Guesty CEO on a Future IPO: ‘We’ll Be Ready’

Guesty could go public as soon as next year. 

That’s according to Amiad Soto, CEO of the platform for short-term rental property managers.

“We will decide to go public when the market is more receptive to companies in our industry. I think that over the next, let's say 12 to 18 months, we'll see more and more businesses going public, and then we'll be ready by then,” Soto said during a session on Wednesday at Skift’s Short-Term Rental Summit in New York City.

“I think that the team has already worked really hard to get us to a stage where we could be a public company.” 

Guesty provides a platform meant to help property managers streamline every part of their short-term rental business, including marketing, accounting, payments, bookings, listings on third-party booking sites like Airbnb and Booking.com, and more. 

The company earlier this year raised $130 million in a series F round — a stage that typically indicates an IPO could be next.

While some other travel software companies that have gone public have struggled to reach profitability, Soto said that won’t be a problem for Guesty. 

“We are very close to being profitable,” Soto said. “We'll be profitable most likely by the end of this year. And we have enough cushion for a lifetime.”

Why Go Public

Guesty recently completed its seventh acquisition. 

The plan is to continue consolidating the fragmented industry, and an IPO would provide more capital to make deals, Soto said.

"This industry is super fragmented, and knowing how many resources we invest just in each functionality, I understand that it doesn't make any sense for all of us to build the same things. So pulling resources together to build better products for our customers just makes a lot more sense," Soto said.

“We have a healthy pipeline of more companies we keep talking to."

Typically, a startup may complete an IPO as a way to pay back early investors and employees. Many of Guesty’s previous funding rounds included additional financing for that need, he said. 

"[Liquidity] is not the reason to go public,” he said “It's mostly to get extra currency to do more types of deals and give us a lot more accessibility to cash.”

He added later during the discussion: “To be honest, the fundraising we just did was completely not for our own sake. It was just because of acquisition targets.” 

What Guesty is Looking For

There are a few different types of companies Soto considers when looking for acquisition deals.

They may be similar companies with old technology, in which case Guesty would take on the clients and shut down the old platform. Guesty may also buy companies to expand geographical reach — another the company is growing organically, Soto said — or as a way to experiment in unfamiliar market segments. 

Guesty has a full suite of products at this point, so there’s not as much of a need to build out tech. 

“We are definitely much less into buying for technology than we were in the past,” Soto said.