Participants

Briony Quinn; Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer; Diamondrock Hospitality Co

Jeff Donnelly; Chief Executive Officer; Diamondrock Hospitality Co

Justin Leonard; Chief Operating Officer & President; Diamondrock Hospitality Co

Dori Kesten; Analyst; Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Austin Wurschmidt; Analyst; KeyBanc Capital Markets

Smedes Rose; Analyst; Citi

Michael Bellisario; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated

Floris Van Dijkum; Analyst; Compass Point Research & Trading LLC

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the DiamondRock Hospitality Company fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Briony Quinn, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Briony Quinn

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to DiamondRock's fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call and webcast. Joining me on today's call is Jeff Donnelly, our Chief Executive Officer; and Justin Leonard, our President and Chief Operating Officer.
Before we begin, let me remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical facts and are considered to be forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. As described in our filings with the SEC, these statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause future results to differ materially from what we discuss today.
In addition, on today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release.
We are pleased to report that our results for the fourth quarter, which we already anticipated to be strong, came in even better than expected. Comparable total RevPAR increased 5.5% over 2023, well ahead of our expectations going into the quarter and over 250 basis points stronger than the growth achieved in the prior quarter.
The upside to our expectations was most pronounced in our urban footprint, particularly in November and December. RevPAR at our urban hotels increased 8.2% on a 5.4% increase in average daily rate. November performance was less affected by the US election than we originally expected.
And more importantly, the calendar in December was favorable for two reasons. First, there were 17 business days in December ahead of Christmas as compared to 15 days in 2023. Secondly, Hanukkah started on December 25 or nearly three weeks later than the prior year.
The combination of these calendar shifts led to exceptional growth across all our urban markets, with December RevPAR up 13.2%, led by our hotels in Chicago, Salt Lake, San Diego, and Boston. I also want to recognize the team at the AC Minneapolis for generating 17% RevPAR and 28% total RevPAR growth in our first full-calendar month of ownership.
Fourth-quarter results at our resort hotels were mixed. RevPAR declined 150 basis points in the quarter, but out-of-room spending contained total revenue to a 10-basis-point decline. Florida continues to see headwinds, owing to what can best be characterized as a hangover from the pandemic, heavy visitation, price inflation, Florida [fans] relocating to Florida, et cetera. But we're hopeful the market finds its footing in 2025.
Our Florida resorts collectively saw a 5.8% decline in RevPAR, while all our other resorts, excluding Orchards Inn, which is under renovation, grew RevPAR 4.5% in the fourth quarter. Chico Hot Springs again performed well, delivering nearly 18% RevPAR growth on over 12% ADR growth, as our revenue management and marketing strategies continue to play out at that hotel. Both Vail and Sonoma had strong revenue and EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter.
Group remained our strongest segment in the fourth quarter as it has throughout 2024. Fourth-quarter group room revenues increased 8.1% over 2023 on a 5.9% increase in room nights. At our urban hotels, group room revenue increased 10.2%, which drove a 6.4% increase in total food and beverage revenue. We continue to add groups to our resorts to build a base to preserve transient pricing and improve profitability. This strategy allowed us to deliver EBITDA growth at our resorts on essentially flat revenue.
Turning to profits, hotel adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $75.9 million, reflecting 16.4% growth over 2023 on a margin that was 250 basis points higher. Corporate adjusted EBITDA was $68.7 million, representing almost 20% growth over 2023. Adjusted funds from operations was $0.24 per share, $0.06 or 33% over 2023.
Before I turn the call over to Jeff to discuss recent events, outlook, and strategy, let me touch on our dividend and our balance sheet. At the end of the fourth quarter, we announced we would pay a $0.20 per share stub dividend in addition to the regular $0.03 per share quarterly dividend we had paid throughout 2024. In total, we paid $0.32 per share of common dividends for 2024.
With that announcement, we communicated our intention to pay regular quarterly dividends of $0.08 per share in 2025 and depending on our 2025 operating income, an additional stub dividend in the fourth quarter. Several analyst reports and outlooks still reference a $0.03 per share quarterly dividend, so I'm not sure this material change was widely understood. And in fact, last night, we announced our common dividend for the first quarter of $0.08 per share.
Turning to the balance sheet, we have three mortgage loans totaling just shy of $300 million maturing in 2025 at a weighted average cost of approximately 4.2%. Moreover, we have a $300 million term loan maturity in early 2026 that, as of year-end, had an average cost of approximately 5.8% or 135 basis points over SOFR.
Finally, our 8.25% preferred stock is callable in August. We continue to review the most cost-effective options to refinance these maturities through a combination of an inaugural corporate debt issuance, placement of mortgage debt, and a recast of our corporate credit facility.
Included in the 2025 guidance Jeff will discuss, we have assumed that the maturing loans are replaced at a high 6% interest rate. Despite this, we do expect our overall interest expense to be slightly lower in 2025 as we realize the full-year benefit of interest rate swaps we executed in late 2024.
On that note, I'll turn the call over to Jeff.

