Duke Realty Refinances $1.2B Credit Facility

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Duke Realty Corp. revealed that its operating partnership, Duke Realty LP, has closed the refinancing of its $1.2 billion unsecured credit facility. The domestic-only logistics REIT amended and restated the credit facility, which it had originally closed in October 2014 to replace an existing $850 million facility.

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Duke’s amendment and restatement of its unsecured credit facility dovetails with its plans for the year. “We intend to continue a robust pace of growth in 2021, which we anticipate to fund with the combination of asset dispositions, internally generated cash flow, short-term use of our line of credit and a potential unsecured bond issuance later in the year,” Mark Denien, CFO of Duke Realty Corp., said during the REIT’s fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call on January 28, 2021.

The unsecured credit facility, which had been extended to January 2022, is now slated to mature in March 2025 and also allows for two six-month extensions. Additionally, new terms allow for an increase of as much as $800 million, and borrowings under the facility will now bear interest at the annual rate of LIBOR plus 0.775 percent, down from the rate of LIBOR plus 0.875 percent, which was established when Duke last extended the facility in January 2018.

Green devotion

A leader in sustainability in real estate, Duke continues to make strides in its commitment to the greening of the industry, and its amended and restated unsecured revolving credit facility is no exception. The company made one of its biggest moves in the arena in 2019, when it closed a $400 million green bond offering, becoming the first industrial REIT in the U.S. to do so. Duke’s newly refinanced credit facility features an incremental reduction in borrowing costs provided that certain sustainability-linked metrics are achieved annually.

The 13 financial institutions that participated in Duke’s amended and restated facility were all existing lenders and include JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. and Wells Fargo Securities LLC, who served as joint lead arrangers.

Extra liquidity

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 health crisis in the U.S. in the spring of 2020, many industrial REITs have bolstered their liquidity through the refinancing of credit facilities. In July 2020, First Industrial Realty Trust announced the refinancing of its $200 million unsecured credit facility in an effort to better manage its business amid the pandemic. More recently, in February 2021, Stag Industrial REIT Inc. increased the capacity of its unsecured credit facility from $500 million to $750 million.