Welcome to Citi's 2026 Global Property CEO Conference. I'm Nick Joseph here with Smedes Rose with Citi Research. We're pleased to have with us Ryman Hospitality Properties. This session is for Citi clients only, and disclosures have been made available at the corporate access desk. To ask a question, you can raise your hand or go to liveqa.com and enter code GPC26 to submit any questions. Mark, we'll turn it over to you to introduce the company and team, provide any opening remarks, tell the audience the top reasons an investor should buy your stock today, and then we'll get into Q&A.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having us today. Joining me today is Jennifer Hutcheson, our Chief Financial Officer, and Sarah Martin, who runs our IR operations. For those of you who aren't familiar with Ryman Hospitality, we are a group-focused, high barrier to entry lodging REIT, and we're built around a unique portfolio of large, irreplaceable, group-oriented assets. We also own a rapidly growing entertainment business that owns some of the most iconic brands and venues in the country music space. I think what makes us unique is that our hotels are large. They're all under one roof, destinations for groups and leisure customers.
That focus on group, about 70% of our business, being group, the group segment, it gives us strong visibility into future business because of the long booking windows associated with groups. It also gives us a level of stability because those groups are under contract. When they either attrite or cancel, we collect fees. In significant downturns or difficult economic times, our profitability is bolstered by that fee collection. We also have a growth profile that our peers don't have through capital allocation.
These large assets, this platform that we operate, as really a single business allows us to deploy capital at high returns to do enhancements and expansions of these existing assets, which when you leverage that infrastructure, you get very high returns on invested capital. You also reduce the risk because we have so much information as it relates to what our guests are looking for and what that property needs to continue to drive profitability. Lastly, we outlined a multiyear growth strategy in 2024 that we're executing. You know, that execution continues. We have the balance sheet to continue to deploy capital into these businesses. We have, you know, moderate leverage at 4.3x . We've got strong liquidity.
We have over $1.4 billion of liquidity. We have no maturities until 2028. Company's in really good shape. We've, you know, carried some strong momentum into 2026 coming off the fourth quarter, with, in terms of business on the books, lead volumes, what we're seeing in terms of meeting planner sentiment. We're very optimistic about how we'll perform in 2026. In terms of three reasons that you should own the stock, first and foremost, we are a highly differentiated model, within, in the REIT space. We're the only ones focused on the group segment. You benefit in terms of stability and visibility because of that.
We have a very clear and effective capital allocation strategy that delivers and has delivered durable and accretive growth. We have a long-tenured management team that has a clear track record of creating shareholder value. The majority of our management team has been with us for 18 years-2three years. it's the team that built and operated these hotels prior to converting to a REIT in 2013. Since that time in 2013, whether it's total shareholder return, whether it's AFFO per share growth, or whether it's dividend per share growth, we've delivered the highest growth rates of our peer set and in most periods and cases above the REIT index generally.
Best-in-class assets, with durable and accretive growth, and then a consistent track record of value creation, I would say are the three reasons why you should own the stock.
Okay, great. Thanks. I wanted to start out with maybe talking a little bit about, I mean, you've obviously like in line with everyone else, you recently reported fourth quarter and your outlook for the year. Your RevPAR guidance is 1.5%-3.5%, essentially in line with what we saw for most of the lodging REITs, low single digits. I guess I wanted to ask you first, just given the visibility that you have, and I think you said 50% of the occupancy points are on the books at a certain higher rate, it seems like to get to the low end of that range, you would have to see negative RevPAR through the balance of the year.
Correct me if I'm wrong and just kinda maybe talk about getting to the low end and the high end of that range.
Yeah. We're entering the year with about 50 points of occupancy on the books. Group rooms revenue on the books is about 6% ahead of where we were entering 2025. Very well-positioned for the year. You know, the real issue for us is that, you know, we seem to be living in a very volatile world. As we talked about on our earnings call, what we try to reflect in our guidance is, you know, is just some of the uncertainty associated with the environment that we're in. You know, when we look at our internal metrics, the things that we look at as it relates to group and how group may or may not perform, you know, we don't. Our dashboard right now is all green.
