CoStar Group is continuing its aggressive pursuit of CoreLogic, upping its bid price to acquire the real estate analytics company by $6 per share, or an additional $450 million.
Andy Florance | Photo credit: CoStar
Under the revised proposal, CoreLogic shareholders would receive $6 in cash per share in cash and 0.1019 shares of CoStar Group’s common stock in exchange for each share of CoreLogic stock.
The value of the package represents approximately $90 per share based on CoStar’s closing price on February 26, or $97 per share based on the 30-day volume-weighted average share price, the company said in a statement.
The revised offer comes a month after CoreLogic agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners (SPC Agreement) for $6 billion.
“We write to provide you with updated terms of a negotiated transaction, which we are confident constitute a ‘Superior Proposal’ under your existing agreement with Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners,” CoStar CEO Andy Florance wrote, in a letter to CoreLogic Shareholders.
“Since your announcement of the SPC Agreement and our previous letter to you on February 16, 2021, your stock price has remained well above the SPC Agreement’s $80 per share price,” Florance added. “Clearly, your stockholders are holding firm to their support for a transaction between our two companies over the SPC Agreement.”
In the letter, Florance says he expects the CoreLogic Board of Directors to deem CoStar’s bid the “superior proposal” within 48 hours. CoStar’s proposal is worth roughly 1.25 billion more in aggregate value or a $17 per share more than the SPC Agreement, according to Florance.
CoreLogic — which offers a variety of multiple listing services and real estate data products, including the popular digital MLS platform Matrix — could serve as a key cog in CoStar Group’s residential real estate play, of which the company has kept details closely guarded.
CoStar in recent months has moved deeper into the residential real estate space in recent months, first with the acquisition of Homesnap and recently with the acquisition of the domain name “houses.com.” The company already has a significant footprint in both the commercial real estate and rental space, with auction.com and apartments.com among the company’s biggest properties.
CoStar’s more aggressive pitch also comes a week after the company reported 2020 revenue of $1.66 billion, an increase of 18.5 percent from the year prior. The company also reported that 2020 profits fell 27.9 percent to $227.1 million, from $315 million in 2019, in part due to a one-time $59.5 million expense related to the company’s attempted acquisition of rival RentPath.
