Earnings Call Transcript - WH Q4 2025

Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Please standby. Your meeting is about to begin. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Geoffrey A. Ballotti, our CEO, and Kurt Albert, our Interim CFO. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and any subsequent reports filed with the SEC. We will also be referring to a number of non-GAAP measures. Corresponding GAAP measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to GAAP metrics are provided in our earnings release and investor presentation, which are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.wyndhamhotels.com. We are providing certain measures discussing future impact on a non-GAAP basis only because without unreasonable efforts, we are unable to provide the comparable GAAP metric. In addition, last evening, we posted an investor presentation containing supplemental information on our Investor Relations website. We may continue to provide supplemental information on our website and on our social media channels in the future. Accordingly, we encourage investors to monitor our website and our social media channels in addition to our press releases, filings submitted with the SEC, and any public conference calls or webcasts. With that, I will turn the call over to Geoffrey A. Ballotti. Geoffrey?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We closed out a challenging year on a very strong note, delivering net room growth of 4% and full-year comparable adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS growth of 46%, respectively, all in line with the outlook that we shared back in October. Against this backdrop, we opened a record 72,000 rooms, the largest number of organic room additions in Wyndham's history and 13% more than last year. We also signed 870 deals, which was 18 more than 2024's all-time high, further increasing our global development pipeline by 3% to nearly 260,000 rooms and more than 2,200 hotels. We drove a 15% increase in ancillary fee streams and our highly cash generative business model produced $433 million in adjusted free cash flow, enabling us to return $393 million to our shareholders. Across the board, where we could control the outcome, our teams delivered in 2025. Our record number of new signings and openings are increasing Wyndham's long-term economics by securing franchise agreements that drive higher average royalty revenue. Our record development pipeline is now carrying an average fee per premium of 30% domestically and nearly 20% internationally compared to our existing system, which will enhance our future growth. Domestically, system growth was driven by strong conversion activity, including the Balfour Miami Beach, a luxurious Registry Collection Art Deco Hotel on Ocean Drive, and The Barley House, an upscale trademark collection boutique hotel on the marina in the heart of Fort Lauderdale, along with many high-quality new construction prototype additions like the new Wyndham Garden in Ana, Texas, the La Quinta by Wyndham in Jackson, Tennessee, and the new Microtel by Wyndham Tooele in the great state of Utah. Separately, developer excitement for our EcoSuites brand continues to build, with half a dozen Q4 openings in Round Rock and Pasadena, Texas, Peoria, Arizona, Springfield, Missouri, Conyers, Georgia, and Naples, Florida. We closed 2025 with 18 Echo Suites now operating, and with RevPAR and operating margins ramping in line with expectations. New hotels continue to break ground and development timelines are faster than ever as construction costs moderate. Following our introduction of Dazzler Select by Wyndham in the economy conversion lifestyle space back in October, we added another three highly rated Dazzler Select conversions, allowing hotel owners to preserve their property's individuality while leveraging the power of our global distribution, loyalty, technology, and marketing platforms. After a highly competitive RFP among our lodging peers, we were thrilled to be selected by the Choctaw Nation in the fourth quarter to add the spectacular AAA four diamond Choctaw Casino and Resort in Durant, Oklahoma, to our Wyndham Grand brand, along with the upscale resort additions of the Choctaw Landing in Hocha Town, the Choctaw Pecola, and the Choctaw Grant to our trademark collection brand. This affiliate relationship adds 2,000 upscale rooms, over 40 restaurants, bars, lounges, full-service pools and spas, and over 100,000 square feet of state-of-the-art conference and event space for our global sales teams to sell, all within easy reach of DFW International, a getaway that our over 120 million Wyndham reward members will want to book, earn, and redeem at, reinforcing why Wyndham Rewards continues to be the number one loyalty program in the industry. The affiliated rooms from these Choctaw resorts join us at an opportune time for our Wyndham reward members as we'll be saying goodbye in the first quarter to approximately 3,000 legacy affiliated rooms, the bulk of which were sourced from travel and leisure and related to the closure of a handful of Wyndham Vacation Resorts that they have previously reported. Along with rooms previously managed by Vacaza, which are being sold by CasaGo to its franchisees. While these terminations will not impact our ability to drive net room growth on a full-year basis, they will create headwinds in the first quarter from a timing perspective. We continue to work on adding more aspirational upscale hotels and resorts which expand opportunities for Wyndham Rewards members to earn and redeem to status match and to transfer benefits, increasing Wyndham rewards membership enrollment which grew 13% in Q4, growing the share of direct Wyndham Rewards occupancy that our franchisees enjoy, which grew to a record 54% domestically this quarter, and identifying new customer markets to drive credit card sales, blue thread marketing, and other ancillary revenue opportunities. Internationally, we increased net rooms by 9%. EMEA grew rooms by 8% with spectacular new conversions like the Wyndham Corfu, an elegant beachfront retreat on the Ionian Sea in Greece, along with several new construction additions like the Ramada Arnav Butkai in Turkey, a country in which we now have 130 direct franchise hotels open, with over 40 more in our development pipeline. Latin America and the Caribbean increased net rooms by 5% with new conversions like the oceanfront all-inclusive Casa Marina Sosua, a new trademark collection hotel in the Dominican Republic, along with new construction openings like the Wyndham Natal Petangie Beach on the sands of Petangie Beach in Brazil's idyllic Northeastern tourist destination. In Southeast Asia, the Pacific Rim, we grew net rooms by 11%, with upscale conversions like the Avolo, Wallumolu, an upscale Wyndham hotel located on the heritage-listed Finger Wharf in Downtown Sydney Harbour, along with several exceptional new construction additions like the oceanfront window, Go Sung, South