Q4 2022 Trivago NV Earnings Call
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Speaker 1: Z four four four four 4, four four
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 3: Good day ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Travago Q4 earnings call 2022. At this time, all lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press staff followed by one on the telephone keypad. I am Matt Adviju, the call is being recorded today Wednesday 8th February 2023.
Speaker 4: We are pleased to be joined on the call today by Axel Heffer, Trivago's CEO and Managing Director, and Matthias Tilmann, Trivago's CFO and Managing Director. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflect management's views as of today, Wednesday February 8th, 2023. Only.
Speaker 5: Trafago does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information.
Speaker 6: As always, some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking, typically preceded by words such as we expect, we believe, we anticipate, or similar statements. Please refer to the Q4 2022 operating and financial review and the company's other filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause Drovago's actual results.
Speaker 7: for different material from these forward-looking statements.
Speaker 8: You will find recommendations of non- GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures discussed in today's Interfago's operating and financial review.
Speaker 9: which is posted on the company's IR website at ir.travago.com. You're encouraged to periodically visit Travago's investor-relationsite for important content.
Speaker 10: Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons on this score will be against the results of the comparable period of 2021. With that, let me turn the call over to Axel.
Speaker 11: Thank you everyone for joining us for our Q4 earnings call today.
Speaker 12: 2022 was a very strong year for Travaga.
Speaker 13: We saw lead travel bouncing back as COVID restrictions were lifted around the globe.
Speaker 14: The pent-up demand was fueled by consumer savings during the pandemic and a strong desire to travel.
Speaker 15: As prices for accommodation continue to rise, consumers need to compare prices more to maximize their savings.
Speaker 16: We are therefore confident that the role of MetaSearch will become even more relevant this year.
Speaker 17: Moving forward, we are further developing and strengthening our core product and unique brand positioning.
Speaker 18: We're leveraging growth opportunities by offering travelers more direct access to our tells in addition to our traditional online travel agency offering.
Speaker 19: In Q4, we've run a new product design in five test markets, allowing us to generate valuable learnings and how to expose travelers to more prices and qualify their intent further before passing them on to our advertisers.
Speaker 20: In addition, we have established the building blocks of our direct hotel strategy, and we will build up on those in 2023.
Speaker 21: And now more than 50% of direct hotel rate coverage, we are getting close to the next phase of our strategy.
Speaker 22: launching consumer-facing features around direct hotel access.
Speaker 23: Thank you Axel and good morning everyone.
Speaker 24: As I said, we are very pleased with our Q4 and full year 2022 financial results.
Speaker 25: Last year, our revenue increased by 48% over year to 535 million euros, while our marketing efficiency measured as return on advertising spent, improved 8% points to 164.4%.
Speaker 26: Due to the impairment charges recorded in the second and third quarters of 2022, totaling 184.6 million euros, we had a net loss of 127.2 million euros.
Speaker 27: The combination of greater marketing efficiency and continued cost discipline led to an increase in adjusted EBITDA, which excludes the effect of the impairment charge of 210% year over year, reaching a full year record for the company of 107.5 million euro.
Speaker 28: This is an increase of more than 50% relative to our most profitable year before the pandemic in 2019, and for the first time we achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of over 20%.
Speaker 29: Now, looking at the fourth quarter, our referral revenue grew 21% eonere driven by continued higher ADRs which led to an increase in overall average booking value.
Speaker 30: Other revenue declined by 2 million euros year-on-year to 3.4 million euro as we stopped certain B2B products like white-labeled solutions and display ads as we mentioned during the summer.
Speaker 31: Net income decreased year-on-year by 4.8 million euro to 10.4 million euro. The decrease was mainly driven by the non-recurrence of a 12 million euro COVID-19 subsidy that we had received from the German government in the fourth quarter of 2021 and recognized as other income.
Speaker 32: excluding this one time subsidy payment, our net income increased by 7.2 million euro.
Adjusted EBITDA also increased by 15% year on year to 22.6 million euro.
In the following, I will give a bit more color on the drivers of our refer revenue development relative to 2019 levels for three regional segments in the fourth quarter.
Starting with developed Europe , qualified refurls were at 72% of 2019 levels, roughly at the same level as in the third quarter.
Revenue per qualified referral recovered to 102% of 2019 levels as ADRs continued to be above 2019 levels, and bidding levels of our partners reflected the increase in traffic quality.
In America, qualified referrals relative to 2019 levels decreased sequentially from 59% in the third quarter to 56% in the fourth quarter, primarily driven by qualified referral declines in Latin America, resulting mainly from a large-scale market test in Brazil.
that led to a significant decline in qualified referrals in that country.
