Paul Pittman, chairman, president, and CEO of Farmland Partners (NYSE: FPI), joined Nareit in New York for a video interview at REITweek: 2019 Investor Conference.
Pittman said there is a lot of confusion about the farm economy and how it relates to farmland. He said that farming is a commodity business so it has its ebbs and flows, and that recently the Midwest has been impacted by some flooding and heavy rainfall.
“The fundamentals of the business are really unchanged [though],” Pittman said. “Global food demand continues to go up [and] farmer productivity…tends to get better through time.”
He added that misperceptions about the farm economy have very little impact on actual farmland values.
Pittman said that he believes Farmland Partners’ shares are trading at a significant discount to net asset value (NAV) and that the company regularly buys back its own stock. He said this strategy is “hugely accretive to shareholder value over time.”