Earnings Call Excerpt
Marriott International, Inc. (MAR)
F4Q08 Earnings Call
February 12, 2009 10:00 am ET
Executives
Arne M. Sorenson - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, President - Continental European Lodging
Laura E. Paugh - Senior Vice President Investor Relations
Carl T. Berquist - Executive Vice President Financial Information & Enterprise Risk Management, Principal Accounting Officer
Betsy Daum - Senior Director of Investor Relations
Analysts
Joseph Greff – J. P. Morgan
Celeste Brown – Morgan Stanley
Steve Kent – Goldman Sachs
Jeffrey Donnelly – Wachovia Securities
C. Patrick Scholes – Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co.
Smedes Rose – Keefe, Bruyette & Wood
William Truelove - UBS
William Crow – Raymond James
Presentation
Operator
Welcome to the Marriott International fourth quarter 2008 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) At this time for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and President of Continental European Lodging, Arne Sorenson. Please go ahead, Sir.
Arne Sorenson
Good morning everyone. Welcome to our year-end 2008 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Carl Berquist, Executive Vice President of Financial Information and Enterprise Risk Management; Laura Paugh, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Betsy Daum, Senior Director of Investor Relations.
Before I get into the discussion of our results let me first remind everyone that many of our comments today are not historical facts and are considered forward-looking statements under Federal Securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our SEC filings which could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments.
Forward-looking statements in the press release that we issued earlier this morning along with our comments today are effective only today, February 12, 2009 and will not be updated as actual events unfold. You can find a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures referred to in our remarks on our website at www.marriott.com/investor.
Before getting into the details of our 2008 results, let me pause to reflect a bit on the environment we face and how Marriott’s management is responding to that environment. Obviously economic conditions in the U.S. and now around the globe are difficult. Those conditions are having a profound impact on our business. As far as we can tell every public company in every industry has acknowledged the difficulty of predicting results for the future in this environment. We certainly share that view.
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