Chatham Lodging Trust Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 6, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: We completed sales of five underperforming hotels for $83 million at ~6% cap rates, reducing leverage to 21% and projecting ~$20 million of free cash flow in 2025 after dividends.
  • Positive Sentiment: The Board approved a $25 million share buyback plan, repurchasing ~20,000 shares at a $7.20 average price and planning to accelerate repurchases in Q3.
  • Positive Sentiment: Q2 results hit an 82% occupancy (post-pandemic high), achieved all-time high ADR and RevPAR in May, and delivered FFO per share at the top of the guidance range.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Portfolio performance was mixed, with Silicon Valley occupancy at 80% and Pittsburgh RevPAR up 23%, offset by weaker results in Texas due to convention center closures and in Seattle from reduced Canadian travel.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Guidance remains unchanged, with Q3 RevPAR expected at ‑1.5% to +0.5% and full-year RevPAR flat to +1%, and adjusted FFO per share of $0.95–$1.03, assuming no further asset sales or rate changes.
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Earnings Conference Call
Chatham Lodging Trust Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust Second Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Chris Daly, President of PG Public Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Chatham Lodging Trust Second Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. Please note that many of our comments today are considered forward-looking statements as defined by federal securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainty, both known and unknown, as described in our most recent Form 10-K and other SEC filings. All information in this call is as of August 6, 2025, unless otherwise noted, and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company's expectations. You can find copies of our SEC filings and earnings release, which contain reconciliations to non-GAAP financial measures referenced on this call, on our website at chathamlodgingtrust.com.

Speaker 5

Now, to provide you with an insight into Chatham's 2025 Second Quarter Results, allow me to introduce Jeff Fisher, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; Dennis Craven, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Jeremy Wegner, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Let me turn the session over to Jeff Fisher. Jeff?

Speaker 1

Yeah, thanks, Chris. Good morning, everyone. I certainly appreciate everybody being on our call today. Before I comment on our second quarter, I want to update some of our key corporate initiatives. We completed the sale of all five hotels listed in the fourth quarter and are very happy with the results. We sold five hotels, as a reminder, with an average age of 25 years at an approximate 6% capitalization rate on 2024 NOI levels for proceeds of $83 million. Each of these five hotels were among the six lowest-net-par hotels in our portfolio at cap rates lower than our cost of debt and are value enhancing. We currently have two additional hotels listed for sale, and of course, it's too early in the process to comment on the specifics of each transaction, but these would be further opportunistic sales.

Speaker 1

We intend to use the proceeds from the five asset sales, as well as those currently listed if we sell them, to fund our Home2 Suites Portland development, acquire a hotel, and repurchase shares of our stock. We look forward to being opportunistic on all those accounts to continue to add shareholder value where we can. Our Board of Trustees approved a $25 million share buyback plan in May, and during the quarter, we repurchased approximately 20,000 shares at a weighted average price of $7.02. We intend to be a bit more active in the third quarter given current share price levels. Our balance sheet continues to get stronger as we've reduced our leverage to now only 21% and are projected to create almost $20 million of free cash flow in 2025 after dividends. We've positioned ourselves to add value in multiple ways.

Speaker 1

During the third quarter, we intend to launch an upsize and recap syndication of our credit facility and term loan, further enhancing our financial condition and lowering overall borrowing costs. We're hopeful that process is complete by the time we speak again in November. Operationally, we're pretty pleased with the results of our second quarter, delivering RevPAR and FFO per share at the top of our guidance range. Second quarter occupancy of 82% matched last year's second quarter occupancy in its post-pandemic highs. Additionally, we hit an all-time high in ADR and RevPAR in May. We grew our operating margins this year, and yes, we did benefit from non-recurring refunds, but even excluding those one-time impacts, margins would have declined less than 1%. Not bad considering the RevPAR results for the quarter.

Speaker 1

I believe our island operating team will do even better in the third and fourth quarters in that regard. After a challenging start to the quarter when April RevPAR was down 4%, we grew RevPAR in May and June to essentially finish with flat RevPAR for the quarter. Our core business segment, business travelers, remains healthy and growing as we are seeing our highest occupancies during the week. When comparing us to our peers, I want to reiterate that we've beaten industry RevPAR growth for now 14 consecutive quarters or three and a half years. Our largest market, Silicon Valley, continues its recovery to pre-pandemic levels, and it was good to see our occupancy at all four hotels reach 80% in the quarter, which is an important hurdle.

Speaker 1

The amount of investments being committed by tech companies, combined with the Applied Materials expansion and the NVIDIA Innovation Center, will certainly help facilitate additional demand growth in the valley. Those demand generators are around the corner from our two large hotels in Sunnyvale. Another good sign of the underlying momentum in Silicon Valley is that multifamily rental growth rates are accelerating. For example, in their recent quarterly report, Essex Property Trust pointed out that their highest growth rates are in the Northern California region. Our press release included details on our largest market performance, and Dennis will expand further on those, but I want to highlight some interesting tidbits from other markets.

