In preparation for HYATT's Q4 earnings release tomorrow, we’ve put together the recent pertinent forward looking company commentary.
YOUTUBE FROM Q3 CONFERENCE CALL
- “Overall as of the end of the third quarter, our signed contract base for future hotels exceeded 150, representing more than 36,000 rooms which is a small increase from last quarter”
- Renovation of big 5 owned hotels: “We're starting to see the benefits of these renovations as hotels are starting to see RevPAR index growth, higher levels of interest among meeting planners and indications that the renovated hotels will be even more appealing to transient and group guests for 2012 and beyond.”
- “From a revenue displacement perspective, because we had rooms out of service in the fourth quarter of last year, we do not expect to see any additional negative impact from displacement on a year-over-year comparative basis going forward”
- “Visibility to the future continues to be limited as booking windows continue to be tight. About one-third of our group business and virtually all of our transient business for 2012 has yet to book.”
- “Corporate rate negotiations have just begun, and while we hope for high single-digit percentage rate increases because of relatively high levels of industry occupancy and continuing limited new hotel supply growth, the fact is that visibility is limited”
- “We continued to shift more business away from lower discount, promotional and opaque third-party rates to higher rated corporate negotiated rates”
- “As we did last quarter, we continue to see an increase in food and beverage revenues and ancillary revenues on a per occupied room basis at North America full service hotels. Specifically, all three measures outlet revenue per transient room night, banquet revenue per group room night and other operating revenue per occupied room increased.”
- “Our adjusted SG&A expenses increased approximately 15% in the quarter. Approximately a third of this increase is due to bad debt expense and performance surcharges related to two properties, a third, due to increased head count driven by growth initiatives and a third due to inflation and increased business levels.”
- “Our full-year forecasted tax rate percentage is currently in the mid 20% range, excluding discrete items.”
- “We have fine-tuned our capital expenditure estimate to be between $390 million and $400 million. Our expectation of depreciation and amortization expense has increased to approximately $300 million, primarily due to the LodgeWorks transaction.”
- “Our estimate for interest expense has increased to approximately $60 million, primarily as a result of our recent debt issuance.”
- “Our SG&A, if you exclude the one-time I would describe the bad debt expense or the performance cues as really one-time events, is running at approximately a little over 8% on a year-to-date basis.”
- “The total CapEx investment will be lower than what's reflected for 2011 largely because, 2011 had the renovations that related to our five big hotels which are largely complete, and the figure broadly was about 40% of the $400 million that you have for 2011.”
- “Approximately a third of the margins were relative to property refunds. Now we do have property refunds. We've seen some last year. We've seen some this year. It just happened this quarter, so when you compare quarter-over-quarter, it is a one-time event. The rest of it was largely driven by the portfolio and it's driven by a couple of factors. First, the margin increase is broad-based so it's not a few properties driving it. It's across the board, both North America and international. Secondly, mix shift which is trending towards higher rated group and transient business has driven higher room and food margins. And we continue as we've done in the past to drive productivity through effective cost control. Our cost per occupied room increase was less than half of the occupancy increase we saw in the quarter.”
- “I think overall, the LodgeWorks transaction should marginally help margins over the long-term. So it should be accretive”
- “Our quarter three RevPAR growth in Europe was in the mid-single digits, so slightly higher than what we've seen in the international business. We've seen really no change, similar trends continue into recent weeks…Our presence is Europe is small. If you look at our total room base, we have about 5% of our room base invested in Europe. And our presence in Europe is largely concentrated in Germany, France and in a few markets in the UK.”
