Despite macroeconomic uncertainty and a stock price that is down nearly
70% since its SPAC
debut in December, Vacasa is raising its full year 2022 guidance for
revenue and adjusted EBITDA and expects to achieve profitability by the end of next
year.
Compared to the second quarter of 2021, Vacasa’s revenue in Q2
this year grew 31% to $310 million – ahead of the May guidance that pegged it
at between $280 and $290 million.
Adjusted EBITDA at negative $2 million was also ahead of guidance,
which was negative $20 to $15 million, but it was below the Q2 2021 figure of $6 million.
Gross booking value in the second quarter grew 32% year-over-year to
$676 million and net income in the quarter was $10 million.
For the full year 2022, Vacasa now says it expects revenue to come
in between $1.16 and $1.18 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be between negative
$7 million and break even.
“We experienced strong
guest demand during the second quarter, and July that has continued into
August, capping off another strong peak season for our homeowners,” says Matt
Roberts, CEO of Vacasa.
“We also welcomed
thousands of new homeowners to Vacasa during the quarter, extending our
industry-leading scale. We believe Vacasa’s technology-enabled local
operations, our proprietary yield optimization, and commitment to hospitality
creates a truly differentiated value proposition for homeowners, making us the
vacation rental manager of choice in the destinations where we operate.”
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The company says despite macroeconomic uncertainty, it has “not
seen signs of consumer weakness in its results or future bookings.” Nights sold
in the second quarter were 1.6 million, a 17% increase year-over-year, and
gross booking value per night sold was $411, up 13% year-over-year.
Vacasa’s sales and marketing expense in Q2 was $62 million, or 20%
of revenue, compared to $39 million, or 16% of Revenue, in Q2 2021. The company
says these expenses outpaced revenue growth in Q2 due to the addition of more
sales people and the subsequent increase in advertising costs to drive leads
for those people.
Vacasa says it is on track to increase its homes under management
by 30% by the end of 2022 compared to 2021. The company currently has more than
35,000 properties on its platform, located in 35 states across the United States plus
Canada, Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica.
Vacasa adds homes through two strategies – a sales team that onboards
individual homeowners, which accounts for about 75% of new properties, and then
a “portfolio approach” through acquisition of local vacation rental management companies.
In Q2 the company says it added 16 portfolio companies.
“All met our strategic objectives of either
bringing a new market that we can then go in with our direct sales force and continue
to expand or adding density in an existing market or potentially opening up a
new kind of inventory that we hadn’t been in previously. So we’re really happy
with our go-to market strategies,” says Jamie Cohen, Vacasa CFO.
In February, Vacasa
announced it is installing smart-home technology into all of its properties.
Cohen says today about half of its homes have at least some of the technology
in operation.