trivago N.V. Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to trivago's First Quarter Earnings Call 2026. I must advise you the call is being recorded today, Wednesday, the 6th of May 2026. We are pleased to be joined on the call today by Johannes Thomas, trivago's CEO and Managing Director; and Wolf Schmuhl, trivago's CFO and Managing Director. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management's view as of Tuesday, May 5, 2026, only, unless expressly stated otherwise, in which case, reflects management's view as of today, Wednesday, May 6, 2026 only. Trivago does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information. As always, some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking, typically preceded by words such as we expect, we believe, we anticipate or similar statements. Please refer to the Q1 2026 operating and financial review and trivago's other filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause trivago's actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. You will find reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures discussed today in trivago's operating and financial review, which is posted in trivago's Investor Relations website at ir.trivago.com. You are encouraged to periodically visit trivago's Investor Relations website for important content. Finally, unless otherwise stated, all comparisons on this call will be against results for the comparable period of 2025. With that, let me turn the call over to Johannes.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our Q1 2026 earnings call. We are off to a strong start to 2026, delivering 15% year-over-year total revenue growth and our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, while improving profitability against our prior year. Americas grew 17% and Developed Europe, 14% in referral revenue, both substantially exceeding our expectations. This performance came despite tangible FX headwinds and geopolitical pressures in parts of our Rest of the World segment. The results reflect our balanced approach to growth and profitability with cost discipline and the compounding effects of prior brand investments translating into tangible outcomes. Branded traffic revenue once again outpaced total revenue growth this quarter, demonstrating that our long-term brand strategy continues to compound. Our product is converting better with conversion rate up 58% since Q1 2023. Before intercompany eliminations, our logged-in member base now drives more than 30% of referral revenue. Trivago Book & Go's relevance has increased significantly compared to the previous year. This is what "optimizing momentum and pushing frontiers," our theme for 2026, looks like in practice. We continue to grow at a healthy pace in markets we have built up since mid-2023 while increasing profitability through the compounding effects of the investments we have already made. While we are facing challenging year-over-year comparables across the first half of 2026, Q1 surprised us positively and Q2 has had a promising start. On the back of our strong Q1 performance and the momentum we are carrying into the rest of the year, we are reaffirming our full year revenue outlook of double-digit percentage growth and raising our profitability guidance. We now expect adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 25 million for 2026, up from prior guidance of at least EUR 20 million. We are also announcing a planned share buyback program up to EUR 20 million, reflecting our confidence in trivago's long-term value creation potential. Wolf will cover the rationale and more context on this. Before walking you through our strategic priorities, I want to address one further announcement. Yesterday, we filed an antitrust damages claim against Google before the Regional Court of Hamburg in Germany, seeking compensation for damages trivago has suffered as a result of Google's self-preferencing in general search results. For more than a decade, we have raised concerns that Google has systematically steered travelers away from competing hotel metasearch platforms and towards its own service. We believe the claim rests on a strong legal foundation. The EU Commission's 2017 Google Shopping decision, upheld by the European Court of Justice in September 2024, established a legal framework for damages actions of this nature and two first instance awards have already been granted in comparable cases before the Regional Court of Berlin in November 2025. The claim covers the period from January 2014 through December 2025 and seeks substantial monetary damages based on an independent expert analysis. We expect this to be a multiyear effort and the outcome of litigation is inherently uncertain. That said, the size of the potential claim is meaningful, and we believe pursuing it is in the best interest of our shareholders and of a travel ecosystem that benefits from competing based on merit. For details, please refer to our separate press release published on ir.trivago.com. With that, let me return to business and walk you through the great progress we made against each of our three strategic priorities this quarter. For additional details, please also refer to our investor presentation on ir.trivago.com. Our first strategic priority is to drive growth through brand marketing. The flywheel we have been building since mid-2023 continues to compound. Branded traffic revenue grew faster than overall top line in Q1, demonstrating that our brand spend produces returns that extend well beyond the period in which it is incurred. Our successful 2025 campaigns, combined with the deliberate diversification of our marketing mix into owned and direct channels, set up Q1 well, and we have meaningfully reduced our reliance on search-related channels. Before intercompany eliminations, the share of referral revenue from Google is down 34% compared to Q1 2023, and our non-branded SEO exposure remains at low single-digit levels. We believe the business is structurally less exposed to search volatility as a result. Traffic referred from GenAI sources remains below 1% of revenue. These channels are small in absolute terms. And in our view, their near-term impact often appears overestimated. We see them as an emerging marketing opportunity gradually growing in relevance, operating more upper funnel than traditional search. We are actively integrating and testing new ad formats, calibrating investments to the relevance those channels demonstrate over time. Our strong brand, deep performance marketing expertise and vertical focus position us well to leverage them to our advantage. In our view, AI systems will play an increasingly relevant role in the travelers' journey, but primarily at the top of the funnel, helping users get inspired and explore where to go. Once users move into planning, selection and booking, the experience they need is fundamentally different. They compare hotels side by side, check different booking sites, build shortlists, filter across many dimensions, check room types and explore locations through a rich map experience. These are only a few examples. In essence, our user experience is much richer and has been optimized over decades. This is not a result of taste or opinion, but of tens of thousands of tests that have shaped our interface into what it is today and how it addresses the nuanced needs of travelers. We believe this is where trivago plays a distinct role as a trusted guide backed by comprehensive pricing, availability and rich content that AI assistants are likely to struggle to build a competitive edge on. Our partnership with Jürgen Klopp continues to be a meaningful asset, and his association with the trivago brand resonates strongly across our audiences. Ahead of the summer travel season, we have produced new creative spots, including dedicated TV ads that combine Klopp with a major sporting event taking place this summer. We are heading into the year's most important travel period with a strong creative pipeline. We are now operating in 30 active markets, though our brand investment remains meaningfully below 2019 levels, and our market share in these markets is still small. We believe significant growth potential lies ahead. Our second strategic priority is to enhance our core hotel search experience, so