Trulia, Inc. (NYSE: TRLA, “Trulia”),announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Market Leader, Inc. (NASDAQ: LEDR, “Market Leader”), for approximately $355 million, or an implied price of $11.33 per share (based on Trulia’s closing share price on Tuesday, May 7, 2013).
MarketLeader.com you might remember bought the domain name RealEstate.com back just in 2011 for $8.25 million dollars.
At the time we noted that the company only had a market cap of $55 Million dollars.
Less than 2 years later the company looks like its being bought by Trulia for 7 times that amount
Market Leader’s shareholders will receive $6.00 in cash and 0.1553 shares of Trulia’s common stock for each share of Market Leader common stock under the terms of the agreement that was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
The purchase price represents an 18% premium to Market Leader’s closing share price of $9.61 on Tuesday, May 7, 2013.
The acquisition is subject to the approval of the holders of a majority of the shares of Market Leader’s common stock, as well as customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
That’s a huge increase in market cap in such a short time, and arguably the domain name acquisition accounts for some of that gain.
And at the time they also acquired another 400 domain names, not much doubt this small company really benefited from the acquisition of RealEstate.com
This is a game changer for Trulia to compete with Zillow for aggregating real estate content and garnering unique visitor traffic. Both of these companies are competing for generic and long tail real estate search.
When Market Leader acquired RealEstate.com from Lending Tree for $8.25M, this brand could have sold for quite a bit more in the open market.
-Peter Niederman
Trulia won’t probably rebrand to RealEstate.com, but will surely benefit from pointing the domain to its main website.
Add this to the acquisition of Cloud.com which had a similar bump for5 the shares of citrix.com
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/citrix-makes-a-run-at-the-cloud-07142011.html
We also see it when Salesforece.com biught ZenDesk.com on the cheap then rebranded as Desk.com
As I have been using on my landing page copy:
According to Forbes, “It is no coincidence that companies with the best domain names often tend to rise to the top of their space. Foursquare won vs. Gowalla, Loopt, and others. Wesabe lost out to Mint.com; its founder later wrote that his awkward name was a key reason. A startup called Corpora made headlines for all the wrong reasons after tech bloggers ran an image search to find the company logo.
Domain names are key to your email identity, and fundamental to your marketing and even capital-raising. Your brand is what sets you apart from your competition in the minds of customers. Brand recognition is vital in securing business; a buyer can’t purchase your product if he can’t remember who you are or how to find you. The best companies are those whose brands are easy to remember and instantly recognizable.”
According to Andrew Rosner,”Owning a premium domain gives a startup instant credibility and gets them one step closer (a big step) to getting serious fund raising.” And I would add a “swifter acquisition.”
All doubt has been removed that seven-eight-nine figure pricing is well justified on these kinds of names alone
I think it is more reflective of the general consensus that the real estate market has regained some health and that lead gen for agents will continue to evolve, I think you could easily argue that Trulia’s brand is superior to realestate.com at this point, LEDR did a great job in securing the RealEstate.com domain from lending tree a few years ago when they were shredding non strategic assets, considering this is a company that got started with the housevalues.com media blitz they have weathered a lot of changes to the market, the flipside is that almost all of the companies that work in this space have really struggle to make money, look at move.com, zillow, etc so it sure makes the move by trulia worth watching.
Market Leaders employ .COM Profit Centers that enable them to expand and employ less valuable 400 or so names such as Realestate.com has done here.
We see things very differently. 80% of your Marketing budget needs to be allocated to a well (Internally Branded) .COM Profit Center. The rest of the 20% should be held in reserve till absolutely needed. There is no rush to pay the Ad men unless needed. Remember 100s if not 1000s will be in a search engines line up.
What many business owners are not told by their SEO manipulator friends, is this key boondoggle of SEO Manipulated Marketing , and it is this !
Your businesses most dreaded competitors are often on the same Search Engine page as your companies are and are just one Click away from you as a choice.
Now come on now, do you think this is Smart Marketing?
It may be smart for SEO manipulators ! But a very stupid choice for the business owner, We think.
This phenomonon can be TOTALLY, avoided by using Pure Play Direct Navigation .COM Generics,ONLY.
Seriously, the Smart Marketers are not swallowing the SEO Manipulated Search Engine Kool-Aid here.
The Candid truth of this matter is the End-Users will find that Branding Internally, not Externally, through the use of a (Pure Play .COM site), will enjoy a residual recall response from Consumers at the Browser.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Trulia wanted Market Leader’s software platform for agents more than anything else. Nobody else in the RE industry has anything like it and is able to monetize agents like they do.
@ DropHawk
R. E. = ” Trulia wanted Market Leader’s software platform for agents more than anything else. Nobody else in the RE industry has anything like it and is able to monetize agents like they do. ”
Yah Right !
What is it with you people that dont get the awesome power of .COM Powerhouse Addresses ?
Business.com gets bought out for multi millions and on and on ETc, Etc. and you still come up with Lame excuses. Get with REALITY.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
This is a KEY CONCEPT you need to grasp.
Prime .COM Domain Foundations are currently the conduit for Trillions of Revenue Dollars. There are no limits to the actual value of some Domain Names. Those who scoff at the prices of some Virtual Business Foundations, just don’t know all the metrics involved in the End Users Mind, as well as their Key Strategic value in unlocking Mass Marketing Principles
.COM Profit Centers collectively have funneled more currency transactions via their Foundations than any other Asset Class in History.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
its good news for dot com domains
but i highly doubt realestate.com is the reason for the price
actually id say Trulia will continue with Trulia and hold realestate.com as a defensive move
in regards to dot com being “dot com profit centres”…
Jeff did you see Frank is selling 35,000 dot com profit centres, and do you know why? its because they DONT MAKE A PROFIT AND END USERS DONT WANT THEM because they’re too long tail to build a business on and 99% of them aren’t worth much more than registration price
please quitely quit off with this dot com profit centre silliness
@JEFF SCHNEIDER,
Yes! For the profit center of the with not for .com it will and must be the true !!! Some will say to go with the for with them and to them for the .com will profit all the more true for me and many !!!
Will the with out for the more to get it some with .com ??? I do not know either ???
The .com profit center is must will have always regardless of naysayers !!!
– WSJ
@JEFF SCHNEIDER,
Yes, it is for the Virtual Business Foundations of the usebiz.com BRAND that is the most powerful for it was .com Profit Centers that will be had with them/ not for them !!!
It will be key for concepts to grasp the use biz Virtual Business Foundations for them to trust actual values for the key Mass Marketing Principles !!!
– WSJ
@JEFF SCHNEIDER,
In Trulia’s conference call yesterday to discuss the details of the acquisition of LEDR and the SaaS platform and WHY they see value in them, they didn’t even mention RealEstate.com (that’s how important it is to them, lol)
Go ahead and listen to the call yourself (but I’m sure you won’t and will just keep trolling!) – http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/g8ts73yu/lan/en
MarketLeader.com got an incredible deal with the domain RealEstate.com but it isn’t even a blip on their revenue statement or the RE industry.
Seymour,
DropHawk was being sarcastic.
and WorldStarJobs is trolling Jeff.
“hijacked by an extremist and turned it in to a farce.”
Dammit, and I cannot read farce-y.