Choice Hotels International - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Record adjusted diluted EPS of $1.92 (+4% y/y) and record adjusted EBITDA of $165.0M (+2% y/y), while total revenues declined 2% y/y to $426.4M; domestic RevPAR fell 2.9% y/y amid macro softness and tough comps (Easter/eclipse), though extended stay and economy transient outperformed peers.
• EPS modestly beat Wall Street consensus by ~$0.02, and adjusted EBITDA was roughly in line; revenue comparisons are definition-sensitive (reimbursable vs. non-reimbursable) and should be interpreted carefully (see Estimates Context)*.
• International expansion accelerated: net international rooms +5% y/y, >140k international rooms, strategic agreements in Brazil, France, China; closed the remaining 50% of Choice Hotels Canada in July (~$112M) with ~$18M FY25 EBITDA expected.
• Mix shift and fee power: effective royalty rate +8 bps y/y to 5.12%; partnership services and fees +7% y/y; adjusted SG&A -4% y/y, expanding EBITDA margin by 120 bps q/q; FY25 domestic RevPAR guidance lowered to -3% to 0% with adjusted EBITDA unchanged at $615–$635M.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• “Another quarter of record financial performance despite a softer domestic RevPAR environment,” with adjusted EPS and adjusted EBITDA reaching second-quarter records.
• International momentum: adjusted EBITDA for international grew ~10% and rooms +5% y/y; expansion agreements and the Canada acquisition broaden direct franchising and brand reach.
• Share gains and portfolio quality: “occupancy index share gains versus competitors,” extended-stay outperformed industry by 40 bps, economy transient outperformed economy chain scale by 320 bps in Q2.

What Went Wrong

• Domestic RevPAR down 2.9% y/y; FY25 domestic RevPAR guidance revised to -3% to 0% amid softer leisure transient demand, reduced government/international travel.
• GAAP net income declined to $81.7M vs $87.1M y/y, reflecting lower total revenue and a $2M operating guarantee payment tied to managed hotels acquired with Radisson Americas.
• Revenue growth headwinds domestically; quarter-over-quarter cadence expected to reflect similar trends, with Q4 comp headwinds from prior-year hurricane demand (125 bps lift last year).

Transcript

Speaker 0

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Choice Hotels International's second quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. I will now turn the conference over to Ms. Alice Summers, Senior Director of Investor Relations for Choice Hotels. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that during this conference call, certain predictive or forward-looking statements will be used to assist you in understanding the company and its results. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated in forward-looking statements, and you should consult the company's Form 10-Q, 10-K, and other SEC filings for information about important risk factors affecting the company that you should consider. These forward-looking statements speak as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to publicly update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. You can find reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks as part of our second quarter 2025 earnings press release, which is posted on our website at choicehotels.com under the Investor Relations section.

This morning, Pat Pacious, President and Chief Executive Officer, will speak to our second quarter operating results and update on our strategic priorities, while Scott Oaksmith, Chief Financial Officer, will discuss our financial performance and outlook for the remainder of the year. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be glad to answer your questions. With that, I will turn the call over to Pat.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Alice, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us. I'm pleased to report that in the second quarter, the ongoing momentum from our strategic investments drove our adjusted EBITDA to $165 million, and our adjusted earnings per share 4% higher year over year. We also achieved a more than 2% year over year net increase in global rooms, including a 3% net increase in our more revenue-intense rooms. We are particularly pleased with the strong performance of our international business, where we drove 10% growth in adjusted EBITDA and expanded our rooms portfolio by 5% year over year, highlighted by a 15% increase in hotel openings. With an 11% increase in our rooms pipeline since the start of the year, we are very optimistic about the continued accelerated growth of our more than 140,000 rooms outside of the U.S.

and see a significant opportunity to further gain international market share in the coming years. We are actively expanding our global footprint across strategic markets through a recent acquisition, strengthening of key partnerships, and entry into new regions. In the Americas in July, we acquired the remaining 50% interest in Choice Hotels Canada from our joint venture partner. This strategic acquisition marks the next chapter in Choice Hotels International's 70-year presence in Canada, transitioning us from a master franchising to a fully direct franchising model. Our Canadian team will now expand their product offering and franchise success system support from the current eight hotel brands to our full portfolio of 22, with particularly strong growth potential for our extended stay brands.

