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spk12: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Emma, your CORA's call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the membership collective group's second quarter earnings conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session, and if you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Rebecca Edelman. Please go ahead.
spk09: Thank you for joining us for the Membership Collective Group's second quarter 2021 financial results. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements may be made on this call today that are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and reflect our current expectations based on our beliefs, assumptions and information currently available to us. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, we undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Description of these factors and other risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC. During the call, we also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or in isolation from, our GAAP results. Reconciliations to most comparable gap measures are available in today's earnings press release, which is available on our investor relations section of our website at www.membershipcollectivegroup.com.
spk07: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. I'm delighted to welcome you all to the second quarter earnings call of the Membership Collective Group. I'm Nick, CEO and founder of the MCG, and I'm joined by Andrew, Group President and Hemera CFO. I'm looking to take you through some of the highlights of the last quarter before handing over to Andrew and Hemera, who will take you through the operational and financial results. The last few months have been incredibly exciting for the MCG. Our successful IPO in New York marked the beginning of a new, really exciting chapter for MCG, and I'm hugely grateful for the support and contribution of our members, the people who work for us, and all our investors. We believe that the MCG is a unique and special business with significant white space and huge potential for growth. Our listing means we are extremely well positioned to continue growing our business and to focus on making membership even better. That's what has driven us on for the last 26 years. Over the last few months, we have been able to reopen our houses, restaurants and workspaces as restrictions have eased. We have loved welcoming members back to SOA houses around the world, to the NED in London and to the Scorpius Beach Club in Mykonos. And one of the most challenging periods of our history, we are happy to get back to doing what we do best. Obviously, as we sit here today, the world is still living with COVID-19 and ongoing restrictions are still having an impact on our industry's recovery. including the recent mask and vaccine mandates in North America and other restrictions across Europe. That said, we have seen over the last few months gives me confidence that when COVID restrictions fully and finally lift, our business will be back to full strength. In fact, against the challenging backdrop of the last quarter, we've opened two houses, one here in London and one in Austin, Texas. And today, we open the doors of Sewer House Tel Aviv in Jaffa District. Originally built as a convent, we have retained and restored many of the original features and designed interiors that are inspired by the city's cultures, colours and influences. It's a beautiful house that I know our members will love. Looking ahead... I'm excited that by the end of the year, we will have opened seven new houses, including three hugely anticipated locations in Paris, Rome and Brighton in England. Soho House Paris sits in one of the city's most vibrant neighbourhoods and is a beautiful former 19th century townhouse spread over five floors with 36 bedrooms due to open next month. The anticipation in the city of Paris is enormous and our membership demand, I've never seen anything quite like it. It's hugely exciting for us. Opening after that, in the heart of San Lorenzo, is Soa House Rome, our first house in Italy. Set in a 10-storey building, the house features a rooftop pool, 49 bedrooms and 20 long-stay apartments. Again, very exciting. I've been looking forward to opening houses in France and Italy for many years, so this is going to be a really exciting period for us. Again, this is all about making membership better. Every day I continue to be overwhelmed by the loyalty of our members. Our membership retention has remained exceptionally strong, and I've been amazed by the increase in applications for Sewer House membership during the quarter. a 40% increase versus pre-pandemic levels. I've never seen anything like it in the 26 years I've been running Sewer House. Our membership waiting list now stands at a record high of 64,000. During this quarter, we have also relaunched the SHAP, the Sewer House app, our digital platform that allows members to bring Sewer House into their pockets. More on that from Andrew later. Beyond Soho House, we have seen robust growth of our newer membership brands, adding over 8,000 members across Soho Friends members, Soho Works Lounge members and Soho Home Plus, which gives me real confidence in the future success of these new tailored memberships. And we've only just began. Now let me hand over to Andrew, who will take you through some more of the detail.
