Despegar.com Corp

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to Desperar's third quarter 2020 earnings call. A slide presentation is accompanying today's webcast and is available in the investor section of the company's website, www.investor.desperar.com. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This conference call is being recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Now I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Natalia Nirenberg, Investor Relations. Go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today for a discussion of our third quarter 2020 results. In addition to reporting financial results in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, we discussed certain non-GAAP financial measures and operating metrics, including foreign exchange neutral calculations. Investors should read the definitions of these measures and metrics included in our press release carefully to ensure that they understand them. Non-GAAP financial measures and operating metrics should not be considered in isolation as substitutes for or superior to GAAP financial measures and are provided as supplemental information only. Before we begin our formal remarks, allow me to remind you that certain statements made during the course of the discussion may constitute forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ, including factors that may be beyond the company's control. This includes, but I'm not limited to, expectations and assumptions related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the integration and performance of the businesses we acquire, including Best Day and Coins. For a description of this risk, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our press release. Speaking on today's call is our CEO, Damian Skokin, who will provide an overview of the third quarter and update you on our strategic priorities. Alberto Lopez Azmi, our CFO, will afterwards discuss the quarter's financials. After that, we open the call to your questions. Damian, please go ahead.

Thank you, Natalia, and good morning, everyone. I hope you and your families are healthy and safe. We have been able to successfully adapt to and rapidly react to countless COVID-related challenges. From the start of this pandemic, we took decisive action to lead our business and organization through these uncharted waters. Our accomplishments throughout 2020 have been a testament to the strength of our value proposition and resilience of our business model, our ability to be agile and innovative, and the exceptional work of our talented and passionate teams. This was further demonstrated in our Q3 results, which showed sequential improvement despite the ongoing negative impact of COVID on the travel industry. We have outlined key strategic initiatives, and on these quarterly calls, we have been providing updates as to the progress we have made. First, we have a flexible toolkit to support our business. During the quarter, activity levels began to recover from the impacts brought about by the pandemic, and we executed on our growth strategy. Let me walk you through some key events. During the third quarter of 2020, Mexico and Brazil were the two major Latin American markets relatively more open to travel. The sequential improvement we saw in transactions and growth bookings was driven primarily by these two markets, where we also benefited from successful negotiations with our travel suppliers to flexibilize our product offering. A favorable mix with a higher share of accommodations and packages contributed to an exceptionally high quarter take-right, excluding cancellations. On the marketing front, we successfully implemented a series of initiatives, mostly undertaken through one-page channels and industry events. This, in turn, enabled us to hold marketing spend flat when compared with the second quarter, even while our transactions tripled in the same period. Additionally, we continued to increase transactions for mobile, up 120 basis points from last year. With a focus on cash generation, the actions we undertook translated into higher levels of profitability per transaction. Moving next to cost structure, we're intensely focused on right-sizing our structure for the new operating environment and shifting to a more variable cost model. We put in place a plan to reduce structural costs to a 28 million runway by the end of the third quarter of 2020. We succeeded in achieving this target. Flexibility and cost discipline will continue to be key in our business going forward, along with automation to increase productivity. Cash is king, particularly in an uncertain operating and economic environment. Our liquidity was another highlight for the quarter. As previously disclosed, during the quarter we closed two private placements rising a bit less than $200 million, giving us a total cash position at quarter end of $380 million. Additionally, net operational short-term obligations were relatively stable quarter over quarter, as increased sales drove up our travel payable position, while refunds and cancellations are still pending. On the other hand, the balance sheet reflects receivables collections, effect partially offset by the absorption of coins loan book. Lastly, we have had to adapt to the new normal with the speed and agility needed to stay focused on delivering business results for here and now. We're advancing our long-term strategic plan for sustained long-term