Earnings call transcript: Home2Go projects strong growth in Q4 2024

Home2Go reported a robust financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2024, with significant increases in booking revenues and adjusted EBITDA, signaling strong growth momentum. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains an impressive 96% gross profit margin and has demonstrated strong revenue growth of 25.78% over the last twelve months. The company has also set ambitious targets for 2025, projecting substantial revenue and EBITDA growth. While current EPS stands at -€0.18, analysts on InvestingPro expect the company to achieve profitability this year.

Key Takeaways

• Booking revenues for Q4 2024 increased by 70% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA surged by 616% to 12.8 million euros.
• The company expanded into eight new markets and launched several innovative products.
• Home2Go projects 2025 booking revenues to exceed 350 million euros, a 35% growth.

Company Performance

Home2Go demonstrated strong financial performance in 2024, with booking revenues reaching 259.7 million euros, a 37% increase from the previous year. The company’s adjusted EBITDA saw an impressive 616% rise, reflecting enhanced operational efficiency and strategic market expansion. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet, with a healthy current ratio of 1.8, indicating strong financial stability. The vacation rental market’s continued growth, coupled with Home2Go’s innovative offerings, has positioned the company favorably against its competitors. For deeper insights into Home2Go’s financial health and growth potential, InvestingPro subscribers can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, featuring detailed analysis and valuation metrics.

Financial Highlights

• Booking revenues: 259.7 million euros, up 37% year-over-year
• IFRS revenues: 212.3 million euros, up 31% year-over-year
• Adjusted EBITDA: 12.8 million euros, up 616% year-over-year
• Gross cash balance: 82.7 million euros as of December 2024

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Home2Go anticipates 2025 to be a breakthrough year, projecting booking revenues to exceed 350 million euros and IFRS revenues to grow over 40% to 300 million euros. The company also aims for an adjusted EBITDA of at least 35 million euros and expects to achieve positive free cash flow for the first time. This outlook aligns with analyst expectations tracked by InvestingPro, with consensus price targets ranging from €3.77 to €5.60, suggesting potential upside from current levels. The platform offers 6 additional exclusive ProTips and detailed financial metrics to help investors make informed decisions. The planned acquisition of InterHome, set to consolidate in June 2025, is expected to further bolster Home2Go’s market position.

Executive Commentary

Dr. Patrick Andree, CEO, stated, "2025 will be a breakthrough year, solidifying Home2Go’s position to become Europe’s leading vacation rental powerhouse." CFO Stefan Schneider highlighted the strategic importance of the InterHome acquisition, expecting Home2Go Pro to achieve a 30% adjusted EBITDA margin earlier than anticipated.

Risks and Challenges

• Integration of InterHome could present operational challenges.
• Market competition remains intense, necessitating continued innovation.
• Economic uncertainties could impact consumer travel spending.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the potential of AI search and marketing efficiency, the growth challenges of the subscription business, and the integration strategy for InterHome. Executives addressed these concerns, emphasizing strategic initiatives to enhance market positioning and operational margins.

Full transcript - Hunting PLC (HTG) Q4 2024:

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Home2Go Full Year and Q4 twenty twenty four Earnings Call. I am Shari, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q and A session. The conference must now be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it’s my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Sebastian Robert. Please go ahead.

Sebastian Robert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance, Home2Go: Thank you very much, and good morning, dear analysts and investors, and welcome to Home2Go’s full year twenty twenty four earnings call. My My name is Sebastian Gramad, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance, and I’m pleased to be joined today by our Co Founder and CEO, Doctor. Patrick Andree and our CFO, Stefan Schneider. Together, they will walk you through our financial highlights for the fourth quarter and the full year 2024 as well as our guidance for the financial year 2025. As always, this call is being recorded and a replay will be available later today on our Investor Relations website.

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: With that, I would

Sebastian Robert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance, Home2Go: like to hand it over to you, Patrick. The floor is yours.

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: Thank you, Sebastian. The analysts and investors, I’m excited to be here today to reflect on what has been a truly milestone year for Home2Go. In 2024, our tenth year as a company, we made significant progress across all key areas, enhancing our technology and AI powered products, expanding our software and service solutions and strengthening our market position in Europe. Overall, Home2Go took major steps towards shaping the future of the chartered accommodation and becoming Europe’s leading vacation rental platform. This progress is clearly reflected in our financial performance for 2024.

First, booking revenues reached EUR 259,700,000.0, representing an impressive 37% increase year over year. Second, IFRS revenues grew by 31% year over year reaching EUR 212,300,000.0. And third, adjusted EBITDA surged to EUR 12,800,000.0, a more than 600% increase compared to last year. With these results, we have achieved the goals we set at the beginning of this year: driving sustained growth while significantly improving our profitability. At the core of this success, our two key segments, the Home2Go Marketplace and Home2Go Pro.

So let’s take a closer look at how each of them performed in 2024. Starting with the Marketplace segment, our AI powered B2C business offering the world’s largest selection of vacation rentals. Our Marketplace offers a superior product experience to meet demand for the modern traveler. With more than 20,000,000 offers and including our well known key brands such as Home2Go, CasaMundo and Aeromizio, we now serve a global audience via local apps and websites in more than 30 countries. The segment’s gross booking value gross booking value grew to over EUR 1,700,000,000.0 in 2024, representing a 21% increase year over year.

This strong momentum translates into EUR 151,000,000 in IFS revenues, up 34% year over year. And while booking on-site was the primary growth driver for that, growing IFS revenues in 2024 by 67% and in the fourth quarter remarkably by even 163% year over year. Also profitability for the marketplace improved significantly as adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 2,900,000.0, more than 22 times higher than last year. Turning now to Home2Go Pro, our B2B segment providing software and tech enabled service solutions for vacation rental suppliers and other customers. With Home2Go Pro, we help more than 60,000 paying customers to streamline operations, enhance distribution and unlock new revenue opportunities, strengthening our position as a key enabler in the vacation rental industry.

