Monaker Reports Fiscal 2019 Year-in-Review, with Initial Revenue Generated by Industry’s First Customizable B2B Alternative Lodging Booking System with Instant-Booking


WESTON, FL, June 14, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Monaker Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKGI), a technology leader in the travel and vacation rental markets, provided a review of its fiscal year ended February 28, 2019 and outlook for fiscal 2020.

“In fiscal 2019, we launched the travel industry’s first B2B reservation system that supports instantaneous booking for more than 2.6 million alternative lodging rentals around the world,” said Monaker CEO, Bill Kerby. “The system also offers other innovations, including the instant booking capability to be integrated into virtually any reservation system with full customization, and commissionable bookings of vacation rentals combined with complete travel packages. This unique feature set has attracted now more than 30 travel partner engagements, including with one of the largest travel technology providers in the world.”

The company’s contracted travel partners include travel aggregators, consolidators, tour companies, airlines, and more than 250,000 travel agents. Located primarily in North America, Europe and the Middle East, the partners are estimated to generate worldwide lodging bookings of more than $20 billion annually.

“For fiscal 2020, we are focused on deploying our unique powerful booking engine with additional key travel partners,” continued Kerby. “We anticipate several new integrations to be completed in the first half of the year, as existing deployments continue to ramp up their bookings on the system. While creating this revolutionary travel technology has been a tremendous undertaking with numerous challenges, we believe it has established Monaker as a key player in the vacation rental space.”

Fiscal 2019 Operational Highlights

·        Monaker completed platform design, build, application programming interface (API) and rollout of its next-generation Monaker Booking Engine (MBE). MBE is believed to be the travel industry’s first B2B solution allowing travel companies access to instantly-bookable alternative lodging rentals.

·        Launched MBE with 30 contracted major travel distributors since September 2018, of which nine completed their integration of MBE in fiscal 2019. The integrated travel distributors now have access to Monaker’s instantly-bookable 2.6 million vacation rental properties.

·        Increased “page/property” searches month over month on MBE by connected partners and users, with page searches per day now totaling more than 500,000.

·        Rental bookings have increased month over month since initial bookings at the end of calendar 2018.

·        Substantial progress made with integrations for some of the world’s larger contracted distributor partners. They are expected to be completed and live in the first half of fiscal 2020.

Fiscal 2019 Financial Highlights

·        Travel and commission revenues increased 17% to $505,000 in fiscal 2019, as the company emerged from the development stage to the full commercialization phase of its flagship MBE technology. Since connecting its next-gen MBE to the first travel partners late last year, there has been a steadily increasing level of inventory searches and bookings through the MBE platform.

·        Net income increased to $4.3 million or $0.50 per basic and diluted share, versus a net loss of $10.0 million or $1.61 per basic and diluted share in fiscal 2018. The improvement was primarily attributable to other income increasing to $9.5 million, which was largely due to a gain on the sale of assets of $5.3 million and a valuation gain on marketable securities of $4.5 million. The improvement was also due to a decrease in operating expenses of $2.5 million.

·        Total assets increased to $10.1 million in fiscal 2019 from $5.8 million in fiscal 2018

·        Complete details of the company’s results for the fiscal year are available in the company’s Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is available from the financial information section of the company’s website and sec.gov.

Subsequent Events

In May 2019, Monaker announced that Trisept Solutions completed the integration and certification of MBE after several months of development and testing of its advanced application program interface (API). Trisept is considered one of the world’s most sophisticated travel technology providers and is part of the Apple Leisure Group (ALG), the leading North American travel, hospitality and leisure management group serving travelers and destinations worldwide.

In April, Monaker raised net proceeds of $1.8 million from a public offering of common stock.

Monaker continues to expand its reach to travel agents with its last three MBE integrations. The company’s inventory of vacation rental properties can be instantly confirmed, rather than forcing the agent to wait hours or even days for property owners to respond, vacation rentals can be seamlessly booked alongside air, car and other travel reservations as a complete, commissionable package.

About Monaker Group

Monaker Group, Inc., is a technology-driven travel company focused on delivering innovation to the alternative lodging rental (ALR) market. The Monaker Booking Engine (MBE) provides access to more than 2.6 million instantly bookable vacation rental homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos, resort residences, and castles. MBE offers travel distributors and agencies an industry first: a customizable, instant-booking platform for alternative lodging. For more about Monaker Group, visit www.monakergroup.com.

Important Cautions Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This release includes ''forward-looking statements'' within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations, opinions, belief or forecasts of future events and performance. A statement identified by the use of forward-looking words including ''will,'' ''may,'' ''expects,'' ''projects,'' ''anticipates,'' ''plans,'' ''believes,'' ''estimate,'' ''should,'' and certain of the other foregoing statements may be deemed forward-looking statements. Although Monaker believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, these statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual future activities and results to be materially different from those suggested or described in this news release.  All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the “Risk Factors” and other cautionary statements included in Monaker’s annual, quarterly and special reports, proxy statements and other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including, but not limited to, the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended February 28, 2019 and the company's subsequently filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, which have been filed with the SEC and are available at www.sec.gov. Investors are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. The forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date hereof. The company takes no obligation to update or correct its own forward-looking statements, except as required by law, or those prepared by third parties that are not paid for by the company.


            

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