Jeff Donnelly

Thanks, Briony, and thank you, all, for joining us this morning. Kudos to the entire team at DiamondRock for exceeding expectations, not just in the fourth quarter, but throughout the year.
It has been a very busy year. Our Board took steps to reduce our G&A costs and increase efficiency. Under Justin, our asset managers exceeded performance throughout the year. In fact, we exceeded our original full-year total RevPAR growth, adjusted EBITDA, and AFFO per share guidance, guidance which we raised several times throughout the year.
Moreover, our design and construction team rationalized our capital expenditures to minimize costs and maximize impact. Under Briony, our finance and accounting team seamlessly implemented new systems to improve and expedite financial reporting and data analysis. And they handle this yeoman's task without a hitch.
And Anika Fischer has been a terrific addition to the team. She helped update corporate policies, strengthened governance, and internalized legal work that might have, otherwise, been outsourced to a costly third party.
I also want to applaud our entire team for receiving NAREIT's Leader in the Light Award in recognition of our corporate responsibility success. I'm so proud of what we've accomplished and how we are positioned for the future.
Let me start with capital expenditures. In 2024, we completed room renovations at Bourbon Orleans and Westin San Diego Bayview, the rebranding of the Hilton Burlington to Hotel Champlain, and a spa renovation at the Westin Fort Lauderdale, among other projects.
The rooms at Westin San Diego were completed in early 2024 at a cost of $14 million. The public spaces will be completed in 2025, where monies will be used to improve the sense of arrival and expand the bar area, and provide grab-and-go food options. We spent about $5 million at Bourbon Orleans updating the rooms and corridors. We introduced a destination fee for a food and beverage credit that guests can redeem in the hotel.
Fourth-quarter other income is up about 80% over the prior year, and we continue to see RevPAR increases. Recall, we reduced the scope of our renovation here, eliminating the addition of a lobby and pool area F&B outlet to enhance the overall ROI.
The $8 million expenditure at Hotel Champlain enhanced our arrival in food and beverage outlets. These opened in June. And in the last six months of the year, F&B outlet sales were up $850,000 or nearly 40% over the prior year. We need to see more from these venues. We're aiming for upwards of $1 million of incremental F&B profit in 2025.
Lastly, the spa renovation in Fort Lauderdale was a $1.5 million endeavor, on which we expect a very rapid payback. Looking to 2025, the redevelopment and repositioning of the Orchards Inn Sedona is well underway. And we expect to be finished with the rooms product by summer 2025 and the new pool amenity by fall.
We've spent about $10 million thus far in 2024, and the remaining $15 million will come in 2025. We expect this project will cause about $1.2 million of EBITDA disruption in the first half of the year, more in Q1 than in Q2. On a full-year basis, we expect disruption will be about $0.5 million as we expect significant year-over-year improvement when the repositioning is complete in late 2025.
Finally, we are working to refine the scope of the renovation and expansion of the Landing Resort in Lake Tahoe to deliver a more impactful ROI, just as we did with Bourbon Orleans. There is more work to be done. We'll have an update in the coming quarters as to whether and how we're moving forward.
It is important to circle back to performance of The Dagny repositioning, a hotel we converted to an independent in August 2023. The hotel remains number two on Tripadvisor in all of Boston, up from the mid-50s when it was branded.
Now the decision to go independent was not about higher revenue, although that has been strong, up 15% in the quarter and 9% for the year. The decision was about expense control to drive profitability. Our thesis was that the brand contribution was simply too expensive.
And we could match or improve profits as an independent while enhancing value with an unencumbered property. I'm pleased to report hotel EBITDA that Dagny was up 90% in the quarter and up 40% for the year to $14 million, surpassing our 2024 budget by $2 million. We're looking for more of these opportunities.
So let's talk about our recent sale in Washington, DC. We closed the 410-room Westin for $92 million, which equates to about a 7% trailing NOI cap rate or 12 times EBITDA. We intentionally managed the marketing to capture the post-election bidding excitement and time closing to capture the inauguration benefit.
We've been fortunate to avoid the uncertainty that has since overtaken the Washington, DC market. The hotel performed better than expected last year. Several hotels in the brand family renovated in the past year, and we were able to draft off their associated average daily rate increases.
