CoStar Group Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 24, 2023

There are 13 speakers on the call.

Operator

Everyone, my name is Lisa, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CoStar Group Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Now Cindy Eakin, Head of Investor Relations will read the Safe Harbor Statement.

Operator

Cindy, you may begin.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Lisa. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us to discuss Before I turn the call over to Andy Florence, CoStar's CEO and Founder and Scott Wheeler, our CFO, I would like to review our safe harbor statement. Certain portions of this discussion today may contain forward looking statements, including the company's outlook and expectations for the Q4 and the full year of 2023 based on current beliefs and assumptions. Forward looking statements involve many risks, uncertainties, assumptions, estimates and other factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Important factors that can cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, those stated in CoStar Group's press release issued earlier today and in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10 ks and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10 Q under the heading Risk Factors.

Speaker 1

All forward looking statements are based on the information available to CoStar on the date of this call. CoStar assumes no obligation to update these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP measure of any non GAAP financial measure is discussed on this call or as discussed on this call are shown in detail in our press release issued today along with the definitions for those terms. The press release is available on our website located@costargroup.comunderpressroom. As a reminder, today's conference call is being webcast and the link is also available on our website under Investors.

Speaker 1

Please refer to today's press release on how to access the replay of this call. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to our Founder and CEO, Andy Florins.

Speaker 2

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for CoStar Group's Q3 2023 earnings call. Revenue for the Q3 of 2023 was $625,000,000 or 12% growth year over year. Our commercial real estate information and marketplace businesses grew revenue at an impressive 14% this quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. We also delivered strong net new bookings of $65,000,000 in the 3rd quarter with CoStar sales improving sequentially and Apartments dotcom coming off the Seasonally strong sales record they set in the 2nd quarter. We've now reported 50 straight quarters of double digit revenue growth Stretching all the way back to the Q1 of 2011 as we came out of the great financial crisis, this is a remarkable achievement.

Speaker 2

Over the past 12 plus years, we've generated 21% compound annual revenue growth, increasing revenue tenfold from $230,000,000 to over $2,300,000,000 on a trailing 12 month basis. As we move into the Q4, we are generating almost $1,000,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA annualized from our commercial real estate business. We have diversified our revenue across countercyclical marketplaces such as LoopNet and Apartments dotcom, While diversifying CoStar product revenue into broader vertical markets such as owners and lenders, alongside our diversification efforts, we remain committed to building a subscription only revenue efforts, we remain committed to building a subscription only revenue portfolio across the business. The result we See Today is an extremely resilient and steady growth business, even during a time when the property markets are in a hard down cycle as they are now. To produce these exceptional results, we made big investment bets on expanding our geographical footprint or entering new adjacent segments.

Speaker 2

These investments, for example, such as expanding CoStar into all the U. S. Cities, Canada and the UK, Or entering the apartment marketplace business, though clear to us, we're not universally popular at the time when we were in the investment phase they required. We pursue growth investments regardless because we are singularly focused on the enormous value creation we see in meeting the demand for digital information, analytics and marketing of the $300,000,000,000,000 real estate asset class globally. Digitizing real estate is unlocking major value and we are absolutely in the earliest innings of this opportunity.

Speaker 2

I believe that CoStar Group's revenue will grow tenfold again over the next 12 years because of the careful significant calculated investments we're making that optimize our competitive advantages and capabilities. We firmly believe that Homes.com can compete And win in the residential opportunity. Just as we lead today in all the prior asset class we have entered in the past, including office, Industrial, retail, hospitality, multifamily, land, etcetera. Homes.com delivered over 100,000,000 unique visitors in the month of September according to Google Analytics. That's an increase of 1290 percent over the same period a year ago, Making homes.com the fastest growing residential marketplace in the United States.

Speaker 2

Our residential network traffic, which consists of homes and apartments, Reached over 140,000,000 monthly unique visitors in September, which is more than Realtor and Redfin combined based on the traffic According to Comscore, we are clearly now the 2nd most heavily trafficked residential network by a wide margin With monthly unique visitors, 35% higher than realtor.com and 90% higher than Redfin in September. Looking at the trend lines, we are on a convergence path with the historically most traffic site. 2 short years ago, when we acquired Homes.com, we set out to deliver an agent friendly site that homebuyers love. I believe that reaching over 100,000,000 monthly unique visitors in September to homes.com is evidence that we are achieving that goal. Our returning users have increased almost 900% over September of last year, which is a testament to our success of building rich content and providing a great consumer experience.

Speaker 2

The traffic generation plans for Homes.com are still in the early stages, And we've already delivered double the 50,000,000 monthly unique visitors that we initially targeted. In the Apple App Store, homes dot com has climbed From 136 under lifestyle to now become number 19. Homes.com is now ranked above Realtor, Redfin, Trulia and even apartments .com in the App Store. When we announced that we were going to build homes.com into a leading residential portal, The number one risk factor called out was skepticism that we could build the traffic required to compete. Earlier this year, media reports speculated that CoStar Group was in talks to acquire realtor.com for approximately 3,000,000,000 If that was true, the primary objective in acquiring realtor.com could have been to take the number to traffic position in the United States.

Speaker 2

Given that that speculation did not come to pass, we might have been good stewards of our shareholders $3,000,000,000 that we saved by building the traffic to homes.com For a fraction of the cost of buying it. Clearly, successfully building traffic is no longer Homes.com's primary risk factor. At this point, shrewd investors seeking a new risk factor to replace the now reduced traffic risk factor We'll now need to turn to monetization as the next key risk factor. Unlike its competitors, homes.com has never invested in any material brand marketing. Because of that, Homes.com's unaid awareness is in the low single digits, while our competitors' unaid awareness is in the mid to high double digits.

Speaker 2

When we acquired Apartments dotcom, it similarly had a single digit unaided awareness problem. But through Assistant creative branding, we've grown Apartments.com unaid awareness to the industry leading unaid awareness of 53%. Achieving significant unaided awareness is important because it improves SEO, optimizes SEM investments and facilitates sales of advertising products To prospects, it is essential to build unaided awareness before we begin monetizing. We do not believe that building unaided awareness is our most significant risk factor. We anticipate selling Homes.com memberships in the Q2 of 2024.