It's not showing, you know, it's not flashing yellow or red anywhere in terms of business on the books, lead volumes, what we're seeing in terms of outside-the-room spending, attrition and cancellation rates. You know, all those factors are positive. What we're trying to factor in is, you know, a little bit of what we saw last year, when we had Liberation Day in April, which really took, you know, took some of the momentum out of the market. We saw some meeting planners pull back, we recovered, you know, in the fourth quarter, and saw very good performance and had an overall good year. You know, frankly, the... I think that the guidance that we provided just tries to reflect that uncertainty...
Mm-hmm
in a range of outcomes that, you know.
It sounds like from what you're saying, 1.5% would be disappointing relative to what you're seeing now and your expectations and what's on the books. I mean, no one's faulting you for having conservativism. It just seems like 1.5 would be hard to get to given what you know so far.
I think based on the controllables and what we know so far, you know, we would not anticipate that. You know, the range that we provided is our guidance, and we'll update that, you know, when we get, when we get later in the year and as the year unfolds, and we see how, you know, some of the things that, you know, are occurring in the environment, you know, how it shakes out.
I see. Thanks.
To your point, you know, there's no real benefit to being Herculean, in your guidance in February, frankly.
No, absolutely not. I just feel like a big point, a selling point of Ryman is that you have better visibility relative to peers. When you come out with a RevPAR outlook that's in line with peers, I just sort of wanted to explore it a little bit more. I mean, everything you're saying makes sense.
Yeah. We have a question.
We do have a question that's come in through Live Q&A. How are you finding the progress of the multi-year growth strategy compared to your expectations thus far?
Generally, we're on track in terms of timing, in terms of budgets. In terms of those projects that are up and running, results have been consistent with or better than what our expectations were. You know, I would say that, you know, the one, if you look back at what we laid out in 2024, the one I think significant project that we are that we had anticipated being underway at this point that's not is an expansion of the Gaylord Rockies. You know, we're working with local government there on a number of initiatives prior to starting that project.
As we said on the call, we anticipate, you know, that process will draw to a close fairly quickly, and that we'll begin that project at some point here in the near future.
When you look at the outlook that you provided, I think the range was $900 million of EBITDA at the low end and $1 billion at the high end, and I think that included the Rockies' rooms expansion being in there. What would you say adjusted that range should be if people were gonna kind of maybe look at that now? I think that was obviously before you bought the JW Desert Ridge as well.
Yeah, it kind of depends on, it depends on kind of what's in and what's out. To your point, we had anticipated we would have that.
Well, let's put the Desert Ridge aside because you've already said what the EBITDA is gonna be there. Just taking out the rooms, what do you think that $900 million-$1 billion should be adjusted to?
I think that without Desert Ridge, you know, we will be comfortably in the lower half of that range. I think if you include Desert Ridge, you know, you're now in the upper half of that range, is the way that I would characterize it.
Okay. Then, on the Rockies, I mean, when you built that, you talked a lot about getting some, I think, sort of, I guess you'd call it tax incentive financing. Just kinda remind us what your agreement with the local authorities is, and is that kind of what's holding up your rooms expansion there?
The our current incentive package is on the original 85 acres where the hotel is developed. We also own 130 acres of undeveloped land around it. On that 85 acres, we collect the majority of our real estate taxes, occupancy taxes, and a portion of the sales taxes. Depending on the tax stream, you know, that incentive was anywhere from about 25 years-30 years. It's a meaningful incentive package. The issue that we're wrestling with right now is around property tax valuations and where those valuations are in that local jurisdiction. We've been working on that issue.
Hopefully we'll have that resolved fairly quickly, and be able to move forward with the project.
What's sort of the capital allocation roughly to build rooms at the Rockies?