travelers can book with confidence, saving time and money. Our testing velocity remained high in Q1, and we have increased our product conversion rates by 58% since Q1 2023. This is significant. It reflects how much better our product has become and is having a direct impact on our unit economics and marketing efficiency. We also expect these increased conversion rates to have a meaningful impact on our user satisfaction and retention over time. For partners, it means more qualified travelers landing on their site. Our member strategy is advancing faster than we expected. Before intersegment elimination, logged-in members now account for more than 30% of referral revenue. Members unlock access to exclusive partner deals, creating a compelling reason to log in and return to trivago. This deepens our understanding of users, gives us more touch points to extend the user life cycle, and we expect this to drive long-term retention. As more data accumulates within the member experience, we expect to unlock further opportunities around loyalty features and reengagement through CRM activities. Personalization is becoming an increasingly important lever for us. We continue to refine our ranking logic based on user behavior. And this quarter, we expanded our explicit preference settings, allowing users to indicate what matters most to them across dimensions like hotel style, quality, star rating, location and budget. The combination of real-time behavioral signals and stated preferences gives us a much richer picture of what each user is looking for. This lays the foundation for increasingly accurate recommendations and a more tailored search experience at scale, and we believe personalization can become a true differentiator for us. We also shipped two important product improvements in Q1. We launched Nova Vista, our new desktop architecture, which gives us a stronger foundation for the more structural experimentation required to rethink the user experience for a conversational AI-native era. As part of our AI Smart Search initiative, we're experimenting with conversational experiences that keep our core search and rich user interface at the center, combining the familiar with the new capabilities GenAI-based technology unlocks. We also introduced AI-synthesized top 10 badges by theme, surfacing each hotel's standout qualities at a glance across attributes like pool, breakfast, location and family-friendliness — a simple but effective way to reduce decision fatigue and help users move from search to booking with more confidence. The progress across these fronts is mutually reinforcing. Better conversion makes us a stronger channel for partners. Members deepen our personalization and personalization improves conversion. We are building a flywheel inside the product itself, and we are still at the early stages of what we believe it can deliver. Our third strategic priority is to help our partners realize their potential on our platform. Our marketplace is healthier than it has ever been in years, and the numbers reflect it. Before intercompany eliminations, the share of referral revenue from all other advertisers has grown from 20% in Q1 2023 to 35% in Q1 2026. Partners increasingly recognize the quality of traffic we deliver, and this is showing up across the board. Over the past three years, we have made deliberate investments to rebalance our marketplace and reduce advertiser concentrations. Initiatives like our transaction-based CPA model, our second-price auction, trivago Book & Go and our Property Details Page share a common goal: making it easier for small and midsized partners to compete effectively on our marketplace. We believe all of these have contributed to this shift and drove advertiser engagement. Our Property Details Page has now been rolled out globally after being qualified over the course of the past year. It addresses a structural disadvantage independent hotels and chains have long faced. Previously, when users clicked through from trivago to a partner site, they would often land on a room selection page, far further into the journey than they actually were. By qualifying our Property Details Page as an intermediary referral destination, we now hand off users at the right moment. We have seen this meaningfully improve conversion for our direct partners. Trivago Book & Go continues to scale rapidly. Since Q1 2023, referral revenue before intercompany eliminations generated through this funnel has grown by 530%, and it has doubled its share compared to last year. Globally, trivago Book & Go has become a top five player in our marketplace. By combining our trusted brand with a seamless booking experience, we are creating value for users and partners alike. Our transaction-based CPA model continues to grow with over 30% of referral revenue before intercompany eliminations now processed through this model, up from 25% just one quarter ago. CPA is particularly valuable for small and midsized partners who often do not have the resources to optimize bids and manage exposure effectively. By removing that complexity, we believe we are helping them to compete more effectively, which is good for partners and for the long-term health of our marketplace. Before closing, I want to address one topic that cuts across all three of our strategic priorities: AI transformation. The pace of AI is accelerating and driving its diffusion across the organization is a key focus for us as a leadership team. In recent months, new impactful AI capabilities have become available, and therefore, we have further elevated AI's role inside the company. We are leading this transformation actively with a clear ambition for our approximately 600 core talents to operate with the impact of 6,000. Importantly, we are not starting from zero. Trivago has run AI in production for over a decade, across our marketplace, search ranking, coding and advertising infrastructure. A majority of our workforce already thinks in systems, acts as builders and operates in close feedback loops, giving us a strong foundation to build on. From here, we see teams evolving through four stages, from AI-assisted work to automated workflows to agentic-first systems and ultimately self-improving systems. There is broad consensus that AI will absorb a meaningful share of execution work, and we view this as a great efficiency gain. It expands our capacity and lets the same number of people deliver more. This has become a base expectation for us, but we believe the real upside is much bigger: reaching the impact of 6,000 will come from human craft being amplified by AI leverage. As execution work is absorbed, our people do not just gain time. They become meaningfully better at what they do, sharper decision-makers, faster and more ambitious builders, capable of governing greater complexity and with real capacity to deepen the relationships that move the business. This is where the real leverage lies, and this is what makes us excited about the path ahead. To execute on this opportunity, with sharper focus and clear accountability, we expanded our leadership team in recent months with three C-level appointments. Ioannis Papadopoulos joined as Chief Technology Officer at the end of last year, leading our technology agenda and AI enablement. In March, Alexander Volkmann was appointed Chief Intelligence Officer, owning machine learning and AI data strategy. And Sherin Hegazy was appointed Chief Commercial Officer, deepening our partner ecosystem. The pace of AI is reshaping what is possible in travel search, how we build products and what travelers and partners will expect. All three additions have helped build what trivago is today and the institutional depth and judgment they bring is exactly what this next chapter requires. I'm excited to have them on board and to shape the future of trivago together. None of this would be possible without our standout team. What gives me confidence is how our people are stepping up to this moment. They are curious, fanatic learners and deeply committed to defining the next chapter of trivago. That mindset more than any single technology or strategy is what can set us apart. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication. With that, I'll hand over to our CFO, Wolf, for a more detailed financial review.

