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eDreams ODIGEO S.A.
5/25/2023
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today for our fiscal year 2021 results presentation for the 12 months ending 31st of March, 2021. I'm David de la Roth, the Director of Investor Relations at the Ibrimsa region. As always, you can find the results materials, including the presentation and our results report, on the investor relations section of our website. I will now pass you over to Dana Dunn, our CEO, who will take you through the first part of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I'll give you an overview of the excellent progress and achievements eDreams Adigio has made despite the pandemic. Following this, David Alitaga, our CFO, will take you through the performance of our consolidated financial statements in more detail and the early signs of market recovery we are experiencing in the first quarter of the new financial year, FY22. I will then continue with why we believe EDU will be a clear winner after the crisis, and we'll conclude with our view going forward and our ambition to reinvent travel. Please turn to slide four. Here I give you a summary of our performance to date. We are pleased to say that after a difficult year, the market is beginning to return, and eDreams Adigio's resumption is even stronger. We are gaining market share, and now we have over 1 million prime members. I'd like to outline briefly to you some of the key highlights in today's presentation. First, as expected, FY21 was heavily affected by travel restrictions. The COVID-19 led to 79% reduction in revenue margins. We managed well our adjusted EBITDA, demonstrating the adaptability and strength of our business model. Our marginal profit was 25 million euros positive in FY21, despite COVID-19, and us investing in our call center to help our customers through this period. And, as you all know, the liquidity of EDU was never at risk. During the first quarter of FY22, we are seeing clear signs of improvement. For example, the US market as a lead indicator has reached 12% below its 2019 levels as of mid-May. In Europe, vaccination rollout continues to improve and is expected to follow the US trend. and our own bookings numbers already show strong improvements. In the month of May until the 22nd of May, we were already at minus 28% versus pre-COVID-19 levels. Three, we will also talk to you about why we strongly believe EDU will be a clear winner after the crisis, because we're structurally well-positioned. Our market share in Europe is growing 6 percentage points just in one year to just over 37%. Prime now has 1 million members and accounts for 39% of our flight bookings. And we are way ahead of schedule to hit our 2 million subscriber target, which we will likely meet a year ahead of schedule, latest by the end of summer 2022. Point four, we will be concluding this presentation by looking forward with our ambition to reinvent travel. And this will have four components, the continuing the growth of Prime, creating a leading-edge transportation platform, building a customer-centric retailing platform, and delivering an effortless omni-channel customer service. We'll talk you through all of these in more detail. But for now, let me hand you over to David Elizaga, who will take you through our FY21 consolidated results.
Thank you, Dana, and good afternoon, everyone. You may have noticed that last year's annual results were in July, but this year we have brought our reporting forward by over a month, demonstrating significant improvement in our reporting and our commitment to delivering our financial information in a timely way. If you could all please turn to slide six of the presentation, I will take you through the financial results in more detail. Unsurprisingly, fiscal 21 was heavily affected by travel restrictions and COVID-19 led to a 79% revenue margin decrease. This was due to a decrease in bookings of 70% and lower revenue margin to booking driven by lower average basket value of our bookings. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, customers booked on average with fewer passengers per trip and to destinations closer to home, so basket values were lower than usual before the pandemic. As a result, the revenue received from providers is smaller, and the classic and diversification revenue we get from customers is also lower during this COVID period. When travel patterns return to normal, we expect the revenue margin for booking to increase from its current level. In fiscal 21, our focus has been on what we can control to continually build and further enhance a high-quality and adaptable business model. This is demonstrated by a marginal profit in fiscal 21 being 25 million positive, despite the investment in our call center to help our customers. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of 38.1 million in fiscal 21, and adjusted net income was a loss of 86.8 million euros. Turning now to slide seven, I will take you through the cash flow statement. In fiscal 21, despite continued travel restrictions, net cash from operating activities improved by 101.8 million, and we ended the year with positive cash flow from operations of 0.4 million, mainly due to a working capital inflow of 65 million euros. This was driven by high variability of our costs and good fixed cost management. working capital inflows from stronger volume in the last two weeks of fiscal 21 than the same period of fiscal 20, better collection from suppliers, refunds collected, and increased prime deferred revenue. We also benefited from lower income tax pay. The group continues to have a strong balance sheet, maintaining a robust liquidity position of $106 million at the end of March, including $94 million undrawn from a super senior revolving credit facility. This undoubtedly places us in a position of strength where no more trading conditions return. We have used cash for investments of 21.7 million in fiscal 21, decreased by 14.5 on fiscal 20 to minimize the temporary impact of COVID-19, while the comparison as well affected by the completion payment for the acquisition of way low in the previous year. Cash used in financing reduced to 69.5 million compared to 74.9 in the same period of last year. The variation by 144 million in financing activities mainly relates to the reimbursement of 54.5 million under the RCF, offset by the drawdown of 15 million under the government-sponsored loan, and the drawdown of 109.5 under the RCF in the previous year, offset by the net payments for acquisition of treasury shares for 6 million. As we have pointed out in the third quarter, There is a cash inflow through the incremental deferred revenues generated from the subscriptions at the time of subscription renewal. Currently, the increase in the deferred revenue from prime is included within the working capital movement, but it does not have the same dynamics as the rest of the working capital. Our working capital presents an inflow or outflow mainly due to an increase or decrease in bookings from one period to another. On the other