I’m back with another Portfolio transaction update.  Unlike my previous two posts from this month though, this doesn’t include two buys.  Instead, I’ve got a purchase and a sale to cover.

Compared to the past couple of months, August has shown an uptick in my transaction activity, and this pair of moves just keeps that trend alive.

With my buy I continued to build out my position in a fairly new holding.  Its stock price is down year-to-date, and the stock hasn’t been this inexpensive in nearly 5 years.

With my sale I finally purged a stock from my Portfolio that has done virtually nothing but present problems since I purchased it.  With a dividend cut looming as well, finding reasons to keep the stock around were hard to come by.

Let’s get more information…  Here are further details for my two most recent transactions.

 

American Tower (AMT)

Since I established my AMT position back in February of this year, I’ve added a couple more times, with each purchase being at a successively lower price.  The same held true with this buy as well.

Short of a brief run-up at the start of 2023, AMT has slumped in price for the majority of the year.  That works out OK for me while I’m growing my position, as I get more shares for my investment dollars… of course, this assumes nothing has fundamentally changed with the company.  I don’t believe it has.

AMT is trading with its highest yield and lowest P/AFFO in the past 5 years.  It’s essentially trading at its 52-week low, too.

FFO growth estimates in FY24 and FY25 are currently in the 8% range, although those estimates have come down in the past 6 months.  However, that will easily top the flat FFO growth from the past 2 years.

While I don’t view the current stock price as a screaming buy, I do think it looks fairly valued, and I know it’s as cheap as it’s been in a long while.  Given that I want to grow my position in AMT, adding some shares at this time is reasonable to me.

On 8/16/23, I bought 3 shares of AMT at $179.90/sh, for a total of $539.70.  The stock yielded 3.49% at my purchase price, which is 0.69 percentage points better than my overall Portfolio yield of 2.80%.

I boosted my AMT share total by nearly 25% with this purchase.  I now own a total of 15.174 shares of AMT.  The purchase added $18.84 to my annual forward dividend income, too.

Despite this being my 4th AMT purchase, each buy has tended to be a small addition.  Thus, AMT still is a bottom 10 holding in my Portfolio.  To be exact, it’s now my 7th smallest holding.  My AMT position is not quite as large as the one I have for VICI Properties (VICI), but it is slightly bigger than that of McCormick & Co. (MKC).

I’ll definitely look to keep adding shares of AMT should the price continue to drop.  A price below $170 might warrant a few extras shares than I normally get.

 

Medical Properties Trust (MPW)

After I first purchased MPW back in September of 2021, the stock performed well for about 3 months.  The stock price has trended down consistently since then.

In 2022 alone, MPW received a haircut of ~50% in its stock price.  Collecting rent from some of its largest tenants become an issue as those tenants struggled with their own businesses.

MPW soon found it hard to find growth avenues.  Trying to fund acquisitions by issuing shares with a depressed stock price wasn’t a good option for MPW.  Taking on more debt didn’t make sense either given their existing debt load.

With the onset of 2023, rising interest rates then added to their woes as a portion of the company’s debt had variable interest rates.

On top of all this bad news, the likelihood of a dividend cut became larger as time went on.  Having already suffered through a falling stock price, I didn’t want to feel the sting of a slashed dividend as well.  So, I decided to take my losses and move on.

On 8/17/23, I sold all 174.182 shares at $7.50/share.  The sale proceeds were $1,306.36, after the $0.01 SEC fee.

It turns out I sold just a few days before a 48.3% dividend cut.

At my sale price, shares of MPW yielded a whopping 15.47% which is over 5.5x my current Portfolio yield.  This is what a high starting yield and a falling stock price will get you.

I realized a long-term capital loss of $2,050.95 and a short-term capital loss of $35.82.  The sale also resulted in a $202.05 reduction in annual forward dividend income.  Ouch!

This is just my second sale of 2023.  Both sales have resulted in the stock being purged from my Portfolio.  In addition, with both sales I locked in a loss.  This feels a lot like I pulled a weed from my Portfolio garden, and that the garden will be better for it.

Since my initial MPW purchase in Sept. 2021 until this final sale, I calculate my annualized return for MPW over the 23 months I held it at -36.48%.  Man, that’s ugly.

I’ve already re-invested the MPW sale proceeds into another stock, but I’ll save that for my next post.

 

Summary

August activity heated up again with another pair of Portfolio transactions.  In this instance I made one purchase and one sale.

I continued adding to my AMT position, scooping up another small group of shares while its stock price slide has persisted.

On the other hand, I sold MPW, eliminating the stock from my Portfolio.  With a business troubled on several fronts, and what appeared to be an upcoming dividend cut, I couldn’t convince myself to continue holding the shares.  I wish I’d come to the conclusion to sell the stock earlier as the signs were there.

The AMT purchase added some additional forward dividend income for my Portfolio, but that was wiped out, and then some, by the MPW sale.

The pair of transactions resulted in a net withdrawal of $766.66 from my Portfolio.  My annual forward dividend income declined significantly, too, falling by $183.21.

I recorded a long-term capital loss of $2,050.95 and a short-term capital loss of $35.82 with the MPW sale.

In the end, MPW exited my Portfolio… and while I added AMT, it was already a current holding.  So, the number of stocks in my Portfolio slipped by one to 59.

 

If you have MPW in your Portfolio, are you thinking of selling the stock now that the dividend has been cut?  Or does this make you feel like the company will now retain the capital it needs to weather the storm and get the company pointed in the right direction again?  I look forward to your comments!