Steve Moster
Analyst · Northcoast Research. Kartik, your line is now open
Thanks everyone for joining us on today’s call. Our third quarter income per share before other items was $1.72 per share, which was up 29.3% from the 2017 quarter, but below our prior guidance range due to the impact of forest fires that caused growth within our Pursuit business to be lower than previously anticipated. Throughout much of August, conditions in Banff and Jasper National Parks were challenged with smoked drifts from the forest fires in Western Canada. They caused core visibility and air quality. Glacier National Park was thoroughly affected where the Howe Ridge fire forced the temporary evacuation of parts of the park, including our 27-room motel like McDonald and the closure of portions of the Going to the Sun Road. I am proud of how well our Pursuit team responded to these challenging conditions. Their ability to delivering year-on-year organic growth of 7.3% is a testament to the strength of our team, our revenue management initiatives, and our Refresh, Build, Buy strategy. During the quarter, we saw continued improvement in many of our key performance indicators for Pursuit, including same-store revenue per passenger and RevPAR. One exception was attraction of passenger volumes, which declined 2.1% year-over-year due to poor visibility and air quality that hampered volumes at our Vamp and Jasper based attractions. However, our overall attraction revenue increased 6.3% on an organic basis as we were able to capture higher revenue per passengers from a combination of food and beverage sales, retail sales and higher effective ticket prices. On a same-store basis, our attractions revenue per passenger was up 7.1% versus 2017 quarter. In our hospitality assets, same-store RevPAR increased 2.5% despite lower occupancy levels caused by the fires. Through combination of higher RevPAR, the reopening of our upgraded Mount Royal Hotel and higher ancillary revenue from food and beverage and retail sales across our hospitality properties, Pursuit drove an overall increase in hospital revenue of 10% on an organic basis. I am happy to report that initial guest feedback on the upgraded Mount Royal Hotel experience has been extremely positive and we have realized significantly higher RevPAR which were up 34% as compared to pre-renovation RevPAR in the third quarter of 2016. As evidenced by our performance this quarter, our Refresh, Build, Buy strategy continued to pay dividend and our revenue management initiatives are enabling us to adjust pricing based on current market conditions to maximize revenue. We have several additional build and refresh projects that are either currently underway or in the final stages of planning that will help fuel Pursuit’s growth, continued growth in 2019 and beyond. On the Build side, we have the new FlyOver Iceland attraction in Reykjavik. The West Glacier RV Park & Cabin Village at Glacier National Park and a 36-room expansion of our Seward Windsong Lodge near Kenai Fjords National Park. I have discussed each of these growth projects in detail in the past and I am pleased to report that they are all tracking to be complete in time for the 2019 peak tourism season. On the Refresh side, we will be investing to enhance the guest experience at several locations during this off-peak season. Our 32-room Glacier View Inn at Glacier – at Jasper National Park will be renovated to provide an elevated lodging experience that matches its incredible views of the majestic Columbia Icefield. We will also be renovating the food and beverage and retail offering at Maligne Lake and Maligne Canyon in Jasper National Park to maximize the revenue and profit potential of these operations which are located in picturesque and remote areas with high levels of tourism and little to no direct competitors. In total, we will be allocating about $35 million against these Build and Refresh projects, including nearly $24 million that is expected to be spent by the end of 2018 and we expect the combined EBITDA contributions from these projects to be in the range of $5 million in 2019. We are fortunate to have many organic growth opportunities across Pursuit that we can execute against while we continue to pursue buy opportunities in our acquisition pipeline. Overall, I am very excited about the progress we are making towards our strategic goals for Pursuit with ample reviewing growth opportunities for 2019 and an active acquisition pipeline we remain committed to scaling the Pursuit business through disciplined investment that creates strong shareholder value. Switching gears to GES, we have realized healthy same show revenue growth during the third quarter as well as strong performance from our non-annual events and continued corporate event wins. These are all positive indicators of the strength of our service offerings and the overall industry growth. Across our third quarter in the U.S. based same shows which are shows that we produce every year out of same city, we have realized an overall revenue growth rate of 5.3%. As expected, we did experience decline in certain retail focused events and we are also seeing softer participation in many other shows, while we continue to see the majority of shows grow year-on-year. Additionally, the Biannual International Manufacturing Technology Show, which is the largest manufacturing show in America reported new records for attendance, exhibit space and number of exhibiting companies. Another major non-annual event that we produced during the quarter, the Farnborough International Airshow in England, reported that its trade attendance increased by nearly 10%. Although we have given revenue visibility at GES, because most of our events are contracted well in advance, there is a portion of our revenue that gets booked and delivered on fairly short notice. Unfortunately, our sales of these shorter lead time events and projects came in below our expectations during the third quarter causing us to miss our revenue guidance for GES. Additionally, while our longer term sales pipeline remains strong, we are not seeing as much growth opportunity from short-term bookings in the fourth quarter as we have previously anticipated. We are disappointed to fell short on our revenue and growth goals for 2018, but we remain optimistic about GES’ strategic direction and future opportunities. We continue to gain important traction in corporate events and audiovisual production services, which remained areas of strategic focus for us with our large market sizes and attractive margins. With AV services representing about 50% of the total client spend on a corporate event we are well positioned to continue growing both of these revenues streams in tandem. Leading with our audiovisual services, we are able to win additional corporate event business from a Fortune 500 manufacturer of agricultural equipment. After successfully delivering select AV services on various events for this client in the past, we were invited to bid for and won one of the larger biannual events that will take place later this year. For this event, we will be providing design services, a theme and messaging for the general session and a staging technical support. This is a great example of leveraging our AV services to win new corporate event business. We are off to leveraging existing corporate event exhibition and conference relationships to pull-through or cross-sell our AV services. For example, we successfully expanded our scope of work for two large third quarter corporate event clients to include audiovisual production services for their general sessions. In another instance, we are able to add audiovisual services to our scope of work for the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation’s annual assembly, which is a recent multiyear renewal. Additionally, adding AV services to our suite of offerings has helped us to continue to move up the value chain in terms of experience of solutions we can bring to our clients. During the third quarter, our AV team engaged with an existing corporate event client looking to enhance the overall attendee experience at the event general session. As of solution, we designed a unique LED wall with curved tiles and projection mapping to create an immersive experience that submerse the attendees in this unique visual environment. I am proud of the team for their continued efforts to accelerate the taste of our growth in these two important areas. Last quarter, I mentioned that we recently secured in-house appointments for audiovisual production services at two large event venues, the San Diego Convention Center and The Brewery in Central London. I am pleased to report that we now are fully established in this venue and delivering successfully. As we seek to grow our AV services in areas where we can leverage the full spectrum of our service offerings, like corporate events and conferences, we have also taken a look at areas where our acquired AV services are not well-aligned with the rest of our offering. To that end, we are redirecting efforts in select resources previously focused on the concert entertainment end market, where we have little to no pull-through of our other services or customer overlap to support growth in segments that are better aligned with our core capabilities. Overall, I am pleased with the progress we are making towards our strategic goals and bolstering the GES’ competitive position in the marketplace. With an enhanced set of offerings, our team is making good progress expanding existing relationships and identifying new opportunities. The addition of audiovisual and event technology services is strengthening our competitive position helping to differentiate GES in the marketplace and providing new avenues of growth. And now, I will turn it over to Ellen to provide more colors on the financials. Ellen?