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spk11: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Choice Hotels International's third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all lines are 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, and please also note today's event is being recorded. Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to Ali Summers, Investor Relations Director for Chase Hotels. Ma'am, you may begin.
spk04: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that during this conference call, certain predictive or forward-looking statements will be used to assist you in understanding the company and its results. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated in forward-looking statements and you should consult the company's 10Q, 10K and other SEC filings for information about important risk factors affecting the company that you should consider. These forward-looking statements speak as of today's date and we undertake no obligation to publicly update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You can find a reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks as part of our third quarter 2022 earnings press release, which is posted on our website at choicehotels.com under the investor relations section. This morning, Pat Pacius, our president and chief executive officer, and Don Dragovich, our chief financial officer, will speak to our third quarter operating results and financial performance. Following Pat and Dom's remarks, we'll be glad to take your questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Pat.
spk02: Thanks, Ali, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter results and the acquisition of the Radisson Americas business are a significant leap forward in the evolution of both Choice Hotels' competitive position and future growth potential. For 11 consecutive quarters, our RevPar growth has outperformed the hotel industry, confirming that our strategy of focusing our investments and growth on RevPar accretive hotel segments and locations is working. Our future growth is now enhanced by the addition of the Radisson Americas brands to our best-in-class business delivery engine, and we now expect to drive an incremental $80 million in recurring adjusted EBITDA from this business unit upon its full integration in early 2024. We are excited about the new growth vectors these brands will provide. Our strategy allowed us to achieve these remarkable operating results, invest in a strategic acquisition, and return over $230 million to shareholders through our share repurchase program in the third quarter, representing nearly 4% of shares outstanding. I'm pleased to report that we now expect to grow our full year 2022 adjusted EBITDA by more than 15% versus full year 2021, and by more than 25% versus our full year 2019, which was our pre-pandemic peak. This year's growth builds on last year's record results when we became the first hotel company to surpass pre-pandemic performance. Our impressive results and outlook clearly demonstrate that we are in a stronger position than ever to further capitalize on outsized growth opportunities over the long term that will continue to pay off for our owners, and shareholders alike. Thanks to our integration efforts in the first two and a half months since acquiring Radisson Americas, we have unlocked additional value drivers that we expect will fuel significant incremental growth for years to come. This upside demonstrates how the Radisson Americas acquisition complements our existing strategy and opens additional opportunities for growth. The level of enthusiasm around the acquisition from developers, franchise owners, and guests continues to be remarkable. And after getting to better know the Radisson America's brands and meeting with the franchisee community, I'm more energized than ever about the prospects for Radisson America's future as part of Choice. Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank both the Choice and Radisson America's teams whose hard work was instrumental in bringing this transaction home. Adding to our optimism is our strong top line growth fueled by sequential acceleration in quarter over quarter RevPAR growth. For comparative purposes throughout the remainder of our remarks, we will now provide RevPAR performance data that excludes the impact of the Radisson Americas acquisition. The third quarter marked our strongest quarter for RevPAR growth this year, with domestic RevPAR increasing 15.2% from the same quarter of 2019. And we expect this momentum to continue into the fourth quarter, including October RevPAR growth results, which surpassed 2019 levels by approximately 20%. We have now exceeded our 2019 REVPAR levels for 17 consecutive months. At the same time, we continue to drive REVPAR index gains as compared to 2019, again, outpacing our competitors. We've been surpassing 2019 levels for the past year and a half because of the strategic decisions and investments we have made to position us to further increase our share of travel demand. Our goal was not to simply return to our 2019 performance levels, but rather to leverage the strength of our business to capitalize on current and future investments to fuel our long-term asset-like growth in REVPAR accretive segments and locations and drive our performance to new levels. We have built on that strength throughout the third quarter and are confident that the changes we are observing in leisure and business travel behavior that favor our brands will enable us to maximize growth opportunities well into the future. As discussed on our prior calls, we've been highlighting the long-term consumer and industry trends that are driving a significant uptick in travel demand And we've been making deliberate investments to reap the benefits from them. Specifically, we are capitalizing on long-term fundamentals that we call the five R's. Remote work, retirements, road trips, rising wages, and reshoring of American manufacturing. We now know that the pandemic has accelerated these trends, each of which favors our brands and locations. As consumers continue to prioritize travel, we believe our business will continue to benefit in an outsized way from additional travel demand coming to our segments. We see these trends as strong tailwinds for our company's long-term growth. Importantly, CHOICE's resilient business model has historically delivered stable returns throughout both expanding and contracting economic cycles. Looking ahead, our optimism is further reinforced by the strengthening of our business transient