growth. Inorganic growth remains an important part of our strategy. We have been active this year, closing on two transactions, Best Day and Coin. And we are accelerating their respective integrations. we closed on best day with results to be reflected as of october the first as you will hear me discuss later best day is already having a positive impact on mexico gross bookings and as of november the first best day b2c travel agency business is running on the spegas technological platform only one month after the closing was announced This is a significant milestone compared to the six months taken to migrate Viajes Falabella's B2C platform. In terms of coins, we strengthened the credit and fraud analysis by leveraging Despregar's credit information, which has contributed to improve coins' final conversion rate while prudently managing credit risk. Moving next, for a discussion on the LATAM air market on slide four. You've all heard the phrase, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. And here on this page, you can clearly see how little air traffic there is in LATAM compared with the rest of the world. This is real-time flight data from FlightAware as of October the 21st. This large disparity reflects tighter travel restrictions in most of LATAM, except for Brazil and Mexico, versus other geographies. As a reminder, although LATAM was the last major geographic region to be impacted by COVID, travel bans were implemented at the same time as Europe. Thus, the limitations to travel have been in place for a longer period. and the recovery is significantly lagging behind. It is also important to note that these factors are temporary responses to the pandemic and are not indicative of a structural shift in the market. I would now like to turn to discussion on the evolving air travel environment in Latin America. During the quarter, we continue to experience COVID-related challenges in certain geographic markets, Specifically, in Argentina, travel has been banned since mid-March and has remained the most restrictive travel market. But we are seeing some signs of opening up. For example, effective October the 30th, Argentina has allowed international tourism travel for foreigners and Argentines located in nearby countries, that is Chile, Brazil, Peru and Paraguay. By contrast, Uruguay has kept its borders closed. In addition, domestic flights recently opened for work-related emergencies, but not for tourism, and subject to the approval of each local government. Overall, air traffic in the country remains restricted. Moving next to Chile, in terms of traffic, International flights were only allowed for Chilean residents through the end of July and since the beginning of August were available for all. Domestic flights were opened with restrictions and still remain banned in key touristic areas such as the lakes in southern Chile. With respect to hotels, they closed in April and began reopening in September. In Colombia, Domestic commercial air travel restarted gradually in September, with international travel reopening also gradually on September 21st. The situation in Peru has been mixed. Domestic flights resumed in July by close again in August to contain the pandemic, and then restarted again in September. International flights were allowed since early October. As I will discuss more in the next few slides, Mexico and Brazil are leading the recovery with sequential improvement while still showing significant year-on-year decline. Mexico remained open throughout the quarter, while Brazil had some restrictions in select municipalities, which were lifted in October. With respect to hotel bookings, we are seeing a similar trend by country as with flight. Moving next to slide five for discussion of transactions and gross bookings. Our third quarter transactions and gross bookings significantly improved when compared with the second quarter, which we believe represented a low for the company. That was at the start of the pandemic when globally most economies were shut down. Importantly, the level of transactions tripled from the second quarter's low. This sequential recovery is mostly attributable to Brazil and Mexico. With respect to gross bookings, the recovery is a bit slower, impacted by the mixed shift to domestic travel and overall FX depreciation across the region. Moving to the chart on the right, where we have presented the monthly evolution of both transactions and gross bookings. On a monthly basis, we also observed a sequential improvement. July was the lowest month of the quarter, and we steadily improved as the quarter progressed. As we enter the first quarter, we continue to see the recovery trend in October, which also includes the contribution from Best Day for the full month. Best Day accounted for 19% of transactions in October and 23% of gross bookings. On a monthly basis between July and October, transactions and gross bookings increased at the compounded annual growth rate of 30% and 40% respectively. Of note, Best Day has a very strong presence in the domestic Mexican market, one of the key reasons that made this a very attractive acquisition for us. While we are still operating under the impact and uncertainty of the pandemic, transactions and gross bookings were down year over year. And while recovery trends are encouraging, there remains uncertainty about the future. As we are seeing, many countries, particularly in Europe, start to shut down again. Our geographic diversification served us well in the third quarter. This is reflected in increasing monthly demand for our products in Brazil and Mexico, which both were generally open to travel throughout the period, as shown on these two charts. Demand was mainly fueled by domestic trips and destinations close to nature, such as beaches. Furthermore, additional products and services that we can provide, including broad financial alternatives and enhanced bookings flexibility, as we adapted our value offer in response to the pandemic, help us drive this performance. Now, let me discuss these two key markets individually, starting with Brazil. 