Diamondrock Hospitality Company

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Diamond Rock Hospitality Company's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentations, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star 11 on your telephone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Brianne Quinn, Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Diamond Rock Hospitality. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Valerie. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Diamond Rock's second quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. Before we get started, let me remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical fact and are considered to be forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in our comments today. In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Mark Brugger, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you for joining us today for Dimerock's Second Quarter Earnings Call. Global travel demand remains strong. TSA throughput in the quarter reached 99% of 2019 levels, and hotel stays in the United States this year are expected to surpass the annual pandemic record of 1.3 billion roommates. Dimerock has been a leader in the recovery, and later we'll discuss why we are well-positioned to hold and expand our lead sector in the years to come. Against the favorable industry backdrop, however, the slowing macroeconomic environment is weighing on the pace of recovery of business travel, and the redistribution of leisure travel from the return of competition from cruise lines and international destinations is impacting domestic leisure-oriented properties. In our view, some of these adjustments are just momentary events, but they were a headwind in the second quarter and will remain a headwind until later this year. However, we are seeing an emerging new baseline of travel demand.

that is more weighted towards leisure travel than in the past.

And industry growth will build upon this foundation going forward after firming up its new normal in 2023. Damaroc's competitive advantage remains the high quality portfolio of hotels and resorts that we have curated to deeply resonate with the desires of today's travelers. Measured by full year revenue, our portfolio is approximately 60% urban, and 40% resort. The 20 urban hotels were tailored to be the hotel of choice for the business group and leisure travelers in their respective cities. The 16 irreplaceable experiential resorts are each in special destinations, and in many of these markets, Damarac has been the first mover among the hotel reads. Perhaps our portfolio's most distinguishing feature is that almost 95% of our hotels are unencumbered by long-term management contracts, which gives us greater control over the operations at the properties and a premium valuation upon sale.

All of these portfolio advantages enable Dime Rock to deliver modestly positive revenue growth to achieve all-time record revenues in the second quarter.

Our hotels outperform their competitive sets

with red part penetration 112%, which represents a gain of 290 basis points from 2019. Overall, total revenues in the second quarter were $289 million, or nearly 1% ahead of 2022. Hotel adjusted in the second quarter was $93.6 million, which was 3.2 million ahead of 2019. Results were held back by the one-time impact of disruption stemming from upgrades at the Salt Lake City Marriott and the former Hilton Boston, combined with a small electrical fire that closed the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square for one week during the quarter. Okay, let's look a little closer at the trends we saw. At our urban hotels, Year-over-year REPAR was strong, up 7.9%, and the second quarter marked the first time this cycle that quarterly REPAR for our urban hotels exceeded 2019. The group segment at the urban hotels performed well, powering solid results at our two largest urban hotels, the Chicago Marriott, which increased year-over-year REPAR 22.8%, and the Boston Westin, which increased year over year rep are by 11.7%. In total, portfolio group room nights increased 4.6% as compared to the second quarter of 2022. We are benefiting from having well maintained hotels and a favorable geographic footprint. But importantly, there's even more opportunity after this year. Second quarter group room nights were still 11.1% behind 2019, and we project that there remain 67,000 group room nights of opportunity after 2023 to just hit prior peak. We want to emphasize that we are very encouraged by the 2024 group bookings for our hotels. 2024 group revenues on the books is up almost 28% led by strong convention calendars in many of our most important urban markets. Business transient was more mixed in the second quarter, but demand varied significantly by market. There was good BT strength in cities like New York, but continued weak demand in places like San Francisco. Midweek business transient occupancy at our urban properties increased, 170 basis points in the second quarter versus the comparable period last year. Our trio of select service hotels in Manhattan were stars in the second quarter, as strong business transient demand pushed RepR above 2022 and 8.4% over 2019, even with the impact of the one-week closure at our Hilton Garden Inn. However, we want to point out that BT comparisons became more difficult for the industry in the second quarter. So the rate of improvement appears to be moderating a bit for BT. Longer term, we believe in expanding economy will allow business transient demand to eventually recover to the 2019 peak, but it will require a few more years to get there on a nominal basis. For our resort portfolio, Second quarter red bar was up nearly 32% over 2019, but down 13% compared to last year. While leisure travel for Americans is likely to hit a record this year, unfettered access to international destinations and cruise lines in a post-pandemic world is redistributing some of that demand. As evidence of that trend, The number of Americans traveling outbound from the US to international destinations is projected to be up nearly 20% over last summer, and cruise lines are seeing big year-over-year bookings. We began experiencing the impact of this redistribution late last year, and we expect leisure patterns to approach their new normal comparisons later this year. we are already seeing signs this summer of stabilization at our resorts in Sonoma, Sausalito, and Vail. In fact, the booked Rep Heart or Vail Resort for this coming December is up 24% versus the same time last year. And while the impact from this year's redistribution of leisure is leading to some near-term pullback, destination resorts remain a clear winner since the start of the pandemic. and we remain confident that resorts will enjoy the strongest new normal secular travel patterns in lodging due to a number of powerful factors. Let me touch on a few of those. One, hybrid work is a game changer. There have been 2.7 billion days of locational flexibility created post-pandemic. That's more than two times the number of annual hotel stays in the entire US. and this locational flexibility will disproportionately benefit leisure properties. Two, people continue to value experiences more than things, partially powered by the phenomenon of social media sharing. Three, demographic changes are powering leisure with the wave of increasing travel by millennials and baby boomers. By the end of the next decade, there will be nearly 40 million more people either in active retirement or starting a family than there was a decade ago.

The wanderlust of boomers is often underestimated.

And four, one of the most powerful reasons behind our conviction in the bright future for resorts is that there is a fundamental supply imbalance with the limited number of resorts in the US. And this imbalance will persist because of the often insurmountable barriers to build new products in most resort markets. Diamond Rock was early to recognize and exploit the long-term outperformance trend in resorts by its early allocation to the segment. In just the second quarter alone, our resorts had REBPAR increase 32% over 2019 and hotel-adjusted EBITDA up 47%. That's a lot of NAV growth. Turning to internal growth, we believe that Dimerock has a competitive advantage from the large number of impactful ROI opportunities within the portfolio. These projects will continue to drive cash flow and increase NAV. In the last 24 months alone, we have completed the conversion and up-branding of the Heist veil to a luxury collection, the Hotel Clio Denver to a luxury collection, the Sheraton Key West to a Margaritaville, and the Lodge at Sonoma to an autographed collection. Those four hotels alone generated a collective rep art increase of 33.1% over 2019 in the second quarter, with hotel adjusted EBITDA up 65.3%. And this is just a start. For example, Just a few days ago, we announced the successful conversion of the DAGNY in Boston, which marks our 14th independent hotel. The DAGNY is projected to grow EBITDA by $3 million next year and ultimately double this year's EBITDA with stabilized EBITDA approaching $17 million. Additionally, we are actively underway with more ROI repositionings. such as the Hilton Burlington to a lifestyle resort to be named the Hotel Champlain, a Curio Collection hotel, to be completed early next year, and the Bourbon Orleans repositioning to a premium urban lifestyle resort in the French Quarter of New Orleans to be completed well before the Super Bowl and Margarita in early 2025. Behind these, Dimerac has a large pipeline of opportunities. There is a repositioning of the orchards in Sedona. There is the potential expansion opportunity of Lake Austin Spa Resort, and there is the ability to add almost 20% more keys at the Landing Resort in Lake Tahoe. These are just a few examples of the many projects to come, so stay tuned. In total, since 2021, we have completed or will soon complete $58 million of ROI repositions at 16 of our 36 properties. The benefit of these projects often play out for several years, so we expect to continue to reap market share gains and increase profits from these efforts for some time to come. That's a good transition to give you an update on the acquisition market. We have been working diligently to find more of the transactions that have worked so well for us. Owner-operated experiential hotels and unique destinations. We've been focusing on these destination markets for the better part of a decade and have a first mover advantage. We also have a deep well of understanding about unlocking value at these types of properties, which puts us in a great position to create value when we can pry these type of properties loose. As we said last call, any deal we would do this year would have to be something we really love. Well, we found one small deal that fits the bill. the Chico Hot Springs Resort in Paradise Valley, Montana. This independent resort has been owner-operated for a century. This is a resort with a deep history, a fiercely loyal following, and is a treasured part of the local Montana community, which we are very respectful of preserving. We are buying the resort at an 8.1% NOI cap rate, and we projected to stabilize it north of a 10% NOI yield, as it benefits from our best practices and a modern revenue management system. The prior owner-operator typically set rates just once per season, did not adjust rates based on demand, and regularly accepted reservations two to three years in advance at current rates. Most of the reservations were still made over the phone because there was no GDS system or modern booking tools in place. Encouragingly, year-to-date through the end of the second quarter, REVPAR has increased 8.7%. In addition to the benefits related to booking practices, there are also a number of opportunities to add value with various enhancement projects on the 153-acre hotel site. Chico is a special place and a special opportunity and is representative of the type of investments we seek out. With that, let me turn it over to Jeff.

Thanks, Mark. I apologize for our operators' technical difficulties earlier.

