Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (NYSE:WH) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (NYSE:WH) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Please standby, we are about to begin. Welcome to the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be opened for your questions following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Matt Capuzzi: Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Geoff Ballotti, our CEO; and Michele Allen, our CFO and Head of Strategy. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC. We’ll also be referring to a number of non-GAAP measures. Corresponding GAAP measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP metrics are provided in our earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.wyndhamhotels.com.

We are providing certain measures discussing future impact on a non-GAAP basis only, because without unreasonable efforts, we are unable to provide the comparable GAAP metric. In addition, last evening we posted an investor presentation containing supplemental information on our Investor Relations website. We may continue to provide supplemental information on our website and on our social media channels in the future. Accordingly, we encourage our investors to monitor our website and our social media channels in addition to our press releases, filings submitted with the SEC and any public conference calls or webcasts. With that, I will turn the call over to Geoff.

Geoff Ballotti: Thanks, Matt, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. Despite a challenging RevPAR environment here in the United States, we’re pleased to report another strong quarter of progress on our executions, openings, retention and net room growth around the world. In addition, late last week our Board increased our share repurchase authorization by $400 million, demonstrating its confidence in our ability to generate significant cash flow and its commitment to continued shareholder returns in the year ahead. We opened over 13,000 rooms globally, 27% more rooms than we opened last year, our largest first quarter of room openings since going public nearly six years ago. We increased our franchisee retention rate by 30 basis points versus the same time last year to 95.6%.

We delivered a record 3.7% increase in net room growth. And most importantly, for the 15th consecutive quarter, we grew our development pipeline by 8% to a record 243,000 rooms. Here in the United States, we again saw both sequential and year-on-year improvement driven by 3.3% system growth in a more revenue intense mid-scale and above segments. We added 50 hotels domestically, including 11 hotel conversions under the newly created WaterWalk Extended Stay by Wyndham brand. Located in key markets such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Tucson, and Jacksonville. WaterWalk by Wyndham adds higher fee PAR hotels to our system while expanding our portfolio into the upscale Extended Stay segment, complementing our new construction ECHO Suites and mid-scale Hawthorn Suites Extended Stay brands.

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