Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Next up, we have Hyatt Hotels, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO; and Joan Bottarini, CFO. Since last year, I guess, you had your Analyst Day over a year ago, we were just off of that going into the conference here last year, but you've also simplified the story you've been consolidating your financials as a result of selling the majority of the UBC business, sold some owned hotels, ramped up Hyatt Studio, a whole bunch of other initiatives. So perhaps if we can kick things off with just a bit of a status update as we look at what you outlined at the Analyst Day over a year ago, how are you, I guess, benchmarking against some of the goals you laid out? And maybe give us some of the initiatives that you're now focused on.

So Joan will have a lot to say about this as the architect of a lot of what Steven just described. So relative to Investor Day. I think we re-segmented the company and some of the key financial metrics from an earnings perspective are not comparable to the basis on which we laid out the data in the Investor Day. So let me just park the direct comparison on adjusted EBITDA or total earnings and focus on 3 things. So the first is RevPAR progression, our RevPAR progression has been faster. We've grown faster in RevPAR in '23 and so far in '24 than we expected in our outlook that we talked about a year ago. The second area is that we've made more progress at equal or better valuations on the asset sales than we had actually embedded in our outlook at that time. And third, we posted much higher free cash flow in '23 than we had forecasted or than we had guided. And our outlook for this year is robust and tracking ahead. So in those 3 major dimensions, which are all value drivers, as you all know, I feel like we're tracking ahead clearly. It doesn't mean that the 5-year outlook that we had talked about is going to maintain those same rates of change. It does mean that we pulled forward a number of key things that will put us in a stronger position from which to build over the next 4 years, let's say. And then finally, I would add a postscript, which is not unimportant, but it's basically on track, which is our net rooms growth. We've continued to grow at the pace that we anticipated that we would with sustained and growing fees per key. So those are the key things that I would mention in direct comparison to what we talked about a year ago. I think we've also made a lot of progress in simplification. And so you might want to talk about the fee-based earnings, which also actually were ahead in '23.

That's right. Very strong fee-based earnings coming from the strong RevPAR growth and actually margin progression. The performance of our hotels outside of the U.S., where we earn significant incentive fees have been exceptionally strong, double-digit growth in the first quarter in the international market. So core business is doing very well. And we had a transaction that you might have heard of in the first quarter, where we sold the majority interest of membership club. And we still manage the membership club because of its importance and strategic contribution to our all-inclusive properties in the Americas. And this was really transformative because what we were able to do is simplify our accounting. We had previously reported the economics through adjusted EBITDA and some add back. And now we are retaining all of the economics through fee-based earnings that are driven off of the top line contract sales which are robust for the membership club, they have been have grown through COVID. I mean they are durable and robust and we continue to feel really, really confident about the future of that business. I'd just say that we showed a correlation at Investor Day of how much of those are correlated to net rooms growth in the all-inclusive business. And we've been seeing net rooms growth for the all-inclusive segment growing by 10% in the last couple of years, and we continue to see those levels going forward. So now that we have all that into our franchise and other fees line, it's a significant and meaningful update to our fee growth and valuation.

Simplification. Yes.

So that's a great jumping off point. So you're effectively hitting on 3 of the 3 things you're exceeding expectations. So where do we go from here? I guess, where are your strategic priorities? What are you focused on? Because I think we often focus too much on maybe RevPAR, but there's things that are in your control that are maybe outside of that realm.