hand, the increase in deferred revenue from prime reflects a cash-in which will not flow out, and it's just a matter of time that it is recognized as revenue in the P&L. In fiscal 21, prime deferred revenue reached 22 million euros, which was an increase of 95% versus fiscal 20, even under COVID travel restrictions. If you can now turn to slide eight, please. A key point of our adaptability is our cost structure. More than 80% of our volume of costs pre-pandemic are variable, and we have the ability to adapt and rapidly reduce fixed costs of capex if needed as well. This is proven by the decrease of 79% in our fiscal 21 revenue margin, coupled with a reduction in variable costs of 75%. In addition, The measures rapidly put in place post the outbreak of the pandemic resulted in 32 million euros of cash savings decreasing our fiscal 21 fixed cost and cash needs versus the levels that we had before the pandemic on the third quarter of fiscal 20. Let's turn to slide nine. Diversification also contributed to adaptability. Another element of our adaptability is our ability to diversify geographically. We knew early on that the pandemic was going to disproportionately affect certain travel markets more than others. Thus, we focused on several markets in order to benefit. For example, we relaunched our U.S. proposition and localized websites in Arabic to better serve travelers in the Middle East region, as well as invested in our Australian websites as well. We have therefore expanded internationally. Bookings outside the top six markets now account for around 34% of our total bookings versus 25% in fiscal 20. We will continue to focus on this, leveraging our scale to improve performance. Our revenue diversification initiatives continue to develop. Product diversification ratio and revenue diversification ratio continue to grow and have increased to 88% and 57% in the fourth quarter, up from 85 and 53 in the fourth quarter of last year, rising 3 and 4 percentage points respectively in just one year, and up 63 and 30 percentage points since fiscal 15. Mobile bookings reached 56% of our total flight bookings in fiscal 21, up 12 percentage points from the same period of last year. Mobile has always been a top priority and a major focus for us. The shift online, and specifically mobile, accelerated by the pandemic, leaves us in a very strong position to take advantage of future demand. Please turn to slide 10. The group continues to have a strong balance sheet with a solid liquidity position of $106 million at the end of March. The average liquidity of the group was $116 million since September 20, despite a temporary softening of trading. This places us in a position of strength for when normal activity resumes. We are the only OTA that did not require a capital or debt raise to navigate through the pandemic. So the liquidity of eDreams was never at risk, which is amply demonstrated by the again unanimously approved covenant waiver extensions on 30th of April, which is valid until the end of June of 2022. Let's move now to trading and the recent signs of market recovery we are experiencing in the first quarter of fiscal 22. as evidenced by industry data, our booking growth, and vendor demand. If you can please now turn to slide 12, let me start by saying that there is no uncertainty that there will be recovery. There is only uncertainty about how quick it will come. Key U.S. data supports a strong travel recovery. In the U.S., air traffic continues to improve with daily TSA screenings in mid-May, just 12% below 2019 levels. Moreover, if you look at the chart on the right-hand side, what it tells you is that there is a direct correlation between vaccination level and bookings in the United States. In the U.S., the reproduction factor of COVID-19 has been less than one since the 21st of December 2020, and the regression analysis proves that as more people are vaccinated, travel activity picks up. Please move to slide 13. While the data points from previous slide are U.S.-focused, let's now turn to Europe. As Europe improves its vaccine rollout, it is expected to follow the U.S. trend. While Europe started slower than the U.S. in speed of vaccination, it has been catching up and even surpassing the U.S. And on the right, in our core countries, 36% of the population have received their first vaccine dose, a number that has tripled since March. Please turn to slide 14. With many traditional travel agencies impacted by the last year and being closed, Europeans are increasingly choosing online booking channels. Online travel penetration advanced three percentage points in 2020 to 55%, and the online share of travel bookings is expected to climb to 60% by 2024. We strongly believe the shift online will benefit OTAs versus supply direct. A modern digital consumer wants to search the market into things and be in control of options between price, convenience, et cetera, in a state-of-the-art, easy-to-use service. This is the expectation of a modern digital consumer. Our trading suggests an outperformance against the airline industry, both regular and low-cost carriers, and growth of market share versus supply direct. This is due to better quality, more comprehensive content, flexibility, and a focus on leisure travel. We also continue to lead the travel industry in mobile innovation, which is another undisputable trend of the modern digital consumer. In the last six years, bookings through the mobile channel have risen exponentially from 10% of adult bookings three percentage points below the industry average, to now 56%, which is 19 percentage points ahead of the European industry average. Mobile has always been a top priority for us and continues to be a major focus. The shift to online, and specifically mobile, accelerated by the pandemic, leaves us in a very strong position to take advantage of future demand. If you can please now turn to slide 15, our booking numbers already show strong improvements. Bookings in March were 9 percentage points better than February. April showed a further 11 percentage point improvement from March. And by the first three weeks of May, we were already at minus 28 percent, which is another 23 percentage point improvement versus April. Our numbers are solid signs of increasing travel demand. The improvement shows that travel demand is there. as more people are vaccinated and travel restrictions are lifted. Travel activity has picked up quickly and meaningfully, and our proposition to customers is superior. Please turn to slide 16. We are in great shape. Inventive demand is evidenced by our searches data, where we have seen a substantial increase in searches for long-dated departures, almost doubled since November-December. If you can please now turn to slide 17, you can also see that our most recent bookings data also show a clear recovery towards pre-COVID levels, both in advance bookings as well as bookings for two or more passengers. I will now turn the presentation back to Dana, who will take you through why we believe EDU will be a clear winner after the crisis and our view going forward.
