HOMETOGO SE EO 1 (HTG) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

good morning ladies and gentlemen and a warm welcome to home to go's investor and analyst call following the publication of the q1 figures of 2026. i'm delighted to welcome cfo sebastian bielski who will speak in a moment after the presentation we will move on to a q a session in which you will be able to ask your questions directly to the management let's dive straight into the presentation sebastian the stage is yours thank you very much and good morning everyone and thank you for joining home to go's q1 2026 earnings call as you have seen in our report published this morning we had a strong start to 2026 characterized by the disciplined and successful execution of our previously outlined strategic

roadmap following a transformative 2025 q1 results demonstrate that our scale transformation is in full swing let's look at how we've structured today's session to give you a clear picture of our continued momentum. Our call is divided into three main chapters. I will start by highlighting the key takeaways from our strong start to the year and our overall performance in Q1, both for our statutory financials and on a like-for-like basis. To wrap up, I will walk you through the latest progress against our 2026 strategic roadmap and our reaffirmed financial guidance for the full year before we open the floor for your questions. Let's dive straight into the first chapter we will start with the key highlights for the first quarter of 2026 first we achieved strong group profitability adjusted ebitda for the group improved by 7.2 million euros representing a 21 year-on-year increase on a like-for-like basis this performance was driven by a substantially improved marketing efficiency and tight cost control additionally we are seeing the first materialization of synergies from the inter-home integration yielding its first tangible benefits. Secondly, Home2Go Pro has become our successful new center of gravity. Our B2B segment has officially established itself as the new core for the group, now accounting for 66% of total group IFRS revenues. The segment showed excellent momentum with a 40% year-on-year increase in adjusted EBTA on a like-for-like basis. IFRS revenues for pro grew by 4.3 million or 13% year-on-year. Thirdly, we had disciplined execution of our strategy for the marketplace segment. We continue to prioritize profitability over top-line growth in our marketplace segment. This strategic shift, including the continued transition from advertising to on-site or booking revenue, resulted in a 12% year-on-year increase in adjusted EBITDA. Notably, our booking revenues backlog reached an all-time high for a first quarter despite a 20% lower advertising spend. This record backlog sets a strong foundation for the coming month and provides us with very good visibility for our revenue generation in q2 and q3 next we saw a significant turnaround in operating cash flow we achieved a positive operating cash flow of 2.6 million euros in the first quarter of this year this marks a very substantial 13.4 million year-on-year improvement compared to the negative 10.8 million euros we saw in the first quarter of last year This swing into positive territory was primarily driven by our strong and disciplined working capital management. Lastly, we are also reconfirming our guidance for 2026. Based on the good start into the year and the successful execution of our strategic roadmap, we confidently confirm our targets for the full year. We expect IFRS revenues in the range of 400 to 410 million euros and we reiterate our adjusted EBITDA guidance of 45 to 47 million moving ahead we will dive straight into the financial details for the first three months of this year let's take a closer look at our like for like P&L comparison please note that the like for like basis refers to a comparison of the statutory financial results for the first quarter of this year against the pro forma financial results for the first quarter of last year that means including interhome in order to eliminate any distortions created by the timing of the first time consolidation of this very significant acquisition first we look at the ifrs revenues on a like-for-like basis ifrs revenues remained flat at 59 million this reflects a stable top line development despite our deliberate strategic decision to deprioritize revenue growth in the marketplace segment in favor of profitability. The intentional negative growth in our marketplace segment was offset by a very good positive growth in our B2B segment. Secondly, the cost of revenue. It increased slightly by 4.2% to 16.9 million euros. This was driven by a 0.5 million increase in payment costs due to the higher adoption of the home-to-go payment offering by our partners. While this negatively impacts this P&L item, it was also a very important driver, which led to the very material improvement of our networking capital position, which we will discuss later in more detail. Next, we look at the marketing and sales line item. We saw a significant improvement of 15.2% with cost decreasing to 45 million euros this is the result of a 8.1 million lower advertising spend mainly in the marketplace segment we are clearly focusing on operational efficiency and margin improvement especially again within the marketplace segment next a look at the gna cost item this cost item decreased by 12.4 percent to 10.9 million euros the primary driver was a 2.3 million euros in savings from the termination of transitional service agreements related to the interhome integration these savings were partially offset by a 0.8 million euro increase in personnel expenses as we transferred some employees from hotel plan the former owner of interhome to be employed directly by interhome lastly and most importantly adjusted ebta improved by 7.2 million euros or 21 percent year on year took a negative 26.8 million euros. This strong like-for-like progress confirms our group strategy, combining the scaling of our high growth and high profitability B2B segment with strict marketing discipline in our B2C business. Now let's dive into our IFRS revenues and adjusted EBTA by each segment for the first quarter of 2026. Again, we will be comparing these on a like-for-like basis let's start with ifrs revenues on a group level overall revenues remain stable at 59 million euros for the marketplace segment ifrs revenues in q1 declined by circa 20 percent the main driver here were the deliberate reduction in advertising spending of 20 as well as the ongoing