ICHGF - InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) Q1 2024 Sales/ Trading Statement Call Transcript
2024-05-03 21:04:08 ET
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG)
Q1 2024 Sales/ Trading Statement Call
May 3, 2024 03:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Stuart Ford - Head, IR
Elie Maalouf - Group CEO
Michael Glover - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Vicki Stern - Barclays
Jamie Rollo - Morgan Stanley
Richard Clarke - Bernstein
Muneeba Kayani - Bank of America
Jaina Mistry - Jefferies
Jarrod Castle - UBS
Leo Carrington - Citi
Alex Brignall - Redburn Atlantic
Jaafar Mestari - BNP Paribas
Presentation
Stuart Ford
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the IHG Hotels & Resorts Conference Call, covering the 2024 First Quarter Trading Update. I'm Stuart Ford, Head of Investor Relations at IHG and I'm joined this morning by Elie Maalouf, our Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Glover, our Chief Financial Officer.
Just to remind listeners on the call that in discussions today, the company may make certain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. law. Please do 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, can I remind you that in order to ask questions, you will need to dial-in using the details on Page 3 of this morning's Q1 RNS release.
The release, together with the usual supplementary data pack for the first quarter, can be downloaded from the results and presentations section under the Investors tab on ihgplc.com.
This morning, we also released a separate announcement regarding changes to System Fund arrangements, which is summarized in the Q1 trading update release. You'll also find that separate full release under the Investors' tab on ihgplc.com or by following the link within the trading update release.
Now, over to Elie.
Elie Maalouf
Thank you, Stuart and good morning everyone. I'd like to start today by congratulating our teams on what has been a very busy and productive start to the year across our business, and which has been another period that has really demonstrated the attractiveness and strength of our globally diverse distribution.
RevPAR continued to grow and on a global basis was up 2.6% on last year. This was driven by both ADR, which was up 2.3%, and occupancy, which was up 0.2 percentage points.
In terms of performance by stay occasion, leisure demand remained robust, with global rooms revenue on a comparable hotels basis up 7% on 2023. Group's performance also improved, with revenue up 5%.
Business revenue was flat, but that reflects the timing of Easter being in March this year compared to April last year, as the week leading up to Easter always experiences a lull in business travel.
In terms of system growth, we opened more than 6,200 rooms across 46 hotels in the quarter, leading to 5% gross growth year-on-year and 3.4% net growth. The number of rooms opened in the quarter was 11% higher than in 2023, adjusting for the Iberostar rooms, which were being added this time last year.
It is worth reminding that we typically experience seasonality in our system growth with the relatively fewer openings and more removals in the first quarter of each calendar year. Year-to-date, net system growth was therefore neutral, and we expect net growth to ramp up through the rest of 2024.
Turning to signings, we added nearly 18,000 rooms into our pipeline in the quarter, which was an increase of 7% on the same period last year. This contributed to the milestone of over 300,000 rooms in the pipeline for the first time, an increase of 6.6% year-on-year....
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) Q1 2024 Sales/ Trading Statement Call Transcript