RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE:RLJ) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call November 3, 2022 12:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Nikhil Bhalla - Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer

Leslie Hale - President and Chief Executive Officer

Sean Mahoney - Chief Financial Officer

Tom Bardenett - Executive Vice President, Asset Management

Conference Call Participants

Anthony Powell - Barclays

Gregory Miller - Truist Securities

Austin Wurschmidt - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Dori Kesten - Wells Fargo

Tyler Batory - Oppenheimer

Neil Malkin - Capital One Securities

Michael Bellisario - Robert W. Baird

Floris Van Dijkum - Compass Point Research

Chris Woronka - Deutsche Bank

Chris Darling - Green Street Advisors

Operator

Welcome to the RLJ Lodging Trust Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Nikhil Bhalla, RLJ's Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Nikhil Bhalla

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to RLJ Lodging Trust 2022 third quarter earnings call. On today's call, Leslie Hale, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will discuss key highlights for the quarter; Sean Mahoney, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will discuss the company's financial results. Tom Bardenett, our Executive Vice President of Asset Management, will be available for Q&A.

Forward-looking statements made on this call are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may lead the company's actual results to differ materially from what had been communicated. Factors that may impact the results of the company can be found in the company's 10-Q and other reports filed with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements. Also, as we discuss certain non-GAAP measures, it may be helpful to review the reconciliations to GAAP located in our press release. Finally, please refer to the schedule of supplemental information, which was posted to our website last night, which includes pro forma operating results for our current hotel portfolio for 2019, 2021 and year-to-date 2022.

I will now turn the call over to Leslie.

Leslie Hale

Thanks, Nikhil. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We were pleased that the positive momentum in lodging fundamentals continued during the third quarter. Against this backdrop, our operating results exceeded our expectations, led by strong group production with our group revenues achieving 2019 levels for the first time, combined with the continued recovery in business transient and leisure remaining strong, even as normal seasonality returned. We are particularly encouraged by the step-up in trends we saw in September, which outperformed our expectations and enabled us to achieve a new peak relative to 2019 RevPAR at 98%, driven primarily by the rebound in our urban markets.