Chatham Lodging Trust Q2 2026 Earnings Report

Chatham Lodging Trust EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.13
• Consensus EPS: $0.11
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.02
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Chatham Lodging Trust Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $87.80 million
• Expected Revenue: $82.01 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$5.80 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Chatham Lodging Trust Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/4/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 10:30AM ET

Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE:CLDT) is a self-advised, publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused primarily on investing in upscale, extended-stay hotels and premium-branded, select-service hotels. The company owns 39 hotels totaling 5,915 rooms/suites in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

Chatham Lodging Trust Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Chatham raised its 2026 guidance by approximately 20% from the start of the year, citing a strong second quarter, the Midwest acquisition and share repurchases. Full-year adjusted FFO guidance is now $1.28–$1.34 per share, with adjusted EBITDA guidance of $99.2 million–$102.3 million.
• Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter RevPAR increased 3.3%, while hotel EBITDA reached $35.7 million and adjusted FFO was $0.48 per share. Expense controls drove a 220-basis-point increase in hotel EBITDA margins, supported by labor productivity, lower repairs and maintenance costs, property-tax refunds and reduced insurance costs.
• Positive Sentiment: The six-hotel Midwest portfolio is outperforming expectations, with second-quarter RevPAR up 8.6%, 83% occupancy and $3.2 million of hotel EBITDA; July RevPAR rose 13%. Management also highlighted additional potential demand from major manufacturing, uranium-enrichment and data-center investments near the properties.
• Positive Sentiment: Silicon Valley remained a major growth driver, with second-quarter RevPAR up 7% and July RevPAR up 26%, including a 41% increase at the two Sunnyvale hotels. Management cited double-digit demand growth from major technology accounts and expects further upside as corporate and technology activity expands.
• Negative Sentiment: Management is assuming only low-single-digit RevPAR growth from September through December because of geopolitical uncertainty and limited visibility, despite strong July results. Convention-oriented hotels also faced weakness, with portfolio convention RevPAR down 5% and San Diego RevPAR down 9%; the company is marketing a smaller hotel for sale, with proceeds expected to be below $20 million.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust Second Quarter 2026 financial results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on August 4, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Daly. Please go ahead.

[Chris Daly, External Media and Public Relations Contact at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Thank you, Matthew. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust second quarter 2026 results conference call. Please note that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements as defined by federal securities laws.

[Chris Daly, External Media and Public Relations Contact at Chatham Lodging Trust]

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, as described in our most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings. All information in this call is as of August 4, 2026, unless otherwise noted, and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company's expectations. You can find copies of our SEC filings and earnings release, which contain reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures referenced on this call, on our website at chathamlodgingtrust.com.

[Chris Daly, External Media and Public Relations Contact at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Now, to provide you some insight into Chatham's 2026 second quarter results, allow me to introduce Jeff Fisher, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Craven, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Jeremy Wegner, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Let me turn the session over to Jeff Fisher. Jeff?

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate that. I also appreciate everybody who's joined us today on our call. Lots of good stuff to talk about here. It was a great second quarter, which followed a very good first quarter, and as a result, we have increased our guidance by approximately 20% since the start of the year. It's a pretty simple equation to explain.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We combined a great acquisition together with strong operating results and share repurchases. We believe the lodging industry is in the early stages of a protracted upcycle. Of course, we understand the Iran conflict makes the near term choppy, but we really like the long-term dynamics. Leisure travel remains strong and will continue that way as domestic travelers realize over the last five years how much they value those experiences.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Of course, for us, it's important to focus on business travel, which is the biggest driver of our portfolio and represents around 75% of our EBITDA. We are really seeing business travel accelerate even more than it has over the last few years at a faster pace, and that's no different than what you've been hearing from the airlines and the hotel brands. On their most recent calls, Delta and United reported corporate travel is up 20%-30%, with close-in bookings increasing and small to medium-sized businesses recovery is surging.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

There's so much business investment happening around the country across many different industries, especially manufacturing and technology, and this is really starting to boost the upscale and midscale hotels as these travelers are generally not staying in luxury hotels.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

I'm sure many of you heard that Hilton on its conference call echoed these same thoughts as they stated the biggest single change they have seen over the last couple of quarters is strong growth in mid-week business transient travel, with very encouraging patterns in small to medium-sized businesses in terms of occupancy gains and their rate growth outstripping what they were seeing from the big corporates.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

