Travelport's first set of full-year results since returning to the public markets came in at the top end of expectations, according to president and CEO Gordon Wilson.
In 2014, Travelport recorded net revenues up 3% at $2.1 billion and an adjusted EBITDA up 5% at $540 million.
Wilson took time out to talk to Tnooz about the operational side of the business rather than financial, although did offer a carefully-worded explanation on why Travelport's share price hasn't really changed that much since the September flotation.
"It's still new listing stock, it's only the second quarter of earnings. There's not much of our stock in the market.
"The feedback from potential investors is they can't get enough stock to hold the positions they want. Our price dropped today, but on trading in 30,000 shares, which is nothing.
"It's a timing issue which will sort itself over the years and as we keep delivering the goods in terms of the numbers."
He was much more animated when asked to talk about the business, 95% of which is its travel commerce platform. Within this, non-air - or "Beyond Air" as Travelport likes to call it, grew by 14% year-on-year and accounted for 21% of the commerce revenues.
By 2018, "Beyond Air" could be as much as one-third of revenues.
This growth will come from Rooms & More, which now has 650,000 bookable properties, "three times plus bigger than our leading GDS competitor in terms of independent hotels" and from stronger attachment rates of car hire through its new version of agency desktop tool SmartPoint.
Smartpoint was relaunched this November, with 80% of customers upgrading to the new product. Increased revenues for the travel commerce platform are also coming via digital advertising. Wilson said:
"The new version lends itself to better advertising opportunities. It's fully graphic so we can offer pop-ups. We have also Google-ized the screen and offer sponsored flights as an advertising option. Chinese carriers in particular are taking to this to promote their connecting flights."
But the real growth story for Travelport is its eNett payments business, which grew full-year revenues of 49% to $67 million. It is already profitable on an EBITDA basis and set to grow at a similar rate in 2015.
Wilson said that customers include some global OTAs who use eNett to pay the hotel suppliers they work with on a merchant model basis.
In the past Wilson has mentioned that eNett could work outside travel, but he said:
"It's not really part of our immediate thinking. We've got 100 or so people at eNett and at the moment I don't want to divert resources away from the massive opportunities which we have in travel."
During the year, Travelport increased its stake in eNett to 73% as one of a number of investments - Hotelzon, Travel-IT and Locomote were the others. In total Travelport spent $93 million on these investments during 2014.
The M&A spend for 2015 is likely to be less than this, Wilson admitted.
"We will spend less cash on M&A this year than last, but if there was a business I really wanted there are other ways to fund it. It's not about the money, it's just that there are only so many acquisitions you can do at once."