Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ:SABR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Randolfi: Yes. And the only thing I would add on that is as we discuss forward-looking commentary incorporated in that forward-looking commentary is an expectation that NDC continues to grow and our forward-looking commentary reflects that.

Joshua Baer: Perfect. And if I could just ask one on the 2025 sort of the $900 million plus in EBITDA going to $500 million in free cash flow. You could talk through some of the assumptions on working capital in those numbers, just thinking through interest, taxes, but then also just working capital in that bridge to free cash flow.

Kurt Ekert: You’re not going to go into too many specifics on that at this time, Josh. What I would say is we are not assuming a significant impact on working capital, either positively or negatively in 2025. But beyond that, we’ll provide just a more fulsome update in February on ’24 and ’25.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from the line of Dan Wasiolek of Morningstar.

Dan Wasiolek: So just going back to the $150 million growth in the 2025 guidance, I think you guys have said that at least 1/3 is coming from hospitality. Any color you can provide on how much high it kind of gets you to that 1/3? And then what would you anticipate would be the implementation time frame for Hyatt? I know you guys said on this quarter that it will begin in the first half of next year.

Kurt Ekert: Yes. Thank you. Good question. So when we look at the strategic growth initiatives, just to color them once again. And we looked at $150 million of EBITDA accretion between now and 2025. What we articulated was we expect to see 1/3 of that from Hospitality Solutions, 1/3 from GS share growth and 1/3 from an amalgam of airline retailing payments, hotel attachment. Specific to Hospitality Solutions at Hyatt, we’re not going to break out the details of the agreement with Hyatt but it is indicative of the traction that we’re getting with SynXis, which traditionally has been the leading mid-market hotel provider. But this basically demonstrates our ability to compete and win in the enterprise CRS space. And so what I want to do is turn it over to Scott Wilson, to lead HS, if he could give more detail about the implementation and the value that we’re bringing there.

Scott Wilson: Thanks, Kurt. Thank — yes. So you actually cure a couple of things that are really important here. But let’s start with by piece. The implementation, as we mentioned, is going to be starting in the first half of the year and we believe that we’ll be vastly continued with it by the end of next year. So most of that revenue gain that we expect through that contract is going to be fully realized by the end of next year, which we think is just a great accomplishment by the team and our partner in Hyatt. The second Kurt talked about the SynXis platform. Overall continues to be very strong within the market. We actually have renewal rates this year at the highest they’ve been since the pandemic, in fact some of the highest ever and we continue to win new business in areas outside of the enterprise space as well.

And the third key piece is the introduction of retail studio this year, which really unlocks a new TAM for us which is around retailing in the hotel space, something that’s a little bit more mature in the airline space, but has a lot of growth and upside that we’re seeing good traction on in the hotel space as well. You take those 3 things combined, and we feel very good about that $50 million that will contribute by the end of time.

Dan Wasiolek: Okay. Great. Very helpful. And then if I can just squeeze in one more quick one. Any color that you can give on just how your booking trends have been trending over your key regions?

Kurt Ekert: Sure. I’ll just talk about it in terms of what we’re seeing in terms of recovery relative to 2019. I mean, as you know, I mean, for the most part, North America is fully recovered. What you’ve seen is Asia is probably still recovered versus 2019 in the mid-60s. Europe is like in the 70s. I would say the one trend that we’ve seen that’s a little more notable. We’ve actually seen Latin America back up a little bit over the last few months, and that’s trended back a little bit, but that’s generally what we’ve seen.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from the line of Victor Cheng of Bank of America.

Victor Cheng: A couple, if I may. Just going back to — on the point on revenue per booking, can you give us some color? Obviously, 9% improvement year-on-year is very solid. I’m sure there’s some pricing element in the mix improving. And often you talk about it depending on region mix, home and the way mix and business leisure mix. But maybe one question I want to ask is, does it matter what tier of airlines are the bookings associated with? The question I asked about this is over the last couple of months, we have seen American Airlines moving a bit more into NDC, United moving to NBC as well. And it seems that the volumes are coming down for the carriers, which presumably has a lower revenue per booking that as a tailwind on revenue per book. Is that the right assumption to think? Or — or am I off?

Kurt Ekert: Victor, thank you. Let me start and then turn it over to Mike. So first of all, NDC today represents only about 1% of the GDS marketplace. So the impact on the average fee per booking is relatively small.

Michael Randolfi: Yes. No, thanks. That’s a very important part. So — the primary driver is really that we’ve seen within the mix regionally, we’ve seen our mix be pretty favorable. And really, within the carrier mix, it’s been favorable. We have due to carriers where the average booking fee is higher. But to Kurt’s point, the impact from NBC has been de minimis on our average booking fee. [indiscernible] is really that NDC at this stage is a very, very, very small part of the industry. And from everything we see, represents 1 maybe 1% to 2% of intermediary distribution globally.

Victor Cheng: Yes. Got you. It’s — I was just looking at some data from talking about U.S. Kings, I think they talk about 10-plus percent of NDC bookings as a percentage of indirect U.S. bookings. And if GDS as a whole is still roughly said — does that mean that as some of the bookings get shifted to NDC that GES is not capturing that opportunity?