Kimco Realty Corp. (KIM)

Kimco Realty owns and operates open-air, grocery-anchored shopping centres and mixed-use properties in the United States. The business began through a predecessor organised in 1966, the company was formed in Delaware in 1973, listed in November 1991 and has been a REIT since 1992.

The portfolio

At the end of 2025 Kimco had interests in 565 shopping centre properties totalling 100.2 million square feet of gross leasable area across 29 states, plus 66 other property interests, mainly net leased properties, preferred equity investments and other investments. The company says 91 percent of the portfolio is in Sun Belt or coastal markets.

Almost everything is done in-house

Nearly all operating functions, including leasing, asset management, maintenance, construction, legal, finance and accounting, are administered by the company itself, and its executive officers work exclusively on Kimco's real estate. It has never engaged a REIT adviser to operate its properties and says it does not expect to.

The shift in growth strategy

Kimco started out developing land and building shopping centres. It revised that, and now focuses on acquiring and redeveloping existing shopping centres that include a grocery component. Alongside that it develops residential and mixed-use operating properties and obtains entitlements for further projects of that kind through redevelopment.

On 2 January 2024 RPT Realty merged into Kimco. That added 56 open-air shopping centres, 43 of them wholly owned and 13 held through a joint venture, comprising 13.3 million square feet of gross leasable area, and brought RPT's 6 percent stake in a 49-property net lease joint venture.

Income that is not rent

Kimco runs institutional joint venture programmes in which it holds non-controlling interests but retains management. From those it earns management fees, acquisition fees and disposition fees, plus promoted interests when certain performance measures are met. It has set up further ventures in which it holds a smaller equity interest while providing management, leasing and operational support. It has also supplied preferred equity capital to real estate professionals, and from time to time provides real estate capital, retail real estate financing and management services to retailers, both healthy and distressed. It has made selective investments in secondary market opportunities where management judges a security or other investment to be priced below the value of the underlying assets, and notes those are exposed to equity and debt market volatility.

Structure and tax

The company reorganised into an UPREIT structure in January 2023, and at the end of 2025 the parent was the managing member of Kimco OP, owning 99.79 percent of its interests and exercising exclusive control. To stay a REIT it must distribute at least 90 percent of REIT taxable income each year, and is taxed at regular corporate rates on anything short of 100 percent. Certain subsidiaries are treated as taxable REIT subsidiaries, which lets Kimco run business activities a REIT may not conduct directly; those subsidiaries pay federal and state taxes on their income.

Four stated pillars

A high quality, diversified portfolio, grocery anchored and concentrated in Sun Belt and coastal markets, with a tenant base the company describes as a mix of essential, necessity-based tenants and omnichannel retailers to whom it provides a last-mile solution. Accretive capital allocation, through acquisitions, development and redevelopment, mixed-use projects, and an opportunistic acquisition and structured investment platform it calls Plus. Financial strength, with an emphasis on reduced leverage. And corporate responsibility.

For reporting purposes the company evaluates performance property by property or transaction by transaction and does not group operations geographically, so it presents a single reportable segment.

From Kimco Realty's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing