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Operator
good morning and welcome to the service properties trust third quarter 2023 earnings call all participants will be in listen only mode should you need assistance please signal a comfort specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad 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 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 Stephen Colbert, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Stephen Colbert
Good morning. Joining me on today's call are Todd Hargraves, President and Chief Investment Officer, and Brian Donnelly, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call includes a presentation by management, followed by a question and answer session with analysts. Please note that the recording, retransmission, and transcription of today's conference call is prohibited without written consent of SCC. I would like to point out that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other securities laws. These forward-looking statements are based on SVC's present beliefs and expectations as of today, November 7th, 2023. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause those differences is contained in our filings with the SEC, which can be accessed from our website at svcreep.com or the SEC's website. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to the forward-looking statements made in today's conference call. In addition, this call may contain non-GAAP financial measures, including normalized funds from operations, or normalized FFO, and adjusted EBITDA RE. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to net income, as well as components to calculate AFFO, are available in our supplemental operating and financial data package which can be found on our website. And with that, I will turn the call over to Todd.
Todd Hargraves
Thank you, Steven, and good morning. SVC's solid third quarter results reflect moderate top line improvement in our hotel portfolio. As year over year, comparable rev far increased 0.8% and comparable hotel EBITDA was generally flat despite displacement from 12 active renovations during the quarter impacting performance. Top line performance was led by Sonesta with an 11.9% gain in group revenue and a 17.6% gain in contract revenue, mitigating some of the softening demand we are experiencing at our leisure-oriented hotels. Our full-service portfolio continues to outperform our other service levels, driven by improvement at our urban hotels as full-service RevPar increased 2.5% year-over-year and EBITDA increased by $2.4 million. REF Pard our select service portfolio declined 0.2% year-over-year with occupancy gains of 0.8 percentage points, while REF Pard our portfolio of extended stay hotels decreased 1.3%. Removing the hotels into renovation, REF Pard our select service hotels increased 2.7%, and REF Pard our extended stay portfolio increased 0.7% as 53 of our extended stay hotels reported a positive index to 2022. There's been a notable shift in segmentation as Q3 transient revenues as a percentage of total hotel revenues declined from 78.1% to 75.4% from the previous year quarter, while group increased from 15.5% to 17.2%, and contract revenues increased from 5.4% to 5.9%. The largest decrease in transient occurred in the full-service portfolio due to market-driven declines in San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans. Group revenues were led by our full-service segment with gains at our Royal Sonesta Cambridge, Royal Sonesta Minneapolis, Sonesta Denver, and Crowne Plaza Atlanta as a result of strong corporate group as well as increased citywide events. Our Sonesta full-service portfolio led the increase in contract-related business with new airline crew activity and increased rates for existing accounts at our properties in Redondo Beach, San Jose, and Nashville. All of our hotel operators remain focused on steering bookings to their respective websites and direct sales channels to lower commissions, and OTA revenues as a percentage of total revenues decreased from 30.8% to 29.4% year-over-year. Business travel continues to trend positively as corporate negotiated revenue increased by 1.3% year-over-year, and SVC's portfolio is now at 76.1% of 2019 levels, up from last quarter's index of 70.8%. The recovery has been led by small and mid-market accounts, while the larger national accounts have been slower to return. The gap between weekend and weekday occupancy is narrowing, and Senesta's weekend occupancy has outpaced weekday by 4.9 percentage points in September, down from a 5.8 percentage point gap in September 2022. Our largest operator, Senesta, remains focused on increasing its brand awareness through its advertising and media campaigns and build out of its loyalty program. Revenue from Senesta's travel pass program as a percentage of total revenue increased from 22.5% in Q3 2022 to 25.9% in Q3 2023 led by room nights, which increased by 15.1% with ADR increasing 1.4%. Group pace improved across all our operators led by Senesta, which is 32.5% ahead of last year. Gains are widespread with 85% of our full service hotels reporting positive group pace led by the Royal Sinestas in San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Washington, D.C., and the Sinestas in Nashville. Hotel operating expenses across our portfolio remain elevated and continue to pressure margins. Insurance premiums increased by $1.6 million, or 15% year over year, an increase we expect will continue into Q4. On the labor front, our hotels are relying less on contract labor, shifting more labor in-house, which has resulted in contract labor per occupied room decreasing in each of the last four quarters. However, wages for in-house employees are increasing and the portfolio experienced a 4% increase in total wages plus benefits on a cost per occupied room basis over the