Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation

Greetings and welcome to Marriott Vacations Worldwide First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Neil Goldner. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Rob, and welcome to the Marriott Vacations Worldwide First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. I am joined today by Steve Wise, Chief Executive Officer, and John Geller, President and Chief Financial Officer. I need to remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings, which could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the press release that we issued last night and the presentation we added to our website this morning, as well as our comments in this call, are effective only when made and will not be updated as actual events unfold. Throughout the call, we will make references to non-GAAP financial information, You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks and the schedules attached to our press release, as well as the investor relations page of our website at ir.mvwc.com. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to CEO Steve Wise.

Thanks, Neil. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. It's now been more than a year since COVID-19 came into our lives, but that certainly didn't mean people forgot about traveling. If anything, the past year reminded us what is really important in life, family, experiences, and togetherness, all the things that travel offers. As a company whose products enable these unique and memorable occasions, it's been gratifying to see more and more people at our resorts this year. As vaccination levels rise, and even more people return to travel. We look forward to welcoming them as well. J.W. Marriott Sr. was fond of saying, if we treat our employees right, they'll treat our customers right, and if customers are treated right, they'll come back. This past year has been quite difficult for many of our associates, so I'm very happy to say that with occupancies recovering as they have, we've been able to bring back most of our associates to work, and they are hard again working to take care of our guests, delivering great vacation experiences. Our results this quarter are evidence of the continued recovery in our business. At this point, nearly all of our sales centers have reopened, and contract sales and exchange transactions grew substantially on a sequential basis during the first quarter, exceeding our own expectations. In fact, six of our sales centers in the quarter actually exceeded their first quarter 2019 levels, which is very encouraging. A review of our vacation ownership occupancies this quarter illustrates just how widespread the recovery has been. For example, occupancy at our Florida beach resorts averaged in the high 80% range during the quarter, including nearly 95% for the month of March. Our Colorado and Utah mountain resorts averaged over 85 percent for the quarter. Our South Carolina resorts ran almost 80 percent occupancy during March as the weather improved, and our U.S. Virgin Island resorts averaged nearly 85 percent for the quarter. Orlando and Hawaii, two of our larger markets that had previously lagged, also continued to recover nicely. For example, Orlando, which represents more than 20 percent of our North American keys, averaged nearly 60 percent occupancy during the quarter, including over 75 percent during March. And Hawaii, excluding Kauai, which was operating under quarantine restrictions for the entire first quarter, averaged over 70 percent occupancy during the quarter, with March averaging nearly 85 percent. These strong occupancies, coupled with the continued execution from our sales teams, enabled us to achieve 27 percent sequential contract sales growth in the quarter, with VBGs increasing 21 percent, even with first-time buyer sales becoming a larger portion of the overall sales mix. Adjusted development profit margin was in line with the first quarter 2019 levels, despite having two-thirds of the contract sales, illustrating the benefits of our business transformation work and synergy initiatives. The recovery in our interval international business was also evident during the first quarter. with interval exchange transactions and revenue per member not only growing year over year, but also increasing compared to the first quarter of 2019, reflecting members' desires to travel and the pent-up demand. During the quarter, Interval introduced getaway rentals of less than seven nights for the first time, enabling members more opportunities to use their membership in ways that better fit their schedule. So let's talk about where I think we go from here. While we're not providing guidance for the second half of the year, we are very encouraged with the improvement in our business. Though Europe and Asia are lagging the recovery and international travel to the U.S. continues to be hampered. We also shut down certain linkage and other marketing channels during the pandemic, all of which are reminders that a full recovery will still take some time. We closed the Welk Transact acquisition on April 1st and have already begun integrating them into our business. Similar to our vacation ownership business this year, Welk has also experienced a strong recovery in occupancies and contract sales, and we expect that improvement to continue going forward. Our urban markets have now reopened, with New York and San Francisco reopening last week, and all of our Kauai sales centers have now reopened as well. As you know, we have been investing in our tour pipeline package, a tour package pipeline engine to support future contract sales growth. And we sold nearly 80% more tour packages in the first quarter than we did in the fourth quarter of 2020. At the end of March, we had 184,000 tours in our package pipeline, a 9% increase from the end of December. And more importantly, nearly 74,000 customers have already booked their vacation and tour for 2021. And we expect Interval's new short-term rental product to lead to more flexible yielding strategies, which we expect will deliver higher overall getaway pricing over time. Finally, our research continues to point to a strong recovery this year as customers get back to traveling. For example, owner confidence to travel in the next three months recently hit its highest level since the pandemic began. Online destination searches by owners are more than double that of January 2019. We're also seeing very high levels of engagement on our social media pages, reflecting excitement around travel. Google searches for resorts and hotels in the U.S. are at their highest levels in nearly 10 years, and the TSA has recorded the most prolonged travel rebound since the pandemic started. We currently have 13% more owner and preview reservations on the books for the second half of this year than we did at the same time in 2019. And finally, occupancies were strong in April and sales grew sequentially, all of which underpins the confidence we have in the recovery and the strength of our leisure-focused business model. As a result, we expect contract sales to grow around 45% sequentially in the second quarter at the midpoint of our guidance range. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Today I'm going to review our first quarter results, the continued strong recovery across all of our businesses, the strength of our balance sheet and liquidity position, and our second quarter expectations. As Steve noted, we have very strong occupancies in many of our key markets, with our two largest, Orlando and Hawaii, improving nicely, illustrating the resiliency of our leisure-focused business model. Reviewing the performance of our segments this quarter, starting first with our vacation ownership business, when the quarter began, our sales centers in both California and Kauai were still closed due to government restrictions. But with the California restrictions being rolled back by the end of January, occupancies quickly started to improve. Overall, as tours grew sequentially and VPG improved compared to the fourth quarter, contract sales increased 27%, even with first-time buyers representing a larger portion of our sales mix. As I mentioned on our last earnings call, we knew revenue reportability was going to be a headwind in the first quarter. So while contract sales grew nearly $50 million on a sequential basis, development profit only increased $6 million as we do not adjust for reportability when calculating revenue or adjusted EBITDA. Adjusting for the impact of reportability, our development profit would have nearly tripled on a sequential basis to $40 million, and development profit margin would have more than doubled to 21%. As a reminder, since reportability is just timing, The revenue and profit from these sales will be reflected in our second quarter earnings. Rentals also improved nicely in the quarter with revenues up 29% sequentially, including 14% growth in transient rate. As a result, our rental business generated a $5 million sequential bottom line improvement as leisure travel and rental occupancies continue to recover. The stickier revenue businesses within our vacation ownership segment also performed well in the quarter. Resort management profit increased 3% sequentially, illustrating the stable nature of this business. And financing profit was unchanged compared to the fourth quarter, despite a declining notes receivable balance reflecting lower interest expense and the benefit of our synergy and cost-saving initiatives. Delinquency rates continue to improve across all of the Marriott brands, and were not only lower than the prior year's first quarter, but were below 2019 as well. Adjusted EBITDA in our vacation ownership segment declined $5 million sequentially to $68 million, despite the $26 million impact from negative revenue reportability, reflecting the strong recovery in contract sales and rental revenue as well as our business transformation efforts and other cost savings. Turning to the exchange and third-party management segment, exchange transactions at our interval business were up 27% compared to the fourth quarter. Getaway rentals nearly doubled, and average revenue per member was up 29% sequentially as members booked their vacations, including what looks like the release of some pent-up demand. As a result, adjusted EBITA increased 53% sequentially to $41 million in the first quarter, benefiting from both the impressive transaction growth and the benefit of our cost-saving efforts. After adjusting for share-based compensation expense and certain pandemic-related expenses and other costs, corporate G&A expense increased $12 million sequentially, primarily related to reinstating our variable compensation plans following 2020. As a result, we delivered $69 million of adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, overcoming $26 million of negative reportability, once again demonstrating the strength of our leisure-focused business model. Moving to our balance sheet, pro forma for the WELC acquisition, which closed on April 1st, we ended the quarter with $1.2 billion of completed inventory, and total liquidity of nearly $1.4 billion, including unrestricted cash of $432 million and gross notes receivable eligible for securitization of $345 million. We had $4.6 billion in principal amount of debt outstanding at the end of the quarter, comprised of $3.2 billion of corporate debt and $1.4 billion of non-recourse debt related to our securitized notes receivable. Our corporate debt increased $474 million during the quarter from the issuance of convertible notes and net of the repayment of a portion of our term loan. We have no corporate debt maturities until September 2022, which is our 2017 convertible note, and that's only $230 million. Finally, we recently extended our $350 million warehouse credit facility for another two years and added the ability to include loans originated by wealth as collateral. We generated an incremental $13 million in run rate synergies this quarter, bringing our total achieved to $145 million, taking us closer to at least $200 million of run rate synergies by the end of the year or early next year. Looking ahead, while we're still not ready to start giving guidance for the balance of the year, I do want to help you think through what the second quarter could look like, including having a full quarter of WELC in our results. Our vacation ownership business continues to recover nicely, and we expect that to continue this quarter. Occupancies and tours are projected to grow sequentially from the first quarter. We do expect VPGs to begin to normalize as first-time buyers become a higher percentage of the mix though we expect VPGs to remain well above pre-COVID levels. So with occupancy improving and tours growing, contract sales are expected to grow to around $320 to $340 million in the second quarter, up around 45% at the midpoint. We also expect development profit to increase $40 to $50 million compared to the first quarter, even after roughly $10 to $15 million of negative reportability. We expect occupancies and transient rate in our rental business to improve, reflecting the continued recovery in leisure travel. As a result, rental profit could improve by $20 to $25 million compared to the first quarter. Moving to the stickier parts of our vacation ownership segment, in our resort management business, we expect the recurring management fees to remain stable and ancillary margins to improve compared to the first quarter. and we expect financing profit to be up on a sequential basis due to the inclusion of WELC. Turning to our exchange and third-party management business, with the first quarter benefiting from seasonality as well as pent-up demand I mentioned earlier, adjusted EBITDA could be down slightly on a sequential basis. We expect G&A, excluding share-based compensation, could be up roughly $10 to $15 million sequentially as we continue to bring our associates back to support the recovery We incur more normalized spend on IT and other corporate initiatives, and with the addition of the wealth G&A, partially offset by our synergy and cost-saving efforts. While we're not providing free cash flow guidance today, with $1.2 billion of completed inventory on the balance sheet, or roughly $600 million of excess inventory at a normalized sales pace, I would expect our adjusted EBITDA to adjusted free cash flow conversion to be well above our normal 55% range for a number of years once contract sales normalize. With that, we'll be happy to answer your questions.

