Lamar Advertising Expands Portfolio, Acquires Verde Outdoor Assets

Lamar Advertising LAMR recently announced that it has purchased Verde Outdoor assets in a major boost to its portfolio. The move will expand its portfolio with more than 1,500 billboard faces, including 80 digital displays, spanning across 10 states in key markets in the Midwest, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The deal was executed as an Umbrella Partnership Real Estate Investment Trust (“UPREIT”) transaction, the first of its kind in the billboard industry. Under this arrangement, Verde transferred its assets to Lamar Advertising Limited Partnership (Lamar LP), the operating partnership subsidiary of Lamar that holds the company’s assets. In exchange, the owners of Verde received common units of Lamar LP, a representative of Lamar’s Class A common stock value.

The Verde Outdoor owners are entitled to receive for their Lamar LP common units an amount equivalent to the dividend per share paid on Lamar’s common stock. Moreover, these units may be converted into cash or shares of Class A common stock of Lamar. As such, the UPREIT transaction enabled Lamar to acquire assets in a tax-efficient manner while presenting a lucrative offer for Verde Outdoor.

LAMAR in a Nutshell

Lamar enjoys an impressive national footprint of outdoor advertising assets and holds a leading position as a provider of logo signs in the United States. The above acquisition highlights the company’s efforts to expand the digital platform through acquisitions and technological advancements in the low-cost, out-of-home (OOH) advertising platform.

Particularly, the growing digital platform allows Lamar to tap into expanding programmatic advertising channels. The company has added a large number of digital screens through acquisitions and internal conversions over the past several years. It offers customers the largest network of digital billboards in the United States, with around 5,100 displays as of the end of the first quarter of 2025.

Over the past three months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 7.4% in comparison to the industry's growth of 7.8%.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are SBA Communications SBAC and Uniti Group UNIT, 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 SBAC’s 2025 FFO per share is pegged at $12.74, moving marginally northward over the past two months.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for UNIT’s full-year FFO per share is pinned at $1.50, being revised upward by 4.2% over the past two months.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (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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