Add
EXPE to Portfolio
Set Alert
Email to a
Friend
| |||
|
|
Quotes & Info
|
| EXPE > SEC Filings for EXPE > Form 10-K on 6-Feb-2013 | All Recent SEC Filings |
6-Feb-2013
Annual Report
Overview
Expedia, Inc. is an online travel company, empowering business and leisure travelers with the tools and information they need to efficiently research, plan, book and experience travel. We have created a global travel marketplace used by a broad range of leisure and corporate travelers, offline retail travel agents and travel service providers. We make available, on a stand-alone and package basis, travel products and services provided by numerous airlines, lodging properties, car rental companies, destination service providers, cruise lines and other travel product and service companies. We also offer travel and non-travel advertisers access to a potential source of incremental traffic and transactions through our various media and advertising offerings on our transaction-based websites. For additional information about our portfolio of brands, see the disclosure set forth in Part I, Item 1, Business, under the caption "Management Overview."
All percentages within this section are calculated on actual, unrounded numbers.
Summary of the Spin-Off of TripAdvisor, Inc.
On December 6, 2011, our stockholders and Board of Directors approved a spin-off transaction that separated Expedia, Inc. into two separately traded public companies:
• TripAdvisor, Inc., which included the domestic and international operations previously associated with the TripAdvisor Media Group, which included its flagship brand as well as 18 other travel media brands, and
• Expedia, Inc., which continued to include the domestic and international operations of our travel transaction brands including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, eLong, Hotwire, Egencia, Expedia Affiliate Network, CruiseShipCenters, Venere, Classic Vacations and carrentals.com.
Immediately prior to the spin-off, Expedia affected a one-for-two reverse stock split. The spin-off was completed following the close of trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on December 20, 2011.
In connection with the spin-off, we entered into various agreements with TripAdvisor, a related party due to common ownership, including, among others, a separation agreement, a tax sharing agreement, an employee matters agreement and a transition services agreement. In addition, we have continued to work together with TripAdvisor pursuant to various commercial agreements between subsidiaries of Expedia, on the one hand, and subsidiaries of TripAdvisor, on the other hand.
Trends
The travel industry, including offline agencies, online agencies and other suppliers of travel products and services, has historically been characterized by intense competition, as well as rapid and significant change. Generally, 2012 represented a year of gradual improvement for the travel industry. However, natural disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy that impacted the northeast United States, ongoing sovereign debt and economic issues in several European countries as well as uncertainty regarding the U.S. debt ceiling, all contribute to a somewhat uncertain forward environment for the travel industry.
Online Travel
Increased usage and familiarity with the internet have driven rapid growth in online penetration of travel expenditures. According to PhoCusWright, an independent travel, tourism and hospitality research firm, in 2012, approximately 59% of U.S. leisure, unmanaged and corporate travel expenditures occur online, compared with approximately 44% of European travel. Online penetration in the emerging markets, such as Asia Pacific and Latin American regions are estimated to be approximately 20%, lagging behind that of Europe. These penetration
rates have increased over the past few years, and are expected to continue growing. This significant growth has attracted many competitors to online travel. This competition has intensified in recent years, and the industry is expected to remain highly competitive for the foreseeable future. In addition to the growth of online travel agencies, airlines and lodging companies have aggressively pursued direct online distribution of their products and services, and supplier growth outpaced online agency growth for several years. Competitive entrants such as "metasearch" companies, including Kayak.com (which entered into a merger agreement with Priceline.com in November 2012) and Trivago.com (in which Expedia has agreed to acquire a majority ownership interest), have in some cases been able to introduce differentiated features and content compared with the legacy online travel agency companies. In addition, models, such as daily deals and private sale sites have also begun proliferating. We have a number of "daily deals" offered on our retail websites as well as a partnership with Groupon called Groupon Getaways with Expedia. Finally, we have seen increased interest in the online travel industry from search engine companies as evidenced by recent innovations and proposed and actual acquisitions by companies such as Google and Microsoft.
