Earnings Labs

Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc. (AHT)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, May 9, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Ashford Hospitality Trust and Ashford Hospitality Prime First Quarter 2014 Conference Call on Friday May, 09 2014. Throughout today’s recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. (Operator Instructions). I will now hand the call over to Scott Eckstein. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Eckstein

Management

Thank you, operator. Good day, everyone, and welcome to today’s conference call to review results for both Ashford Hospitality Trust and Ashford Hospitality Prime for the first quarter of 2014 and to update you on recent developments. On the call today will be Monty Bennett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Douglas Kessler, President; David Kimichik, Chief Financial Officer and Jeremy Welter, Executive Vice President of Asset Management. The results as well as notice of the accessibility of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the internet were distributed yesterday afternoon in press releases that have been covered by the financial media. At this time, let me remind you that certain statements and assumptions in this conference call contained are based upon forward-looking information and are being made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, uncertainties and known or unknown risks which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risk factors are more fully discussed in both companies’ filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made only as of the date of this call and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them. In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in the company’s earnings releases, and accompanying tables or schedules which have been filed on Form 8-K with the SEC on May 08, 2014 and may also be accessed through both companies’ website at www.ahtreit.com and www.ahpreit.com. Each listener is encouraged to review those reconciliations provided in the earnings releases together with all other information provided in the releases. I will now turn the call over to Monty Bennett. Please go ahead, sir.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Thank you and good morning. I’d like to start off by mentioning that we recently launched the Ashford app, this is a free mobile app and is available at the Apple app store by searching Ashford and its targeted towards the hospitality REIT investor community. We designed app as a one-stop resource for everything associated with Ashford, related to companies as well as to the entire hospitality REIT sector. I hope you find the app to be an useful as investment and research tool. During the quarter we continued to see improvement in hotel industry fundamentals and started to see the benefits of revenue initiatives we spoke about last quarter. Additionally, we continued to focus on finding innovative ways to create new term and long-term shareholder value for our two platforms. This includes capitalizing on improving trends in the lodging sector and debt market conditions. Our outlook on the hotel sector remains positive and we are confident that these initiatives are adding value for our shareholders. The management team here with me today is a same team responsible for directing activities of both Ashford Trust and Ashford Prime as a team we’ve always employed a discipline of strict quantitative and qualitative analysis when making our managerial or investment decisions. At the same time once we’ve conducted our analysis we are quick and decisive in our actions. This methodology has serviced well through the years. Since Ashford Trust’s IPO in 2003 this management team has generated a 191% total return to our shareholders compared with 114% return from our peers over the same time period. In fact, we outperformed our peers in every yearly cumulative total shareholder return period since our IPO. We hope to continue this record of success with Ashford Prime which has only recently become an independent public…

David Kimichik

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Monty. For the first quarter of 2014, Ashford Trust reported AFFO per diluted share of $0.25 compared with $0.35 a year ago. The first quarter of 2013, included $6.2 million of interest REIT derivative income which impacted AFFO per share by $0.06. It also included the Ashford Prime hotels. During the quarter, Ashford Trust pro forma hotel operating profit increased by 10.4%. Ashford Prime recorded AFFO per diluted share of $0.18 compared with $0.16 a year ago. During the quarter, Ashford Prime pro forma hotel operating profit increased by 3.6%. For the first quarter, we reported adjusted EBITDA of $79.5 million for Ashford Trust and $14.2 million for the Ashford Prime. At quarter’s end, Ashford Trust had total assets of $3.5 billion including the Highland portfolio which is not consolidated and $1.8 billion of mortgage debt in continuing operations and $2.6 billion overall including Highland. The total combined debt currently has a blended average interest rate of 5.6% that’s currently 54% fixed rate debt and 46% floating rate debt, all of which have interest rate caps in place. Including the market value of Ashford Trust’s OP units of Ashford Prime and as pro rata share of the net working capital of the Highland portfolio, Ashford Trust ended the quarter with net working capital of $395 million. Ashford Prime at quarter’s end had total assets of $1.2 billion, that’s $769 million of mortgage debt in continuing operations and blended average interest rate of 5% which is currently 55% fixed rate debt and 45% floating rate debt, all of which have interest rate caps in place. At quarter’s end, the Ashford Trust portfolio consisted of 114 hotels, with 22,667 net rooms and the Ashford Prime portfolio consisted of ten hotels with 3,469 net rooms. Ashford Trust share-count currently stands at 110 million fully diluted shares outstanding, which is comprised of 90 million common shares and 20 million OP units. While Ashford Prime share-count currently stands at 34.5 million fully diluted shares outstanding which is comprised of 25.4 million common shares and 9.1 million OP units. I’d now like to turn the call over to Jeremy, to discuss our asset management accomplishments for the quarter.

