Reuters Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in lastminute.com have fallen as much as 9 percent amid fears the online travel firm will have to spend more to attract late-booking holidaymakers and meet full-year targets in an increasingly competitive market.
Lastminute LMC.L , which sells flights to hotels and theatre tickets to restaurant bookings in 13 European countries, on Thursday posted a 5 percent rise in third-quarter core earnings but said the outlook for the rest of its financial year remained challenging.
Holidaymakers seeking cheap summer breaks were holding off for longer than usual to book, making it difficult to predict the full-year outcome, Chief Executive Brent Hoberman said...
The firm would cut around 350 jobs, or 15 percent of the workforce, to reduce costs by around 10 percent in the 2005 financial year, he said.
Lastminute's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and exceptional items rose to 4.3 million pounds in the three months to end-June from 4.1 million pounds the previous year.
The total value of transactions carried out on its websites rose 78.2 percent to 268.9 million pounds. It has forward orders of 77 million pounds compared to 61.1 million last year.
Hoberman said the trend towards later booking was benefiting lastminute.com, which allows busy people to book holidays and order gifts on the Internet at short notice.
He expected gross sales of around 400 million pounds in the fourth quarter, a 49 percent rise on the third, and gross margins of around 18 percent for the full-year.
He said the company would close 10 of its 25 offices -- six in the UK and four internationally -- as it integrates its latest acquisitions, including Med Hotels, First Option and its German namesake lastminute.de, into the business.
It will also increase its spending on marketing and advertising in the fourth quarter by 3.6 million pounds.
Hoberman co-founded lastminute.com with Martha Lane Fox at the height of the dot-com boom."
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