Welcome to the Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 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 800-585-8367 and the conference ID number is 59806144. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin conference.

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 will 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. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us. I will begin this call by spending a little bit of time looking backwards at our fourth quarter and full-year performance, but then I'd like to shift to looking forward and to describe how we see the trajectory of our business shaping up not just in terms of ‘17 and our guidance for this particular year, but also into ’18 and beyond. I’ll then pass it on to Mark to discuss the financials. So let's take a quick look back. 2016 was a record year for our company in all key respects. Total revenue, adjusted EBITDA, AFFO and what's really important for us long-term bookings. Now in terms of group bookings, in the fourth quarter, we produced 971,000 gross room nights for all future years, nearly matching the all-time record fourth quarter of ’15. Now this was better than we expected and puts our total 2016 production at a whopping 2.57 million room nights, the single best production year in our history and a 10% increase over the full-year 2015. We ended the year with a total of 6.4 million gross group room nights on the books for all future years, a 9% increase over the end of last year. Now to put this in perspective, this is 400,000 more gross group room nights on the books for all future years than we've ever had in the history of this brand. These room nights represent 1.3 billion in future group room revenue alone. Separate from these totals, the sales team at our news joint venture property Gaylord Rockies booked 187,000 gross group room nights in Q4, closing out a strong first year that ended with 399,000 net room nights on the books for all future periods. This exceeded our full-year…

Thanks Colin, good morning everyone, thanks for joining us this morning. In the fourth quarter, the company generated total revenue of $319.8 million, up 2.5% from the prior-year quarter. For the full year 2016, total revenue increased 5.2% to nearly $1.15 billion. During the quarter, the company generated net income available to common shareholders of $48.1 million or $0.94 per fully diluted share. The company continued to grow profitability in the quarter generating $94.7 million in adjusted EBITDA and improving EBITDA margin by a 130 basis points. For the full year, the company’s adjusted EBITDA margin increased 70 basis points, entering $350.2 million in adjusted EBITDA, a $25 million increase over 2015. For the quarter, the company generated $77.7 million in AFFO, a 7.8% increase over the fourth quarter of 2015 or $1.51 on a fully diluted per share basis. For the full year, the company generated $281.5 million in AFFO, an 8.3% increase over 2015, an equivalent of $5.49 per fully diluted share. Turning to our hospitality segment results, the hotels finished the quarter on a same-store basis with a RevPAR decrease of 2.1%. We entered the quarter with 14,000 fewer group room nights on the books compared to Q4 of last year which was a compounded by Hurricane Matthew [indiscernible] Jewish holidays in the fourth quarter from third. However, a strong performance in banquets in our holiday programming lifted total RevPAR by 1.3%. We finished the year with full-year same-store RevPAR growth of 2.9% which was just below our guidance range. However the strength of outside the room performance drove total RevPAR growth towards the higher end of our guidance of 3.8%. Attrition in Q4 was flat to last year's fourth quarter at 12.7% and down 30 basis points for the year at 12.5% as well as down…

No Mark, let's just open up the call for questions, Crystal if you could handle the questions please.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes the line of Smedes Rose with Citi.

I wanted to ask you Collin, you opened up in your opening remarks you talked about a 6.4 million room nights on the books, is that on a comparable basis or is that and also include room nights being booked for the Gaylord Rockies?

No, it doesn't include that Smedes. This is apples to apples, it is 400,000 more than we've ever seen in our history and it's because of the 2.57 million room nights that we booked for the four big hotels last year and then in addition to that we booked another 400,000 there or thereabouts for the Rockies, but these are very stellar numbers.

No, I just wanted to make sure we're just thinking about them in the right context. And then, I guess I just wanted to ask you for the MGM National Harbor, I mean, you talked about it's a muted impact in the first half but that you've seen some impact in line with expectations I guess I would just say it's seems to me that your remarks I would interpret them as that the impact hasn't been as greater it's a little bit more negative than you would have expected for 2017. And I was just wondering if you could maybe put that in a little more context and what you think you know what from your end you guys might do with the casino to drive more I would think primarily it's weekend occupancy that you're looking for?

Yeah it's Friday and Saturday and I think the hard thing for us is the crystal ball in the summer you know this facility I think will have sort of a fairly similar pattern to what you see in the better casinos in Atlantic City it'll get you know really strong summer time traffic I suspect as well as most weekends. But Smedes, you understand the casino business the problem with a facility like this is when it opens, it get inundated and that's exactly what has happened with MGM and particularly from the local customer, the customer that comes from 20, 25 miles. And this is fairly normal and then what happens is MGM will like all good casino operators will kick in their regional marketing effort start communicating it aggressively and extensively to their frequent flyer customers and Marriott together with the management team in Washington at our hotel is doing the same thing. The good news is that we saw three plus 1,000 room nights in incremental room nights in that from December 8 to the end of the year but the problem that we've had in January, you may have seen the President's speech two days ago, three days ago at the - it was - on TV shown as a National Harbor but it was our - it was our C-pack, it was our hotel, we were full, we were full Friday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and as we said in the earnings script we've got a lot of group business on the books that we put on the books two, three four years ago in Washington. So our comments shouldn't be construed as negative, our comments should be construed as you know give a six months and we’ll you how good this is going to be because we just haven't had the patents to market extensively. And this casino like all casinos all big casinos, regional casinos will go through a transition where you know the regional customer will play more of an important role over the next few months.

The next question comes from the line of Bill Crow with Raymond James.

Good morning, guys. Colin, have you seen any change in demand from small corporate groups since the election.

So, as you know Bill, the middle of last year, May, June of last year -- April, May June of last year with everyone sort of sitting on the sidelines watching this election, we saw a little bit of a softening in the 10 to 300 group, which tends to be short term in nature. One of the things that we -- I think this is fair to say Patrick, over the course of the last couple of months, we have seen decent 10 to 300 production. We have not been disappointed in our small group production. And the thing that we obviously are looking anxiously forward to is to see what happens as we get into this period, April, May, June, July, where last year we saw a few thousand room nights per month in bookings slow up. But I would say to you we've been mildly encouraged by what we've seen in the small corporate group production. Do you want to add to that Pat?

Sure. Hey, Bill. This is Patrick. Good morning. Just to elaborate on Colin’s comment, we did see a lot of softening in Q2, last year that continued into Q3 and I would say the best way to characterize it as we saw stabilization in Q4 to get a better feel for how those smaller group customers and meeting planners are feeling, we're currently engaged in a external research project to go out and essentially take their temperature and understand how they look at the next 12 months, now that the election is over and behind us and now that we're 60 days roughly into the new administration. So we are watching it carefully, we’re working very closely with Marriott to do everything we can to drive additional demand in this sector, but I would say it’s stabilized and we're trying to understand how those folks are feeling about the future as we speak.

All right. Thanks. Colin, one thing that’s changed pretty dramatically since the last time you talked to us was your cost of capital and I'm just wondering how that might impact your appetite to either kick off a new development, pursue larger hotel acquisitions, potentially buy out one or both of the partners at the Rockies, how are you thinking about capital?

Well, it’s a really good question. We had a board meeting, we had a board meeting last week and this was one of the discussions that Mark and I laid with our board. We clearly understand what you're saying. But one of the things that you're going to see with us and I know we've been boring to some investors over the course of the last three or four years, but we are going to stay true to what we are, which is a predominantly large resort group focused business. We believe this business is highly predictable. Even in the bad times, we believe this business is a really good business and it gives us so much visibility. We love the annuity of 6.4 million room nights on the books for the next 6, 8, 10 years. But we do recognize that we have a cost of capital benefit right now and I'm not going to get into the prediction process here Bill, but it's something that is on our minds and I would say, just continue to watch the space and see what we do here, but look these projects that we’re doing by and large are projects that generate pretty good returns on capital. And as our weighted cost of capital goes down, our returns on these projects certainly don't. And so we like our position, we like it a lot and it's something that we're very clearly focused on.

Great. Finally from me Colin, any update you can give us quarter-to-date how the National is playing out. I’m just trying to handicap the impact of the election in the March, et cetera?

National is doing what we expected it to do. We've got a lot of growth business on the books and it's having a, so far in the first quarter, very decent first quarter. And Patrick, I think that’s the way to sum it up right.

