Good morning, and welcome to Hyatt's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Adam Rohman, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Hyatt's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Joan Bottarini, Hyatt's Chief Financial Officer. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that our comments today will include forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other SEC filings. These risks could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued today along with the comments on this call are made only as of today and will not be updated as actual events unfold. In addition, you can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in today's remarks on our website at hyatt.com under the Financial Reporting 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. Please note that unless otherwise stated, references to our occupancy, average daily rate, and RevPAR reflect comparable system-wide hotels on a constant-currency basis. Additionally, percentage changes disclosed during the call are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report that the year is off to a great start, demonstrating high-quality growth across multiple dimensions and expanding fees from all areas of our asset-light business. Let's start with the latest trends that we're seeing. System-wide RevPAR increased 5.5% in the first quarter and travel across all customer segments remains very healthy. As anticipated, the timing of Easter compared to 2023 positively impacted leisure travel in March and negatively impacted group and business travel. Leisure transient revenue increased 7% in the first quarter due to strong demand over spring break and the week leading into Easter. As expected, leisure transient revenue was negatively impacted in April due to the timing of Easter. While we expect year-over-year growth rates to moderate, we are significantly above pre-pandemic levels and are not seeing signs of consumers reducing their leisure travel. For example, pace for our all-inclusive resorts in the Americas is up approximately 4% for the second quarter, led by the Cancun market. Meanwhile, group room revenue increased approximately 6% in the quarter with strong performance in January and February. We anticipate solid contribution to RevPAR from group in the second and third quarters of 2024, and the second quarter is off to a good start with April up 14% compared to last year. We expect another solid year of demand for group meetings and events with group pace for us full service managed properties currently up 7% for May through December of 2024. Finally, business transient revenue increased approximately 6% in the quarter with strength in both January and February, and we saw similar trends in the U.S., a clear sign that business travel continues to recover. April was up 21% globally compared to 2023…

Thanks, Mark, and good morning everyone. Before I begin, I'd like to remind everyone that our first quarter results reflect our three new reportable segments, management and franchising, owned and leased, and distribution. First quarter 2023 results that we published in our earnings release this morning have been recast to reflect our new reportable segments. Selected recast historical financial information is available on our Investor Relations website. As Mark mentioned, first quarter system wide RevPAR increased 5.5%, led by growth across multiple international markets. This growth was fueled by 21% RevPAR growth in Asia-Pacific, excluding Greater China, which benefited from strong outbound travel from Greater China to markets including Japan, Thailand and South Korea. In Greater China, RevPAR increased approximately 12%, aided by easier comparisons to the first quarter of 2023 during which COVID restrictions were lifted. RevPAR growth in the Americas excluding the United States increased approximately 12%, a result of strong leisure demand in Mexico and the Caribbean. We also saw similar results at our all-inclusive properties in the Americas with net package RevPAR growth of 10% for the quarter. And moving to Europe, RevPAR increased 10% due to exceptional performance in southern and eastern Europe. Our European all-inclusive properties produced impressive net package RevPAR growth of approximately 25%, driven by high demand for our resorts in the Canary Islands. And finally, in the United States, RevPAR was up approximately 2%, excluding the impact of Easter, reflecting normalized growth. We reported record gross fees of $262 million, up 13% due to a combination of our RevPAR growth, greater system size, and an increase in our non-RevPAR fees. Franchise and other fees increased 21%, driven by the expansion of our franchise footprint and increases in co-brand credit card fees and UVC fees. Incentive fees increased 16%, excluding foreign exchange…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Daniel Politzer from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. First, I just wanted to touch high-level how you think about asset sales from here. It seems like you guys are pacing towards that $2 billion target. As you kind of maybe get there or even exceed it, how do you think about going forward? What's your appetite for incremental asset sales? Should we expect another target or do you feel like you're - it's going to be kind of ad hoc from here? Thanks.

