Earnings Labs

Hyatt Hotels Corporation (H)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, May 5, 2015

$170.15

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2015 Hyatt Hotels Corporation Earnings Conference Call. My name is Angel, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Mr. Atish Shah, Senior Vice President, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Angel. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Hyatt's first quarter 2015 earnings call. We want to thank everyone in the investment community for participating this morning. Here with me in Chicago is Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's President and Chief Executive Officer. Mark is going to start by making some brief remarks and then we will take live 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 and/or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued earlier this morning along with the comments on this call are made only as of today, May 5, 2015, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update any of these forward-looking statements as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks on our website at hyatt.com under the Press Release section of our Investor Relations link and in this morning's earnings release. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days per the information included in this morning's release. And with that, I will turn it over to Mark to get us started. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Atish. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hyatt's first quarter 2015 earnings call. I would like to speak about three topics today; first, I will discuss our first quarter results and share some thoughts on our outlook. Second, I will provide more color on our group business,…

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Mark. That concludes our prepared remarks. For our question-and-answer session, we'll move right into questions from call participants. Angel, could we please have the first question?

Operator

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Joseph Greff from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Good morning, guys. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good morning.

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

Mark, you had spent a lot time on the F&B side of things and you had talked about the catering revenues as pacing above the room revenue pace. Can you talk about how much catering comprises of the total F&B? And would you say that all F&B revenues are pacing above room revenues or just can you give us some relative metrics there? Thank you. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, first to the latter question that is catering versus all F&B revenues; the pace that we referenced does relate to catering, but there's really not a good way to capture pace for outlets mostly because the vast majority of that business is driven by transient demand. The answer on the – what proportion of the total F&B revenue base is catering versus outlets, it varies dramatically by market. So if you look at Asia, for example, majority of our F&B revenues are outlet-based and minority are catering, and that same relationship is true in most markets in EAME and the Middle East and South Asia. In the U.S., it's much more skewed towards catering and banqueting versus outlets. So like I said, it really is going to vary tremendously depending on where you are.

Joseph R. Greff - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open

That's all from me. Thank you very much. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Joe.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Jeff J. Donnelly - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Good morning, guys, and, Mark, thank you for the additional information on the F&B business. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Pleasure. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff J. Donnelly - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Your line is open

I just had a question of, maybe a little bit more broadly (23:23) and as this relates to Hyatt; how do you think about the competitive landscape in lodging given that one of your larger competitors is exploring alternatives, specifically I guess I'm wondering how do you think the landscape for Hyatt looks one year to two years from now? Do you think this leads to more consolidation in the industry or maybe stiffer competition or do you think it could bring in potentially new entrants into the business that might just have a different focus? I'm wondering how you think about that? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Wow. What a broad question. Look, I think we live in a competitive environment today. Day in and day out we compete with a number of different participants in different markets around the world. And so, I would say it's a vibrant and competitive playing field, and I would say that I'm really encouraged and actually thrilled with how our brands are performing and the residents that we've got – our brands have with developers around the world, and also how we're able to attract great people consistently. So, I would say, our focus has consistently been on having a great deal of opportunity provided for our colleagues that being a great employer is a key element of how we compete. And I think we've not only maintained that, but we've got an increasing volume of recognition around that over the past year in particular. And that is essential to the long-term. I would say that the competitive environment has grown, that is to say, there are more competitors today than there were five years ago; that is to say, more brands whether they are from larger multi-brand companies or individual brands that have been launched. And it's hard to predict how much more proliferated the brand introductions will be. But from our perspective, our focus on brand introduction has been around making sure that there is an obvious customer base that we think we can serve and serve differentially. Second that it could be material to the company, that is, we can grow it, so that it's a significant operation. And third that it can be global; having global footprint is critical for us. And so all of the brand introductions that we've made have met those conditions and that's the screen through which we will evaluate any future plans.

Jeff J. Donnelly - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Your line is open

That's helpful. And if I could go from maybe the broad to the very narrow, is actually two questions. One was just on the Hyatt Regency that you sold in Indianapolis. I'm curious what the depth of the buyer market was that you saw for that asset, maybe, who's sort of showing up and how you guys think about pricing? And then secondarily is the Park Hyatt in New York, you've had probably around nine months now with that asset. I'm just curious, how it's been performing versus your original expectations for things like RevPAR index and taking share? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Great. Thanks. On the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis, the buyer universe is pretty diverse. If you look back over the last couple of years, we've done transactions on both the buy side and the sell side with private REITs, public REITs, with institutional investors and private equity firms. We've done some joint ventures with a number of those types of players as well. And so the diversity of the buyer universe for that asset was high; we had a number of different types of potential buyers. With regard to the Park Hyatt New York, we're really happy with how the hotel has entered the market. We obviously had a very clear positioning for that hotel from a rate and market position perspective and that's how we've gone to market and that's the position that we've established and now maintained. So our average rate through the end of last year was in excess of $1,000 and it's varied month-to-month this year, but it continues to be very, very strong. I think the one area that has taken us longer to ramp up maybe relative to our initial expectation or relative to completion of some of the other facilities in the building not necessarily the hotel was the F&B operations and in particular the meeting, developing the base of meetings and group business within that hotel. That's now beginning to take hold and gain some traction. So, I would say, we're lagging in respect of getting the group business underway, but have great confidence that we're going to be able to continue to evolve that especially given that we're now seeing more traction in that area.

Jeff J. Donnelly - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Jeff Donnelly from Wells Fargo. Your line is open

Thank you, guys. That's it from me. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks, Jeff. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Thomas Allen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Thomas G. Allen - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hey, good morning. So, somewhat approaching the first question in a different way. So you built your business mostly around the Hyatt name, but would you consider acquiring other brands? Thanks. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. Actually we wouldn't only consider it, but we have. So we bought the AmeriSuites brand. We retired that and converted the hotels to Hyatt Places. We bought the Hotel Sierra and the Avia brands. We converted those hotels to a re-launch of the Hyatt House brand. So we have actually, already purchased other brands. In those cases, they were purchased in the vein of building critical mass for existing brands or newly launched brands; Hyatt Place and Hyatt House are the two examples I just gave you. And it's also true that we would consider purchasing a brand that is not a Hyatt – is not branded Hyatt. I think the key from our perspective is to assess the brand equity in that brand whatever it happens to be and how we would integrate it with our existing brand portfolio. But the answer to your question is, yes, we would consider it. Thomas G. Allen - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay, helpful. Thank you. And then just on the food and beverage side, you gave a bunch of good detail around the top line. Can you just help us think about the flow-through of F&B, maybe helping us think about banquet versus catering versus restaurants versus bars, would be helpful. Thank you. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. There's no question that the margins and flow-through with regard to banqueting and catering are significantly higher than outlets. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. So yes, we do have individual bars and restaurants around the world that have very, very high margins. But generally speaking, if you look across the business lines, banqueting and catering tend to operate at significantly higher margins than outlets. In some markets, in the U.S. in particular, outlets really end up being very low margin businesses, single digit margin businesses in key markets where the wage rates are very high and work rules and staffing models are dictated by organized agreements. So I would say that that's probably the most challenging area of the business and the biggest opportunity and one of the more vibrant areas is on the banqueting and catering side. Overall, you can think about – so I gave a statistic for the chain-wide, which was $1 billion of profit on $3.5 billion of revenue, that's chain-wide across the world. And our margins in the U.S. are probably slightly lower than that and the margins outside the U.S. are slightly higher than that. So that gives you a reference point for overall profitability.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

And I would only add that, as we go forward, our expectation is that additional group business and better rated group and better quality group will drive higher margins and that's manifest both in the room rates as a well as banquet and catering spend. And if you look at the first quarter, some of the strongest margin performers on the owned and leased hotel portfolio side were properties in Arizona, our hotel in Atlanta, some of our properties in Florida and Texas. And the big driver there was group business and increased banquets and catering. So that's really what we were trying to point towards in Mark's prepared remarks. Thomas G. Allen - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay, helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question...

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Operator, next question. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Shaun C. Kelley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open

Hey, good morning, everyone. I hope everything is okay in the background there. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, sorry about all the sirens this morning. I don't know, this is actually the – the first Tuesday of every month is the test of the emergency response system in Chicago, in the city of Chicago. So we probably should not schedule our earnings call around this time, sorry about that.

Shaun C. Kelley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open

Well, it's good to know that it's just a test. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, it's just a test and it's working, so two good pieces of news at the moment.

Shaun C. Kelley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open

So just a couple of quick ones and I think you actually alluded to this in your prepared remarks, Mark, but as we look at our model, one of the big surprises was, so, last year you obviously sold the – a number of limited service hotels. Those typically come at higher contribution or EBITDA margins. This year, you've managed to post pretty close to either flat margins or margin growth in your owned and leased segment. So my question is, what do you think is driving that margin outperformance, because we would have thought, you would have had probably more negative mix shift. Is it this discussion around F&B or is it more just that group overall is ramping? Maybe you could just give a little color on the margins and what you think is driving that. And also, is this type of kind of offset sustainable or is it something that's a little bit seasonal as well? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks for that. I guess, let me start with the composition and a couple of reflections on that. First, rates obviously are higher and are the key driver of our RevPAR performance. And that's true for the chain overall and it's true for our owned and leased properties. Importantly, and one of the reasons why we thought that a deeper dive so to speak on the F&B side was particularly relevant at this point is, we have been talking for more than a year now, probably the last year and a half, about our outlook on group. And yes, everyone recognizes and acknowledges that it's taken a little longer to see some momentum on the group side, but that's what we're seeing. It's unambiguous, and I think both in terms of…

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yes. I think that's right. Our total margins were up 30 basis points. And as Mark mentioned, we do have some properties like the Hyatt Regency Orlando, which performed quite well. And there is some seasonality at some of the service-owned properties that we've acquired as well. So, know that that line may bounce around a little bit based on the portfolio mix, but directionally we're in a good spot, given Mark's first comments on food and beverage and what we're seeing in banquets and catering. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. And so, the only other point I would make about market specific or seasonal, we had obviously a very tough quarter for our comparable owned hotels in New York, and that's temporal. So I'm not suggesting that you just add that back and use that as a baseline. What I am saying is that we're going to end up, given the diversity of our portfolio, we're going to end up with a market here and there at any given point in time that's challenged. But overall, I would say, we're in good shape on the margin side for owned hotel properties.

Shaun C. Kelley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open

I really appreciate all the detail. And just one follow-up was, the Grand Hyatt in Rio. So I guess my question there is what would be your kind of medium-term or longer-term plans to recycle capital in a market like that? And then is this going to be something that's core to the owned portfolio or is it something you think you could sell or would plan to sell down the road? And I mean is now a decent time in general or in maybe specific emerging markets where things aren't as healthy to look at development? Because doing such a major project on balance sheet from a ground-up development at this point in the cycle is sort of interesting. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. So, a couple of observations; first, these kinds of developments take some time to actually plan and then execute. So we've been at this now for at least four years. If you look back to when we first acquired land, planned the property, got the entitlements, did some local financing through the development bank in Brazil. So these things take a long time. So one factor that I think is maybe sometimes lost on what the development cycle looks like in many countries. And it's really extraordinarily high barrier to entry kind of market. We are on the beach in Barra da Tijuca, which is a fast growing area within Rio, which also happens to be where the Olympic Center is going to be. So our long-term outlook for the property is that we will end up serving a lot of great corporate business during the weeks. And since we're on the beach, we will have a vibrant weekend business. So we're excited about the prospects of the hotel.…

Shaun C. Kelley - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Your line is open

Thank you for all the color.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citi. Your line is open.

Smedes Rose - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi. Your line is open

Hi, thanks. I just wanted to ask you, I think on your last call, you had mentioned that 20% of your demand in New York is international and I think the bulk that was transient, I was just wondering could you maybe provide some color in what you're seeing on that front from international visitation? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. That number maybe 20% of transient demand, right?

