Highwoods Concludes Acquisition of Legacy Union Parking Garage

Highwoods Properties, Inc. HIW recently announced that it has completed the acquisition of Legacy Union Parking Garage for $111.5 million, including planned near-term building improvements.

Located at 720 South Church Street in Uptown Charlotte, the 3,057-space garage provides parking for 1.2 million square feet of office space owned by Highwoods at Legacy Union, which includes the Bank of America Tower and 650 South Tryon. It is connected to these buildings by a skybridge.

About 70% of the yearly revenue comes from long-term leased customers of the Legacy Union office, with a weighted average remaining contractual term of 9 years. The remaining revenues of the garage are generated from transient and special events, primarily associated with events at the nearby 75,000-seat Bank of America Stadium.

Following the closing of the transaction, Legacy Union Parking Garage is estimated to generate cash and GAAP net operating income of $8 million in the first four quarters.

Highwoods: In a Nutshell

Highwoods follows a disciplined capital-recycling strategy that entails disposing of non-core assets and redeploying the proceeds in premium asset acquisitions and accretive development projects. The above acquisition highlights the company’s efforts to expand its footprint in high-growth markets and improve the quality of the overall portfolio through acquisitions and development.

Highwoods’ well-diversified tenant base and efforts to expand in the high-growth markets are its key growth drivers. However, competition from other players is likely to limit its pricing power and hurt profitability. High interest expenses add to its woes.

In the past three months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have declined 3.5% compared with the industry's decline of 1.1%.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are Plymouth Industrial REIT PLYM and W.P. Carey WPC, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PLYM’s 2025 FFO per share has moved 2 cents northward to $1.88 over the past week.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for WPC’s 2025 FFO per share has moved a cent downward to $4.87 over the past month.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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