I understand there might be some call quality issues that we're working to resolve. As I mentioned in our last earnings call, Q2 is set to be a challenging quarter given difficult comparisons on both revenue and expense. I want to start by breaking down the year-over-year changes to revenue in EBITDA to give you a little more insight into the portfolio and help with comparability to peers. All of the statistics I will discuss are on a comparable basis. Portfolio REVPAR increased 0.5% and total revenue increased 0.9% in the quarter. This breaks down to a 7.1% increase in total revenue for our urban hotels and an 8.3% decrease for our resort portfolio. Our urban hotels were nearly flat to 2019, down just 0.7%, but our resorts were a robust 33% higher. Broadly speaking, Florida continues to exhibit the same year-over-year trend we've discussed since late last year. If we excluded all seven of our Florida hotels, a few of which were up year-over-year in the quarter, REVPAR for our non-Florida hotels increased 3.7%, total revenue increased 3.3%. We had a few sources of disruption and displacement during the quarter. The Hilton Garden Inn in Times Square was closed for a week in June due to a minor electrical fire originating from an MEP repair. We also experienced some disruption from the completion of the rooms upgrade at the Dagny in Boston and the Salt Lake City Marriott. Collectively, these events shaved about 50 basis points off our revenue metrics for the quarter, implying revenue growth would have been about 1.5% for the entire portfolio and closer to 4% for the non-Florida portfolio. Switching to EBITDA, hotel-adjusted EBITDA was 93.6 million at a 32.4% margin. It was 381 basis points below Q2 last year, but only 178 basis points below 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was 85.8 million. Comparisons were particularly difficult this quarter, and they were made even more challenging by two events, the disruption mentioned earlier and property tax refunds achieved last year from several appeals. Let me break down the bulk of the $10 million variance in hotel adjusted EBITDA versus last year. Disruption shaved about $1 million from EBITDA on the quarter, and the property tax refunds we received in Q2 of last year for prior periods created a $2.5 million headwind in Q2 of this year. Importantly, were it not for these two factors, we estimate our hotel adjusted EBITDA margin would be 100 basis points higher, and our adjusted EBITDA would have been a little better than $89 million or ahead of consensus. Continuing with the bridge, our insurance policies renewed on April 1st, so our Q2 results reflect a full impact of significantly higher premiums, with this expense up more than $2 million over 2022 in order. Finally, wages and benefits were up 6.4% year-over-year, or $5.1 million. These costs were partially offset by aggressive asset management initiatives that generated incremental profit from other income items, such as parking. I must commend our asset managers here at Diamond Rock and our third-party managers at the properties for their exemplary performance during what was expected to be a difficult quarter. Okay, let's transition to talk about capital allocation. We prioritize capital towards the highest IRR opportunities on a leverage-neutral basis. We constantly evaluate internal ROI projects, which generally have yields above 20%, common and preferred share repurchases, and finally, external growth opportunities. Mark already spoke to several of our ROI projects, as well as the very special deal in Montana we announced. In the quarter, we repurchased 262,000 shares at an average price of $7.67 per share for a total of $2 million. In the past 12 months, we have repurchased over 1.9 million shares, or nearly 1% of our float, for approximately $14.7 million, or $7.77 per share. Our purchase price equates to approximately a 10% capitalization rate. We are exploring dispositions, the proceeds of which can be used to fund additional repurchases, future repositionings, or external growth. Regardless of the ultimate capital allocation, we will remain opportunistic on all fronts. We remain committed to having a strong, flexible balance sheet. We have low leverage as demonstrated by our trailing net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.6 times. We have about $75 million of mortgage debt maturing in the next 18 months, a small mortgage on our courtyard midtown east in Manhattan. Our liquidity is very strong at $600 million, or 30% of our market cap, consisting of over $200 million of corporate and hotel-level cash plus a fully undrawn $400 million revolver. It remains difficult to provide guidance in a range that we feel is useful, so let me walk you through some thoughts on the balance of the year. on revenue, group demand is solid in Boston, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., but Chicago, our biggest group market, was materially stronger in the first half than we expect it will be in the second half of the year. Business transient gains are leveling off. Visibility is short, but we are hopeful we can see some pickup after Labor Day as more people return to the office. Leisure demand continues to reset to a new normal. well ahead of 2019 but a little behind 2022, and this normalization may play out the remainder of the year. Taken together, the outlook is in line with the demand we saw in the second quarter that resulted in nearly 1% revenue growth, but the back half of 2023 has a slightly more difficult revenue comparison. Between the two remaining quarters, the fourth quarter is currently poised to finish stronger than the third quarter. One final note, Renovations and repositionings are projected to negatively impact second half total revenue growth by roughly $4 million, or an additional headwind of 115 basis points per quarter on REVPAR. For the full year, that impact is expected to be $8 million, or a little over 100 basis points. Switching to expenses, cost controls remain a priority. On labor costs, our largest single expense, we are fully staffed, and we expect the wage and benefit cost increases should level off at the increases seen in Q2. Property insurance and property taxes are ultimately tied to factors like inflation, the recovery of income, market values, and replacement costs. Diamond Rock has been a leader in returning to and exceeding prior peak performance, so naturally we're among the first to see revenue and value-dependent costs moving up. I suspect our peers will eventually see the same. The cost of our property insurance is increasing $9 million on a full 12-month period beginning with our renewal on April 1st. Second quarter fully reflected this new cost, which I mentioned in my bridge earlier, was a greater than $2 million increase in the quarter. Property tax comparisons will also be a headwind in the second half of 2023. We successfully negotiated $9 million of abatements for prior periods in Chicago that we received in the second half of 2022, but these will not repeat this year. All else equal, we expect the year over year property tax and property insurance increases will impact second half hotel adjusted EBITDA margins by approximately 270 basis points compared to the second half of 2022. We do not expect tax headwinds in 2024. Finally, for full year 2023, we expect our corporate overhead to be $32.5 million, preferred dividends are just under $10 million, and debt service costs will be about $63 million. And with that, let me turn the call back to Mark.

Thanks, Jeff. I'll conclude with a few thoughts on why we remain constructive on travel generally, and Dimerock specifically, headed into 2024. For the industry, overall U.S. travel is projected to hit a new record next year with occupancy of more than 1.3 billion hotel nights. The leisure segment in the U.S. next year will have its adjustment to the new normal behind it and can resume its long-term trend line of outperformance. And U.S. industry fundamentals should benefit over the next three to five years from constrained hotel supply as high construction costs and high borrowing costs limit the viability of many new projects. For Diamond Rock, we have room to run. If our urban and resort properties just get back to prior peak occupancy, that is worth $54 million in incremental revenue. If group room nights and associated spend just get back to 2019 levels, that alone is worth $30 million in incremental revenue. ROI projects will also continue to pay off. For example, the Dagny Boston reposition this year is projected to grow profits 35% in 2024, with revenues up about $3.5 million. And importantly for Dimerock, we are excited about our group prospects for next year. Group revenue pace is up a terrific 28%. Our hotels in Boston, Chicago, San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix generate nearly 45% of our urban hotel EBITDA. Currently, these markets have 3.2 million citywide room nights on the books for 2024. This is 10% or 300,000 room nights more than in 2019. So we're obviously encouraged by a group trajectory in 2024. As you can tell, we remain positive on the future of travel. Travel is one of the most highly valued assets in our society and around the world. And we believe that Domrock is well positioned for this cycle with a high quality portfolio, a focused strategy, and ample liquidity to move opportunistically. At this time, we would like to open it up for your questions. I'd also like to- Thank you. Just if I could to summarize, I know there's been some technical difficulties, so we will 8K the transcript of this call.

Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star 11.

One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Dwayne Finningworth. Your line is open.

Dwayne, are you there? Are you there?

Hey, sorry, I didn't hear the name they called, but nice to speak with you. Sorry for the issue. No, no worries. Can you help us maybe size the year-over-year impact you'd expect from the ROI projects that are underway this year and the acquisitions that you've completed this year? What could that look like on a year-over-year contribution basis into 2024?

I'm just thinking about it, and the answer for that is I'm trying to build it up in our head. My suspicion is it's going to be a few million dollars from the acquisitions when you think about all the acquisitions that were effectively closed in this year, because we have Chico, obviously, which just happened. Technically, late last year, we had Lake Austin, if you're going back that far. And then this year, we also have some of the ROI projects that are going to come in. and I think would be another few million dollars on top of that. There will be some offsets this year, Duane. As I mentioned, DAGNY in Boston was probably about $8 million of disruption, but then next year I think you should see a good chunk of that begin to reverse.

Yeah, if I just jump in a couple pieces here. So the DAGNY and Chico are probably the easiest ones to bridge you. So we said on DAGNY is that we expect the revenues next year to be up at least $3.5 million and probably $3 million in EBITDA year over year. On Chico, which is our acquisition this year, we expect it to do north of $3 million in EBITDA in 2024. And then for the disruption, obviously the disruption from the one-week closure at Hilton Garden Inn, we expect to get 100% of that back next year. And then Salt Lake City was a rooms renovation, and we would expect that to all return in 2024 as well. The Dagny, which we gave specific numbers on, will take probably three years since its conversion from a brand to an independent. to fully ramp up to its stabilized number.

Okay, thanks. And then for my follow-up, maybe you could just give us a sense. I thought the ex-Florida portfolio performance was interesting. But as you look at the balance of the year, markets like Key West in particular, are you thinking it's just more of the same normalization, or do you see any potential path to pick up later this year, maybe fourth quarter? Thanks for taking the questions.

