The year in review

6.1 The year with Amadeus

Introduction

In 2011, under the new leadership of President & CEO Luis Maroto, the Amadeus management team continued focusing on consolidating and strengthening our leading market share status in all of our segments. We also remained committed to reinforcing our position at the forefront of the travel technology industry to maintain our notable competitive edge as a transaction provider, whilst also focusing on improving profitability. Additionally, we worked hard on evolving our business to benefit from recent industry trends, particularly in our rapidly growing IT Solutions business, and expanding our reach through a slight reorganisation of our commercial business units.

This success could only be achieved by our continued combined growth in both Distribution and IT Solutions. In Distribution, our global market share of travel agency air bookings ¹ increased by 1.0 p.p. and total bookings (including air and non air) increased 5%; in IT Solutions, Passengers Boarded ² grew by 17.9% to reach 440 million and the number of migrated Altéa customers increased to 100 – significantly, further key airline contract signings for Altéa lifted the projected Passengers Boarded for 2014 to 735 million ³. Further details are laid out below in the relevant sections.

As a result of our continued growth in all business areas, it should be highlighted that total billable travel transactions processed ⁴, which is a key metric for our overall business, increased by 11.5% to reach 947 million - edging us closer to the one billion landmark.

Corporate

Establishment of New Businesses unit

• The establishment of a unit dedicated to new businesses reflects the focus of Amadeus on building new lines of business. The commitment to continue growing and strengthening this priority area was further underlined with key strategic appointments in three of the main business areas within the New Businesses portfolio: airport, hotel and rail.

Sale of Opodo

• In February Amadeus announced that it had reached an agreement with AXA Private Equity and Permira Funds for the sale of a 100% stake in Opodo - subject to the approval of regulatory authorities. This development followed previous communications that Amadeus was exploring and evaluating alternative options for Opodo. The agreed enterprise value was approximately €450 million, which represented a multiple of 11.7x the EBITDA of Opodo during the 2010 financial calendar.
• In May the sale was approved by the European Commission under EU Merger Regulation. On June 30 Amadeus received the cash proceeds, which were subsequently used to pay down a bridge loan of €400 million.

Debt refinancing

• In May Amadeus announced an agreement to refinance its debt through a new senior unsecured credit facility, structured via a "club deal" for a total of €2.7 billion. This formed part of the Amadeus long-term strategy to strengthen its financial structure, by bringing more flexibility through extended maturity periods and improved terms and conditions, as well as significantly decreasing the cost of servicing debt.
• This refinancing was followed in early June by both Standard and Poor's and Moody's assigning Amadeus an investment grade rating.
• Included within this new financing package was a €400 million bridge loan, which was later fully amortised with the cash proceeds from the sale of Opodo (see above). Also included was a further €1.2 billion bridge loan.
• This bridge loan was partially amortised with the proceeds from a €750 million 5-year Euro Bond, successfully issued and priced on July 2011. The maturity date for this bond issue is July 15, 2016 and it has an annual coupon of 4.875%. The issue of this bond formed part of the company's financial strategy to diversify funding sources and extend maturity periods.