Kimco Earns Credit Rating Upgrade, Boosts Shareholder Confidence

Kimco KIM recently announced that it has secured an ‘A-’ credit rating with a stable outlook from S&P Global Ratings. The rating agency suggested solid operating performance and a well-positioned balance sheet as the rationale for the same.

S&P further emphasized Kimco’s enhancement of asset quality and scale through all-stock acquisitions, its embedded revenue growth, ample liquidity, active capital markets transactions and predominantly grocery-anchored portfolio as other factors that led to the move.

The stable outlook assumes that Kimco will attain leverage-neutral growth with debt to EBITDA in the mid-high 5x range, solid tenant demand fueled by an improving retail environment, despite recent bankruptcies in the sector.

The rating upgrade will provide a major boost to Kimco’s creditworthiness and enable it to source funds at favorable rates to propel future growth. Early this month, Fitch Ratings also affirmed an ‘A-’ credit rating with Stable Outlook for KIM.

KIM in a Nutshell

With a well-located and largely grocery-anchored portfolio that offers essential goods and services, this retail REIT is witnessing healthy leasing activity. In the second quarter of 2025, Kimco achieved 86% annual base rent from its grocery-anchored portfolio. The solid tenant demand has yielded a higher blended pro-rata leasing spread of 15% in the second quarter of 2025.

Kimco has been following an opportunistic investment policy to enhance its overall portfolio quality. Moreover, the company has been making efforts to bolster its financial strength. This retail REIT exited the second quarter of 2025 with $2.2 billion of immediate liquidity. Its consolidated weighted average debt maturity profile is 8.5 years.

However, market uncertainties emanating from policy shifts and tenant bankruptcies raise concerns.

Over the past month, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 7.5% compared with the industry's rise of 1.7%.

Analysts, too, seem bullish on KIM, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2025 funds from operations per share being revised a cent northward to $1.74 over the past month.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the retail REIT sector are Regency Centers REG and Tanger Inc. SKT, 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 REG’s 2025 FFO per share has been raised marginally over the past month to $4.59.

The consensus estimate for SKT’s 2025 FFO per share has been revised upward marginally to $2.27 over the past month.

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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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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