Real estate company pays for the sins of its former owner. It pays an 8.8% dividend and its shares can be bought more cheaply than management did
A real estate fund that spent two years selling itself off now pays almost double what the industry leader does. The market is behaving as if it expects another cut. The numbers, however, say something different. How do you tell who is right, and when will it become clear?
Key points
A real estate fund pays an annual dividend of 8.8%, while the biggest player in the sector offers barely 5.2%
Management itself bought shares at $8.11, and today they are available more cheaply than its average purchase price
In two years the company sold off almost $3 billion in assets and cut its dividend four times
In August it made its first acquisition in years, and its CEO talks about a fundamentally different company than the market knows
There are two kinds of 8% yields, and one test reveals which one this belongs to
A yield that looks like a typo in the spreadsheet
Quarterly dividend of $0.19, or $0.76 per year. At a share price around $8.36 that works out to a yield of roughly 8.8–8.9%. For comparison: Realty Income, the largest landlord of this type in the world, offers about 5.2%. Global Net Lease $GNL pays almost double – and for a real estate landlord with tenants like FedEx or Dollar General, that is a number that makes you stop and ask where the catch is.
What makes it even stranger is who is buying the shares. Since February 2025 the company has bought back 20.9 million of its own shares at an average of $8.11, and in the second quarter of 2026 it even paid $9.10 for them. So today the shares can be bought more cheaply than the price at which its own management was buying them. As recently as early September the stock stood at $9.19, meaning it lost about 7% in a month, and it is down about 15% from its 52-week high of $10.04. And that despite the company raising its full-year guidance in August.
For anyone looking for dividend income, the question is simple: is the market paying for patience, or does it sense something the numbers do not show?