Real estate website Trulia files for $75 million IPO
Trulia Inc., which runs real estate website Trulia.com, filed for an initial public offering Friday that could help the San Francisco company raise up to $75 million.
In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trulia did not say how many shares it planned to sell or how they would be priced. The company, which noted in its filing that it could raise up to $75 million, said it plans to list under the ticker TRLA on the New York Stock Exchange.
Trulia offers services on the Web and mobile applications aimed at prospective home buyers, sellers or renters as well as the real estate professionals trying to attract them as clients. The company keeps a searchable database of some 110 million properties, including 4.5 million homes for sale and rent.
Listings come paired with information on nearby schools, crime rates and local amenities and are also paired with user-generated content.
Trulia competes with Zillow, a Seattle-based online real estate company that went public last summer.
In the six months ended June 30, Trulia had 22 million unique visitors, compared with 5 million in the first half of 2009. More than 360,000 of them are active real estate professionals.
More than 4.3 million unique users visited Trulia via mobile in the first half of the year – up 176% compared with the same period last year.
Most Trulia users take advantage of the site’s free functions. But the company also makes money off of more than 21,500 paying subscribers, up from 2,398 subscribers three years ago.
Display advertising sales also contributed to Trulia’s $38.5 million in revenue last year, though the company reported a loss of $6.2 million. In 2010, Trulia reported a $3.8 million loss and $19.8 million in revenue. So far this year, the company has $29 million in revenue but a $7.6 million loss.
Overall, Trulia estimates that the residential real estate industry in the U.S. – which it said is “undergoing a profound transformation” with the rise of technology – accounts for more than a trillion dollars in annual spending.
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