Corporate Real Estate Sale and Leaseback : the Effect on Performance and Beta Risk

Corporate owned real estate is one of the world’s largest asset classes. Yet the US market and later on the European market has come towards a trend of refining businesses and using corporate real estate as a financing alternative by performing sale and leaseback transactions. This paper aims to complement and interlink research on event studies focusing on corporate real estate sale and leaseback and studies focusing on measuring risk and performance with variations in corporate real estate holdings. The study is delimited to companies publicly traded on the Swedish stock exchange. A quantitative survey has been conducted in which data from 23 observations has been analyzed. A positive relationship between stock performance and corporate real estate sale and leaseback transactions has been found. It is also noted that companies that intend to use the disengaged capital to focus on core business show an increase in systematic risk. Furthermore an increase in stock performance is found when transaction value to firm value is high. Investors and corporate managers are encouraged to evaluate possibilities for their corporate real estate holdings since the results indicate that the diversification should take place on the investment level rather than on the corporate level.