Fairfax Media offloaded its holiday rentals website Stayz to US-listed holiday rentals group HomeAway for about $220 million, late on Wednesday [December 4].
According to the Fairfax owned newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald, the sale represents a huge windfall for the media company as they purchased Stayz in 2007 for $12.7 million.
The news came as something of a surprise to financial analysts, who had recently valued Stayz at around $140 million.
The sale of Stayz follows on from last year’s sale of Fairfax’s stake in New Zealand online auction house Trade Me for $616 million.
US based online marketplace, HomeAway, has acquired Stayz Group, which also includes Rentahome.com.au, TakeABreak.com.au and YesBookIt. Stayz generated $25.4 million in revenue in its last fiscal year 2013 (ended June 2013). It operates under a commission-based business model, which produces the majority of its revenue.
“The acquisition of Stayz adds 33,000 additional Australian-based properties to the HomeAway network. It also provides HomeAway a strong momentum to our newly-launched pay-per-booking business, something Stayz has worked over the years to optimise,” said HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples. “Additionally, they have demonstrated that a vacation rental business can generate attractive margins operating on primarily a pay-per-booking model, and we look forward to learning from their team.”
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