Zacks Growth and Income Strategy Highlights: Eagle Bulk Shipping, Healthcare Realty Trust, NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. and RAIT Financial Trust

Business Wire, June 22, 2007

CHICAGO -- The Zacks Growth and Income Profit Track strategy looks for stocks with unusually high dividend yields. Although this screen is based on a long-term and lower risk approach to investing, it has a history of outperforming the S&P 500. Four stocks meeting this screen's exclusive criteria are: Eagle Bulk Shipping, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGLE), Healthcare Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:HR), NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. (NYSE:NRF) and RAIT Financial Trust (NYSE:RAS). View the entire list of stocks for the Growth and Income Profit Track at http://at.zacks.com/?id=1850.

Here are details about four companies currently identified by the Growth and Income Profit Track:

Eagle Bulk Shipping, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGLE) sports a current dividend yield of 9.19%. The company released first-quarter results in early May, stating that the strong performance of its fleet continues to generate significant free cash flow, allowing its shareholders to participate in the strength of the drybulk market through EGLE's dividends. Eagle Bulk Shipping added that with this quarter's declared dividend of 50 cents per share, the company has now declared and paid aggregate dividends of $3.63 per share in just seven quarters of operations.

Healthcare Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:HR) declared a first-quarter dividend of 66 cents per share in late April. Shortly after that HR announced financial results for the first quarter. Revenues of $53.0 million were ahead of the previous year's first-quarter total of $51.9 million. Healthcare Realty Trust meets the requirements for this Profit Track as evidenced by its current dividend yield of 9.32%.

NorthStar Realty Finance Corp. (NYSE:NRF) reported first-quarter adjusted funds from operations ("AFFO") of 39 cents in early May. The result surpassed the consensus estimate by 11% and improved on the year-prior total. The company mentioned that this quarter's results mark another record earnings quarter for the NorthStar franchise and its ninth consecutive quarter of strong credit results. In late April, the company declared a first-quarter dividend of 36 cents per share. NRF offers a current dividend yield of 10.75%.

RAIT Financial Trust (NYSE:RAS) recently declared a second-quarter dividend of 84 cents per share, which is an increase of four cents over the prior quarter's 80 cents. RAS satisfies the criteria for this Profit Track with a current dividend yield of 10.73%. In late April, RAS posted first-quarter financial results, which included earnings per share that were ahead of the year-ago total.

Discover all the current stocks currently on the Growth and Income Profit Track at: http://at.zacks.com/?id=1896.

About Profit Tracks

What is a "Profit Track"? Each Profit Track is a successful stock picking strategy with proven results through the Bear Market of 2001-2002 and the Bull run started in 2003. On Zacks.com we have created these nine unique screens to offer investors great strategies to potentially outperform the market in the years ahead. In 2006, the Low Price Stocks strategy was the top performing Profit Track with a return of 56.5% followed by the Discounted Fundamental screen with a 34% return. To see all nine strategies along with philosophy, past performance and current stocks, go to http://at.zacks.com/?id=1838.

All the Profit Track strategies were created and backtested using the Research Wizard software from Zacks Investment Research. If you like this screening strategy, but want to narrow down the list of stocks and even improve the performance, then you should start a free trial to this powerful stock picking tool. Learn more about the Research Wizard free trial offer and our new special report "Top 10 Stock Screening Strategies" at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2156.

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