shift from advertising to on-site booking revenues while on-site booking revenues declined by just four percent advertising revenues declined by 33 percent for home to go on-site booking revenue carries a much higher strategic value as it provides a superior customer experience throughout the entire booking journey furthermore it enables us to achieve customer ownership fostering long-term relationships and driving repeat business consequently we continue to work actively with our partners to transition them from the old advertising model to the on-site booking model it is however important to know the differing accounting treatments for these two revenue screens advertising revenue is recognized recognized at the point in which a click or booking is made whereas on-site revenue is only recognized once this day has taken place this strategic shift from advertising to on-site booking revenues therefore results in a planned timing effect moving revenue from q1 which is the primary booking quarter into Q2 and Q3, which are the primary travel quarters. Home2Go Pro showed strong revenue growth across both revenue screens. Volume-based revenues grew by 10% year-on-year to 32 million euros, reflecting especially a strong start into the year for Interhome. Subscription revenue from our SaaS software offering, especially from Smuvo, increased significantly by 24% to 6.9 million euros. Let's now move over to adjusted EBITDA. At a group level, we significantly improved adjusted EBITDA by 7.2 million or 21% to a negative 26.8 million. Hereby it is important to note that Q1 and Q4 are always our weak quarters for profitability due to the typical seasonal patterns of our business. Home2Go Pro is a standout performer this quarter with a substantial 40% year-on-year improvement reaching negative 6.7 million this clearly demonstrates the underlying profitability and synergy potential for our b2b operations in the marketplace segment adjusted ebta improved by 12 percent year on year to a negative 20.1 million euros this progress is the direct result of our profitability first strategy driven by higher marketing efficiency and disciplined cost management across our b2c business moving from the like for like view to a comparison of our statutory results to be clear this comparison looks at our current performance against the figures as they were reported in q1 2025 which at that time did not yet include interhome for aifrs revenue we saw a significant statutory growth of 71.5 percent again reaching 59 million in the quarter first quarter of this year this jump is driven by the full consolidation of interhome which was not part of the group's reported figures in q1 of last year cost of revenues increased to 16.9 million euros reflecting a structural shift in our business model following the acquisition of interhome this is due to the inclusion of managed service operations from interhome which incurs substantial direct costs such as cleaning and laundry services next we'll look at product development and operations these expenses increased to 12.9 million euros this is simply a reflection of a larger workforce following the consolidation of interhome into the group marketing and sales remain stable at an absolute basis at 45 million euros despite a significantly larger revenue base this efficiency was primarily driven by reduced advertising spend particularly within the marketplace segment gna expenses reached 10.9 million remaining relatively flat despite the group's increased size this stability highlights the first realization of integration synergies particularly the termination of transitional services agreements and disciplined overhead management overall the adjusted ebda margin expended and this all led to a massive margin expansion of 35.8 percentage points improving from a negative 81.3 percent in the prior year to 45.5 percent in the first quarter of this year this again clearly demonstrates how we're delivering on our 2026 targets by driving group profitability through marketing efficiency and a significantly widened revenue base now let's also take a closer look at the composition of our ifrs revenues and adjusted ebda by segments for the first quarter again on a statutory basis comparing our current scale to the prior year period when interhome was not yet part of our reported figures for ifrs revenues on the group level we realized a massive scale transformation with almost 72 percent year-on-year growth to 59 million euros for home to go pro the standard driver is our volume based revenue which jumped by 690 to 30 32 million euros this again is the result of the consolidation of interho additionally as i said before subscriptions grew by a strong 24 to 6.9 million euros for the marketplace we see the continued strategic shift again advertising revenues declined to 9 million as we also prioritized profitability while booking and on-site revenues remained relatively stable at around 11.6 million euros for the adjusted ebda on the group level we improved our statutory adjusted ebda by around four percent to negative 26.8 million euros despite the significantly larger operational base hope to go pro reported an adjusted ebda of negative 6.7 million the year-on-year change of minus 30 percent in this view is a direct result of the statutory comparison as the q1 2025 figures did not yet include the full operational cost structure and seasonal q1 profile of for the marketplace again we see further proof of our operational discipline and adjusted ebda for this segment improved by 12 percent to negative 20.1 million euros let's turn to one of the most significant proof points of our operational excellence this quarter our marketing efficiency in the marketplace segment on the left hand side you can see the significant reduction in advertising spending we intentionally reduced our advertising spend by 20 percent year on year bringing it down to 29.2 million from 36.5 million in the first quarter of last year this is a clear result of our discipline strategy to prioritize high quality profitable growth over pure volume despite this massive 7.3 million reduction in marketing investment we successfully grew our booking revenue backlog to a new q1 all-time record of 75.4 million as shown on the right hand side of the slide the ability to lift the black backlog to new record levels while simultaneously cutting spend by a fifth is an exceptional achievement for our teams it demonstrates the increasing efficiency of our marketing engine and the strong underlying demand for our on-site booking offering this