A rare Australian unicorn has just graduated to the ASX, with Siteminder Limited (ASX: SDR) shares commencing trading on Monday.

The stock can be bought and sold on a deferred settlement basis until normal trading begins on Wednesday morning.

SiteMinder operates a global hotel e-commerce platform. The Sydney company — which was a ‘unicorn’ because it was privately owned with a valuation exceeding $1 billion — claims it currently has 32,000 hotels in 150 countries selling, marketing and managing their business on the system.

The initial public offer, priced at $5.06 per share, gave the company a market valuation of $1.36 billion.

The stock was in hot demand in its first moments on market, rocketing up 35% to hit $6.85 at the time of writing.

Chief executive Sankar Narayan thanked his staff, customers, partners and investors for the 15-year journey thus far.

“Today serves as yet another reminder that the world’s innovators and market leaders can emerge from Australia,” he said.

“I am thrilled with the extremely high quality of shareholders who have joined us for our journey ahead. These include many of the biggest and most knowledgeable global and Australian giants in the investment world.”

Read the full article at The Motley Fool