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Travel + Leisure Co.
2/19/2024
Greetings and welcome to the TNL fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mike Hugg, the CFO. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, Shamali, and good morning to everyone. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that our discussion today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, and the forward-looking statements made today are effective only as of today. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise these statements. The factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our SEC filings and in our earnings press release accompanying this earnings call. And you can find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in today's call in the earnings press release available on our website at travelleisureco.com slash investors. This morning, Michael Brown, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide an overview of our fourth quarter and full year results and outlook. And I will then provide greater detail on the quarter, our balance sheet, and outlook for 2025. Thank you. Following our prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Michael Brown.
Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. As you saw in our press release this morning, we finished 2024 with strong momentum, which has continued thus far in 2025. For 2024, we delivered $929 million of adjusted EBITDA. Our vacation ownership business fueled our 2024 success, led by tour growth of 8%. We also saw growth return to travel and membership with adjusted EBITDA up 2%. Our integration of a core vacation club from a people, process, and performance standard all exceeded our year one expectations. For 2024, The foundation of our vacation ownership plan was to deliver tour growth to achieve top-line sales. Our vacation club sales for 2024 were within the expected range. Tours led the way with 8% growth, offsetting an expected mixed-driven VPG reduction of 1%. The overall result was 7% growth in enterprise-wide gross vacation ownership sales. The continued VPG performance drives strong adjusted EBITDA margins and reflects a product offering with a solid value proposition backed by a world-class sales and marketing organization. Aligned with our plans, new order transactions increased in 2024 to 35%, a 185 basis point increase from 2023. We expect our new owner transaction mix to be in the range of 35 to 37% in 2025. As we focus on VOI new owner sales growth, we're excited about our partnership pipeline. We signed several national and regional partnerships in 2024, which included Allegiant Airlines and Life Nation. We believe these partnerships will provide incremental cross-marketing and lead generation opportunities, which we expect to lead to a multi-year incremental tour opportunities. We will be focused on ensuring those partnerships come to life as we progress throughout the year. We will continue to push on our existing Blue Thread marketing channels as they begin to mature, while also looking to find incremental Blue Thread opportunities. We saw consistent demand at our resorts from owners, guests, and rentals. Overall occupancy remained strong, and owner satisfaction rates stayed consistent in 2024 from prior year. Late in 2024, we launched the new club window map, making it far easier for our owners to search and book their next vacation. Thus far in 2025, There have been approximately 40,000 downloads, and we are seeing more than 80% positive reviews, highlighting a strong user experience. Early indicators show increased user engagement with a 30% higher booking conversion rate than that of the owner website. This year, we will completely revamp the Worldmark by Wyndham website and launch a new Worldmark app. This is one of our greatest opportunities to further increase the satisfaction of our second largest club member base, which has consistently had the highest satisfaction rates in our system. All in all, our core Wyndham vacation ownership business remains strong, with a clear path for growth in 2025 and beyond. Turning to a core vacation club, ABC contributed $6 million adjusted EBITDA on an expectation of $3 to $5 million. This is a great start to the relationship with Accor Hotels and a reflection of the hard work by the team to integrate and strengthen the business post-closing. Both tours and VPG remain above our initial projections, while the integration of the two organizations and cultures has been virtually seamless. The success of 2024 allows us to be increasingly confident in our ability to capture the opportunities for continued financial growth, along with an increase in new sales locations. As an update on Sports Illustrated, we continue to make progress with the physical launching of this brand. There remains great interest for additional locations, and we anticipate several announcements this year and plan to begin sales for Sports Illustrated in 2025. Turning to travel and membership, I'm very proud of our travel and membership team and the progress they have made this past year. we achieved growth within our adjusted EBITDA range of flat to 2%. Specific to the exchange business, the structural headwinds did not abate. Further consolidation continued, and the migration from external to internal exchanges put continued pressure on the exchange business. Those headwinds were offset with the growth in our travel club business, and a very tight management of costs. Again, our team at Traveler Membership was very aligned and decisive in achieving this target. Capital allocation was once again a highlight in 2024. We paid a $2 per share dividend for the year and repurchased 7% of outstanding shares. As of December 31, 2024, we had repurchased 38% of our shares outstanding at the spins. We also remain disciplined in our allocation of free cash flow toward inventory spend and capital investments. Our inventory spend remained at less than half of annual pre-COVID levels, and our capital investments remained stable at approximately $100 million per year. Let me now share our strategic direction for the upcoming year. We will continue to execute against our core timeshare and travel and membership business plans. which we expect to deliver mid-single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and allow us to generate significant adjusted free cash flow. We will continue to execute against our disciplined capital allocation strategy and expect to return capital to shareholders through share repurchases and an increased dividend while continuing to evaluate potential strategic transactions. We will capitalize on our 2024 Accor Vacation Club successes and expect to continue to grow sales and adjusted EBITDA for that business. We also plan to launch Sports Illustrated sales this year. Given our current momentum and the strategic outlook I just laid out, we expect an adjusted EBITDA range of $955 to $985 million in 2025. I will hand it over to Mike to further elaborate on both 2024 results and 2025 outlook. Mike?
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