spk05: Thanks, Nick. I will now focus on how we reopened and performed in the quarter. talk more about membership, provide insight into how we're delivering our growth plans, and then hand over to Humera for our financial performance. In terms of key performance highlights, we finished the quarter with 128,000 members, an 8,000 increase from Q1 2021. Total revenues grew to $124 million versus Q2 in 2020. Membership accounted for 36% of our revenue, which is recurring subscription revenue. House contribution rebounded up 34% to $25 million. and our in-house revenue grew by 188% to $46 million. As Nick mentioned, we welcomed our members back. EBITDA, a number that is fully burdened for growth, so includes all our pre-opening costs, was a loss of $13 million, and Homero will unpack this later. As Nick mentioned, Q2 was our first quarter as a publicly traded company. We started the quarter with full or impartial closures. or some form of restrictions across all our houses. By the end of the quarter, our teams have successfully reopened our houses whilst improving all aspects of member experience. Although some of our European houses still have restrictions, we were able to welcome all our members back. And our members were desperate to come back, so much so that the booking slots we released on a daily basis were often sold out within minutes. Encouragingly, the weekly rate of food and beverage sales showed momentum throughout the quarter, And our members started staying with us again, leading to an average 58% occupancy increasing to 63% by the end of June. And we had 93% occupancy levels for June in our destination properties within Soho House, Soho Farmhouse, Barrington House and Soho Beach House, Miami. These are all booked by our own platforms and we saw strong daily rate increases across all our properties. So now let me focus on our unique membership subscription performance at MCG. As I said, over a third of our revenue is achieved by recurring membership subscription fees. Our members continue to show incredible loyalty in the quarter with membership retention rates remaining very strong. So house applications increased by 40% versus a comparable pre-pandemic period. with applications spread across all houses and regions and with the weekly rate of applications accelerating through June. This, plus the demand for other membership types, resulted in an increase in the MCG waitlist to an all-time high of 64,000. It is particularly notable that demand remained strong even while houses were closed and restrictions were in place. This gives us a high level of confidence for future growth. We saw a high rate of members globally unfreeze their memberships during the quarter, shrinking the number of frozen members to 11,000, and we expect this trend to continue. We took a cautious approach to accepting new Sur House members to prioritise existing members' enjoyment of the houses as they reopen. We have now resumed normal member intakes in the third quarter. Now let me talk more about members. We were delighted to welcome over 1,400 new members across our two new houses that Nick mentioned, 180 House in London and Soho House Austin in North America. We also welcomed over 8,000 new members across our other membership brands. Soho Friends membership delivered a strong quarter in terms of growth. Soho Works continues to progress nicely. We are benefiting from the structural trend towards flexible working and our unique offer. Membership additions have been very strong and office occupancy increased to over 80% in the quarter and continues to grow. We reopened the NED in May and launched the first NED Friends membership programme, offering members access to exclusive spaces within the NED and we already have over a thousand NED members. So let's move now on to our physical openings at MCG. We were pleased to open two houses in the quarter, bringing our totals to 30 houses globally. 180 House is our ninth house here in London, which opened in mid-April. The house features 1970s-style interiors, a rooftop pool and a club space, and currently has just under 600 members with a large and growing waitlist. Sir House Austin, our first house in Texas, features a rooftop pool, 46 bedrooms, a screening room and restaurants and the house has over 850 members with also a strong waitlist which will enable us to grow membership base quickly in the year. We have opened four sewer houses so far in 2021 with a further three on track as Nick mentioned to open by the end of the year. Bringing our total to seven which is well in line with the growth outlined in our S1. In 2022 we are on track to open a further six sewer houses. in West Hollywood, Cabo, Manchester, Mexico City, Nashville, and Stockholm, as well as five other sites, which will include NED, New York, Scorpius Tulum, Suho Works Berlin, and The Line San Francisco, and a third NED site. We are really pleased with this year's house growth and the openings in 2022 that we're very confident in our execution. Now I'd like to update you on our progress of MCD digital initiatives. One thing we are most proud of and how the team has worked through COVID disruptions to create new features for members and accelerate our digital platforms and innovation while delivering on our strategic roadmap. We relaunched the SoHouse app in May, redesigning and introducing new features to improve member experience and help them connect digitally wherever they are in the world. This includes House Connect, our new Connect platform. improvements in booking features and updates to our proprietary payment service, Housepay. We're seeing positive trends in member engagement. Unique daily member usage is up significantly at plus 25%. The time spent on our app is increasing significantly and table bookings had a successful launch with 62% of all global table bookings taken by the Soho House app in Q2. Our members started to connect with each other through the House Connect feature. Finally, House Guest continues to be used across all our houses globally. We have over 230,000 guests registered on our app, providing us with invaluable data about the people who visit our houses but are not yet members. Long term, this data will be a key differentiator for us. Now to retail. Sewer Home is our retail segment which allows members to bring Sewer House home. Home delivered another strong second quarter, with revenues increasing over 100% versus the previous year. 99% of those sales were full price with little or no marred downs, which shows the strength of execution within the team. Gross margin at IMU increased in the quarter, leading to a higher profit growth in sales. We added new product, which are unique to Soho House, inspired by our houses and which you can only find at Soho Home. DTC accounted for 95% of sales with conversion and UPT both increasing nicely versus the previous quarter. We introduced interior design services only available for our members, which has proven extremely popular. In the quarter, we gained over 700 new Soho Home Plus members. and Soho House members account for 55% of revenue, which contributed to a big increase in AOV. We continue to be very excited about the significant opportunity and prospects for Soho. We completed the purchase of the line in Swigaro. In June, we further enhanced our membership platform as we entered into six hotel management agreements related to the line in Swigaro Hotels. Based in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Austin, Scottsdale, and Palm Springs, the hotels offer a variety of food and beverage as well as over 1,400 hotel bedrooms. We're very excited about this acquisition. Not only will it broaden our geographical reach, it will also continue to enhance the experience for our members on our platform. I'll now pass over to Humera, who will take you through our financial performance.
