HomeToGo SE

XETRA:HTG

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the HomeToGo Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sebastian Grabert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

[Sebastian Grabert, executive]

Thank you, Sacha. Good morning, dear analysts and investors, and welcome to HomeToGo's Q3 2024 earnings call. My name is Sebastian Grabert, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. With me today is our CFO, Steffen Schneider, who will present our financial highlights of the third quarter of 2024.

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, Steffen, for a financial update on the business. Please go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Thank you, Sebastian. Dear analysts and investors, thank you for joining us today.

Let's start with our key financial highlights for Q3. First, we delivered a strong top line performance in the third quarter of 2024. Booking revenues reached a record high for a third quarter with EUR 62.7 million, while IFRS revenues surpassed an all-time high value for any quarter, delivering more than EUR 87 million. To recap, this top line momentum reflects not only solid organic growth, but also contributions from our strategic acquisitions consolidated at the beginning of 2024.

Within the booking revenues, we are especially proud of the high onsite share. This growth trajectory is further reinforced by our increased booking revenues backlog at the end of Q3 to EUR 37.4 million, of which almost 60% will convert into IFRS revenues in the fourth quarter, providing strong revenue visibility through the remainder of the year and also into 2025.

Second, we are consistently enhancing profitability. In Q3 '24, adjusted EBITDA hit a record quarterly high of over EUR 35 million, achieving an all-time high margin of 41%. On a year-to-date basis, adjusted EBITDA has more than tripled year-over-year, reflecting sustained improvement in both segments. On a segment level, the HomeToGo Marketplace generated more than 80% of the group's adjusted EBITDA in Q3 '24 following the summer peak travel season. HomeToGo_PRO nearly doubled its adjusted EBITDA contribution compared to the previous year period. Key drivers behind this profitability boost include further improvement in marketing efficiency, a solid nearly 25% year-over-year growth in repeat booking business for Q3 and even 32% for the first 9 months as well as a higher onsite take rate, also supported by our newly acquired short trip business brands.

Third, we ended Q3 with a robust cash position of nearly EUR 90 million, reflecting a slight decrease of EUR 5.9 million compared to the end of Q2. This was largely due to the advanced payments forwarded to partners during the peak travel season and an earn-out payment related to an acquisition. We anticipate cash inflows in Q4 as a substantial portion of summer travel-related receivables convert into cash. Free cash flow in Q3 nearly reached breakeven in the third quarter on a substantial improvement, up by more than EUR 10 million year-over-year, primarily driven by stronger cash flows from operating activities.

Fourth, we slightly update our financial guidance for 2024. We have upwardly adjusted our outlook for booking revenues from previously more than EUR 250 million, now expecting more than 34% year-over-year growth to exceed EUR 255 million. This revision reflects our continued strong booking momentum, in particular, with bookings for 2025. However, we have slightly downward-adjusted our IFRS revenue target to a range of EUR 215 million to EUR 220 million and a 32% to 35% year-over-year increase, down from our prior expectation of more than EUR 220 million with a 35% year-over-year increase. This adjustment is primarily due to lower performance in our advertising business during the third quarter, particularly in the North American market.

Total booking volumes in the third quarter fell short of expectations with a rather muted and lower-than-expected last-minute booking business in the U.S. market. In addition, we saw an increase in cancellation rates in Q3 '24 compared to the prior year, which is effectively offsetting the positive development we had seen in the first half of 2024, leading to a slightly more moderate outlook for IFRS revenues, so of bookings still to be traveled within 2024.

Finally, while our profitability is currently well advanced, we also see attractive opportunities to further build up the backlog for financial year '25. Therefore, we comfortably confirm our guidance for adjusted EBITDA of more than EUR 10 million, which also means that we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to increase compared to the previous guidance.

Now let's take a high-level look at our segments before diving into financial details of the third quarter. The Marketplace segment represents HomeToGo's AI-powered B2C platform, providing the world's largest selection of vacation rentals. This segment includes well-known brands such as HomeToGo, Casamundo and e-domizil and caters to global audience through local websites across over 25 countries. Supported by strength in both our booking onsite and advertising businesses, the Marketplace achieved over EUR 1.4 billion in GBV during the first 9 months of 2024. This was largely driven by a strong booking onsite business, which contributed a 56% year-over-year growth in IFRS revenues for the first 9 months of the year. In terms of profitability, the third quarter is always the best for the Marketplace segment with a 19% year-on-year growth to almost EUR 30 million adjusted EBITDA and more than 800% growth to more than EUR 6 million for the 9-month period year-to-date.

