Hilton Worldwide Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Hilton Worldwide EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.76
• Consensus EPS: $1.67
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.09
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Hilton Worldwide Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: $2.77 billion
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Hilton Worldwide Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/6/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, February 6, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 9:00AM ET

Hilton Worldwide (NYSE:HLT), a hospitality company, engages in managing, franchising, owning, and leasing hotels and resorts. It operates through two segments, Management and Franchise, and Ownership. The company engages in the hotel management and licensing of its brands. It operates luxury hotels under the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, LXR Hotels & Resorts, and Conrad Hotels & Resorts brand; lifestyle hotels under the Canopy by Hilton, Curio Collection by Hilton, Tapestry Collection by Hilton, Tempo by Hilton, and Motto by Hilton brand; full service hotels under the Signia by Hilton, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, and DoubleTree by Hilton brand; service hotels under the Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton by Hilton, and Tru by Hilton brand; all-suite hotels under the Embassy Suites by Hilton, Homewood Suites by Hilton, and Home2 Suites by Hilton brand; and economy hotel under the Spark by Hilton brand, as well as Hilton Grand Vacations. The company operates in North America, South America, and Central America, including various Caribbean nations; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; and the Asia Pacific. The company was founded in 1919 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Hilton Worldwide Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to the Hilton Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jo Chapman, Senior Vice President, Head of Development, Operations and Investor Relations.

[Operator]

Please begin.

[Jill Chapman, Senior VP and Head of Development Operations & Investor Relations at Hilton Worldwide]

Thank you, Betsy. Welcome to Hilton's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four earnings call. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that our discussions this morning will include forward looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those indicated in the forward looking statements and forward looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements.

[Jill Chapman, Senior VP and Head of Development Operations & Investor Relations at Hilton Worldwide]

For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please see the Risk Factors section of our most recently filed Form 10 K. In addition, we will refer to certain non GAAP financial measures on this call. You can find reconciliations of non GAAP to GAAP financial measures discussed in today's call in our earnings press release and on our website at ir.hilton.com. This morning, Chris Naseta, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide an overview of the current operating environment and the company's outlook. Kevin Jacobs, our Chief Financial Officer and President, Global Development, will then review our fourth quarter and full year results and discuss our expectations for the year.

[Jill Chapman, Senior VP and Head of Development Operations & Investor Relations at Hilton Worldwide]

Following their remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Chris.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Thank you, Jill. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We're happy to report a great end to another strong year, marked by record unit growth and several important milestones. We added new brands and strategic partnerships to meet guests' needs. We opened more rooms than in any other year in our history and we signed a record number of new rooms to our development pipeline, all of which further strengthened our network and positioned Hilton for continued growth in 2025 and beyond.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Thanks to our incredible team members and owners, we also welcome more than two twenty four million guests to our properties more than any year in our history. For the full year, system wide RevPAR increased 2.7% compared to 2023 with growth across all segments and all major regions. Solid top line performance coupled with strong net unit growth drove record adjusted EBITDA of more than $3,400,000,000 up 11% year over year demonstrating the strength of our fee based business model and the power of our growth algorithm. Significant free cash flow generation enabled us to return $3,000,000,000 to shareholders. Turning to results for the quarter, system wide RevPAR increased 3.5% year over year above the high end of our guidance range, driven by better than expected trends in leisure and continued growth in business transient and group.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Leisure transient RevPAR increased 4%, driven by solid growth in both occupancy and rate with particularly strong trends throughout December. In the quarter, leisure occupancy remained five points higher than pre pandemic levels. Business transient RevPAR increased more than 3% led by continued recovery in large corporates with big tech and big banks meaningfully outperforming. Group RevPAR rose 3% year over year as demand for company meetings and social events remained strong. Additionally, booking windows continued to lengthen and strong demand in conventions and company meetings drove higher rates for future periods.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

As we look to the year ahead, we feel incrementally a bit better than we did a quarter ago and expect system wide top line growth of 2% to 3% for 2025. We expect relatively steady growth across The Americas, modest deceleration in EMEA due to tough comparisons following a robust year last year and growth across Asia Pacific given improvements in China and continued strength throughout the rest of the region. We also expect positive RevPAR growth across all major segments with group outperforming driven by continued strength in company meetings and convention business. We assume very modest RevPAR growth in leisure transient given forecasts for steady levels of consumer spending and challenging comparisons. We expect continued recovery in business transient driven by further momentum in large corporates coupled with steady demand across small and medium sized businesses.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Turning to development, we opened 171 hotels in the fourth quarter, totaling nearly 23,000 rooms as our strategic and diversified approach to development continued to drive brand expansion into new markets around the world. During the quarter, we opened our first Tapestry hotels in Paraguay, Bonaire and Australia, helping the conversion friendly lifestyle brand to surpass 150 hotels in 20 countries and territories worldwide. We also debuted our Curio brand in Romania and opened our first Hampton in Africa, True in Colombia, Hilton Garden Inn in Greece and Spark in Austria. In Asia Pacific, we celebrated the opening of our one thousandth hotel ahead of schedule and representing growth of more than 30% versus last year. For the full year, we added a record nine seventy three hotels representing nearly 100,000 rooms and the single biggest increase in rooms in Hilton's more than one hundred year history, driving net unit growth of 7.3%.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Conversions accounted for roughly 45% of room openings in the year, driven by the addition of SLH Properties and continued momentum from Spark, DoubleTree and our conversion friendly lifestyle brands. Overall luxury and lifestyle hotels accounted for roughly half of our system wide openings in the year, bringing those portfolios to more than 900 hotels across the world. Additionally, our luxury and lifestyle pipeline mix is nearly two times our existing supply, supporting continued growth in these important segments. Even with record openings, our system wide pipeline grew 8% year over year to total approximately 500,000 rooms at year end. We signed 154,000 rooms in the year, up 18% and representing our biggest year of signings to date.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