spk11: Thanks, Andrew. I'll now take you through the financial highlights from the second quarter of 2021. Firstly, our total revenue of $124 million increased compared with the second quarter of 2020. In the quarter, membership revenue of $45 million represented 36% of total revenue. And this was driven by the resilience in the retention rate of our existing Soho House members, as well as the addition of new members across the MCG brands. As Andrew has already mentioned, we made the strategic decision to limit Soho House membership intakes in the last 12 months. However, The fall in Soho House members versus the second quarter of 2020 was offset by the increase in new membership brands, including Friends, Works and Home Plus, in addition to the ongoing unfreeze of Soho House members throughout the quarter. In-house revenue in the second quarter rebounded strongly, increasing to 46 million versus 3 million in 2020. The increase was driven by the reopening of our houses and the gradual removing of social distancing restrictions across all of our regions. although it is important to note that our sites were still impacted by local regulations for much of the quarter. And if we think about the exit rates out of the quarter at the end of June, North America market was trading at around 20 to 30% below comparative levels in June 2019, with the UK at 10% below and Europe still lagging at around 40% below. Other revenues of $33 million also showed a strong recovery versus $9 million in Q2 2020. In the quarter, we reopened our public restaurants in the UK and North America in line with the easing of local restrictions. Overall, these sites delivered strong results driven by pent-up consumer demand as well as additional seating in outdoor areas. Additionally, we acquired the remaining 50% share of The Mandolin, a public restaurant in Miami which further boosted our other revenues. Soho Home also delivered another strong quarter, growing revenues by 104% year-on-year. Finally, other revenue growth also includes the benefit from the reopening of Scorpius, as well as the management fees from the NED as the London property reopened. We made good progress in our cost savings programme, which resulted in our houses operating at significantly improved cost ratios versus the comparative period in 2019. Our global procurement programme continues to deliver purchasing savings through contract renegotiation and vendor consolidation. And the program also continues to identify new savings opportunities. And we believe there is a significant opportunity in the North American market where we have only just started. At the site level, we delivered improvements in our stock and waste management. And this, combined with procurement savings, contributed in June to a 3% improvement in our food cost-to-sales ratio, as well as a 2% improvement in the beverage cost-to-sales ratio in June versus the pre-COVID comparative period in 2019. As I'm sure you're aware, the hospitality industry has seen increasing inflationary wage pressures in the last few months, and we were not immune. To help retain our valued employees as well as attract new employees, we increased our hourly wages in the quarter, ensuring that we continue to pay the most competitive rates. However, we were able to manage the inflationary pressures through careful hours and rotor management at the site level. We also closely controlled support office costs as we reopened, recognising the uncertainty of the environment that we operate in and the need to tightly control costs. Moving on to our profitability measures. House level contribution margin was 19%, which was lower than 2020 due to the increase in expenses as we reopened our houses and lower house membership revenues. Other contribution, which we define as other revenues plus non-house membership revenue, less other operating expenses, was a loss of $4 million, as compared to a loss of $10 million for second quarter 2020. This improvement year on year was predominantly driven by the recovery of our public restaurants, as well as the growth in Soho Home versus the comparative period in the prior year, and also the opening of Scorpius in May 2021, which remained fully closed in the comparative period. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $13 million, impacted by factors including the partial opening of our business in the quarter, G&A of $20 million, as well as pre-opening expenses of $6 million. It's important to re-highlight here that when we report our adjusted EBITDA, we report it fully burdened for growth, meaning that we include expenses that are associated with the growth of our business. These items include pre-opening expenses, which are operational expenses that we incur before opening a new house, and these totaled $6 million in the quarter, and they related primarily to the opening of both 180 house in London, Soho House, Austin, as well as the pre-opening costs associated with the new European houses due to open in Q3. Other items that we add back represent non-cash rent, which is the difference between the rental cost in accordance with GAAP and the actual cash cost. For management purposes, we add back non-cash rent to assess the performance of our houses Non-cash rent represents the difference between the rental cost in accordance with GAAP and the actual cash cost. In the second quarter, non-cash rent totaled a credit of $5 million due to a restructure of our Hong Kong lease. The table on the recent development slide shows our capitalization adjusted for the IPO proceeds. We received 402 million proceeds net of fees from the transaction, which has provided us with significantly strengthened balance sheet, as well as funding to support our growth initiatives. Given the uncertainty in the current environment and in order to preserve liquidity and access to funding, we have decided to preserve our senior secured notes facility and instead paid off our RCF totalling $98 million. As previously disclosed, we have also repaid preference shares totalling $20 million. Cash usage in the second quarter related to the reduced levels of in-house revenue in addition to capital expenditure on our digital platform, the extension of Soho Farmhouse as well as capital contributions related to Soho House Austin and Soho House Paris. I'll now hand back to Nick for an update on House Foundation as well as our outlook.
