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Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. After my introductory comments, Derek will review our fourth quarter and full year financial results, and then Chris will provide an operational update on our portfolio.
Our fourth quarter performance was highlighted by 3.1% comparable RevPAR growth, 4.6% comparable total revenue growth, and 6.2% growth in comparable hotel EBITDA. These results underscore the impact of the strategic decisions our team has made over the past several quarters and the strength of our high quality geographically diverse portfolio.
Total revenue growth, meaningfully exceeding revPAR growth, is reflective of the efforts that our asset management team and property managers have taken to grow ancillary revenues, and that discrepancy widened even further in December, with total revenue growth of 7.7% outpacing revPAR growth by 350 basis points. The 6.2% growth in comparable hotel EBITDA offer for the quarter reflects efforts by our property managers to operate more efficiently as margins across the industry have narrowed.
Beyond the impressive operating results, we were also very active in the quarter on the investment and capital markets fronts. We announced the conversion of the Laconia Hotel in Key West to Marriott's autograph collection.
Upon conversion, it was rebranded to Autograph Laconia, and we've created a distinctive theme and style for the hotel that is commensurate with the higher end autograph product. This included transforming the lobby, bar, and restaurant, as well as upgrading the exterior, guest rooms, guest bathrooms, corridors, pool, and meeting space. Ideally located in Oldtown Key West, the transformation elevated the property into a desirable niche in the high barrier to entry, high RevPAR Key West market.
Post-conversion, we believe the new autographed property should realize a 20% to 30% revPAR premium compared to pre-conversion. And the hotel recently posted 25% year-over-year revenue growth in the month of January.
We also completed a similar conversion at our La Pavion Hotel in New Orleans, converting it to Marriott's tribute portfolio. This project included renovations to guest rooms, guest bathrooms, restaurant and lobby bar, as well as the extensive exterior work.
Located on historic Poyer Street, it has a prime location in proximity to major demand generators in downtown New Orleans. Post-conversion, we expected the new tribute portfolio property to realize a 10% to 20% revPAR premium compared to pre-conversion. Impressively, the hotel has exceeded those expectations out of the gate and recently posted more than 45% year-over-year revenue growth in the month of January.
In the capital markets, we refinanced our mortgage loan on the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia in November, and in December we extended the mortgage loan for the La Pavian Hotel in New Orleans. Meanwhile, our non-traded preferred stock offering allowed us to raise substantial capital despite a challenging environment, reinforcing our financial position.
Building on this success, we are pleased to announce that the offering of our Series J and Series K non-traded preferred stocks will close on March 31, 2025.
Looking ahead to 2025, we expect this to be a transformational year for the company, and we have gotten off to a hot start.
In January, we closed down the sale of the Courtyard Boston downtown for $123 million nearly $400,000 per key. This sale underscores the continued improvement in the hotel transaction markets, with a 6.9% trailing cap rate highlighting the intrinsic value within our portfolio.
It also provided important deleveraging for our largest loan pool and resulted in significant capital expenditure savings. On February 12th, we completed the refinancing of 16 assets spanning four mortgage loans with final maturities in the first half of the year.
This refinancing also enabled us to achieve another significant milestone as we fully repaid the remaining balance on the corporate strategic financing.
This accomplishment was the culmination of a comprehensive process that began more than a year ago and included selling over $430 million in hotel assets, refinancing several properties for excess proceeds, and raising approximately $195 million through our non-traded preferred stock offering.
These coordinated actions allowed us to successfully retire the strategic financing and open a new chapter for Ashford Trust.
With the strategic financing behind us, we are now focused on partnering with our adviser and property managers to execute our recently announced Grow AHT initiative. Grow AHT is a massive strategic initiative designed to drive outsize growth and substantially improve shareholder value.
Grow AHT revolves around three core pillars GNA reduction, revenue maximization, and operational efficiency. Under GNA reduction, we plan to significantly lower corporate overhead by cutting management and board compensation, renegotiating advisory fees and expenses with Ashford Inc, and reducing professional and administrative costs.
Our revenue maximization efforts will focus on boosting room's revenue market share, conducting pricing audits to increase ancillary revenue, and introducing additional revenue streams across our portfolio.
Finally, the operational efficiency pillar aims to combat margin pressures by renegotiating vendor contracts, implementing energy saving measures, and optimizing labor.
We believe Grow AHT will transform Ashford Trust with the goal of adding $50 million to our run rate corporate event, an increase of more than 20%. By focusing on discipline, cost control, aggressive revenue strategies, and operational innovation, we are confident we can enhance shareholder value and further strengthen our balance sheet.
Completing the repayment of our strategic financing also allows us to definitively definitively move past the challenges of the COVID era. We remain dedicated to maximizing the performance, profitability, and overall value of our hotels, as well as continuing strategic portfolio turnover and ongoing deleveraging.
We are very encouraged by the increasingly attractive industry fundamentals, limited supply growth in the coming years, and gradually improving transaction and financing markets. We look forward to updating you on our progress with Grow AHT and the many opportunities that lie ahead for Ashford Trust.
I will now turn the call over to Derek to review our fourth quarter and full year financial performance.