Dwayne, so floor is interesting. I'll let Justin jump in here too. So every asset is a little different. In Tranquility Bay, which is a marathon key, we actually saw it stabilize in July. We're encouraged by what's going on there. The pace of decline in the keys is getting better. So we're seeing it get better as the summer. It's still negative year over year. And as you may recall from our results and comments at the end of last year, we were seeing some deterioration there in the Florida Keys earliest that they'd gotten just kind of crazy high. So it was kind of first to start the readjustment, if we will, to the new normal. So we would expect it to be one of the markets that we start getting more normalized as we get to November, December of this year. Justin, do you want to have anything to add to that?

Yeah, I think it's really more the sort of normalization of the comparable year as we get to the back half of the year. As Mark mentioned, we saw the Florida Keys be one of the first assets that we had start to drop off from a year-over-year basis in the summer of last year, and some of our other leisure assets fell off sort of in the back half of the summer. So as we work through third quarter and get to fourth quarter, the comp just gets easier for us on a year-over-year comparable.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Powell of Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for the question. Business transient, you mentioned it plateauing or kind of slowing a bit, a bit different commentary than we're hearing from others. I guess outside of San Francisco, are there any other markets where you're seeing kind of that slowdown or that, I guess, moderation, or is it more of a broader comment? that you're observing?

The data we're looking at on kind of industry-wide is the rep are for business transit really focused on special corporate is down about 20% to 2019 levels. It varies. It can vary dramatically. Obviously, in New York City, we're actually above where we were in 2019. And San Francisco is tragically behind. So it varies a lot depending on the market and what's driving those individual markets. Our rate of recovery in BT was very encouraging the back half of last year and even in Q1 of this year. We're seeing it kind of moderate where it is now. There's optimism that it starts improving, you know, a relatively good jump post-Labor Day as people get back to the office and there's more business travel in the fall than the summer. So we remain hopeful the fall, but we are seeing it moderate and we want to tell you what we're seeing in real time.

Thanks. And maybe on the conversion in Boston to the independent hotel and the acquisition of the independent hotel in Montana, you've gone much more heavily independent in your kind of branding and your acquisitions in recent years. Maybe comment on why you're doing that. And are you seeing the value of some of these brands kind of decline or these more special situations in your view?

Yeah, I think the brands are still valuable and, you know, Most of our hotels still have brands on them, but we look at each hotel as its individual case, and brands are expensive. In some cases, you get a great return on the brand, and it's the appropriate thing to do. Certainly on the big group houses are the most obvious places where they add value. But some hotels, and Chico would be a great example, they are their own brand in a lot of ways, and I don't think we'd see a material uplift anywhere. in demand from the brand and the cost. So I think it's not a message that we don't think the brands are valuable. We really do. It's more a message that we try to tailor each individual asset to whether it makes sense to put a brand on it. Clearly, most of our hotels that have brand are performing significantly better than they would without a brand, both top and bottom line.

I guess maybe in Boston, I guess, what drove that particular decision?

Yeah, Boston's kind of a unique location. It's a historic building, and it's in a seven-day-a-week location. And we looked at what does not have a material group component, which is often a reason to have the brand to attract the groups. And it performs very well seven days a week. It's a great business location. It's also close to Faneuil Hall. It's a great leisure location as well. And we thought that it can perform relatively equally well as a branded hotel. with less cost associated with it. The other thing is that even if it was just equal profitability, the unencumbered nature of having that hotel probably adds 10%, 50, 100 basis points on the back end, so it probably increases the NAV of the hotel by $15 to $20 million. So those were the factors that led us to embrace this conversion. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Flores Van Dickem of Compass Point. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess maybe touch on the new acquisition a little bit more. How did you get to this acquisition? transaction. You say you've been tracking it for a couple of years. What caused the owner to sell now, and who else was bidding with you? And maybe just talk a little bit about what you see as an 8.1% yield, the right yield for this. Do you think this is the... Talk a little bit about the acquisitions environment, perhaps, as well.

Sure. So I guess there's a lot of questions in there. So let me just start with the broadest, which is the acquisition environment generally. You know, the acquisition volume is down over 70%. There aren't very many trades in the marketplace. In some ways, it's a great time to be a public company because of our cost of debt advantage. You know, we're borrowing at SOFR plus 135. Private equity is borrowing at SOFR plus 450. So, you know, there is clear advantage there. We obviously have to consider other capital allocation choices. This is kind of an interesting deal. We love Montana. We like Big Sky. We like Bozeman. We love Paradise Valley. We like things in Jackson Hole and near Yellowstone has been a high priority for us in our search for special properties. This one's an institution in Montana. It's a relatively famous small resort. We've been tracking it. The owner-operator's been the owner-operator for more than two decades. And he's looking to retire, so it was an opportune time. He's staying involved in the property, and we're going to leverage that relationship at the property and with the community. Interesting, this originally went under contract with a, I'll call it a private equity buyer, as we understand it, at $40 million about six months ago. We looked at it. We were very disappointed because that was more than we were willing to pay. And you could see how it's a really special kind of place. And that deal, for reasons we're not privy to, fell apart, and we were selected because we could pay cash, right? We didn't have any financing risk. We were the buyer of choice. I think we were not even in the top four probably in price, but we were the most certain to close that. So that gave us an enormous advantage in the process, and I think we got a tremendous value on the deal. So our plan there is to put in our professional kind of best practices, put in modern reservation systems, enhance the property. It was a constrained buyer before, so we have the ability to improve the property, and hopefully that leads to more satisfied customers that are increased demand and increased revenues of the property.

And I think you mentioned that it was on 153 acres. I mean, is there expansion opportunities here down the road?

There are, I mean, I think, you know, first we want, we've owned it for 48 hours. You know, our first, first plan is we want to make sure we understand it. Uh, there is a lot of land here. Um, and so there, there are opportunities, but you know, that's not our initial plan. Our initial plan is to make it a better version of itself. get our arms around it. And, you know, the nice thing about these kind of properties, and this is what we talk about internally, is, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can get lucky and win. And so it has a lot of those kind of value creation opportunities. But again, our initial game plan, you know, we're not promising we're going to do anything other than make it a better version of itself. And I think that alone will make this a very successful investment for Dimerock.

And maybe the last follow-up is, does that mean that, you know, Does this make you more interested in other properties in the area and sort of to get more of a clustering? Are there other properties nearby that you would like to have in Montana? And does having one stake in the grounds allow you to get more opportunities? Or does this basically say, no, we're done with Montana. Let's go to another part of the country.

Oh, remember that this whole investment is $33 million for what, you know, for a company that's got 4 billion assets. So no, it's, we're not full up on Montana. We love Montana. We love the community. We love the prospects. We like, you know, Yellowstone. We like Bozeman. We like big sky. There are plenty of other opportunities where we'd like to pursue and grow relationships. We're trying to build our reputation within that community. And hopefully that'll, uh, that'll allow us to get off market transactions. It's a relatively small community. But, you know, by being good stewards of that asset and building those relationships, we would hope that that would allow us to get more deals in that state, and we would absolutely expand our footprint there if good opportunities emerged.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Gregory Miller of Truist. Your line is open.

Thanks, Kathleen. Mark, in the prepared remarks, you spoke briefly about NEV, so I thought to ask a question about it. You know, how do you view your internal NEV today relative to a quarter ago? And in particular, if you're able to comment on the drive-through leisure assets you've acquired in the last number of years, I'd be curious to hear about that as well. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a great question. We just had a board meeting earlier this weekend. We were talking about the same issue. Yeah, I'd say that the truth is there's so few data points in the market with volumes being so low that I think anyone that's telling you a change in value is really just guessing. There seems to be a tremendous amount of money on the sidelines, several hundred billion dollars of private equity that's interested in real estate that is poised. So there's a lot of potential buyers that are sitting there. And then I think from the seller's perspective, a lot of them are sitting on the sidelines feeling like debt's going to get more efficient and cheaper six, 12 months from now, so why would I bring my assets to market? So volume's low. It's hard to know what changes value. Obviously, the fading in some of the performance of the resorts, there's going to be some valuation change there, but they still remain. I had a conversation with a private equity fund yesterday. It still remains the one of the most interesting thesis in leisure and hotel investments. I think generally people still believe it's going to be the place to be over the next five to seven years. And remember these assets, unlike buying a hotel and let's say San Francisco, these assets have great trailing cashflow, even, you know, six, 7% compared to zero and a market like San Francisco or San Jose right now. So they're still financeable. So they still become the kind of, very interesting assets. I know there was a recent asset trade in Nashville. We call that a, a totally leisure oriented, uh, asset, uh, that traded for, uh, Troy, what was the cap rate that we looked at?

Yeah, it was about six zero cap rate.

Yeah. So on, on trailing cash flows, pretty stabilized asset was a six cap. Um, you know, is it, and it's relatively independent or unencumbered, uh, leisure oriented asset in Nashville. So there's not a lot of data points out there. Um, And so I think if we told you it was 3% less, that would just be a guess. But we still think there's robust demand for these kind of assets.

You provide some data points. I appreciate that. And thanks for the commentary. For the follow-up question, I thought to ask specifically about the DAG, need a little more depth on the outlook that you provided through 2027. Could you walk us through the bridge and how you get to $17 million of EBITDA in 2027 versus $9 million this year? And how much of the underwriting is driven by operating expense reductions relative to top line gains?

