eDreams Odigeo Shows Its Turnaround Is No Quick Fix
Photo Credit: An image of the eDreams Odigeo offices in Barcelona, where the company moved into new offices in 2017. Inset image is of CEO Dana Dunne photographed at a trade event. Source: eDreams Odigeo. On Thursday, eDreams Odigeo reported its results for the three months through September 2018. It swung to a net loss of $24 million, or €22 million. eDreams Odigeo
Skift Take
The dream of being a turnaround artist who swoops into a distressed company to restore growth is appealing to many people. But CEO Dana Dunne is finding that the turnaround of eDreams Odigeo that he has been pursuing since 2015 is a long hard slog.
Online booking conglomerate eDreams Odigeo is out of intensive care but shows no signs of leaving the hospital. While the company's family of brands continue to be the largest online seller of flights in Europe, several of the group's key financial metrics remain worrisome.
A year ago, Permira, which owns about 30 percent of eDreams Odigeo shares, and Ardian, which owns about 17 percent of shares, pushed hard to sell the public company.
In March, the company said it was no longer for sale.
Despite that statement, CVC Capital Partners and CVC Capital Partners in late spring may have made the best offer with a possible takeover bid of about $700 million, according to The Times of London. If true, that offer would have been a modest premium over the group's market capitalization of about $400 million.
At least one private equity company that looked at the group's books said that eDreams Odigeo's "risk profile" was too high.
On Thursday, eDreams Odigeo reported its results
