Earnings Labs

Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (RHP)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 6, 2012

$103.43

+1.53%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Carter Todd, Executive Vice President and General Counsel. This call will be available for future replay. The number is (800) 585 8367 and the conference ID number is 39255748. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Carter Todd. Sir, you may begin.

Carter Todd

Analyst

Thank you and good morning. My name is Carter Todd, and I'm the General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Ryman Hospitality Properties. Thank you for joining us today on our third quarter 2012 earnings call. You should be aware that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding Ryman Hospitality Properties' expected future financial performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, words such as believes, anticipates, plans, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in our third quarter 2012 earnings release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed or projected in the forward-looking statements. Ryman Properties undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I would also like to remind you that in our call today, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, and a reconciliation of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures has been provided as an exhibit to our earnings release and is also available on our website under the Investor Relations section. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Colin Reed.

Colin Reed

Analyst

Thank you, Carter. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I will start by talking about the third quarter and then provide a detailed update on our REIT conversion process and the transition with Marriott, then Mark will provide additional detail on our financial performance, and then we will take some questions. Over the past 8 years or so, our company has been confronted by a number of extremely challenging periods, be they the worst global recession since the Great Depression, shareholder activism, and not to mention, a thousand-year flood. As a company, we have come together to meet these challenges head on and, ultimately, emerged as a stronger enterprise. It's almost 1 year to the day that we sat with our Board and talked about ways in which we can unlock value, and I now understand why very few companies make the leap from a sequel to a real estate investment trust. Today, Ryman is very different to the Gaylord of 12 months ago. And as a consequence, the company is so much stronger than at any time in its past. As you all know, after much deliberation, we announced our chosen path at the end of May of this year, and the real heavy lifting has occurred during the 5 months since then. As a consequence, the announcement of the selling of Gaylord Hotels brands in Marriott that occurred on the eve of our third quarter essentially put our company into quite a bit of emotional stress. The circumstances that we dealt with this quarter leading up to 1st of October, when we transitioned our properties to Marriott and converted to Ryman, was difficult on a number of fronts, simply because many of our employees at both the corporate and hotel levels were faced with…

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

Thank you, Colin. Good morning, everyone. On a consolidated basis, revenue for the third quarter grew 1.3% to $228.1 million. During the quarter, income from continuing operations was a loss of $26.7 million or $0.57 per fully diluted share based on 46.5 million weighted average shares outstanding. This loss includes $51.4 million of expenses related to the company's planned conversion to a real estate investment trust. And as we outlined in our release, we have separated these costs in our financials for your benefit. Consolidated cash flow was $22.6 million in the third quarter of 2012 compared to $48.8 million in the same period last year and included $30.3 million of cost associated with the conversion process. Turning to the Hospitality segment, RevPAR decreased to 0.9% while total RevPAR was flat compared to the same period last year. Gaylord Hotels' in-the-year, for-the-year cancellations in the quarter totaled 21,912 room nights compared to 19,927 room nights in the third quarter of 2011. Attrition rates increased 0.8% year-over-year to 10.2% in the third quarter. During the quarter, we continued to benefit from attrition and cancellation fee collections, and collections totaled $1.7 million compared to $1.4 million for the same period last year. Gaylord Hotels' consolidated cash flow increased 4.1% in the quarter to $57.8 million, leading to a year-over-year improvement in CCF margin of 100 basis points. The Opry and Attractions segment continued to perform well in the quarter, with revenues increasing 11.4% to $20.2 million, driven by increased attendance at the Grand Ole Opry. CCF increased 25% to $6 million in the third quarter compared to $4.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Moving to Corporate and Other. CCF, excluding REIT conversion costs, improved to a loss of $10.7 million compared to a loss of $11.4 million in the prior-year quarter. As…

Colin Reed

Analyst

Hi, Mark, thank you. I just want to make one comment, Mark. In the middle when you were talking about the overall transaction costs, there was a sentence you used, and I just want to make sure everyone understands precisely what you were saying. When you said the overall net cash impacts of the transaction to be approximately $50 million higher than originally anticipated, I want to make sure everybody understands that the original projection, $210 million coming in all of the different costs, including the dividend, would leave us with about $25 million to $30 million of cash -- $20 million of cash. That number is now $70 million. So when we talk about the overall cash impacts of the transaction to be $50 million higher, that's good, not bad, not $50 million more of costs, so forgive me on that. So operator, we will open up the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

Thanks for clarifying that, because my heart just skipped a beat.

