Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Hilton second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1, and to remove your question, please press star then 2. 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 second quarter 2026 earnings call. Before we begin, we would 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 update or revise these statements. For discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please see the Risk Factors section of our most recently filed Form 10-K. In addition, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. You can find reconciliations of non-gap to gap 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 second quarter results and discuss our expectations for the third quarter and full 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're excited to report strong second quarter results with REVPAR adjusted EBITDA and EPS exceeding our expectations. The continued improvement in travel demand across chain scales and segments supported both our top line and bottom line results. We continue to execute on our disciplined development strategy, achieving one of the best quarters in our history for signings, further growing our record pipeline. Our strong portfolio of brands, powerful commercial engines, and disciplined execution continue to support meaningful free cash flow generation. We remain on track to return $3.5 billion to shareholders for the full year. For the second quarter, system-wide REBPAR increased 3.9% year-over-year, driven by underlying demand recovery in the U.S., where business transient and growth both exceeded expectations. Any strong World Cup business transient REBPAR was up 5.7%, a three-point step up globally, and a four-point step up in the U.S. versus the first quarter. Driven by midweek demand from small to medium-sized businesses. Leisure transient rep par was up 1.6%, supported by World Cup demand, exceeding expectations, but offset by unfavorable holiday shifts and pressure from the conflict in the Middle East. Group rep par was up 3.7%, driven by growth in company meeting demand and favorable event calendar shifts. As we look to the second half of the year, we expect underlying RevPAR growth to remain strong across chain scales and segments. We expect U.S. RevPAR to continue to benefit from macro tailwinds, including supportive tax and regulatory policy, increased private sector investment in the AI complex, and ongoing public infrastructure spending, which should benefit The middle and lower income consumer and drive broader demand growth across our system and will be coupled with historically low levels of supply growth at less than one half of 1%. We expect the business transient segment to lead as its recovery continues to strengthen into the third quarter. Given this momentum, we're raising our full-year system-wide REVPAR growth expectations to three to three and a half percent with third quarter above our full year range benefiting from the World Cup and holiday shifts and fourth quarter a bit below due to calendar shifts and midterm elections. Turning to development, we had a strong quarter opening more than 200 hotels totaling over 24,000 rooms, up 50% from the first quarter. More than 20% of total openings were luxury and lifestyle hotels, including the opening of Conrad Athens, which marked the debut of our Conrad brand in Greece. We celebrated reaching 500 lifestyle hotels with openings across 12 countries, including the brand debut of Curio in India. Additionally, we surpassed 100,000 rooms globally for Home 2 Suites. and announced the brand's debut in Spain, another key European market for us. Conversions represented 36% of openings for the quarter across 12 brands in nearly 30 countries, including spark openings in Saudi Arabia, Germany and the UK. Across our portfolio, the 20 new brands that we've launched over the last two decades have been powerful engines of our unit growth, and we expect them to continue driving more than half of our net unit growth in the years ahead. We believe our ability to identify white space, develop the right brands in partnership with our owners, and launch them with discipline remains a real competitive advantage for us. Building on that strength, in the quarter we launched Undergraduate by Hilton, a new upper mid-scale brand. created to serve a broader range of college and university markets. Undergraduate expands Hilton's collegiate hospitality strategy with a flexible development model that supports both new build and conversion opportunities. Undergraduate complements our existing graduate brand for a different addressable market with long-term expansion potential of more than 400 hotels. In the quarter, we signed approximately 43,000 rooms representing the second largest quarterly signings in our history, increasing 50% from the first quarter and growing year over year above our five-year average historical growth rate. Of total signings, 35% were in luxury and lifestyle with notable announced signings, including the Waldorf Astoria Miami Beach, and our first curio in the Bahamas. More than 70% of our signings were in international markets, driven by strong momentum across Europe and Asia Pacific outside of China, where we currently only have 2% and 1% market share of supply, respectively. In Cala, a fast-growing region where we have only 3% market share of supply, signings grew 20% year-over-year, Thank you for joining us today. a bigger slice of a growing global pie. In the quarter, we saw new development construction starts continue to grow, led by the U.S., which was up over 40% versus the same quarter last year. On conversions, we continue to take well more than our fair share of quality rooms and expect conversion openings to be up in all regions for the year, comprising approximately 40% of total openings. Both new development and conversion growth is driven by continued developer preference for Hilton brands due to industry-leading rep part premiums, which further increased in the second quarter. We know our development success is built on strong partnerships with owners, which is why we evaluate every decision through the lens of Owner Profitability. Over the past year, we've taken several concrete steps to help owners lower costs, strengthen hotel profitability, and improve their returns. First on fees, reflecting the continued growth in scale and efficiency of Hilton Honors, we reduced loyalty fees for most hotels globally. We also launched Hilton Rise, a program that provides program fee discounts when hotels consistently deliver and excellent guest experience. Second, we are taking a more flexible and tailored approach to renovations, balancing owner investment with guest expectations and hotel performance. Most recently, we initiated an intensive cross-functional review of hotel-level P&Ls to identify where Hilton's scale, technology and enterprise capabilities can drive incremental owner profitability. Through this work, we are exploring system-wide opportunities across workforce innovation, purchasing power, and brand cost discipline to strengthen hotel-level margins, reduce complexity, and create even greater long-term value for our owners as well as all stakeholders. These owner profitability initiatives are enabled and accelerated by the power of our proprietary technology platform which allows us to innovate faster, scale more effectively, and deliver greater value across our entire network. Earlier this month, we announced an industry-first direct connection with Navon, a travel management company. This integration was made possible by Hilton developed booking and content APIs that provide direct, real-time access to Hilton availability, rates, booking, and authoritative property and room content. This direct connection bypasses both intermediary connections and other more expensive distribution channels, providing meaningful cost savings for our owners. The same flexible AI-ready technology stack is also enabling the Hilton AI Planner, which launched earlier this year, bringing more personalized, intelligent and useful planning tools to all of our customers. We will continue to extend our technology advantage and utilize it to drive superior turns for owners and better experiences for our guests. Our exceptional Hilton team members continue to bring our award-winning culture to life, helping Hilton achieve 19 number one best workplace recognitions globally so far this year, the highest number we've ever achieved. This commitment to delivering reliable and friendly stays also strengthens our industry-leading brands with Hampton, Home 2, and True recognized for best in category by J.D. Power for 2026. Overall, we're pleased with the quarter and remain confident that our powerful network effect, industry-leading rep part premiums, and feedback 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'm going to turn the call over to Kevin with a few more details on the quarter and our expectations for the full year.