23-Feb-11 – The real estate investment trust that owns Marina City’s Hotel Sax and 33 other upscale hotels says it had its best-ever occupancy rate in 2010 despite a net loss for the year.

LaSalle Hotel Properties, organized in 1998, released its fourth quarter and full year results on Wednesday. Contrasting higher revenues and a 75 percent occupancy rate was a net loss for the quarter and the year. LaSalle took in $600 million in 2010 but had a net loss to shareholders for the year of $24 million. That was more than the $18 million net loss in 2009, when revenue was $542 million. Revenue in 2010 was about $7 million less than the company’s income in 2008.

For the last three months of 2010, revenue was $161.7 million, up 23 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009, but the net loss was up, too, to $17.0 million – an increase of 47 percent. For the entire year, revenue was up ten percent from 2009 to $600.4 million. The net loss was $24.8 million, up 32 percent from the previous year.

EBITDA – earnings if you do not count, interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – was down in the quarter to $27 million from the fourth quarter of 2009, and down for the year to $152 million. The average room rate at a LaSalle hotel in the fourth quarter of 2010 was $185.15. Combined with an increase in occupancy, the company’s room revenue per available room was up 3.2 percent to $132.24. For the year, “RevPAR” was up 2.5 percent to $137.41.

“2010 was a very successful year for our company,” said Michael Barnello, LaSalle’s president and CEO in a press release. “The industry and our portfolio began to recover, our company continued to deliver extraordinary hotel EBITDA margins and we substantially improved our portfolio by acquiring hotels that are consistent with our strategy and that we believe will create long term shareholder value – and by exiting non-core markets and lower-performing assets.”

$8.4 million hit on sale at 330 North Wabash

One of those “non-core markets” may have been the 12 floors at 330 North Wabash sold on December 29, 2010, by a joint venture in which LaSalle had a 95 percent controlling interest. An annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday noted the sale for $58.8 million. LaSalle estimates its loss on the deal at $8,427,000, which includes a $2.7 million termination fee paid to the development manager.

“Primarily as a result of the detrimental effects of the recession,” says the report, Hotel Sax, with its 353 rooms that represent about 3.8 percent of LaSalle’s total number of rooms and suites, had a $5.5 million decrease in revenue. Overall, operating expenses at Sax were down $2.9 million, thanks to “reductions in management and hourly staffing levels and other cost-saving initiatives in anticipation of the significant decrease in occupancy across the portfolio.”