Half Year 2025 InterContinental Hotels Group PLC Earnings Call - Pre-Recorded
<unk>, Chief Executive Officer, Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer, and Julie Fleming, Chief product and Technology Officer.
Before we proceed I'm applies to remind all viewers and listeners that the company may make certain forward looking statements as defined under U S law. Please.
Please refer to the accompanying results 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.
In addition, the presentation, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Once again, please refer to the accompanying results announcement and SEC filings for reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable line items within the financial statements.
The results announcements together with the usual supplementary data pack as well as the presentation slides accompanying this webcast can all be downloaded from the results and presentation section under the investors tab on IHG plc dot com now over to our H, one and 2025 highlights reel followed by Ellie.
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Hello, I'm, Ellie Maloof, Chief Executive officer of IHG hotels and resorts.
Welcome to ice juice 2025 half year results presentation.
Kick things off in a moment by sharing highlights from the first half.
A period of strong financial performance and excellent execution against our strategic framework.
Michael Glover, our Chief Financial Officer will then provide a financial review after which I'll cover some important areas of strategic progress.
We'll then hear from Julie Fleming, our chief product and Technology Officer, Julie will provide an update on the outstanding progress, we're making in the development evolution and deployment of our leading connected technology ecosystem across our global hotel a state. The first half of 2025 was another strong period of <unk>.
Actual performance and important progress against a clear strategy that is unlocking the full potential of our business for all stakeholders.
Global Revpar grew by one 8%, reflecting the breadth of our geographic footprint the strength of our brands and the resilience of our operating model.
We had an outstanding period of development activity, we added over 31000 rooms to our system of record taking our total estate to 999000 rooms across more than 6700 hotels.
And in the weeks since we've reached 1 million open rooms.
This significant milestone demonstrates the enduring appeal of our brands and the strength of our enterprise platform with record openings gross system growth was 7.7% year over year and net system growth was 5.4%.
We signed more than 51000 rooms across 324 hotels.
This was 15% higher than 'twenty 'twenty four levels, when excluding M&A and large portfolio conversions.
This takes our pipeline to nearly 2300 hotels up 4% year to date.
Our fee margin grew 390 basis points contributing to a 13% increase in EBIT.
Adjusted EPS grew 19% supported by our share buybacks.
We are pleased to declare an interim dividend of $58 six sense consistent with our 10% growth rate in each of the last three years.
Dividend payments, along with a $900 million share buyback program are expected to return over $1 $1 billion to shareholders in 2025.
Altogether, we delivered another period of excellent results, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our model and the power of our growth algorithm.
1.8% Revpar growth five 4% net system growth margin accretion from positive operating leverage and the step changes in ancillary fees collectively drove a 13% increase in EBIT.
And with the strength of our cash conversion, which funds our share buybacks, we delivered adjusted EPS growth of 19%.
This performance is above the top end of what we laid out as the compound average that we are targeting over the medium to long term.
And we are confident we will continue delivering on this growth algorithm going forward now let me hand over to Michael who will take you through the details of our financial results.
Thanks, Ellie I'm, Michael Glover, Chief Financial Officer for ice tea hotels and resorts, Let me take you through some more detail on the great set of results delivered for the first half of 2025.
I'll start as usual with our reportable segments, which is the fee business together with the owned and leased portfolio of 17 hotels.
Revenue was $1.2 billion, and EBIT was $604 million growing 6% and 13% respectively. Within this fee business revenue increased 7% and fee business operating profit increased 14% on an underlying.
Lying basis, which adjusts for a $7 million liquidated damages received and is that constant currency fee revenues were up 6% and profit was still up 14%.
Fee margin increased by 390 basis points to 64.7% I'll touch on this outstanding performance in more detail shortly.
Adjusted interest increased to $91 million, putting us on track for our full year guidance range that we've narrowed to between 195 million and $205 million.
Our effective tax rate was 26% down one percentage point. This was predominantly due to the timing of certain items such as non deductible foreign taxes in the U S. We still expect a full year effective tax rate of 27% unchanged from previous guidance earnings.
