Real Estate Signs
Private equity firms may look to so-called secondary markets for the best deals. REUTERS

Shares of Realogy Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: RLGY) vaulted nearly 30 percent after its $1.09 billion initial public offering was priced late Wednesday.

Realogy shares closed at $34.20, up $7.20 from the IPO price. They opened for trading at $32.85. They were priced at $27 by underwriters Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

The Parsipanny, N.J.-based company is the No. 1 company in real estate services revenue. It was acquired by Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO) in an $8.5 billion private equity buyout.

Apollo will retain about 50 percent of Realogy, for now. Paulson & Co., a major hedge fund, will retain a 10 percent share, down from 15 percent before the IPO.

The company reported that its second-quarter net loss widened 9 percent to $24 million, although revenue rose 11 percent to $1.3 billion a year ago.

The response may indicate that investors believe the U.S. housing recession is easing. It may also be a harbinger of good news for the expected IPO on Friday of Workday (NYSE: WDAY), the Pleasanton, Calif-based human resources software company founded by the former bosses of PeopleSoft, which was acquired by Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), the No. 1 database developer.

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