Speaker 2

CoStar Group has created dozens of successful monetization strategies and we believe that our planned monetization strategy for Homes.com We'll become a dozen plus one of our successful monetization strategy. When we acquired Homesnap, we quickly built a centralized sales team to sell their Facebook ads. While we did not believe in the long term value of reselling low retention, low margin Facebook ads, we did very quickly scale a sales force and sold tens of 1,000,000 of dollars worth of ads. We look forward to doing it again with homes.com, which we will believe will be a much better product with higher margin and higher retention. William Blair recently published a paper on October 20th titled Competition Intensifying Among Home Search Portals.

Speaker 2

There are some interesting callouts from their survey of residential agents that are worth noting. Combined spend and potential efficiency gain from agents marketing their It's $15,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 in the United States. Most of the agents marketing spend today is not on our competing portals, It's like print. Most agents do not spend marketing dollars with Zillow. Most agents do not Most of Zillow's clients feel that Zillow will become less important to their lead generation efforts in the next 1 to 2 years.

Speaker 2

60% of Zillow's premier agent client surveys stated that the value of the product is declining And 5% said it's improving. So 60% said the value was declining and 5% said it was improving. 94% of Zillow's premier agent customers said that they're very open or somewhat open to alternative sources for lead generation. Sounds good to me. Even before we begin selling premium services, we're creating real value for agents.

Speaker 2

As a result of our traffic growth in superior You're Listing Your Lead business model, I believe we are already generating millions of leads for agents that are converting to I'm encouraged by the feedback with one agent saying 85% of their total sales come from being able to build their brand and collaborate with sellers and buyers on the Homes dotcom network. From these leads, we estimate that Homes.com is helping agents generate 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars in annual commissions already, while saving them 1,000,000,000 in referral fees. Last week, Stitzer Burnett versus NAR lawsuit went to trial. We could be seeing the biggest change to the residential real estate industry in recent or even intermediate history or long term history. Stitzer, Burnette and other class action lawsuits are challenging the legality of the buyer broker commission rule, which requires the home seller to pay The homebuyers' agent fees.

Speaker 2

Plaintiffs are seeking damages of more than $40,000,000,000 implying the nationwide damages of more than $400,000,000,000 Several defendants have already agreed to collectively pay $138,000,000 in settlements And the changes to the rule. The 1st generation real estate portals leverage this threatened buyer broker commission rule To divert listing leads from all the agents in the market to a small handful of agents who are then required to split their commissions with the portal, Often, that's the model. Many agents and brokers strongly resent that model. Now that homes.com is one of the most heavily traffic portals, There is a strong and viable alternative for lead generation available to agents that does not require a serious commission splits. Unlike the 1st generation portals, homes.combusinessmodel is not negatively impacted by the potential end of the buyer broker commission rule.

Speaker 2

Momentum around our residential strategy is clearly building with the early successes of Homes.com And there is potential for dramatic change in the industry soon. Our confidence in the success of Homes.com and timing It's increasing the need to time the movement that we see happening. For these reasons, we have decided to Slightly accelerate the pace and level of our investments into Homes.com. Last week, we announced our offer to acquire on the market the 3rd most trafficked residential property portal in the UK For approximately £100,000,000 doesn't seem like we thought that number out carefully. How can I just round that to £100,000,000 Okay?

Speaker 2

We did actually. OnTheMarket was founded by agents in 2013 to provide a competitive alternative to the existing U. K. Portals, which the agents felt represented duopoly extracting economic rent from them. We believe that Rightmove's ARPA is $21,000 while ours is less than $1,000 so we feel confident that we can Profitably deliver the U.

Speaker 2

K. Most cost effective solution over the long term. OnTheMarket has Successfully developed a large network of agents and property listings by taking an agent friendly approach. Today, OnTheMarket has over 13,000 agent advertisers and attracts high intent leads at a fraction of the cost of other U. K.

Speaker 2

Portals. Our intention with the acquisition of OnTheMarket is to create the number one property affordable by combining the strengths of our leading commercial U. K. Commercial property site, I said U. K.

Speaker 2

Twice there. CoStar and our technology platform driving homes.com with On the market's large network of agents. So taking our 2 decades of experience with commercial property sites in the U. K. Along with the technology driving the successes of homes dot And combining it with OnTheMarket's large share of agents in the United Kingdom to create a very valuable solution.

Speaker 2

We believe the acquisition of OnTheMarket represents an attractive and efficient entry point into the $8,000,000,000,000 United Kingdom Residential Property Market. CoStar Group has a proven track record of acquiring strong performing property Portals that are not the number one players and investing and building them into the most successful portals serving their market. We intend to apply a similar approach with on the market as we plan to invest £46,500,000 End of sales and marketing in the 1st full year following the commencement of the integration of the portal into CoStar's network of marketplaces. That amount represents 6 times on the market's current annual media spend and more than 3 times the current annual Media spend of Rightmove. The sales and marketing investments in the first stage of a multiyear investment program to drive A consumers to on the market portal with the goal of significantly increasing the quality of valuable leads to on the market agent clients At good prices.

Speaker 2

We believe that real estate portals across Europe will soon be entering a period of consolidation. We did not want to approach that emerging opportunity by jumping into buying assets that are priced to perfection. Private equity firms are more likely to seek to acquire portals in the number one position at elevated multiples because they don't have the same strategic value add with which We believe that as a strategic with extensive proprietary technology and expertise, we can create more value for shareholders by acquiring Good or great assets at excellent values that may benefit from our track record of acquiring and growing traffic share and revenue in high potential portals. We believe that Europe represents a $17,000,000,000 revenue opportunity. Currently, we estimate that publicly traded and large private portals in Europe We also believe that those declined about 10% when we announced the acquisition of On the Market Or since we don't know that's related, but there has been a decline since we announced the acquisition of On the Market.

