Earnings Labs

Travelzoo (TZOO)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 24, 2018

$10.47

+6.68%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Travelzoo Third Quarter 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be opened for questions following the presentation. Today's call is being recorded. The Company would like to remind you that all statements made during this conference call and presented in the 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 refer to the Company's website for important information, including the Company's earnings press release issued earlier this morning. An archived recording of this conference call will be made available on the Travelzoo Investor Relations website at www.travelzoo.com/ir. Travelzoo's Chief Financial Officer, Glen Ceremony, will start with an overview analysis of the third quarter financial results.

Glen Ceremony

Management

Thank you, Jonathan. And welcome to those of you joining us today. For the format of today's call, I will review our third quarter financial results and then Holger will provide you an update on our business initiatives. Thereafter, we will open the call for our question-and-answer session. Please open our management presentation to follow along with our prepared remarks. Our presentation is available on our Investor Relations website. To begin, let's turn to Slide 3, which provides our key financial highlights for the quarter. Our revenue for the quarter grew to $25.3 million, up 2% year-over-year in nominal terms and 3% in constant currencies. Our diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.01, a year-over-year increase of $0.06. Our global number of members increased to 29.8 million and our social media followers and mobile app downloads continue to grow. Slide 4, details our revenue by segment. Revenue in North America was relatively stable year-over-year at $14.9 million. Revenue in Europe was $8.4 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 6%, which is the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for Europe in over two years. Revenue in Asia Pacific was $2 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 13% or up 15% in constant currencies. Slide 5 highlights the Company's financial performance in our core businesses in North America and Europe. Revenues, operating income and EPS are growing and operating margins are at 13%. This often gets overshadowed by our investments in Asia Pacific, resulting in a much smaller profits and margins for the company overall. Furthermore, losses in Asia Pacific cannot be used to offset our tax bills in our core markets. We are looking to take Asia Pacific to profitability in the next two years. The next few slides cover further detail of our revenue for each of…

Holger Bartel

Management

Hi, everyone. We're pleased with the progress that we are making in our goal to build Travelzoo into much larger, global and highly profitable travel membership organization and community. Revenue growth has resumed, even accelerated in many markets and our focused investments in product and technology start paying off. With solid operating margins in North America and Europe, we will continue to invest into our franchise in China and other countries in Asia-Pacific, and we're looking to grow revenues at a faster pace in 2019. On Slide 15, I would just like to highlight two initiatives that are underway, which we believe will increase member activity and revenue growth. We have launched the global technology that offers our members who live around the world the ability to book the hundreds of exclusive hotel deals that we negotiate every month also as complete trips. We have found that when, for example, a member in London receives a special offer for a hotel in Rome, she or he are several times more likely to book a trip if the offer is not just only a hotel rate, but a package that includes hotels, airfare and local activities. We have also found that hotels and airlines are willing to give us better rates if we bundle them into a package offering. We launched this technology in Germany towards the end of Q3, and we've seen their members book up to five times more trips than if we just tell them about a hotel-only offer. We are now rolling out this technology in select markets in Europe this quarter and in North America at the beginning of next year. We are not looking to become a tour operator ourselves, instead we are working in various markets with established and experienced partners in the travel…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Ed Woo from Ascendiant Capital. Your question please.

Ed Woo

Analyst

Yes, thank you for taking my question. I was just wondering what's your overall sense of how the travel industry is doing now? And I assume that we had a pretty positive summer travel season. What's your outlook heading into the end of the year and maybe into next year?

Holger Bartel

Management

Hi, Ed. Yes, you're right, season was actually quite good. Travel is increasing. What we are seeing, and I think probably others in the industry as well, is that the more popular global destinations are becoming increasingly busy. So places like London, Rome, New York more and more tourists are going there. And at some point of time – at sometimes during the year, it's even difficult to get hotels, but at the same time, we see seasonality increasing. So if we look at New York, there is a lot of empty rooms to fill in January and February. But the other trend is that people are looking to travel more and more to destinations that they are not familiar with. And I think that's actually good news for us because that's the type of member that we have. Our members have been to a lot of the most popular places. They're adventurous. They would like to go to places like Iceland or the Azores, destinations that others haven't been to. So I think that's a great trend that works towards us inspiring our members to go to places that they haven't thought about before.

Ed Woo

Analyst

Great. And what's your outlook heading into next year? Do you think there is any concerns with macro issues? Or you think it should be another good year next year?

Holger Bartel

Management

Based on what we are seeing today, I would say next year, the trend will continue. Travel will continue to grow. But as we all know, in the past, often things – sometimes things happen that change travel behaviors. So it's very difficult to predict. But if everything remains like it is today, we see travel continuing to grow next year.

Ed Woo

Analyst

Great. Well, thank you for answering my question. And Glen, wish you good luck in your new opportunity. Thank you.

Glen Ceremony

Management

Thanks Ed. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

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

Holger Bartel

Management

Thank you, again, for dialing into today's conference call. We look forward to speaking with you next time. Bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a pleasant day.