Thanks, Daniel, and good morning. Yes, I - we will be at a run rate of in excess of 80% fee-based earnings, and - assuming that we close everything that we've got remaining, and - but from our perspective, we are fully asset-light. We were 76% last year for the full year and we do not intend to publish another targeted sell-down program. It is true that we have a number of really phenomenal assets left in the portfolio, and we will continue to look at opportunities to sell those. And the opportunities will likely come in conjunction with other growth opportunities that - we have some irreplaceable assets in the form of three Park Hyatt's, not excluding JVs. We have a JV in a Park Hyatt in Europe. We own the Park Hyatt Paris, New York, and Chicago, and the Miraval portfolio, all of which represent what I would consider to be highly durable from a valuation perspective assets in extremely high-barrier markets. And so we are very optimistic about what we're going to be able to do going forward. So I think you can expect to see us continue to sell down. We - like every other company in our industry, we will not get to zero. There's nobody in our industry that has zero and we don't - that's not a target for us. And so the other fact is that we will find other, I think, very value-accretive opportunities to buy hotels from time to time. Irvine is an example. Indian Wells, we proved that out. And so not to mention, if you go back in history, the Hyatt Regency Mexico City and others. So I think we've proven that we can buy, add value to and then sell at a profit plus retain long-term management agreements. And if the market's important enough to us and the opportunity is good enough, we'll do that, but that will be opportunistic and not programmatic and modest.

Thanks. That's really helpful. And just for my follow-up, you reiterated your 3% to 5% RevPAR guidance, but I guess as we think about it now versus a few months ago when you initially introduced it, what are some of the puts and takes? And if you can maybe opine a bit on what you're seeing in China and if that's changed a little bit versus a few months ago. Thanks.

Sure, Daniel. I'll take that question. On the 3% to 5%, we're seeing very strong, as we reported in the first quarter, international result, and that is - as we look at pacing into the second quarter and what our operators are telling us around the world is that continues to be strong. So we feel good about the international results and those would, I would say, are on the high end or exceeding the high end of our guidance as we think about the full year. The U.S. has been in the low single digits. We reported that we saw in the U.S. 2% growth outside of Easter. There was a headwind in the first quarter for the U.S., the Easter holiday, but as we noted in our prepared remarks, our group business is very strong with pacing into the last three quarters of the year up 7% and business transient is also very strong with some very important markets for us like New York up significantly and seeing good short-term transient pacing on the business side. So I would say, all in all, the composition of the RevPAR range is, U.S. on the lower end, international markets on the higher to maybe exceeding the higher end. And then with respect to China, China has been - as I mentioned, international markets very strong, China and Asia-Pacific, excluding China, no exception; really good results coming out in the quarter. And specifically what we're seeing is actually good news on the international inbound into China. So the mix of that business into China from international has increased. I think our numbers are about 7 to 8 percentage points on the mix. So a material increase in international inbound. Still below pre-COVID levels, but we're seeing that business pick up. And then outbound is a phenomenal story into markets like Japan, South Korea, Thailand that we noted in the prepared remarks. We're seeing significant outbound travel from China into those markets, and frankly, all around the world. So really good results coming out of that region.

Thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Shaun Kelley from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Mark or Joan, I just want to dig in on ALG a little bit. So the first part was just kind of exactly helping us understand kind of what is occurring here. So big picture, you had great - it sounded like you had very strong demand on the package tour side both in Europe and in the Caribbean and Latin America. And I'm trying to kind of square that with the distribution headwinds called out in the release and mentioned about sort of the difficult comps. Is there just a timing gap on the way, the distribution piece kind of records revenue? Is there something different in that that we're seeing? So just help us kind of balance the two - those two comments or those two areas, both - one of strength and one of weakness.

Yes. We had already indicated previously that there was going to be, I think we said an approximate $20 million headwind with respect to the ALG Vacations business, and that that would be - that would really show up in the first quarter and that's true. That's what happened. So a lot of that had to do with the comparison to last year, which was extraordinary. Just by way of a reminder, there were - there was an unusual level of air demand, which was not being fully satisfied by scheduled carriers. We were able to backfill that in relation to our efforts. We also drove tremendous traffic to our own all-inclusive resorts both in the Americas - well, throughout the Americas, throughout the Caribbean and the West Coast of Mexico and Jamaica and so forth. So - and this year, the world has changed with respect to the air side. So packaged levels have come down a bit, but - and which we understood and knew that we were facing different dynamics there. It is still true that the demand for our resorts remains extremely strong. So our pace of plus 11 for the first quarter with very strong pace. If you look at Cancun, for example, in the second quarter, pace into Cancun is plus 6. So the - what was it referred to as, the Cancun fatigue last year is we predicted it was temporary. And sure enough, it is. So demand for our hotels remains very, very strong. And I would just point out that there can be a difference between ALGV's business results and our own resorts by virtue of the fact that our resorts represent maybe 25% of ALG Vacations' total volume, and ALG Vacations represents about 20% of the total revenue that we book into our resorts. So there is a lot of other hotels and a lot of other markets that are being served by ALG Vacations.

