Hello, and welcome to the Xenia Hotels & Resorts, Inc. Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Alex, I'll be coordinating the call today. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand it over to your host, Aldo Martinez, Finance Manager, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alex, and welcome to Xenia Hotels & Resorts First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call and Webcast. I'm here with Marcel Verbaas, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer; Barry Bloom, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Atish Shah, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Marcel will begin with a discussion on our performance. Barry will follow with more details on operating trends and capital expenditure projects, and Atish will conclude today's remarks on our balance sheet and outlook. We'll then open the call for 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 in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued yesterday afternoon, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today, May 3, 2024, 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 to net income and definitions of certain items referred to in our remarks in our first quarter earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations section of our website. The property-level information we'll be speaking about today is on a same-property basis for all 32 hotels unless specified otherwise. An archive of this call will be available on our website for 90 days. I will now turn it over to Marcel to get started.

Thanks, Aldo, and good morning, everyone. Our operating results continue to be encouraging in the first quarter as strong group demand and steady improvement in business transient demand drove same-property portfolio RevPAR and total revenues that exceeded our expectations for the quarter. Our consistent focus on expense controls by our operators and asset management team and a continued inflationary environment allowed us to also achieve a same-property hotel EBITDA margin that was a bit ahead of our expectations. As a result, our adjusted EBITDAre came in above our internal forecast as well. For the first quarter of 2024, we reported net income of $8.5 million, adjusted EBITDAre of $65.3 million, and adjusted FFO per share of $0.44. While adjusted EBITDAre declined from the first quarter of 2023, we had anticipated this as Hyatt Regency Scottsdale at Gainey Ranch had record high performance last year when Phoenix hosted the Super Bowl and overall market demand was extremely strong. Despite the lapping of this outperformance and the high level of EBITDA disruption resulting from the ongoing transformative renovation at our Scottsdale resort during the quarter, our adjusted FFO per share increased by 10% over last year. This was mostly driven by the significant amount of share buybacks we completed in 2023, which we continued at a slower pace during the early part of the first quarter this year. Although same-property RevPAR for our 32-hotel portfolio decreased by 1.5% for the quarter, RevPAR actually increased by a healthy 3.7% when excluding Hyatt Regency Scottsdale despite the negative impact of the Easter holiday occurring at the end of March this year. This increase was mainly driven by a significant 310 basis point increase in occupancy for these 31 hotels. We saw particular strength in a number of our large group-oriented hotels such as our…

Thank you, Marcel, and good morning, everyone. For the first quarter, our 32 same-property portfolio RevPAR was $176.86 based on occupancy of 67.4% at an average daily rate of $262.39, a decrease of 1.5% as compared to the first quarter in 2023. Excluding Hyatt Regency Scottsdale, first quarter RevPAR was $178.07, an increase of 3.7% as compared to 2023. This increase reflected 3.1 points of occupancy gain and a decline of 1% in average day rate as compared to the first quarter of 2023. As Marcel indicated in his remarks, the same-property leaders in terms of RevPAR growth in the quarter included our hotels that were lapping first quarter 2023 renovations at Canary Santa Barbara and Grand Bohemian Orlando. Additionally, RevPAR grew significantly at Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, up 26.3%; Waldorf Astoria Atlanta Buckhead up 15.9%; Fairmont Pittsburgh, up 9.8%; Portland, where our 2 hotels were each up approximately 9.5%; Houston, where each of our hotels were up over 8.5%; Park Hyatt Aviara, up 7.6%; and Marriott San Francisco Airport, which was up 5%. The growth in these markets is a result of clearly improving business transient and group demand that we are seeing across the portfolio. Conversely, we experienced RevPAR weakness compared to the first quarter of 2023 at a couple of our leisure driven properties, including Bohemian Savannah Riverfront and Andaz Napa. As expected, results in the first quarter grew as each month progressed. Looking at each month of the quarter, excluding Hyatt Regency Scottsdale, January RevPAR was $157.14, up 11.1% to January 2023. February RevPAR was $178.71, up 0.6% compared to February 2023, and March RevPAR was up -- was $198.40, up 0.9% compared to March 2023. Notably, occupancy grew each month during the quarter. We are optimistic about the recovery in corporate and group rates as…