So we continue to see strong results in this segment. In 2024, Enable gross booking value exceeded EUR 2,600,000,000.0, reflecting a 29% growth year over year. As a reminder, Enable GBV represents travel facilitated through a Home2Go Pro solution, primarily based on data from our customers using our tools. And Home2Go Pro also remained a key profitability driver, generating EUR 9,900,000.0 in adjusted EBITDA, nearly six times higher than last year and now contributing 33% of our group’s total IFRS revenues in 2024. Let’s now take a deeper look at our Marketplace segment and walk through its 2024 achievements and key growth drivers.

In 2024, we made significant advancements in our AI powered marketplace, further enhancing the traveler experience while driving stronger engagement, loyalty and retention. A key milestone was the evolution of our AI powered assistance, AI Sunny, designed to provide instant support for booking related inquiries. AI Sunny has efficiently reduced the need for human agent intervention measured by an already improved escalation rate of a staggering 57%, helping us provide faster, high quality customer service at scale. Beyond AI, we also introduced new value added tools to support travelers throughout their entire journey with holistic travel planning. We launched a partnership with Komoot, the world’s leading outdoor app, giving travelers access to expert curated hiking and biking routes as an added benefit of downloading the Home2Go app, empowering travelers, especially in rural areas, so in our key destinations, to explore their surroundings with ease.

We also continue to provide options to travelers that want to make sustainable travel choices. With our partner, Squeak, travelers across all Home2Go regions can now compensate for the emissions of their vacation rental stays after checkout. And for travelers in Germany with plans to launch in new markets, we introduced weather props, a revolutionary feature that guarantees a full refund if rain disrupts the trip, ensuring that bad weather never ruins a vacation. And finally, our Home2Go app continues to be a major driver of repeat demand, reducing reliance on paid channels and strengthening traveler loyalty. Since 2019, global monthly active users have grown at a 40% compound annual growth rate and at 48% in our core DAS market, making it increasingly powerful platform for direct engagement and retention.

With an iOS App Store rating of 4.8 stars and 4.6 stars on Google Play in Germany, the app is not only growing rapidly, but also delivering an exceptional experience that keeps travelers coming back. Another key milestone in late twenty twenty four and early twenty twenty five was the expansion of Home2Go’s global footprint, bringing our marketplace to even more travelers worldwide. Since December 2024, we have successfully launched eight new markets, including Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Slovakia and Slovenia. With these additions, Home2Go now operates localized websites and apps in more than 30 countries, spanning Europe, North America, South America, Australia and the Asia Pacific region. This expansion reflects our commitment to making incredible homes more accessible globally while unlocking new revenue opportunities for Home2Go.

Travelers in these new markets can now accept our extensive vacation rental selection in their local language and currency, and that alongside with our key AI powered innovations. So as we continue to grow, we remain focused on delivering a seamless and localized booking experience to travelers worldwide. One of the cornerstones of our profitability success has been the cultivation of a loyal and engaged customer base, driving strong repeat demand. We see that when travelers try home to go once, they are more likely to come back. Over the past year alone, we have grown booking revenues from repeat customers by 33.

That’s more than 10 times growth since 2019 and more than 17 times in our core SaaS market. And this is then also reflected in our growth in booking revenues from direct traffic that grew more than 31% year over year, a clear sign that more travelers are visiting Home2Go directly or searching our brand names. And as you know, another key driver of our profitability uplift is our relentless focus on marketing efficiency. Through data driven insights, AI powered targeted bidding campaigns and optimized user acquisition and retention strategies, we continue to maximize the impact of our marketing efforts, reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message. 2024, this allowed us to further reduce marketing and sales costs as a share of IFRS revenues to only 62%, representing an improvement of 38 percentage points since 2019.

Our marketplace continues to offer high quality attractive demand to boost performance for our trusted partners, represented by their willingness to pay higher take rates. We see strong improvements in our on-site take rates, driven by our strategic shift towards higher margin on-site bookings and the impact of the relevance of our short term business. For the year for the full year 2024, the on-site take rate increased to 12.7%, up 1.5 percentage points year over year from 11.2% in 2023. And in Q4, the on-site share count reached 12.5%, reflecting a strong 2.8 percentage point increase year over year. In parallel, we are growing our on-site booking revenue share.

So in 2024, the on-site share in the DACH region reached an exceptional 86%, another 8% up in terms of percentage points year over year, while globally, our on-site share increased to 61%, an improvement of 11 percentage points year over year. Beyond driving profitability, our continuously increasing on-site booking share reinforces Home2Go’s position as a premier booking channel for leading vacation rental players, who gain immense value from Home2Go. Today, we are the first or second largest contributor of booking revenues for 50% of our top 25 partners. And additionally, we rank within the top five booking contributors for nearly 90% of our top 25 partners. These achievements highlight the strength of our marketplace model and our ability to generate high value bookings for our partners, further strengthening Home2Go as a premier platform in the vacation rental industry.

So let’s now take a closer look at Home2Go Pro and its financial performance during 2024 as well as key product advancements that further enable our customer success. Home2Go Pro has evolved into key growth driver for our business, significantly contributing to both revenue and margin expansion. In 2024, Home2Go Pro accounted for approximately 33% of our group’s ISS revenue, supported by strong demand for our V3 software and service solutions. The segment also saw continued strong growth in enabled gross bookings value, reaching over EUR 2,600,000,000.0 in 2024, a 29% increase year over year. This reflects the increasing adoption of our solutions by professional property managers, destination marketing organizations and private wholes, who all benefit from our technology to streamline operations and maximizing their reach.