Per share includes the accretion benefit from the $900 million share buyback program for this year as well as the annualized nation of the previous years 800 million dollar program.
Through this combination of strong revenue growth the margin progression and accretion from the buybacks adjusted earnings per share increased 19%.
The interim dividend is increasing by 10% consistent with the growth rate in each of the past three years.
Moving onto a summary of Revpar performance amid.
Americas Revpar for the half grew one 4% with occupancy up 0.1 percentage points and rate up 1.3%.
After strong revpar growth of 3.5% in Q1, the region moved to a decline of 0.5% in Q2. This was expected given the impact from the shift in timing of Easter between March and April and the broader impact on certain types of business and leisure travel in light of.
Macroeconomic developments.
In EMEA, a revpar for the half grew 4.1% with occupancy up <unk> eight percentage points in rate of 2.9%.
Strong growth of 5% in Q1 east to 3% in Q2 in part due to fewer international events compared to the prior year by major geographic markets have one revpar range from being down <unk>, 8% in the U K to growth of over 5% in each of them.
Middle East Continental Europe, and East Asia and Pacific.
The ladder continued to benefit from higher levels of inbound leisure travel from greater China on top of very strong increases last year.
In greater China Revpar for the half was down three 2% with occupancy up 0.3 percentage points and rate, 3.6% lower the revpar decline of 3.5% in Q1 was followed by 3% in Q2 helped by an easing in the strawn.
Comparative.
Half one revpar was down 1.1% in tier one cities and down 6% in tier two to four cities due to lower groups and business demand and increases in international outbound leisure trips.
This slide presents the business leisure and group demand drivers showing a breakdown of booked revenue split by room nights and ADR.
In the half global rooms revenue for business bookings grew 2% on a comparable hotel basis, driven by a combination of room nights and rate group's revenue also increased 2% predominantly due to grade and leisure bookings grew by 1% driven by room.
Nights with rate held flat.
So on a global basis, all three demand drivers showed positive rooms revenue growth.
Turning to system growth openings produced 7.7% gross growth year on year as we added 31000 rooms in the first half of 'twenty 'twenty Vive. This was 75% more than last year, a record level of openings and that's still the case, even when adjusting for the Nonorganic Ruby additions.
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20000 rooms left the system equivalent to a two 3% removal rate when adjusting for the Venetian.
This is a little higher than the one 5% average we generally expect but we do not consider this an indicator of a longer term trend a temporary higher removals rate in China, reflecting the lagged effect of some hotels exiting post COVID-19 combined with the somewhat lumpy nature of hotel exits elsewhere.
It has resulted in this fluctuation above the mean.
Taken together year on year net system growth was four 6% or five 4% when adjusting for the Venetian.
We signed over 51000 rooms in the half up 15% when excluding the initial signings from the Ruby acquisition and last year's November agreement conversion activity predominantly drove this performance with signings of 27% Pleasingly Newbuild signings were also up by.
9%.
Normally at this point in the presentation I move straight into our margin performance, but before I do that I want to touch on the strength of our cost control as you can see from the slide ISG has maintained a highly disciplined approach to cost management for a long time now this is a continuous mindset.
<unk> underpins, how our business operates.
L a and I have been looking at efficiency and effectiveness in our business since day, one in the job.
And there are always ongoing actions.
Through process redesign greater leverage of centralized support and enhancing our use of technology, particularly AI, we are driving a highly efficient and scalable cost base with savings that are sustainable in the long term.
Set up exposure to realign our business in this manner, resulting in an exceptional costs within the fee business of $3 million in the first half.
And which we expect to be over $10 million for the year as a whole. These costs are expected to have a cash on cash payback within 12 months with savings building further beyond that.
We have seen these actions as well as those taken in previous years already yield results our fee business overheads of $318 million in the first half of 2025 was 15 million less in 2024, a reduction of 4.5%.