Thank you, Barry. I will provide an update on 2 items, our balance sheet and our 2024 guidance. As to our balance sheet, we continue to have a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity. With no near-term maturities, a significant unencumbered asset base and limited interest rate exposure, balance sheet continues to be a point of strength for the company. At quarter end, our leverage ratio was 5.2x trailing 12 months net debt to EBITDA. As a reminder, our long-term target is a leverage ratio in the low 3x to low 4x range. We expect to move closer to that range in 2025 as we see the Scottsdale project ramp up post-renovation. To wrap up the balance sheet discussion, note that we repurchased a small amount of stock, about $6 million, during the quarter. As you may recall, during 2023, we repurchased about 9% of our outstanding shares at about $12.75 per share. While we continue to consider our stock at the current price level to be an attractive use of our capital, we are balancing that with a few other factors, including liquidity in our stock, current year CapEx outlays and reducing our leverage target -- our leverage ratio to be closer to our target range. Next, I'll turn to our 2024 guidance. At the midpoint, our current full year guidance is in line with the guidance we provided at the end of February. While the first quarter came in better than expected, given that we are still early in the year and visibility to the back half of the year continues to be limited, we are maintaining guidance midpoints at prior levels. What has increased is our level of confidence in achieving full year guidance. And we will continue to monitor recent trends to see if the broad…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael Bellisario of Baird.

First question is probably for Barry here. The slide deck references cooling leisure demand in Nashville. Not totally surprising, given the recent data, but you only mentioned Napa and I believe Savannah in your prepared remarks. So maybe help us understand what you're seeing at the W, how that hotel performed in the quarter relative to your expectations and the broader market.

Yes, sure. When we think about -- generally talk about transient hotels, those are generally our smaller leisure-focused hotels, which is why the commentary on Napa and Savannah. Obviously, W Nashville is a very diversified demand base and one that we've talked about historically as where we've really refocused the hotel and trying to achieve better penetration in the corporate transient and group segments, which it has done. The overall backdrop in Nashville, particularly with the number of luxury hotels that have in market the last few years, resulted in both in the market and at W Nashville soft -- a little softness in leisure demand during the first quarter. But leisure demand is not the primary driver in the first quarter in Nashville, really never has been. So we'll have a much better indication as we move through Q2 and Q3, which are much, much stronger months in the market overall and have historically been much stronger periods of time for the W Nashville as well.

Got it, understood. And then a bigger picture question for Marcel on sort of capital allocation and strategies. Remind us how you and the Board are thinking about value creation for shareholders. What metrics are you focused on? And sort of what are the risk-adjusted returns that you're targeting when looking at investment opportunities? That's all for me.

Thanks, Mike. Atish has obviously spoken about this in his remarks, too, and we continue to look at capital allocation as needing to be balanced between the various levers that we can pull to drive value for shareholders. Obviously, last year, we talked quite a bit about not seeing a lot of acquisition opportunities and being very focused on value that we saw in potential share buybacks, which we obviously were very active in last year. And also, as Atish pointed out, we still believe that there is good value in the stock where we are today. But we are balancing that with the needs that we have with cash outlays for CapEx and clearly, Scottsdale was a big part of that for this year, and also wanting to maintain a good amount of dry powder going forward for potential acquisitions. So clearly, as we kind of work through these main expenditures we have this year, we also are keeping a very close eye on what's out there in the acquisition markets. Clearly, I haven't seen us be active on that side yet here in recent times. But we do feel like the pipeline is building a little bit better now, where there may be some opportunities for us here going forward. Clearly, interest rates are higher than where they were previously as everyone knows so that's probably moved up the requirement a little bit on what kind of returns we're looking for. But we're certainly looking kind of for that unlevered double-digit type returns. And obviously, to the extent that there's more risk and there's more renovation risk or any other risk related to that, you're going to look for some better returns to get to those risk-adjusted returns in that range.

Our next question comes from Aryeh Klein of BMO Capital Markets.

