Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties' Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, President and Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Senior Vice President of Asset Management; and Mr. Scott Lynn, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. This call will be available for digital replay. The number is (800) 585-8367 and the conference ID number is 33745746. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the company's expected financial performance. Any statements we make today that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements. Words such as believes, or expects are intended to identify these statements, which may be affected by many factors, including those listed in the company's SEC filings and in today's release. The company's actual results may differ materially from the results we discuss or project today. We will not publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or any other reason. We'll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures today. We reconcile each non-GAAP measure to the most comparable GAAP measure in an exhibit to today's release. I will now turn the call over to the company's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Colin Reed.

Thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. I will begin my remarks by briefly touching on our results for the fourth quarter and the year. And then, I want to express some thoughts on how we see the current environment as a precursor to our outlook for '16 and beyond. And then, I will pass it off to Mark to discuss the financials. As you all aware, we previously shared our key operating metrics for the fourth quarter and year about five weeks ago when we announced our expansion plans for the Gaylord Texan which I will talk about in a couple of minutes. We felt that it was important to give you all our investors and the analyst community insights into how our business was performing in light of all the volatility in the broad market as well as some gloomy rhetoric that we were hearing from a small segment of our REIT hospitality peers. But as a way of reminder, our fourth quarter results capped off an excellent 2015 in fact it was a record year on many fronts. Now let me quickly run through some of the highlights. In the fourth quarter of '15, we delivered the best single quarter forward group sales production in the company's history booking approximately 977,000 gross room nights. Gross bookings for the full-year for 2015 came in at roughly 2.337 million room nights making it the best production year in the company's history. RevPAR for the fourth quarter was up 9.1% and total RevPAR was up 5.7%. Just to remind everyone RevPAR in '14 was up 10.3%. So we had a pretty tough quarter year-over-year. Now after our last earnings call there was some skepticism from a few folks about our ability to hit these levels of RevPAR and…

Thank you, Colin. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining the call. In the fourth quarter, the company generated total revenue of $312.1 million, up 7% from the prior year quarter. For the full-year 2015, total revenue increased 4.9% to nearly $1.1 billion. During the quarter, the company generated net income available to common shareholders of $38.9 million or $0.75 per fully diluted share. Net income in the quarter includes an impairment charge of $16.3 million which are costs associated with the company's decision to move forward with an expansion of guest rooms and meeting space at the Gaylord Texan. As outlined in our announcement in January, our current expansion plans replace a previous plan that was conceived prior to 2008 and has been subsequently put on hold. This non-cash charge is the write-off of accrued development expenses with respect to the previous project and does not impact adjusted EBITDA or AFFO metrics. The company continued to grow profitability in the quarter generating $88.3 million in adjusted EBITDA, improving EBITDA margin by 170 basis points. For the full-year, the company's adjusted EBITDA margin increased 180 basis points generating $325.1 million in adjusted EBITDA, a nearly $34 million increase over 2014. For the quarter, the company generated $80.7 million in AFFO or $1.56 per fully diluted share. For the full-year, the company generated $273.7 million in AFFO or $5.30 per fully diluted share. Turning to the hospitality segment results, the hotels finished the quarter on a same-store basis with a RevPAR increase of 9.1% and an increase in total RevPAR of 5.7%. We finished the year strong with full-year RevPAR and total RevPAR on a same-store basis within our guidance range increasing 3.7% and 3.5% respectively. While we saw an increase in attrition during the quarter of 120 basis points to 12.7%…

I am going to punt on the closing remarks, Mark, and ask Jackie, if she could open up the lines for questions as it is Friday.

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.

Hey, good morning, guys. Was hoping we could talk a little bit about how the -- I guess maybe the composition of the group's changes as we move through the cycle and is it a little bit more association heavy? And also I want to kind of get a sense on the corporate groups how far they typically book out and whether you have seen any changes there or not and kind of how maybe the pricing differential? Sorry for the multiple questions.

Yes, that is fine. Chris, good morning, Colin. So let me just start by giving you sort of a philosophical belief that I have that comes from decades in this business. We love the association business. There are folks that would argue that when the economy is red-hot you should punt the association businesses -- business and shift across too much more heavily weighted with corporate. But the good thing about this association business, it typically books four-and-a-half years out and it tends to come irrespective of the economic health of the country. And just to remind you back in 2009 when the world went off a cliff, we canceled I think it was about 125,000 group room nights of which in '09 of which about 120,000ish were corporate and the association business just sailed through that period. So we like it. In tends to represent if you look at our company, 75% of our business there or thereabouts is group and 75% of that is large group and out of the 75% of total group actually we are about 30% association. So that is how we are made up right now. We are seeing a lot of activity in the corporate sector. We booked disproportionately more corporate business than we have had in previous years for '16 and you want to share some of the details of that, Pat?

