Expedia may be acquiring Travelocity from its parent company Sabre Corp. The possibility came up in a note today from Oppenheimer analyst Manish Hemrajani, who pointed out that the FTC granted an early termination notice to Sabre and Expedia on a Hart-Scott-Rodino Act filing yesterday.
The early termination notice will allow the two companies to get around a mandatory waiting period in the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act and move ahead with an acquisition of the company named in the filing — in this case, Travelocity.
Barring a press release from either firm, Hemrajani said “we can only opine on the probability that Expedia is in the process of acquiring the entire Travelocity asset,” according to a report by Benzinga.
Expedia, for its part, didn’t have much to say. A company spokesperson told GeekWire that it received early termination from the FTC, but that the company has “no additional information to share at this time.”
The news comes almost a year and a half after Expedia initially agreed to provide all of the back-end technology for Travelocity’s services in the U.S. in exchange for half of its revenue. A full acquisition of Travelocity would give Expedia a larger reach in the travel search industry, and help the company better position itself against rivals like Priceline and Kayak.