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Operator
Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties, third-quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Senior Vice President of Asset Management and Mr. Scott Lynn, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. This call will be available for digital replay. The number is (800) 585-8367 and the conference ID number is 15447366.
(Operator Instructions)
It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin.
Scott Lynn - SVP & General Counsel
Good morning thank you for joining us today. This call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act including statements about the Company's expected financial performance. Any statements we make today that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as believes, expects, or similar ones are intended to identify these statements. Which may be affected by many factors including those listed in SEC filings and in today's release. As a result, actual results may differ materially from the results we discussed or project today. We will not update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or other reason. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures which we reconcile to the most comparable GAAP financial measure in exhibit to today's release. I would now turn the call over to the Company's Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman, Colin Reed.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Thanks, Scott and thanks to everyone for being on the call with us today. This was another solid quarter for our business and we're pleased with our hotel properties performed. As well as the continued growth in our attractions business. I will walk you through the quarterly results as well as some of the driving factors behind those results before discussing the overall state of the group sector as we see it today.
We will also talk about some of the capital market actions that we took in the third quarter. I will then close by touching on how we're thinking about the fourth quarter and the closing out of the year.
So first, our hotel business. This quarter, our hotel operating metrics were up across the board as compared to the third quarter of 2013, some by double digits. Starting with the topline we reported a RevPAR increase of 10.2% driven by three percentage point increase in occupancy and a 5.7 percentage lift in ADR. We also saw total RevPAR growth of nearly 10% a key factor in the strong results was the increase in overall group room nights this order with approximately 31,000 more group room nights been in the prior year third quarter. Now this uptick in overall group room nights also positively impacted outside of the room spending which is evidenced by a nearly 10 percentage point growth in total RevPAR.
The other piece of the story is the transient side of our business which as you know has been consistently up since we integrated Marriott's reward program and them as manager of our hotels. In contrast to previous quarters transient room nights were marginally down for the quarter. Now this is simply a function of there be less availability to book into given that our group business was performing like it was this quarter as well as having almost 10,000 room nights out of service due to the room renovation project of the Gaylord Texan property which I'm pleased to say is now complete.
However, there is good news. Despite the modest drop in overall transient room nights this quarter, transient ADR was up nearly 15% sorry $15 or 9.2%. This illustrates the strength of the yield management processes within our business, as well as the attractiveness and strength of the markets that our hotels are situated in.
Turning to the bottom line, our hospitality adjusted EBITDA increased by 12.2% with a 50 basis point increase in margin. What we witnessed this quarter was that the growth in hospitality adjusted EBITDA outpaced the growth in hospitality revenue which is indicative of the operational leverage our hotels are capable of achieving. The improvement in adjusted EBITDA is in spite of some one-time items that distort true year-over-year comparisons, such as the refund for medical expenses, nonrecurring rebates in utilities and property taxes as well as a bonus accrual adjustment received in the third quarter of 2013.
Furthermore, during the third quarter of 2014, we had a one-time $600,000 charge related to an SEC settlement at Gaylord Opryland that some of you may have read about. So, removing the noise, the flow-through of incremental revenue in the hotels would have been approximately 50% which is what we expect. This is the third consecutive quarter in a row that we've seen strong hotel results and solid profitability.
Now as you know, we've worked extremely hard with our manager, Marriott, to ensure that we are continuously improving margin performance and doing everything we can to maximize efficiency and profitability at the hotel level. While maintaining the highest levels of guest satisfaction. While we are certainly pleased with how far we have come in our hotel operating results, we believe there is still room for improvement and we will continue to work with our manager to achieve our high expectations for these one-of-a-kind assets.
Now, to preempt the perennial question of how group is performing here is some additional facts. We continue to see a decline of in the year, for the year cancellations, which were down nearly 2000 room nights or just under 20% compared to the third quarter of last year. Attrition levels also continue to decline, decreasing by more than 20% to 9.7% of contracted room blocks for groups that travel during the third quarter
Now, I'll talk about group bookings in a minute and our ability to price to the consumer but suffice to say, things in the group segment appear to be improving right across the board. Now turning to Washington.
