2/28/2024

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Welcome to Amadeus full year 2023 presentation webcast. The management of Amadeus will run you through the presentation, which will be followed by a question and answer session. You can ask a question on the phone by dialing star one on your telephone keypad at any moment during the presentation. I am now pleased to hand over to you, Mr. Luis Maroto, president and CEO of Amadeus. Please go ahead, sir.

speaker
Luis Maroto
President & CEO of Amadeus

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our 2023 results presentation. Thank you for joining us today. I'm joined by Teal. As usual, I will start with an overview of our most important developments until we elaborate on the key financial details. We start on slide four. Let me start with a financial recap of the year. 2023 has been a solid financial year for Amadeus. We have experienced strong growth, expanding profitability, and high cash flow generation. We continue to see a steady financial evolution through the fourth quarter. In 2023, revenue, EBITDA, and adjusted profit grew by 21%, 30%, and 60% respectively, supporting free cash flow generation of $1.15 billion. This strong financial performance has taken place in a context where we continue to invest for the future across many fronts. We ended the year in a robust financial position. The debt stood at 2.1 billion at December 31st, representing one time last 12-month EBITDA. Our financial health has allowed us to not only receive payment of our dinar dividend but also to announce served reportage programs amounting in aggregate to over 1 million. Additionally, as you know, M&A forms part of our strategy. We're pleased to announce in January 24, our airport at the acquisition of VisionBox, the leader in biometrics for airports, airlines, and border control customers. Performed for this acquisition, our leverage is 1.16 times. Amadeus from its foundation has been a story of expansion and diversification. We are on a constant journey to expand our reach in travel. We believe we can make a positive impact through technology at more touch points along the traveler journey. We aim to continue to strengthen our existing businesses with the solutions and services which help our customers grow. And our focus is also on fulfilling traveler needs across the full trip experience. This means expanding our addressable markets and we see a wealth of opportunities as we advance in our journey. Given our central position at the health of travel, we are uniquely placed to pursue these incremental opportunities across time, be it through our internal efforts and also external through acquisitions or partnerships. We have a few important announcements today and I would like to review a few key strategic levers. In hospitality, we are pleased to announce that we are close to starting the implementation of a new ACRS customer. We have been working with this undisclosed customer and its implementation is expected to start in the first half of this year. The customer is a middle-sized, sophisticated chain. We cannot be more specific at this point. We'll continue to update you as we progress along the key milestones. In R&IT, 2023 has been a highly productive year. We have successfully completed migrations of multiple airlines, including Etihad, ITA, Hawaiian, Allegiant, and Bamboo Airways. As you know, we continue to work on all Nippon Airways and Vietnam Airlines migrations. We are very pleased to announce that American Airlines, one of the leading carriers in the world, has signed for Amadeus cloud-based revenue accounting system. As you know, we also introduced Amadeus Nibio to the marketplace in 23. With Amadeus Nibio, we are leading the way for the retailing transformation of the airline industry. Amadeus Nibio is a traveler-centric retailing platform offering next-generation retailing capabilities to airlines, including but beyond offers and orders. And it's backed by fully flexible, future-proof, cloud-native solutions and the latest advances in AI. As we have discussed in the past, this is an industry evolution that will require years of focus and dedication, but we are very well positioned to drive this transformation and to support the industry's transition. This industry evolution will further drive the penetration of NDC. We believe we have the most advanced NDC technology in the industry and that we will play a key role in scaling NDC adoption. This takes me to our air distribution business. We continue to advance on our NDC strategy to also make NDC possible at scale through the EDS. Industry initiatives such as this are a great opportunity for us to bring incremental value to our customers and to expand our leadership. As NDC content made available through our platform increases, we believe we will be capturing more and more NDC bookings in the future. Our goal is to become the undisputed NDC aggregator for airlines and travel agencies. In this regard, we are making progress with the travel agencies and in the large online OTA space. RISELINE will be sourcing NDC content from the Amadeus Travel Platform soon. Fairportal and eTravel Group are another two examples of online travel agencies who have agreed to source NDC content from Amadeus. Finally, we also continue to progress according to plan in the migration of our systems to the cloud in partnership with Microsoft. To wrap up, we have ended 23 in a good position and are optimistic about 24 and beyond. In 2024, we expect our revenues to grow double digit, expanding at a growth rate ranging from between 11 and 14.4%, with a stable EBITDA margin and solid free cash flow generation. We look to the future with confidence and we continue investing in our variety of growth opportunities. We will certainly support in our outlook for 24 shortly. Let's now review the key developments at each of our reported segments. Starting with air distribution, during the fourth quarter, we