Good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Politzer, gaming and lodging analyst at JPMorgan. We're thrilled to be here and host a fireside discussion with Mark Fioravanti, CEO of Ryman Hospitality, as well Jennifer Hutcheson, CFO. We'll start it off high level. Mark, one of the neat things about Ryman is its group-centric strategy and ecosystem. Can you maybe talk about how you view the advantages of this focused strategy as it relates to targeting customers, maintaining greater demand visibility, and how your approach to portfolio management compares with some of your lodging REIT peers? Yes, starting, I guess, with the group segment. For those of you who may not be familiar with our company, our portfolio of hotels focuses primarily on the large group business. Our mix is about 70% group, 30% leisure transient. What we like about the group business is that the characteristics of it are long lead times in terms of bookings, it gives us tremendous visibility into our business into future years. We typically enter the year with about 50 points of occupancy already on the books under contract form. Because they're under contract, if those meetings do not occur or if those meetings suffer attrition, we have the ability to collect fees, those cancellation and attrition fees help buffer profitability. We have more visibility and more stability of earnings. Those are two primary factors that we like about the group business. That we structure our hotel business significantly different than our peer hospitality REITs because our business operates as a single platform. We have seven large hotels that are all managed by Marriott, so a single manager. We have customers who rotate year by year, market to market. About 66% of our revenue is recurring. By managing this business as a single operating unit, it allows us to maximize retention of customers and also maximize profitability. It also allows us, from a capital deployment perspective, to drive higher rates of return with lower risk as we deploy capital, because these large platforms allow us to make incremental improvements over time to these hotels based on the needs of those customers who are rotating, and ultimately generate higher returns with a lower risk profile because we leverage the infrastructure of the existing hotel with the investment we make, whether that's additional rooms, meeting space, or other amenities. Once we implement an enhancement in a single property and we find that we have positive results, then we can replicate that investment across the portfolio. It's this ability to continue to invest in these properties to drive incremental profitability, create incremental benefit and value for the guest, while driving outsized returns for shareholders. We like this model quite a lot. One of the things I think that's unique about your model maybe evolving is the corporate aspect of it, and corporate group booking aspect. I think on your most recent earnings call, you noted that you've maybe tweaked your approach to inventory management. You're trying to grow a more premium, profitable corporate mix. I guess, what was the impetus for making this strategy pivot right now? Could you speak to how this process is going and expectations for this year and next year as it relates to that? Sure. Yeah. The pivot that he's referring to is, from a mix perspective, one of the things that we're doing is we're trying to improve our share of the corporate business. When you look at our meetings business, that's 70% of our overall business. About half of that 70% or so is corporate. The remaining is association and SMERF groups. What we would like to do, we're currently under-penetrated in the corporate segment from a market share perspective. What we're trying to do is just refine our mix to drive more corporate business. The reason for that is that when you look at corporate meetings versus association and SMERF business, it is higher-rated business. On average, they pay a higher room rate. They also spend more outside the rooms. A corporate room night spends about 180% on outside-the-room spending versus an association. There's a significant amount of incremental spending that we can garner from that guest if we can trade out those rooms. It's not a wholesale change in strategy. It's really just refining how we manage the inventory that we have within those hotels. We have historically been heavier weighted towards associations and SMERF because of the scale of our hotels. Our smallest hotel in the Gaylord Hotels is 1,500 rooms with 450,000 square feet of meeting space. These are very large group-oriented hotels. What we've been doing over the last several years is making investments not only in sales resources in terms of pursuing these corporate meetings, but also making adjustments to the physical properties so that we're delivering to that corporate customer the types of space and the types of amenities that they require to have successful meetings. That really revolves around things like carpeted breakout space. If you look back at how we've deployed capital in a number of our properties, we are adding carpeted breakout space. We're currently doing 100,000 square foot expansion at Opryland. Also, we're also upgrading and adding to our food and beverage offerings across the portfolio. Just continuing to refine the product and refine our service offerings to attract those higher-rated corporate business. It makes sense, and it sounds like you're making the right decision there, but how do you think about the trade-offs? You're going after a higher spending, higher margin customer. What's the flip side of that in terms of execution? The trade-off is that if you look at the average booking window, we talked about visibility a moment ago, because associations are such large groups, they book, on average, more than four years in advance. We have associations who book eight or 10 years in advance because of the scarcity of assets of our size and the lack of new supply that's coming into the market. When you move some of that inventory out of the association business