Canada presents an attractive opportunity with the lodging market projected to grow at an average annual rate of more than 5% over the next five years, reaching over $50 billion in total revenues by 2030. Our teams there have already established a strong base of 30,000 rooms, a pipeline of over 2,500 rooms, approximately 9 million customers, and over 200 Canadian franchisees. This powerful foundation now positions us to capture additional market share by leveraging our local market expertise and Choice's franchisee success system across all 22 brands. Elsewhere in the Americas, we extended our master franchise agreement with the largest multi-brand hotel operator in South America for an additional 20-year term, covering over 10,000 rooms in Brazil, thereby further strengthening our presence in the region. In the EMEA region, we are very pleased with our progress in expanding our presence.

After successfully onboarding approximately 4,000 rooms under direct franchise agreements, we've grown our room count to over 63,000 rooms, a 7% increase from the prior year. We also entered a new European market by signing our first franchise agreement in Poland, one of the fastest growing markets in Central and Eastern Europe. Turning to Asia-Pac, during the second quarter, our team signed a master franchise agreement with a leader in the upscale business hotel and resort segment in China. This relationship is expected to significantly accelerate the growth of our mid-scale portfolio in China with approximately 10,000 rooms over the next five years and increase Choice brand awareness among Chinese travelers internationally. Additionally, we secured a strategic distribution agreement, which will add over 9,500 upscale rooms to the Ascend Hotel Collection by the end of the third quarter, allowing our rewards members to earn and redeem points at these properties.

We believe these agreements mark the first steps towards a long-term expansion opportunity in the region. As we look at the domestic business, we continued our growth in the cycle-resilient extended stay segment. Over the past five years, we have expanded our extended stay portfolio by over 20% to nearly 54,000 rooms, with the segment's pipeline now constituting half of the total domestic rooms pipeline. In the second quarter, we added over 5,000 rooms domestically over the prior year's quarter. For eight consecutive quarters, we have grown our domestic extended stay room system size by double digits year over year, and we expect this higher-than-industry average growth to continue. This increased footprint provides us with even more confidence in the resilience of our business, given the longer average length of stay and more stable revenue associated with extended stay hotels.

Our extended stay hotels continue to outperform the industry during uncertain times. We are very proud that for the third year in a row, JD Power ranked our WoodSpring Suites new construction brand number one in guest satisfaction among economy extended stay hotel brands. This strong guest recognition is translating into increased interest from developers, as demonstrated by a 43% year-over-year increase in the number of WoodSpring Suites brand domestic franchise agreements awarded in the second quarter. With half of the industry-wide economy extended stay rooms currently under construction being a WoodSpring Suites brand, we are well positioned for the future. Now let me discuss how our strategic expansion into more revenue-intense segments is positively impacting our economy transient brands. As part of our portfolio enhancement, we have been deliberately exiting underperforming hotels.

This approach allows us to open these markets to new owners and maximize market potential for more profitable hotels. Additionally, over the past year, we have successfully elevated our guest satisfaction scores in the economy transient segment by delivering enhanced guest experiences through our upgraded product quality. As a result of these actions, our economy transient hotels are outperforming the economy chain scale in domestic RevPAR performance while achieving RevPAR share gains versus competitors. This improved performance enabled us to expand our domestic economy transient rooms pipeline by 8% and execute 42% more domestic franchise agreements in the first half of 2025, year over year, with the new hotels expected to generate higher royalty revenue than the hotels we exited. We have re-energized the Country Inn & Suites by Radisson brand.

Our recently introduced value-engineered prototype for the brand helped drive an 11% increase in the brand's pipeline over the prior year's quarter. In the upscale segment, we continue to expand our presence, increasing the global room system size by 15% year over year to over 110,000 rooms. With nearly 29,000 upscale global rooms in the pipeline, a 7% increase over the prior quarter, we will be providing our guests with even more aspirational locations to visit. As we look to the future, our global pipeline provides a strong platform for long-term growth, with 98% of the rooms within our more revenue-intense brands. This means that our pipeline should generate significantly higher revenue compared to our existing portfolio, driven by a RevPAR premium of more than 30%, a higher average effective royalty rate, and a larger room count per hotel.

Our distinct strategy continues to deliver strong results, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term outlook. Notably, our focused expansion into revenue-intense segments has elevated the domestic mix of higher revenue-generating rooms to 88% of our system. This improvement in our hotel portfolio has further strengthened our overall value proposition to our guests. Our guest strategy is tailored to address the underlying consumer trends we are currently seeing and have been focused on for the past several years, such as increasing retirements, road trips, and domestic infrastructure investments. As more of our core customers reach retirement age this year, they have increased disposable income and time for leisure travel, seeking brands like ours. Research shows that one in four baby boomers currently spends six times more on travel than the majority of Millennials and Gen Z cohorts.

With gas prices at their lowest level since 2021 and approximately 90% of our domestic portfolio within one mile of a highway, we offer travelers the opportunity to take more affordable vacations closer to home without the need to fly. Additionally, as we have been noting for some time, significant infrastructure investments driven by Gen AI and the reshoring of American manufacturing are fueling new business demand, especially for our extended stay hotels. By making deliberate investments to capitalize on these compelling tailwinds, our enhanced value proposition is driving stronger customer engagement, increasing customer lifetime value, and attracting higher-value, more resilient travelers. We are seeing this in a more favorable guest mix, increased traction in the small and medium business and group travel segments, and the growing strength of our rewards program.

We expect these positive trends to further strengthen in the coming quarters and years, positioning us to capture significant future market opportunities. Importantly, we achieved occupancy index share gains versus our competitors in the second quarter, even as the industry faced macro-economic uncertainty. We believe this will contribute to increased loyalty and repeat guests over time. Today, approximately 40% of our guest profile mix consists of business travelers, which we believe is a good balance between business and leisure travel. Importantly, Choice's business travelers have a relatively resilient profile, which is particularly evident in our small and medium business segment performance, where revenues were up 13% year over year in the second quarter. We also see ongoing strength in sectors such as construction, utilities, and high-tech manufacturing. In addition, our recent investments in an enhanced group sales team and an expanded upscale hotel portfolio continue to pay off.

This is demonstrated by the 48% year-over-year increase in revenue from the group travel business in the second quarter, driven in part by small corporate groups and sports travel bookings. Our rewards program is also delivering exciting results, benefiting from the investments we have made this year. We expanded our rewards program to nearly 72 million members, an 8% year-over-year increase as of the end of the second quarter. I'm especially pleased to share that Choice Privileges was recently named the Top Hotel Rewards Program by U.S. News and World Report and WalletHub, a trusted source for personal finance insights and consumer rankings. These recognitions are a testament to our efforts in creating a more compelling rewards program, including introducing new aspirational hotels and exciting experiences such as music, racing, and college sports redemption options, along with added program benefits. Notably, our enhanced rewards program is driving stronger customer engagement.

During the first half of the year, we saw a more than 40% year-over-year increase in the booking window for reward night redemptions, which drove occupancy for our properties further out. Additionally, our rewards program enhancements contributed to the increase in the overall length of stay at our hotels compared to the previous year. As we highlighted previously, our focus on strategic investments, combined with the broader adoption of Gen AI, is unlocking significant growth opportunities for both Choice and our franchisees, positioning us for long-term margin expansion and enhanced operating leverage. In particular, our investments in franchisee-facing technology are empowering our franchise owners to maximize returns on their assets. Solutions such as advanced revenue optimization services and tailored profitability tools are designed to help drive stronger performance of their hotels.

On the guest side, we are elevating the customer experience through the launch of a redesigned Choice Hotels website and mobile app, intelligent marketing initiatives, and enhancements to our rewards program, all of which are contributing to stronger customer engagement and increased customer lifetime value. I'm also proud that we were recently named to Time Magazine's 2025 America's Best Mid-Size Companies list. This achievement is a testament to our strong company culture, where we prioritize our people, foster innovation, and seek to deliver long-term value for all stakeholders. In closing, by successfully executing our strategy, we have transformed the company to be future-ready and established a strong foundation for both near-term stability and long-term growth.

We believe that our proactive investments, differentiated value proposition, and asset-light, fee-based model have meaningfully enhanced our company's growth profile, enabling us to generate multiple avenues of growth, even in the face of an uncertain macro-economic environment. We continue to grow our significant free cash flow annually, prioritizing the creation of long-term value by enhancing our value proposition, driving growth, and returning excess cash to shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Scott.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Pat, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will discuss our second quarter results, update you on our balance sheet and capital allocation, and comment on our outlook for the remainder of 2025. In the second quarter, despite a weaker than anticipated RevPAR environment, we achieved a record second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $165 million, representing a 2% year-over-year increase. Our growth was driven by the expansion of our global rooms, a robust effective royalty rate, strong international business, and successful expansion of our margins as we implement technology and provide tools to improve the productivity of our associates. When excluding the impact of a $2 million operating guarantee payment for a portfolio of managed hotels, which was acquired with the Radisson Americas acquisition, the adjusted EBITDA would have increased by 3%.

Our adjusted earnings per share also reached a second quarter record of $1.92 per share, marking a 4% year-over-year increase. Let me first discuss our key drivers of royalty fee growth, which include unit growth, RevPAR performance, and our royalty rate. In the second quarter, our global rooms grew by 3% year over year across our more revenue-intense upscale, extended stay, and mid-scale portfolio, with total worldwide rooms growing by 2.1%. Our deliberate decisions and strategic investments delivered results across all our brand segments in the second quarter. First, we grew our domestic extended stay room system size by 10% year over year, highlighted by a 7% increase in domestic openings. At the same time, we saw a 6% increase in domestic franchise agreements awarded year over year.

The Everhome Suites brand continues to gain strong traction, with 17 hotels now open, 11 of which were opened this year, and 55 domestic projects in the pipeline, including 16 under construction as of today. Second, we further strengthened our presence in the mid-scale segment. Our flagship Comfort brand continues its growth trajectory, with a 50% increase in global openings and a 23% year-over-year increase in domestic franchise agreements awarded. Third, we expanded our global upscale portfolio and attracted strong developer interest, with a 38% year-over-year increase in domestic franchise agreements executed. Specifically, our Ascend Hotel Collection, a leading global soft brand, reached over 65,000 rooms worldwide and saw a 29% year-over-year increase in domestic franchise agreements awarded.

Given the strong demand we continue to receive from developers for our brands, we are focused on continually elevating the strength and quality of our portfolio by exiting select underperforming assets that fail to meet our requirements and standards and, on average, under-index the rest of our portfolio. In the second quarter, we achieved global system-wide rooms growth, even as we made some of these strategic exits. Turning now to our RevPAR performance. Excluding the tougher comparisons due to the Easter calendar shift to April, as well as the benefit from eclipse-related travel in 2024, domestic RevPAR declined approximately 1.6% for second quarter 2025 compared to the same period of 2024. Our overall second quarter results declined 2.9%, reflecting reduced government and international travel, as well as softer leisure transient demand due to the broader economic uncertainty, as well as the Easter and eclipse impacts.

As Pat mentioned, we were pleased that despite the macro-economic headwinds, our strategic investments to improve our brand portfolio and expand our customer reach drove occupancy share index gains versus our competitors. In particular, our domestic extended stay segment outperformed the industry's second quarter RevPAR by 40 basis points and delivered over 3% year-to-date RevPAR growth through June 30th. At the same time, our domestic transient economy segment outperformed the economy chain scale by over 3 percentage points, achieving RevPAR index share gains versus competitors in the second quarter, and also increased its year-to-date RevPAR by over 3%. Moving on to our third royalty growth lever, we are pleased to report that the continued expansion of our effective royalty rate remains a significant source of revenue growth. In the second quarter, our domestic system effective royalty rate increased by 8 basis points year over year.

This performance highlights the positive impact of our strategy to drive the growth of our revenue-intense brand portfolio and our enhanced value proposition to franchise owners. We are optimistic about the ongoing upward trajectory of our effective royalty rate for years to come, as the contracts in our domestic pipeline have a significantly higher effective royalty rate than those in our current portfolio of open hotels. We continue to strengthen our partnership business, which encompasses revenues from our strategic partners and vendors. Excluding a one-time benefit in 2024 related to our prior credit card partner, this revenue stream increased 16% in the first half of the year and 7% year over year in the second quarter, primarily due to higher partnership fees from our co-brand credit card.

We are also seeing these positive results in our non-RevPAR-related franchise fees for various services we provide, which increased by 6% in the second quarter compared to the prior year. Expanding our partnership servicing fees, as well as our non-RevPAR-related franchise fees, remains one of our key initiatives, and we believe that we can drive strong revenue growth in the years ahead. Finally, we expanded our EBITDA margins by 120 basis points during the second quarter as we continue to grow our top line while improving the productivity of our associates and the efficiency of our operations, reflected by a 4% decline in our adjusted SG&A. In the six months ended June 30, 2025, we generated $116 million in operating cash flows, including $96 million in the second quarter, and our free cash flow conversion was approximately 50%.

Our business continues to produce strong cash flow, which, coupled with our well-positioned balance sheet, allows us to execute on our capital allocation priorities. These include investing in growth initiatives and acquisitions while also returning significant capital to shareholders. Year to date through June, we've returned $137 million to shareholders, including $27 million in cash dividends and $110 million in share repurchases. We had 3 million shares remaining in our authorization as of the end of June. As Pat discussed, we acquired the remaining 50% interest in Choice Hotels Canada from our joint venture partner for approximately $112 million US dollars, subject to customary adjustments for working capital and cash.

For full year 2025, Choice Hotels Canada's operations are expected to generate approximately $18 million in EBITDA in US dollars, and we anticipate growing this EBITDA through the realization of cost synergies and driving higher revenues as we introduce our full array of brands to this key market, which offers us significant development growth opportunities. As a reminder, Choice Hotels Canada refranchises over 26,000 rooms in Canada, which were already part of our system before the acquisition. We remain well positioned with a strong balance sheet, with gross debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA ratio of 3.1 times as of quarter end and total available liquidity of $588 million as of June 30, 2025. Furthermore, the pro forma leverage ratio accounting for the Canada joint venture acquisition remains at the low end of our targeted range. Finally, I'd like to discuss our expectations for the remainder of the year.

As a reminder, in the fourth quarter, we will face tougher comparisons due to the hurricane-related demand we benefited from last year. Reflecting the more uncertain macro-economic backdrop, which is impacting domestic RevPAR performance across the lodging industry, particularly the mid-scale and economy segments, we are adjusting our domestic RevPAR expectations to a range of minus 3% to flat. The midpoint of this range assumes that the current trends we are observing will continue for the remainder of the year. For the full year 2025, we are maintaining our adjusted EBITDA outlook range of $615 million and $635 million. The guidance reflects a more moderate domestic RevPAR expectation, offset by effective cost management and the additional earnings from the purchase of the remaining interest in Choice Hotels Canada.

We are updating our full-year guidance for adjusted SG&A, now expected to grow at the low single-digit rate from the 2024 base of $276 million. We maintain strong conviction in our portfolio's resiliency, our model's versatility and adaptability, and the strength of our fee-based business. We anticipate growth will be driven by more revenue-intense hotels and markets, robust effective royalty rate growth, growth of our partnership revenue streams, strong international business, and incremental revenue-generating opportunities from our expanded scale. This outlook does not account for any additional M&A, repurchase of the company's stock after June 30th, or other capital markets activity. Today's results are a testament to our strategy's effectiveness and the benefits of our expanded scale and versatile business model, even in a softer domestic RevPAR environment. We intend to keep investing in those areas of our business that will generate the highest return on our capital.

At this time, Pat and I would be happy to answer any of your questions. Operator?

Speaker 3

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised, and should you wish to cancel your request, please press star followed by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Dan Wasiolek from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Pat, maybe if we look at your international expansion just from a strategy perspective this quarter, you know you're going direct in Canada, but in other regions like South America and China, they're master franchising. How do you decide on direct versus master franchise in any given market, and should we expect one over the other over time? Maybe can you just remind us of the difference in economics between the two? Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yeah, sure, Danny. If you look at where we are in our international growth strategy, a lot of this goes back to the acquisition we did of Radisson. We bought that brand at the end of 2022, effectively back half. 2023 was really a focus on the cost synergies. 2024 opened up a number of revenue synergy opportunities, and now in 2025, we're really leveraging that platform plus our existing business to expand internationally. The way we think about direct versus master franchise is really one of the fundamentals in each of those countries, and in markets where small business owners can aggregate capital and there's the correct regulatory environment, those are generally the two things that we look for where direct franchising makes sense. I would add to that the ability for owners to actually acquire the land.

In certain markets where we are doing direct franchising, so Canada now, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, a good part of South America, all of those factors are present there. If you look at our mix today, post-acquisition of Canada, we're now more direct franchising than master franchising across the international portfolio. Those are the things that we look for. As we said in our remarks, the Canadian opportunity, we've been in that market since 1955, built a great business there. Of the 70-year history, we had a 30-year great partnership with our JV partner. Since we acquired nine additional brands from Radisson, we also have our Cambria brand and our extended stay brands.

Bringing all of those to be supported by our existing Canadian team just makes a ton of sense, both from an opportunity perspective, but also cost avoidance of going into market in both in the prior world, we were doing both direct franchising for those other brands and the master franchise agreement. It really is a great opportunity for us to consolidate the operation there, leverage the talent of our team headquartered out of Toronto, and really grow our business there.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Bellisario from Robert W. Baird & Co. Please go ahead.

Actually, two more follow-ups on Canada. I mean, first, I guess can you just help us understand the growth outlook there over the coming years? I know, Pat, you mentioned sort of the demographic drivers, but maybe more specifically, how quickly can you open new hotels or convert hotels? Can you quantify some of the revenue and cost synergies that you referenced, maybe kind of on a stabilized basis two to three years out? Thanks.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Michael, I think the dynamics around development and hotel openings and the speed with which to do it in Canada look very similar to what we have here in the U.S. The dynamics around conversion versus new construction are very similar. If you look at an extended stay opportunity up there, given WoodSpring and Everhome, those are more new construction brands, so those will take some time. Whereas, you know, Suburban and MainStay are more conversion brands, so those could be showing up sooner. I think when we look at the health of that market, the reason we disclose just some of the growth trajectories there, a 5% healthy growth is really positive. The other thing is the quality of the product in Canada. The RevPAR there of that system is pretty significant.

It's a good quality product, and the franchisees up there, we already have an existing base of 200 who are interested in doing more brands with us. Really having that support team up there supporting all of the brands, I think, is going to be a really exciting growth opportunity for us. I think as we get further into the ownership structure and some more details, and maybe in the future, we can provide more unit growth expectations for that market. We're pretty excited by the interest in our brands up there, and as I said, the long history we have with existing franchisees.

Helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Dan Wasiolek from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Another one on international. I think that by our estimate, this is about 6%, 7% of your EBITDA, maybe a couple points higher now with Canada. Do you have a long-term expectation? I wanted to sanity check that, but do you have kind of a long-term goal or expectation for how this could evolve over time in the coming years as maybe you look to do more of these international deals?

Speaker 4

I think it obviously differs by region. I think if you look at the 7% increase that we saw in EMEA, a lot of that is based off of the existing franchisee base and the opportunity we have for our brands. They do differ by region. We do see significant upside there. I think what we'll likely do sometime in the future is lay some of this out in a more detailed fashion about where we see those growth opportunities. As I mentioned in the remarks, some of these are foundational. What we are seeing in China, for instance, is partnering with a very strong player in that market, bringing a couple of our mid-scale brands there with a pretty significant opportunity. It's really a look into these markets and looking at the right partners that we have on the master franchise agreement side.

On the direct franchising, as I said, particularly in the Americas region, we are looking to grow the system size there, very similar to what we experience here in the U.S.

Speaker 1

Dan, to follow up on your question on just the absolute size, yeah, you're right. It's about 6% of our current EBITDA prior to the acquisition of Choice Hotels Canada. What we're really excited about is we've been able to really grow that EBITDA during the quarter; that was up 10% even before the acquisition. Really a strong opportunity for us, a lot of white space where we think we can grow at a more accelerated fashion for the company.

Got it. Thank you. If I could just squeeze in a quick follow-up, in terms of the RevPAR cadence, you guys called out and reminded us of that fourth quarter hurricane benefit, which we have from the prior year to compare against. Is there any way to kind of think about or frame out the cadence of RevPAR growth for the rest of the year, just given some of the splits and takes?

Yeah, just as a reminder, what we talked about in the fourth quarter of last year is we did see about a 1.25% lift related to business delivered from FEMA accounts, the Red Cross business, as well as increased spending from the restoration crews. For the rest, in terms of the pace for the rest of the year, really where our guidance in the midpoint is to think about our pace for the second quarter to continue through the rest of the year. That would hit about the midpoint of our guidance. Obviously, any improvement to that would be towards the top end, and any softness would be towards the bottom end.

Got it. Thanks so much.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Pat Pacious from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, everyone. My first question, good morning. In the prepared remarks, everything sounded pretty uniformly positive. On the other hand, you're taking your RevPAR guidance down where you called out basically current trends as the driver for that. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more on, specifically, what in those current trends is softer now than your previous expectations, customer segments, geographies, et cetera. I have a follow-up question. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Pat, I mean, the two headwinds and the whole industry's experience of this are really international inbound and government travel. Those are the two things that have sort of modestly set back RevPAR expectations. I think when we, the reason we're positive is if you look at the U.S. consumer, consumer confidence is trending up. Credit card delinquencies are flat. We pointed out in our remarks, gas prices are lower, people are driving more than flying. You have had some pretty significant catalysts in the kind of middle of the year here. You have got certainty now on tax reform. You have got a solid labor market. The trade policy is sort of settling out. Corporate profits are healthy.

You have got these catalysts for growth, these significant investments in both infrastructure with Gen AI and all of the efforts that we see going on around that, and the reshoring of American manufacturing. You couple that with the limited hotel supply growth that the industry's seen for the last couple of years, and particularly in our segments, it gives us a lot of optimism about the future of RevPAR growth. That is why I think we have had this sort of very choppy first half of the year. The upside case is pretty strong when you look at the industry fundamentals. That is why when we kind of look at the RevPAR environment, those are the positive aspects. We are still, as we mentioned, seeing softness from government travel and international inbound.

Okay, thank you. My follow-up question actually has to do with an article that came out, a news article a couple of weeks ago regarding a loan that you had made in San Jose to a Motel 6 property and a Super 8 property, neither of which I believe are your brands, for $22 million that appears to, per the article, defaulted. My question is, why is Choice making loans to competitors' brands? Secondly, are there any other loans of size similar like this that we should be aware of? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, those loans were not to competitor brands. They were around some new product that we had brought in at our Park Inn brand last year as we launched it. Typically, we do use our balance sheet to launch new brands. I think you're well aware of the investments we've made over the years in Cambria and Everhome to launch it. We had a previous Motel 6 owner that was bringing a large amount of properties over to the Park Inn brand to get that brand started. We did make a loan on one of the properties. That owner has had some financial difficulties, but we are working through the collection process on that. We do detail our overall loans, which are predominantly towards Cambria and Everhome in our financial disclosures, but nothing of significance other than that that has been any financial difficulty at this point.

Okay, thank you. Any other significant loans of size that are in good standing? Thank you. That's my last question.

Yeah, we don't typically do lending. Typically, our capital support programs have been more in joint ventures and building hotels. On the books today, we have just under $80 million of loans on the books spread across multiple properties.

Okay, thank you. I asked, it seems so unusual. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Robin Farley from UBS. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you. I just wanted to make sure I understand, looking at your global net system rooms, the guidance is for 1% growth this year. That didn't change since last quarter, but it seems like the agreement in China would already, I know the rooms in Canada would have been in your system already, but it does seem like China would have added to that. Just wondering if that's not included in that global net systems guidance yet, or if it's just that maybe some domestic deletions were part of that.

Speaker 4

You know, Robin, I think when you look at the whole picture, you start with in the corner, up 2% in global rooms. When we look at our franchise agreements that we've awarded, if you take out the one-time Westgate agreements from last year, we're up 5% year over year. Upper mid-scale, mid-scale awarded contracts are about 15%. Extended stay remains strong. As we talked in our remarks about the economy segment, we've really been looking at removing lower performing properties in that segment. That better product quality in the economy segment is really giving us the confidence to continue to exit out underperforming properties because we've got such strong demand in that segment. You saw that in our numbers.

What we're looking at from a total unit growth is the benefits of the future contracts that we've got either already awarded or apps that we have received or are in-house, and also the strategic terminations that we're doing along the way.

Speaker 1

Robin, I'd say we executed that China agreement towards the beginning of the quarter, so that was contemplated in our previous guidance.

Okay, great. Thank you. I just also wanted to follow up, there was an operating profit guarantee in this quarter that was a little bit of an impact. Are there additional operating profit guarantees this year, next year, any future years just for us to think about? Thanks.

Yeah, as you're aware, the management business is not a large part of our business. We did acquire that with the Radisson Americas. We manage 13 hotels, and a portion of those are with one owner. There is an operating guarantee across a portfolio of hotels. The total amount that potentially could be paid under that over the life of the agreement is $20 million. It's an annual evaluation of that agreement. We did see some softness in some of the markets, as well as a renovation of one of the hotels that had put us a little bit behind on the performance. At this point in time, we evaluate that going forward and don't expect to pay anything more material than what we've recorded today, but we are continuing to monitor the performance of those hotels.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Meredith Jensen from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks. I know in the past you've spoken about managing the balance between occupancy and rate as part of revenue optimization. I was wondering if you could speak to how you're thinking about driving incremental occupancy, particularly now as you have a different mix with higher variable service costs associated to higher revenue-intense brands and how you and the franchisees are approaching this trade-off in this kind of environment. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Meredith, it's a great question, and it's actually kind of a reflection of how our franchisees, I think, are managing through this uncertainty. The good news for us is that they are hanging on to occupancy and actually taking occupancy share gains, which is a reflection of the primarily limited service nature of our brands. I think it's really important to understand that fact. Yes, we are in more revenue-intense segments, but that doesn't necessarily mean the cost per occupied room is higher. You look at extended stay, for instance, where the cost per occupied room is very low, but the revenue intensity of those brands is higher because of the length of stay and the room count in the hotels. Our owners have been managing this through this time of uncertainty, looking to hold on to customers.

