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Kimco is a last-mile real estate investment trust specializing in the acquisition, development, and management of open-air shopping centers. The company's portfolio consists of 567 U.S. shopping centers and mixed-use assets. About 53% of portfolio ABR is from anchor stores and 27% of anchor ABR is from grocery stores. National and regional chain tenants provided about 80% of ABR. In addition to grocery anchors, other anchors include clothing retailers, such as T.J Maxx, the company's top tenant. The REIT's largest grocery tenant is Amazon/Whole Foods with 32 locations. The company recognizes the value of multi-use retail destinations that include smaller tenants, and has maintained relationships with fast-food and coffee retailers. It has shopping centers in 39 states, with a focus on the last-mile suburbs of major metro coastal markets, as well as Sunbelt locations. In August 2021, it purchased Weingarten Realty for approximately $3.9 billion, becoming the largest grocery-anchored shopping REIT by market capitalization. The acquisition also gave the company a presence in Texas. In the first quarter of 2024, Kimco completed the acquisition RPT Realty in an all-stock transaction. Kimco previously held a significant equity stake in Albertsons, and its balance sheet benefited from the Kroger-Albertsons merger. In January 2023, the company restructured with an internal merger into an umbrella partnership REIT, or UPREIT. The new parent holding company, New Kimco, is the publicly traded company. KIM shares are included in the S&P 500. The company's market cap is $17 billion.

Stocks continue to rise with broad sector participation, and 2024 is on track to be another very good year for equity investors. Meanwhile, corporate insiders remain on the sidelines, seemingly content to observe the action without any major participation. As new all-time highs are being printed on a regular basis, we can't fault insiders for not jumping in to buy at the (latest) top, but are pleased that they have not been dumping shares in a manner that would suggest a correction is imminent. Digging into the latest weekly insider-sentiment data from Vickers Stock Research, we note eight-week sell/buy ratios that are uniformly neutral. The neutral range for the ratios runs from 2.00 to 6.00, and current eight-week numbers are 5.43 for the Total (all exchanges) ratio, 5.26 for the NYSE, and 5.74 for the Nasdaq. That said, as we detailed last week, the volume of Form 144 filings (indicating an intent to sell shares) was higher than normal in November -- and now we do indeed see some increased insider selling, especially on the NYSE. With end-of-year 'portfolio dressing' in play, we are not overly alarmed. But we will watch this carefully -- and should the trend evolve into a multi-week event, it may lead us to a more-defensive opinion. On a sector basis, insider buying was the greatest in the Energy sector over the last week, with shares valued at nearly $10 million bought -- although buying activity was still outpaced by selling in the sector by a factor of 2.44-times. Meanwhile, selling was the greatest in Information Technology over the last week, with shares valued at $276 million sold versus less than $20,000 bought. While selling outpaced buying across all sectors last week, selling was also particularly notable in Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, and Financial. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at Copart Inc. (NGS: CPRT) and Cencora Inc. (NYSE: COR).

The Vickers Top Insider Picks is a daily report that utilizes a proprietary algorithm to identify 25 companies with compelling insider purchase histories based on transactions over the past three months.

The Vickers Top Insider Picks is a daily report that utilizes a proprietary algorithm to identify 25 companies with compelling insider purchase histories based on transactions over the past three months.