I pinged Troy for a comment. Here’s what he said.
“I’m excited for the opportunities ahead with Black Knight. I’ve admired their leadership and can-do culture for many years. And I look forward to continuing on with this role in the MLS Industry; an industry which has meant so much to me for the last two+ decades”.
Black Knight has been teasing a reboot of their MLS system. Things could get interesting. Welcome back Troy!
“The alliance will allow Black Knight to offer clients a new, advanced consumer engagement solution fueled by billions of behavioral datapoints that helps real estate professionals and lenders cultivate deeper customer relationships. Using proprietary machine learning to monitor homeowner behavior “signals” through custom landing pages with engaging content (e.g., property valuations, local buyer demand and market activity, monthly email reports, listing activity on client websites, etc.), Percy helps identify the precise timing that a homeowner is likely to transact.”
Congrats to Chuck and everyone at Percy. The funny thing is when I first Googled “Black Knight and Percy” I got this page.
“Sir Percy of Scandia, also known as the original Black Knight, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He was a medieval knight created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Joe Maneely.”
Stan Lee called it.
ICE to Buy Black Knight for $13.1 Billion
The deal values Black Knight at $85 a share. Black Knight shares were up 8% to $68.49 prior to a trading halt.
The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2023.
Everybody is for sale.
CoreLogic rejects takeover bid, calls it an “opportunistic proposal”
“In a statement, Irvine, Calif.-based CoreLogic today said its board of directors has “unanimously concluded that the unsolicited proposal significantly undervalues the company, raises serious regulatory concerns, and is not in the best interests of its shareholders.”
Chairman Folino said that his company is open to “all viable paths to increasing shareholder value,” and is willing to meet with Cannae and Senator. However, given what he described as CoreLogic’s “strong momentum, increasing margins and accelerating growth,” the company could deliver more value on its own.
He also noted that the proposal failed to address “the serious regulatory concerns” raised by significant overlaps between CoreLogic and the network of companies associated with Cannae’s chairman, including Black Knight and Fidelity National. Cannae is led by Bill Foley, the chairman of Black Knight, a data and analytics company that directly competes with CoreLogic.”
Looks like its gonna be a fight.
Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group Submit Proposal to Acquire CoreLogic
“We have followed the Company closely and have spent the last nine months performing extensive “outside-in” due diligence. Despite its strong market position as a provider of data and analytics for the real estate and mortgage industries, we believe the Company will not achieve its full potential under its current strategic plan. We therefore believe the proposed transaction is in the best interests of all the Company’s stakeholders.
Cannae and its affiliates in the proposed transaction are led by William P. Foley II (Bill Foley), a preeminent operator and investor with an established track record of successful acquisitions and value creation. Under Bill Foley’s leadership, we would seek to reignite growth at CoreLogic, increase operating efficiency, and improve overall allocation of scarce capital resources. Bill Foley has extensive experience transforming similar businesses and is uniquely positioned to strengthen the Company’s customer, financial, and employee relationships.
Holy Shit!
Of course, you know Bill Foley is also the chairman of Black Knight too. So in this scenario Matrix and Paragon would be under one roof.
And the deal is likely to happen…
“Please understand, however, as demonstrated by our sizable investment in the Company, that we are committed to this transaction. Senator has conducted a thorough study of the Company’s governance documents and the remedies available to all shareholders and is prepared to exercise our rights, including by calling a special meeting and soliciting proxies, for the benefit of the Company’s shareholders should that be necessary.”
Many people (and by people, I mean investors) believe that the current COVID crisis will accelerate rapid transformation in real estate. Bill Foley is a Grandmaster in chess at seizing crisis and making opportunity.
Beyond the COVID crisis itself, this is the biggest news in the MLS business this year (so far).
Bill Andrews, and maybe at this point I should clarify, Bill Andrews Sr. since he has made this industry a family affair. His son Bill Andrews is National Sales Manager- MLS relations at RateMyAgent and his other son, Ryan Andrews is Director of MLS relations at LionDesk. ????
Bill Sr. has joined Black Knight, this is after joining Remine back is October 2019. Bill has worked for several companies in the industry, I think it goes something like this. Rapattoni, Tarasoft, CoreLogic, Zillow, Remine, a little consulting, and now Black Knight.