We also ended the year with several notable signings, including the Waller Fastoria Bahrain, Waller Fastoria Al Madina in Saudi Arabia, Conrad And Los Cabos in our first motto in China and agreements to debut LXR Curio in Hampton in Morocco. Construction starts for the year remain strong, the highest in our history increasing 10% year over year, excluding acquisitions and partnerships with meaningful growth across all regions. We finished the year with nearly a quarter million rooms under construction, which is more than any other hotel company. This represents more than 20% of industry share of rooms under construction and nearly four times our existing share of supply. With nearly half of our pipeline under construction and continued growth and conversion opportunities, we feel confident in our ability to deliver strong net unit growth of 6% to 7% in 2025.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Defined by our continued focus on geographic and chain scale diversity, we have exciting development opportunities ahead. Live Smart Studios is slated to open its first locations this summer. Following the recent opening of Sparks one hundredth hotel, the brand has several international market debuts, including India and the Cala region scheduled for this year. We expect our newly announced strategic licensing agreement with Olive by Embassy to accelerate Spark's expansion in India, representing an exciting opportunity to tap into the country's growing middle class. We also expect continued momentum in luxury with several noteworthy openings in 2025, including the iconic Waldorf Astoria, New York, following an extensive and thoughtfully designed renovation, the three seventy five room hotel will usher in a new era of luxury for New York City.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

This year, we will also welcome Waldorf Astoria properties in Costa Rica, Shanghai, Osaka and Morocco, in addition to Conrad Hotels in Athens and Hamburg. Signia celebrated an important milestone just last week with the opening of the brand's first hotel outside The U. S. Located in Amman, Jordan, the property offers another sought after location for business and leisure travelers. Demonstrating our continued commitment to meeting the evolving preferences of our guests, We recently announced several new wellness renovations.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

In January, we expanded our partnership with Peloton to provide guests with complimentary access to a collection of Peloton's on demand fitness content on our in room TVs. We also recently partnered with Calm, a leading wellness company to offer guests access to guided meditation, sleep stories, calming soundscapes and mindfulness exercises incredible team members around the world, we continue to be recognized for our culture. During the fourth quarter, we celebrated our eighth consecutive year as the top hospitality company on the world's best workplace list by hospitality company on the world's best workplace list by Great Place to Work. Our brands also continue to receive recognition, most recently by Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500. For the sixteenth consecutive year, Hampton took the number one spot in the lodging category, thanks to its strong preference, global growth and guest loyalty.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

In total, 12 of our brands receive recognition underscoring the value they drive for owners and guests and our leadership and franchising and innovation across the hospitality sector. Overall, we're very pleased with our performance and proud of the record growth we delivered last year. Our powerful network of brands continues to be an engine of opportunity for all of our stakeholders. Given our strong momentum, robust pipeline and resilient fee based business model, we are confident that we are well positioned to continue driving strong performance in 2025 and beyond. Now I'll turn the call over to Kevin to give you a little bit more details on the quarter and our expectations for the year.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. During the quarter, system wide RevPAR grew 3.5% versus the prior year on a comparable and currency neutral basis. Growth was largely driven by occupancy gains in leisure and continued recovery in group and business transient. Adjusted EBITDA was $858,000,000 in the fourth quarter, up 7% year over year and exceeding the high end of our guidance range. Outperformance was largely driven by better than expected RevPAR growth, lower corporate expense and timing items.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Management franchise fees grew 5% year over year ahead of our expectations despite an FX drag. For the quarter, diluted earnings per share adjusted for special items was $1.76 Turning to our regional performance, fourth quarter comparable U. S. RevPAR was up 2.9% driven by strong leisure demand and continued improvement across business transient and group. For full year 2025, we expect U.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

S. RevPAR growth at the low end of our Americas outside The U. S, Fourth Quarter RevPAR increased 8.1% year over year, driven by increased air capacity to the region and strong leisure trends during the holidays. For full year 2025, we expect RevPAR growth in the mid single digit range. In Europe, RevPAR grew 6.2% year over year in the fourth quarter, largely driven by double digit RevPAR growth in group.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

For full year 2025, we expect low to mid single digit RevPAR growth following the region's strong performance in 2024. In the Middle East and Africa region, RevPAR increased 8.4% year over year supported by key events including COP twenty nine in Baku and Formula one races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi. For full year 2025, we expect RevPAR growth in the mid single digit range. In the Asia Pacific region, fourth quarter RevPAR was up 1.7% year over year. RevPAR in APAC ex China increased 8.8% led by strong leisure performance in Southeast Asia during the holiday season.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

