Yahoo Finance

Jeff Donnelly

Thanks, Briony, and thank you for joining us this morning. Let's start by reviewing capital projects, then transactions, and I'll conclude with comments on what we're seeing and how that drives how we're thinking about the rest of the year. First off, recall that we completed guest room renovations at the Westin San Diego Bayview in early 2024. RevPAR in the first quarter was up 28% against a competitive set that declined 8%, and NOI increased 65% year-over-year.
We're looking to close out this project with minor changes to the lobby configuration to improve F&B potential by expanding the seating area and potentially offering a grab and go option. At Bourbon Orleans, we concluded a room renovation in late 2024 that supported implementation of a resort fee. In the first quarter, other income increased over $200,000 or 90% versus first quarter 2024.
For the year, we are forecasting a $1 million increase in high margin other income at the Bourbon, implying a mid-teen current yield on renovation costs. In the first quarter, we completed the room refresh at the Hilton Garden in Times Square, and the product looks great. This is the first time the rooms have been refreshed since the hotel was constructed in 2014.
RevPAR was down by over 16% due to displacement, and we saw a $500,000 impact to EBITDA in a market that runs close to 90% occupancy. The first quarter is the most cost-effective window to execute such work, and our team did a great job executing here on time and on budget. Turning to Sedona, the renovation of our rooms at the orchards is complete, and we are beginning the process of rebrand rebranding this property as the Cliffs Sedona.
In fact, aerial photos on the website the Cliffs Sedona.com will give you a good view of our location in the heart of Sedona and highly desirable views of the red rocks visible from every room of the hotel. All that remains is for the hillside work to be completed. This will create a new pool and bar area with stunning views of the red rocks and connect the Cliffs Hotel to our L' Auberge de Sedona that sits below on a shaded creek.
Construction is well underway and will be completed by fall 2025. We are very excited about the repositioning opportunity and believe it will be an earnings and value driver. On the disposition front, we previously announced the sale of the Weston D.C. City Center Hotel for $92 million during the quarter, which equated to close to a 5% trailing cash flow yield after CapEx.
A portion of these proceeds were creatively recycled into repurchasing common shares at an average price of better than a trailing 10 cap rate. We continue to pursue opportunities to dispose of non-strategic assets as well as opportunistic dispositions, all with a focus on recycling proceeds into the most attractive investment alternatives.
There is nothing we can comment on at this time, but we hope to be able to share more soon. On the transaction front, there are a good number of high dollar resorts on the market, with prices ranging from $500,000 to as much as $2 million per key.
All in pricing after CapEx is in the range of 5.5 to about a 7% cap rate. Given our source of funds, our common shares, preferred equity, and even our debt are among the most accretive reinvestment options today, but we are always actively looking for a creative recycling opportunities. Before I get into guidance, let's talk about what we're seeing in real time.
On the resort front, RevPAR growth was up about 1% in January, 4.4% in February, and flat through about the first three weeks of March. It was only in the final days of March when the resorts were comparing against Easter week 2024 that we saw RevPAR decline. Fast forward to mid-April, and we saw a significant year over year RevPAR spike at the same properties for Easter week 2025.
Moreover, the transient pickup for the second quarter remains consistent with last year. The point is that much of the chopping is seen thus far at our resort seems to originate from holiday shifts and not the coincidental timing with negative macroeconomic headlines. Looking ahead, an unsettled economy may lead to more demand at the drive-to resorts common in our portfolio versus costlier fly-to destinations.
Our direct exposure to foreign travelers is low. Nevertheless, foreign visitation to the US will likely be softer than initial expectations, and it is not clear whether the incremental demand from US travelers will be sufficient to backfill this potential GAAP. Currently we are not seeing a meaningful shift in resort demand but remain vigilant.
The long-term secular drivers for US resorts remain strong, but we recognize, near-term performance could be soft. Nevertheless, we expect DiamondRock's drive to destinations will perform well in this environment. At our urban hotels, business transient demand increased in the mid-teens during the quarter, and trends are encouraging. As for group, it's important to remind everyone DiamondRock is building upon peak group room revenues in 2024. Given that backdrop, lead volume is still higher than last year.
Group pickup for 2025 or in the year for the year bookings. Increased in January and again in February, but we saw a pause in group pickup as we moved into the end of March. It is that pause, that deceleration in our lead conversion, leading us to a more cautious stance on the back of 2025. The optimistic view is that group demand is there and a little more confidence in an unsettled economy will convert business leads to revenue.
Considering we've seen capitulation on many aspects of the unpopular trade policies, one could argue we're already moving toward a calmer environment. The cautious view is confidence arrives too late for the industry to fully recapture its prior potential. Typically group dependent hotels in the market grow anxious and start discounting, which leads to lower revenue creation than may have otherwise occurred.
Our decision to reframe our 2025 guidance was driven by healthy group lead volume and business transient demand on the one hand, and the acknowledgement that a continuing pause in group pickup may make it more challenging for us to replicate the very strong group production we had in the back half of 2024. So let's get to our outlook for 2025. Our FFO per share guidance is unchanged at a range of $94 to $1.06 per share.
We revised our full year 2025 RevPAR outlook to a range of minus 1% to plus 1% growth, or about 200 basis points lower than our prior range. Total RevPAR growth is expected to be the same in the minus 1% to plus 1% range. The lower and upper bound of our new full year range assumes RevPAR for the remaining three quarters of the year is down less than 2% at the low end and slightly positive at the high end.
2025 corporate adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $270 million to $295 million or $5 million lower at the top and bottom than our previous guidance. This places the midpoint at $282.5 million. It bears noting that the rear vision includes the benefit of a $3 million savings on our insurance placement. As Briony mentioned, we have a bit of financing work to do in 2025, and included in our guidance is the assumption we will execute a credit facility recast to address near-term debt maturities.
Adjusted FFO is expected to be in the range of $198 million to $223 million or $1 million lower than prior guidance. Adjusted FFO per share is expected to be in the range of $94 to $1.06 which, as I said earlier, is unchanged from our prior guidance in part because of the share repurchases, as well as the flexibility our liquidity affords us to allow to pivot on our debt refinancing plans.
In closing, the outlook is cloudy. Underlying trends were obscured rather than illuminated by the short-lived doge days of spring coinciding with holiday shifts only to be immediately followed by the somewhat ironically named Liberation Day. It is my personal view, the Trump administration will continue to soften their policies to settle the economy and improve the re-election potential of congressional Republicans in 2026.
For this reason, I'm cautiously optimistic we'll see economic anxiety settle as we move through 2025. Regardless of the future path, increasing earnings per share remains our focus. Our greatest investment during the quarter, aside, of course, from the exciting work in Sedona, was the repurchase of our common shares, and we will continue to lean in on opportunities to continue to prudently grow earnings and create value while preserving flexibility.
Thank you for your time this morning and we'll be happy to answer your questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Smedes Rose, Citi.

