CoStar Group, Inc. (CSGP) — Company Research

Last Updated: 28 August 2026

CoStar Group is the largest commercial property data and analytics business in the world, and — after nearly a decade of very expensive effort — a serious residential marketplace operator too. The FY2025 accounts show a company that grew revenue 19% to $3.25bn while earning almost nothing on a GAAP basis, because roughly $1.5bn a year of residential spending was being absorbed by the income statement. The second quarter of 2026, reported on 28 July 2026, is the first period in which that picture visibly changed: revenue of $925m, net income of $55m against $6m a year earlier, and a Residential segment that turned adjusted-EBITDA positive for the first time. This report sets out what the filings actually say, without ratings or price targets. For live pricing see our Live Charts page.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Company	CoStar Group, Inc.
Ticker / exchange	CSGP (NASDAQ)
Headquarters	Arlington, Virginia, United States
Sector	Commercial and residential real estate data, analytics and marketplaces
CEO / Leadership	Andy Florance (Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer); Robin Rossmann (Chief Financial Officer, from August 2026); Louise Sams (independent Board Chair)
Employees	8,441 (as at 31 January 2026, per the FY2025 Form 10-K), up roughly 28% on the 6,593 disclosed a year earlier
Revenue (FY2025)	$3,247m, up 18.7% year on year
Net income (FY2025)	$7m (GAAP); Adjusted EBITDA $442m
Latest reported period	Q2 2026, quarter ended 30 June 2026, reported 28 July 2026
Revenue (Q2 2026)	$925m, up 18% year on year
Share price	$31.34 (close, 27 August 2026)
Market cap	Approximately $12.70bn
Shares outstanding	405,197,588 (10-Q cover page, 27 July 2026)
Dividend	None. CoStar has never declared or paid a dividend on its common stock
Fiscal year end	31 December

2. Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Profitability inflection is now visible in the numbers: Q2 2026 delivered $925m of revenue, $55m of GAAP net income against $6m a year earlier, and Adjusted EBITDA of $184m, up 116% year on year — the second highest quarterly figure in company history.
• Residential has stopped burning cash at the segment level: Residential Real Estate reported positive Adjusted EBITDA of $12m in Q2 2026, a $41m sequential improvement, against a full-year FY2025 segment loss of $230m.
• The core commercial franchise is a genuine near-monopoly: the CoStar and LoopNet brands together produced $481m of Q2 2026 revenue at $172m of segment Adjusted EBITDA, with a contract renewal rate reported at 93% in the quarter and 95% for customers of five years or more.
• Subscription mechanics and a long growth record: 73% of revenue sits on annual subscription contracts, net new bookings reached a record $308m in FY2025 and $69m in Q2 2026, and the company recorded its 61st consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth.
• The founder is buying his own stock: Andy Florance made three open-market purchases in 2026 — March, May and August — totalling more than 210,000 shares, with the August tranche of 83,300 shares bought at an average $29.89.

Bear Case

• GAAP earnings remain negligible relative to the market value: FY2025 net income was $7m on $3,247m of revenue and the FY2025 GAAP operating result was a $72m loss; trailing GAAP EPS of roughly $0.19 leaves the shares on an extreme reported multiple.
• Homes.com still has to prove the return: roughly 35,000 paid agent members and an annual run-rate around $100m sit against a residential investment programme that an activist publicly characterised as multi-billion-dollar, and Zillow still reports several times Homes.com's audience.
• New antitrust litigation is unresolved: two federal actions were filed in 2026 — a Sherman Act case in the Eastern District of Virginia in April and a rent-data price-fixing class action in the Northern District of Illinois on 12 June — with no trial dates set.
• Goodwill is now roughly half the balance sheet: $4,981m of goodwill at 30 June 2026 against $10,139m of total assets, built up through Matterport, Domain, Visual Lease and now Zonda, which makes any residential stall an impairment question.
• The share price has de-rated violently: the stock closed at $31.34 against a 52-week high of $91.89, and the finance function changed hands in July 2026 when Chris Lown left for Allstate.