Korea. In Mainland China, we again grew our direct franchising system double digits by an impressive 14%, expanding our footprint across the country with conversions like our 136th Days Inn hotel in Changsha, and so many new construction additions like our 20th Hawthorne Suites in Xi'an and our 31st Microtel by Wyndham in Anxi Jianxi along with dozens of other luxurious new openings like the Wyndham Lachan in Sichuan province. Fourth quarter global RevPAR declined 6% in constant currency with domestic RevPAR down about six points, excluding hurricane impacts in 2024. International RevPAR declined one point, while we continue to see strength in several important Midwest and industrial states for us like Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma, where we're seeing increasing infrastructure demand, which was more than offset by continued softness in our three largest states Texas, California, and Florida, which account for one quarter of our U.S. room count, which excluding hurricane impacts declined 11%. Importantly, booking windows and cancellation rates both improved versus the fourth quarter of 2024, and on a full-year basis, U.S. RevPAR declined 4%, which was in line with our expectations. In a moment, Kurt will walk you through our expectations for the full year, excluding hurricane impacts; the decline of 6% we saw in Q4 improved to down 4% in January and has further improved thus far in February. Leisure and corporate bookings are beginning to pick up, as reflected in our booking backlog. As we approach the month of March, we'll lap the beginning of when our RevPAR significantly decelerated in 2025, and when our domestic comps become meaningfully easier. Internationally in the fourth quarter, we continue to see solid growth across our EMEA region, with RevPAR up 7% driven by considerable strength in Southern Europe and across the Middle East. Our Latin America region also delivered impressive RevPAR growth of 6% and 11 sequential improvement from the third quarter, reflecting strong leisure demand and pricing power from our more upscale brands across the Caribbean. Performance in Asia continues to lag the rest of our international regions: Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim was down 2%, primarily due to weakness in Korea and China was down 10%, with continued ADR declines in their deflationary economy. We once again delivered outstanding growth in our ancillary revenues. New strategic partnerships and affiliations, new technology initiatives, and continued momentum in our co-branded credit card program fueled a 19% growth in fourth quarter ancillary fees, bringing full-year growth to 15%, slightly ahead of our expectations from the beginning of the year. After its launch in October, Wyndham Rewards Insider, our travel rewards annual subscription program, saw its month-over-month paid membership double in November and then again double in December, as our teams work to fully integrate Wyndham Rewards Insider into our booking paths and digital platforms. We also recently signed an agreement with Mastercard to create our first international co-branded credit card in Canada, which is expected to launch later this year. Like all of our U.S. offerings, we will be including both no-fee and premium card options. This is an exciting growth opportunity for us, not only designed to bring more members into the Wyndham rewards ecosystem and drive incremental ancillary revenues in Canada, but also serving as a blueprint as we plan for the expansion of our credit card platform into additional new international markets. On our third quarter call, we highlighted the success of our AI initiatives with nearly 350 agentic AI agents handling millions of guest calls and reservation requests, driving hundreds of basis points of additional direct bookings and generating incremental revenue while reducing on-property labor costs for our franchisees. With a track record of proven results, we're accelerating our agentic AI capabilities on the data foundation that set our transformation in motion. Through our partnership with Salesforce, we created a first-of-its-kind guest 360 data product, establishing a scalable AI factory that enables us to rapidly design and deliver advanced solutions that deepen engagement with both our guests and franchisees in ways we never imagined possible. We continue to work with public LLMs, including Google AI Mode and ChatGPT, to establish direct connections of our hotel data to eliminate the need for these models to scrape our sites. For example, in November, Google selected Wyndham as one of a handful of partners to take part in an agentic booking experience on AI mode in search. Soon, guests will be able to discover Wyndham properties through natural conversational interactions while our connected systems enable seamless direct bookings within AI mode. We are very excited to share that we successfully connected to Anthropic's Cloud, the family of LLMs known for its emphasis on safety and human-like reasoning with over 30 million monthly active users. It's an early glimpse of how AI-native distribution will reshape the way guests find and book our hotels, which helps us rapidly improve the guest experience and increase direct booking capture. Before I wrap up, as you saw in our release last night, we recorded non-cash charges in our fourth quarter results related to the recent insolvency filings of a large European franchisee, Rivo Hospitality Group. While our balance sheet exposure to Rivo was secured by certain collateral and guarantees, the scope of these filings has unfavorably impacted the value of our security and our expected recovery. We've engaged an experienced team of advisers to assist us during this complex process, and Kurt will walk through the impacts on our financial statements and reporting metrics in a moment. We want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to our team members around the world. Our resilience in 2025 would not have been possible without their dedication and their support. Their commitment to our economy, culture, and to delivering the very best value to owners and guests in the face of what were considerable global RevPAR challenges remains the key to our continued success as the world's largest hotel franchisor. On behalf of our entire team, I would also like to recognize Alexandra Young, who joined our Board of Directors in November. Alex is an accomplished leader who is recognized as an expert in global portfolio management and international investment. Our expertise spans multiple sectors, including hospitality and real estate. She serves on our corporate governance and audit committees, bringing valuable expertise to our board. Finally, we'd like to welcome Kurt Albert, our interim CFO, who continues to lead our global finance organization while we complete our comprehensive search for a permanent CFO we expect to conclude in the coming weeks. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Kurt. Kurt?

