Artis hikes distribution

Discolure: I own AX.UN

I guessed, when Artis announced yesterday they'd roughly doubled their annual revenue and profit that there might be another shoe to drop in the near future, and today, it did.

Artis upped their distribution today by 3 per cent, to 9 cents or $1.08 per year. In the last year, Artis has managed to lower their FFO ratio to a very impressive 65% (FFO stands for Funds From Operations, a key metric for REITS that basically indicates how much of their total cash flow gets paid out in distributions every month. The lower the ratio, the better, as it generally implies the distribution is safe, and in fact could probably stand to increase.)

I'd written recently about how I was thinking about selling my profitable stake in Artis, so this news is certainly welcome while I mull it over some more. Ultimately, I need to decide if those funds might be better spent somewhere else, but in the interim, it's nice to own a company that seems dedicated to growing dependably and profitably.