Kayak Ends Its IPO Trip — For Now

Will we see any more IPOs this year? Maybe not, amid a brutally volatile
market. The latest casualty, according to a report in All Things Digital , is
travel site Kayak, which has postponed its IPO. However, the company plans to
maintain its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Might as well
be prepared for when the IPO window opens up again, right? Actually, Kayak
continues to grow at a nice pace. For the first six months of this year,
revenues increased by 36% to $109.4 million, and adjusted EBITDA came to $13.3
million. The site saw 443 million user queries, up 49% over the past year. Kayak
also has seen lots of traction with its mobile applications. Since March 2009,
Kayaks apps have been downloaded 8 million times no doubt a key driver for
traffic growth. Still, Kayak faces some serious challenges. Rivals like
Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN ) and Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE ) have tremendous brands
and are building strong businesses in global markets. Then there is Google
(NASDAQ: GOOG ), which recently purchased ITA Software for $700 million. The
company is a provider of data for many top travel sites, including Kayak. Now
Google has leveraged ITA to create its Flights service, which is easy to use and
lightning fast. It also will get a boost from Google's large distribution
footprint both on the desktop and mobile. And as good as it is now, Google
certainly will continue to innovate the Flights service putting even more
pressure on Kayak. So it might take awhile before Kayak decides to revive its
IPO dreams. Tom Taulli is the author of "All About Short Selling" and "All
About Commodities." You can also find him at Twitter account @ttaulli. As of
this writing, Taulli did not own any of the aforementioned stocks.