Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (NYSE:RHP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Colin Reed: Yes. I’m going to sort of fly up to 65,000 feet on this. The growth opportunities in this business are almost on it. We’ve got so many different things that we’re looking at. And we’re frankly just getting to it with our friends from Atairos Comcast NBC. So we’re going to work hard during the course of this year, identify new avenues of growth. We probably will look at the physical venue side of the business, go through additional physical venue side of the business, but also on the digital distribution of the content we create. And I do say, I don’t think you’re going to see any sort of major changes to the structure of that business this year. But we’re very excited about the growth avenue here. And so I would say to our investors that love this part of the business strain it. So we’re going to have some fun with this business over the next one to two years.

Patrick Chaffin: Chris, it’s Patrick. Let me follow up with you. I was able to kind of pull some numbers quickly. Our expectation is that we’ll book around 14% to 15% of our group room night total for the year in the year for the year. And how that compares to prior year is tough because of Omicron because that’s a net number. And if you remember, Omicron was creating so many cancellations. So I’ll have to follow back up with you as far as once you take out the impact of Omicron in the first quarter of last year, what did our — in the year for the year business actually look like. So I’ll follow up with you on that, but roughly 14% to 15% of what we expect to do for the total year in group should be booked in the year for the year.

Chris Woronka: Okay, all very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Patrick Chaffin: Thanks Chris.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Jay Kornreich with SMBC. Your line is open.

Jay Kornreich: Thanks. Good morning. I guess, first, just a follow-up on the Entertainment piece, and you talked about all the possibilities of growth and just the year-over-year growth seems to be more potential on that segment than maybe they tell currently. So I’m just curious, do you outline a potential percent of the overall portfolio, you see the entertainment fees getting to or want to get it to versus the roughly 10% pre-pandemic?

Mark Fioravanti: We really don’t think of it that way, Jay, in terms of its growth and relationship to hotels. We really think about as a separate opportunity with a very different set of demand drivers and capital opportunities. And the longer-term aspiration for this business is to create a stand-alone live entertainment and media business that really focuses on the country lifestyle consumer, helps promote country music and engages with those consumers, both in location-based entertainment opportunities as well as virtually. So we don’t think about it. The only — really the only way we think about in relationship to the hotels is how we think about capital deployment from our perspective and then how — frankly, how it fits within the REIT structure because we do have some limitations there. But we’re — from a growth perspective, we’re nowhere near those limitations at this stage.

Jay Kornreich: Okay. Thanks for that perspective. And then just another question on the Gaylord Rockies that, I guess, if you look at the run rate, Q3 this year, it was our top performing asset 87% occupancy, 4Q dropped down to 70%. I’m sure it’s more of a group-oriented assets. But just curious if you can kind of run through kind of how you see that run rate in 2023 and the year-over-year growth at that asset?

Colin Reed: You want to take that, Patrick?