HomeToGo SE (HTG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to HomeToGo's earnings call following the publication of the H1 figures of 2026. I'm delighted to welcome Co-Founder, Mr. Andre and CFO, Sebastian Bielski, who will speak in a moment. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be able to ask your questions directly to the management. Let's dive straight in, Sebastian, the stage is yours.

Actually, I will hand over back to Patrick because Patrick will start today.

All right.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining HomeToGo's Half Year 1 2026 Earnings Call. As you have seen in our report published this morning, we delivered a strong first half of 2026, characterized by the disciplined and successful execution of our strategic road map. Following a transformative 2025, our half year 1 results clearly demonstrate that our strategic evolution and scale transformation are in full swing and delivering tangible results across the group. But let's now look at how we structure today's call. We want to give you a clear and comprehensive picture of our performance and momentum. We will begin with a brief summary of our half year 1 highlights, followed by a detailed update on the progress we've made against our strategic goals for 2026. And then we will walk you through our financial results for the first half of this year in depth before reviewing our financial guidance for the full year of 2026. To wrap up, we will summarize our key takeaways before opening the floor for your questions. So let's dive in. To kick things off, let's look at the overarching highlights that defined our performance in the first half of 2026 on a statutory basis. First and foremost, we achieved a significant improvement in overall group year-over-year profitability. Our adjusted EBITDA grew substantially by 26.6% year-over-year in half year 1 and has even accelerated in quarter 2 with a year-over-year increase of 58.6%. This development reflects our continuous advancement in expanding the group's profitability. Plus, we massively improved our free cash flow by an exceptional EUR 53.2 million year-over-year, reaching EUR 48.2 million in free cash flow in the first half of 2026 alone. Second, a key element behind this is HomeToGo PRO. Our B2B segment more than tripled its IFRS revenues to EUR 105.2 million, representing an impressive growth of 250.5% year-over-year, primarily driven by the consolidation of Interhome. Third, our disciplined strategy in the Marketplace segment continues to boost profitability. Marketplace adjusted EBITDA improved by 16% year-over-year, while still delivering a new booking revenues backlog record for the end of half year 1, validating our strategic shift towards high-margin conversion and marketing efficiency. Fourth, on the strategic front, the launch of HomeToGo Originals strengthens our position as Europe's leading vacation rental group. This new umbrella brand for our group's property management companies highlights HomeToGo as one of the Europe's largest direct suppliers of vacation rentals, backed by a strong and growing portfolio. Fifth, our AI leadership is driving measurable operational and marketing efficiency gains. Deep group-wide AI adoption is delivering tangible ROI and significantly faster time to market for new product innovations. And finally, backed by the solid first half performance, we reaffirm our financial guidance for the full year 2026. With that high-level summary in mind, let's move to the next section of our call and take a closer look at the concrete progress we've made against our strategic goals for 2026. We introduced our 2026 strategic road map earlier this year to provide a clear and transparent framework to track and discuss our progress throughout the year. Now I'm pleased to share that we are executing successfully across all 5 pillars. But let me walk you through the overview of our year-to-date progress. First, on finalizing the Interhome integration. Our TSA exit and cost synergy road map remains fully on track to achieve our initial EUR 10 million in annualized cost savings until the end of 2026. We are currently executing several large restructuring projects to capture the remaining cost synergies. Second, in HomeToGo PRO, we continue to build out our strategic M&A engine. The bolt-on acquisitions closed in the first quarter of 2026 have now been successfully integrated. We are actively scaling our capabilities, expanding our dedicated M&A and post-merger integration resources as we sought additional asset deals for the second half of the year. Third, regarding group-wide brand harmonization, we officially launched HomeToGo Originals, our new umbrella brand uniting our core property management businesses. This unified market presence builds deeper ecosystem trust, enables seamless cross-company switching and serves as a powerful catalyst to reduce customer acquisition costs. Fourth, on driving operational excellence in the marketplace. Our strategic decision to prioritize profitability over top line growth is paying off. Despite cutting advertising spend by 16% year-over-year, we achieved a record end of quarter 2 booking revenues backlog of EUR 71.9 million, which is up 1% year-over-year, while still delivering a strong 16% increase in marketplace adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year compared to half year '25. And finally, on maintaining our AI leadership. AI adoption across the group is driving tangible measurable efficiency gains. In marketing, latest AI-generated ad tests achieved an impressive 44% lift in ROS alongside 60% lower video ad production costs. At the same time, we significantly accelerated operations and are well on track to drastically reduce time to market for product development. So overall, our disciplined execution across all 5 strategic priorities continues to strengthen our foundation and drive sustainable profitability across the entire group. Let's now dive deeper into our first strategic pillar. The integration of Interhome and the substantial value creation it unlocks across the group. As a reminder, when we closed the transaction, we set an initial target of EUR 10 million in annual cost synergies to be realized within 12 to 18 months. I'm pleased to report that our execution remains ahead of schedule. Year-to-date, we have already captured approximately EUR 6 million of these cost synergies on an annualized basis. The strong momentum is backed by an accelerated TSA exit, and we have successfully exited 8 transitional service agreements to date with 2 TSAs in the second quarter and at least 3 additional exits on track for quarter 3. Crucially, we remain fully on schedule to exit all remaining TSAs, including our largest and most critical milestone, the migration of the Interhomes SAP. To capture the remaining cost synergies until year-end, we are now executing several large restructuring projects that were prepared during quarter 2. Beyond these initial cost savings, we continue to drive our midterm value creation road map, which adds an additional EUR 20 million in upside and brings our total midterm synergy and value creation potential to approximately EUR 30 million. Also there, we made excellent headway on 2 key drivers. First, tech-driven efficiency and sales growth. We successfully deployed HomeToGo's core CRM platform across Interhome's shared service center, optimizing operational efficiency while significantly enhancing sales capabilities to unlock commercial upside. And second, distribution margin internalization. We expanded our own direct booking channel share by more than 5%, allowing us to retain a higher share of the distribution margin directly within the group. So all in all, this progress clearly demonstrates that Interhome is not only delivering on its cost reduction commitments ahead of plan, but is rapidly turning