Thank you, David. Why do we think EDU will be a clear winner after the crisis? There are six key reasons why. Please turn to slide 19, in which I go through the first reason. The first reason is because we are well positioned to benefit from many positive structural drivers and in great shape and primed to win in a post-COVID-19 world. Leisure will recover faster than business travel. That suits us as a leisure-only focused company. There will be more domestic lower-cost travel in the transition phase as the market moves back to more normalcy. We are able to provide the short-distance transport alternatives. We are strong in this segment, providing virtual interlining. hotels, cars, and building multi-transport platform. Consumers want a trusted brand where good experience end-to-end is key. We are one of the few e-commerce companies with over 20 years' experience known throughout Europe and consistently rated high in brand and servicing. During the crisis, we invested significantly and are putting in place innovative customer servicing solutions. In terms of mobile, the world has always been going mobile, and it's just a question of when. As you have seen, we are leading the way in travel in this area, and we'll win in a post-COVID world. And, of course, Prime. Customers want a company they can trust that provides a one-stop shop that views them as not just a transaction but a relationship with all of the perks and benefits of our Prime program. So, there is no reason why, as restrictions are relaxed, we will not grow faster than the industry average, which has been our experience during the pandemic. Please turn to slide 20. The second fundamental reason for us winning is that we have unrivaled scale advantage. Edo is the scale player and leader in flight revenues in Europe, and now second largest worldwide. We have 2.3 times more European flight revenue than the number two player in Europe, and we have 37% of the European OTA flight market share. And recently, we became the number two largest player in flight revenues worldwide, where there are only three big players in flights with Expedia and Trip.com. Obviously, Expedia is very large in the U.S., and Trip.com, very large in China. This scale advantage provides immeasurable benefits versus our competitors. Please turn to slide 21. The third reason is that we continue to outperform the market. Our trading suggested an outperformance against the airline industry, both regular and low-cost carriers, and growth of market share versus supplier direct due to, better quality, more comprehensive content, and flexibility and a focus on leisure travel. This slide shows EDU's overall performance versus IATA in Europe where, on average, during fiscal year 2021, EDU has been 13 percentage points ahead of supplier direct in Europe. The most recent IATA numbers from March suggest that our overall performance has extended to 21 percentage points. Please turn to slide 22. The fourth reason is that we continue to gain market share. E-Dreams of Israel used COVID-19 period to improve our strategic positioning. We have used this time to improve our products and our offering to consumers. This is demonstrated via our proprietary product, Prime. which continued to perform outstandingly in these challenging conditions with our subscriptions continuing to grow. Another example is our mobile offering, which is well ahead of the industry. In terms of strategic positioning, we continue to outperform the market as our bookings performance at minus 70% in FY21 continues to outstrip the overall European market, which was at minus 83 percent. In the latest OTA figures, we have gained six percentage points of market share. FOCUS writes, Europe Travel Market Report 2020-2024, published in March of 2021, showed an increase in our OTA European Airlines market share, in which we increased six percentage points from just under 32% to a bit over 37% in just one year. Please turn to slide 23. Reason five is that we are extending our offer and expanding our footprint. In product, Prime has significantly evolved. Originally, it started as a flights-driven product, launched in 2017 in one country. Now Prime is in seven countries and multiple product segments, giving customers great prices on millions of hotels and flights. And I'm pleased to say there still is lots of expansion opportunities to add additional products for us as we become our customers' one-stop travel shop in the one trillion euro travel market. Also, we continue to develop additional products and services as you've seen us do in the past. and we will continue to do in the future. Geography. We also continue to expand the prime offering geographically. Just in the past year, we have added the UK and US and have more opportunities in the coming years. In addition, we continue to select markets in which we have greater growth prospects, as you have seen in the past year, and we will continue to do this in the years to come. And customer segments. We've been segmenting our proposition and automating our customer service through a unique omnichannel approach. Through this automation, we will reduce the cost of servicing our customers by 45% from pre-pandemic levels. Seventy percent of this improvement has already been reached. The investments we have done in automation will allow us to reinvest in the quality of customer service we provide to our prime customers. Please turn to slide 24, reason six. We have touched on Prime in the previous slides. It is important to note that what was a revolutionary idea for travel has reached a major milestone. Even through this past year's pandemic, our subscription program has thrived. While we started FY21 with 556,000 subscribers, I am pleased to announce that Prime has already reached an exciting milestone of 1 million members as of May 2021, and it represents 39% of our flight bookings. During the previous financial year, our subscribers grew by 58% to 876,000. To put this growth in context, the growth equates to 100,000 new subscribers per month in a normalized non-COVID-19 market. Importantly, it also provides a fixed revenue stream for the company, like most subscription programs. Please turn to slide 25. And the seventh reason, innovation. We are the leader and the inventor of a subscription-based model in travel. Whilst in other industries the subscription model has had great success, Netflix and streaming, Spotify and music, Amazon and consumer goods, no one has achieved this in travel until eDreams and Digio. We have been developing this for four years and have a bright future ahead of us. All of this is institutional knowledge, systems, and competitive advantage. While we've now reached the 1 million subscriber mark, our goal is to reach 2 million and then, clearly, way beyond. We had originally set the goal to have 2 million subscribers in 2023, but that was without the pandemic. In fact, we will achieve this way ahead of schedule, likely one year ahead of schedule, by the latest the end of the summer of 2022. If you can now please turn to slide 27, let's talk about the future and our strategic priorities. Travel is a one trillion euro market, and is the largest e-commerce sector. Given our strengths that I discussed in the previous section, we are well on our way to taking much larger share of the pie of this 1 trillion euro market as we reinvent travel. Our priorities are fourfold. Continue to grow Prime membership program. Create