Shares in Scentre Group Ltd (ASX: SCG) fell 3.2% today despite the Westfield shopping centre operator releasing no specific news to the market.
Westfield has not provided a material update to the market since November 7 2018 when it reported that as at September 30 2018 its Australian shopping centres still boasted of occupancy rates greater than 99.5% as its policy of only operating high-quality sites in major urban centres continues to pay dividends.
It also reported that over the quarter it had opened an additional 106,000, sq metres of retail space across four different redevelopments with development growth like this helping it steadily grow dividend payouts.
In total over FY 2018 it managed to pay 21.95 cents per share in dividends which places it on a trailing yield of 5.62%.
Clearly shopping centres face some structural headwinds from the rise of online shopping, but the market-leading quality of Westfield's operations should see it ride out this problem.
Still I would prefer a higher yield of 6.5% plus (in the form of a lower share price around $3.40) to compensate me for the risks of owning stock in this good quality business.
