Great. Good morning. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. This morning, I'm Bernie McTernan, one of the internet analysts here at Needham & Company. My pleasure to introduce the team at Compass. We have CEO Robert Reffkin, CFO Kalani Reelitz. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. And obviously, very timely. We saw the 8-K this morning with the guidance or the preliminary results better than expected.
Maybe just to start, Robert, could you just provide a brief introduction to Compass? And I think one of the questions we always get from you guys is, is this a brokerage or a tech company? And given the growth we saw in the fourth quarter, it certainly seems to lean towards the latter, but we'd love to get your thoughts.
For those that are newer to the story, I founded Compass in 2012 because my mom (my mom is a real estate agent) has been nearly my entire life. And I could see, as she moved from firm to firm to firm, that she did not have the tools that she needed to realize her potential. The brokerage model, historically, 20-plus years, was a one-stop shop for all of the needs of an agent: all of the supports, all of the programs, all the offerings, marketing.
But what happened is, as technology starts to empower every professional to accomplish more, a greater percentage of what an agent did every day came outside of the brokerage firm. And so an example in technology: prospecting, CRMs, transaction management software, pricing, valuation software, collaborative search software. The MLS now is just software. There used to be a book that would go into the office.
Now it's literally just software, and MLS is arguably the most powerful thing that exists in real estate, pretending to be a nonprofit in many cases, but then Ori and I came together, and Ori is my Co-founder.
He sold a company to Google, another to Twitter, and I was working at Goldman Sachs, and before that, McKinsey, and we said, "I'll hire the business people." He'd hire the product and engineering technology people, and we would create a company that would be a true one-stop shop for the future, not just the past, with, yes, the program supports, marketing, but now even marketing is mostly digital, and so we'd create all the digital solutions that agents expect to do their job in one place.
We went public in 2021, in a year where there were over six million homes sold. In January of 2022, the market research was that it would go from six to seven million homes sold a year. Things were looking good in January, and then, of course, we all know, in March, mortgage rates increased faster than any time in history on a monthly basis. June 2022, first week, they increased the fastest on a weekly basis. So from 3-5 and then 5-6 for the month in that week.
That year, homes sold were five million. In the following two years, so last year and the year before, it's been four million, four million, the lowest level in 28 and 29 years, respectively. The good news is, it helped us get religion on costs, and we are now as focused on costs, I'm sorry, OpEx containment, as we are on, as we were on growth. We're still investing over $100 million in R&D a year. We're launching on February 4th the Client Dashboard. We're launching just a month later our Make Me Sell fully integrated end product for Make Me Sell.
And much more is coming out this year. We also, it's important to note that our OpEx containment is permanent, not temporary. Our OpEx target is for organic OpEx not to grow more than 3%-4% a year. On top of that, we are growing both organically and through M&A. Organically, as we are hiring agents at a faster pace than historical.
And M&A, we're targeting four to six times EBITDA multiples for M&A. And when you add the organic growth, the inorganic growth, OpEx containment, and then title and mortgage, which are both 30% EBITDA margin businesses, that results in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of EBITDA.
The last thing I would say is we completed our acquisition of Christie's International Real Estate, which is our entry into the high-margin franchise affiliate business. This is also, they have significant title operations, significant mortgage operations, and it's an expansion to international as well, where it lets us expand internationally in a low-cost model, and their margins are upwards of 9% EBITDA margins in this market, which really reflects not just the potential of that company, but the potential of Compass overall as we continue to build the future real estate.
That's great. And so definitely want to hit on some of those longer-term themes, but maybe just fourth quarter revenue came in better than expected, better than expected cost discipline. Now, OpEx at the lower end of the range. Just any broad comments in terms of what went right in the fourth quarter, why was it such a good, better than expected result?
Let Kalani start.
Yeah. Yeah, I think on the top line, we saw a little bit healthier market, particularly kind of in that November timeline. That certainly helped. And then on the OpEx side, we continue to learn, quite frankly, where our money is being spent and how our money is being spent. A lot of agent marketing, a lot of in-office conversations, and how really to not just control OpEx, but actually make our agents even more productive. So in the production conversations with our agents, we're finding opportunities.