Looking ahead, Home2Go Pro will play an even larger role in our business. As you know, with the acquisition of InterHome, the expected pro form a 2024 ISSS revenue share of Home2Go Pro would be around 55%, making it the dominant segment within our group. So this shift underscores the increasing importance of our software driven solutions, which not only drive high margin revenue streams, but also position us as a leader in enabling the professional vacation rental industry. Let’s now look into one of our key developments within the Home2Go Pro subscription business, which increased IFS revenue nearly 25% year over year. So zooming in on Smoo, our subscription based software solution for private and semi professional vacation rental halls, we’ve rapidly elevated and advanced our products.

In late twenty twenty four and early twenty twenty five, we introduced a refreshed brand design alongside major product enhancements to further strengthen Smoove’s position as the leading all in one management platform. A key milestone was the launch of the new Smoove app designed to provide an even more seamless, efficient and stress free rental management experience. With a modernized look and feel, improved usability and an intuitive interface, new Smoothware app makes it easier than ever for hosts to manage their properties on the go. Beyond these design and usability improvements, we also rolled out four major product innovations. First, the new website builder.

This tool allows hosts now to seamlessly create and launch their own direct booking websites, reducing dependence on third party platforms and increasing direct revenue streams. Second, Smooth Dynamic Pricing, a smart pricing solution that helps occupancy and revenue by automatically adjusting rates based on real time market data demand and seasonality. Third, the new invoicing feature to simplify financial processes. This feature automatically generates invoices, especially for direct bookings without an OTA in between, making transactions even more efficient and seamless. And fourth, launch a new logo and a modern UI to increase usability of critical product features as already pointed out, but specifically interesting for the calendar and the Smoove app store.

These efforts will continue obviously throughout 2025. So with these enhancements, Moo continues to drive revenue expansion in our subscription business and unlock new opportunities for our partners to scale their business. Another exciting development within Home2Go Pro in late twenty twenty four was the launch of the travel agency hub by Home2Go Pro Dopekanga, a new gateway designed specifically for travel agency partners. The solution enables trusted travel agencies to seamlessly search and book vacation rentals from our extensive global inventory, unlocking new demand sources for both agencies and Home2Go. The travel agency Hubbills on Home2Go Prodopferinga’s powerful suite of white label solutions, which allows partners like the German two operator TUI to integrate our technology through customized interfaces and API solutions.

Travel agencies benefit from the same intuitive experience as our B2C marketplace, but with exclusive features tailored to their needs. So if we’re looking at the benefits for our partners, these include access to world largest selection of vacation rentals, allowing agencies to enhance their offerings for clients competitive commissions on every booking creating new revenue opportunities for agencies value rebooking insights, providing a clearer view of customer demand and trends and a tailored payment and invoicing process streamlining agency operations and last but not least, dedicated support from Home2Go’s in house customer experience team, ensuring a smooth and efficient booking process. So since launch, the travel agency has already gained strong traction, including securing key customers such as Lutz Haase city center alongside other value partners like Foer or Smettening and some so many more. As we continue to expand this offering, we see tremendous potential in further integrating vacation rentals into the travel agency ecosystem, strengthening again Home2Go Pro’s distribution network. So we’re now shifting to 2025.

So let’s explore current trading trends, key market dynamics and operational developments shaping Home2Gold’s performance in the early months of this year. We saw a strong start in January with booking revenues tracking above 2024 levels. However, in February, we observed a temporary slowdown, which we attribute to the German Federal Election and the associated macroeconomic uncertainty in consumer behavior paired with a later Easter. And currently, demand has rebounded in March. Current trends indicate that we are again tracking ahead of 2024 and our first quarter performance remains in line with expectations.

As a reminder, given Easter falls later this year in Q2 and is a key driver for travel demand, we expect stronger momentum for the upcoming next quarter. Additionally, as a reminder again, our booking revenues backlog reached a record high EUR46.9 million at the end of twenty twenty four. This marks our highest year end backlog to date, providing solid revenue visibility and a strong foundation for continued growth in 2025. On top of this foundation for accelerated growth in 2025, we also continue to see Home2Go be a competitive leader across new ways that travelers attend planning. So with AI driven search, because the volume of travelers coming to Home2Go via AI driven search engines has increased more than 30 times year over year in the beginning of twenty twenty five.

And then looking at Home2Go’s visibility in these AI searches and large language models such as ChessGBT or Pelexity AI, Home2Go is the most frequently mentioned vacation rental marketplace with a 38% share of AI generated responses for vacation rental search queries, well ahead of Booking.com, Airbnb and Fable Direct, the German alternative accommodation subsidiary of Expedia. This leadership position is a direct result of our continued investments in organic visibility through SEO and PR efforts And by leveraging advanced AI driven content strategies and optimizing our visibility in top tier assets, we have positioned Home2Go as the go to brand for vacation rentals and AI assisted searches. As AI powered discovery continues to grow, we see this as an important long term driver of organic traffic and brand awareness, further reducing our reliance on paid marketing. Another major milestone for growing Home2Go’s German brand awareness in 2025 is our partnership with the well known Bundesliga club, as the Estonian Berlin. As of February 2025, Home2Go proudly became Union’s main sponsor with our logo now displayed on the team’s jersey and Home2Go branding receiving significant airtime on every televised day.

So we are the main sponsor for the remainder of twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five season and the top sponsor and the official travel partner throughout the season of twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six. Actually, this partnership is a perfect match, not only because Home2Go was founded in and is operated from its Berlin headquarters, but also because we share Union’s deep rooted community spirit. Just as Uniontown find their home in the stadium under Eitenkoster Bay, travelers find their Home2Go to away from home with Home2Go. Hence, the impact of the sponsorship was immediate. The announcement drove a record breaking one day coverage in press with over 130 media placements across Germany.