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. Having spent more than fifteen years with Wyndham, I have a deep affinity for this organization and have truly appreciated the opportunity to increase my engagement and conversations with the investment community since stepping into this CFO position a few months ago. That said, I'll begin my remarks today with a detailed review of our fourth quarter and full year results, followed by an update on our cash flows and balance sheet. I'll then cover our 2026 outlook. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that the comparability of our financial results continues to be impacted by the timing of our marketing fund spend. In the fourth quarter of this year, marketing fund expenses exceeded revenues by $2 million compared to revenues exceeding expenses by $5 million in the fourth quarter of last year. During the full year 2025, marketing fund expenses exceeded revenues by $3 million while in 2024, marketing fund expenses exceeded revenues by $1 million. To enhance transparency and provide a better understanding of the results of our ongoing operations, I'll be highlighting our results on a comparable basis, which neutralizes the marketing fund impact. As Jeff just mentioned, one of our large European franchisees, Revo, filed for insolvency proceedings for most of its operating entities under self-administration last month. Given collectibility concerns, we began deferring all Revo-related revenues starting in the fourth quarter. While these hotels continue to operate under our flags, they will remain in our system size RevPAR royalty rate metrics, and fees owed to us will continue to accrue. For the purposes of our 2026 outlook, we have taken the conservative steps of removing all Revo-related revenue recognition from our expected results until such time that we have greater certainty on expected outcomes and collectibility. We also recorded non-cash charges of $160 million within the operating expenses and impairment lines on our P&L, which reflects a write-down to the net realizable value of the loans outstanding, accounts receivable, and development advances with Revo, as well as the carrying value of our Vienna House intangible assets. As Jeff said, we are continuing to work closely with a strong team of local advisors to pursue all available remedies to maximize the recoverability for our shareholders, and importantly, this relationship represents a unique circumstance given Revo's concentration within our portfolio. In the fourth quarter, we generated $334 million of fee-related and other revenues and $165 million of adjusted EBITDA. Fee-related and other revenues declined 2% year over year, primarily reflecting a 5% decrease in global RevPAR, lower other franchise fees, and the deferral of fees from Revo. These headwinds were partially offset by a 19% increase in ancillary revenues and system growth of 4%. Despite a 5% decline in RevPAR, a $7 million reduction in fee-related and other revenues, and increased costs associated with insurance, litigation defense, and employee benefits, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increased by 2% on a comparable basis. We'd like to thank and recognize our teams around the world who did a fantastic job this quarter helping to drive cost containment measures combined with operational savings aided by the realization of AI investments that drove efficiencies. Adjusted diluted EPS for the quarter was $0.93, down 4% on a comparable basis, as a previously anticipated higher effective tax rate and higher interest expense was partially offset by comparable adjusted EBITDA growth and the benefits of share repurchase activity. For the full year, we generated approximately $1.43 billion of fee-related and other revenues and $718 million of adjusted EBITDA. Fee-related and other revenues increased $25 million year over year, primarily reflecting a 15% increase in ancillary revenues and higher pass-through revenues associated with our global franchisee conference in 2025, partially offset by lower royalties and franchisees and lower non-conference-related marketing, reservation, and loyalty revenue. The decline in royalties and franchise fees and non-conference-related marketing reservation and loyalty revenue primarily reflects a 3% decline in global RevPAR and the deferral of fees from Revo, partially offset by system growth of 4% and a seven basis point increase in our U.S. royalty rate. The strength and efficiency of our business model in the face of declining U.S. and global RevPAR resulted in full-year adjusted EBITDA increasing by 4% on a comparable basis. This increase primarily reflected our growth in ancillary revenues as well as cost containment measures, including one-time variable cost reductions, partially offset by lower royalties and franchise fees and increased costs associated with insurance, litigation, defense, and employee benefits. Adjusted diluted EPS increased 6% on a comparable basis to $4.58, reflecting adjusted EBITDA growth share repurchase activity, partially offset by higher interest expense. Adjusted free cash flow was $168 million in the fourth quarter and $433 million for the full year, with a conversion rate from adjusted EBITDA of 60%, slightly ahead of our expectations due to favorable working capital timing which will reverse out in Q1. Our adjusted free cash flow yield of 7.5% continues to be best in class within the lodging sector. Development advanced spend totaled $32 million in the fourth quarter, bringing our full year investment to $105 million in line with our expectations, largely consistent with our spend in full year 2024. Less than one-third of our openings in 2025 included development advances. Room openings