Speaker 2

Apartments.com continues to deliver impressive quarterly results with revenue of $235,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, A 24% increase over the Q3 of last year. Apartments.com is now our largest business by revenue and is on track to reach a $1,000,000,000 in revenue run rate in the Q1 of 2024. Net new bookings increased year over year for the 7th consecutive quarter, While communities advertising their spaces on Apartments dotcom grew to more than 69,000 in the 3rd quarter, The highest tally ever and 15% above the Q3 of 2022. Apartments.com achieved an all time high in unaided brand awareness in the Q3 of 53%, proving the With average monthly unique visitors of 45,000,000 in the 3rd quarter according to Google Analytics, outperforming the market on a year over year basis, Visitors spend twice 2x more time on our site per visit and our leads convert to leases 3.4x more Then our closest competitor according to Rent Dynamics. Our sales team continues to deliver strong results conducting the highest number of quality meetings ever At 163,000 meetings in the quarter, this is an increase of 36% over the same quarter last year, all while maintaining a Net Promoter Score of 95.

Speaker 2

Our expansion of the mid market sales team continues to deliver Productive results. We have more sellers, increasing levels of productivity and new flexible listing plans, all which result in a 48 As we hear about competitors shrinking their sales teams, we continue to add and train new sales reps Each month to capitalize on the large opportunity we see clearly in front of us. We continue to see Favorable overall economic conditions for rental property advertising, vacancy rates continue to go up with 3 to 5 star property vacancy rates increasing 200 basis points over prior year to 8.1%. New unit deliveries are expected to continue at or near all time highs through the end of the year. For these reasons, we expect to see Apartments.com revenue growth to continue at 24% in the Q4 of 2023.

Speaker 2

CoStar revenue for the 2nd quarter was $233,000,000 or 10% increase over the same period last year and in line with our expectations. Our focus on selling to owners, lenders, Investors and corporates continues to yield great returns and most of our sales activities are now focused on these high value customers. Even though the property markets remain as some of the worst in decades, we still see high levels of engagement and usage of CoStar by our customers. Our subscriber count remains well above 180,000 this year and our renewal rates increased Sequentially in the Q3 and are now above 93%. There were 140,000 distinct logins to CoStar in September, Our 2nd highest month of logins this year.

Speaker 2

Property searches were up 13% compared to the same period last year. Our sales force remains strong and very active and our attrition rates are at an all time low. Demand for our new lender product continues to be strong. We now have 230 customers on the CoStar lender platform, which is more than double what we had this time last year. Our year to date net new bookings have increased 45% versus last year.

Speaker 2

CoStar Lender is now helping clients manage over I'm encouraged by continued strong customer engagement on CoStar and the success of these new product capabilities. Our ability to continue to Generate solid revenue growth and sell through the current downturn is a testament to the value of CoStar at all points in the property cycle. LoopNet revenue was $68,000,000 for the quarter, up 15% year over year and slightly ahead of our guidance forecast. LoopNet International revenue for the Q3 was up 38% compared to the same quarter last year As we continue to work towards the launch of LoopNet in France and Spain, office vacancy rates Increased again in the 3rd quarter, now over 13% and in phantom vacancy rates are dramatically higher, Creating countercyclical momentum with the need to advertise empty commercial property space. Signature ad listings in the 3rd quarter Up 16% compared to last year and we see more customers move up from the basic silver level ads to the higher performing LoopNet's signature adds, which deliver more traffic and lead flow to their properties.

Speaker 2

LoopNet generated 14,000,000 monthly unique average Visitors for the Q3 in a row, an increase of 10% year over year. We have a new sales leader in place for LoopNet, Brandon Liu, who has extensive experience leading both CoStar and LoopNet teams and has experienced with 10x as well. We also changed the LoopNet dedicated sales team commission plan to now focus on both sales and service, which will be backed up by our activity metrics and Net Promoter Score tracking capabilities. Since making these changes, sales activities, including customer service meetings have almost doubled from the prior quarter. We continue to expand our dedicated LoopNet sales team, while shifting more and more of the direct customer account responsibilities over to LoopNet From the CoStar sales team, I'm confident in the long term opportunity for continued strong revenue growth in LoopNet.

Speaker 2

STR revenue growth was 12% compared to the Q3 of last year with subscription revenue growth accelerating 2%. STR had another incredible sales quarter with their 2nd highest sales ever growing 156% In the Q3 versus the same quarter last year, we have now reached a record 78,000 hotels participating with historical data And over 16,000 hotels providing forward looking data. The more hotels we have contributing, the better data we are able to provide to the industry, which is evidenced by our impressive 97 percent renewal rate. We've now migrated over 300 customers to the new CoStar As a game changer saying, I grew up with the old STR report and watched its evolution over 30 years. And by far, this is the best thing that could have happened with the tool.

Speaker 2

In total, our plan is to migrate over 900 Corporate accounts has 6,000 independent hotels into the CoStar platform, and we expect that process will be completed by the end of the Q2 next year. I expect strong double digit revenue growth to continue for STR for the foreseeable future as more and more hospitality customers See the enhanced value that CoStar Information Analytics brings to their subscription. 10X brought $1,100,000,000 assets to the platform in the 3rd quarter and achieved a 51% trade rate, more than double the trade rate we are Currently seeing in the offline transaction space. We continue to see tremendous transaction interest in the platform in the 3rd quarter As we reviewed $4,800,000,000 in potential assets for sale in the quarter, unfortunately, bid ask spreads remain at High levels, leading to only 35 percentage potential assets moving through to auctions on 10x in the quarter. The CRE market continues to face significant headwinds with transaction volumes down 47% in the 3rd quarter as compared to the same quarter a year ago.

Speaker 2

Historically, low levels of transaction volumes are continued expected to continue for the remainder of '23 and 'twenty four or at least the first half of 'twenty four. It's still early to see an increase in distressed assets on 10x at We continue to see the long term value in digital transaction platforms for both commercial and residential real Regardless of any current market conditions, we're focused on continuing to improve our technology tools as part of our CoStar integration And believe there are additional performance synergies to be gained by aligning our 10x sales and marketing activities closer with LoopNet. Turning to the real estate economy. The capital markets continue to be stressed, as I mentioned, with transaction volumes significantly lower. Values are also down with both office and multifamily prices falling by 16% year over year, multifamily And office prices down 30% from their peak.

