Hotel Real Estate Investment Trust Apple Hospitality REIT has refined its hotel investment strategy, and it has since proven to be a testament to its outperformance in a tough economic period.
CEO Justin Knight said during a first quarter earnings call with analysts that the company's investment strategy focuses on mitigating risk of volatility while producing compelling investor returns.
The strategy is straightforward: Own a portfolio of geographically diverse select-service hotels affiliated with the top brands, engage the right management teams, consistently reinvest in its hotels so they remain competitive and maintain a flexible capital structure that's low-leverage.
Putting those guidelines into play, Apple Hospitality purchased five hotels since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, totaling approximately $161 million. In the first quarter of 2021, it closed on the new-build, 176-room Hilton Garden Inn in Madison, Wisconsin, for $50 million.
"I feel really good about the deals that we've done since the beginning of the pandemic," he said. "Each of those deals are located in markets with demand generators that are likely to outperform and to produce significant room nights at attractive pricing as we begin the recovery."
Apple Hospitality's sweet spot is markets that bring both leisure and business transient demand to its hotels.
Knight said he recognizes that "in the near term, leisure will be the stronger component in many of those markets, but ensuring that as we progress to the recovery [we'll] see a more robust business transient, we are also poised to benefit from that."
In terms of chasing deals, he said Apple Hospitality continues to like the type of assets it already has in its portfolio — Hilton, Marriott International or Hyatt Hotels Corp. select-service assets. While his team prefers newer assets, the company is not exclusive to them.
Chief Financial Officer Liz Perkins said the outperformers were in warmer markets like California, Texas and Florida, driven by leisure, entertainment, medical, government and other corporate accounts. Weaker performance occurred at Apple Hospitality's hotels in the northwest.
"Twenty-seven of our hotels ran occupancy in excess of 80% for the full quarter," she said. "... The strong performance of our portfolio overall in the quarter is a tribute to our broad diversification."
Markets where Apple Hospitality is still experiencing weaker results relative to its overall portfolio are expected to achieve growth in future quarters, she said.
With business demand expected to increased in the back half of 2021, Knight is confident his portfolio is well-positioned to continue to outperform.
First Quarter Performance
During the first quarter of 2021, Apple Hospitality achieved its strongest operating results since the beginning of the pandemic, Knight said.
Portfolio occupancy exceeded both industry averages and the REIT's internal expectations. With occupancy and average daily rates steadily improving during the quarter, revenue per available room achieved levels of more than $68 in March, he said.
Perkins said occupancy increased from 40% in December to 66% in March. By February, Apple Hospitality's portfolio surpassed occupancy achieved in October of 2020, which is typically a seasonally strong month and had been its strongest month since the onset of COVID-19.
Knight said RevPAR increased 25% from January to February and 27% from February to March. Those positive trends continued through the end of the quarter, and full portfolio occupancy was approximately 68% in April.
"It's important to note these results include all of our hotels as we were able to remain open and operational even during periods of lower occupancy," he said. "Our portfolio of rooms-focused hotels performed better than the overall industry as well as our chain scales, as reported by STR, even without a full return of business travel."
STR is CoStar's hospitality analytics firm.
Perkins said Apple's portfolio had meaningful improvement in both weekday and weekend occupancy. Weekend occupancy continued to exceed weekday occupancy during the quarter, which points to the strength of leisure demand.
Weekday occupancy moved from 42% in January to 62% in March, while weekend occupancy moved from 51% to 80%.
As of press time, Apple's stock was trading at $15.81 per share, up 22.5% year to date. The NASDAQ Composite was up 6.7% for the same period.