Chatham Lodging Trust

And welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust second quarter 2024 financial 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. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Chris Daly. President of DG Public Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Brock. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust Second Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. Please note that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements as defined by federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, as described in our most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings. All information in this call is as of August 2, 2024, unless otherwise noted. and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to conform the statements to actual results or changes in the company's expectations. You can find copies of our SEC filings and earnings release, which contain reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures referenced on this call, on our website at chathamlodgingtrust.com. Now, to provide you with some insight into Chatham's 2024 second quarter results, allow me to introduce Jeff Fisher, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Craven, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Jeremy Wagner, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Let me turn the session over to Jeff Fisher. Jeff?

Thanks, Chris. And I certainly appreciate everyone joining us this Friday morning for our call. I understand our time slot does conflict with one of our other peer lodging reads. So for anyone who ends up listening to our replay, if you have any questions or follow-up items, of course, feel free to call me. Dennis or Jeremy. Before I get into our strong quarterly results, I want to provide an update on some key corporate initiatives that we have been undertaking. First, we've been quite active solidifying our balance sheet of maturing debt. In just the past three months, we've repaid approximately $280 million of maturing debt. And as we sit here today, we've only got $30 million of maturing debt over the next year. We have no liquidity issues whatsoever, to be clear. We patiently addressed this large wall of maturities through the issuance of debt, asset sales, and free cash flow. Additionally, through the refinancing, we've added exposure to floating rate debt, and with rates expected to decline, we will be able to grow FFO. In fact, based on current borrowings outstanding, our FFO increases $2.6 million, or 5 cents per share, for every 100 basis points decline in SOFR. With interest rates expected to decline as growth opportunities arise, we'll then be able to lock in longer-term borrowings at more historically attractive rates. Second, as we disclosed last quarter, we're opportunistically marketing a handful of hotels for sale. We still expect to realize somewhere between $40 million and $80 million of proceeds from the sale of a portion of them or all of them. Not sure if any of the deals will close in the third quarter, but we are pleased with the progress made to date. We're also excited to announce earlier this quarter that for the first time in two years, we acquired a hotel, the brand new 148 room home, two suites by Hilton Phoenix downtown for $43.3 million or approximately 293,000 per room. We are really excited about the hotel. It sits in the heart of downtown Phoenix, strategically located across the street from the footprint center, which of course is home to the NBA Phoenix Suns and the WNBA Phoenix Mercury, a block away from Chase Field, which is home to the Arizona Diamondbacks, and mere blocks from the Phoenix Convention Center. Those three venues alone bring 5 million annual attendees to downtown Phoenix. Additionally, downtown Phoenix is a vibrant, growing 1.7 square miles of that drives incredibly diverse demand for hotels into its urban core. In addition to the Footprint Center and Chase Field and the Convention Center, downtown includes 11.5 million square feet of office space and a 28-acre bioscience core, which is currently comprised of 1.6 million square feet of space occupied downtown. with plans, because it is growing rapidly, to essentially double that space in coming years. Also, there's numerous museums, theaters, and many wedding venues and other event facilities that immediately surround this hotel. We're in a great location. Switching gears back to our second quarter operating results, it was a successful quarter by almost every metric for us, with RevPar, other operating profit, and operating margins coming in at the top of our guidance range. RevPar growth was a strong 4% in the quarter, and that's despite a sluggish June due to the timing of the Juneteenth holiday. Our second quarter RevPar of $151 exceeded 2019 second quarter RevPar the first time since the pandemic. And if you pull out the five tech-driven hotels, REVPAR for us is up over 10% compared to 2019 levels. As we've said, business travel continues its steady growth across the country, and that certainly was proven out this quarter for us. Occupancy was up every day over last year, and by that I mean average second quarter 2024 Sunday occupancy was higher than 2023. Again, each day of the week was higher. Additionally, our highest occupancy day of the week is now a midweek, back to more of a normal pattern, a midweek Tuesday night. Our occupancy for the key weekday business travel days was 85% on Monday, 88% on Tuesday, 84% on Wednesday, and 83% on Thursday. Sunday is now our lowest occupancy night again, but it was still running 76%. Second quarter occupancy at our tech hotels was 78%, only 300 basis points off 2019 levels, and that gap compressed 100 basis points from the first quarter. Importantly, occupancy in our competitive set at these same hotels was up 8% to approximately 70% in the quarter, underpinning stronger fundamentals occurring in those markets, which we've always said is necessary for us to drive ADR growth in our hotels. Our second quarter REVPAR gains were broad-based across most of our largest markets, another encouraging sign, with our tech-focused hotels in Silicon Valley and Bellevue leading the charge with a REVPAR gain of 10 percent and a quarter. Tech companies are doing some intern programs this year, We expect to derive about $500,000 of intern-related revenue this year, not at the level as pre-pandemic or 2022, but with the intern programs active, the market is compressing, as evidenced by the continued growth in RevPAR. Market demand is starting to feel like it did before the pandemic in the Valley. Bellevue produced the strongest growth for us, with RevPAR up 14% over last year and now sits less than 6% below 2019 levels. Special corporate production there was up 27%. And all the companies that we're all familiar with, like Amazon, Microsoft, TikTok, et cetera, have been putting business in the hotels. Additionally, we've got a nice group of eBay interns at the hotel this summer. Bellevue produced rev par gains of 13% in the quarter, driven by top account production from the likes of Google, Broadcom, and SureFox. Second quarter rev par of $183 is starting to get closer to 2019 levels, roughly 18% short of that number. Rev par at our two Sunnyvale hotels gained 8% in the quarter, and this market, too, is showing good underlying fundamentals with occupancy of 77% for our two large hotels there, with the competitive set occupancy at 67%. So still room for growth in the set in Silicon Valley and certainly room for growth, I mean, in Sunnyvale for those two big hotels. And the normal accounts in the area are producing good midweek corporate demand. Sunnyvale REVPAR of $144 is still, however, 28% below 2019 levels. So that is, you know, the market that suffered the most from the pandemic and has, you know, the delayed return to office policies, et cetera, certainly has cut the REVPAR, but it shows the kind of growth that we're having and good prospects going forward. in Sunnyvale for us. San Mateo REVPAR growth was 4% in the quarter and less than 6% shy of 2019 levels, so gaining back strong there as well. Operationally, GOP margins of 46% finished at the top of our guidance range. And I will add, we absorbed approximately $700,000 of one-time non-recurring expenses that brought down our margins by 85 basis points. So just to finish up here before I turn it over to Dennis in conclusion, we're essentially in great financial shape, having successfully recast the balance sheet and refinanced all that debt. I think we still have the most internal growth upside of other lodging REITs. considering the tech hotels and the double-digit rev par gains we're experiencing there, together with very little new supply coming in our markets. We're positioned to benefit from declining interest rates because now we've reset the debt, as I said, with floating rate debt for the most part and do have the capacity and flexibility to acquire hotels if they can be accretive to our FFO and cash flow. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Dennis.