record backlog provides us with high visibility and a strong tailwind for our revenue recognition in the coming quarters let's now take a closer look at the health of our marketplace specifically our regional booking mix and the evolution of our average basket size we start with the region regional booking revenues share which you can see on the left the dach region remains our most important market accounting for 53 percent of total booking revenues on the marketplace which is a slight one percent increase year on year the rest of europe's share remains relatively stable year over year at 24 percent and north america now accounts for 23 percent of our regional mix this is a market in which we mainly operate under our advertising revenue model and in which we operate very opportunistically now i'll comment on our bucket size basket size evolution which you can see on the right overall our marketplace basket size grew by about three percent year-on-year to an average of 1,178 euros. This growth is mostly driven by our European core markets. In the Dutch region, the average basket size increased by about 9% year-on-year to 1,412 euros when excluding our short-term trip business. The rest of Europe followed a similar positive trajectory, with basket sizes climbing about 4% year-on-year to 1,413 euros. North America continues to represent our highest absolute value with an average basket size of about 1738 euros despite a year on year reduction in the basket size value i would now like to provide more transparency and clarity on the more significant items below adjusted ebda in our statutory pnl i'll start with share based payments which remained relatively stable year over year at about 4.7 million These are non-cash expenses, and they relate to our long-term incentive programs. One-off items below adjusted EBITDA totaled 1.5 million for the first quarter. These were primarily driven by integration costs of about 1.3 million, as we continue to generate synergies from the inter-home acquisition. Now looking at amortization and depreciation, we saw amortization of fair value step-ups from M&A increased to 4.5.4 million euros, which is up from 2.6 million euros in the first quarter of 2025. This reflects the increase in non-cash charges following the purchase price allocation for the interim acquisition. Regular amortization of intangible assets stood at about 1.8 million euros. Now also a look at the net financial income. This net financial income decreased to 8 million euros primarily due to several specific effects it includes the full amortization of remaining transaction costs related to our old bank loan which account for about 3.2 million and the unwinding of the discount on the deferred consideration for interhome of about 1.3 million euros it is important to highlight that both of these are non-cash effects actual interest on external debt during the first quarter of this year amounted to about 1.8 million euros in summary while our net income is impacted by these non-cash and integration related items the underlying operational progress is clearly visible in our significantly improved adjusted ebda and cash flow trajectory moving into two special topics i would like to spend time on as we continue to receive questions from our investors starting with the development of depreciation and amortization for q1 of this year total dna charges amounted to about 9 million euros relatively unchanged compared to q4 of last year but it also represents a significant step up compared to the 4.4 million euros in the first quarter of 2025 and is driven by the acquisition of interhome the largest part of dna about 5.4 million viewers relates to specifically to mna related intangibles such as brand, customer relationships and software. These were recognized as part of the purchase price allocation from past M&A transactions, of which Interhome was the largest. The Interhome acquisition is also the driver of the increase in M&A-related amortization from 2.6 million per quarter in Q1 to Q3 of last year to the 5.4 million seen in Q1 of this year. It is very crucial to remember that these M&A-related charges are entirely non-cash and do not impact our operational liquidity other dna components include depreciation of ppne which stood at about 1.8 million this reflects our current office and infrastructure footprint and the amortization of internally generated software stood at about 1.7 million we were asked for an outlook on these items for 2026 by a number of investors for your financial modeling we expect overall expenses for depreciation amortization for the full year 2026 to be approximately 36 million euros moving to our second deep dive an overview of the pnl effects of share-based compensation total share-based compensation charges for the first quarter stood at 4.7 million euros remaining consistent with the q1 2025 level the main drivers continue to be our virtual stock options vso's of about 3.0 million euros and those are the dark blue buckets and restricted stock units or rsus at 1.7 million those are the purple buckets lti expenditure was elevated in q2 and q3 of last year this is a direct result of certain contractual commitments specifically the four-year contract extension for our ceo patrick and a new three-year contract for me as incoming and new cfo quick reminder on the accounting these costs appear higher during renewal periods which are usually in the first quarter every year because they are front loaded in the pnl according to ifs standards rather than being spread evenly over the vesting period again we've asked been asked by investors for a full year outlook for share best compensation we currently expect the total pnl impact from share base compensation for the full year of 2026 to remain stable or even slightly lower compared to 2025. It is also important to note that these are non-cash charges and, under current IFRS rules, are not marked to market, meaning they don't fluctuate with the current share price once granted. There is also no catch-up or restatement of these costs if the share price changes. Let's now move to our liquidity development and cash generation profile. On the left-hand side, you can see the significant improvement of our operating cash flow. As highlighted earlier, we achieved a significant milestone with a positive operating cash flow of 2.6 million in the first quarter of this year. This represents a big swing of plus 13.4 million euros compared to the prior year quarter, where it stood at a negative 10.8 million euros. It is a clear testament to our