However, on the flip side, we click to book on version increased significantly in Brazil, which had a positive impact on our revenue per qualified refer.
Similar to Europe , revenue per qualified referral in America also benefited from continued high ADRs relative to 2019 levels.
In addition, positive forex exchange and country mix effect were similar to what we already observed in the third quarter, leading to an overall increase of revenue per qualified referrals in America of 33% relative to 2019.
Lastly, our segment rest of world continues to be impacted by the war in Ukraine and the fact that China was still mostly closed during the quarter. Consequently, our qualified refers remain significantly below 2019 levels at 47%. While we do not operate a Chinese platform, we believe that the opening of China will
increasing ADRs in the fourth quarter and revenue per qualified referral improved sequentially from 91% of 2019 levels in Q3 to 94% in Q4.
Moving on to advertising expenses.
As we entered our low season quarter, we pulled back on advertising expenses in the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter as we have always done historically.
Advertising expenses were 55.4% of referral revenue in the fourth quarter compared to 63.1% in the same period in 2019 as we continue to be disciplined with our marketing, our eye targets and improved our marketing efficiency.
Consequently, our return advertising spend improved 22 percentage points in the first fourth quarter relative to 2019 levels.
However, contrary to last year, we started to run some brand TV campaigns in selected markets at the end of the quarter in anticipation of higher travel demand going into the new year, and we continue to expect to increase our brand marketing investments in 2023 relative to 2022.
I will now discuss our operational expenses, excluding advertising expenses, relative to last year. In the fourth quarter, our operational expenses, including Shabby's compensation, decreased by 2.9 million euro or by 8.6% compared to the same period in 2021.
The main drivers for the decrease will lower other marketing expenses, lower share-based compensation expenses and a decrease in depreciation.
Other marketing expenses decreased as a result of lower TV production costs and lower commission fees for acquiring traffic as we started to sunset our wide-level product.
The decrease in expenses was partly offset by an increase in IT related costs, mainly due to a setup fees for the onboarding of independent hotels, and an increase in cloud cost as we made progress with our migration from data center to the cloud.
As we have mentioned before, we expect to reduce our operating expenses in 2023, relative to 2022, despite inflationary pressure. Mainly through the head-con reduction we have done in the second half of 2022.
We expect our quarterly operational expenses, excluding advertising expenses and excluding share-based compensation, going forward, to be roughly in line with what we have reported for this quarter.
The strong operational performance in 2022 led to a significant increase in our cash, cash equivalent and short term investment position to 293.9 million euro as of December 31, 2022 compared to 256.4 million euro at the beginning of the year.
The increase of 37.5 million euro was mainly driven by strong operational results, which more than offset financing activities resulting from the repurchase of shares and penalty payments from the litigation Australia.
Our liquidity position is stronger than ever and we continue to be debt-free.
As we expect to continue to generate positive free cash flows, we will continue to look at different ways to return capital to our shareholders in the future.
Now, moving on to trends in January . As expected, year-on-year refer-and-year growth was strong in January at over 30%, as a result of continued robust travel demand trends and favorable coms due to COVID-related travel restrictions in January 2021.
As in prior years, monetization levels decreased sequentially in January relative to December , and overall we were at similar monetization levels as last year in January .
However, as ADRs continued to be strong and booking conversions improved, our revenue per qualified referral increased year over year in January more than qualified referrals.
Developed Europe in particular is benefiting from easier comps in Q1 and consequently we saw a healthy increase in both qualified referred and revenue per qualified referred in the Jamie
We started to invest opportunistically in brand marketing, also beyond TV advertisement. For example, we were a main partner of the Hempel World Cup in Sweden and Poland, which we believe had a positive impact on our brand traffic in the Nordic region, as well as the Royal Pin markets like Germany, France or Spain.
We will continue to invest in brand activities and expect to be able to increase our brand marketing expenses in the coming months.
In America, qualified referrals continued to be negatively impacted by the large scale market test in Brazil. In Latin America, qualified referrals were down low double digits, which was partly offset by a single-digit qualified referral increase in North America.
Revenue per qualified referrals increased around 20% year-on-year in the segment, decelerating from the 44% year-on-year increase in the fourth quarter, as positive current foreign exchange and country mix effects and our monetization will lower compared to Q4.
In rest of world, we saw a single digit increase in qualified referrals in January year over year, while revenue per qualified referrals increased significantly, driven by strong increases in booking conversion, average booking values and positive country mix effect.
Consequently, referral revenue increased around 60% year-on-year.
While the near-term macro outlook is still uncertain, the underlying trends remain unchanged. Travel demand continues to be robust, while ADRs continue to be at elevated levels.
