Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc

Greetings and welcome to the Ashford Hospitality Trust second quarter 2021 results conference 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 during the conference, 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, Jordan Jennings, Investor Relations for Ashford Trust. Thank you. You may begin.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's conference call to review the results for Ashford Hospitality Trust for the second quarter of 2021 and to update you on recent developments. On the call today will be Rob Hayes, President and Chief Executive Officer, Derek Eubanks, Chief Finance Officer, and Jeremy Walter, Chief Operating Officer. The results as well as notice of the accessibility of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the Internet were distributed yesterday afternoon in a press release. At this time, let me remind you that certain statements and assumptions in this conference call contain or are based upon forward-looking information and are being made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Federal Securities Regulations. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, uncertainties, and known or unknown risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These factors are more fully discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them. In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations, of which are provided in the company's earnings release and in company tables or schedules. which have been filed on Form 8K with the SEC on July 28, 2021, and may also be accessed through the company's website at www.ahcreit.com. Each listener is encouraged to review those organizations provided in the earnings release together with all other information provided in the release. Also, unless otherwise stated, all reported results discussed in this call compare the second quarter of 2021 with the second quarter of 2020. I will now turn the call over to Rob Haight. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning. Welcome to our call. I'll start by providing an overview of the current environment and how Asher Trust has been navigating the recovery. After that, Derek will review our financial results, and Jeremy will provide an operational update on the portfolio. I'd first like to highlight some of our recent accomplishments and the main themes for the call. First, we had strong earnings in the second quarter that exceeded both street estimates and our internal forecasts. We reported positive hotel EBITDA for the second consecutive quarterly period and positive adjusted EBITDA RE. Second, our liquidity continues to improve. We ended the quarter with over $520 million of cash and cash equivalents. Third, we've continued to lower our leverage and improve our financial position. Since its peak in 2020, we have lowered our net debt plus preferred equity by over $800 million, equating to decreasing our leverage ratio defined as net debt plus preferred equity gross assets by over 10 percentage points. And finally, even with an already attractive loan maturity schedule, we successfully modified the loan extension test on another large loan for 2024 and 2025, improving our ability to qualify for those extension options. This loan modification initiative will continue to be a focus for us going forward. Additionally, we are making good progress on refinancing two of our upcoming debt maturities, the Marriott Gateway Crystal City and the Hilton Boston Back Bay. There have been numerous positive developments for both our company and the hospitality industry over the past several months. We highlighted many of them in an updated investor presentation that we put out in early April. We encourage you to review the presentation, which can be found on our website. We are optimistic about the long-term outlook for the company, and by taking decisive actions to strengthen our balance sheets, We now have multiple years of runway that will allow us to capitalize on the recovery we are seeing in the hospitality industry. So while our optimism remains, we must acknowledge some risks to the pace of the recovery due to the ongoing variants of COVID-19. In addition, we believe the majority of our loans could continue to be in cash traps over the next 12 to 24 months or longer. As a result, we will continue to focus on building our liquidity and improving our capital structure in the months to come. We have significantly reduced our planned spend for capital expenditures this year. However, given the sizeable strategic capital expenditures we made in our properties over the past several years, we believe our hotels are in fantastic condition and are well positioned for the industry rebound. Let me turn now to the operating performance at our hotels. The lodging industry is clearly showing signs of improvement. During the quarter, our hotels performed very well. RevPAR for all hotels in the portfolio increased approximately 372% for the second quarter, and we reported positive hotel EBITDA for the second consecutive quarter. The third quarter looks to be building upon our strong momentum, as July numbers look likely to outperform June numbers, so we are confident that the industry recovery is continuing to take hold. We believe our geographically diverse portfolio consists of high-quality, well-located assets across the U.S. that are approximately 80% reliant on transient demand. will be in a position to capitalize on the pent-up leisure and the acceleration of transient corporate demand. We continue to be focused on aggressive cost control initiatives, including working closely with our property managers to minimize cost structures and maximize liquidity at our hotels. This is where our relationship with our affiliated property manager, Remington, really sets us apart. Remington was able to quickly cut costs and rapidly adjust to the new operating environment. In the same way they were hyper-responsive on the way down, we expect them to be hyper-responsive on the way up, mitigating cost creep as much as possible throughout this recovery. We are proud of their efforts over the past year and believe this important relationship has enabled us to outperform the industry from an operations standpoint. Jeremy will discuss this in more detail. Turning to investor relations, our trading volume has hit new highs in 2021 with strong participation from both institutional and retail investors. We're pleased to report that in June we were added to the U.S. Small Cap Russell 2000 Index, the U.S. Broad Market Russell 3000 Index, and the Russell Micro Cap Index as part of the Russell Index's annual reconstitution. We believe our inclusion creates added exposure to key institutional investors as well as to investors who use the Russell Indexes to benchmark their portfolios. The past 18 months have been extraordinary by any measure, but I could not be prouder of the effort and the performance of our teams during this challenging time. Our management team has extensive experience in navigating tough market environments, and we believe we have the right plan in place to capitalize on the recovery as it unfolds. This plan includes continuing to maximize liquidity across the company, optimizing operating performance of our assets as they recover, deleveraging the balance sheet over time, and looking for opportunities to invest and grow as we bounce off the trough of the industry cycle. We are going to be laser-focused on all of these. I'll now turn the call over to Derek to review the second quarter financial performance.

Thanks, Rob. Before I discuss our financial results, I'd like to note that all per share metrics that I will discuss reflect our recently completed 1 for 10 reverse stock split. For the second quarter of 2021, we reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $69.5 million, or $4.35 per diluted share. For the quarter, we reported AFFO per diluted share of 4 cents. We are pleased to report that our adjusted EBITDA RE for the quarter was $31.4 million. At the end of the second quarter, we had $3.9 billion of loans with a blended average interest rate of 4.1%. Our loans were approximately 11% fixed rate and 89% floating rate. We utilized floating rate debt as we believe it is a better hedge of our operating cash flows. However, we do utilize caps on those floating rate loans to protect the company against significant interest rate increases. Our hotel loans are all non-recourse, and as Rob mentioned, nearly all of them are currently in cash traps, meaning that we are currently unable to utilize property-level cash for corporate-related purposes. As the properties recover and meet the various debt yield or coverage thresholds, we will be able to utilize that cash freely at corporate. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $520.4 million and restricted cash of $70.1 million. The vast majority of that restricted cash is comprised of lender and manager held reserve accounts. At the end of the quarter, we also had $15.9 million in due from third party hotel managers. This primarily represents cash held by one of our property managers, which is also available to fund hotel operating costs. We also ended the quarter with net working capital of $531 million. compared to net working capital of $9.8 million at the end of 2020, which highlights the continued improvement in our financial position. I think it's also important to point out that this net working capital amount of $531 million equates to approximately $19.39 per share. This compares to our closing stock price from yesterday of $16.55, which is a 17% discount to our cash value per share, and we do not believe this reflects the intrinsic value of our high-quality hotel portfolio. From a cash utilization standpoint, our portfolio generated hotel EBITDA of $45.6 million in the quarter. Our current monthly run rate for interest expense is approximately $11 million, and our current monthly run rate for corporate G&A and advisory expense is approximately $4 million. On a run rate basis, we were very close to being cash flow positive at the corporate level in the second quarter. As of June 30, 2021, our portfolio consisted of 100 hotels with 22,286 net rooms. Our current share count stands at approximately 27.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding, which is comprised of 27 million shares of common stock and 0.4 million OP units. In the second quarter, our weighted average fully diluted share count used to calculate AFFO per share included approximately 1.7 million common shares associated with the exit fee on the strategic financing we completed in January. The exit fee will be owed once the facility is repaid and could be paid in cash or stock. Assuming yesterday's closing stock price of $16.55, our equity market cap is approximately $450 million. During the quarter, we entered into a modification agreement on the $240 million Renaissance Nashville and Westin Princeton portfolio loan representing two hotels. This modification agreement involved us catching up deferred interest in exchange for reducing future debt yield extension tests, thus improving our ability to qualify for future extension options. As we previously discussed, we have been actively exchanging our preferred stock for common stock as a way to de-lever our balance sheet, remove the accrued dividend liability, and improve our equity flow. Through these exchanges, we have exchanged approximately 67% of our original preferred stock, which is approximately $379 million of face value, into common stock. These exchanges also eliminated a significant amount of accrued preferred dividends. After taking into account the $200 million of new corporate debt that we closed in January and our cash balance at the end of the quarter, we have lowered our net debt plus preferred equity by over $800 million since the first quarter of 2020. We have also been opportunistically raising equity capital to shore up our balance sheet, improve our liquidity, and to be prepared for potential loan paydowns needed to achieve extension tests or meet refinancing requirements. During the second quarter, we issued approximately 8.9 million shares of common stock for approximately $356 million in gross proceeds. Including shares issued subsequent to the end of the second quarter, year to date, we have raised approximately $478 million from the sale of our common stock. Over the past several months, we have taken numerous steps to strengthen our financial position and improve our liquidity, and we are pleased with the progress that we've made. While we still have work to do to improve our capital structure, we believe the company is now well positioned to benefit from the improving trends we are seeing in the lodging industry. This concludes our financial review, and I would now like to turn it over to Jeremy to discuss our asset management activities for the quarter.

Thank you, Derek. Comparable red par for our portfolio increased 372% during the second quarter of 2021, while our hotel EBITDA flow-through was a strong 56%. We're extremely encouraged by the acceleration of occupancy at our hotels with each consecutive month increasing over the prior month during the second quarter. June saw the highest occupancy at 63%. During the second quarter, Ashford Trust recorded an incredible 57% occupancy compared to 51% for the U.S. Upper Upscale Chain Scale. Well, while we are still in the recovery process, we are starting to see green shoots in areas of our portfolio that are now exceeding 2019 levels. I'd like to spend some time highlighting those during this call. A number of our assets have been able to capitalize on the pent-up leisure demand that we are experiencing. The Crown Plaza La Concha Key West increased their hotel EBITDA for the second quarter by 74% relative to 2019. That is phenomenal. Our team has done an excellent job increasing top line through increasing seasonal premiums on upgraded room types and increasing seasonal blackouts to discounted programs. In addition, we are also ensuring that our top line growth hits the bottom line through expense savings, including consolidating our F&B outlets to reduce staffing. The Lakeway Resort and Spa had incredible results during the second quarter with rev par increasing 11% over the comparable period in 2019. An initiative that has been successful this year has been the partnerships we formed with the local marina and sailing group. These two groups are seeing record years, which through our partnership has resulted in additional demand. One Ocean Resort and Spa performed remarkably well during the second quarter with red bar increasing 14% relative to the second quarter of 2019. Our team took a proactive position and increased the ADR of premium room types by more than 10% in anticipation of excess demand. The impact of this can be seen in our pure rooms. which produced $73,000 more revenue than the same time in 2019. The strategy, along with other strategies that we implemented in the second quarter, contributed to HOTEL achieving a HOTEL EBITDA that was 8% higher than the second quarter of 2019. The HOTEL Coral Gables has also done a solid job of exceeding 2019 results, with REVPAR increasing 3% during the second quarter relative to 2019. Our team has been successful in gaining momentum and booking group business, with the hotel producing more than $450,000 of group revenue during the second quarter. Additionally, we were able to successfully secure new airline business at a rate higher than our competitors said. This group and airlines business has provided us enough base level business to shift our revenue strategies and be more proactive about pushing rate. Moving on to capital management, in prior years, we were proactive in renovating our hotels to renew our portfolio. That commitment has now resulted in a huge competitive and strategic advantage as the market rebounds. Not only are our properties more attractive to potential travelers, but we can also deploy capital more prudently throughout the recovery. Thus far in 2021, the only major project that we have completed is a ballroom renovation at the Ritz-Carlton Atlanta. Looking ahead, the only major capital projects on the horizon are a renovation of the public space and guest rooms at the Hilton Santa Cruz, a renovation of the guest rooms at the Marriott Fremont, and a renovation of the public space at eight select service hotels. Here locally, we estimate spending $40 to $55 million in capital expenditures in 2021 which is significantly less than we have spent in previous years. Before moving to Q&A, I'd like to reiterate how optimistic we are about the recovery of our portfolio and the industry as a whole. We're seeing occupancy continue to accelerate, as well as progressively seeing our assets become operationally profitable. During the month of June, 95 percent of our hotels were GOP positive. Although I only highlighted a few properties on this call, there were a number of other properties that exceeded their historical performance or were just on the cusp of doing so. We fully anticipate this momentum will continue. That concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the call up for Q&A.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. The confirmation will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is coming from the line of Tyler Vittori with Janie Montgomery Scott. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. This is Jonathan on for Tyler. Thanks for taking our questions. First one from me, I was wondering if you could provide some color on how trends have progressed into July and if there's been any discernible change with the recent spike in the Delta variant, breakthrough cases, all that. Any signs of deceleration in recent weeks?

Good question. The answer is no, we've not. We've seen some small pockets in a few states where there's a little bit higher case counts. We've seen it a little bit in Florida. and Tennessee and Texas, but nothing significant, nothing material. As we sit here today, the strong summer of transient continues, and we're not seeing that really weaken in any way.

We anticipate July rev part to exceed June rev part, and we've seen that, as I mentioned, consecutively each month so far this year in terms of month-over-month growth.

Okay, great. I appreciate that detail. And then moving to the labor front, how are you thinking about the pace of bringing back more employees, you know, as occupancy and demand continues to ramp? And what kind of staffing levels are the properties currently running, and how is that compared to, say, first quarter or pre-pandemic levels?

Yes, Jeremy. Staffing is clearly our biggest challenge that we have operationally. It's going to continue to be a challenge. I think the teams have done a great job mitigating as much of that as possible. Most of that has been through the efficiencies we've built in the hotels. The process of COVID has really allowed us to kind of, you know, dissect these hotels and rebuild them on a completely different operational model, which is much more efficient. And so you're seeing some of those savings, and I think it will continue to see those savings for the foreseeable future. But there continues to be a shortage of labor, and there continues to be a lot of wage pressures across most of our hotels. To give you just kind of a high-level understanding of what we're facing, we've got about 10% of our staff are open positions. And so that's where we stand, and that's kind of been the trend. It hasn't really come down meaningfully over the last four to six weeks. So it's just continued to be a focus, and we're just doing the best we can given the current environment. But I don't think it's a long-term issue. It's something that we see as a short-term issue.

Okay, great. And then thank you for that answer. And then a question on the rate side of things, if I could. And I know it may be hard to segment everything out, but is that all leisure in the quarter that's driving that ADR gains, or is there some corporate in there impacting either positively or negatively? And, you know, obviously leisure rates have been quite strong, you know, as Jeremy highlighted, but can you provide any additional color on where you think corporate rates will come in as we move through the fall?

Well, let me first, I'll say one thing about the difference in rate. It's been interesting that the stat that popped out to me as we're going through our second quarter numbers was right now weekend rates, and this is both for group and also mostly for transit, weekend rates have been, have had red parts 50% higher than weekday. So you can really see the amount of pricing power that is, you know, going into the weekend because it's obviously predominantly leisure. I think we've been pleasantly surprised overall on the rate side. I mean, even as we look into a group for next year's, we're building the books, ADRs on our bookings in 2022 are actually 4% up over 2019. So you're seeing, I'd say, very strong rates. And overall, our corporate rates are not really at much reductions. I think I saw somewhere it was around 85% or 90% of our corporate rates are rolling at levels at or above 2019 levels. So I think from the rate side overall, we feel very good about where things are. And given the rates of what people are paying this summer, I think it even psychologically allows companies and groups to get comfortable with 2019 or better type rates. So rate is definitely not where we are concerned. I think it's just a real question of what does, with these various variants and some of these companies like Google and Apple and other large S&P 500 type companies, as they're pushing out some of the return to office dates, does that delay things a little bit in terms of the return to travel? But I think we feel pretty good about where rates are.

Yeah, I'll give you a little bit more specifics in the quarterly. So typically we run about 20% group, as we've mentioned. For the second quarter, it's 15% group, 81% transient, and 4% contract business. During the recovery, we were pushing out a lot of our contract business, moving out a lot of airline crews just because we were hitting high occupancy levels. We're starting to pick up a lot more of that contract business, but it's still a very small number, which I think is encouraging because it tends to be lower rated. In terms of the ADR breakup, we had $137 ADR, as you know. Group ADR was $128. Transient was $141. And contract was $101. And that's the breakup. So I think we're still getting decent... group rate, but it's a discount to transient. And then while I don't have a breakout of corporate transient versus leisure, the portfolio does have a lot higher leisure demand right now, and we hope to see some pickup in corporate after Labor Day.

