Marcel Verbaas
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead
Thank you, Lisa and thank you all for joining our call. While 2016 presented its challenges from an operating perspective, we're pleased with the results of our continued focus on the execution of our strategy throughout the year. Despite slowing industry fundamentals and the unique challenges we faced in the Houston market, we spent the year focused on the aspects of our business that we can manage. We remain diligent and dedicated to the four pillars that form our strategy, our broad portfolio mix, a focus on quality through transactions and portfolio enhancements, differentiated portfolio management and a strong financial profile. As a result, we ended the year with a higher quality portfolio and stronger balance sheet than when we started 2016. We believe we're positioned well for the future and our experienced management team will be able to continue to maximize results within our portfolio. In addition, last year's capital allocation decisions have positioned us to take advantage of external opportunities. Operationally, fourth quarter results slightly exceeded our expectations, with RevPAR, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted FFO each above the implied fourth quarter guidance provided in November. During the quarter, we had net income attributable to common stockholders of $48.8 million, our adjusted EBITDA was $64.1 million for the quarter and our adjusted FFO per share declined slightly to $0.55. For full-year 2016, we had net income attributable to common stockholders of $85.9 million, our adjusted EBITDA of $287.3 million was between the midpoint and high end of the range we provided in November and adjusted FFO per share grew 2.3% to $2.20. We made several portfolio changes throughout 2016 that make a year-over-year adjusted EBITDA comparison challenging, a theme that will continue as we move into 2017. In our press release issued this morning, we have added a number of disclosures that should be helpful in better understanding both our historical results and our 2017 guidance that is based on our current 42-property portfolio. Our current portfolio boasted a 2016 RevPAR of $152.46, 7% higher than our total portfolio RevPAR in 2015. While we don't view RevPAR as the best metric to consider when determining portfolio quality, it is one simple way to demonstrate the improvements and the quality of our portfolio throughout the year. We had an active year on the transaction site in 2016, as we continued to fine-tune the portfolio and improve portfolio quality, with over $425 million of strategic transactions during the year. This transaction activity consisted of one $136 million acquisition and approximately $290 million in dispositions. In January, we acquired the Hotel Commonwealth in Boston which is one of the highest RevPAR and EBITDA per key assets in our portfolio. The Hotel Commonwealth and the three Kimpton properties we acquired in 2015 have performed within the range of our underwriting which was done in mid-2015. Additionally, our two Grand Bohemian Hotel development projects in Mountain Brook, Alabama and Charleston, South Carolina continued to ramp throughout the year and we look forward to continued growth at these hotels in 2017. As we have discussed previously, we executed on a number of strategic dispositions in 2016, selling nine lower-quality, low growth hotels. Most recently, we completed the sale of four hotels in two transactions in December for a combined sale price of $119 million. This price represented an 11 times multiple on the hotels' combined 2016 protected EBITDA. The recent transactions allowed us to exit the St. Louis markets and reduce our exposure in Houston, Chicago and Denver through the sale of our lowest quality asset in each of those markets. We continue to believe in the long term prospects of each of these markets, as demonstrated by our decision to schedule capital improvements in 2017 and 2018 at each of our remaining hotels in Houston, Denver and Chicago to improve their competitive positions in the coming years, taking advantage of weaker market conditions in each market. The opportunity to sell our lowest quality assets in these markets at an attractive valuation relative to our public market value has created additional balance sheet flexibility for us. We expect to utilize this for internal and external opportunities, with stronger anticipated growth than we projected for these assets. We began our disposition activity earlier than many of our peers and inclusive of the sale of our Hyatt Regency Orange County in the fourth quarter of 2015, we have disposed of 10 assets at a total price of approximately $427 million over the past 15 months. This level of activity is significant relative to our enterprise value. More importantly, the disposition improve the quality of our remaining portfolio. Proceeds, as well as the significant capital expenditures that we avoided by selling these hotels, have positioned us to invest in higher growth opportunities in the future. In addition to transactions, we also deployed capital into our existing portfolio by completing several renovations throughout the year and commencing several larger scale projects in the fourth quarter. For the full year, we spent $57 million across the portfolio, including the completed projects at the Marriott Napa, Hyatt Centric Key West, Renaissance Atlanta Waverly and the Fairmont Dallas. In the fourth quarter, we commenced guestroom renovations at the Westin Galleria in Houston Andes San Diego, Bohemian Hotel Celebration and Bohemian Hotel Savannah, as well as a meeting room renovation at the Marriott San Francisco Airport's Waterfront Hotel. Our total capital expenditures in 2015 and 2016 amounted to approximately $105 million spent over the two years. As mentioned in our release this morning, our projected CapEx range for 2017 is $85 million to $95 million. A portion of the increased amount in 2017 is strategic capital that we're choosing to deploy opportunistically for portfolio positioning purposes and in some cases, is a result of an acceleration in guestroom renovations to compete effectively with new supply additions. In addition to the renovations that commenced in the fourth quarter that will be completed this year, we're also planning guestroom renovations at the Monaco Chicago Andes Savannah, Hilton Garden Inn DC, The Lorien, Monaco Denver, Marriott Chicago UIC, Residence Inn Denver and the Westin Oaks, the majority of which will start in the fourth quarter of this year. While this level of renovation activity will create an operational headwind in 2017, we believe it is prudent to optimally position the portfolio through these strategic investments for stronger growth in the years ahead. We believe that the returns we can generate from these investments are superior to those that we can generate from other uses of our capital. As Barry will cover later, we have been very successful in planning and executing renovations in the past. Our understanding of our hotels and their competitors, the markets in which they operate, as well as the desires of our guests, gives us confidence in the rationale for each of these projects. From an operational standpoint, expense control continues to be an area of focus and we're pleased with our ability to maintain margins, particularly during a time of RevPAR growth challenges. The result of these efforts is that our same-property EBITDA margin for the year remained flat on RevPAR decline of 0.3%. This is directly attributable to our aggressive asset management initiatives and proprietary property optimization process, as our team focuses on driving bottom-line profitability across the portfolio. We continue to focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet, with ample liquidity and flexibility which we continue to reinforce throughout the year with disposition proceeds. During 2016, we addressed near term debt maturities, lowered our weighted average interest rates and reduced our variable rate exposure. In addition, we were able to return capital to shareholders through dividends and the execution of our share repurchase program at an attractive weighted average price. We were particularly active repurchasing our shares early in 2016, as we bought back approximately $74 million in shares at an average price of $14.89 for the year. We continued to maintain our quarterly dividends of $0.275 per share, as announced Friday. And our Company continues to deliver a strong and supportable yield relative to peers. As we look into 2017, we anticipate it to be a transitional year, as we position the portfolio for 2018 and beyond. We spent considerable time in 2016 positioning the Company to take advantage of opportunities as they arise and believe both our team and our balance sheet have capacity to grow the portfolio. We will look to continue to upgrade our portfolio and believe that our broad market mix will allow us to evaluate a wide array of deals in order to find value and to achieve compelling risk-adjusted returns. We're pleased with all that we were able to accomplish in our first two years as a public Company and ended 2016 in a significantly better position than where it started across all aspects of our business. And we intend to continue this forward momentum as we look to 2017 and beyond. And with that, I will turn it over to Barry.