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spk02: Good morning. My name is Rob and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Membership Collective Group, Inc. fourth quarter and full year 2021 results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press star one. Thank you. Greg Feely, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.
spk03: Some of today's statements may be forward-looking and actual results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in our most recent quarterly report on Form 10Q filed on November 17th, 2021. Any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today. and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements if our views change. By now, you should have access to our fourth quarter and full-year financial fiscal 2021 earnings release, which can be found at membershipcollectivegroup.com in the News and Events section. Additionally, we have posted our fiscal 2021 earnings presentation, which can also be found in the news and events section on our site. During the call, we 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. Reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in today's earnings press release.
spk00: Hello, everyone. I'm Nick Jones, founder and CEO of of MCG. I am delighted to welcome you all to the fourth quarter earnings call for the MCG, this time from London. But we'll be in the US next week and we'll be happy to see you all. I'm going to take you through some of the highlights for the fourth quarter and for the year before handing over to Andrew, our president, for a focus on our core Sowerhouse business, and growing membership despite the pandemic and macro headwinds of the last year. Hemera, our CFO, will follow with a detailed overview for the numbers before concluding remarks and opening up any questions. First though, a recap on our value proposition. What makes MCG special? We are the only global membership platform with a proven experience of delivering reoccurring revenues over the last 26 years. Our membership growth is stronger than ever. In fact, we are on track to beat our Q1 year membership target by 25%. We have always had a member-first focus, and this has seen us increase demand for our membership base year on year during 2021. Our waitlist grew even during COVID. Our members were incredibly loyal. Both retention and frozen members are now back to pre-pandemic levels. We have a large, addressable global market. and that will continue with a North American focus to our development plans, alongside our first two houses in Scandinavia and a further house in Asia. We now aim to target opening at least eight to ten new server houses every year and have increased our development pipeline to nine this year. As you know, Q4 was a quarter with its challenges. Business was really strong in October and November, before the new variant disrupted business in December, during what normally is our best time of year. But looking ahead, we are confident that as the world finally emerges from COVID, we can deliver on our plans. The majority of our future houses are an asset-light development model. which means we can expand significantly whilst conserving cash and providing a path forward to generate free cash flow. Of course, MCG is not immune to the continued pressures from rising inflation, but we have countered this by increasing pricing, including our Every House membership, which was last reviewed in 2019. We also see great potential to scale our high margin brands like Soho Home, which our members love because it means they can bring the house home, and Soho Connect, which is going to be our digital membership where members will be able to connect with each other globally. This is launching later this year. 2021 was a challenging year for us all due to the various COVID restrictions throughout the year. In fact, We estimate that our houses only operated at approximately 40% capacity, and that was with all the masks and the social distancing which went with it. Combined with the inefficiencies of opening and closing numerous times and staff shortages, it made the year difficult for our teams and members. That said, I believe we delivered a strong set of results. It's hard to believe that our IPO was only eight months ago, raising $388 million to strengthen our balance sheet and the huge effort our team dedicated to achieving this during a pandemic. I really want to thank them a lot. At the end of 2021, MCG had approximately 156,000 members in total across the Americas, UK, Europe and Asia. Our total MCG membership grew by 37,000 during 2021, with 11,000 of those joining in the final quarter. And that's despite delaying some December intakes because of the new variant. Our sewer house retention rate has not only remained high, but is now back to 2019 levels. 2021 was a record year for all our membership applications from all geographies. With the year end, MCG waitlist is now at over 70,000. The value of a sewer house membership continued to increase as our portfolio expanded with the opening of another six sewer houses, four of which were in new countries for us. Our members love nothing more than new house opening. In 2022, We have increased our development pipeline to nine and have already had a great start to the year with the opening of Nashville, Brighton later this month, and Holloway House in West Hollywood in April. Our members love products associated with Soho House, and this leads to a higher spend per member across our complementary businesses, such as Soho Home and Soho Works, which grew significantly last year. We saw strong year-on-year EBITDA improvement during the quarter and full year and believe this improving momentum will continue. A little more detail on the exciting openings for 2022. Nashville, which opened last month, is centred around local art and live entertainment. They love music there. Featuring 47 bedrooms, indoor and outdoor performance spaces, a large swimming pool, Screening Room, Asoa Health Club and our first ever Club Chaconis. We have welcomed over a thousand new members since opening and our wait list increasing every week. It's going to be one of the best houses. Brighton Beach House on the south coast of the UK is located in one of the most creative, progressive cities. So it seemed like a natural step to open a house there. Our membership applications are incredible and are very, very strong. Holloway House in West Hollywood will follow shortly afterwards. It has 34 bedrooms, which our West Coast members and people who visit the West Coast have been asking for for a while. We'll host several Oscar parties and other private events at the end of March before fully opening to members in April. For the remainder of 2022, we have houses opening in London, Miami, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Mexico City and Bangkok to reach the nine I've just mentioned. And we'll update you each quarter on our progress. We plan to open our second Scorpio site in Tulum in Mexico towards the end of this year, as well as the Ned Nomad in New York, expected to open in the summer of 2022. This growth is what MCG is all about, continually increasing the value of our memberships by adding new access and experiences for all our members. And with that, I will hand over to Andrew.
