HomeToGo SE

XETRA:HTG

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the conference of Q2 2023 Financial Results and Earnings Call of HomeToGo. [Operator Instructions]

It's been my pleasure to turn the conference over to Sebastian Grabert, Head of IR. Please go ahead, sir.

[Sebastian Grabert, executive]

Good morning, dear analysts and investors, and welcome to HomeToGo's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Sebastian Grabert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. With me today is our Co-Founder and CEO, Dr. Patrick Andrae, who will present our strategic highlights of the second quarter of 2023; as well as our CFO, Steffen Schneider, who will then walk you through the financials. As always, this call is being recorded and will be made available later today on our Investor Relations website.

With this, I would like to hand it over to you, Patrick. Please go ahead, the floor is yours.

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

Thanks, Sebastian. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. After exceptional growth during the first quarter of 2023, I have the pleasure of reporting a strong improvement in our profitability for the second quarter of 2023. In fact, HomeToGo achieved the first time positive adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter amounting to EUR 1.4 million with a substantial improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin of 20 percentage points year-over-year, standing at 3.3% at the end of this quarter -- of the last quarter. While we are very, very proud about achieving this milestone already in quarter 2, we want to reiterate that we plan our business on an annual basis and the progress we make on a year-to-date basis.

This strong advancement in our profitability was particularly driven by continued improvement in our marketing efficiency, further increasing revenues from repeat business as well as higher economies of scale, enhancing our overall cost efficiency. Our track record of continuously improving profitability levels becomes even clearer when looking at the sales and marketing expenses in relation to booking revenues, which we'll explore in more detail later today.

Our business model proved incredibly resilient in a consistently challenging macroeconomic environment. We continued driving strong demand, resulting in a new second quarter record high in booking revenues, booking revenues backlog, and lastly, IFRS revenues, which are today more than 2.5x higher compared to pre-COVID levels 4 years ago. We therefore grew significantly faster than our peers versus 2019. And we observed favorable development of our North American business, growing booking revenues in quarter 2 '23 by 72% year-over-year. As you know, the booking revenue backlog will be gradually recognized as IFRS revenues, providing high visibility over the remainder of the year.

Furthermore, quarter 2 '23 demonstrate our continued operational strength and improved profitability across our key strategic priorities. First, our profitable Subscriptions & Services business delivered an exceptional growth of 85% year-over-year and reached a new record high quarter of EUR 9.1 million IFRS revenue. And this includes especially a strong contribution from our all-in-one SaaS solution provider for self-servicing hosts and smaller supply partners called Smoobu, which is currently the fastest organically growing unit within the entire HomeToGo Group, but more on that success story later today.

Additionally, in quarter 2 '23, we were also able to further increase the CPA take rate to a new all-time high of 11% after hitting the double-digit percentage range for the first time in the previous quarter. The additional increase corresponds to a solid year-over-year improvement of 1 percentage point. So all in all, we are continuing HomeToGo's growth story, while steadily improving our profitability. Based on the excellent first half of 2023, with an earlier-than-expected adjusted EBITDA breakeven and a new record level of booking revenue backlog, we are fully on track to reach our profitability and growth targets for 2023 and can therefore give share space to new inventory and projects. With this, we are already laying the foundation for a good kickoff to 2024. So we are proud to reiterate with full confidence our full year 2023 guidance to reach double-digit IFRS revenues growth year-over-year and be adjusted EBITDA breakeven.

Now that you have the key highlights, let's take a closer look at HomeToGo's operational business in the first half of 2023. We continue to deliver on our promise of offering the largest selection of vacation rentals worldwide, conveniently all in one place. In the first 6 months of 2023, we integrated approximately 10% more new partners to our marketplace versus the same period in the year before. Newly added inventory is especially attractive for us as we benefit from higher take rates on average. And additionally, a significant fraction of our new partners decide to process the incoming bookings entirely end-to-end by our on-site platform. This further enhances our revenue split while also enabling us to increasingly offer additional add-on services like payments and insurance solutions as additional revenue streams on top.

So let me now have a word on what we currently see in the market and on what Steffen will also elaborate on later. In half year 1, we put a particular emphasis on very attractive properties with an exceptional value for money in our most popular travel regions such as, for instance, the Baltic Sea, Italy and Croatia. It's worth noting that while demand has generally rebounded since the pandemic, we do see some patterns of reservation in summer 2023, especially due to higher average daily rates overall. We continue to deliver on quality and breadth and selection for our travelers and are still able to offer availability in popular regions even during peak travel high seasons in August. However, it is surprising that even incredible homes, such as these, are still partially available to book.