Speaker 2

Banks are not lending and now they're shedding CRE loans from their balance sheet. CMBS delinquencies are also trending higher with office delinquencies of 6%, up more than 600% where they were at the end of 2022 and rapidly approaching the 10.5% peak last seen after the last recession. We expect this trend to continue as it took more than 3 years after the conclusion of the great financial crisis for the delinquencies to peak. The office sector already experiencing its worst market conditions ever continued to weaken in the 3rd quarter. Total negative absorption for the year is now 50,000,000 square feet.

Speaker 2

Since the pandemic began, there has been over 170,000,000 square feet of negative absorption in the office sector, which represents about 30% of all of the positive absorption that occurred in the 10 year recovery period after the last recession. Absorption will likely continue to be negative for some time as most indicators Point to continued weaknesses. Measures of workers coming back to the office have largely been flat and only slightly up over the past year. Lease renewal activity is well below pre pandemic levels and new leases now average about 20% less in floor floor space then pre pandemic levels. The U.

Speaker 2

S. Hotel sector continues to approach pre-twenty 20 levels in the 3rd quarter, Mid week occupancies rose fueled by group and corporate customers. Room rates and occupancy rates are also improved and RevPAR is expected to grow at about 4.5% for the year even with the potential recession. The industrial and retail sector Continue to perform well. The industrial vacancy rate remains low at 5.3% in the 3rd quarter and rent growth remains strong as well At 7.5% over the past 12 months, retail vacancy reached another all time low at 4.1% with steady demand, Fewer store closures and minimal new supply.

Speaker 2

The residential sector continues to face challenges from still rising mortgage rates and Associated declining home sales, down 15% year over year in September. More than 90% of the in place loans are now below 6%, With more than 60% below 4% leaned at very low levels of inventory. The combination of rising prices and rising mortgage rates In conclusion, for my part, CoStar Group continues to deliver both Double digit revenue growth and accelerate our performance against our Homes dotcom residential strategy. I'm very proud of our residential team for Achieving the number 2 position in the residential marketplaces in the United States and climbing coming off of our 12 90 percent year over year growth rate. I'm also very proud of the success of our commercial real estate teams We've had increasing our revenue tenfold over the past 10 years, 12 years and generating 14% year over year revenue growth in a downturn, While growing our commercial property adjusted EBITDA to approaching $1,000,000,000 annualized as we move into the 4th quarter.

Speaker 2

At this point, I'm going to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Scott Wheeler. Scott, the floor is yours.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Andy. Great set of results, strong improvements in both investment momentum and Clearly, our revenue growth. So let me cover some facts by the service areas to start out. With CoStar, our revenue grew 10% year over year in the Q3, which was in line with our guidance. And you think, of course, this is outstanding growth at a time when everything is Pretty much gone pear shape for the property markets with rising interest rates, high inflation, record high office vacancies, Only 50% returned to office numbers and pretty much a frozen up transaction market.

Speaker 3

We saw stable improving trends in CoStar's net new bookings in the 3rd quarter As our sales efforts are focused on new product capabilities and high value portfolio customers like lenders, owners and corporate tenants, Our CoStar retention rates improved sequentially in the Q3 to 93%. This includes higher levels of cancellations from bad debt as The property downturn lingers, while client initiated cancellations are actually lower than in prior downturns. Once again, we're seeing that CoStar is proving to be mission critical So this is our 3rd major down cycle in the last 15 years, starting with the great financial crisis in 2,008, And of course, the COVID pandemic disruption in 2022 or sorry, 2020, and most recently now the high interest and inflation cycle that started in 2021. In each progressive cycle, CoStar's performance has been stronger. During the great financial crisis, net new bookings went negative and CoStar revenue growth dipped Into negative territory for 3 quarters before returning to positive growth.

Speaker 3

During the COVID disruption, CoStar net new bookings remained positive And revenue growth slowed to only 4% positive growth before returning back up to double digits. The current market environment is much worse We continue to invest in the CoStar product and our sales force Through the pandemic and it's paying off, we expect CoStar revenue growth between 10% to 11% for the full year 2023 And in the range of 8% to 9% in the 4th quarter. If market trends continue as they are now, we expect CoStar revenue growth would stabilize around 7% to 8% in 1st couple of quarters of 2024 and possibly improving thereafter. Again, this is a very strong performance and certainly above the growth we saw from CoStar in the prior downturns. Apartments.comrevenuegrowthincreasedto24 percent year over year in Q3 to $235,000,000 Apartments.com is now our single largest business by revenue volume.

Speaker 3

This is remarkable for a business that did not even exist in CoStar 10 years ago. For those of you that were with us back in 2014 2015, you'll certainly remember the acquisition of littleapartments.com, Number 5 in the market and the subsequent announcement of a major investment cycle that consumed practically all of our profits at the time. Fast forward to today, we now have the leading apartments marketplace with the most revenue, the most customers, The highest brand awareness and organic growth at the highest level now at scale than at any time since the 1st year of the site launch in 2015 2016. By my calculations, Apartments dotcom has added over $10,000,000,000 of market cap to CoStar Group. I think we would all agree that the early years of investing our profit in Apartments dotcom was a very smart thing to do and something we believe we can repeat at an even bigger scale As we invest in our residential markets with Homes dotcom and now the pending offer to acquire on the market.

Speaker 3

Properties advertising on Apartments dotcom increased 15% year over year with mid market as the leading category of the growth. Our sales force is approximately 22% larger year over year and their performance continues to fuel the growth. Net new bookings in the 3rd quarter remained strong, but stepped down from the record results of the 2nd quarter for both seasonal reasons And due to spending capacity limits in some communities that are faced with the unfortunate decision to pay their high interest and rising inflation costs or to pay more in marketing. We expect 4th quarter revenue growth to remain incredibly strong at 24% for Apartments dotcom, and our full year revenue growth outlook is 23%. LoopNet revenue grew 15% in the 3rd quarter, and we're expecting 4th quarter growth of 11% and full year revenue growth in the range of 14% to 15%.

