Is it Still Worthy to Keep Your Equity Commonwealth (EQC) Shares?

FPA Queens Road, an investment management firm, published its “FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value Fund” fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value Fund (“Fund”) returned 23.2% in 2021. This compares to a 28.3% return for the Russell 2000 Value Index during the year. During the fourth quarter, the Russell 2000 Value Index rallied sharply early, fell off sharply from early November through mid-December, and then rallied during the last two weeks of the year to finish up 4.4%. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.

FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value Fund, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned Equity Commonwealth (NYSE: EQC) and discussed its stance on the firm. Equity Commonwealth is a Chicago, Illinois-based real estate investment trust company with a $3.0 billion market capitalization. EQC delivered a 3.86% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -6.30%. The stock closed at $26.90 per share on March 04, 2022.

Here is what FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value Fund has to say about Equity Commonwealth in its Q4 2021 investor letter:

“Equity Commonwealth declined modestly during the year as its attempted $3.4 billion acquisition of industrial REIT, Monmouth, was rebuffed (Monmouth was acquired later for $4 billion by Industrial Logistics Properties Trust). Equity Commonwealth, headed by Sam Zell, is a REIT that has sold off substantially all its properties over the last eight years and now boasts a balance sheet with $3 billion in cash and around $120 million in debt. Zell has shown himself to be very patient with deploying this capital, and we believe this investment will require a lot of patience. Given his track record, we are confident he will make a shrewd acquisition when the time is right.”

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Our calculations show that Equity Commonwealth (NYSE: EQC) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. EQC was in 20 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 20 funds in the previous quarter. Equity Commonwealth (NYSE: EQC) delivered a  6.58% return in the past 3 months.

In September 2021, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on EQC in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.