And then we're kind of, the good news to Robert's point, we've had to create the muscle, create the DNA of cost savings. And so kind of every week, every month, we're having conversations. So both of the long-term trends on those two things came through. And then we also had about 650 new agent adds this year.
And so I think coming out of last year or 2023. I've got to get used to last year. Coming out of 2023, we had to kind of reset. And so we started to see the engine back in 2024 and really kind of started to hone with Rory Golod leading our agent growth team. We started to see a lot better trends. And we'll be in that 600 to 700 range on a regular basis, I suspect.
Got it. In the 650, was that the fourth quarter? That was the fourth quarter, kind of like gross add number.
Yeah, gross add.
Got it. Okay.
About 50% year on year from a quarter perspective.
That's organic because.
Yeah, those are our objectives.
I just doubled down on two of those thoughts. One, the 50% year-over-year organic, what that reflects, and remember, no incentives, that that reflects is that the value proposition of Compass is continuing to distance from our competitors. Secondly, I doubled down on our agents. I think they are gaining market share relative to their competitors on an organic basis.
Our target customer base, when interest rates go up, they actually tend to be more beneficiaries than hurting them because they don't use mortgages and they receive interest income. They're not payers of interest. They receive interest income. And so this interest rate environment relative to a lot of our competitors puts us at an advantage.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Wanted to touch on the 30/30 Vision. This was something you guys introduced a couple of quarters ago and really, in our view, pivoted the investment thesis to more of like, I don't want to say defensive, but it was, hey, keep OpEx flat, wait for the market to recover to now a more seemingly offensive strategy, really going down, doubling down, trying to gain market share.
And you mentioned we think our math suggests at least a couple hundred or approaching $1 billion of EBITDA the next few years if you're able to be successful here. So maybe just to start, why does inventory matter so much and how does this influence the 30/30 Vision?
Inventory is the lifeblood of our business. You can't buy what's not for sale. You can't sell what's not for sale. That's a sale. The person who has the inventory, yeah, the person who has the inventory is the source of all of the transactions. Listings beget more listings is a common theme. When you have a listing, clients come, whether through the internet, whether through an open house, and it's an opportunity to meet more people so you can get more listings from listings. It all starts at a listing.
Listings are targeted as 3% market share in the top 30 cities. We're in the 20s now. We believe we're well on our way. We have a three-phase marketing strategy where agents start off as a Private Exclusive just in Compass. As an example, in Manhattan today, 6.5% of all of the listings of any company are Compass Private Exclusives just in Compass to Compass agents and their clients, not publicly searchable. The next phase is Compass Coming Soons, where it's on the internet.
The only place you can see it on the internet, and it is publicly everywhere on the internet. Go to Google, but it's only on Compass.com, which means all buyer inquiries in phase and phase II only can go to the listing agent at Compass. There's no other place it can go. Phase III is when it's on all the portal sites and the MLS. In that phase, almost all buyer inquiries get diverted to third-party agents. The reason this is better for homeowners is because there's no days on market, no price drop history in phase I and phase II.
Days on market, price drop history are the killers of value. No negative insights, like valuation estimates that are lower than the actual value of the home where you're trying to sell it, environmental and other, and so every part of this three-phase strategy, there's not a single thing that we advocate for that professional home builders and real estate developers aren't doing every single day.
This is how they market homes, so what Compass is doing is we're giving the playbook of the most sophisticated sellers of real estate to individual homeowners and it just so happens that by doing that, it creates a world where Compass agents have an advantage for their sellers because they can protect their home value and for the buyers because buyers know that they have access to unique inventory. For the Compass platform, it becomes a place where more people want to search because of unique inventory.
Got it. And wanted to stick on the 30/30 Vision, but since we're kind of on this line of thought on clear cooperation, what is clear cooperation? Why is it such a focus for Compass right now? And maybe just for the context of the audience, how it plays into the 30/30 Vision and the inventory strategy.