Shaun, one thing I would just add to that is recognizing what Mark just said, is that there is mix of packages and mix of business as far as what markets ALG Vacations is serving. And what we plan to do is to provide additional color going forward. Just like we did for the first quarter, the headwind that we anticipated, and going forward, we'll continue to provide color on that just because of that correlation that isn't entirely connected with our net package RevPAR results.

Yes. And so one such difference in the first quarter and most likely will show up again in the second quarter and the third quarter, given our pace outlook is Jamaica, Jamaica will be lower, even though we have packages that we sell into Jamaica, and Cancun, as I mentioned, is going strong. So those differences also affect ALG Vacations total volumes.

Very helpful. And then maybe just to kind of stick with the theme, can you just give us an update on sort of for the year, your general expectations for this distribution segment or what's embedded in your broader outlook for it? And then you've, in general talked about, I think, mid-teens or mid to high teens margins as being, I think, normalized in that business, if we look back to pre-COVID times, and I know there was a lot of noise and changes during COVID, but we go back to that as a baseline. I think you're a little bit beneath that. So in this quarter, should we expect that to mean revert or isn't Q1 a little bit like the best quarter of the year, just given seasonality? Just help us understand how to think about margins and sort of the underlying top line assumption from here.

Sure. So Shaun, in the earnings growth model that you'll see on our Investor Relations website, we do have some indicators here for the distribution margins between 16% to 19%. All of those data that we're sharing is on a full-year basis. So you can expect us to be within that range for the distribution margin. And I mentioned we'll give some color on what we expect for the full year. For the last three quarters of the year, we anticipate a flat to last year for the ALG Vacations business and about $5 million or so down in the second quarter and about $5 million or so down - or excuse me, $5 million up in the fourth quarter. So flattish for the last three quarters of the year, and that's all excluding the $20 million that we reported for the first quarter. Now what you'll have to do is we have UVC reported in the distribution segment in 2023. So we've given you all of that information to strip out ALG Vacations for that segment.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Stephen Grambling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Thank you. So you flagged the lower operating leverage in - I think it was on Slide 11 of the deck, and also on Slide 14, you noted that even before considering the free cash flow generation, I think you'll be at sub 2 turns of net leverage versus all the asset-light peers closer to 3 and maybe targeting higher. So how are you thinking about the right capital structure as the model shifts? And then what are the factors that you're watching to potentially take advantage of either greater debt capacity or something like that, if that's something that's on the path?

Yes, we are - our capital allocation strategy hasn't changed. As we look at generating free cash flow and asset sale proceeds, one of our priorities is reinvesting back in the business, maintaining our investment grade profile and returning excess cash to shareholders. So that's how we've looked at it and balancing it. We have our - we're squarely an investment grade profile now and our ratios look good. So as we think about opportunities for us to grow, we'll be balancing how we manage those ratios into the future. We've been targeting 3 times on a gross debt basis and we're definitely trending below that at the moment.

Right. And I guess maybe a follow-up would just be, are there generally more or less opportunities that you see out there to reinvest in growth in the business sitting here today than maybe last quarter or even last year?

Yes, I would - the short answer is more. We are more actively engaged in more transactions now than we were over the course of last year. These kinds of transactions take different forms and shapes. Some of them are portfolio deals, some of them are brand acquisitions, some of them are management company with brand management. So they take different forms. And again, just to reiterate how we think about it, it's primarily customer base is the first screen; second is geography, and third is the way in which any potential acquisition fits to expand network effect for World of Hyatt and also for destinations served. So we are seeing more activity. Much of it is, I would say, off-market. In fact, pretty much everything that we're looking at and engaged in right now is not part of an auction process.

One quick clarification there. I realize this is a second follow-up, but the - on the customer base being the first thing that you think through, is that just suggesting that you'll stick with servicing a higher end customer, or are you talking about maybe broadening out the customers that you're looking for?

Yes. I think the core of our business obviously is serving high-end customers, but what I would say is - so just to double-click on the - what I mean by customer base, it's either growing an existing customer base that we already know and serve. So we have really good predictor value in terms of what their travel patterns might look like and their spending patterns, or it's looking at a demographic profile that's similar, but expands our existing customer base either by age cohort or by geography. So in the case of Dream Hotels, for example, the age - the demographic profile is actually quite similar to our core, but the average age of their guest base was 20 years younger than the average age of our guest base. So we feel that that's a great extension and an expansion of our customer base; still financially capable, but similar to our core customers, but at a younger age. If you look at Lindner Hotels, Lindner is very similar in terms of the demographic profile, but a significant proportion of their total business are Germans traveling within Germany. So those are two different deals done for different really strategic reasons, but it's all designed to build network effect and grow our customer base and grow World of Hyatt, which, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, is on a very significant growth rate, up 22% over the last year. That's a key benefit of doing this in a very deliberate way.

