News Corp. (NWS) is Set to Buy Realtor.com Holding Company for $950 million

Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper publishing company News Corp has today agreed a deal to buy the company which owns Realtor.com for the sum of $950 million. The deal means that News Corp. is overseeing an expansion of their digital real-estate portfolio and is seeking to be in direct competition with competitors such as Zillow.com and others.

As a result of the deal, Move Inc. (MOVE) will receive $21 for each of their shares in a cash settlement, according to a statement released by News Corp (NYSE:NWS)today. The price represents a 37 percent increase on Move’s price at the close of the markets yesterday, Murdochs company claim that the total price is reflective of the net value of their targeted acquisitions cash value.

News Corp (NYSE:NWS) is fighting back against its own failure to shore up via digital business following it’s widely reported struggles to move from being a print business into the digital realm. It is claimed that acquiring websites like Realtor.com as well as Moving.com will mean that the company is able to expand their real estate ventures, this against a backdrop of faltering advertising revenues. This has had an effect on the overall performance of the company, which last month submitted quarterly earnings which fell short of analysts’ projections.

The company will put other digital assets, including the Wall Street Journal and other major publications, to work in order to provide a major stimulus to their marketing operations. CEO, Robert Thomson, is reported as claiming that Move could become the largest real estate seller in the US due to this activity.

Thompson backed up his claim by saying that he believed Move would be ‘turbo charged’ as a result of being aligned with News Corp’s print and digital outlets in the US, which he claimed were ‘powerful’. He claimed that there is an ‘enormous opportunity’ for value to be created in the US if the beginnings of a shift to online real estate advertising combined with the overall scale of the market.

Thompson also sought to distance their strategy from those employed by Trulia and Zillow, claiming that the role of real estate brokers could be ‘tangible and enduring’.

In the finer details of the deal News Corp (NYSE:NWS) is planning to hold eighty percent of Moves stock, while the other twenty is to be held by REA Group Ltd. (REA), which is an Australian company 61.6% owned by News Corp.

News Corp has not secured a larger deal since it left the umbrage of 21^st Century Fox Inc. back in June 2013. The previous largest had been the agreement to buy the book publishing business Harlequin Enterprises in a deal worth $415 million, this was an expansion of their already sizeable publishing portfolio.

It is believed that there are tax saving advantages to the structure of the deal between News Corp and REA and that the deal will be concluded in ten working days.

News Corp (NYSE:NWS) opened today at a value of 16.50 and at 12:10 EDT was trading at 16.40. The days range is 16.20 – 16.43 while over 52 weeks it’s 15.00 – 18.26.