Z - NASDAQ

Hello and welcome to

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to

Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. It's been another excellent quarter. I'm pleased to share that we exceeded our Q1 outlook, including delivering strong top-line growth despite all the macro noise around us. We've kept our focus on executing our strategy, managing costs, and expanding EBITDA margins, which resulted in

Thanks, Jeremy, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter in Q1, and we are well positioned to continue doing so as we execute on our strategy in 2025 and beyond. Our Q1 2025 results exceeded expectations for revenue and EBITDA, with revenue up 13% year-over-year to $598 million which was $15 million above the midpoint of our outlook range. Our better than expected revenue performance, combined with effective cost management, also delivered better than expected EBITDA in the quarter. Q1 EBITDA was $153 million with an EBITDA margin of 26%, a 200 basis point year-over-year improvement. Our trailing 12 month EBITDA as of the end of Q1 grew 28%. In Q1, we also achieved an important milestone for the company, delivering positive GAAP net income of $8 million representing 1% of our revenue. Our Q1 results put us on a solid path to achieve positive GAAP net income for the full year 2025. For Sale revenue grew 8% year-over-year in Q1 to $458 million above industry growth of 3% as reported by NAR and 6% according to

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Ron Josey with Citi. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. And, I've got a ton, but I want to focus, Jeremy, on the Rentals business specifically and the commentary about accelerating revenue growth to 40% for the full year. And I wanted to understand a little bit more about what's driving that. I mean, clearly, multifamily units reaching 60K as of early May talks about an acceleration or at least growing units there at a faster cadence than we've seen normally. And so when you think about the accelerating growth or accelerating growth in Rentals, multifamily units growing as fast as they are, just talk to us a little bit more about where these gains are coming from. Is it more of these multifamily units are willing to work with

Yes. Hey, Ron. Maybe I'll start and Jeremy Hofmann can, give you some details on the forecast and the guide. I mean, I'll start with strategy on Rentals because what you're really seeing is the execution and the outputs of the business come from the strategy really working, right. The strategy is build this comprehensive marketplace. This national database of as much of the inventory as possible, right. There is no national database of all Rentals. We now have more than 2 million listings. That mix of single family as well as multifamily. We think that's the most listings that are out there in one place, and that really starts to satisfy the renter's needs, right. The renter is on a very tight timeframe, wants to find as much inventory as possible. And so if we can deliver them as much inventory, we're going to become their preferred brand of choice. You're seeing that play out, right. So now that we have the supply, you're seeing our audience lead widen, right. 37 million uniques in Comscore in March. That lead continues to grow. And the brand preference we have among renters is number one as well. We have because we're satisfying their need. And so I start with that strategy because that strategy is now yielding the revenue growth and the revenue acceleration that Jeremy talked about. That property growth is a larger and larger share of advertisers wanting to advertise to that audience. And if you check out the video we put in our shareholder letter, you'll see really good testimonials from some of our partners about not just the audience size, but the quality that they're receiving and the ROI they're getting from the

Yes. And then, Ron, I'll just pile on. From a numbers perspective, we grew revenue and Rentals 27%, last year. We grew Q1, 33%. We're expecting, 35% growth in Q2 and then 40% for the full year. And I think that's just, the dynamics that Jeremy highlighted playing out in the revenue growth, and we're quite pleased with what we're doing and really see a long opportunity well beyond 2025. That $1 billion plus revenue target feels quite achievable, and we're pleased with what we're doing into 2025.

Thank you, guys.

Our next question comes from Brad Erickson with RBC Capital Markets. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Yes. Thanks. So a couple of questions. One, just on market share. NAR, I guess, showed 3% growth. You guys showed 6% growth, Residential grew 6%. And I appreciate, Jeremy, the comments earlier on kind of the high-end, low-end nuance going on there. But just in general, with these two reported metrics being a little bit of far apart. How should we be looking at this and aiming to kind of assess your growth relative to the market? And then I've got a follow-up.