Speaker 3

This is relatively unchanged from what we talked about last quarter. Revenue from Information Services grew 9% in the 3rd quarter With STR and Real Estate Manager subscription revenue posting combined 17% revenue growth, we continue to expect Information Services We're doing the right thing in Information Services, deemphasizing and reducing transactional revenue while we focus and grow our subscription revenue across those platforms. Residential revenue came in at $10,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, and we expect full year 2023 revenue of $43,000,000 as we continue to run off the legacy products. The old Pro Plus products are holding up better than we expected, While the Facebook advertising products declined, I suspect agents are finding that our millions of free leads from homes.com are a much better source of potential customers And the poor performing Facebook ads that were sold through Homesnap. Other Marketplaces revenue was $34,000,000 in the 3rd quarter, Down 5% year over year as 10x is still facing the headwinds of the low transaction volume market.

Speaker 3

Our lands and business for sale marketplace revenues are consistently delivering double As we don't see near term indications of an upturn in transaction volumes nor do we plan for those, we expect full year revenue for other marketplaces $130,000,000 Looking at profitability, our adjusted EBITDA for the Q3 was $112,000,000 Slightly below our guidance range of $115,000,000 to $120,000,000 as we made the prudent decision to accelerate investments in our residential strategy. Turning to performance metrics. Our sales force totaled approximately 1180 people on September 30, An increase of 8% from September of last year and approximately 20 more than last quarter. Our contract renewal rate was 91% for the Q3 of With the renewal rate for customers who have been subscribers for 5 years or longer at 96%, with both rates increasing sequentially over the 2nd quarter. I find this particularly impressive given the current state of the property markets.

Speaker 3

Subscription revenue on annual contracts was 82% for the Q3 of 2023 compared to 80% in the Q3 of 2022. This is primarily attributable to our strong Apartments dotcom growth. We have a fortress balance sheet with $5,200,000,000 in cash that is now earning 5% interest. Our net quarterly interest income is pacing at around $55,000,000 Turning to the outlook for 2023, With our offer to purchase on the market expected to close late in Q4, our guidance does not reflect any financial impact of the potential transaction. We expect full year 2023 revenue outlook in the range of $2,445,000,000 to $2,450,000,000 Representing growth of 12% in the midpoint of the range.

Speaker 3

The modest adjustment to our revenue guidance range is from less favorable property market conditions primarily in the 3rd quarter. Our commercial business growth rate for the year is expected to be 14%, generating revenue of over $2,400,000,000 The company expects revenue for the Q4 of 2023 in the range of $630,000,000 to $635,000,000 representing revenue growth of 10% to 11%. The commercial business growth rate for the 4th quarter is expected to be approximately 12% to 13%. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA for the year in the range $485,000,000 to $490,000,000 The Q4 of 2023 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in a range of $123,000,000 to 128,000,000 This guidance includes the additional homes.com investment that Andy mentioned as we prepare for our residential product launch in 2024. Overall, we're excited to be able to deliver 50 straight quarters of double digit growth.

Speaker 3

Over the past 10 years, we have built a much more diversified portfolio focused entirely on subscription revenue, which makes our growth rates increasingly resilient to economic and commercial property cycles. What we are now seeing in the property markets are some of the worst conditions in decades. I suspect this is the first time that many people on this call have experienced high inflation and interest rates like some of us enjoyed back in the '80s '90s and maybe back in the '70s. What CoStar has learned and demonstrated over time It's important to continue invest in attractive long term opportunities for revenue growth and TAM expansion during downturns When others are shrinking or retrenching, we are once again leaning into our high growth future with great promising investments like homes.com and on the market. The overwhelming proof of the success of this strategy is happening now as we continue to deliver double digit revenue growth in our Commercial Information and Marketplace businesses, which we expect will continue into 2024.

Speaker 3

Assuming market conditions and trends don't improve next year, we expect continued double digit revenue growth throughout 2024 in the range of 11% to 12%, exclusive of our residential business and the pending on the market transaction. With these impressive growth expectations, We expect to generate over $1,000,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA from our commercial portfolio next year. With that, I will now turn the call back over to our Call operator to begin the question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 4

You mentioned commercial real estate transaction volumes are seeing significant Declines. Can you elaborate on how different customer types within CoStar Suite are responding to these trends? So Large brokers, small brokers and non brokers, how are basically net bookings growing year over year across these different types of customers?

Speaker 2

Well, most of the brokerage firms are going to be Doing both leasing, valuation and investment sales or property sales. The folks doing property sales are certainly seeing Lower revenue, but I would not call out any particular Big difference from one firm to another owners. I think the bigger difference is that our Salesforce is investing more effort right now against owners and corporations and lenders Then they're focusing on brokers. So we're seeing an increase of bookings with owners, corporates And lenders because that's where the sales force has placed a strategy and that's based on new product offerings And the fact that those have been historically underpenetrated areas for us. So the actual Reduction in year over year sales volume is only really impacting 10x as far as I'm aware.

Speaker 4

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Pete Christiansen with Citi.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. I was hoping we could Dig into the bookings performance this quarter a little bit.

Speaker 5

I know we have the pivot in Suite, which I think was really So it began like Q4 of last year, then you have the commission change in LoopNet and the new leadership change in LoopNet. Should you think of the bookings growth that we saw this quarter really as an inflection point or bottom? Or do you think this is more of a Levelized a level kind of production kind of amount that we should expect for the next Few quarters given the economic backdrop. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thanks for the question, Pete. Yes. As you know and you've watched our patterns over the years, quarter to quarter changes in our net bookings numbers don't Great trends. You have to obviously look for more quarters in a row to actually determine what that looks like.

