Thasos 2019 Retail REIT Performance Update Finds Westfield and Urstadt Biddle Atop Industry Performance Rankings

NEW YORK, April 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Thasos, an alternative data intelligence firm that transforms real-time locations from mobile phones into objective and actionable insights, today published its 2019 Retail REIT Performance Update to provide deep and actionable insights into the state of U.S. retail REITs.

Download the full report here.

The study brings unprecedented insight into the state of U.S. shopping mall REITs just weeks before 1Q 2019 earnings are reported, and demonstrates the power of Thasos' data and analytics following Bloomberg's announcement naming Thasos as one of the first alternative data providers available via Bloomberg Enterprise Access Point.

Key findings in the report:

• Overall, the foot traffic growth that U.S. malls experienced starting in late 2017 has peaked and begun to reverse course in recent months.
• Grocery-anchored open-air malls (GAOAs) continue to outperform all other mall categories, but the margin of this outperformance narrowed significantly in 2018.
• "Experiential tenants" (including Tesla, Apple, Eataly, Starbucks Reserve and other high-end destinations) have yet to provide a meaningful edge in year-over-year visitation growth.
• Beginning January 2018, small strip centers without major anchor tenants began to outperform open-air malls anchored by big-box retailers, reversing a 2017 trend.
• Foot traffic to U.S. outlet malls, which are typically outdoor retail destinations, showed a significant growth decline beginning July 2018.

Thasos produced this Performance Update using the "Thasos Trade Area" methodology, a new measurement system that only includes the areas that actually provide foot traffic to a location, in correct proportion, as opposed to including all residents within a certain radius. For example, Thasos Trade Area discounts New York City residents when evaluating New Jersey's Edgewater Commons mall; those residents are incorrectly included in traditional "fixed ring" measurements of the complex. By weighting contributing census blocks by visitation, Thasos identifies a property's true customer profile and dramatically improves transparency into real customer demographics, a development that shakes up traditional REIT rankings.

The resulting 2019 Retail REIT Performance Rankings are as follows:

"Thasos Trade Area will revolutionize the way the REIT industry measures and analyzes foot traffic," said Greg Skibiski, Founder and CEO of Thasos. "The granularity of our data provides insights never before available and will be critical in uncovering opportunities for investors and companies themselves."

The 2019 Retail REIT Performance Update follows the announcement that Thasos has been selected as one of the first alternative data providers available via Bloomberg Enterprise Access Point, an online Linked Data Platform that provides normalized access to reference, pricing, regulatory and historical datasets for Bloomberg Data License clients.

"We are excited to work with an innovative firm like Thasos that helps fulfill the promise of Bloomberg Enterprise Access Point in empowering financial firms to capitalize on data and make it a strategic asset," said Matthew Rawlings, Chief Data Officer, Enterprise Data at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg will provide easy access to Thasos Trade Area through the Thasos MallStreams and Attribution products, now available via the Bloomberg Enterprise Access Point. MallStreams measures and reports on daily customer visitation for retail REITs, including segmentation by individual mall, quality rating, anchors, and property type, and Attribution is an add-on that captures customer demographics, including household income, loyalty, distance traveled and cross shopping patterns for other malls and individual retailers. Bloomberg Terminal subscribers can also view a free version of the product, the Thasos Mall REIT Foot Traffic Index (THMRFOTR), by accessing the function THAS < GO >.

All Thasos clients can access the firm's unique, web-based dashboard for real estate, an interface that bridges the gap between hard data science and actionable business insights. Users can extract value from MallStreams and Attribution immediately upon subscription, not needing the lengthy technology buildout typically required of granular and highly dimensional data sets.

With the availability of Thasos' MallStreams and Attribution to Bloomberg clients, it is now easier to consume one of the most high-profile and state-of-the-art sources of data on more than 3,500 U.S. malls and their tenants. Access to the data via Bloomberg Enterprise Access Point instantly streamlines investor research workflow, as data consumers can receive the product through their normal Bloomberg interface.

"We are thrilled to have Thasos, and our MallStreams and Attribution services, recognized by Bloomberg for the unique, actionable information we provide to investors and to companies," said Skibiski. "The availability of our data to Bloomberg customers furthers our mission of making alternative data accessible, including to firms that lack teams of data scientists."

About Thasos

Thasos is an award-winning alternative data intelligence firm based in New York City. Founded in 2011, Thasos transforms real-time location pings from mobile phones into objective and actionable information on the performance of businesses, markets, and economies worldwide. Clients include institutional investors and commercial real estate firms, who receive daily customer visitation and related customer attributes for thousands of properties linked to private and publicly traded companies across the U.S.

Thasos' management, investors and advisors are a who's who of data scientists, hedge fund executives and academics, including PDT Co-Founder Ken Nickerson, Acadian Asset Management Founder Gary Bergstrom, MIT Media Lab Co-Creator Sandy Pentland and Andrew Lo, Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

For more information on Thasos, please visit thasos.com.

Michael Kingsley
Forefront Communications for Thasos
212-320-8984
mkingsley@forefrontcomms.com

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