These trends will benefit Chatham more than most of our peers, and as you will hear in the next few minutes, we are seeing great results in our recently acquired six-hotel portfolio that further validates the demand growth in the small to medium-sized businesses across the manufacturing belt in the Midwest and Southeast. On top of these encouraging demand trends, the supply part of the equation should also benefit existing hotel owners.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Construction costs remain quite high, and development is only justified in a few special markets, such as our downtown waterfront Portland, Maine location. On that note, we are excited to have commenced construction on our 130-suite Home2 Suites on what was a surface parking lot adjacent to our Hampton Inn in the heart of the downtown waterfront.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

The development includes approximately 5,500 sq ft of commercial space at the corner of Middle Street and India Street that will be sold. This commercial space is ideally positioned in the heart of the most favorable area of downtown Portland. Although we are very early in the project, we are anticipating the hotel will open just before the summer of 2028. Total construction costs are expected to be $45 million, or $350,000 per room. Though through the sale of the commercial space will reduce our basis.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We estimate our unlevered year two stabilized yield will be around 11% and will be meaningfully accretive upon its opening. Let's talk about another great investment that's paying off for our shareholders, our share repurchase plan, which, by the way, we launched in May 2025. We've repurchased another $3 million of stock in the quarter, bringing total purchases to date of over $18 million out of our $25 million plan.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Since inception, we've repurchased 2.5 million shares, which equates to approximately 5% of our outstanding shares and units at a price of $7.29, or a corporate NOI cap rate of approximately 10%, and hotel NOI cap rate of 11.3%, and at an almost 50% discount to our current trading level. Just a great use of free cash flow, and obviously, a tremendous return for our shareholders.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We've paused repurchases now, for as the current share price has rebounded and the valuation disconnect has compressed. As always, we continually evaluate potential acquisitions and weigh whether to use our capital to acquire hotels or repurchase shares. Trust us, we understand the importance of investing our capital wisely.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

On the acquisition front, I have to highlight the outstanding performance of our recently acquired portfolio of six hotels in Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky. Performance is surpassing our expectations. RevPAR growth accelerated further in the second quarter, up 9% on an even split between occupancy and ADR. Second quarter occupancy was 83%, 200 basis points higher than our portfolio average for the quarter. July, RevPAR jumped another 13%, with occupancy up 9% to 86%, and ADR up 3%.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Additionally, the portfolio produced GOP margins of 49.3% in the quarter, 250 basis points higher than our average portfolio average, even though RevPAR is about 20% below our portfolio average, which provides a great look-through into why we like this portfolio as it combines a strong RevPAR outlook with favorable labor dynamics and lower operating costs per room.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Last quarter, we spoke about the recently announced nuclear uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky, on the U.S. Department of Energy site, it was announced earlier this week that the U.S. Department of Energy is partnering with Brookfield NextEra, Big Rivers Electric Corporation, Jackson Purchase Energy Cooperative, and the Paducah Power System to invest over $100 billion into a new data center within that same complex. The project is expected to create 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs and adds another demand generator for our hotels.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Operationally, it was a great quarter for us, with RevPAR margins, EBITDA, and FFO easily beating our expectations for the quarter. RevPAR grew 3%, we were able to increase our pro forma GOP margins 170 basis points and our hotel EBITDA margins by 220 basis points. Dennis is going to talk about our other larger markets, I'm going to talk a little bit about our largest market, Silicon Valley, which accounts for 17% of our EBITDA now. We've seen RevPAR grow 18 of the last 21 quarters and 10 of the last 11 quarters. Importantly, our projected 2026 RevPAR growth would be our best gaining year since the pandemic. Silicon Valley's RevPAR growth of 7% boosted our portfolio growth by 40 basis points. As growth accelerates, given its significance to the portfolio, it amplifies our company's growth.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Second quarter ADR was up 10% to a post-pandemic quarterly high of $212. That's for any quarter, not just the second quarter. Our quarterly RevPAR of $164 is our highest RevPAR over the last six years. These are great results and very encouraging, again, especially considering the renovation at our Mountain View hotel during the quarter.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We are seeing strong corporate demand, especially within the corporate transient segment. As Dennis quoted in our release, "Since the beginning of the year, we have seen double-digit demand growth from top accounts such as Applied Materials, Palo Alto Networks, NVIDIA, and Google." As good as our second quarter was in Silicon Valley, July RevPAR at our four hotels was outstanding, accelerating 26%. Within that number, our two Sunnyvale hotels rose 41% in July.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Of course, massive capital investment announcements continue into technology from all types of companies, and importantly, companies of all sizes, from the largest in the world to small and medium-sized companies, even startups. Of course, Silicon Valley is the heart of the tech world, and we are seeing a strong resurgence.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Major announcements keep coming to our markets. For example, just last week, Databricks, the data and AI company, today continues its rapid growth in the Bay Area with its expansion into a new 305,000 sq ft office in downtown Sunnyvale, just two and a half miles from our two Residence Inns. Just two weeks ago, Amazon announced that it had leased an entire 317,000 sq ft building at The Moffett Towers in Sunnyvale, and the towers are, again, only three and a half miles from both of our hotels.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Elsewhere, OpenAI announced they're leasing a 450,000 sq ft office complex less than four miles from our hotel in Mountain View, and also Sunnyvale, and General Motors, that currently occupies about 1 million sq ft across the valley, is considering consolidating some of its auto talent into offices either in or near Stanford or Sunnyvale for more space. One more article.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

