Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc (RHP) 2015 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties' first-quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, 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 a digital replay. The number is 800-585-8367 and the conference ID number is 21628762. (Operator Instructions).

It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin.

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 future 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.

The Company's actual results may differ materially from the results we discuss or project. We will not update any forward-looking statements, whether as the result of new information, future events, or any other reason.

We will also discuss non-GAAP measures today, which we reconcile to the most comparable GAAP financial measure in an exhibit to today's release.

I will now turn the call over to Colin.

Thank you, Scott, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call today.

This was a very solid quarter for our Company and a great start to the year. I will start by going through our results before discussing the trends we are observing in the Group sector, how we are thinking about the rest of the year, and the encouraging signs we are seeing for 2016 and beyond. I will then turn it over to Mark to provide more color on the financial performance for the quarter, as well as the capital market activities we undertook subsequent to the end of the quarter.

Now taking a step back for a moment, it's important to remember that during our previous quarterly call in February we stated that we expected our business to be flat in the first quarter compared to the prior year, due to some unusual challenges we knew would negatively impact our results, namely the atypical weather -- winter weather that we had in Nashville and Dallas, as well as the norovirus issue we dealt with at Gaylord Opryland Hotel.

However, when all was said and done, our performance this quarter exceeded our expectations and it's a testament to the state of our hotel business that we're able to deliver growth in a number of areas, despite the one-off headwinds. Notably, we delivered a 4% growth in RevPAR and total RevPAR was up nearly 2%. While occupancy was flat year over year, the increase in RevPAR was largely driven by a 3.2% growth rate this quarter.

While corporate group room nights were down this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year, we saw solid growth in both association group room nights, which were up almost 8%, and rate for this segment was up over 2%. In addition, our transient room nights were up over 4% and transient rate was up over 6%.

Our increasing ability to drive both high room night volume and rate across all segments of our business is an indication of the strength we are seeing in our overall business. More importantly, we see this strength continuing as we look forward, which I will talk about when we cover group bookings.

In terms of the bottom-line performance, our hotel segment continued a streak of strong profitability results this quarter, delivering an adjusted EBITDA increase of 8.5% and an adjusted EBITDA margin increase of 200 basis points compared to the first quarter of 2014. This margin growth is in line with the top end of our 2015 guidance range for this segment, which sets us up well going into the remainder of the year and once again illustrates the strong margin management we have seen from our hotels for the past several quarters.

I mentioned a few minutes ago the issues at Gaylord Opryland, namely the incidences of a norovirus in the early part of the quarter that led to some early group departures and one large cancellation. This issue was compounded by the unfortunate winter weather we had in Nashville in February, two ice storms. These negative events led to our hotel metrics being down across the board at Opryland and formed our somewhat bearish view of the first quarter when we spoke to you on our call back in February.

However, the negative impact to our results from these issues was mitigated more than we anticipated, principally by a few factors. First, the hotel management and staff did a tremendous job managing the issues. As you can see from their margin performance, they were able to match prior year's adjusted EBITDA margin despite a drop of almost 7 percentage points in revenue for the quarter.

Second, we were successful in collecting $1.2 million in available insurance coverage related to the norovirus issue, which is the first portion of the insurance claim. We believe that the property will receive the remaining insurance proceeds by the year-end, and just to clarify, these proceeds will be booked when received.

Finally, Opryland had a very strong close to the quarter, with better-than-expected financial performance in March offsetting some of the negative effects that we saw in January and February.

Now I want to take a moment and highlight the spectacular results that the Texan posted this quarter, in spite of some also abnormal winter weather that caused a slight disruption to operations. The first quarter was this property's best first quarter in its history, even outshining the first quarter of 2011 when Dallas hosted the Super Bowl. I am pleased to see the strong demand from both group and transient customers at this hotel and are confident the recent room renovations we completed last year has positioned this hotel well for the foreseeable future.

Now let's move to Washington. As we discussed last quarter, the 192-room property we acquired in National Harbor -- in the National Harbor development has been flagged under the Marriott's new AC brand, and for this quarter, it was undergoing renovations. Well, we are happy to report that the hotel opened in early April and the guest response has been extremely positive.

In addition, we've already seen the potential synergies between the hotel and Gaylord National begin to bear fruit. There's a few groups at Gaylord National have overflowed into the AC Hotel already.

So what we have seen so far, this property is on track to do exactly what we hoped it would when we acquired it.

Now staying in DC, we also announced two weeks ago that we will be expanding our outdoor meeting space at Gaylord National with the addition of a new ballroom facility. As those of you who have been to the property know, it boasts a breathtaking view of the Potomac River and the meeting space will be enclosed in glass on three sides to capitalize on this spectacular view.