Moving to fee margin, which was up a very pleasing 390 basis points. This has been achieved through a combination of improving our core operating leverage which includes the tightened discipline on costs I just illustrated.
As well as step ups in ancillary fee streams.
As a quick reminder, on those step ups, we announced last year that revenue generated from the sale of loyalty point would come to ISG.
Initially 50% of these revenues were recognized in 2024, representing an incremental $25 million to ice tea with 100% of revenues and therefore, a further $25 million step up to be recognized in 2025, we are on track.
Therefore, this is equivalent to a margin uplift of 50 basis points.
We've also seen a step up in co brand credit card fees, when we announced the new arrangements in November last year, we said that we'd expect to see an incremental $40 million of co brand revenue in 2025 again, we are on track and this is equivalent to a margin uplift of a further <unk>.
80 basis points.
It's worth pointing out that historically ice G central costs had always outweighed central revenues and there is always been a central boss.
The step ups in revenue from point sales and co branded credit card arrangements now mean that this segment generates a net profit after other central overheads.
So there was the combined 130 basis points of margin improvement from the step ups in ancillary and our operational leverage and cost actions drove the other 260 basis points of margin improvement.
Pleasingly improvement was seen in each of the Americas, EMEA, a and greater China.
Moving on to cash flow.
Adjusted free cash flow was $302 million, an increase of $171 million on the first half of 2024. This was driven by progress in trading performance in ancillary revenues and improvement in working capital in the $41 million swing in the system Fund result.
As you May recall cash outflows for the system fund were higher last year due to the planned spin down of its prior cumulative surplus.
Across the year ice tea typically convert approximately 100% of adjusted earnings to free cash flow.
Though it is usual for cash generation to accelerate in half two.
The year to date conversion rate of 80% is therefore very much in line with where we would expect it to be at this point in the year and conversion on a trailing 12 month basis has been over 100%.
A quick look now at capital expenditure in more detail key money spend of $86 million was the same as 2024 as we explained at our full year results announcement increased development activity, particularly in the premium and luxury and lifestyle segments as well as the note.
Conversion portfolio means that key money in 2025 is expected to be in line with last year.
We therefore continue to expect key money and maintenance capex of $200 million to $250 million annually and our guidance for gross capex remains at up to $350 million a year. Our strategy for uses of cash remains unchanged after investing to drive long term growth.
Which is the foremost priority, we look to sustainably grow the ordinary dividend. After that we then look to return surplus funds to shareholders.
This year's $900 million buyback program is 47% complete which has repurchased a further $3 8 million shares or two 4% of the share count.
The dividend payments to shareholders in 2025 together with the buyback program. We will have returned over $1 $1 billion, which is equivalent to just under 6% of ice cheese market capitalization at the start of the year on a prospective basis given consensus.
Patients for growth in EBITDA and cash generation in 2025, together with the share buyback program and the cash outflows for the Ruby acquisition leverage at the end of 'twenty 'twenty five is expected to be around the middle of our target range of two five to three times net debt to EBITDA.
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Our guidance remains unchanged from what was communicated at our 'twenty 'twenty four full year results back in February.
Except for a slight narrowing of the forecast range for interest costs.
For reference this slide also shows a summary of our growth ambitions over the medium to long term.
With that let me now hand back to L. A.
Thank you Michael.
Now share an update on our strategic progress in the first half of 2025.
Our group these into five areas first we continued to drive excellent development activity across our brands second we expanded further into priority growth geographies.
Third we strengthened hotel owner returns.
Fourth we delivered a step change in ancillary fee streams.
And finally as Michael has covered our success in each of these four areas delivered increased profits dividends and the return of further surplus capital to shareholders.
So let me start with excellent development activity for our brands.
Over the last decade, we have doubled our number of brands from 10 to 20, capturing more guests at more price points than ever before.
At the top end, our ultra luxury brand six senses is delivering exclusive one of a kind experiences and sought after leisure destinations and driving average daily rates that are roughly 10 times higher than our essentials brands.
