Expedia Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Kopelman: I had a follow-up on that. Could you help us think about or help us better understand the growth that you’re seeing year-to-date? Should we think of that as kind of getting back to that high-single digit number? Or have you been able to surpass that?

Peter Kern: I think as Julie pointed out, January was north of 20% up in lodging, GBV, gross bookings. So we’re definitely running ahead of high single digits so far. We’ll have to see how the rest of the year plays out, rest of the quarter, rest of the year plays out. But it’s really been driven by pretty much all quadrants. It’s our brands. It’s our B2B business. It’s geographically dispersed. APAC is coming back a little stronger, but that’s a relatively small base for us. So, it’s been pretty broad. And right now, it’s definitely running well ahead of where we were in the fourth quarter.

Julie Whalen: Yeah. And I think just to remember, even when you go back to the third quarter, we also had high single digits. So really the fact that we’re holding that ex all the storms and the noise that we’ve been talking to you guys about, and it’s been accelerated in the fourth quarter, and we’re seeing a step change as we enter into 2023, as well as with our Bex US business, we think that’s a really good sign that we’ve got some strength ahead for this year.

Peter Kern: And I’d add, Kevin. I talked a little bit on the first question about friction. We spent a lot of last year doing some heavy lifting on things like hotels.com, having reduced testing, etc. We really spooled that up in the fourth quarter, and it’s accelerating further now. So just the ability to be back and really innovating on the product in the day to day and the product is really valuable and it’s increment by increment. It’s small pieces. But when you add them up, it really can drive a lot. So conversions improving, lots of things are improving. So I think we’re just starting to multiply those effects of all the work we’ve done along with the marketing and everything else. And hopefully, also, we’re working in a good demand environment, which helps. But I think those things are just more tailwinds than headwinds again, and that’s just helping to drive us a little faster.

Kevin Kopelman: Just one quick follow-up on that. Can you touch on ADR trends? The kind of slower number in Q4, was that just related to the weather incident?

Julie Whalen: Yeah. That was I think called out in our remarks. But that was pretty much solely due to the weather-related incidents. ADRs have been holding pretty strong, but still elevated. I don’t think we’ve heard anyone else speak of any issues with ADRs. We’ve seen a little bit of movement in Vrbo. But again, it’s coming of off really high levels, and it’s not that significant. Slight movement. But ADRs are really holding strong for us across the board.

Operator: The next question comes from Lloyd Walmsley with UBS.

Lloyd Walmsley: Two, if I can. First just on the €“ I think on the marketing, the all-in the marketing side, loyalty, discounting and marketing and the plan for that to kind of be balanced through the year, is there a point where you get to the other side of kind of some of this longer dated spend and feel like you’re going to see leverage as this bears fruit? And then sort of related to that, it sounds like the stats around loyalty and app users show a compelling uplift. How convinced are you guys that those boosts are incremental and kind of causal rather than just coincident with your heaviest users just gravitate towards those things? Anything you can share there would be great.