Jon Stanner
Analyst · KeyBank Capital Market. Your line is open
Thanks, Adam, and thank you all for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full-year 2022 earnings conference call. 2022 was a year of meaningful growth for Summit as we augmented rapidly accelerating operating fundamentals with the acquisition of more than $900 million of high-quality hotels, reinstated our quarterly dividend and made our initial strategic investment in the high growth Glamping segment. Today, Trey and I will discuss our results from last year, our outlook for this year and how our recent transaction activity position Summit to continue to be a leader in the lodging recovery. Overall, we were extremely pleased with the improving operating trends throughout our portfolio, which exceeded our expectations for the year. Pro forma RevPAR increased 38% year-over-year, driven by a 10% increase in and a 26% increase in average rate. In our portfolio of 92 hotels with comparable 2019 data, RevPAR recaptured 90% of 2019 levels and 85% of 2019 EBITDA levels led by average rates, which exceeded 2019 by 2%. Importantly, these RevPAR recapture rates improved sequentially each quarter from 80% in the first quarter to a post pandemic high of 97% in the fourth quarter. Leisure demand led the recovery, as weekend RevPAR for the full-year surpassed 2019 levels by 3%, driven by average rates, which finished the year 12% higher than 2019. Midweek and corporate demand began to improve meaningfully in the second half of 2022, most notably post Labor Day weekend. The acceleration of business transient midweek and urban demand helped drive October RevPAR to $130, our highest nominal RevPAR since the pandemic started. While the natural seasonality of our business resulted in lower nominal RevPARs in the last two-months of the quarter, our December RevPAR recapture for our 92 comparable hotels was 97%, another post pandemic era high. Fourth quarter pro form a RevPAR increased 18% year-over-year, driven by a 3% increase in occupancy and a 14% increase in average rate. Despite the normal seasonal decline in demand experienced in the fourth quarter, average rates were essentially flat quarter-over-quarter, and 6% above 2019 levels, demonstrating our ability to maintain strong pricing power even in softer demand periods. While leisure demand remained robust during the fourth quarter, as weekend ADR surpassed 2019 levels by 16%, week day RevPAR improved sequentially throughout the year and finished the fourth quarter at an 88% recapture to 2019 levels, with ADR surpassing the comparable period of 2019 midweek. Our asset revenue management teams continue to drive impressive operating results, as RevPAR index for our pro forma portfolio finished both the fourth quarter and full-year at 112%, primarily driven by strong occupancy premiums and further demonstrating our ability to capture market share, while maintaining pricing power throughout the portfolio. Trey will provide more details on the cost side of our business shortly, but we have been successful growing margins despite well documented wage and cost pressures, as we add back critical staff, services and amenities to address the rapid acceleration of demand across the portfolio. The improving operating trends we experienced throughout 2022 have continued into the first quarter of this year. Our preliminary January RevPAR increased approximately 28% from the prior year despite being negatively affected by cold fronts across the country and severe rainstorms and flooding in California in the first half of the month. Similar to last year, Presidents Day weekend served as a catalyst for a meaningful acceleration of demand with RevPAR results exceeding 2019 and 2022, by 15% and 11% respectively for the holiday weekend. February and March are pacing up 26% and 21% respectively month-over-month, putting us on-track to finish the first quarter with RevPAR growth between 17% and 19% year-over-year. We continue to be confident in the favorable demand back drop for our portfolio, particularly with our concentration of newer hotels and key high growth Sunbelt markets. As I mentioned, 2022 was another extremely successful year for Summit on the transaction front. In the first quarter, we acquired a high-quality portfolio of 27 hotels and various other assets from NewcrestImage for a total consideration of $822 million, through our joint venture with GIC. Our basis in the hotel portfolio is just over $200,000 dollars per key, which represents a meaningful discount to estimated replacement cost, and compares quite favorably to recent rates of comparable quality hotels. The portfolio has performed ahead of our initial expectations despite a labor intensive transition period during which we implemented numerous operational initiatives such as complexing multiple hotel operations and creating sales clusters to optimize revenue. When excluding the Canopy New Orleans, which opened subsequent to the initial closing of the transaction, the portfolio was more than 3% ahead of our underwritten hotel EBITDA and resulted in a hotel EBITDA yield of just under 7% in 2022. We have emphasized repeatedly that much of the hard work needed to position these assets for future success was completed in 2022, and we believe we are just now starting to see the real benefits from those efforts. For example, in the fourth quarter, RevPAR recapture in the NCI portfolio increased to 97%, an eight percentage point increase over the third quarter culminating with 102% recapture rate in December. The 800 basis point improvement and recapture rate in the fourth quarter compares to approximately 150 basis point improvement in our same store portfolio. Our outlook for the portfolio remains extremely positive, and we expect it to generate outsized RevPAR and EBITDA growing in 2023 compared to the same store portfolio, as our operational initiatives drive better performance and the newer hotels continue to ramp. As you will recall, many of these hotels are newly constructed and have never participated in a traditional RFP season, creating ample opportunity to grow midweek negotiated business in 2023. In June, we closed on our equity purchase option to acquire a 90% interest in the 264 guest room AC element dual branded hotel in downtown Miami’s Brickle neighborhood, at evaluation of $89 million or $337,000 per key. The hotel features the acclaimed Rosa Sky Rooftop bar, which has been a resounding success generating on average nearly $500,000 of revenue per month since its opening in March of last year. The hotels have ramped quickly since their December 2021 opening, generating a full-year 2022 hotel EBITDA approximately 50% higher than our initial underwriting and generating a 7.5% hotel EBITDA yield. The long-term outlook for this market remains incredibly positive, and our attractive basis in the asset demonstrates the value creation potential of our unique mezzanine lending program. In October, we announced the acquisition of a 90% ownership stake in our first High-End Glamping Asset, a distinctive 11 unit property in Fredericksburg, Texas. In 2022, the property’s first full-year of operations on Fredericksburg generated RevPAR of approximately $440, hotel EBIT margin - EBITDA margins of more than 60%, and a net operating income yield of approximately 17% on our initial cost basis. Alongside this transaction, we announced a strategic partnership with Onera, which includes a right of first refusal on their next 10 projects, designed to be a growth pipeline for the company. Yesterday, we announced the initial development of our next two Onera branded projects, the expansion of our Onera Fredericksburg site, and a newly funded mezzanine loan for a separate Glamping project, both of which are expected to open in 2024. Combined with our initial acquisition of the Fredericksburg property, we expect to invest between $40 million and $45 million in these first three projects, which are forecasted to generate mid-teens unlevered stabilized yield yields. In addition, we have several other exciting projects under review that feature similar return profiles to our existing projects, and would allow us to continue to scale our investment in this rapidly growing segment of our industry. In our earnings released yesterday, we also announced several pending asset sales through three separate transactions, including the sale of four non-core hotels and Suburban Chicago and Suburban Minneapolis. The sale of two hotels located in Atlanta and Kansas City, and the sale of a vacant land parcel in San Antonio. The six hotels under contract for sale generated a combined RevPAR of $78 in 2022, a 30% discount to our overall portfolio, and EBITDA margins that were nearly 18 percentage points below our total portfolio. Proceeds from the sale of six hotels totalled$78.6 million, which equates to a 4% net operating income yield on 2022 results. Importantly, all six of these hotels are due for significant renovations, and the sales would allow us to forego near-term capital expenditures of between $35 million and $40 million. Including the foregone capital spend, the equivalent 2022 net operating income yield is approximately 2.7%. We expect the two transactions for the sale of the six hotels to close in the second quarter, and the land parcel sale to close in the fourth quarter. Our recent transaction activity highlights our ability to identify opportunistic and value accretive transactions. Since the onset of the pandemic, we have acquired 32 high quality hotels located in high growth markets, totaling nearly a billion dollars of assets with minimal capital needs. Again, excluding the Canopy, New Orleans, which was delayed in opening, our acquisition portfolio finished 10.5% ahead of our 2022 underwriting, generating an additional $6 million of EBITDA compared to our expectations. Roughly one third of these assets open in 2019 or after, and are still in the early stages of ramping towards stabilization, implying considerable growth and upside remain. In total, our acquisition portfolio generated a full-year 2022 net operating income yield of more than 6%. This compares favorably to our recent and pending dispositions, including the 2022 sale of the Hilton Garden in San Francisco, which collectively totaled nearly $155 million of gross proceeds equating to a 2022 net operating income yield of approximately 3% or sub 2% net of the estimated deferral of nearly $45 million of near-term capital expenditures. With that, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Trey Conkling.