Yes. So, Brad, let me take that first. I think you're right. There's a lot of noise in the macro environment right now. And we've been bouncing along the bottom for a good bit of time in housing. I think we're pleased with the outperformance, both on the Residential side and the For Sale side, particularly when we look at the Mortgage market. So like I called out in the prepared remarks, the high-end of the market was really the driver of any growth in housing, and we tend to look more like the Mortgage buyer. That's the person that shows up most frequently for

Got it. And then you've obviously got a growing portion of connections here coming from the Enhanced Markets, I guess, 24% this quarter, 35% expected by the end of the year. It would seem like that could really start to take growth rates kind of further above the market to the last -- to your last point, so I guess, is that kind of the right way to think about it or maybe any other nuances you might want us to be aware of as we kind of contextualize that in the full year guidance?

Yes, I'll take that, Brad. And Jeremy pile in if I miss anything. But I think the Enhanced Markets are going well. You're right, that 24% of all connections in Q1, we're expecting that to be 35% plus by year-end. The bulk of the launches last year were Q2 through Q4 and it takes about 12 months to see accretion. So I do think that's something to just keep in mind as we go. But I think the progress is quite good. We're seeing double-digit adoption rates across all of the Enhanced Markets, not just those that are more mature with

Yes. The only thing I'd add there is just I know it makes it harder for you all to model, but not everything is the same, right. You think about Real Time Touring and that comes to the Enhanced Markets as we roll them out, but it also comes more broadly. And I talked about 36% of connections nationwide now being in Real Time Touring. So when we have things we can deliver in all the Enhanced Markets and beyond we do. And then when we have things that we have to really be methodical about things like Follow Up Boss improvements for our Premier Agent partners to drive Enhanced Markets results, things like introduction and training with the

Helpful. Thanks.

Our next question will come from John Colantuoni with Jefferies. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Looks like your full year outlook calls for better growth in the Rental segment, which kind of implies either the Residential or the Mortgage segment or maybe both are falling a bit short of prior expectations. Can you talk to the factors causing that shortfall relative to your expectations for either segment. And second question, based on sort of your hiring needs to service your current market footprint in your growth areas, how is that informing your pathway to get back to variable costs growing more consistent with revenue? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks, John. I'll start. It's Jeremy Hofmann. On the Rental side, our full year guide had already included that Rentals acceleration in our February outlook. We had just given a total company number. And we're trying to give you all this quarter, just a bit more visibility into how that builds. So it's not necessarily a change versus what we guided in February. Just more color on Rentals just given the acceleration we are seeing and expected to see. So I think that's question one. And then on the variable side, we are going to continue to invest in variable for both

Great. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Trevor Young with Barclays. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Great. Thanks. Just back to the questions on Rentals and the multifamily ramp there. how much of the uptick in May to the 60,000 was from contracts that lapsed at Redfin that you were able to pick up. I think you said the partnership just launched last week. So clearly very early days. And also can you just remind us kind of the mechanics of the partnership since it wasn't actually an acquisition. Redfin cancels their contracts, but can share a customer list with you and then your sales org can go try to sign up those properties? Is that more or less how it works?

Yes. Trevor, I'll take that. It's Jeremy Hofmann. The way that I would think about the partnership is there was no transfer of contracts. So we had to go out and win that business. And we obviously did that quite well. And that goes back to what Jeremy was talking about earlier. We have differentiated supply. We have differentiated demand and we're driving what we believe is differentiated ROI to our partners as well. And when you put all three of those things together, you can start to see the success that we've had. And adding 5,000 buildings in Q1, another 5,000 in April alone makes us feel quite good that the proposition that we're putting forth in the market is clearly resonating and revenues accelerating throughout the course of the year as a result of all that. And then on the partnership itself, the syndication went live in late April. So we started syndicating properties to Redfin then. And what that means is now the 60,000 buildings that are on

Yes. And maybe the only thing I'd add is, as Jeremy said, we had to go sell and win that business. We're, of course, knocking about 1,000, right. I mean having to earn this business, there's going to be our best efforts. You're seeing the results of that in the numbers we talked about and why we gave the color even since Q1 because it's really a win-win, right. It's a win for the advertiser that was on their sites, but was not on

