Global Business Travel Group - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to the American Express Global Business Travel Q3 2023 earnings conference call. As a reminder, please note today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, Barry Sievert. Please go ahead.

Barry Sievert (VP of Investor Relations)

Hello, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Q3 earnings conference call. This morning, we issued an earnings press release, which is available on SEC.gov and on 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 industry and macroeconomic 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 and in 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, 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 and 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 today are Paul Abbott, our Chief Executive Officer, and Karen Williams, our Chief Financial Officer. Also joining for the Q&A session today is Eric J. Bock, our Chief Legal Officer and Head of Global M&A. With that, I will now turn the call over to Paul. Paul?

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Thank you, Barry, and welcome, and thank you all for joining our Q3 earnings call. In the Q3, we once again delivered outstanding financial results, driven by our focus on margin expansion, cost savings, Egencia synergies, and continued share gains. Our results are ahead of guidance with revenue and Adjusted EBITDA growth of 17% and 135%, respectively. Importantly, we generated very strong Free Cash Flow in the quarter that was ahead of expectations. I'm pleased to report we are now Free Cash Flow positive on a year-to-date basis. This is an important milestone for the company and an inflection point that demonstrates our continued momentum. Based on this, we have the confidence to reiterate our full year 2023 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, and we are increasing our expectation for Free Cash Flow for the full year.

Strong demand for our leading software and services in the quarter resulted in continued share gains. We reported new wins value of $3.3 billion over the last 12 months. We also have continued momentum in our product and our technology leadership, with 77% of transactions now coming through digital channels, further contributing to our cost savings. SME customers represent the largest growth opportunity, with the fastest growth and the highest margins in the industry, and our results continue to be very encouraging. We reported double-digit SME transaction growth and strong SME new wins value of $2.2 billion over the last 12 months, including a significant contribution from previously unmanaged customers. Finally, our focus on delivering significant margin expansion is clearly evidenced in our Q3 results.

Adjusted operating expenses increased to 7% compared to 17% revenue growth, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was up 9 percentage points year-over-year and 2 percentage points over the Q3 of 2019. Adjusted operating expenses decreased quarter-over-quarter, and we expect this momentum to continue into the Q4. Turning to transaction growth, the industry is transitioning to more normalized growth rates, but our Q3 transaction and TTV growth remains strong. Q3 transactions increased 7%, driven by demand for business travel and our ongoing share gains. The reported growth rate in the quarter was negatively impacted by approximately 1 less workday in the Q3 of 2023. So on a workday-adjusted basis, transactions actually increased 9% in the quarter versus 2022. TTV grew 8% or 10% on a workday-adjusted basis.

Looking at our transaction trends in more detail, we're going to focus here on the workday-adjusted growth rates. We continue to see relatively faster growth from SME customers. Our strategy and our focus on SME growth is clearly paying off, and SME transactions were up 10% in the quarter. Global multinational transactions were up 7% in the quarter. Growth in hotel transactions outpaced air by five percentage points, up 11% and 6% respectively. This is driven by a continuation of the trends that we've seen over the last several quarters, as well as our focus on increasing the volume of hotel bookings as we continue to strengthen our hotel content and our hotel display. International air transactions continued to outperform domestic, up 7%. Finally, here on a regional basis, growth in the Americas and EMEA were up 8% and 9% respectively.

Asia Pacific continued to outperform, but starting to show year-over-year signs of normalization, with growth of 12%. Turning to the commercial highlights for the quarter, we continued to gain share with a reported $3.3 billion of total new wins. Importantly, we maintained our strong customer retention rate of 95%. Our biggest opportunity remains in the SME segment, and this represents a total opportunity of approximately $950 billion of travel spend. Within the SME segment, we are already the number one player in managed travel, but 70% of this SME opportunity is not currently in a managed travel program. With our leading software and services that are proven at scale globally, we are very well positioned to capture this significant opportunity, and our results continue to prove this out.

SME new wins value over the last 12 months totals $2.2 billion. Of this, approximately 30% has come from previously unmanaged customers, customers who are looking for the service and the savings and the control that our solutions provide. In addition to the strong SME new wins, we continue to gain share across sectors in global and multinational. I'm very pleased to report our recent global multinational new wins include Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager, Fortescue, one of the world's leading mining companies, Warner Bros. Discovery, of course, one of the leading media and entertainment companies in the world, and finally, one of the world's largest global financial services firms. Our growth algorithm is driven by organic growth and net new wins and share gains. Although we can't control the macro environment, we can control the share gains and net new wins.