Thanks, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. June RevPAR growth of 1% was impacted by the timing of the Juneteenth holiday. RevPAR for that week was down 2% for the industry and was down 5% for our portfolio. Our July RevPAR growth of approximately 1% also saw us get hit by travel the week following the holiday, where industry RevPAR growth was off 5%, while we were down 8%. Generally speaking, because of our reliance on the business traveler, especially given that our guests average a longer length of stay, holiday weeks generally adversely impact our performance relative to the industry. Having said that, we've still outperformed the industry meaningfully in 2024. Some additional RevPAR statistics from the quarter, markets representing over half of our trailing 12-month EBITDA generated RevPar growth between 5% and 10%, proving again some encouraging business travel demand underpinnings. Our second quarter RevPar was not impacted by any renovations, whereas we had three hotels under renovation in the first quarter. And as we look forward, we'll have one hotel under renovation for most of the third quarter, being our courtyard Addison, Texas. And then we'll start the renovation of our Spring Hill Suites Savannah in September. Weekday occupancy was the highest since 2019, and RevPAR in our seven predominantly leisure hotels, which comprises approximately 20% of our second quarter room revenue, saw RevPAR decline 2% in the quarter. Other than our residents in Fort Lauderdale, the other six hotels had RevPAR gains or declines ranging from down 5% to up 5%. Our Fort Lauderdale residents in RevPAR was off 13% in the quarter. Sunday to Thursday weekday occupancy was 81% in the quarter, with Monday to Thursday and then Friday to Sunday occupancy of 86%. All metrics over 2023 levels. Both weekday and weekend ADRs were $183 in the quarter. Our June ADR of $191 matches Our June-July 2022 portfolio ADR of 191, which are the highest since 2019. And our June weekday ADR of 191 was, in fact, the highest monthly weekday ADR since 2019 as well. June RevPAR of $157 matches the third highest monthly RevPAR since 2019. July RevPAR was up 8% in Silicon Valley and 6% across our five tech-driven hotels. Our top five REF PAR hotels were led by the residents in Washington, D.C., with REF PAR of $235, up 11% over last year, followed by our residents in San Diego Gaslamp at $209, up 10%, followed by our Hampton Inn, Portland, Maine, with REF PAR of $202, also up 5%, then followed by our residents in White Plains with REF PAR of $197, again, up 11%, and then our Hilton Garden and Marina Del Rey with rev par of $194. We continue to monitor deplanements into San Francisco and Seattle, two major gateway airports that do, again, provide some correlation to hotel demand, especially in our tech hotels. San Francisco's airport saw international passenger traffic surpass 2019 levels in April and May, and total passenger traffic is only off 10% versus 2019 levels. the lowest April and May variants since 2019. Versus last year, April and May passenger traffic is up 3% at SFO. At SeaTac, April and May total passenger traffic is up 3% over last year, and importantly, international deployments are up approximately 15% for both of those months. Most of that inbound travel is generally coming from the Asia region. As a reminder, Amazon opened a portion of the of the Sonic Building in Bellevue, which welcomed more than 1,000 employees and intends to double its Bellevue workforce from 10,000 to 20,000 employees over the next several years. TikTok continues to expand its office presence in the Bellevue market as well. At our 38 comparable hotels, hotel EBITDA margins were down 230 basis points in the quarter. We are, as always, focused on managing our operating expenses, quite difficult over the last five or so years, having absorbed significant inflation across all expense categories, including labor and benefits. Key expenses adversely impacting our margins in the quarter, payroll-related expenses, and I want to emphasize not necessarily wages, 130 basis points. Complimentary breakfast was up 21% and hit margins by approximately 30 basis points. And then insurance was up almost 20%, and again, hitting margins by about 20 bps. The 130 basis point impact from payroll-related expenses includes some one-time items that adversely impacted our margins. And if you actually look at just pure labor costs, our average hourly wages are only up 1% from December, and on a CPOR basis, wages were up only 0.1% versus the 2023 second quarter, essentially flat as our productivity has improved. Even more encouraging, our room's labor costs on a CPR basis were actually down 1% year over year. Our headcount is up about 1% from the last quarter, but still remains 19% below pre-pandemic levels. On the positive side, and this is something completely in our control, we continue to push our other operating revenue and profits across all of our hotels, with special emphasis on parking and our retail market revenue. During the second quarter, our other operating department profits accelerated 16 percent or $0.4 million, again, basically adding a penny of FFO per share to our results. We're on track to add approximately four cents of FFO this year in our other operating department. Our top five producers of GOP in the quarter were led by our gas lamp residents in with $2.8 million. The 10th straight quarter, it's led our portfolio followed by our Embassy Suite Springfield, with government-related business gaining traction. And for the first time since 2019, three of our five tech hotels round out the top five with Bellevue, and then our two Sunnyvale residents coming in in our rankings. At our five tech-driven hotels, Hotel EBITDA and GOP are up approximately 12% over last year. And as we've previously disclosed, if we get back to 2019 EBITDA levels, we would add approximately $0.30 of FFO. With respect to capital expenditures, we spent $8 million in the quarter, $19 million year-to-date, and still expect to spend approximately $37 million in 2024. No renovations during the second quarter, and we've talked about our renovations that will be occurring in the third quarter. Last year, we did have a renovation at our courtyard, Charleston-Somerville, during the third quarter, so there will be a little bit of adverse impact on REVPAR in the quarter. And I think with that, I'll turn it over to Jeremy.

