Trip.com surges back to huge profit

China's online travel platform Trip.com (9961) swung to a profit of 1.4 billion yuan (HK$1.58 billion) last year, compared with a loss of 550 million yuan in 2021.

Revenue for the period edged up 0.1 percent to 20.06 billion yuan.

The revenue of its transportation ticketing business in 2022 was 8.3 billion yuan, increasing 20 percent compared to a year ago.

For the fourth quarter, the net profit of Trip.com was 2.1 billion yuan.

The company's revenue in the last three months of 2022 was 5 billion yuan, recorded a quarter-on-quarter drop of 27 percent due to the surges of Covid-19 infections in certain regions of China and the winter.

However, outbound air-ticket bookings and hotel bookings jumped by over 200 percent and 140 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2022 respectively.