CorePoint Lodging: Strategic Alternatives, Another Hotel REIT for Sale

CorePoint Lodging (CPLG) is an old friend of the blog that I've tried hard to forget, it is a hotel REIT that was spun from LaQuinta (LQ) in 2018 simultaneously with Wyndham's (WH) acquisition of the LQ franchise/management business.  It is a unique public lodging REIT in that it targets the economy and midscale select service segment (essentially all LaQuinta branded), most public REITs own upscale and luxury hotels.  Looking back at the spin, it was a garbage barge spin and performed like the moniker suggests.  

Hotel REITs are a tough asset class because as a common shareholder, you have a lot of mouths to feed ahead of you.  REITs can't be operating businesses so hotel REITs need management companies to run the hotels themselves which runs 5% of revenues, then you have the franchise fee which is another 5% of revenues, if you rely heavily on online travel agencies, that's another big hair cut. On top of that, you have a lot of fix costs and a heavy asset base with real depreciation, interest expense, etc., these aren't good businesses for public markets generally.  For those reasons, hotel REITs tend to avoid the economy and midscale segments because the average room rates are low and don't provide enough scale to justify all the overhead costs involved.  These hotels tend to be run by local mom and pop type operators who don't have the corporate costs and can avoid the management fee by operating the hotel themselves.  

CorePoint executives clearly understand this even if they don't say it explicitly and have been selling off their older, economy level hotels to individual operators at multiples that are way above where the common stock traded.  Which is sort of the opposite of what you'd expect, but if the buyer is purchasing the hotel unencumbered by the management fee, gets an SBA loan, and they get a tax depreciation shield, it starts to make some sense.  This week, CorePoint essentially put the rest of the company up for sale by announcing they are pursuing strategic alternatives.

Going back to the logic I used recently with Condor Hospitality (CDOR), another hotel REIT that is in the process of selling themselves, I came up with a very rough back of the envelope calculation for what CorePoint is currently valued at off of 2019 Hotel EBITDA (again, I understand the faults of that math, but it's what other comparable transactions are quoting as a valuation metric).  With Condor it was relatively simple because their hotel portfolio has remained constant since 2019, but CorePoint has sold a significant portion of their hotels in the last 18 months.

In CorePoint's 2019 10-K they gave us a "Comparable Hotel" EBITDA number which adjusted for those hotels that were sold or non-operational (CorePoint had some hotels hard hit by hurricanes a few years back) of $158MM.  From there, I attempt to back into what the comparable-"Comparable Hotel" 2019 EBITDA would be adjusted for all the asset sales that have taken place or are pending.  For the Q2 and pending sales, I'm using a 15x EBITDA multiple, I didn't see it directly in their filings but management mentioned 15x on their last earnings call.  From there I get about a $118MM "2019 Hotel EBITDA" number for the remaining hotels, please check my work if you're interested in the situation.  On an EV of about $1.1B, that's a 10.75% cap rate or 9.3x 2019 Hotel EBITDA, well below where the company has been selling its less attractive non-core assets and where other hotels have transacted recently.

Similar to the extended stay segment, economy and midscale hotels held up better through the pandemic and have recovered faster than urban or group oriented hotels.  Alongside their strategic alternatives announcement, CorePoint updated us on the performance of their hotels in the second quarter:

It's not an apples-to-apples comparison since CPLG has sold off a number of lower RevPAR hotels since 2019, but here's a snip from the Q2 2019 earnings release, so business is either back to 2019 levels or at least near it.

Blackstone owns 30% of CorePoint, a legacy of taking LaQuinta private in 2006 and public again in 2014.  Blackstone is obviously a big real estate investor and recently partnered with Starwood in a club deal to buy out Extended Stay America (STAY), maybe they'd do something similar here as CorePoint's hotels serve a similar segment (but clearly without the franchise business like STAY) and select-service hotels could over time look more like extended stay models with less than daily cleaning, etc., driving higher margins.

I'm a little gun-shy on putting a target price on CPLG, the stock price has run significantly and I still have mental scars from my last go around, but to a private buyer who can detach the management contract, it could be worth a decent amount more than where it is trading today at $13.75.  A 9% 2019 Hotel EBITDA (my number could be flawed) cap rate would be around $18 and would still be a lower valuation than where they've been selling their lower quality assets during a pandemic, maybe that's too high, but shouldn't be too far out of reasonableness.

