Regency Centers is a shopping-centre landlord. It owns and develops open-air, grocery-anchored centres in affluent US suburbs — the kind with a Publix or Whole Foods at the core and a ring of restaurants, pharmacies and services around it. Rent from those tenants, after a string of big mergers (Equity One, Urstadt Biddle), flows back to shareholders as a steadily rising dividend.
From capital to rent and back
Index funds and lenders supply the money; Regency uses it to own and build grocery-anchored centres; in-house teams lease and run them; grocers and shops pay rent; and that rent flows back to shareholders as a dividend.