Domus bets on housing recovery with $1B IPO filing – Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

The parent company of Century 21, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s International Realty filed for a billion-dollar initial public offering on Friday, bucking the recent post-Facebook debut pessimism about IPOs.

New Jersey-based Domus Holdings Corp. didn’t list a ticker symbol nor say which exchange it plans to list on.

But the private equity firm that is the majority owner of Domus, Apollo Global Management, clearly believes that housing in the U.S. is on firmer ground. Apollo bought Realogy, the core of its real estate holdings, in 2006 for $9 billion just as the residential real estate market began to give way.

In 2011, Domus’ real estate operations accounted for about 26 percent of home sales in the U.S.

In its filing, Domus said that it lost $439 million last year, quadruple what it lost in 2010 on flat annual revenue of about $4.1 billion. But its adjusted profit was $571 million.

And its adjusted profit for the latest three-month period was $53 million, up about 20 percent, on slightly higher revenue of $875 million. Its GAAP loss for the quarter was $192 million, down from the previous year.

A number of companies have put off their IPO plans in the wake of the huge drop in value of Facebook stock since the social networking company went public on May 18, but a few, including Domus, iWatt Inc. and Qualys Inc.    are nonetheless making new filings.

via Domus bets on housing recovery with $1B IPO filing – Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal.