Industrial Logistics Properties Trust cuts dividend by 97%

Industrial Logistics Properties Trust (ILPT) has announced a big fat dividend cut from 33 cents quarterly to 1 cent quarterly per share in 2022. The new 4 cent per share dividend (annually) yields 0.4% at a stock price of $10 for ILPT.

Industrial Logistics Properties Trust announced that ILPT’s Board of Trustees has reduced ILPT’s regular quarterly cash distribution on its common shares for the second quarter to $0.01 per share. This dividend will be paid to ILPT’s common shareholders of record as of the close of business on July 25, 2022 and distributed on or about August 18, 2022.

Earlier this year, ILPT closed on the strategic acquisition of Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation, or Monmouth, which significantly enhanced ILPT’s scale, tenant base and geographic diversity. Since then, there have been unanticipated increases in interest rates and deterioration in real estate market conditions. As a result, it is taking longer than originally expected to complete ILPT’s long term financing plan for the Monmouth acquisition, which includes the sale of additional equity interests in its consolidated joint venture, property sales and other refinancing activities. ILPT is reducing its quarterly dividend to enhance its liquidity until it completes its long term financing plan for the Monmouth acquisition and/or its leverage profile otherwise improves. ILPT currently anticipates that its dividend will return to a rate at, or close to, its historical level sometime in 2023.

Regardless of its current reduced quarterly dividend rate of $0.01 per share, ILPT expects that its dividends to its common shareholders in 2022 will be at least equal to the minimum amounts required for ILPT to remain a real estate investment trust, or REIT, for federal income tax purposes.

Industrial Logistics Properties Trust is a real estate investment trust, or REIT, that owns and leases industrial and logistics properties throughout the United States. ILPT is managed by the operating subsidiary of The RMR Group Inc. (RMR), an alternative asset management company that is headquartered in Newton, MA.