Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Priceline on Agoda "Agoda had a very good quarter despite the fact that they’ve been running into several headwinds"

SeekingAlpha is carrying a transcript of the recent Q2 earnings call for Priceline (PCLN). Not much was said on the Asian based subsidiary Agoda. There was this exchange between Mark Mahaney of Citigroup and Bob Mylod of Priceline (Vice Chairman and Head of Worldwide Strategy and Planning). Mylod indicates that Agoda is experiences challenges due to declines in the Thai market from general instability and H1N1/swine flu fears. Instead of triple digit growth for Agoda he points to "significant double digit growth". Here is the exchange (thanks again to SeekingAlpha where you can find the entire transcript).
Mark Mahaney - Citigroup

...any qualitative comments on the Agoda growth? I think you had in the past couple of quarters talked about triple digit growth -- anything there? ...

Robert J. Mylod Jr.

...we don’t disclose Agoda separately. It’s part of our international gross bookings which as you can see were very strong during the quarter but I would also say qualitatively Agoda had a very good quarter despite the fact that they’ve been running into several headwinds, significant headwinds at least in terms of how it affects their business individually. They’ve had currency headwinds. They’ve had political instability in their home market, Thailand and they have also had probably a little bit more impact related to swine flu concerns than we’ve had in the United States. But despite all of that, they continue to grow at very significant double-digit rates and we are very happy with how they are doing so far.

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