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Earnings Call: Q3 2023

Nov 9, 2023

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 2023 Trading Update Investor and Media Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am [Sandra], the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Martin Meier-Pfister, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead, sir.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this call. As you can see on slide number two, the speakers today are CEO Luca Concone and Sergio Signoretti, CFO. Let's skip number three and go to number four, please. You see the agenda for the call today, and let me do a remark on the Q&A session. You can post your questions during the presentation or during the Q&A session itself. Just write your question in the field that you see next to the slides on your webcast screen, please. And also keep in mind that the session will be recorded and the replay provided on our webpage. With that, I hand over to Luca for the intro and highlight chapter. Luca, please.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for finding the time to join this conference. I will start with a brief introduction before handing over to Sergio Signoretti, that will go through the results of quarter three and more importantly, of the year-to-date, results. Then I will close off with, some guidance on where we're gonna end up in 2023, and, a bit of look, forward to the coming years. First of all, just very quickly, as everybody that follows the industry knows, the market is not yet back to 2019. The data you're looking at is European commercial flight activity. As you can see, we are still 10% behind our reference point, which remains the full year, 2019. The industry expects to recover the 2019 level during the course of next year, 2024. Some very high-level highlights.

First of all, we have grown dynamic packages. This was one of our key strategic choices, and we moved the needle definitely there. 50% more in terms of revenues and gross profit compared to 2022. We added 11 new markets, now totaling 28, which puts us in a unique position in the European panorama as the widest networker of dynamic packages available on the market. Me and Sergio decided to change the representation of the company performance. There has been in the past some difficulty in reading our numbers and comparing those to industry standards. Now, when we speak about adjusted EBITDA, it includes cancellations and vouchers, like everyone else does in the industry.

We have decided to represent our business from a B2C and B2B perspective, which are roughly 60/40% of our business. This is important because the cost, the processes, and the margins on the two businesses are not the same. The cancellations, which were the object of a few of your questions in the past conference call, have improved dramatically. So in quarter three, as Sergio is gonna show, there is no more cost of cancellations in the DP side. We were already making money on the flight side. Every time somebody cancels, we actually make a margin, and now we are starting to make a small margin also on DPs. So that's a very rapid and important impact. I want to highlight the work of our team in B2B affiliation and co-marketing.

It's a 50% growth in terms of gross profit, like Dynamic Packages, so it's one of the most effective efforts we have done on our B2B. And finally, we have onboarded quite a few people with high skills and expertise. Amongst those, I wanna mention the Chief Marketing Officer, the Chief People Officer, which was a role not present before, and a Chief of Special Projects, where we are gonna focus on two main revenues and profit growth paths. Having said that, the little detail of the Adjusted EBITDA is just as a reminder, if you look at our old numbers, basically, you need to bring up the cancellation and voucher misredemption effect. These are unredeemed vouchers that are just money for us.

To help you understand the B2B and the B2C, the B2B is DP in white label, non- travel, white label, because we sell our products through a bunch of partnerships. The meta business, where we do basically trading of links. We compete for traffic and then direct this traffic to ourselves or to other partners. The media, which is a very interesting small unit, but very successful and profit-making, that basically generates content for our clients, mainly boards of tourism, and displays this content on our own properties and on competitors' properties, and affiliation and co-marketing, which I mentioned before, that has achieved the interesting results of the 50% growth. Now, the B2C-...

is all the classic categories of an online travel agency: dynamic packages, flights only, hotel only, and tour operators, which is another form of package holiday that we resell. Also, we added the cruise business, which is a unit that's growing interestingly in a very specific sector where we are very well positioned, especially in a couple of countries. And then another bunch of minor categories, e-commerce and co-marketing. In terms of color, throughout the presentation, you will see B2B in blue and B2C in pink. We just swapped it here to check if you are paying attention. Having said that, I hand it over to Sergio to start with the quarter three results.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Thank you very much, Luca. Good morning. Good morning, all. Pleased to see you again. So let's go to page 10. Now we focus on Q3 only. So this is the first part of the, let me say, financial highlights is related to the Q3 performance, which is driven by the very good results on holiday packages and by our focus on profitability. So more and more, we are focusing on profitability, on a profitable growth, and this is witnessed by the third column, so by the Adjusted EBITDA growth. Again, as Luca said, now Adjusted EBITDA includes every impact, positive and negative, from cancellation and voucher misredemption. Here, quarter-on-quarter, we are plus 63% versus 2022. So it's a very strong growth. This is, again, mostly driven by the DP, Dynamic Packages growth.