spk04: Thanks, Nick, and welcome, everyone. While our four-year figures reflect the impact of Omicron, with many of our houses closed during long periods of the year, membership engagement has never been strained. To note, memberships increased throughout 2021, achieving all-time highs despite the pandemic. As we add more houses, members are increasingly choosing Every House membership, now accounting for 81% of total members versus 75% in 2017. Our waitlist at the end of fiscal 2021 stands at an all-time high of over 70,000, and demand for memberships have increased significantly in 2022, with 1,600 applications per week. So let me frame that for you. We've attracted around 150,000 members over our nearly three-decade history, and we now have almost 50% of that number on the current waitlist. This provides us with unparalleled stability and predictability. Inflation is on everyone's mind, and we've found that having the majority of our members having Every House membership allows us to pass on inflation more easily, as the added value they gain from opening new houses far outweighs the membership price increase. As of Q4 2021, all membership metrics have returned to or are above historical highs. Our members are incredibly loyal. Our cost of marketing and attracting new members continues to be negligible. This is unique and enables strong margin enhancement opportunities. So here are a few Q4 statistics I'd like to share with you. Membership revenues hit $53 million, 24% higher than Q4 2020. Membership revenue accounted for 29% of total revenues, which is an encouraging metric for us because it shows our recurring revenues are back in line with 2019 levels. We finished Q4 with 122,800 Sewer House members, welcoming 9,300 new members during 21, including 5,000 in Q4. New members joined us across all our houses and geographies, demonstrating our global footprint. Comparable House membership net growth was plus 300 basis points, and new houses achieved their goals, adding a further 1,700 members in Q4. Our waitlist, which is a key indicator of the health of our membership, continued to grow in Q4, up nearly 23,000, or 48%, versus Q4 2020. As Nick mentioned, our retention rate has returned to 95% by the end of Q4, some 300 basis points higher than in 2020. We would have met or even exceeded our intakes if not for the new variant of COVID in December. Frozen memberships reduced by 71% over the course of the financial year back to pre-pandemic levels. Soho Friends, our newer membership, has continued to grow consistently. In Q4, we welcomed a further 5,550, taking the 2021 total to 23,500, which is a 500% growth in 2021. Soho Friends are predominantly guests of members. We capture the data of all our guests and communicate to them about our new memberships via the house guest functionality in the Soho House app. There is an appreciable conversion rate of guests to members. You know, we're able to grow Soho House Friends at a low cost of acquisition using existing physical and digital assets. The membership will drive margin enhancement for the foreseeable future. Finally, we continue to see digital engagement increase significantly. App usage increased by 160% versus 2020, and members now use the app three times per week for booking, paying, and connecting. To help frame those stats further, At the beginning of last year, 40% of members were using the app. By the end of last year, 85% were using it, and 75% of all member bookings are now via the SHAP, doubling within the last 12 months. The update of digital bookings took over 200,000 calls away from our contact center and receptions last year, which led to significant reduction in our operational spend. We've seen a sizable uplift on our social connection feature on the app HouseConnect. 