Real-estate website Zillow surges in IPO

Shares of Zillow, a real-estate website that aspires to become the Amazon.com of home shopping, more than doubled in value in their first day of trading on Wednesday. Zillow shares were trading for $43.40 on the Nasdaq stock exchange at 1600 GMT, a leap of 117 percent from their opening price of $20. The strong debut bodes well for other Internet companies planning to start selling shares to the public, such as daily-deals site Groupon, which filed paperwork for an inital public offering (IPO) last month. "Zillow is transforming the way people make home-related decisions and connect with real estate and mortgage professionals," Nasdaq senior vice president Bob McCooey said in a statement. Launched in 2006, Zillow is an online real-estate marketplace with a trove of data about estimated home prices, rental potential, tax records, sales histories and other information on millions of US properties. Based in Seattle, Washington, the company was co-founded by Richard Barton, creator of online travel service Expedia. Like many other Internet companies seeking to sell shares to the public this year, Zillow has yet to turn a profit. In its IPO filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Zillow reported a net loss of $6.77 million last year and $865,000 in the three months ending on March 31 of this year. Zillow, which listed on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol "Z", was planning a placement of 3.46 million shares of common stock, or as many as 3.98 million in case of strong demand from investors. At its IPO price of $20 per share, that means Zillow could expect to raise between $69 million and $80 million from its market debut.