BOCA RATON, FLA. — ODP Corp. (Nasdaq: ODP), the parent company of Office Depot, has rejected USR Parent Inc.’s off-market transaction offer to acquire the Boca Raton-based retailer. USR, the parent company of office products retailer Staples and affiliate of Sycamore Partners, offered to buy ODP for $40 per share in an all-cash deal that would equate to roughly $2.1 billion. In a letter to Stefan Kaluzny, managing director of Sycamore Partners and a member of the board of directors at USR, ODP’s chairman of the board of directors Joseph Vassalluzzo said the company is not opposed to selling, but “what we do not plan to do, however, is engage in a transaction that, as history has shown, would likely result in a prolonged and expensive regulatory review process with no guarantee of success.” In the letter, Vassalluzzo did not rule out the merger altogether, stating: “In addition, we are open to combining our retail and consumer-facing ecommerce operations with Staples under the right set of circumstances and on mutually acceptable terms.” ODP owns Office Depot, OfficeMax and IT-services business CompuCom. ODP has been in the process of selling CompuCom since November 2020. According to The Wall Street Journal, USR …
BOCA RATON, FLA. — Polo Realty Group and Kay Commercial Realty have been selected to lead the leasing effort for The Milan at Boca Center, a seven-story office building in Boca Raton. Roger Steinhardt of locally based Polo Realty and Bill Klein of New Jersey-based Kay Commercial will handle leasing on behalf of the undisclosed owner. The Milan at Boca Center is located at 1675 N. Military Trail, three miles west of downtown Boca Raton. Comerica Bank anchors the asset, which is also partially leased to Salon Sora.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — Data center REIT Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR) will relocate its global headquarters from San Francisco to Austin. In announcing the move, Digital Realty cited the state’s affordable cost of living for employees, as well as its highly educated workforce and pro-business climate as the key drivers of the relocation. Data Center Knowledge reports that Digital Realty has about 30 data centers in Texas spanning 4 million square feet with a capacity for more than 120 megawatts of power. Details about the company’s new office property were not released. Digital Realty joins Oracle and Tesla as the latest publicly traded companies originally based in California to make sizable investments or relocations in Austin.
SAN DIEGO — Petco ended its first day of trading on Nasdaq on Thursday at $29.40 per share, 63 percent higher than its initial public offering (IPO). The San Diego-based pet care retailer is trading under the stock symbol WOOF. Petco priced its IPO at $18 per share, and the stock price opened at $26 per share Thursday. Petco operates more than 1,500 stores in the United States, Puerto Rico and Mexico and sells food, toys and healthcare needs for a variety of pets. Additionally, more than 100 Petco locations offer in-store veterinary services.
PHILADELPHIA — Urban Outfitters (NASDAQ: URBN) reported an 8.4 percent sales decrease for the two months that ended on Dec. 31, 2020 compared with the same period a year earlier. The Philadelphia-based apparel retailer said that lower sales within its brick-and-mortar stores were partially offset by double-digit sales growth across the digital platforms of its family of brands, which includes Free People and Anthropologie Group. For the fiscal year 2020, the company’s net sales declined by 14.3 percent year-over-year, although the retailer did open 18 new stores over the last 12 months. In addition, Urban Outfitters has announced that current CEO Trish Donnelly will be stepping down on Jan. 31, 2021 after a seven-year stint with the company and will be replaced by Sheila Harrington. Urban Outfitters’ stock price opened at $27.90 per share on Wednesday, Jan. 13, up from $26.47 per share a year ago.