into a major high-margin profit driver for HomeToGo. Now moving up to our second strategic pillar, expanding our M&A engine within HomeToGo PRO to lead the consolidation of a highly fragmented European market. To put the scale of this opportunity again into perspective, if you look at the left side of the chart, you see that Europe's core vacation rental destinations comprise roughly 70 million properties in total. When we narrow this down to rural and marketed vacation homes, we arrive at a serviceable addressable market of roughly 2.5 million homes. Our primary focus within HomeToGo PRO lies in this targeted market, especially for externally managed homes, representing around 900,000 properties operated by more than 100,000 local vacation rental management companies across Europe. As you can imagine, this landscape is characterized by extreme fragmentation. Most of these hyperlocal agencies manage fewer than 100 properties suffered from low tech adoption and face clear operational inefficiencies. On top, the top 3 players, including us with HomeToGo Originals combined hold only about 10% of the total market share, presenting us with a tremendous long-tail roll-up opportunity. Following the proven success of our Interhome acquisition, we are actively scaling our vacation rental property management business with our buy-and-build strategy. I'm pleased to share that the first 3 gold acquisitions we closed in quarter 1, adding roughly 200 new units across Switzerland, Italy and Spain to our property management portfolio have already been successfully integrated and are fully bookable via the Interhome and HomeToGo platform. To build on this transaction, we are expanding our dedicated internal M&A team and ramping up our post-merger integration resources. This infrastructure allows us to even more systematically process deal flow and swiftly onboard new inventory. Looking ahead to the second half of 2026, we are actively sourcing and expect to close additional value-accretive asset deals to continuously broaden our property management footprint. Now on to our third strategic pillar that we already touched on before, harmonizing our group-wide brands through the launch of HomeToGo Originals. As we continue to expand our property management footprint, establishing a unified and recognizable identity is essential. HomeToGo Originals now serves as our new umbrella brand for our property management companies, Interhome and [indiscernible] Through this, what we call long brand initiative, we are connecting key physical and digital customer touch points across the entire travel journey. Whether a guest recovers a home on our digital marketplace or visits one of our local service offices in destination, as illustrated in the storefront markup on the right on this slide, HomeToGo Originals clearly signals vacation rentals that are mostly managed directly within our group with our trusted end-to-end service. From a strategic perspective, this cohesive presence significantly strengthens brand recognition and build deeper trust across our entire ecosystem by seamlessly bridging the gap from initial online search and booking to professional property management and all the way to actually the physical stay. Importantly, this unified identity also unlocks substantial B2B synergies for HomeToGo PRO. By aligning our market presence under one strong roof, we make it easier for homeowners and property managers to transition across our portfolio. This cohesive structure acts as a powerful catalyst to strengthen our overall PRO offering and will ultimately drive down customer acquisition costs across the group and/or increase lifetime value, however you want to see it. Now let's dive into our fourth strategic pillar. The HomeToGo B2C marketplace. Here, our objective remains clear for clear. We strictly prioritize growing profits over pursuing top line volume. And looking at the left side of the slide, you can see the deliberate strategy is directly reflected in our half year 1 numbers. While the Marketplace IFRS revenues intentionally dipped by 10.2% to EUR 58.8 million, driven by our conscious reduction in ad spend, our booking revenues backlog actually increased 1% year-over-year. At the same time, segment profitability improved substantially with adjusted EBITDA increasing by 16% year-over-year to a negative EUR 16.8 million, up from negative EUR 20 million in H1 '25. This earnings progress is powered by a structural transformation in our marketing efficiency shown on the right. Over the past year, we have fundamentally optimized our cost structure. Group marketing and sales expenses as a percentage of IFRS revenues decreased to a new record low of just 54% in half year 1 '26, representing a massive 31 percentage point reduction compared to the 85% in half year 1 of last year that you can see on the slide. By maintaining strict discipline in our B2C marketing spend, we continue to proactively reallocate capital into HomeToGo PRO, where we see superior growth potential and higher risk-adjusted returns. So for the remainder of this year, we will stick firmly to this playbook, lowering marketing investments, maximizing marketing efficiency and enhancing profitability. While this means an intentional resetting of the marketplace revenue base, it ensures the segment operates as a highly efficient, high-margin cash generator for the entire group this and especially in the coming years. But let's take a closer look at one of the clearest proof points of our operational excellence and marketing efficiency in the Marketplace segment. On this slide, on the left side, you can see the significant deliberate reduction in advertising spend. We intentionally scaled back our marketplace ad spend by 16% year-over-year, bringing it down from EUR 16.5 million in half year 1, '25 to EUR 51 million in half year '26. This nearly EUR 10 million cost saving is a direct result of our disciplined strategy to prioritize high-margin conversion and bottom line profitability over sheer transaction volume. Remarkably, as shown on the right side, despite this EUR 9.5 million reduction in marketing investment, we successfully expanded our marketplace booking revenues backlog to a new end of quarter 2 record of EUR 71.9 million, up 1% year-over-year, showcasing what we can do also with lower marketing spend. Now on to a closer look at the underlying health of our marketplace, specifically our regional booking mix and the evolution of our average basket sizes. Starting on the left with our regional booking revenue share for quarter 2. The DACH region continues to represent our core foundation, accounting for 52% of total marketplace booking revenues, up 3 percentage points year-over-year. The rest of Europe contributed 26%, up 1 percentage point year-over-year, reflecting healthy and sustained demand across European destinations. North America contributed 22% to our mix, down 2 percentage points year-over-year. This is a market where we continue to operate selectively under our advertising model. And the rest of the world remained stable at under 1%. Moving to the right side of the chart and our basket size evolution. We saw resilient customer demand across all geographies. Our basket size in quarter 2 grew by 5% year-over-year to reach EUR 1,056. Looking for that into the individual regions. In the DACH region, average basket size increased by 10% year-over-year to EUR 891 and when excluding the short trip business, it climbed by 8% to EUR 1,263. The rest of Europe followed a similar positive trend with basket sizes rising 4% year-over-year to EUR 1,183. Finally, North America continues to generate our highest absolute order values with average basket sizes reaching EUR 1,603, up 2% year-over-year. Overall, and this is important, this broad-based expansion in basket sizes underscores our success in targeting high-value, longer-stay