31% of members now use House Connect each week, up from zero this time last year. Learning from House Connect are feeding into our new digital ownership membership, Soho Connect, which will launch later this year. Looking ahead to 2022, we've already welcomed 9,000 MCG members in the first two months of this year alone, which represents a 6% growth in our membership base since year end and illustrates significant momentum in our membership. we will welcome 25% more members than planned in Q1 and increase full year by the same uplift. Turning to in-house revenues, we saw a near 250% growth of in-house revenues versus the fourth quarter of 2020 and a further 32% growth over Q3 2021 despite the new variant of COVID disruption in December. Our accommodation performance was robust given a backdrop of ongoing restrictions. Occupancy by month varied across three regions for Q4. UK was strongest, followed by the USA business, which improved steadily and held up remarkably well in December, whereas our European business was very challenging and struggled throughout Q4 due to the heavy travel restrictions. Notwithstanding the above, our ADRs were on average 38% higher than comparable Q4 2019 levels, helping to offset weaker occupancy levels and leading to a 4% REVPAR growth versus 2019. revenues have bounced back and continue with the same growth as Q4. In February, performance in the US and UK houses, which are the two regions that are most normalised post-COVID, both are performing well and we're seeing light for light revenues well above 2019 levels. Plus forward bookings for the remainder of March and April are looking very strong. Now I want to turn to our adjustable market. We have a large adjustable market with an attractive financial model that will yield high margins. We will double to over eight to five houses over the next five years and will exceed our planned sewer house openings in 2022, as discussed by Nick earlier. I want to spend more time on our confidence for our margin improvement and why our Cities Without Houses membership is important to our growth. Firstly, margin. With the six openings in 2021 and recently Nashville, 45% of our houses are newly built since the start of 2018. They're all in great condition and in the relatively early stages of the maturation curves. Houses typically run approximately 20% house level contribution margins after three to five years of opening and stabilize at approximately 30% margins after five to 10 years. As they stabilize, more membership drops to the house level contribution with our most established locations now achieving a 90% flow through. Most of our openings will derive from the Cities Without Houses program. We have over 4,200 CWH members paying full Every House membership across more than 40 cities. It's a highly profitable business which we will continue to expand in the creative hubs around the world, in particular North America, Latin America, and Asia. You know, to put this in context, we have a clear path to more than doubling the size of our business in the coming years via our capital-light, high-profit growth pipeline, and margins will continue to grow and improve. I wanted to finish on Soho Home, our luxury interiors business, as it showcases the strength of our Soho House brand. Soho Home literally allows members to take the house home, and over the past three years, the KGAR is over 90%. 2021 was a standout year, including 105% growth in Q4 year-on-year, despite supply chain delays caused by the pandemic, which thankfully are now alleviating, and Soho Homes continue to perform strongly in Q1, with growth in line with 2021. Our members continue to be our most valuable customers, making up 74% of our sales, up 5% in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter, and up 7% year on year. Gross margins over the year improved by 1,500 basis points to 75%, with average order values increasing more than 60% during the quarter versus Q420. The rapid growth and positive metrics show the teams are delighting members and executing growth well. You know, Soho Home is a high-growth business with a significant future ahead of it. Before I pass you on to Humera, I want to thank the teams and Martin, our COO, for continuing to give the best member experience and delivering a good set of results during what has been a very challenging year in Q4.