that are entering our system at a fee per premium nearly 40% above our current system. Over the course of 2025, we added hotels in fee-per-accretive markets such as Miami Beach, Houston, Atlanta, Mexico City, and Singapore, and we expect to continue improving per room EBITDA economics, creating a compounding benefit over time. We returned $393 million to our shareholders in '25, representing 5% of our market cap, $127 million of common stock dividends and $266 million in share repurchases. Over the past five years, we have returned 37% of our market cap to our shareholders, leading all lodging C Corps in capital return. Earlier this month, as part of our continued commitment to shareholder returns, our Board of Directors authorized a 5% increase in the quarterly cash dividend, raising it to $0.43 per share, beginning with the dividend expected to be declared in 2026, reflecting the Board's ongoing confidence in the strength of our business model and our ability to consistently generate strong cash flows. As a result of the completed refinance of our revolving credit facility in the fourth quarter, we closed the year with approximately $840 million in total liquidity, and our net leverage ratio of 3.5 times remained as expected at the midpoint of our target range. Now turning to outlook for 2026. We expect full-year global net room growth of between 4% to 4.5%. From a timing standpoint, in the first quarter, given the known termination of approximately 3,000 rooms that Jeff mentioned earlier, we expect our global system to be largely flat sequentially before returning to growth in Q2. Additionally, our full-year net room growth outlook excludes any potential termination impact associated with Revo's ongoing insolvency. We are projecting global RevPAR to finish between up 0.5% to down 1.5%. Our expectations reflect several key dynamics. While U.S. RevPAR performance trends have improved thus far in 2026, given the first quarter features our most challenging comps of the year, we expect first quarter U.S. RevPAR to range from between down 3% to down 2%. As we move into the second quarter, we expect U.S. leisure demand to begin to improve, aided by events such as the FIFA World Cup and the 250th anniversary of America, as well as the potential for U.S. Government stimulus as we get closer to the midterm elections. However, and importantly, in order to achieve our full year growth, we would only need U.S. RevPAR from Q2 to Q4 to be approximately flat. Full-year international RevPAR growth is expected to remain roughly in line with 2025 performance, while the strong performance we saw in EMEA, Canada, and Latin America in 2025 grows at a bit of a slower rate in 2026. We are anticipating the potential for offsetting benefits from an improvement across Asia Pacific as China's recovery continues. Moving on to the financials. Fee-related and other revenues are expected to be $1.46 billion to $1.49 billion, which includes low to mid-teens year-over-year growth in our ancillary revenues. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $730 million and $745 million, growing year-over-year by 2% to 4%. Excluding the previously noted return of approximately $15 million of one-time variable cost savings, and the impact of the deferral of approximately $12 million of royalties related to Revo, our adjusted EBITDA would otherwise be expected to grow between 5% to 7%. While we expect our marketing funds to break even on a full-year basis, we will continue to see timing differences in our quarterly results. We expect to overspend the funds by approximately $15 million to $20 million in the first quarter and then underspend in each of the remaining quarters of the year. Additionally, including the impact of our marketing fund spend, we would expect to generate approximately 20% of our full-year adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter, consistent with the Q1 percentage of our full-year 2025 adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted net income is projected to be $354 million to $368 million, and adjusted diluted EPS is projected at $4.62 to $4.80 based on a diluted share count of 76,700,000, which as usual assumes no share repurchase activity or incremental interest expense associated with any potential borrowing activity. Free cash flow conversion before development advances is expected to range from 55% to 60%. In addition to the cash we generate from operations, we will also continue to benefit from a strong balance sheet. Combining our excess free cash flow and incremental capacity while maintaining leverage at 3.5 times, based on our projected EBITDA growth, we would anticipate having up to $400 million of available capital in 2026 to either invest in the business or return to shareholders. We expect approximately $110 million of this available capital will be deployed as development advance spend, roughly consistent with 2025. In closing, despite the challenges we face in 2025, our results continue to reflect the highly cash generative nature of our business and a business model that has a proven ability to generate organic adjusted EBITDA and EPS growth amid macro uncertainty. We are entering 2026 with a strong balance sheet, an efficient operating cost structure, prolific ancillary revenue growth, and the potential for significant demand tailwinds. We will continue to invest in high-return growth opportunities and digital technology to provide incremental profitability for our owners while returning excess capital to shareholders in a consistent and sustainable manner. We are enthusiastic about building on our successes and capturing the opportunities that lie ahead in 2026. With that, Jeff and I will be happy to take your questions. Operator?