and group travel segments. In the third quarter, we drove sequential quarter-over-quarter increases in our business travel bookings. In addition to continued robust leisure travel, the business travel component of our guest mix continues to approach historical levels and accounted for approximately 30% of stays in the third quarter. Furthermore, our strongest occupancy growth during weekdays in September year over year was on Tuesday and Wednesday, illustrating the strength of returning business travel. We expect business travel in our key industry verticals to increase, fueled by the additional onshoring of the U.S. supply chain and significant nationwide investments from the infrastructure bill. Likewise, we anticipate additional tailwinds from business travelers in sectors such as healthcare, technology, and professional services, especially in the context of the Radisson Americas acquisition and the our growing presence in more REVPAR accretive segments and locations. Our third quarter results demonstrate that the deliberate decisions and strategic investments we have made in our brand portfolio, value proposition, platform capabilities, and other franchisee tools are paying off. I will now provide a brief update on our key segments, excluding the impact of the Radisson Americas acquisition. First, we continue to strengthen our core portfolio of brands. The mid-scale segment generated strong developer demand with a 39% increase in franchise agreements awarded in the third quarter compared to the same period of 2021. The comfort brand has now registered 11 straight quarters of unit growth year over year since its successful refresh, and consumer confidence in our updated product has continued to drive the brand's average daily rate and occupancy index gains versus its local competitors. This performance underlies the continued attractiveness of this iconic brand to hotel developers and guests alike. Our new comfort prototype is now under development in several locations and marks the next chapter for our flagship brand. We also further invested in the extended stay segment, which continues to be a significant driver of our unit growth and RevPar growth. Specifically, in the third quarter, our extended stay domestic pipeline expanded to nearly 470 hotels. a 45% increase year over year. Our newest extended stay brand, Everhome Suites, recently celebrated the grand opening of its first hotel, and its initial performance exceeded our expectations, fueling our optimism for the brand's trajectory. This mid-scale, new construction, extended stay offering is on the cusp of major growth, gaining impressive traction across the development community, with 56 additional projects already in the pipeline, including a recent commitment from one of the largest extended-stay developers in the nation to build more than 20 Everhome Suites hotels. In addition, we expect a substantially higher number of the brand's domestic contracts for 2022 as compared to last year. Our investments in the WoodSpring Suites brand's marketing and distribution capabilities enabled us to achieve rev par growth of nearly 28% in the third quarter of 2022, compared to the same period of 2019, driven by increases in both occupancy and rate. Overall, we remain very optimistic about our extended stay segment growth. and expect the number of our extended stay units to increase at an average annual growth rate of more than 10% over the next five years. We are also pleased with our upscale portfolio, where our brands outperform the segment's REVPAR growth by over 13 percentage points versus the same period of 2019. At the same time, we increased the number of upscale franchise agreements executed in the third quarter by nearly threefold. The Cambria brand is having one of its best years ever. The brand grew by over 5% year over year, reaching more than 60 units, with an additional 69 domestic properties in the pipeline, over one-third of which are projects under active construction as of the end of September. The recently introduced Cambria Hotel prototype designed for secondary and leisure markets has been enthusiastically received by the developer community with 20 new agreements signed as of the end of the third quarter. In addition, we expect that the Radisson Americas acquisition will enable us to further build on our momentum in the upscale segment, accelerating the growth of our Cambria Hotels and Ascend Hotel Collection brands, and at the same time, allowing us to expand the Radisson portfolio. The addition of the Radisson upscale brands in the Americas increased Choice's global footprint in the upscale segment to over 74,000 rooms as of the end of the third quarter. All that we've accomplished this quarter certainly could not have been done without the strength of our award-winning culture. A central focus of our ESG efforts is our commitment to fostering an environment supportive of diversity and inclusion. I'm proud to share that Choice was recently recognized by Forbes as one of the world's best employers and one of the world's top female-friendly companies in 2022. These awards are particularly meaningful as they are based in large part on responses from our dedicated associates and franchisees. I'm also pleased to report that we recently have been recognized among the top franchise companies for our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by Entrepreneur Magazine. We were the only hotel brand company to make the list. which speaks to the many initiatives our organization continues to undertake to fuel diversity and equitable opportunity across the entire hotel industry. Specifically, our fully dedicated franchise development and service team continues to drive diverse ownership of choice franchised hotels among underrepresented women and minority owners. With over 320 franchise contracts awarded, since the program began over 15 years ago. In closing, I'm confident that our effective strategic investments and commitment to our franchisees' profitability will continue to create value and deliver results for our owners and shareholders. We look forward to continuing to integrate Radisson Americas as part of the Choice family and to accelerate the growth of these brands by leveraging Choice's scale network of owner and franchise relationships, and best-in-class digital platforms. We believe we are well-positioned to build on the success achieved this quarter and that our increased earnings power will enable us to further capitalize on growth opportunities for the remainder of this year and beyond. With that, I will hand it over to our CFO. Dom?