I'm disappointed I could not return more of the capital that was invested in this hotel, but I am very pleased with the proceeds our team realized and the very real brand mandated renovation we avoided. We anticipated the room renovation may have surpassed $30 million. A lobby atrium renovation could have pushed this figure meaningfully higher.
Given the market dynamics in Washington, DC, and especially the submarket, we felt the incremental investment could have been wasted and not produced a return on your capital. That is why I believe our free cash flow yield cap rate on sale is closer to 5%, if not lower.
We are not collectors of hotels. They are merely the medium through which we are investing. We are here to invest, harvest, and reinvest your capital. Our job is to do this again and again to drive total shareholder return or return capital to you if we cannot.
Today, the pool of external growth opportunities is not particularly deep. Lenders are making it easy for undercapitalized owners to continue kicking the can down the road, unless they receive an unrealistic price. We will continue to look at our portfolio for opportunities to prune hotels where we feel we can realize attractive pricing. Even our source of funds, our common shares, preferred equity, and in some cases, even our debt, are among the most accretive options for deployment today.
Let's get to our outlook for 2025. We expect RevPAR to grow 1% to 3% for the year. Total RevPAR growth is expected to be in line with RevPAR growth. Our group pace continues to improve with group revenue for the year, up about 2%, which is about a 500-basis-point improvement in our 2025 pace since our third-quarter call.
In the first half of the year, group pace is up in the mid- to single -- mid- to high single digits. The headwind to our year-over-year group pace is found at the Chicago Marriott. Recall, the Chicago Marriott benefited from the Democratic National Convention in August of 2024 and a strong calendar throughout the back half of 2024, a victim of its own success.
As an interesting data point, if we exclude the Chicago Marriott from just the back half of 2025, DiamondRock's comparable full-year 2025 group revenue pace increases close to 400 basis points to nearly 6% from just under 2%. Now it's still early, but large group sales is where Marriott excels. Since the end of the third quarter, we've seen the Chicago Marriott's revenue pace in the second half of 2025 increase by over 1,500 basis points. So we're optimistic we'll narrow this gap.
Looking ahead to 2026, company-wide revenue pace is up 15% on strong room demand and rate growth. So we remain very encouraged. On the resort front, we remain cautious. We expect leisure will continue to see headwinds due to a combination of known issues, such as the value proposition of foreign destinations and new concerns such as the resurgence of inflation and job uncertainty.
Overall, our guidance expects continued softness in leisure. And in the first quarter, we expect Florida markets will see mid-single-digit RevPAR declines. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to see about $1.2 million of EBITDA disruption at the Orchards in the first half of the year, but we expect to get back all but about $0.5 million by the end of the year.
Continuing with guidance, 2025 corporate adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $275 million to $300 million. Adjusting for the net impact of the AC Minneapolis acquisition and the Westin DC sale as well as the removal of share-based compensation, 2025 adjusted EBITDA is slightly behind 2024 at the midpoint.
As Briony mentioned, we have a bit of financing work to do in 2025. And included in our guidance is the assumption we will execute some combination of a corporate debt issuance, credit facility recast, and possibly a mortgage loan on a hotel. Adjusted FFO is expected to be in the range of $199 million to $224 million. And adjusted FFO per share is expected to be in the range of $0.94 to $1.06.
In conclusion, our focus is on increasing earnings per share. One aspect of that means focusing on free cash flow per share, that is FFO after normalized capital expenditures and dividends. The more free cash flow DiamondRock can preserve and create, the more we can return to shareholders through share repurchases, dividends, and to reinvest to generate higher earnings.
I encourage folks to consider FFO and free cash flow metrics in their valuation assessment of the sector. The disparity between portfolios is most evident in balance sheets and physical asset conditions. So it's important to consider the financial metrics that reveal these differences, instead of focusing on metrics that ignore them, such as EBITDA.
With that, I will thank you for your time, and we'll take your questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Dori Kesten, Wells Fargo Securities.

