Eyeing An IPO, Kayak 2011 Revenue Up 32 Percent To $225M; Net Income Up 21 Percent

Travel search giant Kayak just posted new revenue numbers for the fourth quarter and full year 2011 in a new S-1 filing with the SEC. As we heard last September, Kayak put its IPO plans on hold until market conditions improve. Now that the markets are more stabilized, it should be interesting to see when Kayak makes the push to become a public company. For the year, Kayak generated $224.5 million of revenues, up 32 percent from 2010.

Net income for the year was $9.7 million, up 21 percent from 2010’s net income of $8 million For the fourth quarter, Kayak saw a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue, posting $53.9 million in Q4 2011 sales. In contrast, revenue grew 28 percent in the third quarter.

But the company says that typically its highest revenue quarters are the second and third quarters.

Kayak says it finished 2011 with 899 million user queries processes for travel information, representing growth of 42 percent from 2010. For 2011, Kayak had 7 million downloads, up over 70 percent from 2010.

Despite the IPO being on hold, Kayak has been consistently trying to improve its core product and add additional functionality. The company has been heads down on product development and improving customer experience over the past few months, as the company battles with Google in the travel search space.

In December, Kayak redesigned its iPad app and consolidated the app with its iPhone cousin. The company’s website most recently got a big UI upgrade, creating a more universal and comprehensive consumer experience across all Kayak platforms: web, mobile web and apps. And the search engine just debuted direct booking for flights.