Thetrainline.com, the UK-focussed rail booking and technology business and one of the biggest e-commerce sites in the country, has announced plans to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Reports suggest that the IPO could be worth £500 million.
According to the intention to float document, the trainline.com is one of the UK's biggest online travel retailers and can hold its own in the overall e-commerce space.
In terms of visits, it is second only to booking.com in the travel retail space (Hitwise data October 2014) while its gross transaction value in the UK e-commerce sector is only bettered by amazon.co.uk, Tesco, ebay.co.uk and Sainsbury's (Euromonitor data for 2013).
Mobile is identified as one of its strengths - 66% of total visits to the group's consumer site in its last quarter came from mobile devices, 38% via its apps. Total downloads for its IoS, Android and Windows apps is 7.4m. The site and apps get more than 20 million visits per month.
Around a third of ticket purchases from mobile or the apps are for travel within the next 24 hours, compared with 17% of desktop purchases.
As well as its thetrainline.com consumer brand, the business is also a technology provider to train operators and powers many of the UK's rail.com sites. It also has a dedicated B2B unit which works with TMCs. SMEs and corporates.
It also has recently set up a dedicated international business to look at opportunities within Europe. The long-term plan is for a pan-European consumer-facing one-stop-shop for cross-border travel within Europe.
Back in the UK, rail bookings in the UK is still predominantly an offline business, and the offline-to-online growth potential could be what excites investors. Online rail bookings in the UK accounted for 27% of the total market in 2014 with a value of £2.4 billion.