Dan Hansen
Analyst · Neil Malkin with Capital One Securities. Your line is now open
Thanks, Adam. And thank you all for joining us today for our third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. The third quarter was again challenging for our industry as leisure travel continued to serve as the primary demand source. However, we were encouraged by the continued sequential demand improvements, which led to operating results that were considerably better than the second quarter. RevPar improved each month of the quarter across our portfolio. And importantly, this trend continued into October which provided us with some level of reassurance of the sustainability of demand in the weeks following Labor Day, a period of significant uncertainty heading into the quarter. Occupancy increased each month of the quarter peaking at 47% in September, which led to third quarter RevPar of $47, a 63.5% decline year-over-year. But that was a significant improvement from the second quarter RevPar of $23. Market share gains were substantial once again in the third quarter, as we finished with 151% RevPar index, an increase of approximately 39 percentage points compared to the third quarter of last year, and an 8 percentage point increase relative to last quarter. These gains reflect a tremendous work done by our in house asset and revenue management teams, along with the tireless efforts of our management company partners to capture the limited demand that currently exists in the market. We have clearly been successful capturing our fair share of very short-term leisure demand. But the results have been further aided by capitalizing on certain unique pieces of business and small groups that booked during the quarter, some of which were related to the damaging wildfires on the West Coast and the storms in the Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary October results reflect a modest continuation of the improvements we experienced throughout the third quarter, as October RevPar is expected to finish at $50 with the highest ADR of any month since the onset of the crisis, running nearly $10 higher than the rates achieved in the second quarter. Occupancy in October was over 47% across the total portfolio, more than 24 percentage points higher than the second quarter occupancy, and flat to September, despite the strong Labor Day weekend results. Excluding the five hotels that were either closed or consolidated into adjacent operations at various times during the quarter, occupancy was more than 50% in October. The trend of weekend occupancy and RevPar outperformance continued in the third quarter as leisure travel, particularly in drive-to and non-CBD markets continued to provide the vast majority of demand across the industry. Weekend occupancy was 56% during the third quarter as a relative outperformance compared to weekday results accelerated each month during the quarter. This led to weekend RevPar that was 40% higher than our weekday RevPar, primarily driven by occupancies that ran nearly 20 percentage points higher by the end of the quarter. Despite lagging weekends on a nominal basis, weekday rate demand in the quarter increased commensurately with weekends on a percentage increase basis, as occupancy and RevPar nearly doubled from the second quarter. Weekend occupancy at our hotels located in markets we consider as drive-to was nearly 64% in the third quarter. Our extended stay hotels which comprise nearly a quarter of our total guest rooms were also relative outperformers again during the third quarter, finishing with occupancy of more than 63% and exceeded 60% in each month of the quarter, while achieving a 51% RevPar premium to our overall portfolio. This trend continued as our preliminary October results indicate our extended stay hotels achieved 65% occupancy for the month. Our suburban and airport hotels which comprise more than a third of our portfolio guest rooms were also outperformance during the quarter, posting occupancies of 58% and 56%, respectively. Both increases have more than 20 percentage points from the second quarter results. These hotels achieved RevPar premiums of 27% and 29%, respectively, to the total portfolio in the quarter. Urban hotels have continued to lag the industry recovery, though occupancy increases for our portfolio during the quarter were in line with all other location types, finishing the quarter 20 percentage points higher than in the second quarter. RevPAR growth at our urban hotels led the portfolio on a percentage increase basis relative to the second quarter, posting a nominal RevPAR 2.5 times higher than our urban portfolios second quarter RevPAR. Our hotels continue to operate with extremely lean staffing models with labor resources being added back on an asset by asset basis, strictly based on improved hotel demand. We are currently averaging less than 14 FTEs per hotel, compared to approximately 30 FTEs per hotel prior to the pandemic. Despite this lean staffing model, our team continues to demonstrate a steadfast commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of our guests. Ever changing health and safety protocols and local ordinances provide unique challenges to our business. We are grateful to our brand and management partners for their constant awareness of and compliance with these dynamic policies. Optimizing the guest experience has always been a central tenet of our business model, and that has never been more important than it is today. Finally, to preserve liquidity, we have continued to delay most non-essential capital expenditures for the remainder of 2020, along with common dividend distributions, which combined preserved approximately $30 million in the third quarter, and will preserve $30 million of cash for the balance of the year. I'll let Jon speak to the specifics of our balance sheet, but with approximately $255 million of current liquidity and a manageable monthly cash burn rate that has been further reduced as our portfolio operating metrics have improved, we are well-positioned to navigate the recovery. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jon Stanner.