Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Dalata Hotel Group PLC 2022 full year results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to a speaker today, the CEO of Dalata Hotel Group, Dermot Crowley. Please go ahead. Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm here with Carol Phelan, our CFO, and Shane Casserly, our Corporate Development Director. Carol will bring us through the financial review while Shane will take us through our growth and development strategy, followed by a section on sustainability. I will wrap up with the outlook. If I could start off with page four of the deck. 2022 has been a year of recovery and record performance. We exceeded turnover of EUR 0.5 billion for the first time in our history. We generated a record level of adjusted EBITDA at EUR 183 million. We are back generating significant free cash flow, which came in at EUR 127 million. We successfully opened six new hotels across Ireland and the U.K., and we took over the operation of our first hotel in continental Europe, now called Clayton Hotel Düsseldorf. On the back of this performance and the strength of our balance sheet, I am delighted to announce the board has decided to reintroduce the payment of dividends in 2023. We continue to focus on the priorities that I have set out for my colleagues over the last 12 months. We focused on our people and our customers, I am delighted to report that despite having to recruit thousands of new people into the company early in 2022, we achieved the highest employee engagement score in our history and got customer satisfaction scores back to levels similar to those achieved pre-COVID. Retaining our core teams during COVID was critically important to us. We want to continue to grow, we want to do so sustainably. We added over 1,900 rooms to the portfolio in 2022 and have 1,300 more in the pipeline, including the recently announced Maldron Hotel at Finsbury Park in London. We now have a very strong balance sheet that gives us the financial firepower to grow further. I'm also delighted to report that we received gold awards from Green Tourism for all 48 hotels that were tested, we managed to reduce our energy consumption per room sold by 13% in April to December 2022 compared to the last comparable period in 2019. Moving to slide 5. Another of our priorities is create a culture of innovation. Our industry faces not only the challenge of cost inflation across all our expense lines, but also a shortage of people who want to work within the industry. This forces all to look at new and innovative ways in which we can run our business. Teams within Dalata have responded to the challenge with a range of projects underway or completed. To give you an example, we carried out a time and motion study of how we clean our bedrooms and have come up with changes that will both increase productivity and make the job easier for our people. We expect to see the benefits of that project during 2023. We are rolling out self-check-in pods to our hotels to reduce the pressure on reception areas during busy periods. We are challenging each other to find more efficient ways of doing things, but only on the condition that customer service is never compromised and indeed sometimes we need to have it enhanced. We are more focused than ever on operating our business in a sustainable manner. We are determined to reduce the levels of carbon emissions we generate from both operating our existing hotels and building new hotels. We believe that our focus on sustainability will give us an advantage in attracting both people to work for us and customers to stay with us. Moving on to slide six. I was delighted that we launched our employer brand in January. What we want to tell people about the culture of Dalata and what it's like to work with us. We believe that Dalata is a different way and a better way. We like to empower our people through our decentralized model. We look to develop the people through our commitment to learning and development at our Dalata Academy. Because we retained our core teams during COVID, we have experienced management teams that can train and develop our next generation of talent. We are very focused on inclusion and diversity, and we have much more to do in this area. However, I am happy that we can say that 45% of our senior leadership team is female, and that we received a Bronze Investor in Diversity award in 2022. Despite all the labor shortages in our industry, we are not experiencing significant shortage ourselves at the moment. We will continue to take care of our people and keep on top of our agenda. I'm now going to hand over to Carol, who will take us through the financial review. Thank you, Dermot, and good morning to everyone listening in today. We're delighted to present a great set of financial results. 2022 really has been a record performance, and it is difficult to imagine that barely over 12 months ago from today, we were still coming out of restrictions. As Dermot mentioned, we've exceeded half a billion in revenues for the first time in our history, and this was driven both by the recovery in our own existing hotels coming into the year, along with the successful further growth in our portfolio. The overall performance was achieved by the strong efforts put in by our hotel and our central office teams all across the business to ramp up so quickly in a year where we have seen other businesses and industries really struggle. It is also a testament to clear-eyed, strategic, and tactical decisions taken in the expectation of high post-pandemic demand. The very buoyant mark-to-market backdrop referenced in our first half results extended well through the summer and into the end of the year as pent-up travel and experiential spend was unleashed. This was led by leisure, particularly domestic, and we saw this extend into corporate and international travel, in particular as the airline capacity improved and passenger air numbers grew. Events-related business was particularly strong, both from the catch-up and obviously events being put on, new events being put on for the first time. This impact of this demand has also been in the face of reduced supply, where early on, competition who had let go of their core team, struggled to service guests and had to limit rooms sold. In addition, a considerable amount of rooms sold are out of the Irish market for government use, and I'll touch on this in a later slide. As regards our own decisions, firstly, the decision in the early days of COVID to retain our core team meant the retention of skill and experience has been critical. Dermot