What I've Been Buying, Coronavirus Edition

I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy, but if you're interested, here are some thoughts on a few current positions where I've added in recent weeks, some I've bought above where we're trading today, some below.  I probably started averaging down in some of these too soon, eaten some humble pie and have slowed my activity down significantly.  I assume we'll have more opportunities as it'll take awhile for the new economic reality to work its way through our system, credit agreements will need to be amended, etc.  There will be pot holes and bankruptcies, one change from recent years is we're likely to start to see bankruptcy reorgs that are the "good business, bad balance sheet" type that have been rare lately.  Things will likely get worse, so treat this more as a watchlist than a buylist.

Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC)
I'm a long time HHC bull, my pride is hurting here at the moment, 4 of 5 of HHC's primary markets have significant near term challenges: 1) NYC is front and center of the pandemic in the U.S., likely further pushing back (I've lost count how many times now) the stabilization date of the Seaport development; 2) Houston is dealing with yet another crash in oil prices just weeks after HHC made what they describe as the "largest acquisition in the company's history" by buying Occidental Petroleum's office buildings; 3) Nevada casinos are closed indefinitely, that will have its ripple effects through the Las Vegas service based economy and slowing the development of Summerlin; 4) Similarly but maybe less impacted, Honolulu will see significantly less tourism in 2020 than it did 2019, but more importantly a fall in financial markets doesn't lead to more wealthy people purchasing vacation beach condos.  Only Columbia, MD is mostly spared due to its connection to government services jobs.

The stock has bounced back slightly, but for a while there was trading below $40 which is where it was following the spin-off from GGP almost a decade ago, I was able to add a bit there, but still find the shares incredible cheap around $50.  In early 2019, I pegged the value of the land at ~$2.35B after subtracting out land level debt using a straight line NPV approach with a 10% discount rate, sure the near term sales might be low, but the nature of raw land is long term and Nevada and Texas remain attractive states for corporate relocations due to low/no taxes and friendly regulations.  HHC has $1B in corporate level debt, so just the land portfolio is worth ~$1.35B or about $35/share, obviously this is a somewhat silly back of the envelope valuation exercise that doesn't include overhead, etc.  But sort of thinking about what has happened since the spin-off a decade ago, HHC lays out the development activity in aggregate since then in their 10-K:

We have completed the development of over 5.2 million square feet of office and retail operating properties, 2,516 multi-family units and 909 hospitality keys since 2011. Excluding land which we own, we have invested approximately $2.0 billion in these developments, which is projected to generate a 9.5% yield on cost, or $192.7 million per year of NOI upon stabilization. At today’s market cap rates, this implies value creation to our shareholders in excess of $1.0 billion. Our investment of approximately $444.9 million of cash equity in our development projects since inception, which is computed as total costs excluding land less the related construction debt, is projected to generate a 25.5% return on cash equity assuming a 5.0% cost of debt, which approximates our weighted-average cost. These investments and returns exclude condominium development as well as projects under construction such as the Seaport District. We exclude condominium developments since they do not result in recurring NOI, and we exclude projects under development due to the wider range of NOI they are expected to generate upon stabilization. In Ward Village, we have either opened or have under construction 2,697 condominium units, which have approximately 89.8% units sold as of December 31, 2019 at a targeted profit margin, excluding land costs, of 23.6% or $747.3 million.

If we go back to 2015 and early 2016 when oil collapsed from around $100, there was a lot of anxiety about Houston office space and HHC dropped from ~$150 to ~$80 in a few months, but in the aftermath of the drop, HHC's Woodlands sub-market performed fairly well, their last speculatively built office property (Three Hughes Landing) still hasn't reached stabilization 4 years later, but the bottom didn't fall out either.  Not to directly compare the two time periods, this oil route seems worse for U.S. producers as it coincides with a demand shock due to coronavirus, but Houston is a major metropolitan market (it's not say, Midland TX or OKC) and the economy will evolve over time.  The Occidental office property buy certainly looks like unfortunate timing, but the bulk of the purchase is centered in the Woodlands giving them additional control over the sub-market, the Houston Energy Corridor former OXY campus was only ~10% of the purchase price and not a significant drag if they can't sell it in a year or three.  OXY's equity is certainly in question, the company signed a 13 year sale leaseback with HHC when the transaction happened, but even a reorged OXY will need office space, and HHC recently leased some empty space in the second office tower in the Woodlands to OXY's midstream company, WES.  HHC is taking a portion of the remaining space for themselves as they move their corporate headquarters to Houston, so in reality, there isn't a lot of current vacancy in HHC's Houston offie portfolio.

