Choice Hotels International, Inc.

all lines are in a listen-only mode. I will now turn the conference over to Allie Summers, Investor Relations Senior Director for Choice Hotels.

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 forms 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 the reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks as part of our third quarter 2024 earnings press release, which is posted on our website at choicehotels.com under the investor relations section. This morning, Pat Patience, President and Chief Executive Officer, will speak to our first quarter operating results. while Scott Oaksmith, Chief Financial Officer, will discuss our financial performance and 2024 outlook. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be glad to answer your questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Pat.

Thank you, Allie, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us. Choice Hotels delivered yet another quarter of strong earnings results. We drove our adjusted EBITDA 14% higher, our adjusted EPS 23% higher year over year, and raised our full year adjusted net income and EPS guidance. This strong performance resulted in a raising of the midpoint of our adjusted EBITDA range by $5 million to an expected 10% year over year growth. Through the successful execution of our strategy, we've expanded the versatility of our business model, which, combined with our projected continued unit growth acceleration and our ability to drive better-than-expected RevPar performance, provides us confidence in our new growth outlook. Our global hotel pipeline of over 110,000 rooms set a record for the third quarter. an 11% increase year over year. Importantly, 99% of rooms in our global pipeline are in our more revenue-intense brands, which means that the pipeline represents a meaningful REVPAR premium compared to our existing portfolio. We also accelerated our global unit growth, both domestic and international, as we increased the velocity of moving hotels from our pipeline to open hotels, opening 75% more hotels globally in the third quarter compared to the prior year. Notably, we realized a 1.8% year-over-year net increase in global rooms across our more revenue-intense brands, including a 4% net increase for our international room portfolio. A key addition to this growth story is the performance of the Radisson Americas brands. The significant improvement in digital traffic and booking conversion rates since the integration are attracting new hotel development commitments, which in the third quarter led to a 10% year-over-year increase in the number of rooms in the pipeline across the global Radisson Americas portfolio, including a 53% increase in new construction rooms. We are also pleased to be expanding our lead in the cycle resilient extended stay segment. For five consecutive quarters, we have grown our extended stay unit size by over 10% year over year. And with over 350 extended stay hotels in the pipeline, we are on track to achieve a long-term average annual unit growth rate of 15%. Just two weeks ago, we celebrated a key milestone of 500 open domestic extended stay hotels with the opening of our sixth new construction Everhome Suites in the greater Phoenix area. The property will serve the local booming infrastructure projects and industries, providing much needed longer-term lodging options. The Everhome Suites brand continues to see strong traction with 66 domestic projects in the pipeline, including over 20 under construction. Our strategic focus on more revenue intense hotels means that the pipeline continues to be of significantly higher value than the current hotel portfolio. This higher revenue contribution is driven by a few factors. One, the hotels in our domestic pipeline represent a REVPAR premium of over 30% compared to our existing portfolio. Two, they have higher average effective royalty rates driven by our strengthened value proposition to franchisees. And three, they have on average over 40% higher room count per hotel than our current domestic system. Importantly, our best in class hotel conversion capability moves projects rapidly through the pipeline and is a key differentiator for winning new franchise agreements. In fact, of the domestic franchise agreements we executed for conversion hotels over the trailing 12 months, we opened 141 during the same period, a 17% increase over the same period of the prior year. As of the end of September, We grew our domestic rooms pipeline for conversion hotels by 68% year over year. And we expect our hotel conversion core competency to continue to be a key growth driver throughout the remainder of this year. Turning to REVPAR. Our domestic REVPAR in the third quarter was ahead of our prior expectations. In addition to the continued positive trends in leisure travel, We are seeing renewed strength in our corporate transient business travel, particularly in the transportation and government verticals. And we are now driving an acceleration in the growth in group travel year over year, both of which are further signs of the normalization of travel patterns we discussed on our prior call. As a result of the incremental demand we are delivering to our hotels and exceeding our third quarter and October expectations, we are raising our outlook for the full year, and we now anticipate returning to positive REVPAR growth in the fourth quarter. I'd like to turn now to our international business, where we expanded our rooms portfolio by 3.8% year over year, highlighted by a threefold increase in openings. and with a pipeline that has increased by over 20% compared to the prior year, we continue to see a significant opportunity to further gain international market share in the coming years. In our key strategic region of EMEA, we delivered a 9% increase in REVPAR performance year over year, and we are attracting strong franchisee interest. Our EMEA team just recently executed our first direct franchising agreement in Spain, where we are adding over 700 rooms to our portfolio, with most to be onboarded by year end. And in France, we've already onboarded approximately 2,000 rooms through our recently awarded direct franchising agreement with Zenitude Residential Hotels. Strengthening the value proposition we provide to our franchise owners by investing in our best-in-class franchisee success system continues to fuel our success. The state-of-the-art tools we provide for our franchisees to run their businesses efficiently help them maximize their profitability. For example, last month we began deploying a mobile-friendly, one-stop platform for our franchisees to successfully manage all of their properties from wherever they are and, in turn, help further reduce their operating costs. Relentlessly enhancing the value we bring to our owners is among the reasons why our existing owners choose to expand their hotel portfolio with Choice Hotels and contributes to our industry-leading voluntary franchisee retention rate. Our franchisees are deeply connected with their local communities, and we have always been at the forefront of relief efforts when these communities are impacted by natural disasters. I want to express our concern for everyone affected by the recent hurricanes, and I'm proud that the Choice Hotels family once again came together to support our owners and guests in the recovery efforts. We have partnered with FEMA and are working closely with franchisees in impacted areas to help them accommodate emergency workers, repair crews, and displaced families. We were also the first lodging company to launch a matching campaign for our rewards members to donate their points to our signature partner, the American Red Cross. Turning now to our customer base, at quarter end, we further expanded our rewards program, Choice Privileges, to 68 million members, an 8% increase compared to the prior year. This growth is the direct result of us creating a more compelling program, including adding exciting new experiences, such as music and sporting event redemption options, and adding new aspirational hotels. Our 68 million rewards members now have access to over 1,000 upscale, upper upscale, and luxury hotels around the world. Our continued expansion into more revenue-intense segments has also resulted in us strengthening our business delivery to both the group and business transient segments. In the third quarter, we drove an over 5% year-over-year increase in revenues from group accounts driven by our strength with the Smurf business. At the same time, we increased our business transient revenue, supported by our strengthened upper mid-scale portfolio, where revenues were up by more than 9% year over year in the third quarter. I'm also proud that we were recently named to Time Magazine's World's Best Companies list of 2024. This achievement is a testament to our strong company culture, where we prioritize our people, drive innovation, and seek to deliver long-term value for all of our stakeholders. In closing, the positive momentum we've created, along with our proactive strategic investments and more versatile model, have meaningfully enhanced our company's growth profile. We believe we've positioned Choice to deliver sustained earnings growth and created long-term value even in the current domestic REBPAR environment. We continue to generate attractive free cash flow annually, and our priority use of this capital is to reinvest in our organic growth, particularly in initiatives tied directly to driving the revenue-intense growth of our brand portfolio while returning excess cash to shareholders. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer. Scott?