While we continue to see some changes in consumer behavior like shorter lengths of stay, more interest in cheaper destinations or more clicks on lower hotel offers, we do not believe these trends change the overall picture. We believe that meta search is well positioned in this environment as consumers shift their focus to cross savings and we will focus on improving the user experience.
into brand marketing, thereby driving further brand traffic growth, and to execute on key strategic projects like increasing the coverage of independent hotels. While still expecting our full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA to exceed our pre-covert adjusted EBITDA in 2019.
With that, let's open the line for questions.
Operator, we are now ready to take the first question, please.
Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad.
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The first question today comes from the line of Tom White from DA Davidson. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Hey, this is Wyatt Swanson on for Tom. Thanks for taking our questions. My first one is you mentioned the opportunity you see in offering travelers direct access to the hotel in addition to the traditional online travel agency offering. Can you talk a bit about what level of incremental investment might be required to roll this out globally?
basically two ways to connect additional hotels. One is where we do have an existing connectivity, so where we pay basically for the infrastructure already and where we need to onboard the hotels to the platform, so that does not come at additional technology cost.
The other one is what Matthias was talking about, our partnership with UBIO, where we do have ramp-up costs. And we do expect the cost to stay in line with what we have spent in Q4. And that investment will allow us to get to 80% coverage by end of the year.
as you tested. Is the test going into full production and will this drag on America's QR is going forward?
So basically we have done something that...
that we have not done that often in the past. We've taken five markets and one of those markets being Brazil and rolled out a very different flow, user flow in those markets to get learnings from more long-term user behavior. And...
What you see there is basically we are exposing users to a lot more different rate options. And by doing that we qualify the users further, which basically means that they are not clicking out as quickly.
But when they click out that they are more ready to book and that's what we're saying so that has a negative impact on QRs and a positive impact on our PQRs, which is what you see on the overall America's numbers.
And just to add to that, in terms of impact on qualified referrals, I mean, I gave a bid call on January where we did have a similar impact. But going forward, we might change the design of the test, etc. So there might be a few changes. And that could lead to But there may be a few changes.
a change in click or distribution again. So it's not clear at this point how this will impact qualified referrals going forward in those test markets. Okay great thank you guys.
Thank you.
The next question today comes from the line of Jeremy Liu from UBS. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Hey, good morning, guys. I have two questions. The first is, what impacts might we see from the European PMAA gatekeeper will come into effect this year? Do you have any early indications of how this will impact Google travel or how it might impact your vloggo?
And the second is the consumer trade down behavior widening out. I believe you called out Europe specifically at our conference in December and in the 3Q call. Thank you.
Beyond the DMA, it's a bit too early to tell, to be honest.
expect first effects in 2024 and it will depend very, very much on the approach of the Commission and also then the reaction by Google. So we don't really have a good prediction what exactly the solution will be. What is clear is that...
it will lead to a more favorable competitive environment for us. How much better is impossible to predict?
And then on your second question, I mean first of all ADRs remain strong with click prices on our platform in all segments being roughly 20% higher than in 2019 in the fourth quarter. But as we mentioned last quarter, we are seeing signs of consumer trading down.
The length of stay was roughly flat relative to 2019 levels in America in Q3. So there we now saw in Q4 that the number also dropped slightly.
We also see that the typical seasonal increase in click prices towards the end of the year was less pronounced in Europe last year compared to 2019.
And in all regions, the click out share on our platform for 4 and 5 star hotels decreased slightly year over year.
So I guess what we expect ADR to remain strong, we are seeing some of setting effects presumably as consumers are becoming more price conscious.
Great, thank you.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Doug Ames from JP Morgan. Please go ahead to your line of snow open.
Great. Thanks for taking my question. This is Fabian for the last two. So the first one, I mean, you were able to drive from improvement in margins over the years, and it seems further expansion in margins is possible, depending on your comments around Alpex.
So, could you share your thoughts on where margins could go from here in the near term? It's been 25%.
Todd the wife's notelt or get the driver wahrer,
Yeah, sure. So we mentioned the past that our long term EBITDA margin goal is to reach at least 20% and we did reach that in 2022. And our goal is to grow the business sustainably from our post-pandemic revenue baseline.
focusing on high quality and repeat traffic and that is more important to us than hitting 2019 revenue levels and consequently we will be we will continue to be disciplined with our marketing investments. However if we do see opportunities to invest to accelerate our growth profitably at the expense of short-term contribution
We will do that even if it means that our margin would temporarily go down.
For 2023, we do expect to increase our brand marketing investments as with the benefit of hindsight, we believe we could have invested more last year, in particular during the peak summer period. And also because our own auction was strong. Having said that, while we do plan to ramp up our investments, we are going to be able to increase our brand marketing investments.
we do not expect to go back to 2019 margins level, which were below 10% EBITDA margin.
