REIT Replay: US REIT indexes climb during week leading up to Easter

Indexes for US equity real estate investment trusts climbed during the week ended April 3, following four consecutive weeks of falling REIT share prices.

The Dow Jones Equity All REIT closed the recent week up 2.80%, compared to a 1.63% gain for the S&P 500 and an 1.18% increase for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Most of the Dow Jones US real estate property sector indexes closed the recent week in the black. The self-storage REIT index recorded the largest increase for the week, up 3.54%, followed by the retail and healthcare REIT indexes with increases of 2.70% and 2.32%, respectively.

On the other hand, the hotel and office REIT indexes closed the week in the red, with the office REIT index down 2.69% and the hotel REIT index falling a slight 0.24%.

The three top-performing REIT stocks for the week all came from the communications sector. Uniti Group LLC recorded the largest share-price increase for the week among all US equity REITs with at least $200 million in market capitalization, up 31.59%. The REIT's share price spiked following a report by TMT Finance announcing rumors that T-Mobile US Inc. and private equity firm TPG Inc. are considering acquiring the REIT, with T-Mobile eying Uniti Group's kinetic fiber-to-the-home business and TPG interested in its enterprise fiber business.

SBA Communications Corp. ranked second with a share-price gain of 22.79%. SBA Communications' share price jumped following a Bloomberg report on Thursday, April 2, that the REIT is exploring strategic options, including a sale of the company, with large infrastructure funds eyeing it.

Crown Castle Inc. rounded out the top-three performing REIT stocks for the week with a share-price increase of 8.73%.

On the other end, hotel-focused Service Properties Trust logged the largest share-price decline for the week, down 29.05%. The REIT's large share-price decline followed its announcement of a $500.0 million underwritten public offering of its common shares priced at $1.20 per share, 33% below the REIT's closing price of $1.79 per share on March 30, the most-recent price prior to the original announcement.

Data center REIT Fermi Inc. saw the second-largest share-price decline for the week, down 11.92%, followed by two office REITs, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. and Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., with share-price declines of 9.96% and 7.83%, respectively.