Global Business Travel Group Inc (GBTG) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to the American Express Global Business Travel Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, please note today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Barry Sievert. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, and good morning. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter earnings conference call. This morning we issued an earnings release, which is available on the SEC and our website at investors.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com. A slide presentation, which accompanies today's prepared remarks is also available on the Amex GBT Investor Relations webpage.

We would like to advise you that our comments contain forward-looking statements that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events, including the duration and effects of COVID-19, industry trends, cost savings and acquisition synergies, among others. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made on today's conference call. More information on these and other risks and uncertainties is contained in our earnings release issued this morning, a registration on Form S-1 originally filed on September 9, 2022, the related prospectus filed on October 3, 2022, and our other SEC filings.

Throughout today's call, we will also be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating expenses and free cash flow and net debt. All references during today's call to such non-GAAP financial measures have been adjusted to exclude certain items. Definitions of these terms to the most directly comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are available in the supplemental materials of this presentation and in the earnings release.

Participating with me on the call today are Paul Abbott, our Chief Executive Officer; and Martine Gerow, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining for the Q&A session today is Eric Bock, our Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global M&A.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Paul. Paul?

Well, thank you, Barry, and welcome, and thank you, everyone for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. I'm going to kick off by reviewing the third quarter highlights before turning it over to Martine, who is going to take us through the financials.

So we reported strong third quarter revenue and earnings. Revenue totaled $488 million, up 147% over Q3 2021. Revenue recovery for the third quarter reached 72% of 2019 levels, up 7 percentage points from the second quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA was $41 million with a fall-through on year-over-year revenue growth of 67% of pro forma 2021 levels. These strong financial results are driven by the continued recovery in business travel, our share gains and our increasing momentum in the SME segment.

Transaction recovery reached 71% of pro forma 2019 levels in the third quarter, and that was up 2 points versus the second quarter. As expected, travel demand strengthened meaningfully in September. Post Labor Day demand drove a 43% increase in transaction volume from July to September to reach the strongest volumes that we've seen throughout the recovery. And I'm pleased to say the momentum continues in October with transaction recovery at 76% of 2019 levels. The continued business travel recovery, our share gains and strong momentum in the SME segment, give us confidence to reiterate our full-year revenue guidance of between $1.8 billion and $1.85 billion and our full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of between $90 million and $100 million.

Now Amex GBT has a significant runway for growth, and our new wins momentum shows that we are delivering on this growth opportunity. New wins value over the past 12 months totaled $4.1 billion, representing 11% of our 2019 TTV. We also continue to accelerate our SME wins. In the SME space, we benefit from offering a choice of market-leading solutions, Amex GBT, Egencia and Ovation. We benefit from offering that choice in a very large unconsolidated segment with the fastest growth and the highest margins in the industry. Our SME new wins value over the last 12 months totaled $2.5 billion, with approximately 25% by value and 50% by number of customers coming from companies whose travel programs were previously unmanaged.

These new wins really demonstrate the value of our industry-leading service, technology and savings, which are creating even more value in today's environment with greater travel complexity and higher prices. Finally, here, our customer retention rate over the last 12 months through the end of October has also remained stable at 95%. And I'm pleased to say our customer satisfaction levels have also remained very high as we supported customers through a period with increased levels of industry disruption. As we discussed before, we expect $109 million of total synergies from the Egencia acquisition, and we remain on track to exceed the expected synergy target of $25 million in 2022. Based on actions that we've already completed to date, we have already achieved 70% of the $109 million expected synergies.

Turning to our cost savings, 80% of the $235 million permanent cost savings initiatives have already been realized. Looking ahead, I'm pleased to say customers remain positive about their travel budgets and the Q4 outlook and into next year. The continued business travel recovery, our new wins momentum, SME growth, the permanent cost savings and the Egencia synergy position us very well for long-term adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion.

