GreenTree Hospitality Group Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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November 21, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the GreenTree Hospitality Group Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rene Vanguestaine.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Rocco. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us. GreenTree's earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on our IR website at ir.998.com as well as on PR Newswire services. As a reminder, we also posted a PowerPoint presentation that accompanies our comments to the same IR website. On the call from GreenTree are Mr.

Speaker 1

Alex Xu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Ms. Selena Yang, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Xu will present the company's performance overview for the Q3 of 2024 and Ms. Yang will then discuss financials and guidance.

Speaker 1

They will be available to answer your questions during the Q and A session which follows. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and as defined in the U. S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements can be identified by terminologies such as may, will, expects, anticipates, aims, future, intends, plans, beliefs, estimates, continue, target, is or are likely to, going forward, confident, outlook and similar statements.

Speaker 1

Statements. Any statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the company and its industry, are forward looking statements. Such statements are based upon management's current expectations and current market and operating conditions and relate to events that involve known as well as unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the company's control, which may cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties or factors is included in the company's filings with the U.

Speaker 1

S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided, including the forward looking statements made during this conference call, are current as of today's date. The company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law. It is now my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr.

Speaker 1

Alex Xu. Mr. Xu, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Renee. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to report that our hotel business improved in the 3rd quarter over the 1st 2 quarters of this year as the economy continued to recover. Travel patterns have normalized following last year's surge, which has influenced year over year comparisons. We're back to a more positive environment focusing on growing our pipeline and upgrading numerous hotels across our portfolio.

Speaker 2

We are confident that we are on the right track and will benefit from the ongoing stimulus measures implemented by the government. Our restaurant business net income remained positive for a 2nd consecutive quarter as we continued to grow the number of franchised 3 stores and stores with stable consumer traffic. Such stores now accounted for 55.5 percent of our store count compared to 44.6% a year ago. Following the closing of unprofitable stores over the past year, The number of restaurants in operation had stabilized at 182 at the end of the quarter. We are now focusing on growing that number.

Speaker 2

Please turn to Slide 5. Compared with the Q3 of 2023, hotel RevPAR was RMB135, a decrease of 13.6 and restaurant ADS was RMB4891, a decrease of 25.6%. Total revenues were RMB357 1,000,000 a decrease of 22.5%. Hotel revenues were RMB286.9 million, a decrease of 15.4%, mainly due to a 13.6% year over year decrease in RevPAR and the closure of L. O.

Speaker 2

Hotels, partially offset by new openings. Income from operations decreased to RMB106,400,000 with a margin of 29.8%. Net income was RMB65.2 million, a decrease of 44.4 percent with a margin of 18.3%. Adjusted EBITDA, non GAAP was RMB122.5 million, a decrease of 32.1% with a margin of 34.3%. Slide 6 shows detailed numbers for total revenues, income from operations, net income and adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 2

Slide 7 shows the trend in our quarterly operating performance. In the Q3 compared to a year ago, RevPAR for our L. O. Hotels decreased by 7.5% to RMB196. RevPAR for our FM hotels decreased by 13.8 percent to RMB133.

Speaker 2

ADR for our LO hotels decreased by 3.6% to RMB258 and ADR for our FM hotels decreased by 6.1 percent to RMB179. Occupancy at our L. O. Hotels decreased to 75.9% from 79% and occupancy at our FM hotels decreased to 74.6% from 81.3%. Slide 8 highlights the growth in our membership programs which accounted for most of our direct sales.

Speaker 2

Individual memberships grow to 100,000,000 up from 88,000,000 a year ago and the corporate memberships grew to 2,100,000, up from 2,000,000 a year ago. Slide 9 shows the operating performance of restaurant with ADS decreased year over year to RMB4891, but increased sequentially from quarter 2. Starting with slide 11 to slide 13, I will review our strategic execution across our businesses. In our hotel business we further expanded in the mid to upscale segment and in Tier 3 and the lower cities, especially in South China. We also added more hotels in the Tier 2 cities.

Speaker 2

As you can see on slide 12, we continued to grow our mid to upscale segment with 5 27 hotels. That's 12.1% of our total portfolio at the end of the quarter. While the mid scale segment remains the core of our hotel business at 68.4%, We continue our expansion into the higher end segments. We also continued to grow our economy segment ending the quarter at 19.5%. Please turn to Slide 13.

