iStar Wraps Up 'Difficult' Q1 with $94M Loss

NEW YORK CITY-Coming out of what chairman and CEO Jay Sugarman called “another difficult quarter,” iStar Financial on Thursday reported a Q1 net loss of $93.9 million on revenues of $258.4 million. In a conference call Thursday morning, Sugarman said his company was attempting to develop an “operating runway” that would take it into 2010 and beyond. “Everyone I’ve talked to is making plans based on the assumption that no recovery is imminent, and we’re trying to do the same,” he said.

The year-over-year decline in revenues from the $412.3 million produced in Q1 2008 was due mainly to a reduction of interest income resulting from an increase in non-performing loans and lower interest rates, the company says in a release. At the end of March, iStar had $3.9 billion of NPLs on its books, or about 32.6% of its total loan portfolio, compared to 27.5% of its portfolio at the end of ’08. All told, iStar has $16.3 billion of assets under management.