Optimism About 2023 Deal Volume

The DJIA rose 387 points on Friday while Nasdaq was up 226, the S&P 500 rose 64 points and the 10-year treasury yield eased, down .11 to 3.96%. Lodging stocks were higher. The only major mover was SOND, up 12%, still trading below a buck. Skift, parent company of this publication, published an article on Sonder, saying the company is going through another round of layoffs, this time another 100 that they said will lead to a $10 million annual cost savings. The Skift article described SOND as a prime example of a company that shouldn’t have gone public, but the SPAC trend enabled it to start trading. They said the story is lots of hype to a penny stock. Citigroup doesn’t seem to want to admit they were wrong, they maintained their Buy rating on SOND but cut their price target to $2 from $3.50.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. upped their quarterly dividend by 9%, announcing a quarterly cash dividend of $0.35 per share up from the $0.32 a share quarterly dividend they paid during 2022.

CoStar said that most Lodging Industry Investment Council members expect full-year lodging real estate transactions in 2023 to exceed the volume in 2022. In a survey conducted at a private roundtable of members, 67% said they believe transactions will be up, while 27% believe the count will be roughly the same and only 6% predict down. This was according to Hospitality Real Estate Counselors. Lodging Capital Partners feels the distress on the capital market side is going to force sellers (to dispose of hotels) and cap rates are going to move up roughly 100 basis points