Shares in European online travel agency conglomerate eDreams Odigeo resumed trading Monday on the Madrid stock exchange.
The move came after the shock of last Friday, when its share price fell 59% -- leading to a suspension of trading.
Over the weekend, most of a trade dispute British Airways and Iberia was partly settled.
The Barcelona-based company appeared to capitulate to one demand from the airlines about how their fares should be displayed on two of its branded websites.
At the market close on Monday, shares were trading at euro 1.53, substantially higher than the 1.02 close on Friday when trading was halted.
But that price was dramatically lower than the euro 10.25 at which shares at the company's April initial public offering.
In a conference call at 10 Central European Time this morning, CEO Javier Perez-Tenessa said:
“If it’s the best option going forward to take the company private or not, that’s something that the shareholders have to evaluate in the forum of the board of directors. The fact that the market doesn’t understand us in full is pretty obvious.”
Deutsche Bank's analysts shared their research on the situation with Tnooz:
At this stage the key questions to us are:
1.If the dispute is indeed centered on new commercial terms related to inventory distribution, what exactly do they entail and how will they affect eDreams Odigeo going forward? Would the airlines impose similar actions on other OTAs soon?
Why did the airlines decide to re-supply inventory to the two websites after they changed their practices, without having made progress in the commercial negotiation?
Our checks on Sunday showed that edream.es and opodo.fr both included service fees in the initial prices shown to customers, while edreams.com only revealed service fees at the final payment stage.
2. If the dispute is indeed centered on pricing transparency, how would changing the practice affect eDreams Odigeo's operations going forward? We note that in the past few months there had already been on-going changes to the company’s website designs related to pricing display.
According to the company these have had no impact on their business performance.
However we struggle to understand why then it hasn’t applied the same practice across the board earlier (and to edreams.com now) if these would lead to negligible impact on operations.
In the meantime, the company, which has been unprofitable for two years, says that this week it plans to file "several complaints before competition authorities to preserve its legitimate rights" in several European nations.
The company says that the two airlines want to force on it new restrictions in how their fares are marketed. Iberia has denied this. No party has made clear the exact terms or contours of the debate.
The company added:
“eDreams Odigeo has not seen a negative impact on bookings following BA’s and Iberia’s announcements on Friday."
For details on the dispute that spilled into the public eye on Friday, the dispute's resolution over the weekend, and other factors, such as downward revisions in earnings forecasts and short-selling by hedge funds, that may have been in play in the share price collapse, read our previous article: "eDreams Odigeo suspends share trading [UPDATE 3]."