Smedes Rose

Hi, thanks. Yu mentioned a little bit about some of the trends you're seeing in April. I just wondering, can you just share the preliminary portfolio, RevPAR for April?

Stephen Grambling

Yes. Briony?

Briony Quinn

Yes. It needs our preliminary April is showing a little better than 2% growth.

Smedes Rose

Okay, thank you. And then I guess, -- I just was, wanted to ask you a little bit on the renovation projects that are underway, with the tariffs, et cetera. Would you expect those costs to go up or are they already kind of locked in before all that went into effect?

Justin Leonard

I think it's a bit of a difficult answer because it really depends on which types of renovations you're talking about. I think, and this kind of goes to complexity. I think that most people are in leadership positions and buying stuff from overseas or making decisions about it. I'll give you an example. We were renovating our hotel in Phoenix.
We went. Very quickly from trying to understand what storage options were for a large order of FF&E that was being made in Vietnam to getting it on a boat as fast as possible when the tariffs were pushed back for 90 days so that we could get that FF&E in before the tariffs were, reinstituted. So I think we're trying to Be pragmatic without understanding exactly what the future's going to look for.
I think for the summer window, the stuff that we have on order is likely all going to come in before the tariffs are imposed again for the stuff that we have slated to start in November. We're at a bit of a pause trying to understand what the landscape's going to look like.

Smedes Rose

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Duane Pfennigwerth, Evercore ISI.

Duane Pfennigwerth

Hey, thanks. Appreciate the detailed commentary. Just on group conversion pause, can you talk little bit about the profile of your average group? Are these corporates? Are these small businesses, associations, social gatherings? What types of events are we talking about? And do you have like an average group size?