Speaker 3

We come off of Q2, which is seasonally a high Quarter for apartments, which was also fueled by the NAA Conference and some of those things. And so that's where you see most of the Variation between the two quarters. As I mentioned, CoStar is solid, if not mildly improving. LoopNet's not changed much since the last quarter. So I think we see everyone is holding on well with good strong growth.

Speaker 3

The new sales teams we've added are performing well. And we don't attempt to predict forward guidance on the bookings, again, because of that quarter to quarter volatility. Hopefully, that helps you get an understanding of where the changes were in the quarter.

Speaker 5

Thank you. That's helpful.

Operator

Our next question comes from Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you.

Speaker 6

I was hoping you could well, thank you for the explanation on the market and what you plan to do. I was hoping you could dig in a little bit more on the spending And help us just understand kind of when you talked about after the 1st year of integration, you're going to spend the $46,000,000 Is that the right way to think about it? And what that spending means for your 2027 target in this acquisition, just given that you're going to be investing behind it? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. Thank you, Heather. So the integration of the after the pending transaction Would begin, of course, when the transaction closes, if it gets approval of the vote from the shareholders, we expect that to be at the end of the year in December. So obviously, there's people, technology and other things you'd start to work on immediately as we've outlined in our 2.7 announcements. So we can't say much more beyond what those integration activities are, but we do expect those synergies and the Advertising to begin within the 6 months following the closing of the acquisition.

Speaker 3

And so we don't Including any of that yet in our longer term outlooks, we'll wait until we see what the shareholder vote and the transaction looks like first, and then we can Provide more updates on the effects into next year and beyond.

Speaker 2

And I would just outside of commenting on anything Specific on the market, I would say that something at that scale would not be likely a material change or 20 27 outlook.

Speaker 1

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Aleksey Gogolov with JPMorgan.

Speaker 7

Hi, this is Ella Smith on behalf of Alexey Gogola from

Operator

JPMorgan. So

Speaker 7

my first question hi, good to hear you, Andy. Can you help us understand the organic investments into the residential business over the next few years? Could this be north of $400,000,000 in $24,000,000 and $25,000,000 respectively, and then taper off from then?

Speaker 3

So thanks for the question. We have yet to set out investment plans for 2024 for the residential investments. So I won't be able to give you any specific guidance out into 2024. As we've talked about today, we've seen such strong response both in traffic And in the capability of the site reaction from customers and from agents that we felt it was the right thing to do to keep moving as fast as we can. Also knowing that there's been some cracks possibly in the industry business models, and we want to be as prepared as we possibly can with the site If changes happen in the industry.

Speaker 3

So it wasn't a significant move in the 2023 time period. I think it was roughly around $30,000,000 when you look at the change in the guidance. But certainly, we expect to continue to invest In residential into next year through when we monetize, things are going well and now is the time you keep going and you don't back off on the spend levels for sure.

Speaker 7

Understood. Thank you. And my follow-up question is around the market dynamics in the U. K. So Rightmove has maintained a market dominant position in the U.

Speaker 7

K. For quite And as we understand that many players have sought to disrupt Rightmove with marketing and digital investments and they've largely failed. What do you think CoStar can do differently to disrupt the market despite the company's minimal presence in Europe currently?

Speaker 3

Well,

Speaker 2

I tend not to Signed godlike characteristics to mere companies. And when I see a 72%, 74% margin in a company With none of the major players actually materially investing in my view into significant marketing in the market, I think that the power of the technology we've developed with homes.com And our experience in building traffic often against companies that have more traffic than we have when we begin, I feel very comfortable we have something to bring to the table in the United Kingdom and that we can offer some real value in the market. I would flatly reject any concept that any company is Impervious to competition with the exception of a couple of the fangs.

Speaker 7

Great. Thank you both so much.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Tomasello with KBW. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess following up on the UK deal, Andy, Obviously, on the market gives you a solid foothold in the UK specifically, but you also called out the optionality that that infrastructure brings you to and the Holmes brand across the European market more broadly. So just curious if you could elaborate on the strategic rationale What a Trans European type residential portal brands, what synergies that can provide, What the strategy can look like from here in terms of perhaps participating in that consolidation way that you're expecting across other portals perhaps in other countries? Just a finer point around what that could look like over the next several years.

Speaker 8

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Sure. There's probably 80 portals operating in Europe with market cap very roughly, because some are private, Some are probably $30,000,000 plus. Some of them trade at extremely high multiples, some of them trade at lower multiples. It's a very fragmented market and I do believe I think there's 2 different camps. There are some camps that feel that technology does not play a meaningful role in the digitization of real estate and there are some people that think that Technology will play a big role in the digitization of real estate.

Speaker 2

We found the campus thing and that technology is important and that having And that scale, there'll be greater scale than individual countries over time and that fundamentally what these companies are doing is very similar. They're Basically putting placards, maps, SEO strategy, SEM strategy, branding strategy, they're serving up Digital Twins, they're serving up videos. It's all very similar. And there is the opportunity to differentiate one brand from another with technology. And so I believe there will be significant consolidation and there will be A little bit of a musical chair is occurring and we are and that there'll be winners and losers in it And we want to keep a careful eye on it.

Speaker 2

And I just would say that it reminds me very much the United States maybe 10 years ago Before a lot of consolidation occurred, so I think it's an exciting opportunity. Again, the scale of the opportunity both in The revenue potential in the $10,000,000,000 to $20,000,000,000 range and the market caps in $30,000,000,000 plus, it's great to have a seat at the table. And we believe that our technology is competitively advantaged In the market and so we're operating on that premise.

Speaker 8

And as a follow-up Just the residential opportunity in the U. S. Regarding the commission lawsuits, you've talked about the potential outcomes there that could pose a risk to the legacy portals Focused on buyer agent lead gen, but from the perspective of homes.com, is there an opportunity where that brand could more directly benefit from structural changes there over time? Would unbundling commissions help unlock the under monetized home advertising TAM that you've spoken about in the

Speaker 2

I think we can succeed regardless of what the outcome is in those cases, but I think It would likely if the plaintiffs prevail, it will likely create rapidly changing conditions that might favor A company like homes.com, which is not focused on monetizing buyer agent leads, and as things get turned upside down, If you're not in the blast radius of that change, you're much better off to compete the next day. So I think that's where it really matters.

