Wyndham eyes post-pandemic growth

Article Excerpt

WYNDHAM HOTELS & RESORTS INC. $65 remains a buy. The company (New York symbol WH; Cyclical-Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 92.1 million; Market cap: $6.0 billion; Dividend yield: 2.0%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Average, www.wyndhamhotels.com) is a hotel franchiser with 9,000 properties (810,000 rooms) in 95 countries, across 20 hotel brands. Those include Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Hawthorn Suites, La Quinta and, of course, Wyndham. The company last raised your quarterly dividend by 33.3% with the December 2021 payment. Investors now receive $0.32 a share instead of $0.24. The new annual rate of $1.28 a share yields 2.0%. Wyndham is now building or converting more than 1,600 hotels worldwide over the next few years. That will add more than 204,000 rooms to its network. Approximately 63% will be outside the U.S. The stock trades at a reasonable 18.8 times the $3.45 a share that Wyndham will probably earn in 2022. Wyndham Hotels is a buy. buy…