spk08: Thanks, Pat, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to be with you today to report our third quarter financial performance. Specifically, I will provide additional insights on our third quarter results, update you on our balance sheet and capital allocation approach, and share expectations for what lies ahead. Throughout my remarks today, I would like to note that our financial results, unit growth, and pipeline figures are inclusive of the Radisson Americas portfolio from the August 11th transaction close date, while our REVPAR performance, effective royalty rate, and franchise agreements figures do not include impacts from the acquisition. For the third quarter of 2022, compared to the same period of 2021, total revenues were $414.3 million, a 28% increase. Our adjusted EBITDA grew to $139.4 million driven by our continued impressive REVPAR performance, effective royalty rate growth, and contribution from other platform revenues. And as a result, our adjusted earnings per share were $1.56 for the third quarter. From August 11th through the end of the third quarter, the Radisson Americas portfolio contributed $40.2 million in total revenues and $6.8 million in adjusted EBITDA. I'd like to now turn to our three key revenue levers, beginning with REVPAR. Our domestic REVPAR increased 15.2% for the third quarter, with our average daily rate growing by 15.1% compared to the same quarter of 2019. Our REVPAR and rate growth also represents an acceleration of the gains achieved in the second quarter of this year compared to 2019. In addition, We expect our REVPAR performance for the fourth quarter to continue to accelerate from our third quarter results. The strategic investments we have made in key segments in our value proposition capabilities enabled us to outperform the industry in REVPAR growth by over four percentage points for the third quarter. We believe that the new enhancements to our award-winning revenue management tool will allow us to further optimize rate and occupancy growth for the remainder of 2022 and beyond. This capability, coupled with the expert advice from our revenue management consultants, allows our franchise owners to quickly execute the right pricing strategy and effectively reach their target customers, which continues to be critical in this inflationary environment. Given the strong RevPAR trends, our ongoing strategic initiatives and continued optimism, we are raising both the bottom and top ends of our forecasted REVPAR growth range and now expect full year 2022 domestic REVPAR to increase between 13% and 15% as compared to full year 2019, which represents 11% to 12% growth versus 2021. Our effective royalty rate also continues to be a significant source of our revenue growth. Our domestic effective royalty rate once again exceeded 5% for the quarter, increasing five basis points for both the third quarter and year-to-date through September, year over year. This performance further validates our long-term investment strategy on behalf of our franchisees. The continued strengthening of our value proposition to our franchise owners and the attractiveness of our proven brands. Owners continue to seek Choice's proven capabilities to consistently deliver strong top-line revenues that maximize return on investment while reducing total cost of ownership. For full year 2022, we expect our effective royalty rate to continue to grow in the mid-single digits year over year. The third revenue lever I'd like to discuss is unit growth. where our portfolio's absolute size and the revenue intensity of our hotels are key advantages. Our strategic goal has been to accelerate room growth in RevPAR accretive segments and markets, which ultimately results in an outsized increase in royalties. In fact, currently, every new unit entering our portfolio has continued to generate, on average, twice the revenue as a unit leaving it. The addition of approximately 60,000 Radisson America's domestic rooms open or in the development pipeline as of the end of the third quarter marks the next chapter in CHOICE's higher revenue per room growth trajectory. For the third quarter, our domestic system size grew by 5.4% year over year, including both the Radisson America's acquisition and the previously discussed one-time exits from our portfolio. Although the removal of the Wood Springs Suites properties impacted this overall unit growth, the exit triggered a more than $67 million one-time cash benefit. This resulted in an increase in our reported revenue of approximately $23 million, which has been excluded from our adjusted EBITDA results. Furthermore, this cash benefit will offset more than five years of royalty fees associated with the exit of this portfolio. Importantly, Not only has the WoodSpring Suites pipeline expanded by 68% year over year as of the end of September, reaching nearly 290 domestic projects, but we also expect the brand's openings this year to significantly exceed 2021 levels. For full year 2022, we expect our domestic system size to grow approximately 7%, including both the Radisson Americas acquisition and the one-time exit of the WoodSpring Suites hotels. Furthermore, we expect the broader revenue intensity trends of our overall portfolio seen in 2021 to continue. Aided by our strong value proposition and RevPar performance, developers continue to choose our brands versus the competition as they seek to improve their operations and boost the long-term value of their hotels. I am pleased to report that our domestic pipeline increased 16% year-over-year and 12% quarter over quarter, exceeding 1,000 domestic hotels at third quarter end. Even excluding the incremental Radisson America's hotels, our domestic pipeline increased by 11% year over year and over 6% quarter over quarter, reaching 969 domestic hotels at third quarter end. In addition, in the third quarter, we reported a 38% increase year over year in new domestic franchise agreements awarded. Two-thirds of the agreements sold in the quarter were for conversion hotels, representing an increase of 42% versus the same period of the prior year. Most importantly, these hotels are expected to open more quickly than our new construction projects. Our developers are increasingly optimistic about the long-term fundamentals of the lodging industry. Specifically, we are very pleased to see that demand for our new construction brands increased by over 30% in the third quarter year-over-year. A 23% year-over-year increase in new applications for domestic franchise agreements year-to-date through September and even stronger momentum recently with over one-third of the total domestic franchise agreements for the quarter executed during September further reinforces our confidence in our continued growth prospects for the rest of the year and beyond. I'd like to now turn to the strength of our balance sheet, one of the major reasons why we believe that our prospects for growth are even stronger today than they were pre-pandemic. Even after the completion of the Radisson Americas acquisition and recent significant share repurchases, our impressive performance and effective allocation of resources to drive top-line outperformance has ensured our strong liquidity position. In fact, we continue to maintain a best-in-class balance sheet with a gross debt to EBITDA leverage ratio of 2.5 times, well below the low end of our targeted range of three to four times as of the end of the third quarter. Reflecting the confidence driven by our business performance, ongoing strategic initiatives, and our continued optimism for the outlook, Our Board of Directors recently approved an increase in our share repurchase authorization by 5 million shares. Year to date through September, we have returned over $286 million back to our shareholders. These returns came in the form of approximately $40 million in cash dividends and $247 million in share repurchases. I'm also pleased to