Kayak Goes Public

Kayak is now public. The Connecticut company had its initial public offering on Friday. Behind its successful Kayak.com site the company went public and will trade on Nasdaq. The company saw its initial stock prices jump by 16% as trading started Friday morning.

Kayak offered 3.5 million shares initially priced at $26. That IPO raised over $91 million. The tracking symbol for the company is KYAK. Kayak is expected to use the proceeds from the IPO to possibly make new acquisitions and enhancement its website.

Experts in the industry belief the company will make new commercial efforts such as improving the hotel search on its site or expanding the number of markets such as ones outside the U.S.

Kayak’s IPO had first been ready almost two years ago. Plans were to have it ready in November of 2010, but it was then put on hold after an announcement was made by Google, that is had purchased ITA Software. That purchase by Google rocked the entire online travel industry.

Most members of the general public are not aware of what ITA does, but it provides all the technology for the search of airfares that powers sites such as Bing, Kayak, Orbitz, TripAdvisor and dozens of others. Kayak felt it needed to hold off on its IPO when Google purchased ITA in order to focus more on the development of new products.

On Friday, Kayak’s stock closed its first full day at $33.18, up over 27% from its opening of $26.