If you look at the gross travel value column, the DP growth has been a +26% quarter-on-quarter in terms of volumes, +36% in terms of gross travel value. Overall, the gross travel value is substantially in line versus last year, and this is also considering the strategy on focusing on more profitable flights, which is embedded into the decision on focusing on profitability. So, the overall gross travel value is -4.4% versus Q3 2022. But the DP growth impact positively the revenue trend, which is a +3% versus 2022. Again, remarkable is the growth of the revenues of DP, so +46%, is mostly driven by the volumes that we commented before.

Now, Dynamic Packages represents approximately 50% of the overall gross profit of the company, increasing its shares from last year, as it is represented in this slide, which is number 11. So this shows in absolute numbers what is the weight of the Dynamic Packages across the overall revenues and profitability at gross profit level. Remember, gross profit is what we achieve deducting from all the revenue sources of the company, the variable costs. Okay? So, prior to the fixed cost related to the headcount and to the operating expenses that we comment later on. So two comments here. First of all, we are improving our profitability more than what we are improving revenues. So quarter-over-quarter, we are increasing revenues 3%, and we are improving gross profit 21%.

If you focus on the, magenta part, which is the DP part, DP are growing 46% in terms of revenues. Again, this is mostly driven by volumes versus last year, but are growing 56% in terms of profitability. And this is driven by an efficient marketing spend, mostly on Dynamic Packages. We are improving efficiency in marketing spend, not only in DP, but on flights as well, as we will see later on. Interestingly, we are doing, as you see, we are keeping the same gross profit versus last year, also on the rest of the company. So we are at -1% versus a -19%, and this is again, a cautious and efficient, strategy of spending, in terms of marketing. Another two comments here: we are improving our capability of monetization on DP.

So the take rate, which is the ratio between the overall revenues and gross travel value, is increasing from 10%-11% quarter-on-quarter, and the overall marginality of Dynamic Packages is increasing quite importantly in terms of percentage terms, from 13%-19%, if considered on revenues. Now, let's see the representation. Maybe you see it for the first time, but let's see the representation of our revenues and gross profit, if clusterized and aggregated, the B2B and B2C, as Luca was introducing before. So of course, the consideration about the highest profit profitability will not change versus what we said before. It's important to see the percentages, the weight of the two components.

So again, B2C is in the region of 60% in terms of 62% in the world, in terms of revenues, 64% in terms of gross profit. And this is mostly where we have improved our profitability. As you see, comparing versus last year, we have grown 1% in terms of revenues and 34% in terms of gross profit. This is where we have the SEM spend. This is where we are concentrating our marketing performance investment, which is the biggest chunk of money that we spend on the overall variable costs. And that is witnessed by the marketing spend overall, as you see, which is passing from 43%, if you look at the bottom of the slide, to 39% in Q3 in 2023.

The overall take rate is also increasing from 8%-9%, as you see below the revenues bars, and this is an effect of the mix shift towards holiday packages and the fact that the holiday packages are, itself are growing in terms of, monetization capability. Going to the, more standard representation of PNL in numerical table, which is page 13. Here I would just focus on the last line, which is again, the effect of what we saw before. So you see, we have approximately EUR 5 million, more than EUR 5 million, increase in gross profit, which translates into EBDA growth. This is essentially what has happened in the quarter. EBDA goes from approximately EUR 8 million, 7.7 in Q3 2022 to 12.5 in Q3 2023.

More importantly, I would say it's going from 10%-15%. So we are in the, in terms of revenues. So we are on, in the good path in order to recover, what, is our pre-COVID profitability percentage level. If you switch to page 14, here we have the bottom, the P&L up to bottom line. I would comment here a couple of lines. One is the IFRS EBITDA. So IFRS EBITDA this year is positive, EUR 10.5 million. Last year, as you may remember, we made a quite significant accrual of approximately EUR 35 million, a provision for the costs that then materialized for the repayment of the government subsidies in Switzerland.

So there is a quite huge swing of EUR 30 million between the positive IFRS of this year and the negative EUR 20 million IFRS EBITDA of last year. This, of course, reflects the bottom line. So the net result produced in Q3 has been EUR 2.7 million versus minus EUR 19 million, which was the loss of Q3 2022. Now, let's see how these impact on the overall nine months result. So let's go into page 16. I would say the messages do not change significantly, but of course, the overall picture improves because here we are growing in nine months versus last year in terms of gross travel value, +13% is a record for the nine months. We are cruising towards the EUR 3 billion overall gross travel value, as we'll see later on.

