LONDON, May 13, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- lastminute.com:
-- 93.9% increase in Total Transaction Value to 178.8 million
(Q2 2003: 92.2 million)
-- 36.2% proforma organic like-for-like growth in Quarter 2
(Q1 2004: 23.2%)
-- 106.8% increase in gross profit to 30.9 million (Q2 2003:
15.0 million)
-- Gross margin for the Quarter improved by 1.1 percentage points
to 17.3% (Q2 2003: 16.2% Q1 2004: 17.1%)
-- 51.4% improvement in EBITDA from a loss of 3.1 million (Q2
2003) to a loss of 1.5 million
-- Quarter 2 loss per share of 7.03p (Q2 2003: loss 6.07p)
-- Overall net cash balances remain strong at the end of Quarter
2 2004 at 52.5 million (Q2 2003:42.3 million)
-- Completed the acquisition of First Option and Gemstone Travel
in the Quarter and Online Travel Corporation at the start of
Quarter 3
Brent Hoberman, Chief Executive Officer, said: "lastminute.com has continued to make significant progress during Quarter 2 especially in the overall improvement in gross margins. Strong organic like-for-like growth of 36.2% has been supplemented by key acquisitions in strong gross margin product categories. Industry trends, particularly the offline to online share shift seen in this Quarter, continue to move in our favour. Overall we remain confident of delivering a further year of substantially improved financial metrics."
High resolution photographs will be available to media at www.vismedia.co.uk.
An analyst presentation will take place at 9:30am this morning at the offices of Gavin Anderson & Company.
The Quarter 2 presentation to analysts will be available for replay from 14.30 GMT today, 13 May 2004, at www.lastminute.com/ir.
Notes to Editors:
About lastminute.com
lastminute.com, Europe's leading online independent travel and leisure group, operates directly in thirteen European countries and participates in three international joint ventures, providing travel and leisure inspirations and solutions to customers. At 31 March 2004 lastminute.com had over 8.3 million subscribers to its weekly newsletter and had established over 16,900 supplier relationships. The business is based on the idea of matching supply and demand. lastminute.com offers consumers opportunities to acquire airline tickets, hotel rooms, holidays (both self packaged and third party packages), car hire, entertainment tickets, restaurant reservations and food delivery, speciality services, gifts and auctions.