Points International Ltd., a leading loyalty reward solutions provider and owner of the Points.com portal, announced record fourth quarter and full year results. For the fourth quarter, total revenue was a record $21.7 million. Total revenue for the full year of 2008 was $75.6 million, an impressive 149% increase compared to the twelve months ended December 31, 2007.
“Points delivered a record 2008 more than doubling our revenues over the prior year, expanding EBITDA and posting robust transaction growth,” stated CEO Rob MacLean. “Our ability to accelerate growth and improve the bottom-line despite weakness in travel and the global economy demonstrates the strength of our business model and the value of our programs to both our loyalty partners and consumers.”
He continued, “Throughout the year we launched a number of new products and signed key partnerships in new verticals including hospitality, while expanding our footprint in important geographic markets such as Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. We successfully launched and added new partners to our revolutionary Global Points Exchange (GPX) platform and paved the way for growth on the consumer side of our business. Our record results this year show that we are effectively leveraging relationships with our current partners while continuing to add new partners that will contribute to growth in 2009 and beyond.”
Net loss for year 2008 was $3.6 million, or ($0.03) per share, which included a fourth quarter $1.3 million impairment charge of long-lived assets. Excluding the impairment charge, net loss would have been $2.3 million or ($0.02) per share, a significant improvement over the previous year’s net loss of $4.1 million, or ($0.04) per share in 2007.
Looking towards the future, Points believes that its record fourth quarter results provide strong momentum for the current year, affirming the strength of its business model and the successful impact of the strategic shift to principal-based partnerships. The company’s management team is very encouraged by the heavy promotional plans and activity from its partners and is convinced that the company can continue to drive growth.
“Our proven track record of consistently adding new products into the market and initiating new partnerships with leading loyalty programs around the world, coupled with our strong pipeline of opportunities provides us a high degree of certainty that we will grow our network and volume during 2009. We anticipate that our continued growth will be fueled in part by new relationships in the travel industry both in North America and internationally as well as continued penetration into non-travel verticals,” commented MacLean.
“In the face of an unprecedented downturn in all of our major partners’ markets, Points continues to thrive and deliver record growth driven by our aggressive investment plan. Based on the continuation of this successful 2008 strategy, the Company expects to post solid 2009 growth resulting in revenues of between $85 million and $95 million,” stated Stephen K. Bannon, the Company’s Chairman.
“Furthermore, while we are acutely aware of the need to prudently manage our cash during this market turmoil, the Board and Management are unanimous in our commitment to continue our focus on rapid and profitable growth. Despite the current environment, we now have the unique opportunity of building on our past success. In 2009, between $5.0 million and $7.0 million of our planned operating costs will be a direct investment in activities we believe will produce material long term and accelerated growth and this will be accomplished while producing a third straight year of positive EBITDA performance. One result of this investment will be an expansion of the features, content and depth of our consumer-based offerings, designed to hasten the growth of this side of our business and improve margins over time,” concluded Mr. Bannon.
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