Xenia Hotels & Resorts, Inc.

During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing Start followed by 1 on your keypad. If you change your mind, please press Start followed by 2. I will now hand over to your host, Aldo Martinez, Manager of Finance, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Becky. And welcome to Zinnia Hotels and Resorts' third quarter 2025 earnings call and webcast. I'm here with Marcel Verbas, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Barry Bloom, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Atish Shah, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Marcel will begin with a discussion on our performance. Barry will follow with more details on operating trends and capital expenditure projects. And Atish will conclude today's remarks on our balance sheet and outlook. 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 and are 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, October 31st, 2025, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find the reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to net income and definitions of certain items referred to in our remarks in our third quarter earnings release, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. The property level information we'll be speaking about today is on a same property basis for all 30 hotels, unless specified otherwise. 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 Aldo, and good morning everyone. As we reported this morning, our third quarter performance generally met the expectations we outlined during our second quarter earnings call. The lodging industry continues to experience a challenging operating environment particularly as it relates to leisure demand that generally is a significant driver in the third quarter for our portfolio and the industry overall. However, despite these macro challenges, we continue to benefit from the high-end positioning of our portfolio, as well as unique internal growth drivers, such as the continued ramp of Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort. We also continue to benefit from strong group demand throughout the portfolio, which was evident again in September and thus far in the fourth quarter. We expect group demand to remain strong as we look ahead to next year, which is supported by robust group room revenues already on the books for our portfolio for 2026. Turning to our third quarter financial results, for the third quarter of 2025, we reported a net loss of $13.7 million, adjusted EBIT IRA of $42.2 million, and adjusted FFO per share of 23 cents. which was a decrease of 8% compared to the same quarter last year. Our same property, Redfar, for the third quarter was essentially flat for our 30 hotel portfolio compared to the same period in 2024, with an occupancy decrease of 100 basis points, offset by a 1.6% increase in average daily rate. The Houston market in particular was a drag on portfolio performance, as the market and our hotels faced tough comparisons due to a short-term demand lift from the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl in the third quarter of last year. Additionally, given the seasonality of the various demand segments in our portfolio, group demand, which has been the strongest segment this year, was not as big of a driver for our portfolio in the third quarter as it was in the first half of the year and as we expect to see again in the fourth quarter. Despite these challenges, when excluding our Houston assets, same-property REF PAR increased by 2.9%, which was largely driven by significant year-over-year growth at Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, as the resort continues its track toward post-renovation stabilization. In addition to the strong growth in Scottsdale during the third quarter, we experienced double-digit percentage REF PAR growth in Atlanta, Santa Clara, Birmingham, and Savannah. Despite the relatively muted performance in the third quarter, We are pleased that for the first nine months of the year, our same property portfolio achieved a 3.7% increase in REFBAR, driven by 80 basis point higher occupancy and a 2.4% increase in average daily rate when compared to the same period in 2024. This outperformance was again mostly fueled by the recently renovated and up-branded Grand Hyatt Scottsdale Resort during the early phase of its path towards stabilization, as it continues to perform in line with our underwriting expectations. We continue to be excited about the impact of our stronger group positioning this year, and particularly the associated increase in banquet and catering revenues. As a result of a significant increase in food and beverage revenues, our third quarter same property total ref bar increased by 3.7% in the third quarter as compared to last year, despite our ref bar being flat year over year. The third quarter increase was again mainly driven by Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. For the first nine months of the year, the impact of increased food and beverage revenues was even greater. That same property total REF part increased by 8.5%. Our strong group base for the fourth quarter and for 2026 give us optimism that we will be able to continue to experience outsized total REF part gains in the quarters ahead. Third quarter same property hotel EBITDA of $47 million was 0.7% above 2024 levels. and hotel EBITDA margin decreased 60 basis points. Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, third quarter hotel EBITDA decreased 7.8% and hotel EBITDA margin decreased 160 basis points. For the first nine months of the year, same property hotel EBITDA of $205.4 million increased by 12.6% above 2024 levels and hotel EBITDA margin increased 101 basis points. excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. Year-to-date hotel EBITDA increased 3.9%, and hotel EBITDA margin was essentially flat. We remain pleased with our operator's efforts to control expenses in a continued inflationary environment. Turning to our capital expenditure projects, we now project that we will spend approximately $90 million on property improvements during the year, which is a $10 million increase compared to the midpoints from our prior CapEx guidance. This increase is due to two factors. First, the anticipated completion of some additional capital projects that were originally planned at various properties, as we have been able to mitigate the impact of any potential tariff-related cost increases. And second, the cost we will be incurring in 2025 for a comprehensive reconcepting of the food and beverage operations at WNashville. Even with this increase, we still anticipate spending approximately $15 million less on capital expenditures in 2025 than we projected at the beginning of the year. We are extremely excited about the upcoming relaunch of the food and beverage venues at W Nashville that we announced in our release this morning. We extensively evaluated several options to increase the appeal to food and beverage outlets in the hotel, which could drive incremental F&B revenues and further enhance the desirability of the hotel for all demand segments. After completing this thorough process, we are pleased to have reached an agreement with Jose Andres Group, under which Jose Andres Group will operate and or license essentially all of the food and beverage venues at the hotel. We believe strongly that the combination of the operational and marketing expertise of Marriott and Jose Andres Group will drive incremental revenues in hotel EBITDA and make the hotel an even more exciting destination. We will be making an additional capital investment of approximately $9 million to effectuate this change. However, given the already outstanding physical condition and quality of the hotel's existing venues, this capital will be largely spent on FF&E and branding elements, as well as kitchen equipment and back of the house improvements. We are projecting that the relaunch of the FMB outlets will add between $3 and $5 million to Hotel EBITDA upon stabilization through increases in food and beverage and rooms revenues, which we believe should result in the hotel generating an excess of $20 million of Hotel EBITDA in the next few years. Barry will provide additional details on this exciting WNashville FMB relaunch during his remarks. As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we remain cautious in our near-term outlook, which is reflected by slightly reduced expectations for the fourth quarter. For the full year, we now expect the same property RFPR increase of 4% and adjusted EBIT IRA of $254 million at the midpoint of our updated full year guidance. Atisha will provide additional details on these modest adjustments to guidance during his remarks. As has been the case for most of the year, Group business continues to be a driver of our RFR growth, with leisure softening a bit this year, as we had anticipated, while business transient continues to improve gradually. We saw a continuation of this trend again in October. We are encouraged by the approximately 5.8% RFR growth that we project our same property portfolio will achieve in October, which represents a meaningful improvement over our portfolio's third quarter performance. With strong overall group base for the fourth quarter, We again anticipate significant growth in food and beverage revenues during the quarter as well. Looking ahead to 2026, we believe that Grand Hyatt Scottsdale will continue to ramp consistent with our underwriting, and we expect group demand across the portfolio to be robust and drive outsized non-rooms revenue growth. We continue to believe strongly in the long-term growth prospects for our well-located, diversified, and high-quality portfolio in 2026 and beyond. Barry will now provide more details on our third quarter operating results, the WN Nashville food and beverage relaunch, and our other capital projects.