China RevPAR declined 4% in the quarter as softer macro conditions and outbound travel continued to weigh on performance. However, trends improved sequentially versus the third quarter, driven by Golden Week and an uptick in demand following fiscal stimulus with positive momentum carrying into the new year. For full year 2025, we expect RevPAR growth in Asia Pacific to be in the low to mid single digit range assuming low single digit growth in China. Turning to development, as Chris mentioned for the full year, we grew net units 7.3% and ended the year with over 498,000 rooms in our pipeline, which was up 8% year over year with more than half located outside The U. S.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

And nearly half under construction. Looking to the year ahead, we are excited about our strong development story and the robust demand for Hilton branded products in both The U. S. And international markets. Moving to guidance for the first quarter, we expect system wide RevPAR growth of 2.5% to 3.5% year over year.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

We expect adjusted EBITDA of between $770,000,000 and $790,000,000 and diluted EPS adjusted for special items to be between $1.57 and $1.63 For full year 2025, we expect RevPAR growth of 2% to three percent. We forecast adjusted EBITDA of between $3,700,000,000 and $3,740,000,000 and diluted EPS adjusted for special items of between $7.71 and $7.82 Please note that our guidance ranges do not incorporate future share repurchases. Moving on to capital return, we paid a cash dividend of $0.15 per share during the fourth quarter for a total of $150,000,000 in dividends for the year. For full year 2024, we returned $3,000,000,000 to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends. In the first quarter, our Board authorized a quarterly cash dividend of $0.15 per share.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

For the full year, we expect to return approximately $3,300,000,000 to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends. Further details on our fourth quarter and full year results can be found in the earnings release we issued earlier this morning. This completes our prepared remarks. We would now like to open the line for any questions you may have. We would like to speak with as many of you as possible, so we ask that you limit yourself to one question.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Can we have our first question, please?

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question today comes from Sean Kelly with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Shaun Kelley, Analyst at Bank of America]

Hi, good morning everyone. Chris, I wanted to build off a mention that you made in your prepared remarks, just a bit more of a macro one here to start. But we obviously just went through a major U. S. Election cycle since our last call and our last update.

[Shaun Kelley, Analyst at Bank of America]

You've undoubtedly spoke with a number of hotel and business leaders and you said that you sounded a little bit more confident than where we were a quarter ago. So can you just expand on that comment a little bit? What are some of those conversations with business leaders looking like right now? And maybe what segments of the lodging business could we expect this some of the sentiment improvement to possibly impact? Thank you.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, happy. I assume somebody would ask me that. I'm glad we're getting to it early. And obviously these are just my opinions, but that's what you're asking for. And most of this, I think would not surprise you or anybody in the sense of sort of the general view on what's going on in the macro.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

I mean, if you go back a quarter ago, we hadn't gotten to an election. There was a lot of noise around the election and there was a lot of uncertainty around the outcome of the election at that time. And that uncertainty then translated into a whole bunch of uncertainty around things that people care about, whether that's consumers from a leisure point of view and certainly business and group ends up being a lot very directly related to business with huge amounts of uncertainty on regulatory spending, regulatory, immigration, border, tax policy. And the practical reality is not just sort of the uncertainty around the election, but the uncertainty around all of those outcomes means that people sort of husband their capital a little bit more. They are they pull in their reins pull the reins in a little bit and they're a little bit more tepid, I think broadly in spending.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So fast forward to today, we have an election that is complete. Whether you like it or not, it was pretty dispositive. It wasn't like close, it wasn't disputed. We knew in a day and or not even a day. And while there is certainly a lot of noise in a cycle of things that are going on by EO and everything else living in Washington, trust me, I hear a lot of the noise, I live inside the Beltway.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

I mean I think there is a broader belief and I'll get to what I'm hearing from other leaders that will go nameless. There is a broad belief and I would say fairly consistent amongst the folks that I talk to across a broad range of of industries that people think that the opportunity for economic growth in the short to intermediate term will be better. That doesn't mean that people don't think that there's noise and some people appreciate it more than others in terms of the various things that are going on. But I think almost to a person that I'm talking to really quietly, I think people feel like you're going to see there is an opportunity for a pickup more broadly in economic growth and that there is an opportunity I think in our business as a result for a bit of an uptick, which is why I said I feel a bit better. Why?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Because you have an election behind you. One, while there's a lot of noise, you're going to be in a lighter regulatory environment across the board, financial services, broad range of industries. To tax policy. I mean, unclear, it's going to take time. We're all reading about it this morning, one reconciliation build, two, we're going to be debating it and trust me, we're talking to a lot of people about it.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

It's going to be unclear when exactly how it happens, but it sort of has to happen. And I think certainly the business community is much more optimistic that that's going to get done in a way that is favorable. And so again across the board as I talk to folks, by the way talk to friends and think about as it affects leisure business, but certainly talking to folks that are running businesses across a broad range of industries. I really can't think of one that doesn't mean it didn't happen, but it's not in my memory set of somebody that thought that this is going to be what's happening is negative for broader economic growth. So that's why I feel that a bit more positive.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Now there is a lot of noise, right, particularly in the beginning. So the reason that we're not in our guidance and all those things not going crazy in terms of building big upside is because there's a lot happening and it's early and I think we need to see how these sort of things play out. But I think the general sentiment I've said it is underneath it all when you lift I guess say above it all when you lift up above all the noise is that this is going to be good for The U. S. Economy and to a degree that will have some knock on impact in various economies around the world as a result.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley.