Dori Kesten

Thanks. Good morning. Jeff, I think there tends to be an oversimplification of applying one company's demand trends broadly across all peers. Can you give us a sense of your leisure BT group revenue growth expectations that aggregate up to the 1% to 3% RevPAR guide, and just highlight why your portfolio may not align immediately with peers?

Jeff Donnelly

Good morning, Dori. I mean, I would say off the cuff that a lot of it, obviously, relates to your footprint. Just speaking to, like, for example, on the leisure side, I think where a lot of the weakness that we've seen in leisure that we referenced, really, has been in Florida, where, frankly, our portfolio tends to be a little more, what I would say, popular priced or more sort of appeal to a broader consumer set, where outside of Florida, a lot of our properties tend to be at sort of the luxury end, where we haven't seen as much of a headwind.
I think from a ranking standpoint, we tend to think of group being better than BT and BT better than leisure. But I don't think we have a budget available by segment that I could give you that would back into the 1% to 3% because we tend to budget more by hotel location than we do necessarily by segment.

Dori Kesten

Okay. That's fair. And then, Justin, you talked about -- I guess, can you talk about what you're seeing today on the transaction front, maybe just highlighting the volume of off-market deals you're seeing today versus, say, six months ago? And then can you talk about how competitive the process was for the Westin City Center?

Justin Leonard

Sure. I mean, I think we're seeing -- I think as everyone looked at the transaction volume -- and transaction volume is still down significantly from kind of prior run rate. We'd see it down about 75% versus kind of like pre-COVID transaction volume. So I think there are very few transactions that are getting done.
I think if you really back out some of the very large transactions, which are driving a lot of that volume, I mean, we have not seen a lot of stuff get across the finish line. And there's still a pretty significant bid ask. So while we're actively out there and sort of soliciting bids -- I wouldn't say that we're soliciting bids at a number that people particularly like -- and we haven't seen a lot of forced selling in the market.
So it's a pretty quiet transaction market. And I think that, really, is similar to what we saw six months ago. I think people were optimistic. We'd see a drop off in rates, and that might drive some incremental volume. But given what's happened to interest rates, I think the market still seems to be sort of stuck at a holding pattern.

Dori Kesten

Okay. And then last one. Does your '25 guide assume further hotel-level operating efficiencies are achieved coming off those in '24?

Justin Leonard

I think we're seeing a little bit of slowing of expense growth. A lot of our expense growth last year was driven by our great group year. I mean, the vast majority of our rooms revenue growth, and food and beverage growth particularly came from the group segment, which just had a lot of labor growth to service that incremental food and beverage business.
So I think as our group pace has slowed a little bit, we're going to see a slowing of that labor growth number. But we've also been very focused on productivity within the portfolio. I think the business intelligence tool that we put in place last year, really, gives us a lot more visibility into individual hotel P&Ls. And we've been able to sort of highlight some inefficiency and transplants, and best practices throughout the portfolio.

Dori Kesten

Okay. Thanks so much.

Operator

Austin Wurschmidt, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Austin Wurschmidt

Hey. Good morning, everybody. Jeff, you referenced the drag from the Florida resort assets this past quarter and maybe continuing into the early part of the year. But just maybe broad strokes, I mean, how are you thinking about this subset of assets relative to the overall portfolio as you look out over the course of the year, given there has been a little bit of a normalization in resort patterns? And just curious where we are in that -- where you think we are in that normalization process.