signed 13 new contracts for renewals of distribution agreements, taking a total to 16 the full year. As I was saying, we continue to advance on our NDC strategy. Chrysler will be able to access NDC source content from some of the world's leading airlines via the Madeus trial platform. We have also extended our partnership with the Travel Group, adding to our existing NDC partnership and with Neiman. We saw continued expansion of our customer base for Citric. Citric EC is the only online booking and expense management tool embedded in Microsoft 360 and is now available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. With regards to our volume evolution, in 2023, Amadeus' booking grew by 14% relative to prior year, supported by the air travel industry's progressive strengthening. Please note, however, that the ways of domestic and national-related traffic remain above historic levels, which favor the LCC market and the direct selling channels of airlines. In Q4, our booking grew 7%. We have had a concentration of effects in Q4. We had a spike in cancellations related to the conflict in the Middle East in the month of October, which has a higher weight in the quarter. Cancellations spiked in many regions, most importantly in the Middle East and northern regions. In addition, our bookings were impacted by the evolution of our local bookings in northern. In this country, bookings channeled through direct connects between one very large OTA and a few large carriers increased. and we are seeing an impact on this relative to prior year. We estimate our booking growth in fourth quarter to be close to 13% if we exclude the impact on our bookings from these two effects. Barre connects may happen between big airlines and large online travel agencies in large domestic consolidated markets. They are costly to build and to maintain, therefore to be economically viable they require quite large volumes. They typically affect local bookings where we generate low fees. The impact on our air distribution revenue growth from these data connects in Noram in the last quarter was marginal, and our air distribution revenue grew by 17% in the quarter versus last year. We will move to RIT solutions. This quarter, we have a new PSS customer, Israel, the integrated tour operator and airline. It is deploying Amadeus Altea BSS as well as other solutions such as Amadeus Disruption Management and Revenue Integrity solutions. As I mentioned, we are pleased to announce that American Airlines has signed for Amadeus cloud-based revenue accounting system. This will be our first standalone Amadeus revenue accounting deployment and our first major IT project with a US carrier. Several other airline customers signed for additional solutions in the quarter or implemented new solutions such as all Nippon Airways, Air Europa, and Philippine Satellites. Regarding Airport IT, in January 24, we were pleased to announce our agreement to acquire VisionBox, a leader in biometrics for airports, airlines, and border control customers. VisionBox brings us new capabilities along biometrics, hardware, and software, and adds border control solutions to the Amadeus portfolio. Through this combined offering with VisionBox, Amadeus will be able to deliver a full end-to-end seamless passenger experience from booking to arrival at the airport through border control and boarding. In relation to our passengers' boarder volumes, in 2023, Amadeus PVs increased by 27% driven by air traffic and new customer implementations. We had a net positive effect for implementations as a result of customers' implementations, the main ones being Etihad, ITA, Hawaiian, Bamboo, and Allegiant, and in India in 2022, partially offset by airline customers ceasing or suspending operations or demigrating from our platform, including the demigration of Russian carriers during 2022. In 23, Asia-Pacific was our best performing region, delivering 55% growth, and Western Europe and Asia-Pac were our largest regions accounting needs for a third of Amadeus PVs. Please turn to slide seven for an update of our hospitality segment. Our hospitality and other solutions revenue grew by 14% in 23. Both hospitality, which generates the majority of the revenues in the segment, and payments deliver strong growth, supported by new customer implementations and volume expansion. In the fourth quarter, we had a large negative Forex impact, lowering reported revenue to the, due to the high U.S. BS possible we have in this segment. However, excluding Forex, segment revenues grew 10% in this quarter. Within hospitality, we are advancing on our Amadeus Central Reservation System Strategy. We expect to start implementing a new and disclosed ACRS customer in the first half of this year. The customer is a middle-sized, sophisticated chain, and we cannot be more specific at this point. For an update on Marriott's ACRS implementation, Marriott stated recently that it expects deployment of ACRS to start in waves in the middle of 2025, starting in the US and Canada. Also, our attribute-based selling technology within ACRS is industry-leading technology that evolves business beyond traditional hotel room-based selling and thus allows for a much more personalized guest experience. We are pleased to share that IEC and ACRS customers reported that on average, when a guest purchases an attribute for their stay, hotels see additional revenue of $22 per night for that booking. with luxury and lifestyle brands seeing up to 41 of additional per night revenue for upsell bookings. For a quick update on Outpace Amadeus-Jolion payment subsidiary, we expect that the e-money license Outpace applied for in 22 will be granted in the first half of this year. Outpace intends to offer prepaid virtual car issuing within its B2B wallet solution, which travel agencies use to pay travel providers such as airlines and hotels. With this, I will now pass on to Till for further details on our financial performance in the quarter.

