RLJ Lodging Trust (RLJ) — payout ratio, three ways
Fiscal year ending 2025-12-31 · sector Real estate · payout ratios computed from SEC filings, not taken from a data vendor.
| Basis | Payout | Why it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Operating cash flow | 37.5% | Before capital spending, so it understates the payout that free cash flow shows. |
| Free cash flow | 77.8% | Counts property acquisitions as though they were maintenance. |
| Funds from operations | 41.9% | The basis the real estate industry uses. Adds back depreciation on buildings that are not losing value. |
No GAAP earnings figure is shown. This company does not report the inputs for it in its XBRL filings — capital expenditure, in particular, is often folded into a single investing total rather than tagged on its own. The figure is absent from the filings, not zero, and inventing one from a balance-sheet movement would be a guess dressed as a measurement.
Spread between highest and lowest: 40 percentage points. Same filings, different denominators.
Coverage rating 51 / 100 — Tight. ? Peer standing 47/50Direction 4/30Stability 0/20
Funds from operations payout, last 6 years
| Fiscal year | Payout |
|---|---|
| 2025-12-31 | 41.9% |
| 2024-12-31 | 31.0% |
| 2023-12-31 | 22.1% |
| 2022-12-31 | 8.6% |
| 2019-12-31 | 66.7% |
| 2018-12-31 | 53.5% |
Coverage has deteriorated three years running, 8.6% to 41.9%. Still covered, but moving the wrong way.
Among the 47 real estate companies here, 94% pay out a larger share on this basis — this is comfortable for the sector.
The arithmetic
- Operating cash flow — dividends paid $91.4m ÷ operating cash flow $243.8m
- Free cash flow — dividends paid $91.4m ÷ (operating cash flow $243.8m − capex $126.4m)
- Funds from operations — dividends declared per share $0.60 ÷ derived FFO $1.43 per share
- FFO built NAREIT-style: net income, plus real-estate depreciation, less gains on sale, over weighted-average diluted shares
- This is an approximation. Every REIT defines its own adjusted variant in the filing text, so it will not match the earnings release exactly
Where the figures came from
- 10-K filed 2026-02-27 · accession
0001511337-26-000007
Every one is public at sec.gov and free to check. That is the point — you should not have to take my word for any of it.
Caveats on this company
- FFO derived (NAREIT approximation)
- basis discarded as outside the sane band (distribution far larger than the year's income — usually a special dividend or a return of capital, not a payout ratio): earnings
Computed by an open pipeline reading SEC XBRL directly. If any number here looks wrong to you, tell me — that is more useful to me than agreement.