Good morning, and welcome to the Lastminute.com Q4 and preliminary unaudited full year 2025 financial results conference call. Today's call will be hosted by Julia Weinhart, Head of Investor Relations, and joined by Alessandro Petazzi, Chief Executive Officer, and Diego Fiorentini, Chief Financial Officer. All participants are currently in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask live or webcast questions following the presentation. Please note that this call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Julia, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Valentina. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our investor relations call this morning. We value your continued support and are pleased to present our latest developments. After the presentation, we'll be happy to address your questions. With that, I hand over to Alessandro now.
Thank you. Thank you, Julia. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. We have a lot of positive ground to cover today. You know, we're commenting today the final quarter, but also the preliminary unaudited full year results. I think you've come to know me throughout this year as we complete my first year as CEO of the company, and you probably know that I normally do not like to be blowing my own trumpet, but it is a real pleasure indeed, to be presenting such a strong set of results. I would say quite exceptional, to be honest.
If you follow our industry closely, you know that the period from October to December is the lowest from a seasonality point of view, but in terms of year-over-year comparison, actually, Q4 was the strongest period of the year for us. But in general, if we take a look at the whole 2025, we really we outperformed the market. We grew our market share in core markets, in the expansion markets in which we started investing this year. We hit and then exceeded the expectations we had and the guidance we already raised in Q3, by the way, so achieving double-digit growth in both revenues and Adjusted EBITDA.
So, as I said, at the very beginning of this journey, I think we're the kind of company that can grow top line, bottom line, and cash generation, and that's exactly what happened in 2025, with the holiday packages continuing to be our primary engine and the strategic focus of the company. I would say that we really had a step change also in capital discipline. There's been criticism by some investors in the past about the fact that this company was generating a lot of volumes, but maybe not so much in terms of cash generation. And I think that we can say confidently that this has also changed this year, with cash flow doubling compared to 2024. And it's not a one-off thing, it's there to stay.
So, this is definitely something on which we think the next year will allow us to grow even, even more. Again, it's not just because the market, you know, favored us, it's, it's something that came from, from decisions, we took over the year. Sometimes not easy decisions, but really aimed to put the company in a, in a stronger position to be, you know, focused on what really matters, what moved the needles. We reorganized the internal structure to allow us to work more efficiently. We made clear calls on where to focus and where, not to.
We set clear priorities, defined what we wanted to do, and laid out a 3-year outlook to guide us there, starting with already strong execution in 2025, which is, you know, the foundation of the next phase of the growth of this company. So 2025 has a clear direction, and the focus now is carrying along that energy into 2026. I think it's a very good momentum to enter 2026 on such a strong tailwind, and we plan to continue that. If we look at the numbers a bit more closely, you can see this slide, the financial performance for both the quarter and the full year. You will notice that the quarter has been growing even more than the full year.
So 23% growth from revenues, Adjusted EBITDA very positive at almost EUR 9 million, and Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx, which actually was positive, again, as a proxy of the cash generation, even in the Q4, which normally, because of the working capital dynamic of our industry, has been a quarter in which traditionally we've been, you know, having negative free cash flow and negative EBITDA minus CapEx, but not this year. For the whole year, I think the picture then is pretty similar. 15% growth in revenues, more than proportional growth in Adjusted EBITDA. We'll see exactly why and how over the next few pages with our CFO, Diego.
Again, let me insist on Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx as a kind of a proxy of cash flow, even if we will then take a look at the cash flow in detail later on. But we can say that this number already doubled compared to last year. So again, it shows the strong operating leverage that we currently have in the business, and I would say that the business as a whole is now operating at a new level of financial strength and cash conversion. 2025 was the first year like that. 2026 will be the second one, and we can say that we will confidently move forward in that direction in the future.
With that, I hand it over to our CFO, Diego Fiorentini, to take a closer look at the numbers.
Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning, everyone.
...As you know, Q4 is seasonally the least relevant quarter for our sector. Despite that, we deliver a very strong close of the year. When we last spoke, we highlighted a clear acceleration in Q3, and I'm now pleased to say that this momentum further improved in Q4. Overall, Q4 revenues reached EUR 77 million, up 23% year-over-year. This brought full-year revenues to EUR 361 million, up 13%, and clearly above our guidance. Importantly, all three core segments delivered a Q4 year-over-year growth above their respective full-year growth rates, confirming the strength on the underlying trend. Looking, looking at each segment, the packages, our core product, grew 16% in Q4 and 11% for the full year, demonstrating resilience and solid execution.
Flights delivered an outstanding performance, up 48% in Q4, and 31% for the full year, with strong acceleration in growth and continued market share gains. Hotels remain solid and consistent, growing 22% in Q4 and 21% for the full year. Finally, as a reminder, the other segment includes the cruise business, which was discontinued in early October. As a result, Q4 reflects the absence of that revenue stream. The strong top-line performance translated into solid profit growth. In Q4, gross profit increased 17% year-on-year, while it grew 10% for the year. As already anticipated, gross profit growth was below revenue growth, both into the quarter and for the full year. This reflects higher investment, mainly in performance marketing, aimed at supporting acceleration and expanding market share. Let me be clear on this: We increased investment where we saw measurable and effective returns.