Thanks, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. Our Q2 2024 hotel EBITDA was $33.7 million, adjusted EBITDA was $31.4 million, and adjusted FFO was $0.39 per share. We were able to generate a GOP margin of 46% and hotel EBITDA margin of 39% in Q2. While our Q2 hotel EBITDA margin was down 230 basis points from our Q2 2023 margin, much of this was due to a $1.2 million workers' comp refund recognized in Q2 2023. Importantly, we are seeing a stabilization of some of our key expense line items, such as rooms, labor, and utilities. Our balance sheet remains in excellent condition, and in Q2, we took significant steps to address our near-term debt maturities. In Q2, Chatham completed a $50 million increase in its unsecured term loan and enclosed three single-asset CMBS financings that generated $60 million of proceeds. We used the proceeds from these financings together with excess cash and $120 million of borrowings under our revolving credit facility to repay $261 million of maturing CMBS and acquire the home to Phoenix for $43.3 million in Q2. In July, we borrowed an additional $15 million under our credit facility and used the proceeds to repay an $18.8 million mortgage loan, which was our last piece of debt maturing in July. As of today, we have only $30 million of debt maturing over the next 12 months and have $125 million of availability under our revolving credit facility. As Jeff mentioned, we are exploring several potential asset sales, and if any of these are completed, the proceeds would likely be used to repay credit facility borrowings in the near term, and reinvested into hotel investments in the medium to longer term. As of June 30th, Chatham's net debt to LTM EBITDA was 4.3 times, which is significantly below our pre-pandemic leverage, which was generally in the 5.5 to 6 times area, despite the fact that EBITDA has not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In Q3 2024, we expect REVPAR growth of 0% to 2.5%, adjusted EBITDA of $28.2 to $30.6 million, adjusted FFO per share of $0.31 to $0.36. Our Q3 cash interest expense guidance of $8 million reflects the financings completed in Q2 and the incremental debt associated with the acquisition of the Home 2 Phoenix. Our results over the last few quarters have included a material amount of interest income given the large cash balances that we held during these periods. Now that we have used our excess cash to address debt maturities, we expect interest income to be essentially zero for the balance of the year. This concludes my portion of the call. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate 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 today comes from Ari Klein of BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, and good morning. Can you elaborate maybe a little bit on the trends you've been seeing in recent weeks? It seems like the comparisons are relatively easy in tech markets, in particular in the third quarter market. What are you seeing from a leisure standpoint, I guess, and how much is that weighing on the third quarter outlook?