Jeremy Welter

Management

Thank you, Kimo. RevPAR at ten properties in the Ashford Prime portfolio increased 5.5% in the first quarter of 2014, driven primarily by rate which increased 4.4%. Similar to the fourth quarter, the strong revenue performance was again driven by the four properties located on the West Coast which experienced significant combined RevPAR growth of 19%. Lat Ashford Prime hotels located in the western half of the country, the three hotels in San Francisco and Seattle Markets, collectively increased RevPAR by 15.5% benefiting from continued strong market demand. Of note, the Seattle Courtyard Downtown RevPAR increased 26.5% fueled by increased from net production from the nearby Amazon corporate headquarters. In addition, the Jolla Pines RevPAR increased 29.8% which is primarily aided by a year-over-year renovation comparison. I mentioned in the previous earnings call that we were excited by the properties growth prospects in 2014 given a stunning new rooms products. In terms of market share for Torrey Pines, the first quarter of 2014 was the highest RevPAR index level achieved in the last ten years. I believe this exceptional RevPAR performance is simply the first installment of many solid performances to come. During the quarter, two hotels were added to the Ashford Prime portfolio. In late February, Ashford Prime completed the acquisition of 415 rooms Sofitel Chicago Water Tower. This 32 floor architecturally stunning hotel is located just off the Magnificent Mile in Chicago CBD. Weather and unfavorable year-over-year city wide calendar combined to make for challenging first quarter, while we fully expect this hotel to be stellar edition to the Ashford Prime portfolio. Second, in early March the Pier House Resort was acquired from Ashford Trust. As you may recall Ashford Trust acquired the Pier House Resort in May 2013 and immediately installed Remington as property management company. The…