The online travel industry has also seen the development of alternative business models and variations in the timing of payment by travelers and to suppliers, which in some cases place pressure on historical business models. In particular, the agency hotel model has seen rapid adoption in Europe. Expedia has both a merchant and an agency hotel offer for our hotel supply partners and we expect our use of these models to continue to evolve. During 2012, Expedia introduced the Expedia Traveler Preference program to hotel suppliers in the United States and Europe. ETP offers travelers the choice of whether to pay Expedia at the time of booking or pay the hotel at the time of stay.
Intense competition has also historically led to aggressive marketing spend by the travel suppliers and intermediaries, and a meaningful reduction in our overall marketing efficiencies and operating margins. We manage our selling and marketing spending on a brand basis at the local or regional level, making decisions in each market that we think are appropriate based on the relative growth opportunity, the expected returns and the competitive environment. In certain cases, particularly in emerging markets, we are pursuing and expect to continue to pursue long-term growth opportunities for which our marketing efficiency is lower than that for our consolidated business but for which we still believe the opportunity to be attractive.
Hotel
We generate the majority of our revenue through the marketing and distribution of hotel rooms (stand-alone and package bookings). Our relationships and negotiated total economics with our hotel supply partners have remained broadly stable in the past few years. We have, however, implemented new customer loyalty and discount programs and have eliminated or reduced some fees in that timeframe and, as such, the margin of revenue we earn per booking has declined. In addition, the introduction of ETP could negatively impact the margin of revenue we earn per booking in the future.
Since our hotel supplier agreements are generally negotiated on a percentage basis, any increase or decrease in average daily rates has an impact on the revenue we earn per room night. Over the course of the last two years, occupancies and ADRs in the lodging industry have generally improved in a gradually improving overall travel environment. Currently occupancy rates are near 2007 peaks and there is very little new, net hotel supply being added in the U.S. lodging market with large chains focusing their development opportunities in international markets. This may help hoteliers with their objective of continuing to grow their ADRs and could lead to pressure in negotiations with hoteliers and may ultimately lead to pressure on terms for us and our OTA competitors. In international markets, hotel supply is being added at a much faster rate as hotel owners and operators try to take advantage of opportunities in faster growing regions such as China and India, among others. We have had success adding supply to our marketplace with almost 200,000 hotels on our global websites, including eLong, as of the end of 2012. In addition, our room night growth has been healthy, with room nights growing 18% in 2011 and 27% in 2012. ADRs for rooms booked on Expedia sites grew 5% in 2011, while they declined 2% in 2012.
Air
The airline sector in particular has historically experienced significant turmoil. In recent years, there has been increased air carrier consolidation, generally resulting in lower overall capacity and higher fares. In addition, air carriers have made significant efforts to keep seat capacity relatively low in order to ensure that demand for seats remains high and that flights are as full as possible. Reduced seating capacities are generally negative for Expedia as there is less air supply available on our websites, and in turn less opportunity to facilitate hotel rooms, car rental and other services on behalf of air travelers. Ticket prices on Expedia sites grew 4% and 11% in 2012 and 2011. We are encountering pressure on air remuneration as certain supply agreements renew, and as air carriers and GDS intermediaries re-negotiate their long-term agreements. In addition, some U.S. air carriers introduced various incentives for customers to book directly with the carrier versus via online travel agencies. Examples of these incentives include lower fees, advance seat assignments and greater earning potential for frequent flier miles.
In part as a result of sharply rising average ticket prices, our ticket volumes decreased by 8% in 2011 after having grown by 11% in 2010. Air ticket volumes grew 7% in 2012, largely due to the acquisition of VIA Travel and air ticket sales of a major U.S. carrier, which were absent in the first quarter of 2011 due to a commercial disagreement.
From a product perspective, over 74% of our revenue comes from transactions involving the booking of hotel reservations, with approximately 8% of our revenue derived from the sale of airline tickets. We believe that the hotel product is the most profitable of the products we distribute and represents our best overall growth opportunity.