Really helpful. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Tom Champion with Piper Sandler. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Hi. Good afternoon. Jeremy Wacksman, maybe for you, please. Could you talk a little bit about the listing access standards. This seems like an important industry development. And I'm wondering if you could just offer some comments on it and why it's important. And maybe for Jeremy Hofmann. I'm wondering if you could offer just a little more detail around Enhanced Markets growth and the plans through the balance of the year. I want to say you ended '24 with roughly 50, maybe that expanded to 90-ish in April. What inning are we in with the expansion of the Enhanced Markets. What does this look like over the next maybe couple of quarters into next year? Any thoughts on that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Yes, Tom, I'll start. So our listing standards that we announced recently, it's really just about encouraging the industry to formally implement what most are already practicing, which is that if you're going to market a listing, right, if a seller is not going to choose privacy or they're not going to choose no Internet, which are all options available to them, and you're going to market it publicly to some buyers, you need to market it to all buyers. And the reason we're doing that is because the transparency that the US residential real estate market has the luxury of allows buyers to be informed and be educated when they select their professional sellers understand and get the benefits of that transparency and agents can do their job effectively. Agents can see all the inventory and cooperate with each other. So we announced those standards because we see such a consumer good in buyer and seller empowerment and education and availability of content and we want to make sure that remains in our market so that our consumers and the professionals who work with us, the professional work with our competitors, the professional who work everywhere around the industry can continue to do their jobs effectively.

Yes. And then, Tom, on the Enhanced Markets, I think we're still early innings. And when I say that, we think this is the future consumer experience that drives the vast majority of how

Thanks, guys.

Our next question will come from Mark Mahaney with Evercore ISI. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.

Okay. Thanks. Two questions, please. First, your market transactions growth assumption behind your Q2 Residential revenue outlook? Is it for flat low-single-digits? Is that what you're assuming in the market? And then I know it's a broad range or there's probably a couple of ranges, but can you talk about the monetization of per connection differential between the Enhanced Markets and the rest of the -- and the regular markets? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks, Mark. I'll take the housing market. I think on the housing market front, it's been challenged for a while. We expect it to continue to bounce along the bottom. There's not a lot new on that front. This has been the environment we have been operating in since 2022. And we expect more of the same in 2025. I think what we can do and our job is to really control what we can control regardless of the macro environment. And I think we're doing that quite well. The consistent double-digit revenue growth in the face of a really challenging housing market is something I think we're quite pleased with and we have continued confidence that we'll grow low to mid-teens in 2025 against a challenged market. Q2 is much of the same. We don't have any more specificity around that, just given how fluid macro is, but it's bouncing along the bottom and we expect that to continue to be the case for some time.

And then maybe on your second question, Mark, kind of monetization of Enhanced Market versus not. I mean we don't break it out that precisely. We have talked about how the Enhanced Markets are growing faster than the business on average, and that's the math that backs what Jeremy just talked through earlier around getting from the 20% odd to 35% of connections to 75% plus by the end, drives that $1 billion of organic growth because that's basically share outperformance against the flat housing market, right. So all of that math and the return we're seeing and the growth rates we're seeing, which we talked about a bit in the prepared remarks of Enhanced Market performance is good color for you, but we haven't given a precise breakout of it.

Okay. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Sergio Segura with KeyBanc Capital Markets. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I had two. Maybe going back to the listing standards. Just curious what the industry-wide reaction has been. For the brokerages that have been pushing these private listing networks, have you seen any signs of them maybe backing away from that strategy? And then for the EBITDA expense on 1Q was modestly below what you had in your outlook. So anything to call out there on cost savings or was that more just 1Q investment spend shifting into the second quarter? Thank you.

Yes, Jeremy, I'll start maybe on listings, and you can take the second one. I mean it's really early, I guess, is my short answer, but we're pretty pleased to see so many in the industry, brokerages, MLSs, other organizations publicly committing to the same principle. But again, most of them already believed in and were practicing this, that if you're going to market a listing you should market it available to everyone to all buyers so that the marketplace has transparency. We're also seeing a lot of consumer advocacy organizations, including the consumer policy center support that transparency in real estate. So again, we really put that statement and policy out because it is really supporting most of what those in the industry already believed and we're practicing.

