Choice Hotels International, Inc. · NYSE:CHH
Choice Hotels International — Q1 2026 Earnings Presentation
33 slides from Choice Hotels International's earnings presentation, Apr 30, 2026
Slide 1: Choice Hotels International Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
TRANSCRIPT 04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Slide 2: Corporate Speakers and Participants
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call CORPORATE SPEAKERS: Allie Summers Choice Hotels International, Inc.; Senior Director, Investor Relations Patrick Pacious Choice Hotels International, Inc.; President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Oaksmith Choice Hotels Intern
Slide 3: Opening Remarks and Forward-Looking Statements
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Allie Summers^ Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin, please note that today's discussion includes forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. securities laws. These statements are subject to risks and unce
Slide 4: Strategy and Inflection in Rooms Growth
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call which is reflected in the continued expansion in our average royalty rate. Taken together, this supports more consistent earnings growth and increasing returns to shareholders. At Choice, our strategy is built on a straightforwar
Slide 5: Demand Outlook and Travel Trends
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Looking ahead, as we move past last year's hurricane impact, demand continues to benefit from tax refunds and is expected to be further supported by event-driven travel this summer, such as the FIFA World Cup and the U.S. 250th a
Slide 6: Rooms Growth and Developer Demand
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Our brand portfolio, aligned with both guest demand and owner returns, and improving unit- level economics that continue to drive developer demand across our core segments. Globally, we grew rooms by 1.7% year-over-year, with gro
Slide 7: Economy Segment, International and Pipeline
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call In economy transient, our portfolio strategy continues to improve system quality and guest satisfaction, supporting continued developer engagement with the pipeline increasing 26% sequentially. International continues to scale as
Slide 8: Loyalty and Business Travel
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Loyalty is a key driver of our higher quality demand and customer lifetime value. Our Choice Privileges program now exceeds 75 million members, up 7% year-over-year. Earlier this year, we launched the next evolution of the progra
Slide 9: Technology, Salesforce Partnership and Outlook
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call We are also extending these capabilities through our partnership with Salesforce, where we are deploying intelligent agents across our field organization to improve franchisee operations, strengthen how our hotels capture group d
Slide 10: Financial Results and Key Themes
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call income tax rate in the first quarter. These items were anticipated and are expected to normalize over the balance of the year, consistent with our full-year guidance. As a result, we are maintaining our outlook across all key met
Slide 11: Net Rooms Growth and RevPAR
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Relicensing activity increased significantly year-over-year, reflecting both brand strength and continued franchisee confidence. Taken together, these trends reinforce our expectation that U.S. net rooms growth returns to positiv
Slide 12: Partnership Business and Capital Intensity
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Turning to our partnership business, which remains a key priority. Franchisee-facing service offerings included within our franchise and management fees continue to gain adoption during the quarter, driving over 10% year-over-yea
Slide 13: Cash Flow and Capital Allocation
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call In the first quarter, we used $23.2 million of cash in operating activities, primarily reflecting working capital timing and higher franchise agreement acquisition costs associated with a 37% year-over-year increase in global roo
Slide 14: Outlook and Start of Q&A
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Our outlook reflects continued growth across higher revenue hotels and markets, royalty rate expansion, sustained international momentum and further contribution from partnership and non- RevPAR revenues. It also reflects continu
Slide 15: Q&A: Conversion Pipeline and Unit Growth
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call We are a conversion-led model, and that's really been the driver of growth and the speed and efficiency with which our conversion pipeline is moving. As we mentioned in the script, the conversion pipeline is up 17%. Franchise agr
Slide 16: Q&A: Consumer Health
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call We've been, as an industry, doing much more on the conversion side of the house. And I think the lack of supply growth will incent developers to come back as well as RevPAR strengthens into the future. So we do see an underlying
Slide 17: Q&A: Consumer Resilience