I'm less worried about Ward Village in Honolulu or Summerlin in Las Vegas, Summerlin is likely to have a terrible year, coronavirus feels temporary to me when you take a longer view, whereas domestic oil production might not be viable for many years.  The Seaport has always been a bit of a clown show, it was former management's pet project, there might be more willingness now to part with it for a reasonable offer that eliminates much of the risk/earnings volatility from HHC results.

Par Pacific Holdings (PARR)
Similarly, owning a refining business is tough here, if we just had the supply shock due to the OPEC+ breakup then refiners might be sitting pretty with cheap crude and strong gasoline demand, but with everyone staying in their homes and not commuting to work or traveling, gasoline and jet fuel demand have dropped almost as much as hotel occupancy.

Quick recap, Par Pacific is part of Sam Zell's empire, he doesn't technically control the company or sit on the board, but he owns a significant stake and the PARR management team is made up of former members of his family office - Equity Investments.  Over the last several years they've bulked up their operation to include three refineries, related logistics and a growing retail presence, focusing on niche/isolated markets.  Following a small tuck-in acquisition, they're the only refining presence in Hawaii and thus exposed to their tourism market via jet fuel sales.  They've got a turnaround scheduled for later this year in Hawaii which could be a blessing in disguise as it takes supply offline in that market just when there is a lack of demand.  But in a normalized year, Par Pacific should have a current run rate of approximately $225-250MM (after the next 12 months, PARR won't have a scheduled turnaround for several years), below is the breakdown of EBITDA between their business lines and sort of a reasonable, more rational market multiple for each.  It could take us a while to get there, but management on their last call (guessing there will be a lot of cringing across many management teams when they play back their comments on Q4 earnings calls) said that PARR is "today" a $3/share free cash flow business.  Obviously it won't be this year, but that's how the owners/managers of the business think of the earnings power.

It currently trades for $7-8/share, so that looks like a silly price and maybe it is because things are really different this time.  PARR also has ~$1.5B in NOLs that should shield it from ever paying cash taxes in the foreseeable future (not that it'll be an issue this year) and a stake in a natural gas E&P, Laramie Energy, but I mentally wrote off that investment a long time ago.  Given the natural gas price environment, Laramie has no active rigs, is reportedly cash flow positive and won't require additional investment from PARR to keep it a going concern, so we can sort of sidecar it.

PARR is a small cap and thus only has a relatively short term option chain with the latest expiration being in September.  Moving up market cap, Marathon Petroleum (MPC) is a similarly constructed downstream business with refining, midstream and retail operations that has January 2022 LEAPs available.  Marathon has been under pressure from activist investor Elliott Management to abandon their conglomerate structure and separate into three businesses: 1) retail (which operates the Speedway brand of gas stations/convenience stores); 2) midstream (which is publicly traded as MPLX, MPC owns 63% of MPLX and owns the general partner); 3) and the remaining refining operations.  The company recently rejected the idea of converting MPLX into a C-Corp and spinning MPC's MPLX units out to investors, but they are still committed to separating the Speedway retail business off by year end.  Convenience store 7-Eleven's owners, Seven & i Holdings, recently scrapped a deal to buy Speedway for $22B citing coronavirus and valuation concerns.  If you assume a $15B valuation for Speedway and back out the MPLX shares and consolidated debt, the remaining refining business is something like a $9B EV (with no value given to the MPLX GP) for a ~$5B EBITDA business in normal times.  There's also reason to believe (well maybe) that MPLX is undervalued as well as they're exploring selling their gathering and processing business segment for $15B which represents 1/3 of EBITDA.  The EV of MPLX is ~$34B, and the remaining logistics and storage business should fetch a considerably higher multiple.  I threw some speculative money at out of the money calls, maybe by early 2022 the world is a little more sane, until then I don't really plan on following the day-to-day swings in MPC's share price.