So let's now take a closer look at demand patterns for this, especially compared to last year. For example, take our core market of Germany. When comparing search trends on Google from German sort of ferienhaus, so vacation house in English, from April until July across this year and last year, we clearly see a lower level of demand with some improvement in July. As it has also been reported by some of our peers, travel has currently returned to the city after a complete containment of COVID-19. Another observation is that international travel increases and nondomestic holiday locations are on the rise.

Given our clear focus on rural areas and on DACH and Europe specifically, we temporarily do not enjoy the same strength in demand pattern during thgs phase of normalization and strong comps in last year. We for sure continue to closely monitor the situation. And it's clear looking at the press headlines that the demand overall this year is somewhat lower compared to previous travel season in rural areas, notably, pointed out due to price increases at popular rural destinations. And this was particularly true for some of our core destinations where we've built inventory, the Baltic Sea, Italy and Croatia.

However, despite this dip in demand, we showed the resilience of our business and still broke records in quarter 2, 2023. So all in all and despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges and inflationary pressure, after our strong performance in the first 6 months and the current prospects for the second half of 2023, HomeToGo is fully on track to deliver what we have promised, achieving adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2023.

And you can see this clearly on the continuous improvement of our profitability. Slide 7 depicts the key factors for achieving adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the second quarter. Firstly, and most importantly, as already observed during the first quarter, we were able to further improve our marketing efficiency, clearly visible in our continuous lowering of the marketing and sales cost to booking ratio. Looking long term, we see a continued trend of this efficiency, especially the year-over-year improvement of roughly 15 percentage points, highlighting our strong advancement in increasing the operating leverage of HomeToGo.

Secondly, and closely related to efficiency, we observed ongoing exceptional growth in our revenues from repeat bookings. Since quarter 2, 2019, we have grown our repeat booking revenues almost tenfold with a CAGR of stellar 73%. By increasing this amount of repeat booking revenues, we directly benefit from higher margin revenues from multi-booking customers, as you know, come in with roughly 88% lower acquisition costs compared to first session customers.

Thirdly, in quarter 2 2023, we were also able to further increase the CPA take rate to a new all-time high of 11% after hitting the double-digit percentage range already for the first time in the previous quarter. And last, but definitely not least, our profitable Subscriptions & Services businesses reached its highest quarter IFRS revenues ever with EUR 9.1 million by growing 85% year-over-year.

So let's dive deeper into the key units of our business. Our Subscriptions & Services business, one of the key levers to our improvement in profitability, is especially attractive for HomeToGo as a combined high growth rate, visible in the almost tenfold IFRS revenues over only 4 years and a profitable and, to a large extent, recurring revenue stream. Consequently, the Subscriptions & Services business now reached 21% of our quarterly IFRS revenues. As you recall from the IPO in 2021, our goal was to reach 20% of IFRS revenues within 2 years. This business also includes our very successful software-as-a-service solution provider for self-servicing hosts and smaller supply partners called Smoobu, which currently is the fastest organically growing entity within the entire HomeToGo Group.

To give you a little bit more background on this, our largest entity, Smoobu, in the Subscriptions & Services business encompasses vacation rental software along the customer journey that solves the pain points for our smaller supply partners and sources. The overall goal is to provide technology and data solutions to professionalize the source and supply partners businesses, and by this, foster their growth in a self and hard way. For example, Smoobu's main features include real-time channel management with prices and availabilities, synchronization across multiple booking portals, central customer communications and website creation as well as review management. By focusing on developing these solutions like Smoobu that improves the supply side businesses, we are fueling the growth for the entire accommodation industry.

Let's now take a look at what we are striving for in the remainder of this year and in 2024 and beyond. The focus in the first half of 2023 was clearly on improving our profitability. By reaching the first second quarter adjusted EBITDA breakeven in HomeToGo's history, we have made tremendous progress on our main priority in 2023. Based on this excellent first half of 2023, we are fully on track to reach our growth and profitability targets for the current year and also laying the foundations for a really good start into 2024. As we look ahead, we intend to intensify marketing activities in the second half of 2023, combined with the July launch of our first AI product for travelers, more on that soon, we are laying foundation for accelerated future growth in the remainder of the year and beyond.

