Mondee Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Mondi fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Houston, Senior Vice President. Jeff, please go ahead.

Thank you, Harry, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Mondi's fourth quarter and full year 2022 conference call. With me today are Chairman, CEO, and Founder Prasad Gundamundala and Chief Financial Officer Dan Figginshew, who will present our preliminary results. Also available are our Vice Chairman, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer, Orisees Fintiklis, and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Dullem. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements about revenue, growth of our business, our management and government plans, and other non-historical statements as further described in our press release. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks uncertainties and assumptions, including those related to Monday's growth, the evolution of our industry, our product development and success, our management performance, and general economic and business conditions. I would also like to point out that the fourth quarter and full year 2022 results are preliminary and subject to final audit. We undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Descriptions of these and other risks that could cause actual results to have a material difference from these forward-looking statements are discussed in our reports filed with the SEC and in our press release that was issued this morning. During the call, we also referred to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the most comparable GAAP measures are also available in the press release, which is available at investors.mondi.com. With that, Prasad, I would like to turn the call over to you. Prasad?

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome everyone to Monty's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. We appreciate your interest, whether you are a shareholder, a client, supplier, business partner, employee, prospective shareholder, or analyst. I will begin today's call with a summary of our business highlights and strategy. And then I will turn the call over to our CFO, Dan Fickenshew, for a more detailed review of our preliminary financial results and outlook. We will then conclude the session with time to answer a few questions. I'm excited to announce that in the fourth quarter of 2022, Mondi continued to deliver profitable growth. Gross revenue of $512 million increased 42% year over year. while net revenue of 40 million was up 19% year over year. For the full year 2022, gross revenue of 2.2 billion was 2.2 times about 2021's 966 million of gross revenue. As you may recall in 2021, we equaled our 2019 benchmark revenue of 93 million, despite still being in the middle of the pandemic. And now in 2022, our net revenue of more than 159 million grew 171% over 2021's net revenue, even though the international travel market only recovered to about 70% from its pre-pandemic peak. Equally important as our continuing growth trend is that we continue to deliver profitability as we scale. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was 6 million, representing an improvement of more than 7 million from the same period last year, Fully at 2022, adjusted EBITDA was 16 million, up more than 20 million from 2021's adjusted EBITDA. Turning to slide four, to look at the major industry trends impacting Bondi's business. While 2022, North America domestic care was about 91% recovered to 2019 levels. International travel, which is our main business, was just 69% recovered in 2022. A positive trend is that international improved to 77% in the fourth quarter of 2022. China, in particular, finally reopened for inbound travel in January 2023, and we expect to experience more rapid recovery of our North America outbound travel to China in the back half of 2023, given the lead time necessary for travelers to typically plan and schedule Asia destination trips. And pandemic-led labor shortages in 2022 added to basic undersupply in air and hotel. However, in 2023, the labor shortage is generally expected to improve. And air seat capacity is expected to ramp back up in 2023 and thereafter. For example, Air India invested $70 billion to buy 470 planes. Another positive trend for Monty is the Gen Zs and millennials purchasing power and influence. New platforms are required to meet the needs of these growing consumer cohorts, such as real-time, always-on, curated content, combined with conversational and social commerce. On the headwind side, inflation and high fuel costs are driving price increases, while recession fears may impact both operating costs and business demand in the short to medium term. However, Mondi is well positioned to mitigate these headwinds through its tech platform and value-based content. Turning to slide five, which presents Mondi's geographical destination mix. This provides a better sense of the potential impact China's reopening could have on our business. Asia, which is about half China, represented approximately 20% of our transactions pre-pandemic in fourth quarter 2019. And in the fourth quarter of 2022 was just 15% of the mix. We expect to return to that same level and potentially even higher in late 2023 and into 2024. Outside of China, This chart shows that we continue to capitalize on the ongoing travel recovery in other international markets. For example, Europe increased to 22% in fourth quarter 2022 from 15% in fourth quarter 2019. And India increased to 21% from 16% over the same period. It is also important to highlight that our impressive growth is not just travel recovery driven. because our net revenue recovery has far surpassed the recovery of international travel. This is being driven by many factors, including market share gains, expanding disruption into product segments of the market beyond flights such as hotels, tech-driven improvements in our diversified revenue streams such as fintech and ancillaries. These result in improved