Jeff Donnelly

Yeah. Good morning, Austin. No, it's a great question. I mean, I wish any of us had a crystal ball on that. But I think our expectation and how we're thinking about this year is the belief that in the back half of the year as we begin to comp over what we saw in the back half of '24, is that Florida, in particular, will begin to find its footing a little bit.
We're not expecting, to be clear, like a hockey stick recovery. It's just that the year-over-year declines will begin to subside. So that's how we're thinking about it. To step back for a moment, I think there's just a lot of uncertainty right there now in the economy.
I mean, inflation seems to be something that's difficult to get tamed, and unemployment is up a little bit. So we recognize that consumers are -- continue to be under a bit of pressure. And I think that's why we're a little more cautious on the outlook for some of those, as I described it, as more popular price resorts.

Austin Wurschmidt

That's helpful. And then just your comments on CapEx at the Westin DC and how you guys have continued to convey your thinking about managing free cash flow. Any other large kind of hotels with mandated CapEx projects that you're staring down and considering, maybe it's better to evaluate other options instead of moving forward with those projects? And that's all for me. Thanks.

Jeff Donnelly

Yeah. I mean, in some of them, I would actually say it doesn't necessarily have to be large in dollars in absolute terms. It can just be large relative to the earnings that we expect out of that hotel and also just relative to how the market will sort of pay you for that hotel.
So some of the properties we've mentioned in the past as potentially noncore, would sort of fit that bill where they can be -- the CapEx over the next few years could actually come very close to equating to the NOI of the hotel. I don't know, Justin, you have anything to add or --?

Justin Leonard

No, I think we're actively looking at the portfolio and I think trying to figure out the best use of capital dollars. We've been elongating some of those renovation cycles in order to try and get sort of more bang for our buck.
Unfortunately, I think some of the assets that require a significant amount of capital are not necessarily the ones that are going to trade for a premium price. So I think that's really the balance that we're making. And looking at some of those assets, as Jeff said, it may not be necessarily the biggest number from a CapEx perspective, but where will the market price through it? It may actually come in markets that were a little bit more optimistic about, but the CapEx number as a percent of total value is large.

Austin Wurschmidt

Appreciate the time. Thank you.

Operator

Smedes Rose, Citi.

Smedes Rose

Hi. Thanks. I was just wondering if you could share what the increase in labor -- property-level labor and wage and benefits was for '24, what you're expecting in '25? And maybe just any thoughts on kind of the pace going forward? It seems like yours are maybe a little bit lower than some of your peers. So I just wanted to put some numbers around it.

Justin Leonard

Sure. Yeah, we -- and I think we've mentioned this. A lot of our benefit growth and wage growth is really driven by the massive amount of increase we had in food and beverage. And we saw it abate towards the end of the year. But in totality, we actually saw wages up about 7% for the year.
Salaries and wages -- salaries were about 5%, and benefits picked up at about 12.5%. So we saw that significantly abate as we got to the third and fourth quarter. Then we had 10%-plus food and beverage growth and saw significant growth, just really driven by a lot of that food and beverage labor. And then as we got to the end of the year, that number had slowed to about a 4% year-over-year growth, as food and beverage was more comparable to the year prior.

Briony Quinn

And our 2025 guidance assumes that wages and benefits will grow sort of around 4%.

Smedes Rose

Okay. And do you -- would you expect the pace to continue to slow, I guess, as we go into '26 or kind of just your general thoughts? I know we still have -- the year is young, but --

Justin Leonard

I think -- marginally, I think we're seeing more applicants for open job positions. And it's definitely not sort of the break that pace of labor growth that we saw. The jobs market seems to have slowed a little bit. And I think with more applicants, there's probably less wage pressure in the majority of our markets.

Briony Quinn

That's true. And I would say that the only thing in 2026 for us is we will have a union contract reset in New York. But we only have three limited-service hotels there. So that shouldn't be as impactful for us as a lot of the full-service hotels. But we will have that headwind, if you will, in 2026.

Smedes Rose

Great. And then I just wanted to ask you, on the dividend, you mentioned -- so going to be $0.08 kind of quarterly run rate and then a potential stub dividend. Based on your guidance now, would you expect to pay a stub dividend? Or can be -- I think you have a loss on the sale of the Westin. Does that count against the dividend -- required dividend payouts?

Briony Quinn

Yeah, that's true. We will have a loss on DC. I think the tax loss is actually a little lower than the GAAP loss. But I do expect that we will pay a stub dividend in the fourth quarter. I can't tell you today what that might be, but that's our expectation.