In 2024, we will strive for further growth while simultaneously further improving our underlying profitability. After the adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2023, our next milestone is to reach a positive operating cash flow for 2024. Besides further benefiting from growth in our core marketplace, the essential enabler for these envisioned goals will be the continued favorable developing Subscriptions & Services business on the revenue side. Plus, we plan to intensify the usage of AI in both our processes and across our operations on the cost side. We have a huge opportunity to further leverage the capabilities of AI to not only improve the way people search, but also more quickly deliver highly tailored and increasingly personalized experience to each of our travelers.

In the long run, we continue to aim for EUR 1 billion in booking revenues by 2028-'29. And this will be enabled by a continued expansion of the CPA take rate, the further geographic expansion of our business, as already demonstrated by our North American performance in quarter 2 '23, and for sure, advancing our Subscriptions & Services businesses as well as additional services like payments and insurance solutions and, finally, by selective and value-accretive M&A.

Before I now hand over to Steffen in a second to talk through our financial highlights, I'm proud to share our progress on the most disruptive topic of the moment, AI. For us at HomeToGo, technology, machine learning and AI have been in our DNA ever since the beginning. As you know, we have had machine learning and AI as a core part of our technology for a long time, such as image beautification across billions of property images and natural language processing, even before generative AI was a word, to enhance our listings. It's important to note that we aren't just working with AI and new technologies because it's trendy, but our foundations have always been about making the process of booking travel intuitively easy as it is reflected in our vision.

And that is why we launched a new innovation in our product in May this year. It's called HomeToGo Modes. Mode is basically a collection of curated search experience on HomeToGo that makes finding the perfect vacation rental intuitively fast and easy. Our ambition with this is changing the way we search for travel. And we know our work, especially now with AI and generative AI on the forefront, can be at best what we see in HomeToGo's experiences to be successful in the longer run for HomeToGo as a product.

But before we go into more details, let me ask the question. What do you think? Is AI necessary at all for our business? And is there even a need from the customer side? The clear answer is, yes. In the study, we did in July '23 on a sample of U.S. travelers, we found that 3 out of 4 respondents are using AI towards at least once per month. 20% or every fifth person uses AI several times a day. So we believe that generative AI can greatly benefit travelers who are looking for a more curated search experience, plus with the matchmaking between supply and demand at the core of our business, we know that generative AI can provide a forward-thinking solution to help further take cognitive load of travelers who are searching for the perfect vacation home.

And that is why we created our AI Mode as the first HomeToGo Mode. And we are very, very proud to be the first vacation rental focused marketplace to test and launch an AI product just for the vacation and rental industry. Our new personal assistant for travel planning, the AI Mode, so our first AI product for the traveler, uses generative AI to deliver highly personalized recommendations. This is an incredible milestone, particularly for us as a company, but also in general for the whole industry, improving the entire search experience. So when we look at it, first, AI Mode benefits travelers who are looking for a more curated search experience, providing fast and easier systems in finding and booking the perfect vacation rental through natural conversation. And we also support this natural conversation.

It very easily answers any rental or destination requests such as, "I want to go surfing in Florida. What are the most affordable beach destinations? Find me a wheelchair-accessible home in the Baltic Sea. And even show me the top rated cast in Scotland where my dog can feel like a queen." And AI Mode will also benefit, for sure, our partners because it is providing access to even more highly qualified leads from travelers. And lastly, for HomeToGo, it gives us an improved ability to deliver long case search queries plus also better convert top-of-funnel users with an unclear intent. With our Mode product concept, each mode in the future will be created with the intended time of trips of traveler in mind. We will continue to understand our guests' needs and intuitively deliver an unparalleled travel user experience.

To sum it up, we've always built tools that will drastically improve how our travelers can find and book their perfectly unique vacation rentals. Based on this, we created AI Mode with the same reason we founded HomeToGo, our vision: making incredible homes easily accessible to everyone. We did this with the power of creating one place with the largest selection of vacation rentals globally in an otherwise highly fragmented market. And now with breaking into AI as a pioneer in the vacation rental space, it is a natural next step for us as we continue to live up to our vision.

And with that being said, I would like to hand over to Steffen, who will now lead you through our financials of the second quarter.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning also from my side, and thank you for dialing in.