referenced this, and I don't think we can overstate the impact of this on our performance this year. Our teams, led by our experienced general managers, have pulled off an incredible feat to get the business back, and indeed exceed previous operating and financial levels through all sorts of challenges. We were barely out of the peak of COVID when the war in Ukraine commenced, and the combination drove inflation to the highest levels in recent history. Secondly, in anticipation of the high demand in early February, we took a decision as a senior management group on revenue strategy to confidently hold space and yield on rates. The level of demand and the speed of ramp-up far exceeded our expectations. This ensured we were in a great position to yield strongly. Encouragingly, we have seen a return to more normalized levels of rooms booked for corporate travel in our business as we progressed through the year. However, there still remains a slight skew towards non-international corporates in terms of mix. The charts on the left-hand side of this slide really show the story of the last few years. We are now up 20% on revenue from 2019, and 13% on adjusted EBITDA, despite all that has happened in between. In addition to the revenue and profits, significant additional value has been created on and from the balance sheet. The recovery in the trading performance of our owned hotels impacts the external valuers' estimate of cash flow, and has delivered a valuation uplift of almost EUR 210 million in and of itself. This means our property values are back to 2019 levels on a like-for-like basis, as the trading uplift has offset the impact of increasing interest rate environment on our valuation. Turning now to page 9. In 2022, we are also really pleased that we have not only have we delivered an excellent recovery in our existing portfolio, but we have also pushed on with delivering our pipeline and pursuing growth. We have added seven new hotels to the portfolio during the year. That included our first hotel in continental Europe, the recently rebranded Clayton Hotel Düsseldorf. This means our room numbers have increased by over 25% since mid-2021. Along with Maldron Glasgow, opened in August 2021, the hotels added in 2022 contributed almost EUR 17 million to our EBITDA, which is hugely encouraging given they were largely not open for the full period. Their quick ramp-up and contribution to our profits is in no small measure due to the fact that the teams in these hotels are largely run by management teams internally developed. Over 40% of our rooms are now outside of Ireland. We remain hugely ambitious for future growth. Like how we approach most things we do in Dalata, this is a well-founded ambition rooted in strategy and targeted action. With cash and undrawn facilities of EUR 456 million at the end of the year and very low levels of gearing, we have plenty of balance sheet and funding capacity to execute. We have an experienced acquisitions and development team who will not miss the opportunities presenting themselves as we knew they would post-COVID-19. Shane will touch later on some of the specifics of our most recent success in delivering additional pipeline, the Maldron Finsbury Park in London. I'll get into some further detail now on the financials on slide 10, which sets out our income statement, our group income statement for 2022. Relative to 2021 when the business traded under considerable restrictions in the first half of the year, revenue has increased almost threefold. In addition to our normal hotel revenues, we do have one-off revenue this year of almost EUR 43 million on the completion of our forward sold residential development contract as part of our mixed-use development of our newly built Maldron Hotel Merrion Road. We have delivered adjusted EBITDA of just over EUR 183 million, with the segment's EBITDAR margin of almost 40%. I will touch on our occupancy levels and average room rates and the part they have played in this in the following slide. We are very pleased with this performance, not least with some of the cost inflation we have seen this year, which I will also touch on later. Of the EUR 209 million revaluation gain, which I referenced earlier, just over EUR 20 million. EUR 21 million of this goes through the income statement, in line with accounting guidelines, while the rest goes to reserve. Turning now to slide 11. I'll talk through some more of the information on our performance of RevPAR. After the initial impact of restrictions in the very early months, levels of occupancy overall have surged and have reached 98% of 2019 levels in the second half of 2022. As I mentioned, strong leisure, returned corporates, and returning international demand all led to this performance. Group conferences and events have been slowest to return to previous levels, but recovery is well underway. Average room rates are considerably ahead of 2019, with rates 25% over 2019 levels for the second half of the year. Which continued for all of the second half of the year and into 2023. This is due to yielding strongly in periods of high demand. This rate growth has been extremely important given the inflationary backdrop. Turning now to slide 12, which sets out some of the Dublin supply dynamics. The biggest impact, as we already mentioned, is the ITIC estimated 13% of Dublin hotel rooms supply currently out of the market for government use to support refugees fleeing the Ukrainian war, principally. This is a greater percentage, about 19% outside of Dublin, though it is typically not at that level in all of the cities which we would have hotels in regional Ireland. Unfortunately, there is no line of sight on an end to the current crisis. We are seeing some rooms return to hotel use started this year in Dublin. It is unclear how all will return in the short term, given the severe lack of alternative accommodation. As we previously committed, we continue to provide rooms to the government of about 5% across Ireland. Over 2,200 rooms have come into the market in 2022. 