HomeToGo Announces Key Strategic Updates at its Capital Markets Day 2023, Including New B2B Business Segment And Vision To Build A Fully AI-Powered Marketplace

HomeToGo Announces Key Strategic Updates at its Capital Markets Day 2023, Including New B2B Business Segment And Vision To Build A Fully AI-Powered Marketplace  

• HomeToGo expects significant improvement of around €20M in Adjusted EBITDA in 2023 to reach FY/23 break-even, stemming from its strong growth in repeat demand and profitable Subscriptions & Services business
• HomeToGo further announced its 2024 financial targets:
  • Achieve 2024 growth that clearly surpasses its FY/23 growth rate
  • Improve 2024 profitability remaining above targeted Adjusted EBITDA break-even 2023, including aim to potentially reinvest parts of profitability into additional growth levers
  • Achieve free cash flow break-even in 2025
• Shared details around its M&A strategy, which is selective, disciplined and value-accretive to achieve additional growth and profitability
• Introduced its new B2B brand and business segment for its key growth focus on Software & Service Solutions: HomeToGo_PRO, including the launch of its HomeToGo Doppelgänger brand, a new suite of software and redistribution solutions for industry players
• Unveiled a new suite of AI products and upgrades to its existing AI solutions as part of its strategy to build a fully AI-powered marketplace
• Announced my.HomeToGo, a new service that enables private hosts to list their properties directly on HomeToGo
• Shared significant improvements to its strategic goals in 2023 including accomplishing a worldwide industry-leading ESG Risk Rating from Morningstar Sustainalytics 

Luxembourg, 12 December 2023 - HomeToGo SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: HTG), the SaaS-enabled marketplace with the world’s largest selection of vacation rentals, today hosted its Capital Markets Day 2023. During the event for investors and analysts, HomeToGo’s leadership team presented a comprehensive overview of the Company’s business strategy, including insights and announcements surrounding its demand, supply, product, and technology advancements.

Financial ambitions and strategic levers  

In full year 2023, HomeToGo plans to achieve around €20M YoY improvement in Adjusted EBITDA, affirming that it is on track to reach its number one priority of Adjusted EBITDA break-even in 2023. This accomplishment stems also from HomeToGo’s significant growth of repeat demand, with its Booking Revenues from returning customers increasing by more than 50% YoY. Additionally the Company expanded its profitable Subscriptions & Services business in 2023, which now represents around 20% of the Group’s total IFRS Revenues.

Looking ahead to 2024, the Company aims to achieve YoY growth that clearly surpasses its FY/23 growth rate, and improve profitability to remain above the targeted Adjusted EBITDA break-even of 2023. To efficiently reach its financial milestones, HomeToGo plans to potentially reinvest improved 2024 profitability directly into additional long-term growth levers. The Group targets to surpass its 2024 growth targets in FY/25 and further increase profitability with the aim to achieve free cash flow break-even.

The Group also plans to achieve additional growth and profitability through profitable M&A. The strategy was presented by Dr. Bodo Thielmann, HomeToGo’s Chief Investment Director who joined the team in October 2023. Dr. Thielmann plans to focus HomeToGo’s M&A strategy on selective, disciplined and value-accretive acquisitions in 2024 and beyond. HomeToGo has a financial firepower of more than €135M in cash with more than half reserved for M&A.

Introducing HomeToGo_PRO, including the launch of HomeToGo Doppelgänger  

HomeToGo today introduced HomeToGo_PRO, its new B2B brand and business segment and a key growth focus for the Company. HomeToGo_PRO consists of the Company’s Software & Service Solutions including Subscriptions for the whole travel market, with a special focus on SaaS for the supply side of vacation rentals. Going forward, HomeToGo will optimize its unique, multifaceted marketplace by recognizing HomeToGo_PRO as a distinct reporting segment to also offer more transparency to the capital markets. This includes both volume based revenues as well as those resulting from Subscriptions.

Within HomeToGo_PRO, the Company today launched HomeToGo Doppelgänger, a new suite of innovative software and redistribution solutions. HomeToGo Doppelgänger leverages highly adaptable tech solutions, such as White Label and API products, to enable alternate travel and tourism websites to seamlessly connect with HomeToGo’s unparalleled selection of vacation rentals and tap into HomeToGo’s advanced technology platform. This new suite of products caters to the high diversity of needs in the travel market, and offers fast and scalable solutions to travel platforms, destination marketing organizations, and agencies. HomeToGo Doppelgänger launched with an impressive roster, which includes industry-leading local and global partners such as TUI, HolidayCheck, HolidayPirates and TravelAI already leveraging its technologies.

HomeToGo’s product vision to build a fully AI-powered marketplace

HomeToGo leveraged its Capital Markets Day to introduce a new suite of AI solutions and its product vision to build a fully AI-powered marketplace to empower travelers even more across the booking journey. With its extensive experience with data, technology, and AI at the core of its business, as well as its reputation for pioneering AI in the travel space, HomeToGo is uniquely positioned to transform its marketplace into an even more intuitive platform that solves key pain points for travelers through AI.