Thank you, Johannes, and good morning, everyone. We are thrilled to report that Q1 was another strong quarter for trivago, exceeding our internal total revenue growth expectations. We achieved a 15% year-over-year increase in total revenues while shifting more towards profitability despite ongoing FX-related headwinds. This is a result of optimizing existing markets and making use of compounding brand effects, showcasing our balanced approach between top line growth and improving profitability. We are announcing an up to EUR 20 million share buyback program with details to be finalized and execution planned to start at the end of May. Given our strong cash position of EUR 136.1 million and zero long-term debt as of March 31, we believe this represents a disciplined and high-return use of capital. Our view is that the current share price does not reflect the company's long-term earnings potential, and we are putting capital behind it. Let's review our first quarter results as well as our 2026 outlook. Unless otherwise indicated, all comparisons for 2026 are on a year-over-year basis. In the first quarter, total revenue reached EUR 142.9 million, representing 15% year-over-year growth despite foreign exchange headwinds of approximately 5% globally. Americas grew 17% and Developed Europe 14% in referral revenue, both exceeding our expectations, driven by better quality traffic from higher branded channel traffic and compounding brand effects. In Americas, prior quarter brand investments compounded particularly well. In Developed Europe, demand remains strong. Rest of World declined 12% in referral revenue year-over-year, impacted by FX headwinds of approximately 9% and geopolitical pressures in the Middle East, including airspace restrictions and elevated oil prices. We have managed these markets tactically through the quarter, adjusting bidding, spend and targets locally. The evolving situation in the Middle East continues to create near-term uncertainty, and we will continue to manage our exposure dynamically as conditions develop. With Rest of World representing only 17% of our Q1 referral revenue, the overall impact on total referral revenue was limited. More broadly, with Developed Europe at 44% and Americas at 39% of Q1 referral revenue, our business is well diversified across segments, making us structurally more resilient to localized macro pressures. During the first quarter, we reported a net loss of EUR 7.3 million and achieved an adjusted EBITDA loss of EUR 4.5 million, which was above our internal expectations. Operational expenses increased by EUR 19.2 million, totaling EUR 152.9 million for the first quarter. This was mainly due to a EUR 10.6 million increase in selling and marketing, resulting from higher investments in both brand and performance marketing channels made over the course of the quarter, and incremental expenses resulting from the consolidation of trivago DEALS, formerly Holisto. Advertising spend increased by EUR 7.8 million or 20% in Developed Europe, EUR 4.1 million or 9% in the Americas and decreased by EUR 1 million or 5% in Rest of World. Despite the continued scaling of our marketing investments in this quarter, global ROAS improved from 118.1% in Q1 last year to 121% in Q1 this year. We observed a significant ROAS improvement in Americas, increasing from 102.7% in Q1 2025 to 116.1% in Q1 2026, while we observed reductions in Developed Europe from 134% to 130.5% and in Rest of World from 120.3% to 111.2%. By the end of Q1 2026, we had EUR 136.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and no long-term debt, highlighting our exceptional financial position. Despite challenging comps in the first half of the year, we are off to an encouraging start to Q2. We expect to further scale our brand marketing investments, but at a more moderate pace compared to previous years, and make use of compounding brand effects in order to gradually increase profitability in 2026. Additionally, in 2026, we aim to begin consolidating trivago DEALS without the one-month reporting lag, our current accounting policy election, which currently causes timing differences in our consolidated financial statements. We anticipate sustaining our growth trajectory with steadily improving profitability, targeting 10% adjusted EBITDA margin in the next few years. For 2026, we are maintaining our expectation of double-digit year-over-year total revenue growth and increasing our adjusted EBITDA guidance to around EUR 25 million. With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator, we are now ready to take the first question.