a leading edge transportation platform. Continue to build a customer centric retailing platform driving our diversification. and offered effortless omni-channel customer service. Each of these complements one another as we continue to build a highly powerful customer offering and expand our market share and share of wallet. I will now discuss each of these four priorities in more detail in the following slides. Please turn to slide 28. Priority number one. continue to grow Prime membership. As pioneers of the subscription model in the travel industry, we believe that our Prime product is the perfect platform to have a unique relationship with customers, largely subscription-based relationship with customers in which we cover their travel needs. Our vision for Prime is to be the most innovative and the best travel subscription program covering all of our members' travel needs. During that process, we transform our interactions with the customer from transactional to relationship-based. I've already spoken about how successful a year was FY21 for Prime and our goals for the next year to 18 months. There are many opportunities ahead as we continue to go after the 1 trillion euro travel market, and Prime is a perfect offering for this. Over the coming year, we will focus on, first, product at the core of any proposition is a great product. You have seen this as being one of our fundamental principles since I took over as CEO back in early 2015. Thus, we will continue to improve and innovate on our core offering, as well as adding additional features and products. Two, geographic expansion. While we are in seven markets already, there's still lots of opportunity. Three, customer segmentation. There's lots of opportunity here, and we have yet to address it. Please turn to slide 29. The second priority will be connectivity and creating leading-edge transportation platform. Our goal is to create a leading-edge transportation platform that will create competitive advantage for EDU, combining superior content, best-in-class user experience, and the highest value extraction. We are improving the quality of our content by building a content-agnostic platform that will facilitate content from many providers. One good example of this is that in FY21, we have significantly improved the content customers can access. During the year, we created a strategic partnership with Travelport, which allows us to offer even more travel routes to customers at even more competitive prices and with increased flexibility and choice. We've also incorporated AI into our cache and removed legacy complexities. As a result of these changes, more than 50% of our results are now 75% faster. Over the coming year, we will continue to improve to build the leading edge transportation platform. Please turn to slide 31. Priority three is to be customer-centric retailing platform driving diversification. Our goal is to transform our revenue diversification approach towards a customer-centric, needs-driven, individual product, individual product offering by being the one-stop shop travel provider world leader for our customers. We have moved from a flight-only business in the past to one where we now have over half of our revenues coming from what we call revenue diversification. And as you remember, that is hotels, cars, bags, seats, and many more products and services. We are now recognized as the leader in the industry, selling 88 additional products and services for every 100 flight tickets sold. We believe there is significant potential to further expand our share of the travel wallet. Prime provides us with a great opportunity to do this. We have a unique relationship with our customers through Prime. a competitive advantage through the vast amount of data we have and the fact that the customer first books a flight before booking other travel products. When coupled with our leading-edge technologies and skills to retail, we can see our route to an expanded share of wallet. Our vision is to take the retail experience through the entirety of the travel journey. Our travel shop strategy will meet that vision by building around customers' needs, thereby enabling us to meet our goals and targets. Please turn to slide 31. And our fourth priority, we want to build an effortless omnichannel customer experience. Since the first part of our customer journey begins digitally, we believe that the rest of their travel journey can be digitalized, too, by utilizing our many touchpoints to drive digital adoption and online servicing. We strongly believe that the digital experiences we are building for our customers are creating significant value for our customers. and for our business as well. Over the past year, we have focused on the customer more than ever. Before the pandemic, the average booking cancellation rate was not material. Since March of last year, our customer services team have managed almost 2 million flight cancellations. To cope with the increase, we grew our team dramatically and implemented automated processes, allowing customer concerns to be addressed quickly and efficiently. When payments were not delayed by the airlines in the past, our customers had received their refunds typically within 10 days. In response, eDoors came through together to build a new innovative and highly complex system, which is the first one in the flights market. Overall, our vision and top priority is to create a world-class omni-channel self-service experience for our customers. and become the first OTA in the world to offer a truly digital customer service experience. The investments we have done in automation will allow us to invest in the quality of customer service we provide to our prime members. Turning to slide 33, let me conclude by giving you a quick recap of what we see in the market and why we believe eDreams will be a winner post-COVID. As more people are vaccinated, travel activity tends to pick up. We have seen it in a substantial way in the U.S. market, which in this month already is at less than 20% below the 2019 levels. European markets generally started vaccination later than the U.S. but are now actually vaccinating at a faster speed than the U.S. Our own booking numbers already show strong improvements with the first 22 days of May performing at only 28% below 2019 levels. There are clear reasons why EDU will be a winner post-COVID. One, we are structurally well-positioned in the leisure segment, leader in mobile, geographically diversified, and with a product portfolio that suits consumer needs. Two, we have unrivaled scale, have increased our market share in Europe by six percentage points in just one year, and reached the second position worldwide as flight retailer. Three, Prime is a resounding success in the market. We have surpassed 1 million members already and will reach the 2 million milestone more than one year earlier than originally expected. Prime already represents 39% of our bookings. Four, we are reinventing travel. We are leading the way with a proven model. With that, David and I would now like to take your questions. We'll answer the questions sent to us in writing in the webcast. We will take questions on a first-come, first-served basis, but we will also try to group questions of similar nature. Should we not have time to respond to all of the questions from the webcast, the investor relationships team will, of course, make sure that those are answered afterwards.