We believe that this addition will help us further establish this property as one of, if not the, premier location for groups on the East Coast. Our thinking around this approach is partly tied to another trend that we are seeing in this sector, which is that there is a historically low level of supply growth in the markets we operate and we believe our assets are ideally positioned to capitalize on this.

We have always believed that continuing to invest in our world-class assets is an extremely prudent and high returning use of capital, and this conviction is only strengthened by the feeling that we are really in a sweet spot right now in each of our markets. And the better we position our properties, the more we will be able to take advantage of this over the years ahead.

Now our Nashville entertainment business saw yet another exceptional performance this quarter as revenues increased 17.2% to $16.7 million and adjusted EBITDA increased $1.6 million to $3.7 million. Now what's particularly impressive is that this segment saw this type of growth -- the growth it did even as work continued on the Ryman Auditorium renovation and tour experience, which we expected to cause some disruption. This project remains on budget and is on pace to open this June, in time for the height of the tourism season in Nashville.

Focusing more broadly on the entertainment business, we're working hard building a comprehensive strategy and organization to take advantage of the impact technology is having on the distribution of the unique product that is found in this city.

Also, we continue to work with our advisors, consultants, to find ways to grow this business and unlock its value for our shareholders. And rest assured that as our strategies for this exciting business unfold, we will provide an update at the appropriate time.

Now let's turn to bookings. Let me talk a minute about the group sector and why our Company is moving into a very exciting period. Now as you all know, group represents about 70% to 75% of our hotel business and large group makes up about 80% of that. Large groups typically book anywhere from two to four years out, so for us our RevPAR performance typically lags most REITs, almost all of which are transient focused.

Now what this means is that, to a large extent, current RevPARs at our hotels were shaped two to four years ago, and thus RevPARs two to four years from now are being shaped by what's going on in our bookings today.

There are multiple drivers that influence bookings. The obvious ones, like the current economy, have an impact, but also what's important is the psyche that the meeting planners have regarding the current state of the sector. The fact is that large group hotels have grown in occupancy since 2010 as the recovery has taken place and the leisure and transient customer segment is robust. Large group hotels are just doing better and the meeting planner knows this.

However, unlike other economic recoveries in the past, the supply side has seen limited change, both current and projected.

Now the consequence of all of this is that meeting planners are more willing to book and companies like ours, who have the very highest quality product, are now able to price more appropriately. This is showing up in room nights booked, as well as rate.

So what happened in the first quarter? First of all, it's important to remind you that going into the first quarter we were coming off record -- a record production period in the fourth quarter of last year, and also that our bookings pattern is generally cyclical, with the second and fourth quarters being our strongest. Against this backdrop, we had a very solid production this quarter as we booked over 340,000 gross group room nights for all future years.

Now while this reflects an 8% decrease compared to the same quarter last year, on a net basis we booked more than 263,000 room nights, which translates to about a 5% increase compared to the same quarter last year. Now importantly, the rate on gross group bookings increased approximately 5%, while the rate on net group bookings increased 6.2% over the first quarter last year.

Now to provide some additional insight into the health of the group sector, our lead volume has now seen year-over-year increases for six out of the seven previous seven quarters. Only Q3 2014 was marginally down. As of the end of the first quarter, the rate on tentative group room nights have year-over-year increases of at least 8% for the past four quarters.

Now when you overlay this information against the backdrop of low supply growth for the foreseeable future, particularly in markets in which we operate, it is very encouraging and explains why we are bullish on our world-class assets.

I'm going to give you some more information. First-quarter production I referenced a minute ago also had other very encouraging features, namely we saw very good production for the short term, particularly 2016 and 2017. And as we look toward 2016, our group room revenue on the books is pacing high single-digit increase over the same time last year for 2015, and some of you will remember that as of December 31, which we reported to you in late February, this number was up 5%. The trajectory is extremely encouraging.

Now, I do not want to sound defensive in what I am about to say, but understanding what's going on in the group sector and with our bookings is extremely critical. One of our sell-side analyst friends this morning wrote, gross group bookings declined 8% in Q1 off a decline of 37% last year and we expect the Company to underperform peers today, given what we perceive to be like bookings.

Now what I would remind the analyst is that notwithstanding our first-quarter bookings last year, the overall 2014 bookings were the very best our Company has had since 2007, in large part due to the record bookings last year in the fourth quarter. So while Q1 of 2014 generated fewer bookings than 2013, that clearly was not an indicator regarding how the full-year production for the year of 2014 would finish.

Now the other thing I will point out is this. We do not bank room nights; we bank revenue. We finished Q1 2015 with over $1 billion of group room revenue on the books, an increase of over $59 million over this time last year, or 250,000 gross group room nights. And as this forward book of business fills, our manager can begin to focus on group rate, and that is happening now, as evidenced in our group rate books.

For the rest of this year, our goals for our sales team will be to book about the same amount of room nights as the excellent year we had last year, but with improving rates.