Deric Eubanks

Thanks Stephen. For the fourth quarter, we reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $131.1 million or $23.83 per diluted share. For the full year we reported a net loss attributable to common stockholders of $82.5 million or $17.54 per diluted share for the quarter we reported AFO per diluted share of negative $2.21 and for the full year we reported AFFO per diluted share of negative $4.84.
Adjusted EBITDAre for the quarter was $45.2 million and $235.9 million for the full year. At the end of the fourth quarter, we had $2.6 billion of loans with a blended average interest rate of 7.9%, taking into account in the money interest rate caps. Considering the current level of SOFR and the corresponding interest rate caps, approximately 23% of our debt is now effectively fixed and 77% is effectively floating.
During the quarter, we successfully extended our mortgage loan secured by the 226 room Le Pavion Hotel located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The loan had an initial maturity date in December of 2024 and has two additional one year extension options subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, with a final maturity date in December 2027. The loan was extended with no pay down and continues to have an outstanding balance of $37 million.
During the quarter, we also successfully refinanced our mortgage loan secured by the 703 room Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel located in Arlington, Virginia, which had a final maturity date in November 2026. The new non-recourse loan totals $121.5 million and has a three-year initial term with two one-year extension options subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions.
The loan is interest only and provides for a floating interest rate of SOFR plus 4.75%. The refinancing resulted in approximately $31 million of excess proceeds that were used to pay down our strategic financing.
Subsequent to quarter end, we completed the sale of the 315 room courtyard Boston downtown located in Boston, Massachusetts for $123 million or $390,000 per key. When adjusted for the anticipated capital expenditures, the sale price represented a 5.9% capitalization rate. A net operating income for the trailing 12 months ended September 30, 2024, or 14.3 times Hotel EBITDA for the same time period.
Excluding the anticipated capital spend, the sale price represented a 6.9% capitalization rate on net operating income for the trailing 12 months ended September 30, 2024, or 12.3 times Hotel EBITDA for that same time period.
Subsequent to quarter end, we closed on a $580 million refinancing secured by 16 hotels. The financing included the hotels that were previously part of the company's Keys Pool C loan, Keys Pool D loan. Keys pool E loan and the Bammel pool 3 loan together with the West in Princeton.
The previous loans had a combined outstanding loan balance of approximately $438.7 million. The new financing is non-recourse, has a two-year term with three one-year extension options subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions, and bears interest at a floating interest rate of SOFR plus 4.37%. We used approximately $72 million of the excess proceeds to completely pay off the remaining balance on our strategic financing, including the exit fee.
The remaining excess proceeds were used to fund transaction costs and reserves for future capital expenditures.
We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $112.9 million and restricted cash of $107.6 million. The vast majority of that restricted cash is comprised of lender and manager held reserve accounts and $2.6 million related to trapped cash held by lenders.
At the end of the quarter, we also had $21.2 million due from third party hotel managers. This primarily represents cash held by one of our property managers, which is also available to fund hotel operating costs.
We ended the quarter with networking capital of approximately $122 million. As of December 31, 2024, our consolidated portfolio consisted of 73 hotels with 17,644 rooms.
After taking into account our recently completed one for 10 reverse stock split, our share count at the end of the year consisted of approximately 5.8 million fully diluted shares outstanding, which is comprised of 5.6 million shares of stock and 0.1 million OP units.
Additionally, as Stephen mentioned during the quarter, we announced plans to close the offering of the Series J and Series K non-traded preferred stock on March 31, 2025. Since launching the offering in 2022, we have raised approximately $195 million of gross proceeds from the sale of our Series J and Series K non-traded preferred stock.
While we are currently paying our preferred dividends quarterly or monthly, we do not anticipate reinstating a common dividend in 2025. This concludes our financial review, and I would now like to turn it over to Chris to discuss our asset management activities for the quarter.

