Welcome to the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. . I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Geoff Ballotti, our CEO; and Michele Allen, our CFO. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC. We'll also be referring to a number of non-GAAP measures. Corresponding GAAP measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP metrics are provided in our earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.wyndhamhotels.com. We are providing certain measures discussing future impact on a non-GAAP basis only because without unreasonable efforts, we are unable to provide the comparable GAAP metric. In addition, last evening, we posted an investor presentation containing supplemental information on our Investor Relations website. We may continue to provide supplemental information on our website in the future. Accordingly, we encourage investors to monitor our website in addition to our press releases, filings submitted with the SEC and any public conference calls or webcast. With that, I will turn the call over to Geoff.

Thanks, Matt, and thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. 2021 once again demonstrated the strength of our brands, the resiliency of the leisure traveler and the benefits of the select service economy and mid-scale segments. Many of our franchisees reported the best year they've ever experienced since owning their hotel. Our team's significant progress and accomplishments throughout the year contributed to these outstanding results, positioning our owners and our business for future success. We delivered $590 million of adjusted EBITDA for the full year, over $250 million more than last year and only 5% below 2019. We generated $389 million of free cash flow, over 10x more than last year and $330 million more than we did back in 2019. We closed the year with net room growth in line with our expectations at 1.8%. In the United States, openings for the full year were 96% of 2019 levels, and importantly, we saw a significant improvement in domestic demand as we progress throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, we opened 9,900 rooms, which was 20% higher than 2019's openings. And with the transaction markets and single asset sales picking up, conversion room openings increased over 35% in the fourth quarter versus 2019. Room openings internationally ran 75% of 2019 levels also accelerating throughout the year as they did domestically. In the fourth quarter, we opened 82% of the rooms opened in 2019 as travel restrictions were lifted and owners felt more confident about rising demand. International net room growth was 4%. Our China direct franchising business led the way with double-digit net room growth followed by Latin America at 7% net room growth. We introduced 11 of our 22 brands into 18 new countries and territories, strengthening our foundation for future franchise growth in those regions, including our…

Thanks, Geoff, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my remarks today with a detailed review of our fourth quarter and full year results. I'll then review our cash flows and balance sheet, followed by our 2022 outlook. We generated $314 million of fee-related and other revenues and $131 million of adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter, bringing our full year fee-related and other revenues to $1.25 billion and adjusted EBITDA to $590 million, both well above our expectations. Fourth quarter global RevPAR grew 52% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, 58% in the U.S. and 40% internationally. Versus 2019, RevPAR was up 9% led by our economy brands, which were 19% above 2019; followed by our mid-scale brands, which also continued their sequential client surpassing 2019 levels by 5%. ADR exceeded 2019 by 8%, while occupancy exceeded by 2%. Notably, 72% of our markets in the U.S. outpaced 2019 occupancy levels in the fourth quarter. National Park and beach destinations led the way. The South Atlantic region where nearly 1/4 of our system is concentrated grew RevPAR 12%, and National Park destinations where about 4% of our system is located grew by 17%. January trends continue to bode well as U.S. RevPAR was 3% above 2019, including economy RevPAR up 15%. Internationally, RevPAR continued to improve to 81% of 2019 levels, up from 75% in the third quarter. Outside of China, all international regions experienced significant sequential improvement from the third quarter despite COVID spikes and new variants. Canada improved to 91% of 2019 levels up from 83% in the third quarter, and EMEA improved to 84%, up from 75% in the third quarter. Recovery in China continued to moderate during the fourth quarter at 77% of 2019 levels as a result of sustained lockdowns, and we anticipate that this…

. We'll take a question from Joe Greff of JPMorgan.

Geoff, I was hoping you can give us a little bit more detail on this extended stay brand launch. how will that be positioned versus what choice. And I guess with Blackstone and Barry now owned with this kind of extended America brand, price point, the value proposition to hotel owners. Can you just talk a little bit more about that, please?

