Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Hilton first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please press star, then zero. After today's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Charlie Ruhr, Vice President, Corporate Finance and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Chuck. Welcome to Hilton's first quarter 2026 earnings call. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that our discussion this morning will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements, and forward-looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to financial measures discussed in today's call in our earnings press release and on our website at ir.hilton.com. This morning, Chris Nassetta, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide an overview of the current operating environment and the company's outlook. Kevin Jacobs, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will then review our first quarter results and discuss our expectations for the year. Following the remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Charlie, and good morning, everyone. We certainly appreciate you joining us today. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge all those impacted by the Middle East conflict, and I'd like to thank our team members who adapted very quickly and continue to provide extraordinary hospitality during this difficult time. We remain hopeful for a swift resolution. Turning to results, we're pleased to report a great first quarter, during which strong rev par and net unit growth drove top and bottom line results above the high end of our guidance. Performance was driven by strengthening underlying demand trends, along with ongoing system-wide share gains. Our industry-leading brands, strong commercial engines, and powerful partnerships continue to differentiate us from the competition while a culture of innovation fuels additional growth opportunities. All of this, coupled with our asset-light fee-based business model, positions us to continue producing significant free cash flow and driving meaningful shareholder returns. In the quarter, we returned more than $860 million to shareholders and we remain on track to return approximately $3.5 billion for the full year. For the first quarter, system-wide REVPAR increased 3.6% year-over-year, driven by broad growth across all chain scales, brands, and segments, as well as sequential monthly improvement throughout the quarter in the U.S., In the quarter, business transient rev par was up 2.7%, representing a four-point step up in demand from the fourth quarter when adjusting for day of week and holiday shifts, driven by improving midweek demand across all chain scales. Leisure transient rev par was up 3.5%, driven by concentrated spring break demand that enabled strong rate growth. Group REBPAR was up 4.3%, driven by growth in company meeting and convention demand. We continue to see healthy underlying momentum for group, supported by strong growth in corporate lead volumes. As we look ahead to the second quarter, we remain encouraged by a continuation of demand trends that we've been observing since late 2025 and now through April, But we do expect some headwinds related to the Middle East. For the full year, we expect improving performance in the lower and mid-chain scales, with rep-par strength continuing to move downstream from luxury and upper upscale toward a more balanced convergence demand shape, or what I have been calling a C-shaped economy. This trend should be most evident in the U.S., where supportive tax and regulatory policy, expected lower interest rates, increased private sector investment in AI and the AI complex, and ongoing public infrastructure spending are benefiting the middle and lower income consumer and driving broader demand growth. As a result, for the full year, our system-wide REVPAR growth expectations are now 2% to 3%, factoring in a range of scenarios for the Middle East conflict and recovery. For the year, we continue to expect group to lead, followed by business and leisure transient. Turning to development, during the first quarter, we opened 131 hotels, totaling over 16,000 rooms. representing our second strongest first quarter for hotel openings in our history. Our luxury and lifestyle brands continue to expand around the world, comprising 20% of total openings in the quarter. Earlier this month in Morocco, we proudly opened the Waldorf Astoria Rabat Salé, kicking off 2026 with another key addition to the Waldorf Astoria portfolio, which now includes 40 trading hotels worldwide with more than 30 in the pipeline. Additional marquee Waldorf openings in 2026 will include the Waldorf Astoria Admiralty Arch in London and the Waldorf Astoria Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Within lifestyle, our Curio collection recently surpassed 200 trading hotels with notable openings in the quarter including the newly built Monarch San Antonio, and the converted Hotel Heron Alexandria Old Town, Virginia. We also expanded our lifestyle footprint globally with the debut of Motto in Brazil. In Europe, this week we will open a Home 2 Suites in Dublin, Ireland, which marks the European debut of our Home 2 Suites brand. one of our strongest performing brands in the portfolio with more than 800 hotels open and over 750 in development. This positions this brand for extended rapid growth and allows us to capture even more demand from this important region. Conversions represented 36% of openings for the quarter across 10 brands in dozens of countries. ranging from flagship Hilton openings in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand to Spark openings in France, Canada, and the U.S. Following our apartment collection by Hilton brand announcement earlier this year, we now have our first two converted properties in Atlanta and Salt Lake City accepting bookings for this summer. Conversions overall are expected to be up on a nominal basis in 2026 across every region, demonstrating the performance our system delivers to owners. Despite the current macro uncertainty, signings and starts continue to have momentum. During the quarter, we announced multiple new signings across geographies, including four new brand signings in Turkey, two LXR signings in Japan, the debut of Motto in Australia and France, and the debut of Tapestry in Germany. In India, we signed a strategic agreement with Royal Orchid Hotel to open 125 Hampton hotels in the market, which puts us on track to exceed 400 hotels in the market in the coming years and reaffirms our commitment to expanding in this key emerging economy. We continue to build out our presence in the fast-growing and expansive region of APEC-X China, where approvals, openings, and new development construction starts were all up double digits in the first quarter. Globally, we now expect new development construction starts to be up over 20% for the year, with the strongest growth in the U.S. and EMEA. signaling continued developer confidence and a strong desire to have hotels open in conjunction with a rebounding REBPAR environment. Our pipeline now stands at a record 527,000 rooms and includes brand debuts in more than 25 new countries, with Hilton representing only 5.5% of global hotel supply and over 20% of rooms under construction, we have tremendous opportunity to grow our market share from here. As we look ahead, we expect that our robust global pipeline, strength in conversions, construction start momentum, and industry-leading brand premiums will support sustained net unit growth of between 6% to 7% for the full year, even with the current geopolitical uncertainty. Innovation across our entire business is a core competency, and when deploying new technology, we're focused on broad, impactful use cases to enhance the guest experience, deliver value to owners, and empower team members. As we advance our strategy, we're leveraging AI to embrace the new ways customers are discovering and engaging with our brands, working with leading partners, including Google, ChatGPT, and Anthropic, all while remaining focused on strengthening direct loyalty-driven relationships and maintaining discipline in how we manage distribution. Building on this, earlier this quarter, we deployed an anthropic-powered platform for customers to dream and shop called the Hilton AI Planner. This LLM-powered tool combines our incredibly rich property content with vast information about local venues and activities to allow customers to search for and tailor an experience that is unique to their interests. The AI planner enables guests to spend more time dreaming within our native environment, which should drive incremental demand across our portfolio as customers book with us more often and more quickly. We're just getting started on how technology can customize the customer experience. and the Hilton AI Planner is one great example of how we're delivering our signature Hilton hospitality and enhancing the dream shop book and stay guest journey. During the quarter, we were proud to once again be recognized as the top-rated hospitality company on the Fortune and Great Place to Work list of the 100 best companies to work for in the United States, marking our 11th consecutive year earning this distinction. We also continue to be recognized for our world-class culture globally, receiving Great Place to Work honors in 17 countries, including seven number one rankings. Overall, we are very encouraged by the strength of the demand environment across all our brands. We remain confident that our powerful network effect, industry-leading REVPAR premiums, and fee-based capital-light business model will continue to drive strong operating performance, net unit growth, and meaningful cash flow, enabling us to return an increasing amount of capital to shareholders. Now, I'll turn the call over to Kevin to give you a few more details on the quarter and expectations for the full year.