Speaker 2

Both of our current pipeline and the hotels in operations are growing in the Tier 2 cities. On slide 14, we continued to turn around our restaurant business to ensure that it is sustainably profitable going forward by focusing on areas with greater food traffic. We have closed L. O. Stores and opened FM stores, completing the strategic transformation to our new business model.

Speaker 2

As a result, FM Restaurants accounted for 87.9% at the end of the quarter compared to 74.8% a year ago and the split stores accounted for 48.9% compared to 38.6% a year ago. Next Selina will review operating and financial highlights.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Alex. I will first review our hotel business. Please turn to slide 16. In the Q3, total hotel revenues decreased 15.4% to RMB286.9 million compared to the Q3 of 2023. Total revenues from LRO Hotels were RMB118.2 million, a decrease of 22.2 percent year over year.

Speaker 3

The decrease was primarily attributable to a 7.5% year over year decrease in RevPAR of Air L Hotels, the closing of 6 hotels and the reduction in sublease revenues mainly due to the disposal of property in the Q2. Total revenues from F and M hotels decreased 9.7% to RMB167.9 million primarily due to a 13.8% decrease in RevPAR partially offset by new openings. On slide 17, total hotel operating costs and expenses decreased 4.9% year over year to RMB201.9 million. Operating costs decreased 4.8 percent to RMB152.3 million year over year. Costs decreased less than revenues because of the costs associated with the clothing of LRO Hotels.

Speaker 3

Selling and marketing expenses were RMB12.9 million, a year over year decrease of RMB1.4 million. The decrease was mainly due to lower advertising expenses. General and administrative expenses were RMB35.3 million, up 32.5 percent compared with same quarter of last year. The increase was mainly due to an increase of RMB11 1,000,000 in bad debt provisions for long age account receivables. Turning to Slide 18.

Speaker 3

The decline in revenue resulted in a decrease in profitability for our hotel business despite lower operating costs and expenses. Income from our hotel operations decreased from RMB127.5 million to RMB99.5 million year over year. Net income was RMB58.6 million compared to RMB108.5 million in the Q3 of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 32.8 percent to RMB110.5 million and core net income decreased 21.4 percent to RMB86.9 million year over year. Next, let me review our restaurant business.

Speaker 3

Please turn to Slide 19. In the Q3, as Alex mentioned, we substantially completed the strategic transformation of our business model. Total revenues were RMB70.6 million, a decrease of 42% year over year, mainly due to lower ADS and the closure of ARO stores. Total cost expenses decreased for 2.8 percent year over year to RMB63.9 million due to better cost management of personnel expenses and sales channel commissions. And on slide 20, income from operations for restaurant business was RMB6.9 million, adjusted EBITDA was RMB9.4 million.

Speaker 3

Next, I will review the profitability of our group. Please turn to slide 21. Group net income at RMB65.2 million compared to RMB117.4 million a year ago. That was negatively impacted by a foreign exchange loss of approximately RMB33 1,000,000. Group net income per ADS, that's basic and diluted decreased by 44% to RMB0.65 and core net income ADS, basic and diluted non GAAP decreased by 26.1% to RMB0.92.

Speaker 3

Let's now take a look at slide 22. As of September 30, 2024, the company had total cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash, short term investments, investments in equity securities and hand deposits of RMB1883.9 million compared to RMB1737.2 million as of 2.30, 2024. The increase was mainly attributable to continued operating cash inflow and repayments of loans from franchisees. On slide 23, we now anticipate revenue for our hotel business for the full year 2024 to decrease 8% approximately compared to the year of 2023. This is based on our operating performance so far this year, in particular lower than expected travel in the 3rd quarter and a strategic review of our LRO hotels that led to the net closure of 9 hotels at the end of Q3 and contributed nearly half of the decline.

Speaker 3

This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready to begin the Q and A session. Thank you.

Operator

Thank And our first question today comes from Kevin Wong with Spigen Capital. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. I would like to have 2, if I may. The first one is, can you talk about the trend of the industry? How does the company's performance in the Q3 compare to other peers?

