<Bz38>Sabre booking system for sale
DALLAS (AP) — Sabre Holdings Corp., whose system drives travel-reservations worldwide, has put itself up for sale and could fetch more than its current stock market value of $3.75 billion (euro2.85 billion), according to published reports.Private-equity firms were reported to be in advanced talks to buy the company, which started as the reservations arm of American Airlines but now serves all the major carriers. Sabre operates the Travelocity Web site.
The possible sale was reported by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which cited sources familiar with the situation. Sabre declined to comment.
Shares of Sabre rose $1.92, or 6.8 percent, to a 52-week high of $30.24 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
According to the published reports, two groups of private equity firms are bidding for Sabre. The leading group includes Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group, while Apollo Group is leading another bidding consortium.
Last week, another electronic-ticketing and reservations company, Worldspan, was sold to online travel planner Travelport for $1.4 billion (euro1.06 billion). Travelport, which already owns Orbitz and CheapTickets.com, is itself controlled by another private equity firm, The Blackstone Group LP.
Sabre’s other major rivals include Madrid-based Amadeus and Parsippany, New Jersey-based Galileo International LLC.
Private equity firms flush with money have been drawn to travel-reservations businesses because of the large amounts of cash they generate.
Primitive airline-reservations systems date to the 1930s, but with the advent of computers, they grew in sophistication and value. American Airlines and IBM together built Sabre in the 1960s and linked it to travel agents in the ‘70s.
In later years, Sabre expanded to run systems that connected other carriers, hotels and car rentals with travel agents. But it faces growing competition from Internet sites that sell travel tickets directly to consumers.
