Expedia Group stock rose by more than 8% in after-hours
trading on Thursday after the company's third-quarter earnings report, in which
revenue increased 10% to $3.28 billion.
Expedia attributed the increase to growth in HomeAway, Brand
Expedia, Expedia Partner Solutions and Hotels.com.
Net income grew 49% to $525 million, and adjusted earnings
before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew 29% to $912
million. HomeAway's operating income and adjusted EBITDA both grew 66%.
Expedia's gross bookings increased 11% to $24.7 billion.
While Expedia continues to expand in key international
markets and grow its alternative accommodation offerings (HomeAway now has nearly
1.8 million online bookable listings, Expedia said), CEO Mark Okerstrom said
activities and experiences will continue to be an important part of the company's
growth going forward.
"Activities is absolutely in the frying pan with all of
the other fish," he said in response to an analyst's question. "We
are pretty excited about the opportunity in activities."
Okerstrom noted that the activities space has recently
received a lot of attention and capital in the industry, and it is more
competitive today than it has been historically.
"For us, our focus is really about harnessing one of
the big advantages that we have, which is we have an incredible installed base
of mobile applications," the CEO said.
He estimated that Expedia Group has some 300 million
installed applications on mobile phones. Generally, Expedia can tell where its
customers are going and where they are, a good equation for offering activity
options via application.
"We will be working on building out our set of activities
inventory so that we can deliver the perfect activity to the right customer at
the right time," Okerstrom said, adding that Expedia will work on
executing that plan over the next several years.