Webjet hits record profits, up 146% from 2016

Webjet hits record profits, up 146% from 2016
By Hannah Edensor


Webjet has snagged a net profit after tax of $52 million for the 2017 financial year, a jump of 146 per cent on last year.

Revenue scooped a 52 per cent increase to hit $234.9 million.

The ongoing growth of the Webjet OTA business was boosted by flight bookings growing at more than six times the underlying market.

Throughout the year, the business completed its integration of Online Republic, resulting in a 25 per cent leap in earnings before tax.

Meanwhile, the $28 million gain on sale of Zuji allowed Webjet to focus on a higher growth in B2B accommodation in the Asian market, and its WebBeds business partnered with Thomas Cook and saw the launch of FIT Ruums in Asia.

WEbjet also made a strong move in the hotel game with the acquisition of JacTravel, making WebBeds the second biggest player in the global B2B market.

Webjet bookings were up 11.4 per cent to $1.4 million, while its Total Transaction Value was up 15.3 per cent to $1.4 billion.

Webjet’s Managing Director, John Guscic, said he was stoked with the performance throughout the year.

“The continual market share growth that the Webjet OTA continues to deliver is a credit to the team in its ability to be agile and responsive to market needs,” he said.

“Online Republic is meeting our high expectations and we continue to be delighted with the purchase and the valuable contribution of the management team.

“The B2B business had a phenomenal year.

“Bookings growth in all markets demonstrates the importance of building a global business able to deliver deep inventory at attractive prices to a wide range of customers.

“Going forward, our strategy is to grow market share in each of the markets in which we operate,” he added.

“To do so means we need to grow faster than the underlying market.

“Average booking values in both B2B and B2C markets are driven by market conditions over which we have little control and therefore TTV growth targets are a limited metric by which to exclusively measure performance.

“We believe bookings growth is a more meaningful metric to measure our performance and is driven by providing outstanding service, offering superior technology, highly effective sales and marketing teams and having competitively priced inventory – all of which are key focuses for our businesses.

“We believe we are well positioned for ongoing bookings growth at the B2C market continues to shift online and we continue to focus on improving visitations and conversions.

“We expect our global WebBeds business to benefit from the network effect from increasing global inventory offerings.

“Together with our low cost, multi-supply aggregation strategy model, we believe we can continue to offer the greatest breadth and depth of inventory at competitive prices to our B2B customers.”

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