Travelport sells GTA, what Sabre will do next?

It seems like GDS companies (Amadeus, Sabre and TravelPort) are very busy selling their "non core" assets these days.
Let's do a recap.
On February 09 2011, Amadeus and its owners decide to sell the OTA Opodo to private equity funds AXA and Permira for a transaction worth $630M (€450M). It's worth noting that the valuation of Opodo is 11.7X the EBIDTA recorded by Opodo in 2010.
On March 7 2011, TravelPort and its owner (the private equity fund Blackstone Group and others) decides to sell their ground operator GTA (who has been the leading bedbank for a decade) to the Swiss tour operator Kuoni for a transaction worth $720M (€514M). Note that the transaction has been reported differently by different news site like CNBC, Business Week, Forbes who talk about the $270M. It's a very different figure or a cock up in the TravelPort PR team for sure.


If we take what Travelport announces on their site (or Tnooz reporting), GTA valuation means 8.5X the EBITDA recorded by GTA businesses in 2010. What's more interesting is how much the company has lost in terms of valuation since 2004 where Cendant acquired GTA for $1.1B. Yes you read it right. According to different sources (here and there), this was the deal back in the glorious days where Cendant was snapping some crazy deals like Ebookers, Orbitz, and GTA.
If I read this correctly, it means Travelport and its owners Blackstone is selling the GTA asset at a loss of $380M compared to what it purchased it in late 2004. But in the end does is really matters since Travelport needs to reimburse its bank debt. And quickly if they want to go IPO (good point Dennis!).
So what about Sabre and its private equity owners (TPG and Silver Lake partners), the last GDS who stills owns "non core" assets like Travelocity, Lastminute.com and Zuji. Looking at the trend, I won't be surprised if these companies are currently on the radar of other private equity funds or existing giant OTAs. My instinct is that Sabre will probably sell these companies by the end of the year. There is no reason today why the American GDS has to retain these online companies if their major competitors decided to separate GDS and online travel agencies.
Let's relook at this in a few month time. Stay tuned!