Might Travelzoo Find a Company Buyer in China?

Travelzoo is famously controlled by Ralph Bartel, its founder, chairman, and majority shareholder. Some recent signals hint that Bartel aims to sell his email-newsletter-focused, daily deals company. To snare a deal, he may be renovating it to make it more appealing to potential acquirers in Asia. Bartel once thought Travelzoo, which he founded in 1998, would make him rich. For a while, that seemed possible. In 2004, the New York-based company touched all-time highs in the stock market of $95 a share. The German-born New Yorker owned 13.3 million shares of the company's stock, or about 83 percent of the outstanding shares. So the price run-up had made Bartel worth about $1.2 billion on paper. In 2011, another stock price run-up approached the same highs. But more recently Travelzoo has struggled. Since 2004, Bartel has sold off 7.3 million shares worth at least $100 million. As of a June 17 financial filing, Bartel owned 6 million shares, or 50.567 percent of all shares outstanding. Given Tuesday's closing price of $14, Bartel's paper value for his Travelzoo holdings was $84 million — a far cry from past glory. Looking ahead, Travelzoo's stock is unlikely to surge again anytime soon. Most experts believe the recent years of a U.S. stock market surge has less strength ahead of it than behind it. So if Bartel wants one more big payday out of his cash cow, a sale to another buyer may be the key. Bartel turns 53 years old this year. Two decades of involvement with Travelzoo, with 425 employees worldwide, may have begun to bore him a little. The Asian Fixation Investors might wonder what Bartel plans ne