Good morning, and welcome to the lastminute.com second quarter H2 2026 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, Matilda. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It is a pleasure to welcome you to our investor and media conference call. We appreciate your continued interest in lastminute.com, and we will now take you through our Q2 H2 2026 results and strategic developments, followed by a Q&A session. With this, I will hand it over to Alessandro to begin now. Thank you.
Thank you, Julia, and thank you everyone for joining us. Before we get into the details of our performance for this quarter and first half, just a quick reminder of who we are and what we do as a company, for those of you who might have joined us for the first time. We are a pan-European provider of travel services. We act with two different models, agency model, representing approximately one-third of our revenues, where we sell the individual components of travel, could it be flights and hotels and accommodation mostly. And the principal model in which basically we act as a tour operator, but with a dynamic packaging rather than a static packaging product, which represents approximately two-thirds of our revenues and gross profit. We're active across Europe.
The markets that you see in dark pink are our core markets, and the markets that you see in light pink are the markets in which we have started investing since 2025. Our 14 expansion markets, which we serve, of course, with the main brand, lastminute.com, but also with some brands which have a specific importance in certain countries, such as Rumbo for Spain, Volagratis for Italy, Weg for Germany. After this quick refresh, what happened in the second quarter, in the first half, and what's going to happen, what we expect for the next few quarters. Obviously, if you follow the travel sector, I don't need to tell you how difficult the second quarter is after the start of the war in Iran in March.
April and May were the two months which were more heavily affected, especially by a concern of people not willing to book travel at that point, waiting to understand how the situation will evolve, especially because there were a lot of media reports about the possible risks of jet fuel consumption and potential scarcity, and therefore potential rise in flight costs. Even more, I would say, a perceived risk that if you were to fly on a holiday destination, you might be stranded there and unable to return. Because of all of that, a lot of people decided to postpone their choices regarding especially their summer holidays, to forego Easter holiday completely, and to switch from buying flight plus hotel holiday packages to maybe just consider booking a hotel with maybe a refundable rate and drive to the destination.
Information via AI is on track, I will give you some concrete examples and proof points of where we are so that it's clearly not just a nice line for PR, but the reality that we're living. Continuing to show operating leverage. If we look more in details of the quarter and the first half, I would leave it to Diego to give you some more details about our product mix.
Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning, everyone. When we last spoke, we highlighted a strong start of the year, with January and February showing solid momentum, followed by softer March as geopolitical situation in the Middle East started to impact travel sentiment. This trend continued into the second quarter, particularly in April and May, as increased media coverage around full availability and potential travel disruption affected booking behavior. Overall, Q2 revenues reached EUR 91.4 million, down 2% year-over-year. Excluding impact of this discontinued cruise operation reported under other, like-for-like revenues were down only 1%. Flights and hotel continued to perform well, delivering quarterly growth of 5% and 11% respectively, and more segments recorded double-digit growth in the first half of the year.
Packages was the segment most impacted by the temporary uncertainty, as consumers show a preference for single travel products over packages, seeking greater flexibility in their booking decisions. The situation started to improve from June onwards. We observed a shortening of the booking window across the industry, while travel demand remained resilient, confirming that holidays continue to be a priority for customers. It was down 8% year-over-year in the second quarter, as all segments were impacted by softer trading conditions. Looking at the first half, the reduction was limited to 2%, reflecting the strong start of the year and the resilience of the business model. Gross profit was the metric most impacted by the temporary geopolitical uncertainty. Consumers became more cautious and delayed booking decisions, reducing the effectiveness of market investments compared with previous quarters.
The impact was mainly concentrated in early Q2, we responded quickly to changing customer behavior by adjusting marketing investments to protect return on investment, as we will discuss in more details in the next slide. Despite the short-term pressure, the underlying economics of the business remain solid, with gross profit trends expected to benefit from the normalization of booking behavior in the second half. On Slide 11, you can see a more detailed breakdown of our cost structure, split between variable and fixed cost. Despite higher IT cost and continuing investment in key strategy areas, total cost in the quarter remained broadly in line with the last year, reflecting the flexibility of our base and discipline cost management. As you might recall, variable costs increased 16% in Q1, including a 19% increase in market spend. Market condition changed in Q2, reducing the expected return on our marketing investment.