So let's take a closer look at the continuing recovery. You can see here that transactions, TTV and revenue recovery, all continued to improve in the third quarter. Transaction recovery was at 71% in 2019, and this included actually a softer July and August period, which was definitely impacted by supply constraints and higher levels of industry disruption, particularly with airlines and airports. But post Labor Day, bookings increased significantly as companies continue to reconnect with distributed teams and customers around the world. The outlook for business travel in the fourth quarter also remained solid. As previously mentioned, October transaction recovery increased to 76% on a workday-adjusted basis.

So let's take a look at the recovery trends in a bit more detail. You'll see here that SME customers continue to lead the recovery. In the third quarter, SME transactions were 19 percentage points above our global and multinational customers, and they reached 80% of 2019. Also you'll see the third quarter, for the first time in the recovery, our international bookings recovery exceeded the domestic recovery. And this has been driven by restrictions around the world being relaxed or removed. However, I think it's important to note that there were still several markets and routes around the world yet to fully reopen in the third quarter, certainly Japan and China, Canada still removing restrictions through the third quarter, which provides additional opportunity for growth in the fourth quarter and into 2023.

Looking at product mix, increasing the ratio of hotel to air bookings is a significant opportunity for us, and I'm pleased to say we're making good progress. And we're making this progress through improving our hotel content and also improving the hotel display in our Egencia and Neo platforms. As the recoveries progressed, we continued to see our hotel recovery outperforming air, our hotel transaction recovery was 12 percentage points above air in the third quarter. And finally, here on a regional basis, despite China not having fully reopened, our Asia Pacific volumes have dramatically improved since January of this year and are currently the highest recovered region. This is primarily driven by the very strong recovery we've seen in Australia and India.

EMEA volumes also rebounded strongly. And you'll see here, we did see a slower July and August in EMEA, but it's good to see September volumes in EMEA recovered to 77% of 2019. So now 3 points above the second quarter. So the growth momentum continues also in EMEA. Within the Americas, Canada has been a little slower to recover with travel-related restrictions only removed on the 1 October, we should see some improvement in the fourth quarter, but the U.S. recovery continues to steadily improve. We have a significant runway for growth. We are the leader in a very large fragmented $1.4 trillion industry, and we continue to gain share with $4.1 billion of new sales over the last 12 months and a 2.5% win-loss ratio, winning 2.5x the amount of business we lose and consistently gaining share. The biggest growth opportunity is with SME customers. This is a very large and underpenetrated customer base with a total opportunity of $945 billion.

We are already the #1 player in managed travel for SME customers. But only roughly 30% of the $945 billion is actually managed to travel today. We signed $2.5 billion of new SME wins value over the past 12 months through October. Of this, approximately 25% by value and 50% by customer number is from companies whose travel programs were previously unmanaged, really demonstrating that we are gaining traction converting unmanaged travel spend to manage travel spend. So globally, our new wins value, our strong customer retention rate, underscore the value that we are delivering to customers. And our new SME wins, both the value and the recovery rates demonstrate our growing momentum in this fast-growing, higher-margin segments.

So let's move on just to talk about some examples of our product and technology innovation in the third quarter. 74% of our transactions come through digital channels. So our product and technology investments really do power our customer value proposition and our customer experience. And so I'd like to just highlight some of the new features we launched on the Egencia platform in the third quarter. In today's travel landscape, plans can often change and we are putting more power into the hands of travel managers and travelers. We introduced an upgraded user interface in the mobile app to present the users most important content, such as trip approvals and trip changes. Our new trip guide enhancement instantly connects the user to the most relevant, most important information.

We also launched new push notifications so that travelers can receive vital updates such as flight delays and schedule changes. And approvers can also get trip approval requests for instant approval direct on their mobile device. And then finally, we've also made enhancements to enable full change requests on the mobile device without even leaving the app. It's also always good to see customers, of course, recognize the value of the experience we deliver. And Egencia earned 15 G2 leader badges this fall. G2, as I'm sure many of you know, is the largest and most trusted peer-to-peer review sites, more than 60 million people and Fortune 500 companies use G2 to make software decisions on an annual basis. So it's very good to see the recognition of the Egencia platform.

In addition to the mobile enhancements on Egencia, we also introduced significant enhancements to our re-shopping, disruption management and sustainability capabilities in the third quarter. So to sum it up, I think our third quarter performance provides yet another proof point of our continued strategic, commercial and financial progress.