Speaker 8

Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator

Our next question comes from Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. So I wanted to dig on resi spend a little bit more. It sounds like you're committed to continue on homes.com. So just kind of curious at a high level more qualitatively how the areas of spend could change as we head into 2024. So when do you think brand marketing spend for Homes dotcom could pick up?

Speaker 9

Could the budget for that be Covered some from reduced spend on SEM this year, reallocations from brand marketing on other assets. And then on the content side, will you be building out different content Next year versus a lot of the neighborhood and community content been building out over the last year or so. So just curious where your areas of investments might be changing?

Speaker 2

Sure. On the content side, we will be continuing to build out and evolve Neighborhood content, well into 2024. We will be initiating More general blog content, park content, more school content. So it will be a shifting mix With some of the same in the first half of the year and then some evolutions in the year out. In terms of the mix of what is on branding versus what is on SEM versus what is on content, that will Absolutely shift from quarter to quarter.

Speaker 2

Clearly, we have to Build the unaided brand awareness. So we've got a great site. We've got some great traffic. We have some great return visitors. We feel very strong.

Speaker 2

We feel very confident about our road map going forward, but you have to have That unaided awareness number grows. So there will be some shifting and changes in what we're doing, but we have not done a We certainly have not done our 2024 budget, so we can't really comment specifically.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 2

And we can get you a copy of that William Blair report if you want. Sounds good.

Operator

We'll take our next question from John Campbell with Stephens Inc.

Speaker 10

Hey, guys. Good evening and congrats on the Homes.com traffic gains and the pending on the market deal. Those are pretty exciting developments.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 10

I've got just Sure. I've got 2 questions that follow-up to 2 other questions you guys already received. But first on the resi investment spend, if you could maybe just kind of Put us just pinpoint this just for now, but I'm curious about what the kind of breakout or the mix of spend looks like today for Content versus marketing versus software?

Speaker 3

I can give you directional. Marketing is going to be the top category. Content generation would be the 2nd and technology would be the 3rd. That's probably as much information and I'll probably give on the components for now, John.

Operator

Okay. That's helpful.

Speaker 3

Yes. They're all pretty big. Okay.

Speaker 10

And then on the marketing side, I mean, if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like the majority of that's probably SEM, performance marketing this year and then the softer brand side, TV, radio, print, all that's going to be what essentially ramps into next year?

Speaker 2

It's a combination of a number of things for marketing. So We're doing a lot of industry marketing as well. So it's a mix. And but yes, Moving into next year, there will be more brand development, which will be important.

Speaker 3

Yes. So you will see a mix of the marketing change as we go forward.

Speaker 10

Okay. That's helpful. And then the other question on the resi strategy. I mean, clearly, it seems to me that the chess pieces are kind of put in place where you would benefit from kind of the happenings or potential ripple effects from The commission suits now. So Andy, I'm curious if you can Yes, exactly.

Speaker 10

So if you could maybe talk to How you envision particularly how you envision 10x kind of fitting into the mix? It seems like it might have a place Helping field offers or organize offers or maybe even serving as that final kind of cash register in the late stages of the transaction?

Speaker 2

Sure. I mean, I think the best I mean, we are very focused right now. We are working very hard on Many, many fronts on building out the site and our monetization strategy, our brand development strategy This quarter, next quarter, 2024. 10x will not enter into the residential mix in the next 12 to 18 months, but I wouldn't say that it won't ever enter into the mix. When various players moved into asset heavy participation and basically Hi, buying.

Speaker 2

It struck me that there's an asset light version of that where you're where it's more like a 10x and less actually putting on your But facilitating transactions, certainly, there's inefficiencies in the market when 20 people show up to bid on an asset And it's not digitized. I mean that I think that's a lost opportunity for the seller to get the highest price possible. And also it's a lost opportunity for the sellers to fairly participate in trying to put the best offer out there. So 10x can bring value there. I think elements of what 10x has worked on like deal room documents, that sort of stuff, that may occur in 2024.

Speaker 2

But right now, we are excited about and have very robust product plans going into 2024 that we think will deliver real value And 10x would be a little bit further out there.

Speaker 10

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you, guys.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Jeff Meuler with Baird.

Speaker 11

Yes. Thank you. So just first, it looks like the EBITDA guidance maybe Comes down $27,500,000 at the midpoint. I think you said, Scott, that the increased homes initiative spend is around $30,000,000 So can you just confirm if Consolidated EBITDA guidance change is almost entirely just the increased homes investment.

Speaker 3

Yes. And a little bit of drop through, obviously, from the revenue. So the Homes investment number is probably smaller than the 30 by a little bit, Somewhere in the mid-20s possibly, but you're kind of in the ballpark.

Speaker 11

Okay. And then I see like the great traffic numbers. I guess help me think through anything further on like what you're seeing in terms of quality of Homes dot Traffic, there was some metric like a 900% increase in revisits or something. But what are the other Benefits, I'm thinking about like the ability to market a big traffic number as you launch products, any sort of future SEO and SEM Efficiencies that could come from a lot of traffic flowing through your site ahead of some of those additional investments, things like that?

Speaker 2

I think when we put the number in there about the really outstanding numbers for return traffic As a key point, because we are seeing significant growth in return traffic, which means in my mind The people come into the site like the experience, like the layout, like the fact they can reach agents directly, not go to a call center, not get rerouted around and sold. So we think that that number shows exactly what we want to see, which is The fact that we're winning over some consumers, so that's exciting. Certainly, we don't want to go into too much detail on what we're doing on any given day, but certainly you work the blend of SCM, SEO and At different points in different phases to get the optimal result, we're doing the things you would do at this point in time. We're getting, I think we can confidently say we're at double the traffic that we expected to have at this point. So we're happy with what we're doing right now.