We responded quickly by bringing marketing spend broadly back in line with Q2 last year. Looking at the first half, the positive trend in gross personal cost before capitalization continue, with personal costs down 5% versus the same period last year. In June, we announced an organizational restructuring driven by the adoption of AI across the company. This is not simply a cost reduction initiative. It reflects the structurally different ways of operating, with AI improving productivity and enabling a simpler, more efficient organization. The associated saving will start to come through in the second half of the year, with approximately EUR 6.5 million expected in the second half and around EUR 16 million on an annualized run rate basis. Overall, the actions taken during the first half demonstrate our ability to adapt quickly to changing the market condition, while continuing to invest for the future.
This slide provides a more detailed view of the profit and loss, bridges to the item we have just discussed. In Q2, adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 11.2 million, down 22% year-on-year, as the lower gross profit resulting from softer booking trends flow through the profitability. As mentioned earlier, adjusted EBITDA excludes two non-recurring items. A EUR 10.8 million provision related to the organizational restructuring in June. This represents a one-off investment to simplify the organization and accelerate the adoption of AI across the business. It compares with expected annualized saving of approximately EUR 16 million, implying a payback period of around nine months. A further EUR 2.1 million of cancellation and reprotection costs related to the Middle East conflict, bringing the total impact for the first half to EUR 4.1 million.
Excluding those non-recurring items, the quarter primarily reflects the impact of geopolitical headwinds on trading during Q2 rather than any structural deterioration in the underlying profitability of the business. As a result of these non-recurring items, EBIT was negative EUR 9.3 million, compared with a positive EUR 3.9 million in the same period last year. If we exclude the non-recurring items, EBIT would have been EUR 4 million. Net profit benefited from lower net financial expenses compared with last year. Nevertheless, the quarter closed with a net loss of EUR 7 million, bringing the loss for the first half to EUR 0.6 million. Looking ahead, we expect profitability in the second half to benefit from the progressive realization of the restructuring saving. Our outlook assume no further cancellation-related cost associated with the Middle East conflict in the second half.
We are here providing more granular detail on a rolling 12-month basis to better understand the underlying drivers of cash generation and smooth out the impact of seasonality. Free cash flow over the last 12 months was negative at EUR 13.3 million, improving from negative EUR 18.7 million in the previous 12-month period. The improvement was mainly driven by stronger adjusted EBITDA generation with a EUR 7 million higher contribution compared with the previous 12 months. Net working capital absorption was slightly lower compared with the previous 12 months. During the first half, we saw an area and a historical shift towards prepaid cash, supported by our stronger financial position. This temporary timing effect is expected to progressively unwind during Q3 and Q4. Excluding the change in net working capital, free cash flow would have been positive at EUR 13.7 million.
Free cash flow generation was impacted by EUR 8.9 million of cash costs related to non-recurring items, compared with EUR 3 million in the previous 12-month period. The total non-recurring impact amounted to EUR 19 million, of which EUR 10.1 million remains provisioned and will be mainly paid in the second half of the year. Finally, net financial positions stood at EUR 19.2 million. Overall, excluding temporary working capital movement and non-recurring items, the underlying cash generation of the business remains strong and continues to be a key focus for the group. With this, I will pass the word to Alessandro, and I will be happy to take any follow-up questions during the Q&A.
Thank you, Diego. I've been informed that there was a problem with the connection while I was presenting the first two slides of the presentation. Slide 5 and Slide 6 . I will go back to that and repeat what probably you were not able to hear. Just a quick outline of who we are for those who are connecting to this call for the very first time. We are a pan-European provider of travel services, acting in over 30 countries in Europe with two models: agency model representing approximately one-third of our revenues and gross profit, and principal model representing approximately two-thirds. On the agency model, we sell, as an online travel agency, various components of travel, flights and hotels, for example, on a standalone basis.
Whereas as a principal, we package flights, hotels, and other services and act as, basically, a tour operator, but with a dynamic packaging approach rather than with static packages. Our revenues come from the five core markets that you see in dark pink on the left-hand side of the slide, but also from 2025 on the 14 expansion markets that you see in light pink, mostly served with the main lastminute.com brand, but also with some important local brands such as Rumbo for Spain, weg.de for Germany, and Volagratis for Italy. What's the story that we are seeing here today? You've heard the detailed number from Diego already, I'm not spoiling anything here.
If you follow the travel industry, you don't even need me to say how difficult the second quarter was, how difficult the months from March when the war in Iran started, not just for the direct effect on the Middle East as a destination or as a hub of long-distance travel from Europe, but especially, I would say, for the psychological effect of the perception that jet fuel cost might increase, and therefore there could be scarcity in flights, that flight prices could go up. Even more importantly, the perception that if I was booking a flight and a package today, I might end stranded at the destination and be unable to return home.
