Expedia executives on Thursday discussed strong performance
for Egencia, the company's corporate travel division, and conveyed a somewhat
bipolar perspective on Google.
Regarding Egencia, Expedia CFO Michael Adler said growth is
evident across all market segments and geographies. "We are seeing much
faster growth rates than the industry is experiencing," he said during a
Thursday conference call with analysts. He noted that gross bookings during the
third quarter "grew 40-plus percent," while American Express
"grew about 20 percent. So we feel like we are taking share." Growth,
Adler added, is coming both from existing accounts and new client business.
Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi added that Egencia is
performing strongly in the small-market segment and among larger companies,
noting that new accounts include "the U.S. and Canadian divisions of Procter
& Gamble, and Nasdaq."
Overall, Egencia's third-quarter revenue jumped 28 percent
year over year to $35 million and operating income before amortization was $3
million.
"Given the strong performance of the Egencia business
and the huge opportunity we see there, we are also looking at tuck-in
acquisitions for Egencia, as well," Adler added.
Regarding overall market conditions, "we are seeing
corporate travel come back pretty nicely," Khosrowshahi said. "We are
seeing some tightness in occupancy and [hotel average daily rate] strength in
some of the metropolitan markets where you see business travel—New York,
London, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc."
Meanwhile, when asked about Expedia's participation in the
FairSearch.org coalition established to oppose Google's planned acquisition of
ITA Software, Khosrowshahi said: "Google is a great partner of ours. We do
think it's just a bad idea to put together the dominant search engine on a
worldwide basis with a dominant airline search technology. It has the potential
to squeeze out competition in the marketplace. It's bad for advertisers and
ultimately we think it could be very bad for consumers. The coalition will
certainly make its case, and we hope it's well received by the government. In
the meantime, we are going to work with Google. We are a big spender there. On
a tactical basis, we have a good relationship with them. We just think this
transaction is a bad idea."