So that completes my review of the highlights, and I'd like to hand it over to Martine to discuss the Q3 financials and our forward-looking expectations. Martine, over to you.

Thank you, Paul, and hello, everyone. As you heard from Paul, we continue to make strong progress against our strategic and commercial priorities. And our financial performance was also very strong in the third quarter with sequential improvements on 4 key metrics. Transaction recovery was improved by 2 points in the quarter. Revenue recovery improved 7 points. Adjusted EBITDA fall-through improved by 4 points over the second quarter. And we reduced our cash usage by 36% as compared to the second quarter of 2022.

Now let me start with our third quarter results on a reported basis that we customarily do on these calls. Year-over-year transaction growth was 207% this quarter. Total transaction value was up 270% to a draw of approximately $6.6 million. Average transaction value increased 21%, largely driven by the strong recovery in international bookings.

Moving to revenue. Our third quarter revenue was up 147% to a total of $488 million. Travel revenue was up 224% in the third quarter, which is above transaction growth. And our product and professional services revenue were up by 29%. Now within that category, meeting and events revenue drove over half of the growth in product and professional services as demand for internal and external meetings and events continued to rebound strongly. And as we have shared on previous calls, growth in management fee was more limited as compared to 2021 because this revenue component was relatively protected from the reduction in demand from COVID-19.

Our adjusted operating expenses increased 64% in the third quarter, which compares favorably to the 147% increase in revenue. And as a result, we delivered $41 million of positive adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, which is an improvement of $160 million year-over-year. Free cash flow improved $5 million to a total of negative $112 million, and this was driven by [an amount in] the reduction in our operating loss, which was offset by the cash utilized to build back our working capital to support what was a 35 point increase in transaction recovery between the third quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2022.

Now moving to our pro forma results. And again, pro forma is pro forma for the Egencia acquisition as of January 1, 2021. Results for the third quarter on this basis were also very strong. As mentioned, transaction recovery was 71% versus 2019 pro forma, revenue recovery was 72%, 1 point above transaction recovery, which is a positive inflection from where we were in the first and second quarter. We continue to experience a high level of cancellations and air recovery is still trailing hotel recovery in the third quarter. However, we benefited from higher average ticket prices versus 2019 as well as an improved revenue yield, both of those elements having a positive impact on the revenue recovery versus transaction recovery.

On a pro forma basis, transaction volume was up 101%. TTV, which is total transaction value improved by 173%, again driven by higher fares in international recovery, which is on par with domestic recovery since actually in the second quarter. Total revenue increased 101% as compared to the third quarter of 2021, which is consistent with our transaction volume. Adjusted EBITDA on a pro forma basis improved by $153 million, which compare to a $245 million improvement in revenue. That is a strong fall through margin versus 2021 of 67%. And as indicated in my opening comments, it is a 4-point improvement from the second quarter.

Now let me turn to cash flow. So as expected and as we had shared with you, we significantly reduced our cash usage in the third quarter as the pace of recovery continues at a more steady rate. Our cash usage was $112 million in the third quarter. That is a $64 million improvement from the second quarter, and this is driven by -- you can see here, the lower bill working capital. And as you heard from Paul, our transaction volume increased by 43% between July and September, and that is really what drove the $82 million increase in working capital in the quarter. Now we do expect working capital consumption to continue to moderate going forward as we expect a more moderate pace of improvement in business travel recovery than what we have experienced over the first 3 quarters of this year.

And we continue to expect to turn free cash flow positive during 2023 as demand continues to recover and our working capital build normalizes. We closed the quarter with a cash balance of $312 million, and our net debt was $909 million. And finally, we're pleased to report that we completed our warrant exchange that increased the number of shares of common stock available for trading within what is a simpler capital structure. Additionally, approximately 394 million shares of Class A common stock, issuable upon the exchange of Class B shares held by legacy shareholders will become eligible for sales on November 23, 2022. And to the extent those holders choose to resell the securities, we expect that this would also improve public float and the efficiency of trading in our stock.