Operator? Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, David.

Good morning. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. One of the things we'd love a little more color on is thinking about a recovered new development margin run rate level once we get through all of this. And not necessarily, John, looking for a specific number, but if you can help us or guide us to how to get there on our own, I think that'd be helpful.

Sure. Yeah, I think, you know, I'll do it in terms of, you know, kind of opportunities as well as, you know, potential risks, right, as you think about the development margin. Obviously, you know, it's the two expenses, if you will, are your marketing and sales costs and your product costs. Given where our product cost is, I would say that we don't have a lot of new development or commitments, new product. We've got what we've got on our balance sheet. So the mix over the next couple years could be slanted more towards some reacquired inventory, which we know comes in at a lower price. So I would say, if anything, there's probably some opportunity, right, from product cost, you know, whether that ends up being a point or two or something. But there could be some opportunity on the product cost side. I think if you go to the marketing and sales costs, we've obviously been doing a lot in terms of our transformation and synergy initiatives. A lot of the, you know, not say a lot, but a chunk of the $200 million we expect to get in run rate savings comes in marketing and sales. Some of that's more in the fixed costs and overhead and things we've put in place. And that's what you're seeing now. I mean, when you look at our development margin and our marketing and sales costs, even though our contract sales in the first quarter were a third less than they were in 19, we got back to a very similar development margin. And a lot of that's on the fact that we've been able to leverage some of those marketing and sales costs as we've done some of the synergy savings. I'd say on the offset, or the other opportunity, like I said, on the digital side, as we sell more packages to The ability to acquire first-time buyers, hopefully, at better pricing going forward, still to be determined, but it's an opportunity, right? That's something that is there. And then I think on the negative side, David, you know, obviously there's a lot of reports out there that the cost of some more towards hourly people, but getting people back to work, things like that. to be determined, right, are we going to see some wage cost inflation, things like that. You know, my sense is maybe some of that, but I think we have, I would say, when you put it all together, I think we have more opportunity than cost increases around some of that, right? So those kind of give you the components about where to, how to think about it.

