By Javi West Larrañaga
(Reuters) -Spain’s Amadeus said on Friday it saw further revenue growth this year, after the travel booking software provider posted record annual turnover in 2024.
Amadeus is set to benefit from further growth in the air travel industry, after global airlines body IATA forecast that a record 5.2 billion passengers would fly in 2025, albeit at a slower growth rate of 8% compared to the 10.4% seen last year.
The company, which provides flight booking software, recorded revenue of 6.14 billion euros ($6.38 billion) last year, about 13% higher than in 2023, and forecast growth of 9% to 13% for 2025.
It also reported a fourth-quarter adjusted net profit of 319.7 million euros, well above the 261.7 million expected by analysts according to LSEG’s IBES data.
Analysts at UBS have previously highlighted a slowdown in the “disintermediation” of the travel industry, referring to the trend of companies doing away with middlemen like Amadeus in favour of their own services.
Chief Financial Officer Decius Valmorbida said on Friday that although “reintermediation” was “an upside opportunity”, the company did not expect it to fuel their overall results, and that growth would be driven by new customers.
“We see carriers that were not participating that now decide to participate,” he said, adding they were making progress both in North America and Asia-Pacific.
Valmorbida said airlines’ growing need to invest in cloud, AI and app services would push them to outsource those to providers like Amadeus, as they would have limited resources to do so themselves.
Amadeus shares rose as much as 7.1%, leading gains on Madrid’s blue-chip index, and were on track towards recouping levels from February 20, 2020 – right before news related to the COVID-19 pandemic made the price plummet about 45%.
($1 = 0.9623 euros)
(Reporting by Javi West Larrañaga in Gdansk; editing by Milla Nissi, David Latona, Philippa Fletcher)
