Business & Finance
Business and Finance
Business and Finance
Mon, December 8, 2008 Zacks Analyst Interview Highlights: Equity Residential and HCP, Inc.
CHICAGO--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--Zacks.com releases the latest Analyst Interview. Today's interview is with senior analyst Greg Sukenik,who talks about Equity Residential (NYSE: [ EQR ]) and HCP, Inc. (NYSE: [ HCP ]).
A synopsis of today's Analyst Interview is presented below. The full article can be read at [ http://at.zacks.com/?id=2678 ].
We would overweight apartments, health care and select retail.
Apartment REITs are one of the best performing REIT sectors in 2008. Apartment landlords have benefited from the rapid decline in home sales, which has created a larger pool of renters. This will continue, although more competition has been added from houses and condos that cannot be sold. Look for rental rate growth in the sector to slow or stop; landlords will no longer be able to put through rental increases due to tapped out customers.
Health care has also one of the best performing sectors in 2008. This is still one of our favorite sectors going into 2009. Health care is possibly the most "recession proof" REIT sector; healthcare spending will continue to outpace inflation.
A couple of names we like:
Equity Residential (NYSE: [ EQR ]) -- The largest apartment REIT has geographically diverse portfolio, strong balance sheet and plenty of liquidity. The company has addressed near-term debt maturities.
HCP, Inc. (NYSE: [ HCP ]) -- A health care REIT with diverse health care portfolio is good in long-term markets. The company is moving toward more private pay sources, and has taken care of most 2009 expirations.
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The performance of the Zacks Rank portfolios shown above for annual and year-to-date periods are the linked monthly total returns (price changes + dividends) of equal weighted hypothetical portfolios, consisting of those stocks with the indicated Zacks Rank, assuming monthly rebalancing and zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios. The hypothetical portfolios were created at the beginning of each month from Jan 1988 forward based on the values of the Zacks Rank available to Zacks' clients before the beginning of each month.
The portfolios created monthly from 1988 through September 2006 exclude ADRS and are comprised of stocks that have the indicated Zacks Rank and were covered by at least two analysts at the time of the stocks inclusion in the portfolio. Starting in October 2006 and going forward, the portfolios are comprised of all stocks with the indicated Zacks Rank and do not exclude ADRs, which is more reflective of the list of stocks that customers will find on the Zacks web sites. 2007 returns are for the period of Jan 1 – Jun 30, 2007. These performance numbers have been audited from 1995 through 2003 by Autschuler Melovan, a division of American Express Financial.