Okay, great. Thank you for all the color on that. That's all for me. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Brian Marr with the Riley Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Maybe a quick housekeeping item for Derek. On your release on page 15, you had a share count of $22.7 million at quarter end. But in your comments, you said we're now at $27.4. So I'm assuming that Delta is issuances since the quarter ended?

That's correct.

And the Delta in the share raising component of that would be 478 million minus the 356, correct? That's correct. Great. Thanks. You know, when we think about your portfolio, and Jeremy did a great job walking through a handful of the properties, we don't really think of it as kind of leisure beach, you know, like we might with Braemar. Can you give us a little bit more color on where some of the strength was in the second quarter?

Sure. I think the strength really was, as you can imagine, across kind of a handful of southern warmer markets. So when you look at the strongest assets, you're looking at our Nashville Renaissance. You're looking at our Hyatt and Savannah assets. Most of Florida, our Texas assets, and then even we're starting to see some strength in Southern California. Our Beverly Hills Marriott was extraordinarily strong as well. So it's just kind of these various southern warmer markets. Because when you're looking at even the weaker spots, there's still a lot of weakness in D.C. I mean, I think actually our worst performing assets in the second corner were these two leisure transient hotels in D.C., the Churchill and Melrose, just because the government's been shut down. And just anything that is in... you know, Minneapolis, Chicago, and the Bay Area has been a little bit of a struggle as well in suburban markets there. So, but it's not just, as you kind of pointed out, Brian, it's not just one spot. It's fairly broadly placed across the kind of southern warmer markets.

Right, and to drill down on... And Brian, just to, so Nashville's top performing market in terms of year-over-year growth for us, it... It's a big asset for us as a good weighting, the National Renaissance, as you know. And then the other top five markets were Miami, Atlanta, Orlando, and Tampa. And three of those are in Florida. So it goes to what Rob just mentioned in terms of some of the southern states. And then Atlanta, we've got a good amount of exposure there. So I think that helps us as well. Even though it's not really a leisure market, given that we've got a decent portfolio waiting. So I think some of it has helped in terms of where our assets are located in non-leisure markets. They just happen to be in markets that have done fairly well. D.C. being the one that's more disappointing because we obviously have a lot of exposure at D.C., but given our high concentration crystal city, we are extremely bullish on that market given what's going on there, as you know.

Great. And so you finished the quarter with a lot of cash, you know, roughly $500 million give or take. You know, how much is enough? I know you guys have a lot of money that's probably going to be tied up in cash drafts over the next couple of quarters. But is there a level where you say, you know, we have enough, we don't need to issue shares? You know, can you share with us the board's thought process there?

Sure. Yeah, as you know, Brian, we do. We've built up a significant amount of cash already. And given where we've been over the past 12 months, we felt like it's been important to make some substantive changes to the balance sheet and our liquidity profile. The issue we have is that, frankly, it's a little bit of an unknown still. I mean, even looking at these variants that have been coming and the delaying of certain people to getting back to the office, it does add a little bit of choppiness to this recovery, and to your point, is the vast majority of our loans, as Derek mentioned, as I mentioned, are in cash traps. And for most of them, generally speaking, the way to get out of them is they need typically six or two consecutive quarters above, and it varies by loan, but generally speaking around, call it 1.2 times coverage. And we just don't know what that date is. I don't know if it's in six months from now because things really recover quickly. or if it's 12 to 24 months, which I think is, frankly, a more likely number as we sit here today. And so as we look at the fact that we may not be able to extract cash out of our portfolio for another 12 or 24 months, we've got to be very thoughtful around, well, how then do we fund our CapEx program as it begins to ramp up in the next 24 months? We have, over the next couple of years, we have $2.5 billion of debt in that doesn't necessarily have hard maturities but has extension tests that include debt yield tests. And it's hard to know whether or not the exposure to those extension tests and the paydowns needed to meet them is $0 or $750 million. And we just don't know, given the variability, what's going on. Now, as we mentioned in other, I think, previous calls, I mean, we're very – focused on trying to get these loan modifications to reduce those debt yield extension tests, and we've been successful on a handful of our bigger ones, but we still have some big ones left that we're focused on trying to modify. And then when you kind of add on, well, we've got obviously this rescue financing that we did that we're going to need to pay back here in the next few years. We've got to be able to get our preferreds back current at some point in order to get our S3 eligibility back. When you start adding up those dollars and just the uncertainty of exactly what the recovery looks like, we feel like it's important to err on the side of being conservative so that we are avoiding being back in a position like we were a year ago.