Let me close before I turn it back to Paul, to our full-year 2020 guidance, which, as you heard, we have reiterated. Our third quarter performance and our current recovery trends give us confidence we will finish the year in line with our previously issued guidance, which called for a full-year 2022 revenue between $1.8 billion to $1.85 billion and an adjusted EBITDA between $90 million to $100 million. And as a reminder, this revenue guidance is equivalent to a full-year revenue recovery of 64% to 65% of 2019 pro forma revenue, which essentially implies an expectation for fourth quarter revenue recovery largely in line with the third quarter.

And I will now turn it back to Paul, who will share his initial thoughts on how we're thinking about 2022.

Very good. Thank you, Martine. So looking beyond the end of this year, we are currently working through our 2023 planning process. And while we are not ready to establish formal '23 guidance at this point, I wanted to just provide some insight into how we are thinking about the year ahead. So obviously we recognize that the macroeconomic outlook for '23 has become more challenging over the last few months. And frankly, it's very difficult with the level of uncertainty that exists to predict the exact impact that this may have on business travel demand in 2023. As we've shared before, business travel demand has grown at or above GDP for decades. So it's logical to assume some impact if GDP continues to slow or decline.

However, we are in unique circumstances because there are several strong tailwinds that will also be supporting our growth in 2023. First of all, the business travel recovery continues, and our customer outlook remains strong. A survey of our top 125 customers in October reported that 95% expects their 2023 business travel spend to increase or stay flat to 2022. Also an October survey conducted by Morgan Stanley of 100 global travel buyers, predicted travel budgets for 2023 to be approximately 98% recovered versus 2019, and that was actually up from 94% in their midyear survey. And positively in the Morgan Stanley survey, nearly half of the respondents expect 23 budgets to increase versus 2019. Secondly, distributed teams and the hybrid work model are definitely creating new business travel demand as companies bring their people together for training, for motivation and for collaboration. And we already see this today in our meetings and events results as well as our customers' meetings and events forecast for 2023.

Third, we expect airline capacity to improve throughout 2023, and this incremental supply will support increased business travel demand. And fourth, we expect to continue to gain share, including momentum in the SME segment and continued momentum converting unmanaged travel to manage travel spend. Overall, while our planning is not yet complete, our current view is that we will continue to see solid revenue growth through 2023. And at this point, we're planning to revenue recovery in the high 70s for 2023.

Now finally, I wanted to give you a summary of our strategic priorities and our progress against these priorities. We are very focused on what we can control, executing against the strategic priorities and ensuring that our business model is set up to deliver the expected financial returns. When we started the process to become a public company in early 2021, we shared these strategic priorities with investors, and I'm pleased to say that we are delivering on all of these priorities. First of all, business travel recovery momentum continues. Transaction recovery has continued to improve each quarter and into October with 76% transaction recovery.

Second, the key reason our recovery is ahead of the industry is because of the share gains we're delivering. We continue to gain share and outperform the industry, which is proven by our 2.5:1 win-loss ratio and the new wins value of $4.1 billion. Third, we said our focus on winning in the SME segment would accelerate our growth. And our results show strong progress. SME new wins for the last 12 months, $2.5 billion. We also said we would unlock the unmanaged SME opportunity, and we are with approximately 25% of new wins by value, 50% of new wins by customer number coming from the unmanaged segment. And you can already see the impact of this in our results, with SME transaction recovery reaching 80% in the third quarter.

Fourth, we are delivering on M&A synergies. We expect $109 million in total agency synergies. We're on track to exceed the target of $25 million for this year. And to date, we've executed on 70% of the full expected synergies. Fifth, we outlined permanent cost savings that will drive margin improvement as the recovery continues. And as I mentioned, we have currently realized 80% of the $235 million permanent cost savings. And finally, and very importantly, margin expansion. All of the priorities that I just discussed show that our financial results are on track to deliver adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion. We delivered 60% -- 67% adjusted EBITDA fall through in the third quarter. And this is really important because it means as revenues are increasing, the business model is delivering the target profitability.