Yeah, Greg, this is Jeff Donnelly. I mean, I can take you through a little bit of it. I mean, a good chunk of it that's going from this year to the next year is going to be the elimination of some of the, obviously, some of the disruption that you have from the conversion. So there's a few million dollars that, as Mark mentioned, about $3.5 million of EBITDA, I think, as we go in the next year. That's going to be a big chunk of that. And then... I think there's going to be some cost savings effectively that come with removing the overhead that comes from being a branded asset and effectively enhances profitability because we're able to bring more of that revenue down to the bottom line, being an independent versus a branded operator. And then I think the final leg of it is going to be just how we position that asset and how are we better positioned across both the leisure and business transient channels in that market that we can effectively gain share in that marketplace. I think maybe that's even more details, right? As an asset, you know, I think we're projecting $35 million of gross revenue this year. Nineteen revenues, we're at 43. So, just simply the return back to 19-peak as with a renovated rebranded asset represents a significant amount of what we're calling potential upside. So, in general, the brand costs on an asset like this, given that it's all rooms revenue-driven, between franchise fee and frequent guest program are over 10%. So our $40 million rooms revenue asset, just operating as an independent represents about $4 million of brand costs that we save. So I think that's really the bridge, the combination of return to prior peak revenues and under a more efficient cost structure, we should be able to drop to at least that at the bottom line.

That's all very helpful. Thank you very much.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Samitas Rose of Citi. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. I just wanted to ask you, you mentioned that group business in Chicago is slowing or slower in the second half. I was wondering, is that in line with what you were expecting already, or has that changed from your last update? And then I'm just wondering, on group in general, if you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of kind of composition. Is it more corporate? Is it just associations coming back that's helping the citywide calendars? Or kind of just a little more color around the tenor of group, I guess.

Sure. So, you know, in Chicago in particular, it's driven very much by the citywide layout. And the way the calendar was in 2023 is it just, it's weighted more, the more citywides were focused in the first two quarters of the year. So this is as we expected. And frankly, 2024 looks terrific in Chicago and our bookings in 2024 in Chicago are very strong. So we're excited about the prospects. So this is just seasonality and kind of what we expected from the city-wide. So a number of our markets, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, Q4, back half the year in particular, Q4 looked very strong. So we think group will finish up relatively strong for us, but still opportunity. And the cadence of versus 2019 gets progressively better. So our group versus 19, the cadence as we move through the next five months will continue to get better based on our booking patterns as well. Justin, do you have additional comments?

Yeah, I think as Mark mentioned his remarks, I know there was a little bit of noise on the line, but we think returning to pre-COVID group room night levels represents a big opportunity for us in 2024. I think as 23 has progressed, we're continuing to narrow the gap to 2019 group room nights. First half of the year, we're down about 11% to 2019. We're forecasting that gap to drop to about 4% in Q4. In fact, PACE is only off about 2% in room nights to Q4 2019. And with rate a double digit higher on a percentage basis, we think Q4 revenue is likely to be about 9% higher than 19 revenue. So we're seeing that gap to to sort of pre COVID level room night levels narrow significantly at a significantly higher rate.

And I think to your question on composition, it's mostly the traditional folks. I think there's been a little fall off on some of the tech company bookings, um, as you could imagine, but it's not a, it's not a huge part of the group business in our markets. Um, and financials pharma, um, Smurf business has been very strong. The reasons to get together. continue to be compelling in a hybrid work environment. We're seeing a lot of promotional incentive, a lot of small group meetings that need to happen as people are working hybrid. So that's probably the small groups, probably newer and more robust than it was pre-COVID. But a lot of traditional folks, you know, they're getting together for some reasons that they've always gotten together. And so it's a lot of the folks that, you know, we would normally expect to see in the composition of our groups.

Thanks. And then I just wanted to ask, I know you've answered a lot of questions on the DAGNY, but, you know, sometimes when properties fall out of a major reservation system and go independent, you know, you can just see some disruption, you know, not having that, you know, as it just get pulled out completely from the bigger brand system. And how are you, I guess, avoiding that? It sounds like you are just wondering kind of what you do pragmatically to kind of keep sort of short-term disruption to a minimum.

Yeah, I mean, we've been working hard on preparing for the August 1st date for a long time. We've had weekly revenue calls. We've had strategies. We've had web designs. Probably the most significant defensive thing we did is we took 80 rooms and we put Delta in there at a decent rate to kind of cushion the transition period this fall. So there will be some disruption, as we kind of gave you, and those are in Jeff's numbers that he provided during the prepared remarks. And I think it's, listen, the hotel looks beautiful. And we're excited to see, you know, to see what it can do on its own. Justin, you want to add anything?

Yeah, as Mark mentioned, we did a lot of prep work, just to ensure that we really didn't have any significant revenue loss during a dark period. In fact, we intentionally sold the hotel out for the first week of August to sort of ensure against that. But But we were live both on GDS and most e-channels within 24 hours. So we do have all active reservations up and actively booking. We've also done a significant amount of base building, both through the Delta contract and on the group side. So we're forecasting a drop in revenue as we continue to build brand awareness for the DAGNY. but we have over a million dollars of incremental group rooms on the books for the back half of the year versus last year in addition to the Delta contract. So August and September are both 70% sold, and we're a significantly better place than we were same time last year for the balance of the back half of the year. So we've got a great base to really preserve rate integrity as we grow brand identity.

Great. Thanks for the detail.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Darling of Green Street. Your line is open.

Thank you. Mark, in the prepared remarks, you mentioned exploring a few dispositions, perhaps in the near term. Wondering if you could elaborate on what markets, maybe what assets, and then how you're thinking about seller financing in terms of effectuating a transaction today.

Yeah, so great question. So we are committed to our resort and leisure oriented properties. We think that that is the best long-term place to be so that those will not be on the disposition list. We'll continue to pare down some of the urban exposure. I think we want to identify publicly which assets are, but there'll be smaller assets in this market that are financeable. The large loans are the ones that are very difficult. So it'll be a couple of smaller assets that are not core to the portfolio. As far as your question about seller financing, one of the reasons we're selecting smaller assets is they are financeable and don't need seller financing. We'd prefer not to do any, and so we'd rather preserve that capacity. If it involved a small piece to kind of fill the capital gap, that might be something we'd entertain, but we're not going out to the market offering seller financing.

Got it. That's helpful. And then one for Jeff, maybe. You gave a lot of good detail in terms of the different moving pieces on the expense side this year, but just curious, maybe taking a longer-term view, 24 and beyond, what do you view as sort of a reasonable run rate for overall expense growth, kind of assuming maybe a more normalized demand backdrop? Is 3% to 5% annually a decent betting line for us to think about?

probably a decent range, you know, but when you think about it, I mean, of course, it's going to relate to ultimately what sort of inflation is at the macro. I think for us, when you look at how our properties have recovered, and we've largely, you know, recovered our revenues and earnings, a lot of the factors that municipalities use to drive things like taxes, I don't expect our taxes are going to see sort of outsized increases, you know, over a long period of time. And You know, property insurance is more difficult to forecast. I'd like to believe that this past year was a year, maybe a little bit like a post-Katrina type event where you saw a big spike and then, you know, you had decreases in cost or slowing significantly thereafter. But it's hard to forecast because those rates are renegotiated every year. You know, and there might be some catch-up in the industry. I can't necessarily speak to us off the top of my head on labor costs, but I think same thing. That tends to follow inflation over time. So I think your range is reasonable. If I was a betting man, I'd probably be towards the lower to middle end of that, but that's just a guess.

All right, that's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Bellisario of RW Baird. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good evening, guys. Good evening. Just a quick first follow-up on the transaction front. Was Chico set up as a reverse 1031? Any pressing need to sell something on the back end of this one?

It was not set up as a reverse 1031.

Okay, and then just on the transaction, maybe can you give us a little bit of background on who the customer is, maybe what states people are coming from, and then any percentage, if you have it, just on number of repeat guests that come to the property?

Yeah, this is an institution. The clientele obviously changes depending on the time of year. It is remarkable because of the hot springs. how year-round this asset really is. Obviously, in the peak season when people are going to Yellowstone, this is close to an entrance to the Yellowstone, you get in the summer, you get more out of town, greater than 50%, but you get a fair amount of repeat folks. And then in the rest of the year, it is kind of the local draw. It's probably the best restaurant within 20 miles of the location, so it's got kind of a great local following from Livingston and other areas. But, you know, probably on average, it's about 50% from out in other states from all over the country and all over the U.S.

Michael, I'd add, it's a very popular hangout with locals, even just to go to the saloon and take a soak in the hot spring.

I won't ask if you guys did that, too, on your tour.

Thank you.

In your one pager that you put out the other day, you referenced a 40 plus or minus percentage point rev par delta. And what is your underwriting assume in that Chico does versus the comp set? And maybe how long does it take to get there?

Yeah, I think to sum it up, though, is the gap's going to be both on putting in the revenue system and having the revenue gains, but there's probably things we can do in productivity and best practices that we can implement on the expense side that just haven't been done there. So it's going to be on both of those. But if you think about it, we started an 8.1 NOI cap rate, and getting to a 10 is not a – we don't have to bridge very much of that gap to get there over time. So, you know, the comp set's a little bit, you know, it's pretty broad in that area because you've got to go down to Gardner and Livingston, so it's kind of a broad comp set. But you'll probably see more ability to move rate over time in the summer than the other seasons.

Helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back over to Mark Brugger for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our call, and we look forward to updating you on our earnings next quarter. Take care and have a great evening.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Diamond Rock Hospitality Company's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentations, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star 11 on your telephone. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Bryony Quinn, Senior Vice President and Treasurer of Diamond Rock Hospitality. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Valerie. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Diamond Rock's second quarter 2023 earnings call and webcast. Before we get started, let me remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical fact and are considered to be forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in our comments today. In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to Mark Brugger, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you for joining us today for Dimerock's Second Quarter Earnings Call. Global travel demand remains strong. The TSA throughput in the quarter reached 99% of 2019 levels, and hotel stays in the United States this year are expected to surpass the annual pre-pandemic record of 1.3 billion roommates. Dimerock has been a leader in the recovery and later will discuss why we are well-positioned to hold and expand our lead sector in the years to come. Against the favorable industry backdrop, however, the slowing macroeconomic environment is weighing on the pace of recovery of business travel, and the redistribution of leisure travel from the return of competition from cruise lines and international destinations is impacting domestic leisure-oriented properties. In our view, some of these adjustments are just momentary events, but they were a headwind in the second quarter and will remain a headwind until later this year. However, we are seeing an emerging new baseline of travel demand. that is more weighted towards leisure travel than in the past. And industry growth will build upon this foundation going forward after firming up its new normal in 2023. Damaroc's competitive advantage remains the high quality portfolio of hotels and resorts that we have curated to deeply resonate with the desires of today's travelers. Measured by full year revenue, our portfolio is approximately 60% urban, and 40% resort. The 20 urban hotels were tailored to be the hotel of choice for the business group and leisure travelers in their respective cities. The 16 irreplaceable experiential resorts are each in special destinations, and in many of these markets, Damarac has been the first mover among the hotel REITs. Perhaps our portfolio's most distinguishing feature is that almost 95% of our hotels are unencumbered by long-term management contracts, which gives us greater control over the operations at the properties and a premium valuation upon sale. All of these portfolio advantages enable Dime Rock to deliver modestly positive revenue growth to achieve all-time record revenues in the second quarter. Our hotels outperform their competitive sets with repar penetration 112%, which represents a gain of 290 basis points from 2019. Overall, total revenues in the second quarter were $289 million, or nearly 1% ahead of 2022. Hotel adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $93.6 million, which was 3.2 million ahead of 2019. Results were held back by the one-time impact of disruption stemming from upgrades at the Salt Lake City Marriott and the former Hilton Boston, combined with a small electrical fire that closed the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square for one week during the quarter. Okay, let's look a little closer at the trends we saw. At our urban hotels, Year-over-year REPAR was strong, up 7.9%, and the second quarter marked the first time this cycle that quarterly REPAR for our urban hotels exceeded 2019. The group segment at the urban hotels performed well, powering solid results at our two largest urban hotels, the Chicago Marriott, which increased year-over-year REPAR 22.8%, and the Boston Westin, which increased year over year rep are by 11.7%. In total, portfolio group room nights increased 4.6% as compared to the second quarter of 2022. We are benefiting from having well maintained hotels and a favorable geographic footprint. But importantly, there's even more opportunity after this year. Second quarter group room nights were still 11.1% behind 2019, and we project that there remain 67,000 group room nights of opportunity after 2023 to just hit prior peak. We want to emphasize that we are very encouraged by the 2024 group bookings for our hotels. 2024 group revenues on the books is up almost 28% led by strong convention calendars in many of our most important urban markets. Business transient was more mixed in the second quarter, but demand varied significantly by market. There was good BT strength in cities like New York, but continued weak demand in places like San Francisco. Midweek business transient occupancy at our urban properties increased 170 basis points in the second quarter versus the comparable periods last year. Our trio of select service hotels in Manhattan were stars in the second quarter, as strong business transient demand pushed RepR above 2022 and 8.4% over 2019, even with the impact of the one-week closure at our Hilton Garden Inn. However, we want to point out that BT comparisons became more difficult for the industry in the second quarter. So the rate of improvement appears to be moderating a bit for BT. Longer term, we believe in expanding economy will allow business transient demand to eventually recover to the 2019 peak, but it will require a few more years to get there on a nominal basis. For our resort portfolio, Second quarter red bar was up nearly 32% over 2019, but down 13% compared to last year. While leisure travel for Americans is likely to hit a record this year, unfettered access to international destinations and cruise lines in a post-pandemic world is redistributing some of that demand. As evidence of that trend, The number of Americans traveling outbound from the US to international destinations is projected to be up nearly 20% over last summer, and cruise lines are seeing big year-over-year bookings. We began experiencing the impact of this redistribution late last year, and we expect leisure patterns to approach their new normal comparisons later this year. we are already seeing signs this summer of stabilization at our resorts in Sonoma, Sausalito, and Vail. In fact, the booked Rep Heart or Vail Resort for this coming December is up 24% versus the same time last year. And while the impact from this year's redistribution of leisure is leading to some near-term pullback, destination resorts remain a clear winner since the start of the pandemic. and we remain confident that resorts will enjoy the strongest new normal secular travel patterns and lodging due to a number of powerful factors. Let me touch on a few of those. One, hybrid work is a game changer. There have been 2.7 billion days of locational flexibility created post-pandemic. That's more than two times the number of annual hotel stays in the entire US. and this locational flexibility will disproportionately benefit leisure properties. Two, people continue to value experiences more than things, partially powered by the phenomenon of social media sharing. Three, demographic changes are powering leisure with the wave of increasing travel by millennials and baby boomers. By the end of the next decade, there will be nearly 40 million more people either in active retirement or starting a family than there was a decade ago.

The wanderlust of boomers is often underestimated.

And four, one of the most powerful reasons behind our conviction in the bright future for resorts is that there is a fundamental supply imbalance with the limited number of resorts in the US. And this imbalance will persist because of the often insurmountable barriers to build new products in most resort markets. Diamond Rock was early to recognize and exploit the long-term outperformance trend in resorts by its early allocation to the segment. In just the second quarter alone, our resorts had REBPAR increase 32% over 2019 and hotel-adjusted EBITDA up 47%. That's a lot of NAV growth. Turning to internal growth, we believe that Dimerock has a competitive advantage from the large number of impactful ROI opportunities within the portfolio. These projects will continue to drive cash flow and increase NAV. In the last 24 months alone, we have completed the conversion and up-branding of the Heist veil to a luxury collection, the Hotel Clio Denver to a luxury collection, the Sheraton Key West to a Margaritaville, and the Lodge at Sonoma to an autographed collection. Those four hotels alone generated a collective rep art increase of 33.1% over 2019 in the second quarter, with hotel adjusted EBITDA up 65.3%. And this is just a start. For example, Just a few days ago, we announced the successful conversion of the DAGNY in Boston, which marks our 14th independent hotel. The DAGNY is projected to grow EBITDA by $3 million next year and ultimately double this year's EBITDA with stabilized EBITDA approaching $17 million. Additionally, we are actively underway with more ROI repositionings. such as the Hilton Burlington to a lifestyle resort to be named the Hotel Champlain, a Curio Collection hotel, to be completed early next year, and the Bourbon Orleans repositioning to a premium urban lifestyle resort in the French Quarter of New Orleans to be completed well before the Super Bowl and Margarita in early 2025. Behind these, Dimerac has a large pipeline of opportunities. There is a repositioning of the orchards in Sedona. There is the potential expansion opportunity of Lake Austin Spa Resort, and there is the ability to add almost 20% more keys at the Landing Resort in Lake Tahoe. These are just a few examples of the many projects to come, so stay tuned. In total, since 2021, we have completed or will soon complete $58 million of ROI repositions at 16 of our 36 properties. The benefit of these projects often play out for several years, so we expect to continue to reap market share gains and increase profits from these efforts for some time to come. That's a good transition to give you an update on the acquisition market. We have been working diligently to find more of the transactions that have worked so well for us. Owner-operated experiential hotels and unique destinations. We've been focusing on these destination markets for the better part of a decade and have a first mover advantage. We also have a deep well of understanding about unlocking value at these types of properties, which puts us in a great position to create value when we can pry these type of properties loose. As we said last call, any deal we would do this year would have to be something we really love. Well, we found one small deal that fits the bill. the Chico Hot Springs Resort in Paradise Valley, Montana. This independent resort has been owner-operated for a century. This is a resort with a deep history, a fiercely loyal following, and is a treasured part of the local Montana community, which we are very respectful of preserving. We are buying the resort at an 8.1% NOI cap rate, and we projected to stabilize it north of a 10% NOI yield, as it benefits from our best practices and a modern revenue management system. The prior owner-operator typically set rates just once per season, did not adjust rates based on demand, and regularly accepted reservations two to three years in advance at current rates. Most of the reservations were still made over the phone because there was no GDS system or modern booking tools in place. Encouragingly, year-to-date through the end of the second quarter, REVPAR has increased 8.7%. In addition to the benefits related to booking practices, there are also a number of opportunities to add value with various enhancement projects on the 153-acre hotel site. Chico is a special place and a special opportunity and is representative of the type of investments we seek out. With that, let me turn it over to Jeff.

Thanks, Mark. I apologize for our operators' technical difficulties earlier.

