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News Corp Buys Operator of Realtor.com for $950 Million
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Source: Thinkstock
The News Corp offer represents a premium of 37% to Move’s Monday closing price and a majority of the company’s shares must be tendered in order to complete the deal. Once completed, a News Corp-controlled Australian residential property firm REA Group will pay approximately $200 million for a 20% stake in Move. News Corp will retain the rest.
Following the late July announcement of the merger between Zillow Inc. (NASDAQ: Z) and Trulia Inc. (NYSE: TRLA), shares of Move rose to just over $16 a share in late August before settling back down to around $14.50. The company was widely believed to be next in line for an acquisition — it just took a bit longer than many investors had figured.
Move’s big attraction is its relationship with the NAR. According to a comScore report last July, Zillow gets about 54 million unique visitors a month, Trulia gets about 32 million and Realtor.com gets about 24 million. In Tuesday’s announcement the monthly reach of all Move’s websites, including Realtor.com, is said to be 35 million based on internal data. The Realtor.com website also prices its listings lower than the combination of Zillow and Trulia is expected to. When that merger was announced, one analyst estimated that only 15% of real-estate brokers could afford to put listings on the larger sites.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of 2014.
Move’s stock was trading at $20.95, up 37%, over Monday’s closing price of $15.29. The stock’s 52-week range is $9.47 to $18.36.
News Corp’s stock was inactive in Tuesday’s premarket, having closed at $16.80 Monday, in a 52-week range of $15.44 to $18.53.
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