So everyone wants agents' listings to monetize them for their own gain. Why is it that an agent cannot watermark their own photo? Then the MLS makes them give it to them, then the MLS watermarks it. Why is it that in a listing description, you could say, "Hey, I'm the real listing agent," then the MLS will cut it off? Why, if in the video, there's a video of the listing, if the agent puts their photo in for one second, they'll cut it off? It's not for the homeowner. It's not for the listing agent.
It's their listing. It should be their rules. But what the MLS did through Clear Cooperation, the MLS, NAR effectively owns the MLSs and the associations. There's a three-way agreement. In order to get access to the MLS, you have to pay NAR and the associations. So they're all in this together. Now, I believe they generate over $2 billion a year just from agent dues. There's real money here. They have the highest level of market power. It's effectively 100% market share.
You cannot do your job without it, the MLS. And so what they did in 2019, when Compass had Coming Soons, a very large percentage of listings in the country were coming through Compass, were coming through Compass Coming Soons, only searchable on Compass. And what they did is they put in Clear Cooperation, which forced every agent in the country to give them the listing after one day of public marketing.
So it basically shut that off. It allowed us to continue to do Private Exclusives where it's only searchable in Compass. And so Clear Cooperation was their mechanism. This is effectively a quote from the DOJ. Clear Cooperation. The DOJ doesn't like Clear Cooperation because it prevents seller choices and it prevents alternative listing systems, so it prevented competition.
That's why the DOJ doesn't like Clear Cooperation, and this past Monday, two days ago, the Supreme Court, NAR was hiring many lawyers to go to the Supreme Court to prevent DOJ from investigating again Clear Cooperation, and the Supreme Court said, "Nope, you have to, they can still investigate," so what we believe as a result of this, NAR is not going to fight this battle.
What we believe strongly is that NAR will either eliminate Clear Cooperation or will make it optional and let all the MLSs come up with their own rules, but they will not be able to hide behind NAR or the insurance protection of NAR because there's insurance protection that NAR gives to all the MLSs for their rules.
And so as a result, I believe that agents and their clients will be able to market however they want. It's your home, your choice. And we are going to be able, I believe that we're going to create a world where the majority of our listings are starting off as Compass Private Exclusives and then Compass Coming Soons before going to the open market with the benefit of price discovery from phase I and phase II.
Interesting. And just trying to think about who's advantaged mostly in this Clear Cooperation world if this does in fact play out, who would be better positioned relative to others if it is repealed?
The seller will be better positioned. For sure. What seller? They have no choice. When cooperation was founded decades ago, you were not forced to cooperate with a company that does not have agents, does not have clients, and does not have their own listings. Cooperation was defined as you, as an agent, should cooperate with agents at other brokerage firms. That makes sense. That helps the seller. But you were not forced to cooperate again with the company with portals that don't have any of those things.
They changed the rules. They manipulated the rules by getting a broker license through a lawyer in each state to say they're a broker. And so what I believe strongly is that when cooperation is no longer forced, the people that are taking listings will have to work for the listings. They'll treat you like a client. If you're also an agent, what can I do to get your listings early? Oh, would your seller, if I take days on market and price drop history off your listing, will you give me your listing?
Okay, let's have a conversation. Oh, if I put the listing agent's name back on every listing, will you give me your listing? Okay, let's have a conversation. But right now, there's nothing because it's being forced. So the seller will definitely win. The listing agent will definitely win. And look, for buyers searching, will it be so hard? No, I think the MLS will have 99% of listings anyway, searchable by agents in the private MLS, not publicly searchable. So I don't think I need to really say who.
What's the process and timeline here? We got the news on Monday. When do you think?
30-60 days. I think NAR in the next 30-60 days will make it optional or I mean, but that's what they this is just my guess. There was an article that came out, I think, Monday or last Friday that said they're going to make a decision in 30-60 days. And I just could not imagine a world where NAR says, you know, I want to fight the DOJ right here on this thing after what just happened last year. Yeah, NAR after all that the participation rule on compensation, the MLS stood for three things, compensation, cooperation, and data.
