Sabre - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Sabre Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Cherie, and I will be your operator. As a reminder, please note today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to the Senior Director of Investor Relations, Brian Roberts. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Roberts (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Sabre's second quarter 2023 earnings call. This morning, we issued an earnings press release, which is available on our website at investors.sabre.com. A slide presentation, which accompanies today's prepared remarks, is also available during this call on the Sabre Investor Relations webpage. A replay of today's call will be available on our website later this morning. We advise you that our comments contain forward-looking statements that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events, including the ongoing recovery from the effects of COVID-19, industry trends, benefits from our technology transformation, commercial and strategic arrangements, strategic priorities, our financial outlook and targets, expected revenue, adjusted EBITDA, free cash flow, costs and expenses, cost savings and reductions, margins and liquidity, 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 risks and uncertainties is contained in our earnings release issued this morning and our SEC filings, including our second quarter 2023 Form 10-Q. Throughout today's call, we will also be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures. References during today's call to adjusted operating income, adjusted net income, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EPS, and free cash flow have been adjusted to exclude certain items. The most directly comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are available in the earnings release and other documents posted on our website at investors.sabre.com. Participating with me are Kurt Ekert, President and CEO, and Mike Randolfi, Chief Financial Officer.

Scott Wilson, EVP, and President of Hospitality Solutions, will be available for Q&A after the prepared remarks. With that, I will turn the call over to Kurt.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased this morning to be joining you to discuss our accomplishments for the second quarter and highlight the upward trend in the underlying fundamentals within our business. In the second quarter, we significantly exceeded our financial expectations and believe this performance is indicative of Sabre's ability to compete and win in the dynamic global travel technology marketplace. We see positive momentum across our key business segments that gives us the confidence today to raise our 2023 adjusted EBITDA guidance. We remain focused on the core strategic objectives that we outlined on our conference call last quarter, and I am pleased that Sabre is delivering on our priorities.

Furthermore, we are on a durable path towards Sabre's 2025 financial targets of adjusted EBITDA of greater than $900 million and free cash flow of greater than $500 million. Before jumping into the detail of today's call, let's walk through the agenda. On slide four, you can see an overview of the topics Mike and I will cover. First, I will review our business highlights from the second quarter, and then I'll take a few moments to describe some of the underlying data that we are seeing, which supports our near-term revenue expectations. Next, I'll provide detail on our customer successes during the second quarter and then update the progress of our technology transformation. Finally, Mike will take you through the financial results for the second quarter and provide an update to our 2023 outlook. Turning to slide five.

As a reminder, these are our four key strategic priorities from the foundation of our long-term direction for the company. As I refer to each priority, I will provide proof points and recent accomplishments from the second quarter that highlight our progress towards achieving each of these objectives. First, generating positive free cash flow and de-levering the balance sheet remain our most important financial objectives. Solid operational execution and improving business fundamentals combined to deliver better Q2 results than we had anticipated. As I stated previously, we are pleased to be able to increase our 2023 adjusted EBITDA guidance here today, and we now also expect revenue to be within the upper half of the original guidance we provided on the February earnings call.

During the quarter, we also refinanced a significant portion of our nearest term 2025 debt maturities, which Mike will describe in more detail shortly. Importantly, we see Sabre transitioning towards positive free cash flow generation beginning in Q3 of this year and expect to be free cash flow positive in 2023, excluding the impact of restructuring, and then annually thereafter. Moving to our second strategic priority, which is to deliver sustainable long-term growth, Sabre once again increased its share of industry air bookings on a year-on-year basis during the second quarter. In addition, excluding the impact of Expedia, our share of GDS industry volumes has improved versus both second quarter 2022 and 2019 levels.

Our efforts to expand our business with agencies and new airline partners continues and is the backbone of the distribution growth strategy that we outlined last quarter. We also achieved significant successes with customers across each of our businesses during the second quarter that we expect will support our growth in the coming years. Our third strategic priority is to drive innovation and enhance our value proposition with both existing and new customers. Our technology transformation remains a cornerstone competitive advantage in delivering our products and services quickly and reliably, and in a secure manner to our customers. We achieved our technology migration milestones during the second quarter and remain on track to achieve our longer-term financial and operational goals. In addition, we made important strides on several of our growth strategies that we believe will enhance our overall competitive product suite to fulfill our customers' evolving needs.

