Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V.

Good day and welcome to the Playa Hotels and Resorts fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ryan Himmel. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Chuck. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Playa Hotels and Resorts' fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind participants that many of our comments today will be considered forward-looking statements and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause the company's actual results to differ materially from what has been communicated. Forward-looking statements made today are effective only as of today, and the company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. For discussion of some of the factors that could cause our actual results to differ, please review the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K, which we filed last night with the SEC. We've updated our investor relations website at investors.plyoresorts.com with the company's recent releases. In addition, reconciliations to GAF of the non-GAF financial measures we discussed on this call were included in yesterday's press release. On today's call, Bruce Wardinsky, Plius Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will provide comments on the fourth quarter and key operational highlights. I will then address our fourth quarter results and our outlook. Bruce will wrap up the call with some concluding remarks before we turn it over to Q&A. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bruce.

Great. Thanks, Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm sure most of you have had a chance to review our fourth quarter results reported last night, so let's get into the discussion. The fourth quarter fundamentals once again improved sequentially, with occupancies and flight capacity continuing to ramp up, particularly in the Dominican Republic. The strength in the business was consistent and broad-based, with occupancy improving sequentially each month and similar year-over-year ADR advances as well. That is to say, the ADR gains were not only driven by pricing during the peak demand holiday period. In fact, they have been remarkably steady on a percentage basis for the last six months. More importantly, our fourth quarter 2021 results represent the highest resort margin percentage and absolute EBITDA for any of our historical fourth quarters. While this may seem like an obvious mandate, I'm incredibly proud of how the entire organization is working together to execute our strategy. I truly believe that each functional area of playa is improving each day, and it couldn't be happening at a more critical time. On the booking front, following the slowdown in the summer, our sales picked up dramatically during the first two months of the fourth quarter, reaching new weekly sales peaks in October and November, before slowing down in December, likely due to the outbreak of the Omicron variant. Though Omicron had a modest impact on potential close-in bookings for December and January, Its impact was relatively short-lived as our weekly revenue booking surged in January, with several consecutive record-setting weeks. I believe we are still in the early innings of the resurgence in travel, and it will likely be a multi-year process to find the equilibrium, given that travel was a universal love for so many of us in the pre-pandemic era. With that in mind, I'm pleased to share with you that our pacing figures for 2022 remained elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels and are successfully lapping 2021. I believe we offer an incredible relative value even with the recent ADR gains, and that is being recognized by more travelers as our awareness grows. I think it is also becoming more likely that we are going to get a permanent repricing for off-peak periods. Suddenly, I don't think the idea of going to Mexico in August sounds all that bad. Ryan will share the details on our booking trends with you momentarily. Looking at our segments, Mexico continues to perform well for us, hosting another quarter of exceptional underlying top-line KPIs and margins. International passenger arrivals exceeded 2019 levels in September for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic and have not looked back. Moving on to the Dominican Republic, we experienced our biggest sequential occupancy improvement in the quarter. We were hopeful for this segment as we entered the quarter, given our forward bookings and the forecasted increase in flight capacity, but the performance in the quarter exceeded our expectations. As you may recall, the DR had the biggest mix of European guests in the pre-pandemic period, which was a drag on its performance, particularly in our mid-scale properties. Once again, our flagship Hyatt Stevens Alara Capcana, led the way as it has established itself as a rate leader in the market with the resort's EBITDA margins exceeding 40% during the fourth quarter with occupancy only in the low 60s. The resort's progress and ramp give us further confidence that we can achieve our goal of 12% to 15% stabilized cash-on-cash returns on our investment there. The segment's profit performance was weighed down by our two externally managed properties, which have lagged behind our globally branded resorts in the segment with respect to rate gains, and also yield a significantly lower absolute ADR compared to our globally branded implied managed resorts. Turning to Jamaica, the segment's recovery largely stalled out compared to our other geographic segments and its third quarter results, as the back-to-back variant waves had a disproportionate impact there, given the more stringent entry testing requirements. The impact has lingered into the first quarter of 2022, but bookings in Jamaica are picking up for the rest of the year, and the impact is diminishing as we look out to Q2 and beyond. Our focus on direct channels continues to pay off, and we are confident that Playa is well on target with our five-year plan to increase consumer direct business to at least 50% by 2023. In aggregate, during the fourth quarter of 2021, 41.6% of room nights booked were booked direct, down 10.6 percentage points year over year, reflecting the continued relative strength of our direct channels, including a significant acceleration in group and third party source business. During the fourth quarter of 2021, ApplyYourResource.com accounted for 17.4% of our total room night bookings, down 8.2 percentage point year over year. Looking at 2022, as of January 17th, ApplyYourResource.com generated approximately 70 million of bookings for 2022 compared to only $40 million for the 2021 comparable period. This is a critical aspect of our business that I believe many overlook. We at Playa drive a significant portion of our direct revenues in-house, which is now a major competitive advantage for our current portfolio and for potential third-party managed resorts in the future. Finally, as a reminder, we anticipated that as the world slowly returned to normal, Our mix of direct business would likely fall below 50%, but we still believe it will remain higher than levels seen immediately prior to the pandemic, and significantly higher on an absolute dollar basis. Taking a look at who is traveling, just over 40% of the Playa Manish room night stays in the corridor came from our direct channels, as our group mix improved sequentially and the OTA mix remained significantly depressed. Geographically, our U.S. sourcing increased approximately 13 percentage points compared to Q4 2019 to 64% of managed room nights, while our South American source business increased 400 basis points. But the biggest change in our business was the return of our European guests, which makes three percentage points higher in Q4 21 than Q4 19. Given the current state of travel restrictions, Our Canadian and Asian customer mix remained significantly depressed versus pre-pandemic levels. Our booking window improved versus Q3, but remained shorter than pre-pandemic levels. Our length of stay during the fourth quarter was in line with Q4 2019 and up nearly 10% versus Q4 2020. And this trend is expected to continue as we rely less on close-in bookings. Finally, we recently announced a strategic partnership with Wyndham Hotels. which we believe will accelerate growth in the mid-scale and upper mid-scale segment of our portfolio by leveraging Wyndham's sizable database of customer relationships to increase exposure and awareness of the value proposition of the all-inclusive model. We completed the conversion of two resorts during the fourth quarter and officially welcomed our first guest on December 1st to the new Wyndham Ultra concept in both Cancun and Playa del Carmen. The transition went smoothly from an operational perspective, but just as critical for us, Wyndham has been a superb partner to work with behind the scenes. I look forward to sharing more with you about this new relationship in the coming quarters. Once again, I would like to thank all of our associates that have continued to deliver world-class service in the face of myriad pandemic-related challenges. Their unwavering passion and dedication to service is what truly sets Playa apart. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Ryan to discuss the balance sheet and our outlook.