Operator, Operator

Thank you very much, Mr. Albert. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. We will go first this morning to Brandt Antoine Montour of Barclays.

Brandt Antoine Montour, Analyst

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. So Jeff, I was hoping you could put a finer point on what you're seeing year-to-date in terms of RevPAR you're actually seeing occupancy build sequentially and in which segments and what type of demand segments that you're actually seeing that build in? And then sort of last follow-up to that same question would be how much of or are you putting any of these green shoots that you're seeing into your flat Q2 through Q4 average implied RevPAR growth in your guidance?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Good morning, Brent. I'll let Kurt talk about the guidance, but I'll talk first about just how encouraged we are year-to-date. With a significant improvement in January. To your question, it is the first real sign of green shoots that we've seen in a while. Overall, January U.S. RevPAR was down 4% normalized, and all of that RevPAR improvement was demand-driven, and it's just great to see. We saw very positive January trends as well in the three states that have dragged us down. We've been talking about over the last couple of calls. Texas improved by 600 basis points year-over-year in the quarter, from down five to plus one in January, which is great to see. Florida improved 400 basis points from Q4 to what we saw in January. In California, we're seeing really no signs of any deterioration in the RevPAR; we had been all along last year. So we're seeing continued strength, as we talked about in the Midwest. Wisconsin is up 7%, Minnesota is up, and Oklahoma and Michigan are all up mid to low single digits. February continues to improve in line with what we saw in January, just great news. As you've all seen in the STR and the economy set, which began improving as we all know in the late summer, it's continuing to improve. If you look at the last four weeks versus the last eight weeks, the last four weeks are 200 basis points better than the last eight weeks. And again, our normalized U.S. occupancy has only continued to improve. October was down 4%, November was down 3%, December down 2%, January only down 1%. Going back to 2019, one of the things I think a lot of folks miss is occupancy has recovered more so in economy and mid-scale than it has in any other segment. If we look at upper upscale and luxury occupancy, which were both down 800 basis points to 2019 for the fourth quarter, Economy and midscale performed 200 and almost 500 basis points better, respectively. It's starting to feel like demand is beginning to really improve, that those green shoots are beginning to come, with the longer-term opportunity for our franchisees and small business owners being rate. We know upscale hotels have been able to price much more aggressively than our chain scales, where the guest is obviously more price-sensitive.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Brent, I think when we think about some of the green shoots that we touched on in the prepared remarks, we have not necessarily tried to build an individual level of opportunity directly into our guidance. Really, two reasons. One, in isolation, some of these might end up being smaller and/or harder to quantify. And two, really the ultimate impact to the year will be determined by when we do start to see some of these benefits come to fruition. The way we're thinking about it is, as the year progresses and we see how these tailwinds materialize, they could end up being how we get towards the higher end or maybe even above where our guidance is right now.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go next now to David Brian Katz with Jefferies.

David Brian Katz, Analyst

Good morning, everybody. So Jeff, I could probably venture an educated guess about your least favorite part of the whole report, but you talked in your opening comments about a lot of different things that are positive. Do you have sort of one aspect of this whole earnings report that you would pull out as your favorite?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

David, that one thing would be development. If we look at net room growth acceleration along with the acceleration in our executions and the growth of our pipeline, that would be the one thing that we're most excited about. I mean, to see the accelerated net room growth in these higher fee-per segments continue as we did, a record 72,000 organic rooms, almost 600 hotels. It was up 13% to what was last year our record. It just continued to build throughout the year: 4,000 net rooms added in Q1, 7,000 in Q2, 9,000 in Q3, and nearly 14,000 in Q4.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

That was the one thing that I think really stands out for all of our teams. We are encouraged by both new construction and conversion. I know there's been a lot of talk across the industry that new construction pipelines are pressured. We're not seeing it. We're seeing growth in our new construction executions, which were up 15% from the prior year. New construction openings domestically, our new construction openings increased 50% year-over-year, and globally they increased 7%. Over 30% of our openings this year were new construction. Conversion is still solid; it was up 16% with good growth across the board. Our prototype brands like Hawthorne Suites, Garden, and La Quinta all saw solid growth both on the conversion and the new construction side. Our economy brands, Days Inn, Super 8, and Travelodge, all saw double-digit growth in economy openings. So I think the one thing we're really excited about, our franchise sales team have delivered a pipeline for us looking forward that is larger and stronger than ever: 870 deals signed; that was a record for the full year, up 18% in really high fee-per regions like across Latin America and Europe, the Middle East, and Eurasia. It was really encouraging for us to see, and that would be my highlight.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go next now to Dany Asad with Bank of America.

Dany Asad, Analyst

Good morning, Jeff and Kurt. Just a demand question for you. So if we look at the 20% of bookings that are infrastructure-related, how does the RevPAR from that demand segment compare to that of the leisure traveler? And should we expect the mix of the 20% infrastructure versus the 70% leisure? Should we expect that mix to change over time as you move into higher fee-per rooms?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Thanks, Danny. We will expect it to increase, excluding the impact of the federal government, which was a considerable drag for us. Infrastructure performed a bit below leisure; think leisure was down something like six, while infrastructure was probably down about eight. Infrastructure, we believe, will continue to perform better than it did in 2025. We still view that $1 trillion infrastructure spend as a real multi-year tailwind for us, and additionally, it'll get back to driving that 150 basis points of additional RevPAR growth that it did for us in '24. Pre-Doge and pre-government shutdown, which slowed us down this year. We are also very encouraged about hotels near so many private investment projects, especially data centers and semiconductor fabs, which, as we talked about, are expected to outperform from a RevPAR and RPI standpoint.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Excluding the government and fed rooms, which were obviously down, as I mentioned, infrastructure demand kept pace. It helped drive, we believe, our weak economy occupancy improvement that we saw each month of Q4. Economy occupancy, which was down 7% in October, 5% in November, and 2.5% in December. That improvement just demonstrated a continued resilience and gradual pickup of our infrastructure demand. Our GSO teams did a fantastic job; consumed revenue for the full year grew two to twenty basis points with so much of that growth being infrastructure-related. Our contracted room nights right now are up about twice what our consumed infrastructure room nights are; and our GSO year-to-date infrastructure booked and consumed is pacing well ahead, more so than it fell off about two forty basis points ahead of the same time last year. So we think it will continue to pick up.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We go next now to Charles Patrick Scholes of Truist Securities.

