Versor Investments LP Acquires Shares of 9,023 W.P. Carey Inc. $WPC

Versor Investments LP acquired a new stake in W.P. Carey Inc. (NYSE:WPC) during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The institutional investor acquired 9,023 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock, valued at approximately $563,000.

Several other hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in WPC. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its position in W.P. Carey by 274.7% in the first quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 5,112,190 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock valued at $322,630,000 after purchasing an additional 3,747,898 shares during the period. Pacer Advisors Inc. raised its position in W.P. Carey by 1,016.8% in the first quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 1,751,921 shares of the real estate investment trust’s stock valued at $110,564,000 after purchasing an additional 1,595,045 shares during the period. Nuveen LLC purchased a new position in W.P. Carey in the first quarter valued at about $30,194,000. Private Management Group Inc. purchased a new position in W.P. Carey in the first quarter valued at about $29,923,000. Finally, Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC purchased a new position in W.P. Carey in the second quarter valued at about $24,030,000. 73.73% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Several research analysts have commented on WPC shares. UBS Group raised their price objective on W.P. Carey from $63.00 to $66.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research report on Friday, August 15th. Weiss Ratings restated a “hold (c)” rating on shares of W.P. Carey in a research note on Wednesday, October 8th. Wells Fargo & Company upgraded W.P. Carey from an “equal weight” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their target price for the company from $68.00 to $72.00 in a research note on Thursday, September 11th. Scotiabank raised their target price on W.P. Carey from $64.00 to $67.00 and gave the company a “sector perform” rating in a research note on Friday, September 5th. Finally, Barclays raised their target price on W.P. Carey from $64.00 to $66.00 and gave the company an “underweight” rating in a research note on Monday, October 20th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, seven have given a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $67.89.

W.P. Carey Stock Performance

Shares of W.P. Carey stock opened at $65.96 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $14.45 billion, a PE ratio of 39.97, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 9.57 and a beta of 0.81. W.P. Carey Inc. has a 1 year low of $52.91 and a 1 year high of $69.79. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $67.45 and its 200-day simple moving average is $64.58. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02, a quick ratio of 0.19 and a current ratio of 0.25.

W.P. Carey (NYSE:WPC) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 28th. The real estate investment trust reported $1.25 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $1.23 by $0.02. The business had revenue of $431.30 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $424.44 million. W.P. Carey had a return on equity of 4.40% and a net margin of 21.75%.The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 8.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm earned $1.18 earnings per share. W.P. Carey has set its FY 2025 guidance at 4.930-4.990 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that W.P. Carey Inc. will post 4.87 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

W.P. Carey Increases Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, October 15th. Investors of record on Tuesday, September 30th were paid a $0.91 dividend. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 5.5%. This is a positive change from W.P. Carey’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.90. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, September 30th. W.P. Carey’s payout ratio is 220.61%.

W.P. Carey Profile

W. P. Carey ranks among the largest net lease REITs with a well-diversified portfolio of high-quality, operationally critical commercial real estate, which includes 1,424 net lease properties covering approximately 173 million square feet and a portfolio of 89 self-storage operating properties as of December 31, 2023.