I believe the decline would have been even worse if Ascott had compared it on a same-store basis since there was the merger between Ascott and Ascendas Hospitality that would have boosted the distributable income. During 1H2020, 21 of Ascott's properties were temporarily closed due to the pandemic. Since then, 12 properties have reopened and 7 more are scheduled to reopen in 3Q20. 

Operationally, we also saw the benefit of having master leases or management contracts with minimum rents. From a gross profit standpoint, management contracts experienced the worst decline of -61% while master leases actually grew 51%, although partially contributed by the Ascendas merger. 

Ascott has further highlighted that it has a highly diversified set of revenue streams from a geographical perspective and this could help with the recovery. As mentioned in a previous article, exposure to non-Singapore countries allows Ascott to ride on the push for domestic tourism compared to its SG-focused peers. The higher APAC exposure also allows it to ride on the strong response to Covid that APAC countries have had relative to Europe and the US. 

I expect Ascott's hotel-focused peers to be even worse off as serviced residences tend to have a more stable occupancy due to longer stays. Additionally, in its largest country, Japan, Ascott actually has residential properties that it is renting out, which provides further stability to income. 

At its current price of 90cents, Ascott provides an annualized yield of 2.3% (taking 1.05Scts multiplied by 2). In reality, the yield could be around 2.5% assuming Ascott pays out the amounts retained. At such low yields, I do not believe that investing in Ascott shares provide good risk-return ratio. In fact, investing in their perpetuals might be a better choice since it has seniority over common shares and provides a higher yield at 3.07%.