With Some Relief, Sabre Notes ‘Awakening’ Of Corporate Market

Photo: frankieleon

During Sabre’s third-quarter earnings call, Klein said such large companies are overrepresented among its subscribers, so their sluggish performance was more keenly felt by Sabre than by its competitors.

Like its competitors, Sabre took a hit from the insolvency of Unister, a large German travel agency customer. Unister filed for insolvency protection four days after several senior executives, including its chief executive officer, were killed in the crash of a light aircraft. 

Some of the loss was due to prepaid volume incentives, as well as lost bookings.

Sabre Travel Network’s global bookings increased 2.4% in the quarter, driven by growth of 6.8% in the Asia-Pacific region and modest growth in all other regions. Bookings were up 1.6% in North America, 1% in EMEA and 0.6% in Latin America. 

Had it not been for Unister’s failure, Sabre estimated that global bookings would have been up 2.7% and EMEA bookings would have increased 3.3%

Nevertheless, Sabre has seen “a measureable pickup” in bookings coming out of the third quarter, and it has had “very good sales successes” on the agency front, Klein said. Those implementations “will get us back to share growth in Europe.” 

Klein said Sabre continues to see little or no impact from Lufthansa’s GDS surcharge, implemented 14 months ago, other than a revenue uptick due to the fact that the carrier is no longer receiving discounts for providing full content. 

No other carrier has indicated that it will adopt a similar policy, and Lufthansa’s move “looks like a bad strategy,” he said.

Sabre Corp. reported adjusted net income of $75.3 million for the third quarter, down 6.8% from third quarter 2015, on revenues of $839 million, up 6.9%. Its global bookings share was 37.3%, up from 37.1% in third quarter 2015. Revenue at Sabre Travel Network was up 2.3%, to $582.3 million. Revenue was up 19.8%, to $262.4 million, at Sabre Airline and Hospitality Solutions.