Xenia Hotels & Resorts, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending today's Xenia Hotels and Resorts Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tia, and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Amanda Bryant, VP of Finance. You may proceed.

Thank you, Tia. Good afternoon and welcome to Xenia Hotels and Resorts Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call and Webcast. I'm here with Marcel Verbas, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Barry Bloom, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Atisha, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Marcel will begin with a discussion on our quarterly performance and recent transactions. Barry will follow with more details about our operating trends and capital expenditure projects. And to teach, we'll conclude our remarks with an update on guidance and our balance sheet. We will then open the call for Q&A. Before we get started, let me remind everyone that certain statements made on this call are not historical facts or considered forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued this morning, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, November 2nd, 2022, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to net loss and definitions of certain items referred to in our remarks this morning's earnings release. The third quarter property level portfolio information will be speaking about today is on a same property basis for 32 hotels. This excludes Hyatt Regency Portland at the Oregon Convention Center and W Nashville. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days. I will now turn it over to Marcel to get started.

Thanks, Amanda. And good afternoon to all of you joining our call today. As we reported this morning, we are seeing further momentum across our portfolio as business transients and group demands continue to recover. Overall business picked up meaningfully in mid-September, providing encouraging evidence of the seasonal transition in our business from primarily leisure demand to a more traditional mix of leisure, corporate transit, and group demand. RepR for the quarter declined 2.6% compared to the same period in 2019. Overall demand accelerated in September with RepR growth of 2.7% as compared to 2019, marking a reversal from modest RepR declines in July and August. driven by improved occupancy that significantly closed the gap to 2019 as compared to prior months. Average daily rate growth in the quarter was a solid 15.6% as compared to 2019, offset partially by about 12 points lower occupancy as compared to the third quarter of 2019.

We reported a net loss of $1.7 million for the quarter.

Adjusted EBITRE was $53.8 million, and adjusted FFO per diluted share was 31 cents. Same property hotel EBITDA of $52.2 million represented an increase of 1.4% from the third quarter of 2019, marking the second consecutive quarter of growth relative to 2019.

Third quarter results were mixed compared to our internal expectations.

Same property rep bar matched our forecast for the quarter, albeit slightly more weighted toward ADR than occupancy. Same property hotel EBITDA margin continued to show improvement over 2019, increasing by 48 basis points for the third quarter, which followed an outsized 365 basis point improvement as compared to 2019 in the second quarter. The seasonal drop in margins that typically occurs in the third quarter relative to the second quarter was greater than we had projected. Third quarter margin gains were more subdued due to several factors, including hotels being more fully staffed to meet anticipated customer demand and higher expenses in areas such as utilities. Barry and Atish will provide additional detail on our third quarter operations and our expectations for the balance of the year in their prepared remarks. Regarding the results of some of our newer assets, we are pleased that Park Hyatt Aviara continues to perform in a highly encouraging manner. The transformational renovation of the resort has allowed the property to significantly increase rates compared to those it sees pre-acquisition. as evidenced by our estimated October ADR increasing more than 50% compared to October 2019. We are forecasting that the property will achieve approximately $18 million in EBITDA in 2022, which is already within the stabilized range we projected upon acquisition. However, we believe that significant upside remains as the property has not yet achieved its expected stabilized occupancy. As the operating team continues to optimize its sales strategy and demand mix, we believe substantial embedded growth should be unlocked in the years ahead. Barry will provide an update on the final components of the renovation, which we believe should further enhance Hyatt's ability to optimize results at the resort. Meanwhile, Hyatt Regency Portland continues on its path towards stabilization, as it benefited from a number of citywide groups and events in the third quarter as Portland's reopening is gaining momentum. The property is making good progress, building its book of group business. With group pays for 2023, as of the end of the third quarter, exceeding the pays for 2022 at the same time last year by over 20%. The property's excellent physical condition is a still essentially new hotel, and its differentiated location, surrounded by significant demand generators, such as the Oregon Convention Center and the Moda Center, Continues to position as well to grow business friends in the leisure business.

Top of the group business that we expect will be a significant driver overall demand.

W National continues to ramp in its first full year of operations with third quarter results that were softer than projected, primarily because of weaker than expected summer occupancy and food and beverage revenues. Importantly, both our asset management team and the hotel's operating team are continuing to learn the seasonality of the market in general and the hotel in particular. And important lessons were learned as it relates to the optimal group and transient segment mix and rate strategy. The property also continues to work on optimizing the operations and marketing of its high quality and distinctive food and beverage amenities that we expect will benefit us in the months and quarters ahead. As with many other assets in our portfolio, we are encouraged by recent demand trends, as evidenced by the hotel achieving rep bar of approximately $320 in October. We continue to be strong believers in the Nashville market and the hotel's ability to capture more than its fair share due to its extensive and high-quality facilities. Nashville continues to be an exciting growth market, as further evidenced by the recent announcement of the agreement to build a new multifunctional stadium with an expected cost of more than two billion dollars that will be the new home of the Tennessee Titans. We believe both High Regency Portland and W National will be meaningful growth drivers in the years ahead, and we remain confident that both hotels will achieve the stabilized EBITDA we expected with each of these acquisitions.