Colin Reed

Analyst

Yes, well, when you say that I -- mine did too, so...

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

Jeff, it made sense to me.

Colin Reed

Analyst

I mean, that's really good news because, obviously, we'll have $50 million more to continue to delever. I'll figure out what we do in terms of returning stock to -- returning cash to our shareholders, but anyway...

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

It's always good to find money in the seat cushions. Actually, I guess, I'm just curious -- I have a lot of questions, but I'll just ask a few, maybe start off with you, Mark. Just because there's a lot of confusion out there, I think, among investors, where they're trying to like walk through the transition. Maybe it's a little bit of housekeeping, but are you able to give us maybe a rough sense of where you just see cash balances and debt balances at year end?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

Yes, we should end up with total debt at year end around $930 million or so, I think is about where we'll end up. [indiscernible] last quarter.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

Okay. And that's your gross debt? Is that -- that includes the converting or?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

Yes.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

And do you have a sense for cash penalty as well or?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

Well, at that level, we would have a minimal cash balance.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

Okay. And maybe just related to that, are you able to give people a sense of what the share count is going to look like going forward on a diluted basis for Q4, or even just at the start of 2013? I know there's a lot of moving parts in the convert, but I guess I'm...

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

If you -- just to kind of walk you through our estimate right now, if you assume that we have positive net income in the converts or in the money, we would end up, on a fully diluted basis, with about 16.2 million shares on a GAAP basis. On an economic basis, it would be about 55.3 million shares. Now obviously, if we don't have positive income, then you don't count the convertible notes and the warrants.

Colin Reed

Analyst

Jeff, that means that we do 80-20.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

That's 80-20. That is -- that's the -- in respect for dividend, 80%. We've assumed a share price of $32.39 [ph] in that calculation. Obviously, that price will be set on December 10, 11 and 12. We're just [indiscernible].

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

And then, I guess, maybe a 2-part question for you, Colin, just in terms of returning capital to shareholders. You touched on it in your remarks. One, I guess, how are you thinking about share repurchases at this point, because obviously the price that's implied by [indiscernible] the REIT. And then secondarily, as you look forward to 2013, I know you haven't specified what your dividend is going to be, but are you going to narrow down some folks? What's probably the likelihood permissible ranges for FAD payouts? Is it 60% to 80% with a payout in the 70%, and what do you think you are leaning to at this point in that range?

Colin Reed

Analyst

Yes, Jeff, this was -- these 2 questions were questions that we heard basically in every investor meeting we did back in August when we were doing the TRT secondary [ph]. And the way we answered the question -- let me talk about stock buyback. The issue is, what is the most effective deployment of our capital? Go out and buying something of these high multiples, 14x, 16x, or hypothetically, if we're trading at 11x, buying our own stock. The answer is, we believe -- I suspect our Board will believe that the investment in our sales, because we happen to have a very good sense of the quality of these assets and what we believe they will do, will probably make more sense to us. But it's an issue of what's the alternative opportunity for the deployment of capital if we see an asset that is a screamer that we can get at, and we believe we'll create a substantial improvement in NAV at this company, then we would seriously look at it. But we are not just going to sit here and hold money. Paying down debt is not a bad thing, but the fact of the matter is we will have relatively low leverage when '13 arrives here. So we will look at potential stock buybacks based upon where this company is trading as a multiple of its cash flow. In terms of dividends, obviously, as we have talked to the REIT investment community, we have been conditioned on a couple of things. What the REIT community wants to see from a company like us is a consistent decent dividend policy, and that's what we intend to do. And we're not going to amplify on what decent means right now, but we're going to have a lot of flexibility with the free cash flow that this company generates. So we will have a decent dividend, and when we get through the planning phase with Marriott, which we're in the middle of right now, and we will be ready then to release guidance. One thing we will be doing is being very clear about what our dividend policy will be for '13 and forward.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

And just one last question, actually, on transition issues. Do you think there's going to be [indiscernible] potentially for transition issues into Marriott to persist into Q4 or Q1, whether it's the entire expenses or sort of slippage in revenue, I guess, especially what you're thinking about that.

Colin Reed

Analyst

I'm not sure I understand the question.

Jeffrey Donnelly

Analyst

Well, I'm just -- I guess I'm digging into results of just the transition to Marriott, like you mentioned that there is some systems that will need converting over at off in land [ph] in January. I guess I'm just trying to set expectations around the possibility that things would be -- you're not firing in all 8 cylinders over the next 100 days, I'm just -- I guess I'm trying to figure out the impact [indiscernible].

