Amadeus has reported a strong six months, operationally and financially, with airlines still dominating the business.
Topline results for the six months to end-June show overall revenues up 14.2% to €1,976.8 million, lifting EBITDA by 10.8% to €778.8 million.
"Distribution" accounted for €1,415.1 million of the revenues, 11.3% ahead of the same period last time. Amadeus says that it "strongly outperformed the industry" by lifting the actual number of air travel agency bookings by 10% - reaching 265.9m bookings - compared with a 4.9% average increase across the industry.
The net result is that it has increased its dominance of the global travel agency air distribution market, lifting its market share by 1.9% to 42.2%.
Geographically, western Europe is still its most important region, accounting for 39.5% of the air bookings. This is a slight drop from the 42.2% recorded last year. North America and Asia & Pacific have grown as a proportion in this half. The Middle East and Africa have fallen in volumes and percentage terms.
It is less bullish and transparent about its non-air travel agency bookings on a global scale, although they have increased by 6.2% to reach 32.2 million. No other details are made available.
The airline IT results are based around its preferred KPI of "passengers boarded" - in the first six months of the year its Altea system handled 354.2 million passengers, 6.2% ahead of last year. Migrated airlines such as Korean and ANA account for a lot of the increase, although like-for-like numbers are up 1.9%.
Again, western Europe is the dominant region but Asia & Pacific has grown to 27.4% of the total.
Airline IT is likely to grow in importance - operationally and financially - as a result of its $830 million purchase of Navitaire.
Navitaire will open up not only more low-cost carriers to the unit but also North America - as the chart above shows, its airline IT presence in North America is negligible (at least until Southwest migrates its domestic and international business to Amadeus).
The Navitaire deal is expected to close in the last quarter of this year.
Other than its distribution and IT solutions units, Amadeus has a line of "new businesses" which are referenced in the statements, but whose contribution to the revenues and EBITDA figures is not immediately obvious.
Its partnership with InterContinental Hotels Group, announced this May, "to develop a next generation Guest Reservation System (GRS) that will revolutionise the technological foundations of the global hospitality industry" is mentioned in passing, alongside its purchase earlier this month of Itesso, "which brings Amadeus closer to its vision of bringing together systems ... into a cloud-based community model platform which is fully centered around the guest experience".
This is worth noting as Amadeus spent $500 million on Newmarket International at the back-end of 2013, saying at the time the deal would add "expertise and experience in the hotel IT industry, a key target sector for future growth."
Rail is another area where Amadeus has been investing, but which only warrants a paragraph or so in the results.
Compare this with the airport IT new business line, which is described in relatively granular detail. We learn from the management review that AirIT, a US-based airport technology firm which works with 30 of the top 50 airports in the US and which Amadeus bought in April, cost $13.9 million.
To conclude, the results show that Amadeus continues to do well in what it has always done well and that it is air - helping airlines to sell their seats and optimising their operations. The building of an active airport IT unit, and the potential of changing how airlines and airports work together, strengthens its position.
As for rail and hotels, one has to assume that their time will come and that they are a medium-to-long-term play. But while the details remain thin on the ground, questions will be continued to be asked about the extent to which Amadeus is a travel technology business rather than an aviation one.
Click here to read the press release (8-page PDF)
Click here to read the presentation (16-page PDF)
Click here to read the management review (45-page PDF)
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