Maybe just on the Hyatt Scottsdale, curious what you're seeing from a group booking standpoint as you look beyond this year. What kind of uplift are you seeing on the rate side? And maybe if you can talk to pace at that asset, even acknowledging that it's still pretty early.

Thanks, Aryeh, for the question, and it's a good question. It's 1 that the data moves so much when you're looking at really kind of small numbers, if you will, and different booking patterns as we look into '25. We, by -- in another quarter or 2, obviously, we'll have a much, much better sense of how that's really shaping up for '25. Rate is up significantly. Booking pace in terms of room nights is where we expected it to be, recognizing that a lot of groups, particularly higher end groups, they're waiting until closer to the finish line and looking to see the product before they really start putting business on the books for the very latter part of '24 and we'll have a lot of product available for them and then into '25 as well.

Got it. And then, Atish, I think you mentioned expectations for inbound international travel recovery maybe helping leisure a bit in the summer. I'm curious how the views may have changed or if they've changed at all, given the U.S. dollar trend.

Yes, that's a good question, Aryeh. I think look, there are certain markets which are still very significantly off where they were in, you know pre COVID in terms of international inbound. If we think about some of the markets in Asia, some of the European and Latin American markets that might come into a market like Orlando. So I think even despite kind of the move on the currency side, there's still sentiment that there's a lot more potential for inbound business. And certainly, if you look at the lift going into markets like San Francisco, that has increased quite a bit, as well as international lift coming into a market like Orlando. International is not a huge driver of our portfolio. But certainly in those 2 markets, we do see some international business that comes into the market. So that's just another point around confidence in leisure business this summer.

And if I could just go back to the Hyatt Scottsdale. Can you just talk a little bit about the cadence of the -- I think you took up the EBITDA impact for the year. Just the cadence of that, how things may be shifted around impact first half of the year versus second half of the year and whatnot.

Yes, sure. I mean, the $16 million by quarter, maybe we'll just give you that, so $4 million in the first quarter, $7 million in the second, $4 million in the third and $1 million in the last quarter of the year. So that's how you get to the $16 million. And as we had mentioned, the increase from $14 million to $16 million really is more oriented around the second quarter. Year-over-year, slightly different. Obviously, we had $12 million of disruption last year. How that shaped out by quarter was, no disruption in the first quarter, $1 million of disruption in the second quarter, $5 million in the third quarter, and $6 million in the fourth quarter. So the year-over-year change, obviously $4 million more disruption this year than last year at Gainey Ranch. But you can just subtract those 2 and you get to how that $4 million comes in. Obviously, $10 million more disruption in the first half and $6 million of the tailwind in the second half, really more in the fourth quarter than in the third. So hopefully, that helps.

Our next question comes from Dori Kesten of Wells Fargo.

On the W Nashville, has your outlook for the remainder of the year shifted at all within the updated guidance? And then I'm just wondering if you've finalized plans for the new F&B space there.

Yes. No, our outlook and how we performed there in first quarter and what we're seeing through the rest of the year is right in line with our expectations coming into the year. But again, we feel very good about the market and particularly good about the property and the ability they've had to grow the segments where they needed to. And we've also that we enjoyed in the first quarter. I think some better focus on the middle of the P&L, where we're driving a little more EBITDA and more EBITDA margin than we might have expected coming into the year. In terms of food and beverage, we've not outlined a plan for a long-term replacement for The Dutch, which is the 3-meal restaurant, which left in the very beginning of this year. We're still looking at a number of different concepts, but the property has performed acceptably, certainly, and to our expectation with the unbranded restaurant, which has been very successful for breakfast and lunch and is working on strategies while we figure out a long-term strategy for lunch and dinner.

Okay. And then just back on Gainey Ranch. At what point do you bring in the majority of meeting planners to show them the renovated space? I'm just -- I'm trying to determine like in what time frame you'd see a real solidification of your '25 rooms on the books.