Douglas Kessler

President

Thank you, Jeremy. In the first quarter, Ashford Trust remained focus on improving its capital structure and enhancing its liquidity resources by leveraging attractive interest rates in other favorable market conditions. During the quarter, we successfully refinanced our $165 million MIP portfolio mortgage loan with a new $200 million non-recourse mortgage loan with the two year initial term and three one year extension options, subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions. The new loan is interest only with the floating interest rate of LIBOR plus 4.75% with the 0.2% LIBOR floor. We have received excess net proceeds of about $30 million on this refinancing. The new loan remain secured by the same five hotels including the Embassy Suite Philadelphia Airport, Embassy Suites Warner Creek, Sheraton Mission Valley San Diego, Sheraton Anchorage and the Hilton Minneapolis St. Paul Airport Mall in America. As we have done in the past, we continue to be proactive with our upcoming debt maturities. We think to strike a balance between liquidity and debt capital markets and future operating performance. In addition, we are focused on both fixed and floating rate refinancing and take a very strategic approach to the composition of loan pools to give us greater options and flexibility with our asset base. To strengthen Trust liquidity and better position the company for investment opportunities, in April we completed the follow-on public offering of 7.5 million shares of common stock priced at $10.77 per share granting the underwriter’s of 30 day options to purchase up to an additional 1,125,000 shares of common stock. The offering generated total net proceeds of $77 million. Ashford Trust tends to use the net proceed of the offering for general corporate purposes including without limitation hotel related investments, capital expenditures, working capital and repayment of debt or other obligations.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir. [Operator Instructions] thank you. Our first question comes from Ryan Meliker from MLV & Company. Please go ahead with your question. Ryan Meliker – MLV & Company: Good morning, guys. I just had a couple of things, I was hoping you guys could address. Can you give us any color in terms of what – or any detail I guess more than color in terms of what business lines that Ashford advisers are going to enter? I know you have given some general color on the types of opportunities we have seen North Star get very inquisitive obviously they bought in keepers, and now I know they are now bidding for Griffin (inaudible) are there anything that Ashford further along in it and can you give us an update on how the fund raising is going for the hedge fund?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. This is Monty. As you implied you referenced that we have given some ideas about where we could grow Ashford advisers and where we can be all the additional business lines that we are looking at considering. I think you did hit on the one that’s next up in the queue and that’s our real estate hedged equity strategy. That is – that’s the one that will be the additional business line that will be next in the queue. We are currently out in the marketplace, taking to investors about it and we are looking to launch that in the fall. I would love to give you some more color on what sites we are launch that at but that’s just hard to say right its depends upon investors and we are not at the point where we are receiving investor subscription amount on that, I guess So it's just hard to tell how big that’s going to be in the fall. We would love to know ourselves but we just don't know until we start receiving some of those and that’s just not time yet. So the first opportunity for us is our real estate to hedge equity strategy. After that we see some of these other potential opportunities that we have mentioned you in the past. I wish I could give you more detail and more precision but it just doesn’t exist yet to give. Ryan Meliker - MLV & Company: Okay. Since do you have any commitments here for the hedged equity strategy and what type of investors are you focused on? Are you looking at retail guys or institutional guys?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. We have not sent out subscription agreements yet so we are not in the process of receiving any back. So that hasn’t begun yet and as far as types of investors, we are looking for investments minimum of $1 million and the $10 million probably would be the largest likely type investors. So those are wealthier individuals and smallest type institutions. Ryan Meliker - MLV & Company: Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks Monty and then the second question I wanted to ask was in your prepared remarks and in the Ashford Prime press release, you indicated that this management team is willing to do just about anything to maximize shareholder value, how do you balance the potentially (inaudible) obviously the stock trades at a material discount to the underlying value of the assets, are you open to selling the company if you got a bid at market value, would you be willing to waive the termination fee to Ashford advisers if you got bid at or above market value?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. Well if you look at our history Ryan you can see that we have been very accretive of the years to make sure that our share price has been maximized, no returns to investors and in the first part of my reading here we have mentioned that over our ten years of existence our returns have been almost double our Pier average. So we are very committed to it and large shareholders. So we see the dislocation between what we see as private market value of these assets and that’s pretty straightforward I think investors can look at the private market value of these assets compared to where it's trading publicly and see if there is a big gap. At the same time we know that this is not common for new platforms to trade down at first we saw that with some of our Piers at the IPO to the past numbers three years or so. So we are doing our best to be patience on it but it's difficult for us because we like our investors want to maximize our share price performance. We are opened to any type of opportunity and if that means someone making up the company, then so be it. As far as waiving any types of fees, that has been something that is discussed at all for us but I think that keeping in places it's good for everybody because the way that our fees are structured is that that makes Ashford Inc whole in any type of sale process. And so it doesn’t provide any conflicts of interest that would otherwise exist and makes it much less friction and trying to sale the platform and those aren’t material enough to affect that valuation gap but we are opened to alternatives and we are trying to develop ways in order to maximize our share price. Ryan Meliker - MLV & Company: Alright. I appreciate your candor in answering that. Just one quick one and I will jump back in queue. Any thought you bumping the Prime dividend to try to get more retail investors; obviously you guys have the cash flow within the Prime portfolio. I know you want to grow the portfolio but it's hard to grow the portfolio when the stock is trading at the level it's trading I am wondering if maybe bumping the dividend materially would drop the stock up higher and give you guys the opportunity to grow the platform at a more attractive stock price, any thought into that of the board thinking about the Prime dividend these days?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

We are going to be having a board meeting next week and I am sure that will come up in the first kick round. We traditionally like to talk about that in December for the upcoming year but we do revisit it every quarter. What we are struggling with is that relationship is does increase the dividends increased stock price because of an increased in attraction to retail customers. And we just don't see that relationship in history with our stock price or our Piers very much. It's really hard to divine that relationship exists. That being the case, we are still planning on taking a look at it because when we say that we want to look at all avenues that includes all avenues. Ryan Meliker - MLV & Company: Alright. Thank you. I appreciate your answers Monty.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Robin Farley from UBS Financials. Please go ahead with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · UBS Financials. Please go ahead with your question

Hi. This is actually (inaudible) for Robin. Could you give any color on the transaction market and particularly on sort of what living indicators you look at as you look at whether you will be net buyer or seller to this year at the same time if you have any color on whether you are looking at portfolio deals? Thank you.