Jeff Donnelly

I would say it’s going to run the gambit from associations to corporate. The other thing I would say is when you consider our average hotel, I mean, particularly take Chicago Marriott out of it. When you look at our average hotel, we’re about a 200 to two fifty room hotel. So the nature of our groups tend to be a little shorter, book closer in. And for that reason, they are going to be smaller size.
I don’t have a number for you off the top of my head for what the average group size is, but I would say it’s probably going to be about the size of those hotels at most. Chicago in particular and maybe Boston are going to be some of the ones where you see really a different sized group. But it really does run the gamut in terms of the mix of the source of that group.

Duane Pfennigwerth

Got it. And then on that front, any markets in particular where you’re excited about the group pacing? Thanks for taking the questions.

Justin Leonard

I think Denver is showing some significant strength for us just given the citywide pace that’s on the books. Actually for our hotel downtown, we don’t participate in a lot of those blocks. So the citywide pace is great for a little hotel that can compress around it. Salt Lake is also kind of a significant standout for us. I think we’re finally seeing the benefit of the renovation that we did about a year and a half ago. San Diego also partly driven by the fact that we had some displacement from a renovation last year, but we’re also seeing post renovation a nice uptick in group bookings.

Duane Pfennigwerth

Thank you.

Operator

Michael Belisario, Baird. Please proceed.

Michael Bellisario

Thanks. Good morning. Everyone. Two partner for me, sort of just along the same lines on group. I guess, maybe where are the holes in terms of dates as you look out for the rest of the year in terms of quarters? And then sort of secondarily, I guess, maybe for Justin, what’s the updated revenue management strategy today to try to backfill some of those holes? Thanks.

Justin Leonard

Mean, for a guy in Chicago, Mike, I would think you’d know. I mean, the biggest holes for us are frankly more due to the comparable period than they are necessarily the cadence of where group bookings are. We just given D and C in Chicago in August, that just presents a pretty difficult comp for us in terms of backfilling that size of citywide business.
And then, yes, I think probably November after that, we’ve got a little bit of a difficult comp given some of the business that was in Boston last year. From a revenue management perspective, I would say that we’ve actually been relatively steadfast on rate up to this point. Maybe that is some of the cause of the lack of conversion.
We’re trying to shift people into more appropriate patterns in exchange for giving them a discount. We’ve had some success doing that and candidly trying to book transient into some of those holes. But I think we’re not at a point where we feel like cutting rate is instigating demand. So it’s a bit of a wait and see pattern, I think, for some of those further out holes on the transient front.

Operator

Chris Waronka, Deutsche Bank.

Chris Waronka

Hey, good morning, everyone, thanks for taking the question. Jeff, you guys, you gave out all the data points I think one of the things you mentioned was kind of the pause that maybe happened in March and April some of the group in the year for the year. The question is kind of what’s, -- I guess, the average booking window for that stuff?
And at what point do you say it’s not coming back this year, or is it is it also you know, is it do you think it’s partially a pricing issue where groups are just kind of, using this pause as a as leverage to try to get better rates on some of the smaller meetings?

Jeff Donnelly

Yes. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a pause to get better rates, that it’s necessarily that strategic. I mean, maybe for larger groups, they would probably be looking for better terms around cancellation or attrition. So if they have uncertainty around how many folks are going to be attending their event or if they’re coming from abroad, we might not be the host of the majority of that type of business.
But I would say that our booking window for smaller groups tends to be four to six months out and for larger groups tends to be about eight to twelve months out.

Chris Waronka

Okay. Thanks. Super helpful. Then just a question. I know you guys had talked a lot last year about kind of the post renovation lift and Diagonia was one of the ones you highlighted. Almost 5% RevPAR growth in Q1, not bad. But is that property, when you say that’s kind of fully stabilized now and it’s going to grow in line with the market? Or is there still more to go there?
And I guess on your renovations that are going to wrap up this year, remind us of kind of how long you generally see before stabilization of the post reno benefits? Thanks.

Jeff Donnelly

Yes. The comment we had made when we announced that project was the property was doing about $10 million in EBITDA, and we thought that eventually kind of its stabilization would be like, I think, around $16 million $15 million $16 million dollars And we thought in its first year, would do about $12 million I think it did about $14 million if I recall, in its first year post renovation. So I think there’s still some more room to go. We’ve actually come out of the blocks really or out of the gate really strong. So but I still think there’s still potential there for us to have additional upside.

