Vacation home rental service HomeAway has begun trading on the NASDAQ this morning under the symbol ‘AWAY’, with the shares trading as high as $37.10. giving the company a market cap of $3 billion. That’s an increase of 39 percent, up from the company’s initial pricing of $27 per share last night.
HomeAway, which filed for an IPO in March, raised $216 million in the offering.
As revealed in the company’s filings, HomeAway saw $167.9 million in 2010 revenue, which is up 39.6% from 2009. In 2010, 37.9% of the company’s revenue came from outside the United States, including 36.6% from Europe and 1.3% from Latin America. In 2010, rental listings contributed 91.1% of HomeAway’s revenue. Net Income for 2010 came in at $16.9 million, up from $7.6 million in 2009. And the company says there is plenty of room for growth—the vacation rental market is valued at $85 billion in 2010 in the United States and Europe.
I spoke to HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples this morning who told me the company is just getting started, and that the markets will take care of itself. The market opportunity, says Sharples, is still large. “We are still in the early stages of building this business,” he explains.
Some of the cash raised may be used for acquisitions to expand in additional geographies. “The reason we took the company public,” he says, “was less about the money and more about the marketing and branding event.”