Helpful color. A lot more to dig into there, but I'll jump back into queue. Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from Joe Greff from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Good morning, everybody. Mark and Joan, I think you touched on this a little bit. Maybe I'll ask it differently in terms of maybe how your capital allocations evolve post additional asset sales from here. And then is there much in the way of M&A in terms of brands or tuck-in acquisitions? And then the Juniper Hotel stake, which is like $5 per share for Hyatt, not insignificant, are your plans to hold that or plans to monetize that over time? And then I have a follow up.

Maybe I'll just start, and Joan - I mean, Joan already stated that our capital allocation strategy has not changed. We're still prioritizing investing in the business. We're being very disciplined about it. I think our track record sort of speaks for itself without trying to sound arrogant about it. And sorry about that. But I think we've done a good job of the deals that we have executed against and we've executed well post-acquisition. So I think we've done well there. That's why we think it's reasonable for us to allocate capital where it makes sense. We're not biased, I would say. We're very disciplined. We won't do deals that are too thin or net negative just for the sake of, I don't know, posting higher net rooms growth or something like that. That's not what we're doing. We're trying to create much more shareholder value. We - and we have a significant pipeline, and that pipeline growth continues to grow. And our first quarter net rooms growth for the quarter was - almost everything was pipeline - was openings out of our pipeline. We had a tiny conversion percentage in the first quarter. So the pipeline is not to be forgotten. With respect to what's out there, yes, there are some brand opportunities. They tend to be more narrow. And so we are seeing some activity in that regard, and - but they're not - they're going to be fewer and further between. It's just not a very large universe of things that would make sense for us. Having said that, we're not aware of everything that's going on around the world because we make it our business to know it and we continue to pursue things that do include brand platform and management opportunities. I can tell you that 100% of the things that we're looking at right now are either fully asset-light. The vast majority, if you look at proportionally, is 100% asset-light, or in the one or two cases where there may be assets involved, we have a very good line of sight for what we would do with the assets. So we do not plan to end up being - going backwards in terms of our asset intensity for any extended period of time whatsoever.

Okay. And then with respect to your outlook for this year, I guess maybe from an EBITDA perspective, how do you see it by quarter just so that estimates are sort of in a position or spot that's consistent with how you're viewing quarterly results? Obviously, I know that the full year has been maintained, which is great, but that would probably be helpful for everybody on this call.

Yes. So by the way, Joe, I forgot to answer your - or comment on your question about Juniper. So let me just quickly cover that. We're obviously thrilled with the IPO. The company itself has done remarkable - has done us a remarkable service over the years by helping us grow in India in a very good way with high quality assets. And by the way, that business and the management team there see more opportunities to grow. So it's sort of an opportunity to have a stake in a company that is going to continue to look for opportunities to help us continue to grow in India. And that's our expectation. India is at a very interesting time. First quarter results across the country were staggering, over 20% RevPAR growth. It is on fire, and the supply growth has been muted. So the outlook is really strong. And the - I would say our management team and the leadership of our partner's organization, they are extremely well placed in terms of identifying and getting abreast of opportunities in the marketplace for potential acquisitions of other hotels. Now, as to our intentions with respect to our stake, 75% of our stake is locked up for one year and the remaining 25% is locked up for three. So what I will tell you is that over time, we do expect that we will lighten up our --- and sell down our stake, but I can't comment on exactly what the timing of that would be. I think we're going to keep track of it and look into this and stay closer to it as we get past these lockup dates. But it's a very strong business. It's now delevered and has lots of acquisition capacity and a superb management team.…

Our next question comes from Richard Clarke from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just first on the Easter impact on Q1. You gave us the U.S. impact. Just wondering maybe you can comment on what you think the global impact would be. And if you sort of unpick that into Q2, maybe all else being equal, would you expect RevPAR to accelerate into Q2 from Q1 as Easter reverses?

Richard, the global impact is not a material number. We don't see a material impact from the holiday on a global basis. Certainly in the U.S., there is because of different travel patterns that people take around spring break and the Easter holiday. April will benefit on the reverse side for group and business transient in the month of April, which we've seen and quoted in our prepared remarks. So we certainly see the reverse, particularly in the U.S.

