Apollo Strategic Growth Capital Class A Ordinary Shares

Good morning and welcome to the American Express Global Business Travel fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. This morning we issued an earnings release, which is available on our website at investors.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com. The slide presentation, which accompanies today's prepared remarks, is also available on the Amex GVT Investor Relations webpage. We would like to advise you that our comments contain forward-looking statements. that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events, including the duration and effects of COVID-19, industry trends, cost savings and acquisition synergies, among others. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made on today's conference call. More information on these and other risks and uncertainties is contained in our earnings release issued this morning and the registration statement on Form S-4 filed by Apollo Strategic Growth Capital with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 21, 2021, as amended on February 4, 2022. Throughout today's call, we will be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA. All references during today's call to such non-GAAP financial measures have been adjusted to exclude certain items. Definitions of these terms and the most directly comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations for non-GAAP measures are available in the earnings release. The 2021 financial results represented in this communication are preliminary and unaudited and may change as a result. Please see the earnings release for additional information. Participating with me on the call today are Paul Abbott, our Chief Executive Officer, and Martine Giroux, our Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Paul. Paul?

Thank you very much, Barry, and hello, everyone, and thank you to all of you for joining us today. I'm going to start my section with the 2021 highlights. 2021 was a transformational year for American Express Global Business Travel. With the acquisitions of Ovation Travel Group and Agencia, and the launch of new innovative travel and expense software solutions. We welcomed Expedia as a new investor and secured investment commitments from Sabre, Zoom, and Apollo as part of our pending business combination agreements with Apollo Strategic Growth Capital and our upsize oversubscribed pipe. We entered 2022 with the leading value proposition in each of the customer segments we serve, strengthened relationships with our customers, and strong new sales momentum. Let's take a look at each of these highlights. We ended 2021 on a high note despite the Omicron impact in December, with financial results for the full year well ahead of our adjusted EBITDA forecast, driven by 119% increase in fourth quarter revenue and efficiencies that we delivered from structural cost reduction actions. Our pro forma revenue was 61 million ahead of our forecast, and adjusted EBITDA, 37 million ahead of the forecast. I'm pleased to say the business travel recovery is well underway. Recent booking trends are gaining momentum, with transactions reaching 51% of 2019 levels. in the last week in February. And that is a 23 percentage point improvement versus the middle of January. In 2021, we doubled our SME footprint, making nearly half our revenues attributable to the industry's largest, fastest growing, and most profitable customer segments. We are well on track to deliver the 109 million of identified synergies from Agencia which will further strengthen our future earnings potential, including 25 million of synergies that we expect to deliver in 2022. Furthermore, we delivered 2021 SME new wins value that represents 14% of 2019 pro forma SME total transaction value, or TTV. We exited 2021 with strong new sales momentum overall. driven by the investments that we continue to make in delivering unrivaled value, unrivaled choice, and unrivaled experiences for our customers. The recent acquisitions of Ovation Travel Group and Agencia, and doubling down on our technology investments across our proprietary travel and expense software platform, NEO, have further strengthened our value proposition. This strengthened value proposition has driven $3.7 billion in total new wins value in 2021. And that represents 10% of 2019 pro forma TTP. Very importantly, we also achieved 95% customer retention and 92% total customer satisfaction. So looking ahead, we believe Amex GBT is uniquely positioned to lead and benefit from the industry's continued recovery and long-term growth potential. We expect our pending business combination with Apollo's strategic growth capital to provide access to the capital required to accelerate our growth strategy. So before I come back and go through more detail on each of these highlights, Martine will review our financial results. Over to you, Martine.