So, 2016 is shaping up to be a very good year, and the leads our sales teams are working for 2016 and beyond reflects more leads than prior year, with improving rate.

So in summary, we believe we are operating in a backdrop where with world-class hotels overseen by a manager who is operating our business very well with good margins and a promising forward book of business against a backdrop of very little new competitive supply.

Now given how this is shaping up, we are increasing the bottom end and the top end of our guidance and refining AFFO to reflect the non-cash and tax valuation allowance increase and the impact to long-term financial activity -- and the impact of the recent long-term financing activity we recently undertook.

And with that, let me hand over to Mark to go through the balance sheet and give a little bit more color on the guidance. Mark.

Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone.

In the first quarter, the Company generated total revenue of $253.1 million, up 2.7% from the prior-year quarter. During the quarter, the Company generated net income available to common shareholders $4.5 million or $0.09 per fully diluted share.

Net income this quarter was impacted by a $20.2 million non-cash charge related to the change in fair value of the warrants the Company repurchased during the first quarter.

The Company continued to grow profitability in the quarter, generating $73.8 million in adjusted EBITDA, improving EBITDA margin by 220 basis points. For the quarter, the Company generated $58.9 million in AFFO or $1.14 per fully diluted share.

As a reminder, beginning in 2015 we no longer deduct capital expenditures in our definition of AFFO. We made this modification to ensure our Company's results were not negatively impacted when screened against our hospitality REIT peers.

Turning to the hospitality segment, as Colin mentioned in his opening remarks this quarter exceeded our internal expectations given the unusual challenges we faced early on in the quarter with atypical weather and norovirus issues at Gaylord Opryland. The hotels finished the quarter with RevPAR growth of 4% and total RevPAR growth of 1.8%.

In our earnings release for comparability purposes, we provided pro forma adjustments to 2014 results to show the impact the USALI accounting changes would have had on our results for that period. On a pro forma basis, hospitality total RevPAR in the first quarter would have grown 2.4% over the same period last year.

During the first quarter, we saw a modest increase in attrition rates, primarily due to the norovirus issue at Opryland. For the quarter, attrition increased 110 basis points to 11.3%. Setting aside the impact of the norovirus, we estimate that attrition for the quarter would have been approximately 9% or a 100 basis-point improvement compared to the first quarter of last year.

Cancellations during the first quarter increased 62.9% to 12,000 group rooms. The year-over-year increase in cancellations is due to an unfavorable comp and is not a systemic group issue. To provide some perspective, during the first quarter of 2014 we had only 7,000 group rooms canceled, which is the lowest first-quarter cancellation amount we have experienced as a Company.

Excluding 2014, the trailing three-year average for cancellations in the first quarter is approximately 20,000 room nights. Attrition and cancellation fees collected during the quarter totaled $1.6 million.

Compared to the prior-year quarter, hospitality segment adjusted EBITDA increased 8.5% to $75.8 million. Hospitality adjusted EBITDA margin increased 200 basis points to 32.1%. Two of our hotels, the Gaylord Palms and the Gaylord Texan, had adjusted EBITDA margins approaching 38% for the quarter.

During the quarter, the Company incurred $2.9 million in impairment charges related to assets previously used in special events programming that is being discontinued. If you've followed our story over the years, you know that historically we have invested in special events programming during low group demand periods, such as the summer and the Christmas holidays, to drive leisure transient business.

Now under the Marriott umbrella, our hotels are able to leverage Marriott's transient delivery system, more efficiently drive this type of business, and our hotels can eliminate some of these less accretive special events.

During the quarter, the entertainment segment generated revenue of $16.7 million, up 17.2%. This segment's first-quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 77.6% to $3.7 million.

Corporate and other adjusted EBITDA totaled a loss of $5.8 million in the first quarter, compared to a loss of $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2014.

Moving to the balance sheet, as of March 31 we had total debt of approximately $1.51 billion and unrestricted cash of $53 million, resulting in net debt outstanding of $1.46 billion, including $1.15 billion of borrowings drawn under the Company's credit facility, leaving $240.2 million available under the facility.

During the quarter, we completed the repurchase of all the remaining 4.7 million outstanding warrants associated with the previously outstanding convertible senior notes which matured in October 2014. No warrants remain outstanding following these repurchases. The aggregate amount paid to the warrant counterparties in consideration for the repurchase of the remaining outstanding warrants was $154.7 million, which was funded with cash on hand and borrowings under the Company's credit facility.

The weighted average share price for the warrants we purchased over the past year was approximately $52 per share.

Given our stock performance, the dividends paid during the repurchase period, and the momentum we see in our business moving forward, we believe the decision to repurchase the warrants early and for cash was a prudent one, as we avoided issuing approximately 6.5 million additional shares.

Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we completed a private placement of $400 million of eight-year 5% senior unsecured notes due in 2023. Aggregate net proceeds from the sale of the notes were approximately $392 million. The Company used the proceeds from the offering to repay our outstanding $300 million term loan and a portion of the amounts outstanding under the revolver.

We are currently in the process of recasting our credit facility by extending the maturity of the $700 million revolving credit facility for an additional two years and modifying certain covenants. We anticipate closing this amendment by the end of the second quarter.

Our decision to access the senior unsecured market and recast our existing credit facility was driven by two primary factors. First, prior to these activities approximately 75% of our debt was on a floating rate. While this high level of floating-rate exposure has been beneficial to us over the past several years, we are mindful that we are entering a period where interest rates are more likely than not to rise in the midterm and believe the most prudent action was to lock in favorable fixed-rate debt and bring our floating fixed exposure to more prudent levels.

Second, our decision was also dictated by our desire to extend and stagger our debt maturity schedule. Once we close on the amended revolving credit facility, which we anticipate will be completed in early June, our nearest debt maturity will be 2019, with the next being two years later in 2021 and finally in 2023.

The Company paid its first-quarter 2015 cash dividend of $0.65 per share on April 16 to stockholders of record on March 31. It is the Company's current plan to distribute total annual dividends of approximately $2.60 per share for 2015 in cash in equal quarterly payments in April, July, October, and January. Any future dividend is subject to the Board's future determinations as to the amount and timing of quarterly distribution.

Despite the weather disruptions and a norovirus outbreak, our hotel business was off to a good start and we are encouraged by the positive trends we're seeing in the group segment. Therefore, based on our year-to-date performance in our hotels and our outlook for the remainder of the year, we are increasing the top and bottom ends of our guidance range for full-year 2015 adjusted EBITDA for the hospitality segment and on a consolidated basis by $5 million.

This increase in adjusted EBITDA is being driven by improvements we're seeing in our hotel operating margins. We anticipate the hospitality adjusted EBITDA margin will improve by 150 to 240 basis points.

Finally, due to the increase in interest expense associated with our recent refinancing activities, coupled with an increase in the non-cash valuation allowance for taxes, we are reducing our adjusted FFO guidance range by $5 million for the full year to $250.5 million to $270.5 million.

While we don't provide quarterly guidance, I would note for modeling purposes that based on our current on-the-books room nights and forecast, second and fourth quarters are projected to show the strongest year-over-year growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA.

Let me close by saying that this quarter was a solid start to the year, particularly given some of the unique challenges we encountered. We remain bullish on the group segment as we look out over the remaining part of 2015 and into 2016. Our businesses are well positioned, benefiting from strong group momentum, improving operating margins, a quality balance sheet, and a growing, sustainable dividend.

And with that, I will turn it over to Colin for any closing remarks.

Mark, I don't. I think we will -- Lori, if we will open up the call for questions, we will get on with the question side.

(Operator Instructions). Jeff Donnelly, Wells Fargo.

I think since you called me out, I can ask my question. But I am curious, though, Colin, because I mean at year-end you guys were on the call talking about your prospects being up 8% and your tentative bookings maybe up 10%. I think that's why I am a little surprised to see your gross bookings down 8% in this quarter and on a 37% down comp the prior year.

I have covered you guys long enough to know this is not necessarily a quarter-to-quarter business, but it seems like you were set up for an easy comp on your gross booking results in the quarter, so that's why it seemed out of sorts to me, frankly, and maybe it is timing, as you say. I think that's --

It's exactly what it is. The point I wanted to make to you last year -- wanted to make to you, in your report this morning you talked about us down last year 37% to 2013, but last year we booked overall 2.3 million room nights, which was the best year we ever had since 2007.

And booking over 800,000, almost 900,000 room nights in the fourth quarter, when you book as many room nights in the fourth quarter that we booked, it sucks the funnel out and these salespeople spend a month recovering from the tremendous job they did in the fourth quarter, and that's just the way our business functions.

No, no, I recognize that. It's just that in the prior -- in the fourth quarter, you said the funnel set you up for -- good for 2015. So, I agree with you. It's a full-year result. I am just --

Our funnel was strong at the end of the fourth quarter. It's strong at the end of the first quarter. It's just timing of the way these things get booked.

We're expecting to book approximately there or thereabouts the same amount of room nights this year that we booked last year, which was a tremendous year for our Company.

The thing that is encouraging is the rate side of it that we started to see improving third quarter last year is continuing to move in the direction we all want, and that's really good. Getting a 6% growth in the rate -- group rate that we booked in the first quarter is very, very healthy.

And the other thing that's very good is we're seeing a lot of business short term and that's why 2016 now is where it is. 2016 is -- we have got high single-digit more revenue on the books for 2016 today than we did at this time last year for 2015, and 2015, as you know, 2015 this year is going to be financially the best year our Company has had by far.

