Sabre beats by $0.03, beats on revs; lowers FY19 revs, FCF guidance (22.86)
- Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $0.34 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.03 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $0.31; revenues rose 6.2% year/year to $1.05 bln vs the $1.04 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
- Co lowers guidance for FY19, sees FY19 revs of $3.965-4.045 bln (Prior $4.005-4.085 bln) vs. $4.06 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus; sees FCF of ~$455 mln (Prior ~$485 mln)
- "Our solid first quarter results provide a strong foundation to build on over the balance of the year. As we look at the rest of 2019, we believe our business is solid," said Doug Barnett, CFO. "As you have seen and read about, an Airline Solutions customer in India has recently suspended flight operations. Additionally, our deepest sympathies are with the families and loved ones impacted by the recent accidents involving the 737 MAX aircraft at two of our Airline Solutions customers that resulted in the grounding of that aircraft. There is an obvious near-term impact to our business related to these events that is reflected in our updated guidance. Although we have observed a modest slowdown in global GDS industry bookings, our expectations for continued share gain and our regional and customer mix give us confidence in the underlying performance of the business...We have revised our full year 2019 expectations to reflect both the airline customer's suspended operations and the impact of the 737 MAX aircraft situation."
- Separately, the co and Visa (V) announced a partnership to support the growth of business-to-business (B2B) virtual payments in the travel industry. Under this agreement, travel buyers and suppliers will be able to pay and get paid with virtual Visa commercial cards, through the Sabre Virtual Payments solution