and into the corporate business, the average booking window for a corporate is a little less than two years. You have a shorter booking window, you're leaving inventory open, and you can create a little bit more volatility in your demand because of that. Also the fact that when you look at how associations earn their revenue, they earn revenue by having meetings, so in downturns, associations don't cancel. They travel. They have more attrition, but they don't cancel. Corporations will cancel in downturns if they're tightening their budgets. The protection that we have against that volatility, though, is that these meetings are under contract. Our contracts have attrition and cancellation clauses, so when a corporation cancels, they have to pay us a cancellation fee or an attrition fee. If you look back at 2009, for example, during the financial crisis, we had about 125,000 room nights canceled across our portfolio. Almost all of those room nights were corporate room nights, but at the same time, we collected about $28 million in cancellation fees. When you look at the decline in profitability during that period, our overall profitability was down in single digits versus our peers who were off 20% and 30% because of the nature of that cancellation fee. It sounds like you have an internal offset or hedge built in with the cancellation fees. If I hear what you're saying, you're leaning into the corporate segment. It seems you're incrementally upbeat on that group. Can you maybe talk about why that is and how you think about the overall group health, given you have an uneven macro with record corporate profits, but choppy consumer sentiment. How is the overall health of that group segment across those different segments, the different mixed buckets? Overall group demand is solid. It's been quite good this year. We had a terrific first quarter. Those trends have continued in the second quarter, both in terms of how customers are behaving when they're on property. In terms of attrition and cancellation, in terms of outside the room spending, all those trends are positive. When we look out at current pace of business that we have on the books, we're up significantly both in terms of rate for the rest of 2026, 2027, and 2028. We have a higher percentage of corporate on the books in each of those years, so we're seeing those corporate customers respond, and lead volumes are very healthy as well. The group customer is alive and well right now in this economy, and we're seeing the same thing on the leisure side. The leisure transient's about 30% of our business, and we had a terrific spring break. Summer is starting off and looks quite good. As we get into the fourth quarter, we'll see how our Christmas programming performs, but right now we feel very good about the leisure customer as well. One segment in terms of the group business, just want to go back there real quick to make sure we're covered. Government, I know it's not a huge part of your business, but I think that last year, obviously that was a drag for many within the industry. Have you started to see any recovery in demand there, or do you feel that there was more of a structural shift that took place? Government business is a little less than 1% of our overall portfolio, so it's never been a significant segment for us. What is attractive about government business is that it's typically in the year for the year. Because of the way that their budgeting cycle works, they can't enter into advanced contracts. It's an opportunistic type of business that if you have a hole you're trying to fill or a pattern you're trying to fill and there's government demand, it's great business to have. What we found last year, after the DOGE exercise, government really stopped traveling. We have seen that come back modestly. We're not back to pre-DOGE levels, but we are seeing some recovery in government business. As I said, it's not a significant part of our business model. Got it. In terms of the cost side, recent data suggests that some of the pressures have been easing in terms of labor. You've obviously had a labor union agreement here. I guess, where do we stand today across your portfolio in terms of the labor balance? Are you seeing the issues that you saw a few years ago really ease? Yeah, I think we are in a better place with labor. This year our expectation for labor cost increase-wise are in the range of 3.5%-4%. I think we're able to manage that within our portfolio a little differently than others, given our very limited union labor exposure. We only have one property within our portfolio that has unionized or organized labor. That contract was negotiated a couple of years ago. Is in place now, and we're in the middle of that and operating within that. Setting aside labor, I think we've seen improvements in insurance costs, and have been able to work with our manager, as Mark mentioned, single operator with Marriott, to drive efficiencies operating-wise within our property. Such that our expectation for 2026, at the midpoint of our guidance range, assumes 2.5% of overall operating expense increase. Got it. I guess outside of some of those buckets, where could you be more aggressive on the cost side as it relates to some of the technology initiatives, AI, that we see out there? Are there specific avenues where you see upside? Is it near term, medium term? Yeah, we are, like everyone, actively looking at and trying to understand how to take advantage of what's happening from an AI perspective. Obviously, on the hotel side, that's in conjunction with Marriott, since it's their tech stack that our hotels operate on. Given the nature of our business, the booking windows, the pricing strategy, et cetera, that's associated with group, we think that there's real opportunity there in the medium term around AI to use big data, to use AI to make us not only more efficient as it relates to responding to RFPs, but also more effective in how we think about price and how we can analyze price and consider all the things that happen environmentally that ultimately impact your performance. It's