improved operational health and cash generative power early in the year on the right hand side you can see a bridge from adjusted ebda to unlevered free cash flow this is a metric which we have especially discussed during the nordic bond roadshow and which we decided to include now because we know that we don't just have shareholders anymore but also bondholders who are also very interested in this so to provide full transparency we walk through the bridge from our operational earnings to our unlimited free cash flow now we start with our adjusted ebda which improved by 1.2 million year on year to negative 26.8 million from there we deduct our capex specifically 2.7 million euros for capitalized software and about half a million euros for capex for ppn we then account for interest and principal payments for leasing of about 1.4 million euros and income taxes which we paid in the first quarter of about 2.3 million euros. Finally, we factor in the most significant driver for this quarter, the change in networking capital. We generated a substantial cash inflow of 33.2 million euros from networking capital in Q1. This is a significant 11.6 million euros improvement over the previous year. Key contributors were the efficient management of trade receivables with an 8.2 million higher inflow than in the first quarter of last year and an increase of other liabilities of about 8.2 million euros which were mainly driven by advance payments from travelers. The results of this is a near breakeven unlevered free cash flow in the first quarter. Driven by this disciplined cash management our unlimited free cash flow improved by 12.1 million euros to reach negative 0.5 million euros achieving this improvement in a seasonally low first quarter is a result we are particularly proud of let's move to the next chapter of our presentation the progress on our strategic goals for this year as you may recall we introduced our 2026 strategic roadmap in march of this year to provide a clear and transparent framework. We are successfully executing our strategic roadmap. Let's look at our year-to-date progress across our five key pillars. First, we are looking at the finalization of the inter-home integration. We are moving at a high pace, successfully exiting two more transitional services agreements in Q1. And most importantly, we have now captured 6 million of our 10 million annualized cost-saving target. second we look at the strategic m&a in the home to go pro segment we continue to pursue our buy and build roll-up strategy for vacation rental property managers year to date we have already closed three bolt-on acquisitions in the property management space in switzerland in italy and in spain these were highly value accretive deals adding about 200 units under management at an exceptionally attractive multiple of less than one times ebitda third we're looking at the harmonization of group-wide brands following the successful presentation of our home to go originals umbrella brand at the itb in march we are moving into the next phase we are on track to launch our co-branding initiative for interhome and causa properties in the second quarter of this year significantly enhancing our global brand presence and trust fourth we continue to drive operational excellence in the marketplace. This is our most significant operational proof point this quarter. As discussed previously, we achieved a new Q1 record in booking revenues backlog. We delivered this result while simultaneously reducing our advertising spend significantly by 20% year on year, demonstrating a massive leap in marketing efficiency and ROI. Finally, we're also working to maintain our leadership position in ai we remain at the forefront of the ai revolution in travel our home to go mcp is now launched now home to go chat gpt app is live allowing generative ai users and autonomous agents direct access to our vacation rental inventory looking ahead we are already working on our next integration with anthropics cloud ensuring home to go remains the essential partner for the next generation of AI-driven commerce. This comprehensive roadmap directly fuels our financial ambitions for 2026. Based on our performance in the first quarter, we are confirming our previous guidance for the full year 2026. We reiterate our target for IFRS revenues of between 400 and 410 million euros, and we are aiming for an adjusted EBDI of between 45 billion and 47 million euros as we look towards the remainder of the year we may we remain mindful of the three external key factors built into our guidance first the macroeconomic uncertainty we continue to monitor global developments particularly the ongoing conflict in the middle east second fx volatility especially in relation to the swiss franc euro exchange rate which remains our primary currency pair following the interim acquisition third the strategic reallocation of capital our deliberate shift from b2c marketplace to b2b segments remains the core driver of our margin expansion but this also leads to a negative revenue reset in the marketplace segment but it also significantly strengthens the group overall profitability to wrap up our presentation let's summarize the four key takeaways from our performance in the first quarter of this year First, our strategic roadmap remains firmly on track. We achieved a significant 7.2 million euro like-for-like improvement in group-adjusted EBTA, representing a 21% year-on-year increase. This progress was driven by our high marketing efficiency and the first tangible materialization of inter-home synergies. Secondly, Home2Go Pro is our new center of gravity. The B2B segment is now clearly established as a key driver for profit and revenue growth and contributes 66% of total group IFRS revenues. Performance in the B2B segment was outstanding, delivering a strong 40% year-on-year like-for-like increase in adjusted EBTA. Third, our strong operational cash flow trajectory. We successfully turned our operating cash flow positive in the first quarter. this represents a nearly 13 million euro improvement compared to the prior year underscores our enhanced cash generative power and confirms the successful optimization of our operational cash cycles fourth we confirm our full year guidance for this year based on our successful start to the year we are reconfirming our full year targets for ifrs revenues of 400 to 410 billion and adjusted ebda of 45 to 47 million euro our confidence is supported by continued gains in marketplace marketing efficiency and the ongoing scaling of our home to go pro