Yeah. Just to elaborate, we have about 28,000 more group room nights on the books for the first half of, I’m sorry, for the first quarter of 2017. And so we're very pleased with the direction the hotel is heading from a group perspective. We've already talked about the MGM impact. We're heavily working to market to the regional customer within 100 to 150 miles of the hotel through Marriott rewards, Marriott channel, search engine optimization, other avenues as well and then the hotels doing a lot of great work on their guest sat scores as well. So I would say the hotel is moving in a very positive direction and the casino and the new ball room only add to that positive momentum.

And Bill, just I’ll give you one more piece of -- just one sort of data point. Even when we’re full with the group like we were with CPAC and the inauguration where we had the Texas group into the hotel and we have no availability to actually put leisure customers, casino or leisure customers in to the hotel. The interesting thing is a lot of these customers that are there for groups go up to the casino in the evening. So this casino is certainly getting a lot of accolades from the customer groups that are coming to National.

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholes with SunTrust.

Hi. Good morning. A couple of questions here. Have you quantified -- perhaps I missed it what the actual RevPAR impact will be with the 40,000, excuse me 49,000 room nights out of service in 2017 as well as the EBITDA hit from that, also will the EBITDA hit from the increase in property tax payments?

The 49,000 -- Pat do the math for me, will you?

Yeah. So Patrick, this is Patrick. Good morning. The 49,000 room nights out of service, the displacement impact is about $2.7 million of revenue and then you can flow that through at 40% to 50%. From a property tax perspective, the EBITDA hit is just under $5 million.

Although we don't want to talk about that because we don't involve in our local municipalities.

Sure. All right. I have one more question. When I look at the top 25 markets for new supply coming on and I'm looking at lodging econometrics data, Nashville Scream is having the most new supply coming on over the next two years in relation to its existing size. How do you think that will impact your results and what are your thoughts on that?

Well, unlike any other REIT, we actually have a business that will benefit dramatically from every new customer that comes to Nashville and so our entertainment business loves the idea of more non-convention space downtown, more non-convention hotels downtown. And so all of that businesses -- our entertainment businesses will benefit from the 3,000, 4,000 new room nights coming in. But look last year, we haven't broken out the 2.54 million -- 54 or 57, I can’t, I’m just doing this from memory, million room nights that we booked, but I would tell you that Opryland had by far its best booking year for Group business than it has for the last -- since going back to -- going back seven years and we've booked north of 700,000 room nights last year, group room nights, I beg your pardon, 700, yes, 700,000 group room nights in Opryland alone last year. So we are very excited with what's going on in Nashville. And frankly one of the reasons we're doing sound waves is this massive water feature, which by the way I’ve said earlier in my script that we're hopefully opening in the middle of the year, let me clarify that, we're opening the outside part in the middle of the year and the inside part, the all under one roof part will be with atriums will be towards the fourth quarter, October -- in the October timeframe. But this will position us so well to take advantage of this surge in leisure business and to be able to go and attract new groups that don't come to Nashville today, the family orientated groups. And so this new hotel supply come in here, we’re not concerned about it. We actually think it on a net-net basis, it will benefit our business.

Okay. And did you say that you’re going to offer day passes for non-guests?

No. We did not. We’re not doing that, but there’s a beautiful water park in Nashville called Nashville Shores, which is the local’s water park where local folks go to. And there is one at Dollywood, 200 miles away. This is to stimulate a new customer that doesn't come here today. That's what we're trying to do and so that's the strategy.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo.

Good morning guys. Maybe just going back a little bit to Bill's question about investment, I'm just curious Colin, are there many hotels out there that regardless of whether or not they're on the market that would meet your acquisition criteria? I'm just curious how deep you see that universe of opportunities to be I guess the other part of it and should we just focus on development?

The profile, Jeff, and you and I’ve talked about this before and I appreciate you asking the question in a public forum. The profile that we're looking at is these hotels are going to be for us a 1000 room for us in rooms rows and we want 200 plus 1000 square feet of meeting space so that core customer, that's 600 to 1000 size group who require 150,000 square feet of meeting size for that group, we can accommodate And so, if you look at that across the country, there are probably 20 hotels that fit that criteria. But some of them clearly are not for sale. And so we have that active list that we look at every single month. And so we will see whether there are any willing sellers, but we are not going to compromise and become homogenous like all the other REITs and go by 600 room hotels unless of course the hotel is a great overflow hotel to one of the juggernauts that we own today.

And I might have touched on this in prior calls, but just now that they've had more time with it, do you think that out of the combination of Marriott and Starwood, there's a lot of overlap in that upscale or upper upscale, I should say, segment -- I mean are there hotels that you think that could be shaken out and be converted into a Gaylord brand. I know that might not necessarily be within your ownership, but just wondering if you think that could happen where like hypothetically it's a large Sheraton that might be better served under a different brand like Gaylord?

Yeah. The answer is there are probably two or three of hotels that are in that brand that you just mentioned. That would be the DNA of those buildings are attractive to us. We think we can sprinkle the pixie dust and improve the group demand. We think we can massage the product and make them more appealing and manage the margins pretty well. So it's all a function of the right hotel in the right market at the right price and I know that there have been some folks that have been and I don't include you in this Jeff, but there have been some folks that have been a little impatient, why haven't you gone on hotels like everybody else, we have been rigorously focused on our precise strategy and we are not going to mess that up by getting seduced to going out and buying 600 room hotels in markets that are not really key to us. And so -- but, there are a few hotels and if they come up in the right markets at the right price, we will certainly look at it.

And I'm just curious, because you’ve talked for several calls about just the imbalance between the demand for convention space and sort of lack of new supply. I mean just curious why do you think we haven't seen more construction activity of these larger convention facilities and hotels, what do you think keeps sort of keeps it at bay and I know there are -- it gets contemplated and San Diego recently voted down a new stadium and convention center facility. I'm just curious what your thoughts are and where the markets where we might see some of these come to light?

Yeah. The question is an outstanding question and it's a question that not this last board meeting, but the board meeting before that, we spend -- Mark and I spend quite a bit of time with our board talking about this subject and I would say to you this that I think that the structure of our industry has changed and this is what I mean by it. If you go back ten years, when we were in the construction business and maybe go back 15 years into the -- somewhere between 2001 and 2008 before the financial crisis, the big hotel companies, there were big hotel companies, the big, the big sea corps, the big brand companies were to a large extent sponsors of development and you had companies like us who were really cool developing and we were very different because we created a completely different brand. But the structure of the industry has changed. There are 30 major developers out there building big stuff and the other thing that's occurred is the municipalities all across the country have changed their incentive packaging. The hotel here that was built in Nashville down beside the convention center was the recipient of a very, very healthy incentive package. You don't see that going on in this market anymore. You go to, our Denver deal was probably one of the very highest incentive packages because Aurora and the state of Colorado really wanted to get something that they didn't possess today, which is a large convention hotel, but you don't see this stuff going on anymore. And so I think it's an issue of structure of organizations, you've got the big hotel companies pulling back, you don't have the big developers taking the big risk. And look with the industry, with the growth over the last four to five years of RevPAR in this industry, recovering from 2008, historically low rates of interest, but you see basically none of these results being build, it's very hard for me to see what's going to stimulate these results getting built when the structure is the same, and the structure of the industry is not changing and municipalities aren’t handing out big incentive packages. Interest rates are only going up one way and so that's the reason we love our business and we think our runway looks really, really good here over the next three to four years and I don't think you're going to see it. I don't -- just don't think you're going to see $800 billion construction projects in this sector occur here, other than in a specific market like Las Vegas where you have an entrant like Genting who wants to be in that market. I just don't think you're going to see it.

That’s useful. And maybe just -- so thank you. And maybe just one last question for Mark, I don’t want to leave you out. Just considering RevPAR guidance, you answered part of my question about why the range was a little wider in the opening remarks, but I guess I do have a question about, with the booking visibility being so much better in your niche than traditional hotels, I'm just curious what brings you from the top end of your guidance to the low end of your RevPAR guidance? Is it mainly in the year, for the year group? Is it transient booking or is it just attrition and cancellation from the existing bookings. I wasn't sure if there was one lever that’s maybe stronger than another in pushing you from 0 to 3 RevPAR.

Yeah. I think it is going to have more to do within the year, for the year group and how we see MGM perform at National Harbor. I don't think at this point, we have any real concerns over spikes in attrition or cancellation. It’s really about the pace of growth through the year.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank.

Hey. Good morning, guys. Wanted to ask you one of things that kind of shows up in the model is you guys have done a little bit better on total RevPAR guidance. I think there was a 90 bps difference in the full year of ’16. Is that purely attributable to mix or was it something else and do you think that continues or do you think the two level out a little bit more going forward?

