Welcome to the Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, President and Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Senior Vice President of Asset Management; and Mr. Scott Lynn, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. This call will be available for digital replay. The number is 1-800-585-8367 and the conference ID number is 92690727. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the Company’s expected financial performance. Any statements we make today that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as believes, or expects are intended to identify these statements, which may be affected by many factors, including those listed in the Company’s SEC filings and in today’s release. The Company’s actual results may differ materially from the results we discuss or project today. We will not publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or any other reason. We’ll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures today. We reconcile each non-GAAP measure to the most comparable GAAP measure in an exhibit to today’s release. I will now turn the call over to Colin.

Thanks Scotty. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. As you read this morning, in our third quarter earnings release, this was a very good quarter for our business. Now, it seems that at every investor meeting that we have, there are questions regarding the health of the industry. So, before we discuss our quarterly results, I want to spend a moment to give you our thought on what we see and why we think our hotel business remains competitively positioned. And after that, I’ll briefly touch on some of the investments we are making and then I’ll hand over the call for Mark to go through the financials. So, where are we as an industry at this point in time? Now, as you, no doubt, have been reading and hearing, near-term hotel demand specifically in the corporate transient segment has slowed a little with overall industry RevPAR growth projected to be in the low single-digits for 2017. But nevertheless, positive. Now as some have pointed out, a portion of this deceleration is due to the current economic and political climates. Others have focused on a reduced citywide convention calendar in some markets that is negatively impacting group pace, while others have raised concerns about new supply growth. While some see slowing near-term RevPAR growth as an end to the lodging cycle, we view this a little differently. We do not think the U.S. economy is going into a tailspin and believe that some companies are taking short-term measures during these times of uncertainty, becoming a little more cautious on committing to short-term non-discretionary expenditures. Yes, the supply side of the overall hospitality industry is increasing but it is heavily concentrated in the smaller limited service sector and about a dozen markets, and there is…

Good morning. Thank you, Colin. Good morning, everyone on the call. In the third quarter, the Company generated total consolidated revenue of $271.7 million, up 7.5% from the prior year quarter, and net income available to common shareholders of $33.6 million, or $0.66 per fully diluted share. The Company grew profitability by 16.6% in the quarter generating $83 million in adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter increased 240 basis points to 30.6%. For the quarter, the Company generated $65.6 million in AFFO, or $1.18 per fully diluted share, a per share increase of 10.1% when compared to the third quarter of last year. Turning to the hospitality segment results, the hotels finished the quarter on a same-store basis with RevPAR growth of 8.9% as compared to the prior year second quarter, while outside-the-room spending in group F&B increased total RevPAR by 7.1%. Attrition and cancellation fees collected during the quarter totaled $3.6 million. During the quarter, attrition was flat and in the year for the year cancelations decreased by approximately 25% or 2,300 room nights year-over-year. Consolidated hospitality adjusted EBITDA grew by 14.5% to $76.9 million, generating an adjusted EBITDA margin of 31.9% or an improvement of 200 basis points over the third quarter of last year. During the third quarter, our entertainment segment increased revenue almost 10% to $30.7 million and the segment’s third quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 28.5% to $11.8 million. Corporate and other adjusted EBITDA totaled a loss of $5.6 million in the third quarter, compared to a loss of $5.1 million in the third quarter of 2015. Moving on to the balance sheet, as of September 30th, we had total debt of approximately $1.49 billion, net of unamortized deferred financing costs and unrestricted cash of $35.9 million, resulting in net debt outstanding of $1.45 billion, including $366.9 million of borrowings drawn under our credit facility, leaving $331.1 million of availability under the facility. On October 14th, the Company paid its third quarter 2016 cash dividend of $0.75 per share. It’s our current plan to distribute total 2016 annual dividend of approximately $3 per share in cash in equal quarterly payments with the last quarterly payment for 2016 occurring in January of 2017. Any future dividend is subject to the Board’s determination as to the amount and timing of the distribution. Let me close by saying that the quarter was a solid one for our Company, and we’re all extremely proud of how the business has performed, particularly against the uncertain economic and political environment that we are facing today. As Colin outlined in his remarks, we are bullish on our long-term outlook and are confident that both our hospitality and entertainment businesses have terrific growth prospects and are uniquely well-positioned for the future. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Colin for any closing remarks.

Thanks Mark. No closing remarks. Let’s, Stephanie, open the lines for questions and look forward from hearing from some of our investors.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Shaun Kelley with Bank of America.

