Spirit Realty Sets Date for REIT Spinoff
On June 1 Spirit Realty’s shares will continue to trade on the NYSE under "SRC," and Spirit MTA REIT will begin trading under "SMTA."
DALLAS–The launch date for Spirit Realty Capital’s spinoff of its assets leased to Shopko Retail Shops Holding Corp. has been set by the Board of Directors. The distribution of common stock of Spirit MTA REIT will happen on or about May 31. On the next trading day, June 1, Spirit Realty Capital’s shares of common stock will continue to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “SRC,” and Spirit MTA REIT’s common stock will begin trading on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “SMTA.”
Each SRC shareholder will receive one share of SMTA common stock for every ten shares of Spirit common stock.
“Having evaluated various alternatives to enhance stockholder value with our team of advisers, we plan to commence a transaction to leverage and spin-off our properties leased to Shopko and our assets that collateralize Master Trust A, which we believe provides stockholders with the best risk adjusted strategic alternative to move forward,” CEO and president Jackson Hsieh said in a prepared statement. Among other attributes, he said, the spinoff will “create two companies that have unique capital structures with strong tenancy to fit their specific business strategies.”
Indeed one of the primary objectives of the spin-off is to enable SRC and SMTA to pursue two separate investment strategies, Hsieh explained to analysts last year. Currently the SRC platform encompasses both investment grade tenants and small-and medium-sized tenants, he noted. “While many of our operational processes can effectively be applied to both investment strategies, we’ve concluded that it’s more efficient to have separate financing approaches focused on each investment strategy,” Hsieh said last year.