Stifel's reiterated Buy on Host Hotels looks straightforward until you decompose the Q1 beat and ask what the 8% dividend yield is actually pricing in. The answer should make REIT investors uncomfortable.
RLJ Lodging Trust just touched a 52-week high after a Q1 earnings beat that turned every skeptic's thesis inside out. The investors who bought the balance sheet at a discount are now sitting on a return that says more about REIT pricing discipline than hotel fundamentals.
Xenia Hotels posted a 4.5% RevPAR gain in Q4, and most outlets stopped there. The number worth staring at is the 214 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion underneath it... because that tells you something about flow-through discipline that most hotel owners should be measuring themselves against right now.
