Latin American online travel company Despegar is posting its second consecutive positive quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $12.3 million for the period ending March 31, 2022.
The figure, which excludes payment platform Koin, is up from negative $20 million a year ago.
Gross bookings for Q1 2022 were $803.9 million, up 118% year-on-year and at 69% of Q1 2019 levels. Due to the omicron variant and seasonality in the region, the company says gross bookings were slower in January but recovered by 40% in March.negative $20 million a year ago.
Transactions for the quarter increased 59%n year-on-year, achieving 74% of Q1 2019 volume. Mobile represented 43% of transactions for the period, down 685 basis points year-on-year but up 271 basis points compared to Q1 2019.
Room nights, meanwhile, increased 65% year-on-year to 57% of Q1 2019 levels.
Revenues for Q1 2022 increased 117% year-on-year to $112.4 million, reaching 84% of Q1 2019 levels.
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Despegar reports it generated $29.2 million in cash from operating activities, compared with a use of cash of $7.2 million in Q1 2021 and $6 million in Q1 2019.
The company’s loyalty program reached 3.2 million members for the first quarter of 2022, up from 2.8 million in Q4 2021.
Sales and marketing expenses for the quarter were $30.5 million, down from $34.6 million in Q4 2021.
Earlier this month, Despegar acquired competitor Viajanet in Brazil for $15 million, marking the third acquisition for the company.
In August of 2020, it bought Koin, a Brazilian online payment platform, and earlier in 2022 it acquired a 51% stake in Stays, a Brazil-based supplier of property management solutions for vacation rentals.
“We continue to identify opportunities to consolidate Latin America’s highly fragmented travel market. The recently announced acquisition of Brazil’s Viajanet, an online travel platform focused on the country’s air segment, will give us an opportunity to sell Despegar’s complementary higher-margin non-air products to its large customer base,” says Despegar CEO Damian Scokin.
“Additionally, we intend to drive other synergies by powering this latest acquisition with Despegar’s sophisticated technology platform. Acquiring Viajanet adds a new brand to our portfolio as well as a talented local tech development team.”
Scokin continues that Despegar is expanding Koin’s geographic reach beyond Brazil via a strategic partnership with Movii, Colombia’s largest digital wallet.
“By combining forces, Koin will offer its Buy Now Pay Later solutions to Movii’s four million customers, which will not only greatly increase our addressable market, but help Despegar capture more of the country’s large OTA market,” he says.
With omicron passing, Scokin says he expects demand to continue recovering based on the trends Despegar has observed in April and early May.
“We are even more encouraged by the substantial opportunity that a resumption in international travel presents, given Despegar’s regional leadership,” he says.