Operator

Floris Van Dijkum, Compass Point Research & Trading LLC

Floris Van Dijkum

Hey, guys. Jeff, you’re very, -- you’ve become the new messenger in terms of shareholder value and cash flow per share. I love the messaging you’re providing. Obviously, that’s would suggest that you’re not done with share buybacks. You’ve got about $10 million left on the balance sheet in terms of cash and $158 million of authority remaining.
In this environment, I know that your tenure as a CEO is perhaps more limited than some of your other peers. Is there a better opportunity out there right now to deploy capital besides buying back stock?

Jeff Donnelly

Generally speaking, I would say no. I mean, we’ll see what the environment brings. But at this point, I would say repurchasing our own shares is superior to certainly buying acquisitions in the marketplace.

Floris Van Dijkum

And then maybe a follow-up question. You mentioned something about New Orleans and how you’ve instituted resort fees. Could you remind us what percentage of your hotels today charge resort fees? And is there any more incremental upside in bringing some of those on board?

Jeff Donnelly

I'm trying to think of the percentage off the top of my head. I know.

Justin Leonard

I guess off my head. I know it’s a I guess three quarters about maybe slightly less, but 70%, seventy five % would be my guess by number of rooms probably.

Jeff Donnelly

Yes. And our ability to try and charge those as a function oftentimes of if they’re branded, do you have brand sort of permission and approval, but also what will the market bear? And in Bourbon where it’s an independent hotel, we had more of a free hand, but we also had to make sure that the value proposition was there in order to sort of charge that fee. And so we’ve had good success there.

Floris Van Dijkum

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Jack Armstrong, Wells Fargo.

Jack Armstrong

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. What kind of shifts are you seeing in consumer behavior in terms of the booking window out of room spend? And is there a meaningful difference that you point out there between your higher end consumers versus more of your middle income drive to market?

Justin Leonard

Don’t know if there’s a lot of trends in the relative short term since I think people feel like the work shifted. I think the window continues to get shorter. We’ve definitely seen that over the course of this year and maybe that’s just people are less concerned about ultimately being squeezed out of particular dates. In terms of spend, we’ve seen on property spend be pretty much in line with, if not ahead of last year.
We actually had growth in our food and beverage in the resorts over the first quarter, which we hadn’t had for the previous two quarters. So we thought that was a pretty good sign to see even with spring break moving out of the quarter. And that was pretty universally spread between some of the lower ADR resorts and the higher or affluent customer based ones.

Jack Armstrong

Okay, great. And then on the cost side, what are some of the levers that are available to you if we enter a more notable macro slowdown? How does your current level of full time employees compared to pre pandemic and how does that impact your flexibility to cut costs?

Justin Leonard

I think we’re definitely down in FTEs. I’d have to go back and look at the exact percentage. I’m certain that we’re down in FTE count relative to pre pandemic. It’s typical for this industry to find significant cuts and then be slow to sort of reinstitute them. So there’s probably some more limit to what we could effectuate to the extent we went into a deep recession.
I think we’ve got contingency plans for all of our hotels. The struggle that we have now is we’re not seeing a market change in business or booking pattern. And so we’re a little reticent to cut into service standards at the moment given that the guests are still showing up and paying very high rates. I think we’ve got a number of things between changing operating hours of outlets, changing service standards on the housekeeping side, we pretty much have a hiring freeze in place for the vast majority of hotels already at the moment. But there’s a gradient of things that we can enact to the extent we start to see a falloff in demand.

Jack Armstrong

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question.

Operator

Chris Darling, Green Street.

Chris Darling

Hi, thanks, good morning. I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks that wages and benefits were up about 1.5% in the first quarter. I'm wondering how this compared relative to your expectations and then what are you expecting for the rest of the year there?

Briony Quinn

Yes, I think the wages and benefits came in about what we expected. We had a little favorable comp this quarter with some one time issues or one time costs and benefits last quarter that kept that growth rate down in the first quarter. I think we continue to expect our wages and benefit growth rate to be around 3% to 3.5% for the full year.

Chris Darling

kay. And then I want to go back to the question Floris asked about share repurchases. And Jeff, I’m just curious strategically how you think about incremental share repurchases relative to just bolstering your cash position. And I asked the question in the context of we’re in a more uncertain environment now. I’d imagine it’s a more difficult backdrop in which to sell assets, although it sounds like maybe there’s still some progress on that front.
And the handful of mortgages that are maturing throughout the year. So any incremental thoughts would be helpful to hear.