Thank you, Bruce. Good morning again. I will provide you first with an update on our liquidity and balance sheet, and then review the fundamentals of the fourth quarter, then finish with a discussion on forward bookings and market trends. We finished the quarter with a total unrestricted cash balance of approximately $270 million as of the end of the year. And as a reminder, we have $23.5 million of additional restricted cash on the balance sheet from our June 2020 financing. On the other side of the ledger, we currently have no outstanding borrowings on our revolving credit facility and total outstanding interest-bearing debt of just under $1.15 billion. We anticipate our cash CapEx spend for full year 2022 to be approximately $30 to $35 million for the year, with approximately $5 million of that being carried over from CapEx we did not spend in the fourth quarter as anticipated. The vast majority of our projected 2022 CapEx is maintenance-related. We have roughly $60 million of mandatory debt repayment obligations left over from our asset sales in 2020 and 2021. Turning now to our MICE Group business. While our business on the books in this segment was and remains strong to start the year, we've seen some movement in this segment as a result of the Omicron variant. Our 2022 net MICE Group business on the books is approximately $36 million, which hasn't changed much since the last time that we spoke. And it's well ahead of our final full year 2019 mice revenues of $32 million and ahead of the $33 million we had on the books in early 2020 for that year prior to the onset of the pandemic. Nearly 83% of this mice business is slated to stay in the first half of 2022, which is slightly more balanced than our mice pacing at the time of our last call, as many of our incremental bookings have come for the second half of the year, given limited space and some movement of existing reservations. Our pacing for 2023 has remained strong, with over 15 million already on the books. The return of this MICE business should provide a nice base to help manage yields and drive improved profitability year over year, particularly at our Hyatt resorts in Cabos, Rose Hall, and Cap Cana. Moving on to the fundamentals, as Bruce mentioned, The teams have done an excellent job navigating the current environment. We continue to expect a similar degree of inflation in the first half of 2022 that we experienced in the second half of 2021. Though it is still early, we currently do not anticipate expense inflation to be worse in the second half of 2022. With respect to top line, I believe 2022 can be a phenomenal year for Playa as I look at how our book of business has been building for future periods. We're particularly encouraged by year-over-year ADR gains and revenue pacing in the second half of 2022, as we lap the second half of 2021's record performance. Both the third and the fourth quarters are pacing significantly ahead of the comparable periods in 2019 and are up year-over-year versus 2021 in both revenues and ADR. Putting it all together based on what we know today and the fluidity of the virus, we feel it's best to think about 2022 in half, with a little more granular detail for the first half, given our visibility, and then some directional color for the second half that will firm up later. So for the first quarter of 2022, we expect the occupancy rate for the entire portfolio to improve versus the occupancy rate in the fourth quarter of 2021. At an average daily rate that is approximately low to mid double-digit percentage points higher than Q4's reported $325 average package rate. While this would easily represent the highest ADR playa has ever achieved in a quarter, the percentage increase versus Q1 2019 in ADR is not to the same magnitude that we experienced in the second half of 2021. This is owing, obviously, to higher absolute base in our historically highest seasons. Thus, you should expect a more tempered margin performance in the first quarter as compared to the second half of 2021. Said differently, to reach prior peak Q1 margin levels, we will need to be more reliant on occupancy to get us there because the ADR increase is not enough to offset the lower occupancies versus 2019. Also, stating the obvious, please keep in mind that Q1, particularly January, felt some lingering impact from the Omicron variant. As we mentioned, the segment hit hardest by the disruption in bookings was Jamaica, likely driven by the country's entry testing requirement. Now, looking at the second quarter, our pacing at the Playa Managed Resorts remained strong, with revenues up mid-40s percentage points versus the same time in 2019, and ADR driving a significant portion of the increase. On a percentage growth basis compared to 2019, we expect our ADR to accelerate substantially in Q2 versus what we expect to report in Q1. As we move into the back half of the year, we think the typical interplay between occupancy, ADR, and OPEX for modeling purposes should become easier for you. In order to maintain property margins we experienced in the second half of 2021, we would need to grow ADR slightly faster than inflation to account for additional headcount to help with higher occupancy levels until we reach a stabilized occupancy. And we expect our occupancy to be in the low to mid-70s in the second half, in line roughly with 2018 and 2019. I hope that framework helps you as you fine-tune your models. With that, I'll turn it back over to Bruce for some closing remarks.