Yes. And then on the expenses side, Sergio, Q1, the difference between the $450 million that we had in our implied outlook and the $445 million that we came in with was primarily a bit slower hiring than anticipated and a bit lower marketing than we had anticipated. So those were the two, nothing major to call out. And then the one thing I would say on Q2, we have a $50 million sequential increase from Q1 to Q2 in our EBITDA expenses. More than half of that is driven by normal seasonal marketing step-up. And then the balance of it comes from the Redfin partnership and us starting to pay them for leads and the leads they generate to our Rentals marketplace.

Got it. Thanks both.

Our next question comes from Curtis Nagle with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. You may now ask your question and unmute your audio.

Great. Thanks so much for taking the question. I just want to go back to the point about the impact of high housing kind of driving a relative disparity in terms of your resi For Sale performance versus the market as a whole. I guess was that more outsized in 1Q relative to other quarters? I know high-end housing has been largely or I think for the most part doing better than the market as a whole for, let's say, the past several quarters. So, yes, just curious on your thoughts on that. Thanks very much.

Yes, you're right, Chris, the high-end just outperformed in the first quarter. Homes at the high-end where -- we had 6% total growth on our calculation, high-end contributed 500 plus basis points. So that means the middle and lower end was roughly flat. And that is the set of customers that we tend to more commonly work with. I think that's been a trend particularly the affordability challenge, I think, for homebuyers and first-time homebuyers in particular has been a headwind for more than just Q1. We had that headwind through the course of 2024 as well. It was a bit of a tailwind back in 2023, but more of a headwind in '24, and I think continue to be the case into Q1. And I think that's, like I said, on the relative performance question, that's why we try not to over function, right. The macro is just so fluid at the moment. It has been for a long period of time now that we try to look at how are we doing in Residential, For Sale and total company over longer periods of time where that stuff starts to smooth out and I think quite pleased with the ability to take share in Residential and For Sale and across the business.

Okay. And then maybe just a quick follow-up, Jeremy, on that point. Just I guess the philosophy behind not giving a market forecast this quarter I think you have for at least I don't know past as far back as I can see that's something you've done. So just why not do it for 2Q?

It's just a little too hard to predict, Curtis. I think we -- the housing market itself has been challenging to predict the last few years. And you throw in the more uncertainty going on in the rest of the macro, we felt like better served to just tell you all our expectation is much of the same and our expectation is to grow right through it. So that's what we plan to do in Q2.

Okay. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Benjamin Black with Deutsche Bank Research. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. One on the Listing Showcase. Just can you talk a little bit about the learnings there, your go-to-market strategy, what are some of the feedback that you're getting from your listing agents? And is there anything on the product side that you're working on that could potentially drive even greater adoption? And just longer term, when do you think we get to the place where not having Listing Showcase is seen as sort of a real disadvantage and the sellers start to pressure agents to use it more? Thank you.

I love that question. We ask ourselves that question, too. So on Showcase, 2% of all new listings, up from 1.7% last quarter. We are thrilled with that for a product that's really just nationwide a little more than a year. And your second question is what we all think about, right, when this becomes the standard, but the reality is we're sitting in a world where this is still new and most sales calls are introducing and educating an agent on what this is, right. So we're really pleased with that progress. And you've seen us do a great job enrolling agents and teams and we're starting to also work with brokers as well to work with their agents. We just announced a partnership this quarter and we're going to continue to evolve our go-to-market to get the word out more with agents and brokers. And then when do we move from kind of the fear of missing out version of Showcase to the table stakes, that comes with scale and with time and with share of Showcase. I mean and that is the future we see. I think it's when you see buyers engage more with the Showcase Listing and they spend nearly double the time engaging with it, that's a higher intent buyer, right. And so the agent trying to sell that home absolutely wants that because it helps them sell the home faster. You see that in the data, right. In every market, we see homes sell faster and sell for more money when they are showcased and that's what allows agents to win more listings when they use it. So right now, it's new, it's novel. We've been talking to you all about it for many quarters now. But if you go sit inside a real estate agent's office, they're still learning about it for the first time in many places. So we will get there. Part of the guidance we tried to give you all was, we think, at 5% to 10% share that's the incremental $150 million to $300 million of the product. But when we get beyond that and when we start to get to real penetration of the content, it does turn into an expectation. And we know that because every time you give the consumer access to more content, they move from new, innovative to expectation. You saw that with mobile, you're going to see that with things like Showcase and AI-powered technology in our category. So we're really excited about its potential. We didn't put a time frame on that 5% to 10%, and we haven't put a time frame on your second question, but that is ultimately the goal is to really move all buyer and seller expectations to a much more interactive, much more immersive way to virtually shop. That empowers the consumer and that ultimately empowers the agent, too. It's a higher intent buyer and seller, it's a more educated customer.