Turning to more recent portfolio-wide trends,

We are encouraged by the significant improvement we saw in business transit and group demand starting in the second half of September and continuing through October. We successfully transitioned from primarily leisure demand field recovery to a more traditional mix of leisure, business transit, and group demand across our portfolio. Based on preliminary results, October RASPAR was approximately $196, which was in line with October 2019 and 35% higher than October of last year. Occupancy was approximately seventy-one percent and ADR was up approximately thirteen percent over twenty-nineteen. The pickup in business transit and group translated into higher midweek occupancy with our portfolio consistently achieving occupancy greater than eighty percent on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in recent weeks.

Now turning to transaction activity.

In the third quarter, we entered into two separate agreements to sell two of our assets for a combined sale price of nearly $100 million. In late October, we sold Bohemian Hotel Celebration in Celebration, Florida, for $27.75 million, or approximately $241,000 per key. We believe it was an opportunistic time to sell this hotel, given its small size, the current investment appeal for the leisure markets, and a significant upcoming required renovation. We also entered into an agreement to sell Kimpton Hotel, Monaco, Denver for $69.75 million or approximately $369,000 per key.

This transaction is expected to close before the end of the year.

These two dispositions are consistent with our strategy of monetizing assets that we do not believe to be long-term strategic drivers for our company while continually improving quality and growth profile of our portfolio. We maintain a strong presence in both the Orlando and Denver markets with existing high-quality assets, and we may make additional investments in these markets if appealing opportunities arise, including through internal ROI investments, such as the comprehensive renovation we are currently undertaking at Grand Bohemia in Orlando. Meanwhile, the nearly $100 million in proceeds will improve our already strong liquidity position and provide us with increased balance sheet flexibility. We initiated both of these disposition processes earlier in the year and are pleased with the pricing in both transactions, despite the recent uncertainty in overall economic conditions in general and financing markets in particular. On a combined basis, the sale prices for both properties equated 15 times 2019 hotel EBITDA and 17.1 times trailing 12-month hotel EBITDA through September 2022. We believe that these are very attractive multiples, particularly in light of potential alternative uses for our capital. Going forward, we believe we are well positioned to remain opportunistic as it relates to potential on-strategy acquisitions, and we continue to evaluate a number of significant ROI opportunities within our existing portfolio that we believe could be meaningful drivers of earnings growth in the years ahead. With that, I will turn the call over to Barry, who will provide additional details on our third quarter performance and an update on our capital expenditure projects.

