Q1 2024 Service Properties Trust Earnings Call

Participants

Stephen Colbert; Director of Investor Relations; Service Properties Trust

Todd Hargreaves; President, Chief Investment Officer; Service Properties Trust

Brian Donley; Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer; Service Properties Trust

Bryan Maher; Analyst; B. Riley Securities Inc.

Dori Kesten; Analyst; Wells Fargo Securities

Tyler Batory; Analyst; Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Service Properties Trust first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions)
Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen Covaro, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Stephen Colbert

Good morning, and joining me on today's call are Todd Hargreaves, President and Chief Investment Officer, and Brian Donnelly, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call includes the presentation by management, followed by a question and answer session with analysts.
Please note that the recording, retransmission and transcription of today's conference call is prohibited without the prior written consent of SCC. I would like to point out that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other securities laws.
These forward-looking statements are based on SEC's present beliefs and expectations as of today, May eighth, 2020 for actual results may differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause those differences is contained in our filings with the SEC, which can be accessed from our website at SVC. reit.com or the SEC's website Company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to the forward-looking statements made in today's conference call.
In addition, this call may contain non-GAAP financial measures, including normalized funds from operations or normalized FFO and adjusted EBITDA. RY. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to net income as well as components to calculate ASFO. are available in our financial reporting package, which can be found on our website.
And finally, we are providing guidance on this call, including hotel EBITDA. We are not providing a reconciliation of this non-GAAP measure as part of our guidance because certain information required for such reconciliation is not available without unreasonable efforts or at all.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Todd.

Todd Hargreaves

Thank you, Steven, and good morning. Our first quarter results are indicative of typical seasonality patterns in our lodging portfolio as well as the stability of our net lease portfolio. Our full-service hotels experienced top line growth through increased group demand, while our select-service hotels were impacted by softening transient travel and renovation activity. Our focus remains on improving the performance and quality of our portfolio through the disposition of noncore hotels and capital projects. To put our operators in the best position for long-term success.
Beginning with our hotel portfolio. For the quarter, comparable RevPAR declined 3.5% year over year when excluding the 23 active renovations, ADR declined 0.7% and occupancy declined 0.2%, leading to a RevPAR decline of 1.1%. Renovation hotels, which include our Hyatt Place portfolio semester, Hilton Head and others experienced approximately $3.9 billion of displacement during the quarter.
Cost pressures led to a hotel EBITDA margin decline of 280 basis points over the prior quarter for our 218 comparable hotels as wages, property taxes and insurance increases more than offset our operators improved reliance on contract labor. Full-service was our top-performing segment during the quarter, where we gained 80 basis points of RevPAR over the previous year quarter, led by increases in group and contract sales.
Full-service group performance was led by Royal Sonesta hotels in San Juan San Francisco in July, while the increase in contract revenues was led by our semester hotels from Adagio Beach and Denver, F&B revenue gains occurred across our full-service hotels as well led by our well semesters in St. Louis and Clark.
Our portfolio of select-service hotels continued to see the most disruption during the quarter as 18 of our 61 hotels were under renovation, including our 17 Hyatt Place hotels, which began renovations in 2023. Overall, select-service RevPAR declined by 13.2% due to these disruptions as well as decreased year-over-year income from our five select service hotels located in the Phoenix area that benefited from the 2023 Super Bowl.
Our extended-stay portfolio experienced a 4.6% decline in RevPAR year over year, consistent with the trend from previous quarters. Our longer-term Extended Stay occupancy stays of seven plus nice has been declining due to the loss of non-repeat project base room nights fall semester successfully pivoted to shorter term stays at these hotels to fill occupancy.
Increased rebates were not enough to offset the reduced rates. Group pace is up $15 million or 12.3% over the same time last year due to increases in room nights and ADR in both the CNS and ramps and portfolios. The most notable gains were related to corporate group at the Royal Sonesta, Cambridge and Arrow semester Chicago hotels, where the Democratic National Convention will be held in August.
Combined revenues from our business travel for operators declined slightly year over year due to the ongoing renovations at our Hyatt portfolio and the shift in the Easter holiday from April last year to March this year, while business travel increasing our semester portfolio from key corporate accounts at our select-service hotels.
Ota revenue as a percentage of total revenues declined from 25.6% to 24.8% year over year during the quarter, and our operators continue to concentrate efforts on driving bookings to their websites to lessen the dependency on third party channels.
The charge commissions. Endesa remains focused on building its brand through numerous initiatives and recently merged its Travel Pass rewards program with the legacy Red Lion loyalty program, doubling its overall size during the quarter 25.9% of our semester full-service hotel revenues were from loyalty program members, up 3.5-percentage-points from 2023.
Other ongoing success initiatives include a focus on driving ancillary revenues at the hotel, building out the sales organization and investing in technology.
Turning to our net lease portfolio, which represents 44% of MVC's portfolio by investment as of March 31st, 2024, or seven higher 49 service oriented retail net lease properties were 97.3% leased with a weighted average lease term of 8.7 years.
Our lease maturities are well laddered and only 1.3% of our net lease minimum rent. Six property expire prior to the end of 2024, the aggregate coverage of our net lease portfolio's minimum rents was 2.37 times on a trailing 12-month basis as of March 31, 2024.
The decline sequentially is largely driven by softer EBITDA. Our reported EBITDA for Q1 2020 for transaction activity during the quarter was limited to three net lease dispositions and one hotel disposition, a country and Suites and Suburban Minneapolis for an aggregate sales price of $6.2 million. We continue to market 22 semester hotels with a book value of $160 million. The sale process is well underway and we are working with potential buyers to negotiate terms.
In conclusion, we are optimistic that our hotel portfolio will see meaningful operational improvements as the result of our renovation program as hotels benefit from much-needed refreshes over the coming quarters. Additionally, the performance of our net lease portfolio remained steady and is anchored by an investment grade rated tenant and VP. with more than $700 million of liquidity and no debt maturities in 2024. We are well positioned to implement our strategic plan.
I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Brian Donley

