Cousin Properties CUZ recently acquired a trophy lifestyle office property, Sail Tower, in Austin, TX. This property, which encompasses 804,000 square feet of space, was purchased for a net price of $521.8 million.

Sail Tower, developed in 2022, is located near the Second Street entertainment district in Downtown Austin. It is only a few blocks away from Cousins’ existing 1.7 million square foot Downtown Austin office portfolio. This office space is fully leased to a Fortune 20 company (S&P: AA+) through 2038.

Cousins’ Austin portfolio is exhibiting strong leasing on the back of tenants’ preference for premium office spaces to attract top talent. The addition of the above property enhances the quality of its leading lifestyle office portfolio, yielding immediate incremental revenues.

CUZ: In a Nutshell

Cousins makes concerted efforts to upgrade portfolio quality with trophy assets’ acquisitions and opportunistic developments in high-growth Sun Belt submarkets. This month, it acquired another lifestyle office property, Vantage South End, in Charlotte’s thriving South End submarket for $328.5 million. This strategic acquisition aligns with Cousins’ Sun Belt-focused strategy and enhances its presence in one of Charlotte's most dynamic submarkets.

The company is also seeing a recovery in demand for its high-quality, well-placed office properties, as highlighted by a rebound in new leasing volume. In the first nine months of 2024, the company executed 114 leases for a total of 1.6 million square feet of office space, with a weighted average lease term of 7.8 years.

Over the past six months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have rallied 34.2%, outperforming the industry’s growth of 8.1%.

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Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are SL Green Realty SLG and OUTFRONT Media OUT, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SL Green’s 2024 FFO per share is pegged at $7.79, which suggests year-over-year growth of 57.7%.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for OUTFRONT’s full-year FFO per share stands at $1.73, which indicates an increase of 5.5% from the year-ago period.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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Cousins Properties Incorporated (CUZ) : Free Stock Analysis Report

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