The next generation of HomeToGo’s AI products now launched in beta include:

• AI Mode_web: AI Mode, HomeToGo’s revolutionary AI-powered travel planner, now also conveniently available on web.
• HomeToGo Smart Reviews: AI-summarized reviews from trusted guests, enabling travelers to make fast, informed booking decisions.
• HomeToGo Smart Offer Summaries: AI-summarized offer descriptions - clear and concise to highlight the features that matter most to travelers.
• AI-powered Sunny: Coming soon, HomeToGo’s upgraded guest support chatbot, Sunny, will provide instant guest relations assistance for pre and post booking questions.
• Plus, upcoming additions to the ‘Modes’ product collection: Coming in 2024, two new additions to HomeToGo’s ‘Modes’ collection, which deliver highly curated searches of vacation homes with just one click. 

my.HomeToGo: The direct route to success for hosts

HomeToGo officially announced my.HomeToGo, a new platform that enables vacation rental hosts to effortlessly list their property on HomeToGo. my.HomeToGo hosts benefit from exclusive advantages, including unprecedented flexibility for hosts and the distribution power of HomeToGo.

my.HomeToGo fuels HomeToGo’s business development by catering directly to private hosts. By offering unique industry benefits via my.HomeToGo, the Company is making it easier than ever for homeowners to professionalize and maximize their vacation rental businesses.

Adding new achievements as part of its 2023 strategic goals

HomeToGo also achieved significant strides across various business priorities in 2023. In the sustainability field, HomeToGo received a global, industry-leading Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating from Morningstar Sustainalytics. With a “Low Risk” rating of 16, HomeToGo outranks travel peers such as Airbnb, Inc., Expedia Group, Inc., Booking Holdings, Inc., and Trip.com Group Ltd.

The Group also received several industry recognitions throughout 2023. Notably, four HomeToGo Group brands were listed in the top six of Handelsblatt’s November 2023 ranking of the Best Vacation Rental Portals in Germany, and HomeToGo was awarded as winner of “America’s Best Customer Service 2024” by Statista and Newsweek.

Dr. Patrick Andrae, Co-founder & CEO of HomeToGo: “Our Capital Markets Day is a fantastic opportunity to reflect on our milestones and give our investors and analysts a look at what’s next. This year we expect to improve our Adjusted EBITDA by around €20M while still achieving growth, proving how the HomeToGo team excels at being nimble, entrepreneurial, and strategic in dynamic environments. Together, we’ve built a foundation around our travelers, supply partners, and technology innovations that will fuel our growth in 2024 and beyond. We are building an essential product for the vacation rental experience of the future. As the premier AI innovator in the vacation rental sphere, our product vision announced today to build a fully AI-powered marketplace will deliver an unparalleled experience to our travelers. Combined with our continued advancement of our key growth focus B2B Software & Service Solutions now grouped under the HomeToGo_PRO brand, we’re well on our way to our next phase of incredible growth.”

HomeToGo’s Capital Markets Day 2023 Presentation

HomeToGo’s full Capital Markets Day 2023 presentation will be available to watch on the Company’s Investor Relations website at https://ir.hometogo.de/websites/hometogo/English/9301/capital-markets-day.html.

About HomeToGo

HomeToGo was founded in 2014 with a vision to make incredible homes easily accessible to everyone. HomeToGo has since grown to become the SaaS-enabled marketplace with the world’s largest selection of vacation rentals.

With 15M+ offers across thousands of trusted partners globally, HomeToGo’s AI-powered marketplace expertly matches supply and demand to connect travelers with the perfect vacation rental for any trip around the world. As the go_to destination for vacation rentals, HomeToGo offers the world’s largest vacation rental selection combined with an end-to-end convenient, trusted and intuitive product experience.

HomeToGo_PRO, the Company’s B2B business segment, offers innovative Software & Service Solutions including Subscriptions for the whole travel market with a special focus on SaaS for the supply-side of vacation rentals.

While HomeToGo SE's registered office is located in Luxembourg, HomeToGo GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. HomeToGo operates localized apps and websites in 25 countries.

HomeToGo SE is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the stock ticker “HTG”.

For more information visit: www.hometogo.com/about

Media Contact
Caroline Burns
press@hometogo.com

Investor Relations Contact
Sebastian Grabert, CFA

+49 157 501 63731

IR@hometogo.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of the words "may", "will", "should", "plan", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "project", "goal" or "target" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, forecasts, estimates, projections, opinions or plans that are inherently subject to significant risks, as well as uncertainties and contingencies that are subject to change. No representation is made or will be made by HomeToGo SE that any forward-looking statement will be achieved or will prove to be correct. The actual future business, financial position, results of operations and prospects may differ materially from those projected or forecast in the forward-looking statements. Neither HomeToGo SE nor any of their respective affiliates assume any obligation to update, and do not expect to publicly update, or publicly revise, any forward-looking statements or other information contained in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law.

Use of Non-IFRS Performance Measures

This release includes certain financial measures not presented in accordance with IFRS, which may exclude items that are significant in understanding and assessing the Company's financial results. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as an alternative to measures of profitability, liquidity or performance under IFRS. Regarding the alternative performance measures Adjusted EBITDA, Booking Revenues, Onsite Booking Revenues, Onsite Share and CPA Take Rate, the Company refers to the corresponding definitions published on its IR website under IR resources (https://ir.hometogo.de/).