Douglas Kessler

President

Sure, this is Douglas Kessler. We knew the transaction market to be healthy. The deal flow typically at this point of the cycle continues to show an upward trajectory in terms of the number of opportunities that are coming to the market. If you just look back for example at some data the (inaudible) output at, you can see what happened as the cycle approached its peak the last go around heading into 2007, bottom down 2009-2010 timeframe and now we’re on an upper trajectory as far as expectations and seller’s expectations are more of line. I think we are bullish, as our most of the industry experts in terms of the future RevPAR growth and although new supply coming in, so that seems to indicate that there’s still more room to run in the cycle which would indicate to us it’s still an attractive opportunity to buy hotels. So having kind of shared with you the macro perspective, actually on a micro footprint standpoint, what we’re seeing for both Prime and Trust? It’s a fluid situation where we see active deal opportunities for both platforms. Obviously, with the recent acquisition of the Sofitel property and the transaction on the Pier House we’ve demonstrated growth and the prime platform. Our overall mandate is to be just how we’ve been in the past 11 years in operating a public company, very disciplined, and first and foremost looking at the potential accretion that could happen for the benefit of shareholders. Portfolio opportunities actually make perhaps even more sense for us than had we been just a single entity company comprised of just Ashford Trust. The reason generally is that portfolio which have a mixture of assets, some that fit better into one portfolio, some that may fit better into another portfolio. e…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · UBS Financials. Please go ahead with your question

Very helpful, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, our next question comes from Chris (inaudible) from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · your question

Hey, good morning guys. On the Ashford Prime side, I guess kind of given the stock price and you would ideally like to grow the portfolio, obviously accretively if you can, are you willing to look at deals, or I guess are you looking at deals where maybe the seller’s open to taking some OP units or some other kind of alternative form?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. This is Monty. Just to be clear, part of your question you talked about growing the platform and accretively if possible, I just want to clear that accretively is the only way we’ll grow the platform. We’re not going to grow it if it’s not accretive. As far as looking at it, anything’s possible but if we did something like that we’d see that as tantamount to us issuing shares at this price and buying an asset with cash, which is not attractive to us. So I don’t see how it will be attractive to us, I don’t see how that economically works, I don’t see how that’s a accretive, again anything’s possible but I just don’t see that as a likely scenario.

Douglas Kessler

President

Obviously in the past we’ve issued OP units on transactions, some sellers find it tax efficient, some sellers are interested in broadening their asset base by diversifying their equity into a strong platform with a greater base of hotels. So history would indicate that we have done it, but to money’s point it has to be done at a price point that we feel is an only feel is accretive for the shareholders.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

If a seller would do it at a price point that’s above where we are trading now, then yes we’d look at it. That seems to be what would have to happen.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · your question

Okay, fair enough. And then I guess maybe I’ll ask the flipside of it, which is you’ve talked about the targeted leverage Prime and, maybe that’s more of a fluid moving target, right? Because again to the extent that something that is accretive out there, would you take the leverage up temporarily and that kind of might get things, everything kind of rolling, right?

Douglas Kessler

President

Well, when we look at accretive transactions, we always look at it on a leverage neutral basis. Because, we’ve talked about accretion, we talked about total shareholder return accretion five years from now on a leverage neutral basis, so I just want to make that clear to everyone on the phone when we say accretion that’s what we mean. Because some people talk about accretion, just for next year our accretions, just to [FFNO] or one thing or another. By leveraging something up, it’s much easier to get something accretive. In fact, you can get anything accretive with enough leverage, and I know that’s numbers you’re suggesting. But we’re pretty well set on getting that just EBITDA down to our target level within the timeframe we’ve mentioned, which was at five or below over by two years after we’ve spun out. And while there might be in our path downwards a little blip-up here or there, we’re pretty reluctant to do anything else because we told our shareholders what we’re going to do, and that’s what we want to do. If we did something else, then all those that’s relied on that information would feel short shifted, and we don’t want to do that. But we think we can grow this platform and keep all these other objectives in line; again, it’s not unusual for a stock to back up a little bit after an IPO or spin out. So we’re doing our best just to remain patient as more and more investors come to learn about the platform, and do their homework and see the difference in private market value versus where the stock is trading right now.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · your question

Okay, understood. And just finally for me, as we look out to next year, just trying to get a sense as to how much renovation activity you guys think there might be at this point, basically thinking maybe there’s a little bit more lift than less displacement next year relative to this year, and it seems like this year there is less displacement relative to last year.