Thank you, Marcel, and good morning, everyone. For the third quarter, our same property portfolio REVPAR was $164.50, flat to the third quarter in 2024, based on occupancy of 66.3% and an average daily rate of $248.09. Strengthened non-room spend, notably banquet revenues, resulted in total REVPAR of $289.76 for the quarter and $329.60 for the year to date, an increase of 3.7% and 8.5% respectively when compared to the same periods in 2024. Including Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, third quarter REVPAR was $167.87, a decrease of 2.6% as compared to 2024. This reflected a decrease of 289 basis points in occupancy for the period, and an increase of 1.5% in average daily rate as compared to the third quarter of 2024. Our top performing hotels in the quarter were Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, with Red Park up over 270%, Onda's Savannah up 15.3%, Waldorf Astoria Atlanta Buckhead up nearly 14%, Grand Bohemian Hotel Mountain Brook up 13.2%, High Regency Santa Clara up 12%, Renaissance Atlanta Waverly up 9.5%, Grand Bohemian Hotel Orlando up nearly 9%, Bohemian Hotel Savannah Riverfront up 8.3%, and the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City up nearly 6%. Strength in group business and continued improvement in corporate demand was the driver behind success at most of these properties. Hotels that experienced rep or weakness compared to the third quarter of 2024 included Lowe's New Orleans, all three Houston hotels, Marriott Dallas Downtown, Hyatt Central Key West, and Kipton Hotel Palomar Philadelphia. New Orleans, Dallas, and Philadelphia suffered from a lack of convention center activity relative to last year, and the Houston hotels were challenged by a comparison to the significant amount of business related to Hurricane Beryl that they captured last year. General leisure, softness, and return of inventory that was offline last summer impacted Key West. Looking at each month of the quarter compared to 2024, the live rep part was $161.98, down 1.7%. August REVPAR was $154.43, down 1.5%. And September REVPAR was $177.52, up 3.2%. Excluding Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, compared to last year, business declined in July and August, largely due to the weakness in the Houston market and softer leisure demand overall. Performance in September significantly improved as we got out of the leisure-heavy summer months and saw strong group business as well as a significant increase in corporate travel. Business from our largest corporate accounts grew modestly in Q3, with declines in both July and August, but a significant increase in September as compared to Q3 of 2024. Business from the largest volume accounts continued to be down meaningfully from 2019, but it's continued to grow throughout the year. Group business continues to be a bright spot across the portfolio, despite the seasonal shift from corporate to association-related group, resulting in the lowest quarterly group growth for the year. For the third quarter, excluding Grand High at Scottsdale, Group room revenues were virtually flat compared to the third quarter of last year due to modest declines in both July and August, while September was more in line with the trends we have seen throughout the year, up approximately 5%. Food and beverage revenue from banquets declined slightly during the quarter compared to last year as a result of the mix of group business. Now turning to expenses and profit, third quarter same property total revenue increased 3.8% compared to the third quarter of 2024. Hotel EBITDA margin decreased by 60 basis points, resulting in Hotel EBITDA of nearly $47 million, an increase of 0.7%. For the year to date, Hotel EBITDA increased 12.6%, with margin improvement of 101 basis points compared to the same period in 2024. Since Green Heights Scottsdale was undergoing its transformative renovation last year, the following P&L analysis is presented for the remainder of the same property portfolio compared to last year. Hotel EBITDA for the quarter was $46.7 million, decrease of 7.8 percent on a total revenue decrease of 0.7 percent resulting in a margin decline of 160 basis points however we are pleased with the ability of our hotels management teams to control expenses in light of softer revenues rooms department expenses