Zillow Follows Saturday Night Live Spoof With Record Profit
Bloomberg 2/10/2021 Patrick Clark
(Bloomberg) Zillow Group Inc. has cemented its role in the pandemic-era zeitgeist, with “Saturday Night Live” poking fun at homebound millennials who lust after online home listings.
The growing popularity of the company’s websites and apps has also earned the company record profits during the fourth quarter, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $170 million, according to a statement on Wednesday.
That beat the average analyst estimate of $125 million and represented a wide swing from a $3.2 million loss a year earlier period. The results sent shares surging as much as 13% to $193.39. The company’s stock had already jumped more than 600% since bottoming out in March.
Zillow Group tops Q4 estimates with $789M in revenue as housing boom drives record traffic
February 16, 2021 at 10:26 pm
Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota)
Seattle-based Zillow Group beat analyst estimates for its fourth quarter earnings, reporting $789 million in revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.44. Analysts expected revenue of $740 million and earnings per share of $0.27.
Zillow on Wednesday also announced that it will pay $500 million to acquire ShowingTime, a Chicago-based real estate company that sells software to facilitate home showings.
Zillow is benefiting from a strong U.S. housing market that gained nearly $2.5 trillion in value last year, the most since 2005, according to the company’s analysis. Median sale prices are up 13% year-over-year, and the number of homes sold is up 20%, according to Redfin data. Low mortgage rates coupled with strong demand and low supply are driving tailwinds for the real estate industry.
The total number of Realtor associations and multiple listing services (MLS) declined over the past year, even as the total number of Realtors boomed, data published Tuesday by real estate consulting and research firm T3 Sixty confirmed.
It’s the continuing result of a multi-year trend of consolidation according to the Organized Real Estate 200 (ORE 200), which is the second part of T3 Sixty’s Real Estate Almanac and a ranking of all U.S. state and local Realtor associations and all U.S. MLSs by membership size.
“Every year in the ORE 200, we track how organized real estate is growing and changing, and 2021 highlights the local Realtor association and MLS growth and consolidation we’ve been hearing about,” Clint Skutchan, T3 Sixty vice president of organized real estate, said in a statement.
"You used to want sex, but you're in your late 30s now . You need Zillow," according to a mock commercial that aired this weekend on "Saturday Night Live."
Inman Connect
From online showings to all-digital signings and closings, the digital transaction has fully come into its own. All month, Inman examines the companies and technologies driving this new world of digital transaction.
Keep an eye on the transformation on Wall Street. It could hit close to home, before you know it.
The Economist described it this way: “Information technology is being used to make trading free, shift information flows and catalyze new business models, transforming how markets work.”
Housing is another big market, estimated at $32 trillion in size, which is affected by the same forces and not immune to these sorts of changes.