Sabre Corporation ($SABR): Left for Dead, Stubbornly Alive
Why Corporate Travel Needs GDS and What It Means for Creditors
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āDisintermediationā was the death sentence. When COVID hit and bookings evaporated, Sabre Corporationāthe invisible technology powering global flight reservationsālooked finished.
The numbers were brutal: revenue slashed by over half, leverage metrics exploding, cash bleeding at record rates. Airlines were already trying to ditch the GDS middleman, and now this? Game over.
Except it wasnāt. Through aggressive (and creative) liability management exercises (LMEs), management exchanged their near-term maturities for new instruments that bought it breathing room. They completely migrated to the cloud, cutting $150 million in annual costs.
Yes, airlines keep threatening to abandon Sabreās GDS platform for direct booking. But Fortune 500 companies arenāt about to manage travel across 50 different airline websites. Corporate travel remains Sabreās moat, and itās recovering faster than expected.
Now with hospitality bookings growing double-digits and EBITDA guided to hit $700 million in 2025, is this travel tech survivorās recovery just getting started?
Letās find outā¦
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