HomeAway revenue up 22% to $71.6M

But shares are trading 47% below the company's original public debut

A little over a year since going public, HomeAway’s Q2 earnings show revenue above consensus estimates, which is a nice change of pace, after Apple and Netflix both came in below estimates this week.

HomeAway released its quarterly earnings report Wednesday afternoon and revealed that Q2 revenue was $71.6 million, a 22% increase over the same quarter last year, when HomeAway took home $58.7 million.  Paid listings were up 17.4% to 736,000 from 626,661 this time last year.  And site traffic was up more than 20% to 159.2 million visits in the second quarter.

Bad news: renewal rate was down slightly to 75.3% at the end of the second quarter, compared to 76.2% this time last year.  Rest assured, HomeAway is on top of things:

“Continued improvements in the user experience combined with increased adoption in auto-renew, particularly in Europe, are expected to result in long-term improvements to renewal rates,” the company said in a statement.

But how likely is the average vacation home owner to use HomeAway?  Citi analysts recently conducted a survey of 500 vacation home owners and property managers and found that “usage of self-listing sites remains relatively low – vacation home owner respondents listed self-service sites like HomeAway behind other solutions like property managers and real estate agents,” wrote Citi analyst Mark Mahaney in a research note.  On the flip side: “AWAY's properties are among the most-used self-listing sites – four of the top six most used self-listing sites were part of AWAY,” and, “Respondents broadly viewed self-listing sites as very valuable – HomeAway.com and VRBO.com were described as ‘Very Valuable’ by 55%-60% of survey respondents.”

Thus, while home owners are still likely to turn to traditional property managers and real estate agents over self-listing sites, HomeAway is dominating the self-listing site market.

In May, HomeAway announced the acquisition of Top Rural S.L., a site for independently-owned properties in rural Southern Europe, in an all-cash deal valued at $19.3 million. The acquisition is expected to help strengthen HomeAway’s foothold in Europe.

HomeAway expects third quarter revenues $72.8 million to $73.6 million.

HomeAway debuted on NASDAQ in June 2011, pricing its shares at $27.  Shares surged to $42.30 before closing out the day at $40.21.  HomeAway closed on Wednesday at $21.55, a 47% drop since last year.

Image source: statesman.com