Disclosure: I own shares of CPLG (and CDOR)

Extended Stay America: Rejects Split-Up, Underlying Value Here

Extended Stay America (STAY) is the last remaining public company of size that is an integrated hotel operator and owner of their real estate in the United States (other than Hyatt which is family controlled).  As their name suggests, they compete and are the largest player within the extended stay lodging segment where the average guest stays anywhere from a week to several months.  Demand for the extended stay segment is typically not leisure driven, but rather temporary business assignments, training, relocation bridge housing, medical, or other needs that could span a few weeks.  Extended Stay America has a unique corporate structure where the publicly traded STAY is a "paired" stock, underlying STAY is a hotel management company ("Extended Stay America Inc") and a REIT ("ESH Hospitality Inc"), this structure provides most of the tax benefits of a REIT without the conflicts that can arise between OpCo and PropCo.  ESH Hospitality is 43% owned directly by shareholders via the paired stock structure and 57% owned by Extended Stay America Inc which pays corporate taxes on the dividends received from the REIT.  In the summer of 2018, the company announced it was exploring strategic alternatives with most assuming either a true spinoff or a sale of the management company to one of the hotel brand aggregators with a simultaneous spin of ESH Hospitality (similar to LQ/CPLG/WH last year).  Today, along with earnings, the company announced that it had concluded its strategic review and was going to maintain the status quo, the stock fell 5-10% on the news.

It had been over a year now since that strategic alternatives announcement, the first quarter conference call got a little chippy and some fatigue had built up in the investor base.  Given the relative size of the franchising business and where multiples in the sector are today (especially on the REIT side), I think the company made the right move and event driven sellers (along with the general slide in the market) are providing an opportunity to pick up shares of STAY at a discounted price.

Most of the value is in the real estate and not the management company (unfortunately), as of 6/30, the REIT owned 554 hotels with 61,500 rooms, the management company managed an additional 73 hotels for third parties with 55 more in various stages in the pipeline.  By maintaining the status quo, it allows the franchise side of the business to build up with new construction or conversions, plus ESH plans more asset sales to third parties.   But eventually, the company will succumb to pressure and split the company somehow.  How might that look?

Just to give an idea how STAY is valued today, it essentially trades at the bottom end of the limited service lodging REITs group despite not having to pay a third party management company for its owned properties and having a small franchising business.  Sure there is some tax leakage with the pair structure compared with a pure REIT, but the optionality (it's going to happen someday) on the sale of the management business should make it more valuable than REIT peers, not less.

The extended stay business model is fairly high margin (no frills, rooms cleaned once a week) and STAY generates a decent amount of free cash, roughly $325MM on their current asset base using a maintenance capex of 7% of revenues.  At today's prices, that's a 12% free cash flow yield to the equity.  Looking at it another way, using $80MM of maintenance capex on $564 in EBITDA, STAY is trading at 10x UFCF when they've been selling hotels at ~17x that metric over the past few years.  Management did caution today not to assume that 17x multiple on future asset sales, the next round will be their lower performing hotels, but it's still a useful read through to the disconnect between private and public multiples in real estate today.

Back to what a split might look like: ESH Hospitality would be another economy-midscale REIT similar to CorePoint Lodging (CPLG), it would have the most keys of any lodging REIT but a relatively small market valuation.  If we assume that STAY puts a similarly egregious management and franchise contract on ESH Hospitality as Wyndham/LQ did to CorePoint (I don't think this will be the case since most of the value is in the REIT) with a 5% management fee and a 5% franchise fee, I come up with the following back-of-the-envelope breakout between the two:

Sticking with the LQ/WYN comparisons, if we value the management company similarly to Wyndham Hotels (WH) at 12x and the REIT at 9x similarly to CorePoint Lodging (CPLG), STAY would equate to a combined value of $17+/share versus $14.50 today.  Again, I think this is the worst case split scenario as hopefully management has learned a lesson from CPLG and wouldn't put that management contract on the larger piece of the business.  If the market slowdown passes without a recession we could additionally see multiple expansion back to where lodging REITs traded in 2017-2018.  If the management company were sold versus split off, there would be additional upside as the G&A would essentially be wiped out, perhaps $20+ per share in total under that scenario using today's multiples.  To be clear, this split isn't happening in the near term, but it shows the underlying value in their operations and I believe it's only a matter of time before the market really forces management's hands.