I understand there might be some call quality issues that we're working to resolve. As I mentioned in our last earnings call, Q2 is set to be a challenging quarter given difficult comparisons on both revenue and expense. I want to start by breaking down the year-over-year changes to revenue and EBITDA to give you a little more insight into the portfolio and help with comparability to peers. All of the statistics I will discuss are on a comparable basis. Portfolio REF PAR increased 0.5% and total revenue increased 0.9% in the quarter. This breaks down to a 7.1% increase in total revenue for our urban hotels and an 8.3% decrease for our resort portfolio. Our urban hotels were nearly flat to 2019, down just 0.7%, but our resorts were a robust 33% higher. Broadly speaking, Florida continues to exhibit the same year-over-year trend we've discussed since late last year. If we excluded all seven of our Florida hotels, a few of which were up year-over-year in the quarter, REVPAR for our non-Florida hotels increased 3.7%, total revenue increased 3.3%. We had a few sources of disruption and displacement during the quarter. The Hilton Garden Inn in Times Square was closed for a week in June due to a minor electrical fire originating from an MEP repair. We also experienced some disruption from the completion of the rooms upgrade at the Dagny in Boston and the Salt Lake City Marriott. Collectively, these events shaved about 50 basis points off our revenue metrics. For the quarter, implying revenue growth would have been about 1.5% for the entire portfolio and closer to 4% for the non-Florida portfolio. Switching to EBITDA, hotel adjusted EBITDA was 93.6 million at a 32.4% margin. It was 381 basis points below Q2 last year, but only 178 basis points below 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was 85.8 million. Comparisons were particularly difficult this quarter, and they were made even more challenging by two events, the disruption mentioned earlier and property tax refunds achieved last year from several appeals. Let me break down the bulk of the $10 million variance in hotel adjusted EBITDA versus last year. Disruption shaved about $1 million from EBITDA on the quarter, and the property tax refunds we received in Q2 of last year for prior periods created a $2.5 million headwind in Q2 of this year. Importantly, were it not for these two factors, we estimate our hotel adjusted EBITDA margin would be 100 basis points higher, and our adjusted EBITDA would have been a little better than $89 million, or ahead of consensus. Continuing with the bridge, our insurance policies renewed on April 1st, so our Q2 results reflect a full impact of significantly higher premiums, with this expense up more than $2 million over 2022 in order. Finally, wages and benefits were up 6.4% year-over-year, or $5.1 million. These costs were partially offset by aggressive asset management initiatives that generated incremental profit from other income items, such as parking. I must commend our asset managers here at Diamond Rock and our third-party managers at the properties for their exemplary performance during what was expected to be a difficult quarter. Okay, let's transition to talk about capital allocation. We prioritize capital towards the highest IRR opportunities on a leverage-neutral basis. We constantly evaluate internal ROI projects, which generally have yields above 20%, common and preferred share repurchases, and finally, external growth opportunities. Mark already spoke to several of our ROI projects, as well as the very special deal in Montana we announced. In the quarter, we repurchased 262,000 shares at an average price of $7.67 per share for a total of $2 million. In the past 12 months, we have repurchased over 1.9 million shares, or nearly 1% of our float, for approximately $14.7 million, or $7.77 per share. Our purchase price equates to approximately a 10% capitalization rate. We are exploring dispositions, the proceeds of which can be used to fund additional repurchases, future repositionings, or external growth. Regardless of the ultimate capital allocation, we will remain opportunistic on all fronts. We remain committed to having a strong, flexible balance sheet. We have low leverage as demonstrated by our trailing net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.6 times. We have about $75 million of mortgage debt maturing in the next 18 months, a small mortgage on our courtyard midtown east in Manhattan. Our liquidity is very strong at $600 million, or 30% of our market cap, consisting of over $200 million of corporate and hotel-level cash plus a fully undrawn $400 million revolver. It remains difficult to provide guidance in a range that we feel is useful, so let me walk you through some thoughts on the balance of the year. on revenue, group demand is solid in Boston, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., but Chicago, our biggest group market, was materially stronger in the first half than we expect it will be in the second half of the year. Business transient gains are leveling off. Visibility is short, but we are hopeful we can see some pickup after Labor Day as more people return to the office. Leisure demand continues to reset to a new normal. well ahead of 2019 but a little behind 2022, and this normalization may play out the remainder of the year. Taken together, the outlook is in line with the demand we saw in the second quarter that resulted in nearly 1% revenue growth, but the back half of 2023 has a slightly more difficult revenue comparison. Between the two remaining quarters, the fourth quarter is currently poised to finish stronger than the third quarter. One final note, Renovations and repositionings are projected to negatively impact second half total revenue growth by roughly $4 million, or an additional headwind of 115 basis points per quarter on REVPAR. For the full year, that impact is expected to be $8 million, or a little over 100 basis points. Switching to expenses, cost controls remain a priority. On labor costs, our largest single expense, we are fully staffed, and we expect the wage and benefit cost increases should level off at the increases seen in Q2. Property insurance and property taxes are ultimately tied to factors like inflation, the recovery of income, market values, and replacement costs. Diamond Rock has been a leader in returning to and exceeding prior peak performance, so naturally we're among the first to see revenue and value-dependent costs moving up. I suspect our peers will eventually see the same. The cost of our property insurance is increasing $9 million on a full 12 month period, beginning with our renewal on April 1st. Second quarter fully reflected this new cost, which I mentioned in my bridge earlier, was a greater than $2 million increase in the quarter. Property tax comparisons will also be a headwind in the second half of 2023. We successfully negotiated $9 million abatements for prior periods in Chicago that we received in the second half of 2022, but these will not repeat this year. All else equal, we expect the year over year property tax and property insurance increases will impact second half hotel adjusted EBITDA margins by approximately 270 basis points compared to the second half of 2022. We do not expect tax headwinds in 2024. Finally, for full year 2023, we expect our corporate overhead to be $32.5 million. Preferred dividends are just under $10 million, and debt service costs will be about $63 million. And with that, let me turn the call back to Mark.

Thanks, Jeff. I'll conclude with a few thoughts on why we remain constructive on travel generally, and Dimerock specifically, headed into 2024. For the industry, overall U.S. travel is projected to hit a new record next year with occupancy of more than 1.3 billion hotel nights. The leisure segment in the U.S. next year will have its adjustment to the new normal behind it and can resume its long-term trend line of outperformance. And U.S. industry fundamentals should benefit over the next three to five years from constrained hotel supply as high construction costs and high borrowing costs limit the viability of many new projects. For Dimerock, we have room to run. If our urban and resort properties just get back to prior peak occupancy, that is worth $54 million in incremental revenue. If group room nights and associated spend just get back to 2019 levels, that alone is worth $30 million in incremental revenue. ROI projects will also continue to pay off. For example, the Dagny Boston reposition this year is projected to grow profits 35% in 2024, with revenues up about $3.5 million. And importantly for Dimerock, we are excited about our group prospects for next year. Group revenue pace is up a terrific 28%. Our hotels in Boston, Chicago, San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix generate nearly 45% of our urban hotel EBITDA. Currently, these markets have 3.2 million citywide room nights on the books for 2024. This is 10% or 300,000 room nights more than in 2019. So we're obviously encouraged by a group trajectory in 2024. As you can tell, we remain positive on the future of travel. Travel is one of the most highly valued assets in our society and around the world. And we believe that Domrock is well positioned for this cycle with a high quality portfolio, a focused strategy, and ample liquidity to move opportunistically. At this time, we would like to open it up for your questions. I'd also like to- Thank you. Just if I could to summarize, I know there's been some technical difficulties, so we will 8K the transcript of this call.

Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star 11.

One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Dwayne Finningworth. Your line is open.

Dwayne, are you there? Are you there?

Hey, sorry, I didn't hear the name they called, but nice to speak with you.

Sorry for the issue.

No, no worries. Can you help us maybe size the year-over-year impact you'd expect from the ROI projects that are underway this year and the acquisitions that you've completed this year? What could that look like on a year-over-year contribution basis into 2024?

I'm just thinking about it, and the answer for that is I'm trying to build it up in our head. My suspicion is it's going to be a few million dollars from the acquisitions when you think about all the acquisitions that were effectively closed in this year, because we have Chico, obviously, which just happened. Technically, late last year, we had Lake Austin, if you're going back that far. And then this year, we also have some of the ROI projects that are going to come in. I think would be another few million dollars on top of that. There will be some offsets this year, Duane. As I mentioned, DAGNY in Boston was probably about $8 million of disruption. But then next year, I think you should see a good chunk of that begin to reverse.

Yeah, if I just jump in a couple pieces here. So the DAGNY and Chico are probably the easiest ones to bridge you. So we said on DAGNY is that we expect the revenues next year to be up at least $3.5 million and probably $3 million in EBITDA year over year. On Chico, which is our acquisition this year, we expect it to do north of $3 million in EBITDA in 2024. And then for the disruption, obviously the disruption from the one-week closure at Hilton Garden Inn, we expect to get 100% of that back next year. And then Salt Lake City was a rooms renovation, and we would expect that to all return in 2024 as well. The Dagny, which we gave specific numbers on, will take probably three years since its conversion from a brand to an independent. to fully ramp up to its stabilized number.

Okay, thanks. And then for my follow-up, maybe you could just give us a sense. I thought the ex-Florida portfolio performance was interesting. But as you look at the balance of the year, markets like Key West in particular, are you thinking it's just more of the same normalization, or do you see any potential path to pick up later this year, maybe fourth quarter? Thanks for taking the questions.