For example, we expect our acquisition of Techsembly to accelerate our development of key products within hospitality solutions, including speeding our ability to deliver and scale our retail studio product suite to our hotelier customers. Last, we have now completed the vast majority of the resource realignment and cost reduction program that we communicated last quarter. We are on track to realize $100 million of reduced costs in the second half of 2023, and an estimated annualized $200 million of reduced costs in 2024. In summary, during the second quarter, our team delivered on the priorities we outlined to you back in May, and we are laser focused on achieving our 2023 objectives and executing on our durable path towards our 2025 targets. Now, let's turn to slide six.

Underpinning our optimism for solid industry volume growth in the coming quarters is the expected increase in capacity that can be seen here in the chart. The latest global airline schedule suggests seat growth of 15% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2023, and 19% growth year-over-year in the month of October. Industry optimism regarding further capacity growth is being driven by a host of underlying factors, including rising aircraft deliveries to global carriers, further mitigation of supply constraints from labor and training shortfalls, and a healthy yield environment and load factors that indicate demand for air travel remains robust. Regarding business travel specifically, industry surveys indicate that corporate demand is expected to be healthy in the coming quarters.

Respondents to a recent corporate travel survey indicated that they expect passenger volumes to grow by double digits year-over-year in the second half of 2023 and in 2024. Despite a strong industry backdrop, we have, as we articulated last quarter, conservatively planned for one to two points of sequential industry volume growth moving forward, and should industry growth exceed this level, we would expect to realize upside to the guidance and targets we have provided. Turning to slide seven. During our first quarter earnings call in May, we used this table to highlight the increasing share of GDS industry bookings that we achieved in Q1. As you can see in this slide, our share in Q2 2023 again expanded on a year-over-year basis versus Q2 2022.

Importantly, after removing Expedia volumes, Sabre was again a larger proportion of industry air bookings in Q2 2023 than in the second quarter of 2019 and 2022. If you compare Q2 share of industry air bookings of 33.7% to the 34.0% from the first quarter, the slight sequential change was impacted by seasonal shift in the geographic mix of bookings between quarters. Given signed, but not yet converted business and a robust pipeline, we expect that our share of industry bookings will continue to increase as we deliver on our growth initiatives. Please turn to slide eight. Our team is delivering many successful business wins across both travel solutions and hospitality solutions, as you can see here on this slide. We continue to realize increased momentum in hospitality solutions.

Most notably, we recently announced a global agreement with Hyatt, under which our Sabre SynXis Central Reservation Platform will become the main CRS for Hyatt beginning in 2024. Our platform will offer enhanced reservation capabilities and improve the overall guest experience. In addition to the Hyatt agreement, two well-known hotelier brands based in Asia Pacific selected our SynXis platform to help combine and streamline their IT infrastructure. In distribution, we were pleased to sign a new agreement with Air Canada, in which Sabre will provide agencies with significantly expanded access to content and offers, including the airline's dynamically priced fares and new ancillary services. This agreement provides Sabre with long-term access to all of Air Canada's content via NDC and represents another important example of a leading airline increasing its level of participation with Sabre.

The Sabre marketplace is a highly efficient place to buy and sell travel content, incorporating NDC offers alongside other content sources. We see NDC and GDS or EDIFACT content as complementary, with NDC expanding the breadth of product available in Sabre's multi-source content platform and enhancing our value proposition to both buyers and sellers. Recently, SAP Concur, which has the largest share of corporate online booking volumes globally, shared that Sabre will be its first NDC integration with a GDS provider. During the first half of 2023, we doubled the number of airlines distributing NDC content through the Sabre Marketplace, and last quarter additions included United and AeroMexico.