increased by 1.5 percent on a 2.6 percent decline in rev part food and beverage growth was muted at 0.4 percent with expense growth of 0.8 percent other operated department income including spa parking and golf revenues was up 6.6%. The miscellaneous income was up 7.8%, resulting in a total red part decline of just 0.7%. In the undistributed departments, expenses in A&G and sales and marketing were well controlled. A&G increased by 1.5% compared to last year, while sales and marketing expenses grew by 2%, continuing the moderating trend we've experienced over the past several quarters. Property operations and utilities expenses were up 2.6%, 0.5% respectively. Turning to CapEx, during the third quarter, we invested $19.9 million in portfolio improvements, which brings our total for the year to $70.7 million. These amounts are inclusives of capital expenditures related to the completion of the transformative renovation of Grand Hyatt Scottsdale, where we completed improvements to the building facade and parking lot during the third quarter, which now mark the full completion of this transformational renovation. During the third quarter, we made significant progress on select upgrades to guest rooms at several properties, including Renaissance Atlanta Waverly, Marriott San Francisco Airport, Hyatt Central Key West, Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, Grand Bohemian Hotel Mountain Brook, Grand Bohemian Hotel Charleston, and Kimpton River Place. This work, which is expected to be substantially complete by year end, is being done during periods of lower occupancy, particularly over the holiday season. We are continuing to perform significant infrastructure upgrades at 10 hotels this year, including facade waterproofing, filler replacements, elevator and escalator modernization projects, and fire alarm system upgrades as business levels allow. The majority of this work will be completed in the fourth quarter or early 2026. In the fourth quarter, we will begin work on a limited guest room renovation at Fairmont-Pittsburgh, which will be completed in the first quarter of 2026, and a renovation of the M Club at Marriott Dallas Downtown, which we expect to be completed in early 2026. During the third quarter, we entered into agreements with Jose Andres Group, also known as JAG, pursuant to which JAG will operate and or license substantially all of the food and beverage outlets at W Nashville. JAG is a restaurant management arm of Jose Andres, a globally acclaimed chef, restaurateur, and media personality that operates nearly 40 restaurants, bars, and lounges across the globe, including several of prominent lodging properties. We believe this comprehensive relationship will leverage the superb physical attributes to create unique destination dining venues at W Nashville. The all-new food and beverage programming will replace the existing venues in the hotel. It will include proven JAG concepts such as Zatania, an Eastern Mediterranean concept that will serve lunch and dinner, Bar Mar, a coastal seafood and premium meat concept that will be open for dinner, and Butterfly, a high-energy rooftop bar with a Mexican-inspired menu. In addition, there will be a completely new pool experience that will feature an expanded bar, upgraded food offerings, and refreshed outdoor spaces. Modifications will be made to the existing living room, which will become the breakfast venue, while continuing to serve as the hotel's lobby bar, featuring a revised menu of unique cocktails and food offerings. In addition, the hotel will offer premium Jose Andres Group-designed banquet and catering menus, which will complement existing offerings in order to enhance group experiences and drive incremental food and beverage revenues. Modifications to the venues will begin in the fourth quarter in a staggered approach intended to minimize disruption, and all venues are expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2026. Our in-house project management team will provide direction and oversight through the renovation process, which gives us significant confidence in achieving on-time project completion and the ability to stay within our budget. We are incredibly excited about this relationship and the repositioning of the F&B outlets at W Nashville. With that, we'll turn the call over to Atish.