This expansion will be 450 rooms and an indoor expanded water amenity similar to SoundWaves in Nashville. The cost for the rooms expansion and the water park would be about $300 million. You'll recall, Smedes, that, you know, we did a significant amount of work on this property over the last two years to enhance and expand the food and beverage offerings there and the seat count. From a meeting space and seat count perspective, we have the infrastructure to support that room's addition. You know, the leverage that we'll get from that room count should be quite good in terms of operating leverage.
Okay. Then just kind of what target, what kind of returns would you target on that $300 million, roughly?
Mid-teens on levered.
Okay. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, you know, I know you're over 70% group, but I think, you know, some years ago, you tried to improve your leisure kind of amenities and target that audience a little more. How is that going in terms of the segmentation to leisure? Maybe you could just touch on, you know, you had a much better 4Q 2025 holiday programming season relative to the prior year. Any kind of lessons learned there, in terms of, you know, bringing folks in? Because obviously it was quite successful this year.
Yeah. Holiday period was quite good in the fourth quarter of this year, really off of what was a little bit of a disappointing 2024. We made some changes based on the consumer research that we did post the 2024 holiday season and really made some changes to the timing of our marketing, how we packaged, how we packaged the offerings, and then how we priced the offerings, which drove some earlier bookings, which allowed us to build some compression. Ultimately, as you mentioned, we, you know, we served a record 1.5 million customers through that ticketed event ICE!.
In terms of, in terms of, the focus on leisure and investment, that's, you know, that focus really has been across, our business. You know, we did some work, pre-COVID, that we called internally, this notion of, of enhancing the project, our portfolio overall, with the idea of growing our average rate, attracting higher quality, not only group customers, but leisure customers. That's a big part of, our whole strategy around the capital deployment, whether it's in carpeted breakout space, whether it's in food and beverage or other, amenities like pool product. It's to drive value, ultimately to drive rate.
If you look at how our business has performed over the last four or five years, we've seen a very strong growth in our average rate. We're attracting more premium groups and more premium leisure guests.
segmentation is not changing that much, it's just charging more for the 30% or so that's leisure.
Right. We're still 70, about 70/30 in terms of group leisure. We have been able to increase our rates because we're delivering greater value to the customer.
Okay. Okay. I mean, we had a question come in that was touched on leisure, but I guess the part that I didn't ask is, has adding the JW's and the water parks changed the terminal mix going forward? I'm not sure what the terminal mix is, but.
I assume you're talking about the mix of group leisure. I mean.
I guess, I mean, is the having the two JW's in the portfolios, has that upped your leisure segmentation at all or?
I mean, marginally because they're about 60% group as opposed to 70%.
Okay
... you know, but the, relative to the size of the portfolio, it won't move the weighted average significantly.
Just in terms of your footprint, I mean, I felt like, and maybe I overinterpreted this, but it sort of, it seemed like you alluded on the call of maybe potentially adding another JW Marriott to the mix over time because you have this sort of subset of like higher end groups. JW is, you know, a higher end hotel relative to a Gaylord. Could you just talk about that? Do you feel like you need to expand the footprint?
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that we need to. I think it's desirable over time to continue to grow distribution if we're, you know, if we're finding the right asset for the portfolio that's consistent with our strategy, and we can acquire that, you know, at a, at a price that makes sense for our shareholders, certainly we would look at that. You know, you won't see us go out and, you know, push into other segments or different product types. You know, we have been, we'll continue to be very focused on that large group customer.
You know, preferably, you know, for it to be a Marriott managed product so that we can integrate it into the portfolio and try to capture some of the synergies that come, both operationally as well as, you know, from a consumer perspective with the rotation of groups.
Question came in. The question is, does the 2026 RevPAR guide include renovation headwinds? If so, could you please quantify the impact?
It does. It, you know, it's essentially consistent with what we had, in 2025. I don't know if you have any other comments you wanna make as it relates to that and guidance.
