Piedmont Unveils Q1 Leasing And Capital Market Activities

Piedmont Office Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:PDM) recently announced that it has leased around 400,000 square feet in first-quarter 2017. However, the company did not close any investment transaction during the quarter.

A couple of notable first-quarter lease deals included a 52,720-square-foot, 10 year new lease through 2028 with Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner, the General Services Administration (GSA) at 250 E Street, SW, in Washington, D.C.; and a 38,318-square-foot, 5+ year lease extension through 2024 with Futurewei Technologies, Inc. at 400 Bridgewater Crossing in Bridgewater, NJ.

Moreover, the company signed deals with reputable companies for properties at a number of locations including Boston, MA; Dallas, TX; Atlanta, GA and Chicago.

Regarding capital market activities, the company did not close any investment transaction during first-quarter 2017.

Piedmont is engaged in acquisition, ownership, management and development of high-quality Class A office properties located across major U.S. markets. The continued transactional activity indicates its success in selling non-strategic assets and redeploying the proceeds into targeted submarkets.

Piedmont currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). In the 30 days, the company’s first-quarter and full-year 2017 funds from operations (FFO) per share estimates remained unchanged.

Shares of Piedmont outperformed the Zacks categorized REIT and Equity Trust – Other industry in the last three months. While the company’s shares rose 8.5%, the industry recorded a gain of 2.4%.


Investors interested in the REIT space, may consider stocks like Global Net Lease, Inc. (NYSE:GNL) , CoreSite Realty Corporation (NYSE:COR) and CorEnergy Infrastructure Trust, Inc. (NYSE:COR) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

In the last 30 days, Global Net Lease’s FFO per share for first-quarter 2017 remained unchanged at 60 cents.

In the last 30 days, CoreSite Realty’s FFO per share for first-quarter 2017 increased 0.9% to $1.06.

CorEnergy Infrastructure Trust’s first-quarter 2017 FFO per share estimates moved up 1.8% to $1.14, in the last 30 days.

Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All EPS numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share.

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