Amadeus, the Madrid-based travel technology company, released its first half of 2013 results this morning.
Amadeus is one of the three major global distribution systems (GDSs), whose main business has been computerised-reservations services for the airlines.
The company's topline news is that, for the first time, it has claimed a 40% market share of travel agency air bookings. North America delivered most of the gain to get to that threshold. In 2010, Amadeus only had 9% of travel agency bookings in North America, but now it is close to 13% -- a trend accelerated mostly due mainly to its contract with Expedia.
In an investor call this morning, Luis Maroto, president and chief executive of Amadeus, and Ana de Pro, CFO, said revenue volumes should continue in the second half of 2013, even though there's no volume guarantee as part of the Expedia contract.
Amadeus is hoping to deepen its hare of business in Passenger Service Systems for airlines, such as its current client Norwegian, in light of Google ITA no longer pursuing PSS system sales to airlines (dropping its one client, Cape Air).
A quick overview:
Net revenue – Euro 1,595.1 million (up 5.7% y/y).
Adjusted profit – Euro 349.6 million (up 5.2% y/y).
EBITDA – Euro 645.9 million (up 6.3% y/y).
On the GDS side
Air travel agency bookings were up by 5.8% to Euro 233.1 million, which in turn drove revenue up 5%. North America was a big contributor to gains here.
Bookings (fees): Average booking fees and average transactional revenue per passenger booking were relatively flat in the first half of the year.
Bookings (pax): IT Solutions saw 9.7% more passengers boarded, totaling 284 million, due mainly to migrations from SAS, Cathay Pacific, and Singapore Airlines. The company says this is the important performance indicator for the IT Solutions group; the number of passengers boarded was 9.7% more than in the previous period a year earlier, leading to a gain in net revenue for IT Solutions to Euro 380 million (up 8% y/y).
Non-air – 31 million bookings (down slightly, y/y).
Debt: Trending down, and deleveraging will continue, mostly thanks to re-financing.