Charles Patrick Scholes, Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. A question, then a follow-up question. The first one, sorry if I missed it. Did you quantify what the RevPAR impact was in the fourth quarter from the government shutdown? Or another way of saying it, how much of easy comp do you have from that in the upcoming April? Thank you.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Patrick, in the fourth quarter of this year, the government shutdown was not a significant headwind, but it was about 50 basis points, maybe a little bit less than that, that we'll have coming up until that next fourth quarter.

Michael Joseph Bellisario, Analyst

Okay, thank you. So a little bit of a tailwind there from that coming up. Can then, not to dwell on the negative, can you talk a little bit more about this bankruptcy and was this with Revo? Exactly, you know, what happened there? And was this the same $44 million investment that you had made in this in 2022? Just to make sure I'm understanding what the original participation in that was. Thank you.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Yep. To your last question first, yes, it was tied to the loan investments we made earlier this year. As we noted in our prepared remarks, we learned about the insolvency during the preparation of our year-end financial statements in January. This drove the timing of recording the charges that we did in our fourth quarter results. Since this filing, we've been working closely with our team of advisers to determine next steps in this process and ultimately understand what our plan looks like moving forward. Right now, it's really too early to speculate on what potential outcomes could look like. It's very early in the proceedings, and we believe, while we have both said, they want to emerge from insolvency this year if possible, we also believe these proceedings could last many months potentially.

Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you. We'll go next now to Daniel Brian Politzer with JPMorgan.

Daniel Brian Politzer, Analyst

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to follow up on the Revo topic. You had the Super Eight MFA earlier this year. Are there other franchisees or agreements that we should be kind of thinking about, or that are possibly in danger zone? Has there been any change to your underwriting standards? Have you seen these higher fee-per deals? And then as we think about just kind of in terms of the overall program, what's the collection rate or the rate of this kind of stuff happening so we can gain a little bit more comfort with it? Thanks.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Good morning, Dan. I think what we touched on briefly in our prepared remarks is this circumstance was certainly an outlier on a number of levels. Given the size, the history of the relationship that we had with the partner, and then ultimately, the level of capital deployed. The way we think about it, when we look at our balance sheet right now and excluding anything that was related to REVO, there's only about $20 million of total additional loan expenses across all of our other franchisees that we have around the world. Similarly, when we look at our development advances that are outstanding, no more franchise has more than about five percent of that balance. So this was really the exception. Ultimately, it was a situation that we feel like was also very different than the Super Eight situation earlier this year, which was a legacy relationship. So we do view it as an outlier. In terms of your second part of your question about how we're thinking about it moving forward, deployment of capital to support our business growth will remain and has always been our top priority. So short answer, we will absolutely continue to invest in the growth of our business, and we believe we have ample capacity to do that. Frankly, it does not change our position there.

Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

And what?

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Like we do with all of our deals that have capital tied to them, we always will look back and evaluate anything that we can do moving forward to make sure that we put ourselves in the best position to succeed.

Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go next now to Stephen White Grambling of Morgan Stanley.

Stephen White Grambling, Analyst

In the presentation, highlighted a number of initiatives with AI partners. I was hoping you could just share maybe how to think about any costs or potential benefits from some of these initiatives. I know it's very early, but is this something that could eventually end up with new fee streams? And what are some of the initial tests revealed in terms of the benefits to the system, and what KPIs we should be tracking to evaluate the success of some of these?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Thanks, Steven. Yeah, Matt, Scott Strickland, and Mike Mahar, our chief technology officer, put in three great new slides. I'll take the first part of your question on costs. There are nominal costs of less than $100,000 to connect our MCPs to the LLMs. There are no transaction costs, however. In Claude today, the guest receives a link to complete the transaction on our brand.com site. ChatGPT works the same way. Looking forward, you'll see ads that seek to monetize some of that. I think Claude said they're not doing it; that they're not ever gonna do it, but we'll see. In terms of how we think about the benefits and what it's doing for our franchisees, it is a massive opportunity for us on so many different levels. The exciting thing for us is we're no longer piloting these; we're deploying them. On the second quarter call, we talked about Wyndham Connect, which is a trained large language model partnered with Canary Technologies. There is a quote in there, on slide five, from Canary's CEO. This is allowing our over 5,000 of our hotels today to talk directly to all of their guests via AI, and it's taking costs for our franchisees and small business owners out of their front offices. It's allowing them to make extra money by selling early check-ins, late checkouts, upgrades, and amenities. It's providing them with an economic platform free of charge that they did not have before to monetize that platform, small and large. We have a very engaged Howard Johnson's hotel outside of the main gates of Anaheim that's making over $10,000 a month in incremental fees that are going to that hotel's bottom line—that's $120,000 a year. A typical select-service economy hotel may generate a quarter of $1 million, so it's a big deal. The Wyndham Connect Plus that we outlined in also in the deck is leveraging Salesforce and Canary with 350 AI agents. We talked about this on our last call. That's handling hundreds of thousands of guest calls and handling all the requests, again saving franchisee labor costs. But most importantly to your question, it's driving that direct contribution over 300 basis points direct contribution to franchisees who are using it. In this call and again in the IP, laid out where we are with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, full AI and with Claude; right now, it's live, click to book through to windham.com. We're launching Wyndham apps on all of the emerging LLMs via either our MCPs or our APIs directly, and that will continue to add new capabilities to optimize most importantly how our brand.com sites appear in those searches to drive more direct bookings.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go next now to Michael Joseph Bellisario with Baird.

