Kayak Does Swimmingly Ahead of IPO, Acquires Austrian Travel Site for $9.5 Million

In an updated registration offering, Kayak reported that its first-quarter revenues totaled $53 million, growing 43 percent since the year-ago period.

In addition, it disclosed it acquired a travel metasearch company in Austria for $9.5 million. The company, which has a ridiculously long name, operates as JaBo Software for short and can be found at www.checkfelix.com. (If you don’t believe me, the full name is JaBo
Vertrieb-und Entwicklung GmbH.)

The Norwalk, Conn.-based company, which originally filed its IPO papers in November, is seeking to raise roughly $50 million.

Its first-quarter results also included a net loss of $4.5 million, which is mostly attributable to a non-cash expense of nearly $20 million. The expense was related to the discontinuation of the SideStep brand name and Web site. The migration from SideStep to Kayak.com occurred in January.

Without that charge, adjusted earnings before interest and other non-cash items totaled $8.2 million, growing 266 percent over the three months ended March 31, 2010.

Additionally, the company said its main business of processing travel queries continues to grow. It said more than 214 million queries for travel information were made during the quarter, representing year-over-year growth of 48 percent.

It also reported that its mobile applications have been contributing to more of its business. In all, the apps have been downloaded about seven million times since their introduction. In the first quarter alone, the apps were downloaded one million times and accounted for 12 percent of the company’s total queries.

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