Marriott CEO calls Q3 ‘solid’

Anthony Capuano, President and CEO, said, “Marriott (MAR) had another solid quarter, highlighted by strong net rooms and fee growth, robust development activity and a 3 percent increase in global RevPAR. Third quarter international RevPAR rose 5.4 percent, led by meaningful gains in APEC and EMEA with resilient domestic and cross-border demand, as well as solid ADR growth. RevPAR in the U.S. & Canada increased more than 2 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, with ADR up 2.3 percent. Group remained the standout customer segment, with global group RevPAR rising 10 percent in the quarter and on pace to rise 8 percent for full year 2024. RevPAR for the business transient segment continued to grow nicely in the quarter, while leisure transient RevPAR was flat year over year, but still well ahead of pre-pandemic levels. Given the breadth and depth of our portfolio and the meaningful benefits we deliver to owners and franchisees, demand for our brands remains strong. Through the first three quarters of 2024, we signed over 95,000 organic rooms, more than half of which are outside the U.S. & Canada. More than 40 percent of signed rooms are conversions, where we continue to have a lot of momentum, particularly with multi-unit opportunities. Net rooms grew nearly 6 percent over the last four quarters, and our development pipeline reached a record 585,000 rooms at the end of September. Our teams remain keenly focused on expanding our industry leading global portfolio, and we now expect full year 2024 net rooms growth to be around 6.5 percent. Our business momentum is excellent, and we continue to evolve our business to support our numerous global growth opportunities. To that end, we have undertaken a comprehensive initiative to enhance our effectiveness and efficiency across the company. At this point in the process, we expect this initiative to yield $80 million to $90 million of annual general and administrative cost reductions beginning in 2025. In addition, we expect this work to deliver cost savings to our owners and franchisees. With our asset light business model generating meaningful cash and our solid financial performance, we returned $3.7 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends in the first nine months of the year, and now expect to return approximately $4.4 billion for the full year 2024.”