Operator Instructions. Your first question comes from the line of Naved Khan with B. Riley Securities.

Congrats on the results and the raised outlook. A couple of questions from me. It seems like you may be further ahead in getting the compounding benefits of brand advertising in Americas versus Europe, just looking at where the ROAS is on these markets. Can you maybe just talk about why that may or may not be the case, if I'm thinking about it the right way? And then on your 10% EBITDA margin over the next few years, maybe just give us a better sense of the timeline, if it's like two or three years or maybe further out or not? And then maybe on Google, I think you've been testing some changes as part of remedies. I just wanted to know if those changes are favorable to your business or not or if it's too early to say?

Naved, thanks for your questions. If I get it right, your first question was related to the developments in Americas and in Developed Europe. In our Americas segment, we saw the use of compounding brand effects. This was basically the major impact we saw there. The investments we did in previous quarters are now compounding. If you take a look at the ad spend development there, it is reduced compared to prior quarters and year-on-year comparables. Therefore, we need to spend less in order to generate the same revenue. That was the main driver we saw in the Americas. An additional point that also influences the development is that we improved our conversion rate tremendously, so we were able to generate better quality traffic. All these developments are related to this. When we then take a look at our Developed Europe segment, we also saw a slight decrease in ROAS. The reason is mainly due to the fact that we saw strong investment opportunities in Developed Europe. As you increase brand spend at the same point, your ROAS also decreases because the positive effect from your brand investment will set in at later stages. That's on the development in the segments. Your next question was related to our path to the 10% margin that we called out. We are comfortable with this 10% target within the next few years. At the moment, we don't want to narrow it down further, but think about it in the next few quarters and upcoming years. What leads to this positive margin development: first, we see compounding effects on the one hand from our increased brand investments and on the other hand from a much improved product. More travelers become aware of us and more travelers engage with our product. The loyalty of the users increases — the probability that they come back increases. Second, we will further increase our brand investments, but at a more moderated pace compared to previous quarters and make further use of these compounding brand effects in order to gradually increase our profitability. As an example, in Q1 2025 we increased our ad spend by about 24%, and in Q1 2026 only by about 10%. The additional contribution that we expect from these measures will directly go to the bottom line instead of being reinvested again into marketing. The U.S. market or the Americas market at the moment is a good example for this.