segment with that i thank you very much for your attention today and we will now open the floor for your questions yes thank you very much also from my side for your presentation we will now move on to the q a session and for an engaging conversation we kindly request to ask your questions in person via audio line to do so please click on the raise hand button if you have dialed via phone you can raise your hand by pressing star key nine and additionally you can also place your questions in our chat and i will read them out loud for you we're going to start with mr cruza today mr cruza i just sent you an invite to unmute yourself can you hear me sorry we can

hear you hello thanks thanks for taking my question thanks sebastian for the update uh just two follow-up questions uh firstly congrats on the on the working capital management can you give us bit more insight in what actually the factors were so were you able to um yeah change payment terms on supplier or the customer side is this a structural topic due to the inter-home acquisition a bit more insight there would be very very helpful and then the second question would be on thanks for providing the guidance on the on the stock-based compensation could you maybe also give a rough outlook for the other expenses you adjust for uh the one-off cost that will be very helpful

thank you yes um thank you so on the improvement of networking capital um there is uh two items to note the first one is really a structural item um so that will also continue uh to drive an improvement in networking capital over the coming years and that is the continued rollout and further use of our home to go payment service so more and more of our partners especially on the marketplace segment use our home to go payment infrastructure and that means we receive the money actually a lot earlier so before we had to wait up to half a year to receive our money and we now receive this um at the time of of the booking so this is a very structural driver of this i think the the second effect that we're seeing is in relation to interhome um as you may remember interhome was part of migros so a cooperative um strict working capital management was was not a priority under migros ownership um they always had enough cash in the group so that wasn't a scarce resource and we have implemented a lot more working capital discipline at interhome so yes I think this is something that we will continue to see especially this year when compared to last year and and it will then remain at this level then your second question was some sort of background around the other adjustment costs um so the the kind of like restructuring costs and so forth um it's a little bit hard to give an exact number but i would assume something like a mid-single digit euromillion number for for this year okay so a slight decline due to the completion or progress of the inter-home acquisition i would i would assume okay um then just a quick follow-up

