Mondee Holdings, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to the Mondi Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jeff Houston, Senior Vice President. Jeff, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Mondi's Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. With me today is Founder, Chairman, and CEO Prasad Gundamundala, and Chief Financial Officer Jesus Portillo. who will present our results. Also available for questions and answers is our Vice Chairman, Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer, Aristis Venticulus, 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 MONDI's growth, the evolution of our industry, our product development and success, our management performance, and general economic and business conditions. 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 refer 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, it's my pleasure to turn it over to Prasad.

Thank you, Jeff. This morning, we are excited to welcome everyone to Mondi's second quarter 2023 earnings call to discuss our results and significant developments. We appreciate your interest, whether you are a shareholder, a client, supplier, business partner, employee, prospective shareholders, or unless. I'll begin today's call with our business highlights and strategy, and then I will turn the call over to our CFO, Jesus Portillo, for a more detailed review of our financial results and outlook. We will then conclude the session with time to answer a few questions. Starting on slide four, there are three key points to emphasize in our second quarter results. First, Mondi is once again disrupting the travel market through AI innovation and next-gen technology deployment. We are thrilled that on the first anniversary of our NASDAQ public listing, Mondi released the first fully integrated AI travel marketplace. opening a world of new market opportunities and certifying our status as pioneers in the travel industry. Our journey has naturally led us to this transformational intersection. In the past 12 years, we assembled the components that disrupted a significant segment of the North American travel market and created a highly successful 1.0 marketplace platform. the technology marketplace for travel experts, suppliers, travelers, and organizations. With our newly released Disruptive AI platform and 1D 2.0 marketplace, we are broadening our addressable customer base to include the vibrant ecosystem of travel social influencers, freelancers, and the tech-savvy millennial and Gen Z travelers. Moving to slide five, Key elements of this transformation included a one-of-a-kind modern tech platform, extensive world-class privately negotiated content, deployed through a powerful network of experts and travelers. This positions us to generate increasingly hyper-local content for personalized experiences, as well as establishing Mondi as a technology leader when it comes to AI in travel. Coming to the second point, now that we have all of these assets in place, we are now perfectly positioned to launch a series of robust modern marketing campaigns with the help of our expanded world-class marketing team. This strategic push aims to fully capitalize on our disruptive market position as we approach 2024. EI is not new to us. One, we have been investing in EI technology for the past few years. Because of this, we are uniquely positioned to lead and bring a fully integrated advanced AI platform to the travel industry. Over the past few quarters, a favorable market window opened, allowing us to leverage our established assets to position Mondi as a leader in the AI marketplace. These developments were, first, rapid popularity and proven breakthroughs in the generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Pod. Secondly, Gen Z and millennial travelers are receptive to and actively seeking AI solutions for creating personalized travel experiences. Thirdly, social media influencers have become more relevant to introduce new travel experiences to their followers. With these developments, coupled with the deployment of our advanced technology, expanded global content, and innovative marketing programs, we are stepping into a new realm, poised to bring travel experiences to a wider audience. As a result, we decided to accelerate our investments in deploying the technology, building the marketing programs, the content scope and curation, as well as the business delivery infrastructure. We believe that the symbiotic relationship between AI advancements and Mondi's leadership in AI travel technology justify our intensified focus on these initiatives. Our incremental investments here will facilitate the process of engaging travelers through social media influencers, close user groups, and organizations more quickly. We fully expect our revolutionary AI travel marketplace to contribute to further market share gains improve the rate of net revenue growth, and enhance profitability in 2024 and thereafter. The third point, we continue to grow at a fast pace and perform well financially. Turning to slide six, we are proud of the performance of our monthly marketplace, which has delivered explosive organic and inorganic growth, as well as positive EBITDA. culminating into yet another stellar financial results in the second quarter, exemplifying our commitment to growth with innovation and excellence. In Q2 of this year, with take rate, which we define as net revenue divided by gross revenue, increasing to 8% from 7.2% in the second quarter of 2022. Net revenue of $57 million was 124% of the second quarter of 22. In the first half of 2023, we exceeded the net revenue guidance communicated to the investment community, and we remain on track to continue performing well. On the profitability front, we delivered an adjusted EBITDA of 4.4 million, which is 118% of adjusted EBITDA in the same period last year. We achieved this result even after investing approximately $1 million of additional marketing and personal expenses in anticipation of the Monty AI Marketplace launch. Jesus will delve deeper into financial results and specific guidance numbers shortly. But first, I would like to underscore the reasons for our enthusiastic growth outlook and additional insights on the potential of our AI travel marketplace. and distribution channels. Turning back to slide five, our AI travel marketplace is transforming the travel marketplace with a range of innovative features that will completely change how trips and personal travel experiences are conceived, planned, and booked. We are enabling travel influencers, local experts, and agents with unprecedented access and complete travel content in our unified marketplace as well as travel-centric