Great.

Thanks, Ryan.

So, in summary, I am very optimistic for this new year and the growth ahead for Playa. Strategically, our new partnership with Wyndham in pursuit of third-party management contracts should help enhance our growth profile over the intermediate term. I also want to take this opportunity to share another endeavor that we will expect that we expect will augment our growth profile. The company has entered into a licensing agreement with a third party that will own and operate a membership program, the Playa Collection, which will provide members certain benefits and amenities at designated Playa-owned and or managed resorts. We do not expect the Playa Collection to be a material driver of profits in the near term, but it will hopefully grow into another sourcing channel with a favorable customer acquisition cost profile. Also, as this is being operated by a third party pursuant to a licensing agreement, we will simply be collecting licensing and other ancillary fees from this sourcing channel. We do not anticipate any material changes to how we present our financials. We will continue to look for ways to leverage our expertise, leadership, and experience in the all-inclusive segment to drive strong customer financial results and to create shareholder value for our investors. With that, I'll open up the line for any questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. And to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. And at this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. And the first question will come from Chris Warwonka with Dolce Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, good afternoon, guys. Bruce, really interesting comment on the potentially the structurally higher ADR in the off-peak periods. Does that kind of also directly relate to the direct bookings? I don't know if you can give us a little color on maybe whether a much lower percentage of your bookings during the off-peak periods have been through OTAs and other channels historically?

Sure. Sure, Chris. That's a great question. Actually, I'm really glad you asked that because I think what you see with the ADR increases, you know, through those shoulder periods, it's across all channels. So, you know, certainly, you know, we have benefited, but we've been benefiting, right, from our mixed change with more direct business. But literally, you know, all the channels are going up. We've been incredibly focused on, you know, rate integrity, across all third parties so that, you know, people, you know, couldn't do what they used to be able to do and discount, you know, not just like us, but every hotel company. So, you know, with technology, we've been able to be a little better focused there. And then, you know, our mix is increasing on the direct. And then, you know, I think you're starting to see, you know, some of the group segment pick up. And it's not just the really big groups. It's a lot of smaller groups, too. And those can be, you know, really attractive. And not only, you know, are they good for the ADRs, but a lot of the smaller groups are are really good for the non-packaged revenue. Believe it or not, kind of on a per-person basis, the smaller groups can spend a lot more on non-packaged revenue. I mean, I'll just give you an example. I was in Mexico last week, and I was in the Dominican Republic first four days of this week. And while I was in the DR, while we were there, we signed a very big group contract for September. Okay? That's the kind of thing that's happening now because people are realizing the demand. You know, they're having to figure out when they can get their groups in there. And, you know, and same with, you know, people booking, you know, their private vacations and other leisure trips. So I think you're just seeing it across all channels. And I think, you know, as we said, that this is not a short-term phenomenon. I really believe this is something here to stay.

Okay, great. And then you talked a little bit about the supply collection. That's a new platform for fee growth. You're also right in the process of kind of growing your, hopefully growing your management fee base. Is there a way to just think directionally about where, is there any kind of set goal on fees as a percentage of total, you know, longer term? I mean, can this become 10 or 15% of your EBITDA or something roundly like that?

Well, you know, we don't want to, you know, today it's way too early to try to come with a projection. We will, you know, have discussions, you know, and try to do that in the near future as we see, you know, kind of what the results are from the Playa collection. And it's a little different, as we said, it's a third party. So, you know, we're not running it ourselves. So, you know, we just have to see, you know, how things progress. But we're optimistic about it. And if you look at many of our competitors in the all-inclusive segment, they drive pretty significant, you know, business through that channel. You know, some of them, that's kind of their main focus. It will not be our main focus. As we've stated, you know, our main focus is direct sales. But this will give us a really good additional channel, you know, and people who are loyal to, you know, kind of apply resorts and to our brands and our resorts will you know, for them to, to book. So it's a, it's a really lower cost way for us to get the customers and it's, it's a good benefit for the customers as well. So I think, I think it's going to be successful. And the nice thing about people who are in that channel is they typically come, you know, one to two to three times per year. Okay. So, so that's, you know, that's a really good customer base for us.

Okay, great. Gotcha. And then the last one is, um, you know, if you guys are kind of right about the structural ADRs being higher and we can kind of hang on to some of this growth in REVPAR, you know, you're going to be at a much higher base. I know you have a pretty small CapEx plan this year. You have the required debt pay down, but you're still going to be generating a lot of free cash and leverages probably back down to lower than pre-COVID. So, I mean, where do you prioritize? Where do you possibly begin to be able to think about, you know, share repurchase or some kind of bigger renovation or ROI project?