David, this is Steve. Just a little bit more color, if I could, on a couple things, one of which about the, you know, wage cost increases. Keep in mind, The majority of our associates in the field are associates that are paid for by the condominium owners, the timeshare owners through their maintenance fees. So our exposure there is relatively limited. There could be a little bit of cost creep on the sales and marketing side. We don't think that's material. And then, you know, pandemic, no pandemic. I mean, the name of the game in terms of optimizing your development margin is always around Yes, you can try to get a little bit of an improvement in your product cost, but it's all about marketing and sales. And that is constantly looking at your channel mix, optimizing those channels that give you the highest yield and the lowest cost, and stepping away from those that are the converse. But I think John articulated it very well.

Perfect. And my follow-up, thank you for that, is with Welk now closed, you know, there's always some little surprises. You know, some may be good, some may not be, you know, may be less good. Can you talk about, you know, any that you may have come upon so far?

Yeah, I mean, I think from the positive side, which I guess makes sense. I mean, their recovery that we're seeing in their business is probably a little bit faster than our recovery, right? They didn't have the international exposure like we have, right? Not a big part of our business, but we are seeing their sales, similar VPG trends, things like that, but quite frankly, a little bit better in terms of how quickly they're starting to come back. So that's been a positive thing. On the negative side, I'm not sure we found anything that I would say I'm not saying we won't, but, you know, we haven't found anything negative that we see like, oh, my gosh, we didn't realize that. So it's been great. We feel even better the more we get into the integration work and working with the wealth management team and, you know, kind of forming the new Hyatt business, if you will. Just gives me more excitement about what this is going to mean for our growth opportunities going forward. Super. Good luck. Thank you.

Thank you, David.

Our next question comes from Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question. Hi.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Apologies if I missed this first question in the prepared remarks. On that $320 to $340 million in second quarter expected contract sales, how much do you expect the WELC acquisition to contribute to that?

Yeah, I mean, within the range, call it plus or minus $25 million in the quarter. So about 10% of the, 45%, you know, it's about roughly 10% of the growth is from wealth. The other's organic, if you will, from our existing legacy MVW.

Okay, thank you. And do you see that percentage similar for the remaining quarters of the year?

In terms of, to be determined, obviously we're not getting into that. But yeah, I mean, If anything, I would expect if that's what we do in the second quarter, there should be some form of recovery, right? in the relative scheme of things, right? Not big numbers for all of our contract sales, but I would expect that hopefully 25 million should continue to come back. I mean, we did disclose, I think, as a point of reference, Patrick, that pre-COVID in 2019, Wealth reported, I think, roughly 123 million of contract sales. So that kind of gives you where the business was back pre-COVID, just as, once again, a little bit of a baseline as to what we're trying to get back to here in the near term, right?

Okay. Fair enough. And then my second question here, certainly sizable M&A is, well, that's not your first rodeo in M&A. You know, with the acquisition of Interval several years ago, what would you say are the top one or two most important learnings or best practices from that type of M&A that you see carrying over to the acquisition of WELC. Thank you.

Matthew, this is Steve. I think, first and foremost, having a well-thought-out plan of integrating the leadership of both the WELC organization and our organization into a seamless team so that we can keep focused on all the right things. I think the next thing that certainly comes to mind is channel mix. looking at each channel to understand where, by virtue of some of the things we do versus some of the things they do, where there is some opportunity for improvement. And then this is going to sound a little soft, but it's really important. It's making sure that the cultures are well aligned. I'm sure you have heard countless examples of where companies have made acquisitions and ultimately the cultures don't line up and things don't turn out well. I think we did a a very fine job with the interval acquisition, and I think we're on a great track and a great pace for the bulk acquisition.

Okay. Thank you. That's it.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Brant Montour with J.P. Morgan. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

Hey, guys. Thanks for all the details this morning. Just a quick question on sort of the outlook and the tone of the outlook. I mean, your guidance obviously implies you're getting most of the way back to 2019 levels, even backing out the incremental contract sales from Welk. So I guess my question is, how should we think about the cadence from here? I know that you're not going to give guidance, but my point is that it sounds like you think that international is going to take a little bit longer. So should we expect a little bit of a plateauing and that one piece to just take longer and the core business to sort of fully recover maybe even in the near to medium term? Is that the way we should think about it?

I think, you know, keep in mind, you know, when we gave you the 20% increase over the fourth quarter in Q1, that included really – below our expectations for both Europe and Asia Pacific. There's lots been written, and I'm sure you're very well aware of some of the travel restrictions, et cetera, that exist in both parts of the world there, and I expect that will continue. So if anything, the 27 percent, I don't have the number off the top of my head, but it would have been greater had it not included those two component parts. I think you should think about, and certainly our hope is, that the rest of the system will continue to grow sequentially, and there'll still be some drag, as I said, on the international stuff. The other thing that I would point out, everybody would like to see us be back at 2019 numbers at the end of the year. There are still a couple of other things in play here. Linkage, which you know is where we source customers staying at Marriott-affiliated or now Hyatt-affiliated properties and coming to take tours with us, they're going to be slow to come back because of hotel occupancies, et cetera. And so I think there'll be some drag there, but generally speaking, I think the way for us to characterize our view is that we are very optimistic about what we think the second half of the year holds and starting actually, you know, continuing in the second quarter. And then But there will be a few things that we'll have to continue to work against to try to offset some of that other stuff.

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks for that. And then a question on VPGs, obviously a really, you know, strong step up quarter over quarter. And you mentioned that was despite, you know, unfavorable mix or let's say diluted impact of VPG from new owner sales. So I guess the question is, you know, how did that step up, right? Was it close rate? Was it? Was it location-based mix? What drove those numbers, just so we can try and get a handle on how it should normalize from here?

I'll give you a couple of stats for what they're worth. So our contract sales in Q1 for owners was 74%, and first-time buyers was 26%. Now, the good news is that first-time buyer mix in Q1 was actually four points, better for first-time buyers than it was. So it was 26% versus 22% in Q1. Tours, in a similar fashion, if you look at a quarter-over-quarter basis, owner tours actually were down 3%, and first-time buyers were up 3%. All of that is a function of resort occupancy and people being in market. As you get more people in market that are non-owners, we have an opportunity to talk to them about trying to make sure that if they're interested in taking a timeshare tour and becoming an owner with us, we try to do that. As occupancies continue to improve, as previews continue to come into the system where people who have already bought a package that are not an owner, they become a first-time buyer. That's where this shift will be. You may recall that as late as 2019, I think we were at roughly 60, 40 owners to first-time buyers. on a percentage basis, and I think we're inching our way there. It's going to take a while, but I'm encouraged by what we see. And just to close the loop, obviously, VPGs on first-time buyers are lower because of a lower close rate than they are for owners. So that's where you get the negative drag on VPG for first-time buyers. But ultimately, the best thing for our system is to get more first-time buyers into the system. It grows the system. It allows us to give them further upgrades later on and all the other things that come along with that.

The only other point I'd add is just the mix. Hawaii became a bigger mix in the first quarter versus the fourth quarter. And Hawaii generally comes with a higher VPG, right? So there was a little bit of mix in terms of that location piece, but...

Okay, thanks for that, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our next question comes from Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, Chris. Hey, good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for all the details and taking the questions. So maybe we could drill into a little bit about on the spend patterns from, you know, not so much on BPG, but on actual, you know, dollars realized. And the question is really just given how healthy the consumer is, are you seeing a like-for-like customer, whether it's an existing customer? I guess it would have to be an existing customer. You know, are they spending more than they might have in 2019 or are new customers are first-time buyers spending more than first-time buyers did in 2019 when they make a purchase?

