STORE CEO Featured in LEADERS Magazine
Chris Volk, CEO of STORE Capital, was recently featured in LEADERS, an international publication providing a forum for the thoughts and visions of the world’s most influential people. His status as an expert in the field of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) was reaffirmed as this article was being released and news broke of Warren Buffet’s highly-publicized investment in STORE Capital.
Co-founded by Chris Volk and several members of a management team with a successful industry track record, STORE is one of the largest and fastest-growing net-lease REITs. The company is well known for a diversified portfolio consisting of more than 1,750 properties in 48 states – all of which as, Mr. Buffet likely noted, are in profit-center real estate.
“We decided to focus on profit-center real estate, which is integral to the sales and profitability of our tenants,” Mr. Volk told LEADERS, also noting that the market for Single Tenant Operational Real Estate is a massive $2.6 trillion with more than enough business to go around. “We’re not just trying to take market share in the business. Our view is this is a growth business, and we can create demand – we don’t have to steal market share.”
In the article, Mr. Volk explains that STORE’s focus is on middle-market and larger companies. “These are what I call bank-dependent companies, and they number in the many thousands,” he said. “We have more customers than most companies in our space, together with a portfolio that is insanely granular. We get 80 percent of our revenue from clients that account for less than 1 percent of our revenue.”
Discussing how the company is perceived in general investment circles, Mr. Volk explains there is still much to be understood about the young REIT. “Wall Street doesn’t fully understand the business,” he said. “All of our businesses to date have outperformed the broader performance benchmarks while having less share price volatility and less risk.”
Mr. Volk punctuated his message by emphatically stating, “This business simply works, is resilient, and is among the best real estate and financially-oriented businesses I know.”
The article entitled, “Profits in Profit-Center Real Estate” is in the July/Aug/Sept issue of LEADERS.
