Amadeus: The IT Backbone of Travel - [Business Breakdowns, EP.237]

This episode is brought to you by Portrait. It's the AI research system that I used to prepare for today's episode and for all business breakdowns episodes. Portrait was built by former buy side investors, and they understand great investing isn't just about having more information from low quality sources. It's about having the right information organized the right way. And if you listen to the show, you appreciate diligence consists of many things, diving into the history of a business, framing the nuanced competitive dynamics, tracking key signposts around your thesis. And historically, that would take up material time that you do not have. But Portrait is basically like adding an army of analysts to your team. It's powered by an AI system specifically designed for investment research workflows. So you get nuanced idea generation. Portrait assesses the same types of qualitative attributes that we discuss on this show, and that can help identify businesses which fit your frameworks. Portrait also customizes research report generation, and I use Portrait to generate a primer and layout bold bear cases ahead of today's episode to help frame the conversation. And third, there's intelligent thesis monitoring, and that's where Portrait assesses thousands of data points across value chains each day, extracting the insights, driving the business. Again, all this work would typically take hours and hours and hours. It's at your fingertips now. Visit portraitresearch.com to start your free trial today. This is Business Breakdowns. Business Breakdowns is a series of conversations with investors and operators diving deep into a single business. For each business, we explore its history, its business model, its competitive advantages, and what makes it tick. We believe every business has lessons and secrets that investors and operators can learn from, and we are here to bring them to you. To find more episodes of breakdowns, check out joincolossus.com. All opinions expressed podcast guests, their employers, or affiliates may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. This is Matt Russell, and today, we are breaking down the travel IT giant, Amadeus. If you have booked travel with a travel agent or done business travel and used your system, there's a very good chance that was done through Amadeus' plumbing. They are IT for travel, and it goes well beyond what you see or interact with as a consumer doing this within the airlines, within hotels, inventory management, all of the behind the scenes work that make these logistical engines actually flow. My guest is Ben Needham, portfolio manager at ninety one Asset Management, and he joined to cover why Amadeus might have some misconceptions in the market, the business, and how it's grown and captured such dominant market share over the years, and what that looks like in terms of a value proposition on all sides of the equation. We also get into the AI debate and …