travelers, further supporting our high-margin strategy across all key markets. Turning to our fifth pillar. And the final one, maintaining AI leadership. Given the broader market debate around how generative AI might impact digital search and discovery, we want to clearly address where AI represents a structural net positive for HomeToGo. Generally, vacation rentals are unique and no commodities like hotels. So on one hand, it's harder for people to let AI choose the right one. On the other hand, it's about vacation. And thus, the selection process is for many the first part of the actual vacation. So you can imagine the total opposite of a stay in a hotel for a business trip. But even in a scenario that AI takes fully over the selection process, we are likely the best prepared in the industry. First, the HomeToGo Group generates more than 80% of its adjusted EBITDA with HomeToGo PRO, effectively insulating the vast majority of our group profits from potential B2C search traffic shifts. Looking at HomeToGo PRO on the left, our core profitability is protected by physical mode and unreplicable on-ground services. So the property management business relies fundamentally on local physical services that are simply not easily -- not easy to replicate. This protects our business model overall in particular from big tech players that deliberately avoid capital-intensive local operations, especially when you need to build them up from scratch. Even more, a potential B2C shift traffic -- search traffic will likely increase the direct traffic to our properties. So outside of OTAs and would actually help us further internalize margin. Second, turning to the HomeToGo marketplace side on the right. We've always solved problems of aggregating the largest selection of vacation rentals with the lightest machine learning before AI was talked about by everyone. So we were also among the first leveraging the new capabilities of AI that arrived at the end of 2021 at 2. Our early AI adoption brought us integrated personalized AI-powered travel planning on our platform since '23, launching nice tools and features like AI summaries of reviews and descriptions even before the biggest tech players and so much more we dI'd in the first -- we did first in the vacation rental space. Today, we have also deployed our own native HomeToGo model contracts protocol MCP to allow autonomous AI agents and third-party LLMs directly access -- direct access to our inventory, turning AI platforms into highly efficient low-cost acquisition channels. Beyond these known customer-facing innovations, internal AI adoption is radically accelerating our daily operational efficiency and delivering measurable margin expansion across the group. So that's something we haven't spoken so much about yet. Let's take a look. Today, 100% of our workforce has access to AI tooling with 15 active tools leveraging all leading frontier models across every department. This is supported by a successful training proof of concept with over 100 employees, enabling nontechnical teams to use AI frontier models natively. So via common line interface or CLI, if that's something that you are familiar with, and securely in a secure sandbox environment. Let me highlight 3 areas of the many parts where internal use is already delivering tangible ROI. First, in marketing. AI-generated response search ads are now outperforming copy at near zero generation cost, driving a 44% lift in return on advertisement spends in many of our tests. In video production, AI tools have enabled us to cut costs by more than 60%. Second, we take a look into product development. Time to market has been drastically shortened. The standard example is our new partner center featuring natural language interface, which our engineering teams built and deployed in just 4 weeks, a process that previously would have taken us 6 months. And third, in operations, process automations have enabled 3x faster customer e-mail response times, reduced unit chat escalations by 85%, as we discussed prior, and cut turnaround times for standard vehicle contract drafts by up to 95% for specific parts of the business. In summary, AI is not just a future vision for HomeToGo. It's an operational reality, actively widening our competitive moat, driving marketing efficiency and accelerating our profitability already today. So this concludes the first part of our presentation on the strategic and operational highlights for the first half of this year. As you have seen, our strategic evolution into a B2B-led powerhouse, complemented by a strict marketplace efficiency and AI leadership is actively delivering tangible high-margin results across the group. To now give you a more granular look at how this strategic process and progress translates into our detailed half year 1 financial performance and the actual segment dynamics, I will now hand over to our CFO, Sebastian. Thank you very much. Sebastian, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Patrick, and a warm welcome to everyone from my side as well. I am pleased to walk you through our financial results for the first half of 2026. It was characterized by strong top line expansion, accelerating profitability momentum driven by a very strong second quarter and a remarkable surge in our free cash flow performance. Let's dive straight into the financial highlights for the first half of this year. Let's take a closer look at our statutory P&L comparison for the first half of the year. To be clear, this comparison looks at our H1 2026 performance against the figures as reported in the first half of 2025, which at that time did not yet include Interho. Let's start with the IFRS revenues. We delivered significant statutory revenue growth of 71.8% year-over-year, reaching EUR 160.1 million. This strong jump is driven by the full consolidation of Interhome, which was not part of the group's reported figures for the first half of last year. Next, we look at the cost of revenues. Cost of revenues increased to EUR 41.4 million, reflecting a structural shift in our business model due to the inclusion of Interhome's managed service operations, which incurred substantial direct expenses such as cleaning and laundry services. Next, we'll look at product development and operations. Here, expenses increased to EUR 25.7 million. This was driven by a larger workforce following the Interhome consolidation alongside increased software license fees. Next, we look at G&A expenses. These expenses reached EUR 21.8 million. This increase mainly reflects the full consolidation of Interhome, bringing its personnel-related software license and third-party service expenses directly into the group's expanded cost base. Last, we look at the adjusted EBITDA and the margin expansion. So adjusted EBITDA improved by 26.6% year-over-year to negative EUR 15.1 million. This was driven -- this drove a large margin expansion of plus 12.6 percentage points, improving our adjusted EBITDA margin from negative 22.1% in H1 of last year to negative 9.4% in this year. This clearly demonstrates how we are delivering on our 2026 targets by driving group profitability through strong marketing efficiency and a significantly widened revenue base. Now let's take a closer look at the composition of our IFRS revenues and adjusted EBITDA by segment for the first half of the year, again, on a statutory basis, comparing our current scale to the prior year period when Interhome was not yet part of our reported figures. I will start with discussing IFRS revenues. At the group level, we realized a big step change with 72% year-over-year growth to EUR 160.1 million of IFRS revenue. For HomeToGo PRO, the standard driver is our volume-based revenue, which grew by 412% to EUR 91.1 million, reflecting the full impact of the Interhome consolidation. In addition, subscription revenue expanded by a strong 16% to EUR 14.1 million, mainly driven by very good performance at Smoobu. For the marketplace, overall IFRS revenue declined by circa 10%. This decline was expected and reflects the strategic shift away from a focus on top line growth to a focus of growing earnings and came on the back of a 16% reduction in marketing spending. Within IFRS revenue for the marketplace, the shift between advertising revenue and on-site revenue continues with advertising revenue declining by 26%, while on-site revenue actually grew by 4%. For HomeToGo, on-site revenue carries a much higher strategic value as it provides a superior customer experience throughout the entire booking journey. Furthermore, it enables us to achieve customer ownership, fostering long-term relationships and driving repeat business. Consequently, we continue to work actively with our partners to transition them from the advertising model to the on-site booking model. I will now discuss adjusted EBITDA. At the group level, we improved our statutory adjusted EBITDA by 27% to negative EUR 15.1 million, demonstrating significantly enhanced operating leverage. HomeToGo Pro turned profitable, delivering a positive adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1.7 million. For the Marketplace, further proving our operational discipline, segment adjusted EBITDA improved by 16% year-over-year to negative EUR 16.8 million. Overall, I would like to remind you of the seasonal pattern of our business. In Q1, we invest into customer acquisition to capture the bookings. In Q2, we start to see revenue coming in and profitability increases. But our by far strongest quarter in every year is Q3, where we generate the majority of revenue and earnings. We are seeing the exact same pattern also in this year. So our strongest quarter for revenue and earnings is yet to come in Q3 of this year. I would now like to provide more transparency and clarity on the more significant items below adjusted EBITDA in our statutory P&L for the first half of this year. First, share-based payments stood at EUR 7.9 million compared to EUR 7.1 million last year. These remain noncash expenses related to our long-term incentive program. We have discussed the setup of our long-term incentive program and the accounting treatment of share-based payments in much detail in our last full year call, and I would like to point you there in case you have any questions on this matter. The appendix of this presentation also contains a slide with some additional detail. Second, one-off costs totaled EUR 3.4 million for the first half of this year, essentially flat year-over-year. These were primarily driven by integration costs of EUR 1.7 million as we continue to execute on synergy realization from the Interhome acquisition. We also have a slide with some more detail on one-off items in the appendix of this presentation. Third, amortization and depreciation. Amortization of fair value step-ups from M&A increased to EUR 10.4 million, which was up from EUR 5.3 million in the first half of last year. This reflects noncash charges recognized as part of the purchase price allocation for Interhome. Regular amortization of intangible assets stood at EUR 3.6 million. I would again point you to the appendix of this presentation in case you're looking for more detail. Fourth, net financial income came in at a negative EUR 14.6 million, comprising EUR 400,000 in interest income at EUR 14.1 million in interest expenses. There were a lot of items driving this post, so I will go into more detail. So within the EUR 14.1 million of interest expenses, there were EUR 3.2 million for the full amortization of transaction costs related to the old loan, which we repaid in March 2026. There was EUR 3.1 million in actual interest on the new Nordic bonds. There was EUR 2.6 million relating to the deferred consideration for Interhome and EUR 1.4 million in interest on the old loan, which we repaid in March of this year. Further noncash items included a EUR 1.9 million revaluation of the call option that we have for the remaining 49% of Getaway Group, along with smaller accounting adjustments for the Nordic bond prepayment option, interest hedges and lease interest. In summary, while our statutory net income is impacted by these noncash accounting effects and integration-related items, our underlying operational momentum and profit expansion are clearly visible in our significantly improved adjusted EBITDA and also our really positive free cash flow trajectory. Let's now take a closer look at our like-for-like P&L comparison for the first half of this year. As a reminder, the like-for-like basis compares our statutory financial results for the first half of this year against pro forma financial results for the first half of last year, which includes Interhome and eliminate any distortions created by the timing of the acquisition of Interhome, which only closed on the 28th August of 2025. Again, we'll start with IFRS revenues. IFRS revenues came in virtually flat at EUR 160.1 million, down slightly by 0.2% year-over-year. This reflects a stable overall top line development despite our deliberate strategic decision to deprioritize revenue growth in the Marketplace segment and the decline -- the managed decline in the Marketplace segment was offset by very good revenue growth in our B2B business. Next, we look at cost of revenues. Cost of revenues increased by 6.3% to EUR 41.4 million. This includes a EUR 1 million increase in payment costs due to the higher adoption of HomeToGo payments by our partners, which also led to a material improvement in our net working capital as well as EUR 600,000 increase for additional cleaning staff and EUR 400,000 in higher costs for domains and hosting. Next, we look at marketing and sales. We achieved a significant cost reduction of 11.1% with expenses decreasing to EUR 86.2 million. This positive shift was driven by EUR 9.5 million lower performance marketing expenditures year-over-year as we rigorously focus on operational efficiency and margin protection, particularly within the Marketplace segment. Next, we look at G&A. G&A expenses decreased by 5.2% to EUR 21.8 million. This reduction was primarily driven by the materialization of operational synergies and the successful exit of traditional services agreements for Interhome. Next, other income. Other income decreased to EUR 1.4 million, which was driven by lower other income at Interhome, which actually had an unusually high value for the baseline of last year. Lastly, overall, our adjusted EBITDA improved significantly by EUR 7.3 million on a like-for-like basis or 32.6% year-over-year to negative EUR 15.1 million, expanding our adjusted EBITDA margin by 4.7 percentage points to negative 9.4% -- this strong like-for-like progress, especially on EBITDA, clearly confirms the power of our group strategy, which is to combine the scaling of our high-growth B2B segment with strict marketing and cost discipline in our B2C business. Now let's dive into our IFRS revenues and adjusted EBITDA by segment for the first half of 2026, again, comparing these on a like-for-like basis, that means including Interhome for the comparison period for last year. Let's start again with IFRS revenues. On a group level, as I already said, overall revenues remained stable at EUR 160.1 million. For HomeToGo PRO, we saw solid progress across both revenue streams. Volume-based revenues expanded by 5% year-over-year to EUR 91.1 million, while subscription revenues grew even stronger by 16% year-over-year to EUR 40.1 million, which again was driven by very good performance at -- for the marketplace, overall IFRS revenues declined by circa 10%. This decline was expected and reflects a strategic shift away from a focus on top line growth to a focus of growing earnings and came on the back of a 16% reduction in marketing