spk05: Thanks, Andrew, and welcome, everyone. I'll now take you through the financial highlights from the fourth quarter of 2021, starting first with a snapshot of some of our KPIs before moving on to revenue, contribution margins, and adjusted EBITDA in more detail over the following slides. We've also placed the equivalent slides for the full 2021 financial year in the appendices for your convenience. Firstly, our total revenue in Q4 of 184.5 million increased by 158% compared with the fourth quarter of 2020. In the quarter, membership revenue, our recurring revenue income stream, increased to 52.7 million, or 24% above Q4 2020 levels, and accounting for 29% of total revenue in the period. This was driven by the growth in our total membership base, which Andrew has already spoken about. In-house revenue in Q4 continued to rebound strongly despite the Omicron impact to business in December, increasing to 89 million, or a 247% improvement year-on-year. It was also a strong improvement over the Q3 performance of 66.9 million. All regions benefited from S&B price increases. The weighted average of these was approximately 5% during the quarter and had very little impact on volumes. Growth was also boosted by fewer COVID restrictions year on year, particularly in North America. Other revenues of 42.8 million also showed a very strong recovery versus 2020, driven by the continued robust performance of Soho Home, recovery of public restaurants in the UK and North America. Also aiding other revenue growth was improved performance of the NED London, for which we receive a management fee, and growing contribution from the Lion and Saguaro hotels, which became part of the MCG Group in June 2021. House-level contribution benefited from reduced restrictions year-on-year and robust membership growth in the second half of the year. However, this was offset by increasing operating costs and the company opening six new houses in 2021 versus only one new house in 2020, as new openings tend to have a negative contribution in the first one to two years. House contribution margin for Q4 2021 is down slightly versus Q4 2020 at 24%, and the main driver of this is government support provided during 2020 and 2021, and adjusting the support out, house contribution would be up almost 2% on Q4 2020. Other contribution also improved strongly from a loss of nearly 14 million in Q420 to a positive 5.3 million Q421 due to growth in our retail offering year on year and improved performance in our restaurants and townhouses following reduced restrictions. I'd like to touch briefly on membership credits before we move on. Credits with a face value of 5 million were redeemed by members in Q421, equivalent to an estimated 3 million of potential gross profit if a cash sale had been made by those members. Although these membership credit sales are not included in the revenue numbers, we are sharing them with you today. This takes total credit usage for full year 2021 to $43 million, which is not recognized in our revenue numbers, with an approximate $30 million opportunity cost or EBITDA miss for the group. Credit sales as a percentage of total sales are around 1% to 2% for 2022 year-to-date, with spend predominantly in solo home online and in our European houses. Moving on to the revenue bridge, this slide sets out the building blocks of our revenue build across the final quarter of our financial year. You'll see here the three main drivers to our improved revenue performance. Firstly, membership growth. Membership revenue growth was volume driven with significant increase in full paying members year on year in existing houses, as well as membership fees from six new houses in 2021, an increase of 17,000 members. There were no material sole house membership price increases between Q420 and Q421, and other memberships contributed to circa 35% of revenue growth versus the same quarter in 2020. Secondly, the much improved in-house revenue performance was aided by the new house openings and fewer COVID closures and restrictions overall versus Q4 2020. Although to note, some restrictions in Q4 2021, particularly across Europe, did have an impact on sales. This was partially mitigated by price rises earlier in 2021 across food and beverage and the increase in ADR that Andrew has mentioned. And finally, other revenue growth came from various sources, including full consolidation of revenue from the Mandolin restaurant and revenues from Line and Suaro in Q4 2021. Additionally, there was continued strong growth in the Seoul home offering, as well as improved performance of UK and North American restaurants, as demand increased as COVID restrictions reduced. Turning next to Yvette Da. Overall, our adjusted EBITDA improved from a loss of 19.1 million Q4-20 to a positive 2.6 million for Q4-21, and net loss was 41.9 million for the quarter versus a loss of 72.5 million Q4-20. In terms of the key drivers of the improved performance, adjusted EBITDA growth year-on-year is predominantly driven by four key aspects. Firstly, Increased membership revenues were volume driven with significant increase in full paying Soho House members year on year, as well as membership fees from six new houses. Additional membership revenue was driven by improved occupancy at Soho Works. The next driver is the recovery of in-house contribution through increased footfall given fewer restrictions year on year, in addition to improved food and beverage costs to sales management across the UK and North American houses. However, there was a dilutive impact of the six new houses on house contribution. As you know, they are typically loss-making the first year or two of their operation. Within other contribution, we benefited from continued growth in retail, as well as improved performance from our restaurants and contribution from Lime and Suaro. EBITDA growth was partially offset by increased G&A expenses, including those related to being a publicly listed company. And these were approximately 3 million during the quarter, including payroll, legal fees and insurance. As you know, we report our adjusted EBITDA burden for growth, meaning that we include expenses that are associated with the growth of our business. The bridge in this slide shows some of these