After announcing strong growth in funds from operations ("FFO") for the second three months of the year on Monday, the REIT's stock jumped nearly $5 tuesday to close at $56.563 after hitting a 52-week high of $56.875. Nonetheless, Robertson Stephens Managing Director and Senior Real Estate Services Analyst Jay Leupp reiterated his "Long-Term Attractive" rating of the company.

"Despite Spieker's sharp increase in share price subsequent to its second quarter earnings release, we believe the company's shares continue to represent a compelling value on both an absolute and relative valuation basis," said Leupp.

Leupp expects Spieker to grow FFO per share by 14.1 percent 2001 over 2000, while the company's shares trade at a moderate premium on a multiple basis. As a result, Leupp is boosting Robertson Stephens' 2000 and 2001 FFO per share estimates to $4.12 and $4.70, respectively, to reflect second quarter operating results, "our increased same-store NOI expectation and Spieker's expanding development pipeline."

In noontime trading Wednesday, Spieker stock was trading up 34.3 cents a share at $56.875 after hitting another 52-week high of $57 a share earlier in the day.

FFO was $80.6 million or $1.05 per share for the second quarter of 2000. In 1999, second-quarter FFO was $63.2 million, or 85 cents a share. Net income for the second quarter, before gain on disposition of property and minority interests for the second quarter, was $61.3 million, or 88 cents a share, on revenue of $184 million. The comparable numbers for the second quarter of 1999 were $48.7 million, or 59 cents a share, on revenues of $158.7 million.

For the first six months of 2000, FFO increased to $153 million or $2 per share from FFO of $123.4 million or $1.67 per share for the same period in 1999. This represents a year-to-year increase in FFO and FFO per share of 24 percent and 19.8 percent, respectively. Net income from operations for the first six months of 2000 was $114.6 million, or $1.75 a share, on revenue of $353.5 million. In the first half of 1999, net income was $96.3 million, or $1.16 a share, on revenue of $309.4 million.

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Analysts Validate Spieker's Performance

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