85% of gross bookings in the quarter were for domestic travel, and we have been able to capture demand for travel to beaches in northeastern Brazil, as well as growing interest to touristic destinations close to the larger cities. We are also very pleased with the performance of Passaporte de Colal, our loyalty program, launched in Brazil a year ago. Today, we have more than half a million loyalty members who are keen on purchasing high-imaging hotels and other travel products and transacting on our mobile app. Lastly, our recent acquisition of Coin, a financing platform, further reinforces our financing capabilities. Standing next to Mexico. With the country generally open to domestic travel, the Riviera Maya and Cancun remain our main destinations. We also observe a high level of packages sold. Packages were also particularly strong in the first half of October, accounting for 50% of gross bookings. which includes 15 days of best day operations. Importantly, with the acquisition of best day, our Mexican operations now account for a similar share of gross bookings as Brazil, representing our two largest markets. Coming next to slide seven for an update on key strategic initiatives. From a financial and operational perspective, we took bold steps since the pandemic began in order to reduce costs and leverage our competitive advantages in nearly every area of our operations. I will highlight a few of these areas today. To begin with, as global travel came almost to a halt, we engaged with our travel partners to arrive at the win-win situation. along with the strong performance in non-air products, drove an exceptionally high take rate this quarter of 12.7% in this unprecedented challenging environment. While we are proud of this, let me remind you, as we mentioned in our investor day, that in more normal circumstances, Despegar is a company that can achieve take rates within the range of 11.5%. Stepping back for a moment, let me talk specifically about what we were able to work out with our suppliers. Negotiated flexible inventory with suppliers that meet travelers' health and safety requirements, as well as the option to reschedule bookings as required. Expanded our domestic offering, adding over 500 new hotels. During the third quarter, we completed a wide-label agreement with BBVA in Peru and subsequent to quarter-end added Argentina and Uruguay in October. We also drove significant improvement in several other key performance metrics. An example of this was our ability to leverage organic traffic. Over the past year, we have been able to increase our usage of unpaid marketing channels. As you can see on the chart in the center of this slide, direct marketing spend per transaction index to the fourth quarter of 2019 declined to 17 in the second quarter of 2020 and further down to 14 this past quarter. Importantly, in the third quarter, marketing spend was flat when compared to the second quarter of 2020. even as we deliver a three times quarter-over-quarter increase in transactions. We have also had marketing success with industry events, where we have worked very closely with our financial and travel partners to deliver an attractive value proposition to our consumers. Mobile has also been a key initiative for us, and during the quarter, we saw increased transactions via mobile, 51% in the third quarter of 2020, up from 39% one year ago. Considering the unprecedented impact from COVID-19, we have taken decisive steps to reduce costs and further simplify our operations. I am pleased that we achieved our structural cost runway target that we presented to the investment community earlier this year. By quarter end, structural costs were down 49% year over year. Our cost actions give us confidence that we will emerge from this crisis as a financially stronger company. In sum, we will focus on ensuring liquidity and optimizing costs, including actions to improve cash flow generation. As we've said before, we are confident in our financial position and our ability to manage through these very uncertain times. We've taken actions to build a strong financial base, including reducing our cost structure, enhancing our financial flexibility, and investing where it matters most to our customers as we strengthen our leadership position. Now, let me turn the call to Alberto to go over our financial performance. Thank you, Damian, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered improved sequential top line performance this quarter, although still significantly impacted by the pandemic. As reported revenues returned to positive territory this quarter, reaching close to $12 million from negative nearly 10 million in the second quarter. Customer cancellations continued to have a strong impact on our top line, and amounted to over $9 million this quarter. This reflects the relaxation