LAND - Gladstone Land upped to Outperform at Opennheimer citing low land inflation rate

• Gladstone Land ( NASDAQ: LAND ) stock advanced 2.1% in Wednesday mid-afternoon trading as Oppenheimer analyst Mitchel Penn upgraded the REIT to Outperform from Perform a day after posting Q4 earnings , which reflected growth in the company's portfolio and its cash lease sales.
• Penn estimated LAND's market price ($18.18 a share at the time of writing) implied a 10-year land inflation rate of -1.4%, "which we believe is too low," he wrote in a note.
• "Historically, farm land inflation has averaged 1.5x the annual food and beverage CPI."
• During Q4, the company had two tenants that fell behind on making payments "partly due to excess supply and market for their respective crops," President and CEO David Gladstone said during the company's earnings call . Offsetting that would be high food-at-home inflation mitigating the "increase in operating costs that many of our farmers are experiencing now," he noted.
• SA contributor Cash Builder Opportunities said last month the overall easing in headline inflation reduces "some of the attractiveness of LAND."

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