Speaker 1

Our Sunbelt markets are performing well, with our two Charleston hotels showing strong growth and, encouragingly, our two Florida hotels experiencing RevPAR growth in the quarter after being down last year and in the first quarter this year. Texas, as a reminder, three of our five hotels are being adversely impacted due to the closure of their cities' respective convention centers for expansion, specifically downtown Dallas and Austin. RevPAR in the entire Austin market is down 6% year to date and down 14% in the quarter, with the only good news being the Domain market is less bad than that at down 5% in the quarter and 11% year to date. In Seattle, the entire market, including Bellevue, is soft and feeling the effects of reduced Canadian travel, with RevPAR down 2% year to date and 4% in the second quarter.

Speaker 1

The automobile border crossings in the region were down 47% in the second quarter. Lastly, driven by some great events, our second quarter in Pittsburgh was huge with growth of 23%, and its second quarter RevPAR of $151 was its highest second quarter in history. Second quarter events, special events included its first motocross championship in April, three concerts and the Monster Jam in May, and then the U.S. Open in June. Next year, during the second quarter, we have the NFL Draft right outside our front door, which should be great for the hotel. As we look forward ahead to the balance of the year, we are essentially leaving our guidance unchanged. Growing business travel demand across a good portion of our portfolio is encouraging. Yet offsetting that is weakness in the convention demand in Austin, Dallas, and San Diego, which had an all-time best year in 2024.

Speaker 1

Leisure demand has held up well for us, yet the decline in travel from Canada and Europe is certainly impacting the industry overall. For us, government travel rebounded post-Liberation Days after our three D.C. hotels saw RevPAR decline 9% in April. RevPAR was up approximately 2% for the balance of that quarter. As an industry, I believe we're poised for some better performance in the coming years. Supply, demand, that's the key here. Of course, we all know that new supply should continue to be muted for some time as we look forward. It's expensive to build, and it's my belief that development only makes sense in some very special markets in the U.S.

Speaker 1

Looking past 2026, the current GDP growth rates are encouraging, and the outlook is even more so given the massive investments being made by companies across the U.S., including the substantial commitments made to the technology advancements and all things AI. Adding to this is all the announced foreign investment coming in the U.S. in the coming years. Historically speaking, we all know there's a strong correlation between GDP growth and RevPAR growth. Operationally, as a reminder, we've got great internal growth potential with the recovery, continued recovery of the Silicon Valley hotels. There's quite a bit happening in the market, not only with the largest companies in the world that are based there, and the future continues to look bright. Silicon Valley, once again, took over the number one ranking for startups and is the global epicenter of innovation with abundant capital and continuously creating groundbreaking technology.

Speaker 1

In conclusion, I'm excited about our prospects going forward. We've executed on most all strategic fronts and sit in a great position to grow and add value with a very strong balance sheet. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Dennis.

Operator

Thanks, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. Some additional RevPAR colors. RevPAR growth at our four Silicon Valley hotels, like Jeff said, was up 3%, and we were able to grow hotel EBITDA an additional 3% to almost $5 million. Our Silicon Valley hotels were really no different than our portfolio in that April was quite soft due to the consecutive Easter and Passover holidays, along with the initial reactions from Liberation Day. Within the quarter, RevPAR at our four Silicon Valley hotels was down 2% in April, then up 3% in May, and a strong 6% in June. At our Home2 Suites in Phoenix, as a reminder, it opened in early 2024. We acquired the hotel in late May of 2024, and RevPAR was up over 60% in the quarter.

Operator

As we enter the fall, we are encouraged with our sales efforts there, especially related to the convention center and other group-related business that often has to be targeted at least a year in advance. LA RevPAR was up 1% in the quarter as demand related to the California wildfires pretty much left the market, and especially our Woodland Hills hotel, where we had a significant amount of business there in the quarter. Within our LA market, our three hotels, our Residence Inn Anaheim was up 6%, and our Hilton Garden Inn Marina del Rey was up 3%, with our Home2 Suites Woodland Hills down 5%. Our six predominantly leisure hotels account for about 20% of our EBITDA, and they had a great quarter with RevPAR surging 4% in use due to our Hilton Garden Inn Portsmouth that was under renovation into the quarter.

Operator

Our top five RevPAR hotels in the quarter were our Residence Inn in Washington, D.C., with RevPAR of $239, followed by our Residence Inn San Diego Gaslamp, and both of those RevPARs were the highest second quarter RevPARs in each of their respective histories. Rounding out our top five were our Hilton Garden Inn Marina del Rey, our Residence Inn White Plains, New York, and our Hampton Inn Portland Maine, all three with RevPAR over $200 in the quarter. On the operations front, for the third consecutive quarter, we drove our gross operating profit margins higher, 30 basis points above last year's levels. Although we benefited from about an $800,000 workers' compensation-related refund, it was really attributable to very good claims experiences, and kudos to our operating team for minimizing those costs.

Operator

As we all know, labor and benefits are by far our largest expense and on a per-occupied room basis, these costs were down 7%. When you take out the impact of that refund, labor and benefits were still down year over year on a per-occupied room basis. We continue to allocate meaningful energy, closely monitoring our productivity at that level. Most other operating line items were relatively stable year over year, though guest acquisition-related commission costs were up approximately 15%. Our exposure has increased really due to just different channels of booking business in the quarter. That increase impacted margins by approximately 30 basis points in the quarter.

