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

David Katz: Okay, perfect. And you gave us a lot of detail so I just want to ask about one other, if I may. You talked about $170 million, I think, of recycling in the year. I apologize if I missed it, but have you sort of broken out how much €“ is that €“ should we €“ is that practically all Cambria? Or are there other things in there? And should we think about €“ we’ve notionally thought about $500 million kind of out there outstanding. Does that mean that there’s still $330 million outstanding with that?

Dom Dragisich: Yes. So to answer your first question, yes, that’s €“ all of the recycling is through the Cambria brand. When you think about that balance sheet commitment, in the past, we had talked about having an authorization up to the $725 million. When you think about the recycle, some of the capital that we’ve extended over the course of the last several months, our current balance is about $380 million broadly. So, you’ve seen that come down significantly, just given some of these capital recycling events. But again, we are seeing the flywheel now at this point where we’re deploying the capital, we’re putting 20 year to 30 year franchise agreements that are very sticky on these assets upon sale and we’re continuing to see kind of that capital being recycled.

And so broadly, that $379 million kind of breaks down when you take a look at just the owned assets going forward, almost half of that, a little more than half of that is on the owned assets. So, you’re going to continue to see recycling in the future as well. And I would not anticipate seeing that $380 million push up against that $725 million authorization, David.

David Katz: Understood. Thank you and congrats again.

Dom Dragisich: Thank you.

Pat Pacious: Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from Dori Kesten with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Dori Kesten: Thanks. Good morning. With respect to the new credit card, can you give us a sense of the upside there year-over-year? And does this fall into other revenues?

Pat Pacious: So I think when you look at what we are doing broadly, Dori, with regard to our consumer, as the portfolio mix is getting stronger and our competitive position is getting stronger, we add to that the fact that travel has become kind of a top spend priority for most of our consumers. We’re really looking at ways we can continue to invest in their future growth. I look at what we talked about on the call here, travel is occurring more in different months of the year. So Q1, Q2, traveling’s occurring at different days of the week. We’re seeing more Sunday and Thursday night travel, which is extending the weekend. So that tells us that our consumer is looking to do more with us. They’re engaging more with us. So really what we wanted to do with the co-brand card was to allow our members to engage with us beyond hotel stays.

And so that’s really the exciting opportunity we now have with Wells Fargo and Mastercard is to continue to drive that spend and that engagement in a more experiential level as that consumer we have today is growing in income and is growing in the amount of stays they’re doing with us. So as we mentioned on the call, we are expecting this year to see about a $5 million incremental fee from the co-brand credit card as it rolls out. And as we get traction, we expect that incremental to go to $10 million in 2024. So I think it’s an accelerating factor here for us. And I think it’s really a nice complement to the joining of the two programs of Choice Privileges and Radisson Americas and the opportunity that we see as we’re moving into more of a higher spend consumer across our broader portfolio.