Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT)

Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties' fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Executive Chairman, Mr. Mark Fioravanti, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Jennifer Hutchison, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Chief Operating Officer. This call will be available for digital replay. The number is 800- 839-9881, with no conference ID required. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Ms. Jennifer Hutchison. Ma'am, you may begin.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the company's expected financial performance. Any statements we make today that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as believes or expects are intended to identify these statements, which may be affected by many factors, including those listed in the company's SEC filings and in today's release. The company's actual results may differ materially from the results we discussed or project today. We will not update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or any other reason. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics today, We reconcile each non-gap measure to the most comparable gap measure in exhibits to today's release. I will now turn the call over to Colin.

Thank you, Jan, and good morning, everyone. Well, the fourth quarter was an appropriate exclamation point to close out an extraordinary year for our company. I don't think in all of my years in this industry I've seen anything like the last 12 months. going from just under 33 points of occupancy and $185 of total REVPAR in January of 2022 during the worst of the Omicron wave, and yet ending the year in December with just over 73 points of occupancy and a whopping $612 of total REVPAR. I really believe the results of this past quarter and our ability to recover so quickly from the last stage of the pandemic highlights the exceptional nature of our assets, and our strategy compared to the wider industry. Of course, we've always talked about these attributes since well before the pandemic, about our dedication to studying and understanding our core group customer and delivering the highest quality experiences to our guests, about our rotational system for world-class assets in top markets, which makes that customer's planning decisions so much easier by booking multi-year, multi-site meetings all at once, about our belief in investing significant capital into expanding and upgrading our assets against the backdrop of very limited news supply, and about our strategy to induce our own transient demand with innovative and compelling programs around the calendar. By 2019, we were just starting to really reap the dividends literally and figuratively of this strategy. As our newest property, the Gaylord Rockets, had just opened that year with an unheard of 1.2 million room nights on the books and generated over 85 million of adjusted EBITDA in its first full year of operation. And the other cylinders of our hotels were firing as well, with the opening of Soundwaves and the expansion of the Texan and groundbreaking underway at the Palms. And of course, our entertainment business was riding high on the back of National and Nashville's exponential growth. We found ourselves at the end of 19 sitting on then record performances across so many metrics and we felt like we were just getting started as we gave in February for what by all signs were going to be a bomb burner of the year on the heels of these investments. But within weeks it all came to a halt and the last three years since then have been a whirlwind. But now here we are, three years and three COVID waves later, at last prepared to give you all a complete set of annual guidance once again. And what we are planning for 2023 is already well beyond those figures we'd anticipated back in early 2020. Our law group customers are back in droves and spending healthily on property, thanks greatly to our emphasis on rebooking over fee collection during these dark days. Our assets themselves are transformed compared to this time in 2020, thanks to our commitment to invest capital. This includes the 300 new rooms at the Palms, the beautifully renovated rooms at the National, and a host of new ballrooms, meeting spaces, event lawns, pavilions, and atriums, either complete or now underway across the portfolio. And not to mention the entirely reconcepted food and beverage outlets with innovative new socialization and gathering opportunities for groups, new technologies in place, new staffing models in many areas of our hotel. The list goes on. And our entertainment business is equally transformed. We've opened All Red in Orlando, Broken Ground on All Red in Las Vegas, closed the acquisition of Block 21, which brings Austin's iconic ACL Live at the Moody Theater into the fold. And to cap it all off, in June, we sold 30% of the entertainment business to the impressive team at Ateros, bringing NBC Universal in the tent and valuing the business at over $1.4 billion. It's not a stretch by any means to say that our entire company has not simply recovered from the pandemic, but has undergone a complete transformation. Armed with our new understandings of our customers, both group and leisure, and all of the levers available to us now and in the future through our ongoing investments. And looking at the tremendous book of business we have on the books for all future years, I believe we're capable of delivering exceptional results well into the post-pandemic era. As Mark and Jen will report, notwithstanding the significant impact of Omicron in the first quarter, by almost all measurements, 2022 was a record for us. And as you will see from our guidance in 23, more records are likely to follow. Needless to say, I'm truly excited for this next chapter of our company. And it is a perfect moment for Mark to take over for me in the CEO role as I move to executive chairman. So I'll now turn over to Mark to let him give you more details of the quarter. and our results and how we're thinking about the coming year, Marcus.