Real Estate

Report by Paragon Intel

CEO Andrew Florance’s destructive leadership style makes him unfit to lead CSGP’s costly residential pivot. His rigid, totalitarian micromanaging is incompatible with the disciplined, multi-front execution now required, making his past strengths his current greatest liabilities. CSGP would be better served with Florance receding into an Executive Chairman role, where his visionary strategic brilliance could be offset by a disciplined operational CEO more focused on ROI than empire building. Paragon’s research includes interviews with former senior executives at CSGP who worked with Florance for more than 36 years combined.

Real Estate

Report by Gordon Haskett Research Advisors

While many investors have probably just focused on the Big 3 online real estate portals (Zillow, Redfin & Realtor.com), GHRA believes it's now time to focus on the Big 4 as Costar’s Homes.com has been aggressively growing its web traffic share. Key highlights from their report include: 1) Homes.com accounted for 10.4% of web traffic in Sep, +c.900bps Y/Y. 2) Homes.com's 44% paid mix last month represents a 25-point Y/Y increase, materially above the 1-point increase at both Z & RDFN and 2-point increase at Realtor.com. 3) Homes.com's paid clicks have grown at a significantly faster rate than non-paid clicks (17x vs. 5x).

Report by Abacus Research

Short term pain, long term gain - three ideas where negative short term fundamentals are obscuring long term attractive businesses...

CoStar (CSGP) - No competition, plus headroom to increase prices. 2022 EBITDA margins will be ~27% vs. the 40%+ that the business should do as growth matures.
Etsy (ETSY) - Scaled, capital light, low SBC, and management team with a good history of execution. Take rates will rise longer term, thus revenue can compound faster than GMS.
Pinterest (PINS) - Not all users are equal; core users will be sticky and engaged. Worst case scenario the stock is worth ~$25, but in this scenario Abacus are ~50% below the street for EBITDA.