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Expedia 4Q beats Street
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July 31, 2000: 6:22 p.m. ET
Online travel service's revenue jumps; loss before items less than expected
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Online travel service Expedia Inc. Monday reported a fourth-quarter loss before special items that was far narrower than Wall Street expectations and buoyed by a sharp jump in revenue.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Expedia (EXPE: Research, Estimates), which is majority owned by Microsoft Corp., said its pro forma loss, before special items, was $13.1 million, or 30 cents a share, versus a pro forma loss of $13.5 million one year ago. The company went public in October of 1999, and does not have comparable share data for the previous year.
Wall Street analyst has expected the company to report a loss of 47 cents a share, according to earnings tracker First Call.
 The results include the performance of recent acquisitions Travelscape.com, and VacationSpot.com.
Expedia's net loss grew to $42.4 million from $29 million.
Revenue for the quarter ended June 30 climbed to $69.9 million, up 164 percent from $26.5 million in the year-ago quarter, and up 19 percent from $58.7 million in the third quarter.
"The strong revenue growth we've seen this quarter is a testament to our continued focus on delivering the most powerful shopping tools and the best prices to our customers," said Richard Barton, president and chief executive of Expedia, in a statement.
The company said agency revenue, which represents transaction commissions and fees from the agency component of the business, totaled $21 million, up 137 percent from $8 million last year.
Merchant revenue, a key growth area for the company that represents the full value of the gross bookings for merchant-of-record transactions, increased to $42 million, up 237 percent from $12 million last year.
The company said its had 670,000 quarterly unique purchasing customers, up from 315,000 one year ago. The figure represents the number of unique customers performing transactions through the Expedia sites during the quarter.
Analyst said they were impressed by the results.
"The results were exceptional," Legg Mason Thomas Underwood told CNNfn.com.
"Their merchant business is growing faster than their agent business, which means they are reselling more travel on a percentage basis this quarter than they are acting as an agent, which is their stated plan," he said. "I think they are on track with what they have in mind."
The results were released after the bell on Monday. Shares of Expedia closed during the regular session at 17-1/8, up 1-1/16. 
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