1,600 of these were apart hotels or budget sector. Almost 350 were Dalata rooms, notably our Samuel Hotel and the Maldron Merrion Road. Another approximately 1,600 are due in 2023 and almost 1,900 or 900 in 2024. Given the challenges with construction inflation and the wider uncertainty, it is likely that will slow considerably thereafter. As in 2022, the rooms currently coming into the market are largely in the budget and apart hotel sector. Which has traditionally been very underserved in the Dublin market compared to the U.K. and Europe, notably. Turning now to the next slide. Despite some of the headwinds, there are some very positive indicators around our market backdrop. Firstly, 2022 saw the highest ever increase in FDI employment. That's foreign-owned companies investing into Ireland with a growth of 9% on 2021. The European Commission continues to forecast real Irish GDP growth of 5% in 2023 and 4% in 2024. The U.K. currently appears likely to avoid a recession, though its backdrop is more challenging than Ireland. The central location of our assets in key U.K. cities with multiple demand drivers will stand to us. Despite the cost of living challenges, consumers continue to prioritize travel, which is unsurprising given the events of the last three years, and recent studies support that. Given we trade on two islands, levels and resilience of air travel have an important impact on our business. I am encouraged that there's been a very strong recovery towards pre-pandemic passenger numbers during 2022, and Eurocontrol are forecasting flight traffic levels in Ireland to outperform 2019 as we head into 2024. Turning to slide 14, we feel we are very well positioned in this current inflationary environment. Firstly, our interest and fixed rent payments are largely hedged against the current levels of rising inflation, at least in the near term. Our term loan of hundred and seventy-six and a half million GBP is fully hedged at very attractive rates until October 2024. 1.3% until October 2023, and from there until October 2024, the interest rate is hedged at a very good 1%. Our low gearing following the 2022 performance also means we have dropped to the lowest margin ratchet on our bank facilities, a decrease of almost 140 basis points from where we were at the start of the year. Over 70% now of our rent roll at the end of the year is not due for rent review until 2026 or later. Over 90% of our operating leases have rent review caps, which typically limit the inflation in any given year to 3.5%-4%. This is a great protection in the current period of exceptional inflation. By far, the most significant cost inflation this year has been on the cost of our energy, like all other businesses. Our costs for 2022 were EUR 32 million, which was 2.7 times 2019 levels on a like-for-like basis. We are pleased to have delivered a decreased energy consumption per room sold of 13% from Q2 to Q4 2022 inclusive versus the same levels in 2019. That is the result of a lot of work and effort by all our teams across the business. This is from a cost perspective, obviously very beneficial, but is also with an eye to delivering on our ambitious 2026 environmental targets to reduce down some of those numbers. I'm pleased to say we are now back at a more normal footing as regards our energy buying and have priced and committed following the recent price declines on the substantial element of our expected consumption of gas and electricity at over 85% now fixed for 2023. Consequently, we currently estimate our energy cost to be slightly lower at EUR 31 million for the year, despite the full year impact of our new 2022 hotels. Despite the exceptional inflationary pressures, we have worked very hard this year to protect margin. Our H2 EBITDAR margin is 400 basis points behind the same period in 2019. Excluding the impact of gas and electricity rises, it is in line. Into 2023, we will continue to work to recover this. On slide 15, we present a bridge from 2019 to 2022. Obviously, 2019 was the last pre-pandemic set of results, and we've bridged it to our 2022 hotel revenues and adjusted EBITDAR. This takes us through the different elements of the growth on that period. New hotels added since November 19 have driven the growth, adding almost EUR 71 million of revenues, which converted strongly to almost EUR 20 million of EBITDA, despite most of them only opening through the period and continue to be in their ramp-up phase. The closure of the Ballsbridge Hotel and the sale of the Clayton Crown Hotel reduced revenues by almost EUR 27 million and EBITDA by nearly EUR 8 million. This had a lesser impact on EBITDA, given the large variable rent under the short-term lease of the Ballsbridge Hotel. Existing hotels were just EUR 1 million back in EBITDA, despite revenues being ahead by EUR 40 million. This shows the conversion of our EBITDA to operating cash. We deferred almost EUR 11 million in taxes in the early part of the year when COVID-19 restrictions were in place. We will pay these in early 2023, along with those deferred and warehoused in earlier years. In 2022, our refurbishments CapEx is back on 2019 levels of approximately 4% of revenue due to the delayed start spend at the start of the year when restrictions were in place. This EUR 5 million will be caught up in 2023. Underlying free cash flow is broadly in line with 2019 levels, as there are some items contributing to the higher 2022 amount which were not a feature in 2019. Firstly, due to tax losses incurred in 2021, the group can avail of later timing of Irish corporation tax payments, which would normally have been paid in 2022. A benefit to our cash flow this year of approximately EUR 12 million. Also, the new hotels added to the portfolio and the return of normal working capital levels as the business returned to pre-pandemic trading levels contributed strongly. As our hotels added to the portfolio comprise mainly leased hotels, our fixed rent has also increased by almost EUR 20 million, despite the closure of Ballsbridge. The majority of our hotels opened during the year, and whilst trading ahead of our expectations, they are still in ramp-up and will contribute more strongly to cash flow in 2023. Encouragingly though, our seven new 2021, 2022 leased hotels cover their rent 1.1 times, which is very strong despite being open on average for only three-quarters of the year. Last from me, but by no means least, is slide 17, which sets out how our balance sheet stands now at the end of 2022. As I mentioned earlier, it was a very strong financial position, with EUR 1.4 billion of hotel assets in prime locations with a weighted average terminal cap rate for the group of 7.6%. This has increased or was increased by external valuers by 15%. Business trade has returned strongly, converting to strong profitability. Overall, due to the increased profitability, valuations are now back to 2019 levels, despite the deterioration in cap rates as the interest rate environment has deteriorated, impacting property yields. We have low levels of net debt of approximately EUR 108 million. We also had cash of over EUR 90 million and available facilities of almost EUR 365 million. This