CoStar Raises Revenue and Profit Guidance on Strength of Q2 Numbers and Hints at More Residential Acquisitions

The U.S. real estate giant CoStar has released its results for the second quarter of the 2022 financial year. Highlights of the Washington-based firm's operations from the quarter ended June 30th include:

• Revenue was up 12% year on year at $536 million
• Net income was up 37% year on year at $83 million
• EBITDA was up 5% year on year at $140 million
• $4 billion in cash and cash equivalents

CoStar is one of the largest real estate companies in the world and is the largest player in the U.S. in terms of commercial property data and marketplaces. The company reports six business segments which are:

• CoStar - The company's eponymous suite of digital commercial real estate data insights and analytics products and services
• Information Services - A suite of data and analytics products servicing the hotel, lender and asset management sectors
• Loopnet - The leading online marketplace for commercial real estate in the United States
• Multifamily - CoStar's many apartment rental portals which include Apartments.com and ForRent.com
• Residential - Since 2021 CoStar has broken out its nascent residential sales portal Homes.com and others into their own segment
• Other Marketplaces - This includes the company's online auctions platform, Ten-X as well as several other online marketplaces

CoStar's CEO  Andrew Florance has made no secret his company's intentions to go after the residential sector dominated by Zillow in the United States. CoStar's residential sector continues to build towards the re-launch of the Homes.com brand which is slated for next year. In the meantime, the company is investing heavily in creating unique neighbourhood-specific content to boost the organic traffic for the portal.

Elsewhere, despite market headwinds, the growth in CoStar's multifamily segment pleased management as Net new bookings increased 130% for Apartments.com. Loopnet was also singled out for praise with Florance commenting that the decision to build a dedicated sales team for the platform had "paid off" in a 40% uptick in Net new bookings.

“With net new bookings of $84 million we easily surpassed the record sales results we set in the first quarter of this year. Our top three products, CoStar, Apartments.com and LoopNet, all achieved high double-digit sales increases over the second quarter of 2021. In addition, both revenue and profit in the second quarter of 2022 were ahead of forecast and we are raising our guidance for the year”, commented Florance.

The outspoken CEO also hinted that CoStar is actively hunting out new M&A opportunities. When asked on a call with analysts if CoStar would be buying up multiple portal domains in the residential space (as it has done in the rentals space), he replied that the company is in a strong position with plenty of cash in reserve and falling valuations of a dozen or so "interesting" companies.

CoStar's stock put on a mini-surge in after-hours trading yesterday following the release of the results which were accompanied by a statement raising company revenue guidance for 2022 from $2.16 billion to $2.18 billion and adjusted EBITDA by $20 million to $630 for the year.