Should You Hold CoStar Group (CSGP) For the Long Term?
Lakehouse Capital, a Sydney-based investment manager, released its “Lakehouse Global Growth Fund” July 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. July was a relatively busy month for the Fund, as several portfolio businesses released earnings. During the month, the fund returned 0.8% net of fees and expenses compared to 2.4% for its benchmark, the MSCI All Country World Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.
Lakehouse Global Growth Fund highlighted stocks like CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in the July 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Washington, the District of Columbia, CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) provides information, analytics, and online marketplace services to commercial and residential property markets. On September 1, 2023, CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) stock closed at $82.57 per share. One-month return of CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) was 1.42%, and its shares gained 16.48% of their value over the last 52 weeks. CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) has a market capitalization of $33.716 billion.
L1 Long Short Fund made the following comment about CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in its July 2023 investor letter:
"CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) delivered another solid result with revenue growing 13% year-on-year to $606 million, while EBITDA declined 25% year-on-year to $105 million. While the headline drop in profitability appears worrying at first blush, we aren’t concerned as it’s merely a function of management's decision 18 months ago to step-up reinvestment towards the residential vertical. We were, and still are, supportive of the move to reinvest as we believe it’s a compelling opportunity and are always willing to trade-off some near-term margin for greater long term returns. We also take comfort in the fact that management has an exceptional track record of successfully acquiring, integrating and scaling numerous properties over the last 10 years. And, as it stands today, we have just started to see some initial signs that suggest the company's investments are bearing fruit.
Specifically, traffic to Homes.com was up 130% year-on-year for the month of June and monthly unique users reached an all time high of 38 million. This is not far off the critical milestone of 50 million users that management stated was their desired target before monetisation of the platform begins. Management also noted that combined traffic across all of its residential marketplaces exceeded 100 million monthly unique users in June 2023, which means it surpassed Realtor.com during the quarter to become the 2nd largest residential network in the US behind Zillow. We are particularly encouraged by these results and would not be surprised if CoStar stepped up its investments into the division again in an attempt to capture further market share gains. Zooming out, we continue to believe CoStar remains well positioned to benefit from the ongoing shift of commercial real estate advertising spend towards online channels and also see meaningful upside optionality around their residential property platform."
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CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 38 hedge fund portfolios held CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) at the end of second quarter which was 43 in the previous quarter.
We discussed CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSGP) in another article and shared the list of biggest technology companies. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q2 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
