Marriott Sees Q1 Adj. EPS Above Market, Higher FY23 Results - Update

(RTTNews) - Marriott International Inc. (MAR), while reporting higher fourth-quarter results, on Tuesday issued its forecast, expecting first-quarter earnings about market, and higher results for fiscal 2023.

Marriott also announced that Craig Smith, Group President, International, has announced?his decision to retire February 24 after a 35-year career with the company.?

In pre-market activity on Nasdaq, the shares were gaining around 2 percent to trade at $177.59.

For the first quarter, the company projects adjusted earnings per share in the range of $1.82 to $1.88. On average, 15 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect earnings of $1.66 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter would be $980 million to $1.01 billion, and gross fee revenues would be between $1.045 billion and $1.065 billion.

Worldwide comparable systemwide RevPAR growth is expected to be 30 percent to 32 percent.

In January, worldwide RevPAR was up 51.6 percent year over year.

Further, for fiscal 2023, adjusted earnings per share are expected in the range of $7.23 to $7.91, while analysts project earnings of $7.48 per share for the year.

Adjusted EBITDA for the year would be $4.03 billion to $4.30 billion, and gross fee revenues would be between $4.325 billion and $4.555 billion.

Worldwide comparable systemwide RevPAR growth is expected to be 6 percent to 11 percent for the year.

Gross rooms growth would be around 5.5 percent.

In fiscal 2022, the company's adjusted earnings per share were $6.69, and adjusted EBITDA was $3.85 billion, on gross fee revenues of $4.08 billion.

Marriott said, "Given short-term booking windows and a high level of macroeconomic uncertainty, there is less visibility in forecasting the company's financial performance for full year 2023.... The high end of the range reflects relatively steady global economic conditions throughout 2023, with continued resilience of travel demand across customer segments and markets. The low end of the range reflects a meaningful softening of the global economy beginning in the second quarter with worldwide RevPAR roughly flat compared to 2022 in the second half of the year."