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BREAKING NEWS: Summer overcapacity will boost late bookings, Lastminute claims
Summer over capacity will boost demand for late travel, Lastminute.com has predicted.
Chairman Allan Leighton, revealing reduced losses for the three months ending March 31, said: “The indications are that there will be excess capacity in the market as we move towards the key summer quarter and that the demand for late travel will remain strong.
“For example, trading for the month of April has been generally weak across the majority of the ravel industry as customer continue the trend towards later booking.”
Lastminute.com halved year on year quarterly losses to £1.5 million against £3.1 million.
The result for the three months ending March 31 was an improvement in EBITDA of 51.4%. The half year loss is down to £2.6 million from £4.7 million.
The company saw gross profits more than double to £31 million in the three months ending March 31.
The result was based on a 94% year-on-year rise in total transaction value to almost £179 million against £92 million.
Lastminute saw transaction values from dynamic packaging show “significant growth” to £13.5 million against £5.3 million in the same period last year.
Chief executive Brent Hoberman said the company had made “significant progress” in its second quarter.
“Strong organic like-for-like growth of 36.2% has been supplemented by key acquisitions in strong gross margin product categories,” he said. “Industry trends, particularly the offline to online share shift seen in this quarter, continue to move in our favour. Overall we remain confident of delivering a further year of substantially improved financial metrics.”
Lastminute acquired First Option for £12 million and Gemstone Travel for £1.5 million during the quarter. It completed the acquisition of Online Travel Corporation for £55 million last month.
Report by Phil Davies
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