This visibility translates directly into significant spike in search demand for Home2Go in Germany, tripling compared to the 2024 average. So this partnership not only strengthens our local and national brand presence, but also creates an exciting platform for future engagement with travelers and put those fans alike through planned brand activations and continued visibility. So stay tuned for what we will show you along the year. In March, Home2Go once again took center stage at ACB Berlin, the world’s largest travel trade fair, right here on our home turf. Our Twilight party booth stood alongside other big players in the industry, serving as a vibrant hub for connecting with key partners, engaging in discussions on the future of travel and showcasing our latest innovations.

We also painted ITB red with our union church, even getting lots of praise from local politicians such as the mayor of Berlin with his press entourage. Home2Go was center stage on topics such as digital transformation, the role of AI in holistic travel planning and travel technology and sustainable business models across a period of uncertainty. A special highlight of our ITB presence in 2025 was the launch of the first Home2Go Vacation Rental Awards. With a portfolio of over 20,000,000 vacation rentals from thousands of partners worldwide, we are uniquely positioned to celebrate the best in the industry. Our first ever Vacation Rent Awards recognized outstanding partners across industry specific categories, honoring the properties and providers that go both and beyond to create exceptional travel experiences for guests.

Before we go into our outlook for 2025, let’s take a brief look at where we currently stand with our transformative acquisition of InterHome, which we signed in February 2025. The acquisition of Interhome, Europe’s second largest vacation rental management company is our most significant deal yet. As a reminder, in 2024, Interhome generated approximately EUR 400,000,000 in gross booking value, EUR 125,000,000 in IFS revenues and more than EUR 20,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA. Looking at the time line of the next milestones, we are all on track. From a financing perspective, we secured EUR 75,000,000 in debt financing in December and also successfully raised EUR 85,000,000 in equity in February 2025.

With everything progressing and pending final regulatory approvals, we currently assume Interhome to be consolidated Interhome to go as of June 2025. As we approach closing, our focus is on ensuring day one readiness, so that Interhome can seamlessly continue operations from the very first day after closing. In parallel, we are executing a structured carve out plan to transition into HomeAway from recall systems and services. Overall, this marks a significant milestone for Home2Go, positioning us even more strongly in the vacation rental management space and further accelerating our Home2Go Pro growth strategy. So before I hand over to Stefan for the financial deep dive on our 2024 results, I would like to highlight what is arguably the most anticipated part of today’s call, Home2Gold’s financial guidance for 2025.

Our financial guidance for 2025 marks another major step forward on our journey of profitable growth and scalability. In 2025, we expect booking revenues to exceed EUR $350,000,000, reflecting a strong year over year growth of more than 35%. Similarly, IFRS revenues are projected to grow by more than 40%, surpassing EUR 300,000,000. The slower growth of booking revenues compared to IFRS revenues is a reflection of the assumed consolidation of InterHome from June onwards, when the majority of the main booking season of the first quarter, respectively, is already over. And at the same time, profitability is set to accelerate significantly.

We anticipate adjusted EBITDA of at least EUR 35,000,000, marking a growth rate of over 170% year over year. A particular exciting milestone is the introduction of free cash flow as a new guidance metric. For the first time, we are targeting positive free cash flow in 2025, a testament to our strong financial discipline and sustainable business model. So these numbers reflect our ongoing focus on operational efficiency, economies of scale and the consolidation of Intel, which we, as mentioned before, assumed to consolidate in June 2025. We will update you for sure the analysts and investors should disassume timing of the consolidation change.

With this outlook, we are confident that 2025 will be a breakthrough year, solidifying Home2Go’s position to become Europe’s leading vacation rental powerhouse. And with that, I would like to hand over to Stefan, our CFO, to take you through the financials in more detail. Thank you.

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: Thanks, Patrick. Good morning, the analysts and investors, and thank you for joining us today. Let’s start with a recap of our key financial highlights for the fourth quarter and full year 2024. First, we delivered strong top line growth, reaching a new all time high for the fourth quarter. Booking revenues came in at EUR $260,000,000, representing a 70% year on year growth, exceeding even our already upgraded full year guidance of more than EUR $255,000,000.

Our booking revenue backlog at year end reached EUR 47,000,000, a new record and setting a solid foundation for 2025. Second, IFS revenues growth accelerated towards year end with Q4, IFRS revenues up 45% year over year, driven primarily by strong booking on-site growth of 163% and a 67% increase for the entire Marketplace segment. For the full year 2024, IFS revenues grew by 31% year over year to EUR 212,300,000.0. Third, we continue to scale profitability in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA increased more than sevenfold year over year to EUR 12,800,000.0, reflecting operational efficiencies and improved margins across both segments.

The Q4 adjusted EBITDA came in at negative EUR 4,000,000, reflecting strategic investments to capture attractive commercial opportunities and a further buildup of the booking revenue spectrum for 2025. Fourth, we ended the year with a solid cash position of EUR 82,700,000.0, reinforcing our financial strength. Most importantly, free cash flow, while still negative for the full year, significantly improved by 42% in 2024, and we successfully returned to positive territory in the fourth quarter, underscoring our progress towards sustainable profitability. Taking a closer look at key financials for full year 2024 and the fourth quarter, we delivered exceptional growth in both booking revenues and IFS revenues alongside strong improvement in profitability and cash metrics. We achieved record booking revenues of EUR 259,700,000.0 or EUR 24,000,000, reflecting 37% year over year growth.