Holiday packages are growing 46% in terms of gross travel value in the nine months. And this is again, mostly effect of the volumes growth, which is plus 38%. This affects the revenue growth as well. So revenues is triggered by the GTV, by the gross travel value growth. Again, in the 9% growth versus 2022, dynamic packages grow 46%, which is substantially in line with the GTV growth. This generates an increase in EBITDA. Remember, if we sterilize from the cancellation effect, the EBITDA in the first half was substantially in line versus last year. The positive effect of Q3 is generating a +16% year to date versus 2022, which then, as Luca will show later on, is also affecting our guidance for this year.

The holiday packages, again, also in the nine months, are 50% of the overall gross profit of the group, and we have a +77%, in terms of net financial position, which again, is a witness of solidity and healthiness, in our financial structure and in our cash generation, capability. If you go to page 17, also in the nine months, the message does not change in terms of, the growth in profitability more than in the revenues. So as you see, we are growing +17% in terms of gross profit, from EUR 87 million- EUR 102 million, versus a growth in revenues of 9%, from EUR 240 million- EUR 261 million. And the major driver for growth is again, dynamic packages.

That is increasing 46% in terms of revenues and 41% in the nine months in terms of gross profit. Arriving to, as we said, 50% of incidence for the overall gross profit of the group. The rest of the company, so, the flight business, the tour operator business, the affiliation and co-marketing business, the hotel, all the rest, cruises, is in line versus last year, in the nine months, in terms of overall gross profit, and is showing, I would say, a slight decrease in terms of revenues because we are focusing on profitability rather than volumes, as Luca introduced before. The comments on the marginality of dynamic package is confirmed also in the nine months, because we are moving from the 15%- 19% in Q3 2023.

If we see the representation in the B2C, B2B clusters, here we see that also at year to date level, the B2C represents approximately 60% of our revenues and gross profit pie. B2B represents accordingly 40%. Dynamic Packages is the major piece or component of revenue and let me say, gross profit pie, both at B2C and B2B level. Okay, so it's essentially 50% of both in terms of gross profit. And again, the increase in profitability is driven by the fact that we are spending the same amount of money that we were spending last year, but with revenues which are increasing 9%. So at the end, the percentage of incidence of marketing spend on revenues is decreasing from 43%- 40%.

I would say, again, importantly here is the B2C part, so the fact that, with 2% more revenues, we are improving 19% gross profit. This is again, mostly driven by the more efficient marketing spend, not only on DP, but also on flights as well, in the B2C, in the B2C categorization. A couple of words about the cost base. So this is the fixed cost base. So we define fixed cost base, all the organization cost, all the headcount, except for customer care, which we consider variable, because, of course, it's driven by the volume of activity that they need to manage in terms of wholesale assistance and in terms of, teleselling activity. We are investing, we have invested, and we are continuing to invest in, in the organization.

If you look at the left part of the slide, we are-- we're increasing our overall HR cost to 20%. That is, again, driven by a strategic decision. We have added approximately 100 heads on average, year-on-year. This is all developers. This is all tech talent, people that we have added in order to improve our capability to make it work. Of course, this has reflected into higher capital expenditures, as which is the green box in the HR quadrant of the slides. But this is planned. This is something that we were planning this year. We have the entire annualized effect of the investment that we did last year. We are also increasing the spend on the operating expenses side.

Again, this is entirely planned, and this is driven by the fact that we need to manage more traffic and, on the overall, mostly, I would say, the dynamic packages piece, going from 18 million to approximately 21%, without affecting, though, the, as we saw before, the profitability at the EBITDA level, especially in the quarter. Now, moving at page 20, everything that we said before reflect into an adjusted EBITDA improvement of approximately EUR 5 million, from EUR 32.4 million- EUR 37.4 million, nine months on nine months, with a 1% improvement in terms of EBITDA margin. And again, this is driven by what we said before, so I will not stress more the concept. Just one more maybe remark on the GTV.

So as we said, we are cruising towards the EUR 3 billion. We are targeting approximately EUR 3.4 billion at the end of the year. One comment also on page 21, in terms of P&L bottom line. Of course, here we need to say the same comments as before. So at IFRS EBITDA level, we are closing the nine months with EUR 31 million versus EUR 8 million last year. The EUR 8 million last year were impacted by approximately the provision for the investigation that we accrued consistently, as you may remember. This has impacted as well the net income. So the net income of the nine months is EUR 10 million versus -EUR 4 million, a loss of EUR 4 million, which was recorded in the nine months of 2022.

A couple of comments on our cash situation, page 22. So as usual, the red curve represents what we have in our bank accounts. So the gross cash, gross cash at the end of September was EUR 118 million. As always, from June, July onwards, we have the usual seasonality, which is due to the fact that we pay at check-in date the hotel for holiday packages, and so there is the usual absorption of cash that we have every year.

The EUR 118 million, of course, takes into account that we have repaid the EUR 30 million euro subsidies. So if you re-add them, we would be in a region of EUR 148 million, so slightly higher than September last year. More importantly, I would say, is the net financial position. Also because, we are, we have accelerated the repayments of some, financings, including the COVID loan. As you may remember this, we already, commented in the previous investor call. We moved from EUR 42 million net financial position in December to EUR 74 million at the end of September.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

This is particularly important because it shows that we do not take debt in order to repay these, the second liabilities, but we have repaid the second liabilities, and at the same time, we have improved our financial position by EUR 17 million.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Yeah.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

This is all because of the generation of cash that the company has done during this year.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Just one last slide on the cash flow. This is also a, I would say, new introduction in our investor calls in order to better, to try to better represent for your convenience, the various components of the cash flow year-on-year. If you look at the bottom line, at the end, we are neutral in terms of cash generation versus the beginning of the year. And this is, I would say, mostly driven by the fact that we have repaid EUR 30 million subsidies. That's, I would say, is the key message. Just one other comment on the change in Trade Working Capital, where we have generated EUR 25 million positive impact on cash flow versus EUR 57 million last year.

This is the effect of the growth of dynamic packages, and is the fact that for us, is essential to offer frictionless payment method to our customers in order to improve conversion. So the more we offer for a ticket of EUR 1,800, buy now, pay later solution, deferred payment solution, the more the conversion increases, and that helps the business very much. Of course, this means that we have an increase in B2C receivables. That is part of the reason for which the change of trade working capital is lower than last year. Saying that, I think, that I will move it back to you, Luca, for the guidance chapter.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

Thank you, Sergio. So as Sergio has highlighted, we are on a very good path. We focused on profitability, not on growth, which means that we have a healthy growth of around 10% in terms of of expectation. If you remember, we gave you a guidance mid of the year in a range between 10% and 15%, so we're gonna end up on the left side of the range. More importantly, we have an adjusted EBITDA expectation of 25%, while before it was 10%-15%. So let's all focus on this, because this is, for us, the key metric, for the focus and the and the growth of the company. So now you can expect a higher EBITDA.

I would like now to focus a moment on dynamic packages, because they are the center and the future of the company. I hope all of you on the call know what dynamic packages are. Basically, are a way to go on holiday with the full flexibility of you choosing the destination, the airline, the length of stay, the hotel, the meal plan, and everything that goes with it, which is a completely superior product compared to classic tour operator, closed-end, Saturday to Saturday holidays. We, as I mentioned in the opening, have a unique geographical coverage. On the right side of the slide, you can see, in terms of countries, where we are, and we're gonna close the year with 30 countries.

We have deferred payment solutions, because as Sergio was mentioning, the EUR 1,800 ticket in a one-off payment for most consumers is difficult, and half of our consumers use a deferred payment solution with 0% interest rate for the time being. They benefit from a price advantage. Rather than going on EasyJet website, Sofitel website, and Lufthansa website to buy three different segments, they buy with one click easier, but they also save, save money, and they're fully protected. They're fully protected because in case there is a problem or a cancellation, we act as principal, so the consumer is fully reimbursed if there is any sort of problem. The flexibility that I mentioned in the beginning, I give you some quick numbers.

We have in our engine, over 400 airlines and over 2.1 million different hotels, which is more than Booking.com or Expedia offer. So the combination of the 400 airlines with the 2.1 million hotels, for any combination of two given days of the 365 days a year, make 4 trillion opportunities that we narrow down and basically allow the consumer to rank and choose. And there is a lot of value in this technology and service that we deliver. Just to give you an idea, since dynamic package is the, as I said, the future of the company, on the left-hand side, you see most famous players. Between traditional packages and the core focus on dynamic package, we are not the only ones.

There is, as you see there On the Beach, loveholidays, Travel Republic, but they are all UK-based. So in terms of breadth of offering, on a geographical level, we are by far the largest, and, in terms of, of focus, we are still the ones with the, the best technology. This translates on the right side of, of the slide in our 15% market share in dynamic packaging, which is the largest. We are market, market leaders. And, this small part of the market is still growing 20% year-over-year, in the next, three years, which is the fastest growing. So we are the leader in the fastest growing segment.

