Sabre's guidance idea: less is more.

• Position: Earnings guidance - Sabre Holdings Worldwide

Sabre Holdings Worldwide, the parent of Travelocity.com and extensive airline and travel reservation systems and support applications, is among a group of major American companies--including Coca-Cola Co., McDonald's Corp. and a few others--declining to provide detailed quarterly guidance on earnings per share forecasts.

In Sabre's case, notes CFO Jeffery M. Jackson (pictured), a major factor has been the sharp turndown in travel and the resulting uncertainties associated with revenues. "There's been a dramatic impact on the demand side since September 11," he said in an interview. "There's been a general decline in business travel, fundamentally, due to the nature of the economy, as well as war with Iraq.

"It became more difficult to provide reliable short-term guidance because of the marketplace environment," he adds. So, beginning in October 2001, Sabre has been offering "financial scenarios" to analysts during quarterly conference calls, primarily using "volume-based" numbers such as airline and hotel bookings but eschewing detailed guidance. In effect, he says, Sabre is asking analysts to use the data to "calibrate their own models."

Jackson, who has been CFO since the summer of 1998, sees Sabre's model as something between providing no guidance--which he thinks does a disservice to investors--and getting caught up in a forecasting...