of DesPegas' refund policy as we introduced a friendlier policy that includes refund of customer fees, as well as provisions for potential customer cancellations in October and November, given the lagging industry recovery in Latam. Higher flexibility in non-refundable bookings, following our negotiations with our travel partners, also contributed to the increase in cancellations. During these extraordinary cancellations and provisions, revenues in the quarter would have reached $21 million, up from slightly over $4 million in the prior quarter, but still significantly behind the $132 million reported in the third quarter last year. As Damian mentioned earlier, we achieved an exceptionally high take rate of 12.7% this quarter, excluding cancellations. This solid performance also reflects the volatility we are experiencing in our market details. Moving on to profitability on slide nine, Comparable adjusted EBITDA for the quarter improved sequentially to a loss of nearly 17 million from a loss of 32 in the second quarter this year. Year on year, however, comparable adjusted EBITDA was down from a gain of over 9 million in the third quarter last year, impacted by the pandemic. As detailed in our earnings release published this morning, comparable adjusted EBITDA excludes extraordinary charges of slightly over $17 million incurred in third quarter 2020 in connection with COVID-19. In addition to customer travel cancellations and provisions, it includes severance payments from our cost-saving initiatives, as well as one-time fees related to M&A and capital raising efforts. Remember that second quarter 2020 also included nearly $34 million in extraordinary charges mainly resulted from the pandemic. Moving to liquidity on slide 10. We closed the quarter with a strong balance sheet with cash and equivalents at $386 million, which includes proceeds from the recent $200 million private capital raise, closed towards the end of September. This compares with a cash position of 228 million at the close of the prior quarter. In this challenging context, our operating activities drove a use of cash of 24 million compared to cash generation of nearly 26 in the same quarter last year. The use of cash this quarter mainly reflected a net loss of 42 million that was partly upset by non-cash adjustments in connection with allowances for doubtful accounts and amortization of intangibles. In terms of working capital, new sales triggered an increase in tourist payables, offset by a reduction in accounts pay. Now, please turn to slide 11 for an update on the best day integration. We are pleased to report that in less than a month following transaction closing, we achieved two key goals. As Damian just discussed, we have started to quickly capitalize on the monthly recovery we are seeing in the domestic travel market in Mexico and are very encouraged with the progress we're seeing today. On the tech front, we have already migrated Best Days B2C business to Despegar's platform just 30 days after closing the transaction. Over the next month and until early 2022, we will be executing on the integration plan of the day, advancing on four different fronts that we anticipate will have a direct positive impact on our P&L. First, from a top-line perspective, we are now operating through two different brands in Mexico to fully capture the country's attractive potential as a tourist destination. As the second most recognized travel agency in Mexico after Despegar and over a three-decade history in the country, Best Day provides us with a deeper understanding of domestic travel and the Mexican consumer. To put this in perspective, note that eight of the top ten destinations booked by Mexicans in 2019 were domestic. Mexico is also Latin America's largest travel market and the seventh largest destination worldwide. The combination of our existing B2B operations together with Hotel Doe, Best Days' leading hotel service aggregator, provides us with the most extensive hotel content in Latin America. Second, we aim to enhance revenue margins through two key initiatives. On the one hand, we are starting to consolidate sources further leveraging our negotiating power. At the same time, We plan to cross-sell Best Days in destination services to despegade passengers traveling to Mexico, thus contributing to margin expansion. Third, our plan also calls for additional efficiencies in terms of cost of revenue market, particularly in Best Days kiosk model and call center operations. We also plan to leverage our marketing capabilities and consolidate back office operations, which are anticipated to drive improvement in cost of installments, trade cap processing fee, as well as in fraud and errors. Lastly, we also expect to drive higher efficiencies in terms of G&A, as well as technology and content. To achieve this, we are working on integrating all of Best Day's business lines, namely its B2C, in-destination activities, and the B2B operation into Despegar's IT platform. This also entails an ambitious restructuring as we merge IT, sourcing operations, and administrative roles, providing operating leverage. All these actions combined, once the Latam travel returns to 2019 volume levels, we expect best days revenue margin to increase around 300 basis points from 2019 levels. In terms of cost of revenues and marketing expenses, we expect best day operations to achieve savings of between 1 to 1.5 percentage points as a percentage of cross-bookings. We