Gramercy Will Pay the Preferred Dividend

Exciting day for long time Gramercy shareholders, management must have received a lot of questions regarding their equity raise press release last Friday without many other details, like what the money would be used for?  This morning, Gramercy reissued a press release announcing it had identified a large pipeline of acquisitions and that it will pay the accrued preferred dividend in full this quarter.  They also stated their intention to begin paying a dividend to the common shareholders starting next year (likely Q1?) which will mark its final step in its transformation from a commercial mortgage REIT to a net leased equity REIT.

The large investment pipeline is great news as it will be accretive to Gramercy's NAV as it takes advantage of the spread between private and public market values (although I'd assume its narrowed in recent months).  It also makes sense why management was willing to give the private placement investors the downside protection granted in the CVRs as these acquisitions should increase Gramercy's market value as it gains scale. 

I probably won't be able to listen into the conference call live this afternoon, but I'll update this post if there's anything that strikes me as interesting.  And as I've said before, I'll probably sell most, if not all, of my outsized position once the dust settles a bit and Gramercy is being valued and talked about like a normal equity REIT.

Disclosure: I own shares of GPT