Colin Reed

Analyst

I don't anticipate us having the same issues in the fourth quarter that we had a little bit of in the third quarter. And the reason why things are different now is because in the third quarter, people just didn't know. Well, after we announced this transaction at the end of May, a month before the third quarter, we had a reasonably -- given a reasonably decent June, as we announced at the end of our second quarter, but that was because, basically, June was booked in solid, and the momentum was very good. But what happened was, when we announced this, was that basically every major department of our company, both at corporate and within our hotels, were looking around saying, "Oh my God, what does this mean for me? Do I still have a job? Am I going to just get just consumed into the Marriott machine?" And unfortunately, what occurred was there was some just major cultural shock that went through this organization, and we spent so much of our time communicating to our people. And then as we were building who stays, who goes with Marriott, and Marriott were actually able to go into the hotels and meet these people and determine who were the keepers, who were not the keepers, that plan of action was all rolled out during this third quarter. So at the end of -- by the end of the third quarter, every one of our sales folks knew who was staying, who was going. We had put in place a retention plan for those that we wanted to keep. We had put in place a special sales program to incent our sales people who were leaving to make sure that they delivered the room nights for the customers that they were…

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst

And on the systems side, I guess, the comment that I would make is, is that we have -- we now have converted the Palms, the Texan and EC sequentially, and so each one of those implementations, we learned from the previous ones and made improvements. And so as we roll into Opryland and work through that system conversion in January, it's the fourth one, we've learned a lot, so I think that the process is pretty well refined at this point. So I think there's a lot less risk on the technology side going forward, given that we've got some experience.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Didora with Bank of America.

Andrew Didora

Analyst · Bank of America.

When we reach our goal [indiscernible] seniority, from what you did hear from most of your lodging peers this earnings season, and [indiscernible] about a slowdown in corporate demand [indiscernible] that they expect it to continue through year-end. We also saw your attrition and cancellation fees tick up, albeit modestly, in 3Q. You mentioned the transition in type [ph] of bookings in the quarter, which I'm sure was a good part of it. But I guess, Colin, could you speak a little bit more fundamentally what kind of change, if any, have you seen that improved planning behavior over the last few months?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Bank of America.

Yes, happy to do that, Andrew. First of all, the issues that we had, I think, in the third quarter were really mainly around the short-term stuff. It's the corporate client that books the 50-room, 100-room small meeting. So we had a system working pretty well. In the first quarter, second quarter, hotels performing very, very well. Then we come to this massive change, caused a lot of squirreliness with our sales organization. And then we hand over to Marriott on the first of October. And by the end of October, our lead volume, our lead bucket is up double-digit from where it was this time last year. So we're getting a lot more exposure because Marriott has a much bigger bench of salespeople and much deeper sort of relationships with corporate clients all across the country. And we're happy and pleased with the uptick that we're seeing in our lead volume, which as I said, is almost 20% up from where it was a year ago. So it's very difficult for us to gauge whether the group side is still as vibrant as it was a year ago or still as vibrant as it was at the end of June just looking at this uplift that we have seen, because Marriott's machine is just so much bigger. But I would tell you, I don't think we are seeing, as a company, a decline in interest to hold meetings across our businesses. I just don't think we are seeing that. Now what we did witness in the third quarter, and you may want to jump in on this, Mark and Patrick, is we did see a tick down in the outside-of-the-room spend. And obviously, we did see a massive tick down in outside-of-the-room spend in '09 and '10 as the world was going into a recessionary shock. But it was not -- it was modest. And the thing for us is that each group is not created equal. One group still will spend x outside of the room, and another group will spend more outside of the room. And the last third quarter we had was one of the best third quarters this company has ever had. So I don't see any systemic change taking place here, and I feel very good, though, about the way our hotels are positioned for '13.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Bank of America.

And I think the outside-of-the-room spending, the change that we saw in the third quarter was driven more by mix. And then naturally, behavioral change.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Bank of America.

Right.

Andrew Didora

Analyst · Bank of America.

That's helpful. I guess, kind of to follow-up -- one follow-up question. Just in terms of your October bookings, what is the main driver of the strength that you saw? Was it corporate, association business? Can you give us a sense of what kind of customer kind of lead in [indiscernible]?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Bank of America.

I didn't -- we didn't disclose October bookings. What we disclosed was October lead production. That's what we talked about. And I think it was all of the above. It was both in the corporate section and I think in the association sector.