spending. Within the IFRS revenues for the marketplace, the shift between advertising revenue and on-site revenue continues with advertising revenue declining by 26%, while on-site revenue grew by 4%. For HomeToGo PRO, on-site revenue carries -- for HomeToGo on-site revenues carries a much higher strategic value as it provides a superior customer experience throughout the entire booking journey. Furthermore, it enables us to achieve customer ownership, fostering long-term relationships and driving repeat business. Consequently, we continue to work actively with our partners to transition them from the advertising model to the on-site booking model. Now looking at the adjusted EBITDA. At the group level, we significantly improved adjusted EBITDA by EUR 7.3 million or 33% year-over-year to negative EUR 15.1 million. HomeToGo PRO was a standout performer, delivering a swing in profitability to reach positive EUR 1.7 million, up from negative EUR 2.4 million in the same period of last year. This clearly demonstrates the strong underlying earnings power and synergy potential of our B2B operations, especially in Tahoe. In the Marketplace segment, the segment adjusted EBITDA improved by 16% year-over-year to negative EUR 16.8 million, a direct result of our profitability first strategy and disciplined marketing and cost execution. Let's now move to our liquidity development and cash generation profile. On the left-hand side of this chart, you can see our cash bridge for the period, starting with the 31st December of last year until the 30th of June of this year. In the first half of 2026, HomeToGo generated a remarkable EUR 55.3 million in positive net operating cash flow, powered by a surging EUR 52.7 million in Q2 alone. Driven by the strong operational cash performance, our cash and cash equivalents advanced from EUR 91.6 million at year-end to EUR 134.7 million as of June 30 of this year. Moving to the right side. In order to provide more transparency, let's walk through the bridge from our operational earnings to our underlying unlevered free cash flow for the first half. We start with adjusted EBITDA, which improved by EUR 5.5 million year-over-year to negative EUR 15.1 million. From there, we deduct CapEx payments for intangible assets of EUR 5.8 million, which mainly relate to capitalized internal software development expenses and CapEx for PP&E of EUR 1.2 million. We then account for interest and principal payments for leasing of EUR 3.3 million and income tax paid of EUR 3.5 million. Finally, we factor in the primary engine of our cash performance in the first half of this year, a very strong EUR 77.2 million cash inflow from the change in net working capital, a significant EUR 48.6 million improvement over the first half of last year. The key contributors were a EUR 56.4 million increase in other liabilities, mainly driven by seasonal advanced payments from travelers as well as a EUR 23.2 million increase in trade and other payables. The result, our underlying unlevered free cash flow surged to positive EUR 48.2 million in the first half of this year, a massive EUR 50.7 million swing compared to negative EUR 2.5 million in the first half of last year. Achieving this impressive cash generation clearly underscores our enhanced cash conversion power, which, to be honest, is very much driven by the further implementation and ongoing very good take-up by partners of the HomeToGo payment product and also the successful optimization of our operational cash cycles. Let's now turn to our balance sheet strength, especially looking at our net debt position and covenant headroom as of June 30 of this year. Our total gross debt stands at EUR 209 million. This comprises EUR 101 million face value of our Nordic bond, EUR 81.3 million in deferred payments related to the Interhome acquisition that we still need to pay over the next 3 years and EUR 26.6 million in lease liabilities. Offsetting this gross debt, we hold EUR 134.7 million in cash on our balance sheet and also EUR 9.8 million in cash held in escrow. This brings our total net debt to EUR 64.5 million. Moving to the right. Under the documentation of the Nordic bond, HomeToGo has to adhere to 2 maintenance covenants. The first covenant is the leverage ratio defined as net debt to last 12 months adjusted EBITDA. This covenant requires us to remain below 4.5x as of June 30 of this year. Based on our net debt of EUR 64.5 million and an LTM adjusted EBITDA of EUR 49.8 million, our leverage ratio stood at a very healthy 1.3x, well below the required threshold. The other covenant is the minimum cash position. The requirement is a minimum of EUR 20 million. As of June 30, our total cash position, including cash held in escrow stood at EUR 144.4 million, providing a substantial liquidity buffer. In summary, all maintenance covenants for the Nordic bond are met with very comfortable headroom, fully underpinning the group's financial stability and strong balance sheet. With our strong first half financial performance and operational execution laying a solid foundation, let's now turn to our outlook and financial guidance for the full year 2026. Based on our solid performance in the first half of this year, we are confirming our financial guidance for the full year 2026. We reiterate our target of IFRS revenues of between EUR 400 million and EUR 410 million and adjusted EBITDA between EUR 45 million and EUR -- looking closer at how we expect to deliver within these target ranges. First, regarding IFRS revenues. We currently expect full year results to come in towards the lower end of our guidance range. The driver for the softer revenue outlook are lower-than-expected demand in our ancillary short trips business, which is being impacted by softer consumer sentiment and also forest fires throughout holiday destinations in Southern Europe. But crucially, overall demand in our core vacation rental business remains as expected. Second, looking at adjusted EBITDA, we expect bottom line performance to come in towards the upper end of our guidance range. Our strong focus on profitability in the HomeToGo marketplace, combined with very good progress on synergy realization is providing us with increased confidence in our bottom line execution. To wrap up our presentation, let's summarize the 4 key takeaways from our performance in the first half of this year. First, exceptional top line growth and significant profitability improvement. Group IFRS revenues increased by 72% year-over-year to EUR 160 million. Group adjusted EBITDA improved substantially by almost 27% year-on-year to negative EUR 15.1 million, driven by accelerating growth in the second quarter of plus 59% year-over-year. Second, HomeToGo PRO scales rapidly as the group's main revenue and profit driver. Our B2B segment delivered extraordinary growth with IFRS revenues more than doubling by 250% year-over-year to EUR 105.2 million, now accounting for approximately 66% of total group revenues, while segment adjusted EBITDA turned distinctively positive. Third, we saw a surge in free cash flow, driven by the successful Interhome integration, seasonal cash conversion and optimized working capital, also driven by the further adoption of the HomeToGo payment product. Free cash flow surged to EUR 48.2 million in the first half, up from negative EUR 5 million in the first half of last year, advancing our cash position to EUR 134.7 million. Lastly, we are reaffirming our guidance for this year, backed by a strong H1. We reiterate our full year guidance of EUR 400 million to EUR 400 million for IFRS revenues and EUR 45 million to EUR 47 million in adjusted EBITDA, now tracking towards the lower end of the range for IFRS revenues and towards the upper end of the range for adjusted EBITDA. With that, we thank you very much for your attention today. We will now open the floor for your questions.

