Press Release

Sabre Announces Strategic Priorities Designed to Accelerate Growth

Multi-year plan designed to increase Company’s addressable market, drive revenue and share growth, and improve margin structure

SOUTHLAKE, Texas – Feb. 26, 2020 –  Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR), the leading software and technology provider that powers the global travel industry, today announced a set of strategic priorities that are expected to position the Company to accelerate growth and create long term shareholder value. As part of its vision to lead a new marketplace for personalized travel, Sabre detailed five strategic initiatives that are intended to increase the Company’s addressable market across its business, deliver revenue and market share growth, and improve the Company’s overall margin structure. Specifically, each priority seeks to:
  • Create personalized offers: accelerating new IT capabilities, processes and intelligence that allow suppliers to retail personalized offers through all channels, unlocking more value per passenger boarded
  • Accelerate the future of distribution & NDC: increasing the value of supplier offers and the value of the GDS by integrating NDC content, enabling airlines to distribute personalized offers through the Company’s marketplace and through their direct channels
  • Unlock growth potential in the LCC market: harnessing the growth and innovation of the fast-growing low cost carrier (LCC) market by creating more ways for LCCs to retail and distribute content, and scaling the offerings of Radixx, the Company’s recently acquired LCC provider
  • Deliver a full-service property management system to better serve enterprise hotels: collaborating with Accor, Sabre plans to build a full service property management system that will combine with its best-in-class central reservation system and state-of-the-art limited service property management system within a fully unified, cloud-native platform designed for hoteliers of all property classes, sizes and geographic regions – a milestone in the global travel industry
  • Transform Sabre’s technology in a preferred partnership with Google: this 10-year strategic partnership is designed to:
    • Improve Sabre’s technology capability by migrating the Company’s IT infrastructure to Google Cloud’s highly available and secure services with advanced support and greater flexibility
    • Utilize Google’s data analytics tools to enable Sabre to enhance the capabilities of current and future products by providing insights to help improve operational efficiency and create and optimize travel options, with the goal of improving both loyalty and revenues for its customers
    • Design a broader innovation framework with Google that seeks to leverage the talent and assets of both companies to imagine, develop and deploy future capabilities that will advance the travel ecosystem, benefiting all market participants.
    Sean Menke, Sabre’s President and CEO said, “We are committed to helping our customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized traveler experiences that create greater loyalty. Over the last year, we continued to see shifts in the travel ecosystem resulting in the changing needs of our airline, hotel and agency customers. We are thinking critically about how the retailing, distribution and fulfillment of travel will continue to evolve over the next decade and how each of these elements will become even more interconnected and interdependent.” Menke continued, “At Sabre, we have the vision, the expertise and the planned investments in our end-to-end capabilities to become the trusted technology partner that brings it all together on one advanced travel platform. Building on the momentum we generated in 2019, we have committed $150 million in 2020 to support the five strategic priorities and better position Sabre for revenue and share growth going forward. These priorities are designed to significantly enhance our technology and product offerings, increase our addressable market and create meaningful opportunities for profitable growth.” For the last three years, Sabre’s new leadership team has been driving transformational change and building a foundation to position the Company for future growth. The team has been primarily focused on three areas: the security, stability and health of its technology products and services; enhancing collaboration across the Company’s business segments to accelerate the creation of end-to-end solutions for its customers; and building a leadership team throughout the organization that will lead Sabre into the next phase of its journey to become the trusted technology partner of the travel industry. Sabre unveiled the Company’s strategic initiatives to its top 900 leaders during its annual global leadership summit in Dallas at the end of January. Today, during the Company’s fourth quarter and full year 2019 earnings conference call, Menke and other members of Sabre’s executive leadership team will discuss the initiatives in further detail. Details for that call may be found in the Company’s Q4 and FY 2019 earnings release.

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    About Sabre Corporation Sabre Corporation is a leading software and technology company that powers the global travel industry, serving a wide range of travel companies including airlines, hoteliers, travel agencies and other suppliers. The company provides retailing, distribution and fulfilment solutions that help its customers operate more efficiently, drive revenue and offer personalized traveler experiences. Through its leading travel marketplace, Sabre connects travel suppliers with buyers from around the globe. Sabre’s technology platform manages more than $260B worth of global travel spend annually. Headquartered in Southlake, Texas, USA, Sabre serves customers in more than 160 countries around the world. For more information visit www.sabre.com. 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 “design,” “expect,” “vision,” “initiative,” “intend,” “seek,” “plan,” “commit,” “momentum,” “priority,” “goal,” “believe,” “opportunity,” “position,” “future,” “anticipate,” “will,” “estimate,” “project,” “may,” “should,” “would,” “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, including from airlines’ insolvency or suspension of service or aircraft groundings, the duration and effects of the Coronavirus, the timing, implementation and effects of the technology investment and other strategic imperatives, the completion and effects of travel platforms, travel suppliers’ usage of alternative distribution models, exposure to pricing pressure in the Travel Network business, changes affecting travel supplier customers, maintenance of the integrity of our systems and infrastructure and the effect of any security breaches, failure to adapt to technological advancements, competition in the travel distribution market and solutions markets, implementation of software solutions, reliance on third parties to provide information technology services and the effects of these services, the finalization of an agreement to implement a full-service property management system, the execution, implementation and effects of new or renewed agreements, dependence on establishing, maintaining and renewing contracts with customers and other counterparties and collecting amounts due to us under these agreements, dependence on relationships with travel buyers, our collection, processing, storage, use and transmission of personal data and risks associated with PCI compliance, our ability to recruit, train and retain employees, including our key executive officers and technical employees, the financial and business results and effects of acquisitions, including related costs, and, as applicable, the closing and integration of these acquisitions, the effects of any litigation and regulatory reviews and investigations, including with respect to proposed and completed acquisitions, adverse global and regional economic and political conditions, including, but not limited to, economic conditions in countries or regions with traditionally high levels of exports to China or that have commodities-based economies and the effect of “Brexit” and uncertainty due to related negotiations, risks arising from global operations, reliance on the value of our brands, failure to comply with regulations, use of third-party distributor partners, the effects of the implementation of new accounting standards, and tax-related matters, including the effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. More information about potential risks and uncertainties that could affect our business and results of operations is included in the “Risk Factors” and “Forward-Looking Statements” sections in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on October 31, 2019 and our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 15, 2019 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. SABR-F Media Contact: Kristin Hays Kristin.Hays@sabre.com sabrenews@sabre.com