Trivago, the online hotel reservation company backed by Expedia, is expected to list its shares in New York by the end of November, according to people familiar with the matter.
Expedia, which owns a majority stake in Trivago, has hired JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley to run the flotation, which will take place on the Nasdaq. Analysts have valued the business at $5 billion.
The deal size wasn’t immediately clear, but one person said that Trivago had initially told bankers it was interested in raising as much as $1 billion. That would make it the largest tech IPO in the US this year, and — to this person — is a stretch.
Expedia said in July that it would explore an IPO of Trivago, with an aim to list the shares by the end of the year.
“An IPO would allow investors to value Trivago as a separate standalone company,” Expedia’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at the time. “Expedia does not plan to sell any of our shares in an IPO, and there are no guarantees that an IPO will ultimately be pursued or be successful.”
Expedia said in July that Trivago had generated $200 million in revenue in the second quarter, and more than $660 million on a trailing 12-month basis. That means it was able to file its S-1 document under the Jumpstart our Business Startups (or JOBS) Act, which allows small companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to file for IPOs privately with the SEC.
Once the offering document is public, the company has to wait three weeks before the share sale can proceed. Trivago could make its filing public as soon as next week in order to list by Thanksgiving.
An IPO in late November would be dependent on investor appetite for new shares following the US presidential election. The flotation could be derailed by a volatile market.
The listing would mark another step toward the tech IPO market’s comeback. Deal activity all but stopped last year as investor sentiment soured, and has been slow to pick up in 2016. The largest tech IPO to date was by Japanese messaging app Line, which listed in Tokyo and New York in July and raised $1.24 billion, about two-thirds of which was in the US.
Expedia declined to comment. Reuters previously reported that the company has hired banks for the deal.
As reported by Business Insider