revenue per transaction and take rates. Digging deeper into our main accomplishments in 2022 and so far in 2023, there were four key areas that continue to drive our strong financial and operating results and will support us further during 2023. First, we made significant improvements to our capital structure in 2022. After our successful debut on NASDAQ on July 19th, by raising 85 million of preferred stock with an instrument that is not convertible to common equity and hence not diluted to our shareholders. Moreover, we purchased all 12 million of our public warrants, another important step to limiting potential dilution of Monty's common equity, creating value for common shareholders. These actions fortified our balance sheet in a way that facilitates our organic and inorganic growth strategies. In fact, we deployed about 20 million of this capital toward acquiring Orienter just a few weeks ago, which brings us second point. Orienter strengthens Mondi's position in Brazilian and broader Latam travel market. Their portfolio includes 4,900 travel experts, as well as complimentary local hotel packages and ground transport relationship that will be added to Mondi's content and distribution marketplace. Monty plans to leverage Orienter's outstanding and proven management team, strong market position, and expertise to further expand regionally in LATAM and globally. M&A is not a new endeavor for us. We have a history of well-calibrated and successfully integrated transactions, which have delivered strong revenue and cost synergies. Orienter is the beginning of our third wave of acquisitions, We plan to continue aggressively executing a targeted accretive acquisition strategy which will help accelerate our growth and expansion into new geographies as well as offerings of new products and services. We plan to continue expanding our operations in Brazil and LATAM region while also exploring opportunities in other regions such as Europe and parts of Asia. We believe that by diversifying our operations while expanding new products and services, we can better leverage our platforms and marketplace, as well as achieve sustainable growth and enhance our position as a leader in the travel industry. Third, we continue to improve and evolve our tech platform, which bars our modern marketplace and consequently our revenue streams. We facilitated approximately 2.1 million transactions in 2022, up 62% from 2021. Each transaction could include multiple flights and hotels or vacation rentals as well as ancillary solutions. These diversified solutions are providing higher margin revenue streams and driving higher take rate. Our FinTech revenue grew 186% in 2022 from 2021. These FinTech products include alternate payment and settlement methods, wallets, fraud protection tools and fintech ancillaries in addition we expect to use our stronger balance sheet to further support growth of our fintech offerings and revenue generating items further our transaction growth is supported by the launch of our trip planet platform last year which has grown to access to over 125 million organization members fourth in january 2023 we introduced the Mondi expert and influencer affiliate network program designed to enhance current customer offerings and their travel experiences as well as increase distribution and reach by collaborating with new travel companies, experts, and other businesses. Affiliates can more holistically engage Mondi's technology and marketplace to create expanded travel-related experience while earning enhanced commissions on booking made through the platform. Before turning the call over to Dan, as we look into 2023, we thought it would be helpful to briefly describe Mondi's marketplace positioning and our vision. We believe Mondi is very well positioned for the rapidly developing modern travel ecosystem as shown on slide six. Our global content hub features direct connectivity with over 500 airlines and more than 1 million hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars, and we are aggressively expanding into cruises and other activities. This expanding content is differentiated in the market by combining discount rates, long-term contracts, real-time pricing data, and integration with revenue management systems or strategies across a wide variety of offerings. Technology is at the core of our business and further differentiates us in the travel industry. Our platform-enabled marketplace is highly scalable and flexible, featuring fintech, insurtech, marketing tech, conversational commerce, and ancillaries. And later this year, we plan to roll our next-gen platform that we believe to be many years ahead of what is currently available in the market. Without stealing too much thunder from these upcoming launch events, I can tell you that features include real-time social commerce, gross content, and local experts on ramps. As our B2B2C content consumers, they receive access to curated travel supply and experiences, cost savings, SaaS tools to operate efficiently, and access to our tech platform. We distribute through our more than 55,000 travel experts, affiliates, intermediaries, and gig economy workers, as well as access to 125 million closed user group members. By disrupting a $70 billion subsegment of travel and becoming a leading company in selling wholesale airfare to travel affiliates in North America, Bondi is now rapidly becoming a leading tech platform and modern marketplace, connecting travel suppliers, gig economy workers, and closed group travelers by providing all travel content and experiences through our expert and consumer apps. Our growing segments of gig economy workers include service and concierge agents, local experts, influencers, curators, and content writers. Our close user groups include travel affiliates and influencer network membership organizations and SMBs, which we are expanding globally. With that overview of our business, I will now pass the call over to Dan Figgenshew, CFO of Mondi, for a review to our financial performance and outlook. Dan.