Playa Hotels & Resorts N.V. (NASDAQ:PLYA) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tyler Batory : Okay. And then, multi-part question on the FX topic. It sounds like you have some hedges in place. I’m assuming that’s not something that you had in the past. So just help us think about that. Help us think about the sensitivity hearing that the peso is 16 or 18, what that might mean for the guide? And then, another question that I get from a lot of new investors to this story might be helpful to address in this public forum. Just why is the appreciation of the peso a drag? Maybe just talk through all the mechanics there would be helpful.

Bruce Wardinski : Yeah, it’s a translation issue because we report our functional currency to USDA and roughly 60%, 65% of our Mexican expenses locally are denominated in peso, the biggest one being wages right, we are paying people in peso. We are over spending a lot, from vendors and food and beverages locally. And so, it gets converted. So you shouldn’t divide it by a lower number. When it gets converted to USDA is higher. So, on as far as the hedges that we put in place, so just in January, we hedged about 50% of our Mexican peso exposure. And so, essentially we sold volatility. So, and that’s how you get to the ranges, right? So, if we hadn’t done anything and our exposure was not hedged and the peso stay at 17 for the year, it’s approximately $9 million hit year-over-year.

Because we sold some volatility and assuming that our expense base stays exactly as we have forecasted. There’s some upside to that meaning that the lower end of that range is call it $7 million. So there’s kind of $2 million to $2.5 million that we were paying to put that FX hedge in place, because where the curve sat at the time. The upward bound range of that is, if our expenses – our expense base is higher than we thought for some reasons in our forecast so that would bring it to the other end of that. So we kind of used the midpoint of $9 million if we had no hedge at a spot rate of $17 million. But if you take the $17 million and our senses are exactly as you think, that moves to the lower end of that range to closer to $7 million. And again almost the entirety of that is captured in the first half of the year.

The impact of that is higher than for [Indiscernible]

Tyler Batory : All right. Great. Very helpful. Thank you for the detail.

Bruce Wardinski : Thanks, Tyler.

Operator: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Bruce Wardinski for any closing remarks.

Bruce Wardinski: Great. Thanks everyone for participating. I think we’ve covered a lot of material and I hope today is useful and we appreciate your interest in Playa. Thank you very much.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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