Between gossip and rumors and gossip and more rumors, the Silicon Valley day-to-day is so dramatic Bravo is turning it into not one but two TV shows. No joke. That doesn’t convince you? Well, how about this?
Anyways, I’m in the middle of tracking down a huge funding story but want to get a (separate) rumor du jour out there to you guys, because I’m experimenting with this whole “process journalism” format and have asked several people at both parties involved for more info, to no avail.
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Real estate listings site Zillow reported its first earnings as a public company today, after debuting on the NASDAQ in mid-July. Zillow revealed record revenues of $15.8 million in the second quarter, up 116% year-over-year. Net Income for the quarter came in at $1.6 million, compared to a net loss of $2 million in the same period a year ago and a net loss of $0.8 in the first quarter of 2011. This quarter marked the company’s first quarter of GAAP profitability
Zillow saw record Marketplace Revenues of $9.7 million, up 269% year-over-year. Premier Agent subscribers, which contribute to Marketplace revenues, totaled 13,385 at June 30, 2011, up 180% from 4,777 at the end of the second quarter of 2010. Display revenues increased 30% to $6.1 million from $4.7 million in the second quarter of 2010. → Read More
It’s time for TechCrunched, where we take some of the most popular stories running on TechCrunch and put them together for you in a quick video package. This week was a big one for Apple, with stellar earnings and new products. Google+ took the iTunes App sStore by storm. And Zillow had a big IPO. If something grabs your attention, make sure to click on the links below to get more information.
Also, we’ve created a TechCrunched podcast so you can download episodes and subscribe on iTunes. → Read More
Shares of real estate listings site Zillow began trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol ‘Z’ today, opening at $60 per share. This gives the company a whopping $1.6 billion valuation. Zillow priced its IPO at $20 per share yesterday, after upping the pricing of its IPO to $16 to $18 per share, from the initial range of $12 to $14 per share. While the stock price soared to $60 per share in first trade but has dropped to $43 per share. Zillow raised $69 million in the offering.
According to Experian Hitwise, Zillow.com is the third most visited Real Estate site in the U.S and received 5.36% of Real Estate visits in March 2011, which is a 53% increase compared to March 2010. While Zillow is growing traffic, the company has been taking a loss in terms of net income for the past three years. But the company is cash-flow positive. → Read More
Real estate listings site Zillow has just priced its IPO at $20 per share, giving the company a $539 million valuation. Last week, the company upped the pricing of its IPO to $16 to $18 per share, from the initial range of $12 to $14 per share. Zillow, which will begin trading under the symbol “Z” on the NASDAQ tomorrow morning, will raise as much as $79.6 million in the offering.
The number of changes in Zillow’s pricing (and the steady increase in share value pre-IPO) is similar to LinkedIn and Pandora’s pricing increases. These companies saw fluctuations in the share value post-IPO (though both companies have rebounded in July). Other tech companies like HomeAway, Fusion-IO and Yandex didn’t post a number of changed in pre-IPO pricing and have seen steady share values.
Real estate listings site Zillow has just filed additional documents with the SEC indicating the initial range for the company’s upcoming IPO. Zillow’s price range will start at $12 to $14 per share, giving the company a $378 million valuation. The company aims to raise as much as $55.7 million in the IPO. Zillow will begin trading under the symbol “Z” on the NASDAQ.
Zillow, which initially filed its S-1 in April, currently lists over 100 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market. Zillow launched a mortgage marketplace in 2008, and subsequently expanded into rentals and mobile. → Read More
Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next.
Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation. → Read More
As we reported earlier, Pandora will start trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange under the single letter symbol “P”. By doing so, it becomes the first Silicon Valley consumer Internet company to join the exclusive one-letter stock ticker symbol club.
That club was once reserved for the big blue-chip industrial companies: Chrysler (C), Ford (F), Sears (S), U.S. Steel (X), and Woolworth (Z). Of that list, only Ford and U.S. Steel remain. Chrysler was acquired by Daimler and lost the C to Citibank. Sears lost the S to Sprint Nextel. Woolworth went out of business.
Of course, there are already several tech companies in the single letter club. Agilent Technologies (A), NetSuite (N), Sprint Nextel (S), and AT&T (T). But none are pure consumer-based Internet companies. → Read More
As expected, real estate listings and search site Zillow has just filed its S-1, which indicates that the company will be pursuing a public offering. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, according to the SEC filing. It’s important to note that this is a placeholder amount that could change in the coming months. It appears that Citigroup is one of the underwriters of the IPO (others include Allen & Company, ThinkEquity, Needham & Company, and First Washington Corp.).