speaker
Teal
Chief Financial Officer of Amadeus

Thank you, Luis. Hello, everyone. Please turn to slide nine. Before starting with a review of our financial evolution, let me remind you that, as we did in our first half results presentation, for purposes of comparability between 2023 and 2022, we are excluding non-recurring elements impacting our performance on the P&L. These are, in 2023, First, impacts from updates in tax risk assessments fundamentally due to the positive resolution of proceedings with the Indian and Greek tax authorities, which combined resulted in an increase of 42 million euro in the air distribution contribution and in EBITDA, and of 73.6 million euro in adjusted profit. And second, a payment to a third-party distributor due to a change in our distribution strategy, resulting in a reduction of 10.9 million Euro in the distribution contribution in EBITDA and of 8.2 million Euro in adjusted profit. In 2022, a non-refundable government grant received, which reduced net indirect costs by 51.2 million Euro, resulting in an increase in EBITDA by the same amount and an increase in adjusted profit of 38.9 million euro. Further details on these effects and the full reconciliation to the reported figures can be found in the 2023 management review. Now, on slide 10, to review our revenue evolution in 2023, our group revenue grew 21.3 percent versus 2022, supported by strong revenue growth across our segments. In air distribution, revenue in the year was 23.6% above 2022, primarily driven by the booking evolution Luis described and by revenue per booking, which was 8.8% higher than in 2022, fundamentally driven by a lower weight of local bookings in 2023 compared to 2022, and pricing effects, including impacts from inflation and yearly price adjustments, renewals, and new agreements. With regards to ARIT solutions, revenue in the year was 21.6% higher than in 2022, driven by the PD volumes evolution, coupled with a 4.1% lower revenue per PD. The decrease in the revenue per PP in the year was primarily driven by a proportion of ARIT revenues not linked to PPs growing strongly, albeit at a softer growth rate than PPs, more than offsetting positive pricing impacts from inflationary or price adjustments and from upselling of incremental solutions, as well as from the Altea Newsguys customer mix. Regarding hospitality and other solutions, revenue in 2023 was 14.2% above 2022, driven by strong performances of both hospitality and payments on the back of customer implementations and volume expansion. Within hospitality, hospitality IT revenues increase was mainly driven by sales and event management, service optimization, and Amadeo CRS. Media and distribution revenues continued to grow strongly, backed by an increase in transactions, and business intelligence revenue expanded, driven by customer implementation. Within payments, all its revenue lines reported strong growth rates, supported by higher payment transactions and customer implementations. In the fourth quarter, Hospitality and other solutions revenue increased by 5.2% versus prior year, impacted by a large foreign exchange effect. Let me remind you that 70% to 80% of the revenue in this segment is generated in U.S. dollar, and excluding FX, the segment's revenue grew by 10% in the quarter versus the fourth quarter of 2022, supported by an increase in transactions and customer implementations at both hospitality payments. Please now turn to slide 11 for a review of segment contribution and net indirect cost evolution. Air distribution's contribution grew 27.6% in 2023 versus 2022 as a result of the revenue growth I've just described and by a 20.3% net operating cost increase, which resulted from higher variable costs driven by the bookings evolution and other effects, such as customer and country mix, and an increase in fixed costs largely caused by R&D investment expansion, mainly focused on NDC distribution technology, customer implementations, and solutions for travel sellers and corporations. The contribution margin of the segment in 2023 was 46.6%, an expansion of 1.5 percentage points from 2022. With regards to ARIT solutions, contribution in the year was 21.7% higher than in 2022, resulting from the revenue revolution I described before, and an increase in net operating costs of 21.4%, which was fundamentally driven by the expansion of our R&D investment, focused on the enhancement of our portfolio for airlines and airports, customer implementations, and our fast-growing services business, as well as growth in non-personnel related expenses to support the overall business expansion. AI IT solutions contribution margin reached 71.7% in 2023. Regarding hospitality and other solutions, Contribution in the year was 20.8% above 2022 as a result of the revenue growth described before and higher