Operator

We had 17 hotels produce over $1 million of GOP in the quarter, and for the 14th consecutive quarter, our Residence Inn San Diego Gaslamp led the way with GOP of almost $3 million. Our two Residence Inn Bellevue and Residence Inn Mountain View California made the top five for the first time since the heavy intern summer of 2021, coming in at second and fifth respectively. Not to be outdone, our Embassy Suites Springfield, Virginia delivered GOP of $2 million in the quarter, and coming in fourth despite a tough market was our Residence Inn Bellevue with GOP of $1.6 million. On the capital expenditures front, we spent approximately $9 million in the quarter, and importantly, so far in 2025, we've added eight rooms to our existing portfolio, converting meeting and other spaces into more profitable guest rooms.

Operator

Those rooms include five rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn Portsmouth, two rooms at the Residence Inn in White Plains, and a suite at the Hampton Inn & Suites Exeter New Hampshire. Within these locations of any reasonable valuation, we've added probably $3 to $4 million in value to our portfolio at a fraction of the cost. Our last two renovations of 2025 are to commence later this year in the fourth quarter, with those being at the Residence Inn Austin and the Residence Inn Mountain View California. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeremy.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. Our Q2 2025 hotel EBITDA was $30.9 million, adjusted EBITDA was $28.5 million, and adjusted FFO was $0.36 per share. Our GOP margin for the quarter of 46.3% was up 30 basis points from Q2 2024, despite the flattest RevPAR environment, due to continued strong expense control, moderating inflationary cost pressures, and the benefit of approximately $1.3 million of workers' compensation insurance and tax refunds. In Q2, we continued our asset recycling by completing the sale of the Courtyard Houston for $23.5 million, which represents an LTM capitalization rate of 5.8%, including $3.6 million of required capital expenditures. Our successful asset recycling over the past few years has reduced the age and improved the quality of our hotel portfolio and significantly reduced our leverage.

Speaker 3

The reduction in leverage, along with the successful refinancing of our material debt maturities over the last couple of years, has significantly enhanced our financial flexibility. This added flexibility gave us the confidence to announce our first-ever share repurchase program in Q2, which we started utilizing in June. With leverage of 3.5 times net debt to EBITDA as of June 30th, we have significant capacity to pursue attractive investment opportunities, whether in the form of acquisitions or share repurchases. Turning to our Q3 and full-year 2025 guidance, we expect RevPAR of -1.5% to +0.5%, adjusted EBITDA of $24.7 million to $26.8 million, and adjusted FFO of $0.29 to $0.33 per share in Q3, and RevPAR growth of flat to +1%, adjusted EBITDA of $89 million to $93 million, and adjusted FFO per share of $0.95 to $1.03 per share for the full year.

Speaker 3

This guidance assumes no further asset sales, capital markets activity, or changes in floating interest rates. This concludes my portion of the call. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your headset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Gaurav Mehta from Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to go back to your comments around asset recycling. I think in the prepared remarks, you mentioned that we're looking to sell two more assets in addition to five that had been sold. For the two additional hotels that you're looking to sell, are they going to be similar lower CapEx, lower RevPAR sort of hotels?

Operator

Hey, Gordon. This is Dennis. I think in one of the two instances, yes, it's kind of one of the older, lower RevPAR assets. Another one is really just an opportunistic transaction we're looking at that I think would minimize some capital requirements here in the next few years. We're certainly just in the early phases of that process and hope to have something to talk about a little bit more on our next earnings call.

Operator

Okay. In terms of the point that's at the goal, I think you mentioned development in Portland and then acquisition. Can you maybe remind us the timeline for development in Portland, and then what kind of opportunities are you seeing in the acquisition market?

Operator

Yeah, I'll start on the development side, just on the timing, and I'll let Jeff chime in on acquisitions. Generally speaking, it's going to be around the 21 to 24-month construction timeline. We still have some work to do there with respect to just understanding soils and all that kind of good stuff. Ideally, we'd like to get started on that sometime within the next six months or so. Again, probably as we kind of get to the next call, we'll have a little more information on kickoff and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1

Relative to acquisitions, Jeff, I think it continues to be the same story for most of us. We're always looking, we're always underwriting, we're always talking to owners that we've dealt with before and/or the brokerage community. I still think there's a pretty wide bid-ask scenario going on. I think over time, that gap should lessen. In the meantime, we've got our stock buyback program, and we certainly, as we indicated earlier, are probably going to ramp that up just a little bit more, given the stock price today.

Speaker 1

Okay, thank you, Jeff. Go ahead.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. Once again, a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. As there are no further questions, I would now hand the conference over to Jeff Fisher for his closing comments. Yes?

Speaker 1

Thank you very much. It was a short call. Maybe there's a little vacation time involved, but nonetheless, we will continue on our course and look forward to talking to you for the next call. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference of Chatham Lodging Trust has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.

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