Real Matters set to IPO in 2016 owing to previous funding condition, says report

Markham, Ontario-based real estate and property insights provider Real Matters is rumoured to be heading towards an IPO in 2016 owing to a conditional demand that came with their previous round of funding, according to a report from Bloomberg.
While Bloomberg is working on information provided by the elusive “people familiar with the deal who asked not to be identified discussing private matters” demographic, the IPO speculation is compelling because those “people” have revealed that the company’s previous funding round came with a condition, namely that “the company has to list on public markets before the end of 2016 or it will have to issue more shares to investors.”
Last May, Real Matters closed a $60 million round of growth equity financing, led by Whitecap Venture Partners, with advice on the financing from BMO Capital Markets and Infor Financial Group.
Established in 2004 by CEO Jason Smith, Real Matters is one of North America’s largest providers of real estate appraisals, with over 28,000 field agents working with its cloud-based platform, called redihive, as well as its iv3 business, catering to the mortgage and casualty insurance industry.
With a current valuation north of $600 million, Real Matters was rumoured last month by Bloomberg to be putting together a new fundraising round of at least $60 million, led by Bank of Montreal and Infor Financial Group Inc., once again citing “people familiar with the deal”.
If that were to happen, Real Matters will have assembled a funding total of $180 million.
In the past two years, Real Matters made two acquisitions, including Cincinnati’s Southwest Financial Services, Inc., a home equity service provider that processes more than 5,000 transactions per day through its title, valuation and flood determination services.
The Southwest Financial acquisition was a direct bid to expand Real Matters into the U.S. market and into other parts of the real estate data collection market.
Speculation about an IPO in the tech sector, any IPO at all, is perhaps more a symptom of the relative lack of action and hunger on the part of the investment community, almost all of whom are quoted in the Bloomberg article.