Hedgeye - HST YOUTUBE

In preparation for HST's F4Q earnings release tomorrow, we’ve put together the recent pertinent forward looking company commentary.

HOST HOTELS & RESORTS, INC. ANNOUNCES THE SALE OF THE ATLANTA MARRIOTT MARQUIS (Jan 17)

1,663-room Atlanta Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, GA for $293 million

HOST HOTELS & RESORTS, INC. ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF FIVE HOTELS BY ITS EUROPEAN JOINT VENTURE (Dec 3)

Company holds a 33.4% interest, acquired five hotels from Whitehall comprising 1,733 rooms in two countries for approximately €440 million.

YOUTUBE FROM 3Q CONFERENCE CALL

"Not surprisingly, our larger group hotels, especially those in Boston and several resort markets, outperformed the overall portfolio."
"Looking at the fourth quarter and into next year, we continue to be encouraged by the positive trends in group business. While current booking activity or current quarter booking activity will likely slow somewhat because fewer room blocks are available, longer-term activity continues to be strong as overall bookings in the third quarter were up nearly 9% compared to the prior year. Even with the disruptive timing of several holidays and the election, group revenues on the books are up 7.5% for the fourth quarter....Overall, as we look at the quarter, we are still expecting group to be certainly up meaningfully in the fourth quarter. We do not expect group to be as strong in Q4 as it was in Q3."
"Our activity for 2013 continues to show sequential improvement with revenues on the books now 8% ahead of the prior year. A great majority of this improvement is happening in our larger group hotels, which are benefiting as customers began to plan more proactively."
"We continue to expect that we will complete incremental sales in the $300 million to $400 million range....While we hope to complete these sales by the end of the year, it is likely that the closing of some of these transactions could spill over into early 2013."
"We are also expecting to create value from some underutilized tennis courts at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa. We are under contract with a luxury homebuilder to sell 4.2 acres of excess land adjacent to the hotel, which has been approved for the development and sale of 79 luxury condominiums. The successful execution of these innovative uses of existing space or unused land is expected to create future value to Host of approximately $400 million to $500 million."
"While it's premature to offer any specific guidance relative to RevPAR or revenue growth for 2013, we do believe that the fundamentals for our business continue to be attractive. We expect to enter next year with an occupancy level higher than we had in 2007, the strong booking pace I referenced and supply at a near record low of 0.5% in our markets. We are very confident that our managers will have success in negotiating higher special corporate rates this fall. Additionally, international travel continues to grow at a high-single-digit rate, adding demands in our priority gateway markets. All of these factors should result in solid RevPAR growth in the coming year."
"We expect our Philadelphia hotels to underperform our portfolio in the fourth quarter due to a decline in group and transient demand as well as a renovation at the Philadelphia Airport Marriott."
"We expect our Boston hotels to have a good fourth quarter due to strength in group revenues and an expectation of continuing strong transient rates."
"We expect our San Francisco hotels to continue to perform very well in the fourth quarter, as strong group and transient demand will allow us to continue to drive rate."
"We expect our Miami and Fort Lauderdale hotels to have a good fourth quarter due to solid group bookings."
"We expect our Los Angeles hotels to have a great fourth quarter due to robust group and transient demand."
"We expect our Hawaiian hotels to have a good fourth quarter."
"Results were affected by renovations at three hotels, driving ADR growth in New York has been challenging this year and we expect that trend to continue in the fourth quarter."
"RevPAR increased 3.5%, driven by an increase in rate of nearly 3%, a slight improvement in occupancy. We expect our Chicago hotels to perform much better in the fourth quarter due to better group and transient demand."
"Both group and transient demand were weak as there was little activity on Capitol Hill and election-year activities were outside of D.C. Results in the quarter were hurt by the rooms renovation at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill. We have a series of meeting space and rooms renovations scheduled for the fourth quarter and we expect D.C. to continue to underperform the portfolio. We expect 2013 to be a better year for D.C."
"We are anticipating lower growth in F&B revenue and profitability in the fourth quarter of this year due to an unfavorable comparison for 2011, where F&B revenue grew 6.8%, as well as the anticipated impact of the challenging holiday and election calendar."
"We expect unallocated cost to increase in line with inflation, particularly for sales and marketing where higher revenues will increase cost. We also expect utilities to decline in the quarter albeit at a much lower level of decline than we experienced in the third quarter."
[Property tax] "At this point, we expect the full year increase in the 6% area as we have been successful in reducing several current year assessments and challenging prior year assessments."
"As we look at 2013, I would say that, while we're certainly happy with the disposition pricing that we seem to be attracting on the assets that we're looking at selling, I also think that we feel fairly comfortable that this is going to be an extended cycle. And so I would expect that we would continue to be active in 2013. Whether we're a net acquirer or a net seller probably depends more on how attractive the actual acquisition opportunities that develop over the course of 2013. But I think by and large our intent is to continue to be active in the year. And if I were trying to plan it out perfectly, I'd probably say we'd probably be about neutral in 2013."
"We're fairly comfortable that our capital spending in 2013 will decline compared to the levels that we had in 2012 and it should be by a fairly significant amount."
"The CMBS market does seem to be strengthening and we hope that that proves to be a continuing trend because we would expect that that would be a source of financing. Not the only one, but a key source of financing for folks who are buying properties from us."