cutting-edge technology, such as Abhi, the AI platform with conversational commerce, to conveniently create and deliver personalized travel experiences. It adds the global knowledge of experts to their local expertise to be able to serve any type of customer well. For travelers, we have crafted immersive travel experiences using intuitive self-service exploration tools driven by AI. But that's not all. We have taken it a step further by connecting travelers with on-demand local experts from around the world. Through our AI-driven marketplace, these experts bring local knowledge and tap into global networks to add a unique touch to inspire travel adventures. At the heart of our mission is bringing joy to the traveler's journey, making it personal surprising, and meaningful. We believe in curating localized experiences that matter. With the only fully integrated AI travel platform today, our marketplace empowers travel experts and influencers to provide exactly what their clients desire, saving time while creating their personal travel experiences. Our all-in-one platform offers a wide range of travel content available in about 20 languages, And our customer support has been expanded with our growing always connected expert network to ensure your trip is smooth from start to finish. With assistance available via phone, chat, and email. Experts and travelers are able to discover the world at their fingertips with access to over 500 airlines, 1 million hotels and vacation rentals, 30,000 rental car pickup locations, and now 50 cruise lines. all at negotiated rates that guarantee exceptional value. What truly sets the Monty marketplace apart is our groundbreaking fully integrated AI platform. Innovation is our passion, and we have harnessed the power of generative AI, deep learning, computer vision, and a recommendation engine, along with conversational commerce, to transform the travel booking process. Our FinTech tools provide additional choices and protection for all purchases within our marketplace, ensuring your peace of mind. Moving to slide seven, yesterday we announced the acquisition of SkyPass, a leading travel marketplace, specializing in international corporate and SMB travel, continuing our accretive and disciplined M&A strategy, and adding content and distribution, which is enhancing our new marketplace. This follows our three acquisitions announced earlier this year that strengthened our presence in LATAM, specifically Brazil and Mexico. Going forward, we plan to continue our disciplined inorganic strategy to expand our existing operations while also exploring opportunities in other regions. We intend to leverage our platform and marketplace accretively to support sustainable growth and enhance our position as a leader in the global travel industry. On the operations front, as a part of our continuous improvement, we are introducing all our new technology internally to our support teams, as well as integrating with our new operations team across all geographies to better serve all our organization customers, marketplace influencers, experts, and travelers. The ongoing enhancements of our operation and customer service elevates customer satisfaction and supports rapid growth of our business. For example, our business to enterprise or B2E segment performed very well through the second quarter with 274% increase in transactions as measured in June or January. We continue to experience momentum with joint flight and hotel transactions, providing us with increased confidence as we introduce new travel content and diversify revenue streams to our customers. Moving on to additional networthy accomplishments in the quarters, back to slide six. First is our addition to Russell 2000 Index. As the largest travel tech editions in 2023, it serves as a testament to Mondi's strong fundamentals and business performance, reaffirming our role as a leader in the travel technology industry. This recognition holds significant importance and is expected to support our endeavours in enhancing long-term shareholder value, raising awareness of MONDI among the investment community, bolstering stock volume and liquidity, and diversifying our shareholder base. This development is expected to enhance visibility and trading liquidity while also facilitating the entry of new institutional investors. Next, we completed a successful secondary offering for $52.5 million, welcoming an additional 43 institutional investors to our shareholder base. It was a step forward in diversifying our shareholder base and incentivizes an environment that foster investor participation. Moreover, with management retaining over 40% ownership of shares, our interests remain truly aligned with those of our valued investors. As I mentioned earlier, we have significantly enhanced our leadership and marketing teams in the first half of 2023. Most recently, Miten Mehta, previously a leader at Google, joined Mondi's executive team to oversee AI strategic planning and initiatives. With a professional background of over 25 years, including a wealth of experience in the field of AI, Miten will play a crucial role in our AI marketplace. He brings a growth-focused approach that emphasizes client-centricity, revenue generation, and results-driven leadership. Furthermore, former Accenture executive Geetika Gupta, who led a distributed workforce of 22,000 across geographies, including the United States, India, Singapore, and Malaysia, joined Mondi as Chief People Officer, bringing her HR transformation experience from Accenture Consulting on Fortune 100 projects to aid in scaling Mondi's infrastructure. Under CMO Kimber Lowe's leadership, the marketing team welcomed 14 new members with the focus to drive substantial growth of the company over the coming years. The team now includes online and social media experts from companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, including Rachel Van Notwik and Christy Berg. The marketing team has launched a set of marketing initiatives around Abhi, Mondi's fully integrated AI genius platform, to promote Mondi's now fully AI-enabled marketplace to customers and prospects, including travel experts, influencers, organizations, and SMEs. In addition, as we round out our infrastructure for rapid scalable growth, We continue to add key executive and subject matter experts in AI strategy and roadmap development, vendor relationship management, financial disciplines such as SOX compliance, as well as operational program management. We are now well along the path of building an all-star team to take Mondi up significant levels of profitable growth. I will now pass the call over to Jesus for a review of our financial performance and outlook. Jesus?