Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (REIT)

Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties is Mr. Colin Reed, Executive Chairman, Mr. Mark Fioravanti, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Patrick Moore, Chief Executive Officer, Opry Entertainment Group. This call will be available for a digital replay. The number is 800-839-3516. No conference ID is required. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Mark Garavanti. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Unfortunately, due to a death in the family, Our Chief Financial Officer, Jennifer Hutchison, will not be joining us on the call 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 fact 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 discuss or project today. We will not update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, further events, or any other reason. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures today. We reconcile each non-GAAP measure to the most comparable GAAP measure in exhibits to today's release. I'll now turn the call over to Colin.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Let me start this morning's discussions about our earnings for the third quarter of 23 by first reminding you what an incredible third quarter we had last year. Last year's third quarter was the best third quarter performance ever for total revenue, total adjusted EBITDA RE, and total adjusted EBITDA RE margin. Additionally, in the third quarter of last year, we had a very good group room night production again with record gross bookings in ADR. I pointed out last year how excited we were about the state of our business and how materially ahead we were of 19 in terms of revenue and profit generation and what this trajectory signaled for the period ahead. So here we are reporting on the third quarter of 23 and discussing how we see the full year playing out. And yes, yet again, our third quarter delivered some very compelling results. Our forward booking production continues to accelerate. For our same store hospitality portfolio, this was another record third quarter performance for total revenue, total ADR, and group ADR. Our business continues to get stronger and stronger, and this is especially evident when we look how we are performing relative to 2019. Compared to the third quarter of 2019, total same-store hospitality revenue was up 20.7%, total ADR 22.4%, and group ADR 16.5%. And these growth rates are higher sequentially than where they were in the second quarter of 2023. I know to some of you we must sound like a broken record. But Gaylord Hotels actually does have a differentiated strategy that has consistently driven industry-leading shareholder returns. We do this by building long-term group customer relationships through excellent system-wide service, great product, and very targeted relationship-building endeavors with our customers, the consequence of which is they book contracts with us, and in many cases, years out. This is why our business is far less volatile than those companies you often compare us to. Now, Mark will get into the production numbers in more detail, but our bookings for 24 and 25 continue to track solidly ahead of where they were a year ago for T1 and T2 periods. This momentum supports our confidence to continue investing capital in projects like the redesign of the Grand Lodge and the addition of the new group pavilion at the Gaylord Rockies, which are expected to reopen mid-year next year. In our entertainment business, consistent demand trends at our core Nashville assets continue to highlight the popularity of our live entertainment offerings. Outside of Nashville, we remain excited about our progress towards the opening of Old Red Las Vegas in January. In addition, we recently announced a $40 million of value-enhancing investments at Block 21 in Austin, which will include the full renovation of the W Hotel and additional public space enhancement at ACL Live. In early January, we'll begin our transformation of the Wild Horse Saloon to a multi-level, multi-concept, immersive entertainment experience in partnership with Luke Holmes. I was with Luke a couple of weeks ago in London as he was wrapping up his very successful three-week tour of Northern Europe. And I'm so excited about this new branding opportunity with him, particularly now that he has so rapidly become a global superstar. Finally, our partnership with Ateros and NBC Universal is really starting to show value-enhancing results. During the last few weeks, we've been able to collaborate on some really, really exciting projects which showcased why we chose Ateros and NBCUniversal as our partners. In September, the Opry House hosted the inaugural People's Choice Country Awards, which was broadcast on NBC. Just a few weeks ago, while Luke was on tour in the UK, several episodes of Opry Live featuring some of his performances aired on Sky Arts in the UK and in Ireland. And in early December, Christmas at the Opry will air on NBC. As a result of that collaboration, our brands and the artists who we work with are benefiting from this accelerated media distribution, reaching more country music lifestyle consumers globally. At the highest level, we are really excited. We're exactly where we thought we'd be. And as we've talked about in the past, our performance in both our businesses comes back to our sustainable competitive advantage, which is grounded in our iconic brands and in our extensive knowledge of the unique customer segments we serve. Just as we've done for the past 20 years, we continue to prioritize our customer relationships and invest in our assets to consistently enhance our value proposition, which ultimately translates to stronger customer loyalty and best-in-class shareholder returns. Our business model is not based on hope or things we have little control over. We've built a loyalty-based rotational strategy within our hotel business that is not reliant on citywide conventions or how popular or unpopular a city may be. And our entertainment business is pretty unique, backed up by legendary brands that cannot be replicated. We look forward to hosting the investment community at our upcoming Investor Day in mid-January of next year to discuss in detail our differentiated strategy and the exciting growth priorities that will drive returns in the years to come. And with that, let me turn over to Mark to now discuss the quarter in more detail. Mark?