First Hospitality Opens Up Investment Arm to Outside Capital
Skift Take
First Hospitality unveils $400 million fund to acquire premium hotels, opening decades-old investment division to outside investors.
Baird reported on investor meetings they held with Summit Hotels management. Their takeaways included that INN believes lodging fundamentals are stable, with a 5% drop in RevPAR for the same store portfolio in April. When you exclude the Easter shift and last year’s eclipse, INN said normalized performance would have been flattish. They have seen softer demand in recent weeks with a shorter booking window, but have not seen incremental demand deterioration in April and so far in May. Corporate transient demand has held in reasonably well with no broad-based cancellations. Government demand is down 20% to 25%, and INN’s portfolio has been the subject of cancellations from Canadian travelers in Boston, Scottsdale, and South Florida. They used the description stable to describe expenses and margins as well, which is good news. On the capital allocation front, INN management told investors they are committed to repurchasing shares under its newly authorized $50 million pr
