Zillow Raising $130M Through Secondary Share Sale

Online real estate service-provider Zillow, the most recent Seattle-area tech company to hit the public stock market, is seeking to raise round $130 million by selling off nearly 3.2 million common shares. Several insiders, including co-founders Lloyd Frink and Rich Barton, also are cashing out some Zillow stock.

That’s a much bigger haul than the roughly $70 million raised through Zillow’s IPO last July. The stock has done well since then, giving Zillow a market capitalization of about $1.2 billion. Shares in Zillow (NASDAQ: [[ticker:Z]]) were up slightly in after-hours trading Wednesday.

In a regulatory filing, Zillow says it intends to use the cash for the ever-vague “general corporate purposes.” We have seen Zillow spend in recent months on acquisitions, including rental listings company RentJuice and online marketing provider Diverse Solutions.

Zillow makes most of its money by selling digital services to people in the real estate business, including include subscription fees for real estate agents and charges for lenders to participate in the company’s Mortgage Marketplace. The company also still makes some money by selling ads on its websites, which attract millions of consumers interested in checking out home values and shopping for properties.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.