Originally Posted by
TAWS
Expedia's third quarter net income was $178 million. 30 million dollars would be about 17% of that. I don't consider that a very insignificant amount.
Extrapolate that. Being conservative, give them 600 million in revenue (or do you mean earnings, I haven't looked at their numbers - I'd expect REVENUE to be higher and earnings of 600MM) for the year.
Now we're talking about 5%. Not insignificant, sure, but potentially small, especially if in return for these Expedia actually earned some of it back in rebates, SPIFFs, business development/marketing funds, incentives, etc. Not being an insider, that's not something we're likely to know about. Of course, if this actually drives airline inventory on these routes (popular for the holidays) down, then prices will go up, and so will Expedia's "cut" of the action. They could easily profit on this, even if it was a mistake.