Thanks, Barry. I will provide an update on our balance sheet, discuss our guidance, and provide some early thoughts on 2026. On our balance sheet, it continues to be a source of strength. At quarter end, we had approximately $1.4 billion of outstanding debt. About one-quarter of our debt was at variable rates, and three-quarters of our debt was at fixed rates. Our weighted average interest rate at quarter end was 5.63%. At quarter end, our leverage ratio was approximately five times trailing 12-month net debt to EBITDA. We expect our leverage ratio to further decline as Grand Heights, Scottsdale continues to stabilize over the next two years. As a reminder, we have no preferred equity or senior capital. Our debt maturities continue to be well laddered with a weighted average duration of 3.5 years at quarter end. As to the $52 million mortgage loan that matures next March, we intend to pay it off ahead of maturity with cash on hand. After that payoff, 28 of our 30 hotels will be free of property level debt, reflecting both a source of balance sheet flexibility and strength. As to liquidity, we finished the third quarter with $188 million of available cash, excluding restricted cash. Our $500 million revolver remained undrawn. Therefore, total liquidity was $688 million. Our board authorized a third quarter dividend of 14 cents per share. If annualized, This reflects over 4.5% yield on our current share price. As to payout ratio, if annualized, this reflects a payout ratio of just under 50% of funds available for distribution, or FAD. Our long-term target is a payout ratio of 60% to 70% of FAD, consistent with our pre-pandemic payout range. During the quarter, we repurchased $12.3 million of common stock at a weighted average price of $12.66 per share. Year to date, we have repurchased $83.8 million of common stock at a weighted average price of $12.59 per share. Since the beginning of this year, we have repurchased 6.6% of our outstanding shares as of year end 2024. We have $134.1 million of remaining capacity under our share repurchase authorization. We continue to believe our shares traded a significant discount to the value of the assets we own based upon their earnings potential in the years to come. Turning next to my next topic, our current 2025 guidance. We'll start with our full year REVPAR outlook. We expect REVPAR growth of 4% at the midpoint The 50 basis point reduction in the midpoint of our full year guide reflects lower expected RevPAR growth across our portfolio in the fourth quarter, exclusive of Grand High and Scottsdale. On a full year basis, we continue to believe that Grand High and Scottsdale will represent 300 of the 400 basis points of expected growth. Given our preliminary estimate of October RevPAR increasing approximately 5.8%, Our full year guide at the midpoint reflects an estimated rent part increase of 4.5% for the last two months of the year. Underpinning our guidance is group PACE, which for November and December is up 12%. Excluding Scottsdale, it's up about 5% for the final two months of the year. As to hotel EBITDA margin, we expect full year same property margin growth of nearly 90 basis points which is about 60 basis points higher than the margin growth we expected at the beginning of the year. The strength we have seen has been from non-Rooms revenue growth and slightly more of our Rooms revenue growth coming from rate than originally expected. Moving ahead to our estimate for full year adjusted EBITDA RE is now $254 million, or down $2 million from our last guide at the midpoint. This reflects the change in full-year REVPAR, partially offset by continued strong non-RUMS revenue generation. And finally, our adjusted FFO per diluted share guidance midpoint is now $1.72, which is a decrease of one cent versus our prior guidance. This reflects the $2 million decrease in full-year adjusted EBITDA RE and adjusted FFO, offset by the reduction in weighted average diluted share count. Our current adjusted FFO per share guidance is 4% higher than our guide at the beginning of the year and 8% higher than our 2024 adjusted FFO per share. Our guidance for interest expense, cash G&A expense, and income tax expense are unchanged. Looking ahead to 2026, we would like to provide some initial thoughts. First, on group demand, which by way of reminder is about 35% of our overall demand mix, PACE continues to be healthy. As of the end of September, about 50% of our group rooms revenue for 2026 was definite. PACE for 2026 was up in the mid-teens percentage range. Excluding Grand Heights-Scottsdale, it was up in the low-teens percentage range. This is consistent with 2026 group PACE at the end of the second quarter. As to group revenue production for next year, it was healthy in the third quarter. During the quarter, we booked 13% more group revenue than we did in the third quarter last year. Even excluding Scottsdale, group revenue production was up 12% versus the third quarter of 2024. Looking across our larger group markets, the largest gains in group pace are in Northern California, in part due to the Super Bowl, and in markets such as Houston, Scottsdale, Orlando, and Portland. Our 2026 group pace reflects anticipated strong citywide convention demand in several of our markets. Citywide convention pace is up in the double-digit percentage range in Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Portland. While our hotels in the aggregate rely more on in-house than citywide business, our hotels in these markets do benefit when citywide calendars are strong and the markets experience compression. In a few cases, Citywide Pace is being helped by the World Cup, which will come to five of our markets, including Dallas and Atlanta that are hosting semifinals games. In addition to Citywide Pace, our group Outlook reflects our hotel operators focused pursuit of this demand segment, the capital investments we've made in meeting space and group-focused amenities, and the strength of branded hotels in capturing high-value group business. We expect 2026 to be another record year for group, and as a result, another strong year for total Rev Park growth, which we expect will outpace Rev Park growth again. As to transient demand on the business side, we continue to see steady improvement in demand from the large accounts. On the leisure side, we've seen the normalization temper in most of our key leisure markets, with several having grown top line during the third quarter and year to date. As such, the preliminary outlook for 2026 appears to be more stable on the leisure side. And finally, a major driver for growth Next year will be the continued ramp at Grand Heights, Scottsdale. Our initial expectations for 2026 continue to track our underwriting. By way of reminder, our underwriting with that full-year property, Hotel Ibadah, would increase from the low $20 million range this year to the low $30 million range next year. Given the timing of the completion of the renovation and the seasonality in the market, we expect most of the growth to occur in the first half of the year. And with that, we will turn the call back over to Becky to begin our Q&A session.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press Start followed by 1 on your telephone keypad now. If you feel your question has already been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press Start followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Michael Belisario from Baird. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. First question for you, Ratish, on your dividend. I know you mentioned that you're paying out less than your target, but maybe just where is the current payout this year going to land in terms of where you see this year's taxable income?