Smedes Rose

Thank you.

Operator

Michael Bellisario, Baird.

Michael Bellisario

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just want to go back to CapEx for a second, just dig into the potentially refined scope at the Landing and just maybe also in relation to what you did in New Orleans. Are you dialing back spend because of cost inflation and returns are lower? Or are you seeing something different in these markets, fundamentally, that may be changing your view about where and how much you should be investing there?

Jeff Donnelly

I'll chime in, and Justin can join in. I mean, as it related to the Bourbon, I think the scope of work -- and meaning, like the actual design, setting aside the cost for a moment -- I think it was something that we were pursuing. And then when you actually kind of went to go bid that out, I think the sheer cost was a little bit higher than our expectation.
And frankly, there are some costs, such as room renovations that -- they don't trigger incremental operating expenses, and there are some expenditures. Like in that case, we are adding more food and beverage outlets and bars that are going to trigger additional staffing. And you have to think about whether or not that's really something that you want to be doing there from a return perspective.
So I think in the case of Bourbon, we felt that just the room renovation and the destination fee that followed could effectively produce a better return than if we had spent all of the incremental money on building food and beverage outlets that generally tend to run with lower margins.
So it was just really thinking about where like we can minimize the dollars and generate the biggest return. It doesn't mean that we can't hold that option for F&B outlets on the side for the future. But that's just how we had thought about that one. Justin can speak to the Landings.

Justin Leonard

Yeah. I think (inaudible) when it comes to Landing, we're just trying to be more disciplined about what the true potential ROI is for capital dollars invested. We have some entitlements to build additional room product, but it's a hotel that doesn't run high occupancy for a good portion of the year.
And I think, perhaps, some of our underwriting initially about what we could do in terms of incremental occupancy when we added 14 rooms, we really dug into it. We thought it was a little overly optimistic. And I think that, combined with the fact that costs came in a little higher than we had originally anticipated if we priced the project, it's just taking us back to the drawing board to see if we can find a better way to utilize those 14 additional entitlements, but do in a more cost-effective way, given that we're only going to get occupancy on kind of premium occupancy nights.

Michael Bellisario

Got it. Understood. That's helpful there. And then just on the group comments you guys made, just aside from Chicago, maybe what hotels -- what markets did you see the pace pick up since 3Q? And where does the potential still exist in the portfolio to continue filling in as the year progresses?

Justin Leonard

Yeah. I think some of our sort of midsized urban hotels had some nice movement. So Denver, Salt Lake, San Diego, all had some decent movement and close a decent amount of business towards the end of the year.
So I think we're seeing some good progress. I think particularly in Salt Lake and San Diego, which are two hotels we just renovated, I think we're starting to see some of the benefit of those capital dollars invested. On group tours, we're able to close a little bit more of that group business.

Michael Bellisario

That's all from me. Thank you.

Operator

Duane Pfennigwerth, Evercore ISI.

Hi. Thanks. This is Peter, on for Duane. Thanks for taking the questions. So I guess, Jeff or Justin, if you could help us think about the RevPAR growth by quarter this year, anything that you would highlight on the shape of RevPAR throughout the year, maybe a tough comp in a certain quarter, easier comp in other quarters?
And then in particular, in 1Q, it sounds like Florida resorts is expected to be down. But you did get the benefit of the inauguration in DC and the Super Bowl. So just kind of help us think about 1Q and then how it evolves through the rest of the year.

Jeff Donnelly

I mean, looking at it, I think when you look at it overall, I think our first quarter is where our expectation is that our RevPAR will be a little bit softer than the average of the remaining quarters. It's a little bit of like a tale of two cities, I would say, in that the resorts we're expecting, as I said in my remarks, it will be a little softer in the first part of the year.
And in the first quarter, we tend to be very resort or leisure driven. Really, it's -- that's when [ski] markets and say, like Florida markets would typically be at their peak. And we're expecting Florida to be on the soft side. As we move through the remainder of the year, that's when the urban markets tend to fare a little bit better and we have a little more visibility. I would say our probably toughest comp on the urban side is August, Q4.

Justin Leonard

Well, yeah, August and Q4.