Sure. Thanks, Joe. I think it will be positioned right alongside. I mean extended stay demand has proven to be just absolutely recession and pandemic proof. And we know that the demand is growing. I mean we've seen in our upper mid-scale extended stay brand with Hawthorne Suites, a 50% increase in our pipeline over the last year. And we know that demand is out there for an extended stay economy brand. You referenced brands that are doing very well in that space. . Our developers are asking for an economy extended stay brand, our franchisees are asking for it. And most importantly, our corporate accounts are asking for it. I mean we know that there are over 10 million construction workers out there that travel every week. And we also know that relocation and long-term assignments are going to continue to pick up. We're going to see, we feel, millions of more essential workers hitting the road with the coming Infrastructure Bill and keeping that industry-wide extended stay average daily rate occupancy up in the high 70s and 80% range. And these are our customers. These are our business accounts. So last year, we assembled a developers counsel with many of the nation's top extended state developers to really help us think through the design, the room counts, the operational processes and to help us design a prototype that they know will work and that they will want to build themselves. I mean many of these developers have already built other new construction prototypes before of ours. They've worked with our award-winning architecture design and construction team who we couldn't be happier with that we inherited from La Quinta. I mean this is a team that's designed and opened over 150 La Quinta del Sol prototypes over the past few years and designed our new Hawthorn Suites extended stay prototype and our new economy Microtel Moda prototype with the same approach. So we know that there's demand out there. We think this will be more popular than our other new construction prototypes, I mean, our economy Microtel Moda. We signed over a dozen new construction executions in the fourth quarter alone. And we now have 13,000 rooms out there in the pipeline, and that economy brand grew in our pipeline 40% year-over-year. So we think it is going to be more popular. We're seeing very strong developer interest right now. We're already being asked by those developers for sites. And we'll have a lot more to talk about in the coming weeks about it.

Great. And then my follow-up, maybe this is for Michele or Matt. Can you talk about the cadence of net rooms growth throughout 2022? Is it similar to past normal years? Or how, I guess, back-end loaded it might be or not be. If you can give us some commentary there, that would help us.

Sure, Joe. As you know, the net room growth is typically back-end weighted, and I wouldn't expect to see any changes to that as we move throughout 2022. I think what we're really focused on is making sure we're posted -- we're posting sequential net room growth every quarter, but I think you'd expect to see the largest of that coming in the fourth quarter as is typical for our business.

Great. And just one other one if I could squeeze in there, Geoff. I thought what was interesting was in the fourth quarter, December is stronger than November, November is stronger than October and December stronger despite the impact from Omicron. Can you talk about what you've seen so far year-to-date, quarter-to-date? And that's all from me.

Yes. No, it's -- the demand is really impressive, Joe. Michele and I are heading down on Monday to our resort in Orlando and meeting with 300 or 400 franchisees. Next week at one of our executive summits, and we were told that Friday and Saturday night are sold out at average daily rates at 20%, 30% above what it was in '19. And the team has told us that, that was the same for really every weekend through Easter for not only that hotel, but our other hotels like the Wyndham Grand in Clearwater. We've been looking at the business on the books for our top 20 spring break markets, and it's running 2x what it was versus the same time last year, led by California. We're seeing good demand in Florida. We're seeing off the chart demand, Texas. What we've seen, I could say over, through the fifth, it will be interesting to see what comes out in Smith. I think you'll see a little bit of softness last week because President's Week was a week earlier last year, and I think you'll see really strong demand this weekend. But what we've seen through the 2nd of February was just, again, continued strong demand. January was up 15%. In our economy space, RevPAR, the week ending February 5 was also up double digits. But the last 2 months, the last 8 weeks through the week, February 15, our economy RevPAR is running 19% ahead of where it was in 2019, and our mid-scale RevPAR is running 6% ahead of where it was in 2019. And so look, we had expected seasonal lower occupancy this quarter, but we've been seeing increasing occupancy and increasingly occupancy growth in the midweek, which is where we think there is going to be the real opportunity for us in the weeks and the months ahead.

Our next question is from David Katz of Jefferies.

I wanted to ask about the kind of long-term trend line for net unit growth, right, as we sort of progress through all this, there's a lot of noise in the numbers. Where do you think the domestic and international net unit growth numbers kind of settle in for Wyndham as we think about how to value your stock, right, on a long-term recurring basis?

That's a great question, David. Thanks for that. Domestically, we were really impressed with how domestic opens accelerated. We opened 10,000 rooms, which was 5,000 over last year and 20% more than '19 in '21. And domestically, our system grew 70 basis points in '21, and it was back to the same level that it was in 2019. So we would expect growth to increase further domestically in '22 and we'd expect to start the year -- we're expecting to start the year with positive domestic Q1 growth. . And we'll continue to target and see growth in the midscale and above segments as strong as it's been. We were thrilled with the 5% net room growth domestic increase in those segments in 2021. I think to your question, over the long term, we have right now best in segment retention rates at 95%, as we've talked about, we're looking to move those to 96%. That, of course, would add another point to our domestic net room growth. We were able to achieve that in 2021. And with new launches like our new economy extended stay brand, we're expecting strong growth from hotels -- hotel brands like -- in that segment, and we're very optimistic about that. And then internationally, we've seen really strong growth. We had a 5% increase in our direct franchising business of 4% international net room growth overall in the fourth quarter, and we'll be looking to continue to move that up as we were able to do in 2019.