Because of all of those concerns, a lot of people basically decided to forgo entirely their Easter holiday or to trade an international Easter holiday, going to places such as Egypt and Turkey to more of a domestic trip, maybe done driving to a destination and just booking a hotel rather than a package. The other effect was that a lot of people delayed their summer travel choices. We saw definitely more of a last-minute booking window, that obviously you might think that for a brand like us could even be a good news.
Obviously, in Q2, it was not in the sense that basically we saw a trend that if we're looking at bookings made for the same months, April for April, May for May, and so on, we were up compared to last year, but we were completely missing the bookings that normally people in certain countries, especially thinking about Germany and Italy, people were doing in April and May for July and August. These were basically not showing up. Obviously, we are in July, the situation is different. We're seeing, I would say, already, in the second half of June and in July, a different trading trend also supported by seasonality.
The perception is that obviously people are saying, "Well, I waited until the very last minute to book something, but then I'm not going to give up my holidays just because I'm concerned about the overall geopolitical situation." It's also true that when people tend to book at the very last minute, they tend to book shorter holidays, and therefore, potentially, average order value is not so high as when they plan family vacations four or six months ahead of time.
In this context, to be honest, the fact that we were able, with a very positive January and February, with which we started the year, to still have growth in both revenues and adjusted EBITDA and scope in the first half, to me, is quite remarkable in the context of a sector in which a lot of holiday package providers, especially in Italy, Germany, and France, are down 20% year-over-year. This is not our case, and I think this is proof of the importance of being not exposed to just one market and to just one product line, but to have a broader product portfolio and a broader geographical presence. Because of that, we still think that 2026 will be a year of growth for us.
Obviously, not the spectacular growth that we were expecting at the beginning of the year, because of course, macro is impacting us as well, but still mid-single-digit growth on revenues and up to 10% growth on adjusted EBITDA. To be honest, I was quite surprised when I saw that there were some expectations of us having a great Q2 and basically a linear behavior of year-over-year comparison of Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 to get to the levels of guidance that we had initially indicated. To me, it would be pretty obvious that Q2 would be the most difficult quarter of the year, and then the possible targets would be reached by a stronger Q3 and a stronger Q4. Obviously, assuming that the macro uncertainty at least subsides a bit. Obviously, uncertainty is still with us.
We see that in media reports every day, obviously very different from March and April. Last but not least, the operational transformation is on track. AI is really already part of our day-to-day lives, and I will give you some practical examples of that to prove the fact that it's not just a nice line for PR, but it's really our daily experience. Because of that, I will then skip to the numbers which Diego already commented on in detail. Maybe just one minor thing that I will add on page 13 when we talk about cash flow is you've probably seen this call-out, saying that the change in net working capital would have been positive considering the same usage of credit cards that we had in the previous 12-month period.
This is something we've been commenting on already in the past few quarters, it's important to stress it again. Basically, it's our choice precisely because we are in a solid cash-rich position. We pay a lot of our costs with virtual credit cards, especially cost to airlines. The idea here is that, considering that the conditions that we can have from card providers are better if we choose to pay with prepaid cards rather than credit cards, and obviously prepaid capital, but actually a positive effect on the P&L. Again, entirely our choice. If we had kept the same payment mix that we had in the previous 12 months, the minus 23 would have been plus 3, and therefore the overall free cash flow, rather than minus 13, would have been plus 13. Again, completely our choice, coming from a position of strength.
Some of the qualitative developments here that underpin the performance that we are expecting in the next few quarters and years as soon as the situation goes back to normal. As you all know, travel is always subject to a lot of fluctuations because of geopolitical headwinds, it's also travel, a sector that always bounces back, because ultimately, the underlying demand for travel services is very resilient, very strong, and growing. In this context, just a quick reminder of the four key pillars of our strategy, strengthening our market presence, both in the expansion markets, keeping the evolution of our dynamic packaging product, making sure that we are a companion to our customers, not just when they book, but when they are on holiday as well with our app, making sure that each brand in our portfolio has a very clear mission.
