Travelport Has Had Mixed Success as a Public Company
Photo Credit: Travelport president and CEO Gordon Wilson spoke last June at Skift Tech Forum. The company reported its fourth-quarter 2018 earnings on Friday. Skift
Skift Take
Travelport's latest earnings report is a chance to judge its performance since it went public in 2014. The answer is mixed: The company invested more than its rivals in its airline distribution business, which let it punch above its weight. But not everything on other matters panned out as well as it might have hoped.
Travelport, the travel distribution tech company, remains on track to go private before June, which means its financial inner workings will soon be off limits to the public.
On Friday, the Langley, U.K.-based company reported its earnings, which showed Travelport had a mixed performance last year.
In 2018, Travelport's full-year net revenue rose 4 percent to $2.55 billion. That was at the low end of the 4 to 6 percent range of guidance for the year, but still in range.
The company suffered the loss of travel agency Flight Centre. In a smaller blow, Tripsta, one of its partner online travel agencies in Greece, went bankrupt.
Travelport balanced its losses with better-than-expected gains in Asia, which had 10 percent year-over-year growth thanks partly to a recent series of client wins in India.
Sabre, Travelport's larger rival, reported that its revenue last year grew at a faster rate of 7.5 percent, to $3.87 billion. Sabre said its growth for the year partly reflected st
