Sonder Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:SOND) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Francis Davidson: And just maybe one piece I could add here, Francis stepping in on the question of the total portfolio is that these properties that have contingencies that we’ve decided to exclude as Chris just explained the vast majority of those are — were not expected to go live before 2025 because we’re talking predominantly of financing contingencies that would precede any sort of construction that would have to take place before those signed units can turn into converted units. And so the impact on live units and bookable nights for the next couple of years is minimal.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question please. And it comes from the line of Nick Jones with JMP Securities. Please proceed.

Nick Jones: Great. Thanks for taking the question. I guess just one on 4Q with the Dubai location. I mean any benefit from the World Cup in 4Q that we should note? And then I guess if so anything from the Super Bowl in 1Q?

Francis Davidson: Yes, Francis here. Happy to answer your question. The €“ so we’ve got some significant events happening in across the world across all of our markets many times a year. And so there’s rarely an impact at the aggregate level that could be felt, especially if you look at comparison periods for 2021, where you had other things driving demand, especially in Dubai that were quite strong. So it’s one of these markets that have very sharp recovery post-COVID. So there’s a lot of puts and takes there but we don’t think that the performance of the business or RevPAR was inflated as a result of one-time events?

Nick Jones: Got it. And then I guess just to belabor the RevPAR piece. I think ADRs are you guys really kind of maintain price. It sounds like some of the commentary we’ve heard of that’s going to be kind of resilient at least in the first half of this year. I mean should we be considering any kind of mix shift as international travel comes back maybe pressuring ADRs or any €“ I guess I’m trying to come at this question from a different angle of how we kind of can think about how resilient these can be as you progress to 2023.

Francis Davidson: Yes certainly. So well one thing I think that is important to keep in mind about our relative positioning of our price point one of the major value propositions of staying at Sonder is that we remain affordable option, especially for the quality of experience that we offer. So when we look at our peer group, we typically come in with better but slightly lower ADRs. And so we think that this value proposition could hold particularly well in a softer demand environment. . The other piece of that equation which is what will the market be well, I don’t think we have any further differentiated insight than the market comments from economist on what the travel landscape looks like in urban markets. We have good visibility 30 to 45 days out based on .

But beyond that really we look at what are €“ what is kind of the consensus economic view and use that to plan our business. There is I should say despite a conservatism when it comes to the overall state of the economy, there is quite a lot of optimism for urban travel right now in the €“ coming from these third-party forecasters because we’re looking at a baseline of RevPAR that still isn’t fully recovered until Q4 of 2022 across the urban market in which we currently are versus 2019 levels. And that’s despite an economy that’s inflated quite a bit overall since then. So we’ve only gotten back to RevPAR levels of 2019 as of Q4 2022. And so there’s an expectation on the part of the market that we’ll see strong ADR and RevPAR performance broadly in the markets in which we currently are.

But of course, we don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t want to opine on to what exactly that will be.