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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grommit who wrote (34687)	6/4/2009 1:27:45 PM
From: E_K_S	Respond to of 78747

Hi Grommit - I have not paid much attention to First Industrial Realty Trust Inc. (FR) even though I own a few shares. Didn't realize it was up so much today. Maybe I will nibble at some of the Preferred K shares. Good job on buying this below $10.00. I show that their tangible BV is around $25.00. Wow, this is larger than BDN. I guess I need to put this back on my watch list. Huge insider buying in March by SHIDLER JAY H. finance.yahoo.com This should have been a green flag alert to nibble at some shares too. W. Buffet was an investor in this company 10 years ago so that is one of the reasons I originally bought some shares. Their core assets are good ones but it was their debt leverage that I was concerned about. With the secondary, it looks like there is still a lot of interest in the company. EKS

To: Grommit who wrote (34687)	7/16/2009 2:20:58 PM
From: E_K_S	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78747

Hi Grommit - Started a position in FRpJ 7 1/2% preferred. This preferred series can be redeemed after January 11 2011 at the par value of $25/share plus any accumulated dividend payments due. The annual dividend payment is $1.81/share which yields 17.20% (at my current buy price of $10.55.share). This seems like a pretty good return as long as their portfolio of commercial real estate (including rent rolls) stabilize and/or the company continues to build up their balance sheet by reducing debt. Here is a recent sale where they booked a small capital gain but more importantly retired $5M of debt. This is a good sale considering the state of the current market. LMI Solutions Buys Phoenix Warehouse for $4.3M First Industrial Sells 82,300-SF Facility for $55 PSF costar.com I expect to hold this position through 2011 and hopefully FR will redeem the shares for $25/share. Otherwise, I will take the 17.2% dividend and can hedge the position by selling FR common shares if things get really sour. It seems like this is a good value proposition especially if I am expecting a long "L" recovery for the U.S. commercial real estate market. EKS