NORWALK, CT —Hotel and travel booking site Priceline.com is buying restaurant reservation service OpenTable for $2.3 billion in cash.
The Priceline Group Inc. (NASDAQ: PCLN) will acquire OpenTable Inc. (NASDAQ:OPEN) for $103 a share, a 46 percent increase over its closing price Thursday. OpenTable shares soared on the news, rising to 47 percent to $103.63 in mid-morning trading Friday.
“OpenTable is a great match for The Priceline Group. They provide us with a natural extension into restaurant marketing services and a wonderful and highly-valued booking experience for our global customers,” said Darren Huston, President & CEO of The Priceline Group in a statement.
OpenTable, which provides online restaurant reservations, seated more than 15 million diners per month across more than 31,000 restaurants,.The company says it has seated more than 125 million diners worldwide through its mobile solutions, which were introduced in 2008.
The Priceline Group is the world’s leading accommodation booking platform. Every night, an average of more than 1 million guests stay in accommodations booked through one of The Priceline Group brands in over 480,000 properties in over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
“The Priceline Group is a leader in e-commerce innovation with global expertise in online marketing and digital customer conversion across devices, and they have an exceptional track record of customer service in dozens of languages around the world,” said Matt Roberts, CEO of OpenTable.
Forbes notes that several related stocks also popped in pre-market trading after the announcement of the deal, including Yelp, Groupon, and GrubHub.
Both companies were founded during the first dot com boom and survived the dot com bust early in this century.
OpenTable will continue to be headquartered in San Francisco, CA and will operate as an independent business led by its current management team within The Priceline Group.
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