This momentum was particularly strong in Q4, where booking revenues reached a new Q4 high of EUR 49,900,000.0, marking an impressive 70% increase year over year. IFS revenues followed a similar strong trajectory, growing 31% year over year to EUR 212,300,000.0 for the full year 2024. In Q4, IFS revenues increased by 45% year over year to EUR 34,700,000.0, reflecting strong contributions from our booking on-site business. Third, profitability showed remarkable improvement. Adjusted EBITDA grew by over 616% year over year, reaching EUR 12,800,000.0 for 2024.

Our full year adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 6%, highlighting the structural profitability improvements across both segments. In Q4, adjusted EBITDA stood at negative EUR 4,000,000, reflecting the investments aimed at capturing attractive commercial opportunities and the buildup of the booking revenues backlog for 2025. Free cash flow significantly improved by 42% year over year, reaching negative EUR 10,300,000.0 for the full year. Notably, in Q4, free cash flow, despite negatively affected by M and A related one offs, was again in positive territory, reinforcing our path towards positive free cash flow generation in 2025. Now let’s take a deeper look at the composition of our booking revenues, IFRS revenues and adjusted EBITDA by segment, highlighting the strong contributions from both Marketplace and Home2Go Pro.

Starting with booking revenues, our booking on-site business in the Marketplace segment was the primary driver of growth, increasing by 66% year over year to EUR 116,100,000.0. This reflects the continued shift towards higher margin direct bookings, a higher on-site take rate as well as the successful integration of our short trip acquisitions. Advertising revenues within the marketplace increased only modestly by 5%, reaching EUR 73,600,000.0 for the full year as On-site was offering more attractive commercials. Booking revenues from the volume based business within Home2Go Pro grew by an impressive 52% to EUR 57,000,000. Turning to IFS revenues, we see a similar dynamic.

The Booking Onsets segment within the build marketplace grew strongly by 67% year over year, reaching EUR 89,000,000, while advertising IFS revenues grew moderately at 5% year over year. In the Help to Go Pro segment, both subscriptions and volume based revenues increased equally by 25% year over year. Subscriptions grew to EUR 25,600,000.0, reflecting the continued expansion of our SaaS solution for professional property managers and private house. Hi Fi’s revenues from the volume based business reached EUR 44,400,000.0. Looking at the profitability, adjusted EBITDA expanded more than sevenfold year over year reaching EUR 12,800,000.0.

This was fueled primarily by Home2Go Pro, which contributed EUR 9,900,000.0, reflecting an almost 500% year over year increase. The market sales segment also saw a major profitability improvement posting EUR 2,900,000.0 in adjusted EBITDA after reaching breakeven in the prior year. Breaking down the results for the fourth quarter. Starting with booking revenues from our Marketplace segment, booking on-site business showed exceptional momentum increasing by 161% year over year to EUR 21,800,000.0. Advertising booking revenues grew by 18% year over year to EUR 10,900,000.0.

Within Home2Go Pro, volume based booking revenue surged by 84% to EUR 13,500,000.0, reflecting increased adoption of our solutions by professional property managers. However, booking revenues from our subscription business declined by 4% year over year to EUR 5,500,000.0 due to upcoming technical migration efforts for some of our Southern European subsidiaries and therefore scaled down acquisitions of new customers. Turning to IFS revenues, the booking on-site once again led growth, up 163% year over year to EUR 14,300,000.0, continuing to drive revenue expansion. Advertising IFS revenues increased slightly by 4% to EUR 8,700,000.0. In Home2Go Pro, IFS revenues from the volume based business grew by 41% to EUR 6,600,000.0 and the IFS revenues for the subscription business rate flat at EUR 5,700,000.0.

Looking at the profitability, the Marketplace segment recorded an adjusted EBITDA of negative EUR 3,300,000.0, reflecting the aforementioned opportunistic investments for future growth. And Home2Go Pro posted an adjusted EBITDA of negative $700,000 while improving its quarterly profitability by 70.6% year over year. A bit more context on our average basket size development. You may recall this slide from the previous quarters in 2024. Overall decrease in basket size across the group by 19% year over year is primarily driven by the strong growth of the short trip business in the DACH Region.

The shorter trip results in a lower overall basket size due to reduced length of stay even though the average daily rate remains stable. Excluding the impact of the short trip segment and focusing on our core home to go marketplace, basket size has actually shown a slight overall increase with the DACH region even reporting a 12% year over year growth, almost double the growth of the rest of Europe. In contrast, North America experienced a decline in basket size driven by a combination of slightly lower average daily rates and shorter length of stay compared to the same period last year. Now moving on to the development of our cost ratios and the role in driving group level profitability relative to our IFRS revenues. Starting with the full year view, our gross profit margin improved by 0.4 percentage points year over year to 97.8%, reflecting ongoing cost efficiencies supported by strong top line growth.

The most important driver behind our profitability expansion continues to be enhanced marketing efficiency. Our marketing and sales cost ratio improved by 4.1 percentage points, decreasing from 66.2% in 2023 to 62.2% in 2024. This was fueled by better ROI from paid marketing and increase in repeat booking revenues and synergies from recent acquisitions. Product development costs improved by 0.9 percentage points to 17.1%, highlighting scale efficiencies despite continued investments in AI and platform innovations. On the other hand, G and A expenses increased from 12.4% to 13.5%.

This reflects higher personnel and consulting costs, in particular driven by newly integrated businesses. As a result of these margin optimizations, our adjusted EBITDA margin improved notably, rising from 1.1% in ’20 ’20 ’3 percent to 6% in 24%, a 4.9 percentage point uplift year over year. For the fourth quarter, we see some expected seasonal effects. Gross profit margin remained stable at 94.6%, slightly decreasing by 0.1 percentage points year over year. The marketing and sales cost ratio was higher year over year at 63.4%, increasing by 6.9 percentage points due to the planned investments in building up the 2025 backlog.