Dwayne, so floor is interesting. I'll let Justin jump in here too. So every asset is a little different. In Tranquility Bay, which is a marathon key, we actually saw it stabilize in July. We're encouraged by what's going on there. The pace of decline in the keys is getting better. So we're seeing it get better as the summer. It's still negative year over year. And as you may recall from our results and comments at the end of last year, we were seeing some deterioration there in the Florida Keys earliest that they'd gotten just kind of crazy high. So it was kind of first to start the readjustment, if we will, to the new normal. So we would expect it to be one of the markets that we start getting more normalized as we get to November, December of this year. Justin, do you want to have anything to add to that?

Yeah, I think it's really more the sort of normalization of the comparable year as we get to the back half of the year. As Mark mentioned, we saw the Florida Keys being one of the first assets that we had start to drop off from a year-over-year basis in the summer of last year, and some of our other leisure assets fell off sort of in the back half of the summer. So as we work through third quarter and get to fourth quarter, the comp just gets easier for us on a year-over-year comparable.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Powell of Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for the question. Business transient, you mentioned it plateauing or kind of slowing a bit, a bit different commentary than we're hearing from others. I guess outside of San Francisco, are there any other markets where you're seeing kind of that slowdown or that, I guess, moderation, or is it more of a broader comment? that you're observing?

The data we're looking at on kind of industry-wide is the REVPAR for business transit really focused on special corporate is down about 20% to 2019 levels. It varies. It can vary dramatically. Obviously, in New York City, we're actually above where we were in 2019. And San Francisco is tragically behind. So it varies a lot depending on the market and what's driving those individual markets. Our rate of recovery in BT was very encouraging the back half of last year and even in Q1 of this year. We're seeing it kind of moderate where it is now. There's optimism that it starts improving, you know, a relatively good jump post-Labor Day as people get back to the office and there's more business travel in the fall than the summer. So we remain hopeful the fall, but we are seeing it moderate and we want to tell you what we're seeing in real time.

Thanks. And maybe on the conversion in Boston to the independent hotel and the acquisition of the independent hotel in Montana, you've gone much more heavily independent in your kind of branding and your acquisitions in recent years. Maybe comment on why you're doing that. And are you seeing the value of some of these brands kind of decline or these more special situations in your view?

Yeah, I think the brands are still valuable and, you know, Most of our hotels still have brands on them, but we look at each hotel as its individual case, and brands are expensive. In some cases, you get a great return on the brand, and it's the appropriate thing to do. Certainly on the big group houses are the most obvious places where they add value. But some hotels, and Chico would be a great example, they are their own brand in a lot of ways, and I don't think we'd see a material uplift there. in demand from the brand and the cost. So I think it's not a message that we don't think the brands are valuable. We really do. It's more a message that we try to tailor each individual asset to whether it makes sense to put a brand on it. Clearly, most of our hotels that have brand are performing significantly better than they would without a brand, both top and bottom line.

I guess maybe in Boston, I guess, what drove that particular decision?

Yeah, Boston's kind of a unique location. It's a historic building, and it's in a seven-day-a-week location. And we looked at what does not have a material group component, which is often a reason to have the brand to attract the groups. And it performs very well seven days a week. It's a great business location. It's also close to Faneuil Hall. It's a great leisure location as well. And we thought that it can perform relatively equally well as a branded hotel. with less cost associated with it. The other thing is that even if it was just equal profitability, the unencumbered nature of having that hotel probably adds 10%, 50, 100 basis points on the back end, so it probably increases the NAV of the hotel by $15 to $20 million. So those were the factors that led us to embrace this conversion.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Flores Van Dickem of Compass Point. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I guess maybe touch on the new acquisition a little bit more. How did you get to this acquisition? transaction. You say you've been tracking it for a couple of years. What caused the owner to sell now, and who else was bidding with you? And maybe just talk a little bit about what you see as an 8.1% yield, the right yield for this. Do you think this is the – talk a little bit about the acquisitions environment perhaps as well.

Sure. So I guess there's a lot of questions in there. So let me just start with the broadest, which is the acquisition environment generally. You know, the acquisition volume is down over 70%. There aren't very many trades in the marketplace. In some ways, it's a great time to be a public company because of our cost of debt advantage. You know, we're borrowing at SOFR plus 135. Private equity is borrowing at SOFR plus 450. So, you know, there is clear advantage there. We obviously have to consider other capital allocation choices. This is kind of an interesting deal. We love Montana. We like Big Sky. We like Bozeman. We love Paradise Valley. We like things in Jackson Hole and near Yellowstone has been a high priority for us in our search for special properties. This one's an institution in Montana. It's a relatively famous small resort. We've been tracking it. The owner-operator's been the owner-operator for more than two decades. and he's looking to retire. So it was an opportune time. He's staying involved in the property, and we're going to leverage that relationship at the property and with the community. Interesting, this originally went under contract with a, I'll call it a private equity buyer, as we understand it, at $40 million about six months ago. We looked at it. We were very disappointed because that was more than we were willing to pay. And you could see how it's a really special kind of place. And that deal, for reasons we're not privy to, fell apart. And we were selected because we could pay cash, right? We didn't have any financing risk. We were the buyer of choice. I think we were not even in the top four probably in price, but we were the most certain to close. So that gave us an enormous advantage in the process, and I think we got a tremendous value on the deal. So our plan there is to put in our professional kind of best practices, put in modern reservation systems, enhance the property. It was a constrained buyer before, so we have the ability to improve the property, and hopefully that leads to more satisfied customers that are increased demand and increased revenues of the property.

And I think you mentioned it was on 153 acres. I mean, is there expansion opportunities here down the road?

There are, I mean, I think, you know, first we want, we've owned it for 48 hours. You know, our first plan is we want to make sure we understand it. Uh, there is a lot of land here. Um, and so there, there are opportunities, but you know, that's not our initial plan. Our initial plan is to make it a better version of itself. get our arms around it. And, you know, the nice thing about these kind of properties, and this is what we talk about internally, is, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can get lucky and win. And so it has a lot of those kind of value creation opportunities. But again, our initial game plan, you know, we're not promising we're going to do anything other than make it a better version of itself. And I think that alone will make this a very successful investment for Dimerock.

And maybe the last follow-up is, does that mean that, you know, Does this make you more interested in other properties in the area and sort of to get more of a clustering? Are there other properties nearby that you would like to have in Montana? And does having one stake in the grounds allow you to get more opportunities? Or does this basically say, no, we're done with Montana. Let's go to another part of the country.

Remember that this whole investment is $33 million for what, you know, for a company that's got 4 billion assets. So no, it's, we're not full up on Montana. We love Montana. We love the community. We love the prospects. We like, you know, Yellowstone. We like Bozeman. We like Big Sky. There are plenty of other opportunities where we'd like to pursue and grow relationships. We're trying to build our reputation within that community. And hopefully that'll, that'll allow us to get off market transactions. It's a relatively small community. But, you know, by being good stewards of that asset and building those relationships, we would hope that that would allow us to get more deals in that state, and we would absolutely expand our footprint there if good opportunities emerged.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Gregory Miller of Truist. Your line is open.

Thanks, Kathleen. Mark, in the paragraph, she spoke briefly about NEV, so I thought to ask a question about it. You know, how do you view your internal NEV today relative to a quarter ago? And in particular, if you're able to comment on the drive-through leisure assets you've acquired in the last number of years, I'd be curious to hear about that as well. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a great question. We just had a board meeting earlier this weekend. We were talking about the same issue. Yeah, I'd say that the truth is there's so few data points in the market with volumes being so low that I think anyone that's telling you a change in value is really just guessing. There seems to be a tremendous amount of money on the sidelines, several hundred billion dollars of private equity that's interested in real estate that is poised. So there's a lot of potential buyers that are sitting there. And then I think from the seller's perspective, a lot of them are sitting on the sidelines feeling like debt's going to get more efficient and cheaper six, 12 months from now, so why would I bring my assets to market? So volume's low. It's hard to know what changes value. Obviously, the fading in some of the performance of the resorts, there's going to be some valuation change there, but they still remain. I had a conversation with a private equity fund yesterday. It still remains the one of the most interesting thesis in leisure and hotel investments. I think generally people still believe it's going to be the place to be over the next five to seven years. And remember these assets, unlike buying a hotel and let's say San Francisco, these assets have great trailing cashflow, even, you know, six, 7% compared to zero and a market like San Francisco or San Jose right now. So they're still financeable. So they still become the kind of, very interesting assets. I know there was a recent asset trade in Nashville. We call that a, a totally leisure oriented, uh, asset, um, that traded for, uh, Troy, what was the cap rate that we looked at?

Yeah, it was about six zero cap rate.

Yeah. So on, on trailing cash flows, pretty stabilized asset was a six cap. Um, you know, is it, and it's relatively independent or unencumbered, uh, leisure oriented asset in Nashville. So there's not a lot of data points out there. Um, And so I think if we told you it was 3% less, that would just be a guess. But we still think there's robust demand for these kind of assets.

You provide some data points. I appreciate that. And thanks for the commentary. For the follow-up question, I thought to ask specifically about the DAG and need a little more depth on the outlook that you provided through 2027. Could you walk us through the bridge and how you get to $17 million of EBITDA in 2027 versus $9 million this year, and how much of the underwriting is driven by operating expense reductions relative to top-line gains?