Thank you, Marcel, and good afternoon, everyone. For the third quarter, our 32 same-property portfolio REVPAR was $159.06 based on occupancy of 54.2% and an average daily rate of $247.74. As Marcel mentioned in his remarks, the same-property portfolio REVPAR decreased by 2.6% in the quarter as compared to the same period in 2019. The quarter ended on a high note, however, with September same-property REVPAR growth of 2.7% compared to 2019. This compares to REVPAR declines in July and August of 4.1% and 6.5% respectively as compared to 2019. September's strength was driven by a notable pickup in occupancy beginning in the middle of the month, consistent with expected seasonal patterns in business transients and group, and generally coincided with a marked increase in return to office and return to business travel. Overall, September occupancy of 67.2% was a post-COVID record relative to 2019, with occupancy down to 687 basis points. Of our 32 same-property hotels, all but four achieved higher average daily rates in the third quarter of 2022 than they did in the third quarter of 2019. Average daily rate in the quarter increased 15.6%. We're obviously pleased to see continued pricing strength and are optimistic regarding corporate and group rates, particularly as we achieve higher midweek occupancies in a number of our urban and suburban markets, including San Francisco and Dallas on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, providing significant rate compression opportunities. We continue to see significant continued rate strength in our resorts and our drive-to leisure markets, with RevPAR for the quarter compared to 2019 at 41% of Parquette-Aviara, 34.5% at Kempfing Canary Santa Barbara, 31.8% at Royal Palms, 27.1% of Hyatt Centric Key West, and 26.8% of Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress. As Marcel noted, our business mix shifted after Labor Day to reflect more group and corporate transient business. In the quarter, our group business benefited from solid in-the-quarter, for-the-quarter bookings and double-digit rate growth, resulting in group rooms revenue nearly fully recovered to the third quarter of 2019 levels. Our performance reflected healthy demand from corporate groups, particularly at our larger group-oriented hotels in Orlando, Scottsdale, San Diego, and San Francisco. We remain optimistic on the recovery in corporate transient business, which notably improved in September. This trend has continued and strengthened in October. RevPAR growth to the third quarter of 2019 remains significantly impacted, with Marriott SFO down 29.2% for the quarter and Hyatt Regency Santa Clara down 36.5% for the quarter. However, RevPAR compared to the third quarter of 2021 was up 90.9% from 158% respectively. In addition, our managers continue to point to improving corporate training and business fundamentals and expect this trend to continue as negotiated corporate rates are still on track to increase in the high single or low double digits next year. Now, turning to profit, third quarter same property hotel EBITDA was $52.2 million, an increase of 1.4% on a total revenue decline of 0.7% compared to the third quarter of 2019, resulting in 48 basis points of margin improvement. Hotel EBITDA margin grew modestly in the quarter and was impacted by a combination of several one-time and some ongoing factors, including labor and utility costs. Let me expand a bit on labor, which we believe will be an ongoing factor on the margin side for the foreseeable future. As we identified in the second quarter, we achieved somewhat outside margin expansion as a result of seasonally high revenues despite our managers' challenges in fully staffing our hotels. During the third quarter, our operators were successful in filling many open positions and were able to staff up to meet the strong recovery in demand we've seen in September and October. Some of this labor was hired and trained by our operators early in the third quarter, which put pressure on margins as our hotels continued to return to a more normalized level of guest service and amenity offerings. While most of our hotels are operating at staffing levels between 90% and 95% of pre-COVID levels, increasing wage costs resulted in labor costs being nearly equal to 2019 levels in the rooms department, the largest operating department in our hotels. Despite growing overall margin by just 48 basis points, labor costs in the rooms department were generally well controlled. Labor costs up to 0.3% compared to the third quarter of 2019 on a revenue decline of 2.6%. In the food and beverage department, labor costs were down 4.3%, on revenue decline of 2%. Fixed departmental staffing increased significantly during the quarter, particularly in sales and marketing, where our hotels have been aggressively restaffing positions in response to significant increases in group leads. This resulted in a 9.2% increase in labor costs in the department for the third quarter as compared to the second quarter. Our hotels also had success in bringing back personnel in their repairs and maintenance departments, resulting in a 5.8% increase in labor costs between the second and third quarters. Utility costs continue to increase and are typically much higher in the third quarter than the second quarter within our portfolio. Total utility costs were 20.8% higher in Q3 than in Q2, and were 14.5% higher than the third quarter in 2019. Turning to CapEx, during the quarter near today, we invested $18.8 million and $40.7 million in portfolio improvements respectively. At Park Hyatt Aviara, the comprehensive renovation of the golf course that began in the second quarter is now substantially complete. We continued planning work on a significant upgrade to the resort's spa and wellness amenities, which will be branded as a Miraval Life and Balance Spa upon its completion early in the second quarter of 2023. At Kimpton Canary Hotel Santa Barbara, we finalized planning of the guest room renovation, which is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2022 and be completed in the first quarter of 2023. The comprehensive renovation of Grand Bohemian Hotel Orlando was well underway, with the renovation of all public spaces scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the commencement of guest room renovations in the second quarter of 2023. During the quarter, we substantially completed the renovation of bathrooms at Marriott Woodlands in Houston, including the conversion of bathtubs to walk-in showers in approximately 75% of the guest rooms, as well as the renovation of meeting space at Fairmont Pittsburgh and meeting space at Royal Palms Resort. In the fourth quarter, we'll be renovating and reconfiguring suites at the Ritz Carlton Denver, which will result in three additional keys to the hotel. During the quarter, we also worked on a number of projects to enhance the resilience of many of our assets, including the replacement of the Marquesa deck outside the meeting space and above the restaurant, as well as spawning repairs at Hyatt Central Key West, completed a roofing and sealant project at Lowe's New Orleans related to Hurricane Ida, restoration of the pool decks of Western Oaks and Galleria, new exterior coating, sealants, and signage at Marriott SFO, replacement of the roof at Renaissance Atlanta Waverly, and we continue to work on a number of energy efficiency projects, including six chiller replacements that we look to complete in 2022. Finally, we continue our planning work on a comprehensive renovation of Kimpton Hotel Monaco, Salt Lake City, including the lobby, meeting rooms, restaurant, and bar, as well as the guest rooms, which will include converting tubs to showers and 35% of the inventory. With that, I will turn the call over to Atish.

