RLJ Lodging Trust posted a first quarter that made Wall Street happy, with AFFO beating estimates by six cents and RevPAR outpacing the industry by 100 basis points. But the number buried in the earnings call tells you more about where this cycle is heading than the headline ever will.
RLJ Lodging Trust posted $0.32 AFFO against a $0.28 consensus while comparable RevPAR dropped 1.5%. The spread between those two numbers is the real story, and it tells you more about where lodging REIT value creation is heading than the headline does.
When a REIT with $2.6 billion in floating-rate debt starts dumping hotels at a 3.9% trailing cap rate, that's not a strategy. That's a fire sale with a press release.
DRH topped revenue estimates by $1.1M and posted a 273% net income jump. The 2026 guidance tells a different story than the headline.