Jeff Donnelly

No, that’s a great question. It’s something that I made in my made a comment to in my prepared remarks about it’s important to be driving value. And I think when you think about per share earnings, I think that’s our magnetic north. But at the same time, I think maintaining liquidity and flexibility is critical in moments like this. I personally don’t think we’re on the verge of another global financial crisis or pandemic like outcome, where you really are sort of hoarding cash almost to the extreme.
But it is something we’re mindful of. And that’s why, candidly, you look at the proceeds that came out of Washington D.C, some portion of it went to repurchases, but some of it’s used really to kind of manage the timing around repayment of debt this year as we sort of bridge towards a period of putting more permanent debt on.
So I think that cash becomes sort of more freely available to us as the year goes on. But in the near term, it helps us, as I said, sort of bridge reworking your balance sheet. But I do think it’s an important use of recycling proceeds into share repurchases.

Chris Darling

Alright. Makes sense. Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Stephen Grambling, Morgan Stanley.

Stephen Grambling

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. I know you target these high barrier entry markets, but if you look across your entire portfolio, I guess what do you think competitive supply growth is this year? And are you seeing any change in behavior in developers in the markets from that that you operate from the volatility we've seen broadly?

Jeff Donnelly

Like I would say more just step back. I mean, I would say probably 40% to 50% of our markets are in places where you almost cannot build. I mean, it’s sort of the Florida Keys or French Quarter or Sedona and markets like that, where there’s either a very anti-development stance or just by right, you’re not allowed to build, like as I mentioned, like the French Quarter. So there’s a big chunk of our portfolio that I think for a very long period of time will have almost no supply growth.
And I think other markets right now, like development really doesn’t pencil. So I wouldn’t I don’t have a specific number, but I think it would be probably close to 1% growth if you think about it over the next few years. But as in terms of near-term trends, I mean, certainly, what’s happened in the last thirty days has made financing even on acquisitions more difficult and more expensive. Imagine it’s going to make development more costly to pencil. I don’t know, Justin, if you think in the last three to six months.

Justin Leonard

Really, I mean, I’ve seen very little that’s get announced, maybe one or two things that have involved public subsidy and they’re going to need that in order to get over the finish line. I think candidly what we’re more focused on is unfortunately, I think given the lack of development, the brands have been more focused on getting unit growth from brand acquisitions.
And so where we do have branded outposts, kind of that continued acquisition on the brand front brings competitive supply, although not new rooms, competitive supply into a brand channel. So I think that’s one of the things that we’re particularly focused on and how do we insulate ourselves to some extent from that. Luckily, we don’t have as much of a branded portfolio as some others. So we do have some defense against that. But I think it’s one of the things that we’re watching.

Jeff Donnelly

Yes. One other thing I’d say, Stephen, is it’s only a small glimpse, but in the public markets, there’s a handful of companies that have purchased assets out of development. And you can see this just it tends to be a very difficult environment for that just given the high construction costs and the ramp that’s associated with a development asset, it’s just for us, at least, it’s hard to justify not that you suggested we get into development. But it’s hard to justify that relative to either your own shares or an acquisition where it’s existing income on a lower basis.

Stephen Grambling

Understood. And maybe I missed this, but if the capital markets were to become more supportive, are there specific markets that you think look particularly interesting or you’d want to increase exposure through from M&A if we do get that kind of, I want to say, all is clear on the macro side, but at least maybe from a capital market standpoint?

Jeff Donnelly

There’s specific markets necessarily think of it that way. Mean, we discuss some markets. Think more thematically, it’s starting to find situations where you see an opportunity for a good recovery out there. And so, we have looked at some situations in the last six to twelve months where I’d say they probably skewed to more urban markets. To be clear, we’re not abandoning a focus on resorts.
It’s just when you look at where can you find distressed assets or distressed owners, it can be more in the urban markets that just haven’t rebounded yet.

Stephen Grambling

Value buying. Got it. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes our Q&A session for today. I will turn the call back to Jeff Donnelly for final comments.

Jeff Donnelly

I just thank you everybody for joining us. If we don’t, see you next week at Wells Fargo's headquarters tour or their or their conference. I'm sure we'll see you on the road this summer. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes our conference for today. Thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect.