Zillow will buy RentJuice for $40M; profits are up – Puget Sound Business Journal

Online real estate company Zillow    announced Wednesday that it will buy San Francisco-based RentJuice Corp. for $40 million in cash. Zillow also posted record revenue for the first quarter of 2012 and a profit of $1.7 million, compared to an $800,000 loss in the same quarter last year.

Profits per share were $0.06, compared to a loss of $0.06 last year.

The stock price was up more than 13 percent to around $41 per share in morning trading Thursday.

The RentJuice acquisition will help the company add “a broad suite of tools and services for rental professionals, to help them market their inventory to renters and manage client relationships,” the company said in a press release.

RentJuice launched in 2009 and has 31 employees. The company has an online and mobile marketplace for rental properties.

Zillow also reported that average monthly users increased by 84 percent to 31.8 million so far this year, up from 17.3 million this time last year.

The company also announced that its mortgage marketplace is seeing increased traffic, up to 2.5 million loan requests this quarter, compared to 1.8 million for the entire year in 2010.

Zillow is predicting revenue to be in the $25.5 to $26.5 million range for the second quarter of 2012.

via Zillow will buy RentJuice for $40M; profits are up – Puget Sound Business Journal.