Sure. Good morning, Chris. It is Patrick. It is good to hear from you. Just to give you some insight as Colin was mentioning for 2016, we do have more corporate room nights on the books currently for 2016. We are up about 62,000 at the same time last year. Association is down a little bit just because we have been taking more corporate intentionally. But to Colin's point as we look out into the future years, we continue to take association on as a good firm foundation for our future years. So association is down about 45,000 room nights for 2016 and our SMERF-y groups, which are the social, military, education, religious and fraternal groups, are slightly up for 2016 as we are working to make sure we have our need dates covered.

That's great. Appreciate the color there. And then a question on the entertainment business and look forward to learning more about that next month. I know you guys have been looking at various kind of longer-term alternatives. Do you have any -- directionally do you have any clue as to any changes you might want to make or anything? Also just a view on the timing of do you have a set time when you say we want to be here or there or do this or that?

Well, no, so philosophically the business, philosophically the business the way we think about it probably should not be in hotel real estate investment trust. It is very different and there is no equivocation as far as that is concerned. The thing that we have been doing over this last year is we have literally been bombarded by organizations coming at us that would like to partner with us and do things as it relates to the entertainment business. So what we've done is we've gone through this period of evaluation last year where we had some pricey consultants in helping us think about content, distribution, content creation and then how to leverage the brands that we own on a domestic and may be global basis. And we have a very clear now understanding of what we think the potential is and we will explain that to the investment community that turn up in a couple of weeks. The timing of when we ultimately spin this business will be determined by the speed at which we are able to execute the strategy because when you do it as you well know, Chris, when you -- if you spin a business, you have got to be able to clearly demonstrate to the investment community the sex and sizzle that will come with this business. And so demonstrating the growth is going to be a very important ingredient to determine when. So lots of exciting things we are doing. We are going to explain that but we're not going to say 30th of September of 1st of January, we're going to say to you all here is what we're doing and as we cross certain thresholds then we can be ready to bring this business to prime time.

Okay, very good insights. Thanks, Colin.

Pleasure. Look forward to you coming. You are coming, aren't you, Chris?

Yes.

Excellent. Look forward to seeing you.

Our next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley with Bank of America.

Hey, good afternoon. I guess morning there in Nashville so good morning, everyone. So, Colin, I just wanted to touch on -- I mean there is a lot of sensitivity out there about Texas and I think you guys have given plenty of transparency about what's in or not in your kind of in your books. But can you just remind us sort of oil and gas exposure as it relates to some of the more energy related accounts at the Texan and what kind of exposure you think that might make up of that property specifically just given all of the noise around what's going on in Houston these days?

Yes, sure. We've -- I think we've covered this question I don't know how many times and we are happy to give you a real-time update but the simple answer is that we see very, very little oil and gas business at the Texan. And you want to get into the detail, Pat, just for a second.

Sure. Shaun, it represents less than 3% of the group business that we would see in a given year and we actually looked at '16 and '17 and it is an even smaller fraction than that for the next 24 months. I think in '16, we had less than 5000 rooms on the books for any type, not just specifically oil and gas but any type of related industry that might depend on oil and gas. So we scrubbed the books. We are very confident that we really just don't have a whole lot of exposure there.

Great. That's helpful and I'm sorry to make you guys beat the dead horse on it but when people run

We understand it is top of mind. I mean, we read the perils of oil and gas, we read about it every hour every day and so it's not unusual that you ask the question but.

Always I appreciate you humoring it. And then the second question would just be on -- and don't know what detail you can give or not but it does sound like the project in Aurora is moving forward under a different development or different developer than obviously you guys. I'm curious like down the road as a strategic option for you guys, how would you think about an acquisition of something that's sort of a purpose built property like that especially given that it's something that you guys would know quite well?

That is a good one and so let me come at this from two angles. You have raised the spectrum of Aurora. Let me quickly talk about Aurora and then the more broader question about acquiring more purpose built large group resort assets like what Aurora will be probably in about three years from now. So first of all, Aurora, we love that location. We put four or five years of -- three, four years of energy into that location. We simply believe that being part of the Gaylord family, that hotel will pick up a lot of customers from the West Coast, bring those customers to a world-class hotel and rotate those customers into the rest of the Gaylord brand. We love that whole notion. We think that the economics of that hotel because of its relative competitive positioning in that market will be tremendous because there is not a convention hotel like that anywhere within a 250 to 400 miles of that market. So we love Aurora and under the right circumstances we would consider investment in that business. What we have said is that we are not going to be in the construction business of a large hotel and take the debt 100% on our balance sheet over a two, three-year period. But we love that hotel. Second, if a large quality group hotel in a quality group market would shake loose and come at a price that we believe one, we can influence the profitability on the hotel and the price would generate a good return on capital for us, we of course would look at it. We have been accused by may be a handful of folks of being nonaggressive on the real estate purchasing side over the last three, four years. The problem with us is that our standards are too damn high. We only look at assets that we think are complementary to the world-class assets we own. And we do not want to be homogenous like every other REIT and hospitality REIT in this country. We're going to stick to the part of the business that we truly understand. So that's where we are at on that.