Our recently acquired premium urban lifestyle brand Ruby further enriches our portfolio with an exciting distinct and high quality offer and popular city destinations.
And our newest essentials brand garner is rapidly scaling and further broadening our presence in the affordable Midscale space. This expanded brand bladder not only diversifies our customer mix. It also brings more owners and property types into our system.
10 years ago, our brand ladder consisted solely of hard brands more recently, we have introduced three conversion friendly brands vignette vocal and garner that allow greater flexibility, while still leaning into brand hallmarks left my guess.
These three brands alone represented one third of our conversion signings in the first half of 2025 with the remaining two thirds across our other brands.
Our expanded brand portfolio, which builds on our industry, leading established brands is diversifying our system mix and our growth opportunities.
And we continue to consider options to further develop our portfolio in the future in.
In the first half of 2025, our established brands still drove the majority of our development activity.
These 10 brands, we opened 126 hotels, representing 65% of total room openings. We also signed a further 199 into the pipeline representing 59% of total room signings.
The holiday Inn brand family alone opened an impressive 72 hotels during the period and a further 119 were signed into the pipeline as owners continue to invest behind these industry leading brands.
While our established brands continue to drive system growth off a large base our newer brands are scaling quickly.
These 10 newer brands account for 9% of current system size, but 22% of the pipeline.
During the first half we opened 81 hotels across our newer brands and signed a further 125 into the pipeline within these newer brands Garner our Midscale conversion brand reached 138 open and pipeline hotels across 10 countries less than two years since launch.
The net collection launched in 2021 is ahead of its goal of reaching 100 hotels and its first decade are versatile and flexible vocal brand focused on premium conversions has now exceeded 100 open hotels across almost 30 countries since launching in 2018, where.
With a further 102 in its pipeline of signings continued to accelerate RUBI has also contributed to the signings and openings strength across our newer brands at the time of acquisition Rubia 20 opened hotels and we added the first 16 into our system in the second quarter.
The second phase of the integration, including transitioning the hotels onto Isg's guest reservation system is expected to begin later this year.
And we expect the remaining open hotels that join our system by early 2026.
We are pleased with our brand's growth momentum in recent months. In addition to the 10 pipeline hotels at the time of acquisition and further for hotels and sought after destination Geneva, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Malta have been signed we see excellent opportunities to not only expand Ruby strong European.
Base, but also take this exciting brand across Asia and to the Americas, where we are on track to have Ruby franchise ready in the U S. This year.
Turning to our luxury and lifestyle and premium brands.
These higher fee per key brands now account for a greater share of our system size in openings.
In 2019 loves.
Luxury and lifestyle and premium rooms represented just under one quarter of our openings.
Over the most recent 12 months this rose to 45%.
Luxury and lifestyle and premium represent 29% of current system size, but there are 43% of our pipeline representing future growth of 52%.
So these higher fee per key brands will continue to account for a larger share of openings and system size growth relative to history.
Beyond the fee revenue accretion that comes from these hotels. The brands also enhance the value of Isg's Master brand enrich the loyalty proposition of ISG one rewards.
And drive incremental high margin ancillary fee streams, they're point sales co brand credit card fees and branded residential opportunities.
We also continued to invest behind our powerhouse essentials and suites brands.
For our World, leading holiday Inn Express brand, we recently launched a new marketing campaign.
And you've been to cup upgraded coffee service already rolled out to over 1000 hotels.
And the fifth generation of the product model and lobby design.
This gen. Five format is more efficiently constructed for optimized operational management boosting both investment returns and guest satisfaction now lets turn to priority growth geographies were impressive signings and openings activity aspiring strong development across our well diversified footprint.
With more than 6700 hotels in over 100 countries, we are well positioned to capture guests wherever and whenever they choose to travel.
The U S and greater China, our two largest markets account for 65% of our system size and roughly 60% of our global pipeline.
Highlighting the scale of future growth still to come from these large and growing economies.