The HomeToGo_PRO segment comprises of B2B software and service solutions for the broader travel market with a focus on SaaS offerings for vacation rental suppliers. With HomeToGo_PRO, our mission is to address key pain points for suppliers and deliver solutions that substantially enhance their business operations. We are already seeing solid results along this path. HomeToGo_PRO drove over EUR 2 billion and enabled GBV in the first 9 months of 2024, reflecting a strong 27% increase year-over-year. As a reminder, enabled GBV captures travel enabled through a HomeToGo_PRO solution, mainly based on data from our clients and partners who use our tools. Additionally, HomeToGo_PRO continues to deliver strong profitability growth, nearly tripling its adjusted EBITDA year-to-date compared to the same period last year.

Turning to the next slide. Let's look at the key financials for the first 9 months and third quarter of the year in more detail. Booking revenues reached EUR 209.8 million in the first 9 months of '24 with a new third quarter record of EUR 62.7 million, both showing strong year-over-year growth rates of more than 30%. This was primarily driven by a robust performance in our booking onsite business within the Marketplace, which saw remarkably year-over-year growth of more than 70% in Q3 '24.

IFRS revenues rose by 27.6% for 9 months '24 to EUR 176.7 million. For Q3, this was an all-time quarterly high of EUR 87.4 million, reflecting 18.3% growth year-over-year. Both the HomeToGo Marketplace and HomeToGo_PRO segments contributed significantly to this increase. The difference in growth rates between booking revenues and IFRS revenues in Q3 was largely due to a higher cancellation rate as well as bookings for later periods. These bookings will be traveled, for example, in the shoulder season, which is the main season for the short trip business.

Our underlying profitability has seen substantial improvement with adjusted EBITDA more than tripling year-over-year to EUR 16.8 million in the first 9 months of 2024. This reflects a notable 6.1 percentage point increase in our adjusted EBITDA margin, largely fueled by a sustained margin expansion in both segments and a 31.6% year-over-year rise in repeat booking revenues. In Q3, adjusted EBITDA rose by 27.7% year-over-year, setting to a new quarterly record of EUR 35.9 million with a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 41%.

Free cash flow showed substantial improvement both year-to-date and on a quarterly basis. For the first 9 months, free cash flow improved by 50.2% or EUR 11.3 million year-over-year to minus EUR 11.2 million, driven by significantly better cash flows from operating activities. In Q3, free cash flow came in at minus EUR 0.9 million, so nearly breakeven on a quarterly level and reflecting a strong year-over-year absolute improvement of over EUR 10 million.

On the next slide, we break down revenues and profitability by segment for the first 9 months of 2024. The Marketplace segment delivered robust performance with booking revenues increasing by more than 29% year-over-year to EUR 157.1 million and IFRS revenues by 30% to EUR 128.1 million. This growth was fueled by solid organic expansion alongside the integration of our acquired short trip businesses. Consequently, the booking onsite business within the Marketplace segment achieved strong growth with both 9-month booking revenues and IFRS revenues up by 56% year-over-year, supported by a notable increase in the number of onsite bookings, which rose by nearly 60% year-over-year.

Profitability in the Marketplace segment showed exceptional growth in both absolute and relative terms by dynamic growth in repeat revenues and continuously improved marketing efficiency. Marketplace adjusted EBITDA for the first 9 months of '24 increased nearly tenfold, an 809% year-over-year rise alongside a 4.2 percentage point improvement in the adjusted EBITDA margin.

The HomeToGo_PRO segment sustained its growth momentum from the first half of the year with IFRS revenues up by 19.1% year-over-year to EUR 54.5 million and booking revenues rising by EUR 33.6 million to EUR 60.3 million. Both subscription and volume-based businesses contributed to this progress, posting year-over-year IFRS revenue growth rates of 12.5% and 22.3%, respectively. HomeToGo_PRO accounted for over 30% of the group's total IFRS revenues in the first 9 months of 2024.