Thank you, Barry. I will cover two topics this afternoon. First, I will discuss our full year guidance, and second, I will review our balance sheet strengths. As for the first topic, our full year guidance. Our full year guidance is based on current business conditions and does not anticipate changes to the economic environment or any additional COVID-related impacts. Our same property demand outlook is unchanged. As such, our same property rep part guidance is unchanged from prior guidance at down 5% versus 2019 at the midpoint. As to adjusted EBITDA RE, we currently expect to earn between $250 and $258 million. Relative to prior guidance, our current outlook is $2 million lower on the bottom end and $22 million lower on the top end. The current midpoint of $254 million is $12 million lower than prior guidance. The $12 million variance is primarily driven by three items as follows. Number one, same property hotel EBITDA margins. Number two, W Nashville. And number three, a combination of two factors, the sale of the Celebration Hotel and the impact of Hurricane Ian. I'll now get into more detail on each of these three items. First, on same property hotel EBITDA margins. A few months ago, we had anticipated stronger margin growth in the back half. With second quarter margins of 365 basis points versus second quarter of 2019, our expectation was for strong levels of margin growth in the second half. Relative to prior guidance, the change for same-property hotel EBITDA margins represents $7 million of the variance. This $7 million is driven by the items that Barry just discussed, in particular higher hotel labor expenses as well as higher non-labor expenses such as utility costs. We are seeing this impact more acutely in some of our larger hotels, which are still in early recovery from the pandemic. The second item is lower earnings expectations for W Nashville, which is outside of our same property set. We had previously expected to earn $15 million in hotel EBITDA during 2022. We now expect to earn $12 million in hotel EBITDA this year. So that is about $3 million of variance. The third item, which results in about $2 million of variance in total, is a combination of two factors. First, the sale of the Celebration Hotel last month, and second, the impact from Hurricane Ian. Hurricane Ian had a slight impact to revenues, including non-rooms revenues at seven properties in our portfolio. It also resulted in higher repair and maintenance costs due to minor damage at the seven properties affected by the storm. Next, I want to discuss the EBITDA guidance change by quarter. The variance is weighted more to the third quarter than the fourth quarter, In other words, of the $12 million variance, our expectations, about $8 million came in the third quarter. The remainder, about $4 million. It's a reduction in our fourth quarter expectations relative to our quarter of wealth. The other items that we provided full year guidance on in this morning's release have not changed much since last quarter. Interest expense and cash G&A expense are unchanged. Our capital expenditure guidance is down $5 million and now stands at approximately $85 million. Turning ahead to our group revenue pace, our pace for the balance of this year has dramatically improved. At the end of the second quarter, pace for the fourth quarter was down over 20% versus the same time in 2019. We had strong group production during the third quarter with lots of bookings made for near-end dates. As of month end September, our fourth quarter 2022 pace was about flat pace at the same time, 2019. Group revenue pace for 2023 continues to improve as well. We again had significant booking activity during the third quarter, evidenced by our pace for 2023 increasing materially. At the end of the second quarter, 2023 pace was down 30%. And by the end of the third quarter, it was down 19%. Based on short-term booking trends, we expect that variance to continue to lessen. Group rates for 2023 are currently up almost 10% versus group rates at the same time last year. Our confidence in the long-term is reflected by our recent actions on both our dividend and share buybacks. We've recommenced both paying a quarterly dividend and repurchasing shares. Recall that we were restricted from either activity until this past August. As to dividends, our board of directors declared a third quarter dividend of $0.10 per share. That level of dividend reflects an annualized yield above 2% on a full year basis. As to share repurchases, we repurchased nearly $2 million of stock in the third quarter. and another $6 million in the fourth quarter to date. Our recent average repurchase price was approximately $15.25 per share. We have over $86 million remaining on our board share repurchase authorization. We expect to continue to utilize this tool to drive shareholder returns, and we continue to believe our stock price reflects a significant discount to value. Moving ahead to my second topic, our balance sheet. It continues to be strong in the following four ways. Number one, our overall leverage is manageable. Our trailing 12-month leverage ratio ending September 30th was approximately five times. Our leverage target is to be sub five times net debt to EBITDA. We were running the company in the low three times to low four times net debt to EBITDA range pre-COVID. we're on a path to get back into that low three times to low four times range. In the meantime, we have significant cushion relative to our existing leverage covenant. Number two, we have a strong cash position. Cash at the end of the third quarter pro forma for the sale of Celebration in October was about $285 million. This equates to about $2.50 per share or over 15% of our current stock price. And that does not include proceeds from the pending sale of Monaco Denver. We expect to deploy this cash over time into value creating investments, including internal and external opportunities for our own stock. Number three, we have no debt maturities until the second half of 2024. At that time, less than 20% of our total debt matures. We have good relationships with our lenders and ample time to manage or extend those maturities. And finally, number four, most of our debt is fixed. Currently about 80% of our debt is fixed rate. On an annual basis, our current sensitivity to higher interest rates is about $2.75 million for every 100 basis point increase in SOFR. In terms of FFO, 100 basis point increase in SOFR equates to roughly two cents of FFO. We will be looking to refinance or fix more of our debt over the next 12 months. To wrap up, the company continues to be well-positioned for an extended lodging recovery. With ample liquidity in dry powder, as well as a strong base of assets still poised for recovery, we are looking forward to the next several years of growth and demand. That concludes our prepared remarks today. And with that, we will turn it back over to Tia to begin our Q&A session.

We will now begin the QA session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. The first question comes from the line of Brian Mayer with B. Riley. You may proceed.

um good afternoon uh thank you for those comments um marcel maybe you could give us a little bit of more color on kind of the extent of the weakness in august you know maybe what the causes were as you saw it maybe the segments was it more leisure more business more groups just a little more color there would be helpful

Yeah, I think pretty simply, leisure demand held up quite well for us in August. I think when you're looking at the comparison of 2019, and I think we kind of all saw this, that it was, you know, a little bit of a, that while you would hope that business travel would be a little bit more robust in August, that people really seem to stay off the road in terms of hardcore business travel, not only until after Labor Day, but as we saw actually further into the second week after Labor Day, when we really saw that corporate really kind of kick into gear, which really accounts for, at least in our view, most of the difference between the growth in September over 2019 and the decline in August over 2019.

And then on the rate increases, you know, we hear a lot in the media about people complaining about room rates and airfare rates. Are you seeing any pushback there, or are people just complaining about it but still paying?

And we've seen the operators report to us that there's very little pushback on rates at the time of booking. Clearly, guests are not necessarily happy when they do that. But quite frankly, and to our view, the increases we've achieved in the hotel segment are far more reasonable than what we've seen in the airline segment, for example, in a number of cases. And I think what's been important and a big part of our strategy we've talked about for, I think, almost a year now is that we have tried in our hotels to make sure that we're providing the services and amenities that are supportive of a higher rate structure. And we think that's one of the things that within our various markets has differentiated our hotels and let them perform well.

Okay. And then just last for me, when you think about you know, everything we're reading in the press now versus one quarter ago, two quarters ago, you know, impending recession, et cetera. When you look back at booking trends three, six, nine months ago, and you sit here today and you look out over the next kind of three, six months, you know, has there been any material change in, you know, kind of, you know, the velocity of bookings? You know, can you give us any color there? Is the consumer moving at all as far as you're seeing in the next quarter or two?