We also have a sizable and growing footprint in the rest of the Americas Europe, India, The Middle East Africa, and these deja Pacific.
These markets together account for around 35% of our system size and around 40% of our pipeline as we continue to deepen our presence in existing markets and expand into new ones.
Now taking a closer look at our largest market the United States.
Developing momentum continued to pick up in the first half as franchise applications Graham breaks and openings all increased on last year.
We opened seven new hotels, driven by further openings momentum across our premium essentials and suites brands.
We also signed a further 85 hotels into the pipeline.
And more than half of these openings and signings were delivered in the second quarter highlighting owners continued confidence in investing behind our brands. Despite uncertain macro conditions earlier in the year end.
In greater China, we delivered another record period of hotel development activity in the first half with 55 hotels open and a further 93 signed.
On top of strong Newbuild activity conversion momentum has stepped up as owners recognize the strength of our brands and the benefits of joining our enterprise platform conversions represented 40% of room openings in greater China up from 29% in the first half of 2024.
And higher conversion activity means we are taking even greater share in this vast market.
We expect a record development activity in the first half of the year to continue for the full year and.
And we remain confident in the long term structural growth drivers of greater China, which are underpinned by technological innovation at <unk>.
Rising middle class continued appetite for both business and leisure travel and the under penetration of hotels per capita.
Turning now to E M E I E and focusing on four of our largest markets, where we are also rapidly scaling our footprint.
Together, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and India represent 28% of our system size in EMEA and 37% of our pipeline.
In the first half we opened 36 hotels across these four markets and signed an additional 54 into the pipeline.
This included the launch of Candlewood suites in Europe, our first signing for even hotels in the middle East.
And further expansion of our conversion friendly brands in Japan.
Over the coming years, we aim to double our presence in each of these large and growing markets.
This not only brings more hotels into our system.
But also drives outbound travel and scale benefits across our entire enterprise platform.
Now turning to the important progress, we're making in strengthening our commercial engine to deepen guest loyalty and drive hotel owner returns.
Starting with ISG one rewards.
Our record enrollments grew 22% versus the same time last year.
And we're 64% higher than 2019 levels.
Globally, our loyalty penetration is now approximately 65% of all room nights booked and this figure is even higher in the U S and Americas at around 70%.
Reward night redemptions, a key indicator of member engagement increased 5% year over year, and our 65% higher than 2019 levels.
The strength of ice you on rewards and our ISG managed channels is driving increased total enterprise contribution.
This is generating more high quality revenue for owners and lowering their costs.
Our enterprise across all the channels and sources, we manage for our owners is now providing hotels with 83% of all the rooms revenue booked.
We are also laser focused on driving more direct contribution to our hotels through the strategic marketing of our ISG Master brand.
The Americas I Ashis Master brand awareness reached its highest level ever rising approximately five percentage points from the same time last year.
We're also better leveraging all customer touch points, including rolling out the by ISG endorsement for our hotels across digital channels and physical signage.
This endorsement increases Ice's master brand awareness and drives greater direct contribution which is key to reducing hotel owner costs.
Beyond improving owner returns.
One rewards members are also an essential driver of valuable ancillary fee streams.
We've said before that our loyalty members typically spend 20% more in our hotels than non members and are around 10 times more likely to book direct.
Our co brand credit card holders stay even more frequently and spend more on our hotels. The number of card customers rose at a double digit rate and total card spend continues to grow. We also recently expanded the ISG Chase partnership to give actually one reward status the chase Sapphire.
Zurf customers.
And a new co brand card is in discussion for the U K as we actively work towards expanding our co brand offering the other priority growth markets.
This continued growth in the program together with the new agreements between ISG and our U S. Issuing in financial services partners is driving the step change in co brand credit card fees that Michael spoke about earlier.
We are also very pleased with the growth in ancillary fees from loyalty point sales. This was driven by consumers actively engaging with ISG, one rewards and buying and redeeming points across our global estate.