spk07: Thanks, Humera. We have made strong progress on our ESG programme, House Foundations, which is at the core of what we do every day. It is central to our DNA and our members care deeply about these initiatives. In the last quarter, we formed our first inclusivity board, a group of 30 individuals from around the world who work with our teams to increase diversity and representation within the houses. We've set an annual energy reduction target to help reach our 50% goal by 2030 and have introduced sustainability training into supplier onboardings. I've been particularly excited to launch Soho Chance, a programme to support anyone who is just starting out or starting again in growing their business, for which we have already received over 500 applications, many of which have been truly brilliant, innovative ideas. Our members love helping other people and giving them an opportunity to succeed in achieving their passions. Our Soho Mentorship Programme, which pairs members with young people from marginalised backgrounds pursuing careers in the creative industries, continues to go from strength to strength, launching in new cities including LA and Chicago. The pent-up demand we have seen so far from our members as we have reopened gives me great confidence in the recovery of our business. In the near term, understandably, the rise of COVID cases does create some uncertainty, and the exact timing and profile of a recovery is conditional on this, as well as associated restrictions. We have seen stronger momentum in the UK compared to Europe, where our houses are impacted by capacity and international travel restrictions. and are in turn preventing our global members from visiting. North America is seeing some impact from the mask and vaccine mandates, but we have confidence its recovery will follow the shape of the UK. But clearly it's too early to call the time of that recovery. Our development pipeline remains on track, and we expect to open three new sewer houses in the third quarter of 2021, and Sewer House Brighton in the fourth quarter 2021. The strong wait list and high number of applications also positions us well for the future membership growth. Longer term, our ambitions remain unchanged. We have a very attractive financial model and plan to open five to seven houses a year. We aim to grow membership revenue by 20% per year and we're looking to achieve a 15% EBITDA margin. And finally, We aim to grow adjusted EBITDA at between 20% to 25% each year. It's been a strong start to life as a listed company and we are very excited for the future. I'd like to finish by thanking all of our members, our team and our investors for all their support in the last quarter and in the quarters ahead.
spk12: Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin with the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Stephen Zaccone with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
spk02: Great. Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to focus a bit more on performance because you cited some metrics in the exit rate of performance in June. How does that look thus far in the third quarter? And then you alluded to a different shape of recovery. I guess just could you walk a little bit more through your expectations for the second half of the year? Presumably membership revenue should be okay, but how are you thinking about the trajectory of house revenues?
spk07: Hi, Stephen. It's Nick here. I'll start that, and then Andrew and Humera will... You know, we're here in England, UK, and we're seeing a very strong recovery. We're seeing our numbers, you know, exceeding 2019 figures now. Our houses, you know, because we've been living with the Delta variant here, there are no restrictions in the UK. People can go to soccer matches, sports matches. People can go to restaurants. There's no mask mandate. you know, and the UK is 40% of our business. So, you know, we're seeing very, very strong growth. Our members love coming back to their houses. They are aiming, a lot more people are aiming to be working from the office from September in the fall. So the UK is in pretty good shape. Europe is in good shape as far as the local members. I think the great thing about Sewer House is the fact that it relies locally on its local members, but also, you know, the fact is that our local members aren't able to necessarily travel globally. It means that they use the houses more, and that sort of gives a bit of a buffer in the fact that not so many people are using the hotel rooms because it's difficult to get into the particular cities. So Europe is in a much better position than it was, say, a couple of months ago. And the vaccine programs in Europe are going very well and people are opening up. And I've got to say, you know, the strength of the membership in Paris and Rome is really encouraging. And North America, again, you know, our houses are back open. They're all back open. You know, Miami's had a phenomenal run of it because we know what's been happening in Florida. But New York is good. It's busy, but it's not that busy. quite 2019 figures, nor is the West Coast, but very encouraging signs. And also encouraging signs in Mumbai, in India, where restrictions are nearly all gone, and also in Hong Kong. you know, I'd like to, Hemera, you can add to that.
spk11: Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that is in terms of membership, what we're seeing is members are continuing to unfreeze. In fact, the membership unfreezing is outpacing what our original expectations were. So I think we'll continue to see that. But also in terms of performance, there are levers that we have in our gifts that we would continue to pull should, you know, the Delta variant continue to be And some of those levers are tight cost control and careful shift management in terms of our labor management and our procurement programs that continue to be effective. And there's more to work towards that, specifically in North America.