As we previously announced back in May, we were also able to bring Air India back onto our distribution platform, which is supporting our international bookings growth and industry positioning in one of the fastest-growing regions for air travel globally. On the agency front, in the second quarter, we signed a significant number of agreements. Examples include a deepening of our relationship with Lastminute and a new long-term commitment with Internova, a top 10 agency in North America. In IT solutions, we are pleased with the positive response we're getting from new and existing customers to our intelligent retailing solutions. Sky Airline, the low-cost Chilean carrier, which is growing rapidly in South America, selected our SabreSonic passenger service system for its core IT needs. In addition, Air Serbia recently renewed its PSS agreement and is utilizing some of the latest revenue-generating solutions that we produce.

We expanded our relationship with All Nippon Airways through our enhanced agreement to improve the carrier's network planning and optimization capabilities for its domestic routes. We also had additional network planning software renewals in the quarter with Air China and Delta, among others. Last, we are also realizing very strong growth in our Confirma Payments business. We do not expect to break out these details for the foreseeable future. In summary, Sabre achieved a number of commercial wins during the second quarter that will help us deliver on our financial goals. I will now move on to our technology transformation. Please turn to slide nine. Our technology transformation continues to move forward, we achieved several short-term milestones in Q2. As of the end of the second quarter, we had successfully migrated 73% of our total compute capacity to Google Cloud, up from 69% one quarter earlier.

Additionally, by the end of the second quarter, we had fully decommissioned all 15 Sabre-managed data centers. We have now also decommissioned 68% of our DXC Tulsa mid-range servers and are on track to complete the remainder on schedule by year-end. The chart to the right-hand side of this slide shows the significant improvements we are seeing in our unit cost of compute. Overall, Sabre is on track to complete the tech transformation at the end of 2024 and deliver annual expense savings of at least $150 million in 2025. Now to slide 10. In May, we announced a resource realignment to improve our organizational structure, lower costs and achieve greater efficiency.

We expect these actions to deliver $100 million in cost savings in the second half of 2023 and an additional $100 million in savings in 2024, for a combined $200 million in annualized cost reductions. We were able to complete these actions sooner than we had anticipated and began capturing savings in the second quarter, which gives us high confidence in the overall size and timing of these actions. Now on to slide 11. In closing, we delivered on our priorities in the second quarter and will continue to prioritize free cash flow and delevering, sustainable growth opportunities, the consistent enhancement of the value propositions that we deliver to our customers, and a more efficient organization with a lower cost structure. I will now hand the call over to Mike to walk you through our second quarter performance and our 2023 financial expectations.

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Thanks, Kurt, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide 12. The second quarter was a strong quarter for Sabre. We saw industry volume growth in line with our expectations and significantly higher average booking fees compared to Q1 2023 and prior year. As Kurt mentioned, Sabre continues to grow share on a year-over-year basis. Hospitality Solutions generated double-digit revenue growth with a higher revenue per transaction and contributed to adjusted EBITDA generation sooner than expected. In addition, we accelerated our cost reduction efforts, which helped drive strong bottom line results and better than expected adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Overall, in the second quarter, we gained significant momentum and are optimistic for the remainder of 2023 and beyond. Now referring to the slide. As you can see from the table, we exceeded our expectations for second quarter revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow.

Turning to slide 13. Q2 revenue was $738 million, an increase of $80 million or 12% versus last year. Distribution revenue totaled $530 million, a $99 million or 23% increase compared to $432 million in Q2 2022. Our distribution bookings totaled 90 million in the quarter, a 12% increase compared to 81 million in Q2 2022. Our average booking fee was $5.87 in the second quarter, up 10% from Q2 2022. We continue to realize favorable mix into more profitable regions and types of travel, resulting in higher booking fees, and we believe that further growth in international volumes should support our booking fee at this level for the foreseeable future. IT solutions revenue totaled $140 million in the quarter.

