Is it Wise to Retain Host Hotels Stock in Your Portfolio Now?

Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. HST is poised to witness revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth from a solid portfolio of upscale hotels across lucrative markets. Also, a strategic capital-recycling program and a healthy balance sheet augur well.

However, macroeconomic uncertainty and the competitive landscape are likely to hurt demand for its properties in the near term. The elevated interest expenses add to its concerns.

What’s Supporting Host Hotels?

Host Hotels has a strong Sunbelt exposure and presence in the top 21 U.S. markets. Its properties are advantageously located in the central business districts of major cities, with proximity to airports and resort and conference destinations, thus driving demand. The improvement in group travel demand and business transient demand, led by healthy demand from small and medium-sized businesses, has aided occupancy and RevPAR growth over the past few quarters. In 2025, the company expects comparable hotel RevPAR growth between 0.5% and 2.5%.

The company follows an aggressive capital-recycling strategy that entails the non-strategic dispositions of assets that have lower growth potential or properties with significant capital expenditure requirements and redeploying the proceeds for investments in better-yielding assets. It has prioritized projects in assets and markets that are anticipated to recover faster.

Host Hotels has a healthy balance sheet and has been undertaking steps to strengthen its balance sheet. As of March 31, 2025, the company had $2.2 billion in total available liquidity. As of the same date, the weighted average maturity for its debt was five years, and the weighted average interest rate was 4.7%. Further, as of the end of the first quarter of 2025, the company enjoyed investment-grade ratings of Baa3/Positive from Moody’s, BBB-/Stable from S&P Global and BBB/Stable from Fitch, providing access to the debt market at favorable costs.

Solid dividend payouts are the biggest attraction for REIT investors, and Host Hotels remained committed to that. Encouragingly, the company has increased its dividend eight times in the last five years. Hence, with rebounding operating trends and a healthy financial position, we expect the latest dividend hike to be sustainable in the upcoming period.

Analysts seem bullish on this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for its 2025 funds from operations (FFO) per share has increased 3 cents over the past two months to $1.91.

Shares of this company have gained 21.9% over the past three months compared with the industry's upside of 10%.

What’s Hurting Host Hotels?

On the macroeconomic front, recent heightened uncertainty surrounding trade policy and government spending is expected to weigh on companies’ growth through the remainder of 2025.

Moreover, challenges in the supply chain have led to project delays across the United States, and a restrictive lending environment has made it difficult to obtain construction financing for future projects.

Host Hotels competes with other owners and investors in the upper upscale and luxury full-service hotels, including other lodging REITs. This might adversely impact the revenues and profitability of Host Hotels.

Despite the Federal Reserve announcing rate cuts in the second half of 2024, the interest rate is still high and is a concern for Host Hotels. Elevated rates imply high borrowing costs, affecting its ability to purchase or develop real estate. The company has a substantial debt burden, and its total consolidated debt as of March 31, 2025, was approximately $5.09 billion. For 2025, we project interest expenses to increase 10.2% year over year.

In conclusion, given the all above-mentioned factors, it seems wise to retain HST in your portfolio right now.

Stocks to Consider

Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector include SBA Communications SBAC and Omega Healthcare Investors OHI, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SBAC’s 2025 FFO per share has moved 3 cents northward to $12.74 over the past two months.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for OHI’s 2025 FFO per share has moved a cent northward to $3.03 over the past week.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

Zacks Investment Research