Andrew Didora

Analyst · Bank of America.

Great, and one last question for me, kind of just switching gears a little bit to the conversion and the transition process here. What do you think are the biggest topline -- where these topline synergy opportunities will come from now that Marriott's kind of been running the assets for a bit over a month now? Have you identified anything that might be different than what you were thinking about pre-Marriott management?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Bank of America.

No, it's -- the answer is no. And I don't want to sound cavalier about this, but in all of our internal hypotheses, and I think what we consistently said to our shareholders was our assumption for the reason of doing this was not revenue synergies. We assumed in all of our hypotheses that we will get a goose egg on revenue synergies. Now what we followed that up with was we don't believe that. But that was the hypothesis. Now I really believe that in a market like Orlando, where we basically get 0 business that comes in from the international arena, the Marriott frequent flyer program should really add, in our minds, incremental room nights from the international region because we have very little exposure to that right now. So I think we're going to see uplift in the rewards pipeline delivery, as well as the massive, both corporate and association, sales tentacles that the Marriott organization has. So we're looking, over the course of the next 2 to 3 years, the growth in room nights from each of those 2 major drivers. And let me just say one last thing. We don't have a plan delivered by these guys yet, and we're going to be in this planning process with them over the next few -- several weeks. And I'm sure it won't be, "Here it is. Thank you very much." I'm sure we'll be in very deep discussions about the delivery channels and why and how do we improve it. So we will be, as we talk guidance, be able to give you a lot more specificity around these delivery channels.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Crow with Raymond James & Associates.

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

A couple of questions. It seems appropriate today to ask you about what the prospects look like in D.C. for the inauguration, and are you in negotiations with both parties? How does that work?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Well, the answer to that question should be posed to Marriott. Forgive me for trying to answer to your question, because they're responsible for those types of endeavors now. But look, we benefited the last time we had a change of government. Actually, we did have a massive ball at our hotel back in 2008 that the Republicans held. I think it was the Texas Republicans, if I remember it correctly. But so look, we've got the best physical product in that market, and we expect that it should -- we should benefit from that. And our friends at Marriott are very well equipped to deal with both the Republican and the Democratic parties.

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Okay. And then can you just -- for those of us who don't focus on gaming, can you just give us an update into the expansion in that part of the state? Is that dead? Is it still ongoing? Where are we from that perspective?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Well, Proposition 7, which is the proposition that was heavily nurtured by Governor O'Malley and passed in the legislature, which is the expansion of gaming in the State of Maryland to increase -- put table games in a licensed -- in Prince George's County, will go before the voters of the State of Maryland and the counties today, and it's been almost as vitriolic campaign as the presidential campaign, with massive amounts of money being spent by the proponent, MGM, and our development partner up there, Milt Peterson, and to a small extent, us. And the -- on the other side, as you should go up the antis, they are being heavily supported by Penn Gaming. So we will know the answer to that question at about 8:00, 9:00 tonight. But if gaming gets approved in Prince George's County and expanded in the State of Maryland to include table games in the great facility with limited guest bedrooms that's built in National Harbor, that will be good for our business.

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Two quick questions for Mark. Mark, do you have a G&A run rate that would be appropriate to model going forward?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

In terms of the hotels or in terms of corporate?

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

It's corporate, in corporate.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Well, we're -- I guess, the best way to think about that until we give guidance, Bill, is that we provide a range of corporate level savings of $14 million to $16 million. So you can -- that would be a starting point.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

By the way, we've said this morning, we will exceed.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

We will exceed in the...

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

And should we use the kind of the third quarter as the base of that savings?

Patrick Chaffin

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Well, I mean, the third quarter had some noise as folks were getting ready to start exiting [ph], and I think the second quarter may be a better proxy.

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Great. And then I didn't -- I missed it. I know you gave a number, but the expected gross debt on the books at the end of the year, 900 -- I didn't quite catch that number.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Yes, it's going to be between $930 million and $940 million. Now that -- obviously, that doesn't account for the Prince George's County bonds, which we carry on our balance sheet, which are about $145 million. So I mean, I guess, if you want the net load [ph] against that debt, it would reduce debt.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

And that second tranche of Prince George's County bond state will be go -- will go [indiscernible].

William Crow

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Okay. And then finally for me, you guys had previously announced a belief that the venture with Dolly Parton, I think it was, to propel the park that's dead, isn't it?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Raymond James & Associates.

