Earnings call transcript: InterContinental Hotels Q3 2025 sees steady growth

InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (ADR) reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, showing steady performance with an EPS of $1.48, in line with forecasts. Revenue reached 1.41 billion dollars. Despite meeting expectations, the stock saw a slight pre-market decline of 0.51%, with shares trading at $124.39. The company’s strong performance in the EMEAA region and robust room growth were notable highlights.

Key Takeaways

• InterContinental’s global RevPAR grew 0.1% in Q3, contributing to a 1.4% year-to-date increase.
• The company opened 14,500 rooms across 99 hotels globally, marking a 17% year-on-year increase.
• A new collection brand is set to launch, targeting the upscale to upper-upscale segment.
• The EMEAA region showed strong performance with a 2.8% RevPAR growth.
• The company completed 78% of its $900 million share buyback program.

Company Performance

InterContinental Hotels Group demonstrated resilience in Q3 2025, with global RevPAR showing modest growth. The company capitalized on its strategic initiatives and strong brand portfolio, particularly in the EMEAA region, which offset slower trading conditions in the U.S. market. The opening of new hotels and a robust pipeline contributed to its growth trajectory, positioning the company well against competitors in the hospitality sector.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 1.41 billion dollars
• Earnings per share: $1.48, meeting forecasts
• Global RevPAR: 0.1% growth in Q3, 1.4% year-to-date
• Rooms revenue: Up 4% globally on a comparable hotel basis

Earnings vs. Forecast

InterContinental reported an EPS of $1.48, aligning with market expectations and showing no surprise deviation. This performance is consistent with historical trends, reflecting stable financial management despite challenging market conditions.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, InterContinental’s stock experienced a slight pre-market decrease of 0.51%, trading at $124.39. The stock’s movement reflects investor caution amidst mixed market conditions, with the price still within its 52-week range of $94.78 to $137.25.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, InterContinental remains optimistic about its growth prospects. The company is comfortable with the consensus system growth of 4.3% for the next year and anticipates continued improvement in China. The upcoming launch of a new collection brand and strategic focus on new build signings are expected to drive future growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Eli Malouf highlighted the company’s global RevPAR increase and strategic focus on profitable territories. CFO Michael Glover expressed confidence in meeting full-year profit and earnings expectations, underscoring the company’s strong financial position.

Risks and Challenges

• Slower trading conditions in the U.S. market could impact future growth.
• The decline in government travel poses a challenge for recovery in certain regions.
• Economic uncertainties in major markets may affect consumer spending and travel demand.
• Competitive pressures from other hospitality brands require continued innovation and differentiation.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the new collection brand launch and its potential impact on the company’s portfolio. Discussions also focused on the U.S. market challenges and the outlook for China’s recovery, providing valuable insights into InterContinental’s strategic priorities and market positioning.

Full transcript - InterContinental Hotels Group PLC ADR (IHG) Q3 2025:

Operator: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s IHG Third Quarter Trading Update Call. My name is Seb, and I’ll be the operator for your call today. I will now hand the call over to Stuart Ford to begin the call. Please go ahead.

Stuart Ford, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations, IHG: Thanks, Seb. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to IHG’s hotel and results conference call covering the twenty twenty five third quarter trading update. I’m Stuart Ford, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations at IHG, and I’m joined this morning by Eli Malouf, our Chief Executive Officer and Michael Glover, our Chief Financial Officer. Just to remind listeners on the call that in discussions today, the company may make certain forward looking statements as defined under U. S.

Law. Please refer to this morning’s announcement and the company’s SEC filings for factors that could lead actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by any such forward looking statements. For those analysts or institutional investors who are listening via our website, may I remind you that in order to ask questions, you will need to dial in using the details on Page three of this morning’s RNS release. The release, together with the usual supplementary data pack for the third quarter, can be downloaded from the Results and Presentations section under the Investors tab on ihgplc.com. Now over to Michael.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: Thanks, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. I will start today by providing an update on trading and development activity as well as covering off some other financial updates. I will then hand over to Eli, who will give an overview of our new collection brand launch and his summary. We will then open up the call for Q and A. Global RevPAR grew 0.1% in Q3.

As anticipated, this was similar to the performance seen in Q2 and was driven by strong trading in EMEAA along with further improvement in Greater China. Demand remained robust with occupancy up 0.4 percentage points while rate eased by 0.4%. For the year to date, global RevPAR grew 1.4%. In The Americas, RevPAR for the region as a whole was down 0.9% in the quarter, with The U. S.

1.6% lower given the continuation of some slower trading conditions for the industry. This included government travel continuing to be around 20% lower than the prior year, lower international inbound travel and there was also some small impact at the September from the timing of Jewish holidays. Whilst we’ve seen some softer demand in The U. S. For a couple of quarters now, we remain confident for the return to growth in due course when economic uncertainty further subsides and the travel industry’s fundamental tailwinds prevail.

It is encouraging to see the ongoing stability to The U. S. Jobs market and the expectations for substantial infrastructure investment and continued economic growth. In EMEAA, we saw another strong quarter with RevPAR up 2.8% taking year to date growth to 3.8% overall. Occupancy in the quarter was up 1.6 percentage points to 75.3% and rate was up 0.6%.

By major geographic markets within the region, RevPAR range from percent growth in Continental Europe, where France and Germany in particular had tough comparatives. But this was offset by leisure driven growth elsewhere, particularly in Southern Europe. There was growth of 2.8% in The UK and 3.3% in East Asia and Pacific. And there was a very strong 9.5% growth in The Middle East, driven by The UAE supported by favorable events calendar and infrastructure projects. In Greater China, RevPAR was 1.8% lower in Q3, a further sequential improvement on the 3% decline in Q2 and the 4.8% reduction in full year 2024.

Occupancy was up 0.6 percentage points to 64.40.7%. There was strong growth in Hong Kong, while on the Mainland Tier 1 cities also outperformed down only 1.2 compared to Tiers two to four, which were down 3.9% with further impact from increased international outbound leisure trips. We continue to remain encouraged by the breadth and strength of China’s economic growth and the attractive long term secular growth drivers such as the increasing scale of the middle class and how that triggers more demand to travel and experience. In terms of the overall demand drivers on a global basis, rooms revenue on a comparable hotel basis for business days was up 4% globally, while leisure and groups were down by two percent and four percent respectively. As a reminder, all three drivers saw growth on a global basis in the first half of the year, while the headwinds seen by leisure and groups in the third quarter were predominantly due to the trading conditions and the year over year comps in The U.

S. Moving now to system growth. We opened 14,500 rooms across 99 hotels globally in the quarter, up 17% year on year system excluding the NoBone conversions. This produced 7.2% gross growth year on year and 5.2% net growth when excluding the Venetian removal. After the record levels of openings seen across the business in the first half, the strong pace has continued.

The 46,000 rooms added year to date represents our strongest ever performance through the first three quarters. Our signings performance has been just as strong with nearly 23,000 rooms added to pipeline in the quarter, an increase of 18% on the same period last year. Excluding last year’s NOVEM signings, both our EMEAA and Greater China regions are tracking at record pace through the first three quarters of the year. And The Americas also saw strong signings growth in the quarter. Roughly half of all our signings globally were quicker to market conversions, reflecting the continued breadth and attractiveness of our brands and the benefits to owners of joining ICEG’s enterprise.

Looking now at each region in more detail, The Americas gross system growth was 3.6% year on year with a further 2,700 rooms opened in Q3. Net system growth was 1.5% year on year adjusting for the impact of removing the 7,000 Venetian resort rooms. 7,600 rooms were signed to the Americas pipeline in the quarter, an increase of 14% on last year. These included 33 hotels signed across the Holiday Inn brand family, 16 across our extended stay brand and eight Voco conversions. Garner, our midscale conversion brand also saw good progress in the quarter with another nine signings.

And the brand now has 25 open and 49 in the region. Conversions represented over half of all rooms opened and signed in the quarter. In the EMEAA region, system growth was 10.4% year on year with 4,200 rooms opened in the quarter, an increase of 25% versus the same period last year when excluding the Novan portfolio. Net system growth was 9.1% year on year and 5.2% year to date, which puts 2025 on track for record levels of system growth in the region. 7,100 rooms were added to the EMEAA pipeline in the quarter, which was growth of 22% on last year.

There were 12 hotels signed across luxury and lifestyle brands, including two incredible properties for Regent, nine Crown Plaza and eight Holiday Inn signings as well as five further Gardner properties develops across the region. Conversions represented 60% of all room openings and approaching 40% of room signings in the quarter. Our Greater China region remained on track for a second consecutive year of record development performance. 7,600 rooms opened in the quarter drove gross system growth to 12.8% year on year. These openings were up nearly 40% versus last year and have contributed to year on year net system growth of 9.8%.

Highlights include the opening of the Atwell Suites Shanghai Wuning, marking the debut of this brand in the region as well as the Kimpton Sim Sha Tsui, which represents the first for the brand in Hong Kong and is a truly incredible location steps from Victoria Harbour. Signings of 7,900 rooms in the quarter were up nearly 20% on last year. These included 17 Holiday Inn Express and and 16 Holiday Inn properties along with six vocals and three luxury and lifestyle signings, further demonstrating our strength across change scales in the regions. Conversions represented around 40 of all rooms opened and signed in the quarter. Moving next to update you on the share buyback.

We are currently 78% of the way through this year’s $900,000,000 program. To date, this has reduced our share count by a further 3.9. Today’s statement also notes for you that we completed another bond issuance in the quarter. We have a total of $4,100,000,000 of bonds outstanding with very evenly spread maturities and a blended borrowing cost of around 4.3%. The view of leverage at the 2025 remains around the middle of our target range of 2.5 to three times net debt to EBITDA.

One thing that is new news in today’s statement at the top of Page three is that IHG intends to change the currency of which our ordinary shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange from British pounds to U. S. Dollars, with the change planned from the January 2026. This change has recently became possible, while maintaining FTSE index inclusion following updates to the index rules administered by the FTSE Russell Group. IceG has reported its financial results in U.

S. Dollars for the past seventeen years. Changing our share price currency to match our reporting currency will help reduce the translational impact of exchange rate fluctuations on the share price, therefore better aligning the share price to financial performance and simplifying appraisal of IHG. The change will not impact IHG’s lending listing in any other way and the change will have no impact on IHG’s ADR listing in New York. The change is simply to the currency of our share price and should not be perceived as a precursor to any other changes.

To wrap up, touching briefly on our outlook, as we’ve said in today’s statement, we remain on track to meet current full year profit and earnings expectations. We published details of consensus on our website based on the Visible Alpha data service. This currently sees consensus average for operating profit from reportable segments as $1,259,000,000 The profit consensus implies growth of 12% on twenty twenty four’s results and the adjusted earnings per share consensus, which is $4.99 implies growth of 15%. This would result in another year of strong delivery on our growth outlook. And with that, I’ll hand over to Eli.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Thank you, Michael. So hopefully you’ve got a flavor of our third quarter performance. Trading was as anticipated similar to Q2 with another strong performance in EMEAA, further improvement in Greater China and a continuation of some slower trading conditions in The U. S. But bringing those together you see the power of our globally diverse footprint.

And beyond the short term, we remain really confident in the long term demand drivers. The quarter was another strong one for our development activity with 2025 set to be one of our biggest years ever for both openings and signings. So the growing demand from owners for our portfolio of world class brands and for accessing all the other benefits of our enterprise platform very much continues. As Michael mentioned at the start of his remarks, we’re excited to announce the upcoming launch of a new collection brand in the coming months. To meet growing guest and owner demand, our teams have been hard at work for some time now to create this new collection brand within the large and fast growing premium segment and position an upscale to upper upscale.

It will initially focus on EMEAA region where there is significant proportion of high quality hotels with their own unique identity. And we’re adding a collection brand will further expand our offer for guests. And it will allow even more owners to benefit from our strong enterprise platform. The new brand will complement our versatile premium conversion brand Voco, which has already reached two twenty five open and pipeline hotels across more than 30 countries since its launch in 2018. And we’ll look to replicate the success of Vignette Collection, which is positioned higher in the luxury and lifestyle category and which is already tracking ahead of its goal to reach 100 hotels in a decade, currently with 27 open and a further 41 pipeline properties.

The Voco and Vignette brands also initially launched in the EMEA region. We look forward to telling you more about this exciting new offering in the coming months. In the meantime, for those of you who want to learn more about our brands, I’d encourage you to look at the latest episode of iQIYI Checks In On, which our Investor Relations team have released today on the corporate website. This tenth episode is an opportunity to learn more about iQIYI’s Design and Innovation Center in Atlanta, where we lay out the latest room formats for the premium, essentials and suites brands and we have an equivalent center in Shanghai. The mini teach and walks you through the latest format evolutions and design innovations for nine of our brands, Holiday Inn Express, Inn, Avid, Garner, Candlewood, Atwell, Staybridge, Hotel Indigo and most recently Ruby, which we announced just a few weeks ago is now available for development in The U.

S. The tenth episode is a forty minute watch, which we hope you’ll get a lot out of. So to summarize where we stand after the third quarter. Global RevPAR increased by 1.4% year to date. Gross system growth is 7.2% year on year and net system growth is 5.2% with openings and signings up 1718% respectively on the same quarter last year.

And our teams have delivered a performance that reaffirms our confidence in driving the core components of our shareholder value creation in line with market expectations and our growth algorithm. That growth algorithm sees consensus expecting us to deliver in 2025 around 12% EBIT growth and around 15% EPS growth and we remain on track to meet those expectations. And with that, let me pass it back over to the operator to open up the line for your questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our first question is from Jamie Rollo at Morgan Stanley. Go ahead.

Jamie Rollo, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Three questions, if I may. First is really about net system growth for 2026. It looks like you’re probably going to end this year at about 4%, including the loss of the Venetian and the Novum openings, which broadly match each other.

You’ve obviously announced a very big signings number today. You’ve got the new collection brand. One of your competitors yesterday talked about a big increase in construction starts in The U. S. They raised their unit growth guidance for this year.

So how are you feeling about next year’s net system growth, I think consensus is about 4%. Secondly, I know you didn’t guide on RevPAR, but it looks like you’re talking about a similar flattish performance in the fourth quarter. What sort of puts and takes can we think about for 2026, specifically in The U. S, please? And then on the credit card fees, I know you’ve explicitly guided for 2025 an extra €40,000,000 or so.

And then the remaining €40,000,000 over the next three years, could you talk a bit about the cadence of that? Is it front end loaded into 2026 please? Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Thank you, Jamie. Look, we feel very good about the trajectory of our net system size growth. I think consensus for 2025 is 4.5% the Venetian and we’re very comfortable with that. What encourages us even further is a strong pace of signings and then converting those signings into openings as you saw especially in the third quarter with a pipeline up 4.7%. We’ve got a lot of fuel in the tank to continue our net system size growth.

So if consensus is 4% for next year, we’re quite comfortable with that.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: Regarding And we

Operator: feel like we can continue that

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: the developments in The U. S. Market, look, lower interest rates, we see the ten year bumping now at 4% or even lower, lower inflation, lower energy prices, all of that is a catalyst, a slow growing catalyst as I’ve been saying for a couple of years now. It’s a grind forward, not a V shaped acceleration, but our new build signings are still most of our signings around the world. And therefore, we feel that between the strong conversions momentum we’ve had with our new conversion brands and we’re adding a collection one now as you as we mentioned, but we’re still getting strong new build signings and openings.

So we feel like we’ve got the pipeline, we’ve got the momentum, we’ve got the brands to continue this growth.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: Actually, Jamie, just to clarify, consensus for next year on system growth is around 4.3% growth. And I think we said at the half year, we felt comfortable with where that is based on our visibility and how you see things coming through. We still feel comfortable with where that sits. And as you know, we don’t give guidance, but I can’t say we do feel comfortable with where that sits.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: I think if you go back to what we said last year at the strategy update in February, all the things that we were doing to strengthen the performance of this company, including the trajectory of our growth by taking our brands into new markets. Last year, it was nearly 30 instances where we took existing brands into new markets this year. Year to date, it’s already 15 or 20, we’re making progress along that pace by entering and growing faster in markets like The Middle East, like India, Southeast Asia, Japan, Germany, by strengthening our enterprise loyalty, commercial, revenue management. All these things are helping our brands perform better, as you can see from the RevPAR that we’re delivering and then helping the confidence in our owners to sign up for our brands and open them up.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: On your second question, maybe I’ll take the first stab at that and then Elliot can jump in. Yes, I mean, we’ve said, if you look at where consensus is on terms of RevPAR for the full year, it’s around 1.3%. We’ve delivered 1.4% year to date. And we’ve we’d say we’re comfortable around where that range is for consensus. And really if you look at it to get to that you’re somewhere in a range that’s similar to where we were third in quarter on more on the positive side.

So we feel comfortable with that and being able to achieve that. We still have booking windows that are very short 60% of our booking windows. Our bookings are done within seven days. So the booking windows are very short for us. As you know, we had quite a bit of benefit from the hurricanes last year.

So we’re lapping some of that. You had the election last year as well. And so there’s lapping that as well, which took some days stays away. So I think in overall, I think that’s where we would position. And as we get into 2026, it’s obviously very, very early in the period.

And we’re just going through our processes today. And so we wouldn’t really go out and give any kind of indication of what we feel like 2026 is right now. However, if you look at the fundamentals of the economy, maybe I can let Eli take you through how we’re seeing the fundamentals of the economy in The U. S.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Yes. I mean, not just in U. S. I’ll go, but beyond, you got to look at the fundamentals and say that the underlying factors are pretty optimistic. If you start in The U.

S, we’re still at a record number of people employed. We’ve got wages that are outpacing inflation, wages are accelerating, inflation is lower. Consumer spending is resilient, 2.6% year over year in July and August. And I think that, yes, the consumers have the bit of a tailwind now with energy prices being lower. GDP growth in The U.

S. Is over 3% in the first half of the year and then predictions for the second half are between the high ones to 2%, when the government ever gets around to publishing those results. But the Fed has been cutting rates. Equity markets are record highs, actually not just in The U. S, but in many parts of the world.

We got clarity on the tax situation for consumers and corporates and that is a constructive clarity, not a negative one. And look, travel trends are still pretty solid. You saw the AMEX results for Q3. You saw the airlines pointing to a solid Q4. You see you still see TSA passenger volumes growing despite shutdown.

Supply is still supply growth is still low, although we’re taking share and growing more rapidly. And that still doesn’t include all the benefit of the super cycle of investment with hundreds of billions of dollars in domestic and foreign direct investment that are coming into The U. S. For AI, energy and other capital projects. Pharma companies and auto companies are investing more to reshore into The U.

S. I mean just the four largest U. S. Hyperscalers are projecting to spend over $400,000,000,000 in CapEx this year and projections are for double digit increases next year. And that investment is only expected to increase.

So you look at that, you look at the correlation between private nonresidential fixed investment, which is a leading indicator to our industry and to RevPAR growth, that’s accelerated from 1% in Q4 to 3% in Q1 of this year to 4% in Q2 this year, that’s a pretty good leading indicator. So you look at all these structural growth drivers and yes, there is still some turbulence in the macro and in the tariffs out there. But you look at these fundamentals, you got to feel pretty optimistic about the mid to long term in The U. S. On the other side of the world, we have been saying for a while that China’s bottoming out and our data shows that RevPAR has been getting sequentially better.

The Tier one cities have been getting even better. The economy is still growing at 5%. Exports are still strong for China despite the tariff tensions. So on both ends there and in the middle, EMEA has been a strong driver for us, especially in The Middle East, Southeast Asia. So and it’s despite the lapping of events, we see very strong resilience in Europe and in The U.

K. So I think the fundamentals and the tailwinds are positive for next year.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: To answer your final question, which was on the credit card fees. You are correct. We did state that in 2025 we would see roughly about $40,000,000 increase in this year. And that we said that we would triple what 2023 was by 2028. And so as you go through the next few years, it would be more spread evenly across those years not front loaded into really one year.

And that’s really driven by the economics of the agreement and increasing card signings and spend on the cards. And but we do would say that we would see our ancillaries growing at a fee rate at a premium to where RevPAR growth. And so I think that’s maybe how you could think about it as we get through And go into next

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: it’s not just the credit cards, it’s the point sales that are growing at a healthy clip and we’re starting to see the benefit from our branded residential business that’s growing too.

Jamie Rollo, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great. Thank you both very much.

Operator: Our next question is from Leo Carrington at Citi. Please go ahead.

Leo Carrington, Analyst, Citi: Thank you very much. If I could just do two questions, please. First, on this new brand, you mentioned, I think, percent of openings from conversions. Is the market tilting further to conversions? Is this the reason for launching this brand?

Could I check why the opportunity is greater in Europe for the moment? Why not The U. S? And if you’ve given a total target for openings like with Vignette? And then separately, going to The U.

S. Demands at the moment, I take your points about the outlook improving from a sort of fundamental perspective. But in terms of the reasons for the weakness and the weakness in leisure demand, how do you see it given the flight data is good? Is it substitution or is it behavior? Just any color or ideas that would be very interesting.

Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Sure. All right. Let me take a shot at those and Michael jump in and create even more color around them. So on the new brand, we’re really excited about this launching this new collection brand and upscale to upper upscale. And if you look at why let me start with why EMEA first, a couple of reasons.

Over half of the supply in our EMEA market, is of course, U. K. All the way to the Pacific and Africa, Middle East, India, over half of that supply is still independent. Then within the branded supply, a lot of it is smaller to regional brands and that are accessible, addressable with conversion and collection brands for ISG. And then there are other larger brand addressable categories.

So you end up in 60%, 70%, 80% of the market that we think is addressable for conversion for collection. And we’ve seen the success of Voco in conversion, which now we already have two twenty five properties open on development in 30 countries. We’ve seen the success of Vignette that is on track to reach 100 open hotels in line with the projection we gave. When we launched it, both launched in EMEA, then both branched out East and West, West to The U. S.

And Americas, East towards China successfully. And but because of the larger conversion and independent market in EMEA, it makes sense to launch our conversion and collection brands there. That was the case with Voco. That was the case with Vignette. They’ve both been very successful.

In the to your question of is the market tilting more towards conversion? Clearly post pandemic, we’ve seen a proportional increase in conversions while new builds have been under pressure still growing back from the pandemic, but a slower rate. You had inflation and you had high interest rates and you had those subsiding eventually, but at high cost and then you have now tariff noise. So there’s been quite a bit of headwinds for newbuild, but we’re encouraged to see the gradual recovery of our newbuild signings or newbuild openings that still comprise the majority of our signings and our openings. But yes, conversions of proportions have increased and there are really three fundamental reasons for that.

First, it is structural in the sense that this large independent and other branded market is a large addressable territory that is well over half market. Even in The U. S. Where 40% is independent of the 60% branded a lot of that is small regional and I would say addressable brands that are not in strong enterprise systems. So there is a realization that there’s a strong addressable market.

Second, owners of these hotels, whether branded or independent, are seeing the strength of enterprise systems like our enterprise system that’s delivering 65% of room nights from loyalty, 70% in The U. S. That’s delivering RevPAR premiums quarter after quarter. That’s delivering high direct contribution, lower OTA contribution, that’s delivering group business and corporate business and that has strong technology platforms and enterprise systems like our new revenue management system that drives optimal RevPAR performance. So they’re seeing that benefit and are being attracted to it.

That’s structural tailwind. And so those are structural reasons why we think that the conversion momentum is not temporary. Now we also believe that new builds will come back and the proportions may change, but we’ll be doing more of both in the aggregate. To your question about weakness in leisure in The U. S.

So I think this year in The U. S. You’ve had a few factors that we do think are unique to this year and some of it temporary. First, you’ve had that turmoil around tariffs, tensions, policy in the beginning of the year. You saw the equity markets take a big drop.

They have definitely recovered since then that’s why we’re optimistic. But that did create some pause we think in corporates and in leisure customers in making decisions. And we saw that translate in the first few quarters of the year. Second, you’ve got lower inbound in The U. S.

A lot of that tends to be leisure, especially during the summer months and the holiday periods. And of course, from Canada due to some tensions there. Now that has affected some of the leisure business. Fortunately, we’re 95% domestic in The U. S.

And a lot of our businesses drive to. So we have been not overly affected by it, but in total it has had some impact on the market. But you’ve also seen the business segment up 2% in The U. S. So there are some puts and takes towards it.

We do think that the leisure segment fundamentals, I’d say the third factor there too, Leo, is it’s been a very strong run up in leisure over the last three or four years. And at some point, things may pause a little bit before repricing. But the fundamentals that I talked about earlier in answering Jamie’s question in The U. S. Economy in terms of employment, wage growth, investment, productivity, strong equity markets, all that we think sets up corporate and leisure markets well for the mid to long term.

And we see the short term softness, but we believe in long term strength.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: I would also add, Eli, as we look at just to give you some more facts around the detail, Eli mentioned that U. S. Business in the third quarter was up 2%. Groups were down 7% and leisure was down 5%. But if you look at business across all three regions, all three regions saw positive growth in business with EMEA up 6% and China up 5%.

And so that was really great to see that strong business performance. If we go specifically into The U. S. And we look at groups, you may remember last year around Q3, we were in the U. S.

Election cycle. And so there was lot of groups happening as a result of the Democratic National Convention or the Republican National Convention. We also had hurricane displacement that was happening in groups moving back into certainly address the issues that were happening as a result of some of the hurricane activity, particularly as people left those areas and came out of those areas that were impacted by that. And as mentioned, I think what you what he had mentioned on leisure makes was exactly what we’ve seen. And again, it’s been the most recovered since COVID.

And so but we’d still expect to see growth from here. We’re not seeing any fundamental changes that would expect leisure to be structurally impaired.

Leo Carrington, Analyst, Citi: Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Ellie.

Operator: Our next question is from Estelle Weingrod with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Estelle Weingrod, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi, good morning and thanks for taking my questions. I’ve got three. On the launch of the new brand, just back to Leo’s questions, what are you planning in terms of the timing of the first launch? And how should we model this to ramp up over the next few years? Second one on China.

You sounded quite positive on the latest trends in there. However, comp seems to be getting a little bit tougher in Q4. Just for model purposes, actually model a sequential slowdown in Q4. And on signings, clearly, encouraging overall. But just to get some clarity on the per brand basis, is there any brands that you’re particularly satisfied with?

And are there some you would have expected to perform better? Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: All right. Thank you, Estelle. So on the new brand, just stay tuned in the next few months and if not that many months, we will come back to you with greater detail on the name of the brand, exact positioning, aspects, the launch timings, the projections for how many we expect over a period of time, all of that. As we’ve done with all the brand launches, Voco and Vignette launched in the same way. We introduced it to the market and to you in a sort of a tease like this.

And then a few months later, we gave you all the details and they’ve proceeded to be very successful. So stay with us, stay tuned and you’ll be the first to know. When we get to China, no, we don’t think our comps get tougher into the fourth quarter. I think we are going to continue to see this improving trajectory. And eventually, we’ll turn positive in RevPAR driven by the economic growth of the Chinese economy, driven by the continued strength in travel.

Yes, we’ve had some softness in rate because of the Chinese outbound mostly, frankly, but that we’ve benefited from in Southeast Asia and beyond also in Europe this summer, saw a lot of Chinese travel. But we’re going to be lapping over that to next year. So even if Chinese outbound continues to be strong next year, which we’re just fine with, frankly, because we benefit outside of China even at higher RevPARs. But even if that continues, we’ll be lapping over that next year. So we do believe that the continuing trend of improvement in China will progress and eventually will turn positive.

And we’re going to turn positive in RevPAR in China on a much bigger system. We’re now well over 800 open hotels with nearly 600 hotels under development, signing and opening at record levels and maintaining our occupancy, so absorbing the demand and absorbing that supply. So we’re optimistic for the mid to long term in China. And we don’t think the fourth quarter is going in a different direction than the ones the trend we’ve seen so far. In terms of brand portfolio, look, with this new brand will be up to 21 brands.

We love them all. They all have growth pipelines of 20% or more of their opening estate, some more because they’re newer, some less, but because they’re huge like Holiday Inn Express, but Holiday Inn Express is still in the 23% to 24% pipeline to open. We’d love for all of them to grow faster. That’s why we work every day, all day to make our loyalty plan stronger, our brand performance stronger, give better tools to our owners, market them with cut through marketing, drive technology like the one that we’re doing with revenue management, with the reservations, with the new CRM system that’s launching next year, with the new content manager launching next year. It is a force of many things that we do to make our brands perform better, which means they grow more quickly.

We’re pleased with every one of them. But yes, we want every one of to go even further.

Estelle Weingrod, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Jared Castle at UBS. Please go ahead.

Jared Castle, Analyst, UBS: Good morning, everyone. Maybe three for me, please. Just coming back to the launch of the new brand. I guess, Eli, Michael, at times, you’ve looked to buy something. So I take it there was nothing interesting on the market.

And I guess related to that is how is Ruby performing your most recent acquisition? Secondly, still starting with the 2%. When do you think you get it down to 1.5%? And are there any brands which might need a more extensive refresh? I think the answer is no, but I’ll leave it to you.

And then just lastly, buyback. I mean, seems like it’s gone well so far. I mean, do you think you’ll be able to complete it by the end of the year? Thanks.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Okay. So Ruby, it’s going well. We’ve got five signings since opening, 20 open hotels in the system in major European cities, a further 10 hotels in the pipeline to open. We just announced that it’s ready for development in The United States. So in fact, was in New York City last week walking around a couple of potential sites.

So we’re excited about it. And it’ll go further east after having gone west. If you haven’t stayed at one or visited one here in London, Jared, I would invite you to do it.

Jared Castle, Analyst, UBS: I’ll take Dave.

Andre Julien, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: So let me

Jared Castle, Analyst, UBS: Sorry, just related to that, there was nothing out there, Michael, Eli that looked like a brand which might fit with this new launch or that was interesting to you? You thought organic was the better rate, I take it?

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Look, you’ve we are always doing both things. We’re always looking at our portfolio to see are there profitable territories for us to enter in brands or in markets or both. And then which is the best route to enter? Is it to build or to buy? So it’s an ongoing process.

Just because we launch something doesn’t mean that there’s nothing out there that’s interesting. Just because we buy something like Ruby doesn’t mean that there’s not something that we’re working on internally to launch. We announced the acquisition of Ruby in Q1. You would have to think that for announcing the launch of this brand at the end of Q3 that that might have been in progress by then too. So we’re always doing a bit of both.

The industry is dynamic, the market is dynamic, therefore our brand strategy is dynamic too. But we’re thoughtful not to just have to do things just for the sake of them. They need to be brands that are differentiated from the ones that we have that have a meaningful scope for expansion and a profitable one for expansion.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: I’ll address the removals question, Jared, on that. So first, yes, I mean, you’re right, it is a little bit elevated against the 1.5%. We did talk about this at the half year and really no change to that as well is we do have some rather large hotels that have exited the system particularly in China as China again continues to come through kind of COVID and the final remnants of that. And then as you look in The U. S.

There were a few also fairly large hotels that left. And so we still believe that going back to getting back to 1.5% is our long term trajectory. There may be some ups and downs along the way with that. But we think 1.5% is the right way to look at that over the long term. In terms of a refresh, no, we don’t really see any brands needing a refresh in the future.

That was what we did with the Crown Plaza Holiday Inn initiative was a one time initiative and we really don’t see any need to do that at all. And then, and your final question regarding the buyback, yes, I feel really comfortable that we’ll be able to get through the full amount of the buyback by the end of the year. Really no concern with where that sits. Now we’re at 78% of the way through year to date. So really no reason to believe we can’t finish that through the full year.

Jared Castle, Analyst, UBS: Thanks very much.

Operator: The next question is from from Alex Briggnail at Rothschild and Co. Redburn.

Alex Briggnail, Analyst, Rothschild and Co. Redburn: I’m going to just focus on The U. S, if it’s okay, mainly because the other bits of business are going great. Just an industry question. Hilton was obviously very bullish yesterday about the improvements, and you’ve alluded to some macro dynamics that might help. But can you just if we just look at the data for now, occupancy, I think we’ve spoken about this for occupancy is a long way below where it was pre COVID.

Could you just give us sort of your high level thoughts, not for you, by the way, your occupancy is flat in The Americas versus pre COVID. But for the industry, could you just talk about why that would be the case? Just influencing factors why it would be different to other travel segments. We haven’t seen the same thing in airlines, but it’s almost 600 basis points down at sort of 67 versus 73 in the sort of overall U. S.

Industry. So that obviously is could be seen as something that will hold back RevPAR growth. And then I guess looking at The U. S, you’ve got an overall very strong signings development. But if I look at Americas signings for the first nine months, they’re 35 below where they were in the same nine months of 2018, 2019.

And obviously, taking consideration for the Venetian, your room count in The Americas is also flat versus pre COVID. And if I look at your net openings year to date, if I add back the Venetian impact, it’s only 2,000, which is obviously a very small proportion of your overall net openings, obviously, because you’re doing very well in the other regions. So I guess it’s just it’s I understand all the positivity around The Americas and how it will get better, but it kind of looks a little bit like it’s stuck for the industry at lower occupancy, which, of course, is informing why sort of industry growth is much lower. And so I’d be keen to understand how that gets better. All

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: right, Alex. So first, I think there are a couple factors when you look at the gross industry occupancy. I think there’s been and we think we’ve talked about this before. There’s been better revenue management where operators have preferred where possible to drive rate than to fill up with occupancy, so that they have recovered RevPAR in total in a more profitable way. And that I think is a judgment and probably a productive judgment, which on the positive side still leaves headroom for occupancy once you have achieved and established the fact you can earn higher rates.

I think in some markets and in some categories, there were certain perceived rate ceilings that you could never charge more than this in this town or you can never charge more than this in this brand category or you can never more charge in this much during this period. And a lot of those ceilings and taboos have been shaken loose. And now you have the upside of that occupancy at those higher rates, which actually I think is upside. We don’t look at it as a negative. Irrespective of that, our occupancy is generally recovered from 2019.

So we’ve taken share as others have adjusted their revenue management, but I think there’s headroom in the industry and we have headroom at ISG. Regarding your comparison of ISG signings to 2019, you are correct. We’re still a measure below where we were in 2019. We think that, that is headroom for us, by the way. But there has been clearly some weight.

There have been headwinds to the development market in The U. S. I mentioned them before. I think I mentioned them on every call. We think those headwinds are slowly subsiding.

You see our signings grow every year for the last three years. It’s not a V shape recovery, but it’s a recovery and we’re pleased with that. And a the lot headwind have been on the newbuild signings, where pre pandemic twenty nineteen that was 75% of our signings back then newbuild versus now it’s 50%. And yes, we’re doing more conversion, but the aggregate of newbuild is lower than what it was. Higher interest rates, tighter bank regulation, higher inflation, just it’s been and then the tariff weight that came upon it, there’s just been a lot of weight on the return of newbuild signings of newbuild openings, but it’s coming back.

We see it quarter after quarter, enthusiasm. We see the growth in our applications franchise applications. And so for us, it’s all headroom. And we go into the next set of years with more brands, a stronger enterprise platform, higher share among conversions and new build signings. And as that market recovers and returns, confident we’ll be getting more of a share of it.

So yes, we believe we can get back to 2019. It won’t be quickly, but we think it’s all headroom for us. So we’re optimistic about where we go. In terms of the size of the system, you have to put into account two meaningful factors. One was the Holiday Inn Crown Plaza plan that we did in 2021, I think.

And then also the SVC exit, which we and a few other publicly traded brand companies went through. Again, I think that was 2021, 2022. And those were big chunks that we, let’s just say, exited from our system voluntarily. But that we if you look at that five year period comparing to twenty twenty, twenty nineteen, yes, point to point, you won’t see that much growth. But after that, we’re resuming our growth after that.

Alex Briggnail, Analyst, Rothschild and Co. Redburn: That’s fantastic. And then just a question. It’s really important. I just want to understand that because The U. S.

Just looks very different. Having recovered very quickly at the beginning of COVID, it just now looks very different versus the others. And it’s clearly a much more business travel driven market. I mean you can see it in sort of an Easter move helps in Europe and hurts in The U. S.

So a huge amount more of the underlying demand in The U. S. Is business. And against 2019, The U. S.

Now is a meaningful outlier outside China against all other regions, including Europe, which it led for a very long time. So I’m just trying to work out whether that is structural because business travel, as we know, has kind of stopped recovering lower than it was in 2019 on a sort of volume basis and obviously on a percentage of GDP and the population, obviously, much lower or whether it’s room for upside as kind of everyone is trying to say?

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Yes. I mean, you will be shocked to hear that we are in the latter camp, but for good reason. Not because we’re just blind bulls, but for good reason. I mean, let me take you back to what you said, which is that The U. S.

Recovered very quickly post pandemic. And when that was happening and leisure was the biggest part of that recovery, what was the narrative then? Well, that business travel will never recover. And it’s all going to be leisure driven. Business travel will never recover or that other parts of the world other than The U.

S. Will never recover. That didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out that business travel recovered later, but has fully recovered and continues to recover. Where our business travel was up in all three regions, actually, the least of which in The U.

S. Was up 2%. But China was up 5%, EMEA was up 6% in business travel. So business travel continues why? Because business expands, because GDP expands, because companies expand and employment expands and people have to go to do stuff.

That’s why. Events our events calendar is very strong. People go to do stuff in business. So I think that, that idea that business travel would never recover obviously has been dispelled. And now we’re entering the phase where we start to doubt, well, is leisure travel over?

No, we don’t believe that either. As I answered the question earlier, leisure travel may be taking a bit of a pause after a very strong run up, but there are some headwinds this year with international inbound being down, Canada travel being a bit down, all the turmoil policy and economic and political turmoil in first half of the year putting some pressure on people’s plans going into the summer. We just think that’s momentary. You have to push against a lot of economic gravity to look at all the fundamentals I listed below in investment, in employment, in financial markets, in lower inflation, in lower interest rates and say that those aren’t good precursors to economic growth, job growth, GDP growth and therefore travel growth. There could be another scenario unfolding that would not be the typical scenario from those fundamentals.

So no, we do think it’s upside. But yes, it goes through cycles, Alex. It does go through cycles. So sometimes it slows down, sometimes faster. It makes higher highs and higher lows.

That is the fundamental thesis. It does have ups and downs. It makes higher ups and higher downs. And that’s why we think it is upside, not structural.

Alex Briggnail, Analyst, Rothschild and Co. Redburn: Thanks, really. Very helpful answer to that, Heather. Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Thank you, Alex.

Operator: Who’s next? The next question is from Kate Shao from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Stuart Ford, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations, IHG0: Thank you for taking my questions. The first question is on system growth. You mentioned you’re comfortable with consensus at 4.3 for next year. But really when we look at your underlying growth so far ex Evolution, you’re at much higher. So I guess the question is do you see any upside to that number?

And then just secondly on RevPAR, your RevPAR has been quite strong compared to some of the peers in The U. S. And in the bigger regions including U. S. And Greater China.

Can you help us unpack a little bit what’s idiosyncratic there for ISG? And do you expect these to kind of continue? And then just third question, hypothetically, if we go into 2026 with a flat ish RevPAR environment in The U. S. Again, what would you say is the likely scenario to your EPS growth?

Are you still comfortable to hit that low end of at least 12% EPS growth in that environment? And if so, can you help us understand why? Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Sure. A lot of your questions, so we’ll take them one at a time. So yes, we are comfortable with the consensus of 4.3 next year. We do think we have underlying strength from our signings, from openings momentum, from the performance of our brands. We always want to do more.

We’re ambitious. We’re not saying that, that is a ceiling. We’re saying we’re comfortable with that consensus. It is still early. We haven’t even started next year yet.

Obviously, we’re working on it in our signings and in our construction teams to get things done. But yes, we always want to do more. We don’t guide. And so what we’re telling you is we have very high confidence, but we’re going to we’re not going to put a ceiling on it. And we’re not going to hold our teams back and hold our owners back if they go further.

Now on RevPAR premium, yes, we are pleased that our teams hard at work in hotels and our owners hard at work are in markets, some are faster, some are slower, wherever they are, are delivering RevPAR premiums to the competition. That is a full enterprise effort. There’s not one thing, maybe it isn’t idiosyncratic to what we’re doing, I don’t know. We’re not into the business of exactly what others are doing. What I do know is how hard we work across the full range of enterprise platforms for making our brand stronger, making sure our hotels are renovated, make sure our customer service is the best every day, making sure that our marketing is cutting through, placing the right people in the right places in our managed hotels and training our franchisees to deliver the best operations.

Having revenue management systems like N2 pricing now in 6,000 hotels that we know are using artificial intelligence in a way to drive our RevPAR premium, launching our new property management system, is now in 2,000 hotels and will be in most of our hotels by next year, which makes hotel operations check-in, checkout, upgrade, loyalty, training, everything much simpler. All of those things that we’re doing, our loyalty investment and growth at 65% of room nights globally, 70% in The U. S. That drives RevPAR outperformance against the competition. All of these things working together are driving performance.

I don’t know which one is driving which amount of basis point, but I do know that collectively every quarter they’re driving strong performance over here and we work very hard to keep it continuing. Your last question, I’ll turn over to Michael on the hypothetical.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: Well, as you know, we don’t deal with hypotheticals very well and we don’t actually give out guidance for next year. But I would say what we’ve gone back and what we’ve talked about is the growth algorithm and over the medium to long term, we would hit that 12% to 15% earnings per share growth on average over that period. There’ll be some times that are up and there’ll be some times that may be below. But I mean we’ve just talked about our net system size growth and we talked to that where consensus sits at 4.3% and being comfortable around that. And Ellie gave you a little bit more color on that just second ago.

And so you kind of can see that coming in and you can also see that our ancillaries are continuing to grow. We talked about that earlier being growth faster than RevPAR. And so that comes in and helps us as well. And as we talked about at the half year, we’ve always had and continue to have and have seen strong cost management within this business. And so we feel very good around how we’ve set the business up to continue to grow and develop.

And as for what we can see in terms of system growth and our ancillary fees still really strong growth in those areas next year and expected for next year. I won’t comment on does that mean we get into the range on the EPS next year. But I think if you can see how we’ve set up this business, it’s really, really strong and we’ve got a great opportunity to continue to deliver.

Stuart Ford, Senior Vice President and Head of Investor Relations, IHG0: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Andre Julien from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Andre Julien, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Good morning, gentlemen. Two questions for me, if I may. First one about Greater China. Do you see any significant improvement in this country, considering that we’ve been under pressure through the past few years and still negative? So that’s my the first one.

Second one is about the new brand and new development. We’ve been seeing a quite aggressive development from some of your competitors on the results side. And you are creating a new brand, which is not expected to be focused on this leisure segment. Do you see any opportunity and do you see any logic to improve your presence in this segment? Thank you.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Okay. Let me just actually address your second question first. We have not given out any detail on the positioning of this brand yet. So please do not conclude that it would not be compatible with the resorts or which positioning the type of destination would be for. If you can be patient with us for just a few months here, we’ll give you all the detail.

I think you would be surprised if a collection brand like this when we say collection upscale to upper upscale wouldn’t have a wide range of application urban, suburban, resort, leisure, business. We typically don’t build brands that are narrow in scope. Our brands tend to have wide application, especially in the upscale to upper upscale segment. So more to come, but don’t make the conclusion you seem to have arrived at. The first thing is China is on a good trajectory.

I think it’s not us just saying it, I think it’s the data saying it. Our RevPAR in Q3 was better than first half of the year, was better than Q2, better than last year. The economy is doing well, still tracking 5% GDP growth. The middle class is still growing. The airline capacity continues to improve.

Individual travel, business and leisure is still strong. Rates are a little bit under pressure, but we keep hitting records of travel during holidays, including the last one that was that just concluded. And there’s one coming up here October and we think that’s going to be very strong too. Let’s also not forget that China is a major technology and artificial intelligence innovator and investor, really only second to The U. S.

And very effective at it. That is transforming that economy, creating productivity, jobs, innovation. It’s bringing optimism to the economy and you can see the stock market reflects it, really trading at highs for multiple years, maybe a record high, but certainly at the highs over the last five or six years. And so you put all that together, GDP growth, technology investment, recovery in RevPAR, middle class still growing, exports still pretty strong 7%, 8% growth despite trade tensions with The U. S.

You see a lot of resilience. And therefore, you shouldn’t be surprised that we’re relatively optimistic about the mid to long term. We’re not calling a return to positive RevPAR next month or next week. It may happen. We’re not saying it won’t happen.

We saw a definite improvement in the third quarter for us, but we’re optimistic it’s going to happen in the near term and then it will become a tailwind for us.

Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, IHG: Actually, Andreas, I guess you look at what you might be surprised about is if you look at our occupancy actually in China, it was actually up 0.6 points in the quarter and it’s actually up 0.4 points year to date. And so what that shows is there’s still quite a lot of demand for travel within China. And then if you take that and add in that we’ve seen incredible outbound travel from our from China into Southeast Asia countries. And if you look at just RevPAR in the quarter from some of those, if you look at Vietnam, year over year growth in the third quarter was up 31% and that was driven a lot from the outbound China travel. You’ve seen double digit growth in places like Australia.

We’ve seen year to date strong growth in Japan. And so you’ve seen that outbound Chinese that consumer within China is still traveling. Now there’s within China obviously as that outbound comes out you don’t have some of the higher end suites and higher end travelers staying within China. So you get a bit of a rate issue which is what we’ve seen in China. But overall if you look at that demand at least for our hotels even with all the supply growth that we’re adding, you’re seeing additional demand come in.

And so I think we feel comfortable that China is on the right trajectory.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Think what is important for all of us to keep remembering is the importance of being strong in large domestic markets like China, but also like The U. S, like Europe, eventually like India is yes to be strong in those large domestic markets because they are or will be among the largest travel and hotel markets globally, just domestically. But they are also extremely large outbound markets. To be a strong global hotel company like ourselves, you need to be strong in those domestic markets, which then power your international markets because China, U. S, Europe, eventually India are going to be or are already the largest outbound markets.

And we benefit from Chinese travel in Southeast Asia, in The Middle East, in Europe, maybe not so much in The U. S. Today, but the rest of the world, we have hotels who are benefiting from that too. We benefit from U. S.

Travelers into Europe, into Middle East, into Asia. We benefit from European travelers going to rest of the world. So being strong and continuing our fifty year success in China is important, not just for our very profitable business in China, but for the expansion of our business in the whole world.

Andre Julien, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator: We have no further questions in the queue at this time. So I will hand back to Eli for closing remarks.

Eli Malouf, Chief Executive Officer, IHG: Well, thank you for that. And so to summarize where we stand after the third quarter. Global RevPAR has increased by 1.4% year to date. Gross system growth is 7.2% year on year and net system growth is 5.2 with openings and signings up 1718% respectively on the same quarter last year. And our teams have delivered a performance that reaffirms our confidence in driving the core components of shareholder value in line with market expectations and our growth algorithm.

That growth algorithm sees consensus expecting us to deliver in 2025 around 12% EBIT growth and around 15% EPS growth and we remain on track to meet those expectations. Many thanks to all those on the call. And as a reminder, our financial results for the full year along with the trading in the fourth quarter will be announced on Tuesday, February 17. Thank you and goodbye.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all very much for joining. You may now Connect your line.

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