FAST growing online travel search firm Skyscanner is mulling further acquisitions to boost its technology base but confirmed it has no immediate plans to float on the stock exchange.
That came as Edinburgh technology business said it had seen a 42 per cent rise in revenue to £93 million for 2014.
During the year Skyscanner saw a record numbers of visitors to its websites and apps with upwards of 35 million unique monthly users.
There was also the launch of dedicated hotel and car hire apps.
The business, which was founded in 2003 as a search engine for flights, said earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) came in at £20m across 2014, down from £22.6m in the prior year.
The fall was as a result of acquisitions made during the year as well as a large increase in staff numbers, which now exceed 600 around the world.
More than 400 of those are based in Edinburgh and Glasgow with the remainder spread across China, Singapore, the United States, Spain and Hungary.
Chief financial officer Shane Corstorphine outlined how pleased the company was with performance in 2014.
He said: "The business really transformed during 2014 from being flight search to travel search and really investing into the hotels and car hire products.
"We are investing from a product point of view first and foremost rather than just throwing marketing cash at things."
Asked whether a much mooted initial public offering was moving closer Mr Corstorphine said: "At some point in time if the business needs capital then it is something we would look at.
"But when you are generating £20m EBITDA, are cash generative and in a strong profitability place then at this point in time raising capital is not at the top of the agenda. It is certainly not a focus."
Skyscanner said that more than 80 per cent of its traffic during last year came from outside its home market with growth on mobile devices running at 77 per cent.
Along with the launch of the hotel and car hire apps in more than 30 languages the company opened its Skyscanner for Business unit which offers services including data analytics.
Within that a white label business, where other companies can use Skyscanner technology on their websites, has already attracted Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Secret Escapes and the Spanish tourist board as customers. Non-flight services were said to have generated about one quarter of revenue across the year.
During 2014 Skyscanner acquired Hungarian mobile developer Distinction and Chinese search business Youbibi.
Budapest based Distinction is now Skyscanner's main mobile development hub.
In China Skyscanner, which has an office in Beijing along with the Youbibi base in Shenzhen, said it had a 61 per cent increase in monthly visitors across 2014 with mobile visitors soaring 162 per cent.
Mr Corstorphine said the company was planning on organic financial growth but did not rule out further acquisitions in the coming months.
He said: "We don't tend to buy businesses for revenue or EBITDA. We are pretty clear about our vision to be the most used and trusted online travel brand and the pieces we need to fill in to get there.
"In some cases it might make sense to acquire those rather than do them in house but we are pretty pleased with our velocity in-house right now and are building a lot of stuff."
A dedicated Chinese portal, under the Tianxun brand, is expected to help further accelerate growth in that market.
Mr Corstorphine said: "It is a totally different app and web product but built off the same Skyscanner platform."
While there was no detail on potential new products in the pipeline Mr Corstorphine promised further development and said: "We are exceptionally pleased with where we are from a business point of view and the speed of which we are shipping new product. We hope people will be noticing a lot of changes from Skyscanner products in this year coming."
Gareth Williams, chief executive and co-founder, said: "Despite our progress, we still see ourselves as being in the early stages of our development as a company, as well as an industry. There is so much more we want to achieve in online travel and we've some exciting plans for the year ahead."
Skyscanner has been hailed by early backer Scottish Equity Partners as Scotland's first $1 billion web company. In October 2013 American heavyweight investor Sequoia Capital, which has previously supported the likes of Apple and Google, bought into the business.
Skyscanner bought Spanish hotel search business Fogg in September 2013.
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