Okay. That makes sense. And I know you've taken a couple of questions on buybacks already, but just wondering about the sizing of the increase that you've done up to the $800 million. It feels like you've done half of Q1. Is this the limit? How have you got to that number? Is that just the disposals done in Q1? And as you actually get the cash in for Zurich et cetera, can we look forward to a bigger buyback increase later this year?

Sure. As we provide outlook each quarterly earnings call, we're doing that without incorporating future transactions. So as we looked at the increase that we would undertake in our buyback outlook, our shareholder return outlook, we saw the increased proceeds and evaluated about 50% of those would be excess cash that we could clearly return and increase our outlook. As we proceed throughout the year, we'll continue to update you. We have some transactions in process and as opportunities are evaluated and whether we execute on those, if we generate additional excess cash flow, we'll update you on any new shareholder return outlook that we have.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Meredith Jensen from HSBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, hi. I noticed the - or you had in the press release, 22% increase in the loyalty program, which is huge. I was wondering if there's any particular sort of driver of that high increase and would that be something that we should sort of expect as a trend increase? And related to that, what may we see sort of that trend increase show in the financials? I guess it would just be co-brand or engagement. And secondly, just very quickly, if - on Mr & Mrs Smith, you mentioned building the deeper relationship directly as time goes on. So I was wondering as that evolves over time, how we might track that sort of - what kind of metrics could we use and how would those show up in the financials over time in terms of profitability of that relationship? Thank you.

Sure. A couple of comments on the World of Hyatt. We have continuously tuned and refined the program to be very attractive to the core customer base that we serve. And I think that when you cumulate all of those moves that we've made over a number of years, including our portfolio shifts, we've doubled our luxury hotels over the last five years, seven years now, tripled the number of resorts and quintupled the number of lifestyle resorts, all at the high end. The choice that's available through Hyatt, even though we are the smallest of the major players, when you talk about the relevant base of hotels that members really want to be able to travel to, we've grown disproportionately in those which are in the highest demand. And so when you look at it as a total corporate strategy, this is all very deliberate to continue to build what we call network effects. The result of network effect is higher direct bookings from our members through Hyatt channels, which are the cheapest channels available. And therefore, our relative performance in terms of delivering margins to our hotel owners will continue to improve with that as the tailwind. That in turn drives growth because the better that we can do at hotel level performance, the more capital that we will attract to our platform from diverse owners around the world. I think the fact is that if you look at our pipeline expansion over the last couple of quarters, that's just proof that we've got momentum in that area. On the portfolio front, we also launched an upper mid-scale hotel, extended stay hotel brand last year called Hyatt Studios; again, a very deliberate move to increase the network effect for markets in which we saw our members traveling to,…

That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Our next question comes from Patrick Scholes from Truist Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Could you talk a little bit about expectations for the other fees within the revenues? I believe a significant portion of that is credit card fees. What are your expectations for the rest of the year and perhaps beyond for that? Thank you.

Sure. Patrick. In the quarter, we had a significant increase in franchise and other fees combined, over 20% in the quarter. For the full year, we are giving guidance now on fees. As a reminder, our total fees guidance for the full year is up 15% at the midpoint. So we're not going to give the specific components within other fees, but what I will tell you is that in the quarter, all of the different categories grew significantly within our non-RevPAR fees. We did get an increase from the UVC transaction, which boosted the percentage point on overall fees by a couple of points, but very, very strong results on our fee growth driven by strong RevPAR, our 5.5% RevPAR growth, which is very strong, mostly international markets and that package RevPAR. So across the board, our fee growth is really strong and the other fees we expect will continue to grow at a healthy pace as well.

Okay. Just a follow-up on that. Is there - when is your next major credit card contract renegotiation coming up?

Sure. We're going to start having discussions later this year, into early next year on that - on the renewal of that contract.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Our last question today will come from Michael Bellisario from Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just a quick follow-up on the model. Just those three hotels that you've sold, could you quantify how much EBITDA that they contributed during your four-month ownership period? Trying to figure out the run rate earnings impact going forward.

Yes. We have those, Michael, on the schedule in the earnings release. We're going to continue on any asset sale transactions to report those on schedule. I think the number is a A8.

Michael. It's on A8. And we can chat about that separately if you have additional questions.

By quarter and the assets are listed there in the table. It actually includes the one post quarter. We actually put those into the table to help with modeling.

Understood. Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you all for your time this morning. We appreciate your interest in Hyatt and look forward to extending our purpose of care by welcoming you to our hotels and resorts during your travels. We wish you a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for joining.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.