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Right. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think that's – we will go back and just verify that, but I think it's 20% of transient. But the answer is that we haven't seen a significant change or decline in inbound traffic, in fact in certain markets we've actually seen some strength year-to-date inbound travel into certain U.S. markets and in South America. For example, even in the phase of a stronger U.S. dollar, but a little hard to generalize that at this point; so I would say nothing, we don't see any conclusive evidence that there is a negative shift at this point, as best as we can tell the outlook with respect to travel heading into the summer is – excuse me, reasonably stable. We haven't seen – not that have we seen a significant increase in outbound U.S. travel into Europe at this point. The one market I would say where we actually saw something that you could say was maybe conclusive evidence that there was a change, is in the Middle East. We saw a decline in European travel – outbound European travel into the Middle East, mostly Dubai and so that's what we've seen to date. We do have – there are certain markets which are also somewhat sensitive to outbound Russian travel, Dubai is a key market there and South of France. We have a couple of hotels in the South of France, which are frequented by Russian travelers and we do expect that to be weaker this year for both because of the currency and because of sanctions. So that's sort of the color that we can give you at this point.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yes, I think if you look across the U.S. and this isn't just in New York, but revenue pace from international markets and this is transient again, is up in the low single digits, so where we're seeing some softness, inbound from markets like Germany, France and Spain is being offset by markets such as the U.K. and Switzerland and certainly markets such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong. So that business coming into the U.S. So overall the profile of our international business looks pretty steady to positive and we will go back and pull some New York data in specific and we can post that later today.

Smedes Rose - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi. Your line is open

Thanks. The other thing I just wanted to ask you, you mentioned I think you said $234 million of share repurchase thus far this year, so indicating you're buying back in second quarter as well. Are you buying shares directly from the Pritzker's or are these open market purchases are, I'm just trying to sort of think about the float in Hyatt shares? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. So, if you look at the first quarter, the first quarter share repurchases included the purchase of 750,000 shares of Class B stock, those were owned by Pritzker shareholders and the rest of the share repurchases year-to-date have been Class A shares. So, that's been the mix to date, year-to-date. And we've been, we continue to be active, obviously we're looking at this in the context of our liquidity position, the fact that our business is very healthy and we're generating a lot of cash flow. And so, in that vein, we've been obviously very active in our share repurchases.

Smedes Rose - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi. Your line is open

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Harry Curtis from Nomura. Your line is open.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Harry Curtis from Nomura. Your line is open

Good morning. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Harry Curtis from Nomura. Your line is open

Just a couple of quick questions. Which hotels are currently undergoing renovations that are having what you might describe as a more material drag on your EBITDA or the newer ones that have yet to ramp, I'm just trying to get a sense of how meaningful that piece maybe? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We don't have any very material renovation work underway in our owned portfolio; nothing that I would say is worthy of denoting a separate impact. We do have some hotels, managed hotels, which are under renovation; Washington, D.C., the Grand Hyatt there and Hyatt Regency came out of renovation; but in terms of owned hotels, really nothing significant at this point. In terms of ramping properties, obviously the Park Hyatt New York is ramping, we've got, as we mentioned, we've got the Grand Hyatt Rio that we will open late this year, so that will end up ramping up over the course of next year. And, we also have a joint venture property in Hawaii, the Andaz Wailea, and that opened – we've been building that business and it's really taken hold and we've gotten a good traction in the marketplace, it took us a while to actually establish the identity and reputation of that property, but that's going quite well on a ramping basis and we're encouraged by what we're seeing there. So those are the ones that I would probably just to note as, maybe notable in the vein of your question.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Harry Curtis from Nomura. Your line is open

Very good. And as a follow-up to the recycling of assets question; I'm wondering where you are in the process of selling assets, how happy are you, how satisfied are you with your current portfolio? Are there still some hotels you are likely to sell over the coming 12 months to 18 months? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. So thanks for the question. Look, I think we had an unusually robust year, last year or sort of a record year by every measure. And we affirmatively pause to take stock and plan for future recycling. We do remain committed to the recycling strategy and we're evaluating a number of transactions both potential dispositions and acquisitions. We don't have anything listed for sale at this point. So we are not in the market formally on any assets, but we do expect that we will have assets that we will look to sell in the future and as I said, we're working on a number of potential acquisitions and other investments globally; the timing is really not predictable at this point, but we do expect to continue to be active on both sides of the equation.

