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Lastminute cooks up deal
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February 12, 2001: 8:35 a.m. ET
UK online booker inks Thomas Cook pact and predicts profitability by 2002
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LONDON (CNN) - Lastminute.com, the online bookings provider, allied with a top holiday group on Monday, and predicted a move into the black by 2002.
The British firm, once the poster child of Europe's high tech bubble, agreed to feed Internet traffic to a jointly-operated site with Thomas Cook when Lastminute.com users hunt a holiday more than six weeks in advance.
Lastminute.com said it was on track to turn a profit by the end of 2002 with a growing number of customers buying air tickets, theatre tickets and gifts on its website.
The announcement came as lastminute.com posted a net loss of £11.7 million ($17 million) in the first quarter and said subscriber numbers were barely higher at 2.86 million.
Despite its stock-market collapse, lastminute.com is one of the high-profile Internet retailers to survive the massacre of the sector. Lastminute.com went public in the frenzied times of Internet market flotations, only to see its market value spike and then tumble. 
Shares of lastminute.com (LMC) rose 2.9 percent to 70.3 pence in London midday trade oon Monday. The stock jumped as high of 555 in mid-March last year when it went public, only to retreat steadily after that.
During the first fiscal quarter, 160,819 items were sold, up 49 percent from the fiscal first quarter of the previous year. Non-travel items made up 43 percent of that first-quarter total.
In lastminute.com's first quarter to end-December, the net loss was £15.4 million ($22.2 million), in line with the market's estimate of £15.7 million, according to Reuters. That loss included the effect of £51.5 million goodwill in its buyout of French counterpart Degriftour last September.
"Our strong brand, our widening offer, the successful integration of
Degriftour, our new technology platform and our cash position continue to provide us with confidence as we build the business towards profitability," said Chairman Allan Leighton in a statement.
-- from staff and wire reports 
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