Also, fellow DeVry grad, Annette Sheffler, has left SentriLock and joined Black Knight as a product consultant.
I’m also hearing rumors about one or two others that could be making moves. Don’t know who or where yet, seems like the powers to be haven’t taken their finger off the chess piece yet.
Great to see that Black Knight is not sitting still during this crazy time and making investments in what matters most, good people.
The Homebot integration represents another example of Black Knight’s continual enhancement of Paragon’s Collaboration Center, which provides brokers and agents with advanced features, collaborative tools and capabilities to help them serve the needs of prospective home buyers and sellers. Paragon’s Collaboration Center also enables agents to provide their clients with one common, mobile-optimized portal throughout the entire real estate life cycle.
This is pretty cool. I’m not too familiar with Homebot but what I found interesting is the integration with Paragon MLS. Forget the fact that Homebot uses Black Knight’s data, since Homebot is a mobile-optimized collaborative tool they are integrating it as part of their Paragon MLS Collaboration Center.
While there is an additional charge to agents/brokers for using Homebot they are giving them (Homebot) a huge opportunity by placing the app in an area of the Paragon MLS where agents are already looking to collaborate with their clients. Putting apps (or call it an ad) in places that mirror what the agent is already doing should boost signups, compared to placement on a random dashboard.
CORELOGIC TO OFFER CONSUMER SEARCH SITES POWERED BY HOMES.COM
“Under the agreement, CoreLogic will begin offering the Homes.com Fusion Portal product, a public website platform for multiple listing organizations to CoreLogic clients. Consumer-facing websites follow fair display guidelines, clearly identifying the listing broker and agent on properties for sale.”
Make sense on a lot of levels. First Real Estate Digital (red) left this market awhile back, so there’s no clear leader. Second, Homes.com is one of the best at MLS data aggregation. Third, it gives the CoreLogic’s sales teams a quality product to sell back in to its channel. Plus Homes.com is a good partner. They’ve been powering RE/MAX national website since 2006. Andy Woolley and his team are second to none in integrity and have always been champions of the MLS industry.
A couple of observations. To me this puts CoreLogic in direct competition with BPP and Homesnap. Will MLS providers who signed up for Homesnap also purchase a public facing website? Doesn’t that go against what the BPP “partnership” is all about? Also, the marks the third time (by my count) the industry has used the “fusion” moniker. Please everyone, stop trying to make “fusion” happen. ????
[UPDATE: Turns out Black Knight is Real Estate Digital’s reseller, so they haven’t exited as I first thought. Sorry for the confusion. Plus we know that with FBS acquisition of Solid Earth they also have a dog in this fight.]
Premier Provider of Software and Data and Analytics Solutions Rebrands as Black Knight
” Black Knight Financial Services, Inc. (BKFS) announced today that, effective upon the completion of the previously announced distribution by Fidelity National Financial, Inc. (FNF) of its equity interest in Black Knight Financial Services, Inc., it will be rebranding as Black Knight, clarifying its position as a leading provider of software, data and analytics to the nation’s top financial institutions.”
I love the fact that they don’t mention FNF in the title of this press release. Foley is relentless.
Lots of activity in the industry but I’m still thinking about CoreLogic’s acquisition of Clareity. Why? Because I think it was one of the shrewdest deals in a long while. Here’s why.
1. Talent. The talent at Clareity is both wide and deep in industry experience and contacts. In one fell swoop CoreLogic scooped up some of the most talented and well connected people in the industry.
2. That pesky “MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey”. You know the one, where Black Knight and flexMLS were beating them every year? Well its gone baby gone.
3. Speaking of the “MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey”. All that data on their competitors that was aggregated for the survey is now in the hands of Chris Bennett. I’m sure the other MLS vendors will downplay this, but I’m equally sure they would loved it if that data was in their hands.
4. The Clareity Dashboard. Notice that last on my list is the actual product of the company! It’s almost like a bonus. And having a product that is a gateway to all other products in the industry is a nice place to sit.
Other things I’m hearing…
Troy Rech is now head of MLS sales. And Lucie Fortier, is returning back to CoreLogic after a short stint at Remine. Nice moves.