[Stephen Grambling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Despite that positive business demand outlook coming out of Alice, it seemed like there was a lot of skepticism around the development backdrop just given where returns are versus interest rates. Yet you sound pretty positive on the development pipeline. Clearly, your pipeline has been growing. So I'm just would love to hear how you think about what has set Hilton apart from that much more cautious kind of tone at the industry conference?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes. I was there not for long, but I did the main panel and so we had a big owner reception. I think we have 400 owners. So I talked to a lot of people in the short time I was there. And so not to Stephen, I appreciate the comment and you were probably there longer than I am, but I would probably frame it a little bit differently maybe.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

What I sort of like break it down into like how people felt about M and A activity versus how they're sort of feeling about new development activity. And I would say my read of it, again not to take issue with it, was generally on the first M and A much more positive. I think people are very much of there's more capital available, rates have moved up a bit, but I think there's a belief that over the next twelve, twenty four months broadly rates will come down. I think people feel like the bid and the ask is getting closer because performance has ticked up a bit. And so I sensed and in fact we were asked on the panel and I think the answer for most of the folks on the panel with me was a lot more optimism in M and A.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

In terms of the new development side of it, which is I think probably what you're referencing more, there is still a lot of friction for the reasons that you're describing. During COVID and following COVID it got very expensive to build. Cost structures went up and so it got hard and interest rates went up and capital availability went down And so that's a awfully difficult equation for new construction. I sensed actually some increasing optimism. And so the question is why?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Well, again, people's broader view I think was don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but more optimistic about what's going to go on broadly with the economy. So improving performance, stabilization of cost to build, stabilization on labor costs. There are other component costs insurance and others that are still going up, but some stabilization in frankly the largest parts of the expense base. I believe and I think people are figuring this out an opportunity for rates as I said over the next twelve to twenty four months to come down. Inflation is moderating as we see that one of the largest components of inflation as measured by the federal government is shelter, which is on a lag and is still showing up at above target levels when reality of shelter costs are going up at closer to 1%.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So as you start to see that data set factored into the inflation numbers, you're going to see a very large component of inflation come down. Obviously, the administration is super focused on energy and trying to bring energy costs down, which is another large contributor that has broad impact. So I believe and I think people are starting to believe that there is an opportunity not for rapid deceleration in interest rates. There is over the next twelve to twenty four months a likelihood that rates are going to come down. And then last but not least, I do believe people are seeing more availability of capital.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

It's not a gusher, but I think they're seeing more availability of capital. And I think there is a belief which is what was driving, I think, again, I want to be careful, it wasn't raging optimism, but sort of a bit of a shift at least amongst our owner community is that in a world where the regulatory environment is going to get a lot easier on the financial system, which I think is pretty clearly happening, in a world where the broader economic growth is stable, moving up a tick, there's going to end up by definition as there always is in that kind of cycle being more capital available because the lending institutions of all sorts are going to have to go further out on the risk spectrum to get their yields. And as a result, they're going to be looking more and more to do build and that kind of activity. And that's a normal cyclical thing that happens. But I think with the regulatory environment that we're moving into, it will accelerate that.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So I again, I'm not going to say I'm not taking issue with what you're hearing. There's certainly a lot of friction and we hear that, but I would say I started to sense a movement to a more positive place. Now the last part of it, sorry, and I'll stop. Why are we doing well? How are we defining you didn't say it, but I'll say it's sort of how are we defining gravity and what's been a difficult environment for new construction and development generally.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And I think the answer is twofold. One, we I mean, it's all related to our brands are the best performing brands in the industry. So while there isn't as much money, I think there's more coming. We are getting a very disproportionate share. We're just more financeable with the money that's available for new construction.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And because our brands perform the best in the industry, we get a large disproportionate amount of conversion opportunities. I think over the last twelve months, we're not quite 50% of all conversion opportunities are moving into our system. And so those two things are uniquely helping have been uniquely helping us over the last couple of years and I think will continue to help us, but I do believe the other things I said as well.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Carlo Santarelli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Carlo Santarelli, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Hey, Chris, Kevin, good morning. Hey, Chris, you spoke a lot about development and conversions and stuff. And I might have missed this, you might have said it earlier, one of you may have said it, but conversions as a percentage of your unit growth in 'twenty four and then kind of how you see that shaping up for '25 then I just had a quick follow-up.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, for 2024 if you include everything, the acquisitions and partnerships it was about 45% it was in my prepared comments I think it was. And if you take those out, it was about a third plus or minus. I think this year 25% will be about a third. I mean, meaning that we don't have any big play. I mean, there'll be some very modest incremental growth in our existing partnerships, but I would view that at our scale sort of a rounding error.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And so we're going to go back to sort of more normally where we'd be, which is elevated from the mid-20s into the low to mid-30s, but not up where we were last year. And what was the last part?

[Carlo Santarelli, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

The second part, I just had a follow-up. The as you look at your guidance, obviously, first quarter RevPAR guidance a little bit better than the full year, adjusted EBITDA guidance, obviously, you're facing a challenging comparison. Was there were there some, I don't want to say abnormalities, but some one offs that were benefits in the 1Q 'twenty four that you'll kind of have to lap, just looking at kind of the midpoint of your adjusted EBITDA growth year over year is looking like 4% to 5% versus kind of 8.5% for the full year. So I just want to get a little bit of color on some of the moving parts for the first quarter.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, you hit on it Carlo, it is a tougher comp and that was driven by a couple of one time items and then you've got some FX impact in the first quarter. If you adjust for all that, it's basically in line with the algorithm.

[Carlo Santarelli, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Thank you, guys.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Sure.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Elizabeth Dove, VP - Equity Research at Goldman Sachs]

Hi there. Thanks for taking the question. Another Alice one, but it seems like you're defying gravity a little bit on the cost side too with great EBITDA guide yet at Alice last week there was a lot of talk around cost pressures in the industry particularly on the insurance side, the wage side. Can you maybe talk about just how you're thinking about that broadly and any initiatives you have to offset it?

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, Lizzie, I think if you're talking about us and our cost structure, we continue to be very disciplined. Our GAAP G and A guide for the year you probably noticed is even slightly lower than 2019 after six years of cost inflation. I think on the operating side as you say with owners, yes, there are some cost pressures and we have we just have to keep we are and we'll continue to work for our owners to try to find as many operational efficiencies as we can so that they can grow their bottom lines as well and doing the best we can on wages and benefits, doing the best we can on insurance, just helping them with operating efficiencies across the board. So I've actually missed Dallas this year, so I but my guess is you were hearing a little bit from the ownership side on cost pressures and then for us we just continue to remain disciplined.

[Operator]

The next question comes from David Katz with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. It does appear that you're making some good traction in the luxury side of things. I also observe that, you know, some of the capital deployed, you know, is up a bit this year and obviously what we're hearing in, you know, around analysis that the checks people are writing for luxury hotels are going up. Can you just give us a little more depth into sort of how you're thinking about that?

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Obviously, the strategy is getting some traction, but balancing that with some of the capital required to play in that segment? Thanks.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, sure. I mean, I think if you think about it, it depends on where you are in the world. We are getting a ton of traction in luxury and depending on where you are in the world, capital contributions from the operator can be higher or lower. In the Western world, they tend to be higher in that space. It's probably worth noting that a bunch of our traction in luxury at least last year came from the SLH partnership, which was completely capital light, right, zero contribution on our part.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

You are hearing about some deals up there out there as you get into the higher end of the range, particularly in luxury, there are more competitors, right? In our bread and butter in the mid market, depending on where you are in location, maybe the list of brands that you want to play with is two or three and we might be at the top of that list. When you get into the higher end of the range in luxury and the higher ends of full service that the number of brands in the aperture opens up pretty wide and so the laws of supply and demand are alive and well, so it creates a lot of demand for key money. With all of that said, we still only contribute key money on 10% or less of our deals. We do play in some of those deals because they're important and they tend to be from time to time higher checks.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

But I think if you look at what we do versus our competitors, you know, I'll take our track record against anybody's any day. And then the last thing is you talked about a little bit of the trajectory. You know, last year was a little bit light. I'd say there are a couple of deals out there where the timing has kind of pushed into 2025. So you're seeing that a little bit in our guidance.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

And our guidance for this year is right in line with what we said at the Investor Day, two fifty million dollars to $300,000,000 I think that's the right way to think about it on a run rate basis. Yes, and that's for all CapEx including key money.

[David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies]

Yes. Thank you.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Sure.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Robin Farley with UBS. Please go ahead.

[Robin Farley, Managing Director at UBS Group]

Great. Thank you. So obviously great Q4 result and better '25 Rev Par guidance than a quarter ago. I did want to ask about, you often talk about the algorithm, the growth algorithm being Rev Par plus unit growth and getting to see growth and kind of moving higher as you move down the P and L. And it seems like for 2025 that the EBITDA growth rate is a little bit lower than the sort of midpoint of your RevPAR unit growth.