Yes. So obviously, we are hyper focused on completing our asset sales sold down by the end of this year. That is at which we committed to. We are extremely confident that, that will be done. And I think the other thing, so it's sort of like don't forget the things that you have to get done. So the priorities are keep the core business going and operating well and execute on what you're committed to do. But I think in terms of new opportunities, we've seen -- it is true across the industry that net rooms growth -- sorry, construction starts that lead in that rooms growth are down. They were down in the first quarter sequentially and year-over-year. There's actually pretty much every vertical of real estate, multifamily office I think maybe the only asset class that's growing at this point in our logistics centers are all in a measure of decline for various reasons that I'm not going to go into because I think it's pretty obvious and you all know it. The downside is it's slowed down for a reason, which is inflation first and interest rate second. But this is a supply and demand market and building products or commodities. And when demand slows down, so does price come down, so I think it's going to be less acute in terms of the financial pressure for building new hotels based on factor cost inflation. There's still labor issues where labor inflation has influenced the total cost of construction. So we're really focused on conversions and portfolio deals in this interim period before we start to see some more new build activity underway. And we've been super successful at executing on conversions, but also finding more and more opportunities in the portfolio deal side. What is the portfolio deal? It's finding a portfolio of hotels, so you're not growing one by each, but you're affiliating groups of hotels at the same time. We did the deal in Germany with the lender group, that was a 30 hotel deal. And we've got a number of those that we are pursuing right now, largely in Europe but in some other markets around the world as well. And there's an underlying issue, which is the transition -- generational transition of ownership for a lot of these groups. So we see more and more opportunities to do that. And finally, in terms of other things that we can control and that we are leaning into other offerings and experiences that we believe have inherent value for the guests who are willing to pay for incremental experiences that we are offering them largely centered around well-being. But we're also reinvesting and actually elevating what we're doing in food and beverage as well. So we set up an independent restaurant group within the company to really rethink some of our F&B offerings and elevate what we're doing. So I think between innovation and F&B, well-being and other related services, we're looking at how we can build ancillary revenues using the platform of our current great resort and hotel portfolio to really enhance the guest experience and earn our owners more money and earn us more money through fees.

I think the common wisdom would be usually that if development is slowing, then asset sales may do the same thing or valuation might change. But you said you're very confident in hitting the $2 billion mark. Where do we go after that? Do you slow down then similar to what we've seen from the construction starts? Or are we going to see continued assets held on and what does the portfolio look like that's left relative to what you've sold?

Yes. We retain some very precious assets, Park Hyatt in New York, Paris, Chicago and also the Miraval portfolio, which is performing very well. So we have a lot of cache left in the portfolio that remains. I dare not tell you what the -- our outlook on the valuation of that portfolio is because nobody ever believes that words come out of my mouth and they basically just ignore it, so I'm not going to waste my time and my breath. I think we've proven over $5 billion of asset sales that we have been undervalued on the real estate side forever. So nothing like proof, solid cash in the door on asset sales. But I think the answer is yes, and we have a couple of assets, by the way, I should add, for completeness that are on leaseholds that may be more challenging for us to drive great value out of. But we're working on either extending leases or maybe even cycling out of 1 or 2 hotels, but the markets in which they exist are markets in which we can actually replace our representation there with better representation. So I would just say we have sold 2 hotels so far that in the recent past that had leaseholds associated with them. And I think that we did great executions on those but there are some of those as well, a couple of hotels that are in that category.

And I would just add, as we've sold those assets, the almost $5 billion referred to was a 15x multiple. So clearly, well above some of the parts valuations that we see. And as Mark was referring to precious assets, it's not necessarily meaning that, that is sacred cow that we wouldn't be interested in selling. But given the nature of these assets, so strategic and so many of our transactions have involved strategic in the total negotiation around sales that have included significant amounts of capital from the buyer to rebrand assets. And when we talk about these precious assets, that's what it would -- that's what we would be looking for is really the strategic relationships at the valuations that Mark didn't want to speak to because they should be very strong. And of course, we would always want to keep that distribution. So long-term management contracts is something we've done with every single asset that we've sold, and these would be no exception.

And remind us of the 20, 50 years?

50 years in some cases and 30, 40 years in others.

I just kind of feel like that's an underappreciated aspect of the story. If you've got 50 years left on obviously, you could be resigning these.

And not included in the 15x multiple that I just mentioned.

Not included. Excellent. Maybe we'll turn to what you're seeing on the macro. I guess if you can just weigh in on what you're seeing from a consumer standpoint. Any sign of weakness from a leisure standpoint, I've heard some people talk about normalization. So I'd be curious to hear anything you're seeing there, but also your expectations around business travel.

