Priceline to buy Kayak in $1.8 billion deal
Kayak shares soar as stock sold for $40 a share
By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Shares of Kayak Software soared late Thursday after Priceline.com announced that it was buying the company, which went public in July.
Kayak shares were up 26% in after-hours trading, while Priceline was down 1.6%.
Priceline, which is based in Norwalk, Conn., announced that it was buying Kayak for $40 a share, in a deal worth $1.8 billion deal.
Priceline Chief Executive Jeffery Boyd cited Kayak’s “strong brand in online travel research and their track record of profitable growth”
Kayak Chief Executive Steve Hafner said joining Priceline “will accelerate our growth and help us further develop as a company.”
The announcement came just as Kayak reported its results for the third quarter.
Kayak, which also is also based in Norwalk, reported a profit of $7.18 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with a profit of $4.03 million, or 18 cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue was $78.6 million, up from $61.16 million. Adjusted profit was 26 cents a share.
Analysts were expecting a profit of 18 cents a share, on revenue of $77.36 million, according to a consensus survey by FactSet.
Kayak went public in July when its initial public offering priced at $26 a share.
“Our initial thoughts on this is the impact to the entire online travel ecosystem, now that one of the largest online travel agencies are moving into the marketing end of the funnel,” he wrote.
Shares of Priceline rival, Expedia Inc. shed more than 4%.
Leung said the deal could help Priceline “gain some marketing leverage on the overall business, but [it’s] unclear what happens to the estimated 23-24% of Kayak revenues generated by Expedia at this point.”
Meanwhile, shares of another online travel site, Orbitz Worldwide were up more than 12%.
选择“Disable on www.wenxuecity.com”
选择“don't run on pages on this domain”