Yeah. Hey, Chris. This is Patrick. If you look across our model over the years, we historically are able to drive a little bit more growth outside the room than we do from the room side and so if you look across those years, that pattern pretty much holds true. As we move into ’17, you see our guidance is pretty much even for -- 0 to 3 three for both RevPAR and total RevPAR and the reasoning behind that is to your point, a bit of a mixed shift. In ’15 and ’16, we benefited from a higher mix of corporate groups and high premium association groups. As we move in to ’17, we have a little bit of a flip flop there. We have a little bit more growth in the, what we call, SMERF, the social, military, education, religious and fraternal organizations and a decline in corporate and association room nights on the books. So while we are always doing a great job to enhance our ability to drive outside the room revenue, it is a little bit more challenged in ’17 simply because of the nature of the groups that will be in house.

Okay. That's helpful Patrick. Thanks. And then I guess a follow up to that and a little bit of it is looking out to ’18 generically. Do you guys think rate growth -- I mean you've been getting a little bit more of your RevPAR this year from hoc, do you think that flips back to rate, whether it's ‘17 or ’18, again maybe it's a mix question or maybe it's a quality of group question, but we generally think of rate becoming a little bit more prevalent here in the cycle. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah. Let me sort of give a 60,000 foot answer and then Patrick, do you want to jump in? His reality Chris, when you got 6.4 million room nights on the books, we've got less availability going forward than we've ever had. And that's certainly the case as we look at 2018, 2019, 2020. And so I know Patrick's discussions with me and Patrick’s discussions with the manager at Marriott and the sales leadership of Marriott has been over the last few months, particularly as we closed the year with such strong bookings is guys, we've got to get because we’ve got less availability, we really got to push the right side of the equation and that is the subject of the day with the discussions with that manager. So it's something that we're going to be all over. And that's why I suspect I'll be pretty shocked if we book as many room nights in ’17 as we did in ’16, simply because we're going to be a lot more focused on the right side of our business, because we think that's the big opportunity.

And the only thing I would add to that, this is Patrick, is if you think about the nature of the projects that we have coming online in 2018, they should help us in our ability to drive rate and the reason I say that is the Tucson [ph] expansion, that 60,000 square feet of additional space that we're adding really enhances our ability with some of the smaller corporate groups, especially in the 0 to 300 range, it helps us for the overall property, but that space specifically helps us get in some of those premium corporate groups that are looking for some dedicated space that they have a full run of. The Riverview ballroom at Gaylord National is very much the same way. We can do a lot of great things on local social, but we can also do a lot of great things in that space with the smaller groups. To your question what we were talking about earlier, if you look at the mix for ’18, where it stands right now with what's on the books, we shift back towards a higher mix of corporate groups in 2018. So as Colin said, we are taking advantage of the opportunity right now to shift more towards driving rate, given what's on the books and we have a number of projects that should help us do that even more as we move into the future.

And those projects should drive outside the room spending as well, right?

Absolutely. And that was one of the things I didn't cite when Jeff asked the question about the outside of the room growth. One of the benefits we've had is the capital we've deployed in things like our water features of Texas and the problems, we're generating a lot of business outside of the room as a direct cause of that.

Okay. Great. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Chris. Let's take one more question. It’s 10 o'clock and then if you have other questions, you can call us here and if there are investors that are going to be at the conferences that I know we're attending this week in New York and next week in [indiscernible] City, we're looking forward to spending time with you all, but one more question.

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Trivison with Gabelli.

Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. I guess looking back to the 2020 outlook you guys presented at last year's Investor Day, the low end of the EBITDA range is still about 120 million more than the midpoint of the 2017 EBITDA guidance range. I guess does that outlook still seem feasible and if so, can you help us understand how you get there? I'm not sure how much of that is from the Rockies, but?

Well, a slug of it and but also from these projects and also the business on the books. So what I think will be helpful, why don't we take that question with you offline? I will walk you through the model, but we are pretty excited about where this company is headed to. Are you okay with that?

Yeah. That works for me.

So Crystal, I think the call is concluded. We’d like to thank you all for spending time with us today. This is exciting time for our company and 2017 is going to be a big transition year for us and 2018 is where we are all focused on. Thank you very much indeed.

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.