Today’s trading update from Tritax Big Box (LSE: BBOX) shows that the real estate investment trust (REIT) is making encouraging progress. Its portfolio is 100% let with contracted annual rental income of £78.5m. It benefits from upward-only rent reviews, of which 43% are open market, 32% are fixed uplift, 17% are inflation-linked and 8% are hybrid. Furthermore, Tritax Big Box has high quality institutional tenants: 84% of them are listed PLCs and of those, 71% are listed on the FTSE 350.
Tritax Big Box is targeting a fully covered dividend of 6.2p per share for the full year. This puts it on a yield of 4.9% following its 4% share price fall since the EU referendum. Clearly, Tritax Big Box is highly dependent on the state of the UK economy and it therefore comes with greater risk following the decision for the UK to leave the EU. It has an enticing price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio of 1.5, but with the potential for high volatility in its share price, as well as downgrades to profitability, it may be prudent to await further news regarding the performance of the UK economy before buying-in.
Strong pipeline
Also reporting today was infrastructure specialist John Laing (LSE: JLG). It has maintained its full-year guidance for investment commitments, namely in line with the £180.5m delivered in 2015. It has also maintained its full-year guidance for investment realisations and expects to record proceeds of £100m.
Encouragingly, Laing has a strong pipeline of new investment opportunities in public-private partnerships, renewable energy and other infrastructure sectors. Furthermore, the market for the disposal of secondary infrastructure investments remains buoyant. This bodes well for the company’s future and its exposure to international markets such as North America and Asia Pacific should provide stability at a time when the UK outlook is rather uncertain.
Laing trades on a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 6.4 and has a yield of 3.5%. This indicates that now could be an excellent time to buy it – especially with positive growth in earnings forecast for each of the next two years.
Up for discussion
Meanwhile, shares in Beowulf Mining (LSE: BEM) have soared by 37% today after it announced that the Swedish government has listed the company’s application for an Exploitation Concession for Kallak North on its meeting agenda for discussion today. Although this news has been welcomed by the market (as evidenced by Beowulf’s rising share price), the results are due out shortly and there can be no guarantee that they’ll be favourable.
Clearly, Beowulf has considerable long-term potential and believes that it will be able to deliver a modern and sustainable mining operation in partnership with the local community at its Kallak asset. However, with the company’s shares being highly volatile, it may be prudent to await further news flow before buying them. That’s especially the case when there are a number of post-Brexit buying opportunities on offer.
