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The following are today's upgrades for Validea's Book/Market Investor model based on the published strategy of Joseph Piotroski. This value-quant strategy screens for high book-to-market stocks, and then separates out financially sound firms by looking at a host of improving financial criteria.

RLJ LODGING TRUST (RLJ) is a small-cap growth stock in the Real Estate Operations industry. The rating according to our strategy based on Joseph Piotroski changed from 0% to 80% based on the firm’s underlying fundamentals and the stock’s valuation. A score of 80% or above typically indicates that the strategy has some interest in the stock and a score above 90% typically indicates strong interest.

Company Description: RLJ Lodging Trust is a self-advised and self-administered real estate investment trust that owns primarily premium-branded, rooms-oriented, focused-service and compact full-service hotels. The Company's portfolio consists of 96 hotels with approximately 21,200 rooms, located in 23 states and the District of Columbia and an ownership interest in one unconsolidated hotel with 171 rooms. Its brand affiliations consist of Marriott, which includes Courtyard, Residence Inn, Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites, Renaissance, SpringHill Suites, AC Hotel, Moxy and Tribute Portfolio; Hilton, which includes Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, DoubleTree/DoubleTree Suites by Hilton, Hampton Inn/Hampton Inn & Suites, Curio Collection, Homewood Suites, Hilton and Tapestry Collection; Hyatt, which includes Hyatt House, Hyatt Place and Hyatt Centric, and Wyndham. The Company's hotel properties include Embassy Suites Milpitas Silicon Valley, Hyatt House San Ramon and Moxy Denver Cherry Creek.

The following table summarizes whether the stock meets each of this strategy's tests. Not all criteria in the below table receive equal weighting or are independent, but the table provides a brief overview of the strong and weak points of the security in the context of the strategy's criteria.

Detailed Analysis of RLJ LODGING TRUST

About Joseph Piotroski: Piotroski isn't your typical Wall Street big shot. In fact, he's not even a professional investor. He's a good old numbers-crunching accountant and college professor. But in 2000, shortly after he started teaching at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, Piotroski published a groundbreaking paper in the Journal of Accounting Research entitled "Value Investing: The Use of Historical Financial Statement Information to Separate Winners from Losers". In it, Piotroski laid out an accounting-based stock-selection/shorting method that produced a 23 percent average annual back-tested return from 1976 through 1996 -- more than double the S&P 500's gain during that time. Piotroski's findings were reported in major financial publiations like SmartMoney. Today, he teaches accounting at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

About Validea: Validea is aninvestment researchservice that follows the published strategies of investment legends. Validea offers both stock analysis and model portfolios based on gurus who have outperformed the market over the long-term, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Peter Lynch and Martin Zweig. For more information about Validea, click here

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.