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Serko Is Growing Revenue 45% — So Why Is the Stock Down From Its Highs?

The Growth Is Real. The Patience Required Is Also Real.

Serko (NZX: SKO) is the kind of stock that either excites or frustrates investors, often simultaneously. It's a New Zealand-founded business travel and expense management software company that has built a genuine global product. Revenue is growing fast. Partnerships with tier-one global players are expanding. And yet, the share price at $2.75 NZD sits well below prior highs, and the company is still running at a loss.

This is the classic high-growth SaaS (software-as-a-service) dilemma: strong top-line momentum, but profitability keeps getting pushed out. Understanding whether Serko is a compelling buy or a value trap requires understanding how the business actually makes money.

The Numbers Right Now

  • •Share price: $2.75 NZD
  • •Market cap: ~$216M NZD
  • •H1 FY2026 revenue: $61.8M NZD (up 45% year-on-year)
  • •FY2025 full-year revenue: $90.5M NZD (up 27%)
  • •FY2026 consensus revenue forecast: $123.9M NZD (up 37%)
  • •Net income margin: -24% (loss-making)
  • •EPS forecast FY2026: -$0.09 NZD (loss narrowing)
  • •Analyst consensus target: $3.72 NZD
  • •Price/Sales ratio: ~2.0x (relatively modest for a SaaS company)

The revenue trajectory is hard to argue with. From $90.5M in FY25 to a forecast $123.9M in FY26 is genuinely impressive growth, and the 45% half-year surge suggests the business is accelerating rather than slowing.

What Serko Does — and Why It Matters

Serko builds software used by large corporate organisations to manage business travel and expenses. Think: an employee books a flight through their company's travel management system, and that system tracks the booking, enforces travel policy, integrates with expense reporting, and generates data for finance teams. It's unglamorous infrastructure software, but it's deeply embedded once deployed.

The company's big partnership is with Booking.com for Business — one of the world's largest travel platforms. Serko's technology powers Booking.com's corporate travel offering, which gives it enormous distribution leverage. That relationship is the primary driver of recent revenue growth.

The North America Move

The most significant recent development is Serko's acquisition of GetThere from Sabre Corporation. GetThere is a well-established corporate travel booking platform with a blue-chip US customer base. This acquisition is Serko's most direct push into the North American market — the world's largest corporate travel spend pool.

The Sabre partnership also has strategic depth beyond the acquisition: it's a long-term agreement to co-develop and sell into the North American enterprise market. For a NZ-domiciled company trying to scale globally, having Sabre as both a partner and a distribution channel is significant validation.

The AI Play

Serko recently launched Serko.ai — a multi-agent travel management solution currently in limited trial with US customers. The pitch is straightforward: use AI to automate the complex decision-making and approval chains involved in corporate travel, reducing friction for both travellers and finance teams.

It's early days — this is a limited trial, not a commercial product at scale — but the direction of travel (no pun intended) is clear. Corporate software companies that successfully layer AI on top of transaction data have historically seen strong re-rating; the question is execution.

Why the Stock Is Where It Is

The honest answer is that Serko's path to profitability has been longer than investors expected. The company keeps investing in growth — new markets, new partnerships, new product development — which keeps the bottom line in the red even as revenue climbs. The consensus EPS forecast of -$0.09 for FY2026 is an improvement on prior years, but it's still a loss.

In higher-rate environments, unprofitable growth companies get repriced downward as investors discount future cash flows more aggressively. Serko has felt that. With the OCR falling and rate expectations shifting, the environment for loss-making growth companies is improving — but the re-rating requires actual progress toward profitability.

Analyst View

The consensus analyst target is $3.72 NZD — implying roughly 35% upside from $2.75. The range runs from $3.17 to $4.55, with some more bullish estimates stretching to $6.49. The universal recommendation is Buy, which is notable given the lack of profits.

The Bottom Line

Serko is a genuine technology company with real revenue growth, a strong partnership structure, and an increasingly credible path into the world's largest corporate travel market. At $2.75 with analysts targeting $3.72, the implied upside is significant if management executes on North America and the GetThere acquisition. The risk is the same as it's always been with Serko: profitability keeps moving further out on the horizon. For investors comfortable with growth-over-profits dynamics, the current price looks interesting. For those who need to see earnings before buying, there may still be a wait ahead.

*Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice. Stock data may not be real-time. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.*