All of that underpinned and enabled by AI and scale. Companies that created the group by merging over time at the forefront of innovation for the past 25-plus years. From the very early days in which advantage was just having the possibility to book something online to the first years of 2000, in which SEM was becoming widely adopted, the first companies who would embrace it would have a technology, basically a competitive advantage, to the 2010s when mobile-first booking became the norm, now the AI-first era. I think that strategically, being quick, choosing to lead, being bold, making ambitious choices before other companies in the sector is what can allow us to be at the forefront and actually have a competitive advantage in this moment of disruption. I would say AI allows us to punch above our weight, if you want.
As a smaller OTA compared to Booking.com or Expedia, we can be a few years. AI is reshaping the whole sector, not just how travel is discovered and booked, also how companies work, that's why we have decided to move first. In practical terms, I would say that the three main initiatives that we have in terms of way of working inside the company are the creation of a shared intelligence layer. Having a connection with LLMs, especially internally, we use Gemini Pro and Claude, giving them access to everything that constitutes the company, who we are, the documents that represent our choices. AI automation is happening company-wide in two different ways.
There is a central automation team which supports the automation of workflows for teams who are not process experts, also enabling each and every team to develop, to automate their own workflows, to create their own apps with a vibe-coding approach to deploy agents across the business. This is governed at scale by, again, enabling having a foundational layer that enables teams to build and deploy agents safely across the organization. Some early results of what we've been doing. We've already been talking about the integration of our MCP server to make our inventory of flights and hotels bookable in Claude and ChatGPT interface. That was more for, let's say, customer-facing innovation. In terms of efficiency within the company, we have internal tools that are now being built in days with Claude directly by the team, without any involvement of the tech and teams.
In certain development teams, up to 90% of the code that they generate has been developed with Claude Code. Again, in some of these teams, the number of backlog tasks completed in a unit of time has gone up three times. Not 10%, not 20%, but three times. Workflow automation, we also have a platform with n8n live in production within the company. We created; you might remember that we have started selling our hotel inventory on a B2B basis with the brand Momma Rooms. We created obviously this division Needs at the office. It's been created by the business team with vibe coding with no designers and no front-end engineers in 15 days for something that normally might require up to one year and a lot of teams involved.
Another example is the fact that we connected directly the MCP server on top of our database to the possibility to not only query our database directly in natural language via Claude, but also the possibility for teams to build, publish, and share across the company interactive reports and dashboards, again, in an autonomous way by bypassing an SQL query or to develop a dashboard in HTML. Another example is the fact that every single time that we want to add a local payment system to the PSPs that we already use, there are some developments that need to happen. Typically, we need to make changes across seven separate systems and with three different engineering teams.
Normally that's something that would take weeks, and thanks to AI, we've been able to shorten that to two days with real business impact because of course this means that we can have a much broader variety of local payment methods integrated in our platform. After having given you these, the advantages, I would say and have growth in H1 and see growth in the full year. The fact that we have a very strong embracement of what AI revolution, because AI is nothing short of a revolution. It's something that we're doing to make sure that we have a better product and better service to our customers and a more efficient and productive way of working. It is not a cost-cutting exercise.
That being said, obviously it also has an impact on the reduction of cost, which you will already see for approximately EUR 6.5 million in the second half of the year. That you will see for a total value of EUR 16 million from January 1st, 2027. Here you might have also noticed that the payback time of the extraordinary restructuring cost that Diego was mentioning earlier on is definitely quicker than a year, approximately just a bit over seven months. Thanks to all of this, despite the difficult and uncertain macro situation, we're still seeing a 2026 of growth, and frankly, I think that this is quite remarkable considering the context in which we operate and the performance of some of our peers, especially those sell all this with Google and in Q2 and the beginning of Q3.
Searches, the year-on-year trend was for a decrease in searches for holiday packages and an increase in searches for hotels, which again was reflected in our product mix as part of a broader shift within the sector, which looks temporary, but it's what happened over the past few months. All of that being said, we're almost ready to take your questions and dive deeper in whatever topic you might want. Before that, I just leave the floor to Julia to remind the next occasions of our financial calendar.
Thank you, Alessandro. Here on the next slide, you will see our upcoming conferences until the end of the year and our next financial update we will release to the market on the 29th of October. With this, we will now begin our Q&A session, starting with the live questions first, followed by those submitted via the webcast. Please note, as usual, we might have regrouped similar questions. In line with our privacy and data protection policies, we remind all our participants that stating your name is optional when asking a live question. With this, I hand it back to Matilde, our Chorus Call operator, to begin with the first live question.
Thank you. The first question comes from the line of Volker Bosse from Baader Bank. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning. Volker Bosse, Baader Bank speaking. Thanks for taking my question, thanks for all the shared information so far. I would like to start with the AI transformation. You mentioned EUR 16 million cost savings on the annualized basis from 2027 on. This will be mainly personal costs? That's my first question. Also related to the costs from the AI transformation, how many one-off costs should we take into account for implementing the reorganization? Am I right that this is not part of the guidance? I think you guide for adjusted EBITDA, so the one-off costs are not included in the guidance, right? Second question, or second part of my questions would be the guidance. You are now in EBITDA minus 2% after H1. You guide to achieve 5%-10% EBITDA growth full year. Could you build the bridge?
You mentioned EUR 6.5 million in the second half already coming from the reorganization. If that's the main part, why earnings should outperform sales performance in the second half. Last but not least, on current trading, you mentioned July picked up nicely. Thank you.
Thank you, Volker. I'll take this one. Yeah, in terms of the saving that you see, they are 100% related to personnel cost. We have basically reduced a number of roles, especially in areas which are particularly impacted by AI, meaning that the majority of the work of certain roles, in some cases already today, in some cases not today, but for sure in the foreseeable future, will be doable by AI. Now, obviously, there will also be a slight increase on the token cost, basically. The more we embed AI in every single process, the more tokens we will consume from the LLMs, then obviously we will have a slight uptake in that, but this is a very marginal fraction of the savings. In terms of the cost related to that, they are already fully.
The other question was if they were included in the guidance or not. No, they are below the adjusted EBITDA, those costs are not included in the guidance. In terms of trading, yes, we'll be seeing single mid-digit growth as we were seeing varied across markets. Not all markets obviously are behaving in the same way. Now obviously we will need to see how the situation evolves over the next few months. In general, I would say that when you were wondering how do we reach that, obviously keep in mind that Q3 always for seasonality is much more, I would say, impactful on the overall results of the company than Q2.
Because of that, even a percentage decrease that might sound big in terms of EBITDA for Q2, in reality, if we're talking about absolute numbers, we're talking about assuming anything particularly positive. We've been assuming what we've been seeing over the past few weeks, obviously taking into account the EUR 6.5 million of savings as you were mentioning.
Just for clarification, these EUR 6.5 million are already part of the EUR 16 million which you guided on an annualized basis.
Correct.
Yeah. Okay, cool.
Correct.
Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Xing Songyang from AWP. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have a question also regarding the reorganization. You have announced a headcount cut by 25%, I would like to know in which segments and in which regions will this be, has this already started? Thanks.
This doesn't allow us to get too much in detail, but what I can say that geographically, almost all the European countries in which we are present were impacted, so it's been relatively widespread. Talking about Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the U.K., Portugal, Poland. We'd collected procedures in most of them, as I was saying, and the processes are almost completed. Which is why you already see the effect of EUR 6.5 million out of EUR 16 booked for the year, precisely because we are now at the end of July and most of this has already been completed and will be implemented in the next few weeks and even days. In terms of the company teams which were impacted, I would say again, it's been quite widespread.
There's been a reduction in certain teams for software development, some certain areas of business analysis, various teams as well in terms of design. It's been quite far-reaching, also including customer service, but it's not being, if that was, I would say, the implicit assumption of the question, whether it was particularly related to customer service operations, not necessarily. Those were part of that, but not the lion's share.
The line of Baptiste de Leudeville from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Thank you for taking my question. Hello, Alessandro. Hello, Diego. My question is on gross margin, basically. Gross margin came at 37.9% in Q2, down more than 2 points year-over-year, and it's been eroding for several quarters now. I guess my question is, do you consider that the Q2 marks the trough, or should we expect further pressure in the second half? I understand that there's few moving parts in the gross margin evolution. One is the mix between flights and packages. You mentioned June, July were already improving. My question is that improvement visible specifically in package bookings or it's still mostly flight-driven? That's one important moving part for the evolution of gross margin. The second moving part is your marketing investment.
In the current context, are you refraining on some investments you were making in expansion countries to protect your profitability, or you're still evolving at the same pace? Thank you very much.
