Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (VAC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Thank you for sticking with us. Next up, we have Marriott Vacations Worldwide. It's my pleasure to be joined by Jason Marino, EVP and CFO. Jason, thanks for being here.

Just to kick things off to get the lightning round questions out of the way. Normally, I leave this in, but I'm just going to try to crank them out here. Three questions for every company. The first is really around industry demand. Would love to just hear what the current state of the world is. And then as you look out over the next year or longer, you anticipate it's going to accelerate, decelerate, hold? What are the major things I think through?

Yes. Well, number one, thanks for having us here. It's been a great conference so far. I know I'm probably bringing up the rear of the presentations today, but thanks for having us. As far as industry demand, that's an interesting question. So the good part is that we're still 100% leisure focused in our business. And I think one thing that we learned during COVID, and coming out of COVID is that, the leisure travel and the leisure customer really values travel as part of their life. And as we think about what that means for the future, I think it bodes well from an industry perspective. So as we think about whether. demand is increasing or decreasing or staying the same, I think it's -- I would say it's kind of staying the same, but it continues to be strong. So that's a good part of our business. And I think the opportunity is really looking good.

And then on a margin standpoint, you generally anticipate industry margins and your own margins to be up, down, hold over the next 1 to 3 years? And what are some of the major puts and takes that you're thinking about there?

So as we've operated the business over the last several years, we definitely had a few headwinds that we had and talked about last year, we saw lower rental margins as we had inflationary pressures on our cost in the form of unsold maintenance fees that we're passing on to the consumers as well as us as owners of our unsold inventory. And so that has been a headwind that given inflation -- the outlook for inflation coming down into that, call it, 2% to 3% level here over the next few years, we think that will moderate. We've also had the resetting of short-term interest rates here over the last year that's impacting our financing business. And so for the next year or 2, we expect that the financing margins in our business, while still strong and still a very attractive business are going to continue to compress. So those are sort of the 2 of the big drivers that we see impacting margins here over this year and a little bit in the next.

So this is your first time at this conference as CFO, I believe, what's -- I guess, what can you tell us in terms of how you're thinking about the business? What you want to -- what kind of change you want to effectuate where your priorities are currently?

Yes. So number one, this is a great business. I love this business. I've been involved in this business for close to 15 years kind of at Marriott and my life before that was advising leaders of the space. And so as I think about where we're going in the future, again, leisure-focused. We create our own demand at some level in terms of contract sales, 85% of our sales happen on site. Our occupancy, we run 90% year in and year out. Our vacations are prepaid. 80% of our customers don't have a loan. And so as you think about their marginal cost of vacation, this is still a very attractive part of the business. As I think about my role and what I see for the future of Marriott Vacations, we want to continue to deliver those exceptional customer experiences on site. From a business perspective, this often looks like a real estate company, which we are. But what people really remember and the reason they continue to buy and buy more and roughly 2/3 of our sales come from existing owners, is really that on-site experience. And really, as you think about the memories that are created, it's really that experience in those lifetime of memories that really people coming back year in and year out. From a finance function, we've talked about it in the past, really infusing data analytics, making better decisions, making faster decisions, having better information at our fingertips to really drive the business forward is really what I'm focused on internally, which hopefully we'll all see the benefits of, in our results as well.

I guess on that point, with this IT transformation that's happening, help us dream the dream, what does success look like as you get through it?

Yes. Over time, we've really been focused on integrating our back office systems. We made the acquisition of ILG in 2018, and then we acquired Welk in 2021. In all of our companies, Marriott Vacation Club goes back 40 years. This is our 40th anniversary this year that we're celebrating. There was a lot of legacy technology, technology debt, and we have a lot of data that we need to integrate. And so we've been on this journey, and we're still in the early innings of that journey as we go forward. But the power of data is becoming more and more obvious to all of us in this room as we think about insights that we can gather and the customer expectations of what we're doing with that data, whether it's through better self-service, which we're driving, a majority of our reservations are booked online now from our core vacation ownership product as well as the Interval exchange product, they're booked online. And so ultimately, what we're going to see is better ability to market to customers, both new customers as well as existing customers, better ability to yield manage our inventory as we think about predicting future demand as well as supply. So you're going to really start to see over the next couple of years, really the impact of a lot of that data integration and new tools that we're implementing to really drive towards the bottom line.

