Dan Hansen
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets
Thanks, Adam, and thank you all for joining us today for our third quarter 2018 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we reported bottom-line results in line with our expectations coming into the quarter, despite a difficult year-over-year comparison to the third quarter of last year when natural disaster related occupancy boosted our results, which was compounded by some disruption caused by Hurricane Florence. For the third quarter, we reported adjusted FFO of $36.1 million or $0.35 per share, which came in above the midpoint of our guidance range of $0.33 to $0.36 per share. On a pro forma basis RevPAR was unchanged compared to the third quarter of 2017, which consisted of a 1.7% increase in average daily rate, offset by a 1.6% decline in occupancy largely driven by our hotels and markets affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as well as the wildfires in South California. In addition to the markets affected by last year's natural disasters, there were a few markets such as Ashville and Charlotte that experienced disruption from Hurricanes Florence and Michael in September of this year. Several of our markets performed quite well during the quarter, which gives us continued optimism that well-located hotels with great brands and efficient operating models have opportunities for growth. Minneapolis was again one of our better performing markets with our two downtown hotels leading the way with the combined 9.2% increase in RevPAR during the quarter, bringing year-to-date RevPAR growth to an impressive 18.4% at the two hotels. Bottom-line performance has been encouraging at our downtown hotels as well with hotel EBITDA growth of 19% and margin expansion of 230 basis points during the third quarter. Although, we will up against the difficult Super Bowl comparison in the first quarter of next year. We are encouraged by the strengthening market fundamentals in Minneapolis. Our three San Francisco hotels generated strong RevPAR growth of 5.9% during the quarter led by our recently renovated Holiday Inn Express & Suites which posted 8.3% RevPAR growth. A 9.3% increase in average daily rate across our three San Francisco hotels this quarter, outpaced the overall market growth rate of 8.3% and translated to hotel EBITDA growth of 10.9% and margin expansion of 215 basis points. In Austin, our Hampton Inn & Suites increased RevPAR 8.9% in the quarter significantly outperforming both the Austin market increase of 0.6% and the competitive sets decline of 4% which resulted in a 13.5% gain in share. The hotel's solid top-line performance in the quarter translated to a hotel EBITDA growth of 16.1% with hotel EBITDA margin expansion of nearly 250 basis points as compared to the same period in 2017. Our courtyard in downtown Pittsburgh, which was acquired in mid-2017 had an impressive quarter posting RevPAR growth of 13.4% and the ADR driven RevPAR growth boosted hotel EBITDA margin to nearly 42% an expansion of 400 basis points. In addition, our recently developed and now opened Hyatt House Orlando at Universal Studios is still ramping up and I'm happy to report that our new hotel has been resounding success already achieving its fair share of market share in its first month being month, which makes it the fastest select service hotel to reach 100% RevPAR index in Hyatt's history. We continue to make progress on our capital recycling and allocation strategy during the quarter as we announced the acquisition of the 150 Guest Room Residence in Boston Watertown. The purchase price of $71 million represents an 8.1% cap rate on the estimated over 12-month net operating income. The hotel will require very limited near-term capital expenditures and will have the highest absolute RevPAR and EBITDA margins of any hotel in our portfolio. The hotel is in the rapidly expanding submarket of Watertown adjacent to Cambridge and across the street from the transformational mixed use personally archery [ph] redevelopment. During the quarter, we completed the previously announced sale of the 148 Guest Room Hyatt Place in Fort Myers, Florida. The sale price of $16.5 million resulted in at 7.5% cap rate on the trailing 12-month NOI, including estimated capital expenditures for brand mandated tip items. This brings our gross disposition proceeds in 2018 to $106.8 million at a blended cap rate of 7.7% including capital expenditures. Combined the weighted average 12-month RevPAR of the eight hotels sold in 2018 was approximately $90 or 26.3% lower than the pro forma portfolio average as of September 30th. The combined hotel EBITDA margin of 33.9% was 340 basis points lower than our pro forma portfolio average for the same period. Our blended whole period unlevered to IRR on the eight sold hotels was 14.1% and resulted in a net gain of $42.6 million further demonstrating our ability to execute on a strategy of buying, renovating and selling hotels at attractive returns. The execution of our capital recycling strategy during the year has allowed us to redeploy capital into hotels that we believe have greater growth potential and better overall risk adjusted returns in our recent dispositions. Our 16 hotels currently classified as acquisition hotels have a 43% absolute RevPAR premium compared to the hotels we have sold in 2018 and on average the hotel EBITDA margin of 570 basis points higher. Their success continues to validate our ability to identify and execute high quality acquisitions in markets and locations where today's guest wants to stay. During the quarter, we invested $18.9 million into our portfolio on items ranging from public space improvements and lobby bar enhancements to complete guest room renovations. The planned at ongoing renovation projects are strategically timed to position our hotels to benefit from demand in markets with near term upside such as San Francisco, Atlanta and Huston to name a few. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jon Stanner.