Product development costs saw a notable decrease from 35.1 percent in Q4 twenty twenty three to 25.1% in Q4 twenty twenty four, improving by 10 percentage points. This was mainly driven by first time consolidation effects of our short term business demonstrating better cost ratios. Administrative expenses increased only slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 20.9%. Overall, relative Q4 profitability showed improvement with the adjusted EBITDA margin increasing by 0.6 percentage points year over year, reaching minus 11.5% in Q4 twenty twenty four compared to 12.1% in 2023. As always, we exclude expenses related to equity such share based compensation, depreciation, amortization and other one off items to highlight our operational performance as reflected in adjusted EBITDA.

Looking at our cash position, we maintain a robust balance sheet as of the December ’24 with a gross cash balance of EUR 82,700,000.0, which includes a EUR 12,000,000 investment in the known money market fund. The sequential decrease of EUR 7,100,000.0 in gross cash from the end of Q3 twenty twenty four is mainly due to the earn out payments for the Zikta acquisition, purchase price adjustment for Edometry and higher income tax payments. In 2024, our cash inflow from operating activities saw a substantial year over year improvement of EUR 11,100,000.0, reaching EUR 4,900,000.0 in Q4 twenty twenty four. This improvement is largely due to stronger net results compared to the prior year. Cash flow from investing activities totaled negative EUR 10,100,000.0, primarily reflecting the aforementioned cash outflows related to acquisitions related burnout and purchase price adjustments.

Additionally, cash outflows from investing activities also include investments in internally generated intangible assets aimed at enhancing the booking experience for our customers. Finally, cash flow from financing activities amounted to minus EUR 3,000,000, which includes EUR 2,500,000.0 in debt repayment, EUR 400,000.0 for the share buyback program and EUR 100,000 for principal payments on lease liabilities in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. After deducting interest bearing debt of EUR 200,000.0 and restricted cash of EUR 2,400,000.0 held for connection services on behalf of OZ, our net cash position was EUR 82,100,000.0. 20 20 5 is set to be a transformative year for Home2Go as we solidify our position as Europe’s leading vacation rental powerhouse. With our strong growth trajectory, strategic acquisitions and continuous innovation, we are well positioned to capitalize on the immense opportunities ahead.

With that, I thank you for your attention today, and we will now open the floor for your questions.

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: We will now begin the question and answer The first question comes from the line of Sylvia Cuneo, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Sylvia Cuneo, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I would like to ask three questions. And the first one is around the guidance and the demand demand trends in 2025 outlook sounds encouraging despite the temporary slowdown in February. Can you elaborate on the current booking trends and what visibility you have already into the peak travel summer season at this time of the year?

And what have you factored in your assumptions for the 2025 guidance from a macro perspective? Do you foresee any potential headwinds to consumer demand for travel or maybe not? And second question is on the Slide 15 that you saw with the PR and SEO trends in AI such engines. And I wanted to ask if you could say some additional thoughts about whether in the future you expect to receive more and more traffic from these new sources compared to from Google. And what could be the benefit for your marketing costs at the cheaper acquisition tunnels?

And perhaps do you see any different trends when it comes to conversion of new customers to the funnel? And then, just a final quick one on the inter home integration. What specific integration milestones are planned for 2025 after completion? And what sort of KPIs do you suggest us tracking to access process the success of the integration?

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: Thanks for your question. So I start with the first one and then hand over to Patrick on AI. So with regards to the guidance, as we have said before, when we looked at Home2Go on a stand alone level, we expected a low double digit growth and a significant improvement in profitability, and that still holds true. So as Patrick has outlined, we started really well into the year with January well ahead of the prior year. In February, we had the dip that was really driven by Germany.

So other markets developed also well in February. But given that February is the most one of the most important months for German travelers and that trend again has reversed in March as shown. So we are continuously looking very optimistic. We don’t see any headwinds in the overall macro and therefore continue to believe in that low double digit growth on a stand alone business. With regards to the effects coming out of the integration there, it was for us difficult giving the very limited information in particular to see what kind of effects there is on a monthly basis and what we have to see, for example, Pentecost this year, which is an important travel season, is in the June.

Do we get that? Is it still already included with the check ins, which would have a higher impact on IFRS realization and EBITDA? And there we just took a careful approach.

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: Okay. Then I take over for your AI question on the visibility. So obviously, like you might have seen there have been like a lot of like also research ongoing where people say basically it’s the traffic that comes for e commerce and also travel searches is up more than 10 times. For us, it’s even 30 times, which is probably also the reflection what we see with the visibility of Home2Go within these searches, right? It’s still early, obviously.

It’s hard for us to grasp in the end what and to which extent this will obviously further grow. I wouldn’t expect like 30 times year over year next year obviously, because it came also not from a super high like basis, but it shows basically how fast people are adapting to AI and how fast basically also these like perplexity AI calls themselves as a search or an answering machine, right, like not a search engine. And so like where people like not only necessarily use AI to get an answer, but also then further go after the answer, meaning like coming to our website and so on. And we basically see, which is interesting, yes, that some of these AI searches or many of these AI searches from a conversion rate perspective are even higher than sometimes than SEO traffic coming to our page, which is very good because you see it’s not only people looking for information, but also people looking for transactional kind of value or doing a transaction with Home2Go. So this is in general where we see definitely what we invested in the past was not only a good way for where we positioned ourselves as the expert for vacation rentals was not only good for SEO, but also now turns out to be very good like for the relevance within AI because the large elements also understand and solve obviously a lot of data from the whole Internet.

