Founder Lane Fox calls it quits as lastminute turns in its first profit

No fights, no pressure, no bloodshed in the boardroom, insists dot.com pioneer

Martha Lane Fox, one of the co-founders of lastminute.com and the first dot.com pin-up, yesterday said she would be stepping down as managing director at the end of the year.

The move, which will see her take on a non-executive role instead, was timed to coincide with the online travel and leisure business' announcement that it had made its first ever pre-tax profit, of £200,000 in the year to 30 September.

But shares in the company slumped 17 per cent, or 51.5p, to close at 248.5p, as analysts described the financial results as disappointing and after the bombings in Turkey raised fears about a recovery in the travel market.

The 30-year-old Oxford graduate, who launched lastminute with her friend Brent Hoberman and went on to became synonymous with the dot.com boom, denied there had been any bust-up or that she had come under pressure to quit. "It doesn't make very good copy: No fights. No boardroom bloodshed. I haven't fallen out with Brent. I haven't fallen out with Allan [Leighton] and I haven't been fired," she said.

"It was entirely my decision and, to be honest, it's not a surprise to Brent. Really since day one of lastminute.com we've had very different motivations. It's always very unfair that I got a lot of the attention because it was Brent who had the original idea. To people who know us well, it's not a surprise."

City analysts said yesterday that the company had, in fact, been expected to turn out a profit of £4m to £10m - far above what it produced.

Ms Lane Fox insisted, however, that lastminute had not missed forecasts. "There's been a lot of confusion around the levels of profitability that have been predicted and, at the EBITDA level, we're absolutely bang on where the market expected," she said.

She claimed that the only surprise was in the company's order book. "We were expecting about £25m of sales being carried forward into this quarter we're in now and we've had £46m. If they had been in the quarter we'd have had £5m straight into the bottom line."

Some of Ms Lane Fox's responsibilities will be assumed by Ian McCaig, named chief operating officer in August.

"I've always known I was going to have a finite time in the business," she said. "Why right now? Because we've got to full-year profitability which I've always had in my mind as an important milestone, and in equal significance, we've got exactly the right management team to take the business forward."

Ms Lane Fox said yesterday she was keen to find another full-time position but ruled out working at either another start-up or another dot.com. "I don't have a definite plan yet," she said. "I don't think I'd do a start-up again. I think I've been phenomenally lucky with this one. As a major shareholder and non-executive of the world's leading e-commerce company, that's enough internet, I think. And it won't be internet. Those are the two things I can be categorical about."

In the meantime, she said she would "take a bit of time out" and "do what a lot of customers have been doing recently and book a lastminute.com holiday."

There had been speculation that she might become more involved in charity work. Over the past four years she has become increasingly involved in campaigning for justice for death row prisoners in America and has used some of her wealth to help fund the legal representation of teenagers who face the death penalty. This year she gave £10,000 for a DNA test which proved the innocence of Ryan Matthews, who was facing the death penalty in Louisiana.

But while she has strengthened her ties with Reprieve, the British charity that works with inmates on Death Row in America, she made it clear yesterday that while still committed to these issues, she wanted to continue working in the commercial sector. "I'm honoured to be part of this charity ... but I'm not going to work on that full time. I am looking for another full-time role."

The daughter of a distinguished writer who became an Oxford don at 24, Ms Lane Fox was educated at Westminster School and Oxford.

Throughout her rise to fame and riches, she always hinted that her private life had come second to her business commitments.

At the time of the company's 2000 flotation she admitted to working days that finished at 2am and said in one newspaper interview: "It isn't even possible to have a life."

She said yesterday that she had no plans "at the moment" to sell any of her shares in the business. Ms Lane Fox has a stake of about 3.6 per cent in lastminute, worth about £26m at last night's close.

LINKS TO A PROFIT MARTHA'S LEGACY

Autumn 1998: Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox launch lastminute.com after working on the business plan for nine months.

14 March 2000: Shares in lastminute.com are floated on the London Stock Exchange at a price of 380p a share, valuing the company at more than £500m. Private investors are allocated just 35 shares each.

August 2000: Lastminute buys French rival Degriftour for £59m in a cash and shares deal.

October 2000: Allan Leighton, the former Asda chief executive, joins lastminute as chairman.

July 2000: The company buys another French business - Travelprice.com - for £32m.

November 2001: Unveils a £54m loss after a year of cost-cutting in which it laid off about 20 per cent of its workforce in an attempt to conserve its cash pile

April 2002: Buys UK business Travelselect.com, a flights provider, in a deal worth £9m

March 2003: The company pays £40m for the car rentals business Holiday Autos.

September 2003: It raises £103m through a convertible bond issue, partly to help pay for more acquisitions.

20 November 2003: Lastminute.com reveals it has made its first pre-tax profit, of £200,000. Martha Lane Fox says she will step down at the end of the year.