Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties Third Quarter 2017 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 86822268. [Operator Instructions] 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 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'll now turn the call over to Colin.

Thanks, Scott. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. With two months to go before we close out 2017, I can't help but remember that 1 year ago, at this time, we were getting inundated with questions about the cycle, such as what innings are we in, or will 2017 be the year the cycle turns. In fact, I dedicated a good chunk of time on our Q3 call last year towards addressing these questions from our perspective, particularly as it relates to the group business. I walked you all through what we were seeing in our business that is favorable to a strategy like the one we are pursuing. In particular, I focused on the limited supply forecasts for the next few years and the encouraging trends in group that give us confidence in generating very good returns for our shareholders, particularly when we deploy capital. But here we are one year later, on pace to close out 2017 as another record year for our company, in terms of revenue and adjusted EBITDA. And I'm pleased to report that we have seen no change in these favorable dynamics around supply and demand for group. Now this was evident in our third quarter production, where our existing hotels booked 606,000 gross group room nights for all future periods. This figure is only 1,000 room night shy of the record for a third quarter that we set last year, which you may recall was up 25% over the previous third quarter. And this year's bookings came in with a healthy 3% growth in average rate. Now separate from these bookings, our Gaylord Rockies joint venture, scheduled to open late next year, booked 124,000 gross group room nights for all future periods, a 19% increase over third quarter 2016…

Thank you, Colin. Good morning, everyone. As Colin outlined, we long anticipated that the third quarter would be our most difficult quarter of the year, given the strong comparisons of a year ago, the mix shift and the types of groups we had on the books and the calendar shift in the Jewish holidays. The disruption associated with hurricanes Harvey and Irma certainly did not help the situation. That said we're pleased with how our hotels responded, where we finished the quarter and our business' trajectory for the remainder of the year. With that backdrop, let we walk you through our third quarter results. In the third quarter, the company generated total consolidated revenue of $264.7 million, down 2.6%; and net income of $23.9 million, a 28.9% decrease from the third quarter of 2016. Third quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $75.5 million represented a 9.1% decrease over the third quarter of last year and a 210 basis point decrease in adjusted EBITDA margin. Third quarter AFFO of $56 million was 14.6% below the third quarter of 2016 and amounted to $1.09 per fully diluted share. As a result of the aforementioned hurricanes, in-the-year, for-the-year cancellations and attrition increased this quarter versus last year. Cancellations increased 85.5%, while attrition across the portfolio in Q3 increased 2.1 percentage points. Finally, attrition and cancellation revenue collected in the quarter totaled $2.4 million. Turning to our guidance. As Colin described earlier, with two months left in the year, and the past 3 quarters coming in about where we expected, we're narrowing our range for full year RevPAR growth from 1% to 3% to 2.5% to 3%, which represents a 75 basis point improvement at the midpoint. In terms of full year total RevPAR, we're maintaining our previous guidance range of 1% to 2%, leaving…

No, Mark. I have no -- nothing else to say other than Christie, let's open the lines for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Chris Woronka of Deutsche Bank.

Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask you on the kind of the forward bookings, you guys had a really good year there and the pace looks pretty impressive. And so the question is kind of are we -- do you think we're back to the -- whatever you want call the good old days of 2006 or 2007, in terms of how far out people are booking? And do you think there's -- or do you think there's still more room to go?

Pat, do want to try and answer that and then I'll weigh in?

Sure. Chris, this is Patrick. I would tell you that to your point, obviously, we're very pleased with the position that we're. We finished the third quarter of 2017 with the highest number of room nights on the books for all advanced periods, second highest in the history of the brand, only behind December of last year. We've been watching the booking window very closely. We have seen a little bit of growth that is encouraging on the government side. And more recently, we've seen some positive trends on the corporate side. So we still believe that there is some additional runway for us to go here and we expect that things will continue to be good. Having said that, obviously, availability is a challenge for us because we have so many room nights on the books. So I don't expect that we'll continue producing record levels of sales production, but I think we'll continue to see some solid sales production results out of our team as we do believe that the trends continue to be positive.

But the overall move, Patrick, of Corporate America, seems to be decent. It's not like it was in 2007. I think if we do get tax reform through, Chris, here over the next few months, I think you could see some still fairly material strengthening of this economy and that is extremely good for our business. So we're pretty pleased where we sit. And I just -- I can't underscore what Patrick said about the fact that our bookings are 7% -- our total room nights on the books are 7% up over this time last year. That is a tremendous growth of overall bookings that we've put on the books and that also, by the way, translates very well into 2018. So we're very, very pleased with where we are, particularly with this additional capacity coming. And look, if we -- one of the things that we have the ability of doing is understanding week-by-week, month-by-month turndowns, how many room nights we can't accommodate and if we continue to see this build, the turndowns building, we're not going to be shy to add more capacity in these massive hotels that we own.

Chris, the only other thing I would add to that is that the industry continues to see a shift towards larger groups in terms of the types of groups that are growing. And that's obviously in our wheelhouse and when you look at supply and supply that's to come; our portfolio is positioned quite well for that segment.

Right. Just as a quick follow-up. I know Marriott and Hilton and others have kind of changed their -- some of the cancellation policies more on the transient side and my question is, a, does that actually have any accrual benefits to you all in terms of even managing last-minute groups or your piece of transient business better? And the second part is really, do you think there are changes coming to the group cancellation policies?

Chris, this is Patrick again. From a group perspective, we already have some very solid policies in place and I don't anticipate there'll be any changes to our brand. They may take some of the best practices and learnings from the Gaylord brand and apply them to the other group segments within both the Starwood family and the Marriott family. So I think we'll continue to see more of the same. On the transient side though, to your point earlier, I do think that we'll stand to benefit, as the cancellation policies do become a little bit more robust to the benefit of Marriott and to the ownership.

And your next question comes from Bill Crow from Raymond James.

Good morning, guys. If we start with the fourth quarter and kind of guidance implicit in that. Congratulations on October; terrific results. Can you talk about the -- kind of the deceleration that has to occur in November and December to get you kind of back down to what's implicit in the guidance?

Bill, this is Patrick. Yes, just to give you some thoughts around November, December. Obviously, Colin's already talked about really solid results in October, benefiting from the shift in the Jewish holidays for us, but also just a really strong book of business across the brand. As we look at November and December, if you think back over 2015 and 2016, you'll see that we've been operating at very high levels. There's obviously always additional room for improvement and we're making investments into our holidays programming and offerings at Gaylord National. But the other three hotels have been operating at very high levels. And so if you look back, in 2015, we had 11% RevPAR growth in December; in 2016, we have it 1%. So December is at a very high level. November, we saw good growth last year of about 5.5%. So some good comps or some tough comps, if you will, comparing for November and December. So as we look to that, it's not that we're saying that we're not going to have solid months, but to your point, it won't be quite as strong as we what saw in October, simply because there's not quite the easy comp that we saw in October of last year, from the fact that the Jewish holidays has shifted out, and we have a better book of business for this -- or had a better book of business for this October.

And the reality is it shifts disproportionately to leisure and we've got a short fuse here. So we know that our pace so far is really tracking pretty well against last year for November and December. But there's still a lot of business to be booked into November and particularly December. So we're being, sort of, I think reasonably cautious on this because it's just transient business and it's a little bit harder to predict than the way we're able to predict on group. But we're off to one, a very impressive start; and we expect the fourth quarter to be pretty good for us.

Yes. It sounds like it. Mark, there's no nonrecurring items or maybe a step up in cancellation or attrition fees in the fourth quarter, right, that would push up EBITDA?

No. There's not.

Okay, great. Colin, an Entertainment question for you. And it just seems like it's been a rough month or two for celebrities and high-profile business guys, et cetera. And I'm just wondering how you think about underwriting risk building out an Entertainment venue, multiple locations, really tied to one performer?

So Ole Red is really a lifestyle brand around the image of a guy like Blake Shelton. Blake is an individual who loves the outdoor life, the hunting, fishing. He's a little irreverent, and we're going to be building out this brand around that particular lifestyle. A way to think about it is Margaritaville to Jimmy Buffet. Margaritaville is a brand that goes after a particular beach-loving, martini-drinking group of individuals. And Blake has got a massive following. I mean, this guy, you only had to see it on CBS this morning to understand the following he has. So we are -- the brand is not like Shelton. The brand is Ole Red. And so that's how we're building this brand out. And Opry City Stage is a 90-year-old brand and -- Opry is a 91-year-old brand. And again, it's -- it appeals to a particular consumer group and that's why we're building that brand out.

Right. If I could just ask just one final question. Colin, are you surprised -- I was. Are you surprised that GAMCO took more active a stance after all these years of owning your stock?

Obviously, I don't look at it that way. I don't look at it as an activist stance. I -- look, I would tell you, I communicate with Mario Gabelli very frequently and -- because I happen to respect him. He's been a very, very good shareholder. Bill, you sit on these quarterly earnings calls, there's been multiple times when his analysts and 1 or 2 times Mario talked about the potential spinning of this business. And I think what Mario would like to be able to do is to potentially own more of this business and have it standing alone. And so I sort of don't look at this as sort of an activist approach to life. I sort of see this that he wants us to get there sooner rather than later. And I don't think our board; our management disagrees with the notion of the business standing alone. It's just that Mario doesn't have all of the nonpublic -- he doesn't have nonpublic information, on all of the things we're working on right now. And so that's what we're focused on. And so I sort of don't look at this as sort of someone that is filing a resolution to get out of the business, sell a business, turn a business upside down. That's not what's going on here. He sees -- if you listen to what he says when he sits on CNBC or if you were to talk to him in person, he has the same philosophical beliefs about this business as we do. The issue is getting it standing on its own two feet and not ensnared into a real estate investment trust. So I don't look at it as a sort of an activist movement. I really don't.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the floor back over to Colin Reed for any additional or closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. We'll see you -- those of the investors are going to be in Texas next week, we look forward to showing you around the beautiful Gaylord Texan, that's operating at very high levels of performance and talking through the strategy of our company. So thank you, everyone.

This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.