Mike Landy, president and CEO of Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corp. (NYSE: MNR), joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview at REITWorld 2016: NAREIT’s Annual Convention for All Things REIT at the JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge.
This year marks Monmouth’s 50th anniversary as a public REIT. Landy described the milestone as a “remarkable achievement.” He noted that his father, Eugene Landy, Monmouth’s founder and chairman, is still actively involved on a daily basis.
Landy also commented on the strong tailwind created by the growth of e-commerce.
“For many years we’ve carefully put together a portfolio that would benefit from e-commerce. We saw early on that it would be a tremendous growth engine. Today, we’re 100 percent occupied,” he said.
Monmouth owns 8 percent of the FedEx ground network in the United States, Landy noted. Monmouth is realizing synergistic benefits from investing in e-commerce fulfilment centers that are “piggy-backing off of the FedEx centers,” he added.
Meanwhile, Landy noted that Monmouth recently raised $135 million in preferred equity and will continue to fund future growth that way, “assuming the yield curve doesn’t steepen dramatically.”
Landy described preferred equity as the “ultimate instrument” to utilize in the current environment of low interest rates and a flat yield curve.