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

Nick Jones: Got it. And if I could ask a question on kind of live units. If I look back over the last nine quarters, maybe with the exception of 4Q 2021 and 1Q 2022, it looks like somewhere between 500 and 700 units turn on sequentially. Is that the right way to think about, the growth of live units?

Francis Davidson: So, I think you’re correct to point out that this has been kind of the pace of openings. We have a really substantial portfolio of sign not live properties, right that’s consisted in the majority of the growth of the business, in the last several months since we announced our cash flow positive plan. It’s about 1.8x growth in live units, that we expect to generate as these signed units that aren’t yet, live become live. So, we don’t break out in our guidance, the live units and certainly not several quarters forward, but we do have a really large book of signed deals that are expected to contribute to bookable nights over the coming years.

Nick Jones: Got it. And I got one last question. Just how should we think about kind of corporate travel in 2023? Is that going to be kind of a big contributor, or are there — what’s kind of low-hanging fruit there, as you progress through 2023? Thanks.

Francis Davidson: Certainly. So, I mean we announced some really positive news today on corporate travel, right $70 million of book-to-corporate sales, which was a growth from 2021. So, really extraordinary progress there from the team really proud of the work that they’ve done, to go and drive especially weekday demand and help bolster RevPARs during weekdays, where we’ve traditionally been not as strong, as our comps, but we’re making a lot of progress there and there’s more to come in 2023. Of course, there’s the question mark on, how strong will be business travel demand, which we don’t have again differentiated insight into beyond what prognosticators forecasters have already laid out. But we feel very good about our capacity to get a disproportionate share, as we have in 2022.

Nick Jones: Great. Thanks for taking the questions

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from the line of Ron Josey with Citi. Please proceed.

Ron Josey: Great. Thanks for taking my question, guys. Two, please. One to follow up on Nick’s questions here around corporate. And Francis, I think I heard you say in the prepared remarks just the integration with the GDSs helped to drive a lot of the growth there. Talk to us about just the plan to raise awareness working with corporates, being part of the overall travel, call it booking of process flow amongst corporate travel, how that’s how you’re doing there and how that’s driving overall growth? And then Chris, I think I heard you say, that maybe tougher comps coming up due to COVID, but you cannot talk about summer travel and — would love to hear your thoughts on what you’re seeing in terms of, current trends thoughts in the summer travel insights on booking windows, things along those lines. Thanks, guys.

Francis Davidson: Thank you. So let me kick it off with the first one, Ron. So yes we’ve added more GDSs. There’s a whole distribution landscape for business travel that our team has been working hard, to add to our demand channels. And so those efforts are starting to pay off. And in addition to of course, the technology kind of distribution angle, it’s really important to have boots on the ground and folks that are there to advocate and sell the Sonder value proposition, to corporate customers. We’ve been included in a lot more RFPs during RFP season, as a result of some of these efforts. We’ve got many verticals that are just working quite well for us that we’re leaning into like entertainment, sports, corporate housing, relocations, internships.