Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. (NYSE:PK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 12

We did three bond deals. We pushed out maturities. We’ve paid off — now we paid off 98% of the bank debt. You’ll note that when we went to recast our revolver, the banks welcomed us with open arms. It was done quickly, efficiently, and we were one of the few that were able to upsize in that environment. So you’ve got a very seasoned and experienced team here. We know how to handle the situation. We will study it carefully and we’ll get to the right outcome.

Floris Van Dijkum: Thanks, guys.

Tom Baltimore: Yes, thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Hey, thanks. Good morning.

Tom Baltimore: Good morning, Duane.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Hey, nice to see you. Just on labor cost inflation, I wonder if your relative flexibility and geography, so essentially operating in higher-cost urban markets where rates were already high makes you less exposed to labor rate increases versus your peers. Is having less flexibility on labor, actually, a good thing right now?

Tom Baltimore: It’s a great question, and I think you are spot on. One, we have a labor piece. We’ve been working with our union partners and as a result, the fact that we had perhaps higher wages gives us a benefit. And there’s another part to it as well because of seniority, because of a call by recall rights, we didn’t suffer and have to challenge and chase labor to the extent that perhaps some of our peers had to. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have challenging markets. Orlando has been a market — a challenging market for everyone. Key West was a particularly challenging market. But for many of our markets, having that embedded relationship was an advantage for us.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Appreciate those thoughts. And maybe just to expand a little bit on the Japanese traveler returning to Hawaii. Do you have a view just given seasonality of the year and maybe some of the incentives that they continue to run in the first part of this year, when would you expect that to kind of meaningfully pick up?

Tom Baltimore: It’s the second half of the year. We remain in contact with the tour operators. So your observation is right. There’s a lot of incentives to keep some of those dollars over and keep some of those yen over in Japan right now. But we fully expect — we’re now 3 years of not having that Japanese travel. And I can’t remember the number of weddings, Sean can remind me, but I want to say 150 that we were doing on the annual basis — obviously have not occurred. So we fully expect that we’ll get more than our fair share and that when they come back, they will come back with significant energy, and we would expect certainly longer stays and more spend. So we’re very excited about that. Despite that, as you’ve heard in the prepared remarks and the question, it was a record year.

Now that’s a record year of one property and about the size of that amount of EBITDA, about the size of some of our peers. So to sort of put it in perspective, with huge upside at that world-class resort.

Duane Pfennigwerth: Okay, appreciate the thoughts.

Tom Baltimore: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Powell with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Anthony Powell: Hi, good morning.

Tom Baltimore: Good morning, Anthony.

Anthony Powell: Good morning, Tom. It’s a question on asset sales that you made a lot of progress last year and start this year with asset sales. Maybe update us on what you’re still looking to achieve this year in terms of incremental sales?

Page 3 of 12