Yes. Thank you so much for your presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] With that said, we have received some written hands and I send an invite to Mr. [indiscernible]

Solid set of numbers. First question for Patrick. encouraging to see your average basket size actually going up. I think that's on the industry, probably at best a stable development. Maybe you can share some comments on overall sort of booking behaviors and how you see that -- yes, you're faring against the competition on that respect.

Yes, happy to. Yes. So like part of it is obviously like our marketing efficiency topics that we like said we strategically put on our radar for this year, where we said like we will try to cover higher conversion and higher basket sizes. So like people that may have an interest in book also like a bigger vacation or like spend more. And this is basically also reflected if you compare it in regards to the overall market that we have been able to not only lower our ad spend and nonetheless get a higher booking revenues backlog, but also like some part of it is targeting specific consumer segments that are actually letting us profit from that in the basket size development.

Okay. And then Sebastian, a few questions for you. Thanks for providing the pro forma P&L. That's very helpful the transparency there. But if I look at the Q2 isolated, the EBITDA -- adjusted EBITDA improvement is only marginal. Can you remind us like how we should look at those cost synergies? It seems like they all came sort of in Q1 -- anything we should have in mind there? And on that, also, could you remind us the -- for the pro forma EBITDA for Q3 last year, I think I had EUR 69 million in mind. Could you confirm that?