No, I think that's exactly right, and that's why we were, you know, not explicit necessarily in the, in the guidance that was in the release was because it was comparable to 2025, so not a meaningful call-out from a year-over-year change standpoint.
Okay. I mean, I don't think there's a lot of competition or new competition in this space. Not a lot of people are building hotel, big hotels. The, you know, the Gaylord Pacific did open. Then in the Glendale area, so Phoenix, there was the... I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right, but it's VAI or V-A-I, a large hotel. I don't think it's directly competitive for you, but it is a large property. Could you just talk a little bit about what, if anything, you've seen from the Gaylord Pacific and from the new asset in Phoenix?
Sure. I think broadly speaking, having an additional unit of another Gaylord with to add to what's currently a fairly limited, you know, distribution of the Gaylord Hotels brand is additive. When we saw that open last year, we were excited to be able to attract and have a location that's more westward that could be more accessible to folks who are west of our most western location, the Gaylord Rockies. You know, the thought there is groups, people who had not previously been aware of the Gaylord Hotels brand could experience the Gaylord Pacific in a California location, come in at arguably a higher ADR, given that market, and then rotate into our hotels. We're, we're supportive in general.
There are, of course, brand standards that we support to make sure that the product is consistent and that meeting planners have a good experience. I think what we've seen around that is there have been a few rooms that have been introduced into our portfolio as a result of that. I think, you know, on the group side, it's played out, you know, as we might have thought. The reception from meeting planners from what we hear, has been good in terms of their experience on site. We'll continue to see how it performs.
It sounds like it's been a net positive for you, opening up the Gaylord Pacific.
Yeah, it has been. I think that, you know, that will continue to grow as, you know, they introduce customers to the Gaylord brand, and those customers then begin to rotate. You know, we saw that. Whether it was opening the Texan or the National or the Rockies, each time we've grown distribution, we've seen new customers come into the brand and then ultimately rotate. You know, if they enter in a higher rated market like San Diego, they rotate at a higher rate.
Okay
... when we look at those customers who have entered the brand thus far, through Gaylord Pacific, we look at that multiyear contract, they rotate at about a 9% higher rate than our typical rotational customers. That, again, that's that same phenomenon we've seen historically has continued to hold, with the Pacific opening.
Okay. How about this new property that opened in Glendale?
It's, you know, it's really not competitive.
Okay.
It's a kind of a leisure-oriented. I think they've got a big, like, surfing wave pool and their concept is to have this large hotel that kinda surrounds a concert venue. If you go to bed early, I would stay somewhere else.
Okay. I wanted to go back. You mentioned, you know, you're investing across the portfolio. I think it's about $1 billion program. Putting aside the Gaylord Rockies, which I realize the timing is kind of unclear, how are you thinking about what percent you should be seeing incremental returns on that investment versus, you know, like new cooperating or something, which probably doesn't get, you know, a particular ROIC, if you will?
I mean, we've said that we target at least mid-teens unlevered returns on any growth projects. As far as the multiyear investment, capital plan goes, we've initiated all of the projects we've talked about, with the exception of the Gaylord Rockies, as Mark has just talked about earlier.
It's mid-teens on the entire billion-dollar investment you're thinking?
There are some components of it that, you know, some would argue could be maintenance, i.e., we've done some room renovations as part of that. The Gaylord Texan rooms are underway right now and should wrap up midyear, and then we'll be picking up the renovation of the San Antonio Hill Country rooms, after the Valero Open this year.
Okay. One thing you mentioned on the call, I think Colin mentioned, you know, He, I think it was his paraphrase. I mean, it's like we have such a small % of this group business. Could you talk about how, you know, what do you think your percent , your share of group business in the U.S. is? You know, how do you go about driving incremental share, bringing new, you know, I guess, higher paying groups into the mix, which I think is part of your strategy?