Okay, so we're starting now with the questions, and we already have a good amount of questions that have come in through the webcast. We're going to start from... Juan Pena from the Research House GBC, Glasgow. He has a number of questions. I think it is easier if I read them one by one, and we respond one by one. Otherwise, it's going to be too messy. So the first question is, on fixed costs, in your report, you explained that there is no reduction because of the foreign exchange effect and the unprovisioning of the bonus. Could you elaborate it, please? What level of savings do you estimate that the company could maintain in the future in fixed costs versus fiscal 20? So what happened during fiscal 20 is that it was an absolutely fine year until we were two months from closing in February. So over the year, we were provisioning, as usual, the bonus of the people. But in the last two months, we missed our budgeted objectives. And therefore, there was no bonus paid to the employees. And therefore, what you have in the Q4 is the unprovisioning of the whole year that we had provisioned before. So not only is there is no bonus in the Q4, you actually have a positive amount for unprovisioning all of the previous On top of that, there is a variable that goes into the fixed costs, which is the foreign exchange effect that has to do with the variation in foreign exchange rates between the moment that a customer books and the moment that we actually receive the money in our bank accounts, which is on average about two days later. So, and that, you know, moves quite widely. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 20, it was a positive amount as well of 2 to 3 million euros. So, that was the details about what happened in the Q4. Now, as to the second part of the question of what level of fixed cost do you estimate that the company could maintain? In pre-pandemic, we used to have a level of fixed cost which was around, you know, 80 million per year. Now, what you should see, and we have 63 in the fiscal 21, in the one that we have closed right now. What you should see at least for the next year is a level which is last year plus inflation more or less. It's going to be in that order of magnitude. So, it's going to remain substantially below the level of fixed costs that we had pre-pandemic of about 80, right? Over the year, we expect to be recruiting more people, and we're doing meaningful investments into IT and product people, which is sort of like enlarging our engine to give more and better products and services. So for fiscal 23, the following one, you will have the full year effect of the hirings that we're going to be doing during fiscal 22. So you should have another four or five million extra of fixed costs from fiscal 22 to fiscal 23. The second question, also of financial nature, so I'll take that one, says, on CapEx, you did a great reduction in fiscal 21. Do you think that you will recover levels of 30 million in the following years, or do you think that with the investments made this year, the level of CapEx will be reduced? Well, I have a similar answer to you as I had on the fixed cost because, you know, the vast majority of the capex that we report is the capitalization of a portion of our R&D investment. So as you said, we used to have $30 million. We've done a little bit less than $22 this year. For next year, you know, it's the 22 plus a bit more of inflation. Maybe you get to 23, 34 max. But in the movement from fiscal 22 to fiscal 23, you're going to have an increase of another 4 million, 5 million or so. But it's still going to be meaningfully below the 30 million mark that we used to have before it. Now, the next question is on mobile bookings. It seems that the level of mobile bookings is starting to stabilize, 56% versus 58% in the previous quarter. Do you think that these levels could increase in the future?
Yeah, let me take it that way. So, first of all, if you look historically on a quarter-by-quarter basis over, let's say, five years, you'll find some quarters where there's been a bit of progress but not much, other quarters where there's been a lot of progress, et cetera. So I really, I mean, you know, one quarter to another, I wouldn't really, you know, look at that and say, well, therefore, it's stabilizing. I think there still is meaningful potential to grow further in this, in mobile bookings. If you look at projections just in general for the industry, for e-commerce in general, You know, if you look at the projections, they all project for the next, you know, good three years at least that mobile as a percentage of total purchases, total bookings, depending upon your industry segment, will absolutely continue to increase. And so I would expect that to be the case roughly as well. Right now we're about 20 percentage points, I think, above the travel industry segment's average. So it's clear that we have moved ourselves into the leadership position on this.
Yeah, if I may just add, we usually have a fourth quarter, which is slightly below the third quarter in terms of mobile penetration. That is a pattern that we've been seeing for the last couple of years, and it has repeated again this year. But we think it has to do more with seasonality of the type of bookings that people do pre-Christmas to the first quarter of the calendar year than any other reason. We have more questions on the market. You have increased your market share in flights. You say that you are the only OTA that did not need capital increase or debt raise in these months. Do you think that this is the moment to try some consolidation movement in the market? Did you see opportunities to do that?
So let me first answer pre-pandemic and then come into kind of where we are now. Pre-pandemic, We had expressed a view that we wanted to – we were looking to see if we could acquire a company and create real value for our shareholders. We have built up some unique skills, capabilities, et cetera, that can provide a lot of synergies if and when we would acquire a company. What you need to do is make sure that you're paying the right price for it, which brings me to today. You know, in this marketplace and when you see – a number of companies that have really gone into either hibernation or just don't have the booking performance that we have and have fired most of their staff. It's questionable about what one would really be paying for and whether one would really need to actually pay for it or if you can get it organically. So we are just much more, let's say, hesitant or our discount rate is much higher if we would look right now at many of these players in there. I believe in the future it is an opportunity, but we're quite cautious at the present time. I think there's a fourth question.
Yes, the fifth and last question from this person is on Prime. The figures of Prime subscribers are really good. Do you have a percentage of renovations of 12-month subscriptions?
Yes. So we don't give that out on a quarterly basis. Obviously, this is something our team tracks, and it's very important to us, because at the end of the day, we want to build a good product and a good product experience for our customers. What I think you can draw from inference is that, you know, in the worst market in 100 years, you know, we were able to grow our subscription program very materially, and I think you'd say very dramatically, and you can't do that you know, only through getting new subscribers, right? You have to have your existing subscribers renew as well, and so we have seen good, healthy renewal rates, obviously, for our subscribers that come due each and every day.