And so, there is no negatives here. It is just a function of timing. Pat, you want to add to that?

Yes. Hey, Jeff, it's Patrick. I would just add to it, to accentuate what Colin was saying, there was a lot of timing issues. We talked with the sales team and we did feel very good about the funnel.

I will tell you the funnel remains very strong, and what it really came down to in discussions with the sales team was there were some groups that delayed their decision-making a little bit longer that we anticipated, and while not to give you any additional information on April, I would tell you that where we stand at the end of April, we feel good that a lot of those timing issues are working themselves out and we are in a pretty good position year to date.

Again, as Colin said, we are focused on rate, and so, we may sacrifice a few room nights here and there to drive better rate, and we have seen that in the past couple of quarters where we are getting really good rate and we will continue to do that.

As we're heading into Q2, it is a tough comp because we had the best second quarter in the history of the Company this time last year, but again, we are very bullish on the year and feel like we can come in with a very solid year of production.

That's good to hear. I guess to switch gears, I am just curious, how are you guys thinking about transient booking volumes going forward? I know it's a small part of your business, but I was -- honestly would have expected, not that I have a specific number in mind, but I would have expected more pronounced booking increases over time since Marriott is so strong in that area, and then prior to their involvement, transient wasn't a large focus for the Company. Not so much this quarter. I'm just curious if it has lived up to your expectations since you have affiliated with Marriott.

Yes, Jeff, this is Patrick again. That's a great question. We have been very pleased with what Marriott has brought to the table on the transient side.

If you compare what our business was doing back in 2011, prior to Marriott, compared to where we ended 2014, where we are thinking we're going to finish 2015, they have brought about 140,000 transient room nights to the table and they have also brought really good rate.

So, we are very pleased with what they have done here. They continue to drive the rate side, and we see continued growth as we get more and more savvy and have some historical information under our belts for this brand from a yield management and revenue management side for Marriott to manage. But all things are looking very good on that front.

Jeff, you make an interesting point that I actually want to add to it. If you think about our business today, I was reading one or two of the other reports that you put out in the last 24 hours on organizations that we are deemed to be competitors of. In reality, probably not.

But one company, you wrote their occupancy for 2014 operated at 82%-plus and they think they can get more occupancy in their business. Our business this year, we are projected to do somewhere between 74 and 75 points of occupancy, but the fact of the matter is booking 2.2 million, 2.3 million room nights with the Marriott frequent-flier program, this is continuing to build. This occupancy just is continuing to build. This occupancy this year, it will be 1.5 points up on last year. Last year, it was up on the year before.

But the current level of occupancy that we are generating, 74, 75 points of occupancy, is materially lower than where we were at peak in 2007 with the Marriott frequent-flier program.

So our business, we believe, is in the process of building back to this 80 points of occupancy, but the 74, 75 points of occupancy that we are generating this year is driving a $5-ish in AFFO and a dividend of $2.60. So we are extremely excited about what we see happening in 2016, 2017, and beyond and the implications that will have on the financial performance of our business.

I am flattered you are such an avid reader. Just one last question, Colin, and I recognize this is a bit open ended, but I was curious what your next plans are for Ryman, because at the time of the split from Gaylord, I think the hope was that the significant synergies would be realized and you would go on the hunt for assets or a portfolio of assets, and obviously the integration into Marriott took a little more time than you wanted to take.

So I am just curious. How are you spending your time for -- on Ryman, beyond just the operation of the assets you have today?

Yes, well, good question and that's something that I'm going to be talking to our Board about tonight and tomorrow, because we have a Board of Directors meeting here.

I am spending -- with us putting Mark in the role that he is in, I am spending more of my time figuring out how we continue to put our foot on the accelerator and grow our entertainment business. And we are and have been actively looking at one or two big assets, but we're going to be disciplined here. We are not going to overpay for big assets when our Company is trading -- our multiple has moved up here over the last 12 months and we have been very clear with the investment community, last year, the year before, and the year before that, that we think the best value in the world is our own assets and that's why we have been buying in stock and settling converts and warrants.

But we are somewhat at a little bit of an inflection point here and we have, unlike a lot of the other real estate investment trusts, we have the ability to grow the assets that we have. We have land in three of the four places, occupancies, and turn downs of room nights are moving into a very sweet spot.

And so, I think what you'll see from us is potentially over the next one to two years the selective acquisition of one or two big assets. You will see selective deployment of cash -- of capital into our existing hotels because the returns on this capital are tremendous. They are not like building a new hotel. These returns are very, very solid. And you'll see us at some point when the time is right, the strategy is cast, the organization is right, we will do something with our entertainment business.

And like every public company, Jeff, and I don't say this tongue in cheek, I mean it, if somebody else feels they can do a better job with the Company, they know where we live and we are open to hear ideas and thoughts every day of the week because we have that responsibility managing a public company. But that's what we are focused on.