Jeremy Welter

Management

Yes, this is Jeremy; I think that we’re going to have a little bit less renovation activity in the Trust portfolio. We’ve done a good job of working our way through Highland and have completed most of the Highland portfolio through the summer this year. So that will be in really good shape going forward, and we’ll be able to drive additional rampant growth in that portfolio. We do have a quarter of Boston that we’re going to have to finish up in the fourth quarter, but once we’re done with that Highland is in really good shape. As related to Prime, there is not a lot of renovation activity that we have. I think we need to disclose a few renovations in the fourth quarter, both of which should not be that impactful to the guests and to revenues, so hopefully we’ll be able to minimize displacement in the Prime portfolio as well.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · your question

Okay, very good. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Thomas Allen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thomas Allen – Morgan Stanley: Hi guys. Good morning. I think it’s interesting what you said earlier that you said the D.C. market is stabilizing. You guys had pretty strong results in the first quarter, everything considered with (laudable) inauguration and potential weather impacts, but Le Mare Marquee is opening, I think it might have opened even last week, so what gives you confidence the market is stabilizing? Thanks.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. I’ll comment on it and then Jeremy, you might jump in as well, if you’d like. I think a lot of it has to do with the government and where the government has been and where it’s going. We just hear and see a lot less chat and talk about cutting government spending, and when that spending occurred, I’m sorry, the spending cuts occurred, a large chunk of that came from travel at disproportionate amounts, and that really affected the D.C. market; I think at one point we saw government business down 30% year-over-year in that market. So it was a big drop. We’re just not hearing that kind of talk, we’re not seeing that kind of activity, so we’re seeing government business stabilizing, and maybe even starting to increase. So despite the Marriott coming online, the impact with government business has a big offsetting effect.

Jeremy Welter

Management

That’s right. And when you look at it from a comparative basis, the impact to sequestration, we really felt it beginning in May 2013, and so on a year-over-year comparison in May 2014 there should be less impact from sequestration, but we are seeing a resume of government travel and spending our D.C. assets as well as we actually are starting to see some good group business as well. In the first quarter plus we were able to grow our group revenues in the quarter by close to at 4%. We’re very happy with the way that we’re responding within the tough market conditions within D.C. In the first quarter eight out of our ten Trust D.C. hotels gained market share in the first quarter. Thomas Allen – Morgan Stanley: Good, thanks. And then on Ashford Prime, the Sofitel of Chicago generated negative EBITDA in the first quarter, you mentioned weather in (inaudible) negative impact, can you just help us think about the seasonality and maybe the run rate earnings of that property, thanks.

Douglas Kessler

President

Sure. We don’t give any guidance as far as earnings in the future, but the property on the books just had lower group the first quarter which was something I was anticipating with us because of the weather as well. That was a surprise to us and everybody about the impact on the Chicago market and so that hurt the performance on the top line and on the bottom line. So we see that as an anomaly, and we’re still bullish on the assets and on the market. Thomas Allen – Morgan Stanley: I mean, I guess, in the first quarter will a property in Chicago, in general, generate positive EBITDA or is it typically like that a seasonally tough quarter there and so typically properties which generate negative EBITDA, then you’d make it up in the rest of the year.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

What I can tell you is in the first quarter, the market conditions in Chicago were difficult, and we did have a year-to-year negative EBITDA. But when you look at the performance of our asset, it actually gained market share in the first quarter against this competitive set so that tells you how the rest of the set did. Thomas Allen – Morgan Stanley: That’s helpful, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jordan Sadler from KeyBanc Capital Market. Please go ahead. Austin Wurschmidt – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Hey guys, it’s Austin Wurschmidt here with Jordan, I appreciate the comments you gave relative to the enhancements on the revenue management side. Since these implementation has been in place, just curious how performance has been relative to internal expectations, and then when do you expect to have all of the new capabilities in place?

Douglas Kessler

President

Sure. We are happy with the performance thus far. Most of that performance thus far has been on the group aside which as you know takes awhile to put in place so this was based upon increased group booking activities last summer and fall as we started getting this ramped up. A lot of our transients or I should say almost none of our transient initiatives have hit yet. We have just finished fully staffing this electronic commerce and revenue managements department, our big data, and we should start seeing some of those improvements just barely in the second quarter but more so in the third and the fourth and then our big data initiative, where we’re going to be automating many of our processes. That won’t even be completed until the fall sometime, and then we’ll have to ramp up on being able to use that. So I think that hopefully we’re just beginning to see some of the impacts of these new initiatives. Austin Wurschmidt – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Just, Monty, taking your comments about sort of improving overall economic conditions, and then with the benefits of these enhancements, is it fair to say that we could see some acceleration in RevPAR growth from the current level?