Thank you for that.

Our next question will come from Dae Lee with JPMorgan. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Great. Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two. It's a follow-up on the macro comments you made earlier. So I understand that housing remains challenged. But with that said, how is that translating into agent participation on your platform? I'm wondering if you're seeing any changes in how they're participating this year or that it's last year? And then secondly you've been seeing acceleration in organic user growth. Sort of curious what's driving that acceleration? And if you're seeing any changes to consumer behavior on your platform that could help us guide how to think about how '25 housing market should look like. Thank you.

On agent sentiment, we aren't seeing a ton of change, but I will caveat that with whenever we get asked about agent sentiment in the industry nationwide. It's a reminder that our agents are not the average, right. 80% of agents that work with

Yes. And then I think just to pile on that, if you think about how to get comfortable with why do we continue to grow in the low to mid-teens for 2025. It's not so much on the back of user growth. It's going to be on the back of things like rentals, multifamily property growth, which you're seeing Enhanced Market expansion, continued expansion of Follow Up Boss and continued expansion of Showcase. Those are all really much more kind of self-help transactional services that we're delivering to help us drive growth rather than user specific at the top of the funnel.

That's right. And that's because as we said maybe in the beginning of the hour, our strategy is convert more of the highly engaged brand direct audience we have, right. This isn't about lead gen and lead acquisition. This is about helping more buyers and sellers use an integrated shopping experience to not just shop but actually buy and sell with great partners. And everything Jeremy just laid out are the ways in which we're doing that and we're doing that in our Enhanced Markets most fully.

Got it. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Maria Ripps with Canaccord. You may now unmute your audio and ask your question.

Maria I think you're still on mute if you're trying to talk.

[Operator Instructions]

Great. Thanks so much for taking my questions and sorry about that. Just first sort of a broad industry question. Would love to hear sort of your thoughts on what Rocket's announced acquisitions of Redfin and Mr. Cooper sort of what the strategy there could mean for

Why don't I start and then Jeremy obviously jump in on anything on the partnership specifically. I think for me Rocket announcing their acquisition of Redfin is really about a recognition that the future of real estate is this integrated transaction, right. That is what buyers and sellers are demanding the idea that you need to put together a fantastic technology for the buyer and for the seller and for the real estate agent and for the loan officer and for all the transaction services along the way because a buyer and a seller wants to do that increasingly in the palm of their hand inside one app. That's how I think about that. The great news for us is that's been our strategy for a while, and you're seeing us grow our share of transactions executing against that strategy. And we like the assets we have to continue to grow and be a big share gainer in that future of real estate. And it's a huge and highly fragmented market, right. There's going to be multiple winners here. And so as more companies see that, that is actually a feature of real estate is building this integrated experience, there's going to be more than just us doing it. So we love the bet we are making that real estate is going to be further digitized and integrated and we love our strategic positioning.

And then to the Redfin question, we expect, and I think Rocket has said this as well. We expect them to be supportive there. We don't expect changes to the partnership as a result of the acquisition. And like Jeremy said, really big market, really interesting strategy. We think there are multiple winners. And of course, in these partnerships, we look for ways to create win-wins. That's how these partnerships work best and we think the Redfin one is a win for us. We think it's a win for Rocket/Redfin as well.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then can you maybe help us kind of understand sort of the magnitude of gross margin impact from the Redfin partnership that's sort of that's embedded in your guidance?

Yes. I would go back to just thinking about the sequential uptick between Q1 and Q2 is about $50 million. So $445 in Q1, $495 million in Q2. More than half of that is just seasonal marketing step-up and then the balance of it will come from that Redfin partnership and that will be showing up in cost of revenue.

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

This completes the allotted time for questions. I will now turn the call back over to Jeremy Wacksman for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today. We really appreciate your continued support. We're excited for what's ahead and we look forward to speaking with you in August.

Thank you for joining