Brandywine Realty Trust BDN announced the disposal of 6 Mount Laurel, NJ-based office buildings, spanning 560,100 square feet, for $56.5 million.
Additionally, the company refinanced its Philadelphia-based One Commerce Square property with a mortgage of $130 million due in Apr 2023, thereby replacing the previous $121.2-million mortgage due in Jan 2016. Notably, the new mortgage bears a fixed interest rate of 3.64%, lower than the rate of 5.67% on previous mortgage.
Together, these actions generated net proceeds of $65.8 million for Brandywine Realty, which the company intends to utilize for financing its development pipeline, improving leverage and meeting other general corporate needs.
Moreover, earlier in December, this real estate investment trust (“REIT”) announced the divestiture of five office properties and a 1.6-acre development site for $395.5 million.
In fact, this REIT generated $15.8 million from sale of properties in the third quarter 2015, and is targeting $450 million in sales activity during 2016. This comes as Brandywine Realty remains focused on monetizing non-core land holdings, and deploying proceeds from the same to fund development and/or redevelopment activities in its core markets of Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Austin.
At the same time, the asset sale program is aimed at de-leveraging the company’s balance sheet, which is encouraging. For 2016, the company targets a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 6.0x or lower. As of Sep 30, 2015, the ratio stood at 7.0x.
This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock is one of the largest, publicly traded, full-service, integrated real estate companies in the U.S., with a portfolio comprising 239 properties and 30.7 million square feet as of Sep 30, 2015.
Better-ranked stocks in the same industry include Mack-Cali Realty Corp. CLI, Crown Castle International Corp. CCI and Easterly Government Properties, Inc. DEA. All three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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