Just came across something worth looking at in the retail space. There's this mall operator, Tanger, that's showing some interesting metrics right now if you're into growth plays.

So here's what caught my attention. When you dig into the earnings picture, Tanger is projected to grow EPS at 5.1% this year, which actually beats the sector average of 3.4%. That's solid, not explosive, but consistent. And that matters for growth investors.

But what's more interesting is how efficiently they're using their assets. Most people ignore this, but the sales-to-assets ratio tells you a lot about whether a company actually knows how to work with what it has. Tanger's sitting at 0.23, meaning they pull in 23 cents of sales for every dollar in assets. Compare that to the industry average of 0.14, and you can see they're running tighter operations. Their sales are also expected to grow 6% this year versus the industry's 2.6%.

The other thing I noticed is that analyst estimates for Tanger have been moving up lately. In the past month, consensus estimates ticked up 0.7%. This might seem small, but there's actually research showing this kind of upward revision trend correlates with near-term price movement.

So putting it together, Tanger's got a Zacks Rank of 2 and a Growth Score of B. That combination of metrics is the kind of thing that historically tends to outperform. Obviously nothing's guaranteed, but if you're scanning for growth plays in retail, this one's worth putting on your radar. The fundamentals are pointing in the right direction.