The Problems in Mondee’s Plan to Go Public
Skift Take
The air travel aggregator is likely to get a $1 billion valuation in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. But its disclosures are thin, and paint something less than a picture of certain success.
Travel Tech Briefing
Editor’s Note: Exclusive reporting on technology’s impact on the travel industry, delivered every Thursday. The briefing will guide executives as they decide if their companies should “build, buy, or partner” to stay ahead.It's not the easiest time to take a travel technology-themed company like Silicon Valley airfare consolidator Mondee public, especially via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC). All four 2022 travel SPAC-merger deals to go public identified by Skift have fallen since stocks began trading, by an average of 55 percent. Short-term rental company Sonder, which announced layoffs June 9, is off 86 percent.
So should Mondee, which arranges special deals for members of affinity groups and other travelers, expect to be different? And, to ask a harsher question, is there really much way to even know from the scanty disclosure in public filings preceding the deal?
The answers are, maybe and not easily. And that information gap would be a short-term problem even in a market where blue-chip technology stocks haven't lost 28 percent of their value since winter. In this market, where they have, a deal launched on very narrow (if any) profit margins,
