Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:Z) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

I guess, I’d finally make the point that it is not what the macro does or doesn’t do that drives the growth for this company. However, it really is the fact that we have almost — we have most all of the audience coming in using us and yet, we still have this measly low transaction share. And so the big lever is going to be driving our transaction share from 3% to 6%, and that’s what’s really going to move the needle for us. We have some good early signs. I love the pace and the quality of the product and service innovations that we’re launching right now. It gives us good confidence to prudently invest through this kind of foggy choppy market. We’ve already been through it. You all have seen us go through this last year, and the year before, but last year with a lot of prudent €“ difficult and prudent decisions that we have made.

So we kind of got an early jump on the stuff we’re seeing across the tech economy right now. Anyway, long-winded way, we’re not really calling a bottom because of the fogginess, but we do feel really good about our position. Okay, Wacks €“ Jeremy?

Jeremy Wacksman: Yes. And I think you actually started on the second one, too, which is, we think about the share opportunity coming from really all types of buyers. And that first-time homebuyer mix is, I think, intended to give a bit of color on the stabilization off of some more extreme, but Allen painted in terms of where the market was with cash buyers. But our first home buyer mix is actually pretty consistent with the mortgage market overall. And as Rich said, our growth pillars and our growth strategies really are there not just for first-time homebuyers, but for all buyers, right, but all types of buyers need touring and be able to get into the home. They need to line up financing, repeat buyers need to sell their home into the seller services we offer and all of them need to get in the hands of a great agent if they don’t have one already.

So the growth pillars that we are working on we really think are what drive our share growth across all segments, both first-time homebuyers and repeat home buyers.

Mark Mahaney: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Allen Parker: Yeah, maybe Rich, and Jeremy, I’ll just add on the this, somewhat for Mark, in terms of our comments, we wanted to indicate that as first-time homebuyers normalized we were seeing a little bit of a tailwind. But that tailwind is more temporal than permanent, I think. And so we just wanted to call that out in transparency. And we believe that the things we’re executing around the growth strategy, as Jeremy called out, are what’s going to be driving our growth longer term.

Rich Barton: And in conclusion, before we go to the next question, most all of you on the call already know this, but Brad and Mary Allen have a really terrific team that does deep dive on forecasting the housing market, and we publish it. and offline connect with them, we can provide you with our economists’ view of the housing market.

Mark Mahaney: Thanks, Rich. Thanks, Allen.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Lloyd Walmsley with RBC. You may proceed