Thanks, Todd, and good morning. Starting with our consolidated financial results for the first quarter of 2020 for normalized FFO was $21.1 million or $0.13 per share versus $0.23 per share in the prior year.
Quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA RE declined 1% year over year to $115.5 million. Financial results this quarter as compared to the prior year quarter were impacted by higher interest expense and a decline in hotel EBITDA.
Finally, income decreased by $5.6 million this quarter compared to the prior year due to higher rental income recognized under our TA leases as a result of the BP transaction last May.
Turning to the performance of our hotel portfolio. For our 218 comparable hotels this quarter, RevPAR decreased by 3.5%. Gross operating profit margin percentage declined by 200 basis points to 23.3%, and gross operating profit decreased by $6.5 million from the prior year period.
Below the GOP line costs at our comparable hotels increased $2.8 million from the prior year, driven primarily by increased insurance expense. Our 220 hotels generated hotel EBITDA of $28.9 million, a decline from the prior year, but in line with our guidance range provided last quarter by service level hotel EBITDA year over year increased $676,000 for our 48 full-service hotels declined $5.6 million for a 61 select-service hotels and $3.4 billion for our 111 extended stay hotels.
Turning to our expectations for Q2, we're currently projecting full quarter Q2 RevPAR of $95 to $99 in hotel EBITDA and be in the$ 85 million range prior to the balance sheet, we currently have $5.6 billion of fixed rate debt outstanding with a weighted average interest rate of 5.9%.
Our next debt maturity is $350 million of unsecured senior notes maturing in March 2025. We currently have $80 million of cash and a $650 million revolving credit facility remains undrawn for total liquidity of over $700 million.
Turning to our investing activity during the first quarter, we sold one hotel and three net lease properties for an aggregate sales price of $6.2 million. We made $69 million of total capital improvements at our properties during the first quarter, we currently expect full year capital expenditures of $300 million to $325 million, up from our previous guidance range of $250 million to $275 million. We currently expect maintenance-type capital to be $100 million of the total spend this year.
Our capital program is focused on ensuring the best guest experiences, upgrades to brand standards and positioning the hotels to improve their respective market share. To date, we've completed renovations at nine Sonesta hotels, and we're pleased with the post-renovation returns we're seeing thus far, we expect 22 hotels across all service levels to be under renovation in the second quarter and expect to have completed major major renovations at 33 hotels during the calendar year, including five full-service hotels, 18 select-service hotels and 10 extended-stay hotels.
Finally, in April, we announced our regular quarterly common dividend of $0.2 per share, which we believe is well covered, representing a 51% normalized FFO payout ratio for the trailing 12 months ending March 31st, 2024.
That concludes our prepared remarks ready to open the line for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions)
Bryan Maher, B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Bryan Maher

