Should You Consider Investing in Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT)?

Longleaf Partners Fund, an investment management firm under Southeastern Asset Management, published its “Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund” first quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. A return of 11.74% was delivered by the fund for the Q1 of 2021, slightly below its Russell 2000 benchmark that had a 12.70% gain in the same period. You can view the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a peek at their top bets for 2021.

Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund, in their Q1 2021 investor letter, mentioned Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) and shared their insights on the company. Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. is a US-based real estate investment trust company that currently has a $3.08 billion market capitalization. Since the beginning of the year, ESRT delivered a 15.88% return, extending its 12-month gains to 38.82%. As of April 22, 2021, the stock closed at $10.80 per share.

Here is what Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund has to say about Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. in their Q1 2021 investor letter:

“Empire State Realty Trust (19%, 1.23%), the New York City property owner, also contributed to strong performance. Quarterly results were resilient, with occupancy remaining in the high-80s% in a challenging environment and Empire State Building observatory volumes slowly improving while gaining share from competing attractions. The company repurchased discounted shares at a 5% annualized pace. The stock still trades at a low multiple of earnings power and a 30%+ discount to our appraisal. CEO Tony Malkin shared his expectation that the depressed New York City market will recover in occupancy and pricing from 2022.”

Our calculations show that Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: ESRT) does not belong in our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As of the end of the fourth quarter of 2020, Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. was in 13 hedge fund portfolios, compared to 17 funds in the third quarter. ESRT delivered an 18.94% return in the past 3 months.

The top 10 stocks among hedge funds returned 231.2% between 2015 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 Index ETFs by more than 126 percentage points. We know it sounds unbelievable. You have been dismissing our articles about top hedge fund stocks mostly because you were fed biased information by other media outlets about hedge funds’ poor performance. You could have doubled the size of your nest egg by investing in the top hedge fund stocks instead of dumb S&P 500 ETFs. Here you can watch our video about the top 5 hedge fund stocks right now. All of these stocks had positive returns in 2020.

At Insider Monkey, we scour multiple sources to uncover the next great investment idea. For example, Federal Reserve has been creating trillions of dollars electronically to keep the interest rates near zero. We believe this will lead to inflation and boost real estate prices. So, we recommended this real estate stock to our monthly premium newsletter subscribers. We go through lists like the 15 best innovative stocks to buy to pick the next Tesla that will deliver a 10x return. Even though we recommend positions in only a tiny fraction of the companies we analyze, we check out as many stocks as we can. We read hedge fund investor letters and listen to stock pitches at hedge fund conferences. You can subscribe to our free daily newsletter on our website:

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