So after fighting on compensation and losing, where in 2021, the DOJ told them to get compensation out of the MLS, so they lost, but through their private courts, are they really going to say, you know, yeah, I want to force every single homeowner in the country, unbeknownst to their will? How many of them know? How many homeowners know that their agent is being forced through clear cooperation to give this monopoly their listing? And everyone's making money off it.
Their data is being sold to 20 federal agencies, 300 capital markets, 400 property managers, 500 insurance companies, and 900 mortgage companies, banks through one of the largest data providers. And millions of dollars of kickbacks go to the MLS every year. They don't know any of this.
And so the problem, all NAR risk, this is a quote from one of the most senior people at NAR, from Katie Johnson, the former general counsel. All NAR litigation risk comes from mandatory MLS rules because the MLS is a monopoly. And so if there's a mandatory rule that's the rule that a monopoly is using to force everyone to do something, that's a problem. And so I just can't see a rule where Clear Cooperation exists.
Understood. Can we bring this back to 30/30 Vision? As we think about going from 20% to 30%, how should we think about organic growth versus M&A? I mean, obviously, you just closed the big acquisition last week, but as we think about the market share progresses going forward, how should we think about the mix?
Yeah, I think we think about it as kind of a three-legged stool, right? Organic, inorganic, and then market share kind of same, sorry for my retail, but same store sales on our existing brokers, right? On the organic, you should see us, as we talked about, you should see that machine continue to work. I think our value prop, we are the safe kind of pair of hands for agents, and we're hearing that in the field. 600-700 agents, new agents added, that will kind of be constant.
On the inorganic side, it'll be time, it'll be kind of a time-based and where we are in processes, but as we've said, even with the Christie's acquisition, our pipeline continues to be robust. We continue to see folks having great conversations with us, and we're encouraged by that. That'll just be the timing of everything, as everyone knows.
And then, on the kind of market share, same store transactions per agents, we continue to see those tick up. Our new products like Client Dashboard are really excited. Another new differentiation for agents, so we expect market share gains there. So those are kind of the three legs of the stool. The first and the third are going to be pretty consistent from a timing perspective. The M&A will be just based on when transactions people want to be.
Understood. And then is there a gross margin impact if you guys are successful? I'm assuming in the top 30 markets, you have your quote unquote anchor agent already. So theoretically, you're adding agents that are less productive or have a lower split, let's just say. Could that be a driver of the financials?
Yeah, I think generally, and we've talked about this, but generally, as we add our agents, we did a really nice job going into markets, finding our founding agents, which the economics were what they were. I think as we continue to bring our fleet through the full top 50%, we'll see some geographic, both geographic and production mix.
I think the other thing too, as we think about inventory, is, and that's why I'm excited, one of the many reasons I'm excited about Christie's, is that we call it integrated services, that adjacent services. As we grow inventory, we have the opportunity to attach more to a bigger platform. Those are 30% margins on the EBITDA, even better on the commission and gross profit side. I suspect that's another driver of economics. The answer is definitely yes for that.
Then last one on 30/30, how big or how much GTV do those top 30 markets contribute to your overall GTV? And then what's happening in that other percentage? I'm assuming you're still going after market share there, but what's the strategy in those other markets?
Yeah, we haven't disclosed the kind of the total %. What I'd say is there are obviously two big dynamics. They're the biggest markets we're in, and they also have the most opportunity, right? And so I think in markets that aren't top 30, we'll continue to grow, but we're going to be investing our focus and time, think about from a recruiting standpoint in those top 30 markets. But we haven't disclosed the exact number.
Okay, understood. Maybe let's move on to the Christie's International and @properties acquisition. So announced and then since closed the acquisition. So it's a franchise business, additional title and mortgage, and then the eighth largest brokerage in the U.S. So can you just go through each of those assets and maybe the strategic rationale for adding them to the portfolio?
