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Private equity-owned hotel room wholesaler HBX Group is aiming to raise up to €725mn in an initial public offering in Spain, putting it on track to become the first large European listing of the year.
The Spanish group, which describes itself as part of the behind-the-scenes plumbing of the global travel industry, could be valued at roughly €5bn in a listing, according to people familiar with the matter.
HBX gives businesses that deal directly with travellers access to a huge database of hotel rooms as well as rental cars and tickets for theme parks, theatre shows and other holiday activities.
Existing shareholders, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and buyout groups Cinven and EQT, will sell some of their stakes, according to terms of the IPO announced on Thursday.
An IPO for HBX — best known for its Hotelbeds brand — would signal further momentum for the European IPO market, after activity rebounded last year following a post-pandemic slowdown.
As a wholesaler of hotel rooms, HBX provides clients ranging from Expedia to tour operators and airlines access to hundreds of thousands of rooms — some of which it has block booked in advance — which they can then offer directly to customers.
In a regulatory filing on Thursday, HBX said it “negotiates room types, availability and discounted rates with hotels based on travel insights and earns a mark-up on the sale of hotel rooms to its distribution partners”.
While hotel chains in London, for example, have little difficulty in ensuring they are seen by potential clients in the UK or Europe, HBX’s pitch is that it can help them reach customers from travel markets that are fast growing but less familiar in Asia and Latin America.
A successful flotation would also raise hopes among private equity groups that they would be able to increasingly exit some of their investments via IPOs, as they sit on a record number of unsold assets.
HBX, formerly known as Hotelbeds Group, was acquired by CPPIB and Cinven in 2016 for a €1.2bn enterprise value from tour operator Tui. Proceeds from issuing new shares will be used to reduce the company’s debt load.
The European IPO market picked up last year, but the fates of those newly public companies has not always run smoothly, owing to choppy trading and other macroeconomy and geopolitical turbulence.
Dermatology company Galderma’s shares have risen since being listed by EQT on the Swiss stock exchange last year, but shares in beauty group Douglas are down since it was listed by CVC in Germany. The IPO priced at the low end of its target range, and the shares dropped 15 per cent in the first two days.
Last October, the Spanish group Europastry postponed its planned flotation for the second time in less than four months.
The UK has been an outlier for its lacklustre number of new listings in 2024, with new companies having raised just £737mn in London across the year, the lowest amount of money on record.
