InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending December 31, 2022

February 21, 2023 04:30 p.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello everyone and welcome to the IHG Full Year Results to December 31, 2022. My name is Nadia and I'll be coordinating the call today. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to your host, Stuart Ford, Vice President and Head of Investor Relations to begin. Stuart, please go ahead.

Stuart Ford

Many thanks and good morning, everyone, from me and welcome to IHG's conference call for the 2022 full year results. I'm Stuart Ford, Head of Investor Relations at IHG and I'm joined this morning by Keith Barr, our Group Chief Executive; and Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson, our Chief Financial Officer and the Group Head of Strategy.

Just to remind listeners on the call that in the discussions today, the company may make certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. law. Please refer to this morning's announcement and the company's SEC filings for factors that could lead actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward-looking statements. For those analysts or institutional investors who are listening via our website, may I remind you that in order to ask questions, you will need to dial in using the details on Page 2 of the RNS release. The release, together with the presentation and the usual supplementary data back can be downloaded from the results and presentation section under the Investors tab on ihgplc.com.

I'll now hand the call over to Keith.

Keith Barr

Thanks, Stuart and good morning, everyone. In a moment, Paul will talk you through our financial performance. But first, let me share some key highlights.

The 2022 was another year of strong trading and our teams continue to make significant enhancements across our enterprise platform performance and future growth. We delivered on our strategy, working closely with our hotel owners to grow their business and capture demand. I was particularly pleased that the strong momentum continued in the second half of the year, leading to RevPAR and profitability exceeding 2019 levels.

Looking at our performance around the world. The Americas region surpassed 2019 levels in the second quarter with RevPAR up 9% by the fourth quarter. Our EMEAA region also saw excellent sequential improvement following the listing of travel restrictions and caught up with the Americas to also be 9% ahead in Q4. Trading in Greater China was more difficult due to the COVID restrictions still in place throughout most of 2022. Following the recent listing of these, the inherent desire to travel, both for business and leisure has been clear to see. During the Chinese New Year break in January, 300 million trips were made in China, representing close to 90% of 2019 levels.