Yes. I mean, obviously, we're actively in the market. The sales teams are doing site tours every day. There's just not a lot for the guests to see, particularly in terms of the expansion of the meeting space, although we're now at a point where you can actually see the structure. So that's actually a huge plus as opposed to cleared land next to the existing ballroom facility. So we've actually seen a pretty good uptick in terms of number of site visits and things like that at the encouragement of the hotel. So I guess the simple answer is, there is no particular point in time. And we had a lot of experiences when we did the ballroom expansion at Grand Cypress. There's no particular mark in time when there's a huge flood of business. It's a continual effort and focus on getting people excited about the product. There are some people that simply won't book the product until it's done, but that's not where the focus is. And that would be business to be out in the latter half of '25 and then '26 and '27 in a property like this.

And on the positive side, as we talk about -- let me talk about the various components that we're doing there. There's obviously continuous progress that we're making. I mean, when someone goes to the property now, they can see the newer rooms because we have a good number of our rooms that are completed. They can see the pool complex, which, like I said, is spectacular at this point. And they can see the true progress, like Barry just pointed out, on what's going on with the meeting space. And the biggest challenge here for the next 2 quarters, really the second quarter and the third quarter, is working our way through these public spaces and the lobby and all the F&B offerings. And that's obviously very impactful to the guest experience. So as we get done with this, which really remains on target to be done by the end of the third quarter, we're getting into the fourth quarter with an essentially fully renovated property with the exception of finishing up the meeting spaces and then some of the infrastructure and external facade work that will still be going on. So it's going to be points here kind of towards the end of the third quarter, where people will be able to come into the property and get a real good sense of what the final product is going to look like.

Our next question comes from Austin Wurschmidt of KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Wanted to hit a little bit on some of the markets that have been slower to recover. And I'm just curious if these regions and markets like Bay Area and Portland, to name a couple, are seeing a more durable recovery at this point in demand, and how are booking pace group and/or transient continuing to ramp as you look out through the rest of the year?

Yes. Thanks, Austin. Appreciate the question. I think if you look at each of those markets and the growth we achieved in those in Q1, so Santa Clara and Portland, in particular, 2 -- I think you referenced and -- 2 of our, I think, really good success stories for the quarter, not only show obviously the gap that we've now talked about in getting back to stabilized levels but that we're achieving those significantly. And we're seeing continued growth. Certainly, in terms of Santa Clara, the tech business has been -- is the biggest piece that obviously has come back. There are some particular demand generators and specific companies in our backyard there that have really increased their amount of travel by individual travelers, their amount of group travel. We've never really talked about booking pace kind of by property or by market. But suffice it to say that we continue to indicate that those markets not only have an opportunity for recovery, but they're doing substantial [indiscernible] driving substantial improvement toward that recovery.

So what do you think you need to see to really capture the occupancy point differential that you highlighted in your prepared remarks? What's sort of that next leg up to keep the momentum going?

I think, I mean, we certainly think the momentum is going and we're seeing, obviously, quarter-by-quarter, we're seeing across the portfolio that corporate transient demand, both in the smaller companies and medium-sized companies, which are generally more recovered, and from the larger companies that are less recovered, every quarter, we're seeing that business move up. In terms of the dynamic of Mondays and Thursday nights having a bigger gap than Tuesdays and Wednesdays to pre COVID, that's just -- we view that also just as a matter of time. And then ultimately, in part, travel patterns will change when people realize they may not be able to get rooms on Tuesday and Wednesday nights if you're coming to do a business trip in any market, whether it's a strong market or a weak market, most of our markets are doing unbelievably well on Tuesdays and Wednesday nights. And there's opportunity for us to drive rate as that business compresses, and that there's opportunity and will ultimately, in part, shift business back out to Mondays and Thursdays.

What's particularly been encouraging as far as kind of going on that path like you're describing, as far as kind of narrowing the gap in occupancy, is how much of our RevPAR growth in the first quarter was occupancy-driven, obviously, versus rate, really [indiscernible] essentially. And we're seeing that continue with our April results. So most of our growth that we saw in the April record number that we quoted was really driven by occupancy as well.

Yes, that's really helpful. And then just last 1 for me maybe for Atish. Can you provide some additional detail around your comment about sort of fine-tuning the construction timing and what's really accounting for the additional disruption now embedded in, it sounds like second quarter, in particular, from the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale? I mean, was it pulling forward some room renovation or just performance in the market that's impacting that, that's creating some additional disruption? Any detail would be helpful.