Sure. So, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, you always look at all options, right? So, you mentioned share repurchase or, you know, ROI projects. You know, from my standpoint, you know, if you look at the success of Hyatt's even Zalara Copcana and, you know, where we can invest our money and drive, you know, superior returns, that would be our number one objective, right? Okay, and so as we've talked about in the past, kind of pre-pandemic, we had a lot of opportunities of, you know, kind of organic growth, you know, projects within our existing portfolio. So we're not talking about new build projects. We're just talking about, you know, ROI enhancements. We have a couple properties, you know, that could be rebranded. You know, we have others that we can invest money very strategically in order to drive, you know, higher businesses. And quite honestly, what you're seeing with the higher ADRs is you're seeing, you know, customers are going to have higher standards. You know, they're going to want things. And so I think that's the challenge, but that's really the opportunity. And we're excited about it. After kind of two years, Years, as I said, I was down with, you know, I told you in the Dominican with our team there, and I described it to a big group of our team there as, you know, we were using a hockey metaphor. We were in the penalty box. We all were, right, from COVID. It was kind of the COVID penalty box, and it is so exciting to be back out on the ice again. So that's how I look at it, Chris.

Okay. Very good. Thanks for all the color, Bruce. Great. Thank you.

The next question will come from Sean Kelly with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

I want to dig in a little bit, Ryan, into some of your booking and outlook comments. Thank you for all the clarity. So now I'm going to ask for more as we typically do on the sell side. But can you just – I just want to start with the second half because I think that's really when the business is going to be, I think, operating the way it should. And it's obviously – Super encouraging that you might be able to lap the rate environment that we had in the second half of last year. I just want to be clear on that, though. Do you think in dollar terms rates could be, or is what you're seeing consistent with rates being up in the second half, and I'm talking about ADRs being up in the second half relative to second half of 21? Is that an okay starting point?

Yes, that is correct, Sean.

Okay. Okay. And then the second question would be sort of following up on QQ, because I think that's a pretty critical inflection. Can you help me just unpack again how the rate side of the equation, I think you said up, if I call it right, maybe lower mid-40s in revenue dollars, but can you help me think about how the rate side of that is pacing at least? I think Q1 is your highest point, so that's going to be down a bit from Q1, but is it, you know, are we still up year on year from 2Q21, or what are the puts and takes there?

Yeah, so I think what the message we're trying to get is that, yes, Q1 would be our highest absolute ADR, right, but on a relative basis versus 2019 would not be as good as what we just saw in Q4, because it's a higher base. And so what I was trying to convey was that while Q2's ADR would be slightly lower than Q1's its percentage gain over 19 would be back into the kind of closer to record-breaking levels that we've come to expect in the second half of 2021, if that makes sense. So the absolute ADR would go up in Q1, down in Q2, but its relative position over previous years would be higher.

Great. Two last components then would be for the second half, what percentage of those room nights we typically have on the books now? You obviously have a longer booking curve than – you know, corporate transient style hotels, but obviously, you know, we want to get a sense of, like, how much visibility you'd have as the sort of booking environment is, I think, increasingly normalizing. So just how would that book of business be trending and how much do we need to fill between here and day of arrival?

Yeah, so said differently, so let's just run through the quarters. Q1 is typically 80% booked as of right now. Makes sense. We're two-thirds of the way through. Q2, we're about 60-ish percent booked typically for now. And then just kind of, you know, for the third quarter, think about it this way, like our current revenue on the books for Q3 is a little under 40% of what we were actually reported in Q3 of 2021.

Great. Understood. That's helpful. And then the very last thing for me would just be, you know, you mentioned sort of the leverage points around inflation. And obviously, you know, you're environment is going to be slightly different than maybe what we're seeing in, let's call it U.S. hotels, and obviously there's a lot of micro nuances in just U.S. hotel markets. Can you help us unpack the labor inflation environment based on either market, or I'm actually more intrigued on what are you seeing on the labor side versus how much of this is product cost, kind of trying to think about where you might be seeing some of those pinch points, and especially what you're seeing on the labor side, how much of a bottleneck that is for Playa.

