Blackstone Mortgage Trust: Below Book Value And Paying Dividends

Don’t confuse the publicly traded Blackstone Mortgage Trust Inc. BXMT with the non-publicly traded Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust Inc. (BREIT), the company’s mortgage REIT. Investors can sell their shares of the publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) anytime the market is open, but management sometimes tells you that you can’t get out of the non-publicly traded REIT.

That’s the beauty of owning real estate investment trusts that trade on the New York Stock Exchange and on the Nasdaq Stock Market — you get to decide when you’re done with it and not leave it up to someone with an MBA who sits on an executive committee.

With the Blackstone Mortgage Trust REIT, investors have the choice to buy or sell as long as the market is open. The company is in the business of originating loans collateralized via commercial real estate.

This REIT has a market capitalization of $3.06 billion — plenty of liquidity with an average daily volume of 2.62 million shares. Blackstone Mortgage Trust trades with a price-to-earnings ratio of 13 and at 68% of its book value. Funds from operations over the most recent 12 months declined by 47% — for the past five years, they’re down 8.5%.

The publicly traded REIT pays a dividend of 13.9% — perhaps high enough to be concerned about its sustainability at that level.

Here’s the daily price chart:

The relative strength indicator (RSI) below the price chart shows a positive divergence in price from mid-March to late March. The REIT continues to trade well below both its down-trending 50-day moving average (the blue line) and its down-trending 200-day moving average (the red line).

The weekly chart looks like this:

It’s a bearish look with the 50-week moving average crossing below the 200-week moving average in March. Blackstone Mortgage Trust is finding support just below the level of the mid to late 2020 lows. Note that the price never made it back above the early 2020 peak.

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