On a profitability level, HomeToGo_PRO significantly contributed to the group's overall improvement, more than doubling its adjusted EBITDA to EUR 10.6 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin increase to -- of 10.7 percentage points year-over-year to reach 19.4%

Breaking down the results for Q3, starting with the Marketplace segment. The booking onsite business performed exceptionally well, achieving over 70% growth in booking revenues. This led to significant gains with booking onsite IFRS revenues up by 24.4% year-over-year to EUR 38.8 million in Q3 2024. The advertising business, which includes our former CPA offsite and CPC lines remained relatively stable in booking revenues as we optimized for higher-margin revenues businesses as well as the before mentioned softness in the North American market with higher advertising share. IFRS revenues for advertising saw a modest increase of 3.8% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA for the Marketplace segment showed strong improvement, up by 19.4% year-over-year to EUR 29.7 million, reflecting an exceptional Q3 adjusted EBITDA margin of 47.2%.

Turning to HomeToGo_PRO. The volume-based business showed especially high momentum with Q3 booking revenues up by 71.3% and IFRS revenues growing by 24.5% year-over-year. The subscription business, however, experienced a temporary slowdown impacted by lower demand and seasonally higher customer churn in Q3, yielding a modest 3% year-over-year increase for both booking revenues and IFRS revenues. However, early Q4 signs show month-over-month growth rates, which would reverse this trend. On the profitability side, HomeToGo_PRO nearly doubled its adjusted EBITDA with an impressive 90.6% year-over-year increase to EUR 6.2 million, alongside an 8.3 percentage point expansion in the adjusted EBITDA margin, reaching 22.3%.

In summary, our Q3 results delivered record highs in both IFRS revenues and adjusted EBITDA, which rose by 18.3% and 27.7% year-over-year, respectively, setting new quarterly benchmarks for the company.

Turning back to the group level and examining the trend in booking revenues over the years. As we mentioned during our Q1 and Q2 earnings calls, 2024 has been marked by highly competitive conditions, particularly in the paid marketing landscape. Despite this, we exceeded the figures from previous years, as shown on the left. Even with ongoing market challenges, we delivered strong performance in the first 9 months of the year as well as enhanced our marketing efficiency.

Our booking revenues backlog increased by 28.4% year-over-year, reaching a record end of third quarter high of EUR 37.4 million, of which 57% will be realized as IFRS revenues in Q4 2024. This provides solid revenue visibility for the remainder of the year and beyond. We also see strong bookings at the moment, so expecting a strong improvement in Q4 2024.

A bit more context on our average basket size development. You remember this slide from prior quarters. The overall decrease in basket size across all markets in the entire group by 13% year-over-year, as noted earlier, stems largely from the success of the strong short trip business in the DACH region. These shorter trips have lowered the overall basket size due to the 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 HomeToGo Marketplace, basket size slightly increased overall where the DACH region even experienced a 10% growth year-over-year, even outperforming the also positive trend in the Rest of Europe. In contrast, the North American market saw a decrease in basket size, driven by both a slightly lower average daily rate and shorter length of stay compared to the same period last year.

Turning to the evolution of our onsite take rate on Slide 9. Here, we see yet another positive contribution from the short trip business as it adds favorably to the onsite take rate. Year-over-year, the onsite take rate rose from 11.2% in the first 9 months of 2023 to 12.8% in the same period of 2024, marking a year-over-year increase of 1.6 percentage points. In Q3 '24, the onsite take rate achieved an all-time high of 13%, representing a year-over-year increase of 1.7 percentage points. The Q3 '24 onsite share increased by 12 percentage points year-over-year to 86% for DACH and even 14 percentage points year-over-year to 62% globally.

Now moving on to the development of our cost ratios and their role in driving group-level profitability relative to IFRS revenues, starting with the 9-month view. Our gross profit margin increased by 0.6 percentage points year-over-year to 98.4%, primarily due to enhanced cost efficiencies supported by disproportionately high sales growth. A key contributor to our profitability expansion has been our progress in marketing efficiency. Our marketing and sales cost ratio at 61.9% improved by a substantial 6 percentage points in the first 9 months of '24 compared to the prior year period. This was driven by stronger marketing efficiency, a 31.6% year-over-year increase in repeat booking revenues and positive contributions from recently acquired subsidiaries.