Yeah, Greg, this is Jeff Donnelly. I mean, I can take you through a little bit of it. I mean, a good chunk of it that's going from this year to the next year is going to be the elimination of some of the, obviously, some of the disruption that you have from the conversion. So there's a few million dollars that, as Mark mentioned, about $3.5 million of EBITDA, I think, as we go into the next year. That's going to be a big chunk of that. And then... I think there's going to be some cost savings effectively that come with removing the overhead that comes from being a branded asset and effectively enhances profitability because we're able to bring more of that revenue down to the bottom line, being an independent versus a branded operator. And then I think the final leg of it is going to be just how we position that asset and how are we better positioned across both the leisure and business transient channels in that market that we can effectively gain share in that marketplace. I think maybe that's even more details, right? As an asset, you know, I think we're projecting $35 million of gross revenue this year, 19 revenues, we're at 43. So, just simply the return back to 19 peak as with a renovated rebranded asset represents a significant amount of what we're calling potential upside. In general, the brand costs on an asset like this, given that it's all rooms revenue driven, between franchise fee and frequent guest program are over 10%. So our $40 million rooms revenue asset, just operating as an independent represents about $4 million of brand costs that we save. So I think that's really the bridge, the combination of return to prior peak revenues and under a more efficient cost structure, we should be able to drop to at least that at the bottom line.

That's all very helpful. Thank you very much.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Samitas Rose of Citi. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. I just wanted to ask you, you mentioned that group business in Chicago is slowing or slower in the second half. Is that in line with what you were expecting already, or has that changed from your last update? And then I'm just wondering, on group in general, if you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of kind of composition. Is it more corporate? Is it just associations coming back that's helping the citywide calendars or kind of just a little more color around the tenor of group, I guess?

Sure. So, you know, in Chicago in particular, it's driven very much by the citywide layout. And the way the calendar was in 2023 is it just, it's weighted more, the more citywides were focused in the first two quarters of the year. So this is as we expected. And frankly, 2024 looks terrific in Chicago and our bookings in 2024 in Chicago are very strong. So we're excited about the prospects. So this is just seasonality and kind of what we expected from the city-wide. So a number of our markets, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, Q4, back half the year in particular, Q4 looked very strong. So we think group will finish up relatively strong for us, but still opportunity. And the cadence of versus 2019 gets progressively better. So our group versus 19, the cadence as we move through the next five months will continue to get better based on our booking patterns as well. Justin, do you have additional comments?

Yeah, I think as Mark mentioned his remarks, I know there was a little bit of noise on the line, but we think returning to pre-COVID group room night levels represents a big opportunity for us in 2024. I think as 23 has progressed, we're continuing to narrow the gap to 2019 group room nights. First half of the year, we're down about 11% to 2019. We're forecasting that gap to drop to about 4% in Q4. In fact, PACE is only off about 2% in room nights to Q4 2019. And with rate a double digit higher on a percentage basis, we think Q4 revenue is likely to be about 9% higher than 19 revenue. So we're seeing that gap to to sort of pre-COVID level room night levels narrow significantly at a significantly higher rate.

And I think to your question on composition, it's mostly the traditional folks. I think there's been a little fall off on some of the tech company bookings, as you could imagine, but it's not a huge part of the group business in our markets. And financials, pharma, SPRF business has been very strong. The reasons to get together continue to be compelling in a hybrid work environment. We're seeing a lot of promotional incentive, a lot of small group meetings that need to happen as people are working hybrid. So that's probably the small groups, probably newer and more robust than it was pre-COVID. But a lot of traditional folks, you know, they're getting together for some reasons that they've always gotten together. And so it's a lot of the folks that, you know, we would normally expect to see in the composition of our groups.

Thanks. And then I just wanted to ask you, I know you've answered a lot of questions on the DAGNY, but, you know, sometimes when properties fall out of a major reservation system and go independent, you know, you can just see some disruption, you know, not having that, you know, as it just get pulled out completely from the bigger brand system. And how are you, I guess, avoiding that? It sounds like you are just wondering kind of what you do pragmatically to kind of keep sort of short term disruption to a minimum.

Yeah, I mean, we've been working hard on preparing for the August 1st date for a long time. We've had weekly revenue calls, we've had strategies, we've had web designs. Probably the most significant defensive thing we did is we took 80 rooms and we put Delta in there at a decent rate to kind of cushion the transition period this fall. So there will be some disruptions we gave you, and those are in Jeff's numbers that he provided during the prepared remarks. And I think it's, listen, the hotel looks beautiful. And we're excited to see, you know, to see what it can do on its own. Justin, you want to add anything?

Yes. As Mark mentioned, we did a lot of prep work just to ensure that we really didn't have any significant revenue loss during a dark period. In fact, we intentionally sold the hotel out for the first week of August to sort of ensure against that. But but we were live both on GDS and most e-channels within 24 hours. So we do have all active reservations up and actively booking. We've also done a significant amount of base building, both through the Delta contract and on the group side. So we're forecasting a drop in revenue as we continue to build brand awareness for the DAGNY, but we have over a million dollars of incremental group rooms on the books for the back half of the year versus last year, in addition to the Delta contract. August and September are both 70% sold and we're significantly, um, we're significantly better placed than we were same time last year for the balance of the back half of the year. So we've got a great base to really preserve rate integrity as we grow brand identity.

Great. Thanks for the detail.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Darling of green street. Your line is open.

Thank you. Mark, in the prepared remarks, you mentioned exploring a few dispositions, perhaps in the near term. Wondering if you could elaborate on what markets, maybe what assets, and then how are you thinking about seller financing in terms of effectuating a transaction today?

Yeah, so great question. So we are committed to our resort and leisure-oriented properties. We think that that is the best long-term place to be so that those will not be on the disposition list. We'll continue to pare down some of the urban exposure. I think we want to identify publicly which assets are, but there'll be smaller assets in this market that are financeable. The large loans are the ones that are very difficult, so it'll be a couple of smaller assets that are not core to the portfolio. As far as your question about seller financing, one of the reasons we're selecting smaller assets is they are financeable and don't need seller financing. We'd prefer not to do any. And so we'd rather preserve that capacity. If it involved a small piece to kind of fill the capital gap, that might be something we'd entertain. But we're not going out to the market offering seller financing.

Got it. That's helpful. And then one for Jeff, maybe. You gave a lot of good detail in terms of the different moving pieces on the expense side this year, but Just curious, maybe taking a longer-term view, 24 and beyond, what do you view as sort of a reasonable run rate for overall expense growth, kind of assuming maybe a more normalized demand backdrop? Is 3% to 5% annually a decent betting line for us to think about?

It's probably a decent range, you know, but when you think about it, I mean, of course it's going to relate to ultimately what sort of inflation is at the macro level. I think for us, when you look at how our properties have recovered and we've largely, you know, recovered our revenues and earnings, a lot of the factors that municipalities use to drive things like taxes, I don't expect our taxes are going to see sort of outsized increases, you know, over a long period of time. And, you know, property insurance is more difficult to forecast. I'd like to believe that this past year was a year, maybe a little bit like a post-Katrina type event where you saw a big spike and then, you know, you had decreases in cost or slowing significantly thereafter. but it's hard to forecast because those rates are renegotiated every year. And there might be some catch-up in the industry. I can't necessarily speak to us off the top of my head on labor costs, but I think same thing. That tends to follow inflation over time. So I think your range is reasonable. If I was a betting man, I'd probably be towards the lower to middle end of that, but that's just a guess.

All right. That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Bellisario of RW Baird. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good evening, guys. Just a quick first follow-up on the transaction front. Was Chico set up as a reverse 1031? Any pressing need to sell something on the back end of this one?

It was not set up as a reverse 1031.

Okay. And then just on the transaction, maybe can you give us a little bit of background on who the customer is, maybe what states people are coming from, and then any percentage, if you have it, just on number of repeat guests that come to the property?

Yeah, this is an institution. The clientele obviously changes depending on the time of year. It is remarkable because of the hot springs. how year-round this asset really is. Obviously, in the peak season when people are going to Yellowstone, this is close to an entrance to the Yellowstone, you get in the summer, you get more out of town, greater than 50%, but you get a fair amount of repeat folks. And then in the rest of the year, it is kind of the local draw. It's probably the best restaurant within 20 miles of the location, so it's got kind of a great local following from Livingston and other areas. But, you know, probably on average, it's about 50% from out in other states from all over the country and all over the U.S.

Michael, I'd add it's a very popular hangout with locals, even just to go to the saloon and take a soak in the hot spring.

I won't ask if you guys did that, too, on your tour.

Thank you. Yeah.

In your one pager that you put out the other day, you referenced a 40 plus or minus percentage point rev par delta. And what is your underwriting assume in that Chico does versus the comp set? And maybe how long does it take to get there?

Yeah, I think to sum it up, though, is the gap's going to be both on putting in the revenue system and having the revenue gains, but there's probably things we can do in productivity and best practices that we can implement on the expense side that just haven't been done there. So it's going to be on both of those. But if you think about it, we started an 8.1 NOI cap rate, and getting to a 10 is not a – we don't have to bridge very much of that gap to get there over time. So, you know, the comp set's a little bit, you know, it's pretty broad in that area because you've got to go down to Gardner and Livingston, so it's kind of a broad comp set. But you'll probably see more ability to move rate over time in the summer than the other seasons.

Helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back over to Mark Brugger for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our call, and we look forward to updating you on our earnings next quarter. Take care and have a great evening.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.