In terms of other sales drivers, you have a new Waikiki property that's ramping up. What's the latest on reservation, the potential contribution from that asset?

Yes. So that's the Waikiki property. It's about 110 units that will come online here at the end of Q3, beginning of Q4. We've started opening that up for owner reservations and we're reserving some inventory for other uses as well. But for all of the owner inventory that we've released, it's 100% booked at this point going forward. So we're really optimistic. This has been a location that our owners have been asking for, for quite a long time...

So it just primarily existing owners? Or is there new owners that are also...

Right now, we've opened it up only to existing owners. People that own the product today is the initial phase and then we'll open up more inventory as we get closer to the opening date. And we expect this to generate great demand for our -- from a contract sales perspective. We think somewhere between $30 million and $50 million of ongoing contract sales ultimately will come from the sales center as it ramps up over the next couple of years.

And maybe you can give us a little background on the property in Thailand as well. What was attractive about the property and how might it set the stage for additional growth?

Yes. So you're referring to the Khao Lak property, which is co located as part of a JW Marriott in Khao Lak. And we're acquiring approximately 60 units as part of this. So it was actually just -- the property is an amazing property. It was just written up in the travel journal for the first JW farm in the region, a really large -- I think it was 27-acre farm with a jogging track and everything else. And it's really a great property, 7 or 8 food and beverage outlets that's neatly into our portfolio. It's about an hour located north of Phuket, where we have 2 additional properties in Thailand. So it's an extension in an area where we know how to do business in Asia, and we think it will be a great property for our owners.

And I guess how would you generally characterize the development backdrop? Are you finding that there's partners still out there willing to go ground up, how rates impacted that? And do you even -- are you actively trying to pursue additional properties from here?

Yes. As we think about development rates and call it investor required returns from a third-party perspective are always changing. But we do think that there's definitely partners out there to do development with. We're always looking 3 to 5 years out for our next inventory deals as we think about our inventory pipeline. We've got just over 2 years of inventory on our balance sheet. It's getting pretty close to what we think the sweet spot of inventory is over the last, call it, 10 years -- as 10, 12 years as a public company. We've always been in sort of an excess inventory position through the original spin from Marriott, the acquisition of ILG, which had some extra inventory, whether the acquisition of Welk that had some inventory. And so we've been working that inventory down to get to the kind of these levels. So as we think about it going forward, we are now looking out 3 to 5 years, and we're evaluating a number of opportunities. We've got Waikiki delivering this year. We've announced Charleston and Savannah, 2 additional locations in the U.S. on the Marriott side that will be coming here in 2026. The Thailand property that you mentioned, a couple of properties in Vale that we've talked about that we're expanding for about 120 units. And we're on the lookout to expand high as sort of our part of our multi-brand strategy. So that was -- right now, we've got 22, 23 locations on the Hyatt side. So we're looking for that to add some properties in 4 timeshare destinations to expand that brand as well. So we're very active on the development front today.

Great. And then on, I guess, the product side, you consolidated the brands into a bound. Where are we on educating owners about this and the sales force as well on the product?

Yes. So we've been selling "Abound" for about 18 months, which is really the usage option that allows owners of our Westin, Sheraton and Marriott Vacation Club ownership products to move seamlessly within the system. So as we rolled it out, we found that there was some education needed both on the -- from a sales standpoint and the sales force as well as for owners. And one of the things that will continue to improve over time is owners moving within the system, moving and seeing all parts of the system and seeing the true opportunity that exists within the 90-plus property portfolio that we have in the Marriott Vacation Clubs as we called it. And so I think what you're going to see over time is continued exchange within the brands. And I think as we do that, it will continue to educate the customers on the benefits and really the scalability of the portfolio that they have at their disposal. That's not something that's going to happen overnight. But each and every year, we expect more and more folks to use the Abound system and really exchange within it to use properties, not from their home network.

And I think you have some slides in the deck showing the mix of new owners skewing more, Gen X millennial, how are these owners acting similar or different to prior cohorts?

