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SOUTHLAKE, TX, USA - Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR), a global leader in travel technology solutions, reported its third quarter 2016 financial results this week.

The company reports results in two business segments: Travel Network, a global travel marketplace that connects more than 425,000 travel agents in more than 160 countries with airlines, hotels, car hire, cruise lines, tour operators and other travel suppliers across the world, and the Airline and Hospitality Solutions business, which provides technology software solutions and consulting to the global airline and hospitality industries. 

Sabre President and CEO Tom Klein told investors that while consolidated revenue and earnings growth rates did not meet the standards set for the business, most aspects of underlying business performance remained strong. 

For the third quarter 2016, highlights included:

Third quarter revenue increased 6.9 percentAirline and Hospitality Solutions revenue improved 19.8 percent. Contributing to the rise in revenue was a 45.3 percent increase in airline passengers boarded through the SabreSonic reservation solution. Strong growth also continued in Sabre Hospitality Solutions with nearly 45 percent revenue growth, driven by ongoing momentum behind its leading SynXis Central Reservations solution and an acquisition in the first quarter of 2016Travel Network revenue rose 2.3 percent and had air bookings growth of 3 percent, with continued growth in every region of the world. Overall bookings increase was 2.4 percent

Outside of North America, the company reported the following:

In mid-October, Sabre successfully implemented the SabreSonic reservation solution at Alitalia. The new reservation system complements other Sabre solutions already driving value for the airline, including Intelligence Exchange and the Sabre Digital Experience Platform. Alitalia adds nearly 25 million annual passengers boarded to the SabreSonic reservations platform.Travel Network global bookings increased 2.4 percent in the quarter, driven by growth of 6.8 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 1 percent in EMEA and 0.6 percent in Latin America.

Sabre’s Travel Network business is also looking ahead to 2017 with the launch of its new Sabre Red Workspace operating platform for travel agents.  It is a complete redesign of the system that travel agents have traditionally used to book travel, providing them with market insights and data analytics to help them provide better information to customers, leading to more transactions and higher sales volumes.  The implementation of the new Sabre Red platform was an important factor in Sabre converting an important Asia-Pacific travel retailer in 2017.

“We are relentlessly focused on innovation that will shape the future of the travel industry,” said Sabre President and CEO Tom Klein during a conference call to investors on November 2. “Overall, the shape of the year has been defined by consistent strength across Solutions with year-to-date growth of over 17 percent, including over 40 percent growth in Hospitality. In Travel Network, we have continued to outpace the market, and year-to-date our global share is up 70 basis points.  Although bookings growth slowed through the summer months, our third quarter relative business performance was strong with global share gain and continued growth in all regions,” said Klein.

“Our continued investment, new sales and current travel agency implementations in the quarter will benefit us in the fourth quarter and the near future.  As we have said all year, we expect strong top-line growth and margin performance in the fourth quarter and are seeing some signs of that as we speak, setting up for a solid step-off into 2017,” said Klein.

U.S.-based Sabre is headquartered in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas, and processes more than US$120 billion of travel spend annually, serving customers in more than 160 countries around the world.  It has nearly 10,000 employees globally. 

Earnings release

 For additional information, please refer to our earnings release located on our Investor Relations website at http://investors.sabre.com/results.cfm

Forward-looking statements

 Certain statements herein are forward-looking statements about trends, future events, uncertainties and our plans and expectations of what may happen in the future. Any statements that are not historical or current facts are forward-looking statements. In many cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "will," "expect," "anticipate," "may,” “should,” “would,” “intend,” “believe,” “potential” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Sabre’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, dependency on transaction volumes in the global travel industry, particularly air travel transaction volumes, adverse global and regional economic and political conditions, including, but not limited to, the approval by voters in the U.K. for that country to exit the E.U. and economic uncertainty over related negotiations and economic conditions in countries or regions with traditionally high levels of exports to China or that have commodities-based economies, exposure to pricing pressure in the Travel Network business, risks arising from global operations, the implementation and effects of new or renewed agreements, the financial and business effects of acquisitions, including integration of these acquisitions, dependence on maintaining and renewing contracts with customers and other counterparties and collecting amounts due to us under these agreements, our ability to recruit, train and retain employees, including our key executive officers and technical employees, and the effort to identify a successor to our president and chief executive officer due to his intended resignation, dependence on relationships with travel buyers, changes affecting travel supplier customers, travel suppliers’ usage of alternative distribution models, the effects of litigation, and competition in the travel distribution market and solutions markets.  Information about potential risks and uncertainties that could affect our business and results of operations is included in the “Risk Factors” section in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on August 2, 2016, in the “Risk Factors” and “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” sections included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 19, 2016 and in our other filings with the SEC. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future events, outlook, guidance, results, actions, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Unless required by law, Sabre undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events after the date they are made.