Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (NYSE:VAC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

You’re seeing, like I said, call to a couple points, if you will, in terms of the additional charge we took here. It feels a bit on the margin, right, in terms of it, it doesn’t feel like it’s a broader pervasive issue by any means.

Patrick Scholes: Okay. I’m sorry, one last question. Would you say where you’re seeing that weakness, is it across sort of the FICO score spectrum or is it closer in the high-600s, or is it in the 800s or just all the above?

John Geller: I mean, we’d see, look, FICO as we all know, there’s — the FICO score is great at some level for predicting defaults, but it doesn’t take into account your balance sheet, right. It’s just how you manage your consumer debt. We haven’t seen one band or another we’ve seen generally increases across the band. So, it’s not like it’s specific to a lower FICO score band versus a higher FCO score band. I think, Jason, if you want to add any color there. But I haven’t seen anything, where it’s like specific to one band or another.

Jason Marino: No, Patrick. I would just add that it is more pronounced at the lower FICO bands, call it the sub-700s versus the above 700s. They’re all up a little bit, but the sub-700s are up.

Patrick Scholes: But you to remember sub-700 for us is what percent of our loan pool?

Jason Marino: 60% of our loan pool today is above 700 FICO.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Brandt Montour with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Brandt Montour: [Technical Difficulty]

John Geller: Brandt, we can’t hear you.

Brandt Montour: Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?

John Geller: Yes. that’s better. That was all crackling.

Brandt Montour: Sorry about that.

John Geller: We were about to suture.

Brandt Montour: No, I don’t want that. So, just I think one question from me, or one or two questions from me. but following up on the loan loss provision, and we sort of dug in and I appreciate all the commentary. when we sit here today and you think you’re well reserved for everything you can sort of see in the consumer behavior today, help us understand sort of what that assumes for the sequential behavior of the consumer from here. So, if nothing changes, then we go back to sort of 9.5% loan loss provision next quarter. If the consumer gets sequentially worse, even if it’s marginal, you would have to look at taking another charge, correct. I mean, just trying to figure out if there’s a little bit of cushion in there for what you think could happen from — for the consumer from here.

Jason Marino: Yes. and we’ve tried to factor in what we expect given some of the broader macro. So, yes, I would say, it’s an estimate, it’s our best estimate today. And it doesn’t, at least in the nearer term, doesn’t expect any great increase in terms of what we’ve kind of been seeing here over the last couple quarters. So — but yes, going forward, I guess, depending on how — if we did see a materially worse change and how big that was. yes, I mean, we haven’t factored that in. I guess, if that’s your question, we haven’t assumed like a big deterioration in the broader macro environment that would drive higher defaults. But at least in the near to medium term here, we haven’t necessarily assumed that you’re going to have a great increase in some of the stuff we’ve been seeing.

Brandt Montour: Okay. That’s helpful. And then back to some of the commentary you gave around the $40 million sort of, what I would sort of call core or sort of non-Maui.

Jason Marino: Yes.

Brandt Montour: Non-LLP full-year guide down, you gave a lot of color, I mean, rental, softer ADR, softer OC, and then softer tour flow and a little bit of softer VPG ex-Abound. Good to hear that abound’s getting a little bit better. if I’m sort of like adding all of those or rolling all of those comments up. I think it’s — is it fair to just say that the macro is having an impact across your business on a sequential basis? I know people are still traveling, I know there’s still demand, but sequentially things have gotten a little bit worse. Is — you’re seeing the consumer pullback a little bit in terms of leisure travel?

John Geller: Well, I think that’s a great question. but I think sequentially, right, we’ve kind of seen with the improvements in Abound like we talked about VPG was up a couple points sequentially, right. The Abound was up about 15%. Hyatt was up about five. I think the non-transitioned, if you will, sales centers were generally up 1%, 2%. So, yes, it feels like it’s kind of stabilized clearly versus last year like we’ve talked about we now realize how good last year was, like we talked about from the VPG. but more importantly, from a rental side, especially in a lot of our higher-end markets, we talked about this on the last call. Obviously, you have the Maui impact of the fires here in the third quarter. but even excluding that, what we’ve been seeing and we thought we’d see some firming of that, and it is stabilized if you will, a bit from the second quarter is, ADRs are down year-over-year in a lot of our markets in Hawaii and occupancy’s off a couple points, right.

Some of that in the higher end markets here in the U.S. as well. So, still better than ’19 tough comp to last year given some of the change in travel patterns. We do expect, a lot of that U.S. higher-end traveler that went abroad, we’ll probably maybe stay in the U.S. this year in some of the higher-end markets. So — but that wasn’t something we factored in, in terms of as we thought about our rentals for the full year. So, there’s still on a historical basis, doing very well just year-over-year. That’s where we realized today how strong last year was. but the team’s working on renting rooms, pushing rates and getting occupancies up. So, we feel like it’s generally stabilized if you will in that part of the business as well. Just a little bit lower than we expected.

Brandt Montour: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

John Geller: Good morning, Shaun.