Travel technology company TRX yesterday announced it acquired Travel Analytics Inc., a developer of reporting and spend management technology including the Tango airline-sourcing tool and the Sierra travel-savings predictor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Trip Davis, president and CEO of TRX, which provides transaction processing, online booking and data-integration tools, said the acquisition of Travel Analytics made sense, considering the increasing complexity of spend data, changing agency fees and supplier direct sales. "We play a pivotal role in both ticket processing and data analysis," he said in a statement. "Travel Analytics is a direct, strategic win for us to augment the technology and talent in our data integration offering for corporate travel clients."
Davis alluded to such acquisitions during the company's first-quarter earnings call three months ago
(BTNonline, May 4). "One of the five elements of our growth strategy is pursuing very targeted M&A activity," Davis said in May. "We do see some attractive opportunities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Our appetite is right-sized, meaning that we understand what we're capable of doing from a capital-resources standpoint and from a management standpoint."
Meanwhile, TRX released its second-quarter earnings during an investor call this morning. Net income for the quarter was $1.8 million, compared with a net loss of $2.7 million in the second quarter of 2005, which Davis at the time attributed to costs in taking the company public. Revenues for the quarter totaled $29.4 million, up less than 1 percent from 2005.
"During the second quarter, we made substantial progress in our strategic transition away from the call-center business," Davis said. "As a result, TRX made progress on all our financial priorities: improving our revenue mix, growing our core business and achieving record EBITDA margins."
Helping to further revenue growth opportunities in the future are new partnerships, such as those recently established with TravelGuru, a travel solutions company based in India and CheapTickets.nl, the largest online ticket provider in Holland, Davis said.