On the EBITDA for Q2 in isolation, like 2 effects that I want to point out that are important to know, and that's why I think actually looking at half year is probably the much better metric. It is timing of Easter. So Easter was in Q2 last year, and it was actually in Q1 of this year. So because of the way we recognize revenue, that means that a lot of revenue has actually shifted between quarters. So Q2 this year is kind of like negatively impacted by that because some of the revenue and then also EBITDA actually shifted towards the first quarter. So again, I would invite you to look at H2 because that is a much better comparison. Then for Q3, I would point you to our Q3 presentation that we gave last year. In the appendix, you will find the full pro forma P&L, including Interhome on a quarterly basis. So you can actually look it up there, too.

Okay. And then finally, on the free cash flow, yes, great performance there. I know you don't give guidance on that number, but maybe sort of more on a qualitative level, how we should expect that figure to pan out in the next quarters, that will be very helpful.

Yes. So the seasonality pattern that we see in revenue and EBITDA, we obviously also see in cash, right? So we get cash prepayments from our travelers, especially in the first half. When then the traveler is actually taking the holiday, we also have to pay out money to the host, especially at Interhome. So we have a very seasonal pattern. For those of you who were part of the Nordic bond fundraising last year, there were a couple of slides in the presentation materials back then where we showed the seasonal cash pattern, especially for Interhome, Tim, I'm happy if you don't have those materials to shoot them over after this call. The cash pattern will follow the same patterns as last year, also this year, right?

Another raise hand we do have from Mr. Nagarhash.

I just had a couple of questions. Could you share how much traffic you're currently getting from third-party LLMs and AI agents? That's the first question. And the second question, with regards to your PRO business, the 3% growth on a pro forma basis, is that in line with your expectations for this year? And what kind of growth are you looking to get to in the medium term for this business and the steps you're taking to get there, please?

So on the LLM, look, I think the answer to that is, I think the most importantly is like we don't get many bookings through them, right? So LLM is -- that is all very, very early. I think probably the bookings I do personally with HomeToGo every year probably outpace the combined volume of all bookings we ever received through an LLM. So this is really early adoption of technology. We do believe that much more bookings will migrate to this panel in the future. So we want to be positioned very early on in there. We want to learn. But economically, it doesn't have any material impact at all for us at the moment. Then on your second question for B2B. So yes, it is in line with our expectations. So we're actually quite happy with the B2B performance that we're seeing and our midterm expectations remain the same. So as we have also discussed in prior calls with you.

Okay. All right. May I just ask one more question then. With regards to Smoobu subscriptions, any color on the seasonality with regards to new subscriber adds? And the growth in Smoobu, is that being currently driven by the new subscriber adds or price increases or anything else to talk about?

Yes. So the growth in Smoobu is driven by new subscribers, actually. So it's not driven by price increases mainly this year. And there is not much seasonality profile necessarily when it comes to subscriber growth. It's more driven by campaigns that we run at Smoobu where we try to push for subscriber growth. So there's not that much seasonality profile in there.