Yes. Maybe I'll start then you can add. Geographically, I mentioned that internationally, our business has been very strong. Some of that is coming from events, whether as we think ahead with the Olympics in Paris, and some of that is coming from some of the recovery that we've seen in Asia and in China in particular. So international markets are very strong, and it's across all segments, leisure, business and group travel. So that continues -- we continue to have high confidence. And as we look at our outlook for the year, that's on the high end and above the high end of our range. In the U.S., we're seeing a slower growth rate on the lower end of our range, but still growing and still healthy demand we're seeing from leisure customers and also on the group side, that's been actually a standout for us in the U.S. Our group business on a global basis is about 30% of our revenue mix. In the U.S., it's a little higher than that. We have a lot of convention large business hotels, and they are filling up their inventory. We are still below -- our occupancy levels are still below 2019. And so there's a lot of runway to go. Our pace is up in the high single digits for the rest of this year, and it's up in double digits in the next 2 years. So group is a real standout as we consider where we've got incremental growth into the remaining parts of this year and next year.

So one area that we often get questions on is around the distribution destination management business. So to simplify the story, that's kind of been separated out, but help investors are maybe less familiar with that business. What are some of the key competitive advantages of it? How do you think about the long-term opportunity from growing that business?

Yes. I think just by way of reminder, there are 2 key components to it. One is ALG Vacations, which is the largest tour operator. Package tour operator in the United States or North America for travelers traveling to the Caribbean and Mexico. West Coast of Mexico and other destinations in Central America. So they are the, by far, the biggest, and they have the volumes, I think, representing something like 12% or 13% of all arrivals in Cancun Airport and similarly significant market share in Punta Cana. So when you look at the key airport destinations for travelers that are traveling to those resorts, they really have unique position and also unique visibility into what airlines are planning with respect to their schedules and what their outlook on pricing is. So that's the first thing I would know, which is scale does matter in this business. And we have a management team that has done a great job of not just relying on scale, but being very strategic about which markets they want to serve in which markets they don't want to serve. So they've cut out unprofitable markets, notably Vegas which has actually picked up a lot of margin points for us. And secondly, they have used machine learning to optimize productivity. They're running similar total revenue volumes that is gross package revenue with fewer passengers. So they've high-graded the rates or the total package values. And the total staffing is running about 70% to 75% of what it was pre-pandemic. So when you actually have that sort of transformative top line progression taking out unprofitable markets and getting more productive, your margins expand. They've expanded significantly from sort of low to mid-single digits to high teens. And I think that's durable and sustainable. And they -- I mean, primarily because they're not standing still. They're continuing to be down that path. The second piece of the puzzle is -- and just for reference, we handle about 2.5 million to 2.6 million passengers a year, more than $3 billion of total volume. So it's a pretty big platform by global standards. Mr. & Mrs. Smith, very high end, a couple of thousand properties in the portfolio. About 400 of those are villas. We brought 700 of them into World of Hyatt and hyatt.com booking channels. So you can now as a world of Hyatt member or if you're going on hyatt.com find those hotels and book them directly. 100% of the 700 hotels are in markets in which Hyatt doesn't have existing representation. So the network effect that this creates for us is significant all of them are luxury hotels, the average daily rates run in the range of about $500 a night, and they're highly curated. And they're small hotels, but they're highly curated and offer great experiences. The vast majority of those 700 are in Europe, where we have lower penetration. We expect to be over 1,000 that are going to be part of our channels by the end of this year. Step 2 or Chapter 2 of that story line is as our -- and the booking volumes have been very significant and steady. So we're actually seeing our members go towards this and book with the majority, something like 60% or 70% of those not redemption both stays, but actually paid for stays. So this is not a dumping ground for points. This is a very compelling portfolio that people are like, yes, I want to stay there, not just making this booking because I want to use points. I think that chapter 2 for this is that a number of owners will recognize that closer and closer relationship with us can add more value. And our expectation is that we will find a number. I don't know how many yet, but we are starting to go down the path of actually engaging with some that we think that we could really add a lot of value to and enter into a franchise agreement with them in a -- because a lot of these are owner operated. And so we're excited about that to maybe expand the revenue opportunity directly to Hyatt. Right now, the difference between Mr. & Mrs. Smith and the prior arrangement that we have with the different group is that Mr. & Mrs. Smith is actually booking channel itself. So they actually collect booking fees for all bookings made through their channel. And so we bought a profitable business as effectively a small OTA and it is the entry point, if you will, into a very large portfolio of hotels. So those are the 2 pieces of the business.