Because of the limited service nature of those brands, the profit margins on each room make sense for them. We see it as a positive sign. If you're well aware of sort of past cycles, you know, you need occupancy in order for rate gains to return. We're pretty pleased to see that occupancy is not dropping as well as rate. To have occupancy be stable or slightly up is a positive sign for the future.

That's super helpful, Color. Thank you very much. Very quickly, I was wondering if you could just clarify how many of the Everhome Suites and Cambrias you still have over in ownership and how you're thinking about recycling those. Lastly, sorry to toss one more in, if you could discuss conversion activity internationally in particular. Thank you.

Speaker 1

I can start with the ownership of hotels. Today we have 13 hotels that we own and operate. Those are eight Cambrias, three Radissons, and two Everhome Suites.

Super. Thank you.

Speaker 4

I think on the internet, oh, sorry, I was going to answer your other question, Meredith, on conversions on international. It's very similar to the U.S. business. I mean, I would say in Europe, given most of those are leaseholds, it's a primarily conversion business there. When you look at Canada, you look at LATAM, you look at Australia and New Zealand, some of those markets, the conversion and new construction mix is very similar to the U.S.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Alex Rignall from Robert W. Baird & Co. Please go ahead.

Morning. Thank you very much for taking the question. Could we just look at the U.S. net unit evolution? I guess in there, there's a little continued reduction in Radisson, but just across the beginning of the year, it's down over 10,000 rooms. Maybe you could just give us some detail on how much of that is sort of the intended churn of low revenue rooms that you've taken out and whether you could give us a gross and net number within that. On the 3% that you said in terms of the higher-end brand growth, would that include the China ownership agreement and the Ascend Hotel Collection? Would that be within that number? Obviously, that's a relatively big number. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, to answer your first question on Radisson, one of the things that I think we talked about in the first quarter is skewing the results a little bit. We did have more of a distribution agreement that came over with the Radisson acquisition with the Treasure Island Hotel in Las Vegas. It represented close to 3,000 rooms. It was just a loyalty program arrangement that paid for loyalty program members that stayed there. It was something that when we acquired Radisson, it was a known contract that was expiring that we knew was leaving the system. It has skewed the room numbers a little bit, but it was not a meaningful revenue contributor. I'd say in terms of the other declines, as we purchased that brand, we understood that there were some underperforming properties.

With the success we've had in upscale, we felt it was the right thing to do to make sure that we have the right product going forward for our guests. The rest of it has all been planned of what we expected for the Radisson brand to churn. We do expect in 2026, 2027 to start seeing more growth there. Certainly, we've seen that on an international basis. There's a very strong brand in LATAM. We've been pleased with what the global story looks like for Radisson. In terms of your numbers, I think you're talking about our rooms growth to date. That does not include, we have not opened yet the Chinese hotels yet. That 3% is still sitting in the pipeline for the Chinese hotels and not included in the year-over-year growth rates of our overall portfolio through June 30.

Okay, that's fantastic. I guess a follow-up on the second question then. How much of the growth in the revenue-intense segments is coming in the international business, where obviously there's a much higher mix of kind of master franchising and lower fee agreements, which of course dilute the overall group royalty rate?

Yeah, I would say outside of the Chinese partnership, you know, most of the growth we have is coming from the direct markets, which are a much higher royalty rate, as we've talked about. The growth we've had in Europe with our partnership with Zenitude in France, we've signed in with a multi-unit developer in Spain. All those are direct franchise agreements that are paying on that higher royalty rate. Outside of the Chinese partnership on the indirect master franchise agreements, it's mainly direct franchising growth.

Speaker 4

From a revenue-intense perspective, our economy brands really aren't represented in a meaningful way. It's almost 100% from an international pipeline is in those revenue-intense segments.

That's really helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now hand the call back to Mr. Pat Pacious for any closing remarks.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everybody again for your time this morning. We will talk to you again in November when we announce our third quarter 2025 results. Have a great day.

Speaker 3

This concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.