Our performance marketing model remains highly data-driven, with strict return on investment thresholds and continuous optimization. Looking at the segment breakdown, packages remained our largest contributor, delivering EUR 20 million in gross profit in Q4, up 14% versus the same quarter last year. Flights continued to lead the firm in terms of growth rate, with gross profit up 31% year-on-year, confirming strong operating leverage and scalability in the segment. Hotels remained very stable year-on-year, with higher marketing investment made in the quarter. Finally, while the other segment showed a year-on-year decline at the revenues level, the dynamic reverses completely at the gross profit level. With the discontinuation of the cruise business in early October, the segment now reflects a cleaner perimeter and delivered a positive gross profit growth in the quarter.
On slide 8, you can see in more detail the composition of our cost structure between variable and fixed costs. Variable costs included a 36% increase in marketing spend, supporting gross travel value growth momentum, and made possible by our stronger financial position. On the other hand, fixed costs were up just 6% in the quarter, mainly reflecting higher variable compensation as we achieved and exceeded our targets. Excluding this performance-related component, fixed costs would have been down 13% year-on-year, reflecting the full impact of the cost measures we previously implemented. Looking at the full year, the picture is consistent. Fixed costs were broadly unchanged in absolute terms compared to 2024, despite double-digit revenue growth. Taken together, higher revenues and discipline cost control drove a 4 percentage point reduction in the fixed cost ratio, highlighting clear operating leverage and improved structural efficiency.
This slide takes a closer look at the profit and loss, giving you a bit more detail on what we just covered. In Q4, Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 8.8 million, up 62% year-on-year. This strong increase reflects our operating leverage, which amplified profitability, even as we continue to invest in marketing and sales. Net result benefits from lower financial costs compared to last year, as well as a positive contribution from taxes following the remeasurement of the deferred tax asset . Closing at EUR 1.9 million, earnings per share came at EUR 0.1118, compared with small loss in the same period of last year. Looking at the full year, as we already discussed, revenue grew 15%, while the Adjusted EBITDA increased 33%, with both metrics comfortably exceeding our guidance.
Net results came at EUR 11.6 million, slightly below last year, reflecting the one-off costs related to the cost reduction measures we implemented. That said, the story on operating cash generation is very positive. Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx, a usable proxy for cash flow, double over the year, increasing from EUR 16.2 million-EUR 32.4 million. During our Q3 call, we got some questions on cash generation, so we decided to give a bit more detail to really explain what's driving the numbers. Free cash flow for the year came at EUR 27 million, compared to a negative EUR 4.7 million in 2024.
And even if you strip out the effect of working capital, which of course moves with the gross travel value, free cash flow was still triple, tripled versus 2024, even after accounting for the one-off costs related to the cost reduction initiatives. Our free cash flow to EBITDA conversion has improved significantly, more moving from a figure effectively zero to 58%.... And we are looking to push this even further in 2026, building on the strong progress we have already made from 2024 to 2025. Finally, the net financial position stood at almost EUR 32 million, up from EUR 19 million at the end of 2024. As we speak, we have already repaid all the short-term debt that was outstanding at the end of 2025. With this, I'll pass the word to Alessandro, and I'll be happy to take any follow-up questions during Q&A.
Thank you. Thank you, Diego. So basically, to wrap it up, I mean, you probably don't even need me to highlight how strong this set of results is from three points of view, right? I mean, the first one is that we did better than we planned, I would say, across the board. We exceeded the guidance that we already raised in Q3, and this is visible at the revenue level, where we grew 15%, where we had a target of low double digits, and even more, even more so at the Adjusted EBITDA level, where the growth was 33% compared to a 20% guidance, which had been reviewed also pretty recently. And again, these results are, I would say, a combination of a positive trend, right?
So it's not just Q4, it's more the entire year across product segments, across geographies. We grew in the core markets, we grew in the expansion markets, and we'll, you know, see a bit more details about also our product initiatives in a second. So very robust starting point for 2026. And finally, as Diego mentioned, we really closed the year with a significantly stronger balance sheet, right? Driven by both the EBITDA growth and a very disciplined approach to CapEx and working capital. So yes, we delivered on our commitments on one hand, but I would say even more importantly, we have this trajectory now of our midterm plan on which we are executing against. And, you know, the growth is just, I would say, at the beginning.
So we talked about the financial results, but I think it is also important to realize that these results do not happen in a vacuum. They happen because there are industrial choices that we make underneath them, and things that we are working on and that we already delivered, and then they translate into these results. So we've decided, starting from this quarter and going forward, to give you a bit more of a chance to take a look under the hood of what we've done and what we're doing to make these results possible. So the next section, when we say strategic direction, this is it.
Well, first of all, the overall strategic direction, I will not, you know, spend too much time on this because we insist on this every single time. You've seen this page a few times, page 13. You know, the pillars of our strategy are strengthening the market presence, evolving our dynamic packages product, making sure that we are a travel companion that is relevant for our customers, not only in the moment in which they book their holiday, but really throughout the entire journey. And making sure that we have clear idea of what each brand in our portfolio stands for, and what is the type of product and audience that are relevant for that. With AI, I would say, being the glue that takes it all together as an enabler for the next phase of scaling up.
