Ashford Inc. (AMEX:AINC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 2 of 2

So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s kind of the theme there. And of course, the kind of per unit cost of labor and some of our other expenses are higher with some of the inflation that we’re experiencing.

Jonathan Jenkins: Okay. Understood. And then switching gears to Remington, any high-level commentary on the expansion in the Caribbean? And how you’re thinking about the opportunity for growth at Remington longer term in the Caribbean and maybe broader internationally?

Eric Batis: Yes. I mean we’ll have a lot more next quarter on this probably. But we see it as an area where we have a lot of opportunity to grow. We’ve got some resources dedicated specifically to growth in that area. There’s not as competitive a market in terms of the number of people that are managing number of companies managing in those markets. And so we’ve recently established Miami office, and it’s a concerted effort for us to go identify opportunities down there, and we’re having some early success. So I do expect that we’ll — I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we’ve added three additional contracts already in addition to the one that we’re adding now, and I don’t expect that growth to accelerate as we continue to focus in that area.

Jonathan Jenkins: Okay. And then last one from me, if I could, on Ashford Securities. It continues to accelerate nicely. Can you remind us kind of the opportunity for further growth there? And maybe how that ramp has compared to your initial expectations?

Deric Eubanks: Yes, I’ll take that. Look, we’ve been very happy with the ramp-up in capital raising. I think if you look across that industry and segment being able to raise over $500 million in the amount of time that we’ve been able to raise it is pretty fantastic. So we’re very happy with the ramp up there. Look, our two primary objectives are to grow our assets under management and to grow our third-party business. We view Ashford Securities as a primary way to be able to grow our assets under management by raising capital and then deploying that capital into either hotel acquisitions, investments in other property types like our Texas Strategic Growth Fund and other investments like that, that we can asset manage and potentially put in our other portfolio companies into those assets, et cetera.

So I think the growth prospects for Ashford Securities is pretty significant. And we had a great success with our Braemar nontraded preferred offering. We’ve now raised approximately $77 million for AHT. That offering will be open for more than two more years. So there’s still plenty of room to run on that offering. We’re out in the market right now with this private fund called the Texas Strategic Growth Fund. And there are other products that we could sell through Ashford Securities to grow our assets under management and potentially have other advised platforms. And so that’s something that we are kind of constantly thinking about and talking about, and we’ll see what comes down the pike there, but we continue to be very excited about the potential for Ashford Securities to help us grow our assets under management.

Jonathan Jenkins: Okay, excellent. Thank you for all the color. That’s all for me.

Deric Eubanks: Thanks.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect. This concludes today’s conference call.

Follow Ashford Inc. (NYSE:AINC)

Page 2 of 2