Douglas Kessler

President

It’s just hard to say. We’re always reluctant to give guidance of the reasons we’ve discussed in the past. It is our goal; it is our desire to increase our market share. We were able to do that in the first quarter by almost 200 BIPs . That’s a big amount, whether that can be sustained or not, it’s hard to say, but that’s a big win for us in this first quarter. Austin Wurschmidt – KeyBanc Capital Markets: And then just one last one, maybe for Jeremy just in your comments, you mentioned New York, New Jersey was negatively impacted from the tough comps, do you think the new supply within the Metro also was an impact and could be an impact going forward?

Jeremy Welter

Management

Not for our hotels. Our hotels are outside the metro area so they’re less susceptible to the new supply that you’re seeing in New York City.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

But to follow that up, as the new supply increases, I think there’s a possibility that it could affect us out there and outlying areas. Two groups and these other kinds of groups that typically can’t get into the New York City try to relocate. So we’re keeping careful eye on it. Austin Wurschmidt – KeyBanc Capital Markets: Great. Thanks for the detail.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question come from Brian Maher from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead. Brian Maher – Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Good morning guys. Quick question on the whole Ashford splitting situation. So we have Ashford Trust, we have Ashford Prime, we have Ashford Inc. I distinctly got the impression on the last call that you might be headed towards an Ashford Select and spinning off your Select Service Hotels. Can you give us any more color on that? If you’re thinking about it, when it might happen, how big of read that could become?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Sure. This is Monty. We think that it makes logical sense to do something like that. But we’ve got to do it in a way that makes it accretive to all of our shareholders and that’s what we’re looking at. But also a particular note is that that would cut down the size of Ashford Trust even more and here we cut it down a little bit with the Prime and we’ll cut it down just a tiny bit more with the Ashford Advisers spinning out. So to cut it up again and reduce its size, I am just reluctant to do that because I don’t want that platform, the Trust to get too small for all the reasons I think we know about. So if we do something at least right now, our current thinking is to do something in a way so that it does not reduce the size of Ashford Trust. So we’re still looking at some different possibilities, but fair enough to say, nothing is anywhere close to imminent. Brian Maher – Craig-Hallum Capital Group: Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from Matthew Stolzar from Pyrrho Capital Management. Please go ahead. Matthew Stolzar – Pyrrho Capital Management: Hey guys, thank you for taking my question. Following up on the earlier questions about your share price discount to any of the Ashford Prime and a lot of my questions had been answered but can you just talk about your thoughts around share buyback?

Douglas Kessler

President

Yes. We’ve done share buybacks in the past. In fact I think we’ve done more share buybacks than any other management team in the industry. So we look at it quite often. And at this point, we just don’t think that that’s appropriate because while there is that big discount, we also know that this is not unusual for a company at this point in its life cycle. And so we don’t want to jump out there and do something rashly. So we’re just being cautious about that. We also like our liquidity position and so we’re not anxious to reduce that liquidity position and so while we see that big gap there at this point in time we’re reluctant to try and close it. I think we did let the market know how ridiculously low we thought that, that price was getting by me jumping out in the marketplace and placing an order myself because there is that gap. But to jump in and do buybacks right now is something that’s just not on the table. Matthew Stolzar – Pyrrho Capital Management: Okay. And in terms of your assets, have there been any recent property sales at competitors or nearby assets that sort of highlight the value that you think you have in your portfolio?

Monty Bennett

Chairman

I think that there are numerous data points that either through the brokerage community that you could look at that indicate what the value of gateway upper upscale hotels trade for. We have a great portfolio, a great footprint, great brands, relatively refreshed assets. I think those types of products are in high demand today and the ranges clearly indicate a gap relative to the equivalent cap rate that our current share price equates to. Matthew Stolzar – Pyrrho Capital Management: Okay. Thank you,

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir, we do have no further questions at this time. Please continue with any further points you wish to raise.

Monty Bennett

Chairman

Thank you all for your participation today. We’ll be hosting our Ashford Investor and Analyst Day this year on May 15 at the Palace Hotel in New York City. If there are any analysts or institutional investors that have not registered for this event and have an interest in attending, please contact our investor relations team and we’d be happy to assist you. That is May 15 which is next Thursday in New York City. We look forward to seeing many of you at our investor day and speaking with you again on the next call. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be available for replay after 1 o’clock EST. You may access the teleconference replay system at anytime by dialing 1-800-406-7325 and entering the access code 4678388 followed by the pound key. International participants, dial 1-303-590-3030.