Yeah, so let's start with franchise. Two benefits. One is that it lets us enter the high margin franchise business and to international where we could expand at a lower cost. It also allows us to move from only helping agents that are entrepreneurs to helping broker owner entrepreneurs. Companies exist to help these amazing real estate entrepreneurs to be better, to realize their potential. That's why we exist. If we can't help them do that, we have no reason to exist.
And we are doing that more each year through software. Historically, we could only do that through agents. And then for a brokerage owner, the CEO of a brokerage, they're an entrepreneur as well, but many of them don't want to sell. They want to continue being an entrepreneur. By being an affiliate with Christie's, it allows them to continue to be an entrepreneur and us working for them as they grow their business, and so that's the affiliate franchise business of Christie's.
Then, of course, mortgage, high margin, title, high margin, and these are great, they have great loan officers and great title officers. It's one of the best run businesses overall in the country, and then lastly, they were number one in Chicago and also very significant in Atlanta, but of all the major markets in the country, I think they may be one of the only, if not the only market where we weren't able to become number one against the number one company. They were that good.
They built a strong technology platform, not as end to end, but for what it did, it was very strong. I'm so excited to partner with the leaders of those companies to build the future of this company together.
I'd add three things. One on the franchise, I think obviously the name Christie's is a perfect brand for us, and for many of you, we've had conversations around affiliate model and when this puts us right there with a mature, well operated. I think on the integrated services, too, importantly in Chicago, it's lawyer-led, and so the expertise there, we haven't really been in those markets.
We're able to drive that, and then I think overall, what I get excited about, obviously, is they're at a 9%, Robert said, they're at 9%-10% operating margin today in this market, so I think there's a lot of things we're going to learn to be even more efficient, to look at how to make sure we're attaching further. I think just given, I think there's a lot of learnings we can have together, and that gets me excited on top of everything Robert said.
Maybe the point on margins, you're expecting to be able to achieve $30 million of cost synergies. Where are those coming from primarily? How should we expect them to be phased in?
Yep. So we expect kind of the full window to be three years. Obviously, we are working hard to kind of front load that. I think they come in your standard synergy buckets, and I think the good news is with us putting together the simple things like procurement, right?
Being able to put all of our contracts on the table, looking at where there's price discounts, where pricing is different, looking at opportunities in our support services to be more efficient, and then over time, looking at kind of taking the best of both sides and making sure that we're bringing that to our agents. I think there's some tremendous opportunities there. I'm confident in the $30 million, and the goal is really we're already starting and moving fast on executing those action plans.
Great. Wanted to talk about the M&A strategy more broadly. Just wanted to get a sense, how does the pipeline look for 2025? And as we think about progressing against 30/30 Vision, should it be larger acquisitions like @properties or more tuck-ins like you guys have done historically? How should we think about the opportunity set here?
Yeah, I think that the opportunities definitely exist. I don't think we can really talk about the pipeline too much in this conference, but I think the opportunities definitely exist, and there are multiple paths to get there.
And we feel confident that we can get there through. And what excites me about it is not just the inventory and the opportunities that come from the inventory, but it's also in the last three years, I think we've proven that OpEx containment is a real core pillar of our strategy. And so doing what we've done with ourselves, but with other companies that we merge with, it creates a lot of synergy value.
And then from thinking from the seller side, why do they end up wanting to sell to Compass? And does that logic change if we're in a growth market for the housing market or kind of the market that we've seen over the past three years where it's largely been down?
Yeah, there's no one reason. There are many different reasons. There are times where the founder wants to, is at an age where they want to move on. There are times where the CEO has been told by their agents that have left to come to Compass, I'd love to come back. I miss the former company. I miss the culture because we were friends for like 20 years, but I can't leave the Compass technology.
I think before when people were coming to Compass before 2022, when we were giving incentives, either equity or cash, the unintended consequence, which I didn't realize, was it allowed every CEO of a company when an agent left to say, "Oh, they just went for money." When we stopped that in summer 2022, then when people left and came to Compass, it really impacted CEOs. Like, "But why are you leaving?