Let's take a look at our core metrics on Slide 15, which again emphasizes our strong focus on growth and profitability throughout of 2023. Booking revenues in Q2 '23 grew at 8% year-over-year to EUR 50.2 million, primarily driven by strong North American business. Q2 '23 on-site booking revenues came in 12% lower year-over-year, amounting to EUR 20.6 million. This decrease was, on the one hand, due to less bookings in important on-site markets like Germany, Italy and Croatia as well as the strong performance in our North American business, on the other hand. As you know, the on-site share in North America is still relatively low compared to Europe. Therefore, the strong growth of the North American business of 72% year-over-year was mainly CPA offsite. Given our focus on profitability, we actively pursued opportunities to drive profitable growth. Therefore, this drop in on-site bookings revenue was intended and did not come as a surprise. I will elaborate more on this later.

IFRS revenues grew robustly by 14% year-over-year to EUR 42.8 million in Q2 '23, predominantly driven by strong growth in the CPA offsite business as well as Subscriptions & Services, both growing by 68% and even 85% year-over-year, respectively. As highlighted before, the second quarter of 2023 was all about profitability. Absolute adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 1.4 million, an absolute improvement of EUR 7.8 million year-over-year. On a relative basis, we have improved the adjusted EBITDA margin substantially by more than 20 percentage points compared to the previous year period. Main contributors were the strong improvement in marketing efficiency driven by repeat business as well as higher economies of scale. We are fully confident to improve profitability further over the course of this year in order to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven and to continue our growth in financial year 2023.

Let's take a closer look on Slide 16 at the breakdown of our booking and IFRS revenues on a half year basis. I want to again emphasize our Subscriptions & Services business with its excellent development over the recent years and was the main IFRS revenue growth contributor in the first half of 2023. On top of that, we have seen very solid growth of our marketplace model on an annual comparison both in terms of booking revenues as well as IFRS revenues. The CPA onsite business performed in line with expectations during the last 6 months. In addition, onsite is also important for repeat business, i.e., travelers booking for the second or third time at significantly lower cost to HometoGo. The CPA offsite business driven by the U.S. performed well with growth rates of 66% for booking revenues and 48% for IFRS revenues, respectively.

The growth in booking revenues, as seen on the previous slide, is also reflected on Slide 17, leading to a new second quarter record high booking revenue backlog of EUR 67.4 million. To emphasize, as a reminder, while full cost associated with the booking revenue backlog have already been accounted for, the associated IFRS revenues will be gradually recognized when check-ins have happened in the remainder of 2023, predominantly in Q3 during the summer travel high season month of July through September. Therefore, the second quarter record high booking revenue backlog provides high visibility over the course of H2 and is an important profitability building block to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2023.

Let me elaborate on the marginal decrease in onsite share. While the absolute onsite booking revenues followed the favorable growth trend from the previous period and grew solidly by 16% in the first 6 months of 2023, the corresponding onsite share decreased slightly by 1 percentage point year-over-year. This slight decrease results from our strongly growing North American business, depicted at the bottom of the page. The relative booking revenue shares, excluding Subscriptions & Services attributed to the North American market, increased by 9 percentage points year-over-year and now amounts to roughly 1/4 of the overall absolute amount. As we continuously steer our business opportunistically in the most profitable way, this increase was intentionally driven.

Taking a closer look at our on-site business on a quarterly level. Overall booking revenues on-site share for the group consequently decreased by 7 percentage points, standing at 50% at the end of the second quarter. Again, this effect stems from our strong U.S. business in Q2. On the other side, the onsite share in the DACH region, our most advanced market, could be further expanded by 2 percentage points year-over-year to 81%. The European onsite share increased by 1 percentage point to 65% compared to Q2 2022.

Commenting on our take rate on Page 20. The CPA take rate increased from 10% in Q2 '22 to 11% in Q2 '23, a further increase of 1 percentage points year-over-year, and therefore, reaching a new all-time high in HomeToGo's history after exceeding the double-digit percentage range for the first time in the previous quarter. The growth in take rate was driven by both new higher take rate inventory as well as increased take rates of existing inventory, underlining the competition between partners for traffic and bookings.

Basket size has increased in Q2 '23 by almost 9%, mainly driven by a higher share of U.S. business with its traditional higher basket sizes due to its higher average daily rates. The average daily rate increased by 17% from EUR 151 to EUR 176, driven by the higher share of U.S. business, which has an ADR of EUR 310 in Q2 '23, increasing by 12% in comparison to Q2 2022. The length of stay slightly decreased by 7% for European and North American markets from 6.7 to 6.3 days.

