(By Balachander) Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE:RLGY), a provider of real estate services, raised $1.1 billion in its initial public offering after pricing the shares at the high end of its planned range and its shares jumped as much as 26 percent on their debut.
The Parsippany, New Jersey-based company - controlled by Apollo Global Management LLC (APO) - priced its IPO of 40 million shares at $27 apiece, at the top end of its estimated range of $23 to $27.
The IPO price gave the company an initial market cap of roughly $3.5 billion.
The company expects to net proceeds of roughly $1.02 billion from the offering.
For the six-months ended June 30, Realogy posted a net loss of $216 million on revenue of $2.18 billion. This is compared with a net loss of $258 million on revenue of $2.01 billion in the same period of last year.
In 2011, the company was involved in roughly 26 percent of domestic existing home sale transaction volume that involved a real estate brokerage firm, a regulatory filing showed.
In the first eight months of 2012, Realogy's volume of completed home sales increased 13 percent.
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), existing home sale transaction volume for August 2012 increased about 20 percent from the year-ago period. Further, the most recent NAR forecast estimates that the volume of existing home sales will grow 14 percent for 2012 and a further 14 percent in 2013.
Realogy, which was acquired by Apollo Global Management in 2006 for about $9 billion, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "RLGY."
Goldman Sachs (GS) and J.P. Morgan (JPM) served as lead underwriters for the offering.
The stock hit a high of $33.98 in early trade on Thursday.