Okay, thanks, guys.

And we expect to grow AFFO, which, as I would remind you again, is running at about $5 a share, adjusted EBITDA north of $6 a share, and a dividend of $2.60 that in all probability will have to go higher with the level of performance in our business.

Okay, thank you.

Chris Woronka, Deutsche Bank.

Wanted to ask you -- appreciate all the data points on the forward bookings and obviously think the rate growth you are talking about is encouraging. And just wanted to ask you how much -- what is the out-of-room spend look like on that? Should we assume that the out-of-room spend picks up in line with the rate increases? Are these just better groups or are they just paying more on the base rate?

How would you answer that?

Chris, it's Patrick Chaffin. A good question, and at this point with a lot of these groups, it is just the contractual minimum they signed up for. So what we historically look at is the mix of corporate versus association, in addition to the rate on the books. The rate tells us how premium of a group they are.

So as you are looking at 2016, for instance, I would tell you that we see our corporate room nights increasing about 100,000, based on what's on the books right now, and so that encourages us that the outside-the-room spend will continue to grow and we will see some expansion there because of the type of mix that we are bringing in house.

Other than that, it really comes down to about 90 days out these groups start planning with us and we get a good feel for how they're going to perform against their history. But right now as we look to the future, it's all about mix and the mix is very encouraging.

Okay, great. And then, we have heard on some of the calls this quarter some policies have gone into effect, and I think Marriott was part of that where they were increasing last-minute cancellation. I realize that's on the transient side, but my question would be are they also looking at maybe tightening up some of the policies on the group business as well?

Well, in actuality, they were -- a lot of the changes they made brought them more in line with the policies that we've had on the books for several years.

On the group side.

On the group side and the transient side. So, I think they saw our policies as a good practice and incorporated some of them in, and I don't want to generalize it too much. They were making some other changes on their own. But I think that our brand did demonstrate that there were some opportunities there.

Okay, great. And then just on the acquisition front, I guess, to follow up on the last question, you guys -- I guess when you think about it, there are certainly markets you've talked about in the past, but maybe you can talk about how you might view something in the context of doing it on your own, not new construction, but an acquisition versus doing maybe two properties in some kind of joint venture. How do you delineate opportunity in terms of volume versus on balance sheet capacity?

Well, I would say to you there are multiple drivers to the answer to your question. The first thing is shareholder value. What does the deal look like? What do the JVs potentially look like? What do the control risks look like? Those come into play.

And the other thing is I would say to you we generally don't like being in the development business, other than expansions in our existing hotels because all of that has very high rate of return. I really don't think that doing one hotel versus two JVs is a balance-sheet issue for us. It's more of a which markets are they in. Do they add to the rate rotation strategy? Do they add to the retention of customers that migrate that go outside of our system from time to time? Those are the drivers of those types of questions.

Okay, very good. Thanks, guys.

Bill Crow, Raymond James & Associates.

Colin, your answer to the last question led me right to mine, which is you talked about the rotation amongst your properties. But could you look outside your properties and tell me how you are seeing rotation into some of the competitive markets that you don't have a presence in -- Vegas, Scottsdale, San Diego? We know they come in and come out of favor, so what markets are really driving group demand these days?

The markets -- Bill, first of all, good morning to you. The markets that we like are not just the markets we like. It's the markets that we know the meeting planner likes.

We are a company that did a ton of research. We wanted to know, not think, where they went. We wanted to actually understand that.

So the markets are -- I would say to you that it's probably San Antonio in Texas is a good market and there is a lot of groups that want to go to San Antonio. The Arizona markets of Scottsdale, Mesa, that Phoenix corridor, they want to go there because of the weather in January, February, March, April, May time frame.

Vegas is a market that customers do go to, some customers go to, but as we pointed out many times, Bill, the Vegas market is a very, very different market to any other market in the United States of America. You got about 50% of the large groups want to go there, the other 50% never want to go there, and it's black and white.

West Coast, we obviously like San Diego. If you could find an appropriate asset in and around San Francisco market, that would be good, too, and then, of course, you've got the more northern parts of the United States, the Chicago market, the Boston market are very, very good group markets simply because large corporate groups tend to want to go to these types of cities and some of them, a lot of them, are actually housed in those markets.

So, those are the markets that groups -- Miami is also one that is rapidly becoming a very sought-after market. But those are the locations that we keep our beady eye on, and so that's the answer to your question, I think.

Colin, within the US, maybe no market has been better than right there in Nashville, and I was just curious as you look out to bookings three years out, four years out, is there any sign of burnout on the group part? Is there any sort of reduction in demand as the rotation goes on and people have said they have now had their fill of Nashville? Anything in there indicating any change?

You know, Bill, we certainly don't see that in our lead volumes. We certainly don't see that in our bookings.

