Orbitz Worldwide Results Better Than Expected

OWW reports – the Sept Q comes in better than expected, but mgmt says they are seeing trends slow sig. in Oct and beyond…says bookings in Q4 and '09 will fall below long-term view. Revs came in $240M vs. St $226.4M; EPS looks like .12 vs. St .01; Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2008 was $43 million vs St $35M. Gross bookings in the third quarter of 2008 increased four percent to $2.7 billion as international gross bookings grew 16 percent to $421 million. The economic and industry outlook for the fourth quarter has deteriorated markedly over the past six weeks," continued Barnhart. "Our businesses performed solidly in the third quarter despite the cutbacks in U.S. airline capacity. However, beginning in October, we have experienced a slowdown in all of our businesses around the world. Although we are continuing to implement initiatives to grow our business, we do not expect to be able to offset the slowdown in the global economy. Therefore, we expect growth in gross bookings and revenue to fall below our long-term target range of nine to twelve percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and in 2009….we expect to reduce our U.S. workforce by approximately 10 percent by the end of 2008, generating approximately $20 million in annualized savings in labor costs.