Fortune Staff

Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

Global 500

Key Financials (Last Fiscal Year)

Revenues ($M)

Profits ($M)

Assets ($M)

Total Stockholder Equity ($M)

Profit Ratios

Profit as % of Revenues

Profits as % of Assets

Profits as % of Stockholder Equity

S.F. Holding Company Profile, News, Rankings

legacy

S.F. Holding

s.f. holding

S.F. Holding Company Profile, News, Rankings | Fortune

Sarah Amico, Executive Chairman, Jack Cooper Holdings
Erika Lucas, Founder, StitchCrew
Susan McPherson, Founder and CEO, McPherson Strategies
Jennifer Stark, Co - Director, Center for Business and Social Justice, BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) Moderator: Holly Ojalvo, FORTUNE 

MPW Next Gen 2023 - Protecting Women’s Reproductive Rights 

Conferences

Sarah Amico, Jack Cooper Holdings
Erika Lucas, StitchCrew
Susan McPherson, McPherson Strategies
Jennifer Stark, BSR
Holly Ojalvo, FORTUNE 

Glenn Fogel says despite recession worries and financial crises, there’s “pent-up demand” for travel 

Booking CEO: Travel will be last expense cut in a downturn

Leadership

Glenn. So great to see you to talk about what's going on in the travel business. And you recently reported revenues at your company booking holdings that revenue surged 56% in the past year. Everywhere you look, travel is booming. What's going on. Yeah, I know we are very pleased with those numbers. $17 billion of revenue. A real uh something that we, we, we didn't know when the pandemic was going to end. But certainly it seems that we are beyond the pandemic era and people had a long time where they wanted to travel but they couldn't travel. And then once people felt it was safe to travel, once government stopped their restrictions, everybody wanted to travel at once and almost, but there are some areas not quite as fast, Asia, a little bit slower, but it's coming back to now. Do you see travel continuing to boom. One of the things I would say is look, we've been through a lot recently. Well, one thing that we've all learned is that things can change very rapidly right now. We're very positive on travel. We talked about it in our earnings call a few weeks ago we talked how well January was and how optimistic we were. Now just recently, we see financial crisis in the US with some banks having some issues, we see a bank in Europe having a problem. And people have been saying maybe there's a recession on the horizon. What's really puzzling is that every day we're hearing news and bad news about a recession, inflation and about stock prices falling. Why are consumers still booking trips paying high prices for airline tickets or for hotels? It looks like a disconnect, doesn't it though, Suzie? The reason I think really is that pent up demand for so long? So many people wanted to travel so bad and they couldn't and they have a lot of traveling still to do. Maybe they won't do something else but they'll do their travel. What about China? It's going to open up for business. What could this mean for, for your company? Do you see more people booking trips to China? Look, we'd like to recover. We'd like to get some of that business back. Nobody's really sure how fast that's going to happen though. It's going to come back. Absolutely. And I think it's going to come back slower than a lot of people have been expecting. Tell us a little bit about connected travel booking is best known for booking hotels. But now you've gone beyond that, booking flights, arranging airport transfers, arranging for sightseeing experiences. How are customers responding to this? Service. Well, we call this our connected trip and we're building it out because we know how frustrating it can be for a consumer when you're traveling, having to deal with lots of different vendors. And if something goes wrong, having to make multiple calls, we know that's not the best way to travel. We know tying it all together into one seamless, frictionless way. That would make life much easier. That's why we're building out this connected trip. But to be perfectly honest, we're still very early on it. Well, you're sort of acting like a travel agent. But how is your service different than dealing with a, a traditional travel agent and having a connected trip? I want to have all the personalization and all the great relationship that I had with that old style human travel agent. But I want technology to make it even better in terms of what the best prices are, we should be able to come up with what the best price are. So I want all the part of the beautiful part of that human being by one done through technology and that's what we're working towards. You're also now offering bookings for homes and apartments when people are traveling. But when people think about renting a home or apartment, they think airbnb. So what does it take to beat the powerful and successful business of Airbnb? You know, it, it, it's kind of funny because um what you just said is so true of everybody in America. Now, we are an extremely global company. A lot of people don't know that, but, you know, we had over 300 offices around the world. We operate almost every country in the world in terms of where we can put somebody. If somebody in Europe is looking for a home or an apartment or a villa, they'll say booking dot com in the US. You're right. They'll probably say airbnb or well, more and more people are beginning to think of booking dot com as we continue to build up our inventory in the U. Si Am very confident that given the strength we have in that sector, this is what we call alternative accommodations, given the strength we have that in other parts of the world. There is no reason we shouldn't have as competitive and offering in the US as we do everywhere else. And I am very, very uh conscious of how important it is to have. Every single accommodation is available to a consumer, Glenn. You talk a lot about the importance of travel's role in climate change. You've been a strong advocate of protecting the environment and you also say that travel is a force of good because it connects people and cultures. But how do you reconcile the fact that airlines are big polluters and that undermines the impact of travel as a force for good. What do you say to that? And we understand that the industry does have a problem in terms of emissions and not being as sustainable as it should be. And we know that the suppliers, the airlines hotels are working that way, we're doing our part too. So in examples of flights on kayak, for example, there's actually a meter, you could do a way to find out how much in terms of emissions does the flight you're thinking of taking actually emit and that way you can choose flights that have less emissions. That's a great way for consumers to help out. But another way is our, what we call our travel sustainability badge with our accommodation partners. Over 400,000 partners are part of this and what they're doing is they do things in their business to make it more sustainable. And we then on our site will show that these properties are doing their part to be more sustainable for consumers who want to choose to go sustainably, they'll see those hotels or homes or whichever type of accommodation and they'll choose those and that will help incentivize other properties to be more sustainable. Well, you've written many op ed articles urging the travel industry to decarbonise. I'm just wondering to what extent are you getting through to business leaders, travel companies, even travelers. Are they doing enough? Well, absolutely. Everybody I think in the industry recognizes that there is a problem. Some people are doing more efforts than others. That's true. But when I talk to the CEO S of the major airlines, they are trying to do it when I talk to the CEO S of the major hotel chains, they're doing their part too. What's interesting is the consumer, consumers talk about how much they want to travel sustainably. I'm not seeing them using their wallets yet to prove that that is really true.