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Crow with Raymond James.

Hey, good morning, guys. Colin, I had the same question about our Aurora. Let me phrase it a little differently. Does it pose a risk to your business in that you will likely lose some rotational business out of your properties and into that one? How do you deal with kind of the reputational risk that comes when somebody else is owning an asset with that brand on it?

Well, I don't think there is a REIT in this country that holds any brand captive, right. I mean there's no hospitality company -- hotel real estate company owns 100% of any brand period unless of course it is a one-off hotel sitting in San Francisco. But, Bill, here is the thing. Last year I think we booked out of the 2.3 million room nights, about 1 million room nights of those room nights or thereabouts, 900,000 and something room nights were multiyear, multi-location room nights. We have pioneered this strategy in this country and in fact it is interesting because Marriott has been adopting the strategy of picking a customer up and rotating those customers three, four, five years through the system and keeping them within the system. So these customers, their behavior is such that they will rotate from market to market year-by-year and we have customers that we book every single week every single month for a piece of business next year but the year after they are either in Las Vegas or they are in San Antonio or they are in San Diego, they rotate. So but what this business will do, it will give us the opportunity just like when we opened Washington, it will give us the opportunity of introducing consumers who to-date are not using the Gaylord brand into that Gaylord brand and pick them up and rotate them into our business. And yes, there will be customers that will rotate into that business but on a net-net basis just as when we opened Washington, this was net additive to the system. It was powerful for the system. So we are looking forward to the Colorado hotel happening and we look forward to working with that ownership group and at some point in time, we may find that we will have an involvement in that business and when that occurs, we will of course let you know.

That's helpful. Yes.

One thing I would mention is that when we sold the brand to Marriott, obviously we wrote the brand standards for the hotels and until the brand grows to a certain -- as long as we control at least 50% of the rooms in the Gaylord brand, we have the ability to approve or change the brand standards. So we are comfortable that we have some control over how this brand looks and feels outside of our asset.

That's helpful. Thanks Mark. My final question is -- and you mentioned Washington DC in your answer, Colin -- any -- is it too early now to determine what the inaugural impact will be next year to your properties?

We know that there is a spike; we know that we invariably run a lot of parties through that hotel because that hotel is one of the largest in the region. I thought you were going to talk about the impacts on the hotel from the casino from MGM's casino that is slated to --

You can go there too as well, Colin, if you would like.

No, no, that's okay. But we're excited about the fact that the hotel product that we have in National Harbor will be by far the nearest hotel to that MGM casino which is going to be I think a beautiful casino and it's going to be a game changer for Maryland and for Pennsylvania and that is going to be all very good and we are looking forward to that. And the inauguration is going to be four or five days of parties that it's sort of like a muted Super Bowl. We've had what two inaugurations, three inaugurations now in that hotel in that hotel's history too I think. And it's been positive. But you know, Bill, it's not going to transform the results for that hotel. What is I think is the leisure business that we are going to see from this casino.

Okay, great. I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks. Thanks.

Look forward too.

Our next question comes from the line of Smedes Rose with Citi.

Well, hi, thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask you, Colin, it sounds like you're -- obviously your asset in Nashville is uniquely positioned but you did mention supply in other cities causing some weakness. And when you look at rooms under construction and in planning in Nashville, it's about 25% of current inventory. Is there some level that would give you any kind of worry about the supply in Nashville or do you just feel like the city is growing so rapidly that all of that poses no threat to you?

Yes, thanks. Good question. You are right, 2,500, may be another 1,000. Here is the thing, the city Nashville basically within the downtown city has run out of real estate. The last piece of real estate an acre and half that got sold a couple of month's back, an acre and a half for $20 million for a hotel to be built on it. So what is going on here is frankly very different than what you see going on anywhere else in the United States of America. The millennials have discovered country music; country music is the fastest-growing genre in the United States, because of technology, because of iPhones, iPads, the national TV show. And so when you come to this town today versus five years ago and you see it, you see what is going on here, it is just being bombarded by people who want to come and party and have fun in this town. So this supply is being built to accommodate the extraordinary increase in prices that you're seeing in downtown hotels and to fulfill and to accommodate this demand. When you've got Hampton Inns charging $325 on a Friday night, Saturday night in downtown Nashville compared to what it was two, three years ago; it's quite extraordinary what is going on here. But our business, look, we had the very best year last year. We also had I think a tremendous booking year last year for Opryland going forward. And we don't see any slow up and Opryland. Opryland last year made just $110 million of EBITDA. Four years ago, Opryland was in the 70s. It is quite extraordinary what is going on in Nashville and we don't see any slowing up. The issue that the town has to deal with is the issue of transportation and just like what happened in Vegas in the '90s when all of the new supply came to fulfill the incredible demand from consumers that were flying into Vegas from all across America, the city got choked and we've got to figure out in this town how we move people around. But it is very exciting what is going on in Nashville.

