Sabre’s NDC Expands Footprint With Spontana Deal

Sabre SABR recently integrated its New Distribution Capability (NDC) content into Spotnana’s Travel-as-a-Service platform. Spontana is a cloud-based platform that uses real-time travel content from suppliers and travel aggregators to provide a smooth travel booking experience for leisure and corporate travel.

The integration of Sabre’s NDC content into Spontana’s existing expertise will further simplify the booking experience, increase the flexibility of sourcing content and smoothen the post-booking experience. Travel management companies working with the Spontana platform will now be able to offer a wider variety of amenities and seating choices.

SABR has also aided a New Zealand-based travel-tech company, Serko, to launch Sabre NDC content in the latter’s travel management platform, Zeno. Before this deal, Sabre integrated its NDC content into SAP‘s SAP Concur platform.

SAP integrated Sabre’s Offer and Order application programming interfaces into the Concur platform in the fourth quarter of 2023. This enabled the Concur platform to provide shop, book, fulfillment and service features for NDC content from carriers listed in Sabre GDS. With the integration of Sabre NDC into these travel management platforms, Spontania, Serko and SAP customers can access more than a dozen airlines for amenities and seats.

Sabre’s year-to-date (YTD) share price performance has been marked by significant volatility. The stock has plunged 34.1% YTD against the Zacks Internet – Software and Services industry’s growth of 4.6%.

Sabre Benefits From Growing Adoption of NDC

Sabre operates in a highly competitive travel distribution space that requires the company to continuously innovate and inject its offerings into other products to expand its market reach.

Currently, more than a dozen airlines use Sabre NDC all over the world, including United Airlines UAL and American Airlines AAL. The company also signed NDC deals with Malaysian Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and International Airlines Group in 2024.

United Airlines and American Airlines introduced their NDC offers on Sabre’s GDS to allow travel buyers to access their pricing content on multiple platforms like Sabre Red 360, Sabre APIs and GetThere.

The adoption of multiple Sabre platforms alongside SABR’s NDC has strengthened and diversified its customer base, lowering customer concentration risk and stabilizing the top line.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Sabre’s 2024 revenues is pegged at $3.04 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 4.6%. The consensus mark for the bottom line is pegged at a loss of 17 cents per share, narrower than the loss of 52 cents per share reported in the year-ago quarter.

Conclusion

Sabre’s diversified product portfolio, strong partner base and expanding clientele make it an important player in this sphere. These strengths, coupled with its improving financial performance, position Sabre as a promising opportunity for long-term growth.

However, investors should wait for a better entry point for Sabre, which currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), given the stretched valuation.

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