Essential Properties REIT Hits 9-Month High

Joining the list of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in uptrends, Essential Properties Realty Trust Inc. EPRT recently hit a nine-month high. After establishing an October 2022 low of $19, the move up to the $25 area amounts to a 31% rally in about four months. Whether it can continue is another question, but it’s a nice start to 2023.

Essential Properties is a single-tenant real estate firm with headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey. The company runs a portfolio of 1,653 properties in 48 states. According to its website, the REIT focuses on sale-leasebacks, mergers and acquisitions, third-party landlord financing and build-to-suit construction financing. 

It is trading with a price-earnings (P/E) ratio of 26, slightly higher than that of the S&P 500, which now has a P/E of 21.8. Funds from operations last year increased by 21.1% and grew over the past five years at a rate of 56.2%. The average daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange comes to 974,000.

Essential Properties recently announced an offering of 7.7 million shares of stock priced at $24.90.

No recent Wall Street analysts’ ratings exist, but in August, Bank of America Securities upgraded the REIT from Neutral to Buy with a price target of $27.

Essential Properties pays its common stock investors a dividend of 4.25%.

The daily price chart is here:

It’s easy to make out the higher high — it’s the candlestick on the right breaking above the previous levels. A confirming factor might be the heavy volume for the day, seen as the grayish bar below the price chart. That the REIT trades above both its 50-day moving average (the blue line) and its 200-day moving average is generally considered positive.

The weekly price chart looks like this:

Bulls would like to see the REIT break above that mid-2021 peak of $31, another $6 of price movement upward. Essential Properties is trading above its 50-week moving average and its 200-week moving average, both of which are trending upward.

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Not investment advice. For educational purposes only.

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