spk05: Yeah, so I'd add a little bit more on membership. So I think we're super confident on membership growth in the second half. It's accelerating both in our new houses that Nick mentioned in his opening remarks and in existing houses as we resume pre-COVID levels of intakes. but also our new membership types that we're super excited about. We've got that high wait list, so we have a high level of predictability coming into half two, and, you know, 36% of our revenue is in membership, and it's recurring. So I think we feel really strong about our members coming back to the houses and growing.
spk07: And also, Andrew, the Soho Friends membership, which we introduced at the end of last year, you know, remarkable amount of applications every week for that. It's... It's for people who can't go into our houses but who like staying in our bedrooms, who like... using our workspaces, who have access to our studio spaces. And this is going incredibly well. And we've only just launched it in North America and in Europe. And we're seeing a really healthy amount of applications every week. So, you know, I think the world is just waiting for those last restrictions to go away. And I think we're very well placed. Does that answer your question, Stephen? Yeah.
spk02: Yes, thanks for all the detail. Much appreciated. Best of luck in the back half. Thank you.
spk12: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Thomas Allen with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you. So the other revenue strengths really stood out. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit? It sounds like the home business did very well. But just, you know, historically, I think about half of that came from restaurants and townhouses. So can you just give us a little bit more color there? Thank you.
spk11: Yeah, so in terms of other revenues, yes, certainly a very, very strong comeback we're seeing. So if I break it down by region, specifically North America, we acquired the additional 50% of a restaurant group called Mandolin, which we already had an interest in. So that has been a contributor in this quarter. In the United Kingdom, UK, our public restaurants did far better than we expected. And part of that was actually having additional capacity through outdoor dining. And so that also outpaced where our expectations were. And then in Europe, we also opened Scorpius for the summer season, so that typically is around this time of year, and that also performed much better despite the restrictions that were in place across Europe. And then, of course, we have our home business, which I'll pass back to Andrew to talk a little bit more about how that's performed this quarter.
spk05: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Farah. So, you know, our home business is all about allowing our members to bring the house home, I think, as I mentioned, 55% of our sales are from our members. SoHome is a membership business. We have our HomePlus members, which is growing really nicely. And, you know, we're very confident in half two that our sales will continue that high level of trajectory and our profits will actually go ahead of sales. And it's super exciting. We've got a business that's very unique. that's built all around our membership. And we're very confident in growing that business quite rapidly over the next two to three years. So we'll continue to talk about it each quarter. Nick, do you want to add anything?
spk07: Well, from a creative point of view, and I know this call is not about creativeness, but your autumn collection is fantastic. It's the best we've ever seen, full of autumn. But it really is.
spk06: fantastic and i just you know since andrew's come on board in the last two years our our home business is is really rocketing and we have huge ambitions for our home in the future thank you thomas it does and then and then just as my follow-up um there were three things i heard that i thought were incremental and new um one in rome you you opening up long stay apartments is that new to mcg Second thing, you announced that you're going to open up the NED at the Nomad in Midtown. Are you still opening up another NED in New York, and what happened there? And then the Soho Home Studios, can you just elaborate on those a little bit? Thank you.
spk07: I'll take the first couple of those, and then Andrew will talk about the last one. But Longstay, yes, we have got little house apartments here in Mayfair. They do incredibly well. They're always full. We chose that route in Rome because the area we're in is a very local area. There's a big film industry. It's next to film studios. There's lots of people who want long stay, a long apartment stay. So that's why we created that. And they are really beautiful. And I think they will... sell incredibly well. As far as the NED, we are moving the NED. It's super exciting. Let me just talk about the NED here in London, because it's a big beast, the NED. Before lockdown, it was doing 40,000 customers a week on the ground floor. And then lockdown came, and we've introduced different membership types in. We've introduced NED Friends. We've enhanced the NED membership offering as well. But the return of footfall on the ground floor is very, very encouraging, as is the occupancy in the hotel. I mean, you know, it is really encouraging for a large 200-bedroom hotel. So the NED is right to expand the membership and the hotel. So, you know, the opportunity came with the Nomad. It's a really beautiful building in New York, and it's going to be transferred over to a NED. We're going to keep a lot of the lovely things that people loved about the Nomad before, but we're going to be including our membership within it. Super exciting that. And then the other building, and you're right, and it is signed and we are under construction at the moment, is in the Amex building, the old Stock Exchange building, where it's going to be low on bedrooms, but it's got a huge amount of experiential F&B and membership opportunities. Andrew, maybe you'll go out about our home studios.
spk05: Yeah, sure, Nick. So, You know, our home business is a digital-first business, but we felt there was a big opportunity to create a space for our members that would allow our members to have member studios, so to actually showcase their own product, but also to have a gallery-style format retail space with our interior design service, which we recently launched, which has been incredibly popular to our members, and it's only available for our members. So we've got London coming in the next couple of months and also New York in the meatpacking district. And they're going to be super unique spaces, all based around our members. We're going to have unique events, unique spaces for them. And it's just another way of enhancing our membership.