We expect this fee stream to continue growing in the future as our loyalty program and system size expand further finally, we continue to see meaningful fee growth potential from branded residential developments.
The number of properties in this industry segment is forecast by Savills to double by 2031.
And our industry, leading luxury and lifestyle brands give us an advantageous position to capture that growth.
We currently have more than 30 open are selling projects in the market across 15 plus countries.
More properties are in the pipeline and several of these projects are expected to launch sales later this year.
I will now hand, you over to Joel the Fleming, our chief product and Technology Officer.
Jolie has spent more than 25 years as an experienced an inspiring leader and technology first businesses spanning multiple industries.
Jolie joined Daiichi <unk> 2021 as senior Vice President guest products and platforms, where she was instrumental in leading the tech design and development of ISG, one rewards as well as the new mobile App and hotel websites.
In 2020 for Joe Lee was promoted to our current position, leading the global products and technology function.
<unk> over to you to share more about your team and the outstanding Tech evolution underway across our global business.
Thank you Allie today, our global technology team manages the powerful and highly complex ecosystem, we manage hundreds of applications 24, seven across 20 brands for 6700 hotels in 20 languages, and then more than 100 countries.
Our team is dedicated to running a secure and stable technology environment.
And at the same time, we are committed to evolving our products and solutions to drive business growth value for our owners and memorable experiences for our guests as.
As we review the technology strategy today, I wanted to try and strip out some of the complexity of the actual technology and instead talk in terms of the business value, we're driving through that technology.
When we think about our technology, we think about it in three simple areas.
First how is our technology, helping to promote our hotels, we need to do all that we can to show the breadth and depth of our hotel portfolio to our loyalty members and prospective guests.
Second how our technology is helping hotels to optimize their operations and commercial performance. We wanted to ensure that our owners have the best technology in place to run efficiently and to generate best in class Rois.
Third how is our technology, helping hotels engage effectively with their gas.
Enabling high quality personalized connections with gas and delivering memorable experiences drives loyalty, which keeps gas coming back.
These are the three core ways, we think about our technology technology that promotes hotels technology that optimizes operations and technology that enables engagement with guests.
That is the simple framework that frames, our thinking guides, where we spend our time and where we choose to invest and it reminds us every day about why we're building technology. We are here to solve real business challenges for gas for owners and for IHG.
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Now that we've shared the framework, let's discuss our actual technology solutions in each of these areas and highlight where we're making significant upgrades.
Starting with promoting our hotels, we have our award winning IHG, one rewards mobile app.
We also have our websites. This includes IHG dot com, each brand's website and thousands of individual hotel websites.
And we have the technology supporting our other distribution channels, such as the customer reservation centers and our distribution partners and then to meta providers like Google and Facebook.
Together. These IHG managed channels drove enterprise contribution to represent 83% of all room revenue booked as Ali mentioned earlier.
Now we are taking it to the next level to further elevate how we promote our hotels, we're working with a third party supplier to overhaul our digital content platform over the next 18 months.
The new platform will enable us to quickly and effortlessly add compelling content for each of our hotels and showcase them in new and exciting ways I'll come back to this in more detail shortly.
In the optimized space when you look at the core mechanics of what it takes to run a hotel there are many different systems.
The three largest are the guest reservation system or a G. R. S.
Revenue management system, or RMS and the property management system or P. M S.
These three platforms work together to optimize pricing take bookings and manage check ins checkouts and hotel operations.
You've heard us speak for some time about our GRS and our long standing partnership with Amadeus.
This partnership has been a great example of IHG acting as a first mover to bring leading technology to our hotels at a lower cost to owners ahead of peers.
The rollout of the GRS system was completed in 2018.
And now we're evolving it to further unlock new revenue streams for our hotels.
Alongside that work, we're now laser focused on scaling our new revenue management system and rolling out the new property management system across our global XD.
On the engage side, we're building from a very strong foundation with IHG one rewards we.
We are also building upon our robust Wi Fi network, and our award winning Wi Fi auto connect capabilities.
From that strength, we're developing and investing in a new loyalty and customer relationship management platform and partnership with Salesforce.
This new CRM will give our hotel colleagues greater insight into gas lift.
Sure they arrive and serve them went on property.
Our goal to drive more memorable moments between our hotel colleagues and gas while enhancing the guest experience from checking to check out.
It is this highly connected technology platform that we're building in partnership with best in class providers that will position us to accelerate our growth and portfolio expansion.
Ultimately our aim is to ensure our hotels have modern AI enabled cloud based technology to run their hotels.
And by leveraging our scale, we are delivering these solutions cost effectively to our hotels.
Now, let's go a bit deeper on some of our key initiatives.
As I mentioned in the promote area, we are well underway in building a new digital content platform.
In partnership with a third party, we're building a modernized content platform that simple easy to use and unlocks new capabilities for owners.
It will enable more engaging content types, such as videos 360 degree views and floor plans to really bring a hotel to life.
We'll also be faster for our hotels to upload that content to our channels, making it easy to keep the content current and compelling.
And it allows us to leverage AI to drive commercial performance and enhance the guest experience. For example, we will support AI and machine translation for all hotel content, allowing us to promote hotels to even more global gas.
This in turn will create new and exciting ways for guests to discover and book IHG properties, while enhancing operational efficiency and supporting our direct channel growth.
The new platform is being finalized and we will be rolling it out across the estate in 2026.
Turning to our optimized pillar.
There has been significant investment in this area, which we are now leveraging and further evolving.
As mentioned earlier, our guest reservation platform has been fully deployed across our global estate for several years.
This means that now we can continue to evolve and enhance that core system to drive incremental high margin revenue growth for our hotel owners.
These advancements have increased the number of gassing upsell offers while booking and upcoming ste.
Remember approximately three years ago, our hotels had little to no upsell capabilities beyond offering certain room categories.
Last year, 25% of gas, we're seeing upsell offers for larger rooms, and better views at some point as they move through their bucking journey.
Today that figure has reached approximately 50% and we are working on extending upsells, even further throughout the travel journey.
And we're not stopping there we continue to expand G. R S capabilities, making it easier to book one room multiple grams different room types and add ons.
All to further generate commercial advantage for our owners.
At the same time, we rapidly deployed our new highly sophisticated revenue management system called and two pricing across our global estate.
This product was developed in partnership with a specialist revenue management firm and is proving to be a game changer for our hotels.
You've heard us say before that the platform uses modern data science forecasting tools and machine learning to deliver advanced insights and pricing and distribution channel recommendations to our hotels.
But more importantly, the platform has delivered results. This system is having an immediate and positive impact on topline commercial performance through revenue uplift and market share gains.
User feedback has been strong and N. Two pricing is enabling our hotels to focus more time on strategic planning on guest engagement and on operational efficiency.
As of June 30th and your pricing is live in over 5000 hotels and impressive Vinci event, considering only 1700 properties had end to pricing this time last year.
This is a clear demonstration of our commitment to deliver solutions efficiently and at pace.
With the rollout already 80% complete we expect the system to be fully deployed across the eligible estate by the end of 'twenty 'twenty five and we will continue to optimize going forward.
Turning to the property management system.
We're moving from an onsite hotel property management system to a new modern cloud based platform that is highly efficient portable and easy to use.
So what does a new P M S unlock for IHG.
The new Pms allows hotels to manage operations from anywhere meaning gas can be checked in from a mobile device.
The new Pms is intuitive and easy to use making it simpler to onboard and trained hotel colleagues and complete routine tasks like night audits.
The new Pms is also in the cloud, which enables better above property technical support.
Rapid centralized system updates and.
And additional security measures.
And it will connect seamlessly with other systems unlocking further capabilities, such as our new CRM system.
All of this takes work off of a hotel and enhances the guest experience.
And lastly, the new P. M S moves the relationship from the hotel owner and the third party to IHG and the third party.