We are open to go all over the place with being like the expert for vacation rental. And going forward for sure like anyway on the AI topic, so as you know, Home2Go is pioneering a lot of topics and you can expect from us further things there on the marketplace side, but as well as we have obviously with Home2Go Pro and especially with Home2Go Pro Doppelganger, exclusive product that can serve also as an API and connector, even better connector also to LLMs and to AI companies. So there we are actually very well positioned also for future AI agent, agentic web topics and so on. So happy to give further details, but I don’t want to over spend the time on the question.

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: And with regards to your question on the inter home integration, so we have a, let’s say, a plan ready for day one. We have a lot prepared, really looking forward to doing the integration. On the milestones, that will depend a little bit on when the extra closing is happening. So we will update you on the KPIs on that later. But just to give you an idea what I mean with that.

So for example, you remember from the when we announced the acquisition, the kind of improvements we see, for example, when it comes to booking by having providing them with our tool. By the time that closing of the transaction is expected to happen, the main booking season will be already over except for some last minute business. So it will be limited effects happening for 2025 check-in. However, we will, of course, prepare everything for them, the 2026 season, which will start in Q4 twenty twenty four. But stay tuned, we will update you most likely at closing on that.

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: The next question comes from the line of Christian Salas, Heuthuizer. Please go ahead.

Christian Salas, Analyst, Heuthuizer: Hey guys, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ve got three questions please and I would like to ask them one by one. So on the first one is on the full year 2025 guidance. So in my view, if I do the modeling with regards to inter home and home to go stand alone, it looks quite conservative.

So could you just confirm that your organic run rate organic growth run rate of low double digit growth per year is intact and also with regards to the margin that you will continue to expect Home2Go stand alone also to show margin improvement on the back of higher marketing efficiency and all the margin drivers. And just a follow-up also here on InterHome. Do you expect any one off costs with regards to the integration of InterHome that are backed into your 2025 guidance? That’s the first block of questions.

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: Yes. Thanks, Christian. So as I just said to Silga’s question, yes, the assumption that we are growing the existing Home2Go business excluding the InterHome acquisition is still that we have a lower double digit growth, both in the booking revenues as well as in the IFS revenues. It’s also the assumption that we have a significant improvement in our profitability due to the mentioned improvements in marketing efficiency coming from higher repeat share, etcetera. So that is still intact.

The view on what is coming from the InterHome acquisition. As I also have said, it really comes down to when will the actual closing happening, how much of the early season do we have. So I mentioned already the Pentecost business when you think about the Dutch market. The Dutch school holidays are already in June. So it really depends when that closing is happening and how much are we getting in there.

And therefore, we have taken a cautious approach on the impact of that. We have not included any one off cost or any synergies in our assumption. So this is just really adding the effects of it, only adjusting for then the intercompany charges, which we have because as you know, we have already we are already doing business with InterHome for quite some year and that you also have to deduct these intercompany charges.

Christian Salas, Analyst, Heuthuizer: Okay, thanks. And then the second question is on Home2Go Pro. So you’ve made a lot of progress, especially when it comes to the margin. So that’s really impressive, 14% just EBITDA margin, which is really, yes, up double digits. And I’m wondering what has been driving this significant margin improvement and should we expect a similar improvement also in 2025?

What’s your view here? And also what’s your view on the midterm margin ambition you can achieve in the Homescore Pro segment?

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: Yes. So we also expect continuous margin improvement this year and also reflecting what we said before in over the course of time, we want to reach the industry margin benchmark, which we see as 30% adjusted EBITDA margin for the overall company as well as for both segments. We expect that Home2Go Pro, in particular, with the acquisition and integration of Interhome will reach that a little bit earlier than the marketplace. But it’s definitely the goal to reach that 30% adjusted EBITDA margin.

Christian Salas, Analyst, Heuthuizer: Excellent. And then lastly, could you just provide an update on the integration of the smaller targets you have acquired one point five years ago, Kostmabek and Kosteloud, for example. So after one year now of consolidation, could you just talk a little bit about the synergies you have reached here? Thank you.

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: Yes. Thank you for the question, Christian. So like for the short term businesses, so as you know, like the first phase of getting these companies into Home2Go was like consolidation between like the two companies we acquired, because and there we are well progressing. And we are currently looking also into like how we can leverage their inventory on Home2Go and our inventory there. But we will update you once it’s done because like the first phase for us was bringing really the two companies together.

Christian Salas, Analyst, Heuthuizer: All right. Thank you very much. All the best.

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: Thank you.

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: The next question comes from the line of Benjamin Kornke from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Benjamin Kornke, Analyst, Stifel: Good morning. Good morning, gentlemen. I hope you can hear me all right. I’m dialing in from my mobile. Let me maybe start with one of the very few weak spots in the results.

I mean, you’re talking very positively about Smubu and I can absolutely understand that it’s great asset. But that said, I guess we saw that slump in growth in the subscription sub segment in Q3 already. Now we see that subscriptions were still very weak in Q4. I mean, Stefan, I understand your point about technical migration effects and so on. But can you just provide us with a bit more I don’t know with a bit more so that we get a bit more confidence that growth there can actually recover in 2025?

And I guess when we talked in the past, we always talked about the rule of 40 at Wubu. Is that kind of still intact? Or will it at least get back to those levels over the next twelve months? That would be my first question. The second one would be on marketing.

I mean, you obviously made great progress in terms of marketing efficiency in 2024, so well done on that front. You’re very clear that you want to continue on that path. Now it seems we’re seeing a bit of a shift of the marketing budget into branding. I mean, most notably this football sponsorship, and I guess you do not further you do not want to further elaborate on what this actually costs. But I guess we do know branding is expensive.