This was a $27 million decline versus revenue of $168 million in the comparable prior year period. Passengers boarded totaled 172 million, an 8% improvement from 160 million in Q2 2022. Second quarter revenue growth from passengers boarded and other IT solutions business was more than offset by the impact of $29 million in lower revenue from de-migrations, the vast majority of which was the result of the impact of changes in Russian law. Hospitality Solutions revenue totaled approximately $77 million, a $10 million or 16% improvement versus revenue of $66 million in Q2 2022. The 16 points of revenue growth was driven by eight points of central reservation system transactions growth and eight points of higher rate per transaction.

Hospitality Solutions performed significantly better than our initial expectations and has generated $1.5 million of adjusted EBITDA on a year-to-date basis. While our initial expectations was that Hospitality Solutions would be breakeven for 2023, we now expect Hospitality Solutions to be a meaningful contributor to adjusted EBITDA going forward. Adjusted EBITDA of $73 million in Q2 2023 versus $24 million in Q2 2022, represented a $49 million improvement year-over-year. Free cash flow was negative $57 million in the second quarter, including the impact of restructuring charges, which was better than our prior guidance for a range of between negative $60 million and negative $80 million, including restructuring costs. During the second quarter, we paid down approximately $48 million of term loans from the proceeds of the AirCenter sale.

This amount was lower than our $80 million expectation discussed on the last earnings call, due to the acquisition of Techsembly and additional capital investments. We ended the second quarter with a cash balance of $727 million. Before moving to guidance, let's discuss the actions we took during the second quarter to begin refinancing our 2025 debt maturities. The private facility financing we completed in June, when combined with the successful tender offer on the majority of our April 2025 bonds, helped de-risk our balance sheet by reducing a significant portion of our nearest term bond maturities. In addition, we believe the option to defer cash interest on this facility in favor of payment in kind, provides substantial optionality and flexibility to our balance sheet, and we expect to utilize this feature of the facility for the foreseeable future.

With regards to the remaining 2025 maturities, our intent is to refinance our obligations with a focus on efficiency and flexibility. Moving to slide 14 to discuss our guidance. We expect third quarter 2023 revenue of approximately $725 million, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $100 million, and positive free cash flow of approximately $20 million, inclusive of restructuring. If you exclude the restructuring impact, we would expect positive free cash flow of approximately $50 million. With regard to sequential trends, we expect Q3 revenue to be slightly lower than Q2, driven by typical seasonal differences between the quarters. The primary driver of the expected sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA in Q3 to approximately $100 million from $73 million in Q2, is a near full quarter impact of our cost reduction efforts.

On free cash flow, we expect to generate approximately $50 million in Q3, excluding the impact of restructuring due to the sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA and a typical favorable seasonality in working capital dynamics. As a reminder, our mandatory preferred shares will convert into common equity on September 1, 2023. Following this conversion, our share count will rise by approximately 47 million shares, and our $5 million payment on September 1 will be our last quarterly dividend payment on these shares. We expect fourth quarter 2023 revenue of approximately $700 million, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $110 million, and positive free cash flow of approximately $70 million, inclusive of restructuring. Excluding restructuring, we expect positive free cash flow of approximately $85 million.

With regard to sequential trends, as noted, we expect Q4 revenue at approximately $700 million to be roughly $25 million lower than in Q3, driven by typical seasonality in air distribution bookings. As a reminder, as discussed on prior earnings calls, the fourth quarter typically generates approximately 10% fewer air distribution bookings than the quarterly average for a given year. Despite sequentially lower revenue in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter, we expect a sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA in Q4 to approximately $110 million from $100 million in Q3, driven by the full realization of our cost reduction efforts. On free cash flow, we expect to generate approximately $85 million in Q4, excluding the impact of restructuring, due to the sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA and typical favorable seasonality in working capital dynamics.

Sabre's fourth quarter has historically been a seasonally strong period for free cash flow, driven by timing of when we receive partner receipts in the fourth quarter versus when we make agency payments in the first quarter. For the full year 2023, we now expect revenue to be within the upper half of the original revenue guidance range provided on the February earnings call, and is now expected to be between $2.9 billion and $3 billion. In addition, we now expect higher adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2023 of approximately $340 million above our prior guidance for adjusted EBITDA of between $300 million and $320 million.