Taking a look at the development in our cost ratios that drove group level profitability in relation to IFRS revenues, we observed that gross profit margin improved by 6.5 percentage points, now standing at more than 96%. Cost of revenues decreased significantly during the second quarter as compared to Q2 '22 due to the amortization of the order backlog in the amount of EUR 1.6 million included in the comparative period. Please note that we here, as always, adjust the cost for expenses for share-based compensation and other one-off items in order to arrive at the adjusted EBITDA.

Most notably it's the substantial improvement in the sales and marketing cost ratio by 17.3 percentage points year-over-year, largely benefiting from a continuous improvement in our marketing efficiency, along with the growth in repeat customers. The favorable development of our marketing efficiency was the leading contributor in achieving adjusted EBITDA breakeven in the second quarter of 2023. With respect to our product and development cost margin, the slight deterioration is explained by an increase in the group staff dedicated to product development, resulting in increased personnel expenses in the first half as well as higher license fees resulting from the growing underlying business.

The decrease in general and administrative expenses ratio by 2.8 percentage points year-over-year can be attributed to a decrease in consulting expense compared to the prior year period as we have done more work in-house. Overall, profitability in terms of adjusted EBITDA margin improved substantially by more than 20 percentage points compared to the previous year level, which underlines our full confidence to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2023.

Looking at our cash position on Slide 22. We continue to have a very strong balance sheet with gross cash of EUR 145 million, including the investment of EUR 50 million in our 2 money market funds. Overall, our cash position increased by EUR 5.3 million during Q2 2023. Deducting interest-bearing debt of EUR 6.5 million and restricted cash of EUR 2.8 million brings the net cash position as per end of June to EUR 136 million. On the back of that liquidity cushion, we feel well equipped to finance our future growth ambitions even in an increasingly challenging environment.

In terms of cash flow, during the second quarter, we were able to generate a positive cash flow from operating activities of EUR 8.8 million, increasing our overall cash position. Cash flow from investing activities amounted to negative EUR 1.2 million. The cash flow from financing activities amounted to negative EUR 2.7 million and includes repayment of borrowings. As you have seen before, Q1 '23 was mainly about growth while improving profitability. Q2 was mainly about profitability, while still growing.

Given what we already have in the books with our record booking revenues backlog of EUR 67 million, an increase of more than 14% compared to June 2022, and on top of that, the clear visibility that comes from the stable and profitable Subscriptions & Services business, the focus shifts already towards preparing a good basis for 2024. Therefore, we will continue to act disciplined with regards to profitability in Q3 2023 and keep our powder dry for the 2024 booking season, which usually starts at the end of September.

Looking ahead, at the third quarter, we expect our IFRS revenues to substantially increase on the back of accelerated conversion of booking revenues backlog into IFRS revenues. Combined with further improving adjusted EBITDA margins, we are fully convinced to achieve our growth and profitability targets for 2023. Therefore, we are pleased to reiterate our financial year 2023 guidance and are fully confident to reach our adjusted EBITDA breakeven while reaching our growth targets.

To summarize the performance of the second quarter of 2023, we delivered our first time positive adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter. Our Subscriptions & Services business reached the highest IFRS revenue in the quarter ever. Booking revenues backlog reached a new second quarter all-time high, providing high visibility for the remainder of the year. We reiterate our full confidence in our guidance to achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven and to grow -- and reach our growth targets in 2023. A final note, we will host our Capital Markets Day 2023 virtually on December 12. You're all invited. So please save the date and more details will follow.

And with that, I thank you for your attention today. We are happy to take any questions you may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is from Wolfgang Specht from Berenberg.

[Wolfgang Specht, analyst]

I'll start with 3 questions, and maybe we have time for some other ones after the colleagues could have their time. First one on your repeat booking revenues. You're stating 73% CAGR over the last years. But can you give us any indication of how that -- what that means in absolute terms? That would be really important for us. Then on the Subscriptions & Services revenue growth, that has been outstanding, can you give us an idea on organic share included in these figures. And the third question, you mentioned 10% new partners. Does this also mean that you added 10% of inventory or is it just the number of, let's say, gross partners?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Wolfgang, Steffen here. Thanks for your question. So the absolute number of repeat booking revenues, we are not disclosing. Nevertheless, you can expect that this is a high single-digit million amount, so closer to the upper end, actually pretty close to the upper end. So that gives you an idea that it's already quite a substantial number. But we're expecting that to grow, of course, over the next years as we are having a higher base in our onsite business. With regards to your second question, there is still a little bit of inorganic in there as we have still 2 months of consolidation effect, so notably April and May coming from the SECRA investment, but it's -- the real growth is coming from the Smoobu business. And there, it is fully organic.