So whenever you will see all our targets and our goals looking forward, just remember that half of the company is sitting on a 20% growth, and the other half is sitting on a 14% growth in terms of market. So in three years, this makes over 60% easily, and I—please, you can't see my hands, but it's between quotes, "easily." But it is a market which is definitely going in the right direction for us. What are we gonna do? We are gonna do a bunch of actions mainly focused on dynamic packaging, which is the one on the top. On the B2C, we are gonna invest very heavily on our app. Our app is the best, most effective and most efficient way to communicate with our consumers.

So we have put the app first, as a key development for all our IT. There is further optimization that we can do in performance marketing. There are a bunch of regulatory changes coming in, which will represent an opportunity for a company like ours, and we are gonna invest in, brand marketing. We have multiple brands, amongst which lastminute.com is gonna be positioned as the leading brand and the leading brand in dynamic, dynamic packaging. In order to do this, we need to leverage on flight and hotels, which are the two key components of, dynamic packaging. On the B2B side, we have hired a number of people, salespeople, focusing on expanding our B2B partnerships, and developing furthermore our affiliation.

B2B clearly has a sales cycle, as you all know, which is measured within 6-12 months, from contact to contract to activation, but we have already been working, and we are working more on it in order to make this part grow in the future. All the other products remain important: flight and hotels, because they are part of dynamic packages, tour operators, simply because we resell those close-end packages from our partners, which satisfy our consumers who have the luck to choose a destination and the timing in line with a package. But more importantly, I would say we need to expand ancillaries. For us, ancillaries are all other products that are not the core flight and hotel.

I give you the, an example, seat choice, luggage insurance, flight insurance, lounges, fast track in security controls at the airport, parking, you name it. It's a very long list of additional products which make our flight business profitable and are definitely high margin. We're gonna further develop our fintech. As Sergio was mentioning, frictionless payment is absolutely key. Account-to-account payment becomes key, and the ability to create a margin on the third payment is a great opportunity for a company which has high volumes like ours. And overall, this sits on improved customer experience.

We allow more than 6 million customers to travel every year, and we wish we had all of them happy, but for sure, we want to make sure that the experience with Lastminute is such that they want to come back to us, because this link to our investment enough will allow us to grow volumes without growing too much our marketing costs. What does this mean? Basically, it means that we're gonna keep on focus on profitable growth. Don't look at us as the fastest growing company in the business. We have enough of those that grow and lose money every year. That's not where we are. Look at us to be the leader, remain the leader, and grow our leadership in dynamic packages. We are the go-to company in the industry.

Look at what we are gonna do with our ancillary, additional high-margin products, which is a bunch of different measures that will contribute significantly to our bottom line. In terms of numbers, next year, we want to get the EBITDA and beat 2019, so go back to pre-COVID level, where we had a very successful year. In terms of top-line growth, we want the company to reach EUR 600 million of revenues, which is a significant growth. Keep in mind that we have a 14% or 20% market that is gonna help us there, and this is the most ambitious but reachable goal of tripling our EBITDA compared to this year.

So, it's a growth in revenues, which is accompanied hand-in-hand with even more significant growth in margins. Having said that, I know it's ambitious, but I know it's reachable, and I'm confident that we can get these numbers because we have two key assets, which is our technology and our people. I'm very proud of my team and everyone that works in this company. I now leave to Martin to deal with the Q&A session. Thank you.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Chorus operator, would you like to say something, or I kick it off?

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. I'm now pleased to hand over to Martin Meier-Pfister, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Thank you. There are already several questions we have received. We have bundled them for everybody's convenience, so your question might be phrased a bit differently from the way you posted it. I kick off with the first question. It's for Luca. It goes like this: Looking at your guidance, what is your base case scenario in terms of macroeconomics, and what about inflation? Luca, please.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

... So, consumers still wanted to travel. It's one of the higher choice of expenditure for retail consumers, higher than changing the mobile phone one more year or changing the car. So we are sitting on a good part of the market. We do not expect so in all these numbers, there is no burst of inflation. This is because the spike we had this year, as many reports are showing, is already dying down, and there is no expectation in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

