Elie Maalouf

Thank you for having me.

It's great to be with you.

First, I really do want to thank our teams around the world for what was an excellent financial performance last year.

You saw Refbar grew 1.5% around the world.

Our operating profit was up 13%.

Our earnings per share up 16%.

And we're growing the company.

We had a record over 440 hotel openings around the world.

We added 700, nearly 700 hotels to our pipeline.

So the industry growing, our company's growing, we're confident about the future.

With regard to the United States, there were some, let's just say, unexpected things last year that weighed on the industry, which we think come off this year in 2026.

You had some tariff anxiety.

You had reduced government spending and travel.

You had the longest...

on history, government shutdown, you had reduced inbound travel to the U.S.

internationally.

Now, when you get into 2026, these things either don't happen or really just we comp over those.

In fact, we get some positives, like the World Cup, like U.S.

250 celebration.

You got a very strong economy, a strong GDP growth exit rate from Q4.