ORIENT-EXPRESS HOTELS. July 8, :30 am CT

Transcription

1 Page 1 ORIENT-EXPRESS HOTELS July 8, :30 am CT Operator: Good day everyone and welcome to the Orient-Express Hotels conference call. Today s conference is being recorded. At this time, I d like to turn the conference to Ned Hetherington, Company Secretary of Orient- Express Hotels. Please go ahead. Ned Hetherington: Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for what we hope will be a brief call about today s announcement. As previously announced, we will be issuing second quarter earnings on August 2 and will host a conference call for the investment community on August 3 to discuss those results. As we are now in our quiet period after quarter end, we ask that you hold your questions about performance during the quarter until our call in a few weeks time. I m joined today by Bob Lovejoy, Chairman of the Board of Orient-Express and newly appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer.

2 Page 2 We re also joined by Filip Boyen, our Chief Operating Officer, Martin O Grady, our Chief Financial Officer and Vicky Legg who s in charge of our public relations and corporate communications. Before I turn the call over to Bob, I d like to read out our cautionary statement under the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of In the course of remarks to you today by Orient-Express Hotels Management and in answering your questions, they may make forward-looking statements concerning Orient-Express Hotels that are not historic facts. We caution that actual results of Orient-Express Hotels may differ materially from these forwardlooking statements. Information about factors that could cause actual results to differ is set out in the company s latest annual report to shareholders and the filings of the company with the Securities & Exchange Commission. With that said, I will turn the call over to Bob Lovejoy, Chairman and Interim Chief Executive Officer. Bob will make some brief remarks and then take a few questions. Bob Lovejoy: Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for joining us today on short notice. As you know, today we announced that Paul White, our President and Chief Executive Officer has resigned from the company. Paul s departure was for personal reasons and is in no way related to the company s strategy, operating performance or financial results.

3 Page 3 Orient-Express remains strong and well positioned for continued growth. We thank Paul for his many contributions to the company s success over the past 20 years including his role in managing Orient-Express through the recent economic challenges. The Board understands and agrees with Paul s decision to step down at this time. And we wish him well in his future endeavors. The Board is moving ahead expeditiously to identify a permanent replacement. We ve named a search committee of four directors chaired by Mitchell Hochberg and including Prudence Leith, Georg Rafael and myself. Orient-Express is a highly respected company with iconic properties around the world, a solid financial foundation, a long term track record of success and a deep management team. We are confident that we will be able to attract an outstanding new permanent CEO. In the meantime, I will serve as interim CEO. I have the pleasure of knowing a great many of you already. But for those of you I have not yet met I ve been on the board of directors of Orient- Express since the year 2000 and was elected Chairman last month. Formerly, I was a managing director and partner at Lazard Freres for over 15 years where I served as co-head of general banking. And earlier in my career I was a partner at David Polk and Wardwell where I practiced law for 13 years. During my 11 years as a director, I have worked extensively with the leadership team and have gained a deep understanding of the company s business and properties.

4 Page 4 My primary mission will be to ensure that Orient-Express does not miss a beat during this transition period. We do not anticipate any change in the company s fundamental strategy which the Board believes is sound. We have an outstanding set of properties and a strong operating team. And we will continue to focus on delivering strong financial and operating performance in 2011 and beyond. Orient-Express is on a very good path and has the skill, focus, capacity and determination to continue delivering strong performance. I ll be working closely with the management team to ensure our strategy remains on track and that we are performing well. I ll now take a few questions about today s announcement. I will not take any questions about the second quarter results because we are in the quiet period and as you can appreciate this is a busy day so I d appreciate it if you would limit yourself to a single question. Operator, would you please open the lines? Operator: Certainly. And for the phone audience, to ask a question, you may do so by pressing the star key followed by the digit 1 on your touch-tone telephone. If you re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset or release your mute button to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, this is star 1. And we ll pause for a moment to assemble our queue. We ll take our first question from Josh Attie from Citigroup.

5 Page 5 Josh Attie: Hi, thanks. Bob I think Paul s severance agreement with the company required a six month notice period. Is there any reason why this didn t occur? Bob Lovejoy: There s been a separation agreement entered into by the - between the company and Paul that covers the terms of his separation in an amicable way. Josh Attie: Well I guess is there any reason why it seems strange that he didn t stay on for a transition period at least? Is there any reason why he didn t stay on for a transition period? Bob Lovejoy: I can t give you any special reason other than to say when you have a resignation for personal reasons it s because one has things to do. Josh Attie: Okay, thank you. Operator: Moving on, we ll take our next question from Amanda Bryant, Susquehanna. Amanda, your line is open. Please go ahead. Amanda Bryant: Yes, can you hear me now? Operator: Yes ma am. Bob Lovejoy: Yes. Operator: Yes.

6 Page 6 Amanda Bryant: Great, thank you. Just wanted to wish Paul certainly best wishes to him. But in terms of my question I wanted to ask of the search committee in terms of what sort of candidate are they looking for to be the new CEO of Orient-Express? And then secondly with the search committee are they looking at internal as well as external candidates? Thank you. Bob Lovejoy: The search committee is looking for a strong, well rounded chief executive leader with outstanding leadership qualities and deep industry knowledge and the search committee is going to consider internal as well as external candidates. Amanda Bryant: Thank you. Operator: Moving on, we ll take our next question from Joe Greff, JP Morgan. Joe Greff: Hello everyone. Bob, you mentioned that you will step in and the company won t miss a beat during your period as interim CEO. Should we take it that you ll be doing the same degree of travel as Paul did traveling around the globe? I know Paul, at least our perception of that was Paul was pretty extensive in going out and visiting your different properties and spending time with the GMs. Bob Lovejoy: Well I was in Peru last week, visited all the properties there including the freight rail operations. I ll be in Venice next week. But I don t want to promise you to match up travel schedules with Paul. But I think that this will call for quite a lot of travel, yes.

7 Page 7 Joe Greff: And can you talk about what the severance was with Paul? Bob Lovejoy: I think that s all going to be - let me check with our general counsel Ned. I think all of that is going to be subject to public disclosure in a day or two. So I don t know that we want to get ahead of that. Ned Hetherington: Yes I think that s correct. Joe Greff: Thank you. Operator: And as a reminder that is star 1 if you d like to ask a question. And gentlemen, at this time, it appears there are no further questions. Bob Lovejoy: Okay, I want to thank you all and once again for joining us. We appreciate your interest and we appreciate your continued support and we look forward to chatting with you more specifically in the near term. Thank you. Operator: Thank you. That will conclude today s conference. We thank you for your participation. END