Earnings Labs

Travelzoo (TZOO)

Q3 2010 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 21, 2010

$10.47

+6.68%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the Travelzoo third quarter 2010 financial results conference call. At this time all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Today’s call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chris Loughlin, Travelzoo’s Chief Executive Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today for Travelzoo’s third quarter 2010 financial results conference call. I am Chris Loughlin, Chief Executive Officer. With me today is Wayne Lee, the company’s Chief Financial Officer.

Wayne Lee

Management

Good morning everyone, welcome to our conference call.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Before we begin, Wayne will walk you through today’s format.

Wayne Lee

Management

I would like to first remind you that all statements made during this conference call and presented in our slides that are not statements of historical facts constitute forward-looking statements, and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could vary materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are described in our Forms 10-K and 10-Q, and other periodic filings with the SEC. Please note that this call is being webcast from our Investor Relations Web site at www.travelzoo.com/earnings. Please refer to our Web site for important information including our earnings press release issued earlier this morning, along with the slides that accompany today’s prepared remarks. An archived recording of this conference call will be available on the Travelzoo Investor Relations Web site at www.travelzoo.com/ir, beginning approximately 90 minutes after the conclusion of this call. For the format of today’s call, Chris will review management’s prepared presentation, and we will then conclude with a question-and-answer session. If you will now please now open our management’s presentation, which is available at www.travelzoo.com/earnings, I will now turn the call over to Chris.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Thank you Wayne. Our presentation will fall into three parts because I anticipate that we have many new participants on this call who are not familiar with Travelzoo, I would like to quickly provide an overview of our business. So let us start on slide 5. First, I want to clarify that Travelzoo is not a travel agent. We are a leading global media business. As you can see here on the left, many financial journalists often lump us even with publicly traded online travel agencies or OTAs such as Orbitz and Priceline. We do not sell travel nor do we take travel bookings. Rather, we recommend travel and entertainment fields on our Web site and in our newsletters. With a weekly audience of over 21 million subscribers worldwide, we are a global leader in travel and entertainment information. And you can see here on the right just how large we are compared to other leading traditional publications. On slide 6 you can see that Travelzoo is indeed a global brand. Just five years ago, principally all of our subscribers were guided in the US, and we only published deals in English within the 50 states. Today, 38% of our 21 million subscribers live outside the US, and we publish in 11 languages. As we have scaled, we have maintained a strong focus on quality. On the right, you can see our demographics within the US, and the picture is generally the same across the world. Travelzoo subscribers earn well above the average, and they love to travel. On slide 7 I want to illustrate the key input into our business. Our team of over 100 deal experts, research and review offers from thousands of travel and entertainment and local businesses. If those deals are indeed outstanding, we recommend them…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator instructions) Thank you. Our first question comes from Ed Woo with Wedbush. Go ahead please. Ed Woo – Wedbush: Great quarter, guys.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Thanks Ed. Ed Woo – Wedbush: The first question I have is on Fly.com. How do you see it rolling out in terms of in the US, I know you mentioned that you just launched it in Germany. What about any opportunity to get [ph] it outside of HACR?

Chris Loughlin

Management

Outside of HACR? Ed Woo – Wedbush: Yes, hotels and car rentals.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Ed, if you would, we are quite pleased with the progress we are making on the rollout in the US. I think I have mentioned before, I look at that product and access it based on are we able to compete on these three elements, price, accuracy and speed? And in the US we certainly are. In all areas, we come up equal, if not top. And so the usage in the US is good. We would like obviously to be greater scale and that is a business that does have certain fixed costs. As soon as we get over that fixed cost hurdle, then we are able to take the business to profitability but that requires scale. So the core flights business, I think we have made good progress and we have got good usage in the US. In Europe, obviously we are just starting out. With respect to additional products such as hotels and holidays, we honestly are not focused on that right now. We would rather focus on getting the core aspect right, and then go from there. But it is not a stretch to think at some point you would cut those in. It is just not something the folks have done right now. Ed Woo – Wedbush: Great, and the other question I have is on Local Deals. What are we seeing out there in terms of competitive marketplace?

Chris Loughlin

Management

It is an interesting question Ed because, you know, as a publisher, as an Internet publisher, you cannot publish the same content day after day; it does not matter if it is Internet or traditional, you cannot publish the same content day after day. So everybody in this space, be it Travelzoo or Groupon or any of these companies, we cannot go to the same subscriber and tell him or her the same news tomorrow as we said today. That also puts a limit on the number of times you can work with an individual local business. So from a competitive standpoint, where would you feel the competition? You would feel it in not being able to get access to those companies, but given the natural barrier, if you like, it seems that we are able to get the deals, and we are not locked in moving a business forward. We obviously have the significant advantage over many of the other smaller start-ups in the space that we have got 21 million subscribers. We launched our business into New York on Tuesday with a spa deal that was a relatively expensive price point too. It was $125, and we have already sold 1314 vouchers. That is complete in new incremental opportunities Travelzoo, and it is only possible because we have got a very large audience here in New York. Ed Woo – Wedbush: Great, well good luck.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Thank you, Ed.

Operator

Operator

Okay, I will now turn it back to Mr Loughlin.

Chris Loughlin

Management

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your time today, and that concludes the end of our call, and I look forward to speaking to all of you when I see you. And my door here in New York is always open; please do stop by if you would like to learn more about the business. Thank you. Have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a nice day.