Michael Flaskey
Analyst · Mizuho
Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by saying how encouraged we are with our second quarter results, and more importantly, with the precise execution of our sales and marketing teams that delivered these results on a very aggressive time line that we had laid out. It took a company-wide effort to get these merchandising tools launched. Today, I will be highlighting the 5-step commercial strategy that drove our second quarter results and provide color on each of these initiatives and how they impacted the quarter. I will then focus on how we will sustain the long-term growth of the company. Since joining the company in mid-February, we identified a significant value creation opportunity to improve performance and then created a disciplined 5-step commercial strategy. During the second quarter, we completed implementation of that strategy and the results began to show. We launched the 5 key commercial initiatives and began executing them across the organization. Each month of the quarter got sequentially better, including May and June, which were the 2 highest sales months in the company's history. Highlighting our results, our contract sales increased 22% year-over-year in the quarter, while VPG grew 23% to $4,477. These results were the product of our proven strategy, the power of our brands, along with the outstanding execution of our team. Let me walk through the key initiatives we've implemented and what we're seeing so far. First, at the heart of the strategy is connections. Our commitment to connecting with our owners while they're on vacation and creating deeper interactions throughout their ownership journey. Everything that we are doing is designed to deepen those relationships, create more meaningful engagement, improve the customer experience and ultimately drive stronger tour flow and contract sales. I am happy to report that we improved our owner arrival-to-tour ratio, now branded Connections, by 600 basis points in the second quarter compared to last year, and we will continue to improve this key driver. Second, our Tour Logistics initiative. We launched this data-driven yield management algorithm starting in April to better match the right customer with the right sales executive every tour wave across our company. The goal was to improve both the effectiveness of conversion and the overall guest experience while using propensity data to drive our decision-making. What we're seeing is significantly higher VPGs, driven by a higher average transaction size. As the quarter progressed, we saw VPG continue to improve month after month as our Tour Logistics gained momentum and our teams executed against the strategy. North America tours increased 3% in the quarter and are now up 1% year-to-date through the end of the quarter, showing excellent demand for our product. Together, these results show that both Connections and Tour Logistics are driving stronger tour flow and contract sales performance across our sales organization. Third, a complete transformation of our owner loyalty program, including creating and rolling out 2 new loyalty tiers at the top, Reserve and Pinnacle. These new tiers are driving aspiration to own more and are designed to better engage our owners and help them get even more value from their ownership given their affinity to our brands. Our average points owner owns just 1.3 weeks equivalency of ownership. In my 30 years in this industry, my experience would indicate that owners with a high affinity for brands and with strong engagement will purchase 3 to 4 weeks equivalent over the lifetime of their ownership. Early response has been extremely positive. We're seeing increased engagement from our owner base and a nice lift in average transaction size. This is exactly the kind of owner response we had hoped to see, and it reinforces our diligence that there is significant long-term embedded value still to unlock within our existing owner base. Fourth, our Premier Vacations initiative was introduced on June 9 as a new point-of-sale incentive, designed to support increased sales today while also creating a significant and predictable pipeline of future tours that will generate our highest VPG channel when traveling on their premier vacation's incentive trip. We are already seeing this program contribute to near-term VPGs while also creating a growing and predictable future pipeline that will drive highly profitable future sales. Fifth, our Inner Circle presented by Aflac headline event franchise. We launched this experiential platform on June 22 with country music superstar Lee Brice and executed an additional 5 highly successful events during the second quarter. The VPGs have been tremendous, and our owner feedback and engagement was outstanding. Our objective is clear: to create higher quality engagement with our owners, drive lifetime value, improve connections with our owners and drive incremental tour flow. Importantly, VPGs associated with these events were well above our average and significantly exceeded our expectations. This reinforced our knowledge that this platform will drive stronger connection rates and contract sales with the power of our execution and our owners' affinity to our brands. We expect Inner Circle to become a key driver of higher quality tour flow and continued VPG growth as we rapidly scale the program. We also believe this type of experiential platform fits extremely well with our brands, our owner base and the way our customers want to vacation. As for the long-term plan for our business, I would like to lay out our strategy. It falls into 3 distinct areas: owner growth, first-time buyer growth and operational growth. First, owner growth. VPG increase. We are continuing to see VPG growth. We believe we have strong tailwinds and a healthy upside embedded in our recently launched strategy. Premier Vacations is building a large pipeline of very predictable owner tour flow. When owners travel on this bonus vacation, we expect that they will convert at a very strong VPG level. Connection rate. We will continue to improve owner arrival to tour rates with our owners when they travel to our resorts in the future. Inner Circle will be scaled in a significant way over the course of 2027 and beyond, allowing us to realize the increased connection rate associated with producing one of our experiential events as well as the outsized VPGs associated with them. First-time buyer growth. Package sale pipeline. We will continue to grow through previews sold to guests who will tour our beautiful resorts in the future and attend a sales presentation while doing so. This preview package sales growth will continue to be fueled by the robust Marriott Bonvoy and World of Hyatt databases. Hotel linkage program. This is being aggressively expanded, whereby we will have marketing desk in the lobby of select branded hotels across North America, and we will invite hotel guests to purchase a preview package to tour one of our resorts in North America. Partnership marketing. This is a significant incremental growth channel for us. We are building a team that will sell packages face-to-face in the marketplaces. They will identify companies and events with high guest flow of leisure-minded guests who will provide us the opportunity to sell a preview package to their guests as well as make offers electronically to their database. Operational growth, recruiting. We have recently invested in enhancing our sales and marketing recruiting team to ensure that we are staffed appropriately and positioned to take advantage of the growth that lies ahead in front of us. Training platforms have been decentralized back to the regions to enhance the training process as well as the speed to market. Price elasticity. The business has upside opportunity given our strong performance in Q2. We increased prices on July 1, and our performance continues to be strong. We have confidence that there is still incremental price increase opportunity ahead. Cost reductions. We will continue to address these within the business while effectively supporting the necessary growth strategy that we have in place. We are confident in the sustainability of our performance. As we have said, the second half of this year will continue our revenue growth story, and we also expect nice margin improvement driven by both leveraging our fixed cost and the impact of the cost-saving measures that have been implemented. We are also focused on 2027 and beyond and are strategically ramping a predictable pipeline of both owner and first-time buyer tour flow growth. In closing, during my discussions to join Marriott Vacations, it was clear there was a meaningful opportunity in the company. Having now spent 6 months immersed in the organization, I would tell you that the opportunity is even greater than I could have forecasted. We have outlined a very powerful near-term transformation strategy that is already showing excellent results. In addition, we have laid out a very sustainable long-term plan that will provide predictable and profitable growth for the company out into the future. These plans, coupled with our world-class brands, access to 2 great loyalty programs with highly engaged and qualified owner bases and an extremely talented team give us tremendous confidence in the future of the company. What excites me most is that the results we delivered in the second quarter show what is possible when we execute with focus, discipline and speed. The quarter reinforced my confidence in both the near-term and long-range value creation opportunity and our team's ability to execute it. With that, I'll turn it over to Jason.