Global Business Travel Group, Inc. (NYSE:GBTG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Hilary Lee: Hey, Paul, this is Hilary on for Toni. Just wanted to ask on transaction volume, I know you guys want to kind of move on beyond the 2019 benchmarks. But just based on our estimates, it looks like transaction volumes has kind of stayed around this mid to high 70’s of 2019 pro forma levels the past three quarters? So just wondering if you have any color on why the volume recovery may be slowing down a bit or like how do you see that going forward. I know you expect a baseline of 4% to 5% growth for next year, but just wondering anything else that you can add to that?

Paul Abbott: Yes, look, I think we said earlier in the year that we probably see a couple of points additional recovery per quarter. And that’s pretty much what we’ve seen. I think the latest stats for kind of for Q3 is volume recovery on transaction and sales is around 77%, 78%. Our revenue recovery is just up around roughly 80% level and we have been seeing some sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter. You do have to normalize for some workday adjustments in order to get that for you, but that’s basically the patent the patent is actually very consistent with what we guided to at the beginning of the year. I just want to come back to the 4%, 5% points to make sure it’s clear. I wasn’t guiding to 4%, 5% growth in total next year, I was guiding to 4%, 5% as a baseline of what we control, which is the impact of the net new wins in the share gains.

So, what we’ll have to do over time is make adjustment about what level of market growth is going to come in addition to that, right? And that’s what I was saying to Lee earlier, that is a more difficult judgment to make in this environment, because that clearly is a greater amount of economic and political uncertainty. So, I just want to make sure that point was clear.

Hilary Lee: Okay. I appreciate that. Great color. And just wanted to touch on margins, if I could. I know, we kind of have a limited history here, but I was just wondering if you could tell us like how we should kind of expect the cadence on margins going forward like, should we expect kind of a step up from Q1 to Q2 and then subsequent step down in Q3 and Q4 going forward or still kind of too early to tell?

Karen Williams: Hi, Hilary. It’s Karen here. And we have talked in the past about just the seasonality of our business. And so with the higher volumes in the first-half, you would expect higher volumes, it’s best to look at this on a, on an annual basis where we’ve guided around 16%, 17% on a full-year basis. We have also talked about over time the expectation around our margins of being between low-’20s and mid-’20s. And so an expectation that we will see productivity and efficiency gains going forward and so, approximately a one point improvement. But, the reason why we guide to that range is because we will — one of our priorities is around investments. And so if there are investments that will drive the long-term growth of this business, then we will make those investments.

As you will see that we have done this year. So hopefully that gives you a bit more color in terms of how we’re thinking about it, but you should absolutely think about the seasonality as well. That’s my first point.

Hilary Lee: Great, thank you.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, We currently have no further questions, so I’ll hand back to Paul Abbott for any further remarks.

Paul Abbott: Well, thank you to everyone for joining the call. Appreciate the questions and your interest in the company and we look forward to speaking to all of you again soon. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you for joining today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines.

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