spk07: And a great opportunity now because there are so many opportunities out there because of where retail is. And the whole thing about community pushing commerce is, super excited because as soon as the community's in there, then they go and buy whatever they're sitting on and whatever they're doing. So we're pleased about that. Is that answer everything, Thomas?
spk06: Yep, that's great. Thank you very much.
spk12: The next question comes from the line of Stephen Grambling with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, thanks for taking the question. Good morning, good afternoon. I guess I'd love to hear your latest thoughts on the pricing strategy, both as it relates to the memberships and as you think about kind of in-house, given what you're seeing in terms of labor and inflation.
spk07: I'm going to start that one, Stephen, and then I'm going to pass to Hemera. You know, pricing, we've always been reasonable price, which always means that there is – capability of raising our prices. You know, our members are super smart about, they know that the costs of goods are going up everywhere. They understand labor costs are going up. They're not, they expect to see increases in their S&B prices and their room prices. You know, but we're always very sensitive and very responsible on how we go around around delivering that. And as far as the labour market is concerned, I'm not saying we have a crystal ball here, but we certainly in the UK realised that staffing was going to be a challenge when we reopened, not because of COVID necessarily and people thinking of changing their careers, but because of Brexit. And so we worked very hard before the pandemic on how we were going to be dealing with our staffing. And we've looked at all our new, everyone's on new contracts, some contracts, people are, you know, we've reviewed all the hourly rates, and I think we're best in town on that now. And we've done exactly the same in America. And we always use different ways of recruiting. In the past, we would go directly to source. We'd have recruitment centers in Italy and France and Portugal. And now we are massively looking at retraining people, people who are good with people and passionate about what they do. And so people from retail, people from airlines. So we're really retraining and encouraging them to come into the business. Tamara?
spk11: Yeah, just to add some colour to that, in terms of the increase in hourly rates, so we did increase the UK hourly rate between £1 to £2, and we also increased US hourly rates between $2 and $5. And to your point, yes, we are seeing wage inflation. We're also seeing inflationary pressure in other areas such as freight, laundry, linen, contract cleaning. And how are we managing that? We still believe we have significant pricing power. We've increased prices in the past without having seen a reduction in volume. And I think we would continue to look to that as a future strategy.
spk04: And perhaps maybe one other follow-up to an earlier question on the outlook. Are there any one-time or other expenses that we should be thinking through in the second half of the year, either as it were, or even just ramping back up coming out of the recent restrictions. Thanks.
spk11: None that we currently forecast. And, you know, there may be some advisory costs related to the IPO that are still coming through. But as far as that, I can't see anything that would be a one-off shot for us.
spk07: And, Stephen, we are seeing – really good improvements on our margins compared to when we were in 2019 and that was that was all through us during the pandemic looking on how to make our business smarter and more efficient and there was low-hanging fruit and there was a lot of opportunity and we're beginning to see that and we continue to see that um in the coming months and years ahead
spk04: And maybe one quick follow up on that, I guess, as you've seen these very, very strong in house trends, I mean, typically, I think if you look over the past several years, you have in house revenues left in house expenses kind of running at a loss and you make up all of that with a membership fee. Are you actually seeing the in house revenue less expenses turn profitable in some of these locations, given how strong the revenues are?
spk05: Yeah, it's a good follow-up question. So we've seen a significant improvement at house-level margins through the cost changes that we've made, both on improving F&B margins, restructuring and streamlining the teams and supply base. So our mid-term goal is actually to move from what you're describing as a loss mate to breakeven, because ultimately our long-term goal is that membership revenue is our EBITDA. So it's a huge focus of ours, and we're making, as Nick said, we're making really good progress. And if you want to add anything on that, Amara.
spk11: Yeah, and look, we're already seeing some improvement coming through. We talked about 3% improvement in the food-cost-to-sales ratio, 2% improvement on the beverage-cost-to-sales ratio. We'll continue to work on that. Wages, whilst we've talked about inflationary pressure on wages, we think, you know, better scheduling, better management of our teams and use of technology will really supercharge those initiatives as well. So I think that there's more to play for there.
spk04: It's all super helpful. Thanks so much. Thank you, Stephen.
spk12: Next question comes from the line of Sean Kelly with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Wondering if you could just comment a little bit more on the customer behavior or the member behavior that you're seeing in the houses. So specifically, just thinking about those exit rates that you gave us, could you help us think about just, you know, what are the visitation or usage levels relative to kind of the spend per member levels? And not specifics, but maybe directional color would be interesting or helpful.