We are very confident in the strength of our future sales pipeline and expect our strong new sales momentum to continue. As we head into 2024, even if macro events do result in a lower growth environment, we expect new wins alone to provide a baseline of 4-5 percentage points of volume growth in 2024. And finally, here, we were recently awarded EcoVadis Platinum for the second year in a row. This places us in the top 1% of independently assessed companies across the world and demonstrates our commitment to the highest standards of sustainability. Moving on to our product and technology highlights, we have the leading software platforms across all segments of business travel in Egencia and Neo. These solutions are proven at scale on a global basis, and they bring together the best people and the best technology in the industry.

Owning our own software platforms enables us to improve the end-to-end customer experience, to increase automation, and to reduce our operating costs. 77% of our transactions now come through digital channels, and over the last four years, we've seen an increase of approximately 12 percentage points in our share of digital transactions. Transactions on Neo and Egencia increased 13% in the Q3, which is well above our overall transaction growth of 7%, highlighting more and more share moving to our own software platforms. As a direct result of customer demand that we're seeing for our proprietary software solutions, over 60% of our digital transactions now come through our own proprietary platforms, Egencia and Neo. We are constantly working on new and innovative ways to meet and exceed customer needs.

Recently, we expanded our live chat services to Microsoft Teams, and we now have six different chat channels so that customers can efficiently manage their travel in the enterprise solutions that they use every day. This increases customer satisfaction. It promotes more bookings through our marketplace. Year to date, our Amex GBT Mobile App user growth has nearly doubled. Mobile interactions grew by more than 140%, and chat volumes are up almost 50%.... This is important because it also unlocks a significant opportunity for us through AI-powered solutions, for both improving the productivity of our people and improving the customer experience. 40% of our costs are people serving customers in the voice channel.

Using AI and automation to drive efficiency is something we've been doing consistently for several years, including our acquisition of Thirty Seconds to Fly, a company that specializes in travel artificial intelligence. But looking ahead, we have an even bigger opportunity. With generative AI and large language models, we have the opportunity to drive further efficiency at an accelerated pace. Finally, we continue to ensure that our customers have access to the most comprehensive and the most competitive content in our marketplace, including NDC content. In the Q3, we continued our expansion of NDC and are now working with 10 airlines on NDC initiatives. So to sum up our Q3 performance, we again delivered outstanding financial results, with strong revenue growth and positive year-to-date free cash flow. We remain highly focused on driving margin expansion through cost savings and delivering on the Egencia synergies.

This, combined with our strong new wins and the growing momentum we have in the SME segment, gives us the confidence to reiterate our full year 2023 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, and increase our expectation for full year 2023 Free Cash Flow. So that completes my review of the Q3 highlights. I would like to hand it over to Karen to discuss the financial results in more detail before moving on to our balance of year outlook.

Karen Williams (CFO)

Thank you, Paul, and hello, everyone. So before I get into the details, let me give you the highlights. As you will recall, my three key priorities when it comes to managing our financial performance are: first, achieving outstanding financial results by growing revenue, growing Adjusted EBITDA, and increasing Free Cash Flow. Second, driving continued margin improvement. And third, creating capacity to invest and drive long-term, sustained growth. As you heard from Paul, we delivered strong results in the Q3, continuing to drive momentum and strong performance year-to-date. In the quarter, we grew revenue by 17% year-over-year. We increased our Adjusted EBITDA margins nine percentage points above prior year, reported positive Free Cash Flow totaling $107 million in the quarter, and importantly, are now Free Cash Flow positive for the year.

We approved incremental investments in the quarter, and so year-to-date, we have triggered just under $30 million of OpEx and CapEx investments on an annualized basis, focused on driving our sales and marketing engine, investing in our own software platforms and AI. Looking at the Q3 results in more detail, revenue of $571 million increased 17%. This was ahead of our guidance. We had solid transaction growth of 9% on a workday-adjusted basis, and we saw continued outperformance on our yields. As a reminder, our revenue model is driven by volume, sales, and recurring revenues. And so, as I said, our outperformance was primarily driven by our yield, which is measured as revenue over TTV and reached 8% in Q3.

