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WTF - Wotif.com Holdings

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I will probably be out shortly, it has lost momentum and there could be resistance at this level. Plenty of others breaking out at the moment.

Cheers
Country Lad

WTF P&F 22 Jan 13.gif
 
barnso said:
Did you get out before the dip following today's results? Currently at 5.36
Click to expand...

Yes, sold 31 Jan when both OBV and Siroc turned down.

Interestingly, I was watching it to buy if it broke from the pennant. Today the pattern failed and it goes into the bin.

Cheers
Country Lad

wtf 27 Feb 13.gif
 
The thing to watch closely here, IMO, is the amount of online trade FLT is picking up while WTF sits still.

flightcentre.com.au TTV up 23%

Wotif Total TTV of $594.9m (H1 FY12: $595.6m)

It looks as though they are leaking customers to FLT.:2twocents

ETA: flt.com.au is much smaller than WTF.
 
Big profit downgrade today. H1 profit ~$20m, no guidance for full year. Costs are going up due to competition.

One can't help but feel that the business model may be broken. Anyone can use WTF to check out various hotels and use it purely as a comparison service, then go book directly with the hotel and circumvent the various booking fees etc.

This is certainly how many have been using Webjet. I read something the other day that basically shows that number of unique visitors have been rising, while TTV have been falling.

Back to WTF, even if you annualise the figure to a NPAT of $40m, that's 18-19c EPS. So at currentl price of ~$3 it's still trading at 15x PE. IMO that's a pretty full multiple for an ex-growth stock with cloudy outlook...
 
skc said:
Big profit downgrade today. H1 profit ~$20m, no guidance for full year. Costs are going up due to competition.

One can't help but feel that the business model may be broken. Anyone can use WTF to check out various hotels and use it purely as a comparison service, then go book directly with the hotel and circumvent the various booking fees etc.

This is certainly how many have been using Webjet. I read something the other day that basically shows that number of unique visitors have been rising, while TTV have been falling.

Back to WTF, even if you annualise the figure to a NPAT of $40m, that's 18-19c EPS. So at currentl price of ~$3 it's still trading at 15x PE. IMO that's a pretty full multiple for an ex-growth stock with cloudy outlook...
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This has been an accident waiting to happen for ~2 years IMO.
When I went to Europe and Canada last year I used booking.com. They saw the writing on the wall long before WTF and created a site with a massive world-wide network...with prices that are as low as going direct to the hotel, no added fees and an excellent review system.
The WTF is not nearly as user friendly, and having used it in the past...will never go back now that I have seen how good booking.com is.

Bit of a shame really, has been a great story of a successful Brisbane based startup....:2twocents
 
VSntchr said:
Bit of a shame really, has been a great story of a successful Brisbane based startup....:2twocents
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Yes. I have met the founders whilst at Uni and they were definitely a great story back in 2006, where they had a good business model, user friendly site (for the time) and just caught the rising migration to online booking.

Perhaps they stood still for too long and just couldn't quite adapt quickly enough to the changing competitive landscape.

Speaking of 2006... that's exactly where their share price sits...
 
skc said:
Yes. I have met the founders whilst at Uni and they were definitely a great story back in 2006, where they had a good business model, user friendly site (for the time) and just caught the rising migration to online booking.

Perhaps they stood still for too long and just couldn't quite adapt quickly enough to the changing competitive landscape.

Speaking of 2006... that's exactly where their share price sits...
Click to expand...

Increase their booking fee put me off and I think a lot of people too, increase in hotel commission will probably drive
away some of their provider as well..

They are not a monopoly in this competitive land scape but they act like one.... The good day for them are over and people has found other cheaper booking place...more down grade to come as they jack up their prices and drive customers and provider away...
 
I am keeping an eye on this one. I was hoping for it to gain some up trend momentum after the low kind of like FGE and CDA. It didn't happen though. People are more bearish on this one. They are likely correct though. I have not done a valuation on the company but just eye balling the financial information, it does not look cheap. I am still keeping an eye on this.
 
Thought's on WTF's share price atm. It seems quite low and that the market has over reacted to its lower than expected results.

Seems like it's at a value price to buy.
 
mcgrath111 said:
Thought's on WTF's share price atm. It seems quite low and that the market has over reacted to its lower than expected results.

Seems like it's at a value price to buy.
Click to expand...
What valuation method are you using that tells that it is cheap?
 
mcgrath111 said:
Thought's on WTF's share price atm. It seems quite low and that the market has over reacted to its lower than expected results.

Seems like it's at a value price to buy.
Click to expand...

Yep im watching, seems to have an element of 'over sold' in the share price, Webjet bounced a few weeks ago...one would think that WTF will bounce also at some point.
 
There is no reason why this can't continue dropping. The only way to determine if something is oversold is saying in disbelief "well it can't go any lower" or using an indicator. The former isn't very reliable and often wrong and the latter just presents price action in a different way and really is the same thing "oh we think it can't go any lower, since there was so much selling!". This isn't the case though. It definitely can go lower. There are certainly no bullish technical signals right now anyway.
 
Valued said:
There is no reason why this can't continue dropping. The only way to determine if something is oversold is saying in disbelief "well it can't go any lower" or using an indicator.
Click to expand...

Over sold can also be an experienced judgement call, many have expressed their disbelief on this forum re events in many stocks over many years and many have been wrong.

Valued said:
It definitely can go lower. There are certainly no bullish technical signals right now anyway.
Click to expand...

Agreed, the bottom is pretty much never indicated by anything...experience has taught be that there is money to be made buying well before any buy signals kick in.

I ask myself simple questions.

  • Is this a business that i want to own ?
  • What price you i want to pay?
  • Can i make money buying XYZ now?
 
I travel a fair bit, for business and leisure and I have to say I have never, ever used WTF to make a booking (limit coverage and limited choices within their coverage area + usually more expensive than other websites) and I've used Webjet (they must have the clunkiest booking engine on the interwebz) once. The way I see it, WTF had a niche business in that most of the big international players largely ignored Australia, and places like the Bermagui Motor Inn & Resort couldn't get exposure but those days are gone and the idea of having a limited forward calendar is so out of date it's not funny. No one is falling for those last minute deal websites.

With the proliferation of aggregation sites like Trivago it seems like these sort of sites are going to end up being commodity type businesses. There's some really good hotel websites but not in the segment WTF is operating in. Something like Tablet is a good example. They actually research the places they list on their website and it's not every single hotel in a city but a pretty tight list of boutique, smallish hotels.
 

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