Five Star Senior Living (FVE)
Five Star is debt free (besides a small mortgage on the owned facilities), has a significant net cash position for its size and receives what should be a reliable management fee off of revenue.  Even if we do see small changes in occupancy (for morbid corona related reasons), FVE isn't as exposed to the high fixed cost structure of owning the senior living properties or leasing them.  FVE shares are trading below where they sold off when it was dumped following the distribution to DHC shareholders.  While there is certainly some operational or reputation risk associated with operating senior living facilities during such a high-risk time for the elderly, if Five Star can avoid a Kirkland WA style outbreak, their business should be positioned well and is extremely cheap.  We're still dealing with swag proforma estimates from management as the new structure is only a few months old, but at the EBITDA midpoint of $25MM, that should generate somewhere in the neighborhood of $14MM in FCF for about a 6.4x multiple at the current price of $3, plus you get the owned real estate and $30+ million of cash on a $90MM market cap company.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (WH)
Wyndham Hotels generates sales primarily on franchise fees based on hotel revenues (93% of their business) compared to their upscale hotel brand peers like Marriott (MAR) or Hilton (HLT) which have significant hotel management businesses where they get paid a percentage of hotel level profits and employ the workforce.  During good times, the management company model is better but during bad/terrible, I'd rather have the franchise model, hotel revenues will certainly be a fraction of what they were last year, but they won't be negative like profits.  Wyndham's typical hotel is an economy or midscale hotel with limited business or convention business and less reliance on food & beverage -- convention/conference business might take a while to recover as people stay cautious on large events, and if business travel does pick back up, maybe business travelers move down in hotel segment for a period of time.  Additionally, the typical Wyndham branded hotel owner is a mom or pop who owns just the one hotel, they likely got their financing from a local bank or the SBA who might be more willing to work with them on amendments/forbearance versus a large syndicate of lenders like the larger lodging REITs.  They do have a financial covenant of 5x EBITDA that is at risk, maybe other credit folks could chime in here, but I imagine by the time the TTM month EBITDA trips that covenant we might be back on the other side and WH could work with their creditors.  I did buy a little bit of shares, but also calls as to limit my downside if things do go south with their balance sheet.

My watchlist - quick blurbs, maybe turn into full posts if I buy:

• Exantas Capital (XAN): This is the former Resource Capital (RSO) that I owned for a couple years after C-III took over the management, cut the dividend, and reorganized the assets to a cleaner mortgage REIT.  XAN funds its assets in two ways, one is through repurchase agreements and the other is through CRE CLOs.  CRE CLOs are term financing and not mark-to-market, however the repurchase facilities are mark-to-market and Exantas failed to meet margin calls on their CMBS portfolio this week, sending the preferred and common cratering.  I'm maybe too optimistic on the commercial real estate market (HHC bull) but I think a lot of these loans get amended and Exantas might find its way out of this mess, however it won't be without some pain.  The CRE CLOs might end up tripping their OC tests and shutting off cash flows to the junior notes and equity which is owned by Exantas, so I'm on the side lines for now.  Additionally, like most CRE CLOs, these are "transitional loans" meant to fund a development project, say renovate an apartment building and move it up market, something like that.  So if the market shuts down, the borrower might not be in a financial position to complete said project or refinance into longer term financing, sticking XAN with the exposure longer than expected.
• iStar (STAR): I want to revisit another former holding in iStar, their SAFE ground lease business has grown far larger than I imagined (although likely very overvalued), taking SAFE at market value you could make a case that the legacy business that I originally liked is very cheap.  But they do have a CRE finance arm similar to XAN, but more concentrated on construction lending in major markets (NYC and Miami IIRC) that could be a problem.  Worth looking into given the SAFE stake and the management contract associated with SAFE.
• NexPoint Residential Trust (NXRT):  Another former REIT holding of mine, this is one that sort of got away, I'll get the exact numbers wrong but it spun off from a closed end fund at ~$11 and I sold somewhere around $22, not too far from where it is trading today at $25, a few months ago it was $52.  I love the strategy, they acquire garden style Class B apartments in the sun belt, put a little money into them to move up market a touch, maybe "B+", this investment is very high return on invested capital and then they'll sell, recycle the funds and do it all over again.  Sure their tenant base might have some credit issues in the next year, but demographic trends are still in the sun belt's favor, working class people will need reasonably affordable housing in the future, supply is relatively constrained, and this management team (it is external) has proven they can execute on their strategy.