Thank you and good morning, Todd and Brian. Maybe just sticking with the CapEx for a minute your $50 million increase, I think I did that math right. So can you talk about why and what that $50 million is going to be allocated to?

Todd Hargreaves

Morning, Brian, thanks for the question. Yes, a lot of it is this pace of projects and it as we plan the rest of the year, you know, each quarter we decide which projects we think we should move forward with which ones make sense from a timing standpoint to limit disruption.
We also have a combination of major renovations at certain hotels as well as more routine stuff that we want to get in this year to continue to improve the position of the hotel. So it's a combination of a couple of things, but it's more so just the pace of projects have it has moved a little quicker than it has in past quarters. So it's more of a planning thing than anything.
And this is a multiyear program that we've now started at the end of last year and it will continue for a couple of years.

Bryan Maher

Would you consider some or all of that $50 million pull forward from what you would expect in 2025?

Todd Hargreaves

Some of it? Yes, yes.

Bryan Maher

Okay.
And only think about the Hyatt renovation disruption, can you talk about when you think that that is fully wound down and maybe give us some idea as to how much you're spending per key on those renovations and kind of how deep they are?

Brian Donley

Sure. I can I can take that one. Brian, good morning. So the Hyatts, we started those late last year mode. I would say we're through the majority of those or we should be getting through the majority of those shortly.
I would expect most of that to wrap up this quarter and have those back online fully. So I think we should start to see the benefit of that starting in the second quarter, but really fully hopefully in the third quarter. But total, the total cost is for those renovations is right around $90 million which brands calculating the per-key costs.

Todd Hargreaves

Now a per-key, it's around $40,000.

Brian Donley

It's rooms, common areas, facades. It's pretty it's a pretty intensive renovation. Those hotels have been renovated in awhile. So we expect to see a pretty significant pickup once those renovations are complete.

Bryan Maher

Okay. And maybe kind of the same dialogue on the next, you know, kind of how much more what you're spending per key? I think you meant mentioned in your prepared comments that you're selling in know, 22 hotels book value one 62. I mean, in, what does that sales due to your kind of future CapEx and that you had been planning for?

Todd Hargreaves

Yes, from a senescence standpoint, it depends on the chain scale and the brand via the simply suites at the lower end is 30 to 35,000 per key and could be upwards of 50,000 a key for some of the bigger boxes that we're doing here.

Brian Donley

We've got various full-service hotels that are in the plan for this year, including our Hilton Head property and some of the airport hotels. But yes, we as we look at different chain scale, different needs when last refresh happens, yes.
And that should take off probably another $100 million, $50 million. So total that we otherwise would have had to spend at these hotels.

Bryan Maher

And just two more from me, what kind of uplift are you looking for in RevPAR, roughly speaking from the Hyatt renovations and the semester renovations and if you can break them out, I don't know what the best way to break it out is, but clearly you've thought about what your RevPAR uplift would be. Can you share with that, what you're thinking there?

Todd Hargreaves

Yes. I mean, I think RevPAR index is one metric. I mean, we're very focused on bottom line EBITDA, and we expect high single digit returns on a lot of the money we're deploying for work on renovation capital. We're not going to get that same lift from more routine stuff.
That is just maintenance but capital but there are various broker ROI projects built into our program, yes, the amount of money we're putting in and we expect a significant lift that will high single digit EBITDA and returns it was a longer term post renovation periods.
We finished nine semesters this quarter, but not a lot of anecdotal evidence yet as some of these are only a couple of months post renovation, but some of the ones that have been finished for close to a year. If you look at the periods prior to when before we restarted the renovations to happen ramp-up period afterwards, we're seeing those returns that we had forecasted.

