Expedia prepares to list Trivago hotel search platform - sources

By Arno Schuetze and Robert Venes

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) - Online travel firm Expedia is preparing to list its Trivago hotel search platform through an initial public offering that could value it at more than $1 billion, sources familiar with the matter said.

Expedia, one of the world's largest online travel services firms, has asked banks to pitch for roles in an initial public offering (IPO), which will likely take place in the United States later this year or early in 2017, the sources said.

The founders still own nearly a third of Trivago's equity and are seeking to sell out through the IPO listing, they said.

Bank pitches will take place as early as next week in New York, one of the people said.

Expedia Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi told investors in July that management and Trivago's founding team had agreed to an IPO to value Trivago as a stand-alone company.

"This is an IPO and not a spin-off," Khosrowshahi told investors on the July conference call, adding that Expedia did not plan to sell its own shares during the flotation.

In 2012, Expedia paid 477 million euros ($531 million) for a 62 percent stake in Trivago. The hotel search platform was founded in 2005 in Duesseldorf, where it remains, and has become one of Germany's most successful start-ups of the past decade.

On a stand-alone basis, Trivago generated $200 million in revenue in the second quarter, up 38 percent on a currency adjusted basis from a year earlier, according to Expedia.

Trivago has grown six-fold since Expedia bought it and has been expanding into Japan, Brazil and the Middle East.

Expedia owns a stable of well-known travel properties including Orbitz Worldwide, Hotels.com, Hotwire, as well as Airbnb rival HomeAway among other brands.

Its primary competitors are Priceline, owner of Booking.com and Kayak, and TripAdvisor.

($1 = 0.8982 euros)

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Pamela Barbaglia, Alexander Huebner and Liana Baker; editing by Victoria Bryan and David Clarke)