This is actually Dany Asad on for Shaun here. First of all, great results today. But, I just wanted to touch on, Colin, you talked about the advanced bookings and sales, and so even in your prepared remarks, you talked about increased sales expenses here. Can you maybe help us quantify how much of the results that we saw today were -- is there any form of forward-loading or promotional activity here, or to like to get extra business into the third quarter? And especially I am asking that mostly because seeing as how you didn’t really change the full-year guidance. So, how much of it really is timing in 3Q versus 4Q?

No. I am going to hand over to Patrick on this but the only impact in the third quarter that this tremendous booking production had for all future years is the commission that we pay, the incentives that we pay our people who have booked this business, and then there was $1 million more of costs in the third quarter due to business that would show up 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. So that’s how it works. And Patrick do you want to illuminate?

Yes, just to add on to that. There is not really a retiming. We expect the fourth quarter to be a very productive quarter for us in terms of sales production for group as it historically has been. And so, we’ve not adjusted downward our expense in the fourth quarter. We just had to endure additional cost in the third quarter, which as Colin has talked about in the past, a good problem to have.

Got it. And then may be on a different topic for your entertainment segment. What kind of capital commitment should we be expecting for the Times Square investment? And maybe as a follow-up, do you feel like you need to grow the entertainment business overall a little bit more before considering other strategic alternatives?

Yes. Let me say this, the capital expenditure in Times Square will be -- we’re doing this on a 50-50 JV, will be less than $5 million, somewhere between $4 million and $5 million. And I am counting on that at the moment between 4 and 5, because we are trying to figure out very important but -- complicated but important things like the sounds systems of this venue and how it connects to the Grand Ole Opry directly. But in terms of your broader question, and obviously this is a question that get asked every meeting, and I am going to give you the same answer that we give at every meeting. There are two components. If we make a decision to spin this business, there are two components that we believe are critical to the success of that. One is the clarity of the strategy and two the growth rate that is taking place within the business; probably a third as well is the leadership team that we have in place at the time. Numbers one and two, we’re working very, very hard on. We’ve got multiple growth opportunities. There are several of these growth opportunities that we’re not ready to announce publicly. And in terms of the longer term strategy, we’re spending a lot of our time working on that as well, the venue distribution, but critically the OTT side of this that we feel will be a fabulous thing for country music, the platforms that we control here in Nashville, we’re working hard on that. When all of those things -- when our Board believes, and our management believes that we’ve got all of those things in real strong form, then we’ll talk more definitively about the direction of the business.

Your next question is from Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo.

Colin, I think you might have just touched on some of this in your response on the Opry. But, are you at this point able to maybe talk about, in your sort of wildest dreams like how many venues you actually see in that sort of city lineup and do you think…

We’re not in the projection mode, Jeff. And you know why, because it will be a headline in your world-class release on us and everybody will remember that. And that will be something we’ll be discussing in perpetuity until this business is somewhere else. But let me say this that excitement around what we’re doing in New York City, and the excitement that we’re seeing from potential other partners, lead us to the conclusion that we can do this and in multiple places. And please remember, for all of our investors on the phone, we’re not doing this because we want to own bars and venues around the country and potentially internally in major gateway cities, we’re doing this, because we want to talk to this country lifestyle consumer group that love this space, so that when our digital platforms are ready, we’ll have the ability to pick these people up in their indigenous markets and provide them with a proposition that isn’t available today. So, we feel that our brands are very powerful and have connectivity to consumers. And so that’s why the venue distribution piece is important. And our goal internally of course is to have multiples of these. But Jeff you’re going to have to bear with me; we’re not going to get into the numbers, we’ll let when we’ve signed deals up and where they are and stuff like that.

That’s fair. And do you contemplate doing these maybe in partnership or have you not really determined that? And just because there is sort of a I guess I’ll call it a pro-Nashville aspect to it, is there even an opportunity to get co-investment from the city, would they ever look at something like that?

Well, I am not sure we want -- and this by the way is not a slam on the city of Nashville’s government, I am -- we know that government of the city of Nashville very, very well, and it’s -- this is a very, very good government. But we don’t want government in our business. If there are other major investors in the city that would like to be investors, we’re happy to talk to them. We’re doing the New York City in 50-50 JV with someone who understands operating in New York City. I suspect if we were tomorrow morning announce one, and we are not going to do this by the way you know in a place like London, or Hong Kong, Tokyo, then I would suspect that we would have local partners that would operate these things. But we possess this platform that is sort out all across America and all across the world. And that’s the opportunity and putting in it front of these markets is a really compelling notion I think.