Speaker 2

And I look forward to being able to do the next steps, which optimize the site even further. I think one of the metrics that's probably not coming up, but I believe is there, it's a little tougher to measure, but we're seeing some of it is We're getting some really good lead flow numbers. So I think that a significant number of consumers have figured out that if they're interested in their property, When they come to homes.com, they get directly connected to the person who knows the most about the listing, and we believe that's the best consumer And they know that on some of the alternative sites, They are going to go through a ringer of a sales process to be sold a buyer agent. They're not going to get a quick answer about the property they were expressing interest. So they I think we are seeing it's early to tell, but I think we are seeing a significant advantage In traffic to lead flow ratio compared to some of the other players out there, I do believe That even though we are not monetizing today, I believe it's quite possible that we are Perhaps demonetizing some other sites because if a lead comes through to homes.com, That lead may no longer be available to go to another site even though we're not charging for it.

Speaker 9

Got it.

Speaker 2

We go on, there's lots of different metrics out there, but I think lead flow is a good one. You can tell from apartments.com and our track record there, we're very good at Thinking about those leads and the quality of leads and not spraying junk leads at people, not and optimizing the experience and reducing the friction when people actually Want to express interest in a particular property.

Speaker 11

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Nicholas Jones with JMP Securities.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess maybe kind of double clicking on lead quality on homes.com. Can you kind of speak to the uniqueness of the leads? I mean, are there people who are maybe coming through and maybe the average response time isn't fast enough and then they're kind of abandoning and Going to other sites where they can kind of get on demand tours, can you kind of speak to the difference, I guess, in response time and maybe then what the uniqueness is in the leads To the agents based on kind of what the consumer needed, they may have a question that's very specific to the property or they just may want to get a tour quickly and they're looking for kind of a quick response.

Speaker 2

Are you asking when I stop beating my dog? I've never beaten my dog. And we don't think that we have a slow response time on leads on homes.com. In fact, I would believe we have a better Response time in that if you are reaching out to the person that's got the listing, they know the most about the listing and can respond quickly And you get a single point of contact typically as opposed to alternative sites. You might get many people Respond that you might get 4 or 5 agents calling you back about one house you expressed interest and we feel confident that the experience we're giving the consumers It is a solid experience and we think when you talk to a leader In portals over in Europe, can you explain how the legacy models work in the United States and how homes.com works in the United States?

Speaker 2

People have operated portals for 20 years and they do it the way homes like they listen to what I'm explaining about how it works in the United States and they go, well, gosh, That's really obvious. The consumer would prefer to contact the person who has the listing and knows the property Rather than contact someone who doesn't have the listing and doesn't know the property, and so in the eyes of someone that's not been exposed to it, Our lead process would appear to be the obviously superior process.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 2

I'm not sure if that answered the question or not. It directionally does. Okay, great.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.

Speaker 12

Thanks for taking my questions. So I just wanted to ask about the international M and A opportunities. Obviously, you've talked about on the market and organic investments there, but would you also consider doing more tuck ins or strategic acquisitions To build out the Pan European platform and then would you also look at other opportunities outside of Europe? In particular, you called out how you necessarily are not interested in the number one property, but going after good properties. Would you apply the same approach when you think about M and A outside of Europe as in Europe or outside of Europe for residential assets?

Speaker 12

Thanks.

Speaker 2

Sure. I would just I don't know if I'll get that answer that in the proper order, but I would say that I wouldn't say that we're not interested in the number one asset in the market. Whenever we would be interested in the number one asset in the market. What we want to avoid is, we want to avoid overpaying materially for something. And one of the things we do when we look at a particular portal is we consider, if there are 3 portals in a market or Four portals in a market.

Speaker 2

We will look at what the traffic is on the lead portal, the number 2 portal, number 3, number 4 portal. We look at the Potential cost or value, like acquisition cost of each of those portals. And we'll also be mindful of How we can change the outcome. So if we think that we can build traffic On a given portal up to the number one position, if we can take a portal from number 4 to number 1, we can estimate the cost of what it takes to do that And we know the cost of bringing the technology in. We balance that against the cost of buying the number one portal.

Speaker 2

And so if it's Cheaper to build versus buy, we'll build, but build from the context of acquire And invest as opposed to acquire number 1 and try to hold that number 1 position. So I think sometimes you can do the calculation in various European markets and determine that it would be It would take you 60 years to get a payback relative to the cost of simply buying and building the traffic up. So you're looking for a better return. So we look at it through that lens, the value you get for the price you're paying. There is a mindset that you've heard that People believe that all these 80 portals are set and locked in their stack rank And that there's no value to technology in any of these digital portals.

Speaker 2

I think that's wrong. I think the positions will move. They've always Have moved. If you look at who was number 1 5 years ago, it's different than who was number goes number 1 7 years ago. So it's more dynamic than people appreciate, and we just carefully are meeting some wonderful people in Europe, Getting to know them, getting to know their companies, we've a lot of people we'd love to work with, but we want to make sure that our shareholders' dollar goes as Far as possible and that we aren't and that we're optimizing the investments we're making.

Speaker 12

That's very helpful color. And I was just wondering if you can comment on aspirations for resi, International resi strategy outside of Europe as well. Thanks.

Speaker 2

I've been doing this for a while. So around the minor differences from one market to another, you're missing the similarities. Like Steve Jobs would have been very definitive that human beings are very similar from Singapore to Brazil to South Africa and to obsess about the cultural differences in delivering technology as opposed to the similarities would be a mistake.

Speaker 12

That's great color. Thanks again.

Operator

And there are no further questions at this time. So we'll it back to Andy to wrap up.

Speaker 2

Well, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us on this 3rd quarter earnings call, and we look forward to having you join us again. We can share results with you on, I believe, February 20 At 5 p. M. Eastern Standard Time, 2 p. M.

Speaker 2

Pacific Time on February 20, 20 24. So thank you for joining us and thank you for participating. We enjoyed the questions. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Powered by Quartr
Earnings Conference Call
CoStar Group Q3 2023
00:00 / 00:00