Michael Joseph Bellisario, Analyst

Just one question on net rooms growth. Are you guys doing more affiliate deals like Choctaw? Then kind of help us understand what's the opportunity set there? I understand these are higher fee programs, but you're only getting paid on the direct contribution, if that's correct. Any numbers on what percentage of your rooms growth, gross openings in '25 or '26, are coming from these higher fee-per affiliate deals, but where you're only getting, say, 20% of the bookings?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Yeah, Mike, we report on affiliate annually and their properties, as we've talked about under agreement, either our former Wyndham Worldwide parent T and L, as we talked about, or new third-party partners like our recent affiliation with Choctaw, which was a very competitive process and we were thrilled to be selected. In terms of what percentage, to your question, of affiliate ads in 2025, I think it will be consistent with what we've been reporting for the last several years. In the first part of your question, we will always look to add more aspirational hotels and resorts where they make sense, as Choctaw does, where they provide our guests access to something unique that we don't have upscale vacation experiences. Importantly, where our Wyndham reward members often most want to redeem and vacation. I'd also add they're very accretive and very helpful in driving our credit card and our ancillary fee programs.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go next now to Alex Brignall with UBS.

Alex Brignall, Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Jeff, or whoever wants to take this, how do you envision the ranking system within AI, how do you envision the ranking system working as consumers search for hotels? To the extent you have a view, do you think this will be a traditional kind of CPC auction model? Or do you have a sense that it will be determined purely on relevancy in the search? Obviously, it's early, but what would be your opinion on how that plays out? And kind of related, you've talked about the MCP server. Maybe you could talk about how you're using this to differentiate the attributes associated with your assets to make them more relevant? Am I thinking about that in the right way?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Yeah. I think you are. One of the things that our investment in our tech foundation allowed us to do is work with best-in-class partners like AWS and Oracle and take a very data-driven approach with a really mature and established Salesforce Data 360 product. We've been able to personalize agentic guest 360 experiences all in one place. It centralized our reservations, our loyalty, and our CRM data. The way we're thinking about it is in terms of how that is allowing our guests, in real-time, to answer questions, book direct, check-in, and check-out. To your point, it's early days. But in terms of how we're communicating with our guests and delivering for them, answering these voice calls and messages, and most of that volume through voice right now, through the AI completing the booking, is driving significant cost reductions for our call centers and freeing up resources to redeploy in the marketing fund and send the guests all our availability, all our rates, all our inventory that they were already getting by scraping our brand.com sites. By connecting direct, we ensure that the data is the most accurate, the most current it could be, that our rates are always in parity for a guest who's shopping. Our focus is really on driving more direct bookings, and it's early days to your point, and that's what we're seeing.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We go next now to Isaac Arthur Sellhausen with Oppenheimer.

Isaac Arthur Sellhausen, Analyst

Hey, good morning. This is Isaac Salazen on for Ian. Could you touch on the drivers of the ancillary fee growth in 2025? And then maybe some of the factors that enable you to grow in the low to mid-teens this year?

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Sure. Isaac, I think our biggest driver, like we've touched on in a number of our previous calls, will continue to be our U.S. co-brand card. We had the benefit in 2025 of renewing that partnership with Barclays on a long-term deal, and that provided some significant tailwinds, not just for 2025, but also in the early part of 2026. Along with that, it has allowed us and our teams over at Barclays to work specifically on freshening up the program and the suite of products and the value proposition on those cards. We'll see that continue to be a big opportunity as we get into the second half of this year and then beyond. But that's not our only lever, of course. Our teams are working hard; we've announced in the last twelve months a debit product in the U.S., and we just announced this morning our co-brand card that will be coming later this year in Canada. We're not going to stop there. We are evaluating other opportunities around the world, and we will update you when those are available. The same holds true with our different partnerships and affiliate relationships. We do believe Wyndham Insider will be a unique game changer for us as we think about an opportunity to really engage with our members in a way that we have not yet been able to.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next now to Meredith Prichard Jensen with HSBC.

Meredith Prichard Jensen, Analyst

Good morning, thanks. Kurt, I was hoping you could speak a little bit more about China and maybe unpacking a little bit what you saw at the end of the year. Additionally, how the demand trends figure into the guidance that you gave, and maybe add on a bit about development there and chain scale strategy. I know you mentioned the Baymont launch, so that would be great. Thank you.