Sure. We actually put out a deck earlier this week in advance of these conversations we're having with all of you and put out some data to put a finer point on that. We've estimated that the group meetings business is around 240 million room nights in the US. We're, you know, 1% of that. It's very small. The other point that we would make in describing our piece of that is that we're focused on a particular type of group meeting. There are obviously a large variety when you look at the 243. There are citywides that travel to convention centers, and there are much smaller groups.
You know, we're focused on what we feel is a very profitable segment of group meetings, which is, you know, those 600-plus on peak group room nights, half of our group room nights being corporate-focused, with a lot of our capital allocation right now towards investments that will continue to drive, you know, hopefully more premium corporate group types.
Okay.
You know, when you look at the STR data, it's actually in that presentation, I think. You look at our, you know, our market share premiums, we've grown those dramatically since pre-pandemic. If you look at our revenue and profitability, we've grown that dramatically as well. You know, most of that growth has come through, again, growing rate by investing in these properties and changing the value proposition for meeting planners and consumers. We're not back to pre-pandemic occupancy levels across the brand. We see a real opportunity to continue to drive our occupancy as we continue to make this mix shift into these higher-rated customer segments.
You know, there's significant incremental profitability opportunity for us there just in the same store on a same-store basis.
I don't know if you have this handy, but when you talk about 240 million group room nights in the US, do you have a sense of what percentage of that is in Las Vegas?
I don't have that data right in front of me.
Okay
Las Vegas is a top meetings market.
Okay. 'Cause that's not really, you're not really competing with that market. I think that was always, like, a point that you guys tried to make. Like, there's a certain number of group meeting people that don't wanna have meetings in Las Vegas. Is that still?
I think that's fair.
... part of...
I mean, I think there are groups who have an opinion or a perspective on all markets about where they would wanna go and where not to go. I think Vegas has very specific attributes that probably don't appeal to a lot of the groups that want to travel to our properties, right? The, the gaming element being one.
I'm gonna ask about.
You know, our product size-wise does obviously put us in a, I guess, a sourcing conversation for certain size groups.
One of the topics we're kind of exploring with every company is the deployment of AI and how you at Ryman are thinking about either efficiencies or other opportunities internally to use AI.
Yeah. Depending on the business, you know, on the hotel side, obviously, we are tied to, you know, Marriott's activities and the platform and the strategy that they're developing. For our hotels specifically within that context, some of the areas I think where we're most interested and are doing some work is really around the sales process, how we think about pricing and yielding and managing these longer booking windows. If you think about, you know, we're committing contractually to business, you know, on average three years in advance, but in many cases, eight, 10 years in advance. As you think about, you know, manipulating large amounts of data and trying to do predictive modeling, it's an area where AI, we think, can help us dramatically.
You know, obviously, there's a lot of interest in how AI can help us on the labor front, in terms of, you know, these larger operations, like I think most of our peers are interested as well. On the entertainment side, we're doing quite a bit of work really around things like marketing, customer acquisition, how we think about dynamic pricing in terms of, you know, live entertainment and venues, and then, you know, operational efficiencies as well that we're really just getting started.
Is that mostly buying off the shelf? Is it building, partnering? How are you thinking about the actual deployment of it?
Certainly on the entertainment side, it's buying off the shelf. you know, with Marriott, you know, they're in the process right now, I think, of really developing and executing what their longer term strategy. I would assume that that will be some combination of off-the-shelf plus, you know, some given their scale, some proprietary platforms.
Maybe we can switch to the entertainment business for a moment. I guess, you know, first, you have a 35% partner in that space. They have a right to buy up or put back to you, the business. Can you just remind us when those options?
Mm-hmm
... come back into play for them and maybe how your relationship with them is going?
Sure. I think you're talking about our Atairos partners in OEG. They own about 30% of that business today.
30%.
They do have a right with respect to that 30% to put it back to us in the event that they call for an IPO of that business and we determine as the majority owner that it's not the right time to pursue that particular transaction and decline to move forward with an IPO. They could put that back to us at a contractual amount that's already really reported on our balance sheet as their non-controlling interest value. We would, if that were all to happen, be able to elect whether or not we would settle that put right exercise in cash or shares, and we could also elect the timing of that settlement to occur over three years as opposed to immediately.
