Skift Take
With surprisingly positive earnings and profits, TA demonstrates its strength as a solo player.
(Updates with today’s trading in second paragraph.)
May 2 (Bloomberg) — TripAdvisor Inc., the online travel- recommendation service spun off from Expedia Inc. in December, soared as much as 22 percent after reporting first-quarter sales and profit that exceeded some analysts’ estimates.
The shares climbed 17 percent to $42.90 at 9:59 a.m. New York time, after earlier touching $44.46 for the biggest gain since Dec. 8. The stock was the top performer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
First-quarter profit excluding certain items was 38 cents a share, the Newton, Massachusetts-based company said in a statement yesterday. That compared with an average analyst projection of 34 cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue rose to $183.7 million, topping the $174.4 million average estimate.
TripAdvisor’s results countered concern that the company’s profit might be eroded by higher spending on sales and marketing, Jake Fuller, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets LLC, wrote in a note after the earnings report.
On a conference call yesterday, Chief Financial Officer Julie Bradley said the company expects revenue growth for the year to “trend above the midpoint” of TripAdvisor’s previous forecast for growth at a percentage in the mid- to high teens.
–With assistance from Ian King in San Francisco. Editors: Niamh Ring, Jeffrey Tannenbaum
To contact the reporter on this story: Lisa Rapaport in New York at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at [email protected]
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Tags: tripadvisor, ugc