Christopher Bilotto
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. Yesterday, we reported fourth quarter results that highlight our continued progress optimizing SVC's portfolio, strengthening our financial profile and repositioning the company for long-term growth and value creation. I will begin today's call with a brief update on our key strategic and financial initiatives and share operating highlights from our hotel portfolio. Jesse will provide an update on our net lease platform and recent acquisitions. Brian will then discuss our financial results and balance sheet, along with the introduction of annual guidance for 2026. Starting with our strategic priorities. We had a productive quarter, completing previously announced hotel sales and taking action to reduce leverage and strengthen SVC's balance sheet. During the quarter, we sold 66 hotels totaling nearly 8,300 keys for $534 million. This activity increased our total dispositions for the year to 112 hotels, totaling approximately 14,600 keys for nearly $860 million. We used the proceeds and cash on hand to proactively redeem all $800 million of our 2026 debt maturities and $300 million of our February 2027 notes. Building on this momentum, in 2026, we remain focused on selling additional hotels and executing further strategies to improve SVC's cash flows, debt maturity profile and overall cost of capital. Consistent with these objectives, in January, we sold the Simply Suites for $7.1 million with 133 keys and launched the remarketing of 9 focused service hotels that we initially brought to market in 2025. These hotels benefit from stable occupancy and positive cash flow, providing an opportunity to cater to a wider buyer pool, which is supported by the current interest level we are seeing with the marketing process. Also in January, we initiated the marketing of 7 full-service Sonesta managed hotels with 2,010 keys with locations across the Southeast, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Given their current cash drag, the sale of these 7 properties is expected to increase annual EBITDA by approximately $13 million and improve our leverage metrics. We believe these assets offer an attractive opportunity for investors seeking value-add lodging real estate with repositioning potential through targeted capital investment. In terms of timing, our current plan is to formalize offers and select buyers over the next several months, and we are targeting staggered closings during the back half of 2026. We estimate total proceeds of $175 million to $200 million, which will be used for debt reduction. Complementing these efforts, earlier this week, we announced further actions to strengthen our debt maturity profile. We priced $745 million of new 5-year mortgage financing secured by our existing net lease master trust. To support this financing, SVC contributed to the Trust an additional 158 retail properties, which included legacy properties where we renewed tenants or re-tenanted the property, one of our travel center master leases and assets we acquired over the past year. In total, the contributed properties had an appraised value of approximately $1.1 billion. The transaction proceeds will be used to redeem all $700 million of our 8.375% notes due in 2029 at a significantly lower interest rate. Based on the weighted average coupon of 5.96%, we expect this transaction to result in annual cash savings of approximately $14 million or $0.08 per share. With the completion of this new financing in 2026, we will continue to focus our efforts on improving performance within our hotel portfolio, along with capital preservation, which includes reduced net lease acquisition activity to roughly $25 million funded through sales of select net lease assets, along with a reduction to our overall capital spend across our hotel portfolio, which Brian will speak to momentarily. Turning to hotel performance. During the fourth quarter, the U.S. lodging industry remained soft amid uneven demand trends with RevPAR declining 1.1% year-over-year. Performance continued to be bifurcated as the luxury and upper upscale segments were the only segments to post growth, supported by higher income leisure travelers and premium experiences. The business transient segment remained muted, reflecting the impact of the prolonged government shutdown and value-conscious customers remain sensitive to broader macroeconomic conditions pressuring lower-tier segments. SVC's portfolio continued to deliver steady top line growth as RevPAR increased 70 basis points year-over-year, outpacing the broader industry by 180 basis points and representing the fifth consecutive quarter of outperformance. We have invested significantly in hotel renovations in recent years, upgrading nearly half of our retained portfolio, and these assets are delivering stronger top line performance. We expect this momentum to continue as our renovated hotels capture market share. Excluding the hotels we are exiting, our remaining 77 hotels delivered relatively stronger fourth quarter performance with RevPAR up 170 basis points year-over-year, driven by occupancy gains of 140 basis points. Contract business, particularly airline-related demand, remained a key growth driver, partially offset by a decline in government bookings and softer transient revenues. Hotel EBITDA declined year-over-year due to elevated labor costs and broader operating expense pressures. Additionally, the scale and timing of hotel dispositions during the quarter created temporary operational disruption that weighed on performance, which we view as largely transitional. As the volume and pace of dispositions conclude, we expect this disruption to taper, allowing performance to normalize. Further complementing our efforts to support performance improvement across our hotels, Sonesta, which manages the majority of SVC's owned hotels and is 34% owned by SVC, recently announced the appointment of Keith Pierce and Jeff Leer as Co-CEOs effective April 1. We believe their leadership and experience will be instrumental in further optimizing Sonesta RevPAR market share performance while driving operational discipline and efficiencies across the SVC-owned portfolio. Looking ahead to 2026, we are cautiously optimistic that lodging market conditions will improve and that demand will stabilize as the year progresses. More specifically, our hotel footprint is well positioned to benefit from large events throughout the year, including the World Cup, with 75 matches taking place in SVC markets, representing over 40% of our retained hotel rooms. Across our net lease portfolio, we are forecasting continued improvement with ongoing leasing, sales of noncore assets and benefits from the full year NOI contribution from our acquisitions in 2025. I will now turn it over to Jesse to discuss the net lease portfolio in more detail.