CoStar Ups Bid To Buy CoreLogic After Being Spurned For Lower Offer
CoStar Group isn't giving up on its efforts to acquire residential real estate data firm CoreLogic.
After CoreLogic shunned CoStar's previous offer in favor of a lower-priced deal with two private equity firms, CoStar increased its acquisition bid Tuesday. CoStar CEO Andy Florance penned a letter to CoreLogic's board of directors detailing a proposal to buy the company in an all-stock transaction valued at $95.76/share, CoStar announced Tuesday. The offer would value CoreLogic at $6.9B.
The proposal comes after CoreLogic entered into an agreement on Feb. 4 to sell itself to Stone Point Capital and Insight Partners for $80/share, or roughly $6B in cash. It selected that deal over CoStar's previous all-stock proposal of $86/share, a bid first reported by Bloomberg that CoStar confirmed in its letter Tuesday.
"The decision to accept the lower $80 per share bid from a sponsor instead indicates a failure to appropriately value the synergies of our proposal as a strategic bidder," Florance wrote in the letter.
CoreLogic also received acquisition offers from private equity firms Warburg Pincus and GTCR, plus a pair of activist investors, Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group. CoreLogic didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
CoStar's decision to enter into a bidding war over the company comes after another potential acquisition fell through late last year. RentPath terminated its $588M deal to be acquired by CoStar on Dec. 29, after the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to block the acquisition in November.
The D.C.-based commercial real estate data giant, with a market cap of $37B, has made several other acquisitions over the last two years. In 2019, it acquired hotel research firm STR and student housing marketplace Off Campus Partners. Last year, it acquired online real estate auction platform Ten-X and residential technology firm Homesnap.
