Mr. Landy: Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation is an equity REIT specializing in net lease industrials on long-term leases to investment grade tenants. This is our 34th year, and for 34 years we have done remarkably well. We have got Monmouth REIT now up to almost 15 million shares outstanding at approximately 8, so we have a market capitalization approaching 120 million. Having recently reached this 100 million market capitalization, we believe we may now be eligible for four leading indexes: the Russell 2000 Index, the Wilshire REIT Index, the Morgan Stanley REIT Index and the Vanguard REIT Index. The company pays a dividend of 0.58 a year. I think we have had dividends for about 24 years. We like net lease industrials and long-term leases because of the stability of the income. In addition to a portfolio approaching 200 million in assets, we have maintained a small portfolio of about 20 million in REIT securities, which has been very successful and provides us with liquidity. We are advocates of the REIT concept, and we believe that securitized real estate should be worth more than the underlying assets because we give to the investors liquidity, transparency, additional leverage, professional management and the ability to participate in large investments not usually available for the smaller investor.
TWST: How has that underlying sector been performing? On a triple net
lease, do the credit quality and the tenants themselves play an
important role?
Mr. Landy: Yes, but of all the variables, the quality we picked has been
outstanding. Our largest tenant is FedEx, which is investment grade. We
have Keebler, which has now been merged with Kellogg, which is A rated.
Also, we have Anheuser-Busch which is A rated, we have Mead Paper and we
have Sherwin-Williams. We just have an outstanding list of tenants of
which we are very proud of and our leases go from now until 2016 in some
cases. Our average maturities are probably out to 2008, 2009 and 2010.
We are relatively fully occupied and we have rolled over leases that
have matured in 2003 and 2004, so we don't anticipate any vacancies
until 2005 and 2006. We are hopeful that we will be able to roll those
over in addition.
Tickers included in this excerpt: MNRTA
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