Growth Strategy
Product Innovation. Each of our leading brands was a pioneer in online travel and has been responsible for driving key innovations in the space over the past two decades. They each operate a dedicated technology team, which drives innovations that make researching and shopping for travel increasingly easier and helps customers find and book the best possible travel options. In the past several years, we made key investments in technology, including significant development of our technological platforms that makes it possible for us to deliver innovations at a faster pace. For example, we launched our new Hotels.com global platform in the first quarter of 2010, enabling us to significantly increase the innovation cycle for that brand. Since then, we have been successful in improving conversion and driving much faster growth rates for the Hotels.com brand. We are in the midst of a similar transformation for Brand Expedia, having rolled out its new hotel platform in the second half of 2011, followed by the air platform rollout during the first half of 2012, with expectations that the new package platform will be completed in 2013.
Global Expansion. Our Expedia, Hotels.com, Egencia, EAN, and Hotwire brands operate both domestically and through international points of sale, including in Europe, Asia Pacific, Canada and Latin America. We own a majority share of eLong, which is the second largest online travel company in China. We also own Venere, a European brand, which focuses on marketing hotel rooms in Europe. Egencia, our corporate travel business, operates in 54 countries around the world and continues to expand, including its recent acquisition of VIA Travel. We also partner in a 50/50 joint venture with AirAsia - a low cost carrier serving the Asia-Pacific region - to jointly grow an online travel agency business. Although the results for the joint venture are not consolidated in our financial statements, we consider this business to be a key part of our Asia Pacific strategy. In 2012, approximately 41% of our worldwide gross bookings and 45% of worldwide revenue were international up from 22% for both worldwide gross bookings and revenue in 2005. We have a stated goal of driving more than half of our revenue through international points of sale.
In expanding our global reach, we leverage significant investments in technology, operations, brand building, supplier relationships and other initiatives that we have made since the launch of Expedia.com in 1996.
We intend to continue leveraging these investments when launching additional points of sale in new countries, introducing new website features, adding supplier products and services including new business model offerings, as well as proprietary and user-generated content for travelers.
Our scale of operations enhances the value of technology innovations we introduce on behalf of our travelers and suppliers. We believe that our size and scale affords the company the ability to negotiate competitive rates with our supply partners, provide breadth of choice and travel deals to our traveling customers through an increasingly larger supply portfolio and creates opportunities for new value added offers for our customers such as our loyalty programs. The size of Expedia's worldwide traveler base makes our sites an increasingly appealing channel for travel suppliers to reach customers. In addition, the sheer size of our user base and search query volume allows us to test new technology very quickly in order to determine which innovations are most likely to improve the travel research and booking process, and then roll those features out to our worldwide audience in order to drive improvements to conversion.
New Channel Penetration. Today, the vast majority of online travel bookings are generated through typical desktop and laptop computers. However, technological innovations and developments are creating new opportunities including travel bookings made through mobile devices. In the past few years, each of our brands made significant progress creating new mobile websites and mobile/tablet applications that are receiving strong reviews and solid download trends. In 2010, we bought a leading travel application company called Mobiata® which is responsible for several top travel applications, such as FlightTrackTM, FlightTrack ProTM and FlightBoardTM, and is now integrated into Brand Expedia. We believe mobile bookings present an opportunity for incremental growth as they are typically completed within one day of the travel or stay which is a much shorter booking window than we have historically experienced via more traditional online booking methods. During the last year, customers' behaviors and preferences on tablet devices began to show differences from trends seen on smartphones. For example, the booking window on a smartphone typically is much shorter than the emerging trend on the tablet device and historical average on a desktop or laptop. We have a stated goal of booking 20% of our transactions through mobile devices before the end of 2014.
Virtually all of our leisure brands continue to conduct experiments with 'daily deals' and social media as part of our efforts to drive business through new distribution channels. We believe daily deals may represent incremental travel bookings as it typically represents an impulse purchase compared to historical travel purchasing activity which tends to be a highly considered and deliberate transaction. In addition, we anticipate the importance of social media channels to consumers and to our industry to increase over time. It is our intention to grow our 'social' efforts alongside this trend.
Seasonality
We generally experience seasonal fluctuations in the demand for our travel products and services. For example, traditional leisure travel bookings are generally the highest in the first three quarters as travelers plan and book their spring, summer and holiday travel. The number of bookings typically decreases in the fourth quarter. Because revenue in the merchant business is generally recognized when the travel takes place rather than when it is booked, revenue typically lags bookings by several weeks or longer. The seasonal revenue impact is exacerbated with respect to income by the more stable nature of our fixed costs. As a result, revenue and income are typically the lowest in the first quarter and highest in the third quarter. The continued growth of our international operations or a change in our product mix may influence the typical trend of the seasonality in the future.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Critical accounting policies and estimates are those that we believe are important in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements because they require that we use judgment and estimates in applying those policies. We prepare our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States ("GAAP"). Preparation of the consolidated financial
statements and accompanying notes requires that we make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and the disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities as of the date of the consolidated financial statements as well as revenue and expenses during the periods reported. We base our estimates on historical experience, where applicable, and other assumptions that we believe are reasonable under the circumstances. Actual results may differ from our estimates under different assumptions or conditions.
There are certain critical estimates that we believe require significant judgment in the preparation of our consolidated financial statements. We consider an accounting estimate to be critical if:
• It requires us to make an assumption because information was not available at the time or it included matters that were highly uncertain at the time we were making the estimate; and
• Changes in the estimate or different estimates that we could have selected may have had a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations.
For more information on each of these policies, see Note 2 - Significant Accounting Policies, in the notes to consolidated financial statements. We discuss information about the nature and rationale for our critical accounting estimates below.
Accounting for Certain Merchant Revenue
We accrue the cost of certain merchant revenue based on the amount we expect to be billed by suppliers. In certain instances when a supplier invoices us for less than the cost we accrued, we generally recognize those amounts as revenue six months in arrears, net of an allowance, when we determine it is not probable that we will be required to pay the supplier, based on historical experience and contract terms. Actual revenue could be greater or less than the amounts estimated due to changes in hotel billing practices or changes in traveler behavior.
Loyalty Program Accruals
We offer certain internally administered traveler loyalty programs to our customers, such as our Hotels.com Welcome Rewards program and our Expedia.com Expedia RewardsTM. Welcome Rewards offers travelers one free night at any Hotels.com partner property after that traveler stays 10 nights, subject to certain restrictions. Expedia Rewards enables participating travelers to earn points on all hotel, flight, package and activities made on Expedia.com. As travelers accumulate points towards free travel products, we record a liability for the estimated future cost of redemptions. We determine the future redemption obligation based on judgment factors including: (i) the estimated cost of travel products to be redeemed, and (ii) an estimated redemption rate based on the overall accumulation and usage of points towards free travel products, which is determined through current and historical trends as well as statistical modeling techniques. The actual future cost and rate of redemptions could differ materially from our estimates.
Recoverability of Goodwill and Indefinite and Definite-Lived Intangible Assets
Goodwill. We assess goodwill for impairment annually as of October 1, or more frequently, if events and circumstances indicate impairment may have occurred. In the evaluation of goodwill for impairment, we first perform a qualitative assessment to determine whether it is more likely than not that the fair value of the reporting unit is less than the carrying amount. If so, we perform a quantitative assessment and compare the fair value of the reporting unit to the carrying value. If the carrying value of a reporting unit exceeds its fair value, the goodwill of that reporting unit is potentially impaired and we proceed to step two of the impairment analysis. In step two of the analysis, we will record an impairment loss equal to the excess of the carrying value of the reporting unit's goodwill over its implied fair value should such a circumstance arise.
We generally base our measurement of fair value of reporting units on a blended analysis of the present value of future discounted cash flows and market valuation approach. The discounted cash flows model indicates
the fair value of the reporting units based on the present value of the cash flows that we expect the reporting units to generate in the future. Our significant estimates in the discounted cash flows model include: our weighted average cost of capital; long-term rate of growth and profitability of our business; and working capital effects. The market valuation approach indicates the fair value of the business based on a comparison of the Company to comparable publicly traded firms in similar lines of business. Our significant estimates in the market approach model include identifying similar companies with comparable business factors such as size, growth, profitability, risk and return on investment and assessing comparable revenue and operating income multiples in estimating the fair value of the reporting units.