[Robin Farley, Managing Director at UBS Group]

Just wondering what may be going on there and sort of wondering if it's tied to in Q4 it looked like based on other management fees were down a bit. And so is there something there that is sort of continuing into 2025 that's not bringing the that top line growth kind of getting magnified as it moves down the P and L? Thanks.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, Robin, it's a good question. I'll take the second part first because it's a little bit more straightforward answer. If you adjust those base and other fees for some one time items in FX, it's actually would have been in the high single digits and that was all baked into our guidance for Q4 and the numbers we gave you and we beat that guidance. So it actually came in a little bit better than we thought. So there's nothing going on there other than some timing and some FX.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

And then for the full year '24, yes, the midpoint of our guidance is at 8.5% algorithm would suggest 9%. Again, it's the same it's actually the same answer as Carlo's question earlier on Q4, where if you adjust for some of the one time items last year and you adjust for FX, but we're above algorithm for this year at the midpoint.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And importantly, if you go back and look at even with that, if you go back and and look at Investor Day sort of what we laid out, the bottom line EBITDA numbers are higher than what we would have laid out a year ago for 2025 even with the FX really is FX. If you take FX out, it's above algorithm. I mean, either one time things going on, but it's really FX. But even still, even with the FX, bottom line EBITDA is higher than what we presented to everybody in our three year plan. And that's because, again, we're super disciplined like we're super disciplined on the top line, we're also disciplined on our cost structure.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And so if you think about this business versus 2019, we finished last year with EBITDA margins that are over 8,000 basis points higher than the prior peak of 2019. So I think that's a pretty good testament to the discipline that we have in running this business.

[Robin Farley, Managing Director at UBS Group]

Thank you. That's super helpful color. Just anything you'd call out in terms of those one time items just so we can think about that when we're thinking about the quarterly cadence, just sort of any of the big ones you'd call out?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

No, it's just sort of the lumpy, there are all sorts of their term fees, there are all sorts of things that happen in a normal year and they sometimes get weighted in one quarter versus the other. And in this case, some of them were weighted in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four or 2023 and the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Once you get through that, those go away. I mean, you still have FX depending on where the dollar goes, but that all washes away and obviously for the full year it washes away given you saw our guidance for the full year.

[Operator]

Thank you. The next question comes from Brandt Montour with Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just following on that question, Kevin, if you could just maybe bridge the rest of the P and L. When we look at EPS guide versus again the Investor Day algo, it's below that. Obviously, buybacks are not in the full year guide, but it was in the three year algo.

[Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

But look, the bottom end of the EBITDA guide is right there in line and makes sense with your RevPAR, but it looks like the EPS is still a little lower. And if you could provide some extra color there, I'm sure it would be helpful.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, sure, Brian. I mean you look you mentioned that the big driver is buybacks but that's all that was all factored for and I assume you're factored for. The other one is just re leveraging right. We did $2,000,000,000 of financing to re lever the balance sheet to fund our to help fund our buyback program. This past year we've got another about similar amount next year and it's just a little bit higher rates than we had been borrowing at before and so you're just seeing that catch up flow through to EPS.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

And other than that, if you adjusted for all that we'd

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

be in the mid teens in terms of adjusted EPS growth.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes. And while you're relevering, it has an impact, but longer term it doesn't have any impact, meaning once you've stabilized at certain leverage levels, then year over year it fixes itself.

[Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays Capital]

Excellent. Thanks, everybody.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citi. Please go ahead.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

Hi. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you just really thinking about maybe just The U. S. For a moment and you talked about your RevPAR expectations across the system.

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

But when you think about kind of just the luxury or upper upscale full service properties versus select service, would you expect to continue to see more relative weakness on the select service side or any kind of commentary there of what you how you think the year can unfold and maybe what's weighing or supporting your expectations for that segment?

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

No, I think, Smedes, I think you're talking about Q4. Are you talking about Q4 relative to chain scale performance?

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

Well, and for the year as well. I mean, I think most

[Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup]

industry companies do not do that.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

It's really just year over year comps, right? So I think we wouldn't call out any underperformance. We continue to be in line or better than chain scale performance for the full year 2024. We're gaining share and we expect that to continue.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Patrick Scholes with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

[Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities]

Thank you. Good morning, Chris and Kevin.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Good morning, Matt.

[Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities]

Good morning. One thing I don't think I've heard you speak about is tariffs and specifically what potentially might be any impacts on your franchisees or potential developers and builders.

[Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities]

What are you hearing from them? And the last time I blinked, I believe the only tariff at the moment could change in a moment is the 10% from China. But I'd like to hear your thoughts around that potential and

[Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities]

what if anything you're hearing.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes. I mean, I've

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

been talk about it as you pointed out embedded in your question is that they're tariffs and then they're not. It's sort of moving around a lot. So far obviously we've talked to a lot of people not any real impact to speak of. It depends what happens. I do believe what's playing out is a series of trade negotiations that are delicate and I believe tariffs are part of that negotiation and part of the strategy to getting to the right kinds of deals in the end.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So that doesn't mean there won't be tariffs. But my guess is that we will end up in most cases in a place where we get some form of trade deal done that will not involve major tariffs. And so again, I sort of like all of you that know me know I like to lift up above the noise, this whole steady hand on the wheel. I think when you lift above it all, I still believe that with the opportunity is broadly even with all the noise of tariffs and I'll come back to supply chain in a second that we're going to that we have broader economic growth that's better than we thought it was going to be, not worse even with the risk of various negotiations and short term tariffs impose imposition of short term tariffs. One of the things that we've done so far no impact and frankly not to say depends what happens that we couldn't have impact, but we've diversified our supply chains in a very aggressive way over the last five years.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

I mean think about what happened in COVID, like couldn't get things. So part of it was driven by the necessity of diversification coming out of COVID. But then we continued on because we just think it's a really good idea to have various places in the world where we can get various products. So it's not like we're getting carry from one place in the world for the whole system because that would create risk that if you had a problem with tariffs in that particular location, it could cause a ripple effect. So I would say again, never I can't say it would have no impact, but we have done our HSM team has done a terrific job of diversifying our supply chain.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And So we feel pretty good that at least what's going on so far and the areas that are in question that we have ways to pivot given our supply chain relationships in other parts of the world.

[Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities]

Thank you. Well said and explained.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Thanks.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Michael Bellisario with Baird. Please go ahead.

[Michael Bellisario, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just wondering if there's any commentary you can give on deletions and also what might be falling out of the pipeline, any color on how those might be trending and what the read throughs would be there? Thanks.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

It's a good question. We generally remove a point to a point a quarter of the system every year. I mean, it's sort of same answer as we've talked about before, Michael. Most of those are our choice. We did do a little bit more last year for 2024 than typical than that run rate, but everything that's baked into our expectation for 2025 is consistent with long term averages.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

[Chad Beynon, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask about your comment on large corporations traveling more, kind of that impact on BT and group. Wondering when you started to see that acceleration and now that we have more certainty and some more certainty around policy inside the Beltway, if that could be a big positive swing factor sequentially as we kind of work through the next couple of months for the go forward? Thank you.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

It certainly could be. We are not we have not given you guidance or forecasted that. I would say we saw throughout the fourth quarter an uptick and then particularly post election demonstrated by mid week strength. Now I think that was based on all the things that I described earlier, people's belief on more certainty on tax regulatory environment. It's just more comfort spending more.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

I think part of it was that the way the holidays fell, it compressed the fourth quarter in terms of travel days. And that gave us a benefit in the fourth quarter. But net net, as I said, every CEO I'm talking to, I met with our Head of Sales across all our special corporate account. I mean uniformly, I think people whether it happened in part because of the election, which I think it probably did, but it was happening anyway just in a sort of normal cycle of people getting back to office and getting more serious about running their businesses and sort of back to a little bit of business as usual. If you talk to all accounts, if you talk to large, medium, small, almost without exception people are broadly saying that they're going to travel more, okay.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And they broadly understand that they're going to pay more for their travel because they understand that the environment they're living in. And so I do think that that bodes well for business transient recovery to continue to sort of beat our way back to prior. Obviously, rate structures are higher, but we're still not back to prior levels of demand. But I think by the end of the year, there's certainly a pretty good shot of being able to do that. And same with group and leisure as I commented on in my introductory comments, leisure is already way over.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So I think you'll see some substitution effect as between the segments, which will be good. What you should want to see and I certainly want to see is as business transients demand levels sort of recover and then I think will ultimately go beyond prior peaks in core demand, you'll be trying to sort of manage your inventory in a way where you're taking out lower price segments that would be sort of lower rated leisure. We want to keep the high rated leisure, but some of the lower rated leisure, which we're super focused on as that's happening. So it's a long winded way of saying, year. Are sort of indicative of the same thing, although it's early in the year.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

You're not you had the holidays falling away where January wasn't a barn burner. I mean, it was fine and in line with our expectations, but people just aren't fully they're just fully getting back out on the road. But I suspect we will see a bit of a small step change in mid week travel.

[Chad Beynon, Analyst at Macquarie Group]

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Richard Clark with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

[Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein]

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to ask about the dawn of the AgenTik AI. Obviously, the first partners into those AI agents have been the online travel agencies booking trip advisory, etcetera. Are you talking to those agents?

[Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein]

Would you be happy for an OTA to handle your distribution through those agents? And maybe overall, do you see that development as good or bad news for Hilton?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes. I mean, we obviously want to deal with our customers as directly as we can. I mean, we do have a percentage of our business that comes through the OTAs. It's a relatively small percentage of the business. We have good relationships there.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

The better they can serve that customer that we access through them, the better for everybody. The better experience is always what we want. And so we think that's great. But the very large majority of our system is driven through our direct relationships. We want obviously for that to continue.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

We have done a huge amount of work in how we think about every element of the relationship we have with our customer from the first time that they dream about a trip to exploration of how they where they want to go to the booking experience to putting their package together to pre arrival, on stay, post arrival, every element of it and we're without getting into great detail because it would take a whole day to do it, we are super engaged in how we use tools and technology including AI in every step of that journey to make it a more pleasant and friction free experience for our customers. And so, no, we don't plan to outsource that is the short answer. We're doing we're all over it. And I think honestly the work we're doing across the board, but particularly with the Stay experience in terms of being able to use AI from a data and analytics point of view to understand in great granular detail what individual customers want and then to mass customize the experience both ahead of the state but particularly on stay. We have some really, really interesting things going on and game changing things there.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

And so we are fully committed to pursuing continuing our pursuit of direct relationships with our customers.

[Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein]

Thanks, Chris. Maybe just to ask a follow-up on that. Could I conclude therefore that you would not allow an OpenAI agent or a Gemini agent to navigate to Hilton and make a booking on behalf of a customer? You're saying they would have to come direct to do that not through an agent AI?

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

I just said we may work directly with a number of those players. We will work directly with them. What we're saying is we don't want to work indirectly with some of those players.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Dan Politzer with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to circle back on leisure a bit. You guys called out the strong occupancy trends, particularly in December. Was that mostly in The U.

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

S? Was it international? And then also can you maybe touch on it? It sounded like that was

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

a bit lower rated than

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

higher rated given those occupancy. And then just one clarification for the first quarter, anything to call out in terms of calendar, spring break, Easter, anything we should be aware of? Thanks.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes. I think in the fourth quarter, it was pretty much everywhere at leisure and had a lot to do with how the holidays fell. Now that impacts some regions more than others, but the holidays fell in a way that stipulated a lot of travel. By the way, it was across the board. It wasn't just low rated.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

It Volume wise would have been more low rated, but it stimulated all rate structures of leisure. And then, what was the second part of the question? Holiday. Oh, holiday in the first quarter, Easter, the biggest impact is Easter moving from Q1 to Q2.

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. Thanks so much.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Otherwise, I mean, obviously there's a lot of noise with the what fires and storms and snow and all that. Best we can tell, sadly there's a lot of things that go on every year. There was enough of that going on in the first quarter of last year that it doesn't strike us yet that there's any real net negative obviously for Q2.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

That's the primary driver of guidance being a 0.5 in Q1.

[Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Sure. Yes.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Connor Cunningham with Melius Research. Please go ahead.

[Conor Cunningham, Director - Travel & Transports Analyst at Melius Research LLC]

Hi, everyone. Thank you. So positive comments on China today. So I'm just curious if you could kind of unpack that a little bit. I would imagine that within that low single digit number that you talked about for $25,000,000 the differences in first half or second half are pretty stark.

[Conor Cunningham, Director - Travel & Transports Analyst at Melius Research LLC]

So if you could just bridge that a little bit and then maybe touch a bit on just development and signings and what's going on in the region in general? Thank you.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

Yes, sure. For China, it was pretty consistent last year over the course of the year and ended up sort of down five ish for the year. I think it was down four in the fourth quarter is what I had in my prepared remarks for this year. I don't have the quarterly spread exactly in front of me, but I think it's pretty consistent across the board at low single digits. And then development, we're doing great.

[Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development at Hilton Worldwide]

In 2024, our approvals were our approvals and starts are both up 10% and our openings in China were up nearly 30% and we continue to do really well sort of across the board in chain scales in terms of demand for the product. So the slowdown you're seeing overall in real estate isn't affecting lodging as much and in fact lodging is you know our developers are a bit of a beneficiary from hotels particularly mid market hotels both in Hilton Garden Inn and our in our master limited partnerships being a good adaptive reuse for some of the Shell residential buildings and Shell office buildings that got developed and now need to find a different use in China. So low single digit RevPAR growth definitely a little bit of that is of course on easier comps and do we really know what GDP growth is going to be in China this year? No, but we feel pretty good about doing better on the fundamental side and then we're doing great on the development side.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

The only other thing I'd add is China is Chinese are traveling like crazy. So there's a whole outbound story, which is China has opened up Visa free zones, Inter Asia Visa free zones. And so while we still expect China to sort of be tepid positive growth, but tepid as Kevin just suggested, when you aggregate all the demand for travel coming out of China, it's super beneficial to our broader APAC business. So like Japan, Southeast Asia, they are huge, Australasia to a degree, they're huge beneficiaries of a lot of outbound travel outside of China. But that obviously has the effect of diminishing what's going on within China.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

But the good news about a big global diversified company like ours is we get to pick it up on the other side too.

[Conor Cunningham, Director - Travel & Transports Analyst at Melius Research LLC]

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Chris Naceta for any additional or closing remarks.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

Thanks again everybody for joining us. We always appreciate the time. Great questions. Hopefully, we gave you a little bit of context in addition to our prepared commentary. It's an interesting world, but we're as you heard, super optimistic about obviously very happy with how we finished out '24 and '24 overall and optimistic as we go into 2025.

[Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO at Hilton Worldwide]

So we look forward to catching up with you after we finish the first quarter. Thanks again. Have a great day.

[Operator]

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

Participants

Executives

• Jill Chapman, Senior VP and Head of Development Operations & Investor Relations
• Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO
• Kevin Jacobs, CFO & President of Global Development

Analysts

• Shaun Kelley, Analyst at Bank of America
• Stephen Grambling, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Carlo Santarelli, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Elizabeth Dove, VP - Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
• David Katz, Managing Director at Jefferies
• Robin Farley, Managing Director at UBS Group
• Brandt Montour, Analyst at Barclays Capital
• Smedes Rose, Analyst at Citigroup
• Patrick Scholes, Managing Director - Lodging & Leisure Equity Research at Truist Securities
• Michael Bellisario, Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co
• Chad Beynon, Analyst at Macquarie Group
• Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein
• Daniel Politzer, Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Conor Cunningham, Director - Travel & Transports Analyst at Melius Research LLC