Vacasa, the US-headquartered holiday home rental service that counts insurance firm Assurant as an investor, agreed yesterday to merge with publicly listed special purpose acquisition company TPG Pace Solutions.
The deal implies a pro forma equity valuation of $4.5bn for Vacasa, which will take the spot on the Nasdaq Capital Market acquired by TPG Pace Solutions in a $250m initial public offering in April this year.
The transaction will be boosted by a $200m equity investment by TPG, the private equity group that owns TPG Pace Solutions sponsor TPG Pace Group, in addition to unnamed mutual funds and institutional investors.
Founded in 2009, Vacasa runs an online marketplace for holiday accommodation, listing properties across some 400 destinations covering North America, Belize and Costa Rica. It has projected over $750m in revenue for 2021.
Matt Roberts, Vacasa’s CEO, said: The integration of our purpose-built technology with our local, expert service teams brings exceptional care and greater returns to our homeowners, delivers a consistent and reliable experience to our guests, and helps us offer a large supply of professionally managed homes for our distribution partners.
“As more second homeowners share their homes with guests for the first time, and travellers increasingly prefer to stay at vacation rentals, we believe our partnership with TPG Pace Solutions will help accelerate our growth and the enhancement of our technology offerings for homeowners and guests.”
The company had raised a total of $527m as of a late 2019 when technology investment firm Silver Lake led a $319m round also backed by Riverwood Capital, Level Equity and NewSpring at a valuation topping $1bn.
Riverwood Capital had previously led a $64m round for Vacasa in 2018 that also featured Level Equity, NewSpring and Assurant Growth Investing, the Assurant investment vehicle since evolved into Assurant Ventures.
Vacasa had raised $104m in series B funding from Riverwood Capital, Level Equity and NewSpring the previous year, after Assurant had added $5m to close a $40m series A round also featuring Level Equity in 2016.