Bryan Maher

Okay. Thank you.

Todd Hargreaves

Thank you.

Operator

Dori Kesten, Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Dori Kesten

Thanks. Good morning, I appreciate the 2Q RevPAR and hotel EBITDA guide. I was wondering what you're thinking for the back half of the year clams and our peers have highlighted a strong second half versus first, but I just I'm not sure if you feel the SEC portfolio would participate as much given the limited group.

Todd Hargreaves

I've mentioned the renovation headwinds. Yes, it's a great question. Dori? Thank you, Tom. I think our trends will mirror patterns that we've had in previous years. We expect Q2 to be a startup period. Obviously, in Q1. We think Q3 will be in line with Q2 before it starts trailing off, there is a lot of noise in our portfolio given the renovation activity we've highlighted.
So when we do see ramp up from certain hotels and picking up different business and market share, yes, that could be weighed down by some of the other hotels that we're moving into renovation program.

Dori Kesten

And as you wrap up the negotiations on the 22 semesters. And I'm wondering what did you learn from the marketing process and the negotiation process so far? And just based on level of interest, would you expect there to be around two of asset sales or would you consider yourself done for the year Operator?

Brian Donley

Sure, Dori, um, that marketing process. So just to just to clarify were we have gone through multiple rounds of bidding on the hotels. Some were we've we've identified buyers for the majority of those hotels. And so we are as you point out negotiating contracts.
It's not going to be a portfolio sale. It's not going to be to two or three buyers. There's going to be likely more than 10 buyers for these 22 hotels, and we're likely to maximize proceeds that way. I think that I think the process has gone somewhat as expected in terms of interest level from a lot of smaller operators for these types of hotels. A lot of local operators, if you recall, these East hotels today are some are losing their negative EBITDA.
For the most part, they need CapEx. So local operators are coming in and out and really focusing on turning around some of these hotels at the we did get a lot of interest. And I think the types of hotels that are trading even with transaction activity down, are these types of hotels kind of the lower price price point hotels where buyers can come in at a good basis.
So again, it was similar to what we expected. There was a lot of repeat buyers from from the time we sold the 68 hotels a couple of years ago as well. So I'm not sure we necessarily learned anything further. I think there continues to be interest in these hotels.
There continues to be interest in groups buying these hotels and entering into franchise agreements with Sonesta, which which was a positive to see as well.
To answer your question on more hotels, I think we want to get through these first but there could be other hotels in the system. I think it is just going to be a continuing evaluation of the performance of the hotels. And so there could be other hotels, but we haven't identified any yet.

Dori Kesten

Okay. And then my last one is just on ag breaking trends. And you talked about the normalization of trends have been and therefore makes sense your rent coverage is coming in post pandemic. And but for context, like what level of rent coverage would make, you consider the trend less of a normalization and more it works. And just to be clear, I don't think you're there.
I'm just wondering like what your what your line in the sand is derived from it remains to be seen.

Brian Donley

Is a good is the commentary is we agree with that commentary back in 2017, 1819, the coverage for those assets was probably closer to one eight or one nine times and then once once we came out of the or what's the pandemic in trucking activity picked up significantly, e-commerce activity picked up significantly and you saw diesel volumes and more importantly, margins get to levels that we hadn't seen before and that really drove coverage up.
I think what you've seen over the past and several core past three or four quarters is that really get back down to more what we view as normalized levels. We don't have as we don't have nearly as much insight now given the lease amendment to the performance of these sites, but some were we're following what BP says publicly.
We have very little concern given the investment grade credit backing these fees, properties and leases and just the underlying value of the real estate. But I don't have necessarily a number where I'd say I would start to be concerned, but we're far away from that number.

Dori Kesten

Okay. Focus much of our own.

Operator

Tyler Batory, Oppenheimer. Please go ahead, Bob.

