Expedia group, an online travel giant headquartered in Seattle, reported better than expected results in the second quarter, saying that despite the economic instability and the lingering impact of COVID-19 on the world, tourism demand is strong.
Revenue was US $3.2 billion, an increase of more than 50% over the second quarter of last year, and an increase of 1% over the last comparable quarter before the outbreak (2019).
Adjusted earnings per share was $1.96, compared with a loss of $1.13 a year ago. Wall Street expects earnings per share to be $1.58 and revenue to be $3 billion.
Total bookings were US $26.1 billion, up 26% from US $20.8 billion a year ago.
The net loss was US $185 million, compared with us $301 million in the same period last year.
The company continues to transform its online travel brand into a single platform, recently focusing on mobile hotels. Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia group, told analysts in a conference call that Expedia technologies would establish a contact with expedia.com.
“We have accelerated this speed in the past two quarters because the benefits of being able to optimize our two largest (online travel agency) brands on the same stack are enormous,” Kern said. However, he admitted that “migration often destroys the customer model and may affect the transformation in the short term,” adding that the company must “make some choices and put speed above perfection.”
hotel. The front-end migration of COM is nearing completion, which “liberates engineers, who can now turn their attention to optimizing the entire stack,” Kern said, adding that this is an example of the company’s decision to “exchange moderate short-term disruption for significant long-term growth.”
Expedia group is headquartered in the seafront of Seattle, including VRBO, Orbitz, hotwire, trivago and hotels. In addition to the flagship expedia.com, there are expedia.com and e-mail.
Kern cited Expedia group’s new unified loyalty program as part of a larger effort to improve customer retention.
“Traffic has never been a problem during travel; it has always been a reserved problem,” he said. “We intend to change this dynamic once and for all by providing products and services worthy of customer loyalty. Finally, we intend to spend less time and money chasing them in the wild again and again.”
After the earnings report was released, the stock rose more than 5% in the extended trading.