Other thoughts:

• Just one example of the benefit to STAY's management company being part of a larger brand, as a one-brand entity, Extended Stay's loyalty program is small (under 3 million members), plugging the brand into a larger rewards program could prove valuable to people who are on a temporary work assignment and can use their points on a resort vacation versus another sterile Extended Stay property off the side of the interstate.
• Labor costs are really squeezing hotel operators at this point in the cycle, unemployment rates are so low that they're having a hard time recruiting labor and are mostly unable to pass that additional cost onto customers.
• STAY increased their buyback authorization, they have $263MM remaining which is roughly 10% of share outstanding, on the conference call they made it clear they intend exhaust the authorization this year.  Alongside a ~6% dividend yield and that's a compelling total "shareholder yield".
• Their numbers can look a little messy on a year-over-year basis as they've been selling hotels to third parties, to normalize the 2019 EBITDA vs 2018, you would need to add $21MM for the sold hotels.
• Management also talked about what a recession might do to their results, anywhere from a $50MM hit to EBITDA in a mild downturn to $100MM hit in a more severe recession, taking those haircuts off of current EBITDA means it would be trading at 9.5-10.5x, certainly not a high valuation considering lodging REITs were trading for 11-12x not too long ago.

Disclosure: I own shares of STAY (continue to own CPLG and WH too)

CorePoint Lodging: Form 10 Notes

Today I'm doing another update, this time on La Quinta's upcoming REIT spinoff, CorePoint Lodging (CPLG), based on the long awaited update (at least on my part) to their Form 10 and the merger agreement between La Quinta (LQ) and Wyndham Worldwide (WYN).  Quick recap, La Quinta announced last year their intention to separate the hotel management business from the real estate, initially that was a straight forward spinoff of the real estate into a REIT, but Wyndham came along and offered to buy the management company for $1.95B in cash.  Later in Q2, La Quinta shareholders will receive $8.40 per share from Wyndham for the management company and shares in the REIT spinoff, CPLG.

The setup for CPLG checks off a lot of boxes, it's likely to sold/trade cheaply as a taxable spinoff, plus it will have the dual benefits of EBITDA growth and a multiple that needs to come up.  When I've gotten in trouble with spinoffs or just special situations in general, its usually because the spinoff is a dressed up melting ice cube, I believe the opposite is true in CorePoint's case.

CorePoint will have 317 hotels with over 41,000 rooms across the United States (all of LQ's international hotels are franchised or managed) and is positioning itself as the "only public REIT focused on the midscale and upper midscale self-service lodging segment."  That's more happenstance than design, but self-service hotels feature more consistent and wider margins than their equivalent segment full-service competitors (fewer employees, 99% of revenues from room rentals).  On the negative side select-service hotels are viewed as easier to build, CorePoint pointed to the fact that midscale hotels are the fastest new build segment (its pitched as a positive), that's good for Wyndham has a management company but likely bad for operators like CorePoint as more suppy comes onto the market.  The majority of their hotels are located near suburban office parks, airports and along interstates, mostly avoiding urban and resort locations that could be more impacted by AirBnB and HomeAway like room sharing services (but again, easier to build new supply in suburban locations).  As a REIT, CorePoint technically can't operate the hotels under the typical franchise arrangement Wyndham uses and instead the hotels will be managed by Wyndham for a 5% of revenue fee (plus your typical royalty, reservation, and marketing fees you'd see in a franchise arrangement).

Quick screen shots from the Form 10, listing the locations and chain scale, much of the economy bucket is exterior corridor hotels that they've been selling off in recent years, but as you can see, a reasonably diversified hotel base for a one brand REIT.

At the time of my brief post on the idea in January, we didn't know the proforma capital structure at CorePoint and it muddied up the valuation a bit.  CorePoint is taking out $1.035B of CMBS financing that is secured by their hotel properties and then paying a dividend to LQ/WYN of $983.95MM subject to the adjustments listed below from the Separation and Distribution Agreement:

Section 3.6. Cash Payment. Upon the completion of the Financing Transactions and immediately prior to the Effective Time, CPLG shall transfer to LQ Parent or the applicable member of the LQ Parent Group, as directed by LQ Parent, an amount equal to $983,950,000, as such amount may be adjusted pursuant to this Section 3.6, such amount of which will, substantially concurrently with the Distribution and the Merger, be used by LQ Parent to satisfy a portion of the Liabilities outstanding under the Existing Debt Agreements; provided that:

(a) in the event the Closing Existing Net Indebtedness exceeds the Estimated Existing Net Indebtedness, the Cash Payment shall be increased on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the amount of such difference;

(b) in the event the Estimated Existing Net Indebtedness exceeds the Closing Existing Net Indebtedness, the Cash Payment shall be decreased on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the amount of such difference;

(c) in the event the amount of accrued but unpaid Transaction Expenses as of the Distribution Date exceeds the Estimated Transaction Expenses, the Cash Payment shall be increased on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the amount of such difference; and

(d) in the event the Estimated Transaction Expenses exceed the amount of accrued but unpaid Transaction Expenses as of the Distribution Date, the Cash Payment shall be decreased on a dollar-for-dollar basis by the amount of such difference.