Oh, it's dead with Dolly. But what's interesting is we've had several other companies that have come to us, and we are in discussions with 2 other companies to do something similar in -- here in National. And we don't know where that will go, but both of these organizations seem to have some -- and these organizations that are not fly-by-night. These are major companies in the water park space, and they have an interest, and we're talking. So we'll see where that goes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Milota with JPMorgan.

Kevin Milota

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Just had a question, as you look forward, more bigger picture here. Maybe you can give us a sense of how you're thinking about peak occupancy level targets as you move forward with the understanding that you had Marriott Rewards customers now online, and that you'll likely see higher leisure guests on kind of call it Thursday, Friday, Saturday business. Maybe you can give us a sense of where you see occupancy levels going?

Colin Reed

Analyst · JPMorgan.

So, Kevin, I'm sorry, but I'm going to disappoint you here. And again, we have gotten into this whole budgeting detail sessions with our friends from Bethesda as we speak. And so for us to give you sort of aspirational targets of where we think, I think would be a little bit like getting the cart before the horse before we finish all of these very healthy dialogues and discussions. But I think when we get ready to announce the -- our guidance for '13, we will talk sort of long-term aspirationally where we think these assets can go. But one thing I would say to you, absent a massive double dip, we only expect our occupancies and our RevPARs to go up.

Kevin Milota

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Okay, maybe an easier one here for you. As it relates to the conversion costs going to $73 million versus the prior estimate of $55 million, of that, is it still call it $15 million to $20 million in required CapEx to get the properties on the Marriott systems? So you give the actual impact, just [indiscernible] $15 million to $20 million?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · JPMorgan.

It's $16 million, is the Marriott conversion cost.

Colin Reed

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And that's cash.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · JPMorgan.

That's cash.

Colin Reed

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Yes, so we're -- so that's IMAC [ph]. And we're hoping that comes in a little bit less than that, but that's what their number is.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Joshua Attie with Citi.

Joshua Attie

Analyst · Citi.

Following the REIT conversions, do you have any plans to turnout the balance sheet with longer-duration debt? I know that the revolver doesn't mature until 2015, but you're effectively financing long-term assets with shorter-term floating-rate debt, which obviously helps the free cash flow of the company. So just help us think about what the future cash flow might be available for dividends. Can you tell us what the financing strategy will be post-REIT conversion?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Citi.

Josh, it's Mark. Colin and I, actually, we're working through right now the various options in the planning process and, obviously, part of that will be what we do with the balance sheet. But what I can tell you at this point is, is that we will be looking at how we restructure the balance sheet going forward. It will likely incur or include more fixed-rate debt given where rates are today. It will include longer-term debt, and we'll try to ladder our maturities so we don't face these large maturity stacks. But that -- those are all activities that we'll be undertaking through the middle of next year.

Joshua Attie

Analyst · Citi.

Okay, that's helpful. And one more question on kind of on the operating side. When we think about lead volumes being up and more activity in the portfolio now that it's being integrated into Marriott's system, looking at the occupancy of your hotels, they seem pretty high, and they seem like it implies that they are pretty full during these periods. I guess my question is, do you actually have space and capacity in the portfolio to accommodate a lot more incremental group meetings? Or is the potential revenue synergy mainly on the leisure side?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

That's a really good question. So let me try and give you an answer. The -- in terms of group room nights and group occupancy, there is a requirement to make sure, in order to maximize occupancy, you've got to make sure that you transition to groups who are not "space hogs" so you can put more groups into the hotel, the hotel with the size meetings that we tend to do in this company, historically, that we have done. And you look at the average space that an average group consumes, the theoretical peaking occupancy for us in group is somewhere in the 68 to 70 points of group occupancy, okay? Now if you do more corporate business, and you bring down the amount of space that each group uses, that occupancy, that theoretical occupancy, can potentially go up a little bit. But right now, we do, occupancy-wise, Patrick, somewhere in the 60 points of group business. So we have the ability, if we manage our space well -- Marriott manages our space well, to increase the group side 3, 4, 5 points here over the course of the next 3 to 5 years. In terms of the leisure side, though, this is a big opportunity for us because, if you look at our Smith Travel data and you look at how we do as a company, even though our occupancy is high, it's because we dramatically outperform the competitive set on the group side, but we underperformed on the leisure side. There's a reason for that, and that is that we do not have, like the Starwoods, the Hyatts, and the Hiltons and the Marriotts, our own frequent flyer program. We don't have that dedicated pipeline. So we expect to see leisure business grow here over the next 2 to 3 years. And what you've got to remember is that on any -- not any given night, because it doesn't work this way with the patents, but we want about 75 points of occupancy. So de facto, 25% of our rooms over the course of the year are empty. And we think that we can move those room nights -- those occupancies more towards the 80-point measurement. And that's been something that we have talked about as a company consistently here over the last 3 to 5 years. So yes, we do. It's a long winded way of saying, yes, we do have the ability to put more group business in these hotels if we manage the space right. But we also have the ability to put more leisure room nights into this business substantially, so...

Joshua Attie

Analyst · Citi.

Colin, that's really helpful. If I can ask one more question with respect to the national bonds, one, is that $2 million that you're going to get every year, is that cash? And two, how should we think about potentially monetizing those bonds? could you sell them today if you wanted to, and what's your tax basis, anyone?

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Citi.

It is cash. And it will be in -- it's annual payment. You're talking about the marketing payment, that is a [indiscernible] payment. We do have the ability to monetize those bonds today. We can sell them to a QIB. The tax basis in them, though, is 0. And so the challenge for us has been, historically is, is that we have these 2 bonds that yield 8%, 10%. We have a 0 tax basis. And so to monetize them, you have to have a pretty compelling use of proceeds to make it work economically.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

Yes, right now, given the fact that the Bs [ph] just don't have the money, it doesn't make any sense for us to settle those bonds, pay the 35% tax rate, and then take that money and then go and repay our revolver, which is 2.25 of a LIBOR.

Joshua Attie

Analyst · Citi.

So it sounds like the plan is to help these through medium term to hold them for income.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

Yes, and -- exactly. And then take that income and dividends to the shareholders or take that income and buy stock back. Or if, all of a sudden, here's a screamer of a deal that generates a substantial return on invested capital, and we don't have the alternative to get our hands on capital at an affordable rate, then those bonds, all of a sudden, they're in the process to be monetized.

Joshua Attie

Analyst · Citi.

If you were [indiscernible] the maturity date for those bonds, would you get the principal back?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

The average of -- the principal is amortized over the life of the bond. But they're 35...

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

Okay, and how long is it?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

They're 35-year bonds. I think they're 35.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Citi.

That long.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

And I think they've got, what, 28 years left on them, something like that.

Mark Fioravanti

Analyst · Citi.

Yes. [indiscernible] details, Josh.

Colin Reed

Analyst · Citi.

And then, Josh, the other thing is if gaming does -- is approved in Prince George's County, those bonds, they then have more value to them. I mean, they just are [ph], because the volume of business in that community is substantially different. So we're not in any rush off this.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Colin Reed

Analyst

If other folks have questions, well, you know how to get hold of us.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Fred Lowrance with Avondale Partners.

Fred Lowrance

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Just a broader-breast question to ask for you, Colin. Just how would you characterize what transaction activity has looked like in those markets and those sort of specific type of hotels that you'd be looking at over the next couple of years to acquire? I know you're seeing good supply come to market. How would you characterize -- or the perky or the multiple earnings prices being paid for, any color just on what your bucket of hotels is sort of trading like right now?

Colin Reed

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Our bucket of hotels there have been a handful of hotels that have come to market that would probably fit in our profile. And the multiples on current cash flows are pretty rich. And the issue for us is what happens with this economy over the next 2 to 3 years? How does RevPAR continue to grow in this country? I think we'll know a lot more given today in the next week, 2 weeks as to the general direction of this country. And -- but we -- as we look at just the broad question, Fred, when we look at the broad multiples, people are paying up for these things. And we don't -- given our balance sheet, given our free cash flow in this company, we're not in a mood at this moment to destroy value by overpaying for an asset. Well, look, thank you, everyone. There's so much noise in this third quarter, and I know Mark and Patrick and I and Carter sit around late in the evening when we talk about this, what's going on in this company here over the last few months. And this has been a very extraordinary time for us. I never come to work these days thinking the decisions we've taken are wrong. What we've done, I think, is the right thing for the company, right thing for our shareholders, and I know there's been a lot of pain and hardship with a lot of our people. And there's been some community fallouts here. But at the end of the day, we're going to create a lot of value here, and we'd like to again thank our shareholders for navigating this process with us. So if anyone has any further questions, they can get a hold of Mark, Patrick or I with the -- using the communication channels that you normally get a hold of us through. So thank you very much indeed.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.