 ELLEN MCGIRT: Are there new or different opportunities for outside investment in some of these either issues, or economies, or locale? What have been some of the traditional barriers? JAMES MWANGI: Africa provides the world with the best opportunities for investment. Because if we accept that investments are geared to addressing opportunities, that are created by solving challenges for society, then those opportunities in Africa are significant. The second aspect of the continent is that the continent is endowed with significant natural resources and a very strong labor force. So what the lead entrepeneurship [INAUDIBLE] needs to build is to bring capital, then to premiere capability to [INAUDIBLE] to the list, and managerial skills. And essentially, Africa has a significant diaspora. As we start creating these opportunities on the continent, that diaspora is willing to jump back and be counted in providing Africa with the skills and the competencies it require. So we've seen the factors of production are inherently available on the African continent. The second aspect of the African continent is that it has a very young population, and mean age of 19 years. 19 years means that that population has gone through most of it more than education. It's a digital generation. So it's a population, it's a labor force, it's a workforce that can be used to reform legacy technologies. And Africa can avoid the trap of legacy technologies and legacy systems, and hence, can provide very significant returns to the investors because of modern technology. The last one is that Africa has a very rapidly growing population that constantly continues to increase in terms of consumption capability, of consumption power. So essentially, the market will be a growing market for the foreseeable future. We anticipate African population will have doubled by the year 2050. And that, then, shows the scale to which investments can grow. 

Africa is ripe with opportunity for investment

Uncategorized

James Mwangi of Equity Holdings Group joins FGF.

James Mwangi, CEO of Equity Holdings Group,  joins Fortune Global Forum.

As customers begin to travel again, they expect a different, minimal touch experience.

Enterprise Holdings CEO Chrissy Taylor weighs in on customers' changing expectations

They expect a different, minimal touch experience.

S.F. Holding

Company Information

Key Financials (Last Fiscal Year)

Profit Ratios