Speaker 4

And my second question is about the restaurant business. It seems that the business turned profitable in Q2 and turning even better in Q3. So what do you expect for Q4?

Speaker 2

Kevin, this is Alex. Thanks for those two questions. In terms of the trend in the hospitality industry for the year, we have compared like to like, I think our portfolio has higher percentage of aged hotels, legacy hotels. So as a result that our RevPAR impact during the downward trend is more severe compared with the newly opened hotels portfolio. And we noticed our newly opened hotels has a much better performance than the aged hotels.

Speaker 2

And we have a track record of 20 years. So we have accumulated more legacy hotels in that end. So the downward pressure is more noticeable after the mid August like August 15 and we see a more downward trend in the travel industry. But in October, we have also happily observed an improvement in the occupancy trend. So we expected the Q4 will be performing better than the Q3.

Speaker 2

And with more and more newer hotels adding to our portfolio, we think our trend will be reversed and will be outperforming the average of the industry in 1 year or 2 with our substantial new products coming online. So that's on the hospitality side. On the restaurant and we have worked really, really hard and the client reposition our business model. The past our store are located in for instance in supermarket anchored shopping malls with severe drop of the food traffic and the substantial number of those are closed, repositioned into 3 stores. And secondly, we also made improvement in the supply chain side because in the restaurant, the business model heavily relied on the food traffic, the supply chain, the management system and also the team.

Speaker 2

So as a result, I think we have performed better than the industry average in the restaurant chain side. We're happy to see a continued profitability and we will continue to select new locations to add the new stores at our own pace. So to make sure that as I pointed out to you, the profitability can be sustained. So we have all business segments contributing to the bottom line. So Kevin, that's the trend in the restaurant and we are still optimistically cautious about the restaurant business because we will see how the consumer trend will change, will shift and how we can deliver more value at a more affordable price and that's I think what the majority of the consumers are looking for.

Speaker 2

So we're continuing to improve our restaurant operating model. Thank you so much for the Phase 2 questions.

Speaker 4

Very clear. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Today's next question comes from Betty Yu with UBS. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you, management, for giving me this chance to ask questions. I also have two questions. And the first might be, could you give us some more color on your expectations for the sector supply and demand landscape going forward? Would the current fast supply expansion continue in 2025? And my second question would be, what measures are the company planning to take in the next 1 to 2 years to further improve your RevPAR and meet current macro conditions?

Speaker 3

Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Thanks Betty. The industry's competition intensified a great deal, but we are getting into a more normalized period. Last year and there was a big surge after the pandemic finishes. So this year I think we'll see a normalized competing environment. However, there are a lot more new hotels, new brands and on the supply side and the demand side I think has not caught up.

Speaker 2

As a result of that, we'll see the downward industry wide RevPAR decrease. And you can see from our L and O Hotels segment, the downward pressure was not as much as our franchised hotels because our franchised hotels has a lot more older models there. So we are pretty confident our new products in the new locations and are going to be a lot more competitive. So we expect a better performance in the 2025 for the year both on the RevPAR as well as our hotel openings because we see we'll have many, many new hotels in the pipeline and not only in the 3rd tier city, we also had substantially more new hotels in the pipeline in the 2nd tier city. The 2nd tier city consists of the primarily the regional economic centers and the provincial capital cities.

Speaker 2

I think that those locations that once we have newer hotels will better showcase our hotels presence in those regions will further help to improve our Tier 3 cities hotels performance. So overall, we are very optimistic about our own 2025 outlooks and performance. In terms of RevPAR, as I said to Kevin earlier, we see an improvement in the Q4 of this year already and however, it is really I think difficult to project the travel pattern next year because the light of the write down the economic environment. But GreenTree's business model has been more resilient. For instance, as you can see from our mix of portfolio, we may be hurt a little bit by in the company side because when you have more hotel in the second and third tier cities, our RevPAR is not as high in the 1st tier city.

Speaker 2

So as a result, our fee incomes, other related incomes are not as high as compared with some of the peers, which has a large hotel portfolios in the 1st tier city. However, the second and third tier cities has a higher profit margins than the 1st tier cities. The 1st tier cities basically you have higher rent, higher personnel cost and as a result the profit margin is much smaller than the 2nd 3rd tier city. So our franchisee has a lot more room to grow and we expect that our profitability and the RevPAR for the 2nd and third tier cities will be stable to say the least and or at least will withhold the pressure, withstand the pressure from the market fluctuations. So hopefully back here I answered your questions regarding our 2025.