a very complex yield management exercise. We think AI is a big part of that. On our entertainment side, because we also own and operate an entertainment business within TRS in the country music space, we are using it currently within that business around how we communicate with concertgoers and consumers around marketing and social media. Dynamic pricing is an important aspect, as well as call center activities, et cetera, in terms of fulfillment. That's more of a buy strategy versus what will likely be more of a build strategy with Marriott on the hotel side. Got it. I think, flipping quickly back to the top line and the revenue side, you have total RevPAR, which is inclusive of food and beverage, out-of-room spend, then you have hotel RevPAR. For the last few years, total RevPAR has been outpacing hotel room RevPAR. Do you think this is sustainable, or you think this is more reflective of the broader RevPAR environment where you just didn't see the rate increases that maybe we had in prior cycles? Well, with the pricing strategy that we've implemented the last several years, we have quite good rate growth. If you look at rate growth on the books for the next couple of years, we're mid-single digits each year in terms of room rate growth. This refinement of our strategy towards more corporate will drive incremental outside-the-room spending. I don't know whether one will outpace the other. I think that we're set up between the changes that we're making in terms of our mix and some of the capital investments we've made around incremental meeting space and food and beverage that we should have healthy growth rates both on the room side as well as outside the room. In terms of performance across your properties, I think Gaylord, Opryland, Palms have been particular bright spots. We saw an acceleration of both of those. Could you maybe talk through what you're seeing on the demand side at those specific properties that's driving that? Or is it investments? As you look out over the next 12- 18 months, are there other properties in your portfolio that you're particularly excited about? Yeah. In the case of Palms and Rockies and Opryland, a lot of what's driving the performance there is the investments that we made. We've invested significantly at the Rockies in terms of incremental food and beverage seats, an events pavilion, as well as additional outdoor meeting space there. At the Palms, we've done a complete rooms renovation, as well as a lobby renovation and food and beverage re-concepting. You'll recall, during the pandemic, we added 300 rooms there and about 90,000 sq ft of additional breakout space, which is driving more corporate demand into that market. Both of those properties are benefiting from the capital that we deployed over the last few years, and you're seeing that too at Opryland. We've been doing quite a bit of work. Opryland is the flagship and original hotel in the portfolio. It will turn 50 years old next year. We are investing in that product so that it is of the same fit and finishing quality of the rest of the portfolio. We recently opened about a 560-seat or so sports bar, as well as an events lawn and pavilion there. We're adding about 100,000 square feet of incremental breakout space that will help drive corporate demand there, as well as re-concepting more and more food and beverage there. All those properties are benefiting from this high-return capital deployment strategy that we have. In the context of the Nashville market, Opryland, obviously, you've been investing a lot. That's also been a market where you've seen elevated supply levels for some time now. How do you think about the supply-demand dynamic in that market over the longer term? What are the big drivers there? Yeah. Nashville has seen some supply increases, particularly in the hotel side, over the last 7 or 8 years. It's really a response to what we're seeing in terms of consumer demand. Nashville, as a tourism market, has grown dramatically, not only in terms of the volume of tourists but also the quality of the visitor. We've seen more and more upscale product come into that market. Therefore, it's driving a higher quality consumer into the market. You're going to see that continue. We're getting a new NFL stadium there with the Titans. It's a domed stadium. It will open for the 2027-2028 season. Having a domed year-round facility like that will have a meaningful impact on the Nashville market from a special events perspective. We were recently awarded the 2030 Super Bowl. Because of that, you'll see Nashville become home for things like Super Bowl, Final Four, World Cup games. It'll become a year-round stadium concert venue. When we drive those big citywide types of special events, it really drives tourism into the market. In addition to the tourism side, Nashville's also seeing a tremendous amount of in-migration as it relates to corporate headquarters and large quality employers. Nashville obviously has the music industry, and it's the third coast in the entertainment industry, but it's also probably the leading healthcare market in the U.S., and it's now becoming a tech center with Amazon. Oracle is moving there. There was just an announcement that Starbucks is moving a big national facility there, and companies continue to find, I think, Tennessee and Nashville is a great place to do business ultimately, and what that's driving is high-quality employment, and driving population growth. That's helpful, and I think that's a good overview of the hospitality business, but I don't want to leave out the entertainment part. Can you just walk us through how the OEG segment came about, how you think about it, and what's the rationale to keep investing here as you build out more facilities and expand the concert business? Opry Entertainment Group is a legacy business that we owned. The crown jewel of that business is the Grand Ole Opry. The Opry turned 100 years old last year. We operate that business within a TRS. We own and operate that versus having an external manager. It's a business that represents about 15% of our revenue and about 15% of profitability. It has grown dramatically over the last decade or so. We own probably the most important brands in country music, and if you're familiar with live entertainment, you know that as a sector, it has been growing dramatically, and country music as a genre is the fastest-growing genre in music. It's really a confluence of things that are occurring that make this business incredibly valuable and a real opportunity to continue to grow and create value. As you said, we have been investing in a variety of different verticals within the country space. Serving that same consumer demographic as well as the same artist community, and leveraging that growth with the intention ultimately of separating that business from the REIT. There's no real strategic connective tissue between our hotel business and the entertainment business. Ultimately, we think that the way to maximize value for shareholders would be to separate that business and let it be a standalone entertainment business, and then have the standalone hospitality REIT. What are the avenues to separating that? I think your partner has some put options. I think one might even expire soon and the other one 2029. Can you talk about the avenues to monetize that or to extract that value? Yeah. The only real kind of, I would say, constraint that we have in terms of how to monetize is that we would want to do it in a way that would allow us to comply with all the requirements to remain a REIT, particularly around things like the income test, et cetera. That business could be sold to our partner, we could do an IPO and exit over time. There's a variety of different ways in which we can monetize that asset, and put it in a position where it can continue to grow and be successful. We have a lot of flexibility as it relates to that. The real issue for us is that, what's the right timing and what does that business need to look like to be successful? Because the goal here is ultimately to create value for shareholders beyond how it's being valued today within the REIT. We think that with that separation, whatever form it takes, there's an underappreciation for the value in the current form that it's in. You're still investing in the business, obviously. I think you have your own pace, you have 3 Category 10s, seven Ole Red locations. Is there a number you feel like you need to get to, or an area where you feel like, "Okay, we're big enough, we've grown enough that now it would make sense to pursue the next move on? Yeah, we're getting to that. The midpoint of the guidance this year for that business is about $125 million of EBITDA, so we've scaled it quite a bit. One of the critical factors from a growth perspective for us is that we want that growth pipeline to be visible to investors so that as people look at that business and underwrite that business, they can see growth over the next couple of years and can reliably underwrite it, because that will obviously lead to, I think, to a better multiple. Things like the artist partnerships, as you said, we have announced two Category 10s, one in Orlando, one in Las Vegas, that are under development currently. We just announced the new Ole Red, which is a concept we have with Blake Shelton, in Indianapolis, with a Pacers organization. We have three units there. We recently moved into the amphitheater business. In the last six months or so, we've won two RFPs, one in Nashville with the Ascend Amphitheatre, the other in Simpsonville, South Carolina, with the CCNB Amphitheatre. We're now growing in that vertical of amps. When you think about our business, our business is focused on that singular country music and country lifestyle consumer, and the country artist community, and we're in a number of verticals. We're in the venue business. We're in these artist-inspired concepts. We generate content, particularly with the Grand Ole Opry. We're in the amphitheater business, and we're now in the festivals business. What we're doing is building a sustainable pipeline across all of those that target that same consumer, and then we're marketing across those verticals to that consumer group. Underlying those verticals are things like ticketing, sponsorship, marketing, et cetera, retail as a way to drive and utilize the scale to drive profitability. Got it. We have time, I think, for one more, just in terms of capital allocation, M&A. About a year ago, a little bit more, you acquired Desert Ridge for $865 million. Based on our conversations at this conference, it does feel like the transaction environment's starting to show some signs of life. Can you talk about your appetite to pursue additional deals and what are your M&A criteria, and what do you look for when you're evaluating your opportunity set? Yeah. We have a very specific and focused strategy, and we think that focus is critical to success. For us, focus is probably saying no more than saying yes, frankly. If you look at the two assets that we've purchased versus developed, they're right down the center of the fairway for us in terms of these large meeting-oriented hotels, and that's what we'll look for. We're kind of elephant hunters. We're not asset traders. We buy things, we bring them into the portfolio, and we want assets that help make the portfolio stronger, and that through being included in our portfolio, that we can drive incremental value. We want large group-oriented resorts in great meetings markets, and preferably managed by Marriott, because that single manager across the portfolio is what allows us to capture, retain, and rotate those customers. Got it. Thank you so much. This was great. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Nice job, gentlemen Thanks so much. You got a full day? I am all over. I'm sure you guys are. At least you're staying in there. Yeah. Kind of like going to run back. Yeah. Fortunately, people are coming to us, so we're not fighting that elevator. I have one elevator fight. Hey, how are you, man? Good. How are you? Good. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. I'll see you a little bit later. All right. Thanks.