Helen of Troy's El Paso headquarters sells for $50.6M to global manufacturer Eaton Corp.
Consumer products company Helen of Troy has completed the sale of its El Paso headquarters office building and adjacent warehouse for $50.6 million, officials announced.
Eaton Corp., a worldwide manufacturing company, bought the property. The Ireland-based company plans to put a second El Paso factory in the warehouse and occupy the large office building.
Eaton officials did not immediately respond to an El Paso Times request for comments about the Sept. 28 completion of the property sale. But a company official in September said Eaton would spend about $80 million on the new factory project, and add 600 jobs.
Helen of Troy also has an agreement to lease back the office building from Eaton for up to 18 months mostly rent free — a deal Helen of Troy officials value at $1.9 million, which the company will add to the sale price in its financial accounting, according to its second-quarter earnings report released Wednesday.
Its headquarters will move to another El Paso location in the future.
Appraisal District values complex at $13M
The sale price is well above the property’s $13 million valuation for tax purposes by the El Paso Central Appraisal District.
Experts in the El Paso commercial real estate business said the Helen of Troy sale amount is not unusually high in El Paso’s current commercial real estate market.
“As far as transactions happening in the market, we’ve had land transactions recently that are higher than that with investors,” said Brett Preston, managing partner of the El Paso office of Cushman & Wakefield/Pires International, a large industrial real estate firm. “It’s a high price, but its not gargantuan.”
“Eaton got a hell of a deal. They couldn’t build all that for that price, nor would they,” Preston said. “Helen of Troy got a hell of a deal too, to find a user. This property was not designed to be an income-producing property,” which is why investors shied away from it, he said.
Adin Brown, president of Sonny Brown Associates, an El Paso commercial real estate firm, said the Helen of Troy sale is one of the larger single-property deals in the El Paso industrial market in recent years. But this market has seen higher dollar deals involving multiple industrial buildings, he noted.
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The Helen of Troy property is unique in the market, making it difficult to compare to other industrial building sales, Brown added.
Officials with CBRE Group, the Dallas-based commercial real estate firm that handled the sale for Helen of Troy, had no comments about the deal. Helen of Troy officials in September announced it had a pending sale agreement for its property.
Helen of Troy reports $34.2M profit from deal
Helen of Troy's complex, opened 24 years ago, has become a landmark next to Interstate 10, between Redd and Artcraft roads, in West El Paso. It includes an ultramodern, 115,000 square-foot office building, and 412,000 square-foot warehouse.
Helen of Troy will record a profit of around $34.2 million in its September-November third quarter from the property sale — money that will go toward paying off its long-term debt, according to its second-quarter financial report.
The company plans to move its headquarters to a long-term rental property in El Paso, Julien Mininberg, Helen of Troy CEO, told Wall Street analysts during a Wednesday conference call. He did not specify a location.
“With El Paso being our largest shared-service hub, we expect it to continue to play an ongoing, important role for the company and community," Mininberg said.
The company employed about 400 people in El Paso in February 2022, prior to companywide job cuts as part of a restructuring plan. It currently employs 1,903 people worldwide, including "multiple hundreds" in El Paso, a company official reported.
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The sale of the El Paso property allows Helen of Troy to move forward with a previously announced plan to move its beauty business, which develops and sells name-brand hair dryers and other hair-care appliances, to the Boston area next year.
The beauty business, now based in El Paso and the Los Angeles area, will be located with the company's wellness business, which develops and sells name-brand humidifiers, thermometers, water purifiers, and other products.
The company has annual sales of more than $2 billion.
The company's sales decreased 5.7% to $491.4 million in its June-August second quarter compared to a year ago. Its second-quarter profit declined 10.7% to $27.4 million from a year ago. Its stock price closed Wednesday at $105.28 per share on the Nasdaq stock exchange, down $8.36 per share.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Helen of Troy gets $50.6M for El Paso headquarters sale to Eaton
