DALLAS—Spirit Realty Capital (SRC) said Tuesday it had filed confidentially with the SEC to register its planned spin-off, Spirit MTA REIT (SMTA). The plan was originally announced this past August, and would spin off substantially all of SRC's properties leased to Shopko Stores.

Prior to a distribution of SMTA's common shares to SRC shareholders, the spin-off REIT will hold, directly or indirectly, the assets that collateralize SRC's Master Trust 2014, almost all the properties that Spirit leases to Shopko and certain of its affiliates, as well as certain other assets. SRC said in August that SMTA was initially expected to have about $2.7 billion in gross real estate investments. A completion date in the first half of 2018 is currently expected for the spin-off.

Among the primary objectives of the spin-off is to enable SRC and SMTA to pursue two separate investment strategies. At present, the SRC platform encompasses investment grade tenants on the one hand and small- and medium-sized tenants on the other, SRC's president and CEO, Jackson Hsieh, told analysts in August. “While many of our operational processes can effectively be applied to both investment strategies, we've concluded that it's more efficient to have separate financing approaches focused on each investment strategy,” Hsieh said at the time.