The "San Francisco Business Times" stated that companies are pursuing almost 11 million sq ft of office and R&D space in Silicon Valley. Essex Property Trust, one of the largest multifamily REITs in the country, with a lot of exposure to Northern California, especially Silicon Valley and San Francisco, commented on their recent call that Northern California was their best-performing market. These are just great trends for our four hotels and, given their significance, ultimately our entire portfolio performance.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Compared to 2019, there's still a lot of upside in Sunnyvale and Mountain View, and we fully expect RevPAR to get back to those hotels and then some. Our projected 2016 San Mateo Residence Inn RevPAR is about 10% higher than 2019 levels and still growing meaningfully. Mountain View was impacted by renovation in the first and second quarter, comparing 2016 to 2019 really isn't relevant for them, but our projected Sunnyvale RevPAR is still about 18% shy of 2019 levels.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Returning those two big hotels to 2019 levels would add another $3 million of FFO or $0.06 per share. Wrapping up my proposed remarks, looking to the balance of the year, we have increased our annual guidance for the second quarter beat, as well as a modest increase to the second half of the year.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Probably a bit of conservatism in our second half outlook, but given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and little visibility past the next one or two months, we are assuming low single-digit RevPAR growth similar to Hilton's non-luxury projection. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Dennis.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Thanks, Jeff. Second quarter RevPAR finished strong with RevPAR up 9% in June and July advancing 10%. July occupancy rose 5%, with ADR up 4%. July RevPAR grew in 35 of our 39 hotels, and 14 of our 39 hotels saw RevPAR gains of over 10%. In fact, June and July RevPAR of $175 and $169 are all-time high marks for each of those respective months. We continue to experience broad demand growth across our portfolio with approximately two-thirds of our hotels generating RevPAR growth, three-fourths of our hotels pushing ADRs higher, and approximately one-fourth of our hotels experiencing double-digit RevPAR gains. This is essentially the same trend from the first quarter and a signal of strength of our portfolio moving forward.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Adding to Jeff's commentary on Silicon Valley, July RevPAR was fantastic with RevPAR increasing 26% across all four hotels, and our two Sunnyvale hotels were up 41% with growth attributable to primarily corporate transient demand as the World Cup really didn't have much of an impact there. They only hosted one game at Levi's Stadium in the month of July. Our top five RevPAR hotels in the quarter were our Residence Inn Washington, D.C. with RevPAR of $236, our Residence Inn White Plains with RevPAR of $209, followed by our Marina del Rey Hilton Garden Inn with RevPAR of $206, and rounded out by our Residence Inn San Diego Gaslamp, and Embassy Suites Springfield, and our Hampton Inn Portland, all basically right around $198 for the quarter. The fact that two of our top five being in the D.C.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

metroplex gives you a feeling for how well that market has rebounded after a really tough 2025. Five of our 39 hotels benefited from World Cup related demand. June RevPAR was up almost 12% at these hotels. The impact of the quarter was only 40 basis points to our entire portfolio. Our RevPAR was still up 3% for the quarter excluding any World Cup impact.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Our seven predominantly leisure hotels generated RevPAR growth of approximately a half a point in the quarter. Our Savannah SpringHill Suites continues its hot performance post-renovation last year with growth of 9% in the quarter. While our Hilton Garden Inn Portsmouth saw RevPAR decline 8% in the quarter due to leisure demand softness from Canada, obviously some wildfire impact, and a new Homewood Suites that opened earlier this year. Our three predominantly government-oriented hotels, all in the greater D.C.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

area, produced RevPAR growth of 9% in the quarter, same as the first quarter production. As a group, these hotels represent approximately 9% of our EBITDA. Our Springfield Embassy Suites and our Tysons Corner hotels produced RevPAR growth of 14% and 13% respectively. Our five convention hotels saw RevPAR decline 5% in the quarter. San Diego RevPAR dropped 9%, which is about what we expected as the 2026 convention calendar for the balance of the year is soft in comparison to prior years.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