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

Wolfgang, Patrick here. In regards to the growth of listings, yes, so it's not 10% of our listings things that grow, but we included 10% more partners in this quarter, right, where you can say -- so like the listing is one thing. The quality of the listings is the more important one. But roughly it's still a 2,000 digit number that we delivered throughout this year in terms of new inventory on the site. And as you can see on the slide, also like in the beginning, we were focusing especially on specific inventory, nice inventory with high margin for us but nonetheless, good prices for the customers in our core rural areas, so like the DACH region, Croatia, Italy, so South Europe in general. And this is what we are focusing on.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Volker Bosse from Baader Bank.

[Volker Bosse, analyst]

Volker Bosse, Baader Bank. Congratulations on the great results, especially in regards to profitability. I would also like to ask a couple of questions. First of all, do I get the message right that you see some certain consumer demand slowdown? Most recently if I look at the bookings trend, which you showed on Page 23, and in relation to that, what does it mean in regards to change of consumers' booking behavior? What is most recently then visible, shorter stays, less long-haul bookings, or trading down in regards to booking classes also? I would be curious to see what you most recently here see in the market.

Third question is about the EBITDA trend in the second half. And also to set expectations here, right, in third quarter is a profitable quarter for you, let's say, by nature due to seasonality. So is it fair to assume an improved profitability also in the third quarter this year and most likely fourth quarter to be negative again? Or do you expect now to continue to remain in positive territories quarter-by-quarter going forward?

And last but not least is on your HomeToGo Mode, the AI Mode, very interesting to see. Thanks for sharing these insights into the most recent developments. Very helpful. And as I got the message that this is still a beta version or test version, so could you give us an idea of how the rollout to the overall market can then be expected? And when decent sales contributions can be expected from these kind of new state of technologies?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

So Volker, thanks for your questions. So maybe I'll start with your question on Slide 23. So as you might recall from last year's earnings call, the July '22 benchmark was quite extraordinary. We had some very strong demand, in particular, from one customer in that month. And therefore, that was a strong comp to beat. In general, our goal is to be very disciplined in Q3 and to focus on profitability.

Jumping over to your second question on EBITDA, the Q3 EBITDA will be very high as always in our third quarter. So we will end up the Q3 year-to-date with a positive adjusted EBITDA for the group, and that will basically give us then the firepower to spend in Q4 '23, like we did last year in Q4, and building up the booking backlog for 2024. So therefore, expect that Q3 will be very profitable, Q4 will be negative again.

But all in all, the full year will be profitable as already mentioned, because we have it in the books, and then we can basically see how much we can spend in Q4. And as before, we will make sure that we are profitable, but we will also make sure that we have a very good basis for 2024. As the, let's say, business continues, we want to continue to grow, and we want to become more profitable in the years to come. Patrick will talk about Mode.

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

Yes, happy to. Volker, in regards to your question around the AI Mode, and in general, right? So as we said, so we are looking at machine learning AI for a long time within HomeToGo. So also like if you look at what we did with natural language processing already prior generative AI got so popular, we were obviously working with such models on understanding what are descriptions on HomeToGo and these things and try to enhance the listings on the platform without, like what people are now talking about, mainly generative AI being basically used in chat, where you can talk to, for instance, the HomeToGo AI Mode as a travel time.

But this is also why we launched the AI Mode rather quickly, and as you said, beta launched it first, right, so like in U.S. and U.K. to really be, again, at the forefront with our tools that we have on the site. And also -- because that's the thing, the moment you have it on the website, you can start learning how people interact with it and then directly use these learnings instead of making up huge plans that might not interest the customer and so on.

So for us, the most important thing in general within HomeToGo, but especially also for the AI Mode, is like bringing these kind of tools quickly to the customers, seeing how they're being adapted and then iterate on it quickly. That also means that -- that's also why we focus first on the U.S., u.K. market in the app with it because obviously, these models are best with the English language. So we can also very quickly learn there from customer behavior, but we will definitely also roll it out to the web and we will roll it out to other countries as well.

And you will see the first rollout phases still this year, for sure, on the different kind of access points to also use the AI Mode, not only via the app and also to use it not only in U.S., U.K. And for sure, you will learn a little bit more around this topic as well at our CMD. As Steffen mentioned, that will take place in December. And by then, you will also see the further progress.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Felix Ellmann from Warburg Research.