Product and development costs increased by 20.4%, primarily due to the acquisitions. However, these costs were largely offset by economies of scale, resulting in a slight margin contraction of 0.3 percentage points. General and administrative expenses rose by 22.7%, primarily due to the aforementioned increased personnel expenses attributed to the increased scope of consolidation from recent acquisitions as well as increased audit and consulting expenses. Consequently, the G&A cost ratio worsened by 1 percentage point year-over-year in the first 9 months of 2024. Altogether, our adjusted EBITDA margin in the first 9 months improved by a substantial 6.1 percentage points compared to the prior year.

The third quarter shows a similar trend. Product and development expenses rose by 14.2% from EUR 9.7 million in the prior year period to EUR 11.1 million in Q3 '24, mainly due to higher personnel expenses related to our expanded scope of consolidation and new services for the supply side. G&A expenses increased by EUR 4.6 million in Q3, mainly driven by higher consulting costs and third-party expense. Overall, Q3 profitability improved with the adjusted EBITDA margin up by 3 percentage points year-over-year, driven by an improvement of almost 4 percentage points in marketing and sales. As always, we exclude expenses related to equity-settled share-based compensation, depreciation, amortization and other one-off items to highlight our operational performance, which is reflected in our adjusted EBITDA.

Looking at our cash position on Slide 11. We maintain a robust balance sheet with a gross cash balance of EUR 89.8 million, which includes a EUR 12 million investment in the [ loan ] money market fund. The sequential decrease of EUR 5.9 million in gross cash from the end of Q2 '24 is mainly due to the seasonal forwarding of traveler advance payments to partners during peak travel season and acquisition-related earn-out payment as well as increasing tax payments. After deducting interest-bearing debt of EUR 2.7 million and restricted cash of EUR 10.1 million held for collection services on behalf of host, our net cash position as of the end of September stands at EUR 77 million.

Our cash inflow from operating activities saw a substantial year-over-year improvement of EUR 9.7 million, reaching EUR 1.4 million in Q3 '24. This improvement is largely due to stronger net results compared to the prior year as well as a reduction in net payouts related to travel advance payments, leading to a lower cash outflow in Q3 '24.

Cash flow from investing activities totaled minus EUR 5.1 million, primarily reflecting cash outflows related to acquisition-related earn-out and holdback obligations. These outflows also include investments in internally generated intangible assets aimed at enhancing the booking experience for our customers. Partly offsetting these were proceeds from the sale of a portion of our money market fund investment totaling EUR 5 million, resulting in a net cash outflow from investing activities of just EUR 0.1 million in Q3 '24.

Finally, cash flow from financing activities amounted to minus EUR 1.3 million, which includes EUR 0.7 million in debt repayments, EUR 0.3 million for the share buyback program and EUR 0.3 million for principal payments on lease liabilities in the third quarter of '24.

Before we conclude with the '24 outlook, I would like to address two topics that frequently come up during investor meetings: HomeToGo's capital structure and share-based compensation. You're likely familiar with this slide, which illustrates the potential impact of both our pre-IPO virtual stock option program, in short, VSOP or VSOP and post-IPO long-term incentive, in short, LTI program on dilution and the total number of shares outstanding.

The total euro value of all vested share-based compensation, including the legacy pre-IPO VSOP program amounts to approximately EUR 5 million despite higher accounting valuations. In the first 9 months of 2024 alone, we had to account for EUR 9.8 million, highlighting the discrepancy between accounting and real impact. Importantly, this is comfortably covered by our treasury shares as the total number of shares currently required for this vested program is well under 3 million shares. Based on yesterday's closing price, the number of shares required would have been roughly 2.4 million shares.

The simulation on the left side details the total shares required for all vested equity incentive programs across the HomeToGo Group based on different share price scenarios. Currently, 661,000 shares are needed for the legacy VSOP program, which, as a reminder, was priced at EUR 10 per share at the time of our IPO. Additionally, 1.7 million shares are required for vested restricted share units or RSUs. The claim from RSUs remained unaffected by share price fluctuations. However, the number of shares needed to settle vested virtual share options or VSOs increases with the share price. For instance, if the HomeToGo share price were to rise to EUR 4, an additional 2 million shares would be needed to settle these VSO claims.

On the right side of the slide, you see that we currently own around 6.5 million treasury shares, more than sufficient to cover all claims arising from vested share-based compensation even if the share price were to double.

Let's take a detailed look at our first deep dive topic, the share-based compensation structure and clarify its key elements for a better understanding. It's important to note that share-based compensation expenses are excluded from the calculation of adjusted EBITDA as they are, in the vast majority, equity and not cash-settled. Hence, the exclusion of the expenses provides a clearer view of operational performance.

Our share-based compensation consists primarily of 2 programs: the pre-IPO virtual stock option plan, VSOP, and the post-IPO long-term incentive program, LTI. While the VSOP program has been closed since our IPO and has unique features regarding its design and calculations, our focus will be on the LTI program, which is more standardized and currently in operation.

Each employee who is eligible to participate in the LTI program is awarded a certain annual euro amount as part of their compensation, which they can split among restricted stock units and virtual stock options. The minimum allocation to each instrument is 30%. In order to compensate for the VSOs higher risk, the participant gets 4 VSOs for 1 RSU. At the time of the grant, the fair value of all granted RSUs and VSOs is determined once and subsequently recognized over the vesting period of 2 years. Hereby, the grant fair value is recognized in our P&L degressively according to the individual vesting schedule, which is usually 2 years with quarterly tranches. In sum, it takes 8 quarters or 2 years that the LTI grant is fully vested for the employee. In case of the Management Board, the vesting period is 4 years, and therefore, it takes 16 quarters for vesting. Once RSUs or VSOs tranches have vested, the employee has 3 years after vesting of each tranche to exercise them before they expire.

Coming to the second deep dive of our capital structure. We have issued a total of around 127 million shares, comprising roughly 122.6 million publicly traded Class A shares and around 4.6 million Class B shares. As already mentioned on the previous slide, of the Class A shares, we currently hold around 6.5 million as treasury shares. The Class B shares have the same voting rights as the Class A shares. They will convert into Class A shares when the stock price reaches EUR 12, these are the B2 shares, and EUR 14 for the B3 shares. There also used to be B1 shares, which were converted into A shares at the time of our IPO in September 2021. There is no expiry date for the conversion of both B2 and B3 shares into Class A shares.

In addition to the shares, we have outstanding Class A and Class B warrants. Both warrants have a strike price of EUR 11.5. Both classes of warrants expire after 5 years, i.e., September 2026. The 9.2 million Class A warrants are publicly listed and can be exercised either against payment in cash or on a cashless basis. With cash exercise, the warrant holder pays a strike price of EUR 11.5 first before receiving one Class A share for each warrant. In a cashless exercise, the warrant holder receives only the intrinsic value of the warrant calculated as the difference between the Class A share price at the time of exercise and the strike price of EUR 11.50 without making any own contribution at exercise. The 5.3 million Class B warrants are not publicly traded and can only be exercised cashless, which lowers the potential dilution effect as only the intrinsic value has to be settled in Class A shares. If all Class A and Class B warrants were exercised, the maximum potential dilution with all Class A warrants being exercised against payment in cash would be 11.4%.

Before I close, let's revisit our updated outlook for the financial year 2024. Based on the strong performance in the first 9 months of 2024 and the strong first look into Q4 '24, we are upwardly adjusting our expectation for booking revenues from more than EUR 250 million to more than EUR 255 million, targeting growth rates of more than 34% year-over-year. However, we are slightly downward-adjusting our IFRS revenue target to a range of EUR 215 million to EUR 220 million, down from our prior expectation of more than EUR 220 million. This adjustment is primarily due to low performance in our advertising business during the third quarter, particularly in the North American market.

Total booking volumes in the third quarter fell short of expectations with rather muted last-minute business in the U.S. market. In addition, we saw an overall higher cancellation rate in Q3 '24 compared to the prior year, which is effectively offsetting the positive development we had seen in the first half of '24, leading to a more moderate outlook for IFRS revenues.

Finally, while our profitability is currently well advanced, we also see attractive opportunities to further build up the backlog for 2025. Therefore, we comfortably confirm our guidance for adjusted EBITDA of more than EUR 10 million, which also means that we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to increase compared to the previous guidance. This is a substantial increase both in absolute as well as relative amounts compared to the financial year 2023.

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

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Silvia Cuneo with Deutsche Bank.

[Silvia Cuneo, analyst]

My first one is on the North America market where you talked about muted last-minute bookings. Could you provide more detail on the dynamics at play in this market? Are these challenges reflective of broader industry trends rather than specific to HomeToGo? And can you tell us anything about how demand has evolved so far in Q4? And secondly, on the cancellation rates, can you tell us a little bit more about the primary drivers behind the Q3 trends? For example, are cancellations specific for certain geographies or holiday types? I know there could be some seasonality factors at play. So can you comment about what you expect for the remainder of the year for cancellations? And then finally, if I can, a third question on the subscription business. Can you provide more color on the performance of the revenue stream within the HomeToGo_PRO segment? If you could tell us about the key drivers of subscriber trends? And what is the outlook more specifically for this recurring revenue stream?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Thank you, Silvia. So on North America, the North American market is usually a market which books rather late in the year. It fluctuates from year-to-year, but it usually books relatively late in the year, and that leads to basically booking revenues and IFRS revenues in Q3 with an immediate check-in. This business has been rather muted this year. And it's -- I wouldn't read too much into it, although as you might have seen, Airbnb also in their quarterly report was -- the North American region was the one with the lowest growth rate. So it could be that there is some trends going, but it's as of now, too early to say.

With regards to the cancellation rate, it's the usual topic, I always have the discussion with my Head of Controlling about it that one year, it starts rather with a high cancellation rate, and we are concerned at the beginning of the year. And then during the course of the year, it continuously improve in order to be basically on the same level as before. And there are years there it's just the other way around. And that's basically what we have seen this year. So we had a very low cancellation rate in the first 6 months of the year and a higher one in Q3, which basically brings the 9-month average almost on the same level as the year before. So nothing to be concerned about. Nevertheless, it's the reason why we had that deviation in Q3.

And with regards to the subscription business, we worked on new modules and features, especially for Smoobu that will be launched, going into beta soon as well as more internationalization. So we expect positive effects to come from it. The first trends we see in Q4 are quite encouraging. So we ask you to stay tuned on it. We stay very optimistic on that business.

[Operator]

The next question is from Nagaraj Bharath with Cantor.

[Bharath Nagaraj, analyst]

Just to continue on the same context with regards to North America and the cautious -- sorry, the last-minute bookings not coming through. With that in mind and the color that you've already provided, do you have like any kind of guidance or any discussions that we can have with regards to 2025? Or is it still too early? I do know that in Q1, that is when you kind of actually are able to guide, but just wanted to get your high-level thoughts, given what's happening in the U.S. That's the first question. I'll wait to ask the next question.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Okay. So in general, the North American business is always a little bit like -- if I say wildcard, it's too much, but I just, at the moment, don't have a better word for it. So sometimes the North American business comes in very strongly. Sometimes it's a little bit more muted. This Q3, it was a little bit more muted. However, I would not read too much into it, again, referring to some of the cautious wording that some of our competitors have made in their earnings calls about North America. But then again, as we have seen the kind of strong performance in the stock market, in particular, in the last week, that could change again. So it's really too early to make a good statement with regards to North America 2025.

What I can make is that as of now, we see, in particular for Q4, very strong bookings, which is mainly a check-in for 2025. And that's the reason why although we are currently very comfortably on our adjusted EBITDA year-to-date numbers, why we want to have that, let's say, entrepreneurial freedom to make use of that good booking window because, at the moment, we can really get in a lot of bookings with check-in in 2025 with very high profitability, and that helps us to build up our backlog, and that also helps us to have a nice profitability and cash flow in 2025. I have to say the majority of these bookings we get at the moment are for Europe, not so much North America. But then again, that's the usual seasonality we see.

[Bharath Nagaraj, analyst]

Understood. That's very useful. The next couple of questions I have are around -- I'll just ask them all at the same time. The GBV for your Marketplace business did 15% kind of growth. Like just wanting to also ensure or double check whether the organic development is also positive. I know you don't want to break it out at the moment. Just that's one question. And then the second one is, given that -- is there any worry that the large number of listings on your -- I know you have a large number of listings on your Marketplace business, is there any worry that a significant portion of your revenue is made up from a portion of those listings? Is there any such worry at all?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

You mean like a concentration risk?

[Bharath Nagaraj, analyst]

Yes, yes, that's right. Yes, sorry.

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Okay. So actually, we -- so the -- as you know, the -- we, at some point, just said it's more than EUR 15 million because that number is fluctuating. But as of now, we are well, well ahead of the EUR 15 million. And also, we have a very good distribution over the properties. We have a very good distribution over the partners. So there's basically not one partner where we have any kind of concentration risk. There are -- we always show that at our end of year party when like the colleagues have to guess which was our best property of the year, both in terms of absolute numbers, which is usually some kind of villa directly at the coast, which you can rent for EUR 50,000 per week. And then -- but the winner is there's always a [ Dutch ] place, which is booked out like 51 weeks out of the year, but it's a really small hub. But there's really not a listing concentration which would give me any worry at all.

With regards to the GBV, we also see the -- we see the same kind of development as we have seen in the Marketplace -- sorry, in the basket size, where the -- with the shorter lengths of stay, the basket size has come down and therefore, the GBV growth is at the 15%. But it's -- we see positive development also for the organic business in all categories.

[Bharath Nagaraj, analyst]

Understood. That's super helpful. Sorry, if I may just ask one last follow-up, which just came to mind. On the HomeToGo_PRO business, is there like a normalized kind of growth rate that you want to think about in the medium term, not like guidance for the next year or anything like this, but in general, like in the medium term, what do you expect this business to grow at?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

So in the medium term, we expect both segments to -- basically to run in parallel, both in terms of growth rates as well as in terms of profitability. So longer term, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins of the 30% to 35%, similar to where our industry peers are. And longer term, we also see growth rates of 10%. As always, the PRO business will have less of a seasonality, while our Marketplace business will -- although it's much more muted now with the short trip business in Q2 and Q4, but the big Q3 numbers that will continue in our Marketplace business in terms of IFRS revenue recognition.

[Operator]

The next question is from Wolfgang Specht with Berenberg.

[Wolfgang Specht, analyst]

Two additional ones from my side. The first one also on the U.S. Could you give us an indication how far away you are from EBITDA breakeven here? And the second one on organic growth traction. We had the consolidation of KMW and Super Urlaub earlier this year. For sure, Q3 is rather, let's say, a low season for this type of vacation as it's more shoulder season. But can you give us an idea how the organic growth would have looked like in Q3 if we strip out these 2 assets?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

So with regards to the profitability of the North American business, as you know, we don't split out the profitability by region. But as we had said before, and that still holds true, we are very cost-conscious when it comes to the North American business. And therefore, that is -- it's really close to breakeven. So that's all on a good track.

With regards to the organic, we don't provide the organic growth rates. But when you look at our half year numbers, and the kind of organic growth rates you had seen there based on the notes, we had included that order of magnitude of organic growth rate held still true for -- also for the 9-month figures. And in terms of profitability, a similar thing there, we even made a big jump in organic profitability in the third quarter.

[Operator]

The next question is from Christian Salis with Hauck Aufhaeuser.

[Christian Salis, analyst]

Christian Salis from Hauck. I've got 2 additional ones, please. So first of all, on Slide 25 on the profitability of -- no, sorry, the onsite share, yes. So the onsite share of booking revenues increased quite significantly now in Q3 and also the first 9 months, so to 61% in the first 9 months, 66% in Q3. And I saw that DACH is already exceeding 80%. And could you maybe provide an indication where do you see this number evolving in the midterm? How much upside is left there because 66% is already, yes, pretty high. And then on Slide 9 -- that's the second question. On Slide 9, the onsite take rate was pretty much flattish month-over-month for 6 months or so. So why is that basically flattish and not further increasing? Is there -- yes, is there any reason for that?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Sure. So on the organic share, so first of all, as you see, the 86% for DACH, that is a number which I would say is, as of now, given our mix, given our also advertising business, which maybe will increase a little bit, but we will continue to have an advertising business. So therefore, this is that. For the non-DACH region, we expect that share to grow. And for the Rest of Europe, we are more advanced than for the North American market. For the North American market, the onsite share has been the lowest. But that's basically a development we have with all our new products, and it's difficult to call onsite a new product, given that we introduced it in 2017. But the kind of development we had first seen that we grew it in DACH, then we grew it in the Rest of Europe and now we grow it also in North America. So you should expect it to come. How quickly we will reach DACH levels, that we have to see. I don't want to provide a guidance on that one, but we definitely want to increase it.

With regards to the take rate, so the take rate doesn't grow on a straight line. It always -- we always have the kind of ups and downs. And it's the long-term trend, which you have to see. So what you always have to keep in mind with regards to the take rate is it depends on the actual booking. So take rate depends from partner to partner, from region to region. It depends on what the people are actually booking. So it could be that it increases in one month very, very high, could be that it decreases. That really comes down to the long-term effect. So therefore, it's always better to look at the 9-month numbers to see the long-term trend. And the long-term trend is -- continues to be very positive. And that growth is really coming from new partners joining the Marketplace. And when new partners join, it gives us an opportunity to ask for higher take rates so that they get the respective visibility on the Marketplace. And it's also with good performance data that we are able to increase take rates of existing partners.

[Operator]

The next question is from Benjamin Kohnke with Stifel.

[Benjamin Kohnke, analyst]

Three, if I may. The first one, coming back to the performance of your subscriptions business. I mean, when you look over the last couple of quarters, I mean, we've seen a sequential deceleration in year-over-year growth. And obviously, Q3 cannot be to your satisfaction. You said you're happy. But I mean, if you look at the trends, is there anything that worries you? Or is it -- I cannot really understand your statement that you're actually happy with that business and the sort of growth rates you're seeing. And I was just wondering if you could shed a bit more light on what actually happened. I think you mentioned churn, but if you could be bit more specific what caused that churn and just for us to get a better understanding of what's really going on in the subscriptions line.

Then secondly, Steffen, you talked about opportunities you see in Q4 to step up investments into obviously, booking backlog and so on. I was wondering if you could also here be a bit more specific on, I don't know, regions or products where you see opportunities arising. And then thirdly, and apologies, but I need to come back to North America. And just generally about the strategic importance of the North American market. I mean, yes, you breakeven, but still we all know you're relatively, let's call it, subscale in that market, it probably takes additional investments to get bigger there and to build the scale to be sustainably profitable, maybe a bit provocatively, but does it -- or have you discussed internally, does it potentially make sense to, I don't know, exit may be the wrong word, but spend significantly less there and just use that money to grow where you have scale and build even further scale to just increase overall profitability in the group?

[Steffen Schneider, executive]

Sure. Ben, thanks a lot for particularly your first question because if I left the impression that I'm happy about the subscription performance, then it's good that I can clarify that. I don't want to say that we are happy with the growth rate. What I wanted to say is that we were doing some changes. We did -- we implemented these changes in Q3, and we are happy with the first results of these changes in Q4, which is visible to us, not visible to you yet, but that we can, with these changes, turn around that development. So clear statement, not happy with the Q3 performance, but happy with the first signs of the turnaround in Q4. And you're absolutely right. That's an important part of our business, and we put a lot of focus on it, and we are very confident to return to growth rates, which are in line with our overall growth rates as we have seen it this year.

With regards to Q4, so you might remember in last year Q4, we had to take it a little bit more cautious spending because we definitely wanted to ensure that we achieve our Q3 -- our full year adjusted EBITDA breakeven. Ultimately, we were a little bit too cautious. And we missed out on a good opportunity with bookings, which were coming in at a very high profitability. So usually, Q4 is not an attractive booking period. So up until last year, Q4, October, November, basically nothing happened until in December, slowly, traffic picked up and then it went through the roof after Christmas.

Last year, we had seen good bookings in November, and we see the same trend this year. And if that trend continues and, at the moment, we can get bookings at a very attractive profitability with mainly check-ins in 2025, but we want to get as many of these, let's say, high-profitability bookings into our books because that is already a big step forward with regards to further increasing profitability in '25 and also which is our big goal for next year to achieve the free cash flow breakeven. And we don't want to achieve it by EUR 1 million. We want to achieve it by a big number because we want to -- as we always say, free cash flow is freedom.

And we don't know how long that trend will continue. So if it continues, we will invest more because it will pay back very good in next year. But if for whatever reason, that trend is only, I don't know a good English word, but you know what I mean, [indiscernible], then the -- we will, of course, safeguard our profitability and then we'll show a higher profitability for this year. But as of now, we just want to keep that entrepreneurial freedom and -- but we are very well on the way with regards to our profitability.

Last question. So on the North American business, so we are a global business with network effect. And therefore, all the markets have a substantial contribution to the overall business. And therefore, it's an important -- it makes a lot of sense to earn money there if we can earn money. But we also constantly review the market, and we see North America as an opportunistic market. So if we can earn money, we will go for it. And if not, then we might do it differently. So we won't exit a market that is running profitable with low maintenance. And also, that means there's no concentration on the European Union.

[Operator]

That was the last question. I hand back over to the management for any closing remarks.

[Sebastian Grabert, executive]

Dear analysts and investors, thank you very much for your attention and all your 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.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.