Trivago reports Q3 adjusted EBITDA EUR 33.5M vs. EUR 15.5M last year

Reports Q3 revenue EUR 183.7M vs. EUR 138.6M y/y. The company states: "In the third quarter of 2022, we continued to benefit from the recovery in travel, particularly in the northern hemisphere, and as planned, we increased our branded marketing activities during this period. Our new television advertising creative, refocusing on price comparison, performed well and led to healthy growth in branded traffic to our platform. Overall, the competitive dynamics in performance marketing channels, including our own auction, intensified during the summer as many players in the online travel industry appeared to have focused on gaining traffic share. While we benefited from this increased competition and have experienced a very strong auction during the quarter, these dynamics have also resulted in higher costs in some performance marketing channels in certain markets. We have maintained our disciplined marketing approach and continued to focus on high-quality traffic at the expense of more traffic volume to maintain profitability targets that we believe create long-term value. The past few months have also given us a better view on the trends affecting the online travel industry as we approach 2023. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel behavior appear to have receded as large-scale vaccinations and mass recovery from COVID-19 infections have muted the negative effects of the pandemic. We believe that travel seasonality this winter will be more in line with what we experienced prior to the pandemic. Throughout the summer, we have observed a significant increase in average price levels for hotel rooms. We believe that geopolitical conflicts and disruptions, which have led to higher energy prices, are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. We anticipate that this, when combined with the effects of labor cost increases, may continue to result in increases in consumer prices, including average daily rates for hotels. In the third quarter of 2022, we saw first signs of consumers attempting to mitigate this effect through searching for more affordable destinations and accommodations as well as by reducing the length of their trip, especially in our Developed Europe segment. We believe that this trend is likely to continue in 2023 as inflation leads to consumers having lower real disposable income. While this may result in lower traffic volumes, we continue to believe that our value proposition will be highly relevant for consumers around the globe and that we will be able to benefit from consumers' greater focus on cost saving and their need for price comparison."