Jack Cuneo, president and CEO of Chambers Street Properties (NYSE: CSG), joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview in Chicago at REITWeek 2013: NAREIT’s Investor Forum.
Chambers Street Properties buys and manages warehouse, distribution and logistics properties, office buildings, and net leases the space to corporate and government tenants.
The company went public in May 2013 and Cuneo discussed how the decision to list on the NYSE fits into the company’s overall strategic plan.
“What listing the company did was really enable us to provide liquidity to our existing shareholders and at the same time give us access to other sources of capital,” he said. “We are pretty excited. I think it’s going to give us an opportunity to grow and really create a very viable company.”
When asked to describe current fundamentals in the single-tenant net lease and industrial sectors, Cuneo said that it’s fairly competitive from the investment side.
“It’s been an attractive investment product in the past year or so. I don’t know if recent activity in the market is going to change that at all,” he said. “But we found that it’s been a great place for us. We like our portfolio. We’re at 98 percent occupancy, have very high credit tenants and we’re very happy where we are.”
Additionally, Cuneo discussed the company’s industrial properties in Germany and the United Kingdom. He said that acquisitions in those countries have focused on newer, built to suit product that’s built to a more modern type of standard similar to what is found in the United States.
“We pretty much have the same types of tenants in Europe as we do here. Lease structures are a little different but overall it’s been an attractive area for us,” he said.
Cuneo added that Chambers Street Properties also has a partner is Europe that it works with on some of its build-to-suit programs.