Well, clearly, on the transient side, the booking window is still very, very short. So to clean anything from transient places, you know, it doesn't do a whole lot either now or three or six months ago. What we're seeing on the ground is pretty robust travel in this midweek, particularly. And what we've seen in the trends and kind of our daily occupancies is that we're getting back to a much more traditional kind of weekly change where, the midweek days are really outperforming some of our weekend days now, which is kind of as expected as we got into the fall. Now, where we obviously do have more visibility is on the group side, and Atish went into a fair amount of detail on kind of what's happening with our group days, and we've seen a lot of very robust booking activity here over the last quarter or so, narrowing the gap very significantly or actually eliminating the gap here for the fourth quarter as compared to 2019. but also really seeing some really good bookings going into 23. Also, that's pretty robust rates still, going back to Barry's point, as far as not receiving a ton of pushback on rates increases either on the group side or on the transient side. And we're hearing pretty good things from our operators, too, as it relates to negotiated rates for next year, where we're thinking, but we're also seeing the same type of results as far as rate growth. So, we're not really seeing anything as it relates to that side of the business. And we're actually pretty encouraged with what we're seeing over the last few weeks as it relates to corporate travel.

Okay, thank you. That's all for me.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Michael Delcerio with Baird. You may proceed.

Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Just first question for you is sort of in reaction to the stock price being down, I suppose. Did you contemplate or maybe why was there no pre-release or intra-quarter update to better align analyst and investor expectations as the quarter had progressed?

No, clearly, where you're seeing some of the softness and what we reported and what we really focused on today is a lot of what we saw really kind of towards the latter part of the quarter as it relates to the expense side of the business. And that's obviously a lot harder to see in really short term than what you're seeing on the top line. So the top line for the quarter remained very much intact throughout the quarter with our expectations. We were also a little bit more surprised on the expense side of the business. And I think both Barry and Lateesh obviously went into a fair amount of detail there as far as what the challenges were on the bottom line side. So it was just something that obviously to us also is a little bit more recent information, and that takes a little bit longer to work through than figuring out what's going on with the top line.

Okay, fair enough.

And then one for Barry, just on the expense side. Were there any brand or market or regional differences in the margin pressures that you saw materialize in the third quarter?

Yeah, for sure. Certainly in the properties that had not recovered, they take a much bigger burden when we're bringing on, when the operators are bringing on fixed staffing in areas like sales and marketing and repairs and maintenance, which I alluded to. But more specifically, the largest margin pressure came from our largest hotels, which our largest non-resort hotels, which on a relative basis are still significantly underperforming on the top line. But the operators and we agreed a while ago that we need to really make sure that we've got in particular sales teams in place to not just be catching leads, but to be doing outbound selling on leads. And again, we think that part of proof of them being successful in that is what's shown up in closing the gap on booking pays for Q4 and for 2023.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Dori Keston with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Thanks. With respect to acquisitions, how has your underwriting changed versus a few quarters ago, just taking into account the higher cost of debt and potential recessionary headwinds?

Yeah, frankly, the pipeline isn't particularly broad at this point.

We're obviously always keeping an eye out on what's out there and what would make sense. We think that it's appropriate to be probably a little bit more patient as things progress here and as we get a little bit more visibility into what happens both on the overall economic climate, but also what might happen with asset pricing and particularly with the way the financing markets have been for hotels, we think that there might be some more interesting opportunities that would come down our path a little bit later on. So we're being pretty patient in that regard. And obviously we have to take into consideration where interest rates are, what we think is happening on inflation, both on the top line and on the bottom line. So we are looking at things, we're keeping an eye on things, aren't, you know, don't have an overly filled pipeline at this point.

And when you look out over the next few years, would you expect to have a higher weighting towards group? I'm just thinking about the 90% to 95% of FTEs back, but you're still 1,200 basis points below on occupancy. So, is this just more about building building back your business a little, sorry, building labor ahead of business returning

Well, I think certainly when you look at the overall portfolio, that's what happened. And to differentiate a little bit, I mean, it's interesting, the properties kind of fall into two clusters. The properties that are more or less fully recovered occupancy are at the 95% FTE level. The properties that have not fully recovered are closer to the 90 or a little bit sub-90 in terms of FDs compared to 2019. So that's a little bit independent of, to our mind, it's a little bit independent of group and more directly related to occupancy because the primary piece that's still left or could be left is the variable labor that relates to rooms expense and rooms cleaning. In terms of kind of fixed staffing around the property and getting things done, whether that's in AMG or sales and marketing or repairs and maintenance. that the properties have kind of reached relatively stabilized levels, and there are not a lot of open positions in those areas at this point.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question is from Delana Ari-Klang with BMO. You may proceed.

saying, in October with business demand recovering, REVPAR was flat versus 2019 versus plus 3% in September. Why wouldn't there be above normal seasonal growth in October? Is leisure dragging in any way relative to normal seasonality or is there something else going on?