Thank you, Derek.
In the fourth quarter, we delivered strong performance across our geographically diverse portfolio. Comparable hotel revPAR increased by 3% over the prior year period, reflecting solid demand and the impact of our strategic revenue management initiatives.
Group dynamics and corporate transient demand are improving, and we are starting to see accelerating benefits from our grow AHT initiatives, many of which were rolled out in November. December was a particularly strong month with a 12% increase in Hotel EBITDA over the prior year period, driven in large part by the successful execution of several grow AHT initiatives that were in full swing.
This performance was broad-based, demonstrating the resilience of our portfolio and the effectiveness of our strategies. I would not like to go into more detail on some of the achievements completed throughout the quarter.
Group revenue for the fourth quarter increased by 5% over the prior year period. Booking activity remained strong, with group pays continuing to accelerate across our portfolio. Our Washington DC properties delivered a healthy group performance this period. During the fourth quarter, Embassy Suites Crystal City produced a 22% increase in group room revenue compared to the prior year period.
With the Presidential election cycle presenting both opportunities and challenges, our team implemented an aggressive strategy to drive results. We focused on targeted marketing to political organizations supporting the election, particularly security and campaign teams.
2025 group room revenue pace for the broader portfolio remains strong, currently pacing ahead by 5% over the prior year period.
Additionally, booking volumes have been robust. We added over $13 million in additional group room revenue during the fourth quarter for the first quarter of 2025, representing an increase of approximately 6% compared to the prior year quarter for the first quarter of 2024.
Turning to gross operating performance, I am pleased with our results. This fourth quarter, gross operating margins expanded by approximately 141 basis points relative to the prior year quarter. Renaissance Nashville delivered a strong fourth quarter gross operating profit increase of 10% on 3% total revenue growth, ideally positioned near downtown Music City Center. This property benefited from recent initiatives aimed at enhancing its operating performance.
These initiatives included adding a valuable ancillary revenue stream and cutting other operational expenses. Additionally, our team strategically utilized the supply chain procurement system throughout the year, which resulted in over $130,000 in food cost savings for the full year.
These efforts underscore our ongoing commitment to operational efficiency and margin expansion, reinforcing our ability to drive sustainable profitability across our portfolio.
One hotel that I would like to highlight this quarter is La Meridian Fort Worth downtown, which opened during the third quarter of 2024. Thanks to a combination of strategic partnerships, proactive marketing, and early activations, our asset management team has successfully capitalized on the hotel's incredible amenities, achieving total revenue growth ahead of our initial budget by 21%.
A key driver of this early success was our focus on strong community engagement even before the hotel's grand opening and ribbon cutting events. We partnered with Fort Worth Sister Cities International, the Fort Worth Chamber, and downtown Fort Worth Inc to improve awareness prior to the opening.
Additionally, the hotel conducted exclusive hard hat tours for prospective customers and community partners, generating early excitement and demand. To attract business travelers, we introduced bond holy room packages and brought on a dedicated business travel sales manager to engage with companies in the downtown area and establish corporate accounts.
Simultaneously to position the hotel as a vibrant social and dining destination, our team launched dynamic food and beverage activations including live music and happy hours at the Upscale lobby restaurants and the stunning rooftop lounge.
Further, an aggressive early rate strategy for group bookings helped establish a competitive market presence with additional overflow blocks and group bookings secured through strategic collaborations with our other properties in the area.