This was another solid quarter for the Gaylord National. Further supporting our cautiously optimistic view that while the market and frankly anything tied to the government will remain challenging and have an inherent degree of unpredictability we're confident in our market position there. This is particularly true given the continued evolution of the National Harbor development which we believe is growing into a significant economic driver for the entire region and will benefit not only the Gaylord National, but the new, 190 room hotel we announced last quarter that we were acquiring. This hotel today is operated as an aloft. We recently reached an agreement for this hotel to join the Marriott family under its new AC brand and the deal is still on track to be closed by the end of December.
From a synergies perspective, this is an important development as it makes the property a natural overflow destination for the Gaylord National as these two properties will be overseen by the same management team. Now we expect to shutter the hotel shortly after acquisition is complete which will be in the early part of next year and do some renovations, reposition the hotel to deliver great service. Now we'll have more details on what we expect the financial performance of this hotel will be during the fourth quarter of 2014's earnings call we'll be doing in early February and it's at that time that we will be outlining our complete guidance for 2015.
Now turning to the sales production our room night performance this quarter was very much in line with our expectations. While our gross group room nights were moderately down 14% from the same quarter last year our net room nights were actually slightly up, a function of the decline that we saw in attrition and cancellations. Now let me point out some things relative to our bookings production this quarter and why we're very satisfied with it.
As many of you know our bookings patterns are cyclical. The second and fourth quarters are typically our strongest quarters and while last year was a bit of an aberration due to some of the transition related issues, we have seen a normalization this year and here is the good news. During the second quarter you may remember that we booked nearly 640,000 gross room nights which was the best second-quarter production we've ever had on record. Obviously when you have a blowout quarter like that, the pipeline is not going to be as robust the next quarter.
However, rate continues to lift nicely for future year bookings and we're seeing the light of what has been a very long tunnel here when it comes to pricing and that is something that will have a significant benefit for us moving forward. Going into the fourth quarter, the funnel of tentative and prospect bookings are looking particularly healthy. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, but we're confident in saying that it looks like the fourth quarter is going to follow the traditional pattern I just mentioned of being a strong bookings quarter for us.
As we stated last quarter we also believe that we will continue to see our bookings performance improve as we continue to work with Marriott to optimize production at the regional sales offices. I'm pleased to report we now have a structure mapped out that we feel confident will yield the production that hits our historical averages.
Now I'd like to just take a moment and just highlight the performance of Gaylord Opryland this last quarter. As you all know this is our last -- largest property and the largest hotel of its kind outside of Las Vegas. And its performance has been consistently strong for quite some time now. Now over the last couple of years, we've been inundated with continued questions regarding the potential impact of the national convention center and the new downtown Omni hotel and maybe it's having an impact on our businesses here in Nashville. So here's the answer to the continued question.
In the third quarter Opryland was firing on all cylinders in fact, this property is on pace to have its very best year ever in revenue and profitability in its roughly 40 years history. Occupancy was at nearly 80% in the quarter exactly where we aim our properties to be in an ideal scenario. Revenue was up 15% over last year boosted by a lift in occupancy, rate and outside of the room spend as we saw a shift towards more premium higher-rated groups. In addition the property delivered a 33% margin performance in spite of some one-time costs negatively impacted the bottom line that I referenced earlier.
Lead volume is also very good and our expectations for bookings in the fourth quarter for all future years is very high. Keeping the focus on Nashville, as you all know, we believe that our Nashville entertainment assets are somewhat underappreciated and maybe misunderstood among several of the sell side community. This quarter, our attractions business produced a record quarterly revenue of $25.9 million, up over 18% from the prior year quarter. Let me repeat that. Up over 18% from the last -- from the prior year quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA was also very strong coming in at $9.5 million, our strongest third quarter and second highest overall quarter ever. And by the way that was a 43% year over -- quarter-over-quarter growth in adjusted EBITDA. The extraordinary authentic music industry here in Nashville is literally being discovered everyday by folks from all across the planet and the tourists base here in this unique city continues to grow.
Now some of you have been asking what are our plans for these assets and questioning if we're considering any strategic actions that could expand the brand's presence and further capitalize on the strong performance. What we'll say to you at this point is that we continue to work with our legal, tax and financial advisors to find ways to grow this business and unlock its value for our shareholders. Whatever decisions we come to, note we'll need to take into account both the singular nature of these assets as well as our historical tax basis. We've made progress in this endeavor and we'll provide an update when we have reached our conclusions. Regardless, it's so exciting to see what's going on here in Nashville and particularly with our business.
Now, switching subjects Mark will go into more detail on this shortly, but I want to highlight several balance sheet developments from this quarter. As most of you are aware, our 3 3/4 convertible notes matured on October 1. Over the last few quarters we've been buying in these converts for cash when they became available. We settled the remaining 232.2 million of our convertible notes through cash on hand and borrowings under our Revolving Credit Facility.
In addition during the third quarter we cashed several 2.4 million warrants associated with these convertible notes for $57.9 million which was also funded through cash on hand and draws under our Revolving Credit Facility. We are pleased with the current strength of our balance sheet and confident it gives us the right amount of flexibility moving forward particularly in light of our operating performance and commitment to pay our shareholders a very good dividend.
Now turning to guidance as you may have seen in our earnings release this morning we tightened our guidance range for the year. Based on year-to-date performance and the outlook for the remainder of the year which is always the hardest quarter to predict given the business mix that occurs in the fourth quarter. We are narrowing our guidance range for the full-year 2014 RevPAR growth to 6% to 7%, and total RevPAR growth to 7% to 8% over 2013.
We're also tightening our full-year 2014 adjusted EBITDA guidance for the hospitality segment to $278 million to $284 million. Now given the consistent outperformance by our attractions businesses we are adjusting the top and bottom range of guidance to this segment to $25 million to $27 million. As such our updated guidance for 2014 adjusted EBITDA on a consolidated basis is now $280 million to $290 million with corporate and other loss of $23 million to $21 million remaining unchanged even though it includes some unbudgeted consulting and legal expenses associated with the work we're undertaking with our attractions business. Our adjusted FFO guidance range for the full year is now $188 million to $198 million.
In closing, this was again a very solid quarter for our business and we are pleased with the momentum we have as we enter the fourth quarter. We feel that with the conversion issues behind us our assets are operating like they're capable of and the group sector environment appears to be strengthening. We are also remaining very focused on constantly evaluating how we can best return value to you, our shareholders and prudently manage our balance sheet and with that, let me hand you over to Mark to walk you to the financials. Mark?
Mark Fioravanti - EVP & CFO
Thank you, Colin, good morning everyone. Driven by continued strength across the Company, third-quarter Ryman Hospitality consolidated total revenue increased 10.8% to $245 million compared to the prior year quarter. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter of 2014 grew 14% to $65.4 million, representing an 80 basis point proven in margin.
During the quarter, the Company generated net income of $15.1 million or $0.25 per fully diluted share and $42.1 million in adjusted funds from operations or AFFO per fully diluted share of $0.69. Both net income and AFFO were down on a comparative basis year over year due to a $12 million tax benefit the Company received in 2013. It's important to remember that the GAAP fully diluted share calculations do not consider the anti-dilutive effects of the Company's purchased call option associated with our convertible notes which remained outstanding at the end of the second quarter. I'll speak more about this in a moment when I discuss the balance sheet activity during the quarter.
Turning to the hospitality segment results driven by continued strength in both the group and transient segments, RevPAR during the quarter increased 10.2% to $123.99. Strong occupancy growth and an increase in corporate rooms nights particularly at Opryland drove a 9.9% increase in total RevPAR to $294.09 compared to the second quarter of last year.
As Colin mentioned during his opening remarks we continue to see encouraging trends in the group cancellation and attrition rates during the quarter. Gaylord Hotels in the year for the year cancellations totaled 7,300, excuse me, 7,837 room nights down 19.9% compared to the third quarter of 2013. Attrition rates continue to decline falling 250 basis points to 9.7%. Attrition in cancellation fees collected during the quarter totaled $1.4 million down $600,000 from the same period last year. For the quarter hospitality segment adjusted EBITDA increased 12.2% to $61.5 million representing a 60 basis point improvement in margin.
The Opry and Attractions segment revenue rose 18.4% to $25.9 million in the quarter and segment adjusted EBITDA increased 43% to $9.5 million representing a 630 basis point improvement in margin. The corporate and other segment adjusted EBITDA totaled a loss of $5.6 million. The increase in corporate expense as compared to the prior year quarter is largely due to an increase in employee incentive costs associated with improved Company performance and consulting and advisory fees incurred during the quarter.
Moving on to the balance sheet pursuant to an agreement made in June with one of the note hedge counterparties to our convertible notes the Company cash settled 2.4 million warrants in August for $57.6 million. This cash settlement was funded by cash on hand and draws under the Company's Revolving Credit Facility. As part of this transaction the Company reported a $1.6 million loss on a change in fair value of warrants between June 30 and the settlement date which is included in the other gains and losses in the Company's financial statements. After the settlement of this transaction, the remaining warrants cover approximately 7.2 million shares with an adjusted strike price of $25.01 per share.
As you are aware the remaining $232.2 million in convertible notes matured on October 1, 2014. Subsequent to the end of the quarter the Company settled its obligations upon conversion of each $1,000 principal amount of the convertible notes in cash and the remainder of the conversion settlement amount in shares of common stock. Concurrently, with the settlement of the convertible notes, the Company received and canceled an equal amount of shares of its common stock pursuant to its rights under the convertible note hedge transactions with respect to its common stock. The net impact resulted in no dilution to our outstanding common shares.
As a reminder the dilution mechanics for the remaining outstanding warrants is available in the investor toolkit section of our website and has been updated with all the activities I just outlined. As of September 30, 2014 the Company had total debt outstanding of $1.587 billion which includes a $232.2 million of outstanding convertible notes. And had unrestricted cash of $279.5 million resulting in a net debt balance of $2.29 million of debt. Or $2.29 billion of debt, excuse me.
As of September 30, 2014, $926 million of borrowing were drawn under the Company's credit facility including the Term Loan B and the lending banks had issued $2.7 million in letters of credit which left $470.3 million of availability for borrowing under the credit facility. During the quarter the Company paid its third quarter cash dividend of $0.55 per share of common stock on October 15. It is the Company's current plan to distribute total annual dividends of approximately $2.20 per share in cash in equal quarterly payments with the remaining quarterly payments in January, 2015 subject to our Board's future determination and the timing thereof. And with that I'll turn the call back over to Colin for any closing remarks.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Thanks, Mark. Let's, Lori, let's open the phone lines up for questions. If anyone has any questions.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Chris Woronka, Deutsche Bank.
Chris Woronka - Analyst
Hello good morning, guys. Nice quarter. I want to ask you, I think we heard from Marriott last week that going forward they were going to raise some of the out of room minimum spending requirements and I think the comment pertained more to the flagship Marriott brand but I was hoping you could comment on maybe whether that's something they're working with you guys on as well?
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
No. We -- that hasn't, I don't think, Patrick, that has risen -- that discussion has risen to the size of hotels that we own. As you know we put contracts in place with our group customers, there is outside of the room minimum spends outside of the room spend as a Company at total RevPAR per room is either the highest or equal highest in hospitality REIT -- I don't think this strategy would apply to these battleships that we own.
Chris Woronka - Analyst
Okay, understood. And then, just secondly as we kind of think about group business continuing to accelerate kind on an industrywide basis it seems that you guys should kind of benefit of little bit more just from the standpoint that some of the smaller boxes I think are actually yielding out some of their group businesses as the transient moves on and can you talk about whether you think we see a big jump up in that in 2015? Or is that more for you guys more of a multiyear process out into 2016 and beyond?
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Well let me give you sort of a 60,000-foot answer and then maybe Patrick and Mark can dive in here. Our hotels are running right now if we just look at the sort of midpoint of whether you analysts have us in occupancy, we're running at least four hotels running at 73%-ish, Patrick, 73.5% something like that and so what we're seeing is we're seeing group demand grow across the board in most sectors putting government aside. And as we signaled in our release we saw really decent rate growth in our group bookings in the third quarter. Mid- to high-single digit and this is very exciting times because for us we've been working with Marriott for the last two years to perfect the whole sales process as it relates to these big boxes with our sales -- with our seal team 6 these are the groups that the salespeople that are looking for these and sourcing these very large groups, the regional sales office refinements that we have done and we believe we're hitting our stride now. We believe the sales process is where they need to be and we're same lead volumes increase and so the opportunity when you start seeing room night compression in the business, the opportunity is rate growth both in terms of group and also as it relates to leisure.
We took a little bit more of a bolder move this year in terms of pricing our leisure side we're seeing that, we're seeing that show up in our business and this is the reason why we've got a 10% RevPAR growth and a 10% total RevPAR growth for the quarter. So, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves yet for 2015, we're the middle of our budgeting season with Marriott, but frankly I expect a good level of performance and I think our management does, a very good level of performance for these hotels in 2015. And if the economy stays with this 2.5%, 3% growth in GDP, 2015, 2016, Chris, we don't have new supply affecting the hotels that we own and so this should be, this should translate into a good 2015 and a good 2016 for our business. The other thing is just FYI, we're pacing ahead, we're pacing ahead right now for 2015 and we're pacing ahead right now for 2016. And so with the T's and P's we're looking at lead volumes we're looking at, with a 5.1 million room nights on the books in contract form for all future years providing there's no geopolitical disconnected here, the next two to three years are going to be pretty good.
Chris Woronka - Analyst
Great that's great color Colin and just one final one for me. The performance within the attractions segment was terrific and it's interesting some of your comments and I would agree with you that we probably don't have a full appreciation of the business but I want to ask you, when you think longer-term you've talked about may be some different options for the business but where do you think Nashville is in its evolutionary cycle and is this something where you guys are kind of seeing infrastructure and other changes within the city that could really drive some outsized longer-term growth in the segment?
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
I think this again sounds silly when we own almost 10% of the room supply in this town and me advocating more hotel rooms to be built so it sort of seems silly but this is not supply induced demand. What is happening is, to Nashville which is quite unlike any other city in the United States and probably in the world, is this town has an extraordinary music base, not just country as the way it used to be thought about 10, 15 years ago, multi-genre. It's extraordinary. Tomorrow night we have the CMA's here on TV it's going to be mayhem in this town. Ticket prices are being scalped to hundreds and hundreds of dollars the people who are wanting to get to this thing and so what is happening is people all across America, all across the globe are discovering what we have in Nashville, Tennessee and the demand is just extraordinary and it's continuing.
The thing that this town has got to focus on and we're active with political leadership, is how do you deal with infrastructure? How do you deal with airlift? How do you deal with more hotel rooms? How do you deal with transportation to get workers to downtown and this is the 5-year, 10-year challenge that the city of Nashville has. It's not like any other city which the challenge is how do you stimulate demand. Demand is here what we've got to do is fulfill it and the thing is that we own main and main. When I say we own main and main, the backbone of the country music industry, a large part of it is in our hands and so that's what we are constantly trying to figure out how do we expand these entertainment assets to make the experience to this ever-growing consumer base more appealing? And we've been squawking about this for three or four years because we've seeing this coming and I think the financial results of our business shows it's underway but I think we're in the very early innings of this providing our political leadership, state leadership is able to deal with the growing pains of too much demand.
Chris Woronka - Analyst
Okay, that's very helpful thanks, Colin.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Thanks a lot.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Patrick's Scholes, SunTrust.
Patrick Scholes - Analyst
Hi, good morning. Two questions for you here. I wondered if you could give us a little color if possible on the pricing on, forward pricing on your bookings for outside of the room or ancillary spend you noted in your press release about the average daily rate on the room nights up high-single digits how should we also think about the outside of the room pricing that you're doing? That's the first question.
Patrick Chaffin - Senior Vice President of Asset Management
Patrick this is Patrick Chaffin, so I want to remind you that when we put room nights on the books for the future we set them up with a minimum as far as spend and then as we get 90 days out or so we really start communicating with the group to set their individual menus et cetera. So, what we really look at, at this point is not so much the minimums which we maintain a very stringent restriction on what the minimums have to be by group size but we look at the rate and we know that as the rate grows and we get premium groups in-house with better rates, we stand to benefit outside the room. And so, we are confident that as we continue to move forward the rate increases we're seeing on the books as getting back towards prior peak levels back in 2008 as far as what's on the books for group will benefit us in outside the room spend as well. From a mix perspective that's further supported by the fact that this year we've seen corporate leads increase year to date about 14%, we're booking more corporate room nights than we have in the past, there's a lot more demand coming in there, so we believe that you put all these factors together and that it stands to reason that we should see good benefit outside the room as we move into 2015 and beyond.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Let me just add to this, Patrick first one of I think Patrick's goals, the implication or the way you asked the question sort of you could imply that do we price the stay today for four years from now, is that how we conduct business? And the answer is no. What we do is we write into the contract a food and beverage minimum as Patrick Chaffin said, three months out we're sitting with the customer, building the menus, how many breaks, are we going to have a two breakfasts, one lunch, two dinners, or vice versa and then the client with us is constructing that menu, constructing the wine list and so the pricing is being done, the actual pricing is being done in a dynamic way whenever the client chooses to engage in those decisions it's not something that's set at the time the contract is done for a group that's going to come four years from now.