And, hey, Brian, this is Derek. I just want to clarify one of the questions you asked about the capital raising to date post the end of the second quarter and kind of walking through that math. The $478 million is how much we have raised year to date. The $356 million is what was raised in the second quarter. There was also about $45 million that was raised in the first quarter. So you would need to back that out as well if you're trying to get to sort of how much has been raised post-quarter end.

Great. That's really helpful. And just last for me, when you look at what's going on in the transaction market, some assets are turning, some interestingly, depending upon where they're located, a decent cap rate. Is there a thought process that in the second half of this year, early next year, you might either try and sell assets where you can achieve an attractive cap rate or just let go of assets that you just don't think are going to recover and it's not worth holding? And that's all for me.

Yeah, thanks, Brian. I think to your latter point, I don't think we probably have any assets left that we're just going to let go. I mean, we went through that process last year. So as we sit here today, unless there's a material change in the world, I wouldn't anticipate handing back any more assets. To your earlier question, You're right. We are definitely seeing and actually getting a lot of inbound traffic on assets that kind of fit the, I don't know, the soup du jour of the day, the southern, warmer, transient-focused assets, and we do have a good number of those. The reality of the circumstances that we're in is that while that asset sales are a little less attractive right now because of the nature of the rescue financing that we've done. So to the extent we sell any assets, and get excess proceeds, or if we refinance and get excess proceeds, those are allocated to paying down the loan. And given that there's a two-year make-hole, which goes basically until January of 2023, it doesn't really make sense for us to pull the trigger on an asset sell today if in 12 months from now we could sell the exact same asset for additional proceeds and that would still have to go to pay down the loan. So I think it's something that as we get into later next year and coming closer to the make-hold burn-off, I think it's something we'll consider. But by and large, we like the assets, the portfolio we have. So I think it'd be something maybe around the edges that we would do as opposed to anything substantive.

Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question is coming from the line of Michael Bellisario with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Can we just go back to maybe for Jeremy or just your group comments? Maybe can you focus on where you're at in terms of demand and what's on the books today for 2022 versus the same time in 2019 and also just on the BT side? What are you seeing in where are you seeing inflection maybe occurring in your portfolio in terms of when you expect BT travel to pick up based on what you're seeing with the booking pattern today?

Yeah, so Rob quoted that the ADR is ahead 4% for group. It's still pacing down for 2021 about 18%. This is all compared to 2019. In terms of kind of on a quarter-over-quarter basis, when you look at total group pace, it was down 70% in Q2. We're looking at 49% in Q3, 36% in Q4, and down 24% in Q1. So you can just see that each quarter it's coming down. And then the cancellations have been a lot less than what we have experienced over the course of the last year and three months, I guess, year and a quarter. The one thing that's interesting is the way the leads are working. We're just seeing such a high percentage of our lead volume in three to six months. It's the highest percentage right now is our lead volume is for booking three to six months out, which is not typical. And so when you look at the mix of leads, It is much more weighted towards less than a year out, which is definitely different than what we've seen in previous years. I think that's good because even though as I project out what our group pace looks like, it doesn't really take into account that shift in short-term lead volume because we're just kind of comparing a static outlook. And so I do think that there's an opportunity to continue to see more pickup in lead volume and converting that to actual group business. So that kind of gives you a flavor of what we're looking at right now. And then 2023 looks very strong, but it's obviously a ways out.

Does that help? Yeah, it does. All those comments are specific to group. I assume any comments, at least in the near term, on the BT bookings?