Hey, Ari. I mean, listen, I think, you know, we disclosed what our leisure hotel performance was in the second quarter, which was down 2%. You know, we don't expect that to move a whole lot from there, you know, if it goes from down 2% to down 3% or something. But, you know, that's essentially 20% of our portfolio. I think you see a little bit there – Obviously, the week after the July 4th holiday, I think, caught a lot of people by surprise, you know, with the industry off 5% in REVPAR for a Thursday holiday, and it was really the week after that that really hit the industry. So, you know, that alone brings down, you know, July REVPAR. For us, we were off 8%, you know, by about a point or so. So, you know, I think not a ton of difference, I think, between, you know, what we had pre you know, what we had expected for the third quarter versus our zero to two and a half percent range. But, you know, I think it's just a combination of a couple of those things, really. I think we do expect as we kind of get out of the summer and into, you know, some of the heavier business travel reliant months that, you know, we should and I think expect to be able to hopefully outperform a little bit.

Thanks for that. And I guess from a rev park cadence for the second half of the year, would you expect fourth quarter to be softer than the third quarter? And I know you're not yet providing guidance, but just from a directional standpoint.

I mean, listen, generally October is a pretty strong BT month, especially when you're looking at our tech hotels as you get towards the end of the year. I think for now I'd say we, you know, our viewpoint is the range is going to be similar to our third quarter. We have, you know, Yeah, I think it'll be similar.

All right, thanks for that. And then maybe on the home to Phoenix acquisition, are you seeing other similar types of opportunities emerge that you're looking to transact on? And then from a disposition standpoint, you highlighted $40 to $80 million in potential sales. Curious what types of assets or markets you're looking to sell in and just the level of interest you're seeing on those. Thank you.