Another rise in hand by Mr. [indiscernible]

I have 3 questions, if I may. On the wildfires we are currently seeing, I guess that makes Southern Europe in summer increasingly more or less attractive destination, maybe also some DACH regions. Can you say something how do you see the impact of that on your business model? I mean, probably summer months are very important for HomeToGo. Maybe you can share your thoughts on that one, if that's possible. Secondly, it seems -- I would like to understand that short-term trips seems to be much more important in the DACH region than elsewhere. Is it because most of your customers are in the DACH region and they are more -- tend to be more attracted by short-term trips? Or what's the reason behind that? And lastly, on HomeToGo Payments, you said that the you incurred additional cost of EUR 1 million. for HomeToGo payments. But overall, my understanding was always that this is a very positive feature for HomeToGo because you are able to manage more effectively your net working capital when it comes to payments, customer prepayments, et cetera. Can you confirm that? That would be my 3 questions.

Yes. So on the first one, on the wildfires, I think the wildfires per se, they -- like we do see cancellations in the areas which are specifically impacted by the wildfires, right? So we do see cancellations. Overall, they're not exceptionally meaningful for us right now, right? But it is a rapidly developing situation, and it's very, very hard to forecast wildfires. So we just need to see and hopefully, it's all going well and there is rain coming. I think the broader question, to be honest, is more what the impact of climate change in Europe will do to holidays because when you live in Germany and you are already suffering from heat, you probably are not really looking to take a holiday in Southern Europe where it's even hotter. So what we do see is an increasing interest in holidays in northern destinations. So for example, the Baltic Sea, where we are also very strong, has had a very, very good year this year. So people are looking towards taking holidays there. From industry, we also know that Scandinavia had a very, very good year this year, which is an area where we are currently underrepresented. So it's definitely an area we're looking at to grow in the future. And we do see that some southern destinations, for example, Croatia are actually suffering this year, right? So climate change and the expectation that the heat patterns will continue in Europe and that's like hot summers like we had this year will probably be the norm in the next couple of years will definitely have an impact on where people want to take holidays. And we, as a travel provider, need to adjust to that, and we need to make sure that our destination portfolio is also well equipped to cater for that. Then the second one on DACH. So yes, our short-term business is really a very German business, right? So it's Kodolfureen that is a business that is catering towards German customers, taking short trips in Germany. So think about taking a short trip with your wife to, I don't know, go to Munich and see the Opera or something like that. And this is definitely a part of our business where we do see negative consumer sentiment coming through. So there is less interest in this kind of booking. It's seen as a more -- as an item of spending that people can do without in contrast to the big summer holiday, which is the driver for our core vacation rental business. So this is definitely one part of our business where we see negative sentiment unfortunately playing against us. And then on HomeToGo Payments, yes, you're absolutely right. So we obviously have higher payment fees as more and more of our partners are using the payment product, but the benefit far outweighs the cost. It's, number one, a much better customer experience. So overall conversions are positively impacted by that. Number two, the cash flow is also positively impacted because we get the money in earlier if people use our payment infrastructure. So it's a very, very good thing if more and more people use that.

We have in hand by Mr. can you hear us?

All the details already provided. A couple of questions from my side. First of all, in the future, I mean, it's about AI. And in the future, if I got it right, HomeToGo could be more an inventory provider than for the AI models. You said that is, of course, not immediate impact. But looking ahead, what does it mean on your business model? And what -- how could that impact take rates, for example, first question. Second question is on M&A. I mean perhaps a word on that. You touched on that in the past. It was always a topic. I mean, are you working on a short list here? And how is your priority in regards to M&A versus debt reduction, for example? How do you look at that? And last one, perhaps some words on the negative EPS trend in H1 versus H1 last year. How do you think about the quality of your net income given that the higher PPA, higher financing costs and higher SBC effects?

Thank you, Volker. I take the first question and Sebastian will take the second and the third. So in regards to AI, so like as mentioned by us, we see the LLMs as a potential addition or like somehow replacing direct traffic channel. So because people might turn not only that they go directly to OpenAI ChatGPT or usethropic, but also like within the integrated AI mode of Google when they search, you obviously have like this kind of LLM interaction there, right? And so what HomeToGo has always been doing is not only like going after our own like website, but we had from some time ago like the HomeToGo DopperGanger product, which is allowing third parties to access HomeToGo inventory. And this is something we further went after with building this MCP so that LLMs can theoretically directly access our inventory via the MCP protocol. So like really trying to build like a standard if people want to connect to the largest selection of vacation rentals. And you can imagine, as we have like good relations with Google, but also OpenAI and others are eager to connect to our large amount of inventory, we believe that this is an interesting kind of traffic channel in general. In regards to take rates, that shouldn't change something. We actually expect that customer acquisition costs like in terms of ad spend would rather be lower on that side and especially for our HomeToGo PRO part of the business, as you said, right? So there, what we take as take rates for like managing the house, like maintaining it, cleaning it and so on, that is not affected by AI. Furthermore, we also believe there that the acquisition costs will get lower as more people might get directly to, for instance, the Interhome inventory instead of needing to pay another OTA margin in between. So like take rates stay the same, but like margin likely goes up because we don't have to share part of our take rate with third parties.