I would say, hi Baptiste. General comments on marketing is that obviously, again, because of the macro situation, the efficiency of marketing spend has been going down for everyone in the industry in the sense that, again, this is something that we've confirmed with our partners, that it's been a trend they've seen in general, that people were still looking for holidays and clicking on things and being curious about it, but not ready to convert. Obviously, because our campaigns are structured to be optimizing for conversions, then it's difficult. Basically, it means that we had to pay relatively more to achieve a certain level of bookings, which is why at some point we decided not to invest too much because the extra investments would be mostly very inefficient, right? There's always a fine line between the growth you can generate and the profitability of that growth.
Normally, before the situations in Iran in March, we were at a certain level. That level became more difficult to reach after March. Now in the latest trending, I would say that we're quite satisfied of the B2C component of our sales for packages. Yes, flights and hotels are growing more than proportionally. Again, not because of a last-minute specific situation, more rather for, I would say, general market dynamics in this context. I think that's it. Yep.
Alessandro, line?
There are no more questions from the phone at this time.
Okay, thank you very much. We will be now moving to the questions we have received via the webcast. I will read out the first question. The restructuring cost for H2 estimates are the same for H1. Could you please comment the full year guidance? How confident are you in the midterm guidance?
Yeah. First of all, we're, I would say, lowering the revenue guidance on the adjusted EBITDA. You might have noticed that the top part of the range that we provide is still in line with the previous guidance. We were previously saying that we were seeing a 10% growth. Now we're saying that we see a range between 5% and 10%. Basically, what we're seeing is increased variability due to the uncertainty rather than an impossibility to reach that target. That being said, as a clarification for 2026, again, We see this as a very temporary situation. We're used to that travel. If you've been following travel for a number of years, let alone COVID, but before COVID, you might remember the effects of when a volcano in Iceland disrupted travel across Europe.
There were effects by terror attacks in which people were scared to travel in certain destinations. There were effects by the financial crisis and Lehman collapse in 2008, in which people were deferring their travel spend. Always an effect on travel, and always travel bounce back stronger than before, because in general, there is a tendency of younger generations to have a desire to allocate a higher portion of their disposable income to experiences rather than to goods. Now, this means that the midterm guidance is absolutely not impacted. We provided our three-year outlook last year in November 2025. We're now working on an updated version in just few months. Yeah, I hope that answered the question.
Thank you, Alessandro. Moving to the next question. Can you explain what you mean by June and July are already improving? Does this mean less negative or growth compared to the period 2025?
Okay. Thank you, Julia. Well, let's look at the different components. With regard to revenues, our guidance for the year implies that the second half will be more or less in line with the first half of the year, which means that there is a positive growth compared to the same period of the previous year. As we move down, on this positive, and this together with the effect of the cost reduction and reorganization will have an even higher impact on the expected EBITDA in the second half, which can lead to the guidance we just updated.
Thank you, Diego. I will move now to the next question. Could you give more insight on your AI transformation process? How will it be phased savings and restructuring costs for 2026 and 2027?
Well, I think probably this question was written before the latest explanation that we gave. I think that I will not comment on savings and restructuring costs. We have already discussed at length. Again, if there is something that is specifically not clear, I would ask the person to potentially ask a new question now. Otherwise, I will assume that it has been understood. What I think is more important to know is that, again, obviously we have mostly financial analysts and investors connected to this call. I understand that the most immediate effect of what we need to try and make you understand that this is not about that. This is about really a transformation, a radical transformation in the way we work. This is unlike anything we have seen in the past, and we have decided to be among the first companies to fully embrace it.
I hope that I already gave you some examples today of how AI is already impacting our way of working. It will be exponential. It will be even more than that over the next few quarters. We will need obviously to change internal processes. AI makes building so much faster that it makes the other bottlenecks in the processes in a company much more visible and therefore also easier to attack and to change. The effect will be that we will be much faster to iterate the type of products that we bring to the market, the type of improvements that we can have in terms of our product UX but also marketing investment efficiency. Again, over time, you will see that more than proportionally not as a reduction of costs only, but I would say as an improvement of our operational performance and customer satisfaction.
I understand that there are no further questions at this moment. I do not know, Matilda, if there is someone who is connecting again for a live question.
At the moment, there are still no more questions on the phone.
If this is the case, I would wrap it up. Thank you for joining us today. I hope we provided a bit of clarity on the reasons behind our results, also the reasons behind our relative optimism in a difficult condition. I think that compared to our peers, especially in holiday packages, the performance has and continues to be quite remarkable. I will see you all on October the 29th for our Q3 trading update, and whoever is going to be attending the conferences that we will be attending even before that date. See you there. Looking forward to that. Thank you again.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for attending Chorus Call and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye