Tampa's Sila Realty Trust sold for $2.4 billion

Sila Realty Trust, the Tampa-based REIT specializing in health care properties, has agreed to be sold in an all-cash deal worth $2.4 billion to an affiliate of the asset management firm Blue Owl Capital.

In a letter to investors Monday morning, the company says Blue Owl will buy all its outstanding shares for $30.38 per share, a 19% premium over its April 17 closing stock price of $25.53.

The company’s board of directors has unanimously approved the sale, which is expected to close in the second or third quarter of this year. Once the deal closes, Sila will become a private company.

The letter did not say if Sila’s current management team would remain on once it becomes a part of Blue Owl.

Sila is a Tampa-based “pure play” net lease health care Real Estate Investment Trust. As of Dec. 31, its portfolio was made up of 140 properties totaling about 5.3 million square feet of rentable space that was 98.7% leased. At that time, it had $590 million in liquidity made up of $32.3 million in cash and cash equivalents and $449 million available under its credit lines.

The company was originally known as Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT and Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT II before the two merged in 2019 to become Sila.

In 2021, Sila made a decision to focus solely on the health care sector, selling off a 29-property data center portfolio for $1.32 billion. The firm used the proceeds to pay off $854 million in debt.

In 2024, when Sila was first listed on the New York Stock Exchange, President, CEO and Chairman Michael A. Seton told the Business Observer in an interview that it concentrated on health care because the sector is “defensive, but it's growing.”

“Everybody always says, ‘People are getting older.’ Why do people then like the health care industry? Because there's going to be more money flowing into the health care industry. So that ultimately should help our tenants. And we rely on those tenants to pay us rent for our durable income streams.”

BofA Securities is serving as Sila’s exclusive financial advisor. Hogan Lovells US LLP is serving as the company’s legal counsel.

New York-based Blue Owl, which has $307 billion in assets under management as of December 31, says in a statement that it invests across three multi-strategy platforms: credit, real assets and GP Strategic Capital.