Patrick Scholes - Analyst
Got it thank you. Second question concerns the Gaylord National you had a number of one-time say EBITDA interruptions in the third quarter utility rates, union related expenses will those also flow-through to the fourth quarter of this year and the first half of next year? Or are they specifically 3Q items?
Patrick Chaffin - Senior Vice President of Asset Management
So, Patrick, one of the big items was a rebate that we received from Petco up at the National in the third quarter of 2013 so no that won't be any kind of impact into the fourth quarter of this year or next year. The union costs increases, that's just the nature of the beast with a union hotel so we'll continue to see that but we continue to work with the property and with Marriott to identify ways to offset those and then some of the other costs that we saw increasing were CITY booking costs because we're booking more room nights so that's a good problem for us to have. But then there were as we mentioned there were some tax rebates, there were some medical rebates et cetera that are just one-time items in the previous year that is exclusively to the third quarter.
Patrick Scholes - Analyst
Okay and then on the union related expenses is that associated with payroll and/or benefits and how much -- which part of that was driving the increase or was it something else.
Patrick Chaffin - Senior Vice President of Asset Management
No it's predominately with the benefit side of the house and it's just what had been negotiated in by the union to keep them on par with other union hotels.
Patrick Scholes - Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Thanks a lot.
Operator
Howard Bryerman, Penn Capital.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
I'm just trying to simplify transient versus group, if we just simply look at the mix in the quarter what percentage was from group and what percentage was from transient and how do we look at that relative to last year's third quarter? In terms of a pie chart of the respective percentages?
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Just hold on, Howard, Patrick is getting out his data we don't want to be inaccurate.
Patrick Chaffin - Senior Vice President of Asset Management
I mean we're about 75% group 25% roughly transient and that's a little bit higher than what we saw on the group side in the third quarter of last year, just a couple of points difference, again we booked more groups into the third quarter of this year and that as Colin mentioned earlier in the call, that blocked out of some of the transient availability.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
Okay, and if we just, I realize you don't have 2015 guidance out there but if you look at booked room nights going forward how does that pie look looking out to book business at this point?
Patrick Chaffin - Senior Vice President of Asset Management
So we are having a very good year in 2014 from a group perspective and if you look at 2015 right now, the only guidance that we'll give is that we have more group room nights on the books for 2015 than we did at this point last year for 2014 and we have a higher mix of corporate business going into 2015.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Sorry and other thing I would say, Howard, good morning to you by the way.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
Thank you.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Is that we have a higher bucket of leads that we did at this time last year and I think, Patrick, about 8% of higher T's and P's right now for future years than we did at this time last year so, and the other part of it is the attrition rates are lower now than they were at this time last year which will affect if they stay how group's perform next year.
Mark Fioravanti - EVP & CFO
Howard in terms of how the pilot for 2015, right now 2015 is all group it's 100% group because of the booking window's for transient are very short-term.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
Okay fair enough.
Mark Fioravanti - EVP & CFO
Our expectation is our mix next year between group and transient is going to be right around where we are today which is kind of 75/ 25 group versus transient.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
Okay. And just a question regarding the balance sheet. So at the end of the day after the converts were taking care of debt has actually dropped I guess so because you've used up the cash so we wind up with a smaller, we wind up with $1.2 billion versus $1.5 billion so debt has actually dropped although net debt is probably about the same.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
That's right that's the way to think about it. We would never keep $300 million had we not contemplated settling these converts. We would never keep $300 million in cash.
Mark Fioravanti - EVP & CFO
The mechanics of it Howard, where we had to draw the revolver a day or so prior to settling the converts and of course the converts settled on October 1 so when we closed the quarter we had the cash on the balance sheet.
Howard Bryerman - Analyst
Okay, very good thanks a lot, gentlemen.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you that does conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. I'll now turn it over to Colin Reed for any additional or closing remarks.
Colin Reed - Chairman & CEO
Well thank you everyone for being on the call I know some of us are in a way to Atlanta here in the next hour or so for the REIT world lovefest and we'll see quite a few of the sell side there and look forward to engaging and talking more so about this performance. But we're happy with it. And, we're happy about the way things are shaping for the fourth quarter and 2015. So, with that, thank you very much, everyone and see you soon.
Operator
Thank you that does conclude the Ryman Hospitality Properties third-quarter 2014 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.