We believe the weighted use of discounted cash flows and market approach is the best method for determining the fair value of our reporting units because these are the most common valuation methodologies used within the travel and internet industries; and the blended use of both models compensates for the inherent risks associated with either model if used on a stand-alone basis.
In addition to measuring the fair value of our reporting units as described above, we consider the combined carrying and fair values of our reporting units in relation to the Company's total fair value of equity plus debt as of the assessment date. Our equity value assumes our fully diluted market capitalization, using either the stock price on the valuation date or the average stock price over a range of dates around the valuation date, plus an estimated acquisition premium which is based on observable transactions of comparable companies. The debt value is based on the highest value expected to be paid to repurchase the debt, which can be fair value, principal or principal plus a premium depending on the terms of each debt instrument.
Indefinite-Lived Intangible Assets. We base our measurement of fair value of indefinite-lived intangible assets, which primarily consist of trade name and trademarks, using the relief-from-royalty method. This method assumes that the trade name and trademarks have value to the extent that their owner is relieved of the obligation to pay royalties for the benefits received from them. This method requires us to estimate the future revenue for the related brands, the appropriate royalty rate and the weighted average cost of capital.
Definite-Lived Intangible Assets. We review the carrying value of long-lived assets or asset groups to be used in operations whenever events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying amount of the assets might not be recoverable. Factors that would necessitate an impairment assessment include a significant adverse change in the extent or manner in which an asset is used, a significant adverse change in legal factors or the business climate that could affect the value of the asset, or a significant decline in the observable market value of an asset, among others. If such facts indicate a potential impairment, we would assess the recoverability of an asset group by determining if the carrying value of the asset group exceeds the sum of the projected undiscounted cash flows expected to result from the use and eventual disposition of the assets over the remaining economic life of the primary asset in the asset group. If the recoverability test indicates that the carrying value of the asset group is not recoverable, we will estimate the fair value of the asset group using appropriate valuation methodologies, which would typically include an estimate of discounted cash flows. Any impairment would be measured as the difference between the asset groups carrying amount and its estimated fair value.
The use of different estimates or assumptions in determining the fair value of our goodwill, indefinite-lived and definite-lived intangible assets may result in different values for these assets, which could result in an impairment or, in period in which an impairment is recognized, could result in a materially different impairment charge. As of October 1, 2012 and 2011, and as of December 20, 2011 (the date of the spin-off), the fair value of each goodwill reporting unit significantly exceeded its carrying values.
Income Taxes
We record income taxes under the liability method. Deferred tax assets and liabilities reflect our estimation of the future tax consequences of temporary differences between the carrying amounts of assets and liabilities for book and tax purposes. We determine deferred income taxes based on the differences in accounting methods and
timing between financial statement and income tax reporting. Accordingly, we determine the deferred tax asset or liability for each temporary difference based on the enacted tax rates expected to be in effect when we realize the underlying items of income and expense. We consider many factors when assessing the likelihood of future realization of our deferred tax assets, including our recent earnings experience by jurisdiction, expectations of future taxable income, and the carryforward periods available to us for tax reporting purposes, as well as other relevant factors. We may establish a valuation allowance to reduce deferred tax assets to the amount we believe is more likely than not to be realized. Due to inherent complexities arising from the nature of our businesses, future changes in income tax law, tax sharing agreements or variances between our actual and anticipated operating results, we make certain judgments and estimates. Therefore, actual income taxes could materially vary from these estimates.
We record liabilities to address uncertain tax positions we have taken in previously filed tax returns or that we expect to take in a future tax return. The determination for required liabilities is based upon an analysis of each individual tax position, taking into consideration whether it is more likely than not that our tax position, based on technical merits, will be sustained upon examination. For those positions for which we conclude it is more likely than not it will be sustained, we recognize the largest amount of tax benefit . . .
|
|