Well, I don't have that in front of me, but I will say that, you know, we continue to utilize NOLs that we generated, you know, coming off of COVID. So, you know, we're finding the balance of providing both a good payout relative to past levels as well as utilizing those NOLs.

So, and we'll pull that relative to taxable income number for you and provide that.

Okay. Thanks, and then just a second question probably for Barry just on the group outlaw commentary. How much of the pace increase for next year's price versus volume and then just in terms of production, what type of accounts, what type of groups are booking and what are you hearing from meeting planners today? Thanks.

Yeah. The setup for next year, obviously, as Atish mentioned, is really good. It's quite strong. It's a little more in volume, but rate growth is good. I mean, better rate growth than we've seen in the last year or two. So it's a very, very nice setup on the group side. We are continuing to see a little bit of a shift from corporate business back into more normalized association business within the portfolio, particularly at the largest resorts. I think if you look back, we were really coming out of COVID. Corporate wanted every date and they were ready to fill in. Associations were a little slow in rebooking, but we're seeing that come through now. I think that's part of what you saw in our mix in Q3 was that whereas corporates had kind of filled Q3 in the last couple of years, that's really where we first started seeing the shift back to the more normalized relative ratios of association versus corporate. But both segments are good. are quite strong looking into next year. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jack Armstrong from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Could you break out what the impact of the government shutdown has been, if any, on the portfolio? And with the uncertainty there, how confident you're feeling in the full year of park rides?

Well, thus far, it's been fairly limited within our portfolio. We've spoken before about the fact that we are not heavily dependent on government business. Obviously, we continue to check with all of our properties to see if we're seeing any particular impact. There have been a few cancellations, but it's been relatively minimal thus far. So I think if you kind of contrast our portfolio to some of the peers, uh our exposure to that type of business is probably a little bit more limited um now you know if there's a prolonged shutdown that is causing more issues as it relates to uh air traffic control issues and people being more concerned about being able to travel and those type of things then obviously it could impact us uh as well uh going forward so um you know so far we we're not um we're not assuming any very you know very significant impact from the government shutdown over the next few months and that's really based on kind of the situation as we see it today.

Well, thank you. And could you maybe provide an update for us on what you're seeing in transaction markets and also what your level of interest is in trying to get some more dispositions done over the next year?

Yeah, sure. I mean, it seems like, you know, kind of contrasting it to where things were maybe, you know, six to 12 months ago, it does seem like there are some more more potential hotel transactions coming to markets, it does seem like there's a little bit more volume that the broker community is seeing. And as it relates to us, I mean, obviously, we're still looking at the various ways how we can allocate capital. And given our cost of capital at this point, And especially with how attractive our own portfolio looks and share buybacks continue to look probably more attractive than acquisitions at this point, I wouldn't expect us to be really active on the acquisition side here in the very near future. I think a lot of that's going to have to do with what happens with pricing in the private markets. If there is maybe a little bit more softness, if you will, if prices are coming down a little bit and And they come a little bit closer to what we view to be something that is a good use of capital for us. But I don't foresee that here really in the very short term. As it relates to dispositions, you know, we'll continue to look at what we've always done. This doesn't make sense to continue to fine tune the portfolio slightly, especially when it comes to assets that may need some additional capital where we don't feel the appropriate ROI might be, we might be able to get the right appropriate ROI on those projects. So, you know, we'll continue to evaluate that. I wouldn't expect any wholesale changes, but we certainly could see another, you know, disposition or two over the next, you know, over the next 12, 18 months as we continue to fine tune and review our portfolio.

Really helpful. Thanks for the call.

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Katz from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. David, your line is now open. Please ensure you're not muted. We are not getting any audio, so we will move on to our next question from Ari Klein from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks, and good morning. With regards to the somewhat softer expectations for Q, where are you seeing that play out the most? It sounds like it's predominantly leisure, but is it broad-based across markets? And I guess as leisure stabilizes, do you still see it getting weaker? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks, Ari, for that question. So with regard to the fourth quarter, it is certainly more on the transient side, combination of leisure and business transient that we've nudged down our expectations ever so slightly. And really, you know, it's not any particular market. You know, as I mentioned, Scottsdale continues to show a lot of strength. Gap is really more broad-based. There's no specific market. I will point out that Houston was a pretty big headwind for us in the third quarter, and that certainly is something in the past. As we look at the fourth quarter, we're expecting a little bit of growth in Houston, and in the month of October, we were actually about flattish in Houston.

So that big drag that we had in the third quarter for Houston because of the tough comparison dissipates for the fourth quarter and it's actually positive.

Yeah, I'll just add that as a teacher really points out there is that part of the reduction in our ref bar guidance for the full year is obviously also attributable to what we what happened in the third quarter. So it's not that we brought our ref bar down entirely in the fourth quarter. And that's what got us down essentially 50 base points at the mid at the midpoint. Some of that was, you know, some of the additional weakness that we saw in Houston, a little bit in excess of what we anticipated. The reason why we still got to our numbers meeting our expectations was because we saw some greater strength on the out-of-room spend that really got us back to the total ref bar number that was more closely matching what we were expecting in the third quarter.

Thanks. And then maybe just on the changes at the W Nashville for F&B, I guess that piece of the business has been a struggle for a while. How quickly do you think you can get to that three to five million of incremental EBITDA from the changes? And I think I heard now you expect the hotel to ultimately stabilize in the low 20s. I just wanted to make sure that's correct. I guess the prior range or the original range was 25 to 30. I just want to double check on that.

Yeah, sure. I mean, obviously, it's going to take a couple few years to get to that stabilized number. As I pointed out and as Barry kind of spoke about in his comments too, we really anticipate this to help drive not just the F&B revenues, but also just make the hotel a more desirable location overall and more of a destination, even than it has been to date. As you point out, clearly we've given it time here. We've worked kind of tirelessly with Marriott to try to improve the F&B operations and jointly with them have worked on coming to a solution that we believe is going to be very attractive for the hotel over the next few years. I think that is something that's going to take a little bit of time to stabilize here. We've essentially been running in the mid-teens of EBITDA over the last few years. So clearly, we were looking for ways to drive what we think that this hotel can produce for us over the next few years. We have, to your point, tempered our expectations from where we started our underwriting, since we aren't close to those numbers that you quoted yet. We do think that this will give us that additional lift of 3 to 5 million as a result of this F&B change over the next several years. And what's still going on in the national market overall, obviously, is that we're still going through some stabilization in the markets with the supply that's getting the high-end supply that was added over the last several years that is still getting absorbed into the market. So over the next several years, we expect to see kind of the bump coming from the F&B change that we're doing here but also with the markets kind of improving and stabilizing. It's been a tougher leisure year, especially in that market as well. So we do expect that to get better over the next several years. We're obviously not saying we're going to put a ceiling on where we think the earnings can go here, but just realistically looking at where the earnings have been over the last several years, what we think the F&B will do to help the operations there. We've set our expectations now to say over the next several years, we expect to get kind of north of that $20 million number. And then, you know, hopefully we'll grow from there. And that's, it's a great asset. It's a great market. Still a lot of positivity as far as what's going on in the markets. So, you know, we continue to have high hopes for how ultimately, where ultimately this property will go.

Thanks for all the color. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Katz from Jefferies. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question again. I appreciate it. I wanted to just get your perspective on leisure. We've obviously been hearing about some of the weakness in leisure. In your opinion or from your perspective, is it travelers who are choosing not to travel, to defer to travel? Are they balking at price and perhaps trading down? What would you classify as the weakness, the source of the weakness, as far as you can tell?

