Holiday rental giant HomeAway would prefer to stay as a privately owned business for the foreseeable future because it is more fun, says CEO Brian Sharples.
In addition, there is no pressure from the company's existing (and generous) investors to switch its corporate model just yet.
The comments from Sharples were made during a brief visit to the UK today and come just a few weeks after Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told a conference that he expected HomeAway to go public this year or in 2011.
Reacting to the comments and the resulting speculation, Sharples says: "I am trying to keep HomeAway private as long as I can. It is more fun, there is more flexibility and we can continue to grow aggressively."
He says that the investment group led by Technology Crossover Ventures that bought into the company in late-2008 are "extremely supportive" of its current strategy and have not exerted any pressure to take HomeAway public and realise their investment.
Eventually there will probably be an IPO ("big enough, profitable enough"), he concedes, but hints that he would rather stay focused as CEO "100% of the time on the business" rather than the inevitable 30% of the time on matters arising from public corporate ownership.
"We will make decision to take HomeAway public when we have accomplished everything we want to."
Part of what is left to do is the ongoing strategy to launch in new markets - a policy until now, Sharples admits, has been "aggressive" but fruitful in terms of expanding its reach.
However he concedes that there will be fewer acquisitions and more often than not there will be launches of the existing HomeAway brand in new countries, such as it did Spain.
HomeAway bought the best companies in the countries where it wanted to expand, he says, but with rental inventory already on the system there is less need to buy a company for the properties on its books.
Sharples believes one of the primary reasons online travel agencies have continued to shy away from investing heavily in the rental market is because of conflicts of interest.
The large OTAs are heavily dependent on revenue from their hotel product and therefore have to nurture and maintain good relations with the chains and individual owners.
Sharples says shifting or sharing focus to the rental industry may upset hotel partners and may have influenced their decision.
Finally it appears that booking functionality will continue in the short term to be the domain only of the larger property management companies - those that have the supporting technology - on the system.
However, Sharples says says its recent acquisition Bedandbreakfast.com was also bought for some of the booking technology behind the scenes, "which are learning from".