James F. Risoleo
President, Chief Executive Officer at Host Hotels & Resorts
Thank you, Jamie, and thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. 2024 was a busy year for host. We delivered operational improvements driven by continued rate growth and out-of-room spending. We acquired $1.5 billion of iconic and irreplaceable real-estate across four properties, three of which are in new markets for host. We continue to reinvest in our portfolio through capital expenditures and resiliency investments.
We made progress on the Hyatt transformational capital program and the condo development at the Four Seasons Resort, Orlando, at Walt Disney World Resort. We returned significant capital to stockholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases and we maintained an investment-grade balance sheet and continue to position host to take advantage of potential opportunities in the future. Turning to our results. We finished 2024 above our most recent guidance estimates.
For the full-year, we delivered adjusted EBITDA RE of $1.656 million, a 1.7% increase over 2023 and adjusted FFO per share of $1.97, a 2.6% increase year-over-year. Comparable hotel total RevPAR grew 2.1%, while comparable hotel RevPAR grew 90 basis-points compared to 2023. Comparable hotel EBITDA margin of 29.2% was down 60 basis-points versus 2023, primarily due to increased wages, fixed expense pressures and performance in Maui following the wildfires in 2023.
During the 4th-quarter, we delivered adjusted EBITDAre of $373 million and adjusted FFO per share of $0.44. Comparable hotel total RevPAR improved 3.3% compared to the 4th-quarter of 2023 and comparable hotel RevPAR was up 3%, driven by strong transient demand, including improving leisure transient demand in Maui and increased ancillary revenues. Comparable hotel EBITDA margin improved by 30 basis-points year-over-year to 28.1%, driven by improvements in rate, increases in ancillary spending, the same productivity improvements and certain one-time items. As a reminder, the operational results discussed today refer to our 78 hotel comparable portfolio in 2024, which excludes the Ritz-Carlton Naples, Ali Ventana Big and the Don.
In 2025, our 79 hotel comparable portfolio only excludes Ali Vantana, Big Sar and Adon as the Ritz-Carlton Naples is comparable in 2025. Turning to business mix, RevPAR growth in the 4th-quarter was better-than-expected, driven by over 3% rate growth. Transient revenue drove the outperformance in the quarter, growing 8%, which is the highest improvement in the last six quarters. Revenue growth was led by leisure in Maui, New York and Oahu, which all had strong festive seasons. Notably, our three Maui resorts accounted for nearly half of the transient room revenue growth in the 4th-quarter.
Transient rates at our comparable resorts remained robust at 44% above 2019 levels, even as our Maui resorts strategically offered leisure incentives to drive demand. Excluding Maui, transient rates at our compo Resorts were in-line with recent quarters. Business transient revenue grew approximately 6%, driven by strong rate growth as we saw a favorable market mix and a continued shift from government to the corporate negotiated segment. As expected, group room revenue for the quarter was down approximately 5% year-over-year due to tough comparisons in San Francisco and Mali as Mali benefited from recovery and relief group room nights in 2023.
Our property sold 960,000 group room nights in the 4th-quarter, bringing our total group room nights sold for 2024 to 4.3 million or 101% of comparable 2023 group room nights. Digging deeper into Mali, the leisure recovery is underway. Total RevPAR at our three Maui resorts was up 6.4% in the 4th-quarter as leisure guests total spend exceeded recovery and relief group business last year. Transient rooms sold were up approximately 50% year-over-year at our two resorts and transient rooms sold at the Hyatt Regency Mali and Kana Poly were up 325%. The leisure guests continues to spend at our F&B outlets, and golf courses, leaving us encouraged by the leisure recovery that is beginning to take shape in Mali.
For the full-year, we estimate that Mali impacted our comparable hotel total RevPAR by 110 basis-points, RevPAR by 160 basis-points and EBITDA margin by-20 basis-points, including the business interruption proceeds received during the year. Turning to ancillary spend, we continue to see improvements in food and beverage revenues and out-of-room spending. F&B revenue grew nearly 3% in the quarter, driven by outlets at our resorts. Notably, banquet revenue increased despite a decrease in group room nights, driven by growth in banquet revenue per group room night. Other revenue grew 8% despite an expected moderation of attrition and cancellation revenue.
For the full-year, F&B revenue grew 3.6%, driven by an increase in banquet contribution and an improvement in group room night volumes. Taken together, we continue to see the strength of the affluent customer across properties in our portfolio. Moving to our reconstruction efforts at the Don Cesar, we have substantially completed our remediation efforts and our focus has shifted to rebuilding compromised infrastructure to increase resilience, including elevating critical equipment and systems as we did at the Ritz-Carlton Naples. We expect a phase reopening of the property beginning late in the first-quarter.
