Marriott International, Inc. (NASDAQ:MAR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 9 of 11

And then also, if I’m interpreting that correctly, your rooms under construction, excluding the MGM rooms, is like 30-something percent of your pipeline, whereas, historically have been in the high 40% range, closer to 50%? And just thinking about rooms like physically under construction as a percent of your pipeline being a bit lower, obviously, there’s — we know what’s going on in the macro environment, but it seems like that would have implications for 2024 openings if the rooms under construction are, in fact, that low, if I’m interpreting it correctly from how you’re counting MGM in the construction pipeline? Thanks.

Tony Capuano: Sure. So I think there’s three questions in there, I’ll try to hit all three, Robin. On the first one, as Leeny mentioned, while we’re not going to disclose the specific deal terms, this is structured very similar to a franchise agreement where we are receiving a royalty fee on rooms revenue. This is not as Leeny termed it, an à la carte, where we’re only getting paid on fees generated just through our proprietary channels. So I do think you should think about it through the lens of a more traditional franchise fee structure. On your second question, we typically do conversions, pending opening in our system are typically included as rooms under construction because they typically have some measure of property improvement plan, improvements and construction before they come into our system.

Even in the case of MGM with extraordinary quality assets, there are, for instance, some life safety improvements and some other physical improvements that are required to those assets before they will be plugged into the system. And that’s why they’re characterized in that way. And on your third question, I’m doing the math just in my brain so we can do it more precisely for you. But if you take the quarter end pipeline and you back out those numbers or back out the MGM, we would have been a little over 500,000 rooms in the pipeline. And if you back the MGM numbers out of the under construction, we would have been a little over 200,000. So, it would have been 40%-ish under construction versus the 30% that you referenced. And so in terms of implications going forward, I’d reference a response I gave you maybe a quarter ago, which is for, I don’t recall the precise number, but 20-some-odd quarters despite really strong openings we’ve continued consistently to have plus or minus 20,000 rooms under construction globally, which I don’t think bodes quite well for our continued recovery to mid-single-digit net unit growth.

Robin Farley: Okay. Thanks. And just one quick clarification then. I wasn’t counting when you gave rooms in your pipeline at quarter end, just since the MGM deal was announced in July. Are you including MGM in that number? It sounds like you are from the math you just walked us through. I just wanted to clarify.

Tony Capuano: In the pipeline, yes, we are in the 547,000, yes. So that would include — to be more precise, that would include the roughly 37,000 incremental rooms that will come in, not the full 40,000 because the Cosmopolitan is already open and operating in the system as an Autograph as we sit here today.

Robin Farley: It’s included in your June 30 pipeline, even the–

Leeny Oberg: Yes. The deal was signed before June 30. So, it’s appropriate that it was in — it was not announced until a few weeks ago, but it was signed.

Robin Farley: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Brandt Montour with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Brandt Montour: Great. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Just one for me, maybe for Tony. Maybe you could just give us a view into the development backdrop in China as it stands today, just sort of the latest lay of the land in terms of starts and construction progress and any sort of acceleration and sort of how things look on the ground, that would be helpful?

Page 9 of 11