In Texas, our Dallas and Austin hotels have felt the impact of convention demand fall off as well, with those convention centers being under renovation and for ongoing expansions. RevPAR at our Courtyard Dallas was down 3% in the quarter, much better than the 26% in the first quarter, and our comps get better over the last half of the year.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Obviously, we benefited some at that hotel from the World Cup media center being located in the convention center downtown. RevPAR at Austin hotels were down less than 3% in the quarter, and as I said, those comps start to get easier as we get through the balance of the year. Switching to our profitability. We had another great quarter managing expenses and maximizing employee productivity, as well as increasing our non-room profits and driving margins higher.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We continue to focus on increasing that other operating department revenue and profits, and we were able to increase those profits by about $400,000 or 13% in the quarter. As we mentioned in the release, when you take out the one-time workers' compensation refund, our GOP and our hotel EBITDA margins jumped 170 and 220 basis points respectively, with GOP and EBITDA flow-through of approximately 60%.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Taking out the refund, our department expenses were down almost 1% on a CPOR basis, and all hotel operating expenses were only up about 2% on a CPOR basis. Our employee productivity is excellent. For example, coming off a very efficient first quarter, our second quarter occupied rooms were up 13% over the first quarter, with headcount only up 4%.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

There remains really no shortage of available labor, and as a reminder, we do reassess our employee pay every July, and the increase for our employees across our hotels averaged approximately 2.5%. Below the GOP line, we received an approximate $300,000 in property tax refunds at our Sunnyvale and Fort Lauderdale hotels that enhanced our EBITDA margins even higher than our GOP margins.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

For the quarter, our top five producers of GOP were led by our Residence Inn San Diego, our Embassy Suites Springfield, and followed by our Sunnyvale two Residence Inn, then our Bellevue Residence Inn, and then finally in fifth was our SpringHill Suites Savannah.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

All three of the Silicon Valley hotels that were not under renovation were among our top 11 in EBITDA production. Using hotel EBITDA, our Sunnyvale two Residence Inn led all hotels, and all four Silicon Valley hotels, as well as our Bellevue Residence Inn, were ranked in our top 10. Clearly, tech hotels are gaining ground. GOP at our three non-renovation impacted Silicon Valley hotels were up approximately 51%, over 400 basis points higher than our portfolio average.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Looking further at the comparable Silicon Valley hotels, which excludes the Mountain View Hotel, hotel EBITDA grew a strong 29% year-over-year on a 9% RevPAR increase. Of course, we did benefit from some property tax refunds, but EBITDA margins would still be about 20% higher excluding those. We discussed last quarter that we'd most likely look to opportunistically sell an asset or two this year. Thankfully, we don't have a lot that we want to get rid of, but I do want to let everybody know we are marketing one of our smaller hotels for sale with similar characteristics to the hotels we sold last year, and we would expect proceeds for that sale to be less than $20 million.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We hope to have something to announce in that regard when we come back in November for our third quarter earnings call. On the CapEx front, we spent approximately $7 million in the quarter, with our full budget for the year to being about $27 million. We do have three hotel scheduled for renovation later this year. Those being our Gaslamp Residence Inn, our Hyatt Place Pittsburgh, and our Homewood Suites Farmington. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeremy.

[Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Thanks, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. Our Q2 2026 hotel EBITDA was $35.7 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $32.7 million, and adjusted FFO was $0.48 per share. We were able to generate a GOP margin of 46.8% and hotel EBITDA margin of 40.8% in Q2. GOP margins for the quarter were up 60 basis points from Q2 2025. Hotel EBITDA margins increased 220 basis points. As a reminder, we recorded a $900,000 workers' comp benefit in Q2 2025. Excluding the impact of that, GOP margins would have been up 170 basis points and hotel EBITDA margins would have been up 330 basis points. The Midwest portfolio that we acquired in March generated RevPAR growth of 8.6% and $3.2 million of hotel EBITDA in Q2.

[Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Chatham's overall RevPAR growth of 3.3% in Q2 exceeded our expectations going into the quarter. Performance accelerated significantly over the course of the quarter, with June RevPAR up 8.7%. This strong top-line performance has continued into July, where Chatham's RevPAR increased 9.7%.

[Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Chatham's balance sheet remains in excellent condition and provides significant flexibility to fund opportunistic growth through accretive acquisitions and the development of the Home2 Suites by Hilton Portland. As of Q2, Chatham's leverage ratio, as defined in our credit facility, was only 31.2%. The company had $225 million of availability under its revolving credit facility. Continuing strong EBITDA growth and meaningful free cash flow after dividends are expected to further enhance our financial flexibility. Turning to our 2026 guidance, we expect RevPAR growth of 1.5%-3%, adjusted EBITDA of $99.2 million-$102.3 million, and adjusted FFO per share of $1.28-$1.34 for the full year.

[Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We generally expect Chatham's Q3 RevPAR will increase approximately 4%.

[Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

As a reminder, our 2025 RevPAR pro forma for the impact of the Midwest acquisition would've been $149 in Q3, $129 in Q4, and $140 for the full year in 2025. This concludes my portion of the call. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Gaurav Mehta of Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead, your line is open.

[Gaurav Mehta, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners]

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask you on the expense management, you talked about labor and productivity. Can you maybe talk about other expense items, maybe insurance costs and any other expense items where you're looking at expense management?

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Hey, Gaurav, this is Dennis. Good morning. I think if you look outside of labor and productivity, I know we spend a lot of time talking about it, but it is, between labor and benefits, almost 40% of our operating cost. Outside of that, obviously we have seen, and we've been seeing some benefits from property tax refunds. Really, those are from prior years that we're starting to get the refunds, and hopefully, those continue as we kind of catch up to where we are now, at least with the local jurisdictions. Property insurance for us, we renewed at the beginning of the year. We've seen that down in around 10% range, for the full year.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

If you look at a couple of the other things, utilities, I think we've done a pretty good job over the past of, depending on jurisdictions, we're able to market and to have competitive bids on pricing. We've done a good job of securing longer-term fixed rate contracts in certain markets that have helped mitigate rising utility costs, especially on the gas and electricity side. I think lastly, if you look at our R&M line in total for the year, I think we've done a very good job this year of keeping and investing a lot of dollars in the past, and really we've seen the fruits of that in a little bit of a decline year-over-year that's benefited our margin. Just a lot of focus in that area as well.

[Gaurav Mehta, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners]

Okay. Second question on the asset you are looking to sell. What's the expected use of the proceeds, and is that disposition included in the guidance?

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

It's not included in the guidance. We typically keep it in our guidance until literally it closes. I think the short-term use of proceeds is going to be to pay down our credit facility. I think we have $60 million or $70 million outstanding as we sit here today. We'll use the proceeds in the short term to pay down the line.

[Gaurav Mehta, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners]

All right. Thank you. That's all I had.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Tyler Batory of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead, the line is open.

[Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. First question from me. I really wanted to double-click on the July performance in terms of RevPAR up 10%. Is there anything unusual that's going on with the comp year-over-year? If you could just go through really what was contributing to that very strong performance, that would be helpful.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Hey, Tyler. Good morning. Listen, it starts with Silicon Valley, and I think it's part of the answer to your second part of that question. If you recall last year when we were reporting on our third quarter earnings call in November, we talked about a decision that we had made regarding one of our top accounts in terms of pricing for some business, and we declined that price reduction. If you recall, we kind of had a weak third quarter in Silicon Valley last year, so the comps are easier there for Silicon Valley, but certainly, a plus 26% in July, including plus 41% in Sunnyvale at the two hotels there, was certainly a much bigger surprise, from where we would've thought we would've been and what we had underwritten for the balance of the year three months ago.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We certainly have seen a good trend outside of that Mountain View hotel of double-digit increases. Certainly, a plus 26 in Silicon Valley just really helps our portfolio.

[Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Okay. Thank you for that. Could you bridge for us just where you are, RevPAR, in terms of so far this year through July, then connect the dots with the full-year guide? Not sure if there's anything unique that's going on in the second half of the year. How much of the outlook is maybe a little bit of extra conservatism?

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

I'm not sure I can verbally connect the dots, I will say that yes, as Jeff talked about in his prepared remarks, listen, I think we're going to be a little conservative here. Obviously, July plus 10 is fantastic. Early thoughts into August are good. We are just taking the assumption that the rest of the year, from September to December, is low single digits. We sure hope that we outperform that, I think just given just the relative risk that's out there and limited visibility, we'll be a little conservative to start.

[Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Okay. A bigger picture question from me, Jeff or Dennis, I'm not sure who wants to take this. I look at the lodging industry. I look at RevPAR performance really over the last decade or so. There have been periods of time where the business looks like it's really trending in the right direction, it turns out to be a head fake, certainly, nobody has a crystal ball. Jeff, in the prepared remarks, you did talk about a protracted upcycle for lodging. If you could talk a little bit more about that comment. What gives you that confidence when you look at the strength so far this year? What's, from your view, you think really going to contribute to that continuing over the next couple of years?

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

This is Jeff. I think it really revolves around simple supply-demand economics. In all the years I've been in this business, and I would have to pull up some charts to validate this, we are in or are starting to approach the longest period of time where construction starts have really been as low as they have been since the pandemic, really, or shortly thereafter. I think that fundamentally has always meant, as we've seen RevPAR increases in the upper single-digit, as you can remember probably or double-digit range, very little supply generally yields to pricing power. You could see our portfolio occupancy is around 81. I think that in our peak, guys, wasn't it around 83, maybe?

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

We're getting to a level here where the ability to charge more, I think, and get the kind of ADR increases that will really push the RevPAR is coming or already partially in some markets already there. Fundamental GDP and manufacturing growth, highlighted by our Midwest stuff and the performance there being double-digit gainers obviously feels good. I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. Whether you think AI is a bubble or a non-bubble, guess what? It certainly seems that our Silicon Valley presence is paying off, and I don't really think that that's going to pull back anytime soon, nor do I think a 40% RevPAR gain is sustainable either. It's really lack of construction. Prices are high. Other developer friends that I've known for 20, 30, and some 40 years used to build 10, 12, 15 hotels a year as franchisees.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Most are building one or two, if that, in the select service arena. I think that fundamentally really paints a pretty positive picture for us.

[Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Tyler, just to add to Jeff's comment about occupancy, if you look over the last 16 years as a public company, our annual occupancy kind of peaked at 81.5% back in 2014. If you look at the busiest months of the year, which are generally the summer months and October, portfolio occupancy was in the upper 80s and occasionally might have hit like 90%, but generally speaking, upper 80s. As Jeff talked about with occupancies now getting into the low to mid-80s, that should continue to gain with that lack of new supply.

[Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Okay. Appreciate that. Last one from me. Just on the transaction market, just given that positive fundamental outlook, what's the opportunity set look like for acquisitions? What are you seeing in terms of valuations? What are you seeing in terms of the volume or the number of assets that are out there and just overall activity?

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Yeah. This is Jeff again. I think that as Jeremy indicated, the balance sheet here is pretty strong. We have been very careful and always will be, as we said in our prepared remarks, to measure what kind of yield in the longer term we'll get from making an acquisition versus buying our own stock. Those economics have certainly shifted a bit here, as the stock price for us and some others has come up. I think in my short 40-year history doing this, I think that generally means that the pipeline ought to increase.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

I think that RevPAR trends, if they should continue to be in a positive manner, overall, across the country, will sort of encourage owners that were on the fence about perhaps recycling their capital or selling or getting out from under debt maturities that are still out there or generating money to still do renovations that may be behind as a result still of sort of the post-COVID hangover, end up putting their hotels on the market, and people get, as buyers, a little more bullish. I'm more or less looking in in the future as opposed to saying that all of a sudden people have put hundreds of hotels on the market, and that's all happening now. It's likely to have certainly positive effects. Transaction market for the balance of this year, second half ought to be certainly better than the first six months of this year.

[Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Okay. That's all for me. Appreciate that detail. Very helpful. Thank you.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Sorry for the long answer.

[Operator]

Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touchtone phone. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to the speakers for closing comments.

[Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President at Chatham Lodging Trust]

Well, again, thank you all for being with us today. We certainly look forward to continuing to put the kind of results on. Frankly, I'd like to, for those that are listening anyway, complement our team and the Island Hospitality team insofar as, forget these Chatham guys, insofar as the results that have been posted. I think everyone honestly has worked real hard. The expense management, as was asked on the first question, I think has been excellent, and we expect to continue to maintain our focus on all fronts, driving RevPAR, driving market share, and driving that incremental revenue to the bottom line. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your line.

Participants

Executives

• Chris Daly, External Media and Public Relations Contact
• Jeff H. Fisher, Co-founder, Chairman, CEO, and President
• Dennis M. Craven, EVP and COO
• Jeremy Wegner, SVP and CFO

Analysts

• Gaurav Mehta, Analyst at Alliance Global Partners
• Tyler Batory, Analyst at Oppenheimer