Tyler Batory

Good morning. Thank you. A follow up question on the guidance for the second quarter. It looks like RevPAR at the midpoint flat year over year, 80 to 85 of hotel EBITDA margin, so still down year over year. Is there a way to think about the renovation disruption that's in those numbers.
Then talk a little bit more about what needs to happen, maybe outside or really including renovation disruption and what needs to happen for you to really see some margin margin improvement and margin growth.

Todd Hargreaves

Tyler, good morning and thanks for the question of Star and Todd, you want to add anything, but, you know, as far as disruption goes in Q2, it's going to be more of the same. I think it will have a little bit more of a with the side of being a portfolio from the highest coming out of renovations, all 70 of those hotels are going to be coming out throughout the quarter.
So we're going to start to see some lift from that. So it's sort of going to negate some of the disruption we're seeing with these are some of our stronger seasonal periods. We're going to trying to limit rooms that are under service. So it's tough to fully quantify?
Yes, once you start a project and get into it, how fast it moves, how many rooms you take out can vary, but view the bigger overall question, how to drive margin where we believe it's an occupancy issue. We need to drive more demand at our hotels.
We're doing that through various initiatives, including the CapEx program so that the operators or other operators are also very focused on driving demand through different initiatives and marketing promotions and other projects they're working on to drive business.
Yes.

Brian Donley

I'll just add to that I mean, we saw our we are very pleased with how the whole service portfolio did, especially the Royal snus business, and that grew over 6% in RevPAR year over year really drop driven by group business, but also our urban urban hotels will really were increased as well, just driven by increased citywide demand.
So I think I think we're really optimistic with what we're seeing on the full-service side of things. We touched on a couple of things in the prepared comments, but especially on the start to get a good comp on the select-service portfolio because so many were out of work were disrupted during the quarter.
But in terms of the extended stay, I think our focus really is on having our operators really get back to getting that through Tier four extended stay business of have more than seven nights. So because you can get 30, 60, 96, 30 30 to 60 nights and especially in the seasonally weak quarters, you really rely on that occupancy for those types of hotels.
But ideally, we see some of that more longer term project based business come back online. I think that's something our operators, especially semester, very focused on.
Okay.

Tyler Batory

Okay, great. So in terms of the semester brand, I think you cited 30% of stays in the quarter were loyalty members a little bit lower and some of the other brands that are out there. Obviously, this loyalty program is still pretty new.
So just talk a little bit more about kind of the adoption of the loyalty program more broadly, just kind of an update on how CMS is resonating in the marketplace for travelers?

Todd Hargreaves

Brad, the number was about 26%, I believe for the full service hotels, it's a little bit lower on the young focused service hotels, but we are seeing increases there. I think the whole service that we saw 300 basis point increase year over year.
So we are really seeing the adoption, especially on the semester and Royal semester hotels. But as you know, especially on the select service side, it's so much of the business oriented hotels. We see it with some of the other brands is really driven by loyalty members.
So that's really where we need to continue to see to see pickup, but it's certainly a positive that you're seeing it on the full service side, an increase of that much in terms of and bookings through loyalty through the loyalty program. So some semesters still at this size is a relatively newer younger company. So we're seeing things move. It move in the right direction and we are seeing that brand brand adoption in some of the numbers.

Tyler Batory

Okay, great. And then last question for me off, obviously no debt maturity this year. At what point do you start to think more about the 2020 fives and what sort of options might be on the table for those? And as you sit today there, can you can you rank order on your kind of what looks most attractive to you in terms of handling those maturity?

Todd Hargreaves

It's a great question. And we continue to monitor the debt markets and we are going to be continue to be proactive on our debt maturities. As we've demonstrated, we've got multiple options on using SBCs portfolio, but our real preference is unsecured corporate debt.
So that's something we're going to take a hard look at in the near term to stay ahead of our maturity wall, but we do have multiple options out there.

Tyler Batory

Okay. That's all for me. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Todd Hargreaves for any closing remarks.

Todd Hargreaves

Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call, and we appreciate your continued interest in SVC. Thank you.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.