spk07: Yeah, I mean, I... You know, Sean, our members are delighted to be back. You know, they've been, you know, they love socialising, they love talking, they love connecting, they love, you know, they love to be able to be in a room where there's other people. They love laughter. So we are seeing a return to old, old 2019 habits. you know our places whenever we put on members events which we do all the time constantly we are really seeing members coming out and enjoying that now you know to be specific on on on member spend etc etc it's as good if not better than before and and and Our members of, you know, the farm here in Oxfordshire, Babington, all our places where people can relax are doing, you know, the demanded. If I get another email from someone asking me to rent a cabin at the farm, I would be going into the hundreds of thousands. But the member behaviour is really, it's good to see it back. And also the other thing that I've been really positive is that we did a big shift of trying to make our Soho Houses during the day less worky, less laptop-y. And with our Soho Works offering, we have been encouraging them to take a lounge membership out in our workspace. and use their laptops less in the houses, which will give us more capacity in our houses and give them more of a social soul rather than a work soul. And we are seeing the response to that very positive. The Soho works here in London, the office space is 100% full and the Soho lounge membership is really increasing week by week. And we really are seeing, one thing we are really seeing, Sean, is members really love the hybrid way of living. They love a bit of digital, they love a bit of physical. And because we've really ramped up the chat and we launched Connect recently, on the chat, we've put content onto the chat, we've taken a lot of friction out of being a member within the chat as far as payment and bookings are concerned. You know, they really feel that they got their SOA House membership 24 hours a day. And as you can tell from my voice, it is great to see. It's great to see people back in our houses. It's great to see our members engage in our chat. And it's great to see the demand on the applications that's coming in.
spk11: And to add to that, Sean, a couple of things that we're also seeing is that we're seeing an uptick in average spend. I think there's been a pent-up demand, people haven't had much to do, not many places to go, and so we are seeing a site uptake in average spend. What we're also seeing, and Nick's already alluded to this, is the occupancy rates at our experiential houses. So if we look at Babington and Farmhouse and actually Miami, we have high 90% occupancy rates. And I can't get in myself, frankly. So it's continuing to be particularly high. I mean, the only sort of other thing I'd add is city houses are still slightly lagging because not 100% of people are back into the offices. But I think you'll see that coming back as soon as people are back in the offices.
spk05: And then I'll finish with something. Sean, I'll just finish with something that hasn't changed, which is our retention rates are extraordinarily high still and at historical levels. And that just goes to show that all our teams globally are continually focused on giving the best member experience in every house, which leads to those really high retention rates.
spk08: Thank you, Will. And just as a short follow-up, Nick, I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that Works was progressing nicely. And obviously, you just talked about that trade-off relative to the behavior a little bit. Could you just comment a little bit more specifically on how you expect Works to be impacted by sort of the return to office cadence? Is it actually a bit of a tailwind right now that, you know, people aren't going back to normal behavior, or do you need some of the urban, you know, markets to fill up a little bit more before you see the works piece, you know, take off a little bit more aggressively?
spk07: Very good follow-up, Sean. You know, works is sort of It's like designed for this period of time. It's sort of designed for post-pandemic. You know, companies are looking at losing their leases on their buildings and they're looking for the people who work for them to have a hybrid style of working. And Soho Works is perfect for that. So we're seeing a huge demand of smaller office requests, which we can't We can't do anything about it in the UK at the moment because we're 100% full. We're still working through it in the US. And the lounge membership works very well. So, you know, a company could take small offers and then for their company, they could take, say, 50 lounge memberships, which they have a sort of hybrid approach on working from home and working in the city. They can go into different locations in the city. We're not just in one location. We're in five locations in London. So we're seeing that the SOHO works. And this is through more luck than judgment, Sean. So I'm not trying to be some sort of chemical. It really is dovetailing well into the new way that people want to live. It's really encouraging.
spk08: Thank you, everyone.
spk12: The next question comes from the line of Daniel Adam with Loop Capital Market. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi, thanks and congratulations. Just one for me. It looks like Cities Without Houses memberships declined by about 500 members sequentially. Was the reason for that decline related to the partial opening of Austin, Texas in the quarter? And then I guess just looking ahead, what do you expect? Do you expect the CWH membership to grow, or do you expect gradual decline as you continue to open the masses? Thanks.
spk05: Hey, Daniel. Great question. So, yes, you are correct. So, when we have a city that houses city, for example, Paris and Austin, when those houses open, we transfer the CWH membership into house membership. So, that's something that we've always done. We have got actually huge ambitious plans for CWH because it's wonderful for us. It helps us find our next physical locations. It expands our membership into newer regions like Latin America, Africa, and Asia. So this year, we'll expand to 60 cities, and by early next year, we'll actually be in 80 cities. So actually, we are expanding CWH because it's proven to be so successful. It adds to the diversity and inclusivity of our membership. It helps us grow both by membership and also physically. So there's actually a lot more to come on CWH, and it's incredibly exciting.