expenses. Firstly, pre-opening costs were 5.3 million in Q421. Non-cash rent, which is the difference between the rental costs in accordance with GAAP and the actual cash cost, was 5.8 million in the quarter. And finally, deferred registration fees were 3.9 million in Q421. Now delving a bit further into contribution margins. Firstly, house level contribution, which is defined as house revenues less in-house operating expenses, was 32 million for the fourth quarter of 21, with house level contribution margin at 24%, up from 21% in Q through 21, but down from 26% margin in Q4 20. As mentioned earlier, stripping out government wage support from house contribution, Q4 21 margin would be almost 2% better year on year. Understandably, as volumes in houses rose, in-house operating expenses also increased. In line with the industry, we've seen inflationary pressures across our food and beverage, indirect costs, and most notably labour base, as well as energy. We expect energy prices to continue to rise into 2022. As mentioned in Q3, we proactively increased wage rates in June to attract and retain the best talent. The food, beverage and accommodation price increase we have implemented, combined with ongoing efficiency programmes, have enabled us to partially offset the inflationary pressures. In fact, our food and beverage cost ratios in our UK houses in the quarter were 3% better than the same period pre-pandemic. Moving now to other contributions, which we define as other revenues plus non-house membership revenue, less other operating expenses, was 5.3 million compared to a loss of 13.9 million for fourth quarter 2020. This improvement was driven by strong growth of our other revenue and in particular the contribution from Soho Home, public restaurants and the line in Suwarrow. The capitalisation table shows our position as at the end of Q4 2021. We ended the year with £221 million of cash and cash equivalents and net debt of £382.4 million. During the quarter, there was an £8 million payment to pay back debt within our Barcelona joint venture, a £4 million settlement of a promissory note and also a £4 million employment tax-related payment which had been delayed due to the pandemic. Excluding financing, cash usage in the quarter related to the diminishing impact of membership credits as well as the ongoing impact of capacity limitations at our houses as a result of COVID-related restrictions in some locations, for example, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Furthermore, there was capital expenditure on our digital platform and routine capital expenditure to support the ongoing reopening of the houses. And finally, from me. We remain confident about the overall recovery of our MCG group revenues, given the positive momentum of Q4 2021 carrying through into Q1 2022. Our February 2022 revenues in our UK and U.S. houses and restaurants performed 15% and 3% above the comparative 2019 pre-pandemic levels respectively. Total MCG membership increased by a further 6% in the first two months of the quarter. Together with our high-level member retention, record waitlist numbers and growth from new houses, membership continues to be a very valuable recurring revenue stream. We have accelerated our pipeline for site openings in 2022 to nine Soho houses covering four new countries. In the first quarter of 2022, we will have opened two new houses in Nashville and Brighton. This will be followed in April by Holloway House in West Hollywood, From fiscal 2023 onwards, we now aim to open 8 to 10 new Soho houses per annum. With the increased houses in our pipeline, combined with the unprecedented demand for our memberships, we feel confident in exceeding our Soho House membership goals this year by 25%. We remain cautious about the emergence of any future COVID-19 variants, along with continued inflationary pressures, particularly in energy supply. However, we have several cost control programmes in progress to counter some of these pressures. Notwithstanding these headwinds, we expect to deliver sustained margin growth within the short term and beyond. And now I'll pass you back to Nick.
spk00: In summary, it's been a strong quarter despite the new variant, and we continue to be very excited about the future. We now have considerable momentum thanks to a number of factors. The ongoing bounce back from the pandemic, but also the highest membership waitlist we have ever had, with applications building steadily and the immense loyalty our members have demonstrated. We have a very clear path to house growth, with nine new sewer houses this year and an asset-light strategy which will drive free cash flow. And our wider sewer house ecosystem will continue to yield further revenue and margin expansion alongside growth of our recent house openings. I'd like to finish by thanking all the people who work for the MCG around the world for their passion, resilience and hard work in facing the issues of the past year. and our members and investors for all their support in the last quarter and in the coming quarters ahead. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Humera, our Chief Financial Officer, who will be leaving the company on 14 June 2022. Humera played an instrumental role in leading our IPO process and the journey towards becoming a public company. She has been an invaluable advisor to the leadership team and to me personally. And her expertise, knowledge, wit, and strength will be missed by us all. I wish her every success in the future. We will now open up to some questions. Operator, can we take the first question, please?
spk02: Thank you, Mr. Nick Jones. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment to compile the Q&A roster. And your first question comes from a line of Thomas Allen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
spk01: Thank you. Just on the increase in the annual opening guide, can you just give us a little bit more detail on what's driving that confidence? And I guess... connected to that question, when I look at what you're guiding for openings in 2022, there's been a bit of a shuffling, right? So you've added Miami, Ballum, Copenhagen, Bangkok, and you've moved out Cabo and Manchester. Can you just give a little bit more detail on that too? Thank you.