on on the payment topic so that would mean that structurally you would probably have sort of a shift from um cash flow from the from the summer months more towards the beginning of the year as the booking pattern normally is uh if if that if the payment uh uh yeah if if you succeed to to bring more customers onto your payment solution great well that is partially correct like so the the working capital thing is is an ongoing right so we don't

just look at one period but we're a going concern business so so that will repeat over and over again and it's it's not just something that happens in Q1 and Q3 but it's actually an ongoing topic so it's not a shift within the year it is also a shift within the year but not just a shift within the year number one and then the second thing is as long as we continue to grow in the B2B segment we will also always see a positive cash effect from a change in networking capital right so in the B2B segment especially at Interhome we received the money from customers well in advance and and again this is something where we have any given day of the year we have a negative working capital situation at interhome and so as we continue to grow that business that will also remain a positive cash contributor so if you think about kind of like a dcf perspective maybe right then um what we do in our modeling we for the you know like also the forecast period we always have a positive contribution from the change in networking capital given that we are growing the business okay perfect and then just final question um on on m a activities um what are you seeing at the moment what what can we or could we expect maybe throughout the year that would be very helpful thank you yeah um so um there is kind of like two buckets of transactions that we're looking at uh one i like to call a staubsauger deal so we're trying to hoover up small targets and this is the the core driver of our buy and build roll-up strategy so these are all small very hyper local agencies having 50 units under management 100 units under management maybe 200 units under management they're very small very regional and our what we're currently doing is building an internal infrastructure to do many many many of these deals because we really have a very good deal inflow because we have a network of 210 local service agencies at interhome so the people working in these local agencies they know the other operators in their town and they know who might look to retire and who's looking to to sell their business and so we're trying to use that as a um as a funnel for the deal flow and then we're trying to build the internal infrastructure to actually then onboard these always very quickly important to understand that we're not buying businesses we're buying contract portfolios so we're not buying we're basically buying revenue right we're not taking on a further fixed cost um but we still need to build kind of like an engine to be able to to execute these these really at scale but we will definitely do more of these small transactions throughout the years um in addition to that we're also looking at larger m a deals um in the property management space with these larger transactions it's a little bit hard to say when exactly will they happen will they happen different scale we're really talking you know like higher single digit million euro amounts in purchase price so we're hoping to close maybe one or two of days in the course of this year but it's that is an M&A game right so you cannot really focus when they will happen and if they will happen but the smaller ones the Staubsauger deals we're definitely we'll do a couple of more this year excellent thanks all the best and looking forward

to our virtual in june thanks yes thank you thank you very much mr kruse for your questions we have another risen hand by mr knut hinkle you may unmute yourself now yeah good morning can you yes perfectly thank you hello fantastic so um i got two questions so first one is um um you stuck to your outlook for the for the full year 26 um but at the same time you reported on some bolt-on acquisitions at obviously very favorable terms so my question would be why don't they lift the outlook for the full year my first question the second question more uh uh uh on the on the detail you just on on you just outlined that you're buying um contract portfolios rather than companies so my question would be don't you need don't the seller need the consent of of the of the homeowner before he can sell these these contracts how does it technically work if you just buy contracts instead of businesses so that would be my my two questions thanks yeah so on the first question on the basically the impact of the bold on acquisitions on EBITDA they're they're very small right so the purchase price was about half a million euros so that means if we had a

one times EBITDA multiple it's basically half a million euro of EBITDA so in the overall context of 45 to 47 million euros it is more of a rounding error at the moment and this was not something that we would use to to adjust the guidance um at this point in time so it's just not big enough to to really make an impact if we do more of these throughout the year it will become impactful but the three months the three months that we had they're just not big enough the second one on the acquisition of the contract portfolios um so you can think about it the same way as for example in the insurance brokerage space right so if an insurance broker retires they often sell their contract portfolio to aggregators or successors no you don't need the explicit consent right the the customer trans customer relationship just moves over customers have the right to cancel the contract afterwards but they have that in any way so there is no no change um compared to that so it's um from a legal technical perspective it's a very very simple transaction okay very clear thank you very much thank you mr hinkel for your question we do have another risen hand by mr noise benjamin noise please unmute yourself now yeah hello good

morning I had a couple questions regarding the the revenue shift you referred to in your booking revenues from advertising driven to on-site you said revenue shifts away from Q1 into later quarters can you quantify that effect um so help me understanding what your question exactly relates to right i think the the point i would point you to is more the uh revenue backlog actually right so that increased

so um or slightly increased by one percent so you can use that as a measure when you look at the last year um to see how uh booking revenue then came in at q2 q and q3 so this is i think a pretty good guideline to to look at um yeah i think that's the for me the best way to try to answer your question there okay yeah because you had a a particular um decline in the advertising driven booking revenues and you said um more is on site now on your own sides but there you can only realize the revenue later so not in q1 but right so meaning whatever you transferred out of the advertising driven to the on-site booking bucket and that is revenue realization that will have move to later quarters that i was trying to understand exactly exactly right and you can see that in the backlog but there is there is two factors right so the first one is that we pulled down marketing spending by 20 so that obviously had an overall impact on the revenue the impact was weighted towards the advertising uh revenue business which is the business that is strategically a lot less attractive for us because we don't own the customer and there is no way for us to

generate repeat business out of this so we tried to wade it towards the part of the revenue which is less valuable for us okay makes sense then I saw your positive operating free cash flow which is from the one-time networking capital effect that you explained that would mean we will have this this one-time networking capital effect probably only in 26 from 27 onwards we should expect q1 still to be a cash flow negative quarter right uh no and and and this is very much not not what i try to say

um and because i just had that debate with with tim cruiser right and i tried to explain the networking capital so it's definitely not a one-time effect there is structural forces at work here and i expect the operating free cash flow of q1 2027 to be much better also driven by ongoing movements in the networking capital number one we continue to expand the part of our business which runs on our own payment infrastructure which is structural secondly we are growing our b2b business and as long as we grow our b2b business we will always have a positive effect from the change in networking capital so no both of these are structural they are not i repeat not one time

in nature okay but the the release of cash is particularly strong this year right i would also not subscribe to that statement okay okay cool um you said you have a slight um sensitivity to the euro swiss franc fx rate um could you give us a feel for the ebitda sensitivity to the exchange rate for like i don't know yeah one percent change a five percent or ten percent change yeah i would i would point you to a note in our annual report 2025 in which we actually have published such a sensitivity okay i will take a look there um you've given us a 45 to 47 million adjusted EBITDA guidance could you also give us a rough free cash flow guidance uh no we we don't uh officially guide on free cash flow okay but i um i seem to remember from the previous bond roadshow that there's roughly five million of lease payments is that number yeah like that i mean we yeah mr neuser i think we do mr neuser we actually have another a lot

of other reason that's my last one that's last question yeah so mr neuer i would invite you for a call because we're going through a lot of your questions the things that we debated during our bond road show they still hold okay many things right so there is there is no change um if you have further questions please send an email to to carsten fricke very very happy to set up a call but we have a couple of other investors who also would absolutely make sense thank you thank you bye thank you mr noisa we are going over to barat nagaraj you may unmute yourself now can you hear us hello hope you can hear me hi yes we can hi excellent um just a couple of

questions please uh do you have any kpis to share how the internalization of the distribution margins by using your own home-to-go marketplace to fill your vacation rental inventory? How is that helping you to improve profitability?

Yeah, so at the moment, I mean, that was also something that we always said. At the moment, we are focused on generating the 10 million in cost savings that we had promised. Then the 20 million in value creation upside, our guidance was always that we would see this in the numbers from 2027 onwards. So that statement still holds.

Okay, okay. With regards to the booking backlog, just wondering, despite the lower ad spend, how was it that this was so strong? And what, in terms of your strategy to, you know, operational excellence in the marketplace, how do you plan to do that with the lower spend? Any further color on that would be helpful.

Thank you. yeah I mean we're we're trying to do a couple of things right so number one we're always looking at additional marketing channels right so we're trying to always reallocate marketing towards the channels where we see the best return on advertising spends number one this is an ongoing exercise and number two we had a just a very deep and granular look into our marketing spending and we try to just aggregate it by the marginal dollar return that we can generate and move much, much more aggressively towards the high ROAS end of our marketing efficiency. So it's an ongoing game. We are generally very good to steer in markets and in channels. So this worked out very, very well for us. I would leave it at that because it starts otherwise to inform our competitors and we would like to keep that a little bit to ourselves what we're doing exactly.

