Zillow Inc.'s quarterly revenue topped estimates and the online real estate marketplace said it anticipates its acquisition of Trulia Inc. will close as early as Tuesday.
The Seattle-based company's fourth-quarter revenue rose 58% to $92.3 million, Zillow said in a statement Friday. That exceeded the average analysts' estimate of $89.9 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Profit excluding items was 24 cents a share, compared with analysts' projection for 25 cents.
"We expect to close the acquisition of Trulia as early as Feb. 17," Zillow Chief Executive Officer Spencer Rascoff said in a statement.
Zillow said it received an official notification from the Federal Trade Commission on Friday that the agency had closed its investigation of the deal.
The Trulia deal led to $8.1 million in acquisition-related costs over the quarter, Zillow said, higher than the company's forecast of $5 million to $6 million. That translated to an impact of 20 cents a share. As a result, Zillow's fourth-quarter net loss was $10.9 million, compared with net income of $2.71 million a year earlier.
Zillow agreed to purchase Trulia in July, in an all-stock deal then valued at $3.5 billion. The deal positions a combined Zillow and Trulia to capture a larger share of digital real estate ads as more people shift house hunting onto the Web and property agents deploy more marketing dollars onto the Internet.
Based on Zillow's offer to buy each Trulia share for 0.444 of each Zillow share, the deal is now worth about $1.78 billion. Zillow rose 1.7% on Friday to close at $106.50 in New York.