was before our GBP 44 million acquisition of Maldron Finsbury Park this month. Our main commitments over the coming year are the completion of our Maldron Shoreditch hotel that we are building in London and the EUR 37 million repayment of taxes deferred as part of government support during COVID-19. Which is a good point to hand over to Shane to talk about our development and growth strategy given the shape of that balance sheet. Morning all. Shane here. We're on slide 19, compelling growth strategy. In terms of markets, there is no change in strategy. Ireland, our focus is on exceptional opportunities where we can maintain our market share in the respective cities. For the U.K., this is our key strategic growth market where most of our acquisition focus is. In terms of Continental Europe, we are delighted with Clayton Düsseldorf and continue to appraise select opportunities that are consistent with our criteria. On some of the critical advantages we have, Carol has already talked you through the strength of our balance sheet and the advantages it gives us. The Finsbury Park acquisition, which has a separate page later, is a tangible demonstration of this. Being a hotel company that develops, acquires, leases, and operates hotels gives us a panoramic understanding of the industry, allowing us an advantage over many of our competitors for opportunities. In a world where earnings percentages are under pressure, owning our brands can be a critical difference. Our partnership approach, and specifically our behavior during the pandemic, is undoubtedly leading to further opportunities. Moving to slide 20, driving U.K. expansion. The map on the right-hand side gives an excellent representation of the cities we are targeting in the U.K. If you can see, the timeline at the bottom of the page maps the fantastic progress we've made in the U.K., going from less than 1,800 bedrooms in 2016 to at least 5,000 bedrooms in 2024. Whilst we are now also focused on the continent, the U.K. growth story is far from over. We've identified further opportunities of circa 5,000 extra bedrooms in regional U.K. in the short and medium term. It would be remiss of me not to highlight that the average age of our U.K. portfolios is 9 years. For comparison, 35% of the hotel stock in our U.K. regional target cities are over 40 years old. This has obvious advantages in terms of our offering, but also real tangible benefits for your energy efficiency versus our competitors. On to Finsbury Park, which is on slide 21. We are delighted with our most recent acquisition, Maldron Finsbury Park, London, our first Maldron Hotel in London. We've managed to purchase a brand-new 192-bedroom hotel that will be operational in the summer of this year. We have already commenced the project to invest in the property, ensuring its facilities are appropriate for a Maldron. Most of the investment will be focused on the lobby, external entrance, and bedroom fit out. The hotel is very well located to transport hubs and leisure center drivers and will allow us to demonstrate the agility of our business model in new markets. As Carol touched on, with our strong balance sheet and mix of owning and leasing assets, we were able to pivot very quickly to purchasing this asset when the institutional landlord funding was not available. Bottom line, it's sort of GBP 250,000 investment per key. It represents exceptional value. If we move on a couple of slides now, to sustainability progress, which is on slide 23. The image you can see on the right-hand side is a CGI of our Maldron Hotel Liverpool, which is currently under construction and scheduled to open in the summer of 2024. As you're aware, we've been working for a couple of years internally and with consultants to identify and act on opportunities to remove carbon embodied and operational from our developments. In terms of some headlines, installing air source heat pumps in Maldron Glasgow, which opened in August 2021, resulted in a circa 50% reduction in our operational carbon footprint from the original specification. All of our current hotels under construction now have that air source heat pump technology with a fully electric kitchens and hybrid air conditioning. This, as part of the research we're doing, the structural embodied carbon of Maldron Liverpool will be circa 50% of Maldron Glasgow. That said, we are aware we need to conclude as to whether we can commit as a corporate to programs such as the Science Based Targets initiative. We have previously intimated that we will complete this exercise by the end of half one 2023, that is still the case. Now moving on to my last slide, which is page 24, progress on 2026 environmental targets. This is an effective scorecard on our own 2026 internally generated environmental targets. As you can see, waste diversion is already fully achieved. We are on target with our energy emissions with a 15% reduction, 2022 versus 2019. In fact, excluding Clayton Düsseldorf, we have already achieved a 22% efficiency in the ROI and U.K.. Food waste, with its added cost benefits, is very much a priority in 2023, we are focused on completing the installation of water meters, we continue to work with our suppliers with their focus on sustainability. I must mention our Green Tourism Awards on the bottom left of the page, of which we are tremendously proud. We've moved from 7 silver and 36 bronze medals in 2019 to 49 gold awards in 2022. All of our hotels that were tested achieved the gold awards. I now hand you back to Dermot. Thanks, Shane, and thanks to Carol for that. I'm moving on to the outlook now on slide 26. January and February have been strong months, with group RevPAR coming in at 125% of 2019 levels. Continue the strong performance of 2022. To date, we have not seen any evidence of a slowdown in trade, but we will remain vigilant given the ongoing impacts of inflation on consumers' disposable income. Our newly opened hotels continue to perform well, and 2023 will be the first full year of international travel since 2019, and we expect that this will positively impact demand. Conference business continues to recover, whilst there is a strong calendar event in most of the cities in which we operate. On the cost front, we have hedged some of our major items, with prices now fixed for, as Carol mentioned previously, for 85% of our projected gas and electricity consumption during the year. Interest payments on our term debt is fixed until October 2024, and over 70% of our rent roll is fixed until 2026. This gives us an element of certainty over a significant element of our costs in 2023. We will continue