Jeff Donnelly

August because Chicago, the Democratic National Convention came through. And (inaudible) also in the fourth quarter, we had very good group pace.
But when you blend it together, I would say, the first quarter, I think, is going to be on the lower side relative to the rest of the year and maybe relatively sort of in the, what, 2% to 3% range in the remaining three quarters.

That's very helpful. Thank you for that. And then I guess, just on the expense side, could you highlight maybe some initiatives that you've taken, anything in particular that's kind of helped your expense growth for this year, which seems to be a little bit better than peers? Thanks for taking the questions.

Justin Leonard

Yeah. We haven't found the magic bullet. I think it's really just a focus on productivity. And I think a lot -- some of the tools that we've enacted -- and I think we've been able to sort of dig a little bit deeper into some of our managers, labor management tools really to try and figure out where are we having successes from a productivity, particularly in rooms, and where can we utilize some of the standards that are in place at those hotels that are able to drive higher flow-through and better rooms productivity and utilize some of those at other assets.
I think that's really where we've had success. So it's just kind of blocking and tackling of like how do we combat the increase in labor cost with a bit of increased productivity to, hopefully, offset some of that wage inflation.

Got it. Appreciate the thoughts.

Operator

Floris Van Dijkum, Compass Point LLC.

Floris Van Dijkum

Morning, guys. Jeff, I appreciated your comments on FFO and why it's important to look at the capital structure and the balance sheet, and actually what comes down to what pays the dividends. One of the interesting things, I think, is if we look at your stock and most of your peers' as well, frankly, you look cheap on both FFO and EBITDA.
I just want to -- you sort of alluded to this, but maybe if you can expound on the fact that -- are there better opportunities today than buying your own stock back? What would make -- I guess, maybe ROI projects potentially could get higher returns. But if you can talk about your -- as you look out at the -- at your portfolio today, where you find the best or the most attractive returns available?

Jeff Donnelly

Yeah. Thank you for the question, Floris. I mean, certainly, share repurchases are attractive. I think if you -- and when you consider our source of funds, for example, and you look at what we're saying sort of CapEx adjusted, where we were thinking that we sold the Westin DC and you could conceptually do the same for our portfolio, we just think it's a much better sort of free cash flow yield in our shares than it is in the Westin DC.
There's other investments as well, as you mentioned, ROI projects within our portfolio. Because for us, we're able to better understand those risks than most. And also, there are some pieces of our capital structure where, depending on the source of funds, there can be opportunities to accretively pay off debt and reduce leverage or call our preferred.
So we do look at all of those options. Right now, I mean, we'd love to be finding compelling external growth opportunities at 10 caps and a fraction of replacement costs. But there's just not a lot of that out there.

Floris Van Dijkum

Yeah. And maybe my follow-up question. As you think about portfolio composition, you sold another, I guess, a $90 million hotel in DC. How do you see the portfolio of your hotels in two years' time? Is it going to be more concentrated, or do you think it's going to be more diversified in terms of single-asset exposures?

Jeff Donnelly

I guess, I'd like to believe that it will be more diversified. I think there will continue to be some asset sales over the next few years that might skew towards larger assets. And if we're successful on that, recycling that capital would allow us to diversify our portfolio a little bit would be my expectation.

Floris Van Dijkum

And in terms of management, is there a -- I mean, you could argue that having fewer assets are easier to manage. How do you look at -- in terms of managing your portfolio and driving growth, is it -- I guess, you're pretty close in contact with all of your local operators. Are you benchmarking across the portfolio? And are you finding opportunities to increase the operations as well?

Justin Leonard

We just work harder than everybody else. No, I think candidly, Floris, we have the most -- in terms of percentage of our portfolio, we're by far the most third-party managed. It just gives us a lot of say in the operations and our individual assets.
We're really able to dictate like a lot of the policies and procedures and staffing levels. To a higher degree, I think that we, ultimately, can on some of the brand managed assets. So that gives us more of a say in cost mitigation strategies.

Floris Van Dijkum

Thanks, guys.

Jeff Donnelly

Thanks, Floris.

Operator

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back to Jeff Donnelly for closing remarks.

Jeff Donnelly

Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us this quarter. And we look forward to seeing you on the road. Thanks.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.