AustralianSuper & BlackRock back $100 million pre-IPO raise for hotels tech venture SiteMinder

Hotel commerce platform SiteMinder has raised $100 million in a pre-IPO round, repeating the raise it made before the pandemic hit.

Fidelity International came aboard as a new shareholder with existing backers AustralianSuper, and equity funds managed by BlackRock, Ellerston Capital, Pendal Group, and Washington H. Soul Pattinson upping their stakes in the tech platform.

Other investors include Bailador Technology Investments, Les Szekely of Equity Venture Partners, and TCV.

The raise maintains a valuation of just over A$1 billion for the business and repeats a US$70 million raise at a US$750 million valuation for the Australian-based hotel guest acquisition and management cloud platform in January last year, which was also flagged as a pre-IPO raise.

Despite the impact of the pandemic and ongoing lockdowns and quarantine on the hotels sector over the past 18 months, SiteMinder CEO Sankar Narayan said the business had been resilient in the face of significant disruption, delivering revenue of more than $100 million in FY2021.

Customer numbers grew by 40% for its payments and other transaction-based products. Revenue fell by around 6% in constant currency terms.

“We thank all of our shareholders for their ongoing trust as we continue to perform against an evolving industry backdrop,” Narayan said in a statement.

“We have maintained high levels of engagement with customers and partners to deliver consistently strong business performance and demonstrate SiteMinder’s resilience during these difficult industry conditions.

“Our continued investment in expanding our product suite puts us in a strong position to benefit from the recovery in travel which we are beginning to see, particularly in the many travel markets where bookings are bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels.”

SiteMinder operates in 150 countries across 35,000 hotels and in 2019 before the pandemic hit, generated more than 100 million reservations worth US$35 billion in revenue.

AustralianSuper senior portfolio manager George Batsakis said the super fund was glad to double down on the business as it moves towards a public listing.

“After joining SiteMinder’s capital raise of over AU$100 million in January 2020, at a time where we could not have foreseen the events ahead, what we have seen is SiteMinder show tremendous agility, resilience and innovation, particularly as the needs of their customers and partners have rapidly shifted,” he said.

“The unprecedented impacts of the last 18 months have proven the importance of easy-to-use technology platforms for hotels, and we are pleased to be growing our support of SiteMinder as the company continues to provide these much-needed services to support its customers.”

The company’s partners include Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and Hostelworld and hotel chains such as Hyatt and Best Western.

Despite flagging the latest funding once again as a pre-IPO round, SiteMinder would not comment on a timeframe for a public listing.