The Estimated Existing Net Indebtness is listed as $1.665B in the agreement, as of 12/31/2017, LQ had net debt of $1.53B, reducing CPLG dividend payment down to ~$850MM.  The cash position at the time of the spinoff will then be something in neighborhood of ~$185MM ($1.035B - $850MM).  Proforma CorePoint earned $208MM in (adjusted) EBITDA for 2017, using my previous 12x multiple, gets me to about $14/share for CPLG.

$14 + $8.40 from WYN when the deal closes, gets you to $22.40 per share, or put another way, the market is currently valuing CPLG at a little under 10x EBITDA (no internally managed lodging REIT trades that cheap) at today's $18.84 share price.

Sources of Upside:

• The cash balance will likely be higher than $185MM, we should assume some additional cash build from the beginning of the year until the deal closes (although maybe not due to rebuilding efforts after the hurricanes).  Plus as part of the Tax Matters Agreement, CPLG will receive any excess between the actual tax due and the $240MM amount Wyndham agreed to escrow as part of the management company deal.  I can't quite figure out what the cost basis is for LQ itself (I saw an analyst note that pegged it at $1.7B but can't source it for myself) so if you know what the amount is, please let me know.  Let's say that $1.7B is correct and my EV on the first day is correct at $2.5B, the Tax Matters Agreement assumes the tax rate at 24.65%, which would be about ~$200MM of the gain, meaning $40MM could come back to CPLG and potentially more if really trades down day 1 (most likely as I doubt it'll trade at 12x EBITDA to start).
• This will also be taxable for shareholders, your taxable gain will be $8.40 + CPLG's first day price over your own tax basis, so all current LQ shareholders (including 30% owner Blackstone) should be cheering for the shares to get dumped the first day and then hopefully recover once the proforma numbers are clearer.
• The spinoff is maybe ~2 months out and we don't have a CorePoint specific shareholder presentation, I haven't seen a lender presentation (which makes sense since they went the CMBS route) or heard about a road show, maybe there has been one but its certainly under the radar, it seems pretty clear to me that management isn't going to try and pump the stock up ahead of time.
• This is quite the interesting dynamic where the lower the price, the better for everyone involved, management appears to know this and hasn't put out any forward guidance for the spinoff leaving the market to anchor to 2017's numbers.  2017's numbers could be deceptively low for three reasons: 
1. The 2017 hurricanes significantly impacted La Quinta's owned hotels in Florida and Texas, in Florida more than 3000 rooms were out of service for the last four months of the year, and as of 2/28, 5% of CPLG's rooms remain out of service as they undergo repairs.  They disclosed a $36.7MM revenue impact due to Hurricane Irma closures in 2017, and on the Q4 call translated this into an annualized estimated EBITDA loss of $28-35MM (to be recouped through insurance proceeds which should add to the cash balance as well).  This could be a short term risk to the stock price depending on how quickly their Florida hotels get back online, but eventually the insurance proceeds will come in and the hotels will reopen.
2. LQ initiated a big capex program in late 2016, they identified 50 hotels to renovate with the hope to move them from midscale to upper-midscale and capture greater room rates.  With this renovation project, many hotel rooms were out service and are just now re-opening, the renovation project cost $180MM and is expected to be largely complete by the time of the spinoff, what return will that investment make going forward?  On the Q4 conference call, managemend stated that remodeled hotels had on average a 13% increase in RevPAR upon reopening.
3. La Quinta has always been a standalone brand without a larger rewards group.  La Quinta Rewards has 15 million members, by joining Wyndham Rewards and their 55 million members, WYN will funnel more travelers to CorePoint's properties.  They'll also potentially see some margin benefits from shifting a few percentage points away from OTA's to their direct reservation sites being part of Wyndham.  Additionally, there could be some opportunity to rebrand some of CorePoint's La Quinta hotels that are upscale or on the high end of the upper mid-scale segment to one of Wyndham's upscale brands.
• Let's pretend forward EBITDA is closer to $235MM for 2019 (hurricane recovery, renovated hotels coming back online at higher rates and WYN synergies) CorePoint could be worth over $16 per share, or over 50% upside from today's implied price.