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Michael Hirsh^ Yes. I'm here. Patrick Pacious^ Okay. Sorry, there was a bit of a disruption there. Yes, I mean I think we look at that -- the consumer has been pretty resilient given the rise in gas prices. We saw higher gas pric
Slide 18: Q&A: RevPAR Expectations
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Michael Hirsh^ And a quick follow-up on what Pat mentioned. For U.S. RevPAR, understanding the first quarter was impacted by the hurricane comparison, what are your expectations for U.S. RevPAR in the second quarter and second ha
Slide 19: Q&A: Occupancy and RevPAR
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Patrick Pacious^ Yes, Michael, I think if you look at a couple of things, the first is the key point in all of this is occupancy. We talked about this on the last call. We saw a strength of that indicator all last year, and that
Slide 20: Q&A: Hurricane Impact and Communication
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call So really was a regionalized hurricane impact to our results. And as we said in our prepared remarks, if you pull out the hurricane impact, actually the entire system was up about 1.8% for the quarter. Michael Bellisario^ Okay. T
Slide 21: Q&A: Market Share
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call I want to go back and look at the transcript from 1Q ’21. You had 400 basis points of year-over- year market share gain. Along that same line, what was your market share change year-over-year versus last year in the most recent q
Slide 22: Q&A: RevPAR Guidance
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call So creating a broader -- I think in the past, we had given some of the RPI gains against the various segments that we operate in, economy, scale up or midscale. So we don't have those to provide today, but certainly happy to foll
Slide 23: Q&A: Seasonality and April Trends
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Patrick Pacious^ Yes. Robin, I think it's important to also remember, Q1 is one of the lowest contributors from a travel perspective for our type of travelers. So that's also playing into why we maintain our RevPAR guidance. As w
Slide 24: Q&A: Capital Intensity and International
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call As we mentioned earlier, we are at the back end of the investments that we've done for Everhome and for Cambria now that both of them have met their strategic objectives. So you'll see a meaningful step down in the capital intens
Slide 25: Q&A: Canada and Free Cash Flow
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Scott Oaksmith^ Yes. We're really pleased with the Canadian acquisition that we executed last year and really saw strong results from that -- our Canadian operations during the quarter with RevPAR up a little over 5%. Our rooms g
Slide 26: Q&A: Balance Sheet Investments and AI
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call On the balance sheet investments, a really strong quarter where net -- our outflows were down 50%, and we were actually net recyclers of capital during the quarter with about $4 million net back to Choice where we spent about $40
Slide 27: Q&A: AI Approach
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call bloom. We've taken a very direct and purposeful approach to how we're going to use AI to drive the unit economics of our hotels. To your point about the customer journey, we are definitely, as we've talked in the past, leaning in
Slide 28: Q&A: Macro Risks
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call I'm just trying to put those comments with the earlier comments that the U.S. -- that you see the U.S. inflecting. So I guess what is there in terms of macro tail risk within the domestic travel picture, if anything at all, or if
Slide 29: Q&A: Key Money
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Or is the fact that you guys are doing better than expected on gross additions just going to raise that number? Then longer term, as we look forward, should we think about a tie ratio of gross room or hotel adds to key money that
Slide 30: Q&A: AI Strategy
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Operator^ (Operator Instructions) The next question comes from the line of Meredith Jensen with HSBC. Meredith Jensen^ Just a quick follow-up on what Brandt asked around AI as I think your particular take is unique given your bac
Slide 31: Q&A: AI and Franchisee Economics
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call We do develop proprietary tools. We just see an opportunity here to really drive higher productivity out of our current workforce in a way that's going to bring some pretty, I think, significant change to our franchisees' operati
Slide 32: Q&A: Loyalty Program
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call I know you had a pretty big refresh that launched earlier in the year. And maybe if you could just speak a little bit more about the momentum you're seeing in engagement, changes in redemptions rates given you gave people, I thin
Slide 33: Closing Remarks
04 - 30 - 2026 Choice Hotels International, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call Have a great rest of your day. Operator^ Thank you, presenters. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
Choice Hotels International — Q1 2026 Earnings Presentation on 6ix