We believe the favorable revenue performance we have seen in the second quarter and the cost actions we have already taken support the higher adjusted EBITDA guidance. While we are very optimistic about the potential for air distribution industry volume growth, we continue to conservatively base our projections on a one to two percentage point sequential improvement going forward. Also, as noted on our prior earnings call, we expect to be free cash flow positive for the full year 2023, excluding the impact of restructuring. Included in our assumption for free cash flow in 2023 are restructuring costs of approximately $70 million and capital expenditures of approximately $80 million. We increased a portion of our investment spending to support development of certain strategic growth initiatives, such as our multi-source content platform, including NDC and Hospitality Solutions.

We will continue to focus on consistent improvement through product optimization and expect that it will allow us to proactively meet the needs of the evolving travel marketplace. We expect capital expenditures to be in a similar range as 2023 in future years based on this increased investment. We also now expect approximately $375 million in cash interest costs for the full year 2023. Additionally, our working capital initiatives are on track, and we expect to generate at least $125 million in positive cash flow benefits this year from these actions. The second quarter was a meaningful step forward towards the strategic priorities that Kurt highlighted earlier.

We continue to believe the company is on a durable path toward achieving long-term targets of greater than $900 million in adjusted EBITDA and greater than $500 million in free cash flow in 2025. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. Due to time restraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Josh Baer (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Congrats on the upside, and the EBITDA performance and improvement for the year. Question on the, on the air bookings, the recovery versus 2019. If I'm looking at it right, it improved 90 basis points from Q1. Just wondering, like, any puts and takes in the quarter, and how that compares to the 1.5%, you know, ramp that's assumed going forward?

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Josh, thank you. What we're seeing in Q2, and frankly, in the early part of Q3, is consistent with the guidance we provided last quarter, which isone to two percentage points of sequential quarterly growth versus the prior quarter. That's relatively consistent between leisure and corporate. We are seeing some improvement in Asia relative to where we were early in the year. We do expect, as we articulated, that the growth going forward has a good chance to be higher than that number, but we have planned or forecasted conservatively to be on the safe side.

Josh Baer (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, got it. I know you, you spent some time reviewing some of the commercial wins across all businesses. Was, was hoping you could focus on PSS and just wondering if there were any notable PSS wins or losses to highlight.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thank you, Josh. I articulated in the prepared remarks, some of the wins or benefits that we've seen through the period. Overall, when you look at IT solutions. We've stabilized the business. We're now investing in leading next-generation retailing solutions to drive long-term growth in this portfolio, and we feel very good about the future prospects for this business.

Josh Baer (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. I guess, I guess, just to ask directly, like, investors are definitely wondering about, Amadeus mentioned a 25 million passenger PSS win. Is, is that, you know, does that represent a, a competitive replacement? Thank you.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Thanks, Josh. We are like our competitor, bound by confidentiality. We do believe this references a current Sabre customer. I would note the revenue impact for this carrier is very small on an annual basis, with a de minimis EBITDA impact. And I should note that as we've disclosed before, should JetBlue be successful in the transaction they're pursuing with Spirit, that volume will begin to come onto Sabre next year.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Victor Cheng with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Victor Cheng (Equity Research Analyst)

Great morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on a very solid quarter. Two, if I may. Just going back to the point on, you know, quarter-on-quarter improvements, obviously, it's roughly, you know, within your 1%-2% improvement. Can you give us some color, maybe by region as well, where you're seeing growth? Obviously, if we look at Amadeus, they improved 3.4 percentage points this quarter, which is quite a bit higher than you. I know you got Air India contract as well in this quarter. Kind of, what are some of the puts and takes for this quarter by region and some of the wins and losses you might have? Thank you. I have one more follow-up.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Victor. It's important to note that when we look at this, what we're not doing is we're not talking about the seasonality quarter-on-quarter. We're talking about sequential percentage improvement in the marketplace.