net operating costs by 11.2%. And growth in net operating costs resulted from higher variable costs, primarily driven by volume expansion at our media distribution and CRS hospitality businesses, as well as the strong performance of our payments B2B wallet solutions. And furthermore, an increase in fixed costs fundamentally caused by expanded R&D investment dedicated to the evolution of our hospitality and payment solutions portfolio and to customer implementations. Hospitality and other solutions contribution margin in 2023 rose by 1.8 percentage points versus 2022 to 33.5%. And finally, net indirect costs were 11.7% higher than in 2022, mainly resulting from an increase in transaction processing and cloud costs as a result of the volume expansion and our progressive shift to the public cloud, and to a lesser extent, the unitary personnel cost increase. Please now turn to slide 12 for a review of our evolution. In 2023, our EBITDA was 29.8% higher than in 2022. EBITDA margin expanded by 2.5 percentage points to 77.9%. And our EBITDA performance resulted from, first, the revenue evolution explained before, second, a higher cost of revenue, and third, an increase in our combined personnel and other operating expenses cost lines. Cost of revenue grew by 24.1% in the year of 2022, resulting from volume expansion across our businesses and several factors impacting air distribution variable costs, including customer and country mixes. Our P&L fixed costs in 2023 compared to last year were 12.1% higher. This cost evolution resulted from increased resources, particularly in our development activity, to support our R&D investment, coupled with higher unitary costs resulting from our global salary increase, growth in non-personnel-related trends like travel and training, amongst others, driven by the business expansion relative to prior year, and higher transaction processing and cloud costs caused by the volume expansion and the progressive migration of our solutions to the public cloud. Below the EBITDA line, DNA expense in 2023 was broadly in line with prior year, mainly resulting from a lower depreciation expense from a reduction in hardware investment, largely driven by our shift to the cloud, offsetting higher amortization expense from internally developed assets. The increase in EBITDA coupled with an inline DNA expense drove operating income up by 51.7% in 2023 versus 2022, and operating income margin expanded in the year by 5.1 percentage points versus 2022. Net financial expense declined in 2023 by 35.4% as a result of an increase in interest income driven by higher interest rates Non-operating FX gains and the reduction in interest expense by 7% as a consequence of lower gross debt relative to last year. Income taxes increased by 47.5% in the year versus prior year, largely driven by higher taxable income. And finally, resulting from all these effects, adjusted profit grew by 59.8% in 2023 versus 2022. Please turn to page 13 to review our R&D investment and capex. R&D investment grew by 12.9% in 2023 versus 2022 and focused on the evolution of our portfolio for airlines, including Amadeus Navio, our hospitality platform, also enhancing our solutions for travel sellers and corporations, as well as for airports, and our payment solutions portfolio, our partnership with Microsoft, including our migration to cloud, bespoke and consulting services provided to our customers and customer implementations. In 2023, our capex increased by 33.9 million euro or 6% compared to 2022, mainly driven by higher capitalized R&D investment and to a lesser extent, investments in our offices. CAPEX in the year was reduced by a collection of research tax credits corresponding to the years 2020 and 2021 for an aggregated amount of 21.4 million euro, as well as our usual collection of research tax credits from the previous year of 21.3 million euro. And CAPEX represented 11% of revenue in 2026. Please turn to slide 14 for a review of our free cash flow generation and leverage. With regards to free cash flow, we generated 1.148 billion euro in 2023, 42.7 percent higher than prior year, resulting from the increase in EBITDA and improving change in working capital and higher capex and taxes. As I mentioned before, in 2023, We collected 42.8 million Euro from the Indian tax authorities linked to the positive resolution of proceedings. And we also paid 10.9 million Euro to a third party distributor. Excluding these two effects, we generated 1.117 billion Euro free cash flow in 2023. Net debt amounted to 2.140 billion euro at the end of December, with a leverage amounting to 1 times net debt to EBITDA. And with this, we've now finished the presentation on our 2023 results, and I will pass back to Luis for our views for 2024. Thanks, David.

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