There is a ton of small hotels being built in downtown Nashville to accommodate a massive demand, surge in demand, that's coming from all across America and outside of America for people wanting to come to the playground of Nashville, Tennessee.

But we don't see this in the groups. Quite the contrary. We see actually very, very healthy lead volumes here, and one of the things that we are in the process of doing and it's been semi-reported within the local press, we have been doing some research about a pool facility of some kind, a high-quality, high-end pool facility to, one, accommodate the meeting planner and the meetings that come here.

We do a lot of meetings where people want to bring their wife and family, and what we want to do is potentially do what we have done in both Orlando and in Texas, and our Texas hotel has -- that pool expansion that we put there has been, to a large extent, surprising to us. That hotel this year is going to do well north of $70 million in terms of profitability, and I remember back five, eight years ago dreaming that we would get to $50 million.

And so, that has been a very interesting thing for us, and what we are looking at is potentially doing something here in this market to, one, drive more leisure business, but also to accommodate the desire and needs of meeting planners and create a differentiated product that you can find in places like Atlanta, New Orleans, where this hotel here tends to compete with.

We don't compete within the market. We compete within these -- we compete for groups in the big markets of Atlanta, New Orleans, those types of places.

So no, we don't see any burnout here. We see quite the contrary and this is one hell of a place to come to. People like coming to Nashville.

Bill, the thing I would add to that, just quickly, is that when you look at large groups, which is really our bread and butter, there is a limited number of hotels that they can go to if they want 200,000, 300,000 or 400,000 square feet plus of meeting space under one roof to house their event.

And as we look forward, there is not new supply being built. So, there is a limited decision set for them and a scarcity of assets.

All right, appreciate that.

Bill, this is Patrick. The only other thing I would add is just to give you some flavor for what's on the books. As you look at Opryland, lead volume is very encouraging, and what's on the books shows year-over-year increases all the way out through 2020. So just to add to what Mark and Colin have already said, we feel good about Opryland and the Nashville market.

Thanks, Patrick. I want to just throw one other quick question out there. We all are hearing more and more from you about the entertainment side of your business and certainly that's more challenging for us to value. If we were going to do a sum of the parts sort of analysis, would you put a higher multiple on that business, a higher multiple on the hotel business, or just use a blanket multiple?

I think you're going to have to make that decision for yourself. But I know how I think about the business. If somebody came knocking on our door and said that they wanted to buy this business and they want to value it like an arena business, I think we would shake their hand and say thank you very much. We are not -- our Company is not interested.

And by the way, I think that will be the attitude of certainly one or two of our very large shareholders.

We sort of see this business as a business that really generates content. Yes, it provides phenomenal music experiences and social experiences, but we think that this business really provides and builds unique content, and we are spending more of our time thinking about how we can actually build more content and do this.

And, frankly -- so I suppose that would lead you to the view that our view is that a higher multiple business versus a lower multiple business.

Thanks for your time this morning. I appreciate it.

Shaun Kelley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Good morning and thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to maybe touch a little bit more on just the overall forward book of business. We have heard a number of competing companies in the group segment here, whether it be, I think, Hyatt yesterday or Sunstone and a few other companies talk a little bit more about aggressively trying to hold back some group nights in order to obviously get a chance to push rates higher with the transient business.

As we get later cycle, can you just remind us what sort of patterns you may have seen before? And does that pattern typically benefit you? And do you feel that in a material way as groups are starting to get pushed out of other hotels when occupancies are as high as they are starting to be?

Yes, Shaun, thank you. So first and foremost, we have no misconception of what we are. We are the dominant business in group, we believe, in the United States of America.

When you add our, I think, group space up, we have got as much group space in these four hotels as the other hotel REITs do combined.

So we are group business, and what we believe is just like if you were in the office leasing business, what we want is we want our hotels full. So what we do is we maximize the rooms we book week by week, month by month, year by year, and we take pride in the fact that we have got 5.6 million room nights on the books, Patrick, for future years, representing north of $2 billion of business.

And you will not see us holding back room nights. And I don't think our manager philosophically believes that in these types of hotels.

Our goal is to book as many quality group rooms as we can book for forward years, and then build these big rocks, put these big rocks into these businesses, and then as we get nearer and nearer the stay of those groups, we sprinkle around a little sand and fill them up around the edges. That's our game plan.

What we believe we have here is a very differentiated economic model. And so, when a cycle gets to the end, although it's hard to see other than an economic downturn what -- we're not going to see the cycle come to an end in our sector caused by oversupply because there is no material new supply being built.

But let's pretend for a second we come to the next version of 2008-2009, we want to make sure that we have, when we go into that down cycle, that we have a ton of business on the books, and that's why we as a company perform so admirably comparable to the rest of the industry in times when the cycle goes off. So, that's how we think about it.

