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Who buys the trees grown by timberland-owning REITs? Timber REIT returns depend on strong demand from end-use markets for forest products such as lumber, plywood, pulp and OSB. This explains the dependence that timber REITs have on housing markets. Low more…
How can timber REITs leverage their available capital, given the fact that they must distribute, and cannot retain, earnings? Over time, timberland-owning REITs have identified and employed multiple investment strategies to leverage available capital. These strategies include: “Recycling capital” through programs more…
According to Forisk tracking of timberland ownership, 58 firms currently own or manage in excess of 100,000 acres of timberlands in the United States. These firms feature the following descriptive statistics: As a group, they own/manage 57.6 million acres of more…
In an earlier post (February 15, 2011), we wrote about the pace-setting performance of timberland-owning REITs, as measured by the Forisk Timber REIT (FTR) Index, vis-à-vis other asset classes. In revisiting this theme after close to two quarters of stomach-churning more…
The June issue of Wood Bioenergy US indicates that, as of June 28, 2011: The continental US has 457 wood-consuming, announced and operating bioenergy projects (up from 453 in May). In total, these projects represent potential, incremental wood use of 130.5 million green more…
Major League Baseball turned to the US Forest Service to evaluate the “epidemic” of wood baseball bats breaking during baseball games. The Associated Press recently reported how research engineer Dave Kretschmann at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin has more…
Last month, our team published a project-by-project study of the US biofuels sector called “Transportation Fuels from Wood: Investment and Market Implications of Current Projects and Technologies.” One of the 36 projects evaluated in the study is KiOR, which went public more…
“How do timberland investment managers make money?” The question itself, asked by an analyst working for an institutional investor, was straightforward enough. However, it was the third time in the past week our team had received a call with such more…
Last week, Pasadena, Texas-based KiOR filed with US regulators to increase the size of its initial public offering to $200 million, doubling its initial filing of $100 million in April (KiOR doubles size of IPO, Reuters, June 1, 2011). KiOR plans more…
The May issue of Wood Bioenergy US indicates that, as of May 25, 2011: The continental US has 453 wood-consuming, announced and operating bioenergy projects. In total, these projects represent potential, incremental wood use of 130 million green tons/year by 2021. more…