3. Revenue Segments

From the fourth quarter of 2025 CoStar reports two segments — Commercial Real Estate and Residential Real Estate — and disaggregates commercial revenue by brand. The table below uses the disaggregated revenue disclosure for the three months ended 30 June 2026, on total revenue of $925m.

Segment / revenue line	% of revenue	What it is
Residential Real Estate	48.0% ($444m)	Apartments.com, Homes.com, Domain in Australia, Matterport digital twins and the land marketplaces. Grew 33% year on year from $335m and turned Adjusted EBITDA positive for the first time in Q2 2026
CoStar (commercial information)	36.4% ($337m)	The flagship commercial property research subscription — leasing, sales comparables, tenant and analytics data for brokers, owners, lenders and investors
LoopNet	9.4% ($87m)	The commercial property marketing marketplace, sold on a listing-exposure basis to owners and brokers
Other Commercial Real Estate	6.2% ($57m)	Ten-X online auctions, STR hospitality benchmarking, Visual Lease lease administration and other commercial products

Total Commercial Real Estate was $481m, or 52.0% of the quarter. For the full FY2025 year, Commercial Real Estate was $1,787m (55.0%) against Residential Real Estate of $1,460m (45.0%), with segment Adjusted EBITDA of $672m and negative $230m respectively.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. CoStar sells annual subscriptions to proprietary databases and marketplace exposure, collected monthly and sold through a large direct field sales force. Approximately 73% of revenue was on annual subscription contracts in the most recent disclosure. The company's own forward indicator is net new bookings — the annualised value of new and expanded contracts less cancellations — which was $67m in Q1 2026 and $69m in Q2 2026, following a record $308m for FY2025.

Where the moat sits. The commercial database is built by a research operation that physically verifies property, lease and sale data at a scale competitors have not replicated, and the resulting dataset is embedded in the workflow of brokers, appraisers, lenders and institutional owners. That shows up as renewal behaviour: management reported a 93% contract renewal rate in Q2 2026, with 95% for customers of five years' tenure or more. Switching costs are behavioural as much as contractual — comparables histories, saved searches and internal underwriting models are all built on the CoStar record.

Why residential is different. Homes.com and Apartments.com are advertising marketplaces, where the moat is audience rather than data exclusivity. CoStar reported roughly 118m average monthly unique visitors across its websites in Q2 2026 and an average of 108m for the Homes.com Network across 2025, and has been buying reach — Domain in Australia in August 2025, Matterport in February 2025 and Zonda in August 2026. The economics only work if agent subscriptions convert that traffic; membership stood at roughly 35,000 paid agents after a fee increase that took effect in late April 2026.

Capital intensity. Property capital expenditure has been dominated by the Richmond, Virginia campus build: $307m of "new campuses" spending in FY2025 plus $82m of other property and equipment, falling to $83m and $29m respectively in the first half of 2026 as the programme tapers.

5. Financial Health

All figures below are taken from CoStar Group's annual and quarterly earnings releases filed with the SEC and from the company's XBRL financial data. Adjusted EPS is the company's own non-GAAP net income per diluted share.

Fiscal Year	Revenue ($m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	1,944.1	+17.2%	$0.74	$1.14	Nil	$987.9m
FY2022	2,182.4	+12.3%	$0.93	$1.27	Nil	$989.2m
FY2023	2,455.0	+12.5%	$0.92	$1.22	Nil	$990.5m
FY2024	2,736.0	+11.4%	$0.34	$0.73	Nil	$992.0m
FY2025	3,247.0	+18.7%	$0.02	$0.87	Nil	$993.0m

Long-term debt is the $1.0bn of 2.800% senior notes due 2030, carried net of issuance costs; CoStar has no current portion of long-term debt. The dividend column is nil in every year because the company has never declared one and states it has no plan to.

