Amadeus Seeks Up To €1.36 Billion in IPO

(Reuters) – Travel and tourism IT firm Amadeus aims to raise up to 1.36 billion euros ($1.86 billion) when it returns to the Madrid stock exchange on later this month in Europe’s largest IPO this year.

Amadeus, with 2.46 billion euros of revenues in 2009, was delisted four years ago when BC Partners and Cinven bought their stake from airlines Air France, Lufthansa and Iberia in a deal worth 4.4 billion euros.

Now Amadeus will offer 98.9 million shares in a primary offering and 36.9 million existing shares to institutional investors, representing 25 percent of the firm, it said in its IPO prospectus lodged with stock market regulator CNMV.

It aims for a free float of about 30 percent.

The price range for the fresh listing has been set between 9.2 and 12.2 euros per share, giving the company an enterprise value of between 7.3 billion and 8.4 billion euros, nearly double that of the 2005 private-equity buy-out.

“Interest in this listing is very high, but the range is massive and wider than expected,” a trader in Spain said.

Air France (AIRF.PA) with 23.1 percent and Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) with 11.6 percent will offload parts of their stakes, while cash-rich Iberia, which last week sealed a merger deal with British Airways (BAY.L), will maintain its 11.6 percent.

Amadeus hired Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley as global bookrunners for the IPO last year.

It recently decided to push ahead with the April IPO despite a raft of failed listings across Europe, including airline ticketing rival Travelport which called off a $1.8 billion London float in February.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski, Robert Hetz and Jonathan Gleave; Editing by David Cowell and Louise Heavens)