Dave Liniger

RE/MAX Holdings Inc.,  the real estate juggernaut that popularized the 100 percent commission concept after being founded in Denver four decades ago, today announced it is taking the first step to going public, a move long-anticipated by observers.

RE/MAX, founded by Dave and Gail Liniger in 1973, filed a registration document with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would seek to raise as much as $100 million with an initial public offering. It would be traded

The document also provided the first public look at many of the privately held company’s finances.

Financial Snapshot

It posted $78.316 million in total revenues in the first half of the year, 11.6 percent more than the $70.2 million in the first six months of 2012.

Revenues have been growing since 2010. Last year, it had total revenues of $143.7 million, compared with $138.3 million and $140.2 million, in 2011 and 2010, respectively.

The real estate franchise company, the biggest in the world, showed net income of $14.95 million in the first half of this year, compared with $13.835 million during the firs half of 2012. It had $18 million in 2012, compared with $13.94 million in 2011 and a loss of $16.14 million in 2010.

It has total assets of $238 million and long-term debt of $223 million. It has 91,808 agents, compared with 88,487 in the first half of 2012. RE/MAX agents sold $296 billion in real estate last year, $165 billion of it in the U.S.

It plans to use about $27.3 million of the net proceeds of the initial public offering to re-acquire regional RE/MAX franchise rights in the Southwest and Central Atlantic regions of the U.S. through the acquisition of the business assets of HBN, Inc. and Tails, Inc.

Weston Presidio, a private equity firm with offices in San Francisco and Boston, made a $40 million investment in RE/MAX in 2010.

Going public has long been discussed as a possibility for RE/MAX.

Insidernews.com