Victor Cheng (Equity Research Analyst)

Yes.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

That is compared on a year-on-year basis, and so we don't talk about seasonality. We, we understand that you, you project that and understand that very well. What we're gonna do is talk about quarterly progression and then our share performance. As we indicated during the prepared remarks, our share performance continues to outpace our competitive peers, and we are seeing sequential improvements quarter-on-quarter. The greatest improvement on a quarter-on-quarter basis, if you look at it versus Q1, was certainly in Asia Pacific. That's recovering at an elevated or better basis. And then we see relative improvements across the board. The corporate travel recovery is relatively slow. It's sort of in the upper 70s or so on a percentage basis.

Interestingly, given much higher airline and hotel yields than 2019, we believe corporate travel spending may actually be in the range of what it was three or four years ago. There's a governor on the pace of corporate travel recovery because the way corporate travel budgets are set within the corporate environment. That may serve as a governor for the balance of this year.

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

The one thing, Victor, I would add, you could see in the average booking fee, where we had significant strength, both on a sequential basis, on a year-over-year basis. That was driven partly by strength in our international markets as, as Kurt mentioned, both APAC and then also Europe. In general, the booking fees tend to be a little higher in those regions, and so that provided a really good tailwind on our average booking fee. We generally see that mix continuing as we move forward.

Victor Cheng (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. That's very good color. Follow up on maybe the hospitality and think about Hyatt and the two other deals that you alluded to. Can you give us a bit more color on the economics, the contribution? Obviously, you said Hyatt is the main CRS, and you're implementing 2024, but I guess we should only see material contribution by 2025. How do you quantify it on revenue side, and kind of how we think about implementation costs and, and, you know, margin contribution as well?

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Victor. We are really excited about the Hyatt win. It augments the enterprise portfolio. That will go on, as we said, onto the Sabre SynXis platform. You can expect to see Hyatt come on through 2024. When you step back and look at the HS business overall, what we've articulated before, this is another proof point to that. Which is that you're gonna see double-digit revenue growth in HS this year and beyond. You'll see HS achieve double-digit margin production by the end of next year. Of the $150 million of growth initiatives that we articulated last quarter, that you'll see benefit us 2025 versus 2023, we believe HS will be $50 million of that $150, meaning HS will deliver $50 million of EBITDA in 2025.

We feel great about what this does. We don't break out the economics of any individual customer deal, but Hyatt is clearly one of the leading brands in the world, and we think this is quite strategic and financially accretive to this business.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one. Our next question will come from the line of Dan Wasiolek with Morningstar. Your line is open.

Dan Wasiolek (Senior Equity Analyst)

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the call, and nice execution this quarter. Just kind of following up, you mentioned, you know, corporate travel, and just looking at some of the hotel operators, they talk about SME having already kind of fully recovered in developed markets, but corporate travel is still lagging. Is this how should we think about this when it relates to the GDSs? Do the GDSs tend to have more of that larger corporation mix as you talk about those budgets maybe opening up and being a governor, you know, how does that kind of play out between what the hotel operators are seeing versus the GDS?

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Yeah, Dan, thank you. I, I suggest you look at this a couple of ways. Number one is managed corporate travel, that changes based on geography. Figure corporations that spend more than $2 million-$3 million a year, where typically procurement is running travel as a category, you're right, that has recovered relatively more slowly, we believe, than SME or unmanaged corporate travel has recovered. Unmanaged travel tends to go predominantly through travel agencies, there's a portion of that that goes supplier direct. Versus managed corporate travel tends to go almost entirely through intermediaries, through TMCs, through corporate booking tools, effectively through the GDS providers. As corporate travel continues to recover in the future, that should accrue predominantly to our business.

The other thing to look at, interestingly, is I think everybody puts a North American lens on this. China, for example, is a larger corporate travel market domestically than the United States, meaning there's a tremendous amount of corporate travel that originates ex-US, and that has recovered relatively more slowly than travel in North America has. We believe there's significant upside in the non-US points of sale as well.

