Benjamin Butcher, chairman, president and CEO of STAG Industrial (NYSE: STAG), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworld: 2018 Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Butcher said that STAG is focused on about 65 primary and secondary markets in the U.S.
“The bottom half of the primary market and the secondary markets are underappreciated, because capital tends to pursue the super primary or the larger markets,” he said. There are operating industrial markets in the bottom 40 or 50 assets of those 65 markets “where there are perfectly good transactions to do,” Butcher added.
Butcher discussed a $500 million senior unsecured revolving credit facility that STAG closed over the summer, noting that the company originated a new $175 million term loan through the transaction.
“We have between $500 million and $1 billion of liquidity available to us today,” he said. “Our debt remains relatively low leverage debt.”
He added that the company is working on tenant diversification. “We’re trying to make sure that no particular correlated risk can interfere with the portfolio of those operations,” Butcher said.