Okay, now we have a set of questions from Guillermo Santayo of CaixaBank BPI. The first one is, can you provide some color on how has revenue margin for booking evolved in April and May? How should we think about future performance? Well, I would say that the revenue margin for booking has a very high relationship with the size of the basket that customers book. Pre-pandemic. As you probably remember, we used to have a basket size in euros of about 450. If you look at the numbers that we have published, that number stands now at about 300, which is a meaningful reduction of about 33%, and it's a bigger driver behind the regular margin for booking evolution. What we are seeing in the market right now is that the amount of bookings that you've seen in the published data is increasing for us in a very meaningful way. And I say for us because the patterns of increasing market share that we have shown in the presentation, and you have the Focusrite data, which is for calendar 2020, and you have the performance against IATA that we show up until March, which is the latest available data point. continues to increase. We see that pattern continuing to increase. So we are performing clearly better than the market. The profile of bookings that we are seeing in April and May continues to be relatively similar to the profile of bookings that we've seen in fiscal 21. So it's still around that 300 euro mark more or less, so we see so far no meaningful increase in the revenue management booking. We would expect that as the market in general picks up that we will see increases in the revenue management booking, which is something that I also said in my prepared remarks, and therefore the revenue management booking will increase. But up until May, that hasn't happened. The second question from Guillerme, is the Q4 fixed cost run rate a good proxy for your quarterly expectations? I think I've answered already to the previous investor. The third one, can you provide more details over the market share gains in 2020, namely in regional and channel terms? Do you think that the current market share levels are sustainable or the overall activity recovery might bring some players back to the markets? So we see I can differentiate from within Europe or top six and outside of Europe. If you look at market share terms, outside of Europe is much bigger in terms of market share gains, but it's also coming from a much lower base. So then in the overall aspect is not as meaningful. When we look at market share across the different European markets, is increasing in parallel almost everywhere. This is a very much across-the-board type of increasing in market share. And whether or not they are sustainable, we believe that they are, because the drivers are fundamental drivers of us versus the rest of the market. Online is increasing, and there are a lot of offline players which are closed, and probably many of them will not reopen or will reopen in a very different fashion. We are pushing our product in the mobile channel much more efficiently than other competitors are, and our product is better to use. And Prime is being a wonderful driver in people joining us. And we do think that after a long period of time in which people have not traveled, the fact that more and more people are doing their first booking after the pandemic with us and hopefully having a very good experience with us can have a lasting effect on what will they remember the next time that they search for travel. So we think that, yes, it is a sustainable increase in market share. We're going now to a different set of questions from a different investor. This is Carlos Sevino from Banco Santander. The first question is, which countries are leading their recovery in bookings in May? It's very much across the board. There is one element that is important, but that was true before May as well, which is in line with what we showed in the presentation. If you have a faster recovery of vaccination, then you see a more important drive in the booking. So the U.S. has recovered earlier than Europe. Other countries like Australia that have had a very low impact, I guess many of you saw with all, at least I did, when they broadcasted the Australian Open of Tennis, the stands full of people, which is something that we're not used to see in Europe, unfortunately. Well, with the flight market in Australia, it happens pretty much the same thing. And the one country that is not having exactly the same performance across Europe is the UK, because the restrictions to travel to UK citizens from the UK government continue to be meaningful. And they have quite strict conditions of quarantine on their return to the UK and testing, which really increases the price of travel for those customers. And I would say it's pretty much the only country that is not moving more or less in sync with the rest of the big European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Your second question, could you give us your current liquidity position or at least at the end of April? End of April was very, very similar to the end with a difference of 2 million with the end of March. So it is relatively constant. There is a positive inflow from working capital, as you have seen from the volumes, but we've taken that opportunity as well to make more refunds to our customers and accelerate in that sense. because there is lots of customers who have been waiting from the airlines for a long period of time. The third one, could you elaborate on your working capital trends during the fourth quarter? So in the fourth quarter, as always, you have many moving pieces, but also, as always, the most important one is the volumes that we're transacting. And you know that the volumes that are really important are particularly the volumes of the last two weeks of the period. The last two weeks of March had about 50,000, 60,000 more bookings than the last two weeks of December. And you multiply that times the 300 that I was telling you before of average basket value, and you get more or less to the inflow of the 15 million. You have other moving pieces, but they all compensate each other. That's the most important driver. And then the fourth and last one is your classic subscriber revenues were significantly above previous quarter figures. Could you explain the reason? I think that, Carlos, you've written with a typo. I think that the classic supplier revenues, which is the element that has grown in a meaningful way, that is driven by a couple of things. That is driven by us renegotiating conditions with our travel suppliers. Even though the volumes are down, you see that our market share is up. And when your market share is up, your ability and your value, let's say, to those providers increases and therefore we're taking, let's say, we're pushing the interest of the company in that respect. And then the And that's pretty much the driver, together with another thing, which is that the revenues that we get from subscribers are based... Sorry, from subscribers. I'm reading your question again. From suppliers, the revenue we get from suppliers are driven by flown tickets, not just booked tickets. And therefore, when the level of cancellation reduces and the level of cancellations in the sector has reduced, then the actual volumes that we're able to accrue as revenues increase, and that is also playing a role in the March numbers versus the December numbers. We go now to a different set of questions, and this is from of Schwartz Investments. The first question is, what do you attribute the recent acceleration in the growth of prime scrubbers?