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

The, the only other thing I would add is, if you look at the yield environment at airlines, which has been very, very strong over the last one year, 18 months, you've seen some moderation in yield more recently. As you think about that from a corporate travel perspective, if corporate budgets on travel are relatively fixed, what that allows for is more segments and more bookings for that same amount of dollars. We think that has the potential of benefiting us in a moderating yield environment.

Dan Wasiolek (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay, makes sense. If I could just ask one more, kind of on a different topic here, but you, you kind of gave some information how to think about the revenue per booking. What about, how should we think about the revenue per passenger boarding? I think, you know, obviously there was the Russia call out, but that looked like it was maybe down a little bit sequentially. Just any thoughts there or anything to call out on how we should think about that moving forward?

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Sure. Obviously, the driver of the year-over-year decline that we talked about was attributable to the demigrations, the vast majority of which was associated with changes in Russian law. You know, the way you should think about our revenue, our airline IT solutions revenue per BP, is roughly half of that is fixed based on products we sell. Roughly half of it is variable and correlates directly with PBs. You know, with that mix, given roughly half of your revenue per BP is variable, as PBs grow, as they've done this quarter, you're gonna see that result in a lower average revenue per BP, just because the PBs are growing, and it only represents about half of the revenue per BP.

Dan Wasiolek (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to. Actually, we do have a question from Jeff Harlev with Barclays. One moment.

Jeff Harlev (Director)

Yeah, following your successful refinancing of a portion of 25s, how are you looking at addressing the remaining 25 maturities with respect to timing and options? You know, obviously, if you perform better, you'll, you know, better economics, but how are you looking at the 7 3/8s in the converts?

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Yeah, thanks for the question. First, let me just recap a little bit around our thoughts of the refinancing that occurred this quarter. You know, as we pursue that financing and achieved and completed that financing, there were a few objectives that it helped achieve. One, obviously, it took out about 1/3 of the 2025 maturities. It also was intentionally focused on the April maturities within 2025, so really extended by a couple quarters our required refinancing window to the back part now of 2025, and also the optionality with the pick option, we believe gave us really good flexibility. What, what I would expect is, and we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna answer specifics with regards to refinancing, obviously, given the sensitivity around that.

What I would say is, you're gonna see us continue to focus on taking advantage of market opportunities with a focus on efficiency and flexibility and keeping in mind the perspective of our, of, of our stakeholders, and that's how we're gonna pursue it going forward. You should expect us to, you know, in the not too distant future, be focused on addressing the remainder of the 2025 maturities.

Jeff Harlev (Director)

Okay. Just on the revenue per booking, is, is the improvement you saw in the current quarter, is that sustainable, or should that move around, or do you think it's, you know, gonna be a, a steady or an uptick from here?

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Yeah, no, thanks for the question. A couple of things to unpack the average booking fee. As you look at the sequential improvement, there are really two drivers, and these have been the trends over the last 12 months. One is we have seen a favorable regional mix, as we've talked about, and we've seen international, both in APAC and Europe, continue to perform better than they've had, and that's been very supportive of average booking fee. The other thing is, as we drill down and we look at the mix of carriers, and we look at the mix of bookings, it's a more favorable mix. When we're looking at the underlying trends, we really see both of those trends continuing, and so we'd expect the average booking fee to remain roughly in this range for the foreseeable future.

Jeff Harlev (Director)

Okay, great. Last question from me, just IT solutions. You know, you've talked about new business coming on and, you know, you were, you know, lapping some losses. I mean, how do you see the revenue trajectory, going forward in that business now?

Mike Randolfi (CFO)

Yeah, as you look at the $140 million this quarter, you know, I, I, as Kurt had mentioned, we have stabilized that business. With that being said, I would expect just a very small tick down sequentially going from Q2 to Q3, but generally, in the range that we're in right now.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Ekert for any closing remarks.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Thank you, and thank you again for joining us this morning. We appreciate your interest in Sabre and look forward to speaking with all of you again very soon.

Operator (participant)

Thank you all.

Kurt Ekert (President and CEO)

Operator, that concludes today's call.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Thank you all for participating. This concludes today's program. You may now disconnect.