And just to switch gear on bookings, you had great success on advanced bookings. Can you maybe delve a little bit deeper and talk about just trends you’re seeing in that pipeline? For instance -- it’s not the right term, but like on a same group basis or same event basis, are you seeing events get larger or smaller in future years compared to the last instance or is the weakness that other companies are seeing in corporate transient, is it manifesting itself at all in your pipeline, there’s maybe a shift away from corporate group events to association business? I am just curious what you might be seeing.

Well, I am going to let Pat get into -- Patrick get into the detail here, but Let me say this. Given what’s going and what’s about to happen next week and the obsession about what likely outcome is all across the country, to us after six, seven years of decent growth, it’s not surprising that the meeting planer who’s focused on the meetings the next quarter, 60 days from now is being a little more cautious. And as we said in our scripted remarks, we’re seeing the exact opposite. And meeting planners -- and it’s not that we’re seeing a surge of association business, all of our markets, all of our customer bases, associations, corporations, the SMERF type business, we are seeing good strong demand. And I think what’ s happening is the meeting planner is sitting there that has to have a meeting two, three, four years from now. They know they have these annual meetings, whether they’re corporate meeting or association meetings and they are saying occupancy is compressing all across the big markets across the country; occupancy is operating almost at peak occupancy in most of the big -- most of the top 25 markets. And I’ve got a secure space, the two, three, four years out. And remember, when they do that with us, they sign a contract. So, it’s not sort of a take lightly type of a commitment, these are massive commitments that these meeting planners are making. So, no, we are not seeing any material shift in demand in the big group side. And do you want to add anything to that Patrick?

Yes, the only thing I would add Jeff is just a reiteration of what Colin’s already said during the scripted part of the call, and that we have seen groups of a 1,000 attendees or greater growing. But to specifically answer your question, it’s really in terms of the numbers of groups. The group sizes themselves, if you look at individual groups are pretty much consistent with what they have been running at in the past three or four years. So, the smaller groups we’ve seen slow down a little bit in the short-term, but in the long-term, the large groups continue to grow, the number of groups increases. And we’ve discussed on the call earlier, we feel very good about 2018, 2019 and 2020, and we’re watching cautiously to see what this means for 2017. But again, we’re pacing in line with where we were at this point last year.

Your next question is from Smedes Rose with Citi.

I wanted to ask with Marriott having completed their acquisition of Starwood, are you seeing any changes at all or is that sort of a non-event for you guys, just in terms of group leads or I don’t know, other items that they may be able to bring to the table as a bigger system now?

Well, I’ll tell you what the headline is, because we ask this question every day, or Mark and I do, Patrick and the managers. But, I sort of would summarize it like this, Smedes, is business as usual. Patrick, have you got any -- do you want make any additional comments?

Yes. I would tell you that Marriot is taking this transition from our perspective in a very measured way. I think it’s one of the learnings from the Gaylord Hotels transition, to make sure that these critical systems, critical programs are brought on line in a very measured cadence and they’re not rushing anything. And so we think that’s a good thing. I’d tell you from a leads perspective, we have not seen a decline in the leads; we’ve not seen a decline in production as evidenced by our bookings and also the comment that Colin made as far as what our October results look like. This does create an opportunity for us from a multiyear booking perspective and that you can now do multiyear rotation by adding in a current Starwood Hotel into your rotation. So, you can put together more and more rotational solutions for meeting planners where a Gaylord Hotel might not exist today. And then, it also creates the opportunity for us to essentially sell a large destination. So, you can take a Starwood Hotel, a Gaylord Hotel and sell them as one single destination, if the group is larger than what the Gaylord Hotel could accommodate, and those new hotels are located near one another.

And we have plenty of those groups.

Yes. And so, we think that as long as the systems and programs are approached properly, the sales systems are done properly, this should create opportunities for us in the long-term.

Okay. That’s very helpful. And then, I just wanted to ask you, I’m sure you’ll provide more guidance for 2017 at some point. But just on the CapEx front, it’s primarily the costs in 2017, I guess for projects beyond maintenance, would be associated with your expansion at the Texan, is that correct? And I think you had said that that was about $120 million project altogether?

Yes. And there will be some for Washington, the completion of the ballroom there.