Other Thoughts:

• I've received some pushback on this idea due to the "one brand" risk, however with a hotel REIT, I think some of that risk is overblown.  CPLG as a hotel REIT is not taking the credit risk of LQ/WYN unlike some of the triple-net lease REITs that were spun off with one master lease tenant.  Hotels change the logo on the outside of the building not infrequently; brand diversification makes for a nice investor relations slide but how important is it really?  Quick service restaurant franchisees usually specialize in one brand, although Papa Johns franchisees maybe wished they also own Dominos stores, I think of the hotel REIT business similarly, more about locations, markets and value/price over single brand risk.
• CorePoint will have geographic market concentration risk, 23% of their hotel rooms are in Texas which caused the stock to drop significantly during the oil downturn in 2014-2015, and more recently their concentration in Florida resulted in significant disruption after Hurricane Irma.  Mr. Brightside, both markets are recovering and should provide a tailwind to CorePoint's results post spinoff.
• There will be a 1 for 2 reverse split ahead of the transaction, keep that in mind when it actually starts trading, my $14 estimate becomes $28.  In the Form 10, a purging dividend is mentioned but its expected to be minimal.
• CorePoint mentions they intend to be an acquirer, initially that seemed strange, but given the potential cash position at the spinoff, it might make sense to play consolidator for a minute in the fragmented midscale segment (another source of growth).  Either way, with the spinoff being taxable and the presence of a 30% private equity owner, I'd expect CorePoint to be acquired in relatively short order (6-24 months) after the spinoff.

It might be better to wait for the spinoff to occur and get some more color around the Florida hotel recovery speed before diving in but I have a position now and expect to add to CPLG when it begins trading.

Disclosure: I own shares of LQ and WYN (plus WYN calls)

La Quinta Holdings: WYN Buying OpCo, PropCo Undervalued

In a recent post I mentioned there are some interesting spins on the horizon, one of those is La Quinta Holdings (LQ) doing an OpCo/PropCo split sometime in Q2 2018.  Their plans changed a little last week with the announcement that Wyndham Worldwide (WYN) - also doing an interesting spin - is buying La Quinta's asset-lite management company business for $1.71B in cash (after backing out $240MM Wyndham is reserving for potential taxes La Quinta will owe in the spinoff) or roughly 15.1x EBITDA.

Since Wyndham is paying cash, it's fairly easy to back into what value the market is assigning to La Quinta's PropCo spinoff, to be named CorePoint Lodging (CPLG).  Today, La Quinta's enterprise value is roughly $3.83B and combined company has an estimated $331MM in EBITDA for 2017.  Wyndham is paying $1.71B for the management company that will do $113MM in EBITDA, leaving an EV of $2.12B and $218MM in EBITDA behind in the REIT spinoff, for a 9.7x EBITDA multiple.

CorePoint is a hotel REIT, I've discussed the disadvantages of those in previous posts, but in summary they're more an operating company/franchisees than true REIT models, they're taking the majority of the business risk rather than acting as a landlord charging rent.  La Quinta's model is a mid-market select service hotel, historically they've been concentrated in the south (particularly Texas) but have expanded and diversified in recent years after being hit hard in the oil downturn.  Their hotels typically tend to be situated in suburban, airport and interstate locations that might be less susceptible to AirBnB but more at risk for overbuilding/supply risk.

There are a lot of hotel REITs, here's a small sample of internally managed ones I pulled, they might not all be perfect comparable companies but as you can see, none of them trade below 10x EBITDA:

If CorePoint is worth 12x EBITDA, my math gets me to about a $14/share price for the spinoff (might move around a little depending on the eventual net debt on the spin) + $8.40/share from Wyndham for the management business for a total of $22.40 versus a $19.60 stock price today, or about 14% upside.  No one is going to get rich on this idea, if you could isolate the spinoff directly it'd be a better deal, but I like the risk/reward.  Two other points to consider: 1) the $240MM WYN is reserving for taxes approximates a $2.85B EV valuation or 13x EBITDA for CorePoint (21% on the difference between the first day of trading and the book value of the assets); 2) since CorePoint is a taxable spinoff (REIT spins are no longer allowed to be tax free) it will be immediately be available to get acquired, and I expect it won't be a standalone company for very long.

Disclosure: I own shares of LQ