As far as staffing availability, labor has not been an issue for us, with the exception of a little bit in Q4. There was a little bit of over-earnings early just because of the Omicron transmissibility, and we had to have people out in quarantine for extra periods of time, much like what the airlines had to deal with. The Mexican government, as an example, lowered those quarantine periods down to five days from 10, and so there were some days that we were shorter staffed. But as far as increases on the pricing and the unit costs, Mexico and the DR both increased minimum wage for 2022 in the teens. DR does it every couple years. Mexico has done it, I think this is the third time since AMLO took office. On a dollar basis, it doesn't make a huge, huge dent in our overall cost purely because, you know, it's only a portion of our line staff salary and wages. And other than that, the biggest component for us kind of on like unit growth, it's been F&B. And so those are kind of the two pinch points for us, F&B and then the cost of labor. But like I said, we are fully expecting that what we saw in the second half of the year to continue the first half of this year. But where we sit today, we don't see it increasing any more than normal in the back half of the year. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Sean.

The next question will come from Chad Baynon with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Nice results. For the first quarter, Ryan, just with your guidance, I think you noted occupancies would be slightly up sequentially. And it looks like the big driver of that increasing would be Jamaica. I think normally seasonality calls for Q1 over Q4 occupancy increases. Jamaica is currently still slightly below 60%. When can we start to move up closer to where the rest of the portfolio is? Thanks.

Yeah, you know, your guess is still as good as mine. I mean, I love seeing that so many other places in the world, like UK and Israel and other places, are removing restrictions. You know, Bahamas removed their entry requirements, what, last quarter. And so what we've seen is that, like, Jamaica, just as you said, was the only period that, if you look at Q1 pacing, was the only one that did not increase since our last call. But if you look at, like, the second half and the second quarter beyond that, Jamaica has our highest occupancy on the books against any other segment. So where you've really started to see an inflection point is in the second quarter. And we saw signs of that last year, right, when kind of as you moved into the fall, kind of post-Delta, when Jamaica just kind of on a relative pricing perspective looked pretty good, right? And so people said, okay, look, I'm willing to take the chance that I'll test positive and I'll go there. Now when Omicron pops up, obviously – More people were worried about somebody in their family or their significant other testing positive and not being able to go. So as you can imagine, those bookings lagged and slowed down there. But our expectation is that hopefully that continues to recover. As far as when they pulled out that requirement, I have no idea. Great.

Thanks. And then just on the management contract side or the conversion side of things, like what you announced with Wyndham, are there still more opportunities in the market? And can you just kind of help us gauge expectations in terms of what we should generally expect for these types of things on an annual basis? Can we start to see a couple more each year, or has that kind of hit somewhat of a ceiling? Thanks.

Sure, sure. Great, Chad. I appreciate the question. So to answer the first part of your question, yes, there's more opportunities out there, okay? Part of the reason I've been traveling is, you know, because there's opportunities trying to get out in front of things, you know, meet with people, you know, things we weren't able to do during the pandemic. I mean, the two big restrictions during the pandemic were, number one, you know, everybody had to conserve cash and, you know, prepare for the unknown. You know, we're feeling pretty comfortable that we're kind of beyond that phase. But then the second one is, you know, really – you know, getting out meeting and trying to sell the playa story. And I think, you know, what's going on right now is the playa story is selling incredibly well. So we've always said that it's difficult in our segment, right, given the profile of the people who own the properties, you know, to do these kind of transactions and get people to change. Having said that, you know, I think our results are resonating incredibly well across the segment, the all-inclusive segment, particularly with the percentage of direct business that we're driving. And that's just so far superior to others. I think that's the competitive advantage that we have. So what we're trying to do is get out there and sell the story that, you know, hey, let Playa come in, you know, let us work with, you know, a global brand. Let us put in, you know, our management and very particularly our sales, you know, and we'll drive more direct business and, you know, we'll generate more, you know, profit to the bottom line. What are the numbers of properties, you know? we could do, that's very, very hard to say. But if you set a couple a year, I think that's a very conservative number that we could do at least a couple a year.

