Reits’ Price Reaction to Unexpected FFO Announcements

This study examines the reaction of REIT prices to unexpected FFO announcements. Using both the traditionally constrained models and an unconstrained model, we find that the market reacts significantly when REITs announce unexpected FFO with a stronger response for positive than negative surprises. Also, we find that FFO explains significantly more variance in abnormal returns than net income supporting our conjecture that FFO, being more accurately reflective of cash flow, provides more useful information to investors than traditional GAAP measures. Our results are robust to different specifications. The results also suggest that the traditional approaches have been misspecified.     

Do REITs Manipulate Their Financial Results Around Seasoned Equity Offerings? Evidence from US Equity REITs

This study addresses two questions: Is there earnings management in the REIT industry around seasoned equity offerings (SEO)? How is earnings management affected by financial and governance factors? Discretionary accruals methods are used to measure earnings management. In addition, the difference between actual and calculated FFO is used to capture the potential FFO manipulation. We examine how these manipulation measures change in the five quarters around SEOs. Moreover, we investigate how a REIT’s earnings management decision is affected by its financial structure, operating style, external auditor and corporate governance. We find clear evidence of FFO manipulation around SEOs, but the extent of earnings management is relatively weaker. We find that REITs issuing SEOs more often are more aggressive in manipulating FFO than earnings. Moreover, there is a notable difference between these two types of financial results manipulation. A mean-reversion trend is found in discretionary accruals, but not for FFO manipulation. Manipulation in financial results is influenced by various factors. A diminished capability to generate cash flow, high leverage, volatile cash flow, frequent SEOs and slack corporate governance are all the features of REITs more likely to manipulate financial results.     

An Empirical Investigation of Herding Behavior in the U.S. REIT Market

Our study investigates the market-wide herding behavior in the U.S. equity REIT market. Utilizing the quantile regression method, we find that herding is more likely to be present in the high quantiles of the REIT return dispersion. This implies that REIT investors tend to herd under turbulent market conditions. Our results also support the asymmetry of herding behaviors, that is, herding is more likely to occur and becomes stronger in declining markets than in rising markets. In addition, our findings show that the current financial crisis has caused a change in the circumstances under which herding can occur, as we find that during the current crisis REIT investors may not start to herd until the market becomes extremely turbulent whereas during the relatively normal period before the crisis, investors tend to herd when the market is moderately turbulent. Finally, we find that compared with the case of the ‘pre-modern’ era, REIT investors are more likely to herd in the ‘modern’ era, during which herding usually occurs when the market becomes tumultuous. This implies that the switch of REITs from passive externally managed entities into active self-managed ones has made the investors more responsive to market sentiment.     

Rushing to Overpay: Modeling and Measuring the REIT Premium

We explore the questions of why Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) pay more for real estate than non-REIT buyers and by how much. First, we develop a search model where REITs optimally pay more for property because (1) they are willing, due to cost of capital advantages and, (2) they are occasionally rushed, due to external regulatory time constraints and internal incentives to deploy capital quickly. Second, using commercial real estate transactions, we find that the extant hedonic pricing models contain an unobserved explanatory variables bias leading to inflated estimates of the REIT premium. Third, using a repeat-sales methodology that controls for unobserved property characteristics, we derive more plausible estimates of the REIT premium. Consistent with our model, we also find the REIT-buyer premium depends on the size of the REIT advantage, the rush to deploy, and the relative presence of REITs in the market.     

Information Uncertainty and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift Anomaly: Insights from REITs

This is the first study to examine the post-earnings-announcement drift anomaly in a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) context. The efficient markets hypothesis suggests that unexpected earnings should be fully incorporated into asset prices soon after being publicly announced. We hypothesize that publicly announced earnings signals may be more certain for REITs due to the presence of a parallel (private) asset market, suggesting less drift for REIT stocks. However, we find a large REIT drift component that is both statistically and economically significant. Furthermore, while the initial earnings surprise response is more muted for REITs, we find that the magnitude of the drift is significantly larger for REITs than for ordinary common stocks (NonREITs). Thus, information does not appear to move between the private and public asset markets in such a way as to render REIT earnings signals more certain than NonREIT earnings signals.     

A Test of the Signaling Value of IPO Underpricing with REIT IPO-SEO Pairs

The asymmetric information hypothesis states that IPO underpricing signals superior firm value. During the post-IPO period, the market learns the firms true worth such that good quality firms issue seasoned equity at favorable prices and recoup the loss sustained at IPO. Since REITs have no special incentive to issue debt because of their tax-exempt status, and since they must pay out 95 percent of net income as dividends, REIT managers are hard pressed to raise capital through seasoned equity. Consequently, the signaling link between IPOs and SEOs is critical for REITs. Consistent with the signaling model, we find strong evidence that (1) REITs that underprice IPOs more are likely to sell seasoned equity sooner, (2) higher IPO underpricing results in larger joint amount of capital raised through an IPO-SEO pair, and (3) firms that underprice IPOs underprice SEOs as well. IPO underpricing does not mitigate the valuation loss associated with seasoned offerings, however.     

Institutional Ownership and the Dynamics of Trading Volume around FFO Announcements

We examine the effect of institutional ownership on abnormal trading volume around the announcement of funds from operations (FFO) by real estate investment trusts (REITs). Our central thesis is that abnormal trading volume is lower for the more informed institutions vis a vis non-sophisticated retail investors/institutions. We find a negative relationship between ownership by pension funds and abnormal trading volume around quarterly FFO announcements. However, ownership by the other types of institutions is unrelated to abnormal trading volume. Consistent with the view that some institutional investors are more informed than individual investors and therefore respond less to end of year announcements, we find that higher ownership by investment advisors is associated with lower levels of trading volume around end of year FFO announcements. Lastly, we find no evidence of institutional sell-offs associated with announcements of less than expected FFO.     

What is the Relationship Between REIT Governance and Earnings Management?

The empirical corporate finance literature claims that better corporate governance constrains earnings management, while others argue that the unique legal and reporting structure of REITs may reduce the need for such internal corporate governance. Using a sample of publicly traded REITs for the 2004–2008 time period, we examine the relationships amongst corporate governance, accruals earnings management, manipulation of Funds from Operations (FFO), and real earnings management. We find that corporate governance quality is unrelated to accruals earnings management and manipulation of FFO. At first glance, the findings suggest that managers need less internal oversight because of the more transparent reporting structure of REITs. However, we document that REITs engage in significant real activities manipulation for earnings management purposes. Our empirical findings further show that corporate governance characteristics, in particular board size, independence, number of board meetings and audit committee financial expertise, are essential for constraining such activities. Finally, by focusing on a subset of REITs that act in ways which previous research has identified as more susceptible to earnings management activities, we demonstrate that good corporate governance effectively reduces accruals earnings management and manipulation of FFO for these REITs. Overall, our findings indicate that, despite the unique legal and reporting structure, REITs engage in certain forms of earnings management, and that the ability for REITs to manipulate earnings is reduced when corporate governance is more effective.     

Depreciation-Related Capital Gains,Differential Tax Rates,and the Market Value of Real Estate Investment Trusts

We develop a model for valuing U.S. real estate investment trusts (REITs) that considers the tax liability impounded in REITs’ property portfolios. This liability is a function of the portfolio’s accumulated depreciation and is driven by different tax rates applied to individual components of the total gain from property sales. These two components are the capital gain resulting from the sale of property at a price higher than its cost and the gain due to the recapture of depreciation taken during the use of the property. Our measure of value is the REIT’s net asset liquidation value (NALV). The metric of REIT value currently used by analysts is a REIT’s net asset value (NAV), but a REIT’s NAV will always be greater than the NALV and therefore overestimate market value, all else equal. Finally, using observed market prices for REITs, we provide evidence that NALVs give superior estimates of REIT market prices than do NAVs.     

