Chinese Internet travel website eLong.com reported its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008 and says net loss from continuing operations worsened year-on-year by RMB31.7 million to RMB32.6 million, driven primarily by a RMB28.3 million increase in unrealized foreign exchange losses and a RMB4.1 million decrease in interest income compared to the prior year quarter, caused by the appreciation of the Renminbi and lower U.S. interest rates.<\/p>\n
The company's total gross revenues increased 25% year-on-year to RMB81.4 million and net revenues increased 24% year-on-year to RMB76.7 million.<\/p>\n
\"While we are pleased with the 24% year-on-year net revenue growth that we achieved in the first quarter, there is more work to be done,\" said CEO Guangfu Cui in a statement. \"Going forward, we will continue to focus on building a strong team, improving customer experience through the website and call center, and building a strong eLong brand via effective marketing programs.\"<\/p>\n
Hotel commissions for the first quarter of 2008 increased 17% year-on-year primarily due to higher room volume. Room nights booked through eLong increased 16% to 875,000, while commission per room night was RMB0.8 higher than the prior year quarter, at RMB65.4.<\/p>\n
Air ticketing commissions for the first quarter of 2008 increased 63% year-on-year, driven by a 31% increase in air segments to 428,000, and an increase of 75 basis points in the average percent commission to 5.5% or RMB46 per air ticket. The quarter also benefited from a higher average ticket price, which increased 7.3% year-on-year, to RMB828.<\/p>\n
Gross margin in the first quarter was 69% compared to 71% in the prior year period driven by the growth of lower margin air revenues. Total operating expenses increased 15% for the first quarter of 2008 compared to the first quarter of 2007. Operating expenses were 74% of net revenues decreasing by 5 percentage points compared to the first quarter of the prior year.<\/p>\n
eLong expects net revenues for the second quarter of 2008 to be within the range of RMB79 million to RMB88 million, an increase of 6% to 18% from the second quarter of 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese Internet travel website eLong.com reported its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008 and says net loss from continuing operations worsened year-on-year by RMB31.7 million to RMB32.6 million, driven primarily by a RMB28.3 million increase in unrealized foreign exchange losses and a RMB4.1 million decrease in interest income compared to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12723],"tags":[12933,4329,5224,14066,15821,16637,13826,17883,15828,13112,13114,17996],"class_list":["post-6440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","tag-e-ticket","tag-elong","tag-expedia","tag-hotel","tag-internet-travel","tag-loss","tag-online-travel","tag-profit","tag-revenue","tag-travel","tag-website","tag-world-travel-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}