There may be stormy weather ahead for the market. A long weekend didn't give investors much of a vacation, as ADP's employment numbers on Thursday presaged a worse report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In wobbly times like these, it becomes even more important to do some homework on the companies you own or have your eyes on. Those that can outperform in the future often leave a trail of positive signals in the past. With that in mind, let's take a look at Travelzoo
Break it down
I wanted to take a look at Travelzoo precisely because it's been so hard-hit over the past year. The market sometimes overreacts to bad news, after all. Apart from Travelzoo and Expedia
|
Metric |
Trailing-12-Month (or most recent) Result |
|---|---|
| Annual revenue | $148 million |
| Annual net income | $3 million |
| Profit margin | 2.2% |
| Annual free cash flow | $13 million |
| Market cap | $343 million |
| Price to earnings ratio | 107.5 |
| 12-month stock price decline | (72.3%) |
| Subscribers | 24 million |
| North American revenue | 73% of total revenue |
Sources: Yahoo! Finance, Morningstar, Google Finance, and corporate 10-K filing.
Worth its weight?
Stockholders that stuck with Travelzoo have been rewarded -- assuming they got in at recessionary lows and fled during the stock's epic run-up last summer. For many others, it's been a rather frustrating ride. The popping of Travelzoo's bubble coincided neatly with a big drop in bottom-line results, as you can see from the following chart:
TZOO Total Return Price data by YCharts
However, an encouraging uptick following that disaster hasn't been met with renewed excitement. At a P/E ratio of over 100, Travelzoo lags far behind priceline.com
|
Company |
Market Cap |
TTM Free Cash Flow |
P/FCF |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travelzoo | $338.1 million | $13 million | 26.0 |
| priceline.com | $38.2 billion | $1.30 billion | 29.4 |
| TripAdvisor | $4.9 billion | $197 million | 24.9 |
| Expedia | $4.5 billion | $822 million | 5.5 |
|
Groupon |
$8.9 billion | $232 million | 38.4 |
Source: Morningstar. TTM = trailing-12-month.
Expedia again looks like the cheap one, but on a free-cash-flow basis, Travelzoo compares much more favorably to its peers. Unfortunately, analysts don't seem to give much weight to this comparison and haven't predicted exceptional growth for the company going forward:
|
Company |
2012 Projected Growth Rate |
5-Year Projected Annual Growth Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Travelzoo | 19.2% | 19.9% |
| priceline.com | 33% | 22.9% |
| TripAdvisor | 20.4% | 14.6% |
| Expedia | 0% | 10.4% |
| Groupon | 130.6% | 28.8% |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
Maybe Expedia was the cheap one for a reason. Still, every other competitor easily trounces Travelzoo's projected growth this year. Going forward, things look a little better, but not better than Priceline, and certainly not better than deal behemoth Groupon.
Half-off profit is a bad daily deal
There may yet be something to be said for Travelzoo's revival. An annual growth rate around 20% is nothing to sneeze at for a company with a long track record of profitability. To earn its turnaround, Travelzoo will need to avoid the daily deals red ink that still plagues Groupon. Thus far, that business model hasn't shown resistance to competitive encroachment; size alone isn't enough to guarantee a moat, and Travelzoo is hardly the biggest fish in the sea.
Despite these worries, forward estimates expect Travelzoo to sport a lower P/E next year than all competitors save Expedia. If that bears out, it would make today a good entry point. Fellow Fool Dan Caplinger thinks there may be sharks sniffing around for a good meal as big technology companies look to diversify, and even a doubling of the company's market cap would be a drop in the bucket for Google or Microsoft.
Foolish final thoughts
A buyout offers the possibility for big gains, but so does gambling. For the time being, I'm content to watch Travelzoo from a distance to see if it can win in this brave new world of deep discounting. If you'd like to join me in keeping an eye on this travel company, click here to add Travelzoo to your Watchlist.
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