Plaza Retail REIT\u2019s focus on grocery- and needs-based retail has provided a strong base for the trust during the COVID-19 crisis. The resilience of its strategy has even allowed the REIT to launch a new, grocery-anchored Halifax development.<\/p>\n
Plaza\u2019s portfolio<\/h3>\n
Plaza (PLZ-UN-T) is a Fredericton-headquartered open-ended REIT and retail property owner and developer focused on Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.<\/p>\n
Plaza\u2019s portfolio at the end of Q1 2020 included interests in 272 properties totalling approximately 8.4 million square feet and additional land held for development. It had a 98.3 per cent occupancy rate.<\/p>\n
Plaza\u2019s portfolio largely consists of open-air centres and stand-alone, small-box retail outlets and is predominantly occupied by national tenants. It\u2019s heavily weighted with grocery stores, pharmacies and dollar stores.<\/p>\n
Two-thirds of the businesses at its properties kept operating through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
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Plaza\u2019s stock and financial performance<\/h4>\n
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Retail REITs were hit hard by business shutdowns imposed by governments in March to try to curb the spread of COVID-19 and Plaza was no exception.<\/p>\n
Its stock price hit a 52-week low of $2.66 on April 3 and had gradually recovered to $3.59 by July 8, which is still down significantly from its 52-week high of $4.77. Plaza has a market cap of approximately $366 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s getting better and people will realize that we have a solid business and that we didn\u2019t lose a third of our business overnight,\u201d said Zakuta of Plaza\u2019s stock price. \u201cPeople are very negative about retail, but we believe there\u2019s a future in retail.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously you have to be careful in what you do, and how you do it, but we\u2019ve always done the basic essential-needs stuff since the beginning \u2014 a lot of it just because of our geography more than anything else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Steve McLean<\/h5>\n
Steve is a veteran writer, reporter, editor and communications specialist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of print and online outlets. He\u2019s the author of the book Hot\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plaza Retail REIT\u2019s focus on grocery- and needs-based retail has provided a strong base for the trust during the COVID-19 crisis. The resilience of its strategy has even allowed the REIT to launch a new,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[490,491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-fr","category-press-releases-fr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5089"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5092,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5089\/revisions\/5092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plaza.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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