Public healthcare REIT makes first purchases in Hawaii, invested $440M last year
By John B. Mugford
Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Healthcare Trust of America Inc. (NYSE: HTA) recently made its first purchases in the Aloha State, acquiring two medical office buildings (MOBs) in separate transactions on the island of Oahu for a total of $47.3 million.
The purchases, in fact, topped off quite an eventful end to 2014 for the publicly traded, MOB-focused real estate investment trust (REIT). With the latest transactions, the REIT was likely to close 2014 with $440 million in acquisitions for the year. In the fourth quarter alone, the REIT made purchases totaling $122 million.
The REIT also recently announced that it was in the process of raising about $96 million through the sale of about 8 million additional shares of its stock at $12.55 per share. The company said proceeds will be used to pay down debt and for general corporate purposes, such as making acquisitions.
“We have been very active investors in healthcare real estate, investing (about) $1 billion over the last three years,” said Scott Peters, the company’s chairman and CEO, in a statement. “The proceeds of the offering, along with some recent asset sales, will allow us to continue to expand our platform of core, critical medical office buildings throughout the country.”
Unlike a number of other REITs that focus on acquiring portfolios of properties, HTA continues to strive for steady portfolio growth of anywhere from 8 percent to 12 per year, and to do so it certainly does not shy away from making purchases of single assets.
A look at its Q4 acquisitions reiterates the point. In Hawaii, HTA acquired the 92,560 square foot St. Francis Medical Pavilion in Honolulu from San Diego-based Pacific Medical Buildings for $30 million.
It also acquired the 50,859 square foot Kapolei Medical Park in the city of Kapolei, a suburb of Honolulu, from Darryl P. Wong, for $17.3 million, according to information from real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA) Inc. Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente and Hawaii-based Queen’s Health System are the major tenants in the buildings.
Also in Q4, the REIT: paid $9 million for the 25,208 square foot East Cooper Medical Arts Center in Mount Pleasant, S.C.; paid $29 million for the Westmed building in White Plains, N.Y.; and paid $37 million for two assets in Greater Denver that are occupied by Centura and HCA-HealthONE, two of the region’s largest health systems.
For all of 2014, HTA acquired 21 MOBs in eight states with a total of 1.2 million square feet. The company also disposed of properties for a total of about $83 million.
Disclaimer: The author has no financial position in any of the companies mentioned and this article does not constitute an investment recommendation.
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