The strong revenue yield in the quarter was driven by our continued focus on revenue optimization and by the recovery momentum we have seen in 2023, particularly as a result of the stronger year-over-year international mix. Additionally, as we look at the demand for meetings and events, we continue to see strong performance with double-digit growth. Now, before we talk about Adjusted EBITDA, let's discuss expenses, which are a key area of focus for us. Our adjusted operating expenses increased 7% in the quarter, while revenues grew 17%. While transaction growth drove increased cost of revenue and investments in the business resulted in higher sales and marketing spend, our drive to improve margins realized the Egencia synergies, of which we are on track to exceed our $60 million of expectations this year, and our cost-saving initiatives resulted in a net $9 million reduction quarter-over-quarter.

So this performance translates into delivering $95 million of Adjusted EBITDA and significant margin expansion in the Q3. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 17%, up 9 percentage points year-over-year, and notably, this strong margin performance was also 2 percentage points ahead of Q3 2019 pro forma Adjusted EBITDA margin. As I said in my opening comments, we achieved free cash flow generation of $107 million in the Q3. This was driven primarily by net working capital actions. We have provided more details on free cash flow in the appendix of our earnings presentation, which I'm not going to walk through on this call, but encourage you to review to provide more context. On our last two calls, I discussed the Egencia working capital initiative. Once again, on the things within our control, we are delivering.

On this critical initiative, we are realizing the benefits earlier than expected. Approximately $50 million of the positive Free Cash Flow generation came from these initiatives, and I expect to see a similar level of benefit in Q4. Additionally, it is important to remember the seasonality of our business, where cash usage decreases in H2 versus H1, and this is certainly reflected in our Q3 performance. And so, importantly, we are now Free Cash Flow positive on a year-to-date basis. This is another pivotal moment for the company. Our leverage ratio or Net Debt divided by last twelve months Adjusted EBITDA is now 2.7 times as of September thirtieth. Our Net Debt is now $927 million. This is a very significant step down for us as a company and a critical proof point in terms of the momentum and focus on the balance sheet.

We are now in our target range of 2x to 3x net leverage. This reduction on leverage ratio will drive 75 basis points of interest rate reduction on our outstanding term loan beginning later in the Q4. Just as an additional point to note, we expect a further step down in our net leverage during Q1 2024, which will drive a further 75 basis points of interest rate reduction. So let's discuss guidance. Turning to the Q4 in more detail, we are maintaining Q4 guidance with revenue expectations of $535 million-$550 million. As a reminder, revenue growth in Q4 is lower due to the outperformance of supplier yield in the Q4 of 2022.

We saw a different phasing through last year, with the majority of performance payments paid in the Q4, resulting in revenue yield of 8.9% in Q4, versus 7.4% in the prior two quarters of 2022. As already discussed, we are very focused on margin expansion and cost reduction. We expect operating expenses to continue to trend down sequentially in the Q4. This is driven by the changes we announced in January relating to our reorganization, Egencia synergies, increased digital adoption, and our overall focus on productivity. This results in Q4 expectations for $75 million-$85 million of Adjusted EBITDA, with an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 14%-15%, representing year-over-year Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 6-7 percentage points.

Turning to the full year, given our outperformance, particularly on revenue yield in the Q3, we expect to be at the higher end of our revenue guidance range. This would represent 23% of revenue growth year-over-year. But given the investments I previously mentioned, we expect to be closer to the midpoint of our Adjusted EBITDA guidance range. This represents an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 16%-17%, with productivity gains and high operating leverage delivering 10-11 points of year-over-year margin expansion. Looking beyond the end of this year, we are currently working through our 2024 planning process. We obviously recognize that the economic and political environment has become more uncertain, and it is difficult to predict the impact this may have on business travel demand in 2024.

While we aren't ready to establish 2024 guidance at this point, I want to provide some insight into how we are thinking about next year. Our top-line growth is driven by organic growth and net new wins. As we have shared before, business travel demand has grown at or above GDP for decades, so it is logical to assume organic growth will track at or above GDP next year. There are a couple of data points externally that I want to draw your attention to.

Our clients and GBTA polling are supportive of continued growth in business travel. This is seen in our most recent customer survey, which shows that 88% of our top 100 customers expect their travel spend to be flat or up in 2024 versus 2023. GBTA's most recent poll results shows that 72% of buyers expect travel budgets to increase or hold steady in 2024.

... But let's turn to what is in our control, and quite frankly, we are delivering outstanding results. On top of organic growth, you have heard us talk about our share gains, and we expect our net new wins to contribute 4-5 percentage points of volume growth in 2024. This is a strong baseline going into next year. Finally, we expect our continued focus on productivity and cost savings to drive further margin expansion in 2024. We will continue to benefit from our agency synergies and cost-saving initiatives and expect continued momentum in margin expansion. So in summary, we delivered strong Q3 revenue growth, significant Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, positive year-to-date Free Cash Flow, reduced our Net Leverage Ratio, and created capacity to invest for the longer-term growth. We are delivering strong results.

