Online travel agent breaks even
October 27, 2005 - 5:19PM
www.smh.com.au
Online travel agent travel.com.au says it's prepared to sacrifice profitability whilst rebalancing its business toward more online services.
The company, which recorded a $1.99 million net loss for the year ending June 30, 2005, said it was pleased with a flat result for the first quarter of the current financial year.
However, Travel.com chairman Roger Sharp was not prepared to forecast a profit for 2005/06 as the company underwent a major restructure.
"For the first quarter, we've broken even and that is with a doubling of our market spend," Mr Sharp said after the company's annual general meeting.
"For us, the whole (restructure) is about shrinking unprofitable offline business and growing online as fast as we can."
Mr Sharp said the company would find a point of equilibrium between the two services in the next 12 months.
"It is going to take a long time to reshape business the way it ought to be run," he said.
"We are nine months into it, it is going well, there are many hard yards so I wouldn't want to be predicting that we are going to move straight into great levels of profitability.
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"What we would rather do is get constant online growth and not run a business at a loss, but perhaps sacrifice profitability for a little while we actually rebalance the business and get it growing."
Travel.com.au cut staff levels by 20 per cent earlier this year to around 60 staff.
Mr Sharp said there are no plans at this stage to shed more staff.
Travel.com.au shares rose one cent to 22 cents on Thursday.
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