It's a great question, Ari. We actually You obviously heard us talk quite a bit about how encouraged we are about what we saw in the trends in October. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that our midweek occupancies in October were pretty significantly above what we've seen in prior months. So we really are seeing that comeback of business travel happening, and we're certainly seeing strengthening on the group side. The October situation is a little bit unique, and we haven't talked about this much in the last year or two because we were just doing comparisons to very low baselines. But what we are getting back into now is calendar changes. And what you saw in October is October of this year had five weekends in it versus four weekends in 2019. And that fifth weekend, you know, adds another Sunday, which is pretty low in occupancy. So if you kind of script that out, we actually saw some positive movements in October where this last weekend of, you know, the extra Sunday leading into a Monday night of Halloween, those two nights were particularly soft. So those brought down the average, but otherwise we actually would have seen some pretty good growth for a month.

Okay, got it. And then as you think about the margin profile of the business and where it was in 2019 and costs now coming back, have your views changed on the potential long-term improvements that can be realized?

Well, we've spoken quite a bit about this and answering questions in the past couple of years and And I think we, as opposed to other people in this space, have always been pretty cautious as far as talking about any kind of specific margin improvement that we thought was going to come out of this. Because we've always been very cognizant about the fact that we do think we have a better way of running hotels and more efficiently running hotels. But there is no getting away from the fact that there is a good amount of cost pressure on the labor side and overall expenses in operating hotels. So we are pleased, frankly, that that we're still very able to eke out, you know, 48 basis point improvement in margins over the third quarter of 19 in an environment where obviously we're seeing a lot of pressure on expenses. So we are absolutely still running them a little bit more efficiently. But clearly there's, you know, everyone is seeing it everywhere. Inflation is everywhere. There's cost pressures everywhere. And it is something that we always felt it was a little bit premature to talk about, you know, we're going to be able to achieve X basis points of margin improvement over time.

Appreciate the color.

Thanks. Thank you. The next question is from the line of David Katz with Jefferies. You may proceed.

Hi, afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. It covered a lot of the issues I wanted to raise, but I did want to go back to just kind of the maturity flow, taking a little longer term, right? There's a couple of mortgages, and then there's the bank facility that you know, I think is a 24 thing. So we should start to see and hear some stuff about it next year. Is that about right? And how are you thinking about your strategies here?

Yeah, thanks, David. You know, absolutely. So we do have the line of credit, which matures in the first quarter of 2024. It's undrawn. And then we've got $275 million worth of debt that matures in the second half of 2024. And so, you should start to see us, you know, sort of address those next year. I'll say that, you know, a few things about how we feel about those maturities, which, you know, I mentioned in my remarks that, you know, that debt that matures reflects about 20 percent of our total debt, so relatively manageable. You know, all that debt is bank debt, and we continue to have good relations with our bank syndicate. You know, we did four amendments during COVID. The banks were really supportive and cooperative. And so that's our expectation right now. You know, of that $275 million, some is mortgage debt. A couple properties have performed well. You know, it's not a lot of debt relative to the value of those properties and how those properties are yielding. And then the remainder is one-term loan in the undrawn line. And how I would think about those pieces, that's total $575 million worth of capacity. But again, the line is not drawn, so it's only $125 million that's on that term line. But say even the 575 relative to our unencumbered assets is a very manageable level. 29 of our 33 hotels are unencumbered. So that's roughly $3 billion of asset value. And that's how you know, the bank syndicate would look at, you know, our level of bank debt relative to the pool of assets. So that's a little bit of how, you know, they think about it and why our view is that it is quite unmanageable. The only other thing I'll say is, you know, the commentary that we've gotten from our banks since we're, you know, always in dialogue with them is that we did everything that we said we would during COVID. We issued high-yield debt and paid off some bank debt. So we're viewed as, you know, a credible good credit and kind of manageable level of bank debt relative to the size company and the unencumbered asset base. So that's kind of the full story on how we're thinking about the maturities in 2024 and the overall philosophy on the balance sheet.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tyler Battery with Oppenheimer. You may proceed.

Good afternoon. This is Jonathan on for Tyler. Thanks for taking our questions. First one for me, following up on the discussion of the business moving to a more normalized mix, can you provide some additional color on the business mix now and how that compares to pre-pandemic and the potential upside that remains there as we move further along in the normalization process?

Yeah, sure. I think if you piece together everything we've talked about, we know that relative to 2019, we're generating more leisure rooms through our portfolio than we had before. uh thinking about three q q3 uh group business has has uh certainly uh recovered on a revenue basis a little less so on a room night basis so there's still some opportunity to grow into that uh the biggest piece that's still missing from the business is that uh is on the corporate transient side and as we've continued to see you know the smaller businesses the local regional businesses are traveling as much or more than they had during covet the biggest gaps are still from the largest customers, whether that's big four accounting firms, the large consulting firms, some of the Fortune 500 companies, their business is still down pretty significantly. But certainly, as reported by the properties, as we can see in the weekly data, particularly as we've talked about a couple times today, that Tuesday and Wednesday in that occupancy, that those travelers are continuing to come back more and more each week. We've seen, again, kind of since mid-September and feel like ultimately the question is the timeline, that the business should stabilize around where it was before for our business, which is relatively equal parts in each of those segments.

Okay, great. Thank you for all the detail there. And then switching gears to the common dividend, any additional details you can share in terms of what factors contributed to that decision, why you think that level is appropriate? And I'm also interested in your perspective on potential payout ratios going forward? You know, how do you think about the right payout ratio or the right level of quarterly payment today versus pre-COVID, given all the movements that have occurred in the portfolio?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. So, in terms of dividend, you know, the way our board looked at this is that the business is recovering, and they viewed that this would be an appropriate level of dividend, given that we have, you know, sort of more more visibility into the business and the demand has been strong. And, you know, our expectation is that over time that our payout ratio would move to kind of the 65% of sad level, which was where it was pre COVID. So, you know, that's, that's kind of the thinking right now that we turn to that at some, some point in time. And our, you know, our board tends to revisit the level of dividend in the future, so we'll obviously be updating you all on that as things move.