Maybe I can add one aspect here about what makes us excited and how we believe we can improve the bottom line. If you look at our ad spend increase last year in Q1, it was three times higher compared to this year. This is exactly the path we are going: our incremental investment will slow down gradually, but there's still lots of room to grow compared to our investment in 2019. So there can be a multiyear uplift in brand investment, but slower than in the past years. That will flow into the bottom line. A third point that makes us comfortable about the 10% adjusted EBITDA is the logged-in member aspect: logged-in members show higher loyalty because people have more touch points with us. You also have the aftermath of that: emails and a chance to engage with users. We call this owned media internally. We are reengaging users in the period where users tend to book within one day to two weeks — that's a high-converting period. If we have emails, we can engage with these users much more actively, stay top of mind and then drive and convert these users and bring them back. This has a direct impact. We see our CRM activities, including emails to users, growing a lot internally, and it will start to become meaningful for our bottom line very soon. Over time, the more our members grow, the better we optimize engagement with them, the more this will contribute to the bottom line. The 10% target is realistic, and we will create more clarity on timing; we expect it within the next few years rather than a long process.

Great. And then on Google?

On Google: from our perspective, Google is still not complying with the DMA. I think the commission had a preliminary finding that they are not and everybody is waiting for the final finding of the commission. This can happen at any time. What we see on the Google front is that they do some changes and tests. We have not seen any material impact. They are testing and evolving. Overall, I think what has been true over the long term is that they are not allowed to put their full hotel search product and price comparison product on top of the search results, and that is strategically a positive development because they are not pushing a product in front of people's minds on top of the generic search results. So this is generally positive. I wouldn't say this has a short-term impact on us. It's rather a stronger position we have as a metasearch with a better product that we can operate for users. There's no change we can see in the last week.

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan.

This is Dae on for Doug. I have two questions. The first one: it looks like the share of referral revenue from all others appears to have inflected more meaningfully over the past two quarters. Curious what's driving that acceleration? And can you speak to the competition within the bucket? Is it broad-based long tail or specific partners scaling into material individual share? I have a follow-up.

Thank you — a very important question. On the one side, we are diversifying our marketing mix, and we believe this makes us more resilient. On the other hand, the partner mix is becoming much better, and the mix has moved from 20% in Q1 2023 to 35% in Q1 2026. That's quite substantial. The main reasons are many things: marketplace dynamics, how advertisers engage and structural changes we implemented. Improved conversion rates we deliver — higher quality traffic — has resonated positively with our partners. There are a range of structural initiatives that contributed. Two to three years ago we rolled out our second-price auction, which changed marketplace dynamics. Over the last quarters, the CPA model has been very successful; it's a transaction-based model so partners don't need to do the bidding. Bidding is complicated, especially for small partners with limited data, and CPA has been a successful initiative. Book & Go took more share and doubled its share in our marketplace. Book & Go is one of the contributors. Other players have joined our auctions and marketplace, including relevant players in the alternative accommodation space, and direct players have significantly increased in size as well. Connected to that is the Property Details Page that we rolled out. We qualified it after a long testing process to ensure this drives conversion and is positive for our direct partners. Previously, clicking from trivago often landed a user on a room selection page, a big step in decision-making. With the Property Details Page, users land on a hotel page on trivago with content, images and room types, and we forward more highly qualified users to our direct partners. This reduces structural disadvantages independent hotels and chains have faced, and it had a significant impact in recent months together with Book & Go, other partners and the CPA model — all contributing to the shift.

Okay. Great. And as a follow-up and somewhat related: when you talk about referral revenue from logged-in members growing to 30% of referral revenue, I'm curious where that log-in conversion happens through the travel funnel? And is the logged-in members growth from new users logging in for the first time drawn by exclusive deals? Or are you seeing meaningful repeat behavior and higher revenue per member from the existing base?

Very good question. The most important drivers for this are the prompts on desktop and in-app that highlight better prices when you log in. Logged-in users unlock exclusive rates in the price comparison stack on the hotel level, which is a primary driver. In the app, you are prominently asked to log in, and these prompts are effective drivers. It's both: people returning to trivago have a higher share of logged-in members than the general population, and we also attract new users who log in for the first time because of unlocked deals. The app is particularly effective: once someone logs into the app, we can use push notifications in addition to emails, which drives contribution at very low cost compared to other marketing channels. Push and CRM activities are powerful levers to increase repeat behavior and revenue per member.

We have no further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back to Johannes Thomas for closing remarks.

Thank you. Over the past three years, we have deliberately diversified our marketing mix, reduced our reliance on Google and rebalanced our marketplace effectively. The result is a structurally more resilient business that we expect to continue to grow at a strong pace. From here, we are increasingly focused on steering towards profitability to maximize returns for our shareholders. Our planned share buyback program reflects our conviction. To our investors, thank you for the trust you place in us. And to everyone on the call, thank you for joining us today.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.