Don't let anyone tell you that growth is dead throughout the entire real estate market. LoopNet (Nasdaq: LOOP) has carved itself a cozy living by matching commercial real estate buyers and sellers online.
Yesterday, the recent Rule Breakers recommendation posted its third-quarter results, and it certainly feels like a compelling growth story within what many see as a troubled sector.
Net income inched 12% higher, with EPS coming in at $0.09 -- a penny ahead of what the market was expecting. Revenues soared 52% higher to $12.7 million. The LoopNet concept is clicking within the commercial real estate sector. Over the past year, the company has seen its registered member base grow 58% higher, to 1.6 million. Only slightly more than 76,000 of those members pay for premium access and exposure, but even so, there's no such thing as a bad set of eyeballs in cyberspace. Beyond paying subscribers, LoopNet makes money on the free accounts by selling ads on the site and generating commercial leads.
The LoopNet database of listings currently includes 430,000 listings, collectively valued at $370 billion. When David Gardner singled out the stock to Rule Breakers subscribers back in June shortly after it went public, the site was stocked with only 360,000 listings valued at $300 billion.
Growth is good. LoopNet is in the right place, as commercial real estate sales and leases often march to different drummers than the more conventional residential realty business. David attributed a "network effect" in relating LoopNet's promising prospects. Many Internet-based companies similarly achieved success by scaling rapidly enough to make their girth an advantage. Consider eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY), News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, or the Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdSense program; in each case, swift growth made it nearly impossible for competitors to challenge the top dog.
It may be too early in LoopNet's tenure to brand it an ironclad leader. The market for commercial real estate online listings may prove to be too narrow. Naturally, we'll be on the lookout for that, but for now, LoopNet is healthy and growing and it may be just a matter of time before shareholders start feeling the same way.
If you want to read David's original buy report for LoopNet, and all of the updates along the way, take advantage of a 30-day guest pass that will grant you a trial subscription of the Motley Fool Rule Breakers service.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has never dabbled in commercial real estate beyond the Monopoly board, though he wants you to know that he can hand you Boardwalk and Park Place at the beginning of the game and still beat you. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. eBay is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection.The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
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