Inman

HomeAway files for $230M IPO

Austin, Texas-based vacation real estate company HomeAway Inc. has registered its intentions for an initial public offering worth an estimated $230 million, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday.

The company has not yet indicated how many shares it will offer, the price per share, or when it will start offering them. According to the filing, HomeAway estimated the $230 million maximum offering price for the purposes of calculating the IPO registration fee.

In similar, recent filings, online radio company Pandora and social networking site LinkedIn announced plans to raise as much as $100 million and $175 million, respectively, according to Bloomberg. HomeAway plans to list its stock under the symbol "AWAY."

According to the tech blog TechCrunch, investors have injected about half a billion dollars into the company since its founding in 2005. The company’s latest investor is Google Ventures, the search giant’s venture capital arm.

HomeAway Inc. runs 31 websites in 11 languages worldwide, including global vacation rental site HomeAway.com and vacation real estate site HomeAwayRealEstate.com. The company’s portfolio of sites represents more than 500,000 paid vacation rental listings in more than 145 countries and attracted more than 220 million site visits in 2010, according to the filing.

In 2010, the company generated revenue of $167.9 million, a year-over-year jump of 39.6 percent. More than a third of that revenue came from outside the U.S. and 91.1 percent came from listings. The company charges $329 to property owners for annual subscriptions to the site.

HomeAway.com is the 17th most visited real estate site on the Web, according to the latest rankings from Web metrics firm Experian Hitwise.