Michael Brown
Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is now live
Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. I look forward to expanding on the strong first quarter results you saw in our press release earlier today, as well as handing the call over to Mike Hug for a review of our financial performance. This will be Mike's last earnings call, and I would like to thank Mike for his twenty-six years with our company and his last seven as the first and only Travel + Leisure Co. CFO. During his leadership, Mike has seen us grow revenues from $500 million to $4 billion, has brought the company public, navigated us through the great financial crisis and COVID, and has been integral in ensuring we execute against our operational plans and our capital return strategy with incredible consistency. Thank you, Mike. In quarter one, we delivered $202 million of adjusted EBITDA, at the high end of our guidance range. Our vacation ownership business was once again driven by VPGs well above $3,000. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA margins grew from 21% in the prior year to 22%. We also continued to return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Our dividend increased 12% to $0.56 per share, and share repurchases were $70 million or 1.3 million shares in Q1. Before I address the question we're asked most often, which is how is the consumer, let me first take a moment to revisit who our 800,000-plus owners actually are. On average, they're 59 years old, with a household income in excess of $110,000 and a tenure of about 17 years. Eighty percent have fully paid off their ownership, and our newest buyers, 65% of whom are Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, reflect the appeal of our product across generations. In short, our consumer KPIs performed very well in Q1. Consistent with the broad commentary in the marketplace, we recognize there is incrementally more uncertainty in the macro outlook, and consumer sentiment has fallen progressively in 2025. Our perspective is that we will continue to monitor the available data; however, we have not seen meaningful changes in our company-specific KPIs. Our owners showed continued demand for vacation ownership in the first quarter. This was most clearly reflected in our best daily measure, volume per guest or VPG. Our VPG was $3,212, up from 2024 and notably above $3,000. We also measure consumer demand through our owners' desire to visit our properties, as shown in resort bookings. We saw an acceleration of resort bookings as the quarter progressed. Mike will speak to a third important KPI during his overview. Our performance in Q1 is a great reminder of the characteristics of the timeshare business that are often overlooked, starting with the reality that our owners continue to prioritize their travel and generally do not view vacations as discretionary. Travel patterns do tend to shift with economic conditions, and in that regard, we monitor drive-to versus fly-to arrival percentages as well as booking windows. There has been no change in the percent of owners driving to our resorts, and we have only seen a modest reduction in our booking window. Compared to the same time last year, the booking window has We see strong build for the upcoming months, and our second quarter reservations on the books are in line with expectations. When you combine VPGs, forward bookings, and travel trends, we currently see our consumer as quite resilient. We also observed that our investments in technology are beginning to yield higher owner satisfaction. The Club Wyndham app has now been downloaded by nearly 100,000 owners or approximately 20% of our Club Wyndham owner base. This is up from 40,000 downloads when we last reported. The app is driving a search-to-book conversion rate of 71%, representing a 22% increase compared to the booking conversion on the owner website. As I mentioned in our last call, we will deploy a similar app to our 200,000-plus WorldMark owners later this year. Additionally, our resort operations team has deployed texting capabilities, increasing on-site satisfaction scores to new highs in Q1. All of this is to say demand was solid in Q1, and our satisfaction rates are increasing. Moving to travel and membership, industry consolidation continues to drive the migration from external to internal exchanges, putting continued pressure on the segment. Exchange transactions were down in the quarter; however, the business had its strongest exchange year-over-year transaction performance toward the end of the quarter. Our travel club business showed transaction growth of 3% in the quarter, with an expectation of acceleration in Q2, highlighting an opportunity to support the Traveler membership segment. Q1 is typically the strongest transaction quarter; therefore, transaction trends and margin will remain our focus in Q2. Our VO strength more than offset weakness in this segment, and we expect a similar dynamic throughout 2025, albeit with different orders of magnitude. Lastly, let me touch on our brand strategy. Starting with our partnership with Wyndham Hotels, Blue Thread performance in Q1 contributed 7% of new owner tours, with the VPG more than 20% higher than other new owner channels. Our relationship with the core in Asia Pacific has been performing for a year with good success. Sports Illustrated remains on pace to start sales in 2025, and we have dedicated significant resources to reinvigorate our sales and expansion efforts for Margaritaville. We announced the new Margaritaville Resort in Orlando that will open in 2027, placing a vacation ownership resort next to the successful 265-room Margaritaville hotel and 900 Margaritaville cottages on the doorsteps of Disney. We have nearly completed an organizational realignment to marry strategy, economic objectives, and people around our brands. Although it is a subtle change, it is one that ensures we are laser-focused on the successful execution of these brands. As we look to Q2, on the back of the strength from Q1, we are projecting $250 million of adjusted EBITDA with a range of $5 million on either side. We are reiterating our full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook. Mike will provide more details on this outlook, and with that, let me hand the call over to Mike.