HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee, and MILWAUKEE—The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index ended April with a 3.4-percent increase to 2,507, and it is up 23.8-percent year-to-date 2012. The index ended 2011 at 2,025.
Robert W. Baird & Company and STR partnered to create the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index—the first widely available U.S. hotel stock index in the hotel industry. The index combines Baird’s financial markets expertise, the data processing of STR and the up-to-the-minute distribution capabilities of HotelNewsNow.com, the industry’s leading hotel news website.
The Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index outperformed both the MSCI REIT (RMZ) (+2.7 percent) and the S&P 500 (-0.7 percent) in April.
“While April was only a decent month for the Baird/STR Hotel Stock Index, investor interest continued to be up significantly year to date,” said Randy Smith, chairman and co-founder of STR. “We expect this interest to continue as the industry reports strong performance leading up to the summer travel season.”
“Hotel stocks continued their outperformance in April as better-than-expected first quarter earnings from Marriott International, LaSalle Hotel Properties, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Host Hotels & Resorts drove stock prices higher. The first wave of strong earnings from these companies set the bar high, and the second set of earnings later in the month and into May, while strong, were met with some skepticism,” said David Loeb, senior hotel research analyst and managing director at Baird. “Management teams expect fundamentals to remain strong for the rest of the year, and acquisitions and capital recycling have a renewed focus given the improvement in equity prices."
Media Contacts:
Jeff Higley
VP, Digital Media & Communications
jeff@str.com
+1 (615) 824-8664 ext. 3318
Rachael Spann Urie
Director, Public Relations
rurie@str.com
+1 (615) 824-8664 ext. 3305
Angela Pittman Taylor
Baird Public Relations
apittmantaylor@rwbaird.com
+1 (414) 765-7250