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

I'll start and then I'll let Kurt touch on guidance. Our brands in China were, much like here in the U.S., the first to recover coming out of the lockdown. Looking at our overall RevPAR today versus where it was back in '19, we are in line with Smith Travel, and we are actually ahead of the industry by about 400 basis points. Our China direct RevPAR, which was down 19% still to 2019, versus STR down 23% in the quarter overall. China ADR, which was good to see, improved by 100 basis points from down eight to down six. We all know it is a deflationary economy, which has seen the longest deflation streak since the 1960s and is likely to soon turn. There is just a tremendous occupancy opportunity and tailwind at only 83% of 2019 levels. We think that has the opportunity to come back as ADR is already coming back for us and for our hotels over there after having been the first to recover. From a development standpoint, our room growth in China was spectacular. The deals that we are signing now have royalty rates approaching 4%, and an overall royalty rate approaching our international royalty rate, which is great to see. The bottom line for us is that every China room we add adds incremental revenue and an annuity-like stream to our business. We grew rooms 10% overall and delivered a 14% net room growth in the direct RevPAR accretive rooms. We executed 49 new deals in Q4, many of which were baymounts to your point, and it brought the year to 182 signings, which was up 10%. We're feeling really good about our long-term prospects in China as the country recovers. We do want to add new brands like Baymont, along with Hawthorne Suites and La Quinta, to capture those guests who are trading up and want a reliable international name at a domestic price point.

Kurt Albert, Interim CFO

Yes, Meredith. I think the way we're thinking about China is we know that 2025 was a tougher year for our brands in the market. But overall, when you look at how we are stacked up with the industry compared to 2019, we're basically in about the same place. Moving forward, we're not expecting to see the same type of year-over-year declines in the market. The industry is projected to be about flat for 2026, and since that's where our brands are right on top of where the industry is, that's one of what's driving our underlying assumptions is a performance much closer to flat in '26, and that will be a significant improvement from what we saw in 2025.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We go next now to Lizzie Dove with Goldman Sachs.

Lizzie Dove, Analyst

Good morning, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to go back to U.S. Rooms growth, if possible. Obviously, some moving pieces in Q1 that you called out. But I'm curious how to think about U.S. Rooms growth just for the rest of the year and even just longer term. It feels like some of the operators are going into more of these conversion-friendly type brands in that kind of premium economy segment, which might overlap with you. But then you also have nice momentum happening right now at mid-scale and above. So I'm just curious how to think about those puts and takes long term.

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Yeah, I mean, we're encouraged, obviously, by the pipeline, Lizzie, that U.S. continues to pick up. We're really encouraged with the conversions, which were just so solid. We opened 10,000 economy rooms domestically this year in 2025 versus 5,000 in 2024. 2,000 of those were echo suites but that was a 90% growth in economy opens, which drove a 4% U.S. gross add to our economy system; we haven't seen that in a while with the best-in-class economy retention rate of over 94%. You couple that domestically with how we're growing at over 2% net room growth in the domestic mid-scale brands you just mentioned. 2025 was the most openings in nine years. Conversions are picking up, and the pipeline continues to grow. We're feeling really good about the U.S.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And we'll take our final question today from Trey Bowers with Wells Fargo.

Trey Bowers, Analyst

Hi, guys. I guess just building on that, it was noticeable that economy rooms had the lowest declines I think we've seen in many years, but mid-scale rooms slowed a little bit. Just on that mid-scale and above, could you just dig in on some of the brands that are getting you guys excited and feel like they could further accelerate that domestic pace? Additionally, should we expect to see a similar level of domestic net unit growth this year to last year, or should we model for some level of acceleration?

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Yeah, I think similar is fair, Trey. In terms of the brands, you know, I just mentioned Days, Super, Travelodge showing double-digit growth. Our mid-scale brands were our prototype brands. On both the new construction and the conversion side, we domestically signed 30 new construction deals. David Wilner and his team just did a great job for our La Quinta new construction, Hawthorne Suites new construction. Obviously, extended stay is really hot right now. Our Microtel by Wyndham is doing really well. On the new construction side, the number of projects, the percentage of projects in the ground increased about 300 basis points. We have a great new leader, Keith Harris, of our architecture design and construction team, and we're really excited about what we're doing on the new construction side. Extended stay is obviously hot for us across all scales. We've a great economy extended stay brand, Echo Suites, which we talked about in our script. Mid-scale with Hawthorne Suites, and an upscale with WaterWalk. All three of those are exciting and doing well. I think it's great to see the acceleration and looking for that to continue.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. That will conclude our question and answer session this morning. Mr. Ballotti, back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

Geoffrey A. Ballotti, CEO

Well, thanks as always, Bo, and thanks everyone for your questions and your interest in Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. We look forward to talking to and seeing many of you in the months ahead at many of the upcoming investor conferences that we'll be attending. In the meantime, have a great weekend ahead, everybody, and thanks again for joining us.

Operator, Operator

Thank you, Mr. Ballotti, and thank you, Mr. Albert. Again, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc. fourth quarter full year 2025 earnings conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day.

Matt Capuzzi, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Goodbye.