I guess one follow-up on the -- I guess it would be on the tour side, but is that more like a tip of the spear than business for you, like you have better visibility than on leisure trends as a result of that. And that's factoring into -- I think you made comments about leisure still being strong, that's true, in fact, in the Caribbean as well and from part of that business.

Right. And that business into the Caribbean, Mark's noted 12% to 13% of all business into the Caribbean, not just Hyatt Hotels. So that goes into all brands. So the amount of information we have about those demand patterns and what's happening with the consumer, a significant portion 70% to 80% of that travel is coming from the U.S. consumer. So that gives us great insights into that business. One thing I would just comment is both of these businesses now in our new segments that Mark described earlier, are in a separate segment, and we did that. That's another move we made for simplification so that there's visibility into that business. The margins are in the high teens on full year basis. And so it's a very strong healthy margin performance for this business, and we'll provide some additional color around because I think it's something that is not typical in for analysts to model out and being able to provide some of those drivers and what's happening in the business will continue to do.

I would say a number of the repeat customers to the formerly ALG or AMR portfolio, the secret streams portfolio that we bought in 2021, they are accustomed to booking through ALG Vacations. So they represent mid-teens total occupancy in our AMR, in our HIC high inclusive collection hotels. And we've grown share in '23 when it was really hard fought because Cancun went through that period of time, but I forget what they call the Cancun fatigue or whatever it was, that's come back. And I think our pace ended the second quarter overall for those resources is up 4% on the back of a very strong second quarter last year. So we're seeing the ability for ALG V to continue to attract the customer base that is really looking to book at our hotels. So it is -- I guess, you call it the front end of the sphere it is. It's a really, really powerful way for us to actually make sure that we can continue to support traffic.

I tried to take advantage of that Cancun fatigue. It did not work. Pricing was in very strong. Yes. Maybe one other area that you touched on a little bit, and we heard from yesterday is China. I think that -- I guess what's your current view on the consumer there, puts and takes between international recovery, both outbound and inbound in your business?

Sure. We had double-digit growth from China in the first quarter and almost twice that outside of China and Asia Pacific. And the dynamic there is, yes, it is recovering healthy demand. A lot of it is domestic in China. And we also lapped a softer quarter last year in the first quarter of 2023. So I think that, that is the dynamic that we're seeing today. Again, it's across all segments, leisure, business group. The inbound is a tailwind for us because flight capacities are still down into China. So for those of you who have traveled there, you understand it's taking a lot longer and you have to leave on certain days of the week.

Hearing some inklings of contract rooms coming back though in the back half. So maybe you'll see something.

Yes. We hear that it's going to pick up, and it's just a matter of time. And we've seen it pick up. So the momentum has been growing, but it's still behind those levels. And that is the tailwind, not just from demand coming in, but also the rate coming from inbound is just at a premium and it's a healthy premium to the domestic traveler. And so then outbound, the other half of your question has just been phenomenal just off the charts growth outside. So when you think about the Chinese consumer and the demand that they're generating in the region, that speaks to the health of and their intent to travel. It's just they're traveling outside the country into Northeast Asia, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia primarily. And we've just seen phenomenal growth rates there, and we have every reason to believe that will continue.

