CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And so we feel that we have a unique offering on the organic side that no one else is offering out there. And so we’re a little more focused on that and acquisitions that might support an organic, inorganic — a more organic strategy on building out the opportunity. It’s important to remember that in the residential portal space, the vast majority of residential agents don’t buy anything from the leading portals. So I believe that maybe 97% of active residential agents aren’t buying anything from the existing portals. And so we think there’s a very attractive organic opportunity there. And we think that there are acquisitions that help you reach that goal. And then there are also less directly related acquisition opportunities. So — it’s a changing landscape and you’re making judgments as you go and making sure that you believe it’s the best ROI for the investors.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Heather Balsky: Just going back to the M&A question. with regards to your balance sheet and you guys are sitting on a lot of cash. I guess if — it sounds like you’re thinking organic, you’re thinking organic investment, you’re thinking, it sounds like maybe some sort of acquisitions that sound like might be tuck-in or you may do something transformational. I guess, in the meantime, how are you thinking about your balance sheet and the cash sitting on your balance sheet?

Scott Wheeler: Yes. Thanks for the question. The continued view of our strategy is to focus on acquisitions and adding meaningful scale to the company through that vehicle, which is why we raised the capital over the last few years. And in the meantime, obviously, we’ll try to maximize the returns from the capital that we have. It’s helpful that interest rates have gone up to help us a bit with that. And of course, we’ll always keep open other alternatives for that capital as time goes on. But that’s how we’re thinking about our capital still today, and we have many other acquisition opportunities in the pipeline that we hope to deploy that capital against in the near future. .

Heather Balsky: And I apologize, may I just squeeze in what — in terms of the investment spend for residential in 2023? Okay. Sorry about that.

Scott Wheeler: No, no, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Heather Balsky: Okay. Just the actual dollar spend, specifically for residential in 2023, would you guys mind sharing that?

Scott Wheeler: Yes. No, we haven’t provided that information in 2023. And let me explain, I’m sure everyone is wondering, Matt, that now that we’ve integrated Homesnap, we’ve integrated Homes.com. They’re all in our combined technology stacks with the rest of the things that Frank Simuro runs in our marketplaces. We also have significant resources in our research team now embedded under Lisa Ruggles, working on residential as well as the research for CoStar Apartments.com, LoopNet. And so as they deploy folks out into the field to do media shoots and other property information, those resources go all across the different property types that we have and they produce information. And so we don’t spend the time to go back and track time sheets or record what everyone’s working on in a way that would say, hey, we’re going to track margins by each of our businesses.