Disclosure: I own shares of HHC, PARR, FVE, WH (and calls) and MPC 2022 LEAPs

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)

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: Form 10 Notes

Once again, apologies for being somewhat repetitive, but the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Form 10-12 came out today and I wanted to update my numbers for a few changes and add some additional thoughts around the spinoff.  The biggest change from my post last week is it appears Wyndham Worldwide (WYN) already incorporates the timeshare-to-hotel group royalty fee in their segment results, which mutes some of the multiple arbitrage upside of creating an expense from the lower valuation company into a revenue of the higher valuation company.

Removing the double counting of Hotel EBITDA brings down the overall valuation a few dollars.

*Edited from original, proforma net debt was incorrect

It was also disclosed in the Form 10 that Wyndham Hotels & Resorts will have $1.888B in net debt at the time of the spinoff, essentially all the purchase price of La Quinta's management and franchise business will be placed on the spinoff which makes sense.  By incorporating the net debt number, we can infer what the target price of each side will be after the spinoff (using my multiples above) which might be useful as there's often significant volatility around the when issued and spinoff dates.

*Edited from original, proforma net debt was incorrect

Other thoughts/notes from the Form 10:

• After the closing of La Quinta's management business, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts will have over 9300 hotels in their system, making them the largest franchiser in the world by the number of hotels and #3 in hotel rooms (economy hotels tend to be smaller in size).
• The typical franchisee is a first time hotelier and single property owner, Wyndham has 5700 franchisees for their 9300 hotels, this is a small business in a box type service.  This is likely good and bad, good in that they're not exposed to any one large franchisee and bad in that the net worth of their franchisees is likely minimal outside of their hotel, leaving them more susceptible to distress.  Their value proposition is the single property owner can work with Wyndham and receive the marketing, reservation and technology system of an upscale hotel but for the economy and midscale segments.
• Royalty fees are typically 4-5%, plus marketing fees of 2% and another 2% of gross revenues for rooms book through their reservation system.  Here's a good place to point out that the economy segment is less pressured by the Online Travel Agencies (OTA's) as the upscale and luxury segments, many of Wyndham's guests are drive-up, meaning they book their room the night of based on which hotels in a particular destination have vacancies.
• Their two main strategic priorities going forward will be to grow in the midscale segment (to a lesser extent the upscale segment as well) and grow internationally.  Growing outside the economy segment helps strengthen Wyndham Rewards, their loyalty program, by keeping more people within the system, they don't want loyal guests being forced out of the Wyndham system because they don't have a mid or upscale hotel in a desired location.  International growth is an obvious given, about 70% of U.S. hotels are branded, while only 46% internationally, creating a growth runway for the entire industry.  Wyndham could also receive a tailwind from the growing middle class in developing markets, the middle class leisure traveler is the primary target demographic of economy chains.  Their recent purchase of La Quinta's management and franchise business hits both the moving upscale and international boxes.
• This is the dream asset-lite "compounder" type business model.  Capital allocation will be split between a dividend, share buybacks (starting out of the gate with a repurchase plan in place) and M&A.  They've been an active acquirer over the past few decades:
  
• Completing a spinoff isn't cheap, one-time costs add up to $330MM here with $280MM on the parent and $50MM on the spinoff.

Disclosure: I own shares and calls on WYN

Wyndham Worldwide: Hotel Spin from Timeshare Business

This idea is another addition to my unintentional ongoing series circling around the timeshare and hotel management industries.  Wyndham Worldwide (WYN) is the largest of the U.S. based timeshare companies and they will be spinning off their hotel franchise management division in the second quarter of 2018.  Timeshare multiples have run up significantly in the past several years, while this situation might not be as juicy as the past timeshare spinoffs, the pre-spin Wyndham trades at a discount to the parent's closest peer after the spinoff in ILG, while hotel management companies all trade significantly higher.  One also could argue that as the timeshare companies begin to generate increasingly more of their revenue from sticky resort management contracts, their multiples should continue to converge with the hotel management companies.