Thanks, David. So there would be three parts to this question, the answer to the question. Part one, we have taken this period over the past year to really continue to further improve our prime product, right? So, for example, we've added in hotels now. We've done this in all of our markets. We've done a number of things in just how we actually sell it, the whole proposition to customers, a number of things like that. Part two is we've expanded geographically, right? So for the past year, we've expanded into the U.K. and to the U.S. Part three is that the market has come back up, right? So, you know, a market of trading at, let's say, minus 70% or minus 90% versus, you know, right now you saw our May trade. First three weeks of May, we were at roughly minus, you know, 28%. So that clearly, as the market comes back and is attracted to us more, we're able to sell more, in a sense, the Prime subscribers to it. The second question I think Chad had was, did you do any advertising on Prime? What is the opportunity to do this post-COVID? So very good question, Chad. So let me be clear to everybody. No, we did no advertising. And when I say advertising, meaning I'm thinking about advertising like doing a television commercial, doing billboards, doing print media, radio, doing YouTube, you know, YouTube videos, things like that. We haven't done any of that stuff whatsoever for Prime. It is absolutely an opportunity for us, but we haven't. We've focused on building a great, great product, you know, For it. It is absolutely an opportunity for us. And so I think you know during the course of some time this year We may start this doing tests or experimenting just building up knowledge and experience of it But not doing on any major scale and there would be an opportunity probably more for the next financial year third question, um Do you? additional I think it's something like maybe does your timing on the addition of other services or probably what is your timing on the addition of other services such as car rentals, airport transportation, and experiences to Prime? I can't say publicly the timing. We haven't disclosed that yet. But suffice to say, you know, look, Prime is a perfect, you know, an ideal vehicle to be a one-stop shop. And we continue to think about, you know, the allocation of our resources to doing those types of things, expanding additional products and services in it, versus expanding geographically, versus continuing to improve the overall proposition as well. And so that's the tradeoff we go through. As you can see, over the past year, we added hotels in all of our markets. We've actually just recently, very recently, we've added dynamic packages as well to the Prime offering, so we do continue to add this on. And it would be likely over this coming year that we may add, you know, other products and services as well. The fourth question is how many hotels are available on Prime in Europe and how many in the U.S.? ? I don't know the exact numbers, but so let me tell you what I do know. One is that we have over a million hotels that are offered to Prime subscribers, so it's very substantive. Two is we don't, let's say, it's not like it's, you know, 80% in Europe and 20% outside Europe. No, it's a good smattering. So I think, you know, for example, if we took the U.S., we would have well over 100,000 hotels and quite large, potentially be much, much more than that. In Europe, again, it would be in the, you know, 300, 400,000 or much, much more. But again, Latin America as well, Asia, hundreds of thousands of hotels, et cetera. So you can see it is a, in a sense, a global offering to a customer to make sure that we cover their travel requirements and travel needs. The fifth question is, are there specific end dates announced for European travel restrictions? There really aren't. I think the vaccination rate has been a big, big driver within Europe, and quite frankly, Europe started, you know, later or was slower just in the rollout than the U.S., and it's been only more recently that really been picking up in Europe. There are individual countries that may have some travel restrictions, the U.K. being one that does have some travel restrictions, and it sounds clear about the timing of when they would actually release those travel restrictions for it. But again, the vaccine is probably the biggest driver when I speak about Europe as a whole, as opposed to an individual country basis. Question six is, there was an interesting Seeking Alpha article last month on the value of your prime program. How do you think about the value of a prime program? I think about it probably on three levels. The first one is that And I'm doing these more from, let's say, a shareholder point of view. The first one is it's an ongoing constant revenue stream, right? It de-risks the business just dramatically from an investor point of view. Because now you don't have a business that's constantly reacquiring, reacquiring, and reacquiring customers, but that you have a business that increasingly it has actually let's say a long-term revenue stream, a long-term relationship with customers, and therefore much more predictability and de-risking for it. The second one is around increasing share of wallet, right? When customers make a conscious decision to do a subscription program, they're consciously saying that we like you as a company, we want to give you our business, and so typically we gain more business through that. So you can see increasing market share. The third element I think about is around share of wallet, right? Prime is a perfect vehicle to, you know, be your one-stop shop for a customer. And so that's why you see with the introduction of hotels, with the introduction of dynamic packages, you know, and there is other vehicles in it. So it really does have the potential to really transform travel and to further transform us in the years to come. Next question is, from Chad is, as the only OTA that did not need to raise capital to get through the pandemic, what are your thoughts on eDream's ability versus its competitors to fund growth post the reopening?