We feel confident in our full year 2023 guidance, and we are well positioned heading into 2024 and beyond. So we can move into Q&A. Paul and I are joined by Eric Bock, who is our Chief Legal Officer, Global Head of M&A and Compliance, and Corporate Secretary. Operator, please go ahead and open the line.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to remove your question, you may press star followed by two. Please ensure you're unmuted locally when asking your question. Our first question for today comes from Duane Pfennigwerth from Evercore. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Jake Gunning (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Good morning. This is Jake on for Duane. Were there any surprises by region or customer type this quarter? If we, if we were to segment contribution from new wins from recovery of existing customers that were in the baseline in 2019, what industries are you seeing recovery on a same-store sales basis?

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Yeah, look, thanks, Jake. Nice to speak to you again. No, I wouldn't say any real surprises. I mean, mostly it's a continuation of the same trends as you heard from me in the presentation. You know, SME continues to outpace global multinationals, hotels outpacing air. You know, Asia Pacific is, from a recovery standpoint, still a little bit ahead of EMEA, which is a little bit ahead of the Americas. And those themes have been consistent now for a year.

So I'd say those trends, but you know, really no surprises at all. But what we have seen in terms of sea change, the actual technology sector showed some actual improvement in Q3, and that was, I think, a sector that I've referenced before, where we... From a global multinational segment perspective, that industry had the sort of lowest recovery rate. And so I think we were encouraged to see some improvement in that sector, specifically in Q3. But that is the only thing I would call out that is different from prior quarters.

Jake Gunning (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Okay, that's helpful. And then just if I can get a follow-up here, could you explain the change in share count and how we should think about that going forward?

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Sure. Eric, do you want to take that one?

Eric Bock (Chief Legal Officer and Global Head of Mergers and Acquisitions)

Sure. You may be referring to, you know, we did the, a B for A exchange in the summer, so, that took the Class A's up, from about 74 million shares to about 465 million shares as we consolidated into one class of stock. So really, when you look through the B's and the A's, we remain at 465 million shares. We're up a little bit to about 467 million shares with some RSUs vesting in September, but the stock count really is pretty consistent, but you're probably seeing the more Class A outstanding due to the exchange offer that we completed.

Jake Gunning (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Right. That, that makes sense. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Lee Horowitz of Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Lee Horowitz (Co-Head of Internet Equity Research)

Great. Thanks so much for the time. Can we talk a bit more about sort of the state of the macro environment? So how have the most recent trends in your business informed how you may be thinking about industry growth rates next year? And is there any detail you may be able to share with us as it relates to sort of monthly trends to help us better understand the current state of the industry?

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Yeah, look, thanks, Lee. Well, as it relates to Q3, initially, you know, our Workday adjusted growth rate was 9%. That was pretty much in line with what we expected and what we put in our guidance. You look out to Q4, you know, you heard from me earlier in the call that we are confident of coming in at the high end of our revenue guidance. So, you know, that is the sort of most immediate outlook for us. You know, 2024, specifically, as you mentioned it, you know, we're not kind of ready to establish guidance for 2024, but, you know, I've given some sort of insights on how to think about 2024, you know, in previous conversations and, there are two basic elements to 2024.

You know, the first one, you know, is what we directly control, which is what we are going to deliver in terms of continued share gains. And, you know, the second one, and the one that's more difficult to predict, is what is the overall broader industry growth gonna be, you know, in 2024? What fuel is left in the tank on recovery, and what kind of macroeconomic GDP environment are we gonna be in 2024? So those are the sort of the variables as such. The one we directly control, the share gains, and, you know, we see 4-5 points of growth in 2024 from our new wins as a baseline.

And then you, you're gonna have to make a judgment about, you know, what you think is going to come in terms of additional recovery, and what you think will come from the broader macroeconomic environment. And that is challenging. You know, I think, you know, there's probably more uncertainty now than when we did this call 90 days ago. Macro, political, and economic conditions are, you know, pretty uncertain. And so I do think as you look out to 2024, you know, it's not clear yet, you know, how those headwinds and tailwinds are going to influence the overall market growth in 2024.