Quarter / Half	Revenue ($m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026	925	$0.32	$0.14
Q1 2026	897	$0.23	$0.01
Q4 2025	900	$0.31	$0.11
Q3 2025	834	$0.23	−$0.07
FY2025 total	3,247	$0.87	$0.02

Cash flow and balance sheet. Operating cash flow was $430m in FY2025 and $267m in the first half of 2026 against $200m in the comparable prior period. Capital expenditure across both disclosed lines was $389m in FY2025 and $112m in the first half of 2026. Depreciation and amortisation was $263m in FY2025 and $167m in the first half of 2026. At 30 June 2026 the company held $1,266m of cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash against $994m of long-term debt, $4,981m of goodwill, $10,139m of total assets and $7,945m of total equity. The first-half cash outflow of $467m reflects $587m of share repurchases and a $109m litigation accrual payment tied to the Matterport Brown judgment; the $800m Zonda purchase closed after the balance sheet date on 21 August 2026 and is not reflected above.

Guidance. For FY2026 management guides revenue of $3.715bn to $3.755bn, Adjusted EBITDA of $780m to $820m, GAAP diluted EPS of $0.54 to $0.61 and Adjusted EPS of $1.32 to $1.39 on 405m shares. Q3 2026 guidance is revenue of $935m to $945m and Adjusted EPS of $0.31 to $0.34.

6. Valuation Metrics

Raw metrics, August 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Share price	$31.34 (close, 27 August 2026)
Market cap	~$12.70bn (405.2m shares at $31.34)
Enterprise value	~$12.43bn (market cap ~$12.70bn + total debt ~$0.99bn − cash and restricted cash ~$1.27bn per the 30 June 2026 balance sheet; CoStar reports no current portion of long-term debt and no separate short-term investments line)
Trailing P/E (GAAP)	~165x ($31.34 divided by trailing twelve-month GAAP diluted EPS of $0.19, being Q3 2025 −$0.07, Q4 2025 $0.11, Q1 2026 $0.01 and Q2 2026 $0.14). On the company's own trailing twelve-month Adjusted EPS of $1.09 the same price is about 29x
P/E (forward)	~23x on the midpoint of company FY2026 Adjusted EPS guidance of $1.32–$1.39; approximately 55x on the midpoint of FY2026 GAAP diluted EPS guidance of $0.54–$0.61
P/S (TTM)	~3.6x (market cap ~$12.70bn / trailing twelve-month revenue $3,556m, being FY2025 $3,247m − H1 2025 $1,513m + H1 2026 $1,822m)
EV/EBITDA (TTM)	~31.5x (EV ~$12.43bn / trailing twelve-month EBITDA of $394m; EBITDA = trailing operating income $77m + trailing depreciation and amortisation $317m, using the wider cash-flow-statement D&A line rather than the narrower property-only depreciation figure). GAAP EBITDA remains heavily depressed by acquired-intangible amortisation, so this multiple sits far above the ~15x implied on the company's own FY2026 Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $780m–$820m
P/FCF	~56x (market cap ~$12.70bn / free cash flow ~$227m; FCF = trailing operating cash flow $497m − trailing capital expenditure $270m across both disclosed property lines)
Price/book	~1.6x (market cap ~$12.70bn / total equity $7,945m at 30 June 2026)
52-week high	$91.89
52-week low	$25.89
Short interest (% of float)	4.15% (16.69m shares short against a 399.6m share float, settlement date 14 August 2026)
Days to cover	2.15
Dividend yield	n/a — no dividend is paid

7. What Are They Building

Artificial intelligence across the marketplaces. Homes AI launched on Homes.com on 17 February 2026 as a conversational property search and shopping layer, and an equivalent Apartments.com AI product followed in June 2026. Both are aimed at converting the audience CoStar has bought and built into paid agent and property-manager subscriptions.

New-home data through Zonda. The $800m acquisition of Zonda from MidOcean Partners, agreed 29 May 2026 and completed on 21 August 2026, brings NewHomeSource and Livabl plus a lot-level new-construction database. It extends CoStar's residential coverage into the new-build segment, where the advertiser is a homebuilder rather than an agent.

Digital twins and international. Matterport, acquired in February 2025, is being pushed into listing workflows across the residential and commercial products. Domain, acquired in August 2025, gives CoStar an established Australian marketplace, while the European business — previously run by the incoming CFO — has been extended into France.

