3 Stocks Getting Clobbered Today For Very Different Reasons

La Quinta Holdings Inc (NYSE:LQ)

• Investors with Long Positions (as of June 30): 29
• Aggregate Value of Investors’ Holdings (as of June 30): $385 million
• Percentage of Shares Owned by Investors: 12.90%

La Quinta Holdings is the worst offender of the day among the stocks in this article, as its shares have declined by 14.87%. There was a bevy of news surrounding the company last night, beginning with the fact that CEO Wayne Goldberg stepped down, to be replaced on an interim basis by Chief Financial Officer Keith Cline. The departure is certainly unexpected, and was accompanied only by the former leader saying that he had achieved his goals at the company and that it was well positioned for future growth.

Not everyone would agree with that assessment however, which is highlighted by the fact that La Quinta Holdings Inc (NYSE:LQ) also announced lowering its guidance for 2015 yesterday in terms of RevPAR growth on a system-wide comparable hotel basis and Pro Forma Adjusted EBITDA. The former was lowered to 3.5%-to-4.5% from 4.5%-to-5.5%, while the latter was lowered to $393 million-to-$400 million from $398 million-to-$404 million. La Quinta seemingly tried to soften the news by announcing a $100 million share buyback program, but given the company’s debt load, this was also a questionable decision.

Similar to Parsley Energy, there were two more shareholders of La Quinta Holdings within our database by the end of the second quarter. However, the value of their collective holdings likewise slid, by nearly $169 million, while shares declined by just 3.5% during the quarter, so there was a large flight of capital from the stock. Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group cut its position in the stock by 64% during the second quarter to just over 2.00 million shares, while Tom Sandell cut his position by 57% to 586,450 shares, though it still ranked as one of his top small-cap picks.