Canada: Gen Z- and millennial-friendly online travel agency [OTA], Hopper, is said to be targeting going public via an initial public offering [IPO] and achieving a valuation of up to $10 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.
The Montreal-based company, one of the most downloaded travel apps in North America, previously achieved a valuation of $5 billion in 2022 and has raised an estimated $730 million to date since its founding in 2007. Its investors include Brookfield Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Caisse du Depot et Placement du Quebec, according to Bloomberg, while it has also established a partnership with Capital One Travel and received funding via its investment arm.
Listing everything from homes to hotels, flights and car rentals, Hopper was the fastest-growing app in the OTA market in 2021, growing its active users by 494 per cent and even overtaking Airbnb in terms of market share for monthly active users.
In January 2022, the company expanded into the short-term rental vertical by launching Hopper Homes with more than two million properties in its inventory. At the time, Hopper said that it planned to “bring price transparency and flexibility to the home rental category”.
Since then, it has partnered with fintech platforms including Brazilian neobank and digital financial services platform, Nubank, expanded its e-commerce offerings, and sought to drive the social commerce aspect of its business. This includes offering in-app promotions, discounts and sales events, and creating a unique purchasing experience for its customers in a competitive OTA marketplace.
In addition, it provides price predictions for flights, hotels, car rentals and more by analysing data points and enabling customers to secure a future price for a set fee.
No timeframe has been given on when Hopper could go public but it is suggested that an offering could be a “long-term plan” for the company as it also seeks to double its previous valuation.
Bloomberg also suggests that Hopper could potentially trade on both the Nasdaq and Toronto stock exchanges, or instead, it could seek to secure private equity investment instead of going down an IPO route.
In November, the Canadian firm laid off around 60 to 65 employees [accounting for around ten per cent of its workforce at the time], following a previous restructuring 13 months earlier when it cut 250 jobs [30 per cent of the workforce at the time]. Frederic Lalonde attributed the redundancies to needing to “cut our burn rate and arrive to break even as fast as possible”.
