Good morning!

These appear to be the most relevant announcements for today:

Paul is looking at one or two of these, so today's report is going to be a joint effort.

Cheers,

Graham



Hostelworld (LON:HSW)

  • Share price: 266p (-9%)
  • No. of shares: 96 million
  • Market cap: £254 million

2018 Interim Results Announcement

CFO Appointment

Hostelworld, the world's leading hostel-focused online booking platform, is pleased to announce its interim results for the period ended 30 June 2018.

Paul wrote an appropriately cautious comment on this back in January, when the share price was 379p.

Value is beginning to show:

5b7bdbfc9ccdaHSW_20180821.PNG

Today's results (to June) are said to be in line with expectations. But July and August were tough and the outlook sounds quite poor:

Overall, our first half results were in line with our expectations. As previously reported, the market, particularly in Europe, is increasingly competitive. In addition the World Cup and the unusually hot weather in Europe have also led to a softness in bookings in the peak summer months of July and August. If these trends continue like for like, growth in Group bookings is likely to be flat for the full year given the expected declines in our supporting brands.

Indeed, it's safe to assume that competition is fierce in this sector.

I just googled the phrase "book hostel", and the four ads which appeared at the top were airbnb, booking.com, hostelworld and hotels.com (owned by Expedia). Those are some serious companies to face off against for ad space.

The Results

Headline figures and KPIs announced today aren't that bad:

  • Group bookings up 2%. The Hostelworld brand continues to do better than the rest, and accounts for the vast majority of activity.
  • Average booking value up 5% on a constant-currency basis.
  • Bookings from not-paid-for channels up to 64% of total.
  • Marketing "investment" per booking down 7%

This is all fine. 

Actually, it reminds me a little of…

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