Wyndham is currently divided into three business lines:

1. Wyndham Hotel Group:  Almost entirely a low capital requirement franchise business, Wyndham has over 8400 hotels in its stable which primarily skew to economy and midscale brands.  Their brands include the namesake Wyndham, along with brands well known to those that travel US interstates like Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Howard Johnson, Baymont and Travelodge.  Franchise fees are usually structured with an initial on-boarding fee, plus a percentage of revenues royalty irrespective of the underlying profitability of the hotel making the business less cyclical than the hotel operator REITs.  The essential components of the hotel management business are the number of rooms in your system and the revenue per available room (RevPar), both of which have been growing for Wyndham's hotel group.  To illustrate where Wyndham's brands are on the hotel segment landscape, the RevPAR for the entire in U.S. lodging industry was $83.57 in 2017, Wyndham's RevPAR was $37.63 for the same period.  Management guidance has this segment projected to do $445-$455MM of EBITDA in 2018.
2. Wyndham Destination Network:  Wyndham operates the largest timeshare exchange network, RCI, which allows members (for an annual fee plus transaction fees) to trade their weeks or points in their own timeshare for another.  This is another low capital requirements business, but faces headwinds as consolidation across the timeshare industry has lessened the need for exchange networks.  Smaller or one off timeshare developers would typically give away an RCI membership in order to entice a sale, sell that the owner on having the option to be apart of a greater exchange network.  As larger brands entered the space, they've created their own exchange network ecosystems putting pricing pressure on RCI and their main competitor, Interval Internation (ILG's exchange network).  Management guidance has this segment projected to do $265-$275MM of EBITDA in 2018.
3. Wyndham Vacation Ownership:  Wyndham is the largest timeshare business globally, they have 221 resorts under management representing 25,000 units and 878,000 owners.  Their model is almost entirely points based giving timeshare owners flexibility in how they book their vacation, plus more importantly to Wyndham it makes it easier for a current timeshare owner to upgrade/buy additional points than it would be to sell the same owner additional weeks under the old model.  Like everyone else in the industry, Wyndham has moved to a less capital intensive model where 80% of the units sold in 2017 were not developed by the company, instead buy a developer or via a just-in-time purchase of inventory.  Additionally, Wyndham provides financing to timeshare owners and then securitizes these loans in the ABS market.  Management guidance has this segement projected to do $735-$750MM of EBITDA in 2018.

Wyndham Hotel Group is going to be the spinoff, leaving the Destination Network and Vacation Ownership segments behind to become a purer play timeshare business.  In recent months, Wyndham has announced two large M&A transactions: (1) they sold their European vacation rentals business that was within their Destination Network segment for $1.3B in cash and (2) purchased La Quinta's hotel management business for $1.95B in cash ahead of its own spinoff.  Additionally, as part of these hotel/timeshare spinoffs, there has typically been a royalty fee going from the timeshare business to the hotel management company.  In all of the other timeshare spinoffs, the hotel management company has been the larger/parent in the transaction, where the opposite is true with Wyndham.  Even so, I'm going to assume management is smart and will put in place a 5% of VOI sales royalty agreement in place going from the timeshare parent to the hotel spin.

In order to come up with the post-spin picture, I took management's guidance and added the impacts of the European vacation rental business being sold (but it's already excluded from EBITDA guidance), the purchase of LQ's management business (and varying synergies levels), a potential 5% timeshare royalty to the spinoff, and then added some additional overhead to account for running two separate public companies.

Taking a look at peers of each, the parent will look most similarly to ILG with a combination of a large VOI sales business and an exchange.  ILG has had a epic run since the RMT with Starwood's Visitana (I sold unfortunately in the low-to-mid $20) and trades for a forward EBITDA multiple of just under 13x.  The hotel group spinoff will most resemble Choice Hotels (CHH), both compete primarily in the economy to midscale segments with brands like Comfort Inn, Quality and Econo Lodge.  The hotel management group all has significant growth baked into some of these EBITDA projections, the backwards numbers are several turns higher, but Choice Hotels trades for a 16x multiple on analyst 2018 estimates.

If we assume the timeshare business parent trades for 11.5x and the hotel group spinoff trades for 15x EBITDA, I come up with the below SOTP based on my mid-point forecasts:

The primary risks here is valuation, we're presumably late in the cycle, hospitality companies are historically very cyclical (timeshare and hotel operators more than hotel management) and we could be looking at both peak revenue/earnings and peak multiples.  This spinoff transaction would have looked a lot more attractive one or two years back, but I think it still will work and I've established a position with the hopes that there's something more to do after the spinoff if one or the other trade well outside my valuation targets.

If you're interested in WYN and in the Chicago area, we're covering WYN on 3/19 at the CFA Chicago meeting I co-host every month, details here: https://specialsituationsresearchforum.wordpress.com/meeting-registration/

Disclosure: I own shares of WYN

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