spk02: Okay, thanks for that.
spk12: Next question comes from the line of Sharon Zaxia with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, I hope everyone's doing well. So I guess I'm thinking through what sounds like a really re-engaged membership group at the houses, particularly in the UK. And as you're seeing those visitation patterns really accelerate, how does that inform your willingness to start to do what I think was quoted as normal member intake? And I'm thinking, you know, if the existing members are acting more like new members because they're so excited to come back, does that mean or translate to a more cautious cadence even in the third quarter on continuing to winnow down that wait list?
spk07: Let me take that, and I'm sure Andrew and Homero might want to add to that, Sharon. So, you know, we have been cautious in Q2 because of the reasons you said. You know, we didn't know how our members were going to come back. And, you know, we say to our members, we're not having overcrowded clubs. You know, they don't like it, they don't want it. They want busy clubs. They don't like walking into an empty club. And so we've sort of used Q2 as a sort of testing to see restrictions fall away and see how our members return. And you're right, they have come back a bit like new members, but as every new member does, it's like a kid getting a Christmas present. You know, they use it, they play with their Christmas present dramatically in January and February, and then it goes back into the cupboard and it comes out a bit different. So we will definitely be able to resume our membership intake in Q3, which we have, and obviously we've got a huge demand on the waiting list, but never to overcrowd our clubs, never to have a situation where members feel that they can't get a seat when they want a seat or they can't get in when they want to get in. But there is capacity.
spk05: Sharon, I think I would just add a little bit more color on that for Nikki. We're incredibly excited about our new houses. If you think, we've got seven new houses this year, which all, you know, they're new members, which adds to our global membership and makes our membership, again, more interesting, diverse, and inclusive. And then we've also got our new membership types, which Nick mentioned. It's getting fantastic traction from Soho Works, Soho Friends, and Home Plus. So we're obviously always focused on house members in existing houses, but we do have a lot of new houses, a lot of new memberships to grow at the same time. So, Nick, do you want to add anything else to that? No, I'm good. Great. That answers your question, Sharon.
spk10: Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you. That's perfect. Thank you.
spk12: Next question comes from Lion of Geograph with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hello, everyone. Just on the topic of new cell house member intake and resuming to normal levels here in the 3Q, how even is that resumption across geographies, the UK, the US, and the rest of Europe?
spk05: I'll take that, and then Nick can answer it. It's pretty even, Joe. Our wait list is pretty evenly spread across all our houses and all our regions globally. So our intakes are done based off that. So I would say at the moment in Q3 that it will be a nice, even spread across most of our houses. And then obviously you have the new houses, and even our new houses have large wait lists. So it's a pretty even spread going forward.
spk07: And just to add to that, Joe, you know, there is capacity. You know, we didn't want to knee-jerk in Q2 and... And see, there is capacity. Earlier today, I was on a call with all our membership teams in Hong Kong and Mumbai, and we're talking to our membership teams all the time and really understanding how our members are coming back and how excited they are to be back and how excited they are to come to members' events. But, you know... there is this opportunity to, you know, add more. And also our members have always said, can CERNTO get through? I'm getting more and more than ever, or the team, the membership teams, people just, you know, really, really wanted to get into the houses because, you know, it is a safe space as well. People know that they know who's around them. So I hope that answers that, Joe.
spk00: Perfect. That's all for me. Thanks.
spk12: And there are no further questions registered online. I would like to hand back to Nick Jones for closing comments.
spk07: Well, you know, this is my... I'm a bit nervous doing this, in fact, because I've never done an earnings call before, and I've got to say I've really enjoyed being public. I've really enjoyed meeting everyone and the sort of... the more sort of the focus we have on doing what we've been doing for 25 years, 26 years. And we are so determined to achieve our plan. We are, we're never more determined. We're never more, you know, the leadership team, you know, we've got a brilliant leadership team who are absolutely focused on making life for our members better, which means more houses, better experience within the house and more interesting members and and and we are really delivering that on a on a on a on a on a good level i'm super excited about retail and and and and and the expansion of retail and all the different membership types, which we have been working on for a number of years, but I've only recently launched. And it gives me great, great, great faith in that. And also the digital, which is, you know, it's, You people, you talk to companies all the time. Taking a very physical company and making it a hybrid company has its challenges. And I think during the lockdown, we've been able to really get everyone on board on the fact that we are now going to be hybrid. Our members are really loving the fact that their membership has turned from just physical to a hybrid membership. So, yeah, I look forward to many more of these calls in the future as restrictions disappear and our members return big time. So thank you.
spk12: Thank you.
spk07: Thank you.
spk12: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.
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