Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (HLT) CEO Chris Nassetta on Q2 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HLT) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 27, 2022 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Jill Slattery - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development

Chris Nassetta - President and Chief Executive Officer

Kevin Jacobs - Chief Financial Officer and President, Global Development

Conference Call Participants

Carlo Santarelli - Deutsche Bank

Sean Kelly - Bank of America

Joe Greff - JPMorgan

David Katz - Jefferies

Smedes Rose - Citi

Robin Farley - UBS

Richard Clarke - Bernstein

Chad Beynon - Macquarie

Vince Ciepiel - Cleveland Research Company

Patrick Scholes - Truist Securities

Duane Pfennigwerth - Evercore ISI

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Hilton’s Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jill Slattery, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development. You may begin.

Jill Slattery

Thank you, Chad. Welcome to Hilton’s second quarter 2022 earnings call. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that our discussions this morning will include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements and forward-looking statements made today speak only to our expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to update or revise these statements. For a discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ, please see the Risk Factors section of our most recently filed Form 10-K and first quarter 10-Q. In addition, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. You can find reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures discussed in today’s call in our earnings press release and on our website at ir.hilton.com.

This morning, Chris Nassetta, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide an overview of the current operating environment and the company’s outlook. Kevin Jacobs, our Chief Financial Officer and President, Global Development, will then review our second quarter results and discuss expectations for the year. Following their remarks, we will be happy to take your questions.

With that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Nassetta

Thank you, Jill. Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us today. As our second quarter results demonstrate, we have a lot to be proud of. System-wide RevPAR achieved 98% of 2019 peak levels with all major regions except for Asia-Pacific, exceeding 2019 RevPAR. We continued to execute on our strong development story reaching 7,000 hotels globally and grew our industry-leading RevPAR premiums, all while maintaining good cost discipline. Coupled with the resiliency of our asset-light fee-based business model, these accomplishments enabled us to deliver EBITDA 10% higher than the second quarter of 2019, with margins of nearly 70%, up more than 800 basis points above 2019 levels. As a result, we continued returning meaningful capital to shareholders after resuming our capital return program last quarter.