RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE: RLJ): Hunting Genuine Value In Market Debris

The Vanguard Group, Inc. recently announced the acquisition of new stake in RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE:RLJ). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Real Estate company by 0.95% to 23.9 million shares with purchase of 0.23 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 14.70% valued currently at $241.35 million. In addition, BlackRock Fund Advisors raised its holdings by 0.98 million to 13.5 million shares. And FIAM LLC has lifted its position by 5.69% or 0.56 million shares – to 10.39 million shares.

With over 2.47 million RLJ Lodging Trust (RLJ) shares trading Monday and a closing price of $10.62 on the day, the dollar volume was approximately $26.23 million. The shares have shown a negative half year performance of -6.60% and its price on 05/22/23 gained nearly 0.47%. Currently, there are 159.48M common shares owned by the public and among those 158.33M shares have been available to trade.

Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 29 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 10 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 524,343 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 19 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 133,807 shares.

The top 3 mutual fund holders in RLJ Lodging Trust are Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund, Fidelity Japan Fidelity US REIT M, and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund owns 7.13 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $72.05 million. The company sold 66078.0 shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 4.39% of the shares outstanding. Fidelity Japan Fidelity US REIT M bought 0.89 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 5.5 million shares valued at over $55.58 million and representing 3.39% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF sold -0.27 million shares to bring its total holdings to over 4.69 million shares at a value of $47.42 million. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF now owns shares totaling to 2.89% of the shares outstanding.

Shares of RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE: RLJ) opened at $10.64, up $0.07 from a prior closing price of $10.57. However, the script later moved the day high at 10.72, up 0.47%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of -0.38% and -5.93% over the past three months. RLJ shares are trading 0.28% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance down to -19.78% lower. It has a 12-month low price of $9.27 and touched a high of $14.31 over the same period. RLJ has an average intraday trading volume of 1.95 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 1.89%, 2.91%, and -6.06% respectively.

Institutional ownership of RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE: RLJ) shares accounts for 95.70% of the company’s 159.48M shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 46.44%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 50.24% and 10.27% respectively.

It has a market capitalization of $1.71B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 1.76. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 41.16, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $0.26. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio at 1.10. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 2.34% over the week and 3.08% over the month.

Analysts forecast that RLJ Lodging Trust (RLJ) will achieve an EPS of $0.21 for the current quarter, $0.05 for the next quarter and $0.46 for 2024. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $0.2 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $0.22. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $0.16 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 105.10%, and 48.39% over the next financial year.