Very helpful. Thank you for all the color. That's all for me.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Bill Crow with Raymond James. You may proceed.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. I wanted to drill down a little bit in Nashville and the kind of 20% miss on the first year underwriting. This is really before all the new luxury supply hits. So, you know, how are you adjusting your kind of long-term underwriting assumptions on that asset?

Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of that supply already has hit at this point, and a fair number of assets have opened, actually, over the last, you know, number of months. So, the bulk of the supply you've actually seen coming in already. What we acquired out, we talked about expecting about $13 to $15 million of EBITDA for this year. As we got a couple months into it, we were more comfortable that we thought we'd end up on the high end of the range around the $15 million number. Fortunately, the summer was just weaker from both kind of the occupancy side, and we do think that that's really a matter of not really focusing on the right kind of segmentation mix. Probably need a little bit more group than what we had on the books for this summer, which would have optimized the operations a little bit better. Also, some short-term issues as it related to optimizing the food and beverage facilities. We think that there's a lot of upside to be found there going forward. So if you look back at when we initially acquired Daltel, like I said, we expected about 13 to 15 million this year. We're going to end up somewhere in the $12 million range. So clearly a little bit south of where we thought and hoped it would be this year. But with everything that's still going on at the property, the focus that the team has, some of the changes that have been made at the operating team level as well, we think that our long-term fees absolutely remains intact there. And we're very positive about all the developments that continue to happen in Nashville. So what we're seeing here really is, in our minds, kind of some Some growing things, I would describe it, and we think there's absolutely a lot of upside to come there, and we're very comfortable with that asset.

Are you, if I can just probe a little bit more, I think we've talked before about the W brand and kind of its attempted rebirth, I guess. Now that the supply that you referenced and I referenced has opened, do you think you're losing to other brands that... that have entered the market? And do you still believe in the W brand over the long term?

Yeah, Bill, this is Barry. We definitely do. And when you just maybe put a little finer point on what Marcel said, April and May were tremendous for this hotel, and October has been a tremendous month as well. What the property really experienced was, and just put it right out there, was a bit of a miss on group strategy over the summer months. Like many markets, this property needs group business midweek and they've done a great job of capturing that in the months where there was both high demand and high rates, which is really a good part of the explanation of April, May and October. Summer months were a little different. And the hotel had been operating on a rate strategy that they had worked with philosophically, which was to maintain very high rate for mid-week group during the summer. And the reality is that they were mispriced and were not able to pick up the right number of group rooms in the summer, a strategy that's really hard to course correct that quickly. But we have a lot of optimism about that strategy, about the change in that strategy as we look into next year and we look in general into months that may be a little bit softer from a weekday demand perspective.

Yeah, and I think I mentioned in my remarks as well, Bill, Silver ref bar was about $320 at the hotel. And that comes after a number of those new additions that you're talking about have opened up in the market. So clearly there's momentum here, and there's a lot of confidence that we have around those operations.

Yeah, I appreciate it. If I could just ask one follow-up question, and maybe, Barry, for you. There's talk about the level of staffing driving the labor costs higher. But where are we at a rate basis? Are we still losing employees to other businesses and the $20, $25 an hour sort of warehouse and retail workers? Or do you think rates have stabilized at this point?

Yeah, we're seeing a lot less of the losing employees to other businesses as our operators report that to us. And I think in most markets that not only have the labor market stabilized a little bit in terms of wage rates, but also I think people have come around to understanding that in a stable environment, the hotel business is a great business to be in. And both at the property level, at the management company level, and at the HLA level, so the national level, there's been a lot of emphasis being put on why hotel industry can provide a great career opportunity and that you can come in at, an entry level and really have a lot of opportunity. I think people are, have been much more receptive to that as the labor markets may have just tightened in general a little bit. And there's not, you can go and apply for any position that you want out there in any industry and be certain of getting that opportunity. So that's what we've heard from the operators. And I think that certainly kind of rings true in terms of what we've seen in terms of filling open positions at what are now relatively stable wage rates.

Great. Thank you. That's it for me.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Austin Rushments with KeyBank. You may proceed.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. So I wanted to hit a little bit more on some of the challenge markets in the Bay Area and Portland. And Barry, I believe you've spoken about how Paul Cecala, Citywide and group demand is negatively impacted these markets, you know, and I'm just curious how within sort of the, you know, pace of the group calendar. Paul Cecala, How does it stack up, you know, specific for these markets as we look out into the, you know, late into this year and into 2023

where the convention center really is still just now having the first benefit of having a true headquarters hotel that they never had in 2019, so it's not a great comparison. Their bookings are up fairly significantly for next year, as are the hotel's in-house bookings, and I think we're pretty pleased with how Portland has come online after the pandemic and that that location and the quality asset have proven their merit to a great extent. as I think you know, has a somewhat better year next year in terms of city-wide compared to 2019 and certainly compared to the last couple of years. But our property at the airport, the Marriott, has really only benefited from that during true compression from really large events. And part of the strategy there for many years and certainly part of the strategy going into next year has been for the hotel to really focus in on bringing in its own in-house group. It's got some very nice meeting facilities that have often been underutilized because the hotel has the benefit of so much great transient business historically, but the hotel is really making a pivot to do that. In Santa Clara, continuing the Bay Area, since those are areas you focused on, business in the Santa Clara Convention Center is weaker next year, but we have not historically driven a lot of business out of that center, which has really been relied much more heavily on local events and things like that. So, again, that property has kind of doubled down on its efforts to be out there looking for a business that can be accommodated within the hotel. And, again, all of that net-net is reflected in the booking pace we talked about for 23.

Yep, yep, no, that's helpful. And I recognize overall the booking trends for group are improving and appreciate all of the updates you've provided. Is there anything, you know, any signs of anything that would give you pause on further improvement from here for next year? You know, either select cancellations you've seen or a decrease in the conversion rate of leads to bookings. Just, yeah, anything, you know, that you could share.

Yeah, no, we continue to see, obviously, see group leads continue to grow. Just to tie a couple things together that I talked about in the prepared remarks and in some of the Q&A is that, you know, we've made a concerted effort in our portfolio to make sure that our operators have hired enough salespeople to, quite frankly, process the amount of business that is coming in, but also to really focus on hiring additional labor that's out there truly selling and proactively looking for business. That strategy has paid off for us, we think, as we look at how the properties perform from a group perspective in Q3 and where we are in Q4. I think that's going to be a material part of a positive strategy for the portfolio as we work through next year.

Yeah, I mean, I would just add that the production that I talked about, in the quarter was really remarkable. I mean, in the third quarter or in the quarter bookings for the second half for three times the level that they were in the third quarter of 2019. So we put a tremendous amount of business on the books, you know, and business continues to be very short term in nature. I would also say that rate progression is a big positive. You know, if you go back to the end of the second quarter and looked at our pace for 2023, group rates were up about 4% or 5%. By the end of the third quarter, our 23 group rates were up close to 10%. So, again, you know, real positive from that perspective as well. And, you know, it's broad-based. I mean, there are a lot of our big group hotels are now seeing good production. It's not a tale of only certain markets or only certain types of assets. hotels continue to move in the right direction.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Hey, thank you. I think that we've been hearing about outperformance from some of the hotels with refreshes or renovations during the pandemic kind of across the broader group. I guess, are you seeing any outsized benefits from these ROI projects that you've already done? And as we think about the ROI that's assumed on what you're doing in the future, any thoughts on how that may be similar or different? Thanks.

Well, clearly the most obvious example in our portfolio is what we did at Aviara, and I touched upon that quite a bit in my prepared remarks. But for that property to deal with the effects of COVID in the middle of doing this whole project and already being in the stabilized range of where we thought this hotel would end up from an EBITDA perspective, which is very significantly above where it was operating before, it's obviously highly encouraging. And with that asset particularly, we're nowhere near stabilized occupancy. So we think that there's a lot of upside there. So it is a project that's... that we like to talk about and that we focus on quite a bit because it is an asset that absolutely was screaming for that type of ROI investment and where we identified the absolute right type of level of investment to make. When we acquired it, I know a lot of people were looking at it thinking that the amounts might be very different from what we ended up spending on it, and we think we made the absolutely right investment amount at the hotel and are getting the appropriate return for it. It is an example for some of the things that we may be looking at in our portfolio, and particularly when there's a chance for us to kind of catch up to a set where we think it is where it could more appropriately operate after making the right kind of investment.

I think the other project that I think has certainly had a post-COVID benefit that was a real ROI project was the new ballroom that opened at Hy-Vee Sea Grand Cypress at the end of 2019 in Wall. While it's a little harder to measure because group business there has been good but has not fully recovered, we know that, in fact, during the toughest days of COVID, having that extra ballroom was a tremendous ability for the asset in terms of spacing out groups. And as we look to booking this, as the hotel is booked this year and looks into booking in 2023 and 2024 and beyond, having that second ballroom has really changed the game for them in terms of their ability to stack in-house groups instead of having to have just one in-house group. And what we've seen, the properties performed tremendously well this year and continue to perform very well on the leisure and transient side, the transient leisure side, in part because the hotel has been able to compress rates when they have two groups in-house using the two ballrooms simultaneously. And we did a small project there where we renovated the restaurant in 2019, never really got off the ground, but then further reconcepted at the end of 2021 with the celebrity chef Richard Blaze, which has become a significant draw to the hotel for Transient and Group as well. So we've seen real benefit and returns on that, on the work we've done at that hotel as well. And again, look to doing absolutely similar things in every one of the more comprehensive renovations that we talked about in prepared remarks and in our earnings release.

Yeah, just to add one more comment, I would say we do look at the returns on ROI projects. We underwrite all of them and feel confident in the level of returns, double-digit type returns that we're getting from these projects. And we're also looking at after the CapEx, what's our overall basis in the asset as I compare to other assets in the market. So there are a few things we're looking at and continue to feel good about the investment made in some of the projects that Marcel there just talked about.

It's great, Keller. Thanks so much.

Thank you. There are no additional questions at this time. I will pass it back to Marcel Verbas for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tia.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing many of you over the next few weeks.

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you. You may now disconnect your line.