Real Estate

Report by Huber Research Partners

Craig Huber argues that the near-50% YTD fall in CSGP’s share price has created an attractive entry point, with investor concerns around AI competition and Homes.com losses now overdone. His 2026/2027 adjusted EPS estimates are above consensus at $1.40/$2.00, with revenue forecast to rise 18.0%/15.4% to $3.833bn/$4.424bn and adjusted EBITDA to reach $833.8m/$1.142bn. The group also has $1bn remaining on its share buyback programme (representing ~7.5% of current m/cap). The stock trades at 16.8x 2027 adjusted EPS or 13.9x EBITDA. If you exclude the Homes.com losses (where there is a lot of flexibility in the expense base; sees losses dropping to ~$300m this year), CSGP is trading at only 9.4x 2027 EBITDA. Information services is a sector that historically trades around 25x EBITDA, if not higher. Craig is an “aggressive buyer” at these levels with a conservative $50 12-month price target, implying ~50% upside.

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.