Thank you, Paul, and hello, everyone. The 2021 financial results that are presented on this slide are pro forma to include agencia for the full year. These pro forma financial results are therefore directly comparable to the forecast provided in the registration statement filed with the SEC by Apollo Strategic Growth Capital. As you can see, and as you just heard from Paul, we came in well above forecast. Starting with TTV, pro forma total transaction value was nearly 8 billion, which was 369 million above forecast. This drove pro forma revenue of 889 million, which was 61 million above forecast. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA totaled a negative 520 million, which was 37 million better than forecast, due to strong revenue growth in the fourth quarter and cost savings execution. Moving now to the fourth quarter results. As a reminder, we closed the Agencia acquisition on November 1st, 2021. Therefore, what you see here only includes about two months of contribution from Agencia. As a reminder, these are preliminary results. In the fourth quarter, we significantly benefited from the acceleration in the travel recovery through October and November. Omicron had a limited impact on the fourth quarter as the deceleration was mostly felt in December, which is traditionally our lowest trading month. Total transaction value, or TTV, increased 488% year over year to a total of $2.8 billion. At constant foreign exchange rates, TTV increased by 353%, which is in line with the 348% increase in transaction volume. Fourth quarter revenue increased 119% to a total of $287 million. Total revenue yield, which is our revenue over our TTV, was 9%. as compared to 27% in the fourth quarter of 2020, where we benefited from the fixed component of our revenue over a very low volume base, as well as revenue from servicing what were higher than normal cancellations. Cancellations drive transactions and revenue, but not TTV, which is reported on a net basis. As a result, travel revenue was up 244% in the quarter, a lower rate of increase than both TTV and transaction volume. Product and professional services revenue increased 31% in the fourth quarter due to increased management fee, product revenue, and meeting and events revenue as COVID-19 restrictions were relaxed and travel rebounded. And please remember that our product and professional services revenue have a higher portion of fixed revenue that doesn't fluctuate. with TTV. Our adjusted EBITDA totaled negative 101 million, which is an improvement of 37 million due to revenue growth and partially offset by increased cost of revenue to support the rise in the volume of transactions, higher G&A costs, and increased investments behind technology, content, and sales and marketing. You might recall that we implemented significant cost reductions from April of 2020 through the second quarter of 2021 when the volume recovery was still very limited. Over that period, we reduced our operating expenses by more than 50% at their peak, and costs remained significantly below 2019 levels. Excluding the impact of acquisition , our adjusted expenses were down 41% for the full year 2021 as compared to 2019. This reduction includes the benefit of our structural cost savings program of $235 million. We do expect these structural savings to remain even as volumes come back. They are permanent in nature, and we have already fully realized 80% of the benefits, with the remaining 20% expected to be realized as the recovery continues. As business travel continues to recover as a result, we expect adjusted EBITDA to scale rapidly with strong incremental margins. Turning our attention to the four-year. Again, our actual results include approximately two months of contribution from Agencia. TTV increased 14% to 6.8 billion. At constant for exchange rates, TTV increased by 6%, which is in line with a 6% growth in transaction volume. In the first part of 2021, we faced a difficult comparison versus a strong Q1 2020 due to term restrictions and the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which really started in late March and into April of 2020. TTV and transaction volumes recovered materially over the back half of 2021. Full year revenue totaled $763 million. Our total revenue yield was 11% as compared to 13% in 2020. As previously mentioned, we benefited in 2020 from higher than normal yield due to the fixed components of our revenue, as well as revenue from servicing higher than normal cancellations. As a result, travel revenue was down 5%. Product and professional services revenue declined 2% due to a reduction in management fee and meeting and events revenues in the first half of the year. Again, related to the onset of travel restriction in the March 2020 period, which was partially offset by an increase in revenues in the second half of the year, driven by the recovery in travel. Because of our strong cost savings execution, adjusted EBITDA increased by 23 million year over year despite a 4% decline in overall revenue. Excluding the impact of acquisitions, our adjusted expense were down 41% in full year 2021 as compared to 2019. And I will now turn it back over to Paul.

Thank you, Martine. I'm now going to take you through each of the 2021 highlights in a little more detail. starting with corporate recovery. I'm pleased to say momentum in the travel exceeded our forecast in 2021, despite the impact of Omicron in December, and the recovery trends are promising for 2022 and beyond. As vaccination rates increased and travel restrictions eased around the world, recovery trends accelerated to reach a peak of 50% of 2019 levels at the end of November 2021. And you can see on the chart that the Omicron variant impacted both December 2021 and January 2022. However, corporate travel volumes have shown a lot more resilience and a much faster recovery rate from the Omicron wave. as governments and businesses have adopted a more pragmatic response that recognizes the transition to a more endemic state. We actually passed the Omicron volume trough in mid-January. Only about four to six weeks after the initial outbreak, Then if you look over the past six weeks, we have seen a 23 percentage point volume recovery increase. And we exited the last week in February with transaction volumes at 51% of 2019 levels and TTV at 45% of 2019 levels. As an important point of reference here, the 45% TTV recovery compares to a 2022 full year TTV recovery level of 49% that was anticipated in the registration statement forecast. We expect to see continued meaningful improvement in the recovery levels going forward, and we're confident in the long-term recovery of corporate travel. Recent government announcements from the WHO and various government and corporate bodies around the world underscore the recent shift in attitudes towards travel and are supportive of a stronger recovery. And that's particularly important for higher value international travel as we look