Sabre’s Travelocity bids £600m for Lastminute.com

Sabre’s Travelocity arm has made a bid for lastminute.com valuing the UK online company at almost £600 million.

The recommended offer came as lastminute.com revealed a half year pre-tax loss of £45 million compared to a loss of £39.5 million in the same period a year earlier.

Total transation values were up by 57% to £512 million. Gross profits in the six months to March 31 increased to £83 million from £55.9 million a year earlier.

The £577 million deal is estimated to make a windfall for joint founders Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, with Mr Hoberman’s share valued at £26 million and Ms Lane Fox’s at £12.5 million, according to the BBC.

Lastminute.com chairman Brian Collie said the offer from Sabre was considered “very carefully”, adding: “While we acknowledge lastminute.com’s future prospects, we believe that this offer represents an excellent opportunity to deliver significant, certain value to sahreholders now and to build an even stronger business for the future.”

He added: “The combination of Lastminute.com and Sabre Holdings creates a world scale business with even greater capability to work with global airlines and hotel ad car rental groups to offer unbeatable deals to our customers in Europe and the US.”

Sabre Holdings chirman, president and CEO Sam Gilliland said: “The anticipated acquisition of lastminute.com directly supports Sabre’s strategy of extending our role as a travel retailer focusing on merchandising content, packages, and growing our international points of sale, while broadening the products and services we offer to all customers through our travel distribution platform.

“We’re extremely pleased with the prospect of having lastminute.com, with its highly-regarded brands and well-established customer base, as a part of Travelocity, including Travelocity Europe. We expect this combination would provide us greater opportunity to profit from the fast-growing European online segment.  We look forward to working with lastminute.com’s strong team to create further value for our suppliers, our customers and our shareholders.” 

Lastminute.com CEO Mr Hoberman will become CEO of the combined lastminute.com and Travelocity European operations, reporting to Michelle Peluso, president and CEO of Travelocity. Damon Tassone, currently president of Travelocity Europe, will become Deputy CEO reporting to Mr Hoberman. The takeover is due to be concluded by the end of July. 

Mr Hoberman said: “Today’s offer from Sabre is an endorsement of the achievements of everyone at lastminute.com. Over the past seven years, we have built a business from scratch into one of Europe’s leading travel and leisure groups, with over seven million customers and total transactions worth £992 million for the financial year ended September 30, 2004.

“Today’s interim results are a further demonstration that the growth and entrepreneurship at the heart of lastminute.com is continuing strongly, with total transaction value of 57% for the first half of 2005 and a doubling of our order book since the first quarter of 2005. I am looking forward to the opportunity of running the combined lastminte.com and Travelocity buisnesses in Europe.” 

Ms Peluso said the combination of Travelocity and lastminute.com would create “the leading position in european online travel”.

She added: “Toegther we would have strong positions in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and Spain. Lastminute.com’s diverse mix of flights, holidays, hotels, car hire, and non-travel, ties closely with Travelocity’s strategy of continuing to expand our range of offerings to consumers beyond basic air travel.”

Travelocity is to evaluate its brands country by country, with lastminute.com being positioned as the leading brand in most countries. Travelocity is likely to run multiple brands in Europe.

Sabre said it had identified “a number of areas for cost savings and revenue synergies” to Travelocity, adding: “Areas of opportunity include streamlining marketing spending across brands, centralising operations and administrative functions, consolidating platforms, sharing technologies and supplier relationships”.

Report by Phil Davies