We're not seeing any particular evidence of that. What you have seen is obviously as our owner mix of sales vis-a-vis 2019 has gone up, you know, they're adding more points to their portfolio than, you know, they may have done in the past. However, they are in smaller slugs. So, the actual average sales price of a first-time buyer, of an owner is still lower than what you get in a first-time buyer. First-time buyer average sales price is up, but not materially different from what we saw before. So, and we've not seen really any inflection point in terms of things like FICO scores or anything else that's notable. that we can point to that would suggest to you there's something that we haven't seen. The great news is our owners continue to like to buy more of our product. We think that's a very good sign. But like I said, we're not seeing bigger checks or something like that as a result of something in the economy.

Yeah, I mean, I think where you see it more, Chris, is in the closing efficiency, right? If that's people, not necessarily people spending more on average, but More people buying more, right, in terms of closing more people, whether that's owners or first-time buyers, right? Maybe that's some of the pent-up demand. Maybe that's our product form resonating even more in a COVID world in terms of the size of our units and the amenities and all the things we've talked about in the past. But you are seeing it there, obviously, with the higher VP driving it, which is generally higher closing efficiencies.

Okay. Yeah, very helpful. And then just to follow up on the progression of the revenue recognition, do you guys expect that to kind of fully normalize by the end of the year, or do you think that obviously could potentially bleed over into 21, even though it should, I guess, be less of an impact quarter by quarter, right?

Yeah. Well, the assumption, remember, Chris, is quarter by quarter, it's if your contract sales in a recovery are continuing to increase sequentially on average, it just means until you get back to more of the seasonal quarters and just normal growth, you are going to have negative reportability from that recovery. So what you saw, $50 million increase in sales, a lot of that being weighted in the first quarter in March as things progressively got better, you know, we just guided even higher sales, right, in terms of contract sales for the second quarter. So, you know, the implication is, yeah, that's why we said, notwithstanding that reportability will get recognized. you are going to have, if you have the higher contract sales, you're still going to have 10 to 15 million that'll get pushed into the third quarter, and then not giving guidance for the third or the fourth quarter, but if those continue to grow. So if, you know, not saying we will, if we got back to a more normalized fourth quarter contract sales, right, then I think you'd start to get back to more of the seasonal reportability like we've always had, where you're on a full annual basis your reportability or negative reportability would essentially be your growth year over year, right, a percentage of that, right? So unfortunately, it's just because of the recovery, that's what will kind of continue to get that continued negative reportability until we get back to more normalized sales.

By virtue of timeshare accounting, and I'm certainly not the expert, John is, but it essentially leaves the last two weeks of the quarter in terms of contract sales. Maybe a little bit more, but generally speaking, because you have to get through the various hoops to make sure that it's revenue to be recognized and the like. So you'll always have some carryover from the end of the year out of 21 into 22. Our belief is, as we've seen in the past, is that generally unreportable sales that happen in the first part of the year, by and large, come back through before the end of the year. But you always still have some of that.

Right. Okay. Understood. Very, very helpful. Appreciate that. Thanks, guys.

Sure. Thank you.

We have reached the end of the question and answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn a call back over to Steve Wise for closing comments.

Thank you, Rob. And thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. As we've always known, whether it's to relax, spend time with loved ones, or see new and exciting places, at their core, people want to vacation. And being at a business whose sole products enable these experiences is a great business to be in. So while the past year has been difficult for all of us, it's also been a reminder of just how resilient our business model really is. A review of our first quarter gives you a sense of that. We grew contract sales 27% sequentially, beating our own expectations. Interval exchange transactions increased 17% year over year. And our adjusted EBITDA would have grown 47% from the fourth quarter were it not for revenue reportability, which is just timing. Looking forward, people are flying again, owner confidence is at a post-pandemic high, and occupancies at our resorts are strong and growing. 74,000 customers who had purchased a tour package from us have already booked their vacation for this year, while our total package pipeline continues to grow. And we currently have 13% more owner and preview reservations on the books for the second half of this year than we did at the same time in 2019, illustrating the pent-up demand we think is starting to manifest itself. As always, thank you for your interest in Marriott Vacations Worldwide. Take care of yourselves. And finally, to everyone on the call and your families, stay safe and enjoy your next vacation.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.