Expedia Group saw a severe dip in shares, falling by over 10% in Friday's pre-market trading. This hit follows the company downgrading its full-year guidance, a consequence of Vrbo, its vacation rental platform, and its business-to-consumer sector underperforming. Alongside the Expedia travel booking platform, the group operates several brands including Hotels.com, Vrbo, Travelocity, and Hotwire.
CEO of Expedia Group, Peter Kern, revealed in a statement, "We are lowering our full year guidance to a range of mid to high single digit top line growth with margins relatively in line versus last year due to the Vrbo drag and the rate of acceleration in B2C."
He added that the recovery of Vrbo has been slower than expected, applying pressure on gross bookings. However, the second quarter is showing some acceleration in other B2C business aspects, which Kern anticipates to continue throughout the year.
First quarter figures showed Expedia suffering a net loss of $135 million or 99 cents per share, an improvement on a $145 million loss or 95 cents per share from the previous year. Despite the loss, this result was better than analysts had predicted. With gross bookings rising 3% to $30.16 billion, Expedia reported revenue of $2.89 billion, an 8% increase from a year ago.
February also witnessed a fall in Expedia's shares when the company announced unmet booking numbers and a change of CEO. Current Expedia for Business President, Ariane Gorin, is scheduled to assume the CEO role later this month, following Kern's last report as CEO on Thursday. With pre-market trading on Friday seeing shares down by 10.7% at $121.50, this slump continues to affect Expedia.