The only thing I would add is by wave comparison, just by way wave reminder, because sometimes years feel like decades. What happened after the Chinese government on January '22 declared COVID over. What happened was the most stratospheric travel, we've ever seen and experienced in China. It was like a rocket ship. And the second quarter of last year was staggering and that also led into the third quarter. So we're lapping sort of the mass return to travel that was beyond anybody's imagination. So just by way of reminder, that's what happened last year. But demand remains solid, underneath. We might have some quarter-to-quarter comparison issues. But otherwise, the outlook is excellent. And tailwinds that Joan described and to your point, it might start to show up a little later this year, right?

Capacity comes back.

Exactly. That's right.

Air capacity.

Air capacity. Sorry, that's what I know.

Yes. Maybe talking about the development part of the business. You referenced that your folks a little bit more on conversions. How does the pipeline today compared to how it maybe looked pre-pandemic? And what does it mean in terms of where we'll see the portfolio shift and what it could mean from a fee per room standpoint.

I think the pipeline looks largely the same. I mean it's not profile wise, it's still 70% outside the U.S., still 70% full service hotels. So the profile has not changed materially. We do have -- I think it's now over 3,000 Hyatt Studio rooms that are part of the pipeline. And that's just getting going in terms of actually getting to sign documents and getting hotels out of the ground. So we won't see that inflection point for us, I'd say the probably another 1.5 years to 2 years where we start to see it inflecting the net rooms growth. I think the one thing that had happened is during the hard lockdowns of '22, the last 2 quarters of '22 in China pretty much every construction site that we had underway stopped in [ Harley ] because people couldn't actually leave their apartments to go and work at the sites. It was absolute like go to zero. And there's been a pattern or it's been trending towards more and more of those projects getting restarted, but there's also been some capital formation issues in China, not related to the hotel business relating mostly to multifamily that is infecting some of the developers. Most of our developers sustained on enterprises so they're back at it, and we have hotels being built again. And in the U.S., obviously, construction has slowed down. So those are the dynamics, but the profile of the pipeline is largely the same. We mapped this out with specificity and we see -- we've tracked our fees per key, which have been rising. And if you extrapolate the openings that we currently have in our pipeline, they're going to continue to rise. We are not seeing anything that looks like a degradation or a dilution of our fees per key. So really excited about that. That has to do with mix and where we stand in the segments that we serve.

I've got a couple more, but I want to make sure that I give the opportunity for questions if folks have them. All right. Let's maybe look at margins. So I think it's a little bit straightforward on the fee business, but maybe you can talk about how you're thinking about the puts and takes to the owned and leased business. What operating margins should look like not only this year, but as we think longer term?

Yes. After 2019, we put in place several initiatives basically for all the reasons that many of the hotel companies did around preservation of cash and looking at staffing models as we were reopening hotels. We had every expectation and have been clear that margin expansion would be something we would retain once we stabilize. We have said that we'd be between 100 to 300 basis points above those levels on a full year stabilized basis, the pre-COVID levels on a full year stabilized basis, we continue to be tracking to that. It's something that with costs rising and insurance costs rising, et cetera. This is work that we had a lot of different data and analytics underway to actually look at how we can improve our productivity at the property level. And I'm not just talking about productivity for productivity's sake, I'm talking about productivity that puts us in a position where we are staffing our hotels to provide the best customer service at the best time. So we've put this in place before COVID, and now it's amplifying that effort and kind of leveraging actually artificial intelligence to help us do an even better and more targeted job to actually help our hotels perform better and provide excellent customer service. Just to give you an example of how we are addressing what we're seeing is some rising costs on the property side.

And so you put that all together, margins hold them? Or do you think there's even an opportunity for it to go up? Or you still have to fight an uphill battle?

There's opportunity for it to go up. But as we get further into our artificial intelligence initiatives, which we are deep into now, I think there's a great number of opportunities to drive top line. And so that is -- as I was giving that example because I think cost rising is something that's on a lot of people's mind. But the vast majority of the initiatives that we're looking at are driving top line, whether it's revenue management practices at our hotels and at the center, the way that we engage with group customers to maximize the business for hotels, I mean, there is a variety of opportunities that we're looking into.

Lots to dig into there in future conversations. But we are 2 minutes over. Please join me in thanking Mark and Joan from Hyatt. Next up, we'll have IHG.