British online travel store Lastminute.com says its year pretax loss has widened due to rising costs from recent European acquisitions.
Shares in the company, which also announced on Thursday that its chief financial officer, David Howell, would be leaving early next year, fell 18.4 percent to 98 pence in early trading.
Lastminute posted a pretax loss for the year of £77.2 million (€110.3m), compared with £47.7 million (€68.1m) a year ago.
Pre-exceptional earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 60 percent to £24.1 million (€34.4m) in the year to end-September, said Lastminute, which sells holidays and flights over the internet at short notice.
On October 4 the company said earnings for its crucial summer quarter would come in towards the lower end of expectations with EBITDA of £25-30 million (€35.7m-€42.8m).
"Whilst demonstrating continued improvements in most key metrics our financial performance has fallen short of expectations," said Chief Executive Brent Hoberman.
"Our acquisition strategy has given us the necessary scale to compete across our core European market but this has come at the expense of a higher cost base," he said.
The company said full-year pretax profit before exceptional charges and goodwill amortisation was £4.6 million (€6.5m), compared with £200,000 (€286,000) a year ago. Total transaction value rose to £992.3 million (€1.41bn), against £552.4 million (€789.67m) last year.
"These results show that Lastminute.com has performed solidly in a difficult trading environment for the sector in the last quarter and the year as a whole," said Chairman Allan Leighton.
Howell, talking to reporters in a conference call after the results, said he was leaving because he wanted to face fresh challenges after nearly four years with the company.