DEEP VALUE REPORT — RLJ LODGING TRUST (NYSE: RLJ)
Hidden Value in plain sight
RLJ is priced like a hotel portfolio that exists, but where the market refuses to pay for the footprint until it sees two things: (1) clean capital allocation, and (2) a clean path through the next few years without value leaking to the stack.
This is not a “do you like hotels” stock.
This is a balance-sheet + per-share asset stock.
And the misprice (if it exists) comes from a boring truth: public markets mark hotels like earnings streams. Private markets often mark them like real estate that can be refinanced when the window reopens.
1) What RLJ actually is
RLJ is a lodging REIT. It owns hotels; it does not sell software; it does not have “product.” It has rooms, locations, flags, and a capital stack.
From the proxy snapshot: RLJ had 95 hotels and about 21,200 rooms (rooms = the real “unit count” in this business).
Revenue is not one thing. It prints as: rooms, food & beverage, and other hotel revenue. But the engine is still the same: fill rooms at the highest clean rate, protect margins, don’t blow the capex cycle.
How analysts usually cover this (and where they miss):
They lead with RevPAR and “earnings power”.
They anchor valuation to AFFO multiples.
They talk about “cycle” and “demand.”
All fine — but it misses the deep value file.
Our file: what is the footprint worth today in replacement dollars, what are the senior claims, and what does that leave per share if the world is merely “normal,” not booming.
2) The setup and why RLJ can be cheap without being broken
RLJ’s “story” in 2025 was not “the hotels disappeared.”
It was: demand got choppy, costs stayed real, and the market stopped rewarding lodging REITs with generous multiples.
Meanwhile, RLJ did the operator thing: it authorized a $250M repurchase program (common + preferred) and started buying stock.
That matters, because deep value is not a vibe. It’s behavior.
🔒 PAYWALL — Everything below is the full Deep Value file
Asset pricing per share, replacement-cost math (with numbers), capital stack & maturity map, buybacks, insider + board ownership by person, fund holder intent (H/2 + RM Trading), conference-call extraction, 5-year rewind, BEAR/BASE/BULL valuation map, and the explicit “what breaks it” section.