spk00: Sure. Hi, Nick here. Well, we're really excited about the nine houses we're opening this year. And Yes, it has been a slight moving of houses from one quarter to another, and that is down to supply chain, availability of building contractors, etc., due to the headwinds from COVID. But we are very confident of the nine houses this year um and we're very confident for a robust number of houses next year um so um you know our our houses are definitely increasing up to as we said to the eight to ten mark each year um and um we're very excited about all these new new houses opening manchester for instance you mentioned manchester i want to face into that is is you know it It could be this year. It could be the beginning of next year. We didn't want to put anything out. We weren't going to deliver.
spk01: Nick, I guess my follow-up to this is I don't remember seeing Copenhagen or Bangkok in the pipeline prior. Are you getting more quick conversion opportunities? Is that how some of these properties are coming in?
spk00: I mean, we always look at every opportunity which comes our way. And a city like Copenhagen, we didn't want to put a big house in there, so we wanted to put a medium's house in there. So we've been on the lookout for a very long time. It just so happened that one came available in the perfect space in the last six months. And the same has happened in Bangkok. We are very interested in expanding in Asia now. And Bangkok has been a big target city for us. Our CWH membership works incredibly well in both these cities. And through that, our members have helped us find these sites and secure these sites.
spk04: Just to add on to Nick's answer is the other thing that we've obviously done is we've beefed up a lot of our development teams. We did that 12, 18 months ago, and that's actually paying a lot of dividends now. So actually, we have a playbook of openings. of how to do it opening six last year really gave us a lot of learning so we've got a clear playbook so actually when opportunities do come along we can move super quick now and execute to a really high level so that's what actually is giving us the extra confidence of delivering that the eight to ten versus five to seven previously guided um i hope that makes sense
spk01: No, that all makes sense. And then just as my second question, you obviously have a lot of exposure to Europe and some to Asia. Are you seeing impacts from the rising COVID cases in those regions and then any impacts from what's going on in Russia and Ukraine? Thank you.
spk00: Well, Europe is definitely getting stronger and stronger for us every week. I mean, As I think we've reported, we are delighted with what we're seeing back in our houses. And Europe is exactly the same. Asia, Hong Kong, there is, you know, it's a six o'clock closing in Hong Kong currently. So that is impacted. As far as Russia and Ukraine is concerned, we don't have any houses in either country. And in terms of the supply chain, there's likely to be some limited disruption. But as yet, we haven't noticed that.
spk01: Helpful. Thank you.
spk02: Your next question comes from a line of Joe Greff from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open. Hi, everybody. Hope you're well. A couple of quick questions here. Nick or Andrew Merritt, can you talk about the revenue and margin ramp of new houses in new geographies, so the Scandic countries, Mexico and Asia, versus the historical ramp of new houses in New York and London? Is there much of a difference? Is there a difference in labor costs that might actually help in Asia or Mexico? Can you talk about that a little bit? And then on the topic of reordering the new house openings for this year and next year, I was hoping you can give us an era of pre-opening expenses and non-cash rent for this year, perhaps for next year.
spk00: It sounds like a double-hair Mara.
spk05: In terms of the different geographies and the margin ramp-up and revenue ramp-up, the maturation profile that we've referred to before will still hold, continue to hold. um you know there may be ups and downs as you said based on different labor costs etc but in the longer term that to target that we've already set will still be sustained um and and when we look at you know potential labor cost increases and you're right in companies in a country like copenhagen um that they labor costs are higher But we'd expect to be able to pass those on through the membership prices and also the F&B prices. So we do try and make our underwriting and our forward-looking models based on the same maturation curve. In North America, there are also pluses and minuses. So in North America, the membership fee continues to be higher than the rest of the world. And so we do expect to see a margin ramp up in North America. But on the whole, the expectation is that the margins are linked in the same. And then your next question was around the pre-opening cost.
spk02: Pre-opening expenses and non-cash rent, yep.
spk05: We can dig into the model a bit later when we've got, I think we've got one in one call with you.
