Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE:CHH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Bellisario: Just on your 2% RevPAR growth guidance, can you maybe provide a breakdown between what Choice legacy might be and what your expectation is for Radisson Americas, presumably adding in Radisson now is a tailwind to this number? And then do you assume any top-line synergies from Radisson in that 2% expectation?

Pat Pacious: So let me just talk broadly about our RevPAR projection for the year, Michael. I think when we look at where we sit today, we’re 15% higher than we were in 2019. And by guiding to an additional 2% growth this year, we really think that, that’s a really positive on top of what will become tougher comps as we move throughout the year. But as we look out at the economy, we look out at the growth of our business and we look out at really this portfolio mix shift that’s occurring as well as the business we’re delivering into our hotels, we’re not modeling RevPAR declines at this point in any of the quarters that we’re looking out as we move in. But the comps will get tougher. And I think Dom wants to kind of talk about sort of the components of Choice legacy versus Radisson.

Dom Dragisich: Yes, Mike, when you take a look at the Choice legacy portfolio, you would be pretty close to that 2%, broadly speaking. So just on an apples-to-apples basis, we’re expecting to see that 2% growth on top of already 15% RevPAR growth versus 2019. So, I think it’s really important to understand, just at the jump-off point, it’s pretty impressive already, and we still are not underwriting any sort of flat lining of RevPAR as we look ahead to 2023. I think on the Radisson side of the house, we would expect to see probably anywhere from 30 basis points to 40 basis points of tailwind associated with that Radisson portfolio. In 2023, we’re looking at RevPAR growth probably closer to 5%-plus for Radisson. We’re not anticipating or underwriting any sort of lift, just given the full integration is going to happen probably sometime in that back half of the year.

So, we’re probably a little bit conservative in terms of the tailwinds that the platform on the Choice side will provide to those Radisson brands. So, I would say that there’s probably a little bit of upside to that plus 5% on the Radisson side.

Michael Bellisario: Got it. That’s helpful. And then just sticking with Radisson, the prior $80 million of contribution that you had expected next year. Now it’s obviously going to be higher based on your comments. How much of that is revenue synergy? How much of that is expense synergy?

Pat Pacious: So, I think the way to think about it is when you look at the sort of expertise our company has developed on integrating hotels into our system, when we bought the WoodSpring Suites brand back in 2018, we’ve really had just spectacular RevPAR growth in that brand. I think in the fourth quarter, it was up over 33% when you look at the comp back to 2019 levels. So our integration team has really developed a core competency here in driving these synergies quickly and really identifying areas where we’re able to deliver more business to our owners in a much more rapid fashion. And that’s an accelerant factor from the investments we’ve made in our pricing management tools for our franchisees, the promotion tools that our franchisees now have at their hands.