The Richmond campus. The largest single capital project of recent years is CoStar's Richmond, Virginia campus, which absorbed $307m of capital spending in FY2025 and is tapering: $83m in the first half of 2026. Its completion is a meaningful free-cash-flow tailwind independent of trading.

8. Competitive Landscape

CoStar sits between two competitive sets. In commercial data and analytics it competes with the broader financial information complex; in residential marketplaces it competes with Zillow, Realtor.com and, increasingly, brokerage-owned portals. Market capitalisations below were checked live on 27–28 August 2026.

Peer	Market cap (August 2026)	Key 2025 metric
Moody's Corporation (MCO)	~$88.15bn	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $8.16bn; the benchmark for a subscription analytics franchise with pricing power
MSCI Inc. (MSCI)	~$41.38bn	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $3.33bn on a similar revenue base to CoStar but with far higher margins — trailing EBITDA of roughly $1.96bn
Verisk Analytics (VRSK)	~$24.86bn	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $3.14bn and trailing EBITDA of roughly $1.52bn
Compass, Inc. (COMP)	~$8.52bn	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $10.56bn on brokerage gross accounting; reported record Q2 2026 revenue of $4.31bn
Zillow Group (ZG)	~$8.17bn	Trailing twelve-month revenue of $2.81bn; Q2 2026 revenue of $772m, up 18%, with a $4m net loss after a $36m restructuring charge

Two structural points sit behind the table. Zillow's audience remains materially larger than the Homes.com Network's, which is the single most important competitive fact for CoStar's residential thesis. And News Corp's Move business, which operates Realtor.com, reported FY2026 revenue up 11% to $610m with a seventh consecutive quarter of growth, indicating the third-place fight is not going uncontested. Black Knight no longer trades independently, having been absorbed into Intercontinental Exchange.

9. Insider Activity

Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Florance has been a consistent open-market buyer of CoStar stock through 2026, in three separate tranches spanning March, May and August, against a share price that has fallen heavily over the period. The only insider sale of note was by the Chief Accounting Officer in August 2026. All entries are drawn from Form 4 filings under CIK 1057352.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Price	Value	Plan Type
Andy Florance (Founder, CEO & Director)	04 Aug 2026	Buy	83,300	$29.89 avg	~$2.49m	Open market
Cynthia Cammett Cann (Chief Accounting Officer)	07 Aug 2026	Sell	4,788	$30.78	~$0.15m	Not stated on filing summary
Christine M. McCarthy (Director)	23 Jun 2026	Restricted share grant	8,262	$0.00	Nil consideration	Annual director equity award
Andy Florance (Founder, CEO & Director)	01 May 2026	Buy	71,430	Not disclosed in filing summary	Not disclosed	Open market
Andy Florance (Founder, CEO & Director)	02 Mar 2026	Buy	55,720	~$44.51 avg	~$2.48m	Open market

After the August purchase Florance's reported holding stood at 1,806,165 shares.

10. Key Risks

• Residential return on investment: Homes.com has roughly 35,000 paid agent members and an annualised revenue run-rate near $100m against a residential build-out that consumed the great majority of the group's operating profit for two years. Q2 2026 was the first quarter of positive segment Adjusted EBITDA, at $12m, and a single quarter does not establish durability.
• Antitrust litigation: two federal actions were filed in 2026 — a Sherman Act monopolisation suit in the Eastern District of Virginia in April 2026 and a rent-data price-fixing class action in the Northern District of Illinois on 12 June 2026 naming CoStar alongside major brokerages. CoStar has publicly denied the claims; no trial dates have been set and no financial exposure has been quantified in the filings.
• Goodwill and acquisition integration: goodwill stood at $4,981m at 30 June 2026, roughly 49% of total assets, having roughly doubled since the end of 2024 through Matterport, Domain and now Zonda. Management continues to list realisation of Matterport benefits as a forward-looking risk in its own filings.
• Competitive intensity in residential: Zillow reports a substantially larger audience and Realtor.com has posted seven consecutive quarters of revenue growth. Agent advertising budgets are finite, and Homes.com raised new-member pricing in April 2026 into that environment.
• Commercial real estate cycle exposure: the commercial subscription base is sold to brokers, owners and lenders whose headcount and budgets move with transaction volumes. A renewed downturn in commercial transaction activity would hit net new bookings before it hit revenue.
• GAAP earnings quality and reliance on adjustments: the gap between FY2026 GAAP EPS guidance of $0.54–$0.61 and Adjusted EPS guidance of $1.32–$1.39 is roughly $251m of acquired-intangible amortisation and $156m of stock-based compensation. Investors valuing the shares on the adjusted figure are excluding real, recurring costs.
• Leadership and governance transition: the Chief Financial Officer changed hands in July 2026, the board was substantially refreshed through 2025 and 2026, and an activist campaign ran publicly from January to April 2026 before the investor exited entirely.