Speaker 3

Thank you. It's very clear.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Liwan Liu with China Securities. Please go

Speaker 5

ahead. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. And I have two questions.

Speaker 5

The first is about as we see like the 3rd quarter financial quarter for the OTAs like Ctrip and Chongqing, we still see they can achieve double digit growth in the hotel industry despite of the situation. So what do you think about the bargain power like as a hotel side like for next year? And this is my first question. And the second question is about I see that we have like an investment or a new project like in Guizhou province like, so I think the call is very slow. Can you give some color on this project?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Levin. With regard to the OTAs and online travel agencies agencies taking more market shares, I think that's really understandable because we are moving into the digital period. And that the I think that the double digit growth is taking the shares from the off lines and not necessarily in terms of overall industry hotel hospitality demand increased double digit. And we are working closely with all of the reputable online travel agencies. I think as long as they're mutually profitable, we can bring in their business with affordable commission cost, I think that will become the new ecosystem and the new win win situation.

Speaker 2

And that we are we think that trend the average consumer become younger and younger and that they will use their digital tools to make the reservations and so we are basically taking notice of that trend working closely with them. With regard to the Guizhou project and we are working with we have a strategic partners in the 4 or 5 star hotels which we potentially will bring into the group in the future. There is a noticeable well known projects over there that's ideal for a showcase 4 star, 5 star hotels there and the local government has sought our corporation help to reposition that asset and to make it workable, reopen that reposition, reopen that in the near future. So we're really happy to have the opportunity to work with the local government and to make the non performing asset work.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Thank you for your answer. Yes. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Today's next question comes from Victor Lee with D. M. H. Y.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Good evening, management. Thank you for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one is about the dividends. So dividends was announced in the Q2 and now we see the performance in the Q3 is lower than expected.

Speaker 6

So do you have any plan to continue to paying the dividends in the future? And my second question is about the liquidity. Can you tell us how you plan to improve the liquidity in the capital market? Since company has previously mentioned that the company is considering several passes to boost the liquidity. So is there any progress or timetable now?

Speaker 6

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Victor. I will answer the question and Selina you can always jump in. With regard to the dividend Victor, even though we see the Q3 net income dropped and looks like a large number of drop like 44%. However, we are pretty confident because some of the cost of the drop as Selena mentioned to you in the report, dollars 33,000,000 of that drop is really a paper loss of the foreign currency exchange because we have a portion of the deposit is in U. S.

Speaker 2

Dollars. I think the Q3 at the beginning of the end, the conversion basically there is a $33,000,000 loss there. Then I think there is a $11,000,000 a bad debt provision for the long aged accounts receivable. We're pretty also confident that a lot of them eventually will be worked out given the opportunity for the franchisee to work out their hotel performance, improve the hotel performance a little bit better and slowly. And those some of those will be paid back.

Speaker 2

So in addition, we have legacy hotels being improved and that's resulted because we have large percentage in the legacy hotels. So resulted of the RevPAR decrease and more than the industry. We also see that a large number of newly opened hotels had a better performance. So on the going forward basis, we think our operating income and EBITDA will also improve significantly. As a result, our dividend policy will continue.

Speaker 2

And like we stated in the past, we're not deviate from the past plan and the strategy we have announced. And regarding to the liquidity, we have I think also shared with our analysts and investors that we are our company is going through reorganization and as a result our parent company will merge with our GHG as a result of that and some of the shareholders in the parent company will become direct shareholders of the GHG and therefore will increase the liquidity and hopefully that will help and boost our liquidity in the long run. I think that's our analysis. That's our current we are still on schedule and but because there are a number of approving approval process. So hopefully that will be completed soon.

Speaker 2

And thanks Victor.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Thank you for your answer.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Selina Yang for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Thank you, operator. In closing, on behalf of the entire GreenTree management team, we thank you for your interest in GreenTree and your participation in today's call. If you require any further information or have plans to visit us, please feel free to contact us. Thank you all.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day or evening.

Operator

Thank you.

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GreenTree Hospitality Group Q3 2024
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