report that we made impressive progress executing on our capital recycling strategy. Following the sale of one of our own Cambria assets in June 2022, we sold an additional asset in July, recycling another $110 million. Most importantly, we also secured a 30-year franchise agreement with the buyer. Following the closing of this transaction, we will have recycled over $140 million of prior investments in Cambria development projects during 2022. The strategic sale of these Cambria assets reduced the company's third quarter adjusted EBITDA from owned hotels by $2.7 million compared to the same period of the prior year. Our strong cash flows and debt capacity position us well to continue to make strategic investments, grow the business, and return excess cash to shareholders well into the future. Moving forward, we plan to continue to use all pillars of our capital allocation strategy. Before opening it up for questions, I'd like to turn to our expectations for what lies ahead. We expect full-year 2022 adjusted EBITDA to range between $465 million and $470 million representing 15% to 17% growth compared to full year 2021 and 25% to 26% growth compared to full year 2019. This adjusted EBITDA outlook includes $14 million to $15 million of adjusted EBITDA contribution from the Radisson Americas Business Unit since the acquisition through the end of the year. Additionally, We expect to generate $80 million in recurring adjusted EBITDA from Radisson Americas upon its full integration in early 2024, underlining the value added from combining these two great companies. We intend to continue to invest in the core growth vectors across the higher value and more REVPAR accretive mid-scale, upper mid-scale, upscale, and extended stay segments. Even with these increased investments and excluding the impact of the Radisson Americas acquisition, we expect our full year 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin to exceed our full year 2019 adjusted EBITDA margin. We are proud of the accomplishments we have achieved to advance our long-term strategy and are excited about the value creation we expect Radisson Americas to bring to choice. We look forward to providing you with further updates in February during our next earnings call. In closing, we remain confident that our long-term strategic approach and resilient business model will enable us to continue to deliver strong operating results and generate substantial levels of cash through multiple growth levers. Combined with our disciplined capital allocation strategy and strong balance sheet, we believe these strengths will allow us to further capitalize on growth opportunities and drive outsized returns in the years ahead. At this time, Pat and I would be happy to answer any questions. Operator?
spk11: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one using a touch-tone telephone. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset prior to pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Once again, that is star and then one. to join the question queue. We'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And our first question today comes from Sean Kelly from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.
spk00: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Dom or Pat, you wanted to start with the RevPAR outlook. You mentioned, obviously, October's off to a strong start. Your outlook for 4Q is that things will accelerate from the third quarter. Can you just talk a little bit about the drivers there? That's actually a little bit better than what we're seeing across a number of the other hotel chains. And specifically, you know, we probably would have thought with a more leisure heavy bend, you may not be moving into kind of peak seasonality here. So what's kind of the driver that's going to push that up quarter on quarter?
spk02: Yeah, Sean, I think fundamentally it's something we've been talking about in these calls for quite some time, that the time of year and the time of week that people are now able to travel post-pandemic, these changing travel behaviors, are really going to provide a significant tailwind for our business. And we saw that in the third quarter. We saw it in October. I mentioned in my remarks in September, which is sort of the kind of expected return of business travel, we saw Tuesday and Wednesday occupancy pick up. When you look at the quarter as a whole, we saw Sunday night and Thursday night occupancy gains year over quarter over quarter. When you look at a Q3 last year. So these five R's that we're talking about, rising wages, remote work, reshoring of American manufacturing, road trips and retirements, those are all things that we believe are long-term fundamentals that are going to keep driving our business. And, you know, traditionally you saw things slow down in Q3 and the back half of Q3 and then into Q4. And we're not seeing that anymore. And we believe it's partially due to these trends that are really changing the time of year and the time of week that consumers are able to travel. And as I mentioned, the business traveler is coming back for our industry verticals.
spk00: Super, thanks. Thanks, Pat. And then my follow-up would be on sort of the NUG outlook. If we back out WoodSpring and Radisson, obviously, you continue to, I think, refine the core portfolio here a little bit. Can you help us put some parameters around how those refinements and some of those dispositions are going to move as we start looking out into 2023? Is this a specific initiative that you're undertaking across some brands that should meet its end, or should we expect – some of this churn to continue or be material as we move out into 2023 and beyond?
spk02: Yeah, Sean, I think it's reflective of our long-term strategy to reposition the company, the brand issue. It's really building in the segments that we expect to see long-term growth. So as Don mentioned in his remarks, everything we're bringing in is twice the revenue, lifetime revenue of every hotel that's increased our unit growth by 7%. But if you remember from the investor deck, that like to like, if you go back and look at 2019, the Radisson system was delivering 38% higher rev par than the choice system at that time. So it's a reflection of our shift into upscale, upper mid-scale, and extended stay in particular, those three segments. And Don can fill in kind of the exact numbers on kind of what we did in the quarter. But you're right. It is more of a segment shift that we're going to experience as we move into 2023 and beyond.
spk08: Yeah, Sean. And so when you put some numbers around it, you know, overall, our unit growth guide for the year is about 7% year over year. That does include the 110 terminations associated with the Woodspring exits. Now, that would also imply an acceleration from Q3 into Q4. So we're expecting to see some of that nug pick up here in the fourth quarter. When you take a look and you unpackage Q3 in particular, your revenue intense unit growth without any of the one-time impacts, both the one-time impacts of the acquisition, the one-time impacts of the terms, it's about a half a percentage point positive. And so you're basically growing 50 basis points. When you take a look at, you know, broader apples to apples nug, a lot of that churn is coming from the same segments that we talked about before. It's from that economy segment. That revenue-intense unit growth is actually expected to also accelerate heading into the fourth quarter as well. So we're expecting that revenue-intense unit growth in the fourth quarter to be, obviously, outpace the 50 basis points. For the full year, that revenue-intense unit growth is expected to be about one percentage point. I think what gives us further optimism, obviously, is the very strong pipeline growth that we've seen now over the last two quarters. So we're pretty optimistic about the long-term outlook on the NUD side of the house.
spk00: Thank you very much.
spk08: Thank you.
spk11: Our next question comes from Dory Teston from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead with your question.
spk01: Thanks. Good morning. Can you walk through your key assumptions behind the 2024 EBITDA for Radisson and just provide some context on the swing-in results that there could be in regards to your comment that you said you couldn't reasonably reconcile 22 or 24?
spk02: Yeah, I think if you look at the business that we bought, and we mentioned this when we announced the deal, You know, it was a 624 hotel portfolio that was sitting on an infrastructure that was built for a much larger company. So the opportunity here is to remove a significant amount of that infrastructure cost, which we've already begun to do. I think the exciting part moving forward is when you look at, let's just say, a country in its suites, take that and compare it to a comfort inn, a legacy choice brand. The OTA contribution for Country Inn and Suites was double what a Comfort Inn was, and the loyalty contribution was half. So that OTA guest pays a, they're more price sensitive, and that loyalty program member, they're generally a higher rated customer. So when we think about bringing those new contracts onto the Choice platform when the integration is completed in the coming year here, we expect to see a significant revenue boost coming from those hotels. And we also think at the corporate level, there's a lot of duplicative costs that we're obviously going to be pulling out of the business.
spk08: Yeah, and then what I would, just to put some numbers around that, Dory, when you take a look at that $80 million, the vast majority of that is still the fee business. And so about $70 million of that 80 essentially is the fee business. Obviously, the acquisition came with three owned assets, so that's about $10 million. When you take a look at what the drivers are of the outperformance, because candidly, when you take a look at what we shared with the investment community just a couple quarters ago, we're exceeding those numbers. A lot of that has to do with the revenue synergies being much stronger than expected. Obviously, the benefits of putting it on our platform to pass point, we found some additional revenue streams to unlock some value. We do have a higher synergy figure than previously expected as well. Obviously, we're not disclosing the specific synergy figures, but you can pretty much back into them when you take a look at that $80 million. And I would argue that that $80 million certainly has some upside as we continue to unlock some of this value associated with the acquisition. You know, the disclaimer language is really around some of the puts and takes and the more granular, you know, net income figures. When you take a look at 2024, we don't want to provide guidance right now around, you know, the purchase accounting elements and the depreciation and amortization. We'll be providing some of that guidance in the future. But, again, very optimistic about that $80 million. The vast majority of it comes from that fee business, which is a high-margin business, and we're expecting to see additional value unlocked here over the course of the next several quarters.
spk01: Okay. And when you think about growing the Radisson Americas brands, do you expect to have to commit your own capital to that in any way?
spk02: At this point, Dory, we don't. What we see for our opportunities with their – It's really the two largest brands, the Radisson full-service upscale brand and the Country Inn & Suites brand. We don't see those as needing outsized capital. There are some additional brands that we acquired as part of it that are more limited in their unit count that we may give some thought to over time. But at this point, we don't see any additional capital requirements to grow the brands.
spk01: Okay. Thank you.
spk11: Our next question comes from Michael Bellisario from Baird. Please go ahead with your question.
spk10: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just one more follow-up on Radisson. Can you talk about the deletions that have occurred within the portfolio since you first announced the deal in June? Maybe why were the properties deleted and then sort of what's the near-term outlook for more rooms to maybe exit the system in the coming months and quarters?
spk02: Yeah, Michael, in the underwriting, when we were going through the diligence, there were hotels in the existing unit count that were already transitioning out. So we were aware of that. I think Dom was the number seven. Seven in total. Seven in total hotels. So we were aware of that. That's sort of the normal, you know, as 624 hotels, you're going to have hotels that are coming up on their outs and owners have decided to make an exit. And these owners weren't aware that the ownership was about to change hands either. So we do think, and we look at the existing portfolio that we have and the significant optimism we've heard from both the existing owners and future investors in these brands, we do expect to get these brands back into a growth mode.
spk10: Got it. And then a modeling question for Dom, just on the SG&A during the quarter, the step up there, can you maybe break down how much was Choice Legacy versus Radisson costs?
spk08: Yeah, broadly speaking, I'd say about 300 basis points or so of the margin really is a result of the core business. And so some of that is timing. So when you take a look at the return of certain one-time costs, obviously our convention came back this year. Some of that cost spilled into Q3, so it was about $800,000 or so there. We saw some bad debt reversals last year during the third quarter, I should say. It's about a $2.5 million delta there when you compare year over year in quarter three. And then obviously the return of some one-time costs like T&E and whatnot. The way I would look at this, Michael, is it's a noisy quarter. A lot of timing of certain expenses, some added costs obviously associated with the Radisson acquisition. You want to look at it on a full year basis. And when you take a look at what we're guiding to from a full year perspective, your EBITDA is up about 15% to 17%. I think that's the punchline there. Even if you remove the added benefit of Radisson, your EBITDA is still up organically, 12% to 13% year over year. So we're very optimistic. We're going to continue to invest in this business for long-term growth, much like we've done in the past.
spk10: Okay, helpful. And then just last one from me on the own portfolio, particularly on the legacy side. You've taken some properties back recently where you've done a lender on. Maybe what's the outlook there for you to take ownership of more properties and just sort of the health of the franchisee on the Cambria side would be helpful. Thank you.
spk08: We don't anticipate taking ownership of any properties in the future, you know, on the franchisee side of the house. Obviously, we're very excited about some of the capital recycling that you've seen this year. Every single quarter, we've actually recycled significant capital with 20- to 30-year franchise agreements on every one of those assets. Obviously, that's having an impact from a modeling perspective on the owned EBITDA. I mentioned in my prepared remarks $2.7 million in the quarter. You're expecting to lose probably like $3 million or so in Q4, but obviously that's a strategic initiative in terms of selling those assets and recycling significant capital while putting long-term franchise agreements in place.
spk09: Thank you.
spk05: Thank you.
spk11: Our next question comes from David Katz from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.
spk05: Morning, gentlemen. How are you? How are you? So we occasionally, periodically, regularly debate with investors the sort of progression that you're making up the REVPAR scale and understanding the logic around revenue intensity of those hotels. What I was hoping you could talk about is the degree to which or the evidence or any data points around getting investors traction or prospective traction out there from customers who, you know, are looking, coming to choice, looking for a hundred bucks rather than sort of the core, you know, historically that's been somewhat lower than that.
spk02: Yeah, Dave, you know, it's interesting as we've talked to the Radisson owners and they look to us and say, can you drive upscale rates? What's really fascinating is when you look at what we're driving in our Cambria brand and places like Napa Valley and places like Nashville, Tennessee. You know, we're driving, you know, in some cases, $700 a night. And that's coming from the Choice platform. So this whole question, which I believe we crested this probably five, six years ago, can Choice deliver the upscale customer? We've proven that in a significant way in both the growth we're seeing in RevPAR in our upscale brands, And also the new growth, the new developers who are building Cambria today. Cambria is having one of its best years ever with regard to new contracts sold. On top of that, by adding another significant amount of upscale rooms, which brings that upscale guest, brings that corporate account that stays in upscale hotels in. The Radisson acquisition really cements our position in that upscale segment. So when I look at the type of rate we're driving in Cambria, when I look at Cambria's outperformance versus the upscale select service segment that we talked about in our remarks, you know, that's an achievement that the company surpassed several years ago. And the Radisson acquisition, as we look at what we're doing going forward, it's really going to accelerate that presence and that momentum that we have in the upscale segment.
spk08: Yeah, David, and it's showing up in the performance figures as well. When you take a look at the broader upscale segment, we were up 18.3% versus 2019 levels. Obviously, we're seeing continued improvements sequentially as well. We were only up about 10% in quarter two. When you compare that against what the industry is driving, it's over 13 percentage points higher than the industry. So, We're feeling very good about the share that we're taking in that segment. And obviously, the revenue intensity story isn't just an upscale specific segment, but it's the right product in the right locations in that core mid-scale segment as well. And we're seeing that show up at the same time.
spk05: Got it. Thank you very much.
spk11: Thank you. Our next question comes from Robin Farley from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
spk03: Great, thanks. Just circling back to looking at your organic unit growth, and I know that there was a big one-time wood spring change, but even excluding that, it looks like it was down slightly sequentially. And I know you've talked about moving to more revenue-intense segments. I wonder if you could just clarify a little bit about what's happening in the economy segment there. Are you sort of intentionally enforcing brand standards to kind of intentionally prune some of those economy units out? Or I'm just curious if it's just that it's such a good demand environment, a good travel environment, that are you finding that maybe some of the economy owners feel like they don't need any extra help from a loyalty program because the travel environment is so good and they're sort of leaving? I'm just kind of wondering which dynamic is driving that. Thanks.
spk02: Well, I think we'll go back to what we've talked about a number of times, that the economy segment itself really has been shrinking. The only growth brand, or the highest growth brand, I guess I should say, in the economy segment is WoodSpring, which is an extended stay brand, and that's on our platform. So we are focused on that consumer, and they are feeding a significant driver of our both unit growth and REVPAR in that segment. So it's less about the consumer, and it's more about economy, hotels, and in that transient sector that has actually continued to shrink. What we've seen, particularly in the post-pandemic environment or during the pandemic, is a lot of those economy hotels being repurposed for other forms of shelter. And so you're seeing hotels exit for non-hotel use. And so that's another factor in all that. I would say that what we've done in the economy sector for our brands is continue to, as you stated, to maintain the quality levels. And if owners are not going to do that, then they will churn out of our system. And so we have seen some of that as well. But our overall strategy is to be growing in segments that are growing. And the two highest growth segments today in the transient sector are upscale select service and upper mid-scale. And we've got great brands positioned and are taking advantage of those trends. And then extended stay, which is just a segment that is undergoing significant growth, and we've got four great brands that are positioned for that trend as well.
spk03: Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. And this is my follow-up question. Just looking at your expectation for the sort of early 2024, hitting that number with Radisson, is it a matter of waiting for the OTA agreements that that brand had to expire and then they moved to the choice OTA agreements? Or is it that it will take, you know, 18 months of sort of IT work for the loyalty programs to be combined? Or what's the sort of – the gating issues between the synergies you'll get six months after it versus the ones 18 months after your acquisition, which it sounds like it's going to take more 18 months to get to those.
spk02: Sure. Day one, we had to make sure we could check guests in and check them out. We had to make sure that the people that we acquired are getting paid. We are today still running two systems to make that happen. We would expect by the second half of next year to be completed with the technology integration. So once you've done that, then you're on a single reservation system, a single website, you're using a single call center provider, all of that integration. And when I look at the teams that we have working on this, and other large acquisitions, how long it's taken them to do that. We're going to do this in a remarkably short amount of time to bring the loyalty programs together and really bring that business delivery engine to the Radisson brands. What's exciting is we're making investments today in their website already that is going to drive, I would expect, some rev par increases and some proprietary contribution increases for those brands even before we get to the future state platform. And the second thing is there are things they were doing that are better than what we were doing at Choice. So this isn't all put everything on the Choice system. The combined platform going forward is going to really be inclusive of what we were doing great and what they were doing great. So I think the overall value proposition for all of our franchisees by the time we get to the second half of next year is really going to be another bump forward. And when I look at that $80 million, you know, that's the starting point. So the growth from that and the opportunity as we get into 2024 and beyond to really accelerate the REVPAR that's being driven into those hotels is a pretty exciting prospect for our company and for our shareholders.
spk03: Okay, great. Thank you.
spk11: And our next question comes from Patrick Schultz from Truist Securities. Please go ahead with your question.
spk07: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Hey, Patrick. A couple questions. Good morning. A couple questions here for you. Are you able to tell us in that full-year EBITDA guide how much is assumed for Radisson? And then are you able to give us what that – Also, that full year REVPAR guide growth would be if you were to include Radisson in that. Thank you. And then I'll have a follow-up question.
spk08: Yeah, Patrick, so the full year guide includes about $15 million associated with Radisson adjusted EBITDA. And tying it back to the previous question as well, this is why we're extremely optimistic about that $80 million plus in 2024. That $15 million is just for the stub period. So from the time we close the acquisition, mid-August through the end of the year, we expect to generate $15 million. That's really due to the great work that our integration team has done on this acquisition for us. The REVPAR would obviously be even higher. When you take a look at a more normalized REVPAR environment in 2019, the Radisson REVPAR was actually 38% higher than Choices Organic REVPAR. So just for comparability purposes, we felt that it was wise to just continue to report that on a core business basis. Now, going forward, we expect to see continued tailwinds associated with the return of business travel Obviously, you know, when you look at it on a year-over-year basis, Choice's REVPAR has continued to outpace the industry and also outpace, you know, the Radisson business. So going forward, we expect that to be a tailwind for our REVPAR as well.
spk07: Okay. Thank you. And then on the share repurchases, historically, I would say Choice has been fairly lumpy quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year with the activity and share repurchases. You know, would you see this as sort of a consistent thing going forward at consistent dollar values being spent per quarter? Or do you take it, do you think of it more as sort of a quarter to quarter activity going forward? Thank you.
spk02: Yeah, I think when we've talked about our capital allocation strategy overall, I mean, the third quarter is actually a very interesting one where we pulled all the levers. We invested in the core business. We made a strategic acquisition. We bought back a significant amount of stock. And our strategy always says we want to do that when we believe it's dislocated from the actual valuation is dislocated from what we believe internally the value of the stock to be. And we paid back, I think, double the amount of dividends this year than we did in the prior year. All the while, you know, keeping our leverage levels actually below target, as Don mentioned in his remark. So the expectation of what we will do going forward on share purchases is similar to the strategy we've executed in the past. And if it shows up as a lumpy on the timeline, that's probably a fact of, you know, kind of where the stock sits versus what we believe the future growth opportunity is for our shareholders.
spk07: Okay, thank you for the color on that. I'm all set. Thank you.
spk11: And our next question comes from Joe Greff from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.
spk09: Good morning. Good morning. Can you share with us what percentage of the rooms in your development pipeline are in RepR creative geography segments relative to your core and proforma weighted average absolute RepR performance? And what is that average premium
spk08: I can just provide high-level composition of the pipeline, Joe. I don't know if we have those numbers off the hand from a geography perspective, but when you look at the composition of the pipeline, just under 50% of that is extended stay. So, obviously, we would consider extended stay a Rep Park creative environment, much larger room counts, higher occupancies, et cetera. We've got about 10% of the pipeline is sitting in upscale. and about just under 35% of it is sitting in mid-scale. So 5% of our pipeline is in those lower rev par economy segments. From a geography perspective, you know, just taking a look at the top 25 markets, we've got about 25% of our pipeline that's sitting in those top 25 markets. Obviously, our strategy is really even within, you know, that core, like I said prior, Even within that core mid-scale, the goal here is to be the most revpar-accretive street corner location, the most revpar-accretive product. So feeling very good about it both from a macro perspective, as you can see in the composition of the pipeline, and a micro perspective at that hotel level.
spk09: Great. Thank you. And then are conversions generally revpar-accretive? In which segments are you seeing and anticipating the most conversion activity? And that's all for me. Thank you.
spk02: Yeah, I think when you look at in our upscale portfolio today, both the Ascend collection and I would expect most of the Radisons will be conversion. As you move down into upper mid-scale, you know, country and comfort, particularly the strategic tips that we do for those brands, that's where you get a lot of Red Park creative unit growth from the upper mid-scale brands. And then as Dom said, and this isn't just a brand, it's a location. So, you know, pulling a quality in into our system that is sitting in a higher rev part market than one that's leaving is also part of our strategy as well. So you're really getting it both with what we're bringing in from a segment perspective, but also from a location.
spk11: Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. And our next question comes from Dan Wozniak from Morningstar. Please go ahead with your question.
spk12: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions, too, if I may. So just on Radisson, wondering if you might maybe give a mix of the room nights, leisure versus business, and also where Radisson Red Power was in the quarter as a percent of 2018. And then just a second question along with that, going back to kind of the SG&A, you mentioned some one-time costs. I'm wondering if you might maybe give some additional information there as far as, like, you mentioned one-time costs on Radisson and the bad debt reversal, if maybe some quantification could be provided with that. And that's it for me.
spk02: Thanks. Yeah, sure, Dan. So the Radisson Brands system was 60% leisure, 40% business. You know, historically, choice has been 70% leisure, 30% business, so it's a nice mix on the additional business travelers that we'd be picking up.
spk08: And then when you take a look at just the RevPAR performance, obviously I mentioned, you know, RevPAR created by about 38%, you know, on an apples-to-apples basis. When you look at, you know, Pure Radisson versus 2019, the whole portfolio was up a little over 3 percentage points. versus 2019 levels. Year-to-date, it's up about two percentage points. So, again, this goes back to what we believe the revenue synergies can be on our side. When we put them on our platform, we believe that both the tailwinds that, you know, the broader, you know, that we're seeing in business travel quarter over quarter, when you're looking at just the strength of the platform, we expect to see an acceleration of that rev par growth in the future. Now, the quantification of your kind of those one-time costs or so, Convention, we talked about returning costs associated with that. That was about $800,000 for the quarter. The bad debt reversals, it was about just under $3 million, apples to apples, year over year for quarter three. And then the one-time cost, let's call it $1 to $2 million associated with T&E, some of these other one-time costs that are coming back into the business.
spk12: Okay, very helpful. Thank you.
spk11: Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one. Our next question comes from Brant Montour from JP Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.
spk06: Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. So I'm going to circle back on net unit growth and just focusing on the upscale and upper mid-scale segments, excluding Radisson, excluding the Cambria Hotel you sold, and And just on a quarter-over-quarter basis for those two segments, you know, we see a little bit of churn in the quarter, but I think I also heard you mention, Dom, that apples to apples, there was an acceleration in those higher repar intensity segments. I just want to make sure, like, if we're copying this wrong and maybe there's something else that we need to adjust to see what you cited in the early part of the Q&A. I want to make sure we can credit to that.
spk08: So, yeah, when you take a look in the exhibit, if you look at the Choice Legacy brands, the total net unit growth year over year for quarter three was about a decline of 50 basis points. Now, the primary driver of that churn was in the economy segment. When you look at roadway and Econolodge in particular, those blended, you know, shrunk by between five and five and a half percent. So, most of the churn is coming from those two segments. Obviously, we're seeing some churn in kind of the lower mid-scale, call it the lowest 25% of certain brands that we obviously continue to strategically evaluate. The good news is when you look at the churn for the entire company this year, we're still expecting our historical average of about 4%, the vast majority of which is choice-elected churn. So it's essentially us taking advantage of the window and making sure that the product is performing the way it needs to be. When you look at specifically that revenue-intense unit growth, We're up about 50 basis points. So that's inclusive of mid-scale, upper mid-scale, upscale, extended stay. And we do expect to see an acceleration, you know, from Q3 into Q4. So we're guiding to about one percentage point of year-over-year, full-year revenue-intense unit growth. And so, again, we're continuing to see some optimism in those revenue-intense segments. We think that the turn in the economy segment, the trends that you've seen in the past, will probably continue into the future. But from a revenue multiplier perspective, we feel like it's setting us up for a really nice 2023.
spk06: Okay, thanks for that clarification. And then just as a quick follow-up, the domestic royalty rate for Radisson, if you could give us that on a Radisson sort of separate basis. The reason I ask is because it seems like, you know, You only have half of a quarter in there in the third quarter, but if I'm reading between the lines in your guidance, it's lower. And so I just want to understand if for the next three or four quarters, we sort of have to lap the integration of Radisson before we start to see that domestic royalty rate grow again on a system-wide basis.
spk08: Yeah, the effective royalty rate for the Addison portfolio is certainly lower than the 5% that we see in choice. I think it's closer to about 4%. So you would expect to have to lap in order to see more apples to apples. We'll likely continue to report some of those operational metrics on a core basis just so that you have the ability to model it more effectively. And our guidance did not include – the effective royalty rate guidance that we provided for the full year is exclusively of the Radisson business unit.
spk06: Very helpful. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you.
spk11: And ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Pat Pacius for any closing remarks.
spk02: Great. Thank you, operator. Thanks everyone again for your time this morning. We wish you a really wonderful holiday season, and we will talk to you again in the new year. Have a great rest of your day.
spk11: And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
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