IPO Filing: Excel Trust, A REIT Soon-To-Be (EXL)

There was an interesting filing for an initial public offering that was put in at the SEC after most investors, brokers, advisors, and traders had already headed home either for Christmas of for the day off as an official holiday.  Excel Trust, Inc. filed to come public via an initial public offering.  No IPO terms were set other than up to $300 million worth of common stock, and the stock will trade under the stock ticker “EXL” after it trades.

This will be perhaps one of the more complex REIT IPOs out there, because the company has no operating history as a formal REIT and most of the properties are deals currently under negotiation.  Excel Trust is a vertically integrated, self-administered, self-managed real estate firm with the principal objective of acquiring, financing, developing, leasing, owning and managing value oriented community and power centers, grocery anchored neighborhood centers and freestanding retail properties.

The joint book-running managers are listed as Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital, and UBS Investment Bank.  Excel was organized as a Maryland corporation on December 15, 2009 and it intend to elect to be taxed as a REIT beginning with its taxable year ending December 31, 2010.  It will conduct substantially all of its business through Excel Trust, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership, or its operating partnership. It is the sole general partner of its operating partnership and the company headquarters is located at 17140 Bernardo Center Drive, Suite 300, San Diego, California 92128.

Upon the completion of this offering and upon its formation transactions, Excel will own an initial portfolio consisting of seven retail properties totaling 191,611 square feet of gross leasable area, which were approximately 86.7% leased and had a weighted average age of approximately 3.4 years as of September 30, 2009 based on gross leasable area. It will also own one commercial office property totaling 82,157 square feet of gross leasable area which was 100% leased as of September 30, 2009. The company utilizes a portion of this commercial building as its headquarters. It will also own a 19.93 acre land parcel that it will have the ability to develop.

As of December 15, 2009, Excel was actively negotiating potential property acquisitions from its pipeline having an aggregate value in excess of $400 million and comprising approximately 3.2 million square feet of gross leasable area.

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JON C. OGG