CoStar Group – CSGP – To acquire LoopNet

CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP), commercial real estate’s leading provider of information and analytic services, announced today the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has approved a consent order, clearing the way for the completion of the merger of CoStar and LoopNet that was previously announced on April 27, 2011. The waiting period imposed by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act was terminated upon the approval of the FTC Commissioners. The merger is expected to close on or about April 30, 2012.

“CoStar revolutionized how the industry researches commercial real estate while LoopNet revolutionized the way the industry markets commercial real estate, and we expect the combination of our companies to give the $11 trillion commercial real estate market the full benefit of the Internet,” said Andrew C. Florance, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoStar.  “After a thorough review by the FTC of this transaction, we are thrilled to win FTC approval.”

“CoStar and LoopNet have been at the cutting edge of innovation in their respective businesses, and we believe the two companies will be even stronger together,” said Richard Boyle, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LoopNet. “This transaction combines the capabilities and best practices of two successful and very complementary companies.  We are excited about the possibilities that we can create together.”

Highlights of the Combination

• Combines industry-leading, large-scale, game-changing technology platforms

• Maximizes customer value with highly complementary operations that create a larger, more robust market place with hundreds of thousands of participants and billions of potential connections

• Combines two profitable companies with strong cash flows, while creating potentially significant opportunities to cross-sell services and reduce costs

• Both companies announced very strong first quarter 2012 financial results further signaling a continued recovery in the commercial real estate sector

• Based upon the first quarter of 2012, the combined companies have annualized revenue of $366 million

“We expect the scale, complementary service capabilities and diversified client and geographic footprint created by the combination of CoStar and LoopNet will drive significant revenue opportunities,” added Florance. “We believe that the combined company will be the premier resource for researching, analyzing, and marketing commercial real estate properties online and will be positioned to provide more widespread market coverage for customers ranging from large, national brokerage firms, property owners and institutional players to small, local brokers, owners and investors.”

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Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.