NEW YORK CITY—Amazon's June 16 announcement that it would purchase Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion sent shudders through the grocery sector. Six months later, the shudders have largely subsided into a modern-day equivalent of the “keep calm and carry on” resoluteness that got wartime Londoners through Luftwaffe bombing runs on their city.

BTIG analysts Michael Gorman and James Sullivan note that shares of strip center REITs in their coverage universe declined by more than 6.5% in the days following Amazon's statement of its plans to enter the brick-and-mortar grocery space. Since then, though, this cohort of shopping center landlords has outperformed the broader MSCI US REIT Index, according to a research note from BTIG.

“Although the grocery business remains a competitive market with narrow margins, there has not been a material decline in fundamentals since the WFM acquisition,” Gorman and Sullivan write. “Management teams in the grocer space have also cited limited impact on their business to date.” Their operating metrics have remained stable, with occupancies exceeding 95%, leasing spreads nearly 11% and growth in same-store NOI of 2.3% during the third quarter.