Serko reported a 45 percent growth in income year over year
for the first half of the 2026 fiscal year, stemming from "momentum"
in Booking.com for Business along with its acquisition of GetThere.
For the first six months of the fiscal year, which runs from
April through March, Serko reported total income of NZ$61.8 million (US$35
million), and CEO and co-founder Darrin Grafton said it was the company's
strongest half-year ever in terms of revenue. Booking.com for Business was a
key driver of that, Grafton said, with 2.1 million completed room night—up from
1.6 million in the first half of the 2025 fiscal year—and a 40 percent growth
in active customers year over year.
Amid the customer growth, completed room nights per active
customer was down slightly year over year. "This likely reflects small and
medium-sized businesses in Europe booking fewer trips due to the macroeconomic
headwinds there," Grafton said in an earnings call. He said that should
stabilize as economic conditions improve.
Serko's $12 million acquisition of GetThere from Sabre, which
closed in January, boosted U.S. revenue above expectations for the six
months, as customers it has expected to leave the tool have been doing so
slower than expected, Grafton said. GetThere is now "fully
integrated" within Serko's business, and its customer base has stabilized,
with "a very low level of new churn," he said.
Grafton said Serko has not yet achieved its sales targets
with GetThere but has a "clear path forward" to do so. "It's
become apparent as we've been establishing our sales pipeline with leading
Fortune 500 companies that many of them want to wait for the new capabilities
we're building rather than onboarding to our existing product and going through
a second migration later," he said.
In addition, Sabre—which
established a new partnership with Serko alongside the GetThere sale—has
shifted its focus away from direct corporate sales toward more sales with
travel management companies. "Sabre is referring TMC resellers to us, but
the lower direct corporate sales means we don't anticipate making any
performance payments for the 2025 calendar year," he said.
For its Australasia business, Serko reported a 2 percent
year-over-year increase in online bookings to 2.2 million. Average revenue per
booking was down 2 percent, meaning revenue in the region was
"stable" with "improving margins with lower third-party
costs," according to Serko.
Serko reported a post-tax net loss of NZ$9.5 million (US$5.4
million), compared with a net loss of NZ$5.1 million (US$2.9 million) in the
first half of the 2025 fiscal year. Serko CFO Shane Sampson said the larger
loss was due to a combination of lower interest income, foreign exchange
effects and the company's
sale of its InterplX expense management offering to Cerebri AI. That sale resulted
in a NZ$2 million (US$1.1 million) non-cash accounting loss, Sampson said.
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