A private equity firm has agreed to invest $100 million in Homestore Inc. The newly created firm, Elevation Partners, manages $1.9 billion in investments in media, entertainment and consumer-related businesses. The funding will be used for strategic growth initiatives or acquisitions as well as general corporate purposes. Homestore, an online real estate marketing company based in Westlake Village, has been in turnaround since its former executives were charged with accounting irregularities. For the most recently reported quarter Homestore logged net income of $3.3 million or $0.02 per share. It was just the second profitable quarter for the company in the previous two years. The Elevation Partners investment, in the form of convertible preferred stock, would account for about 18 percent of the company’s stock as of Nov. 4 if the preferred shares were converted to common stock shares. The investment follows a $300 million investment announced by Elevation Partners last week. That investment, in two video game developers, Pandemic Studios LLC in Los Angeles and Brisbane, Australia; and BioWare Corp. in Edmonton, Canada, resulted in the formation of a holding company BioWare/Pandemic Studios. Elevation Partners, based in Menlo Park, is run by six partners including Fred Anderson, former CFO of Apple; Bret Pearlman, former senior managing director of The Blackstone Group, Marc Bodnick, a founding principal of Silver Lake Partners, John Riccitiello, former president of Electronic Arts, Roger McNamee, a co-founder of Silver Lake Partner and Integral Capital Partners and Bono, lead singer and co-founder of rock band U2.
