Hudson Pacific To Shed Up To $150M In Assets To Mitigate Office, Studio Doldrums
Hudson Pacific Properties is planning more asset sales as it reckons with dramatic shifts in office and studio occupancy that have hindered the company's financial performance in the last several quarters.
In its fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday, HPP reported losses nearly double those of 2023 and outlined continued asset sales and cost-cutting measures as ways to stanch the bleeding.
“Beyond our strong focus on driving office and studio leasing, our strategic priorities in 2025 are to continue to execute on asset sales, look for additional cost savings and further strengthen our balance sheet,” HPP CEO Victor Coleman said in a release announcing the results.
In one move to try and right the ship, the company is pursuing $100M to $150M in office property dispositions that are in various stages of completion. Executives discussed three recent sales, including the $46M sale of the Los Angeles Arts District office property the Maxwell, and three more the company is confident will go under contract soon.
The company’s net loss attributable to common stockholders in the fourth quarter was approximately $169.9M, nearly double the roughly $97.9M from the same period the previous year. The company’s full-year loss was more than $364M, almost double the $192.1M it lost in 2023.
Among the reasons for the company’s losses, Coleman cited an impairment with Quixote, the production services company that HPP bought in 2022 for $360M.
The entertainment industry in Los Angeles and nationally is still struggling to rebound from the pandemic, worker strikes and the whiplash suffered from studios dramatically lowering their content spending from the peaks of the streaming wars.
Stages in HPP’s portfolio were 76.8% leased for the 12 months ending in Q4, and the in-service studio portfolio was 73.8% leased. Those figures were 73.8% and 75.9%, respectively, the previous year.
HPP executives highlighted a proposed expansion of the state’s film tax credit that would bump the annual tax credit up to $750M from its present $330M. Doing so would give California the highest cap for film incentives. If approved, it could go into effect as soon as July and would last five years.
This credit is among the reasons HPP President Mark Lammas said the firm expects its studio occupancy to improve in the second half of the year.
“Despite the indications of strong future production demand for Los Angeles, we continue to look for ways to rightsize the Quixote business,” Lammas said on the earnings call, adding that in Q3 and Q4, HPP terminated leases and “implemented other cost savings initiatives,” which together should result in a $7.5M reduction in Quixote’s fixed expenses annually.
But some indicators of the company’s financial performance have been trending down and point to pain points that may require broader changes. Funds from operations have crept down to 11 cents per diluted share from 14 cents in Q4 2023. In Q4 2022, FFO per diluted share was $2.02.
HPP has debt maturities coming up in November with approximately $599.9M in secured and unsecured debt coming due this year. Executives said on its earnings call that it plans to use the proceeds from asset sales “to fully address both our 2025 and 2026 maturities.”
