trivago NV Q2 FY2025 earnings call

Brand Marketing

• Continued to elevate the globally recognized brand, with double-digit branded revenue growth across all geographic segments. Multiyear investment strategy, optimization, and new brand marketing campaign (featuring Jürgen Klopp) contributed to success. Expected to elevate branded visitor baseline.

Core Hotel Search Experience

• Focused on improving search functionalities: filters more visible, AI smart filters, AI-powered review summaries for over 230,000 hotels in 11 languages, integration of AI Smart Search into core experience. Launched fifth generation of personalized ranking, with 20% of referral revenue from logged-in users in Q2 2025. Completed Project Trinity to simplify price comparison, laying foundation for trivago Book & Go.

Empowering Partners

• Onboarded over 100 partners to transaction-based model, doubling its revenue share since 2023. Completed acquisition of Holisto, successfully launched trivago Book & Go with pilot partners showing substantial conversion improvements.

In the second quarter, trivago's total revenue reached EUR 139.3 million, a 17% increase compared to Q2 2024. This marks the third consecutive quarter of growth. Referral revenues grew 32% in Rest of World, 20% in Developed Europe, and 10% in Americas. The growth was driven by increased branded channel traffic from brand marketing investments and product improvements.

Full Year 2025

• Expect mid-teens percentage revenue growth.

Adjusted EBITDA

• Anticipate positive adjusted EBITDA in Q3 and Q4 2025, after negative in Q1 and Q2.

Holisto Acquisition

• Anticipate Holisto will generate low double-digit million euros in revenue for trivago's consolidated group results for remaining 5 months of 2025, operating near breakeven.

FX Headwinds

• FX was a strong headwind in Q2 2025, affecting top line by approximately -3%, with an even stronger headwind in Americas (-7%).

Q: Can you quantify how much of a headwind currency was for the second quarter results? And in your guidance, what's the effect of FX? And then the second question I have is around the branded investments that you're making. How much of a growth runway do you see here to continue to increase your brand investments to drive branded traffic?

A: For the second quarter, the FX effect was a strong headwind for us, affecting our top line by approximately minus 3%. Regarding Americas, the headwind was around minus 7%. Regarding brand investment, we see a 22% spend increase year-on-year and an 18% referral revenue increase by only a slight increase in ROAS, indicating our brand strategy works effectively and has upside potential.

Q: What's the impact of FX for the full year?

A: This question is tough to answer. We haven't currently factored it in. We remain with our guidance of mid-teens double-digit growth.

Q: Wondering what kind of differences you see in logged in users versus logged out users? And how are you encouraging more users to log in? And then with regards to your 3Q guide, I wanted to get some clarity around like what's giving you confidence that revenue growth will accelerate from single-digit percent that you saw in July for the quarter to grow double-digit percent.

A: On the member side, we offer features like price alerts and exclusive deals, and have seen conversion rates 25% up for logged-in users. Regarding 3Q guide, there were temporary FX effects and a transitory headwind in June and July from major players not leaning into summer as last year, but most of this has ceased, and we anticipate comps to improve throughout the quarter with strong branded traffic and revenue growth in July and August.

Q: My first one is on Book & Go. You mentioned that it's already driving a substantial improvement in conversion rates for some of these pilot partners. But can you maybe elaborate on the early learnings from those partnerships and then talk to the steps required to continue growing this product over the next few quarters here?

A: The partnership with Holisto has gone well, with pilot partners seeing very significant double-digit conversion improvements. We've expanded Book & Go's visibility through Project Trinity and expect to onboard more partners, as non-branded players can benefit from higher conversion rates by leveraging our brand.

Q: But can you maybe double-click on what's driving the outsized growth here? And what the main drivers are beyond branded channel traffic?

A: In Rest of the World, markets like Japan and Turkey are working well with low brand awareness, strong value proposition, and less concentration of booking sites, providing room for user base growth.