Harry C. Curtis - Nomura Securities International, Inc.

Analyst · Harry Curtis from Nomura. Your line is open

Thanks, Mark. Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Nikhil Bhalla from FBR. Your line is open. Nikhil Bhalla - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Yes, hi, good morning, Mark. Question on incentive management fees. Could you just give us some sense of, what's the percentage of hotels that were paying incentive management fees as of 1Q, how that stood compared to same time last year and if there's a way for us to kind of understand the sensitivity of IMF, sort of going forward based on the level of ADR growth we're seeing at the moment?

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yes, Nikhil, let me just get that answer for you. So on the incentive piece side, about 45% of the hotels in the Americas are paying incentive fees as of the first quarter and outside the Americas, it's about 75% that are paying incentive management fees, just as a refresh. So that's up very slightly from a year ago, but as a refresh, the peak was 60% in the Americas and about high 80%, almost 90% outside the Americas. So we still have a ways to go on the incentive management fee side and we're focused on that. As to how that increases over time, it's really a difficult one to model. There's a lot of leverage there obviously associated with both higher rates and with stronger food and beverage business. And I think you've seen us post pretty good incentive fee growth relative to RevPAR growth. So you can see some of that come through. And as we move through this part of the cycle, you should see an acceleration in that incentive management fee growth and I think that's what we were referring to when we spoke about this topic at our Investor Meeting last year. Thesis remains intact on that. It's just really difficult for us to kind of give you a forecast or a projection on how that might play out over time, but know that there's a lot of potential on the incentive fee side. Nikhil Bhalla - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay, great. And just a follow-up question on the pace; so clearly coming into 2015, your pace was up pretty good, I think it was up 8%, now you're saying it's up about 7%. Any early indications on 2016; is that cracking pretty strong compared to 2015 at this point in time? How do you see that? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: A couple of observations on that front. I think first, I would just note that if you look at our progression and you sort of try to contextualize this if you look back as to how things have been evolving. Our group revenue base in the first quarter of 2014 for example was up over 9% and we're lapping that and it's up over 10%. So it gives you a sense for sort of a two-year look. Now, in fairness, 2014, as compared to 2013 in the first quarter, included an Easter shift. So it's not exactly apples-to-apples from a 2013 to 2014 perspective, but from 2014 to 2015 certainly is more comparable. And I would say that our outlook for pace into 2016 and 2017 and 2018 is consistently positive. We're seeing consistent positive pace figures for each of the three years. Nikhil Bhalla - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Okay.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yes, I think that's right. It's a little bit early to get into the 2016 pace number, but I would say that we are focused on improving rate progression. Our production numbers actually for 2016 and beyond in the first quarter were down a little bit and frankly we're being more selective and focused on higher rated business given the profile of what we see taking place and demand evolution, both in transient and in group. Nikhil Bhalla - FBR Capital Markets & Co.: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Richard Allen Hightower - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI. Your line is open

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good morning.

Richard Allen Hightower - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI. Your line is open

So just looking at the results among the different brands, I notice Park Hyatt underperformed, a lot of the select service brands (54:08) for instance and at least among the U.S. aggregate numbers, a lot of the luxury segments' underperformance has been driven by New York, but in your numbers that's probably not the case and the Park Hyatt opened in August of last year, so it's not a comparable hotel. So what in your portfolio is driving the Park Hyatt's results specifically in that sense? And then do you – expected to improve on a relative basis anytime soon? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks. The answer in short is Europe. We had a very tough quarter in Paris, both because of the reintroduction of hotels that were out of the market for major renovations and repositionings as well as new openings. There's been a significant increase in supply of the top-end hotels in Paris. The Park Hyatt Paris is considered to be a palace hotel, palace designation, which is the very, very top of all luxury hotels. And we saw some very significant increases there. If you look at the quarter's results, RevPAR progression was still positive 4% on a constant dollar basis for the brand, so it's not a significant – it's not a decline or a contraction, but we did see the impact from Europe.