Let me take that one. Given that our Marginal profit is positive. It's structurally positive. And we have, let's say, in order to fund new growth, what we need to do is to basically invest more in marketing, but that investment is profitable. We really don't need to do anything special, right? It's not like we need extra new capital because every new booking is a profitable booking. And then the last question that we have from this investor is, given you are ahead of schedule of achieving your goal of 2 million prime members, are you ready to revise the goal up? Actually, we just did. We had a milestone target of 2 million by the end of 2023, and we just moved it to the summer of 22. So, yes, we hear you, and, yes, we have advanced our targets. Next question. We still have quite a few investors, like seven or eight more. And I am not going to read out some of the questions, just to save time. I'm conscious of the time that we have when the questions are literally repeated from someone else before. So I'm going to go straight to questions that have not been answered. Neil Keeney from Credit Science. Can you give us some color on the churn within your prime membership and the contribution of subscription fees to overall revenue margin? The answer to this is we do not disclose churn, but the numbers of prime members that you see are, of course, after churn, so they're net of the churn that we already have. The contribution of subscription fees to overall revenue margin is – Also not something that we disclose, although let me take the opportunity to say that over the next six months, we are planning to increase the amount of disclosure that we make on Prime, given that it is becoming clearly the most important product of the company. and we think that it is important we provide additional information and we're trying to strike the right balance between giving information to our investors and not giving it to our competitors to a degree that they will want to have it. What we do disclose so far is that 39% of our bookings come from our subscribers. How much is the subscription fees specifically of overall revenue margin? It is going to be less than that 39% because subscription is a portion of the revenues that we get from subscribers, but there are other revenues from subscribers that we are also getting. Let me leave it at that for now. What proportion of your current and historical memberships are those on free trials? And the response to that is zero. The number of members that we disclose are those that have paid the subscription fee and therefore this is after they have their free trial period. It's an absolute net figure and these customers that pay the ones that we disclose. The next set of questions come from . Further expansion of prime in any other region in 2021 or planned throughout the year? Yes, there will be more countries. I cannot disclose which ones exactly right now, but there will be more countries throughout the fiscal year. What are your current expectations regarding summer bookings as a percentage of 2019 bookings? We have a number of scenarios. We don't have a single expectation. And for the same reason that we don't give formal guidance for fiscal 22, I'm afraid I can also not anticipate the exact number of bookings that we expect for the summer. Any comments on a possible refinancing of the bond due 2023? Which core price steps down in September? It's something that we evaluate on an ongoing basis, what would be the best moment to do the refinancing of that bond. We still have time. You mentioned one threshold moment, which is September, when the price of the call steps down. But it is also true that given that there is an important recuperation, like you've seen in our numbers, also we do expect that our financials on a quarter-by-quarter basis will keep improving. And we will just evaluate their options. And the target of the company is, on the one hand, to ensure the refinancing, and on the other hand, to ensure that it is a successful refinancing and hopefully have at least equal, if not lower, cost of the financing for the shareholders of this company. Next set of questions from Peter Kaufman of Argonaut Analytics. There was one that is strictly repeated. The other one Could you give us some color regarding churn expectation on your prime program as well as conversion ratio from one monthly trial to annual subscription? I'm afraid that that is also not something that we disclosed at this moment in time. Andrew DeBak from DPA Asset Management, looking forward. Once the travel market has normalized and you would have reached your 2 million prime customer target, what percentage of a revenue stream do you expect to be fixed subscription-based versus variable transaction-based? We think the 2 million target is just an interim target. It's not like we're going to stop there. I think that we have a lot more potential than the 2 million's. And we would expect as well that the amount of revenues that we get from subscribers will increase and increase over time, and every time it will represent a higher percentage of our revenues. But adventuring here an exact figure, I think it's a bit too early for that. The next question comes from Giuseppe Sezzi of Lombard O'Neill Investment Managers. Hello, do you have any ESG new initiatives? Do you plan to disclose emissions? Well, one good piece of news that you can find in our annual report where we have done an effort to really disclose appropriately the real nature of this company from an ESG perspective is that we have already been carbon neutral for fiscal 20 and fiscal 21. So for the last two years, we have carbon neutral activity. Now on the ESG, given that we are an online retailer, we are an e-commerce players, our direct environmental impact is quite low and the little that there is, we compensate it to get to be carbon neutral. The focus for us is a lot more on the S of social and then the G of governance. and we have a number of initiatives to move forward in that respect. And on the social, I would like to maybe flag one that has been very, very important for us over the last 12 months. We've seen the vast majority, if not all of our competitors, doing staff reductions of 25% or more over their workforces. We are keeping 100%. of our workforce. We haven't fired a single employee during the crisis, and that's something that we are very proud of. It is something that generates an increase in the engagement of our employees, and I think this company has a unique culture in that respect. And I really encourage you to read our annual report on the section of ESG. We've done, I think, a very good effort in improving, let's say, the potential knowledge of our investors about how we are inside of the company. And I hope that you like it and we'll be happy to entertain any questions that you have that on one-on-ones or whatever. The next question is from Wogo Antelix of Saria. What are the main components of your 150 million of payables, and how large is each component? Well, we don't disclose exactly the amount, but I can tell you directionally what are the important amounts. Normally, the bigger one, as usual, is the payable to our providers, and that would be for different components. You also have, and by providers, sorry, I mean trade providers, so this would be payment to airlines, hoteliers, etc., Normally, the second most important is the payments to marketing providers, which is the bigger expense within our P&L. You also have in the deferred revenue of prime that we've been explaining with some detail over the last two quarters to investors. It shows up as a payable, but it is not really a payable. I like to call it a parking lot. It's a parking lot of cash that is just waiting to be recognized as revenue. And another, let's say the fourth important component is the refunds which are in transit. from the airlines to our customers. So there's a refund that we have received from the airline, and there's about a two-, three-week period in which we need to reconcile those amounts, assign them to the appropriate booking, and then send the money to our customers. And the last question that we have. of Pine Bridge investments, even how open the debt capital markets have been up late, what is the right time to think about the refinancing of the 2023 bond maturity? This question is actually repeated, so I'm not going to answer again. And with that, I think we have everything of the questions that we have received, and Thank you, everybody, for joining the webcast. And before we conclude the call, I would like to inform you that on the 1st of September, Wednesday, the 1st of September, we will be hosting our conference call for the first quarter of fiscal 22. I hope that by the 1st of September, you will have had time to make a booking with us at least, travel. It's really good for your health. It's really good for your family. And hopefully by the 1st of September, you're back from your vacation. And we will be welcoming you with our first quarter results. In the meantime, we will be happy to receive your questions through our investor relations team or the investor email address, which is investors at edriensoligio.com. Thank you, everyone.