Long-term trends favour these two

Article Excerpt

WYNDHAM WORLDWIDE $59.05 (New York symbol WYN; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk) (973- 753-6000; www.wyndhamworldwide.com; Shares outstanding: 140.3 million; Market cap: $8.3 billion; Dividend yield: 1.6%) is one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, with 7,340 franchised hotels worldwide. In addition to hotels, Wyndham manages vacation resorts, rental properties, luxury clubs and time-shares. The company now has 100,000 vacation rental properties worldwide. In the three months ended December 31, 2012, Wyndham’s revenue rose 9.4%, to $1.09 billion from $1.0 billion a year earlier. The company gets most of its revenue from vacation rather than business travel, and vacation bookings rose in the latest quarter. That helped push up Wyndham’s occupancy rate by 2.6%. Before one-time items, earnings rose 34.0%, to $0.63 a share from $0.47. The company continues to buy back its stock. In the latest quarter, it repurchased 2.9 million shares for $151 million. In all of 2012, it bought back 12.9 million shares for $623 million. The company has…