We’ll finalize that; we’ll finish our investment into Rockies.

Yes, exactly.

And then, we just have one major project on the maintenance side, which is the renovation of the delta wing of Gaylord Opryland, which is about 1,000 rooms.

Yes, we have…

That will be in the 5%.

That will be in the reserve.

Your next question is from Bill Crow with Raymond James.

Good morning guys, good quarter. Colin, couple of housekeeping items. Any update on a change -- any changes to the Aurora budget or the timing of the opening?

Aurora? No, we’ve increased the number of sales people we have simply because of lead volumes. We needed more sales people to prosecute lead volumes. But overall, is it something we look at with our partner every single month? I know Patrick was in Colorado earlier this week, and no, the project is on time and so far on budget. Obviously we like that.

Sure. Any discussions going on with either that party or another party about a possible additional Ryman owned Gaylord property?

We are having conversations on several locations. And when we got anything to talk about, we’ll talk about it.

Colin, as you think about expanding the urban Opry concept, it seems like you might have excess land in Texas to do something, if you wanted to at the Texan, maybe in Orlando. Would you do something on your own property or would you try and keep it separate just to ultimately be able to more cleanly separate the two businesses?

Bill, you ask a very good question. It really depends on what is going on around the property in question. And what I mean by that if something to on all of that land sits at the doorstep in Orlando was to happen, a material development of some kind, then clearly something like what we’re doing in New York City would be tremendous. And particularly in the market like Orlando, if you think about it, after 9 o’clock, there is not a ton of things to do there. Most people are running around the theme parks through the day and sort of 9 o’clock the world slows down a little, apart from Pleasure Island items I supposed. So, the answer to the question is, it really depends on what the development initiatives that are taking place at or around hotels, but it’s certainly not something that we wouldn’t consider.

And one final question. When you opened National Harbor, how many hotel rooms were in that submarket, that area and then how many are there today assuming that once we add there in the casino?

Yes. When we opened National Harbor, there were -- the Westin was there; the residence in across the street was there; and no Peterson was building the aloft that we converted to the AC. And that’s about it, and that’s what they are today, except of course, MGM which had 350 hotel rooms to accommodate the anticipated 20,000 to 25,000 people a day. So, that is the answer to your question.

Your next question is from Chip Oat with Tradition Capital Management.

Good morning. Colin, I think you answered my question about as well as you can at this time. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Andrew Berg with Post Advisory Group.

Hey guys, couple of quick questions. One clarification with respect to New York, was that 4 million to 5 million your portion of the CapEx or that’s the JVs, entire CapEx of which you pick up a piece of it?

Andrew, it’s ours. That’s our contribution into the venture.

Okay. Second question was with respect to the bookings that you’ve been seeing, and you noticed that you’d seen a fall off in some of the smaller groups; you’ve seen a pickup in some of the larger groups, over 1,000 room nights. What percentage of your business falls in each of those buckets, ballpark?

Here’s the way to think about our business. This is rough order of magnitude, okay? Somewhere between 75% and 80% of our business is group, somewhere in that region, depending on which hotel. 80% of that group -- of that group business is large group. So, large groups are very, very, very critical to us. I think Patrick made the comment that -- large groups for us by the way, we count large groups 600 and above. Patrick, I think mentioned earlier that almost 50% -- or no, maybe it was me in the script, 50% of our 600,000 room night bookings that we did in the third quarter, 50% of that was a 1,000 plus. But we sort of look at large groups as 600 plus. So, the way to think about it, 80% of that is large group, what we call star accounts. That’s the way to think about it.

And that’s 1,000 room nights or more?

600 rooms or more.

600 rooms, okay. And that component then that would be the small group that you alluded to that’s seeing a little bit of softness, which is not uncommon from what we are hearing across the board, any rough guess as to what percentage of your business that is?

It’s pretty small. Patrick, it represents about 25,000 room nights a month that we book for small meetings, right? That’s the 10 to 300. And what we’ve seen is a decline of 5,000ish room night, somewhere in that region, 5,000 room nights. But it pales in comparison to the big stuff.

Yes. I knew it was small. I was just trying to recall what the -- how small it was. So, it’s helpful to just quantify it. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions?

There are no additional questions at this time sir.

Okay, lovely. All right. Well, Stephanie, thank you. Investors, analysts, thank you for joining us. Good quarter. We love our positioning. And if you have any more questions, you know how to get hold of Mark, Patrick, Todd Siefert, or me. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us.

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