Perfect. And as my follow-up, I'm going to sort of wrap 2 things in there, if it's okay, because I think they're interesting. Just in terms of capital allocation, with the launch of the economy extended, today, brand, is it potentially going to consume some capital in terms of key money or other inducements with it? And as I go back to Michele's commentary around prospective accretive acquisitions, which is normally part of range of potential allocation options, if you could classify that just a little bit or help us with the boundaries of that. Would they be immediately accretive? And are there any boundaries of size or scale or type that you would or wouldn't consider seriously?

Sure, David. On the first part of your question related to the economy extended stay brand, we will look to put a good amount of capital to work there. We are very interested in committing to the brand for long-term success. And you'll hear more from us about what that commitment will look like in the coming weeks. I would say we will absolutely expect some of those outflows this year, thought -- but those outflows would pick up much more meaningfully in 2023 and beyond. . With respect to your M&A question, yes, immediately accretive to both earnings and net room growth. We look for opportunities globally, particularly in in high-growth markets or in regions where we have gaps in our portfolio. You'll likely see bolt-ons of smaller brands, but nothing is off the table if it's a strategic fit and, again, value accretive.

Our next question is from Dany Asad of Bank of America.

Geoff, can you maybe help us unpack your kind of that global RevPAR expectation for 2022, if we kind of think about it, versus '19? Can you kind of help us through either the progression through the year and also kind of if we were to kind of break out your U.S. expectations versus how you expect the international kind of state to recover through the year? Can you help us walk through that a little bit?

Hi, Dany, sure. What you'll see we finished the year 12% globally down and our U.S. business was down only 3%, with international still down 30%. And we're projecting at the midpoint of our guidance flat for 2022 for RevPAR growth. It's not evenly distributed across the regions, though. So we do expect the U.S. is going to lead the way, particularly in the economy segment, and they'll finish up year-over-year or even up versus 2019, clearly. Internationally, though, we're not expecting to get all the way back to 2019 levels. As we get through the first quarter with the Olympics and Omicron behind us and cross-border travel opening up, we expect a meaningful improvement as we move throughout the year. I would think -- I wouldn't be surprised to see China surpassing 2019 RevPARs in the back half of the year. And I think we could easily end the year with U.S., China and a couple of the other regions at or above 2019 levels. So, though, some regions still below 2019, particularly in Southeast Asia and some parts of the European Continent.

Got it. That makes sense. My follow-up was a little bit unrelated, but we've had several quarters now of like healthy royalty rate growth globally in the U.S. also. But if we look at kind of your contribution to unit growth has been a lot more coming through the -- at the higher end change scales, you're kind of what you categorize as upscale and above. If that pattern continues for some time, how would that affect that dynamic? Like how -- that dynamic kind of goes on, how would that affect the royalty rate kind of in the coming quarters and years?

Yes. So for royalty rate, we think about it separately between domestic and international. And you'll see in 2021, our domestic rate improved 2%, and that was on the back of 5% net room growth in the midscale and above category. So that's a trend that we would expect to continue to hold as we grow faster in some of those higher-end categories, we should see some continued improvement in the overall domestic world. Internationally, we saw a 20% improvement in the royalty rate for China this year, and that's reflecting our strategy to focus on direct franchising opportunities there and as well as some of the benefits from the strategic terminations we completed in 2021. But I would expect that as we grow the direct franchising business in China faster than the masters, we would continue to see improvement in that royalty rate. And our long-term goal really is to steadily improve the royalty rates within each region and how that impacts the overall global rate will really depend -- will really depend more on the regional weighting of the system growth.

Our next question is from Stephen Grambling of Goldman Sachs.

To start I'd like a follow up on -- I think this is Joe's questions on extended stay and the launch there. Are there any upfront expenses or investments that you vision to ramp up, whether it's revenue management for the segment or a sales force? Or is this largely leverage existing teams?

Sure, there are going to be some upfront costs because the majority of these teams will be dedicated to serving a different customer type than a transitory hotel. But those costs right now are already reflected in our guidance.

Great. And maybe that dovetails into my second question which was just as we think about the 2022 EBITDA guidance, I guess, can you give any sensitivity to maybe every 100 basis point change in RevPAR or how RevPAR performance across geographies might influence that sensitivity?

Sure. About 100 basis point change in RevPAR is around $3 million of EBITDA impact, and you would definitely see a higher RevPAR sensitivity for faster growth domestic than you would internationally. Clearly, it's more sensitive to changes domestically than it is internationally.

Our next question is from Patrick Scholes of Truist Securities.

High-level visionary question for you. Where in a couple of years do you envision your new all-inclusive brand? How big could that be? And as a large growth strategy, is that in your vision?

Well, I think in our vision for the extended stay economy brand, we just talked about, could be large. Altra, as we've talked about in the all-inclusive space, is going to be more strategic. We're working on several applications right now in the Caribbean, in Mexico and in Central America. We've seen some interest as well in Europe in places like Tenerife and Costa del Sol. And certainly, the consumer interest in that space is growing. We've got a great partner with Playa. But it will be opportunistic where it makes sense for us both domestically and internationally. And again, our focus is in the economy and the mid-scale and select serve for those larger growth brands.

Our next question is from Ian Zaffino of Oppenheiner.

Just wanted to maybe drill down a little bit on the cash flow statement. I'm kind of looking here, you gave us the free cash flow conversion. You gave us other ranges. So if I do this, it looks like there's, I'll call it, $340 million -- of cash flow. But then I guess, if I kind of add in other things like CorePoint, I think that's a little bit under $100 million, and then also some of these asset sales, that's probably, I don't know, over $100 million, maybe $150 million, $200 million. I'm kind of getting up to like a $600 million number. What do you do with it? And how do we think about that?

Sure, right. Yes, I think that's the right way to think about it, Ian. And so we are going to be either allocate it to investment in the business to support future growth or for shareholder return. And the amount we allocate to each is going to depend largely on the opportunities that emerged to invest more heavily in the business, while we're eager to reinvest to create recurring earnings and cash flow. At the same time, we do place a high value of importance on shareholder return. There's no reason we can't do both. An asset-light business model warrants that.

Okay. And then if I just had a follow-up to this, the dividend that you authorized, had you arriving or how are you now thinking about subsequent maybe dividend increases? Is there sort of a golden rule that you're following? How do we think about that?

Yes. Our dividend policy is to target low to mid-30s net income payout ratio.

Our next question is from Daniel Adam of Loop Capital Markets.

Unlike some of your peers, your willingness to sort of stick your neck out there and offer detailed full year guidance is pretty commendable. I guess what gives you confidence in the outlook for the year? And then as a related follow-up, the 12% to 16% RevPAR range for the year, is there any way you could further break that down between occupancy and rate?

Daniel, welcome to the call. I would say from an outlook perspective, our business is pretty predictable. It's demonstrated a high level of resilience, and we feel confident in being able to and being able to predict what we think the business will produce from an earnings and a cash flow perspective. With respect to occupancy and ADR split, we don't provide guidance for the individual components, but we would expect to see continued improvement in ADR and occupancy also recovering to its -- closer to its 2019 levels. .

Our next question is from Michael Bellisario of Baird.

Just sort of follow-up questions from me. First for this new extended stay brand, what's your initial view of what a typical construction time line is going to look like? And then do you think this brand introduction will be enough to get you from your 2% to 4% net unit growth target into your longer-term 3% to 5% net unit growth target?

Sure. Mike, it's certainly going to help. I mean, again, the demand out there that we're seeing from developers that have been side-by-side with us over the last many months developing this are beginning to have conversations with us. We think that every 100 hotels could add 1 point or 2 to our network growth domestically. In terms of time line, we typically on all of our extended stay brands, target anywhere between 18 and 24 months from planning to ground break to opening, we think that will be right in the same sort of ballpark in terms of timetable.

Got it. So it's more of a ‘24 impact to net unit growth at least at this point, right?

Late '23, '24, yes.

Got it. And then just second question on asset sales. Is there any tax impact that we should be aware of in terms of the gross versus net proceeds you might receive if and when you sell those hotels?

There will be a small tax impact, yes.

Our final question -- actually, we have no further questions at this time. I'd be happy to return the call to Geoff Ballotti for any closing remarks.

All right. Well, thank you, Leo. And listen, thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning on what we know is an extremely busy day for many of you. Michele, Matt and I very much appreciate your continued interest, of course, in Wyndham. We look forward to talking to you, Zooming with you, and much more importantly, hopefully seeing you soon in person in -- throughout 2022. Thanks again, everybody, and have a great day.

Thank you. This does conclude today's Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.