Yes. I think it's an interesting question because we talk about those demographics, but those demographics are actually aging into what our core customer demographic is. I'm 48 years old this year, turning 49. And I'm square in the middle of Gen X, and so I'm married. I have 2 kids. And the thought of going to a property that doesn't have the spaces, not exactly a vacation in my mind. So I value that extra space. And I think as people, as the demographic changes and does age, it's really becoming our core customer. That's who we're targeting for first-time buyers. That's who we're targeting because it fits into that lifestyle. As we've grown the product and the points product and added city collection locations, the ability to go outside the network, our product really satisfies people from, call it, the beginning all the way through retirement because people don't always need a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom unit at a resort. Some people want to go to different cities. Some people want smaller units. So the product that we have really satisfies a lot of different stages of our owner's lives, which is really great and really provides a lot of that flexibility. So I think the millennials, Gen X-ers are really coming into the core demographic for who timeshare was originally created to satisfy.

You talked about this a little bit in the beginning, but I want to come back to. We've just seen several areas of consumer spending in leisure specifically slowed down a little bit. You got regional casinos, slots in Vegas, even RevPAR on the leisure side has been a little bit softer -- restaurant traffic. I guess what are you seeing in the business into the summer as you think about package sales or other leading indicators that make you think about how the business might evolve. And then remind us, there were some onetime things with Maui that we need to consider as the year progresses and into next year.

Yes. So as we think about current demand trends, everything looks very positive from where we sit today. We talked about it at the -- on our first quarter conference call in May about occupancy trends being up a couple of points year-over-year and that continues. So we feel good about summer. Remember, our owners have prepaid their vacations. So 2/3 of our occupancy comes from our existing owner base year in and year out. So you kind of have that base of occupancy from the get-go. But yes, as it relates to ADRs, they seem to be holding in there. occupancy trends seem to be good, well over 90% right now depending on the month. And we feel good about where we sit. As it turns to Maui, the Maui recovery is going to take some time. Occupancies in Maui for our properties are a couple of hundred basis points below what they normally would be. That feels good. When you think about when people book their vacations to go to Maui and our product, it's typically 6, 9, 12 months in advance. So we're not even a year past the August anniversary of the wildfire. So I think as people were making their decisions in Q4 last year and even into Q1 this year, whether they were going to come back to Maui, I think people decided potentially to go to other locations. That being said, we've been able to fill the occupancy through other channels. So we're running, call it, in that mid-90s, 94%, 95% occupancy in Maui. So people are willing to come. They want to come the area outside of our properties was pretty devastated. That was kind of the heart of the wildfires on Lahaina, our properties didn't have any damage, have been fully operational throughout the entire -- for the last year. We've had some staffing challenges that we've worked through, and our associates have done an unbelievable job managing their personal lives as well as their professional lives in terms of supporting their resorts. They know how important tourism is to the Maui economy. And some of our associates still have not found permanent housing. So they're still working on that. But I think as we think about the long-term recovery of Maui, we're very optimistic, unclear how long it really takes to bounce back to be -- the experience it once was. I've seen some estimates that would say that Maui behind and might not be back for 5 years. That would be sad.

On the exchange business, this segment hasn't been as much of a growth story in the industry, but has great free cash flow conversion. I guess, walk us through some of the strategies to sustain or even reinvigorate growth? And whatever you do there have to come at the expense of the really solid free cash flow conversion?

So yes, we're taking a pretty good look at the exchange business. Remember, this is a really high -- as you mentioned, a high free cash flow conversion business, but it definitely had headwinds that we've seen in the industry with the lack of growth in terms of new developers and the expansion of the larger branded systems really providing headwinds towards growing that business. So we're really focused on monetizing the inventory that we have, which to your -- second part of your question, that would be high margin business because it's inventory that's currently not being used as well as expanding our share of the travel wallet with existing customers. That would probably be on the lower end of the margin side as those transactions are typically smaller dollar and the most profitable transactions depending on what they are. But I think that's the way that we think about it. We've got new leadership that was announced in January. And so they're really doing a deep dive to sort of see the opportunity there and what needs to happen to make that come to fruition.

Some of your peers -- one of your peers has tried to push into kind of tangential opportunities. Would you generally think about trying to do something similar or would it be more organic or inorganic?

We're still working through what the ultimate strategy is going to be. Again, we just announced the new management team in January. So more to come on that as we work our way through with.

And then on the credit cycle here, you've seen an uptick in delinquencies. What are you trying to do to mitigate delinquencies? And can you give any color on how that might be similar or different by customer type location or the reason for delays?

