RLJ (RLJ) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Monday, May 4, 2026 astatine 11 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• President and Chief Executive Officer — Leslie D. Hale

• Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer — Nikhil Bhalla

• Chief Operating Officer — Thomas Bardenett

Full Conference Call Transcript

Leslie D. Hale: Thanks, John Paul. Good morning, everyone, and convey you for joining america today. We are encouraged to spot the lodging manufacture disconnected to a beardown commencement this year, benefiting from the underlying spot of fundamentals, with the acceleration of concern transient request being a cardinal driver. We are peculiarly pleased with our archetypal 4th results arsenic our urban-centric portfolio outperformed the industry. Our favorable footprint with vulnerability to galore top-performing markets specified arsenic Northern California and South Florida, among others, allowed america to seizure the broad-based momentum successful each segments of request on with the ramp from our caller precocious interaction renovations and conversion, driving coagulated results up of our expectations.

During the archetypal quarter, we achieved RevPAR maturation of 4.8%. The outperforming the manufacture by 100 ground points. We delivered robust non-room gross growth, which exceeded our RevPAR show by much than 300 ground points, and we drove precocious single-digit year-over-year EBITDA maturation and borderline expansion. We besides precocious our conversion pipeline and addressed each of our maturities done 2029. Our coagulated archetypal 4th show demonstrates the momentum successful our municipality markets and the maturation embedded successful our portfolio, portion the ongoing execution of our superior allocation and equilibrium expanse initiatives, presumption america to proceed to thrust out-performance comparative to the manufacture and make semipermanent shareholder value. Turning to our operating results.

Our archetypal 4th RevPAR maturation of 4.8% was balanced betwixt occupancy and ADR gains. Trends improved sequentially passim the quarter, with RevPAR, February and March, achieving steadfast year-over-year maturation of 6% and 9%, respectively, pursuing January's RevPAR decline. Both February and March were aided by a robust calendar of events arsenic good arsenic the favorable timing of holidays, which bolster demand. We were pleased to spot this affirmative momentum transportation into April. Our municipality markets person been consistently performing well, disproportionately benefiting from affirmative trends crossed each request segments. We were pleased to spot our municipality footprint outperform the broader manufacture municipality markets, with a fig of our markets delivered precocious single-digit RevPAR growth.

Notably, Northern California achieved outstanding RevPAR maturation of 27%, benefiting not lone from the Super Bowl and the favorable displacement of the [ RNA ] league to March this twelvemonth but besides from the continued enlargement of the AI industry, which is driving important firm concern and concern question request broadly crossed this marketplace successful summation to a amended wide environment. New York City was different noteworthy marketplace during the 4th with our properties achieving implicit 8% RevPAR growth, driven by steadfast firm and leisure-transient demand, a favorable events lineup and the ramp of our precocious occupancy renovations that we completed past year.