Arun Gupta, a director at LXP Industrial Trust (LXP) recently bought 15,000 shares. The buy increased his stake by 30%, and came to a total cost just over $134,000.
This marks the first insider activity of any kind at the industrial property REIT over the past two years. Overall, LXP insiders own 2.2% of shares, and institutions own nearly 96% of LXP shares.
LXP Industrial shares have declined about 12% in the past year.
While investors were once interested in industrial space for manufacturing and data centers, interest has waned as interest rates have stayed higher and weighed on valuations.
LXP has also struggled in the past year, as revenues grew by just 1.4%. Plus, the REIT didn’t make an overall profit.
That’s not as important in the real estate space, given the ability to depreciate property values and still earn a cash flow.
As a REIT, shares pay a high dividend of 5.9% at current prices. The current dividend payout is less than half of the total revenues per share, so the payout looks sustainable at present.
Action to take: Income-oriented investors may like LXP shares here. The valuation isn’t as extremely low as office or other commercial space, but is justified by how the industrial space is generally holding up.
For traders, shares have started to trend higher over the past few weeks. If that trend holds, the August $10 calls, last trading for about $0.15, could see high double-digit returns in the weeks ahead.
Disclosure: The author of this article has no position in the company mentioned here, but may trade after the next 72 hours. The author receives no compensation from any company mentioned in this article.