Lastminute.com
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| Founded | September 2, 1998 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London, England, U.K. |
| Founder(s) |
Martha Lane Fox Brent Hoberman |
| Key people | Fabio Cannavale (CEO) and (Founder) |
| Industry | Travel |
| Parent | Lastminute.com Group |
| Website | lastminute |
| Alexa rank |
 4,157 (as of February 2015[update]) |
| Launched | October 1998 |
| Current status | Trading |
lastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer. The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and was a part of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, part of the dot com bubble and trading on the under the symbol 'LMC'.
lastminute.com was founded in London by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 to offer late holiday deals online. The founders were colleagues at media strategy consultants Spectrum.
By January 2000, the site had more than 500,000 regular users and its offerings had expanded to include travel, gifts and entertainment, with a specialisation in selling distressed inventory.
Prior to its flotation, the company raised a further $31m. It opened offices in Paris, Munich and Stockholm. During the ten months ending December 1999, the company handled £37m of transactions, which generated £330,000 of income.
The shares floated on the London Stock Exchange on 14 March 2000. The shares were placed at 380p, valuing the company at £571m. The price rose on the first day of trading to 511p, giving a valuation of £768m, before falling back to 492.5p later in the day. The paper wealth of the founders of the business went up to around £300m.
Two hundred and fifty thousand private investors had applied for shares in the flotation. 33m shares – 25% of the company – were being offered for sale, the bulk to institutional investors. Private applicants received just 35 shares each.
Two weeks after listing, the share price had dropped to 270p. In the first week of April, the shares dipped below 190p, half the issue price. On Monday, 17 April 2000, after the biggest ever one-day fall in the New York stock market the preceding Friday, £35bn were wiped off the value of the London Stock Exchange. By now, lastminute.com was trading at 30% of its flotation price.
Its share price was rising again when the firm announced its first quarter's results on 6 May 2000. The company had handled £7.16m of transactions, up 68% compared with the previous period. During this period, the company had invested in a new version of the website as well as international expansions. These factors pushed pre-tax losses up from £6m to £11m. The market responded to the better-than-expected figures and the shares closed the day up 8p at 245p. Two weeks later, however, the shares closed at 141p, as concerns over dotcom stocks increased, after boo.com went into liquidation.
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