But let's be a bit more concrete, right? Because, this could sound like, just a framework, but what about the execution on this framework and the things that prove that we're getting, there, progressively? Well, first of all, the first thing that I'm really happy to announce, is that we have indeed launched, our free multi-tier, loyalty program, which, as you can see, we decided to call PRO, which I think is a nice acronym for Perks, Rewards, and Offers, and also hints to the idea that with that, you are indeed, traveling like a pro. So the concept is simple, and the idea is that the more our customers travel with us, the more benefits they unlock over a 12-month period.
Some of these benefits are special discounts, because indeed, this is something that people still expect, you know, from a loyalty program, but also, I would say, perks and dedicated offers. So it's gonna be a mix of, you know, financial rewards, I would say, and more qualitative elements which people have proven to enjoy, and also games that they can play that do not have an immediate monetary value, but are, you know, designed in order to improve the psychological, you know, effect of happiness on our customers if they come back. So the idea is that, again, we want to convert the people who maybe got in touch for us for the first time as a, with a price-led approach, and make them become loyal customers.
We started that in Q4 2025 in the U.K., and progressively, we are rolling that out in all of our markets. But now, you know, it's not just about what we did, I would say it's also what we achieved. So, if we take a look at loyalty of our customers, you can see on this page that the bookings from repeat customers in 2025 already grew 27% compared to 2024. So clearly, there is, and this was before the launch of the loyalty program, obviously. So it throughout the entire year. So this is very important. This tells us that our brands already resonate with consumers, and our value proposition convinces them to come back.
So that is something that happens across the board on all touch points, web, mobile, and app. But obviously, I would say that the app is at the center of this travel companion bit of the strategy, as the go-to device and the go-to product for people who are familiar with the brand and loyal to us. And I would say the numbers have been really interesting on that side as well. I think we never talked about these numbers, and I think it's actually important to give you a sense of how relevant the app already is in our ecosystem, and how even more relevant it will become in the next few years. We had a 12% growth year-over-year of app downloads, 1.6 million. People who download the app then also use it.
We have over 600,000 monthly users for the app, and it represents an important engine of bookings with 20%, 21% of booking shares. Don't get me wrong, we don't think that the app's value is just in terms of allowing people to book a holiday. Yes, that's also there, but let's be honest, they can do it on a variety of touchpoints. We think that the app value is really as a travel companion. Of course, as you get more used to it and you use it more often, then it becomes natural. Once the app has all your information about you, it becomes easier also to book there your second or third trip with us.
As we talk about touch, touchpoints, and as we talk about how consumer behavior is evolving in terms of looking for holidays and booking holidays, I think it is really important to take a closer look at AI and how AI is changing the way we all search and get inspired online. This is a topic on which I got a lot of questions in all the one-to-ones I had with you guys over the past, few months, and so I thought it was appropriate to take a closer look. The question that I get all the time, even if it's not always articulated this clearly, but the, the, the concept behind it is: okay, what happens to your business if Google Search becomes irrelevant?
What happens if users search via chatbots, they never click an ad, they never land on your website? What happens if agents do all the work on behalf of the customers, and therefore they're not necessarily influenced by, by your brand? What happens. And sometimes I get that question in a much more simpler form, which is, well, but now, progressively, everyone is looking for inspiration about their travels on, on ChatGPT, so what happens to, people like you? What happens to online travel agencies, right? Is there's a complete disruption of the business model. And I think it's fair because I think that, you know, potentially you could say, well, if you lose the entry point, then ultimately you lose the customer.
But actually, the evolution we're seeing is much more nuanced than this, and I think it's important to understand certain characteristics and dynamics of our market to really understand what we're talking about here. So on the next page. So first of all, a bit of fact-checking, right? How the search and discovery scenario is actually evolving. So historically, I would say for over 20 years, it kind of stayed the same, right? People go to Google, they type holiday for 4 in Mallorca, and thanks to, SEM ads or SEO, free positioning, companies like us, they show up, us at the top, right? So for sure, we're seeing a shift, from even if, you know, typing keywords into a, into a bar is still the vast majority of searches.
Of course, people are having more conversations with chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini by Google. So, is this the end of paid ad? Is it the end of Google Search? Will AI players become the new OTAs? Will they eat your cake and your company will become irrelevant? Well, it's a bit different than that. Well, first of all, Google still holds a dominant position. If we're talking about Gemini and AI Overviews, basically, the vast majority of customer interactions with some type of AI chatbot is indeed managed by Google. And Google has been adamant that their business model is an ad-based one. They have no intention to become an OTA. For those of you who've been following the sector for a few years, this sounds like Google Flights all over again.
When Google, many years ago now, launched Google Flights , a lot of questions were like, "Oh, then the OTAs are done. Google is gonna allow you to book flights." And well, actually, Google's business model has always been to be able to surface the right type of information to the right type of audience, and connect that audience and that information with the right advertisers, paying them their bills, right? And they're adamant their business model will continue to be ads. And also in an AI-first world, their job will be to connect demand and supply, and when they say supply, it means companies like us. Now, obviously, other players are emerging, so there's new traffic sources emerging. OpenAI and ChatGPT are the obvious ones.
I think it's really interesting actually, that because up to now, obviously, these companies have been burning through a huge amount of cash, and that will continue for some time, but at some point, they will also want to understand how they can better monetize what they're doing. And so far, they try to have a premium, a freemium kind of model, with a lot of stuff for free, and then the possibility to pay, let's say, $20 a month if you want something more or even more, if you want more premium features. But it's pretty clear that it's a pretty niche market, the market in which people are willing to pay for that, and potentially they're realizing that, ad money is bigger. So I think it's interesting that they started offering ads in the U.S.
Now, will this be the end of it? Because at the end of the day, maybe the end game will be a situation in which all the players managing chatbots will have an ad-supported model, and then for us, it will be an evolution from basically having Google as the main as the only actually player for search, to having a number of players that we interact with that are really strong on the inspiration phase of the journey, and where we can place our ads to make sure we're relevant there. This is one possible scenario. But obviously we, you know, we don't have a crystal ball, so it's so early days. It's very difficult to say how the things will evolve. New players might emerge, new models might emerge.
So let's say that, even if, the business model remains or, the business model changes in a way that actually, it would be customers to pay for the service and there will be no ads, which again, something that right now we really don't see happening. But, you know, even assuming that, that, might happen, we believe that Lastminute.com is very well positioned to be a winner in this new phase of AI growth and to thrive, not just survive, I would say, in this evolving landscape. And why that? For a number of reasons, which you can see at page 18. So, on one hand, from a technical point of view, we're building an AI-friendly infrastructure, embedding our services where the conversation happens.
So you might have seen the PR that we already launched our flight MCP server in Q4. Now, I get it, that it might be a bit technical. The easy way to say that is that it's kind of a universal plug. It's kind of the evolution of APIs, if you want, and that allows LLMs, such as Gemini or ChatGPT or Claude, to plug directly into our real-time inventory and pricing. And this is very important because it has the power to ensure that when an AI agent moves from the inspiration to actually booking a holiday, we are, you know, one of the brands that I surfaced, and the agent has directly access to our tariffs, right? So it's very important.
The first use case that we that this technology enables is the fact that we have an app in the Claude ecosystem, and you know, it will be also very soon available on OpenAI and ChatGPT as well. So I saw that in the insurance sector, a Spanish start-up made a huge wave in the industry to say, "Oh, we have an app on ChatGPT." And so people were like, "Wow, this company is the one who's gonna benefit from all people starting to book their insurance directly on ChatGPT." Well, you know, we're gonna be there in a few weeks as well, from a travel point of view. But I think but again, this is an infrastructure play.
So the MCP, the, this thing of having the app on ChatGPT, the app on Claude, is, I would say, just one of the, of the use cases. There are even more interesting ones that this infrastructure enables. And this is the type of investments that we can do, and, of course, other very large companies such as Booking.com or Expedia can do. But if you are a small hotel chain, probably you're not able to do that, right? So that already, I think, creates a moat in terms of the winners, the large companies, versus the really, the really small ones. The second one is that from a product point of view, you know, we used to be a distribution platform which was distributing mostly, we can call them commodity products, such as flights and hotels.
But in reality, over the past few years and even more from now onwards, we have our unique proprietary packages at the core. And, you know, so we have these end-to-end holiday packages, which are not just available on any hotel website or airline or even their MCPs. This is a Lastminute.com package. You can only find it on Lastminute.com. And when you find it on Lastminute.com, I don't necessarily mean the website, I also mean the MCP server. I mean everything that is Lastminute.com. So we are the producer of that, you know, not just you know... It's produced by Netflix, if you want, not just distributed by Netflix, if you allow me the analogy. And by owning the product itself, we are the provider of this value proposition.
Now, people might say, "Well, but basically a package is just putting a flight and hotel together, and, AI agents can do that themselves, so will they- they will be able to do that." And I'm definitely not in the camp. There are people in the industry who say, "Oh, but that's more complex. AI is not able to do it." I don't think that's the case. I think any kind of technical complexity, AI will be able to get it. So that's not the point. Maybe not now, but, in the not-too-distant future, for sure. For sure. That's not the point. So I'm not saying that what we do is so complex, AI cannot do it. What I'm talking about is business models and regulation, right?
Because the key thing here is that in order to create a package, we have commercial agreements with, you know, with all the hotel chains, from the big ones, Hilton, Marriott, to the really small ones, with independent boutique hotels. We have commercial agreements with all the airlines. We have commercial agreements with transfer providers, with activity providers, with the tons of players in the ecosystem. And for each of those, we have access to those called opaque or opaque or non-public rates, which can be used only if you create a package. Now, again, it's really not the business model of Google or OpenAI to start replicating these deals with all these players. And then it's not their business model to be in charge of customer service when something goes wrong.
You know, you get to, a lot of times, you book a flight, and then the flight is disrupted, it's rescheduled. We are in charge of that. If there's a partial refund, as the provider of the package, it's our responsibility. All these companies want nothing to do with that. It's the opposite of their business model. They want, again, to surface someone like us to serve the customer. And it's not just because they don't want to do it, but it's also because from a regulatory point of view, once you are the provider of a package, at least in Europe and in the UK, you clearly have responsibilities of that. And again, you have to have a license, you have... So this is definitely not something that is interesting for this company.
So again, AI and chatbots excel in inspiration, but we remain the partner that delivers the actual holiday. For sure, AI can help you plan, know the context, and give you great suggestions, but then to sell a protected package, to have the ATOL license in the U.K., to manage the customer operations and service, you need to be a player like us. So I hope that this clarified a few things. But now talking about AI as an opportunity, right? Because let's focus on why this is actually good for us. And I think it's good for us from three points of view, and these are the three pillars on which we are working on. So internal productivity, of course, everyone gets it. We are embedding AI company-wide to boost, I would say, productivity of our employees.
We have already automated a number of processes, and we are working to increase that. We have a new AI automation department under our chief data officer, precisely in charge of that, to collect all the initiatives that are happening already around the company, and to give a very clear strategic direction using a mix of internal and external tools. Of course, we started with, you know, a big project on our customer service side, which really is aimed also to improve the customer experience. So again, I don't see historically, right, you were seeing productivity and customer experience almost as a trade-off. You need to invest more if you want to make customer happy.
In this case, I would say, yes, we are investing, obviously, on technology, but then the efficiency will come also with a bigger effectiveness, I would say. So we're also using AI to rethink the traveler's journey in terms of personalization. So the kind of things, the kind of experience that you have right now on ChatGPT, there's no reason why you cannot have it on our website, potentially. And, you know, in terms of providing that type of, I would say, consultancy, if you want. And then again, as I was saying, Gen AI power customer service allows to provide high quality support 24/7 in all languages, initially in the chat and potentially then also with voice.
Last but not least, we need to be present where the conversations happen, and therefore, that's why we are integrating seamlessly in the various chatbots. As I was saying, Claude is the first example, but the MCP servers that we now release for flights, and we will expand for it to include dynamic packages, will then be on all the relevant chatbots in the market. And I would say that because this is so interesting and because there's so much happening in the company right now, probably over the next few quarters, we will give you some more insight on the things that we, you know, we are progressively deploying as they go into production, because I think there are so many interesting things that I'm really excited to share them with you.
As we complete this very passionate talk about product and industry, let's go back on page 21 to what it means from a financial point of view. So our 2026 outlook, you might have, by the way, noticed that, this year, we're giving you an indication on what we expect at the very beginning of February. Last year, considering it was my first year in the job, I needed a bit more time to take a look at our budgets, and so we gave you guidance much later, towards the end of March. So while we're doing that, we think that we're gonna keep growing more than the market, so that's gonna be constant.
We still expect to be growing market share at the expense of more traditional players in both core and expansion markets around Europe. And we expect the growth to be at 10%. Now, you might be, I can anticipate some questions you might have as soon as we open the floor in a few minutes, which is, well, this year you grew much more than proportionally at the Adjusted EBITDA level in terms than on revenues. Why for 2026, we're forecasting the same type of growth? And I would say there are various considerations here. The first one is that from a strategic point of view, I think that this company underinvested in its own brand for, in some brands actually, for many years.
This is something that potentially in a short term maximizes or helps maximizing EBITDA, especially if revenues are a bit stagnating, but it's not something that makes sense in the long term. I would say that by excessive short-termism companies die, right? This is not us. We have the possibility—because we're growing the top line, we have the possibility to also grow the bottom line while still making strategic bets and strategic investments. One of these is that we will significantly, significantly expand our investments in our brands in 2026. Again, to—and these are investments that maybe are do not necessarily have an immediate return on revenues. It's different from performance marketing, clearly, but they do have a return on a foundation for the future, on customer loyalty.
So we're really building the steps for our continued long-term success. The other element is that here we're talking about this more, a bit of more of a technical one, if you want, but we're talking about the Adjusted EBITDA, which was EUR 55 million. This year, you might have noticed that actually below the Adjusted EBITDA, we had over EUR 8 million of one-off charges. And obviously, we do not expect the one-off charges to, you know, by definition, they're one-off, so we don't expect such a value in 2026. So actually the growth of the reported EBITDA will be more than that... because of this, because of this element, right? And if I take a look at the, at the cash flow, I would say even more so.
Because on one hand, our CapEx reached the kind of the plateau in 2025, so we do not, we do not expect a growth in CapEx for 2026. And because we're growing the top line and the GTV, clearly, because of the nature of our working capital dynamics, we will also have a very positive effect from working capital on our cash flow. So if you combine all of these effects, the growth of Adjusted EBITDA, the more than proportional growth in reported EBITDA, stable CapEx, so that, that growth will go straight to the, let's say, bottom line of cash generation, right? And then you mount on top of it, the positive net working capital effect, then you have a company that we generate in 2026.
We're very confident to generate, even way more cash flow than in 2025, while still growing the top line. So I think it's a very, how can I say, reassuring and positive forward-looking message, both from an industrial and from a, a strategic and financial point of view. And with that, I leave the floor again to Julia to wrap it up, with our financial calendar, and then to open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much, Alessandro. On slide 23, we have just wrapped up our latest financial publications you can see, and the conferences where we participate in 2026. We will now begin with today's Q&A session, starting with the live questions, followed by submitted the ones in webcast. Please note that, like always, we might group questions together, and they might be slightly rephrased. In line with our privacy and data protection policy, we remind participants that starting, stating your name is optional when asking a live question. With this, I hand it over to Valentina now to start with the first live questions.
Thank you. The first question comes from Volker Bosse, from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello. Good morning. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. Yeah, congratulations on the great set of results and the convincing outlook. I would like to start with three questions, if I may, starting with page six, where you'd give the breakdown of sales growth by product lines. I mean, in the past, we were used that the strongest growth comes always from the dynamic packaging system. Now, we see flights up 31%, hotels 21%, which of course, great results, but they are exceeding dynamic packaging growth. So therefore my question, is that a structural change, and what has been the driver for that outperformance of hotels and flights? I mean, in the past, you spoke about flights as a commodity, and we do not push that, and therefore, growth will be lower.
So my question would be: how should we look at the growth by the product lines if we model our year 2026 and the following years, just the growth guidance you can give here in that regard? Second question, if I may, would be on your guidance 2026. Yes, you always took my question, why EBITDA adjust, Adjusted EBITDA just in line to sales, but you—thanks for the explanation, more marketing investment. Understood. But more details, how do you plan to spend more marketing? Which channels you will use? Will you also use offline channels or online only, or need a bit more on, yeah, how your marketing budget will be spent going forward? And last but not least, a bit more general one.
You speak about robust demand for travel products, which helped you to generate great results on top of your, of course, company-specific initiatives. But my question would be on your expectations regarding market trends in 2026, what is the growth you expect for 2026 from the markets inside? Do you expect less tailwind for 2026? I mean, we see that unemployment rates are, yeah, going up, means job uncertainties are rising on the back of, yeah, weak macros all over Europe, basically. But just curious to get your view on these things and how this would affect the travel industry potentially. Thank you.
Hi, Volker. This is Alessandro. Thanks for the questions. Actually, we had said last time that it would be better to have one question at a time out of respect for the many people who write a question. So we have a lot of that. Because of that, I'll answer two of your questions, the first two, which are really company-specific, and then I'll leave the floor for other questions which are company-specific. If we then have time at the end, happy to also answer the one on, on market dynamics, but I would prioritize the other if you, if you allow. So I would say revenue growth. Well, maybe there was, and I would say, a conceptual misunderstanding here. What we say is that, if we have to bet-...
You know, 5-10 years down the line, the more we want to be a product-led organization. We want to have a differentiated product that is just specific of us, of Lastminute, and that's the package. The evolution of the package, like Flight + Hotel , it becomes something potentially even something more. Now, we want to have a more curated approach on the experience. Now, does that mean we're abandoning the flights or hotels? Absolutely not. We're very happy about the performance. I would say that for flights, it was about catching up with the fact that that product had been neglected a bit over the past few years. But, you know, maybe in another time, we can go in the details of how we managed to grow so much. We improved the unit economics. That was, again, done.
That's why I want to try and give more details about the things we do internally, because then they explain, you know, by having a lot of testing on and changing our pricing algorithm, we improved that. We were able to sell more ancillaries, and therefore, we were able to have better discounts on meta channels. That includes, increases the volume. So we will continue to do that as long as possible, right? So, in terms of the market evolution, maybe this is something that will change, you know, in the next few years. But as long as it doesn't change, as long as there is an audience interested in our flight product, we will continue believing in that, investing on it, improving it, and therefore growing it.
So going forward, I would say I expect the growth to be kind of, I would say, similar across our various segments for 2026. I don't necessarily expect one specific segment to really outperform. Clearly, the one difference would be the so-called other, because other, in 2024 and before, included the cruise business, which, as you know, we closed in Q3. So obviously, that number will be smaller going forward. So that's the first one. The second one was about marketing, I guess. So, sorry, there's another consideration. What we report as packages is a mix of our own product, the dynamic packaging, and the fact that especially in Germany, with the brand weg.de, we distribute packages by third-party tour operators through their tour and stuff like that.
This is a minor component of the business, so don't think much about that. But of course, strategically, again, that's something on which we are distributing a third-party product, and so, you know, the core is our own product. Now, marketing, as I use the word brand rather than marketing, not on purpose, right? Because basically here, you know, performance marketing is when you spend money, especially on Google or Meta, to drive immediately traffic that is already, let's say, warm, ready to potentially book a holiday, searching for something specific, maybe tomorrow already, searching something in ChatGPT, and then being ready to book their holiday. Performance marketing, of course, we will increase that in the core markets, in the expansion markets, but the increase there is very data-driven.
Every extra euro we spend brings more than EUR 1 in terms of profit, so it's always accretive from an absolute number point of view. What I was talking about here is different, the so-called branding, meaning the investments that are not necessarily meant to drive an immediate conversion, but something that builds brand awareness and loyalty over time. Does this mean offline? Does this mean out-of-home or TV? Not necessarily. You can do a lot of that on digital channels, but for example, we're talking about, you know, YouTube, videos on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram, but stuff that talks about why Lastminute is your provider of choice, not necessarily book now for this deal, right? So it's a different thing, and historically, we haven't really done it a lot over the past few years.
I think now that we can afford it, so to say, with the cash flow that we generate, it's now the time to do that investment. With that, I would pass on to the next question.
Thank you very much.
Valentina. Thank you, folks. Valentina, do we have any, any other live questions in line?
We don't have any more questions from the phone. Back over to you for questions from the webcast.
Okay, then we will now move to the webcast. I will start with the first question we have received today: Will the growing adoption of pay-by-installment options for dynamic packages have an impact on your working capital? Have you structured partnerships with external providers, for example, Klarna, Scalapay, that advance the full transaction amount to you upfront, leaving the credit risk with them?
Thank you, Julia. I'll take this one. Yes, we do have agreements with players like Klarna, Scalapay, and PayPal, and those partners are offering the current payment solution to our customers even after departure. In these cases, we are getting the full value of the transaction up front, and we are not taking any credit risk on our balance sheet. This solution still amounts to a few percentage points of our Gross Travel Value . On the other hand, we still are offering to our customer our internal solution, both deposit and balance, so a deposit upfront and balance before departure, or deposit and payment by installments. These options are still with no credit risk for us because our clients are required to pay everything before departure.
Thank you, Diego. The next question we have received this morning: Unfortunately, you only communicate the planned change in EBITDA for 2026, but not for the net result. Net result will also be positively affected by missing one-off that should be communicated?
... Thank you, Julia. Yeah, yeah, this is a fair point, and thank you for highlighting it. Our primary guidance focuses on revenues and EBITDA because those are the clearest indicator of the underlying operational performance of the company. But it is correct, next year we are not expecting significantly one-off item like we had in 2025. For this reason, the net profit will - we expect to have it to be higher than in 2025. We'll be in the position to provide a greater clarity during the year as the year progresses.
Thank you, Diego. Moving to the next question. Dynamic packages delivered strong growth to EUR 250 million in revenues. Can you decompose this between B2C and B2B white label channels? What's the percentage of dynamic package revenue now comes from B2B2C partnerships?
Thank you, thank you, Julia. Yeah, basically, you've seen that our packages grew from, you know, mostly from the new pricing and marketing and approach to marketing. The one thing that we're not disclosing now, the precise distribution mix, but there's one thing that I can say, and I think also hopefully correcting what was maybe a misunderstanding in the past. We love our B2B2C partnerships. We love our white label partnerships with players like Booking.com and a lot of companies for which we deliver their welfare solutions, holiday payouts, other players. We love them, but we think that strategically it's important to invest in our own B2C brands, where we are really building an asset.
So the one thing that I can tell, this is to say that when we say, well, we should increase the percentage of our revenues that come from our B2C proposition, I would say yes, but we achieve that by making sure that our B2C proposition grows more than proportionally than the other, not by making sure that the others remain either flat or even decreases, right? So in that sense, I can reassure you that indeed, the majority of growth, in revenues, for our dynamic package product in 2025 came from our own B2C, B2C brands. So indeed, the proportion of B2B2C decreased as a part of the mix, compared to the latest numbers we had disclosed in 2023 and 2024.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question. Flight revenues accelerated to 31% growth in the full year 2025, after more muted performance previously. What were the primary drivers for this trajectory change? Is this growth sustainable in the future as well?
Well, I think actually that I already answered this question with answering Volker's live question. And so, yeah, we will continue to invest in flights. Again, the exceptional growth of 2025, I think was a function of many things. The improved pricing system, the improved ancillary products, which again, in turn, improved also the way that we showed up in Meta channels. Also, the fact that we have a resilient traffic on the non-Meta channels for flights.
The fact that we started having more kickbacks from debit card providers because we started progressively having more cash, we could have a bigger portion of the payments going to airlines than with debit cards, which right now provide higher kickbacks than credit cards, and that also improved the unit economics. So it was all about basically the improvement of unit economics. Clearly, you cannot improve unit economics indefinitely, I guess, but you can still grow. Again, I would say 2025, for sure, we had also the fact that the investments were neglected and this type of activity neglected in the prior years. But yes, we expect the growth to continue at a more balanced level with the other products.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question: Can you please talk about your dividend plans?
Yes. Thank you, Julia. I just want to remind everybody that these are unaudited results, which means that once the audit is completed in the coming weeks, the board will propose the 2025 dividend in line with our dividend policy for shareholder approval at the end of June.
Thank you, Diego. Moving to the next question. Cash allocation. Given the strong operating cash generation, what are your capital allocation priorities for 2026? Do you plan to accelerate debt reduction, considering targeted acquisitions, M&A, or invest further in technology and marketing? Could you please explain how you think about cash-generated priorities going forward?
Yeah. Yeah, well, basically, the first thing is that we intend to reinvest in our all our strategic drivers, brand for sure is one of them, strategic initiatives and, you know, let's say improving our product, and getting ready for this really fast-changing landscape is also part of that. We also have the idea of keeping discipline to holder returns through our dividend policy, so that's gonna continue. But I would say more in general, I think we still feel that it's the right time now to have a bit of a war chest, in a way, to be prepared for whatever market scenario comes up. Basically, I really like the idea of having optionality, especially when there's so much change, right?
I think when there's so much change, you want to be in a position to act swiftly if something interesting comes up. For example, we are working a lot now with AI, with startups. I would say mostly in the AI space, but not just in the AI space. Also, another interesting project, which maybe we'll tell you a bit more about in the next few quarters, you know, if opportunities come there. So I'm not thinking about, you know, that type of transformational type of acquisition, but if opportunities arise to maybe have direct capital investments in some of these very interesting companies that are developing something that is AI first, or that are developing something that is really complementary to our business model, then I want to have that flexibility.
That's what we're prioritizing now.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question. Your revenue outlook for 2028, EUR 450 million, looks very defensive now, as you plan to do EUR 426 million already. Can you give us an update, please?
Well, guys, I would say this is a happy problem to have, in the sense that if you look at this company a couple of years ago, the story was completely different, right? Revenues were stagnating, maybe decreasing. Now we have the problem of saying, "Oops, you're growing too fast, you're not credible in what you're saying if you're not more aggressive." So I would say, it's February. There is a bit of a tendency sometimes of the market to say, "Well, actually, once you give a guidance in the beginning of the year," it's not a fast business in which you have subscriptions. Obviously, there's seasonality, there's stuff. So, you know, it's early days, I would say. We're confident that we can deliver on the growth that we talked about for 2026.
The moment that this confidence translates into actual numbers, we, you know, we can think about taking a closer look at our longer term guidance. Obviously, we will have, like, a rolling approach to our three-year plan. So last year, we were talking about the 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028 plan, and later in the year, we will extend it to 2029, and give you a refresh on that based on the actual numbers. I would say when we are past the peak of the season.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question: How could tax rate be negative in Q4?
Thank you, Julia. I think I mentioned during the call already, but happy to explain it better. In Q4, we had what is called a remeasurement of the deferred tax assets. Basically, tax assets are losses that we incurred in the past, but we were not able to record them because the expectation for the profitability of the companies was not there yet. With the measure we have taken in 2025, we are now more confident about the possibility to use those losses brought forward, and for this reason, we have recognized these tax losses.
Thank you, Diego. Do you consider your fixed cost base as optional at the moment? Any path to further optimize without damaging top-line growth potential?
Yeah, this is a very good question. The current cost base is something we are happy with at the moment, but of course, this cannot be taken for granted as we move forward. So we will continue to revise our cost base, especially in light of the new technology and the possibility to automate the back office and the accounting operations.
Thank you, Diego. Moving to the next question. Thank you, thank you so much for the presentation. You mentioned no growth of CapEx for 2026. Does it mean that there was no change in your approach? Do IT app development expenses, or have you finished the app and there is not much to capitalize?
Okay, I'll, I'll take this. No, I think this would be a bit of a simplistic, simplistic view. We're not slowing down development. We maintain a significant level of CapEx relative to our EBITDA. It's more that we have reached a plateau in which we think that this is the amount of money that allows us to basically keep on improving our products, because there's always something to improve. Keep in mind that also, thanks, not just, but also thanks to the more widespread usage within the company of AI tools, also for coding, we expect a big productivity gain. So with the same type of cost should be able to be faster, deliver more products. So that's more the approach.
We started using internally, Claude, with the development team, and we have a target of improving productivity of 15% on that. So you know, that alone, means that you can be actually delivering all the initiatives we're talking about, without increasing the, the CapEx, the CapEx amount.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question: What was the one-off charge in P&L 2025 for? Maybe it was, maybe it was covered and I have missed it. Could you please explain?
Yeah. Thank you, Julia. Yes, this was covered during Q2 and Q3 calls. We had two reorganization efforts in 2025. The first one during Q2 and the second one in Q3, when we closed the cruise business. There were no other exercises in Q4.
Thank you, Diego. With this, we will close our call today. If there are any questions which we couldn't address today, we are, of course, available after the call. You can write us an email or give us a call. With this, I hand over to Alessandro for the final words.
Thank you. Thank you, Julia, and thank you everyone for joining us. Yeah, I think we talked a lot about what we've done in what ended up being an exceptional year, to be honest, even beyond our targets and expectations. We keep on building for 2026 to make sure that we keep this momentum, and we will give you more information, not just on our financial growth, but how we get there, and all the interesting things that we are working on. So stay tuned, not just for our investor calls, but also for the press releases we will have over the next few months about some industrial developments. Thank you. Thank you so much, and see you next time.
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.