MOORESTOWN, N.J. — Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT) has received a zoning approval that will allow the Philadelphia-based mall owner to add up to 1,065 multifamily units and a hotel to its Moorestown Mall in Southern New Jersey. For PREIT (NYSE: PEI), which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early November, the move is part of a larger effort to diversify the real estate at several of its regional malls. Dubbed a “densification plan” by company executives, PREIT’s plan to sell parcels of land to multifamily developers is expected to generate as much as $150 million in proceeds that will be used to reduce its outstanding debt. The company is in the process of delivering 3,500 apartments across its properties as part of the initial phase of the plan, which could ultimately see as many as 7,000 multifamily units and several hotels added to PREIT’s properties. The first phase of the multifamily component at Moorestown Mall will consist of 375 units and a hotel with an unspecified number of rooms. “Our foresight has shaped a high-quality portfolio with a strong retail core that attracts a distinctive mix of new uses to redefine the future-ready retail and leisure district,” said …
WARREN, MICH. — Loves Furniture & Mattresses, owned by Dallas-based private equity firm U.S. Assets Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week amid struggles brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Loves was formed in April of this year and acquired 27 Art Van Furniture locations across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Virginia and Maryland in May. That deal did not include the stores’ underlying real estate, which had already been sold off, according to reports by the Detroit Free Press. The company also opened or acquired 13 additional locations between May and October of 2020 in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The board of directors for Loves attributes the continuing pandemic, government restrictions on business operations, the need for additional operational financing and creditor demands as reasoning for the Chapter 11 filing. The Warren-based company plans to pare down its store count to 13. The remaining stores will host going-out-of-business sales organized by Planning Furniture Promotions, which assists furniture stores with liquidation, according to reports by The Detroit News. A testament to these struggles is seen in a lawsuit recently filed by Mississippi-based furniture maker Southern Motion Inc. and its subsidiary Fusion Furniture Inc., which alleges a break of contract by Loves …
UNION, N.J. — Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ: BBBY) reported 2 percent comparable sales growth for its fiscal third quarter that ended on Nov. 30, an increase that was fueled largely by 77 percent growth in digital sales compared with the same period a year ago. Despite this growth, the New Jersey-based retailer will continue with its plan that was announced in July of last year to close some 200 stores by mid-2022. According to CNBC, this includes the closing of 43 stores by the end of February. Bed Bath & Beyond also agreed in December agreed to sell its Cost Plus World Market brand to Los Angeles-based private equity firm Kingswood Capital Management. The company’s stock price closed at $21.03 per share on Wednesday, Dec. 6, up from $16.60 per share a year ago. CNBC also reports that as of late August, Bed Bath & Beyond operated about 1,500 stores across the country.
NEW YORK CITY — Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM) has submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire all outstanding shares of common stock of Brookfield Property Partners (NASDAQ: BPY), which would effectively take its commercial real estate division private. Brookfield Property Partners has about 357.6 million outstanding shares. Brookfield Asset Management’s bid to acquire those shares from public investors at $16.50 per share gives the deal a total price tag of $5.9 billion. The $16.50 per share price represents premiums of 14.9 percent and 14 percent, respectively, over the closing price of the BPY units on the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ on Dec. 31. This price also reflects premiums of 8.9 percent and 29.4 percent, respectively, over the 30-day and 180-day volume-weighted average prices of the BPY shares on NASDAQ. Brookfield Asset Management’s proposal does not include the purchase of shares of preferred stock or other securities of Brookfield Property Partners or its subsidiaries. Under the terms of the deal, for each share they hold, BPY shareholders can elect to receive $16.50 in cash, 0.4 BAM Class A shares or 0.66 of BPY preferred shares. Should the proposed transaction go forward, Brookfield intends to file a transaction statement and other …
CHICAGO AND RICHARDSON, TEXAS — Chicago-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo has acquired RealPage (NASDAQ: RP), the Richardson, Texas-based provider of property management software, in a deal valued at $10.2 billion. The price tag includes the assumption of the debt of RealPage, which was founded in 1998 and serves owners worldwide that have more than 19 million apartments in their combined portfolios. Under the terms of the agreement, RealPage stockholders will receive $88.75 in cash per share of RealPage common stock upon closing of the transaction. The purchase price represents a premium of 30.8 percent over RealPage’s closing stock price of $67.83 on Dec. 18, 2020. The stock price of RealPage opened at $87.65 per share on Tuesday, Dec. 22, up from $53.65 a year ago. According to The Wall Street Journal, software providers have performed well during the pandemic as more companies have pivoted to digital marketing of goods and services. As a technology specialist within the private equity space, Thoma Bravo was drawn to this operational trend. RealPage CEO Steve Winn echoed this notion in an interview with the Journal, saying, “we were able to do quite well during the pandemic because there was a rush by our industry to go …