Zillow Q1 Results Beat View, Shares Rise

(RTTNews) - Shares of Zillow, Inc. (Z) gained more than 3 percent in extended trades Wednesday after the real estate information website's revenue as well as adjusted earnings for the first quarter beat analysts' estimates. However, the company reported a wider loss for the quarter on higher advertising expenses.

Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow, said, "The first quarter was a terrific start to 2014 with record traffic, revenue and results that exceeded our expectations and strengthened our lead in the category."

Seattle, Washington-based Zillow reported net loss for the first quarter of $6.26 million or $0.16 per share, wider than net loss of $3.75 million or $0.11 per share in the same period last year. The company noted that the wider loss for the quarter was mainly due to planned increased in advertising expenses.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the quarter was $873 thousand or $0.02 per share, compared to adjusted net income of $399 thousand or $0.01 per share in the prior-year quarter.

On average, 16 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report loss of $0.08 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenues for the quarter surged 70 percent to $66.24 million from $38.97 million in the year-ago period and beat analysts' consensus estimate of $63.21 million.

Marketplace revenue for the quarter soared 72 percent from the previous-year quarter to $53.36 million and accounted for 81 percent of total revenue for the quarter.

Total costs and expenses rose 70 percent from the year-ago period to $72.72 million.

Zillow's traffic hit a record of nearly 79 million monthly unique users on mobile and Web in April 2014, up 50 percent year-over-year. Average monthly unique users during the quarter were a record 70.67 million, up 51 percent year-over-year.

Premier Agent subscriber count grew 56 percent, adding 4,654 quarterly subscribers for a total of 52,968 subscribers at the end of the quarter. Average monthly revenue per subscriber was a record $286, representing an increase of 10 percent over first quarter 2013.

Looking ahead, Rascoff said, "We're continuing to ramp our marketing investment, and plan to be firing on all cylinders through the busy spring and summer home shopping season, which also helps increase value and opportunity for our agent and broker partners."

Z closed Wednesday's regular trading session at $93.63, down $9.29 or 9.03 percent on a volume of 5.81 million shares. However, in after-hours, the stock gained $3.37 or 3.60 percent to $97.00.