Zillow, which saw 19 million visitors in March, is now listing 100 million U.S. homes, including homes for sale, homes for rent and homes not currently on the market. For the years ended December 31, 2008, 2009 and 2010, the company generated revenues of $10.6 million, $17.5 million and $30.5 million, representing year-over-year growth of 49%, 65% and 74%, respectively. Unfortunately, in terms of income, Zillow has been taking a loss for the past three years, according to the filing. → Read More
Real estate listings and search site Zillow has acquired Postlets, a online real estate listing creation and distribution platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2005, Postlets allows individual real estate agents, property managers and landlords to create listings and send them to 13 real estate and social media websites. The free platform itself makes syndication of listings easy. It allows you to create a listing and then automatically distribute the posting across the Web. Postlets also allows agents to create a personalized, customized landing page to showcase all postings in are centralized. → Read More
The real estate bust is still dragging down the economy, but some startups are making the best of a bad situation. Real estate search engine Trulia, is still growing by zeroing in on subscription services for real estate agents. CEO Peter Flint tells me the company edged into profitability two months ago—six years after the company was founded. He won’t give specific numbers, but says that revenues are doubling from a year ago and almost half comes from real estate agents who pay for Trulia Local Ads and the premium Trulia Pro service to help market their listings. → Read More
Real estate listings and search site Zillow has named Spencer Rascoff as chief executive officer. Co-founder Rich Barton, who has been the company’s CEO since it was founded in 2005, will take on the role of executive chairman of the board of directors. Fellow co-founder Lloyd Frink will move from president to chief strategy officer.
Rascoff joined Zillow in 2005 as one of the original executive team members and has been serving as chief operating officer since October 2008. As COO, Rascoff has been responsible for the majority of Zillow’s day-to-day operations for the past two years, overseeing marketing, finance, partner relations, legal and human resources as well as the execution of the company’s recent partnership with Yahoo to power for-sale listings for the company. Prior to his role as COO, Rascoff was chief financial officer and vice president of marketing. → Read More
Yahoo is outsourcing yet another product to an outside company. Tonight, Yahoo is announcing an exclusive partnership with real estate listings and search site Zillow. As part of the partnership, which will go into effect later this year, Zillow will power all for-sale listings on Yahoo Real Estate. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Zillow’s will integrate its 4 million for-sale listings on Yahoo’s real estate site, where users will still be able to search for home listings by the same parameters as on Zillow’s site, such as by geography, price and other criteria. For-sale listings placed on Zillow will automatically appear on Yahoo Real Estate. → Read More
Real estate listings and search site Zillow,</a is launching an Android app to allows users to search its 95 million listings on the go. The startup has seen considerable success with its iPhone app, which launched in April of last year and has seen 1 million downloads with more than 2 million homes viewed each month on the app. The Android app is expected to hit the Android Market by tomorrow.
Zillow’s Android app has similar functionality to the iPhone app. The Android app uses GPS technology to find and follow users on an aerial map, and displays values, homes for sale, homes for rent, listings and recently-sold data on the homes around their local area. Users can also search for homes, even if they’re not nearby, utilizing the Android’s voice search capabilities. You speak the address, neighborhood, zip code or city into the phone and the app will instantly take the user to the location on the map. → Read More
Zillow, a popular real-estate listings site, recently tweaked the pricing model in its marketplace for mortgages, angering many of the lenders who pay Zillow for customer leads. A few weeks ago, the site announced that it will be introducing a new pricing model for these leads to lenders.
Zillow’s mortgage marketplace, which launched in 2008, lets borrowers submit loan requests for mortgages and then review quotes provided by lenders. Basically, lenders will be able to submit any number of loan quotes for free, but will be required to pay Zillow a “market-priced fee” when any borrowers contact them regarding their quotes. When a contact is made, the lender will be charged a market-priced fee. → Read More
The economy is in the hole, and real estate is in an even deeper hole. What better time to invest in a real estate search engine? Shasta Ventures just led an $8 million series B financing in Roost, a real-estate search engine that is grabbing data from MLS listings (actually from something called the IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, which is a close proxy to MLS listings). As a result, Roost claims to have more comprehensive and accurate listings in the cities it covers than competing real-estate search engines such as Trulia and Zillow.
Yet Roost’s traffic barely registers. It is much smaller than Trulia, Zillow, or Redfin (which I’ve charted as a comparison below because Redfin also is not yet nationwide). → Read More
The largest Multiple Listing Service system, MRIS, covers real estate listings from 60,000 professionals in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. (Maryland, Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania). Like their sister MLS organizations, they hate services like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia which give everday consumers access to real estate information.
But they don’t hate it so much that they won’t compete.
MRIS is launching a beta version of a service called HomesDatabase that shows MLS listings. For now only homes covered in their region are shown, but they hope to partner with the other MLS systems to create a complete database covering the U.S. → Read More
The layoff train continues: Zillow CEO Richard Barton reports 42% year over year visitor increases and 25% layoffs. The last time we updated Crunchbase Zillow had 155 employees, so it sounds like at least 35 former employees are now looking for a job.
Richard’s blog post:
This week we are reducing our workforce by 25%. This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.
San Francisco, CA
