Hopperthe startup and mobile travel booking app that lets users book flights, hotels, cars and — most recently – Short-term home rentals a la Airbnb and VRBO, have seen a rapid pace of growth following the easing of Covid-19 travel restrictions over the past year, with 70 million downloads so far day and over $2 billion in travel sales last year. Now the company is preparing for its next steps. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company raised $35 million in a secondary stock sale that values the company at $5 billion.
In some context, the Canadian startup was valued at just over $3.5 billion just five months ago when it raised $175 million in Series G funding round.
The secondary sale, a source said, was aimed at employees, giving them cash “so they don’t have to wait for a potential IPO.” Among the stock buyers were Drive Capital, Stack Capital Group (which independently announcement its share in the investment) and existing investors. (This list includes Goldman Sachs, Inovia Capital, Omers, Citi and others.
There’s no date yet for when it might go public, which is one of the reasons for holding a secondary sale to donate cash now. But Hopper confirmed that was the plan.
“We are planning an IPO in the future, but we are head over heels and focused on innovating on behalf of our clients, so we don’t have a concrete plan or timeline for that,” Frederic said. Lalonde, CEO, to TechCrunch in an email. “There are still a lot of things we want to do before we make a public offering.” Specifically, he said the company is focused on growing its margins and new business areas, including the short-term home rentals it launched last month; its new B2B platform Hopper Cloud; and international expansion.
A spokesperson for Hopper described this latest transaction as “purely secondary”, and a source confirmed that Hopper is not currently raising new outside funding, having brought in some $345 million last year. (Before the G-series, Hopper raised $170 million Series F in March 2021.)
Covid-19 dealt a huge blow to the tourism and travel industries, with people unable or unwilling to travel, the closure of many hospitality venues and leisure attractions, and governments restricting the way people could get move in an effort to contain the spread of the pandemic.
But a number of companies in these verticals have found ways to reposition their businesses – for example, companies selling “experiences” in different destinations have shifted to running virtual experiences on video; others have set up more services to help their partners and suppliers better manage the pandemic themselves. And then, as travel and tourism began to return, the original business funnels of these companies also made a comeback.
Such was the case for Hopper, who said her revenue grew by more than 300% in 2021 compared to 2020 – growth that she’s sustained and in fact improved, with monthly revenue now 375% higher than that. they were before the pandemic.
Some areas are doing particularly well. The company said its share of North American air travel sales was up 300% from before the pandemic began. (It doesn’t say what its actual share is now or in the past. Other competitors in the space include other aggregators like Booking.com and Travelocity, Opodo, Expedia, SkyScanner, and airline direct sales themselves.)
Price freeze and rebooking guarantee, two of the additional services it offers to airline ticket buyers, account for 70% of Hoppers’ total airline revenue. Hopper describes them as “travel fintech” and they are a key way for the company to achieve better margins on what is otherwise a very commoditized business.
Another reason for Hopper’s performance was the launch of Hopper Cloud, which was the company’s own effort to diversify its business by creating a larger B2B platform for companies it was already working with in its platform. B2C aggregation, and now represents 15% of the company’s turnover. (Hopper Cloud enables travel agencies to integrate Hopper’s travel services and its “fintech” products; partners include Capital One, Kayak, Marriott, Amadeus, Trip.com and MakeMyTrip.)
Hopper, as we understand it, is no longer raising outside capital at this time.
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