11. Recent Developments

• 27 Jan 2026 — Third Point launches a public activist campaign. Dan Loeb's Third Point wrote to the board demanding an overhaul and an exit from Homes.com, criticising both the scale of residential investment and executive pay.
• 17 Feb 2026 — Homes AI launches. CoStar rolled out an AI-driven property search and shopping experience on Homes.com.
• 20 Feb 2026 — Delaware litigation resolved. The Chancery Court dismissed the Matterport-related class and derivative claims with prejudice as to the named plaintiff after the disputed clause was removed.
• 24 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results. Revenue of $3,247m, up 19%, net income of $7m, Adjusted EBITDA of $442m up 83%, record net new bookings of $308m, and a $700m buyback planned for 2026.
• 13 Apr 2026 — Third Point exits. The activist sold its entire CoStar position, with Loeb stating the original thesis no longer held, ending the campaign without a proxy fight.
• 28 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results. Revenue of $897m, up 23%, net new bookings of $67m up 20%, and a return to positive GAAP net income of $3m.
• 29 Apr 2026 — Homes.com raises pricing. New agent membership fees increased, taking the average annual subscription cost to roughly $3,400.
• 29 May 2026 — Zonda agreed. CoStar agreed to acquire Zonda from MidOcean Partners for $800m in cash.
• 12 Jun 2026 — Price-fixing class action filed. A hub-and-spoke antitrust class action was filed in the Northern District of Illinois naming CoStar and several major commercial brokerages over alleged sharing of non-public rent data.
• 25 Jun 2026 — Annual meeting. Stockholders re-elected all director nominees and supported the say-on-pay proposal.
• 28 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 results. Revenue of $925m up 18%, GAAP net income of $55m against $6m, Adjusted EBITDA of $184m up 116%, and the first positive Residential segment Adjusted EBITDA at $12m.
• 31 Jul 2026 — CFO change. Chris Lown left to become Chief Financial Officer of Allstate; Robin Rossmann, previously Europe Managing Director, was named his successor.
• 04 Aug 2026 — CEO buys stock. Andy Florance purchased 83,300 shares at an average $29.89, roughly $2.5m, in the open market.
• 21 Aug 2026 — Zonda closes. The $800m acquisition completed, funded from cash on hand, adding NewHomeSource and Livabl to the residential portfolio.
• 26 Aug 2026 — Data-centre demand research published. A CoStar report showed data centres taking an increasing share of United States industrial demand, a data point for the commercial analytics franchise.

12. Key Dates and Catalysts

• Expected late Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 results. Company guidance is revenue of $935m to $945m and Adjusted EPS of $0.31 to $0.34; CoStar has reported the third quarter in the second half of October in each of the last two years, but has not yet confirmed the date.
• Expected Feb 2027 — FY2026 results, against full-year guidance of $3.715bn to $3.755bn of revenue and $780m to $820m of Adjusted EBITDA.
• Expected Jun 2027 — annual meeting of stockholders; the 2026 meeting was held on 25 June 2026.
• TBC — procedural milestones in the two 2026 federal antitrust actions in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Northern District of Illinois. No hearing or trial dates have been published.
• TBD — first full quarter of Zonda contribution. The acquisition closed on 21 August 2026, so Q3 2026 will carry roughly six weeks of it and Q4 2026 will be the first clean quarter.

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