Altos Media Watch: MergerMarket Interview

Some Altos coverage in Wall Street insider publication Merger Market recently. I met writer Hana Askren in New York last month at the O'Reilly Money:Tech conference. Her article on us is out now. Merger Market's output is all behind a paywall, so here's a snippet of the contents.

Note: Since this pub writes about mergers and acquisitions, the article is centered on the very hypothetical question, Who might acquire Altos Research? With that caveat, enjoy some rampant, totally unfounded speculation:

Altos Research, a Mountain View, California-based real estate data company, could become a target for strategics in the information industry...The startup is profitable, self-funded, and is not actively seeking investments, Simonsen said. Several companies have approached Altos seeking strategic partnerships and some have sought to buy a stake in the company, he added, although none have yet pursued a buyout. One of these strategics may eventually buy the company, he said, but declined to name potential bidders, adding that Altos already has "several relationships in place" with partner companies.

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An industry executive ... said it would make sense for title insurance companies to acquire a real estate data startup like Altos in order to add to their data offerings. This news service reported that First American has acquired a number of data and analysis companies in recent years, including Basis100.

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Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist in the financial technology industry, also said it would make sense for Altos to be acquired as a "tuck-in" by companies like Fidelity National Information Services or Core Logic. He added that a company like Thomson would also find Altos attractive, as an addition to its information services...A futures exchange might acquire Altos, said the industry executive. Kedrosky agreed, saying that exchanges are becoming aggressive about providing more services to listed companies...Altos collects weekly real estate data and sells it to individual brokers, realtors, and real estate information companies, said Simonsen, as well as Wall Street firms and hedge funds which use the data for trading. Because of the nature of real estate transactions, he added, publicly available data can be more than six months old.

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The company's first revenue-producing year was 2007 and it is growing at a rate of 20% each month, Simonsen said. While not disclosing revenues, he said that the company has thousands of customers and half of its revenue comes from Wall Street firms. Altos uses Farella Braun & Martel for its legal advising and does not have a relationship with an investment banker. Altos was founded in 2005 by Silicon Valley executives Simonsen and Jason Buberel, who own a majority of the company.