My earlier blog last month was prescient and great timing as the acquisition spree has started again in 2018 with a bang.
2018 will be the year of travel startup acquisitions.
The larger travel companies are taking more risks and startup engineers are wising up.
MEZI sold to American Express, reported at $125M-$150M all cash.
Routehappy sold to ATPCO.
Who is next?
As I mentioned, this is a continuation of the larger global trend that started in Q3/Q4 of 2017. I believe that it’ will be even more rapid in Q1 straight through to Q4, 2018.
With the new U.S. corporate tax rates lowered in 2018, the larger travel companies will have even more free cash flow to deploy into acquisitions.
What’s interesting about these two acquisitions?
1) The travel startups will remain independent subsidiaries of the larger travel companies with freedom to keep their management, continuing building what they started.
2) The startups were acquired by companies that were a) piloting the startups software or b) had started a commercial licensing deal.
I believe these acquisitions provide other larger travel companies and startups a playbook or template to use going forward to consummate deals.
At Travel Startups Incubator one of our portfolio companies similar to MEZI is in play to be acquired and we’re discussing selling two other investment portfolio companies to larger players.
Let the games continue!