VT still, it's, I think what we'd say is that we're still, we see pickup basically on a daily basis, so there's good acceleration, but it's still on such a small base that it's just, we've got a ways to go. In Q2, the mix of business grew from 14 to 16%, so it still has a ways to go, and hopefully after Labor Day, we'll see More pick-up in corporate demand. As you can imagine, in Q2 and Q3, at least certainly Q2, typically the mix of corporate demand generally goes down in our portfolio anyway, just because it becomes more leisure-focused as summer travel picks up. Even though the mix didn't grow significantly between Q2 and Q1, it's still positive because that mix usually declines between those quarters. So we're hopeful that we see a pickup in corporate transient demand. But as you know, the booking window for our business when it comes to transient is generally three weeks out. And today, and that's in a normal environment, and today it's much shorter than that.

But, Mike, one thing I would say I touched on earlier is that we are seeing rates from the corporate side, even though they're small, and as we're looking at kind of constantly rolling over, you know, corporate rates, we still are seeing strength there. So, you know, when we're looking at the various sometimes fires we're trying to put out and ways to grow the business, where we're not seeing pressure is pushback from a rate standpoint with corporate, which is great.

And is it fair to assume when we hit the fall here with, you know, RFP season, we're just going to roll the 20 rates pre-pandemic into 22 then too? Is that what the brands are thinking?

Yeah, at least for us, we think it's going to be mostly probably 90, close to 90%, maybe just under that'll roll or do a dynamic pricing, which is just kind of a discount off of retail rates. So that's the strategy that we're going to do. We're not going to, we're going to kind of hold firm on that. And I think that you're seeing that Not just us, but all owners are doing that and the brand just because it's the right thing to do.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Chris Varunka with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys. Just a quick follow-up on the cash trap issue. situation, Rob, I think you mentioned two consecutive quarters of, uh, 1.6 times coverage. Is there any way to triangulate using round numbers, what that might equate to on a portfolio wide rev par or hotel EBITDA basis, just to, just to get a sense as to how close you are.

That's a good question. Um, so one, one point is it's, it's, it's closer to 1.2 overall, not 1.6. Um, Yeah, I don't know the best way to triangulate that to a RevPar type number. I guess from a simplistic standpoint, as we sit here now, we obviously are generating positive hotel EBITDA. Overall, our interest expense is roughly, what, $120 million, somewhere around there, on an annualized basis. So I think the way to do it is if you're, if it's $120 million plus or minus of interest expense, add 20% to that. And I guess you're just backing into, when do you think to leave a dog gets to that level? Um, you know, you can use whatever occupancy and rate discounts you want to get to it, but I think it's probably the easiest now and it won't be exactly right because obviously each pool is different. And, but if you're into a backup envelope, it's probably the easiest way to do it.

Okay. Uh, that, that is helpful. And just a housekeeping question on the quarter-to-date, which I think we calculated $77 million of capital raised in Q3. Is that all on the share issuance program, or does that maybe include some additional preferred buybacks or swaps?

Yeah, so we don't include preferred exchanges in those dollars that I quoted, Chris. So that would just be based on issuance of common shares pursuant to the S11s that have been filed.

Okay. Thanks, Derek. And maybe one for Jeremy. I think we've heard about – a lot of hotels where because of the labor situation, you're actually kind of shrinking the hotel, right? Not, not, not making all your rooms available for sale, which can also help you on the rate side. Is that happening across a lot of your portfolio or, or not?

It definitely has happened where we aren't able to put rooms in service just because we can't get them clean. I don't think it's a wide scale pervasive issue that is causing us to, to lose any revenues. Um, that's meaningful at this time just given where I can see levels are as well in most cases. That has helped us in some cases to push rate. We've taken more risk than I think a lot of our peers have in trying to hold firm on pushing rate as much as possible. I've been pleased with some of the pickup we've seen in our ADR in our portfolio.

Okay, helpful. And just one last follow-up. The CapEx number you gave out, I think $40 to $55 million for the year. Does that include anything additional for Key West for the autograph?

No, we're still in the kind of programming phase for that right now. So, no, that's not this year.

Yeah, and Chris, we were able to push out our PIP dates for that. So we've got plenty of time on Key West. And right now the market's doing so well that I don't really want to take any rooms out of service. I don't have to, as you can understand.

Sure. Okay, great. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session, so I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Thank you for joining today's call. We look forward to speaking to you all again next quarter. In addition, know that we are looking to potentially do an Investor Day in New York in October, likely October 12th, so stay tuned, and we'll provide more details later. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.