Yes sure, Austin, this is Marcel. I'll actually answer that for you. So we are obviously very, very focused on making sure this project gets done on the time line that we've outlined and that we want to make sure we hit. So in order to feel as good as possible about getting all these components done by the time frames that we've talked about, we decided to pull forward into the second quarter, a little bit earlier in the second quarter, some of the renovations that we're doing on the public spaces particularly, so lobby, F&B spaces. And that is pretty impactful to the guest experience and will impact a little bit more on the leisure side, particularly than what we initially had projected. So that's really the main driver between it. It's really making sure that we hit these time lines, that we get these projects done specifically on the times we talked about and having some more comfort around pulling that forward a little bit to start for those particular components.

Our next question comes from Tyler Batory from Oppenheimer.

This is Jonathan on for Tyler. Congrats on the quarter. Most of my questions have been answered but maybe 1 for Barry. You noted the discrepancy between large corporate and small and mid accounts. I'm curious how you think about that gap closing and large corporates returning to maybe pre-COVID levels.

Yes. I mean, as I said, in part response to Austin's question, we're certainly seeing that recover, and the larger accounts are improving quarter-over-quarter, which obviously we think is a positive. I think it's a little hard to look -- to think about when they come closer to closing the gap to back to pre-COVID levels. But again, I think some of that has to do with just business expanding and that people are becoming seemingly more willing to travel on the Monday and Thursday nights or at least the Monday nights in addition to Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So that's certainly part of what's going to close the gap. And I think just as more people get back to more normalized patterns and are making more traditional business travel, we think that's coming in. And we don't interface directly with the big 4 accounting firms or the big 3 consulting firms or the Fortune 100 companies, which really makes up kind of that pool as we analyze it. But all of our operators tell us that people want to be on the road more, they want to be out, they want to earn their points. They want to meet with customers. They want to meet with their own internal teams. So again, it's -- think it's a time and a matter of time issue, not a whether demand ultimately comes back or not.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Bill Crow of Raymond James.

Barry, 1 for you. I think you all cited weakness in leisure demand in a couple of markets, which sounds isolated. But then the peers have also identified 1 or 2 markets each where they're seeing some weakness in leisure demand. And I'm just leaning into your experience. What do you think the odds are that a quarter or 2 from now, we're talking about more challenges in the leisure space than less challenges, I guess, is a way to think about it?

I guess, I mean, when I think about it as it relates to our portfolio and the markets that we're in that drive leisure business in the larger hotels, I think we really think about it 2 ways: one, larger hotels and then our smaller market, leisure-driven hotels. But when we think certainly near term and midterm about Orlando, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Aviara, that we think those properties all have really good attributes to them that will continue to drive performance and are not seeing anything that resembles softness in leisure in those higher-end resort properties. And we feel good about that. Again, they're not positioned at the super ultra-luxury level. They're positioned at a level that guests really like and want to visit those resorts and that there's sufficient demand in those markets that will keep driving those. I think that we're certainly seeing normalization of demand in our leisure markets like Key West and Savannah and Northern California, I mean, Napa in our case. But nothing that is truly problematic in terms of the leisure downturn. Napa, for example, had a very -- another very, very tough quarter in terms of weather, which was no doubt part of the challenge there. But I think as we look across the portfolio, our assets are really desirable within their markets. We've not seen leisure -- we've seen leisure -- I mean, we use the word normalized really for a reason that it's a normalization. The part that we're also particularly enthusiastic about is, is it, in general, we've been able to hold to the rate levels that we started to achieve during COVID. Have they softened a little bit in some markets? Yes, sure, they have. But the guest has really been retrained and reaccustomed to paying a much, much higher rate for their leisure stays.

Okay. All right. I appreciate it. We're just -- we're trying to dissect as much information on the consumer as we can. A lot of uncertainty out there, so I appreciate your commentary.

At this time, we currently have no further questions, so I hand back to Marcel Verbaas for any further remarks.

Thanks, Alex, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We're certainly pleased with the continued momentum that we're seeing within our portfolio and in our markets. And we look forward to seeing many of you at NAREIT or any other conferences coming up or meeting opportunities. So thanks again for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you next.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.