Park Hotels & Resorts President and CEO Tom Baltimore Jr. remains confident in his decision to walk away from two large hotels in San Francisco, citing both the high costs those properties face and the near- to medium-term issues that market faces, but he's still open to future investment in the city.
Speaking during the hotel-focused real estate investment trust's second-quarter earnings call, Baltimore said he's hopeful to soon move on.
"It's not helpful to the overall narrative for Park that we continue to have to talk about San Francisco, but we realize until it's completely removed from the portfolio and is still in guidance, we still have to address it," he told analysts. "If you take that out, that was the lion's share of the reason we had a modest 2% reduction in guidance to the midpoint. It is San Francisco. We'd rather talk about Hawaii and the explosive growth we're seeing given the fact we still don't have the Japanese traveler."
In June, Park announced its decision to stop making payments on the $725 million non-recourse CMBS debt on the Parc 55 San Francisco and the Hilton San Francisco Union Square, starting the process of handing nearly 3,000 rooms in the troubled market back to a special servicer.
Prior to the pandemic-induced downturn, Baltimore had touted his company's strong presence in San Francisco as a strength and selling point while the city continued to operate as perhaps the premiere hotel market in the U.S. The REIT still owns the JW Marriott San Francisco Union Square and the Hyatt Centric Fisherman's Wharf along with a handful of other hotels around the Bay Area. He said he is "very comfortable" with the two hotels Park still holds in the city.
But Baltimore now points to an "elongated recovery" for the market, along with nearly $200 million in scheduled renovation for the two hotels, as to why keeping those hotels was no longer financially viable.
"In terms of the REIT CEOs, and I'd respectfully submit even the C-corp CEOs, I spent as much time in San Francisco as anybody," he said. "And the key takeaways were that the recovery period there would be extended. We thought one to three years. I can tell you from being on the ground as early as 10 days ago, it's probably five to seven years."
Park still holds the keys to both the Park 55 and Hilton Union Square as of today, but Baltimore said there is no chance of an 11th-hour deal to keep the properties.
"I want to emphasize that this decision is not intended to be a negotiating tactic, and we continue to work with the servicer to divest these assets as quickly as possible," he said.
But when asked for his perspective on future acquisitions in the market, Baltimore stressed he wouldn't "red line" the city.
"It's a market that only has 32,000 rooms, so it will come back," he said. "We'll follow the job growth. We'll follow the opportunities and where we can generate the returns. So we certainly wouldn't rule out San Francisco."
In terms of markets that the REIT will shift its focus toward, Park officials said their flagship property, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, continues to outperform. Baltimore said there are signs that a return of Japanese travelers — with the yen strengthening versus the U.S. dollar, airlift improving and Hawaiian tourism officials actively working to reopen that pipeline — could throw fuel on that fire.
"You see a lot from the U.S. traveling to Europe this summer," he said. "You've got a lot of pent-up demand. You want to recapture those experiences since people haven't been to Europe in two or three years. And we feel the same way and get the same signals about people wanting to go to Hawaii."
Second-Quarter Performance
During the quarter, Park saw a 5.3% year-over-year increase in revenue per available room to $191.03 for its comparable hotels portfolio. Occupancy for the quarter came in at 76.9% with average daily rate of $248.33.
The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $146 million and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $187 million.
As of press time, Park's stock was trading at $12.79 a share, up 8.5% year to date compared to a 6.2% increase in the NYSE Composite for the same period.