spk02: Okay, great. And then, Andrew, on Soho Home, I was hoping you could give us an attitude of
spk04: revenue dollars in the fourth quarter in fiscal 21 and perhaps you can share with us how you expect that to grow in 22. yeah good question joe um i'm not going to give you the revenue numbers um we can you know we can discuss that when we're when we catch up what we are seeing is you know we've seen over the past three years super high comps i can um confidently say they will continue through this year and next. It's a very, very high-growth business. It's yielding really nice margins, as I said on my pre-recorded script. So it's really enhancing the overall profitability of some houses, and it will continue to do so in a much bigger way as we go forward. Thank you.
spk02: And there are no further phone questions at this time. I will turn the call over to our presenters for any web questions.
spk03: Okay, we've got a couple of questions online here. I'll just read them out. How have price rises that you have enacted been received by members is the first question that we have.
spk00: Well, I'll take that. Maybe Humera and Andrew will chip in. Our members are very understanding about what's going on in the world. They understand that the price of food, fuel is going up, and we're very responsible how we pass it on to our members, but they understand and we have not seen any negativeness from our members on this.
spk05: Yeah, we haven't really seen any drop-off in terms of volumes, in terms of in-house revenues. Our ADRs continue to be strong across North America and the UK. RevPAR is actually trending above where it was in Q4 2019 across both North America and the UK. So we're confident that the price increases have landed well.
spk03: We have one more question online. Would you be opening Soho House in more major cities in the US, for example, Boston?
spk00: Yes, is the answer to that. I mean, we are looking at Boston heavily, as we are with Atlanta and other cities in America. I mean, as you know, America and Soho House have a great relationship. And when we do go into cities like we have done with Nashville and Austin over the last decade, June last year, they have been received incredibly well, and the membership numbers are really impressive. So yes is the answer to that.
spk03: We have another question online. Do you have data on member utilization and visits, and if this is tracking ahead versus pre-pandemic times?
spk04: Yeah, so I'll take that one. Yes, we do. We have a lot of data on our members. And what we saw in February was, yes, our members are increasing their visits per house on a monthly basis in February compared to 2019. And their average spend in the house is slightly higher. Now, you would expect that a little bit on the price increases that we've put through, but they are spending slightly more than us. But the other key factor here is we're getting a lot more spend from our members to our new businesses like Soho Works. We have over 5,000 Soho Works members now, and they're all existing Soho House members. They're bolting on another membership. And then in addition to Soho Home, 75% of all our sales in Soho Home are Soho House members. So it all goes back to that, getting a bigger share of wallet from our existing members, from our new businesses, but also driving our members into their houses more often through better event programming, great food, great services, to gain more spend and more frequency of visit. So yes, we are seeing those trends, and we're very focused on them as we go forward.
spk03: And one more, so house location question, are we looking in Singapore?
spk00: We are looking in Singapore. We've come close a couple of times on several sites, but they haven't come off. You know, I mean, I just do want to sort of say that members love new houses. They really are. Our existing members love visiting the new houses and the local community and the local membership really works in the areas that houses do open. And, you know, so our house is all about looking after our existing members and adding new members. I think the team are doing an incredible job globally in all those areas.
spk03: We have a further question about what is our strategy given the current situation in Hong Kong?
spk00: Well, the strategy is we're on it every day with the team. We're hoping that in April things will open up more. And we have great hope for Hong Kong in the future. We have a very robust membership out there. They would love to use the house more if they could. And it's a beautiful house. So we're confident about the future.
spk05: We're looking at the cost base in Hong Kong as well. You know, volumes have dropped off given the limitations and activity there. So some of the things that we're looking at is negotiating the rent because that's a fixed cost. And we're also looking at subletting floors that perhaps are underutilized. So would they be short to midterm lets where we can bring back some of the costs?
spk03: We have no further questions on the line.
spk02: And there are no further phone questions at this time. I'll turn the call over to Mr. Nick Jones for any closing comments.
spk00: Yeah, I just want to thank everyone. You know, I think it's been an exciting course. We're super excited about the future. You know, I want to say live thank you to Humera again. We're super sad that she's moving on and she's done such a brilliant job. I wouldn't be sitting here unless she was there by my side making this happen. And I want to thank you, Andrew, as well, for all your support and help over the last 12 months and really look forward to really getting back to what we love, which is serving members, serving customers, busy houses, huge waiting lists, new houses, etc. And that's what we are passionate about. So thank you very much and we'll see you all very soon.
spk02: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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