Might Travelzoo Find a Company Buyer in China?
Photo Credit: A view of Travelzoo's Toronto office. The U.S.-based company aims to find growth primarily in Asia-Pacific in the near-term. Travelzoo
Skift Take
Travelzoo's founder Ralph Bartel has seen the value of his investment in the public company go from north of a billion to less than $100 million over two decades. Could the chairman of the company be seeking an exit with a sale to a buyer in Asia?
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