We currently estimate our total property damage and remediation costs at the will be between $100 million and $110 million and our total insurance deductible is $20 million. Additionally, we expect to collect business interruption proceeds. We have included approximately $9 million of business interruption proceeds in our 2025 adjusted EBITDARE guidance, which we expect to receive in the first-half of the year. But it is still too early to estimate the timing or amounts of additional payments. In total, we estimate that Hurricanes and Milton negatively impacted our adjusted EBITDARE by $15 million in 2024.
Turning to capital allocation. In 2024, we completed $1.5 billion of acquisitions across four hotels, including the one hotel Nashville and Embassy Suites by Hilton Nashville downtown, the One Hotel Central Park and the Ritz-Carlton Oahu Turtle Bay. Thus far, our new acquisitions are performing in-line with our underwriting expectations.
In addition to successfully allocating capital through acquisitions, we also returned capital to stockholders through share repurchases and dividends. In 2024, we repurchased 6.3 million shares at an average price of $16.99 per share for a total of $107 million. Since 2022, we have repurchased $315 million of stock at an average repurchase price of $16.27 per share, and we have $685 million of remaining capacity under our share repurchase program. In the 4th-quarter, we declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.20 per share and announced a special dividend of $0.10 per share, bringing the total dividends declared for the year to $0.90 per share. In total, we returned over $844 million of capital to stockholders in 2024.
Turning to portfolio reinvestment. In 2024, we invested nearly $550 million in capital expenditures and resiliency investments. We completed renovations to approximately 2100 guest rooms, 213,000 square feet of meeting space and approximately 93,000 square feet of public space. In addition, we completed the repositioning renovation at the Singer Oceanfront Resort as well as made progress on the Hyatt transformational capital program. We also completed vertical construction on the Midrise condominium building at the Four Seasons Resort, Orlando at Walt Disney World Resort, marking a significant milestone in the development. Sales efforts for the condos started in November of 2024 and we have deposits and purchase agreements for 14 of the 40 units.
In 2025, our capital expenditure guidance range is $580 million to $670 million, which includes between $70 million and $80 million for property damage reconstruction, the majority of which we expect to be covered by insurance. Our CapEx guidance also reflects approximately $270 million to $315 million of investment for redevelopment, repositioning and ROI projects.
Within the Hyatt transformational capital program, we expect to start renovations at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego and the Hyatt Regency Austin. As a reminder, we expect to benefit from approximately $27 million of operating profit guarantees in 2025 related to the Hyatt transformational capital program, which we expect will offset the majority of the EBITDA disruption at those properties. Other major ROI projects for 2025 include the construction of the Phoenician Canyon expansion and the ballroom expansion, which we expect to complete in the 4th-quarter of 2025.
In addition to our capital expenditure investment, we expect to spend $75 million to $85 million on the condo development at the Four Seasons Resort, Orlando at Walt Disney World Resort this year. More broadly, we have completed 24 transformational renovations since 2018, which we believe will continue to provide meaningful tailwinds for our portfolio. Of the 16 hotels that have stabilized post-renovation operations to date, the average RevPAR index share gain is over 7.5 points, which is well in excess of our targeted gain of three to five points. We continue to be recognized as a global leader in corporate responsibility over the course of 2024.
Last month, Post was named to Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies for the sixth year in a row. The annual ranking analyzes data from more than 2,000 of the largest public companies in the United States before selecting the most responsible. The final list for 2024 recognizes the top 600 most responsible companies spanning dozens of industries. Host landed at spot number 88 and is ranked number four in the real-estate and housing industry. We also continue to make progress on our sustainability goals with four properties achieving lease certification during the year, bringing the total to 20. Importantly, we achieved a new milestone in our sustainability efforts for renewable energy use and green building certifications, resulting in the maximum pricing benefit under our credit facility, which reduced the interest-rate for the outstanding term loans by-5 basis-points.
Wrapping up, we are proud of our accomplishments in 2024, including the iconic portfolio we have assembled in the investment-grade balance sheet we have maintained. We are encouraged by the state of travel as affluent consumers continue to prioritize experience and the supply picture for our markets and chain scales remains below historical levels. We continue to believe that Host is well-positioned due to our geographically diversified portfolio, our continued reinvestment in our assets and our fortress balance sheet, and we are confident in the opportunities for continued shareholder value-creation in 2025.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Surav.