What we're doing, Lee, is making sure that we're prepared for different growth scenarios in 2024, and making sure that we have the flexibility in our model to adapt, you know, if we are in a higher or lower growth scenario. I think we've proven in terms of the cost savings, the synergies, the margin expansion, that they will serve us very well if we do find ourselves, you know, in a lower growth environment in 2024. But, you know, obviously, I think we need a little bit more time to see exactly, you know, how the year ahead is gonna play out.

Lee Horowitz (Co-Head of Internet Equity Research)

Helpful. Thanks. And maybe just one follow-up, sort of on... You know, can we spend some time maybe talking more about the sort of promise of generative AI technologies? Obviously, you know, you guys have a big headcount organization, so, presumably there's a lot of benefits that it can have across the P&L. I guess, you know, how quickly do you think some of the cost savings that can be gained via digital agents and the like can be realized, across the P&L? Seems like the technology moving very quickly, and perhaps, you know, this could be a margin driver next year. Just any help there would be great. Thanks so much.

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Yeah, sure. Look, forty percent of our costs are, you know, people costs that are in, you know, the voice channel serving customers. And so, you know, that does present an opportunity for us to drive productivity gains and improve efficiency, and also at the same time, improve the customer experience. Driving productivity gains with automation and AI is not new to us. Like, we do that today with Egencia and with Neo. We analyze the demand that comes in to the voice channel, and we look at what's driving that demand, and we build those features into our own software platforms. That's why our digital adoption rate is now 77% of transactions coming through digital channels. And so when you ask about the timeline associated with these things, some of it is already happening today.

I think what is very interesting is the power of generative AI and in large language models, just open up new possibilities for us to do some of these things at much, much greater scale. And we're focused in three areas, right? One is the area I just mentioned, which is, you know, our, our travel counselor productivity environment. The second area is our finance function, and looking at ways that we can use AI to automate more of our, finance processing. And the third actually is product and tech. Using AI to actually do more, of our basic, you know, programming and engineering work. Those three areas for us are, are all, interesting areas of focus that can deliver savings over the medium to long term.

We have, you know, a cost savings plan that rolls out over multiple years, and we have savings against AI-driven automation in 2024, 2025, and 2026. So I hope that gives you a flavor for where it's headed.

Lee Horowitz (Co-Head of Internet Equity Research)

Helpful. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, you can press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Toni Kaplan of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hi, Paul. This is Hillary on for Toni. Just wanted to ask on transaction volume. I know you guys wanna kind of move on beyond the two thousand and nineteen benchmarks, but, you know, just based on our estimates, it looks like transaction volumes has kind of stayed around this mid to high seventies of two thousand and nineteen pro forma levels the past three quarters. So just wondering, you know, if you have any color on, you know, 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%-5% growth for next year, but just wondering anything else that you could add to that?

Paul Abbott (CEO)

Yeah. Look, I think we said earlier in the year that we'd probably see a couple of points, additional recovery per quarter, and that's pretty much what we've seen. You know, I think the latest stats for kind of, you know, for Q3 is volume recovery on transaction and sales is around 77-78. Our revenue recovery is just, you know, up around, you know, roughly on the 80% level. And we have been seeing some sequential improvement quarter-over-quarter. You do have to, you know, normalize for some workday adjustments in order to get that view, but that's basically the pattern. The pattern is actually very consistent with what we guided to at the beginning of the year. I just wanna come back to the 4-5% point to make sure it's clear.

I wasn't guiding the 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 and the share gains. So, you know, what we'll have to do over time is make a judgment 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 that is a more difficult judgment to make in this environment, because there clearly is a greater amount of economic and political uncertainty. So I just wanted to make sure that point was clear.

Speaker 7

Oh, great. Appreciate that. Great color. And, you know, just wanted to touch on margins, if I could. You know, I know we kind of have a limited history here, but, you know, I was wondering if you could tell us, like, how we should kind of expect the cadence of margins, you know, 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 (CFO)

So hi, Hillary, 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. But it's best to look at this on an annual basis, where we've guided to around 16%-17% on a full year basis. We've also talked about over time, the expectation around our margins of being in between the low 20s and mid-20s, and so an expectation that we will see productivity and efficiency gains going forward, and so, you know, approximately a 1-point improvement. But the reason why we guide to that range is because we will...

One of our priorities is around investment, and so if there are investments that will drive the long-term growth of this business, then we will make those investments, as you have seen that we have done this year. 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. Back to my first point.

Speaker 7

Oh, great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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 (CEO)

Oh, 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 (participant)

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your line.