Sure. This is -- what we've really been trying to do is get people to use their vacation and their ownership. As you think about the -- what we've seen in terms of the consumer, there's clearly been inflationary pressures on the cost side for our customer base, especially -- and I think that's adversely impacting on the lower end of the customer spectrum. So we do lend the FICO scores from 600 and above. And so we have seen disproportionate delinquencies and ultimately defaults at those lower FICO bands. But what we're trying to do is get them on vacation. We can see whether people have booked current year usage. We're reaching out to them via e-mail, via a phone call to try and get them on vacation because once people go on vacation, it reminds them of what's the reason they bought the product in the first place and how much enjoyment they can get out of it. So that's really the best thing that we can do as a company as well as an industry is get people to use what they own because if you don't use what you own, then you're more likely to default on it. So that's where it been where we've been focusing a lot of our time here over the last several months to try and get people to get back on vacation and experience the product.

And rates have stayed definitely high. Have you taken any action to try to increase the rates that you're extending? And then our economists are talking about a pretty rapid reduction in rates, you just immediately -- you hold the line, do you let that come down? Do you refi and then bring things down.

So on the lending side from us, when rates -- our rates are generally pretty sticky. So when we could borrow in the ABS market, at 2% or 3%, we didn't really reduce our rates. As rates have ticked up here over the last 18 months, we have increased our lending rates to our customers about 50 basis points on average. Given the quality of our customer in general, we think there is a balancing act between how high to push those rates and the buyer's willingness to take the financing and even at the current interest rates and the current spreads, which the excess spread right now is running about 800 basis points. It's still a very attractive return from a business perspective, given we financed 98% of our receivables. So we think that those rates will tend to come down on the borrowing side over time. We always knew that an 11% excess spread wasn't probably sustainable for the long term. But on the flip side, I would imagine that it's going to be higher than it is today into the future once interest rates kind of normalize, the curve kind of goes to a more typical shape.

Fair enough. I've got a couple more, but we'll let people if they've got any questions in the audience, anyone? Here we go. We've got one in the front over here.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer the questions. So on Maui, you talked about the occupancy coming from sort of different groups. I've heard from some other timeshare operators that they've been housing displaced families and some other sort of lower quality customers in terms of like revenue contributions. Could you talk a little bit more about the composition of your occupancy there, if it's something similar?

Yes. Our occupancy is -- it hasn't been significantly different than traditional occupancy. We did initially hire -- sorry, house not hire. We did initially house first responders and things like that and maybe some associates. We also have the Aqua Aston business, where more of our displaced associates, more Red Cross and FEMA compensated folks have been staying in the other parts of our business. But on the Vacation Ownership side, we've traditionally been operating in its vacation ownership resorts housing, our existing owners as well as our other parts of the business. So from that perspective, it's been business-as-usual since probably early Q4, of last year. I will say that the traveler who -- Maui seems to have is a little lower quality than we're used to seeing in Maui. And I think some of that is due to available inventory, people offering cheaper deals, which obviously we compete with when it comes to transient markets. and things like that. So I would say the demographics of the customer in Maui these days is a little bit lower than we've traditionally used to seeing, but it's not because we're housing different constituents in our VO side of the business.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And then maybe one follow-up. In the context of your press release earlier this week, late last week, you're now sort of implying a decent acceleration in the second half in terms of contract sales. Obviously, there's the Maui recovery, although -- I mean, today, it sounds like it's a lot better than what I've been hearing, but it still kind of seems like the recovery may be sort of stagnating a bit and might be getting pushed more into 1Q '25. But could you maybe just talk a little bit about your expectations for the second half of the year given sort of as we've heard from some other companies presenting today, like RevPAR outlook might be a little softer, leisure is hanging in, but not as strong sort of just your thoughts on the second half of the year?