also see 40 to 50% reductions in terms of G&A and tech and content. All combined, we anticipate these integration initiatives will contribute between $20 to $30 million in annual EBITDA and best day. Recapping quickly on the key highlights for the quarter. While we saw sequential improvements in Brazil and Mexico, the travel industry in Latam remained highly impacted by the restrictions in place. Commercial air travel in Latam was down 70% year-on-year in the third quarter. This compares with declines of 50 in the U.S. and 56 in Europe in the same period. Our win-win value proposition for customers and travel partners contributed to a particularly high take rate, excluding cancellations. Organic channels continue to perform well, supporting declining per transaction paid marketing. Importantly, mobile accounted for 51% of transactions. We are running a lean operation after meeting our goal of cutting structural costs by 49% this quarter. The combination of these efforts allowed us to cut adjusted dividend losses in half sequentially. We are also advancing rapidly on the integration of pet tax. And finally, we have further strengthened our balance sheet with the recent capital raise to support execution of our growth strategy. Now, please turn to slide 13 for final remarks. Looking ahead, we continue to operate in an uncertain environment with external factors still impacting consumer behavior and the travel industry. In this context, we remain focused on the four key goals established earlier in the year. We expect to continue benefiting from the adjustments made across the company to navigate in business market conditions and integration of best day. First, focusing on the business activity. Brazil and Mexico remain our key growth markets. In particular, we expect to see continued recovery in hotels and packages in Brazil. At the same time, we anticipate a slight recovery in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia as restrictions in these markets are gradually lifted. In Mexico, as you can see from the October data points we shared, Fourth quarter results are already benefiting from the contribution of that day, as it leverages its strong focus on the Mexican domestic market. Prioritizing unpaid marketing sources is also a key element of our strategy, as we have successfully done this quarter. The next few months are quite relevant in our two most important markets. In Mexico, we have one team. which is the biggest national marketing campaign of the year in the country, and Black Friday in Brazil. We are leveraging our relationship with our financial partners with the goal of providing an attractive value proposition that includes discounts and financing. We continue to enhance our domestic offering and prioritizing the personal health of our customers. We are working on further strengthening our 320,000 location rental offerings. We have achieved significant cost reduction over the last two quarters, which provide an indication of how we expect to see our P&L dependent on recovery levels. Although unclear on its timing, as Despegar navigates through this pandemic environment, we are encouraged with the future performance of the Despegar business. To share such a view, we will be excluding the impact of both Best Day and Coin with the respective integration efforts and the impact of canceled tickets with scheduling and reservicing due to COVID-19. Under these assumptions, we understand Despegar could be EBITDA break-even as we get to gross bookings per quarter in the 400 million area, which is approximately 35% of Despegar's 2019 gross bookings. Third, we have a strong cash position. The recent capital raise has provided Desperado with resources to continue advancing on our growth strategy. At the moment, we are screening and evaluating several M&A opportunities. At the same time, we continue taking care of our customers and processing refunds, requests, and cancellations. Many of these require a manual response that is taking up time and efforts to complete, but we are moving forward on this front. Finally, we continue making progress on the integration of recent acquisitions. During the following quarters, we expect to make working capital investment at the day in connection with the struggle pay-offs. According to the revised terms of the acquisition, disclosed last June 11th, these working capital adjustments, together with inductiveness, are included in the base considerations of 56.5 million. As such, consideration to be paid 36 months following closing will be approximately $26.6 million. Earn-out-payment, performance-dependent, is due only 48 months following set closing. At Coin, we are working on integrating this business into our best-in-class fraud and errors platform. We are progressing in completing the API connectivity both on the app while launching the PIX project in line with central bank developments aimed at fostering fintechs. In conclusion, the pandemic has challenged our business model and we have demonstrated agility and operational efficiency as we leverage the digital technology we've been investing in for years. We also continue to focus on developing our longer-term strategies intended to ensure we maintain our leading position while further strengthening our financial performance and creating ongoing value for shareholders. This ends our prepared remarks. We are now ready to take your questions. Operator, please open the line for questions.