Put together, all of this progress gives us confidence that our business model is delivering and that we are set up to achieve and exceed our pre-COVID adjusted EBITDA when we reach 86% revenue recovery and set up for even stronger results beyond that. So we look forward to sharing a more complete view of our expectations for 2023 once our annual planning process is completed.

Thank you very much for your interest. And now we're going to open it up for any questions you may have.

(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan of Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to follow up on the 4Q EBITDA guidance. It looks like at the midpoint, the guidance is below 3Q. And just wanted to understand if it was due to seasonality or what factors might be driving that just because it seems like you're optimistic on continued recovery in this quarter, as you just mentioned, the EBITDA fall-through was very good. So just wanted to understand why the moderation in 4Q EBITDA?

So it's really seasonality. I mean, the fourth quarter has some of our 2 lowest months we see November and December. If you look at the fall-through that is implicit in that guidance, the fall-through the fourth quarter is actually 70%. So same profitability trends, but a much lower revenue base because it's the fourth quarter.

And I wanted to also ask if you could help us with some of the puts and takes about free cash flow for 2023. I know, Martine, you mentioned in the prepared remarks, you expect it to be positive and helped by working capital. Just I guess what's embedded with regard to interest expense headwinds, tax, some of the items that are below the line?

So we expect a working -- we think our cash flow to turn positive at some point in time during 2023. We're still working through our 2023 planning. So determining exactly when that will take place. We're still working through that. And you should have in mind that there is seasonality in our cash flow as well. With respect to interest rates, given the structure of our debt, interest rates is likely to be in the 10% range, if you assume LIBOR 4.5% next year, given that part of our 60% of our debt is actually swapped. That's probably taking equates to $120 million of interest for next year.

The next question comes from the line of Lee Horowitz of Deutsche Bank.

This is [Sherry Tsang] in place of Lee Horowitz, and thanks for the additional color that you provided on the overall macro environment. It strikes us that your 2023 outlook, obviously incorporates some of the macro concerns that we're seeing across the economy. And with this in mind, how do you think about managing your headcount relative to the fairly benign recovery that you're expecting next year? And relatedly, how do you think about investments to the extent if macro environment proves to be a little bit more challenging than what you're currently expecting?

I think the way that we look at that is, obviously we're still operating in an environment where there's a fair amount of uncertainty. So we have to make sure we've got flexibility in the model. And I think we've demonstrated that we have that flexibility in the past. As Martine mentioned and I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the important element for us is to make sure that we're delivering the right level of fall-through. We can't predict with absolute precision exactly what the revenue recovery is going to be in '23. What we can make sure is that whatever that revenue recovery is that we are -- that the business model is converting that revenue into the appropriate level of margin and profitability. So we will manage our expenses to ensure that we deliver the fall-through that we need. That's essentially how we look at it.

And also just to another question related to another point that you made about distributed teams being a tailwind to your business moving forward. Just curious if there is any way that you can help us better understand the size of the tailwind through these kind of new hybrid working environment has been to date and sort of how you expect this -- like what kind of incremental benefits that we're going to see from this going forward?

Yes. Look, it's a great question, mate. I don't know how to put a finite dollar number on it. But what I can say is that our Meetings & Events Group, we have a division that focuses specifically on meetings for under 50 people. And that is already above 2019 levels. And in a recent survey that we did with our customers on 2023 M&E forecast, we're also seeing projections for 2023 above 2019. So we definitely have data points that, I think, prove that the trend is real. But being able to size it and honestly isolate exactly what share of the recovery that represents is very challenging.

The next question comes from Stephen Ju of Credit Suisse.

So just briefly on the SME segment. So why do we think the recovery for the SMEs are at -- I think you said that it's 80% versus 2019 is so far ahead of the rest of the industry overall at 71%. And does this mean that the recovery for, say, your larger clients are still lagging the overall industry. So I guess there's more sort of white space ahead for the recovery. And I guess what is the strategy to convince the SMEs who may be using perhaps one of the OTAs to book something that they really need to use your products? Because in order for you to serve as a replacement, it has to be materially better than what they are used to using.