We base our forecast on external information from IATA, from Euroconsult, that as a job estimated the travel market, and the growth of the market is between 5% and 10%. We have a higher growth because there is still a bit of market, significant bit, EUR 200 billion of market that's moving from offline to online, and in particular, dynamic packages, which have a clear advantage from the consumer standpoint, are growing even, even, even more. So, there is no embedded particular market effect in our forecast.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Okay, next question is for Sergio: Can you give us the absolute level of the 2022 Adjusted EBITDA, which you use in your updated 2023 guidance? Sergio, please.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Thank you, Martin. Yes, of course. I mean, the full year 2022 number, including every cancellation impact and voucher misredemption, was EUR 31 million, EUR 31.1. So this is the one that you should use as a base for comparison of our performance. Gross of cancellations, as we reported also in the annual report of 2022, it was EUR 37.7 million. So there was a 6 million, 6.5, 6.6 million swing between the two. But every reference now should be done in comparison with the 31 million from now on.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Thank you. Another one for you related, when you expect Adjusted EBITDA to recover from the 2019 pre-COVID levels, can you also please be precise on what the 2019 Adjusted EBITDA number you referred to?

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Yeah.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

— as there have been a number of such definitions in 2019.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Yeah. Thank you for the question. We are referring to 59.9 million. So essentially to EUR 60 million EBITDA, which net of cancellation, is the comparable number that you should consider as a baseline that we are targeting to beat next year in terms of EBITDA evolution. Gross, in 2019 was EUR 63 million, as it is shown, in the annual report of 2019.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Okay. Thank you. Next question is for Luca. You have confirmed the guidance for 2023 at the lower end in terms of revenues. Why isn't there more growth?

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

Okay. As I said in the previous call, we are focusing on profitable growth. So we are moving away from low-margin flights. Flight is a cutthroat business. Everybody easily can set up a company that resells flights. Most of the traffic comes from Meta, comes from Skyscanner, Google Flights, Kayak, and the likes. In order to compete, their price is the main driver, and as you all know, flight is a non-differentiated product. So, when I sell a London, Madrid flight from EasyJet, it is the same flight that Expedia sells, that eDreams sells, that EasyJet themselves sell. There is no possibility to distinguish my product from anyone else product, so price becomes a key driver.

Having said that, the idea to fight for many low-cost flights, in which then the consumer does not buy enough of my ancillary products, the ones I mentioned before, in order for me to regain margin, is not where I think the company should focus. We should focus on higher value items, like dynamic packages, where creating the content itself is a differentiating skill that we have and the others don't, and where we can add margins because of the impossibility for the consumer to compare exactly my holiday package with someone else holiday package.

So let's forget the ego of my company is bigger than your company, and let's focus on my company makes more money than your company. So, this is why a 10% growth is a healthy growth, and we don't think we should aim to measure growth as the key metric for the success of the company.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Thank you. Next question is for Sergio. How have your incentive plans impacted the Q3 results?

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Thank you, Martin, for the question. You find the answer in page 14 on the presentation. The incentive plan impact is a non-cash cost. That's why we don't include it into the adjusted EBITDA. It's not part of our co-- of the company performance. It's one of the lines that, as you can see in page 14 for the Q3 and in page 21 for the year-to-date figures, is a bridging between the Adjusted EBITDA and IFRS EBITDA.

The impact has been positive in terms of PNL impact in Q3, because the share have, has, devalued from June, from the 13th of June, and therefore, the stock of liability towards management and employees incentivized as devalued accordingly. Different story is for the year-to-date figures. So if you're interested in looking at what is the impact, it has been from EUR 900,000- EUR 1 million positive for Q3. For the year-to-date figure is in the region of EUR 2.7 million negative, because the share versus the 31st of December of 2022 has

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

16%, I think.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Has increased to 16%.

Martin Meier-Pfister
Investor Relations Manager, lastminute.com

Thank you, Sergio. There are no more questions, so let me thank you for participating today. We close the Q&A session now. If you feel there has been something left unanswered, just drop us an email, and with that, I hand over to Luca for some last words. Please, Luca.

Luca Concone
CEO, lastminute.com

Yes. So, we know this is a company which is difficult to read from the outside, given the complexity, the number of geographies and regulators that insist on us. We think we have done an effort to make it more transparent and make it more comparable to our peers. If there are ideas and suggestions, please, reach out to us. But as you can see, our numbers are definitely on the positive side, and we have set up the company with the new organization and the new talent added, and investment in technology to continue to be very successful in the future.

You can look forward optimistically to our year-end, unaudited results, and we will hopefully see all of you during the month of February, when we will disclose more about 2024 goals and the 2023 year results. Thank you to everyone.

Sergio Signoretti
CFO, lastminute.com

Thank you very much also on my side.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

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