Richard Allen Hightower - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI. Your line is open

Okay. That's helpful, Mark. And then, one quick follow-up related to the balance sheet. So you guys have carried a pretty significant restricted cash balance for several quarters, and you did highlight it earlier in the call as a source of liquidity, I think, but, so how much of that is FF&E (56:00) that really is restricted. And then, how much of it could potentially become available for some of the capital investment plans and share repurchases that you guys have been doing for the past several quarters?

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Yes, Rich, that's a good question. Virtually all of it can become unrestricted or will become unrestricted over time. It doesn't have to do with FF&E balance, it more has to do with transaction activity, and so, some restrictions on cash for a certain period of time post transaction activity. But I'd say in the short-term greater than 50% of it will become unrestricted. So it is a source of liquidity for us and that's why we do include it and talk about it.

Richard Allen Hightower - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Rich Hightower with Evercore ISI. Your line is open

Okay, great. Thanks, Atish.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Okay. We'll take our last question, please. Oh, great.

Operator

Operator

I'm sorry. Your final question comes from the line of Vince Ciepiel with Cleveland Research. Your line is open.

Vince Ciepiel - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Great. Thanks. So I wanted to circle back on the margins and maybe we could first start with international; I think you guys mentioned a 200-basis point decline. As you look into 2Q through 4Q are there any hotel specific events which you lapped, which could lead to those kind of flattening out throughout the year, remainder of the year? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: As I sit here, off the top of my head, I cannot think of any particular, any specific issues that we hit last year that had an unusual impact. We've discussed over a number of calls the fact that business in Seoul has been very challenging, and so we had a persistent sort of downward pressure on results out of that hotel last year, but there was no event that occurred. There was not any dislocations that I can think of that would be sort of particularly outsize that we would lap in the next three quarters that will cause unusual comparisons to occur. Can you (58:14)?

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

No. I think, really at some of the international properties that we've talked about in the past that have had margin pressure, but it's not a lap issue. I think it's a focus on improving margins going forward at those hotels as oppose to a big change due to some market specific factors in a single quarter. And I think, we did breakout what the margin impact from New York was, and also talked about the international margins relative to the Americas margins. And the international margins, it's really Seoul and as a market in Paris that significantly impacted us. So it's not a lapping issue, Vince, but we are focused on margin growth at all hotels including the international ones.

Vince Ciepiel - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Great, thanks. And then maybe big picture on the margins, if you look over the last four years, five years, 1Q has been lowest of the year and lower than the full year figure, I think that might be somewhat related to seasonality, the portfolio has undergone some changes. Is there any reason you guys wouldn't think that would be the case this year? Mark S. Hoplamazian - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, that's accurate. Typically our strongest margin quarters are second quarter and fourth quarter, followed by first quarter and third quarter. So from a margin perspective I think that's typically how it's working that is related to the seasonality of the business and the seasonality of the asset base, and the type of business that comes in at different period of time. We tend to see more of the true business over the summer and see more higher-end group business and corporate business in second quarter and fourth quarter. So it's really a function of rate profile and food and beverage mix associated with customer segments. So that gives you a general sense of the margin profile from quarter-to-quarter and I think that it's consistent with how margins have performed over the past couple of years and going forward as well.

Vince Ciepiel - Cleveland Research Co. LLC

Analyst · Cleveland Research. Your line is open

Great. Thanks very much.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I turn the call back to the presenters.

Atish Shah - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Okay. Thank you very much. I would like to thank everyone for joining us this afternoon and for your interest in Hyatt. We look forward to talking to you over the months ahead. Take care.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.