Now squaring all of that, it means that the share of performance marketing will actually go down in 2025 and that is obviously the much quicker kind of conversion channel. So I would assume that this kind of slows down growth least in the short term. So a few more thoughts maybe from you, Patrick, on the marketing mix and the impact on growth would be appreciated. And then very lastly on your thoughts about the introduction and potential launch of a loyalty program. I mean, everybody in the industry is talking about it and the great effects it has on obviously loyalty, but repeat bookings and all of that.

I mean not only in travel, basically across e commerce, right? So yes, any sort of updated thoughts on why you refrain from doing more on that front? Thank you.

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: Yes. So Ben, thanks for your questions. I’m happy to take them all. So like subscription business in Pro, right? Like so it consists obviously of subscription businesses we have in South Europe and also like Smoo.

We saw like as you rightly pointed out that the revenue growth was coming down, yes, on that task. Nonetheless, like the organic growth is because it’s all organic growth there, right, like it’s still strong. And we have like as we pointed out in this call also, right, that we worked on various topics that we now launched to the end of twenty twenty four and the beginning of twenty twenty five, especially on the Smooboo side, which were like basically, for instance, rebuilding the whole website build up as a complete new model, having the app live and these types of things, which will allow us to enter new like kind of markets where we can get demand throughout the year. We will also enter The U. S.

With Smubu as a goal. And so like we are very confident to have basically showcasing you throughout the year what this can mean. But obviously, as it is always with these subscription businesses, there’s a lagging effect. And so we but we will definitely update you also during the course of the year and especially also when we have a Capital Markets Day this year on that topic. Secondly, if we look into the marketing efficiency, yes, so obviously, this is something we are working on every year, yes.

And as you know, one strong element of marketing efficiency is obviously how much of this of the demand we can get for free, yes, if you want to phrase it like this or direct, yes. And something like the union sponsorship is a helper in elevating the Home2Go brands because it helps not only like getting people directly on the side, but also like making Home2Go as a brand more well known. So you have overspill effect also into paid marketing, for instance, because efficiency is not only your shift marketing channels, but it also means to get more efficient in paid channels. And also, if people know your brand better, obviously, they are more likely to click, which has this overspill effect there. And we are unfortunately not allowed to tell you like the price we pay for that sponsorship, we would be happy to and that might give you already like an indication how cheap or expensive it was.

So but in general, for sure, we want that marketing efficiency trend to further go into that direction. And also to be very clear, people that come via retention or directly to Home2Go often have even a higher conversion rate because they know Home2Go already. So it’s not like that if you have less paid traffic that the conversion goes down. Maybe just like to make that clear. And then lastly, on the loyalty program question, that’s actually a very, very good question.

Just like to put that also in perspective, so also EvinD doesn’t have a loyalty program. And obviously, we see the loyalty program as something that we might want to do in the future. But that is for us especially something that comes into play once we reached the retention share that has a certain kind of amount and then we want to invest further there. Prior to that, we see even more leverage on other topics, but it’s obviously something we have on our radar and also on our roadmap at some point.

Benjamin Kornke, Analyst, Stifel: Great. Thank you very much, Patrick.

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: The next question comes from the line of Bharat Nagaraj, Cantor. Please go ahead.

Bharat Nagaraj, Analyst, Cantor: Thank you. I just have two questions. With regards to your expansion into new countries, I’m guessing it’s mainly in the B2C business. And if so, are you doing that mainly via advertising or also are you growing the on-site business? And secondly, given that you are now trying to grow in multiple countries and also expanding your Home2Go Pro business with travel agency hubs, MUBU, etcetera, I wanted to better understand your priorities for capital and resource allocation given all these things that you’re trying to do.

And the second question, is around the Home2Go Pro segment, the margin expansion. I’m talking about it on a stand alone basis. What would be the drivers of the margin expansion in the medium term to get to the industry standard margins that you’re referring to? Thank

Dr. Patrick Andree, Co-Founder and CEO, Home2Go: you. Thanks for your questions, right. Like expansion into new markets, for sure, it’s not like with B2C, like we always do because as we have the Home2Gold offering a product that runs can run external websites, we are also very good in launching on websites and that’s why we now pursued some more where we put some seats in. And usually, you are completely right, it starts usually with a larger scale of advertising, for instance, in India. And then we see if the market gets traction, that’s where it makes sense also to grow then on-site.

But it follows exactly that playbook like you said. And in regards to Pro, right, like so obviously, for instance, MooGo is a very global product, yes. So it’s many much more than 100 countries we’ve used. So there is a large like potential audience. So that also means that obviously we will look one after another country to see where we can also like put pro solutions into these markets, but that will also according to our playbook follow once we have some better understanding of the market coming from the B2C side.

And resources in general for our pro businesses for all of the entities basically we steer with an owned P and L and want them to have specific growth and profitability targets, so that we have these like speedboats within the group and on the left profiting from the group resources and group knowledge and experience.

Stefan Schneider, CFO, Home2Go: And with regards to your questions on the pro margin, so it’s the very much driven by the economies of scale. So as you know, in a software product, once you have more customers, more revenues, yes, you need to have some kind of further work on operating the product, but the kind of economies of scale are really driving the increase of profitability there. And that’s more on the subscription side. When you look at the volume based side, again, we have also the economies of scale. But just to give you one data point there, the business Kausa, which we acquired there, for example, we were able to increase the share of own bookings, so not going via channels, but bookings on their side, which effectively is running on our technology, it has already increased to over 70% and that, of course, is a big driver in profitability.

Now will that go to 100%? No. But there’s further improvement possible as well as then in the future, particularly including the inter home business.

Shari, Chorus Call Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Sebastian Robert for any closing remarks.

Sebastian Robert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance, Home2Go: Yes, listen, Ivesos, thank you very much for your attention and questions. Should there be additional questions, please feel free to contact us. We wish you a great day and hope to see you soon. Many thanks.

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