to focus on our people and focus on exceeding our customers' expectations. We will be innovative in our approach as we take on the challenges facing our industries. We will continue to seek to grow in a responsible and in a sustainable manner. If I could take you on to slide 27, where we look at capital allocation. When looking at capital all-allocation, we consider firstly the need to maintain and refurbish our existing hotels, and typically, we spend 4% of our revenues in doing that. Secondly, we want to maintain a strong asset-backed balance sheet, which is valued by our banks and our fixed income investors who give us the funds for further growth. Thirdly, we have a desire to seek out hotel opportunities. We're good at developing, acquiring, and operating new hotels. These skills add values for all our stakeholders. Finally, the need to reward our shareholders through the adoption of a progressive dividend policy. As I said previously, we intend to restore dividends during 2023. Given the strength of our balance sheet and the assets on it, we are very well-placed to maintain our existing hotels and to acquire new ones and hopefully deliver for all our stakeholders. Moving to page 28. What we want to do here is give a breakdown of our hotels that we operate and the value that we see them generating. At 31st of December, 2022, the value of our hotel portfolio was EUR 1.4 billion, and the net asset value of our balance sheet equates to EUR 5.63 per share. If we were to exclude the property valuer's deductions for purchasers costs, it equates to EUR 6.18 per share. Looking at our lease portfolio. The pre-2020 portfolio, i.e., the hotels that we had under lease prior to 2020, generated an EBITDA post-rent of EUR 23 million last year. The seven leased hotels that we took on since the middle of 2021, are expected to deliver an EBITDA post-rent of EUR 16 million when they are up and running fully. The existing pipeline of four leased hotels are expected to deliver an EBITDA post-rent of EUR 8 million when they reach normal trading levels. Therefore, the existing leased hotels and those in the pipeline are expected to contribute EBITDA post-rent of EUR 47 million when up and running fully. That's on top of the owned portfolio, which I said previously, which equates to EUR 66.18 per share. On top of all that, our lowly geared balance sheet and our track record of securing new opportunities gives us the potential to grow further. On that very positive note, in my view, I would like to thank you for listening to us this morning and finish up by thanking all my colleagues across all our 50 hotels and the central office for their commitment, resilience, and professionalism over the last 12 months. It is they who have made this such a strong story of resilience and recovery. I am honored to work with them. I'm happy to hand over for questions. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by, we will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. We're going to take our first question. The first question comes from line of Jaina Mistry from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Congratulations on a very strong set of results. I have three questions. Maybe we'll go through them one by one. The first one is around capital allocation. I mean, your leverage is now at 0.8 times net debt to EBITDA. I mean, how are you thinking about a potential target leverage ratio in the context of the rising rate environment still? Okay, Jaina, I might address that for you, I suppose. Our leverage at the end of the year was indeed 0.8. We obviously completed Maldron Finsbury Park subsequent to that, and we'll pay just shy of EUR 40 million back in warehouse tax to the Irish government. We look at a couple of things in the business, obviously, because we do both owned and leased. We keep an eye on that net debt to EBITDA, but we also monitor our debt and lease service cover. It is important, and I think it's been demonstrated through COVID, the importance in a business like ours that has operational gearing and is exposed to the macro trends, that we keep that discipline both on our balance sheet and in terms of how we grow with leases, where we seek out a cover, typically of about 1.85 or have since Brexit, when we probably lifted that cover, that we'd look to get. They're the two things, I suppose, that we look at in balance. We've obviously just mentioned there this morning that we intend to restore dividends through to the back end of this year and to continue on with our normal maintenance and refurbishment programs. I suppose Shane has touched on it there. We are very hopeful, as we've said before, that further growth opportunities will come out in this post-COVID period. Okay. Thanks very much. My second question is on growth opportunities in the U.K.. I mean, your peers are talking about independent supply coming out of the market at a much faster rate than history post-COVID. Are you seeing more properties coming onto the market, whether it's new builds or independents? You know, in terms of that 5,000 room target in the U.K. by 2024, you know, how much upside do you think there is on that from M&A? Because right now it seems like that 5,000 room target is purely from your pipeline. Shane. Yeah. Hi. Shane here. Terms of opportunities, the, like, we do see independents leaving the market, we need to be clear here that terms of our focus on the U.K., it's very disciplined, and it's very focused on those cities that you can see. I can't remember the slide number where that map was on. A lot of the, let's say, a lot of the exits from the market are in cities or in markets that we're not actually interested in. That said, we are seeing a lot more opportunities than we would've seen 12 months ago. We are seeing a lot more, let's call them M&A opportunities than we would've seen 24 or 48 months ago. You know, there are opportunities there. Again, we need to retain our discipline. We're delighted with Finsbury Park. You know, it was something that was configured as a budget hotel. The reality is, given to where the room sizes were, given the spec of the ground floor and the food and beverage offer, it was something that fitted into a modern brand. Most of, say, most of those buildings that may be specced out as a budget hotel, they're not gonna fit in terms of a modern brand. You know, I don't want to. There are opportunities there. I'm very happy. Let's say what I see in terms of the potential for us to target, but I don't want you to think that, like, there's a widespread opportunity. The Finsbury would be the exception rather than the rule. Jaina, I might clarify one thing there. On slide 20, we expect to have 5,000 rooms at the end of 2024, between our existing hotels and our existing pipeline. Then there's the additional target of 5,000 rooms across the 10 cities that are set out in that map over time. Oh, understood. Thank you. Then my last question is around. Pricing. How do you think about the sustainability of pricing in 2023, given how strong it was in 2022? Well, you know, I suppose Look, we operate a dynamic pricing model. You're reacting to where the market is. Now, certainly, if I take Dublin, which is our biggest market, there remains a lot of rooms out of the market because of the housing of refugees. On top of that, there is supply coming into the market on that as well. Like, demand is strong. We look at international travel resuming fully for the first time since 2019. You know, we expect North American travel to be very strong, certainly into Dublin and into regional Ireland. If you look at London, you know, it's the first year again since 2019 at all that you've got Asian travel coming into the city. You can never tell 'til you get closer to the months, the busier months. The outlook generally for the industry, I think, is pretty positive from a travel perspective. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Please stand by. The next question come from line of Dudley Shanley from Goodbody. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Just two questions from me, if I may. The first one is, I noticed in the statement you've obviously given details on the expected energy bill for 2023. Can you elaborate on the other cost lines and what you're seeing there in terms of whether you're seeing any easing of pressures or whether you expect that pressure to continue through 2023? The second question was, I was just gonna ask about the number of rooms that are out of the market in terms of the rooms the government has at the moment. There's obviously been a lot of press articles about the return of some of these hotels to tourist business. Dermot, you made a comment about where would they put the people, but what are you hearing on the ground at the moment? Thank you. I might take that first, and then I'll let Carol deal with the cost lines, the query on cost lines. I mean, like, depending on who you talk to, there, you know, there's probably something between 10% and 15% of rooms that are currently out of the market. Obviously some of the really bigger ones in terms of room numbers are places like Citywest and Red Cow and our own neighbor, the Holiday Inn Dublin Airport. As I understand it, none of those are coming back this year, and that equates to about 1,500 rooms. You hear that there is other hotels just looking at, in terms of looking at booking, when they're available to booking. There are some bigger hotels that are coming back online. You know, publicly, the Holiday Inn Express out in Dublin Airport and the Crowne Plaza reopened in January. That would be just over 400 rooms. The Crowne Plaza over in Blanchardstown reopened as well. That's under 200 rooms. And I understand the Travelodge in Townsend is open for bookings from May onwards, which is nearly another 400 rooms. There is stuff coming back into the market, but we would still expect around 10% of the market will be given over to housing refugees. Beyond that, Look, I can't predict, you know, as I said, there is certainly a big element of about 1,500 rooms which we know aren't coming back onto the market this year. Beyond that, what individual hoteliers are gonna do, I can't say. Like, what we have said is that we've just committed to another three-month contract with the government, and that's just because the length of those contracts is three months, to continue to give 5% of our rooms to refugees. And you know, and I just think that's the right thing for us to do, at this point in time. I said this morning on radio, you know, government was very good to us in Ireland during COVID, and I think it's right that we give back and help out in this situation. That's certainly the perspective of Dalata. I might hand over to Carol. Morning, morning, Dudley. I suppose in terms of costs, we would've indicated just before year end, we obviously intended to give between 4% and 6% increases on our salaries across the business heading into 2023. Inflation obviously naturally enough continues. Now, Dermot touched on it in an earlier slide. We don't sit back and just take cost increases into the business without looking to do things differently, either more efficiently or using innovation to I suppose, reduce the impact of that on our business. I'd say that firstly. We also touched on those gas and electricity costs. We fixed those prices in for the rest of the year, which gives us good handle on that cost line, and we've indicated what that is. I suppose if you look, we have called out that half to margin that we have generated coming off the revenues in our hotels. You know, it's 4% back on 2019, but the business has worked extremely hard with the type of inflation that's been hitting it this year to stay on top of those margins. That speaks to our centralized model and the efforts of our general managers, supported by their teams across the business, to really work to convert the revenues they work so hard to bring into the hotels to the bottom line. I would have every confidence as we head into 2023 that we will continue to fight that battle despite obviously inflationary pressures continuing. That's great. Thanks very much. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question's come from line of Paul Ruddy from Davy. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hey, good morning, guys. Again, congratulations on a phenomenal recovery year. Just two questions from me, if that's okay. First is just around this 5,000 room target that you talked to. What are the impediments to getting there now? Is it just availability of buildings? Kind of as a follow-on. You know, the hotel in Finsbury, does that signal anything around kind of more potential transactions, the market freeing up a little bit, you know, post a kind of a slow period to transactions? The second question, if I could, is just around the kind of mix of corporate and leisure business in 2023. How do you see that versus 2019? If you could comment on maybe how the, that contracted with the pre-agreed kind of corporate business might look for the year ahead. Hi, Paul. I'll take the second question first, and then I'll let Shane come back on the 5,000 room target. I mean, I suppose what we're, you know, we're, like, how 2023 plays out will be interesting, right? 