Keith Cline, president and CEO of CorePoint Lodging Inc. (NYSE: CPLG), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworld: 2018 Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Cline discussed CorePoint’s recent move to trade on the New York Stock Exchange as a stand-alone company, calling 2018 “a pretty busy year” for the REIT.
“Our near-term strategies … are really ensuring that our renovation properties get opened on a timely basis … [and] getting our hurricane-affected properties back online as well,” he said. Cline added that the REIT had almost 3,000 rooms out of service in the first quarter of 2018 due to Hurricane Irma.
He said that another priority for CorePoint is to execute against its asset management strategy after selling the brand and management company to Wyndham Hotels and Resorts earlier in 2018.
“It’s a very different world having run the brand a year ago, and now we are just the largest franchisee,” Cline said. “We’re trying to ensure that nothing disrupts the activities of this portfolio.”
Cline said that the revenue per available room (RevPAR) from CorePoint’s repositioned properties is “up about 15.6 percent on a year-over-year basis.” He also said that operating fundamentals in the mid-scale and upper mid-scale lodging segments has been “very attractive” for the REIT.
“As we go into 2019, I view generally a very similar situation as we saw in 2018…CorePoint Lodging has some very unique catalysts for performance,” he said, including the fact that many rooms are coming back into service that were out of commission a year ago.