ahead. As many large corporations around the world begin to reopen their offices and welcome back employees, we believe this bodes well for continuing momentum in the corporate travel recovery. We're also seeing increased demand for our meetings and events as teams reunite to collaborate, to innovate, and to motivate. As of March 1st, 2022 forward bookings for meetings and events are already at 63% of 2019 levels. So now moving on to Agencia synergies and accelerating SME growth. In November 21, we welcomed the Agencia team into Amex GVT from Expedia. And of course we welcomed Expedia as a shareholder. Agencia is the leading B2B travel software platform and the fourth largest travel management company in the world. So not only is Agencia a very important strategic acquisition, It's also a very important financial transaction. We identified 109 million of expected synergies. The synergies are comprised of 75 million of revenue synergies, primarily driven from additional content benefits, and 35 million of cost synergies. Already in the first few months, we've made solid progress towards achieving these synergies. The American Express GBT content including what we call our preferred extras program, is now already live in the Agencia platform, giving customers access to this additional content and additional choice. And we're already realizing significant real estate consolidation benefits. This progress underscores our confidence in fully delivering the planned synergies associated with the Agencia acquisition, And we're on track to achieve the 25 million of expected synergies in 2022. You may recall earlier in 2021, we also acquired Ovation Travel Group. Ovation is a recognized leader in providing high touch service and premium leisure. Agencia is the leading B2B travel software platform, fully integrated, with an intuitive consumer-like experience for both the traveler and the travel manager it is a platform that is proven at scale on a global basis and importantly over 90 percent of agency transactions are initiated online in the platform together these two acquisitions and american express gbt's sme business doubles our footprint in the important sme space Approximately 45% of our revenues are now from the SME customer segments. And this is important because the SME segment presents a tremendous runway for growth. It represents a total addressable opportunity of $945 billion of travel spend, and it is the fastest growing customer segment with recovery trends that have consistently outpaced global multinational enterprises by 5 to 10 percentage points. SME is also the most profitable customer segment. And every dollar that we shift towards SME improves our margins. And this is particularly true for the United States, where our US SME contribution margin is 25% to 30% higher than Amex GBT's total margins. So Amex GBT, with the addition of Ovation Travel Group and Agencia, puts us in a very strong position. with the leading solutions for each of the customer segments we serve. And we intend to capitalize on the tailwind of customers that are now moving from an unmanaged travel program to a fully managed travel program, driven by a more complex travel environment and the fact that we now have turnkey solutions designed exactly for these customers. In 2021, we delivered SME new wins value that represented 14% of our 2019 pro forma SME TTV. Looking ahead, we expect strong growth to continue, driven by the ongoing recovery, increased sales and marketing investments, and a differentiated value proposition. And importantly, this will result in an increase in our mix of faster growing and higher margin revenues. So moving on to look at how we've strengthened customer value in 2021. Our differentiated customer value proposition grow further expansion of our industry leadership position. We added 3.7 billion in total new win value in 21, which to put into perspective represents 10% of our 2019 pro forma TTP. Major new wins included Hewlett Packard Enterprises, Standard Chartered, and Palo Alto Networks. Year-to-date, that momentum continues. Notable wins include Raytheon Technologies and Ferrero Group. Equally important, though, are customer retention and customer satisfaction results remain strong at 95% and 92%, respectively, ahead of pre-pandemic levels. So we have significantly strengthened the value, the choice, and the experience we deliver for our customers through 2021, including through two strategic acquisitions. And we've accelerated our technology investments, specifically in our digital and e-commerce solutions, strengthening our mobile and our chat capabilities. These investments have tripled our share of digital interactions in 2021. This includes expansion of our chat services to more customers and more channels, including the integration of WhatsApp and Google Chat. Also the launch of Traveler Feedback Tools on mobile. We've enhanced our sustainability features. We've increased the content that is available to customers in our marketplace, including new NDC content. We introduced over 500 new customer features in Neo, NEO is our proprietary travel and expense software platform. These features are now available to customers in over 90 countries around the world. And this resulted in over 20% year-over-year growth in GBT's NEO transactions in 2021. Finally, we also launched NEO One in the United States. NEO One was initially launched in the UK. It's now been expanded to the US market. It's a software solution designed specifically for SME customers to manage all of their indirect spend, including travel. So 2021 was a year of milestones for the company and increasing momentum. We delivered financial results that were well above forecast, and we enter 2022 with continued confidence. the recovery of business travel is well underway. We changed the profile of our company, unlocking the potential for enhanced growth and margin expansion going forward. With the acquisitions of Ovation Travel Group and Agencia, we now provide the leading solutions for the customer segments we serve. And we are positioned to accelerate growth in the large, fast-growing and more profitable SME space. We have strengthened our industry leadership position through strong sales execution, enviable customer retention and customer satisfaction scores that are above pre-pandemic levels, all of which is enabled by bringing the best people and the best technology and travel together to serve our customers. So we enter 2022 as the clear industry leader, a stronger company, a stronger competitor, and we have stronger relationships with colleagues, customers, and suppliers. We look forward to completing our pending business combination with Apollo Strategic Growth Capital, and of course, continuing to provide updates on our progress in the quarters and years ahead. We hope that you'll all be able to join us for our upcoming Investor Day in New York City on April the 12th. Thank you very much for your interest.