Highwoods Properties HIW is well-poised to benefit from the rising demand for its highly amenitized office properties, aggressive capital-recycling initiatives and solid balance sheet strength.
Analysts seem positive about this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for HIW’s 2024 funds from operations (FFO) per share has moved marginally northward over the past month to $3.62.
Shares of this office-based real estate investment trust (REIT) company have gained 22% in the past six months compared with the industry’s 7.9% growth. Given the strength in its fundamentals, there seems additional room for growth.
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Factors That Make Highwoods Stock a Solid Pick
Healthy Operating Fundamentals: Highwoods’ portfolio is concentrated in high-growth Sun Belt markets, which have long-term favorable demographic trends and are expected to continue experiencing above-average job growth. This will likely support the company’s rent growth over the long term. Its average in-place cash rent witnessed a CAGR of 4.2% from 2013 to the third quarter of 2024. During the third quarter of 2024, its average in-place cash rent witnessed growth of 3.8% per square foot year over year.
Going forward, the next cycle of office space demand will likely be driven by inbound migration and significant investments announced by office occupiers to expand their footprint in Sun Belt regions as well as additional hiring plans in the company’s markets. Moreover, HIW is seeing an increasing number of tenants returning to offices or announcing plans to come back. This is likely to support office real estate market fundamentals.
Healthy Leasing Activities: Highwoods is seeing a recovery in demand for its high-quality, well-placed office properties as highlighted by a rebound in new leasing volume. In the third quarter of 2024, the company signed 906,000 square feet of second-generation leases. This includes new leases spanning 530,000 square feet.
Capital-Recycling Efforts: 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. In the first nine months of 2024, Highwoods completed building and land dispositions worth $79.4 million and $4.5 million, respectively. Management expects to carry out an additional disposition of up to $150 million in 2024.
The company has made efforts to expand its footprint in high-growth best business district markets through acquisitions. From 2010 to the third quarter of 2024, Highwoods completed buyouts worth $3.6 billion. It is also focused on development projects in key markets, which are likely to generate considerable annual net operating income (NOI) upon completion and stabilization. As of Sept. 30, 2024, Highwoods’ development pipeline aggregated $513.7 million (at the company’s share) and was 49.2% pre-leased.
Balance Sheet & ROE Strength: Highwoods maintains a healthy balance sheet, with no consolidated debt maturities until the second quarter of 2026. As of Sept. 30, 2024, the company had around $23.7 million of available cash and $644.9 million of unused capacity under its revolving credit facility. In the third quarter of 2024, Highwoods generated 83.3% unencumbered NOI (at the company’s share), providing scope to tap additional secured debt capital if required. Investment-grade ratings of BBB-/Baa2 from S&P and Moody’s render the company access to the debt market at favorable rates.
Its trailing 12-month return on equity (ROE) is 6.05% compared with the industry’s average of 2.73%. This reflects that the company is more efficient in using shareholders’ funds than its peers.
Favorable Valuation: HIW stock has a Value Score of B. Our research shows that stocks with a Value Score of A or B, when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2, offer the best upside potential.
Other Stocks to Consider
Some other top-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are SL Green SLG and Gladstone Commercial GOOD, each carrying a Zacks Rank of 2 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SL Green’s 2024 FFO per share has moved 2% northward over the past week to $7.75.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Gladstone Commercial’s current-year FFO per share has been raised 2.1% over the past month to $1.43.
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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