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

Dom Dragisich: Yes. And Robin, just to clarify on the actual net unit growth side of the house on economy. I think the past point, the expectation is the trends that you’re currently seeing just from an absolute net unit growth perspective, we expect to see those continue in 2023. But what’s impressive is the story of strategic development and just onboarding just more revenue-intense, higher royalty product, you’re going to see a scenario here where in the economy segment, even with a decline year-over-year, your royalty associated with those two brands is expected to at least remain flat, if not grow marginally. And so the revenue intense strategy is even working within brand and segment. It’s just €“ it’s not just a brand mix shift story.

Pat Pacious: Yes. And I think on top of that, just when we look at the performance of our economy brands, we’ve gained significant RevPAR index share for those brands over the past three years. So during the pandemic, when they got hit by pandemic, then last year, they got hit by labor shortage, this year hit by inflation. We’ve been able to help our hotels perform better and take share from their competition. So, we feel like we’ve built a very nice franchisee success system, not just for our revenue-intense brands, but also for the economy segment, and that’s allowed us to attract higher-quality owners and higher-quality assets.

Robin Farley: Great. Thanks. And then just one quick clarification. Your 2% RevPAR guidance, that includes the mix benefit, correct? In other words, that’s not a same-store 2% growth? I just wanted to clarify. Thanks.

Dom Dragisich: That is correct.

Pat Pacious: Yes, that’s correct, Robin.

Robin Farley: Okay, thank you.

Pat Pacious: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Stephen Grambling: Hi, thanks. I’m not sure if I missed this, but I would love you to just touch on your capital plans and any key money that we should be thinking about in 2023 and maybe even beyond as we think about this move to the Upper-Upscale and Upscale segments.

Dom Dragisich: Yes. Thanks for the question. When you take a look at key money, what I would say at this point in time, Stephen, is really the key money should be in line with or possibly up marginally versus 2022 levels. So if you think about just modeling out for 2023, a lot of it depends on obviously how successful our development team is. So if we see slightly elevated key money, that means that the development team is probably doing something right in terms of this revenue intense strategy. I think on the CapEx side of the house, you could see it tick up slightly year-over-year. I think our maintenance CapEx has historically been anywhere in that kind of $25 million to $35 million range. We are in the process of moving our office locations so you could see CapEx up marginally versus what the historical levels have been. But in terms of the actual key money incentives, I think using 2022 as a proxy for 2023 is probably a pretty good starting point.

Stephen Grambling: Great. And then one other housekeeping item. The other fee line was a little bit stronger in the fourth quarter, I think, than we were anticipating. Curious if you can give us a little bit more of a breakdown of what’s been impacting that line and how we should think about that specifically into 2023?