Got it. Okay. And then I guess as a follow-up, in terms of ADR, you talked about
Because they're still being strong. So are you seeing any signs of that slowing down? And then...
So are you seeing any signs of that slowing down and then...
And I guess with that, how do you think about ADRs going from here? Do you think this level of ADR is...
You were breaking up a little bit, but I think I got more of a question. So the question is if ADR...
can be sustained at these levels. Obviously it's difficult to say and I'm speculating. But at least looking at the underlying dynamics why ADRs are up, I think that there are good reasons why they will stay at current or similar levels.
In particular, last year in summer and in the peak season, we have seen that supply was tight in certain destinations, in particular, popular holiday destinations.
And the reason for the increase in ADRs were driven by a cost increase and we still continue to see that there's labor shortage, energy prices are still higher than they were a year ago and these cost drivers, if you can, they pass it on to the consumer.
and also what we are seeing now in January . We do not see that overall demand is coming down. We do see some signs that people try to mitigate the effect as we call it out but it's not that overall demand levels are lower because of that at least from what we can.
Hi, this is Mike Trevino on Foron. Thanks for taking our question. You mentioned potential uplift from the reopening in China. Can you maybe talk about any early benefits you might be seeing now that COVID restrictions have been listed there? And could you maybe frame the size of the potential impact there as the recovery accelerates? Thank you.
So, yeah, absolutely. We don't operate a platform in China. So, the benefits that we are seeing and expecting are twofold. One is obviously more travel into China, in particular from Asia.
and the other one is higher ADRs in Asia and in big western cities from outbound Chinese travelers. The latter we have not seen yet, but we have seen a significant increase in ADRs in Asia and in big western cities from outbound Chinese travelers.
searches and also bookings into China. The overall impact is difficult to quantify. We have still some travel restrictions in place and some markets into China. So we do expect that trend to accelerate, but it is too early to tell and to quantify the
Great, thanks so much. So a couple of questions. First one, on the January metrics you gave, can you give us a sense of what those look like relative to 2019?
Okay, thank you. Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I can give you a bit more colour. However, I deliberately do not comment on 2019 levels as it's been four years now and we have rebased our revenue and trading at a different growth margin profile than before the pandemic. So we think the year over year comparison is
is more meaningful and that is how we look at our business now. But let me be a bit more specific with what we see year over year. As I said, demand continues to be robust, qualified referrals increase by more than 10% year on year in Europe .
around 5% in rest of the world, while qualified referrals decreased slightly in the United States due to the decline in Latin America, which more than offset the increase in North America. Revenue per qualified referrals in Europe and America were up around 20% and...
globally, you should keep in mind that January was lower relative to February and March as percentage of 2019 levels in 2021. So everything that being equal year of year revenue numbers for the quarter will be lower than the January figure just due to this comp effect.
I hope this gives you a bit more color and helps to model the quarter for you.
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for that. And then just a different question. Could you talk about
How big intensity has trended on the platform on average over a kind of Q4 Q1 quarter date. Thanks.
Yeah, sure. So Q4 was very strong. I mean, so we've seen a high level of competition, both on our platform, but also on other performance marketing platforms and channels that we engage in. And we've seen a seasonal decline in bid intensity, which is
quite common from December into January . So the current bid intensity is lower in January compared to what we've seen in Q4.
Thanks, Axel. Thanks, Patrice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Kevin.
Thank you. As a reminder if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.
The next question today comes from a line of Brian Fitzgerald from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Hi, this is Tom Velika for Brian . Thanks for taking our question. On your platform, you have a good mix of hotels and alternative accommodations. So my question is, have you seen any day originals in the trends for traditional versus alternatives?
so far in EQ4 and in January this year.
Sure, yeah. So the click out share of alternative accommodation had increased during the pandemic on our platform, but we called out already last quarter and I think even before.
that it trended back to our mix that we had pre-pandemic. So right now it's roughly flat with 2019 levels as city trip approach pre-pandemic levels as well in our travel type mix and with travel recovering. And in particular city trips and international travel coming back we have seen a reverse.
hotel price comparison and has a significantly higher share than alternative accommodation for us.
All right, guys. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.
There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass the conference back over to Axel Haeffler for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking the time to participate in today's earnings call. We appreciate your continued interest.
We are very proud of the operational results achieved this year, and we are very excited by the year to come.
Our continuous focus on price combined with the positive start of our hotel direct strategy is giving us confidence that we can better serve our users and reach more travelers in the years to come.
Thank you very much and see you next quarter.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.