Steve Weisz
Analyst · MKM Partners. Please proceed with your question
Thanks Jeff. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. This morning, I will walk through our second quarter results and provide an update on our top-line growth initiatives which give us confidence that we will achieve our full year guidance and provide a solid foundation for future growth. I will then turn the call over to John to provide a more detailed review of our second quarter and outlook for the year before we open the call to your questions. Second quarter company contract sales were $166 million slightly ahead of the second quarter of last year and in line with our expectations as we indicated in our first quarter call. This stemmed primarily from strong performance in both our Asia Pacific and Europe segments which combined improved over 30% or $5 million. In North America, contract sales were down 3.3% or $5 million, which was not unexpected as our Latin American sales channels continue to experience many of the same headwinds we saw in the last three quarters, driving $2.1 million of the second quarter decline. Going forward, we expect the decrease in our Latin American sales to subside as we lap the initial strengthening of the U.S. dollar, which occurred in the late July of 2015. Contract sales in North America were also impacted by the Owner Recognition Level or ORL changes, which occurred last year. Since this promotion ran through the end of April 2015, the tough prior year comparison continued well into the second quarter. Since that time, we've seen positive indications that we're generating contract sales growth. To that end, let me take a moment to walk you through the high level trends we have seen in the latter half of the quarter. Total North America contract sales were $145.6 million down $5 million to the prior year. However it is important to understand the pace of contract sales within the quarter to see the entire picture. In the first five weeks of the quarter, our North America onsite contract sales were down over 6% to last year as we continue to experience the comparison from the ORL changes in 2015. For the last seven weeks of the quarter after we lapped that tough comparison, we were up over 4% to the same seven weeks in 2015, primarily due to a year-over-year increase of over 650 tours during this same timeframe. Putting all this together highlights the positive trends we expected to see from improvements in our new programs designed to drive tour flow mainly Call Transfer and Universal Encore. These programs continue to wrap up with the pipeline increasing in additional 3500 tours from the first quarter of this year while just as important activated tour package were up almost 40% over this time last year. The vast majority of these tours are scheduled to arrive in the second half of 2016, providing confidence that we will continue our recent positive trends throughout the second half of the year. Now let me turn to our other piece of our story the one which is expected to provide a large part of our future growth, not just in 2016, but in the years to come. We are very pleased to have four of our six new sales centers open and expect to have the other two open by the end of the year, so let me provide an update on each one. In Australia we launched our sales operation at our Surface Paradise Resort location early in the second quarter and sales are continuing to ramp up. Additionally, I’m pleased to announce that we have completed the renovations of all 88 vacation ownership units in the property and have opened these units to our owners and guests. In Washington D.C. we opened our permanent sales gallery located across the street from our units at the Mayflower Hotel and are currently working on completing our marketing arrangements in the local area, which will allow us to maximize the opportunity in this location as sales continue to grow. In New York, we begin sales early in the quarter and have recently completed the permanent on-site sales center. We're off to a great start in our on-site location and we’ve also signed a lease for a much larger off-site sales center nearby. This additional space will allow us to handle the future tour of volume we expect to generate in New York and should be open by the end of this year or early next. At our San Diego property, we’ve recently opened our on-site sales gallery in conjunction with our first set of beautifully renovated rooms and common areas and are seeing good tour flow at sales in this location begins to grow. On the big Island of Hawaii, the renovations of our 112 one and two bedroom units are well underway with the expectation of delivery in July 2017. Work on the permanent sales center is expected to be completed soon with an opening date in September of this year. And finally in South Beach, we have signed a lease for the sales location very close to the property. Our expectations remain to complete the sales center by the end of the year, providing strong future sales growth as it starts to generate sales beginning in 2017. I’m excited to see all the new properties in our portfolio and what they bring to our company, not just from potential sales opportunities, but also as great new vacation destinations for our owners and guests. I look forward to opening the two remaining new sales locations later this year and updating you on their continued progress as well as our new planned locations in Bali. Moving to our recent disposition efforts, I am pleased to announce that we have completed the sale of the downside Surfers Paradise Hotel, as well as the bulk sale of our remaining units at the Ritz-Carlton Club and residences in San Francisco. On a combined basis, these transactions generated over $65 million of additional net cash flow. With the completion of these two transactions, only two parcels remain for disposition, a small ocean front parcel in the Bahamas and our ocean front parcel in Cancun which remains a potential asset light transaction for future growth. Now, allow me to take a moment to discuss our contract sales outlook not only as it relates to our guidance of 4% to 8% for 2016 but also for 2017 and beyond. In order to achieve the midpoint of our full year guidance, the growth target in the second half of this year is 16% over the second half of 2015. While challenging and not without risk, let me highlight several of the trends and opportunities we showcase why we remain confident. First, we expect to see growth in our Latin America sales channels as we lap the strengthening of the U.S. dollar which occurred in late July of last year. Next, since we passed the tough comparison to the very successful ORL program change which occurred in the first half of 2015, contract sales volume has grown and tour flow has increased substantially. In addition to these positive trends, our activated pipeline of tours in the second half of the year underscores the strong growth potential of our same store contract sales. We expect that more than half of our contract sales growth in the second half of the year will come from these activated tours. Lastly, as it relates to our new destinations, we’ve already opened the majority of our new sale centers and are on pace to open our fifth new center during the third quarter. We expect these new locations to provide the remaining growth necessary to achieve our full year guidance. Looking past 2016 while each sale center could take 2 to 3 years to fully ramp up, we expect these locations alone could generate well over $125 million in sales volume once they are at full production. For these reasons, we remain confident not only in our 2016 contract sales and adjusted EBITDA guidance but also in our ability to grow our top line in 2017 and beyond. With that, I will turn the call over to John to provide a more detailed look at our second quarter results. John?