[Felix Ellmann, analyst]

Congratulations on the numbers. I have 2 questions. As the summer is nearly over, I would like to have an impression about how it is going and how the quarter is going, how you're feeling it towards the August and first weeks of summer? And the other question is, looking at the dynamics of the software business, which is exceptionally, I think, how will it go further? If I take this 80% growth rate for the next 2, 3 years, then I have the value of the company you add by the software segment. What is the feeling you have here?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Felix, thanks for your questions. So the summer is going okay. What we have seen is, I already mentioned it, it was a little bit softer in July. In August, we are currently looking at similar level as we had it in the last year. So therefore, this is going according to our expectations. Again, to reiterate the point, it is really about profitability. So we are very careful looking for where can we make the margins, where can we make the business, and all of that is basically paying into our EBITDA and paying into to then have the firepower for Q4 when people make the bookings for 2024.

So as straight as it might sound, but our focus really is already on how to have the best basis for a good start into 2024, and therefore, we'll continue to be very disciplined about it. And maybe just to give one last comment. When you take our half year numbers, then add to that the backlog of EUR 67 million what we have, and then if you just add the same amount of Subscriptions & Services business, you're already almost at our lower end of our guidance. So we are in good shape for 2023, and therefore, we want to have a good basis for 2024.

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

Felix, happy to take the second question, which is also a bit connected, right? As Steffen said, so part of us investing into the right topics is also, for sure, investing into Subscriptions & Services, what you see in the very nice growth rate there, especially also on the organic side, and for sure, with a longer payback time. But this is what we have been investing throughout the year and nonetheless run this whole kind of businesses profitable. And investments into software and subscription, especially are investments that then later also like turn back as revenues and customer lifetime value on these dynamics.

So if we look, for sure, at the whole Subscriptions & Services, you could say like bucket of businesses we have, we want to continue strong growth rates for sure, as we have been doing that on a higher basis, we need to see. But we believe that it will continue to stand out in terms of growth in the overall company. And this is also why we will invest into it and why we will also, at the Capital Markets Day, have a longer deep dive also into how we look into the whole topic of Subscriptions & Services and how we can bring solutions to our supply partner side to help them not only be successful on HomeToGo, but in general be more successful within their business because we obviously saw a lot of topics on the marketplace, but also with the solutions like Smoobu also outside of the marketplace today, that's more supply partners and host can actually leverage. And there we see what you also can see as a result in a strong growth rate, especially from Smoobu.

[Felix Ellmann, analyst]

Sorry for me getting back to the numbers. Just for a rule of thumb, would you expect more or less EUR 30 million in SaaS for next year or EUR 60 million?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Well, I mean, let us come back to that at a little bit later point in time, Felix. So as of now, we are not talking about the breakdown of our revenue guidance for next year as we haven't disclosed the guidance for next year. But you can be assured that Subscriptions & Services business continues to be a very important pillar of our growth rate, and we want to continue on that growth so that it will become more and more important. But in general, we don't provide any guidance on business lines.

[Felix Ellmann, analyst]

Sorry to conclude here. But this was regular business we've been seeing in Q3 -- in Q2 here. There was nothing irregular. It was natural growth or was there something special in Q2?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Well, as mentioned, there was a little bit of inorganic leftover from last year because, as you might recall, we had the SECRA acquisition starting consolidation June 1, 2022. So therefore, we had a little bit of consolidation effect for April and May. But the majority of the growth came from Smoobu, as mentioned.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Benjamin Zoega from Deutsche Bank.

[Benjamin Zoega, analyst]

Congratulations on the EBITDA beat. I just wanted to follow-up on the earlier question around summer travel demand. I think you mentioned August was in line with your expectations. Is there any incremental detail you can provide in terms of bookings? And just looking at the CPA take rate in June at 12.3%, what do you think is driving this? And do you expect this to persist? And then I have a follow-up question, perhaps I can ask it after.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Sure. So Ben, on the summer travel trends, so as before, we -- our main focus is always on the booking revenue. So we don't try to maximize the number of bookings. We always try to maximize booking revenues. And to answer your second question because that's related to that, when we see the growth in CPA take rate, that is really a function of, on the one hand, adding new inventory. And when we add new inventory there, the take rate is usually north of 13%. But also, we have seen a strong improvement of take rates from existing partners. So they have offered more in order to be competitive in order to be -- to get more traffic and to get more bookings.

And for us, it was really important to put our business where we see the margins in order to get the pay in for the EBITDA. And all of that together brought that increase in booking revenues. Now if you ask, will the Q3 be at 12.3%? I would assume not so. It will not grow that fast. But it was, all in all, a good example of how we have been playing our marketplace and how we are basically giving traffic to the parties and the partners, who provide the most attractive economics to us.

[Benjamin Zoega, analyst]

Understood. Maybe one for Patrick. I think you mentioned that M&A is still a lever to reach the '28-'29 target. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on what type of targets might be interesting to you. Are there still areas where you think strategic bolt-ons could better the overall position? Or do you think about this more as a lever to accelerate growth into new geographies, for example?

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

Yes. So obviously, around M&A, even if we would look at things, we could not say that, but if -- so concretely. But like for sure, when we look at M&A, we look at 2 topics mainly, right? So one topic is like adding accretive businesses to our marketplace where it might make sense. And the second is the clear kind of focus on the Subscriptions & Services part, like where we also acquired in the past like Smoobu and SECRA, which are contributing now in the Subscriptions & Services bucket a lot, especially, as we mentioned around Smoobu also, on a great organic growth path shortly after our acquisition now. And this is what we are looking at.

And for sure, for us, this is a lever to also -- or where we can look into a lot of different opportunities on that side because the market for the vacation rental space, in general, that's the reason why we found HomeToGo in the first place, is a super fragmented one. So it means also that there is a lot of room also for consolidation on our side. But for us, the most important thing, so when we do M&A is, for sure, also in light of what our overall goal is acquiring profitable businesses that are value-enhancing for HomeToGo in general.

[Operator]

We have a follow-up question from Wolfgang Specht.

[Wolfgang Specht, analyst]

Three additional ones from my side. First, can you give us some idea how you expect the CPC, CPL business to develop going into autumn? So do you expect your large partners to increase or decrease remuneration for leads here? Second question is on your midterm outlook, free cash flow breakeven, you mentioned '24/'25. To my knowledge, it used to be full year 2024. It would be great if you could clarify this one. And then you also mentioned regional expansion in your slides. Are you looking here at, let's say, large world regions? Or is it rather targeted at selective single countries you would approach? That's it.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Sure. Wolfgang, so let me first go on your CPC question. The very honest answer, we don't know. So it will be always a reflection of what the overall market will be. And as we have seen last year, that can be getting at some point very high. It can be getting at some point rather low. So that is very difficult to forecast. But we are not dependent on that. And as we've said before that it is always a reflection of how the partners compete on our marketplace. So whoever is offering us good commercials will get more traffic and who's offering us less attractive commercials will get less traffic.

On your question on the free cash flow and operating cash flow, the goal is very clear that generating free cash flow is an important milestone, which we want to achieve rather sooner than later. And as we have looked in the past, at the moment, we improve our profitability. At the moment, there is not that much difference between adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow because we have to pay a little bit of taxes in our subsidiaries, which are not part of the fiscal unity. We have -- in the past, we had negative interest expense. Now we have positive interest income as we are now getting interest on our cash position, which is actually helping. And then we have a little bit of CapEx, which is mainly capitalized R&D. And therefore, it's about generating operating cash flow and then generating free cash flow as soon as possible. And that is what we want to do. If it's in '24, great. But overall, we want to increase the value of our business and to enhance the value overall.

[Patrick Andrae, executive]

And to your third question on geographic expansion, yes, so one thing is for sure, like looking at -- so it's always the second approach, right? Like one thing is looking at our current geographies that we are already in, so where we can further expand, like you also saw now in Q2 with North America as an example. But also like not only expanding basically the revenues and the bookings we get from a region, but also then consequently rolling out our playbook in regards to onsite and then also Subscriptions & Services.

But we, for sure, also look into if there are new geographic markets that could be interesting. Having in mind that HomeToGo, in general, like with first, you could say, when we build a bridge test into a certain country or region, we can go in very light. And that's why we already have more than 20 markets basically active, where we also see a lot of expansion potential.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time, and I hand back to Sebastian Grabert for closing comments.

[Sebastian Grabert, executive]

Thank you so much, Francie, and all the analysts who cover our stock. We're very happy for your very positive feedback as well as all the questions you have asked. Obviously, the Investor Relations department is here to answer all the questions, remaining ones, throughout the day. So please contact us if there are further questions. And with that, we would like to close this call today. Thank you very much. Have a fantastic day, and talk to you soon.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.