Thanks for that (multiple speakers)

And by the way, I suppose, Shaun, that if hotel companies like Hyatt and whoever are saying we're not going to book groups because we want to take the risk that in a year from now or two years from now leisure customers are going to be there, we like their strategy.

And my only answer to that would be I remember in the middle of 2008 when people were buying hotels at $1 million a room, or in the beginning of 2008 at $1 million a room, and then 12 months from then the world was upside down, and I'm not -- we are not in the business of not booking group rooms, gambling that two years from now the world is going to look the same.

And Shaun, this is Patrick. I would add to that that as an asset manager, there is a very positive, healthy natural tension between Marriott and us of them pushing rate and focused on rate and us trying to make sure that we are taking care of the future years down the road when the cycle inevitably will turn.

And so, it is a balancing act to make sure that they maintain their focus on rate and that we maintain our focus on taking care of the future, and that we are taking advantage of the current environment, but always with a mind to the future.

Thanks for that and I think that last part of your comments, Colin, really -- really was where I was heading with the question, which is more is it constructive for you.

So, my follow-up would just be on the Texan in particular, it looked like that property performed really well, and I am curious. Are you -- did you see any oil and gas related cancellations during the quarter, and is that -- and how much are those types of groups or larger trade shows, how much of that is your overall business exposed to the commodity piece?

Yes, very little, and the answer is, to your two questions there, no and no. The first quarter was the best first quarter we have ever had in the Texan and -- ever had at the Texan, and I don't think we saw any cancellations for oil and gas.

No, the Houston market is feeling that pain, but we did not feel it in Dallas.

Perfect. That's all for me. Thanks, guys.

Harry Curtis, Nomura.

Just to follow up on the relationship with Marriott, can you give us a sense of the differential in the rate that you are seeing from the transient nights that Marriott is booking versus the average rates that you're getting? How meaningful is it, if at all?

Harry, good morning, Colin. Looking forward to seeing you at your conference in several weeks.

Thank you.

Patrick, can you (multiple speakers)

Sure. So let me give you a little background. We finished 2014 with group rate at about $171.50 and transient rate at about $185 for our brand.

As we move into 2015, we see that the group rate continues to improve and transient rate continues to improve and that relationship pretty much stays the same, although group is starting to make up a little bit of ground there.

I guess given the differential, though, the question is are you intending to shift the mix a bit more towards transient? Does it make sense? And is your linkage to the Marriott system capable of driving any mix shift that you might like to see increase?

Patrick, take the second part of it, but one thing I want you to keep in mind, Harry, every room night, whether it's -- they are paying $185 or $178, are not created equal.

What I mean by that is the group consumer, particularly the corporate group consumer, tends to consume far more out of the room than the leisure customer who comes through Marriott and other distribution systems. When we have a group customer in-house for three days, they eat breakfast, they have lunch, they have dinner, they drink in our bars. That is not necessarily the pattern of the leisure consumer.

So, Patrick, take the rest of that.

So Harry, to your point, we have been increasing -- over time as part of the Marriott family of brands, we have been increasing the amount of transient that we have in our mix, and our eye toward the future is making sure that we don't block out weekends with group business when we know that we can drive transient or that we don't block out certain periods of the summertime or holidays when we know that we can drive a lot of transient and get premium rate.

So, we're not going to be looking to lower group mix during the midweek or Sunday nights or anything like that, but we are always mindful of opening up and being very careful in where we book groups into when it comes down to Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, et cetera.

Okay, just a quick follow-up on margins. At both Opryland and Gaylord Palms, your margin, either improvement at the Palms and they were relatively flat at Opryland, was pretty impressive, given the topline performance. Was anything -- was there anything in either of those two properties that was either one-off or have you been doing more aggressive cost cutting? I am just trying to understand the relationship between the two. Thanks.

At Palms, there was no one-off. That was just good performance and continued margin management and continued -- the synergies continue to layer into the business over time and get stronger as our relationship with Marriott continues to mature.

At Opryland, the only thing that I would call out is that there was the insurance coverage that we received, a small portion of it, or partial payment that was received of about $1.2 million. That is recognized as other income and flows at 100% to the bottom line. So that helped the margin somewhat at Opryland, but even if you remove that, they did an excellent job of managing their margins through the norovirus and the winter storm challenges of January and February.

Okay, that does it for me. Thank you very much.

I think we will do one more question if there is one, Lori.

There are no further questions. Mr. Reed, do you have any closing remarks?

No, only that thank everyone for joining us and if you have any follow-ups, you know how to get hold of us here, and Mark and I will be on the investor road for the next -- I suppose, Mark, ever the next month to two, and we will have multiple opportunities to see all of our investors as we proceed through the country and thank everyone. Thank you, good morning.

Thank you for participating in the Ryman Hospitality Properties first-quarter 2015 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.