Morningstar | CoStar Is On Track to Meet Its Adjusted EBITDA Margin Goal and Slightly Raises Outlook
CoStar Group reaffirmed its confidence in meeting its fourth-quarter 2018 adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%, while raising its full-year outlook. While the company reached its prior run-rate target of $1 billion in revenue in fourth-quarter 2017 and is now at a run rate of $1.2 billion after the recent acquisition of ForRent.com, we were a bit cautious on the current EBITDA margin target. In previous quarters, the company's adjusted EBITDA margin has averaged around 30% with a quarterly high of 34%. With the hiccups that often occur with integrations, closing the ForRent acquisition in February arguably put the margin goal at risk. However, management stated that it expects a faster integration for ForRent of less than 12 months compared with an initial estimate of 12-24 months, and that it will meet, if not exceed, its 40% EBITDA margin goal. We don't currently anticipate making a significant change to our fair value estimate for wide-moat CoStar Group.With half the year over, management slightly increased its outlook. Revenue is expected to be $1.18 billion-$1.192 billion compared with a previous outlook of $1.174 billion-$1.19 billion. At the midpoint, this would be a 23% increase on the $965 million of revenue in 2017. The new 2018 adjusted EBITDA range is $395 million-$405 million compared with a previous outlook of $380 million-$390 million and 2017 adjusted EBITDA of about $280 million. CoStar appears to be exceeding expectations with migrating users of LoopNet's information products to CoStar and selling higher-tier advertising on LoopNet.
CoStar Group provides information, analytics and online marketplace services to the commercial real estate and related business community through its database of commercial real estate information covering the U.S., the U.K., and parts of Canada, Spain, Germany and France. The company provides online marketplaces for commercial real estate, apartment rentals, lands for sale and businesses for sale. The company operates within two operating segments, North America and International, and its services are distributed to its clients under subscription-based license agreements that renew automatically, a majority of which have a term of one year.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offer an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors.
Morningstar provides data on approximately 530,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 18 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries and had approximately $185 billion in assets under advisement and management as of June 30, 2016.
We have operations in 27 countries.
Unfortunately, this report is not available for the investor type or country you selected.
Browse all ResearchPool reportsReport is subscription only.
Thank you, your report is ready.
Thank you, your report is ready.