And Chad, the management contracts we have today You know, even in a COVID-impacted year, we did roughly $3 million of management fee revenue, or a little over $2 million. You know, we expect that, those existing contracts today, to stabilize, you know, anywhere kind of mid, you know, $5 million to $7 million of management fee revenue. And as you're well aware, the flow is around that's pretty high, particularly if you're taking on contracts in areas where you've already got existing infrastructure.

That's great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chad.

The next question will come from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi. I just wanted to ask you on the management contract side, and then I had another question, but have you seen any increase, I guess, in competition because with Hyatt being so heavily in that business now, or is there enough to go around for everybody, or is it just more one-off opportunities for you and if they're not such a big presence?

Sure. You know, you know, if you look at first of all, they've always been there, right? They've been there and they've been a very successful company. I'm speaking specifically about AM Resorts, you know, in the number of contracts that they've been able to do. So, you know, they're they're a quality company, you know, and a strong competitor. I will say, you know, their focus now is broader, right? So they're looking over in Europe, and a lot of their new contracts are over in Europe. So, you know, I think, you know, while we'll see them and we'll, you know, we'll compete with them, you know, where we're competing, and I think the flexibility we have with, you know, multiple brands gives, you know, gives us a very strong competitive position, right? I'm not saying we're better than them or they're better than us. I just think we have a strong competitive position. The bigger thing you should kind of focus on, well, we should focus on, is that there are just not as many management contract players in the all-inclusive space as there would be pretty much in any other segment of the global lodging industry, right, whether it's geographic or product line. And so I think that still bodes incredibly well for us. So the real challenge is, is convincing, you know, often family owner operators, you know, to kind of partner with Playa, you know, and let us kind of do our magic. That, I think, is the biggest challenge.

Okay. And then I just wanted to ask you, I guess, specifically for Cancun, but maybe any other markets as well. I mean, are your competitors, do you think also, are they also seeing like the the boost in rates versus 19, or is that more unique to you because it's a more branded product, or maybe just what you're seeing there? And do you see any new supply coming online that's significant over the next year or so?

So, you know, there's always the, you know, fact that, you know, the tide rises all boats, right? So, sure, there's going to be some impact of that. I think what you're seeing with us is that we're exceeding, you know, the market levels and we're exceeding the market levels due to two big, you know, kind of differentiating factors that we have. Number one, it's a percentage we sell direct, which is far superior than across, you know, the industry segment. Number two, it's, you know, our focus affiliation with global brands. which also affects the direct. But I think those two factors are really big factors in why we are going faster than the market, faster than our competitors when it comes to increasing ADRs. And so I think that, again, is somewhat of a permanent kind of feature. With regards to new projects, new development, First of all, during the pandemic, just like everywhere in the world, most lodging projects stopped. So any that were on the drawing board just didn't even occur. There were a couple that opened more recently, and they were people that said, hey, we're just going to plow through the pandemic. And obviously, they were financially very strong in order to do that. So they're open. They're there. As far as a lot of new stuff coming, no. And then when you look particularly at Cancun proper, virtually nothing, okay, because, you know, there's just no land available to do anything or conversion opportunities. So we feel very good about, you know, kind of our positioning within, you know, Cancun and within, you know, kind of the whole Riviera Maya market as well as in the Dominican and in Jamaica as well. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thanks, Mace. Thanks, Mace.

The next question will come from Tyler Battery with Jani. Please go ahead.

Hey, thank you. Good afternoon. A few follow-up questions here. In terms of the cost margin side of things, can you quantify or put some numbers around just how much costs were up on a percentage basis in Q4 versus pre-COVID? And what are you expecting in terms of cost increases this year compared with 2019 or 2018?