By positioning itself as a premier venue for group events and conferences, this upscale boutique property has delivered an exceptionally strong performance right out of the gate, and I'm excited about its long-term potential.
As Stephen mentioned, this quarter marked the successful completion of our strategic repositioning of Crowne Plaza La Concha Hotel in Key West, Florida and autograph Laanha, now part of Marriott's autograph collection, ideally located on Duval Street in Old Town Key West. This transformation followed a $35 million investment, including upgrades to the lobby, bar, restaurant, exterior, guest rooms, bathrooms, corridors, pool, and meeting space.
As a key enhancement was a conversion of a previously underutilized spa into premium rooftop suites, offering some of the best views in Key West.
I'm equally excited about the conversion of our La Pavian Hotel in downtown New Orleans to a tribute portfolio property following a $19 million investment.
This renovation included extensive exterior work, upgraded guest rooms and bathrooms, a refreshed restaurant, and a reimagined hotel lobby bar. The new bar, 1,803, pays homage to the rich history of both the hotel and the city, named after the year Emperor Napoleon signed the Louisiana Purchase.
These conversions exemplify our ability to unlock embedded value in our portfolio.
Looking ahead, we expect La Concha and Le Pavian to benefit significantly from Marriott's sales, distribution, and loyalty platforms, enhancing long-term performance and value.
As part of our grow AHT initiatives, we implemented strategic measures during the fourth quarter to drive Hotel EBITDA, focusing on food and beverage, parking, and labor expenses to enhance profitability while maintaining service standards. We conducted audits of revenues of all outlets and gift shops to optimize offerings and improve margins.
Parking fee and historic preservation fee adjustments will provide additional revenue streams. We also partnered with Remington to reduce allocated expenses. We launched a day use hospitality program monetizing hotel amenities.
On the labor front, we refined staffing models, optimize schedules, and leverage technology to improve efficiency while preserving guest service.
Together, these grow AHT initiatives will help us create a more sustainable and profitable operating model.
As we move into 2025, we will continue identifying opportunities to further drive Hotel EBITDA and maximize value.
Turning to capital expenditures in the fourth quarter of 2024, we completed the extensive guest room and public space renovation at Embassy Suites Dallas and began the guest room renovation at Embassy Suites West Palm, which is on track for completion during the first quarter of 2025. Additionally, renovations at residence in Evansville and Courtyard Bloomington are progressing well, with completion expected during the second quarter of 2025.
For the full year we invested approximately $106.5 million in capital expenditures. In 2025, we will execute several PIPs to support brand franchise agreement renewals while enhancing guest experience at Hilton Garden in Austin, a restaurant and meeting space renovation will modernize the property and capitalize on its prime downtown location.
Later in the year we plan to embark on public space renovations at Hampton and Evansville and Western Princeton. These initiatives underscore our commitment to asset excellence and delivering superior guests' experiences.
In total, we expect to spend between $95 million and $115 million in 2025 as we continue to enhance and elevate our portfolio.
In summary, business continues to show solid growth. Demand remains strong across key markets, and our ancillary revenue initiatives are performing well. Looking ahead, we are actively rolling out additional pro AHT initiatives aimed at enhancing operational performance. We are also focused on reducing energy costs, optimizing contract labor utilization, and cutting travel expenses, all designed to drive efficiency, lower cost, and improve profitability.
We remain optimistic about our portfolio's outlook for 2025 and confident in our ability to unlock additional value.
That concludes our prepared remarks, and we will now open up the call for Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you.
(Operator Instructions)
Our question comes from the line of Jonathan Jenkins from Oppenheimer. Sir, please go ahead.