This means we can leverage our global scale to negotiate on behalf of our 6700 hotels to deliver cost efficient and in many cases cheaper solutions for our owners over time.
So far we've partnered with two P. M S providers.
They are hotel key in the Americas, and EMEA Eh and.
And she G for hotels in greater China, we.
We are also currently piloting additional global solutions.
It's important to note that generally we aim to deploy enterprise wide solutions that could be standardized and adopted across all IHG hotels. However, we also have to recognize the breadth of our global footprint and the depth of our brands ladder.
By partnering with a few leading providers we are ensuring we have the right technology solutions in place for the right properties.
And here's another delivery proof point.
As of June 30th the New Pms solutions, our lives and over 1200 select service hotels around the world.
More than 600 hotels have been deployed this year alone.
We are targeting to be at 2000 by the year end and we expect to continue this accelerated pace until full rollout.
And additional solution is currently in pilot.
And if successful we expect to begin rolling it out to the estate in 'twenty 'twenty six.
Ultimately these three cloud based solutions G. R S.
Our M. S N P. M S provide our hotel owners with industry, leading core technology to achieve best in class retirements.
This will ultimately drive greater owner satisfaction.
<unk> future growth opportunities for IHG, and bolster our asset light fee based revenue streams.
Last but not least there is engagement.
Today, we are working to re imagine our loyalty and customer relationship management platform to deliver a unified view of each guest create elevated guest experiences and drive faster loyalty benefit delivery.
Our new AI enabled platform will empower our hotels to know each guest before they arrive and provide more personalized experiences and offers.
This will make their stay feel more personal and more memorable.
The new CRM tool will seamlessly connect into our overall tech ecosystem. So that hotels can easily access our guests stay preferences recognized milestone events and more easily celebrate loyalty with gestures like room upgrades and welcome amenity.
Yes.
Our reservation and customer care colleagues will also be able to see guest information when a guest calls.
Elevating how we service them in those moments.
The automated tooling will also make it simpler and more intuitive to use for our hotel colleagues. Another example of the many ways in which our solutions are not only unlocking commercial value and better guest experiences, but also driving better operational.
Efficiency.
The platform is currently in development and we aim to launch in 'twenty 'twenty six.
We believe elevating our core platforms will further strengthen IHG is leading position.
Our focus on cloud based technologies removes operational burden from our hotels.
Our focus on AI across our platforms will help colleagues work more efficiently and effectively while unlocking new areas of growth.
Our focus on value based solutions will create upside for our hotel owners and will contain costs along the way.
And our intentional shift from homegrown solutions to best in Class Third Party solutions will ensure IHG stays at the leading edge in technology for our guests and for our owners.
Collectively the developments that I've talked through today will transform how our hotels operate how we deliver more direct bookings drive deeper guest loyalty and enhance owner returns and how we widen the competitive moat.
We are incredibly proud of the delivery to date and we are excited about the next phase in our evolution to promote hotels.
Optimize operations and drive guest engagement.
So much with that I'll hand, it back to Ali.
To conclude.
We are very pleased with the strength of our financial performance the growth of our brands and the progress made in the first half of 2025 against a clear strategy that is unlocking the full potential of our business for all stakeholders.
The strong performance in each one went beyond the growth algorithm delivering revpar growth of one 8%.
Net system size growth of five 4%.
And 390 basis points of fee margin expansion.
We're on track to return to shareholders over one point and $1 billion. This year.
And this culminated in adjusted EPS growth of 19% in the first half of 2025.
We remain confident in our ability to continue delivering the growth algorithm over the medium to long term driven by <unk>.
High single digit fee revenue growth.
100 to 150 basis points of margin expansion per annum from operating leverage.
Proximately, 100% adjusted earnings converting into free cash flow.
Sustainable dividend growth.
Surplus capital returned to shareholders, while targeting financial leverage between two and a half and three times.
And ultimately delivering 12% to 15% adjusted EPS growth as a compound annual growth rate.
And with that we thank you for listening to our first half 'twenty twenty-five results presentation.