Okay, thanks. If I could ask just one more, you mentioned that you have about 49% occupancy on the books for this year. I think that was up from about 46.5% in the third quarter. Is that typically where you stand at the beginning of a year like more or less 50% full and then you would layer on the other 25 points or so over the course of the year or does it just vary so much?

Normally -- it normally historically, it has sort of been in that 46% to 50% range. And I will tell you this that the amount of room nights we have on the books is as good as we have ever had and the quality of those room nights are as good as we have ever had. It is up over last year, up over the year before. And the thing about it that we really like is the fact that we have got all of this business on the books but when we look at the ts and ps, the tentatives and the prospects and we look at our lead volumes, our lead volumes are up in the 20%, 25% range over this time last year. So we are seeing a lot of business and as we are tracking our leisure business literally week by week, we see that our leisure volumes are good and our rate on leisure is good as well. So yes, we like to be at about 49% to 50% and -- but in prior years, somewhere in the 46% to 50%.

All right, thank you very much.

See you in two, three weeks at your conference in Florida.

That's right.

Look forward to it.

Thank you.

Our final question comes from the line of Harry Curtis with Nomura.

Hi, good morning. Just wanted to go back to the question that you almost half answered from Bill. When you look ahead into 2017, I am interested in your initial expectations for the either positive or the competitive impact of MGM on your demand in DC. Is there any information or data you can give us on forward bookings? Are you seeing any competitive impact or is it having -- is it sort of accretive to your business at this point?

Look, Harry, you have been a student of the casino business for a long time, right. And the facility that MGM is building is about 350 room hotel and it will do 10,000 cars a day in this market. It's going to be all of the people have written about this business $700 million to $800 million of net win. You understand what all that means. That is a ton of transient business. But the thing about it is transients don't book a year ahead. Transients will make the decision in October that they are going in November. And so we haven't seen any at this stage lift from the MGM facility nor would we expect to simply because the MGM facility is not -- it doesn't have 150,000 square feet of meeting space and they can't accommodate meetings that they are booking. They have basically no meeting space. So I cannot imagine that this business will be anything other than accretive to us when this hotel gets to opening. And quite frankly, I think National Harbor is positioned fantastically well to capture a large part of the consumers that will come to that facility.

And Harry, just to build on that point to accentuate what Colin said just to give you a little additional information outlook to 2017 and the room nights on the books from a group perspective are definitely consistent with what we've seen in years past for that looking that far out. So it is tracking from a group perspective and again, we don't really see this is a competitive threat from a group perspective but as an additive component on the transient side.

Just a quick follow-up and that will do it for me. The typical mix of your transient customers at National Harbor is what?

It runs lower than our other hotels. It's in the 15% to 20% range just because the National Harbor development continues to work to get the notoriety and awareness in the region there which we -- to Colin's point earlier, which is why we are excited about MGM because it will bring a much higher level of awareness, notoriety, and cachet for that development. So 15% to 20% is where it normally hovers.

Just a physical question, how close is it to your facility?

Half a mile. But it is in the complex, it is on the far northwestern side of the complex nearest the interstate which is where it should be. But Harry, here is the thing. If you come out of that facility and you decide you want to go further northwest towards downtown, I think that is the geographic way, you have probably got seven miles. And then if you say okay, I don't want to stay at National Harbor, where do I stay? The nearest other hotels is back across the bridge over in Alexandria where the rate is materially different. Or you go East I would think it's East, probably East, Southeast into Prince Georges County and there is just not a lot of quality hotels until you get to Baltimore I would suppose. So we are perfectly located to accommodate the overnight player who wants to come in with the wife, the girlfriend, the boyfriend, whatever it may be, have dinner, play cards, play slots, stay over, have a few beverages, we are a perfect location and the fact of the matter is we have some of the finest suites on the East Coast of the United States in that hotel.

That's helpful. And thanks very much.

See you at your conference, Harry. I think we are scheduled for the Nomura conference this year as well.

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you.

Thanks. All right. I think, Jackie, then we are done. Right?

Correct. There are no further questions at this time.

All right. Well let me just finish by saying we look forward to seeing everybody at our Investor Day and more to follow. Thank you very much everyone for joining us.