Well, I'll start off with kind of a global comment on this. I think when we looked at When we look at the setup for this year, and I'm sure you recall when we even spoke at the beginning of the year, our expectation was really kind of the way it has played out for every segment, which was strong group business for us this year. We did expect business transient to kind of slowly keep recovering. And we did expect some softness and leisure compared to prior years because there's still this normalization that was kind of going on from these kind of outsized levels of leisure travel that we saw over the last few years. So I would say that it hasn't changed that much from what our initial expectations were. I think what you've seen overall is that there's obviously been a lot of discussion this year about consumer spending overall, about consumer spending on travel. It appears to have been clearly more in the lower segments that have been impacted more significantly than the higher segments like where we play. So it hasn't been quite as severe on the higher end, but we are still dealing with with a lot of uncertainty out there in the markets on various economic issues, obviously. Dealing with the fact that international outbound is still greater than international inbound. Alternative travel that obviously has been also appealing for people, whether that's cruises or other things. So I think all of those things kind of play into it. Now, that being said, and Tiege pointed this out in his comments, as we look ahead to next year, and going a little bit more granular as it relates to us, I think that we are still seeing a very similar setup on the group side. We've got really good group pace going into next year. Business transient that is subject to some of the macroeconomic issues, obviously, whether that continues to kind of gradually improve, but that's still our expectation at this point. And we do think that leisure has probably kind of found more of its footing in our portfolio where some of these markets are has stabilized and where we do think that we could hopefully see some growth on that again going into next year. And I'll just kind of leave it at that. I know Barry or Letitia won't say anything to that, but that's our view of kind of what we're seeing happening in the market at this point.

Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question on today's call, Please press start followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Austin Verschmidt from KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Barry, you had commented that business from your large corporate accounts was up significantly in September. I guess, first, any markets you'd call out as seeing sort of an outsized increase, And then second, is the pace of that improvement still less than you may have expected given the comments that Atish made about just transient demand broadly? You know, you had kind of dialed expectations back on both the business and the leisure side. Thanks.

Yeah, in terms of strength, no doubt Northern California and Santa Clara in particular are seeing significant corporate growth. I mean, we all know what's kind of gone on in tech this year, and Santa Clara is ideally positioned both for tech as well as specifically within some specific AI-driven accounts that are maybe either directly or indirectly focused on that. I think we've seen some other markets where we've seen a good quality corporate demand. We see it in Some of the smaller markets like Pittsburgh, we're seeing that. We're seeing it in D.C., where Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, is a little bit outside of the government, of direct government business. So with the strong accounts that we have in Pentagon City, we're seeing it in Atlanta. So markets like that are kind of traditionally strong business markets. That's where we've seen the strength in corporate demand this year. In terms of across the portfolio, it continues to improve every month. I think well, the expectations overall, it's probably where we want to be. There are still some markets that are are that ebb and flow. I think that, you know, particularly based on seasonality, it's part of in addition to the impact from from Hurricane Beryl in Houston, we did see a little bit softer corporate demand in the quarterly expected in both Houston and Dallas. But again, we feel like that segment clearly is growing. We're particularly getting – we're starting to or continuing to sell out more Tuesday and Wednesday nights, which is also great because not only does it drive volume, but it enables the hotel to really drive compression on those nights as well. So it's a good setup, and we certainly see that continuing into next year.

That's helpful. And then just going back to leisure demand, you know, Marcel, you provided a lot of good detail to the earlier question. But I guess at a high level, would you still expect leisure to lag the overall portfolio in 2026? Or could the demand normalization provide a little bit better pricing power? And maybe it's a little more on par with what you're seeing in just the transient segment overall.

Yeah, I think we could. I think, you know, Ateesh pointed it out, too. We've definitely seen some stabilization in some of the more leisure-oriented markets. Clearly, we still expect group to be the leading segment for us as it relates to growth next year. Our setup on the group side is obviously very strong. Grand Hyatt Scottsdale has a lot to do with that, too. You know, continues to ramp and continues to build a greater group base at that property, obviously, but even throughout the rest of the portfolio, as Ateesh pointed out, our group base is very, very strong going into next year. So I kind of expect a similar result next year as it relates to the segments. The group will continue to lead, and I do think that we could see that there certainly could be a scenario where leisure and business transients are more on par as it relates to what kind of growth we can see out of those segments.

Very helpful. That's all for me. Thanks, everyone.

thank you we currently have no further questions so i'll hand back to chair and ceo myself for bass for closing remarks thanks becky um thanks everyone for joining us today um appreciate uh your interest in the company um appreciate the opportunity to share our results for the third quarter and what we believe is a very good setup going into next year we have a great portfolio that can will continue to see the benefits from that going forward and hope everyone has a great Halloween.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.