Yes. So we released contract sales guidance for Q2 last year -- last week of 2% to 4%, which includes a 4% headwind from the Maui wildfires. So that's what we released on Friday, but we did reiterate our contract sales guidance of 6% to 9% for the year. So based on that math, it's back-end weighted, which is consistent with what we said in our February call. In our February call, we said that contract sales were going to be back-end weighted, 6% to 9% contract sales growth for the year. And we did give guidance of Q1 would be flat, but we didn't really guide the other quarters. So maybe that was part of it. But as we think about it, when we look at our contract sales, it's obviously a combination of tours in VPG. And as we look at our tour forecast and how tours are shaping up, we've got a lot more previews on the books for the back half of the year, so we feel good about that. We feel good about our ability to generate the tours based on what we've seen in the first half of the year through today. And what we've seen in the international side is going to continue to grow. Yes, Maui is going to have about a $5 million contract sales impact positive on '24 versus '23, but that's not a huge component on an annual basis. But obviously, that's -- we're going to be back half weighted from a growth perspective because through, call it, the first week of August last year, Maui was operating 100%. And then we had about 1.5 months there in Q3. And where it was effectively shut down and then it slowly ramped up over Q4. So some of that contract sales growth in Q3 and Q4 is definitely due to the impact of Maui on a year-over-year basis. And then you add in a little bit from Waikiki and then what we expect on the VPG trends, and we feel comfortable with that 6% to 9%.

Can you just remind us of your primary CapEx requirements and you can tie into that inventory? And you said you were over inventory, but do you at some point have to re-add to the base?

Yes. So why don't we just talk about inventory first. Given we're at call it that 2.25 years on hand and it might go a little bit lower. About 4% of our owner base turns over every year that we're getting that inventory back at a very low cost. So it's about $80 million or $90 million of annual spend that comes back. And so that flows through the inventory line. On top of that, as we think of inventory, given we're in a relatively normalized inventory position, each and every year, it's going to be plus or minus a little bit from a cash flow perspective relative to our cost of goods sold. Some of that's going to be dependent on what inventory commitments we have. We talked about buying Waikiki. We're going to pay for that over 3 years starting this year. So we have that inventory commitment to pay for over the next 3 years. Charleston and Savannah are going to be completed on balance sheet here, given the size of their projects. So you're going to see that flow through the inventory line as we go there. So we've trended towards kind of that plus or minus a little bit on the inventory spending line relative to product costs. And so that's kind of where we see ourselves for the next few years. In terms of the corporate CapEx, it's really a couple of components, supporting our IT development and more and more IT is being done as Software as a Service, and you don't get to capitalize as much as you used to be able to. So you're seeing that run through our CapEx. Enhancements to the sales centers, we operate a lot more sales centers that we used to prior to 2018 and the acquisition of ILG. So that's another component of our capital expenditures. And then supporting our ancillary outlets and other corporate owned assets. When you add all that up, that's what really drives the components of the CapEx line in our financial statements.

And then in terms of giving that cash back to shareholders, Remind us of your priorities? And does the rate environment impact us at all? Like if we come down or if we hold where it is now, does that alter your view in terms of what could go back?

Yes. So we find ourselves at roughly 3.9x debt to adjusted EBITDA, and we've committed to get down to 3.0x by the end of 2025. So based on, call it, consensus estimates for EBITDA there, there does need to be some debt pay down to get there. So we've got our dividend, which is running about $105 million a year. And then we're going to balance the rest of our cash flow between repaying our debt to make sure that we do get down to that 3x leverage by the end of next year as well as continuing to do share buybacks when we -- as is appropriate. We definitely want to make sure that we get down to the 3x on the leverage side, just given that's where we think it provides the most flexibility to do what we need to do with the business, whether that's make acquisitions or invest more in development, just be able to weather whatever happens in the macro economy as well.

Mason, for me on the election, which is coming up this year. Do you anticipate that there's typically any impact to your business from election years? And then are there any proposals to be on the lookout for, that could impact the business?

Talking a normal election or this year's election?

Not Normal.

Yes, I wouldn't say that most election cycles really have an impact on our business. Given the net worth of our customers I would say that, our customers typically have material balances in 401(k). So they are exposed to market gyrations. We do often see that in terms of stock market volatility, we sometimes have a short-term impact to sales that always kind of normalizes in pretty short order. But generally, the election itself doesn't really impact most of the way that the leisure travelers behave. In a normal world, we'll see what happens this year.

Awesome. Well. I think we're going to end it there. Next up we have our Capital Markets Validation panel. Hopefully we're going to find out, what's going to happen [ with them. ] So please join me in thanking Jason and Marriott Vacations. Thanks so much.