Okay, sure. Just a very quick follow up. That's the last one for me. North America, do we expect that to continue to decline? I know it only declined by 1% year on year right now, but given that's not your focus anymore, should we expect that to continue to decline the rest of the year and next year as well?

Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, we're opportunistically operating in America, right? So this is the part of the business where we're really only playing in the advertising revenue game. So we're steering this from Berlin. We don't have an operational footprint in the USA. So it's very, very opportunistically for us. if we see good ways to make money there we will absolutely do it because we should um if this is a market um that we see uh where we cannot make good money then we will pull back from it again but again it's very opportunistically um the way that we look at it thank you thank you very much for your questions um we're moving on to mr volker bossa you may unmute yourself now Yes, hello.

Speaking from Bada Bank, congrats on the results. I would have two questions left. First one is on current trading. Obviously, market environment is challenging. Families have less disposable income, but on the other hand, your alternative accommodation offer provides families the opportunity to keep costs under control. So question, how is booking um behavior changing do you see any trends and an update how uh april and may worked out so far would be helpful thank you and the second just a brief one on the take rate for on-site bookings what was the take rate and how does the take rate develop um year over year thanks yeah so the first one maybe just a little bit of of market backdrop what we're seeing so we're really seeing two countervailing effects at the moment so the first one is that we see a shift in

travel behavior when it comes to destinations so the the package holiday especially going to Turkey and to Egypt is definitely under a lot of pressure is what we can can see it here from the market that is a trend which redirects people who want to travel more towards continental europe and in many of those of those countries like for example spain and and france the vacation rental space would be the natural destination so that is something that is positive for us but we do also see and and you can see this in a lot of surveys that consumers are under stress they're worried especially customers in in germany are very worried um and and we can see that they're looking overall at their household disposable income um i mean they start pulling back in other areas especially you know ordering referendo or going out to restaurants or buying expensive clothes so the big family holiday which is our core product comes relatively late um in in the kind of like cutting back uh part of the household disposable income but depending on on how this whole second and third order impact from higher oil prices higher kerosene prices maybe flights being cancelled how that all plays out over the couple of months is just something that we need to to watch right um and and and need to to see how how this all plays out at the moment i would say it is neutral or slightly positive for us um so the what we can see in our own numbers is that travelers continue to behave how we expect them to behave so there is no large shifts in in booking behavior um so this all kind of like is within expected parameters um but we really need to have a very watchful eye on how this develops over the first um couple of uh next couple of months um so on the take rate i think it's down slightly uh versus last year

um so last year was i think 13.1 percent it is down to 12.8 so a touchdown um this is mainly driven by a change in partner mix okay thank you very much and all the best thank you thank you mr boss we're now moving on to our last question today who is mr ramon huber you may unmute yourself now i just sent you an invite hello you can hear me yes we can hear you hello congratulations to the the strong figures i just have one left was that uh like surprising for yourself that uh

cutting the marketing so much that the sales ended up on the same level or you expected it to be honest and without wanting to be arrogant we expected it right so we did a lot of analysis work up front the good thing is that our team has gone through these exercises a number of times before because the first thing that you do in times of crisis and especially in times of external shocks for example during covet you cut down advertising spending so we had a lot of uh experience from the past and our team had a lot of experience from the past there is always execution risk involved when you make such drastic shifts in um in budgets um but it it came out um actually a little bit better than we than we expected it to be so we're we're really thankful and proud of the of the job that our marketing team and especially the performance marketing team in the marketplace did so well done midsos in in case you are listening yeah that's what i also say well done thank you very much and uh have a good day thank you thank you mr huba and thank you for all of your questions we have not received any more questions

in our chat box or risen hands so dear participants if there are any further questions please raise your hand or put your question in our chat box we're happy to answer them we still have some minutes time but i guess everything has been answered and i would say thank you very much for your participation we will now come to the end of today's earnings call as we have not received any further questions you will find the presentation on home to go's website and also at the airtime platform by clicking into today's event dear participants thank you for joining and your interest in home to go should further questions arise at a later time please feel free to contact investor relations thanks once again have a nice day and goodbye