previous year's quarter. Turning to our net lease portfolio, which represents 45% of SBC's portfolio by investment. As of September 30th, 2023, our 761 service-oriented retail net lease properties We're 95.8% leased with a weighted average lease term of 9.1 years. Our lease maturities are well laddered and only 8% of our net lease minimum rents expire prior to the end of 2026. The aggregate coverage of our net lease portfolios minimum rents was 2.72 times on a trailing 12-month basis as of September 30th, 2023. The decline sequentially from 2.94 times is largely driven by increased rents in our TA leases as a result of our amendments in May and softer EBITDA reported by TA for Q3 2023. Importantly, TA is our largest tenant in the portfolio, and the rent payments are guaranteed by an investment-grade rated subsidiary of BP. Rent coverage for our other retail net lease tenants improved 3.68 times in Q3, up from 3.58 times in Q2 2023. Transaction activity during the quarter was relatively muted with no acquisitions and limited net lease dispositions. We continue to evaluate select acquisition opportunities, specifically full-service hotels and target markets, but remain disciplined in these volatile capital markets as we carefully consider how we allocate capital. While Brian will provide more detail on the balance sheet, I'd like to emphasize the strong position SVC is in to refinance our upcoming debt maturities due in 2024 and 2025. Our hotel portfolio continues to demonstrate improved financial and operational performance And our net lease portfolio provides dependable cash flows with 68% of annual minimum rents coming from an investment grade rated tenant BP. With over a billion dollars of total liquidity and a large pool of highly valuable unencumbered assets, including all of our travel centers leased to TA, we plan to be proactive in determining the most efficient and cost effective solutions to address these maturities in the near future. I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss our financial results in more detail.
Steven
Thank you, Todd, and good morning. Starting with our consolidated financial results for the third quarter of 2023, normalized FFO was $92.1 million or $0.56 per share versus $0.54 per share in the prior year quarter. Adjusted EBIT to RE increased 1% year-over-year to $175.3 million. Earnings this quarter as compared to the prior year quarter benefited from $0.03 per share of additional interest income earned on our cash balances and $0.02 per share related to an income tax benefit recorded. partially offset by a $0.03 per share decline in hotel results. Rental income increased by $3.5 million this quarter compared to the prior year, largely as a result of the full quarter impact of our amended TA leases that were effective in May 2023. Turning to the performance of our hotel portfolio, for our 219 comparable hotels this quarter, rent power increased by 80 basis points, Gross operating profit margin percentage declined by 160 basis points to 31.3%, and gross operating profit decreased by $2.2 million from the prior year period. Below the GOP line costs at our comparable hotels decreased $1.4 million from the prior year, driven by a reduction in real estate taxes offset by increased property insurance expense. Our 221 hotels generated hotel EBITDA of $75.5 million, a 1.6% decline from the prior year. By service level, Hotel Ibiza year over year declined $2.3 million for our 111 extended stay hotels and declined $900,000 for our 61 select service hotels, partially offset by a $2 million increase from our 48 full service hotels. Turning to our expectations for Q4, Preliminary October 2023 rep bar was $96.62, and we're currently projecting full quarter Q4 rep bar of $76 to $79 in Hotel Ibiza in the $45 to $49 million range. Please note the expected decline in Hotel Ibiza sequentially is largely due to the seasonal patterns our hotel portfolio has historically seen as demand softens typically beginning mid-November and continues to the early winter months. Regarding our income tax provision, we recorded a tax benefit of $2.2 million in the third quarter of 2023. We expect this benefit to reverse in the fourth quarter and reaffirm our projection of full-year tax expense of $1.5 million. Turning to the balance sheet, we currently have $5.8 billion of fixed-rate debt outstanding with a weighted average interest rate of 5.2%. Our next debt maturity is $350 million of senior notes maturing in March 2024, followed by $825 million of senior notes maturing in October 2024. We're currently evaluating various options to address these maturities in the coming months, and we'll look to mitigate the impact of higher interest rates. Our real estate portfolio includes over $8.5 billion of unencumbered assets based on gross book value, including all of our travel centers leased to TA, as well as a large diverse hotel portfolio we could look to for possible strategies to manage our debt maturities and the current rate environment. We currently have $432 million of cash and $650 million of undrawn credit facility capacity for total liquidity of over $1 billion. Turning to investing activity. During the third quarter, we had no acquisitions and sold two net lease properties for a total price of $3.7 million. We made $65 million of total capital improvements at our properties during the third quarter, and we expect to make capital expenditures of $65 to $75 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. We'll provide guidance on our plan in 2024 spend on our fourth quarter earnings call. In October, we announced our regular quarterly common dividend of 20 cents per share, which we believe is well covered, representing a 44% normalized FFO annualized payout ratio on the trailing 12 months ended September 30th, 2023. That concludes our prepared remarks. We're ready to open the line for questions.
Operator
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. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Brian Maher with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.
Brian Maher
Great. Thank you. Good morning. Maybe sticking with CapEx for a minute since You just touched upon that, Brian. Can you give us a little color as to why it was slow getting off the ground in the first half of 2023 and the number you just threw out for the fourth quarter, I think 65 to 75 million. Do you suspect that that's kind of a peak type of number? I mean, I know you said you'll give us color on 2024 in a couple of months, but, you know, certainly I wouldn't expect the run rate to stay at that level.
Steven
Brian, thank you for the question. Yeah, I mean, some of the delays in getting started in some of these projects has been, you know, whether it be scoping, planning, trying to avoid disruption. We've talked for the last couple of quarters about our Hyatt portfolio. That's been slow out of the gate, but that's now fully underway. I do expect Q1, given how many Hyatts are currently under renovation, to be elevated from a CapEx standpoint. We're also kicking off a bunch of renovations at various Sonesta hotels across multiple segments. Yeah, so originally in 2023, we had guided $200, $250 million of CapEx, you know, as sort of a preview. I think it's going to be in that range for 2024, as we do have a multi-year renovation plan going on. It'll be a little choppy quarter to quarter, because again, we like to obviously plan things to avoid as much disruption as we can, especially during the peak summer months. So, you know, there could be some bookend effect, you know, Q1 versus Q4.
Brian Maher
Okay. Thanks for that. And suffice it to say, I would suspect that your acquisition appetite will be somewhat muted until you address the 2024s unless it's, you know, something that's just too good to turn down. Would that be a correct thought process?
Todd Hargraves
Good morning, Brian. That's an accurate statement. Our priority remains addressing our upcoming debt maturities. That being said, we continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities similar to what we bought in June with the Nautilus. But at the current time, we have nothing under purchase and sale agreement. We're underwriting a couple of transactions, but that said, it's unlikely we buy anything the rest of this calendar year. And as you know, we've bought one asset in the past three years. We've sold over 100 hotels for a billion dollars of proceeds. So we have been net sellers, but we'll continue to.
Brian Maher
um opportunistically evaluate transactions but again priority is the upcoming maturities okay just another couple of quick ones and i'll turn it over to somebody else um brian when you look at the ta portfolio as a potential you know security for a fairly meaningful you know debt refinance can you give us any broad stroke thoughts on what the interest rate might be on something like that, given its high security with the BP leases?
Steven
It's a great question. It's something we're studying very closely. You know, there's a couple of different ways you could do it, whether it be property level, debt, some sort of secured bond or some other, you know, bank debt that uses the portfolio as collateral. And, you know, some of our potential paths, you know, we have to look at where our bonds are trading and look at relative spreads. And there's all sorts of different permutations we could look at. You know, I would just say that the far end of the goalpost is where our unsecured debt bonds are trading, which is, you know, in the 10% range. Yeah, we've done security financing this year as low as 7%. Obviously, rates have moved since the first quarter of 2023. So we're somewhere in that ballpark in between those goalposts is my best guess today.
Brian Maher
Okay, just lastly, if insurance rates continue to get ridiculously higher, given that you have so many unencumbered assets, do you ever get to the point where you just think about self-insuring?
Todd Hargraves
No, I don't think that's really an option for us at this point.
Brian Maher
Okay, thanks. That's all for me.
Operator
The next question comes from Tyler Vittori with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Tyler Vittori
Good morning. This is Jonathan. I'm for Tyler. Thanks for taking my question. First one from me, can you provide some additional color on October red par and the Q4 guidance and understanding seasonality is a factor, but You know, are you expecting more of the same demand trends in the fourth quarter with strong groups and kind of a slowing leisure environment?
Steven
Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. And, yeah, October is one of the stronger months in our hotel portfolio and continues sort of the summer trend before things start tapering off. you know, couple the seasonal patterns with, you know, demand changes and sort of tempering of activity that we saw in the second half of Q3. I think that's a reasonable explanation of why, you know, our projection might be a little lower than what we achieved last year. So those same trends are continuing with leisure and different segmentations of group versus transient and that sort of thing.
Tyler Vittori
Okay, great. Appreciate the color there. And then on the group business, helpful commentary and the prepared remarks on where group is now, but can you remind us what percent of your historical total mix is typically grouped? And then looking ahead, any thoughts on the booking pace into 2024 and kind of that near-term sustainability of group strength that we've seen?
Todd Hargraves
Sure. So group is, you know, probably where it is today is, probably a little lower than it has been historically, but certainly a sizable shift in segmentation from where we saw in last year's quarter, which isn't surprising just given what we're seeing overall in the industry with just overall leisure transient decreasing. But yeah, group pace going forward to 2024, we're seeing strong pace there as well. We're well ahead of 2022. We're not back. Most of our operators, specifically Senesta, is not back to 2019 levels, but you're seeing a lot more booking happening in the quarter, for the quarter. So, you know, those booking windows are changing a little bit.
Tyler Vittori
Okay. And then last one for me, if I could, in terms of the Senesta brand, can you talk a little bit about how it's resonating with consumers, how it's competing in the marketplace, what you're seeing in terms of RevCore and VIX? and any uptick in the loyalty program usage there?
Todd Hargraves
Sure, Jonathan. That's a good question, something we monitor very closely. SNES has been very focused on their advertising campaigns and their media campaigns to really get the brand name out there. We're seeing the metrics we track on the loyalty program in terms of number of actual members in the loyalty program, but also percentage revenues that are booked through the loyalty program continue to increase year over year. They're not at the levels of some of the competing brands that, you know, some are sometimes closer to 50% of total revenues booked through the loyalty program. So there's still a lot of room to grow there, but we are seeing, we are to answer your question. We are seeing it resonate more with more with consumers, the semester brand in terms of, Indexing, you know, you need to look at it by service level. There's certain service levels and brands that Senesta competes very effectively in. For example, our Royal Senesta branded hotels are at 93% of 2019. Our Senesta hotels and resorts, which are other full-service hotels, are 92%. Our Senesta Simply Suites are 89% of 2019. The area we've touched on this, as you know, Jonathan, on prior calls too, is the Senesta Select portfolio, which is very reliant on business travel. So it's a little bit of a market issue, but also just with business travel overall in this industry not having to return to 2019 levels. But we acknowledge that it's also a shift in the brand to Senesta Select. Select, which has caused some of the lag in the recovery there. It's a small percentage of the portfolio. Sure, and just, yeah, it is a small percentage of the portfolio. I mean, the Senesa Select was $8 million out of the total $75 million of EBITDA for the quarter, but again, something we're very focused on. We've sold some of the lower-performing Senesa Select hotels in the past, but again, something we're very focused on improving that.
Tyler Vittori
Excellent. Thank you very much. That's all for me. Thanks, John.
Operator
The next question comes from Chris Cushboo with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Sinesta Extended Stay
So I see there's a lot of information in the presentation regarding the hotel portfolio, including geography-wise, market, and so on. Wondering if you could share the breakup, like, business versus leisure, both in terms of hotel portfolio and revenue, that would be great.
Todd Hargraves
Sure. So to clarify, you're looking for the mixed business versus leisure?
Sinesta Extended Stay
Yes.
Todd Hargraves
Sure. So historically, our portfolio has been very concentrated in more business relative to leisure. We've been anywhere from 75% to 80% of our demand has been from business. And obviously, that's lagged the recovery relative to leisure. Leisure was the area that really recovered and saw the double-digit rev par growth in 2021, 20, and 22. You're starting to see that shift now. You're starting to see some declines in leisure-related rev par and travel overall. There's been more outbound international travel than there has been inbound. So you are seeing the business travel in our portfolio pick up year over year, still not back to 2019 levels. Through what we've sold and acquired over the past few years, you're seeing the shift more towards leisure, but we're still well above 50% in terms of business relative to leisure. But I think over the next few years, you may see a shift in our portfolio more towards leisure relative to business.
Sinesta Extended Stay
My next question is, it would be great if you could share some color on the Sonista franchising strategy and also the format which is having the most success or is the biggest focus for franchise efforts. Additionally, it would be great if you could share an update on the Sonista direct booking, that is, which is not through an OTA platform. Because in 2022, it has increased to 24%, which is like up from 18% in 2021. So any thoughts there, any recent color would be great.
Todd Hargraves
Great. I think I got that all. So starting with the franchising effort, that's something the Synesta franchising team is very focused on and where we expect the majority of the growth to occur at Synesta. There is a lot of momentum in franchising hotels for Senesta across all the different Senesta brands as well as the legacy Red Lion brands. It's a very competitive industry right now. There's not a lot of new construction happening, so a lot of it is conversions. from other brands, but there's a lot of momentum there. Sonesta will typically put out a press release when they open a new franchise hotel as well. So that's something that is out there for the public. The brands, you know, one of the benefits of Sonesta is they have They have a large family of brands all the way from the Red Lion Economy hotels all the way to upper upscale Royal Sinesta hotels. So they really have the ability to offer every brand out there. The brands that we own in our portfolio, they're very focused on, including the Sinesta Selects, Sinesta Extended Stay, ES Suites, as well as the Simply Suites. They also recently launched a new brand called Senesta Essential, which is a select service hotel with a lighter F&B component that they've had a lot of success with. And that was one of the reasons they launched that brand is because they were getting feedback from a lot of their franchisees that that's what they wanted to see. So there's been a lot of momentum there. Again, we're, you know, SVC owns 34% of the equity in Senesta. So we're very interested in seeing them grow that brand. grow the franchising business. It helps not only with the value of that 34% to us, but just overall helps the brand recognition and the brand awareness across the portfolio. And there is a lot of room to grow, not just in the U.S., but internationally as well. In terms of the direct bookings and OTA, I'm not sure I followed the statistics you were quoting, but SNESTA's percentage of revenues that were booked through OTAs declined from 30% to 29% year-over-year for the quarter. So it did decrease. Some of that, a lot of that was due to lower ADRs and rates charged at some of our leisure-oriented hotels. So actual room nights were constant or may have increased even a little bit and You know, OTAs, obviously there's the high commissions that you're paying anytime you use the OTAs. You'd always prefer the direct booking. You always prefer customers going to your website and booking there. But at the same time, OTAs can help backfill occupancy at our select service hotels, especially midweek occupancy. They're also helping. fill occupancy at some of our extended stay hotels. And you can sometimes get higher rates than you would at a longer-term extended stay when you're booking through OTAs on just transient night revenues. So they can help as well. But for the most part, again, revenues declined over years or percentage of OTA and direct bookings through the Synesta website have generally stayed flat to slightly increase.
Sinesta Extended Stay
Great. Thank you so much. Is it okay if I can squeeze in a couple of more questions or else I'll join the queue?
spk01
Of course.
Sinesta Extended Stay
Perfect, thank you so much. Go ahead. So this is again related to Sonesta, so is it possible for you to discuss the number of Sonesta Travel Pass members we have and any color you might provide regarding differences in terms of length of stay or other details? Additionally, when do you expect the Red Lion family of hotels Hello Reward loyalty programs? Do we expect it to be unified into one program or not?
Todd Hargraves
So, Senesta is a private company, so we can't share specific data on what you're asking, but in terms of the Red Lion brands, Senesta is, as you know, Senesta purchased Red Lion probably two years ago, so they are far along in the process of integrating those two companies. They have essentially been integrating, but you still have two different companies that have come together. So the idea long-term is to have one loyalty program, one app, one website. But right now, essentially, those teams are working together and the integration has occurred on both, specifically kind of merging the management franchise companies together.
Sinesta Extended Stay
Thank you so much. Thanks a lot.
Operator
You're welcome. At this time, as this concludes the question and answer session, I would like to turn the conference back over to Todd Hargraves, President and Chief Investment Officer, for any closing remarks.
Todd Hargraves
Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. We appreciate your continued interest in SVC and hope to see many of you next week in Los Angeles for the Navy Conference. Thank you.
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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