2020 was an unusual year, and that is a huge amount of leisure, at the start. Like, we have seen corporate business return quite strongly, but in some respects it's a different type of corporate business as well. There's no doubt that when we look at the FDI companies here in Ireland, there is less travel. I'd imagine for a combination of reasons, obviously, you know, there has been some redundancies, so therefore travel budgets are being restricted. People are more aware of the carbon emissions they're generating, when they're traveling. Then you've got the availability of online meetings as well. That has had a, you know, a downward impact on travel in those companies. We have seen a, you know, a growth in other elements of our corporate business, probably because we stayed open right throughout COVID-19 and we secured new areas of business. On an overall basis, we probably expect corporate on a total basis to get back to similar levels as it was in terms of mix as it was in 2019. In reality, we won't really have a much better view for that till we get into the middle of the year. Okay? I might just hand over to Shane as regards the query on the target. Morning, Paul, how are you? If I heard you correctly, I think the first half it was just on what were some of the challenges in delivering the 5,000 rooms. Then you did, I think, give something specific on Finsbury Park as to was this a new channel of opportunity. In terms of the 5,000 rooms, look, there's no great, you know, challenges are the same. We're very much a city folk hotel group, with the location, the biggest challenge there in terms of city centers. Like, that's, that is the main challenge you'll see from the map that I think it was on slide 20, that, you know, we're actually dealing with a smaller pool of cities now, but we're very, very happy with those cities. It, you know, we draw confidence on the success I suppose we've had in Ireland in terms of our market share. We've been at 20% in Dublin now for a considerable period of years, why couldn't we have a bigger percentage share in some of those large U.K. cities where we've had a lot of success? I mean, if you look at Manchester, we have two, we have one in the airport, we have two in the city center today. Our development partners are building a third. With my acquisition guys or our acquisition guys look at a fourth, we would. The reality is that we have two there and one on the way means that we have to even be more location disciplined in terms of the opportunities we're looking in that city. That's, that to me is, you know, in terms of the, can we get around the funding? We can, because of flexibility in terms of our model. It's actually finding those opportunities in terms of location is the main challenge. On Finsbury Park, apologies if I'm kind of repeating myself, I think in terms of what I said to Jane earlier, we're very, very happy with it. We're delighted with it, to be honest. Could there be more opportunities? You know, there could be, but I don't see it as a deep pool of opportunity in terms of, let's say, buying a hotel that's just been recently completed and that we can convert very quickly. Yeah, just to follow up, Shane. The question was more just really quickly, like was there any signal about like the market has gotten a little bit more liquid, if you like? There's more opportunities available from a transaction perspective in that. Well, like the reality, we're now, what are we, three years on from COVID? You know, the U.K. has certainly had a difficult time in terms of their market, both on the finance side and the operational side. You know, there are, let's say, less patience in the market in terms of where some of hotels funding is. You know, there are noises out there in terms of opportunities. We are challenged in terms of the institutional landlord markets in terms of where they're pricing and directly related to the cost of debt. Again, that gives us a bit of an advantage where we actually have the option of using our balance sheet to buy out assets as well. You know, there was, I suppose, if you want to call it a bit of a freeze in terms of acquisition or M&A activity, certainly through the pandemic and even over the last year. There would certainly be more chatter in the market about opportunities. Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question come from line of Jack Cummings from Berenberg. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi all. Thanks for taking the questions. Three, if I may. The first, the current RevPAR trading performance in Jan and Feb seemed really strong. I was wondering if you could give a little color there on any of the rates or occupancy trends in the respective regions. Secondly, you flagged in the presentation the Clayton Hotel Düsseldorf as performing well following lifting of restrictions in Germany. Any updated thoughts on continental Europe or some learnings there that you could potentially share? Finally, you mentioned the board obviously plans to reintroduce a progressive dividend policy. Could you provide some color on what that might look like? Thank you. Okay. I'll take the 1st question. I'll let Shane take the 2nd question, and Carol, I'll give you the 3rd question. I'm all for spreading around the love. In terms of the RevPAR in January and February, you know, we are very happy, right? Because it's across all three regions. As said, you know, we're obviously in the last day of February here, but we're looked at Dublin's gonna be 17% ahead of the equivalent period in 2019. That is very strong, very happy with that. If I look at regional Ireland, it's 54%. That is a big number. That is kind of relates to a couple of things. We did have a hotel in Cork, which has just literally opened at the end of 2018, so that is skewing the numbers a bit. I think generally speaking, during COVID, what we found in both the U.K. and Ireland is actually domestic breaks became very, very popular. That continues to be the case, and we're seeing that in our numbers in regional Ireland and obviously as well in the U.K. at 27%. I suppose when we look at the outlook for the three markets as well, you know, I think in London especially, the recovery has been the slowest. Again, international travel is just so important to that city. You know, I've said it on numerous occasions, you go around London in a normal year, and you see the amount of Asian visitors in London, and they effectively for all intents and purposes, weren't there for three years. We think that's, has the potential to be very positive in this current year, 2023. Likewise, North American travel, really we saw it in terms of flight numbers and passenger numbers and people staying in our hotels, that only really started impacting really from about August onwards. Again, this is the 1st full year. Here in Ireland, St. Patrick's Day typically heralds the start of the tourist season in Ireland, and the hotels are all full, over St. Patrick's Day. Now there's an Ireland rugby international as well, which contributes to that. I think generally speaking, you know, we said we're cautiously optimistic. The reason we word cautious, we do have to be aware of the cost of living challenges for people that are out there. As I said in my own piece earlier, we still haven't seen the impact of that really on demand. I think Karen mentioned when she was speaking, that people seem to be prioritizing experiences over things. We're certainly, our industry hopefully will continue to benefit from that. Hand over to Shane, just I mean, just to say on Düsseldorf, we are very happy with it. It's our first hotel in Europe. There's always a degree of nervousness when you go into a new jurisdiction. We're really pleased. Our operations team have done a really good job over there. You know, so we're very happy, and it encourages more opportunities. I suppose what we are gonna be very careful of, if you knew where that hotel was in Düsseldorf, is absolutely in the city center. It's a short walking distance to the railway station. We will continue to be careful to make sure locations we get, as we do in the U.K. and Ireland, are really prime. Dermot essentially has answered it there. You know, if you look back 12 months, would you be nervous that we could take the Dalata model to Germany? If we're honest, we would have. I attended the European Investment Hotel investment briefing last week. I felt like the only person in the room who was happy with the German hotel performance in 2022. We're delighted. I think looking at it from my perspective in terms of acquisitions, that I think the opportunity bringing the Dalata brand, bringing the Dalata way of business in terms of the way we decentralize our hotels, and we have, let's call it proactive general and revenue management. I think the opportunity, Germany specifically is a great market for that model. Are we interested in more opportunities? We are. You'll have seen from, again, that slide 20, you know, we've plenty of road left in the U.K., so we're under no urgency in Germany. We move strategically in terms of so that we wouldn't be under pressure, but we'd be certainly very interested in more of the right opportunity. Dermot's correct. Again, we have to be location disciplined, both in terms of the city itself and the location within the city. Morning, Jack. Just to pick up on your question on dividends, I suppose, you know, first of all, it is the time, I think Dermot referenced it, to get back onto our progressive dividend policy that we had pre-COVID, to reward our shareholders for their support or ongoing support over the last few years. We haven't indicated a level of dividend. We will obviously do that when we get to the point in the second half of the year. I suppose it is a real statement of our confidence in our trading performance and our financial position that we are looking to resume that, in addition to continuing to maintain and refurbish our hotels, keep that balance sheet very strong to continue to power growth and to deliver the types of opportunities we just have with Maldron Finsbury Park, and have obviously great ambition to continue to do so. Great. Thanks, all. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes to line of Jaina Mistry from Jefferies. Your line is open, please ask your question. Hi. I just had one more question, and thanks very much for taking it. On the new room target or the additional room target for the U.K., I just wondered if that had any implications on the cost of growth for the U.K., whether, you know, it requires additional investment into digital pricing algorithms or some other form of investment. No. Like Dermot here again. No, I mean, it doesn't really. I mean, one of the benefits we've had really is that with our shared service center in Cork, right, we have centralized more in terms of payroll processing, in terms of procurement, and in time we'll have, very soon, we'll have our income audit down there. In terms of the technology generally that we've invested right across the group, it makes it easier for us to add on hotels. Like we operate a decentralized model. In terms of revenue management, you know, there's a revenue manager, there's a general manager, and there's a team in every hotel. What we're trying to do, is we're trying to take more of the processing away from the hotels, and we've been very successful in doing that. In fact, we've taken, we're taking away some of the stuff, like in terms of digital media, centralizing that as well, back in the center. The hotels are really focused on things like taking care of their people, taking care of their customer, generating local corporate sales, making sure that the hotels are safe. No, like, if anything, to be honest with you, adding a hotel on for us now is easier than what it was two or three years, definitely easier than what it was two or three years. Even our central office, we've tried to build up a capacity that as we've taken on six hotels last year, that we can take that on and take on the hotels that are in our pipeline without having to add a huge amount of cost at the center. Sorry, does that kind of answer your question? Yeah, it does. It really does. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. There are no further questions at this moment, and I would like now to hand the conference over to your speaker, Dermot Crowley, for closing remarks. Well look, guys, basically just thank you for everyone for listening in. We're delighted with the outcome in 2022. I think as I said previously, it does show the resilience of our people right throughout the organization. I just wanna thank them again for that. You know, we're looking forward to 2023. We've had a strong start to it. We've put really good building blocks in place. We accept there's challenges. We hear a lot about the challenges in terms of shortage of people, increase in costs. We genuinely believe if we continue to look for innovative ways and new ways of doing our business, we're, you know, we're really up for the challenge and as I said, cautiously optimistic about the future. Thank you very much. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.