The information content of funds from operations (FFO) for real estate investment trusts (REITs)

This paper examines the information content of alternative summary performance measures, using stock returns as the benchmark, for 138 REITs during 1994–1996. This paper tests for both incremental and relative information content of FFO (a voluntarily disclosed, accounting-based performance measure that is the industry standard for REITs) compared to GAAP net income (EPS), cash from operations, and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Results indicate that both FFO and EPS consistently provide incremental information content with only weak evidence that EPS has greater relative information content and no evidence for the other summary performance measures.     

Do REITs use cash reserves efficiently? Evidence from corporate acquisitions

We examine the combined impact of corporate governance and excess cash holdings on the propensity of firms to become bidders and engage in value destroying acquisitions. We focus on the REIT market, due to its unique characteristics caused by regulation and the nature of the industry. The lack of active real estate takeover market should lead to entrenchment and exacerbate agency costs. However, given the mandatory high cash payout for REITs, the absence of takeover market should not cause concerns to shareholders. Our analyses reveal that unlike conventional firms, cash-rich REITs are not more likely to become acquirers and acquisitions by cash-rich REITs are not value decreasing. However, similarly to industrial firms, REITs with higher excess cash and lower insider ownership are more likely to become bidders. We interpret our results to be consistent with the hypothesis that agency problems are less severe in real estate and investors are not averse to use of excess cash by REIT managers on intra-industry acquisitions.     

Liquidity dynamics across public and private markets

In this paper we investigate cross-asset liquidity between equity markets and REITs and between REITs and private real estate markets. While many studies have investigated REIT liquidity, and there is an emerging interest in liquidity in the private real estate markets, there appears to be little knowledge of the dynamics of cross-market liquidity. We find lower levels of liquidity for REITs compared to a set of control firms matched on size and book-to-market ratios. Commonality in liquidity is also lower for REITs than the controls and the overall market. However, we do find an important difference in share turnover for REITs, which appears to have a higher level of commonality than found in other studies. We suggest that this may be due to the financial crisis. Additionally we find evidence of similar time-series variation in liquidity for public and private real estate markets. We also find significant directional causality for most liquidity proxies from the public to private real estate markets. Finally our results show that there is strong contemporaneous correlation between both public and private real estate market liquidity and the term spread and real investment and consumption spending. REIT liquidity measures based on intraday data also appear to contain important information not found in measures constructed from daily returns.     

Bank Mergers,REIT Loan Pricing and Takeover Likelihood

The impact of bank mergers on Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) loan pricing and takeover likelihood is assessed. REITs that lose their primary banking relationship due to bank mergers pay higher interest rates on future borrowings. Bank consolidation reduces bank competition for REIT loans which affects loan pricing. Moreover, based on randomly matched samples of REITs, the results imply that firms losing their agent banks due to bank mergers and those with limited access to bank debt are more likely to be acquired while REITs associated with acquiring banks are more likely to acquire other firms. Additional analysis of the 92 merged REITs reveals that 33% of the target REITs’ banks are merged with their REIT acquirers’ banks prior to the REIT mergers while 67% of the target REITs share at least one major bank with their acquirer.     

Equity Capital Flows and Demand for REITs

REITs are attractive to investors due to their unique characteristics such as high dividend yields, low correlation with common stocks, and a potential hedge against inflation. Thus the market demand curve of REIT equities may not be horizontal. This paper examines the shape of the market demand curve for REIT equities by employing REIT equity capital flows as a proxy for REIT aggregate demand. Our results do not support a downward demand curve for REIT equities. That is, we do not find evidence for the price-pressure effect in REIT returns. Instead, we find it is REIT returns that affect REIT equity capital flows rather than REIT equity flows that affect REIT returns. The results are consistent when we allow for the presence of market fundamental variables in our analysis. In addition, a variance decomposition analysis suggests that REIT equity capital flows do not cause revisions in expected cash flows (dividends) that are strong enough to impact REIT returns. Thus our findings are consistent with implications that the market demand curve for REIT equities is horizontal.     

Analyst Activity and Firm Value: Evidence from the REIT Sector

This paper is the first to examine (1) properties of analyst forecasts and (2) effects of analyst following on firm value for all REITs on CRSP, Compustat and I/B/E/S. Our results suggest that REITs operate in an information environment that has changed over time. We find that for periods when the REIT industry was either in the developmental stage (pre-1992), or after other structural changes in the industry (post-2000), more analysts cover REITs and forecasts are more accurate and less biased. Further, we find that mortgage REITs are more transparent than other REIT structures and exhibit properties of analyst behavior that are different from other types of REITs. Our investigation into the effect of analyst coverage on REIT value suggests that analyst coverage increases REIT value (as measured by Tobin’s q) and that the causality does not run the opposite way.

What Determines Stock Price Synchronicity in REITs?

This paper studies the behavior of REIT stock price synchronicity for the years 1997 through 2006. Theory suggests that REIT stock prices should be largely independent of market changes; and, at the very least, REITs should have a low covariance with other assets, including other REIT stocks. The evidence presented below does not support this view. Instead, synchronicity appears to be quite high in the equity REIT market, especially among REITs that larger and more liquid. We also find that REIT stock price synchronicity is negatively related to hedge fund ownership, but positively related to pension fund and insurance company ownership. The evidence further suggests that synchronicity is the highest among industrial and regional mall REITs, and lower among apartment, health care, and mixed property REITs.     

Analysis of REIT IPOs Using a Market Microstructure Approach: Anomalous Behavior or Asset Structure

In this research, we examine and present new evidence on the market activity following the initial public offering (IPO) of a real estate investment trust (REIT) using microstructure data. We analyze the bid-ask spread differences for REIT securities compared to common stocks and closed-end funds for all IPOs between 1985 and 1988. Our results show that REITs, as a whole sample, experience significantly greater bid-ask spreads immediately following the IPO compared to common stocks and funds. However, this outcome is driven by the equity REIT sample, with the mortgage REIT sample having significantly smaller bid-ask spreads. This is in contrast to the evidence documented by Nelling, Mahoney, Hildebrand, and Goldstein (1995). We attribute our result to the underlying asset structure (such as equity, hybrid, and mortgage portfolios) of the various REITs. Overall, however, we find that bid-ask spreads for REITs are similar to those of common stock when both asset structure and the traditional determinants of the spread (share price, trade volume, and returns variance) are considered.     

Are REIT IPOs Unique? The Global Evidence

Previous studies of real estate investment trust (REIT) IPOs have focused primarily on REITs listed in the U.S. These studies in general find that, unlike industrial firm IPOs, REIT IPOs in the U.S. exhibit an abnormally low initial-day return and mixed long-run performance. Our study examines this puzzle using a large sample of 370 REIT IPOs from four continents (14 different countries) during the 1996–2010 period. We find that (1) the newly-established REITs in other countries exhibit similar initial-day return pattern as in the U.S., (2) the low initial-day return might be caused by the fund-like structure of REITs and the re-deployable assets (real estate) they hold, (3) the slightly positive initial-day return is offset by the poor performance in the 190 days subsequent to the IPO, and (4) the change in U.S. REIT IPO performance before and after 1990 is likely due to a change in the REIT structure.     

Extreme Risk Measures for International REIT Markets

Extreme risks associated with extraordinary market conditions are catastrophic for all investors. The ongoing financial crisis has perfectly exemplified this point. Surprisingly, there are few studies exploring this issue for REITs. This study aims to close the knowledge gap. We conduct a comprehensive study by utilizing all three methodological categories to examine their forecasting performances of VaR and ES for nine major global REIT markets. Our findings indicate that there is no universally adequate method to model extreme risks across global markets. Also, estimating risks for the stock and REIT markets may require different methods. In addition, we compare the risk profiles between the stock and REIT markets, and find that the extreme risks for REITs are generally higher than those of stock markets. The fluctuations of risk levels are well synchronized between the two types of markets. The current crisis has significantly increased the extreme risk exposure for both REIT and stock investors. In all, our results have significant implications for REIT risk management, portfolio selection, and evaluation.