Jonathan Jenkins

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First one from me on the growth initiative, Chris, I think you noticed some changes and benefits that you're already seeing here in 4Q, but can you maybe quantify the benefits that you've seen and provide some color on the grant period and the cadence throughout the year and maybe some additional color and potential opportunities to get you to that $50 million dollar target.

Yeah, great question, Jonathan. Thanks for the question. So, we've begun rolling out all initiatives. I would say more than half of the initiatives are fully rolled out and underway.
Obviously, we've seen the impact of performance that a number of these initiatives started having immediately with the December numbers we've excited as we look ahead to kind of Q1 in January, then our performance is pulling through, so we're very optimistic.
Many of the initiatives will continue to roll out through the course of the year as we're kind of going through 2025. We're still identifying new initiatives and potential new partnerships and things we can do to kind of build on. And so we're very happy, but we're not satisfied. So I'd say roughly half of the initiatives have been fully rolled out and then the remainder will be rolled out throughout throughout the remainder of the year.

Jonathan Jenkins

Very helpful. That's great to hear. And then switching gears to the conversions, Steven, I believe you talked about 20% to 30% of par premiums and revenue growth in January was in or above that, which is impressive.
Do you think those assets have largely stabilized, or is there an additional ramp period from here? And then more broadly, any additional thoughts regarding conversions in the portfolio and how much of an opportunity that could be?

Yeah, hey Jonathan, this is Chris. I'll take that.
We're very encouraged by the performance of the conversions, as Stephen indicated, we underwrote pretty aggressive returns and both hotels are outperforming that. And Leviion, the outperformance is Steven said is north of 40% in January. That continued through February, and that's accounting for, kind of normalizing for Super Bowl impact.
So, when you remove Super Bowl, the hotel is still performing at kind of that level, outperforming underwriting. When you throw an event like Super Bowl in there, it's again through the roof. I think the hotel had Pavian was sold out for 4 straight nights over Super Bowl with revPAR which exceeded $900 so extremely strong performance. The hotel continues to ramp.
We're seeing strong distribution performance as we expected from Marriott, and so I think there is still some additional runway before that stabilizes, but performance at both hotels is kind of blowing our underwriting out of the water down in Key West.
Occupancy has outperformed the market. We're starting to see the broader market soften a little bit in occupancy, so it's great that we're outperforming there. But where we've really seen the benefit is on the ADR side with ADR gains that are just significantly outperforming underwriting, which is obviously great news for us.

Jonathan Jenkins

Okay, that's excellent. And then switching gears to the transaction environment, can you provide some additional color there? Has there been any noticeable pick up or changes in conversations you've been having as of late? Any changes in bid a spreads or differences in portfolio deals versus one-offs that are worth calling out, any additional color that would be helpful.

Yeah, we've definitely seen improvement in the financing markets, and that has driven an improvement in transaction markets, certainly driven optimism that 2025 is going to be a much better year for transactions, from our perspective, I expect that we'll continue to sell a handful of additional assets, but I'd caveat that and say that we're going to continue to be very disciplined.
We want to ensure that we're getting optimal value on our sales, and there does remain a bid ask spread in a handful of markets and so we need to explore several different opportunities. We're not going to transact on all of them similar to what we've done in prior quarters, but we also expect to continue to deleverage and, improve our our balance sheet overall.

Jonathan Jenkins

Okay, that's great. And then lastly for me, if I could just a clarification question on your floating rate exposure, I assume that increased sequentially is just the expiration swaps.
Is that the case? And, more broadly, is there any additional color you can provide to us on how you're thinking about your fixed or floating rate exposure? Do you expect to, we get into the swaps to lower that floating exposure?

Deric Eubanks

Jonathan, this is Derek. I'll take that.
It's a combination of interest rate caps burning off as well as sour dropping back below strike prices on those caps. So that's why we're more floating now.
I think, historically we've always preferred floating rate financing just because it has more flexibility. We think it's more of a natural hedge to our business. And we believe over time that you'll typically pay less floating. Obviously, that's been a challenge for us over the last year or two, but I think you'll continue to see us have a mix of fixed in floating with sort of a bent to more to more floating.

Jonathan Jenkins

Okay, very helpful. I appreciate all the color, everyone, but thank you for your time.

Thank You.

Operator

That conclude.

Thank you for joining today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you all again next quarter.

Operator

That includes our conference call for today.
Thank you for joining and you may now disconnect.