SKYSCANNER, the expanding Edinburgh-based global travel website, is preparing the way for a flotation on the London Stock Exchange, its chief executive has revealed to The Herald.

Gareth Williams, who is also one of the company’s three co-founders, said: “We can see the route through to flotation, but we need to get to £100 million turnover first.

“I think that’s necessary. I don’t think I’d be confident enough to float on the stock market unless we were turning over at least £100m.”

Asked about the timeframe, Mr Williams added: “Not less than two years, but certainly less than five. It’s two or three years away, I’d say. We’re confident about our growth and we’re confident about the scaleability of our business model.”

Skyscanner, which is one of Scotland’s fastest-growing companies, is rapidly becoming an essential tool for travellers all over the world.

Its technology searches millions of internet sites, and then compares and contrasts each flight for relative advantages, such as cost, time and date of departure and destination. It also books the flights for the customer.

The company’s plans not only show the exit strategy of its biggest investors, venture capitalist Scottish Equity Partners, which owns about a third of Skyscanner, but also the scale of the company’s ambitions and potential.

Mr Williams revealed that Skyscanner turned over £15m and made a pre-tax profit of around £3.5m in its financial year to the end of May, compared with an £8.8m turnover last time with profits of £1.3m.

This year, he said he expects the company to turn over £33m and to make a profit of £7m, which means the company will have virtually doubled its take for three years running – a trend Mr Williams sees continuing into the future.

At the same time, the company has benefited from substantial growth in international advertising on its website.

Skyscanner this week launched its mobile site, and at the latest count the company has clocked up 3.5 million sessions from iPhone and Android apps. Overseas visitors account for 75% of traffic, up from 73% the year before. It said Russia now gets 1.4 million a month, with robust growth also in Italy, Spain, France and Asia.

Skyscanner now has more than 130 employees, up from around 100 last year, and said it was still “undergoing a recruitment drive”. The company has ambitions to grow to at least 500 employees.

Mr Williams said: “To reach and operate our long-term vision, which is to create a travel service that can connect two people anywhere in the world at any time, using whatever means necessary – planes, trains, buses, cars, taxis, helicopters, whatever it takes – that requires big staff increases, because it means driving huge amounts of data through our systems.”

Earlier this year, Skyscanner acquired tech start-up Zoombu, whose technology links trains, buses and airline timetables, as part of that long-term vision for expansion.

Meanwhile, the company is also poised to open a new regional operation in Singapore this year to capitalise on strong growth in Asia and the Pacific Rim after seeing annual increases in traffic of up to 90% in countries like China, Indonesia, Japan, India and Malaysia.

The idea for Skyscanner grew out of the shared frustration of three IT professionals with a passion for skiing.

Back in 2002, Skyscanner was just an idea to help co-founders Mr Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes find cheap ski breaks on the internet. It has since booked hundreds of thousands of flights.

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