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Travelzoo (TZOO)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 3, 2015

$10.47

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Travelzoo Third Quarter 2015 Financial Results Conference. [Operator Instructions]. Before introducing you to your host and beginning with the Company's presentation, the Company would like to remind you that all statements made during this conference call and presented in the Company's 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 the Company's Forms 10-K and 10-Q and other periodic filings with the SEC. Unless required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please note that this call is being webcast from the Company's Investor Relations website at www.travelzoo.com/earnings. Please review the Company's website for important information, including the Company's earnings press release issued earlier this morning, along with the slides that accompany today's prepared remarks. An archive recording of this conference call will be available on the Travelzoo Investor Relations website at www.travelzoo.com/ir, beginning approximately 90 minutes after the conclusion of this call. Now it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Holger Bartel, Travelzoo's Executive Chairman. Sir, you may begin.

Holger Bartel

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today for Travelzoo's third quarter 2015 financial results conference call. I am Holger Bartel, Executive Chairman of Travelzoo. Joining me today are Chris Loughlin, our Chief Executive Officer; and Glen Ceremony, the Company's Chief Financial Officer. Glen will walk you through today's format.

Glen Ceremony

Analyst

Thank you, Holger and everyone for joining us today. For the format of today's call, I will review our third quarter financial results and then Holger will provide an update on our strategy. Thereafter, we will open the call for our question-and-answer session. Now, please open our management presentation which is available on our Investor Relations website at www.travelzoo.com/earnings, to follow along with our prepared remarks. Slide 3 provides the key financial highlights for the quarter. These results include the financial results of the Asia Pacific business we acquired this quarter, for the full customer quarter and for prior periods as well. Our revenue for the quarter was $33.7 million, down 7% year over year or down 2% in constant currencies. Our non-GAAP earnings per share this quarter was $0.03 which is $0.06 higher than the prior-year period. In addition, our members grew to over 28 million with the acquisition of Travelzoo Asia Pacific and our social media followers and mobile app downloads continue to increase. The next few slides provide a view on our financial progress over the next few quarters. Vast changes in foreign currency exchange rates and our investments in member growth and product enhancements have been overshadowing some positive trends. Slide 4 demonstrates the steady progress we're making on revenues, costs and profitability. Year-over-year revenue growth in constant currencies have been improving over the past 12 months. Similarly, year-over-year changes in operating income and EPS have improved steadily. Slide 5 highlights that this improvement is despite our increased investments in audience and product development, as we had focused on operating smarter and increasing margins in order to help fund these investments. We're also pleased that revenue growth has resumed in most of our markets. As slide 6 shows, revenues grew in constant currencies across Europe and…

Holger Bartel

Analyst

Please turn to slide 18. Our growth strategy continues to be built on two pillars. On one hand, we're looking to grow our audience. We have added almost 3 million new members over the past 3 quarters. At the same time, we're looking to enhance our products to serve our users better. In other words, we want them to receive deals from us by email and social media, but we also want to help them when they are actively searching for something specific, like a hotel room and a destination on a certain date. We believe these product enhancements will result over time in higher revenues per member. Slide 19 highlights how our investments align with these two pillars of our strategy -- growth in audience and improvements of our products. First, in the last year we increased our investment in acquisition of new members. Our focus was to get high-quality members, explore ways to leverage our strong social media presence and test some offline marketing channels. The results have been the addition of 3 million growth new members this year which are expected to yield benefits to our business for years to come. Second, we've also been working to enhance our product to be more mobile-friendly and to simplify the usability of our product so members can easily find what they are looking for. A lot of work is underway in this area, but has not been placed into production yet. We have made our emails easier to read on all devices and we have tested ways to deliver more relevant content to our members based on their likes and dislikes which has shown promising early results. We're still working on an overall simpler search from our website, mobile site and apps and expect these improvements to go live…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Ed Woo from Ascendiant Capital. Your question please.

Ed Woo

Analyst

And Chris, I wish you good luck. It was great working with you. My question is, what was the rationale for acquiring the Asia business this quarter?

Holger Bartel

Analyst

Glen? Hi, Ed. Glen will answer this question.

Glen Ceremony

Analyst

So, the rationale for acquiring Asia was, as you know, we had an option to acquire Asia. And just that region in particular, in the long term, has great long-term travel market trends, in particular with China and outbound travel. So, it's definitely an attractive region of the world that we wanted to participate in. And so, that's what really drove us to do the transaction.

Ed Woo

Analyst

In terms of accounting, do you start including it in your business as of the day of purchase or was it included for the whole quarter?

Glen Ceremony

Analyst

Yes, it was included for the whole quarter and for most of the financial information you're seeing it's in all prior periods as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tom White from Macquarie. Your question please.

Tom White

Analyst

European business, you had, I guess, a nice little rebound there, FX-neutral. Can you maybe just help us with how we should kind of think about the trajectory of growth there. Was that -- it's still relatively small numbers, so is that something that we should sort of think should continue? And any maybe broader comments on what you're seeing in terms of just European travel trends overall. And then I had one follow-up. Thanks.

Holger Bartel

Analyst

Chris, why don't you comment on our European business and what the trends are in Europe right now?

Chris Loughlin

Analyst

Sure. Tom, we saw some strength there with the German tour operators that was quite positive. And frankly, it was after a heck of a lot of work over the last few years with the team. So, it was a great job by the team. It seems that the German tour operators will remain relatively strong for us which is positive. And we were able to put a rate increase in there in Germany, so we'll benefit from that going forward. The UK business is just, I would say, rather steady as she goes; not any significant change there.

Tom White

Analyst

And then just maybe bigger-picture, when we think about Travelzoo's sort of transition to becoming more of, kind of, a pull-oriented marketplace or product strategy, I guess, what sort of inning do you guys think you're in there in terms of, A, the product; B, sort of scaling out supply. And then just sort of consumer awareness. Maybe just how you think about each one of those three buckets and how far away we're before you guys feel like the bulk of the work will be behind you on that front. Thanks.

Holger Bartel

Analyst

So, Tom, to order a very -- to offer a very simple search for our users and members, it requires a lot of simplification on the back end basis -- content structure; how we even code content. And we've gone through a lot of this. And we're actually actively testing right now a very simplified user search experience. We're still not completely happy, but it's something that's working right now in beta. As I said earlier, we expect it to, at least in the first phase, go live in the next few months. And so far we've heard very good feedback from users. But in the end, we want to be perfectly happy with the product until we put it in front of millions of people.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Thank you. I'll turn back now to Mr. Holger Bartel.

Holger Bartel

Analyst

Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time and support and we look forward to speaking with you again next question. Thanks. Bye.