Yeah
the mechanics of it.
Yeah. I think as it relates to an IPO and the timing of an IPO, you know, I would just.
That's annoying.
... all I would say is that, you know, I think that we are well aligned with Atairos in terms of how we think about that, the timing and what that opportunity could, may or may not look like.
Okay. Don't those rights kinda come in and out when they have a right to buy up or a right to put back to you, or is it always available to them?
Their right to buy up additional shares above their 30%, up to an additional 19%, was available to them annually since they came into the investment, through last fourth quarter at the end of the year. The timing was a window at the end of the year so that we could provide them the data around our REIT compliance limitations. The value was already contractually set, based on a trailing 12, profitability Adjusted EBITDA defined metric in that investment agreement. Those windows opened and closed essentially at the end of every calendar year.
Okay. In terms of like the big growth drivers there, you've got the Category 10, right, under construction in Las Vegas.
Correct.
It's near your Ole Red facility, I think sort of down the street a little bit, right? In the Flamingo, right? Is that where it's opening? Okay.
It's in front of the Flamingo.
Okay
... where the old Margaritaville was, right where The LINQ ties into the Strip across from Caesars.
Okay. I mean, when is that expected to open?
That'll open this fall.
Okay. I mean, are you kind of pre-booking, or how are you thinking about the opening there? I mean, is it gonna do a lot of corporate or is it?
Yeah, it'll do. You know, all of those venues do a significant amount of, you know, special events and buyouts. You know, we have sales folks that are already working on that.
Okay. You announced another venue opening, I think, in, at Universal Studios maybe. Can you just remind me what that is?
Yes, here in Orlando.
Okay. What, what is it?
We're not in Orlando anymore.
Oh, we're not in Orlando. Yeah, I was in Orlando yesterday.
We were in Orlando yesterday.
Sorry. Yeah, in Orlando. That will open late next year.
Okay. That's a Category 10 as well?
Correct.
Okay. Okay. You have one in Nashville.
We do, yeah.
Okay.
It's the former Wildhorse-
Okay. Okay.
that was converted.
Just to, so everyone knows, these are kind of in conjunction with Luke Combs, country star.
Correct.
okay. Those are the main drivers-
Country superstar.
Country superstar. Sorry. Yes. Are you... I mean, are those the main drivers of growth? 'Cause you've also made some headway into kind of festivals. I know you're managing some auditoriums, which looks like there's some out-of-pocket going into.
Yes
Not that much.
Category 10 is another brand within kind of this kind of artist-inspired venue category. We also have a concept with Blake Shelton called Ole Red. To your point, Smedes, you know, we bought a controlling interest in a festivals business, and so we now kind of have established ourselves with a platform in that festivals business that we can now grow in that vertical. In the last four months or so, we were selected in an RFP to operate the Ascend Amphitheatre in Nashville and also in another RFP to operate an amphitheatre in Simpsonville, South Carolina. That puts us in the amphitheatre vertical.
If you look across the business, what we're doing is that we're establishing growth platforms in these different verticals that service the same customer and then also allow us to, as we grow, leverage things like marketing, sponsorship, ticketing, et cetera.
Okay
... to build scale.
All right, we're coming down to less than a minute, so we do have two final questions we want to ask you. I guess first, as you think about the public hotel REIT space, do you think there'll be more, fewer, or the same public companies a year from now?
Should be fewer. They'll be the same.
I need one answer.
The same.
Okay. If we think nationwide RevPAR could be 2% in 2027, what do you think same story EBITDA could be? Nationwide, not for you.
Yeah. Not for us, I would say probably flat to slightly down.
Okay.
I think the real story here will end up being mix. I think that, you know, quality group hotels, quality luxury hotels, you know, could have the ability to grow their EBITDA margins despite that, you know, lower growth rate. At least that would be my expectation for us.