Thanks, Ari. It's Jeff. I'll take that question. On the acquisition side, I've kind of, I think on the last call, called Phoenix a needle in the haystack. Not a lot of deals like that, being brand new, being in a market that we really wanted some exposure to, and being the right brand for us, which is home to kind of our second favorite brand to residence in for the most part. and all extended stay as we continue to increase that percentage of our room count. So we're pretty excited about the deal. Look, I think, and we still expect that there'll be a little more deal flow as the year progresses, and we are talking to a few of our friends that actually do have some maturities for the remainder of this year, and I think most either special servicers or lenders are extremely patient with their borrower. But in an effort to recycle capital, if nothing else, not necessarily facing foreclosure per se, there could be a few opportunities out there as the year goes on. But we'll be real careful about what we do. We understand you know, our share price, our multiple, and what we need to be accretive or non-accretive. So, you know, I wouldn't expect to see too much on that front. And then on the disposition side, it's just, again, characterized by some lower-rev park hotels for us that we don't see a lot of upside in the market. And a common denominator would be that they're facing a renovation of a normal cycle renovation in either 2025, you know, or 2026. And, you know, we see that money as probably kind of a no ROI investment. So looking to see if we can recycle that capital into something that's newer and more attractive with a lot more upside.

Thanks. Appreciate all the color.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Tyler Batori of Oppenheimer and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. This is Jonathan on for Tyler. Thanks for taking our question. First one from me, maybe just to expand on that demand commentary, which so far sounds healthy. Is that a fair characterization of how you're seeing things? And is there anything out there that maybe gives you pause from a demand perspective or concerns you?

I mean, I don't think that, and you read the journal today, for example, all of a sudden the R word, the nasty old R word popped up for the first time in a while, whether it's a soft landing or otherwise. I don't think there's anything at this point for us to be nervous about in terms of a real economic slowdown and or demand slowdown because We read you in the prepared remarks the occupancy levels, I mean, pretty strong in the 80s. I think everybody's challenge has been the ability to get an ADR increase commensurate, perhaps, with where they thought they might go, and the leisure pullback, depending upon what company you are and what level of exposure you have. We got six hotels here. you know, really only that expose us to that. So we feel pretty insulated. And that's not a matter of consumers necessarily buttoning up their pocketbooks and saying, I'm not doing anything or going anywhere. It's just a pullback from obviously the COVID revenge travel and otherwise, as they used to call it. So I think you're into a normalization phase more than anything else here.

Okay, very helpful. Thank you for that commentary, Jeff. Maybe switching gears, the margin came in stronger than we were expecting and above the guidance range by about 150 basis points, if I'm doing my math correctly. Can you talk about the delta there between the quarter and your original expectations and what drove that outperformance?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. One, I think ultimately our property taxes were a little bit better than we thought for the quarter. But, you know, as We, you know, one of the main things was, especially on the rooms labor side, you know, are essentially on a CPR basis, basically flat year over year. And, you know, I think that's really the main difference. A little bit on the property tax side, but primarily some excellent, you know, productivity on rooms labor.

Okay. Very helpful, Tyler. And last one from me, if I could. Jeff, on the hotel sales, any early feedback? in terms of the transaction market right now and maybe how it compares to your original expectations when you went out with those assets, what you're hearing in terms of bid-ask rates or any other high-level commentary I think would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, I think we're going to get on a couple of hotels pretty close to where we had targeted the range towards the higher end of the range, let's say. So I'm pretty pleased about that. I mean, there are these one-off buyers out there that are smaller regional players that will stretch a little bit to get an asset and to grow, notwithstanding the overall environment and or the way public companies may look at the environment so far as evaluating whether they should buy a deal or not. So So I think there are some opportunities for us to recycle, continue to recycle some capital the way we've been doing just, you know, periodically over the last few years for this year.

Very helpful. I appreciate all the color. That's all for me.

Thanks for the questions.

There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Well, I appreciate everybody being on the call this morning, and we certainly look forward to continuing to put up some good numbers here and getting some of these dispositions done, which only further solidifies our already strong balance sheet and puts us in a great position to take advantage, perhaps, of some opportunities on the acquisition side down the road. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.