Well, I think there are a number of factors as to why the SME segment is outperforming global multinational. I think the SME segment has actually, for many years, been a faster-growing segment. Secondly, we are gaining share in that segment. So that's a factor. Third, we are seeing this conversion from unmanaged to managed travel, which is a factor. And I think finally, small to midsized companies have frankly been quicker to get back to a kind of operating model post-COVID than some larger companies that have been a bit slower to return to office and just slower and more cautious in terms of returning to travel. So those are, I think, the main reasons as to why the SME segment is outperforming. But that's a trend we expect to continue. That's why really through 2019 and 2020, we placed a series of bets on the SME segment, expanding our own sales force with the purchase of Egencia and Ovation to make sure that we have essentially the market-leading solutions for SME customers and different subsegments of the SME customer base.

Now in terms of why a customer would move from an OTA or from an airline direct to proper managed travel program, I think there are several key reasons. First of all, savings, access to our preferred express content delivers significant savings. First of all, you're getting access to a marketplace that has the most comprehensive and the most competitive content in the industry. You're not going to a single supplier site, you're getting the most comprehensive, most competitive content in the industry. On average, our SME customers book our own negotiated content, our unique rates 40% of the time. So they're getting significant savings.

Secondly, they're getting far superior service. I don't know if you've tried to contact an OTA, if your flights are canceled or you're facing some disruption. It's a pretty transactional experience. We offer high-quality 24/7 support mobile, desktop, voice integrated around the world. So you're getting significant savings, you're getting significantly improved service. And also, you're getting reporting and benchmarking and analytics that help the company manage the spend, you're getting full transparency of your spend across the entire company, which you're not going to get if your employees are all out there doing their own thing on various supplier or OTA websites. So those are the 3 key reasons. And honestly, they're very, very compelling. You get better savings, you get better service and you get full transparency and management of your company spend.

The next question comes from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth of Evercore ISI.

I wanted to ask you about the intermediate term shape of corporate recovery. So not theoretical 2023 but things you can actually see in your bookings. We've seen a nice sequential pickup since the summer here into September and into October. Do you think we plateau at these levels until early next year with new budget cycles? Or are there geographies where you expect a sequential improvement here into 4Q?

Well, I think in this environment, it's always difficult looking ahead and making accurate predictions. But I do think -- I'd refer you back to the tailwinds that I mentioned earlier. I mean, I was doing that in the context of 2023, but I think they're all relevant in the context of Q4 as well. I mean, more specifically, in the fourth quarter, if you look at October, I think travel restrictions on the 1 October are removed in Canada. I think we saw travel restrictions and quarantine removed in Singapore and Hong Kong. We've also seen Japan open up very recently.

And so the impact of those markets and routes opening up, we've not really seen in the third quarter, you're going to see some benefit from that, I think, in the fourth quarter. So far, we are not seeing kind of an impact of the macroeconomic conditions in the recovery numbers. As I said before, the recovery has strengthened in September. It strengthened again in October. Now what I can't say is if macroeconomic conditions were different, we would be at 80 or 82. That's obviously speculation. But what we continue to see is signs of good solid recovery through September and October. And I think we have still some tailwinds that should carry us through the fourth quarter and into 2023.

And then just for my follow-up on staffing, are you finding it easier to hire where are you on staffing relative to optimal maybe at this point in time versus, say, the second quarter? Are you catching up?

Yes, we have absolutely the number of target headcount that we were expecting at this point in time. We have done a lot of hiring in order to staff up for the peak, which was really September, October. So we are now focused on training and improving the productivity of the people that we have brought into the organization. But broadly speaking, we have the headcount that we need to carry us through the next period. So yes, I mean, we've been able to hire the number of people that we required.

There are currently no additional questions registered at this time. (Operator Instructions) There are currently no additional questions registered at this time. So I will pass the conference back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Well, finally, thank you very much to all of you for joining us today. And in closing, I would like to extend thanks to our team across Amex GBT, for their dedication to our customers and the strong results that they've delivered. Thank you, all of you for joining us. We look forward to continuing to update you in the future.

That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.