Yeah, so just kind of as a reminder, we, in a typical year, our costs inflate anywhere from 300 to 500 basis points. But if you think about kind of cumulative inflation since either 18 or 2019, depending on how you want to look at it, you know, cumulatively our costs have been up roughly 20% since 18 and roughly 17% since 19. And if you think about this as kind of a CAGR instead of a cumulative multi-year you know, comparison, the gains really aren't that out of line with what you saw in a typically early cycle recovery. So, you know, the hope is that that doesn't continue the rest of this year and where we expected that it shouldn't. But thus far, you know, we have not been immune to what the rest of the world is seeing.

Okay. And in terms of Capcana, you know, I think your 40% margin on 60% occupancy, which is obviously very strong there. You know, what sort of margin do Were you thinking originally in terms of stabilization at that property? And then, you know, how are you thinking about, you know, the potential timeline to reach stabilization and really achieve that 12% to 15% cash on cash return you had talked about?

Yeah, our underwriting was probably around where we are today on a margin perspective. And so I think we've only, you know, I think we've, you know, tried to communicate the last, you know, couple quarters that, You know, in a typical hotel, anywhere kind of two to three years, this hotel has been doing so well that we think that timeline to reaching those stabilized kind of returns is accelerated. So that could potentially apply, you know, imply by the end of this year.

Okay. I'll leave it there. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thanks, Tyler. The last question will come from Patrick Scholes with Truist. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. A couple questions. How should we think about if there's any deferred CapEx that you folks have coming up this year as far as a modeling question? And then if you could just give us your latest high-level thoughts on working with Wyndham and going forward on your growth story with them. Thank you.

Yeah, we expect about 30 to 35 million of mostly maintenance CapEx this year. The nice part, just give me to think about the immense amount we've spent, you know, starting back in 2013 and then heavily in kind of, you know, 17, 18, 19, kind of converting and introducing these Hyatt, Hilton, and Wyndham brands to the public. And then you think about what we sold in the last couple of years. We sold assets with lower growth trajectories or had, you know, more significant deferred CapEx Our portfolio, where it sits, we were very fortunate that during the time when we needed to save capital, we didn't have to kick a bunch of deferred CapEx down the road or anything like that. So, you know, if there was anything critical, certainly we didn't ignore it, you know, during pre-pandemic times. But we expect our maintenance CapEx to return kind of to the, you know, percentage of revenues that we've discussed in the past, so roughly 30, 35 million bucks. And I'll let Bruce talk about the Wyndham.

Yeah, sure. So thanks, Patrick. With regards to Wyndham, so like we said, we converted the properties on the 1st of December. So obviously you had kind of a little bit of Omicron impact in December and then into early January. So even with that, I think if you look at it, we're very, very pleased with what we're doing so far. So if you kind of look at You know, what we've done with our other brand conversions and how quickly they started generating business through, you know, the brand channels, you know, I think we're, you know, just as pleased, if not more pleased, with where we are with Wyndham. And, you know, it's very exciting for us because, you know, at this, you know, kind of the mid-scale, upper mid-scale price point, you know, there's a lot of all-inclusive inventory at that price point. And I think there's, you know... a great opportunity to really have the playa relationship with Wyndham Ultra to stand out, you know, from that crowd. And it's a big crowd. And so, you know, we're excited. And we also are excited about more management contract opportunities there too for the same reason. right? I mean, it's just harder, you know, the higher up you go in the price and quality, it's harder to have multiple properties in a single market, where at this price point, you know, there's just a lot more opportunity. But we're super excited to be working with Wyndham. We think they're great, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, kind of, you know, behind the scenes, they're just really, they've been great to work with. So, you know, we're excited to expanding the relationship.

Okay, very good to hear. Thank you.

Thank you, Beth.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Bruce Wardenski for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Great. Now, thanks, everybody. I think, you know, we got, you know, with the questions, with our prepared remarks and the questions, we were able to cover, you know, all the things that we wanted to cover. I think we're just, you know, excited to be kind of On the other side of the worst of the pandemic, we're really seeing the benefits of the pent-up demand, and we think it's just more likely to accelerate than not as we go forward. So we're excited about the prospects for Playa, and we appreciate all of the interest from everybody in our company. So thank you very much. Take care.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.