Sabre Corporation ($SABR): Left for Dead, Stubbornly Alive
Why Corporate Travel Needs GDS and What It Means for Creditors
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“Disintermediation” was the death sentence. When COVID hit and bookings evaporated, Sabre Corporation—the invisible technology powering global flight reservations—looked 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 wasn’t. 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 Sabre’s GDS platform for direct booking. But Fortune 500 companies aren’t about to manage travel across 50 different airline websites. Corporate travel remains Sabre’s moat, and it’s recovering faster than expected.
Now with hospitality bookings growing double-digits and EBITDA guided to hit $700 million in 2025, is this travel tech survivor’s recovery just getting started?
Let’s find out…
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