EBIT more than doubles from Euro 0.89 million to Euro 2.03 million
Planned increase in dividend from Euro 0.27 to Euro 0.47
Nuremberg, 28 February 2011 – hotel.de AG has left the implications of the financial and economic crisis behind and can look back on a successful 2010 financial year. The company’s operating business benefited in the past year from the economic recovery and the resultant increase in travel activities among private and business customers alike. Sales thus grew year-on-year by 11.8% from Euro 32.37 million to Euro 36.17 million. With 16.0% growth to Euro 15.25 million, sales in the international business improved disproportionately, as a result of which the international share of sales rose from 40.6% to 42.2%. On the one hand, this development involved a process of catching up, as international sales were far harder hit by the crisis in 2009. On the other hand, business here also benefited from the targeted investments made in the company’s internationalisation.
Key earnings figures reflect benefits of scale
These higher sales volumes contributed to a substantial improvement in earnings in the past financial year. Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) thus surged by 128.1% from Euro 0.89 million to Euro 2.03 million, while the annual net surplus grew from Euro 1.04 million to Euro 1.78 million.
“Our earnings performance reflects the first benefits of scale from the internationalisation strategy we have consistently pursued. We aim to latch onto this performance in the current financial year as well”, explained Dr. Heinz Raufer, CEO of hotel.de AG. “Over and above that, we have achieved a further relative reduction in our costs, especially by exploiting the increasing automation of hotel registration and administration processes and by consistently raising the efficiency and effectiveness of our search engine marketing.”
Dividend proposal: Euro 0.47 per share
The Management and Supervisory Boards of hotel.de AG propose to draw on the annual net surplus to distribute a dividend of Euro 0.47 per share. This corresponds to a year-on-year increase of 74.1% (previous year: Euro 0.27 per share). Based on the company’s current share price of around Euro 14.00, the dividend yield thus amounts to 3.4%.
Outlook for the current 2011 financial year
hotel.de AG expects to see further growth in the market for online travel services. This expectation is backed up by increased cost pressure at many companies, which has boosted demand for time and cost-saving booking alternatives. Private customers too are increasingly booking journeys online, a factor also supported by the rapid development in mobile internet applications.
“We are superbly positioned to benefit from the dynamic market climate. Our aim for 2011 is to achieve sales growth in a low double-digit percentage range and further improve our EBIT. We expect to see positive momentum in particular from the ongoing expansion in our IT platform, which will help enhance our efficiency and increase the speed at which we can acquire foreign hotels”, commented Dr. Raufer with regard to the company’s objectives for the current year.
The 2010 Annual Report, including extensive information about the past financial year, will be published in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website at www.hotel.de on 8 April 2011.
hotel.de AG
hotel.de AG, with its international brand hotel.info, operates a free hotel reservation service for companies and private customers at www.hotel.de and www.hotel.info. The company offers more than 210,000 hotels worldwide for booking online. Customers benefit in this respect from considerable cost savings. hotel.de shows all available room rates for each hotel, thus always enabling customers to select the lowest or most appropriate rate. All bookings are forward simultaneously, securely and directly to the individual hotel. This is guaranteed by the unique integration of hotels’ own reservation systems (so-called CRS and PMS systems) and hotel.de’s own myRES reservation system under hotel.de’s standard user surface. hotel.de’s corporate application is already used by well-known companies, such as BASF, SAP AG, Texas Instruments and Ernst & Young AG. Since January 2007, hotel.de has extended its portfolio to include a conference enquiries and booking system. Business customers in particular stand to save time and money due to the optimised conference organisation processes facilitated by this conference tool.
hotel.info
hotel.info – the international brand of hotel.de AG – was created to promote the company’s expansion into international markets. To acquire new customers and hotels abroad, sales offices have already been opened in the UK (London), France (Paris), Spain (Barcelona), Italy (Rome) and China (Shanghai). The company’s high share of business customers with international operations facilitates its entry into new markets. The aim is to establish hotel.info as the leading online hotel reservation service for business and private customers in the foreign markets mentioned and then step by step across the whole of Europe.