You're not paying anymore. Why are you leaving?" And when the answers are things that they can't do, the answers are, "Well, because they have technology. It can make my life so much easier because they have this national referral network, because they have the coaching platform." But really, it's the technology. We invested over $1.7 billion in this platform. No one's going to create that in the foreseeable future for agents.
It was a unique point in time in a unique decade where we were able to raise unique capital to invest for this group of professionals that don't pay brokers enough for them to use their own capital to invest in it. And so now we have it. It's just getting better and better every year, but that strong base no one can build. So I think a lot of these entrepreneurs, they want to win. They want to be part of the winning group, the winning team. So they say, "Hey, let's come together and we could win together."
And ultimately, another thing very important, they want to better serve their agents. We love our agents. Every CEO of a brokerage firm, you're doing this. You wouldn't do this because it can be an overwhelming thing at times. You wouldn't do it if you didn't love agents and want them to succeed. So I think people see the path. If we come together, it'll be better for the agents that we love and serve.
Understood. Wanted to shift over to organic agent net adds. Obviously, you guys just put up 650 organic or gross adds in the fourth quarter. How should we think about 2025? Are there any easier difficult comparisons as we're sharpening our pencils on the quarters? Just any thoughts to help us there in terms of thinking about this year?
Yeah, look, I think there are a couple of names out there of companies that you probably can see that are having harder times, whether it's for different reasons, whether it's the balance sheet reasons or other reasons. And so you all know who those companies are. And so I think, yes, 2025 was going to be not as good as I would have thought. I think we could talk about it later if you want, but I think it'll be price growth will be around 3%, same as the historical average, the pre-COVID average.
And I think units will be up 5%-10%. And we can talk about more of the reasons why if you want. I think there's more upside to downside, but not a lot more upside. And so it's not going to be as great of a year as I would have maybe wanted. However, our competition is not investing. It solidifies another year where competition is not investing, where they're going to cut back on initiatives and basic support. And so the distance between us and our competitors will widen more because of 2025's expected year than if it would have been a better year.
I don't anticipate us changing from the trend that we're seeing over the last few quarters of that 600-700 gross agent adds that we expect to continue to do that. We're having a ton of conversations, investing a little bit in our recruiting teams because we see the momentum. To Robert's point, the market is right for us to be the safe pair of hands for agents. I expect that trend of 600-700 gross to be there. It's seasonality on some of the attrition folks leaving the industry, et cetera, but our trend should stay the same over the last few quarters.
And there's one other really big trend, arguably one of the biggest trends, if not the biggest trend that I think we'll see in our industry over the next couple of years. And I want to say it right. I think so the MLS stood for Compensation Cooperation Data. That's what it stood for. It was effectively a system. They called it leveling the playing field, but that really meant leveling the playing field in that it means there's big brokers and there's small brokers.
It means moving small brokers here and artificially buttressing and supporting small brokers' success. So an example, compensation, you're an agent at a small brokerage. You were able to get the buy-side compensation of whatever a top listing agent negotiated on your behalf. At whatever great company, they negotiate your compensation. No longer is that the case.
So now in a world where I'm a buyer, I would ask you a year ago, you would say, "Oh, don't worry, you don't need to sign anything. You don't need to pay me anything," they could say, because it's going to come from the listing agent or the seller. And now those things aren't true. You need to sign something before the first showing. And the compensation, you're going to have to pay. It's not going to be from the listing agent. So that's one of many examples. Cooperation is another example.
But I think in the future of the MLS, where it's going to be more around data, not mandatory compensation rules, mandatory cooperation rules, small agents as small brokerages, I believe will be more interested in the value proposition of a large brokerage. It's a very significant theme. There are 80,000 brokerages in the country. I would say the majority of agents in, definitely, the majority of markets that we're in are agents as small brokerages. And when I say small, I don't mean. I mean like small, small, like 200 minus or 100 minus or less.
Right. I want to turn it over to the audience, see if there's any questions. But before, just double-click on the housing market comments again. So I think you said low single-digit pricing and mid-single-digit volume was the, if I heard you right?
Yeah. So I think on the negative side, of course, you have affordability. On the negative side of Ledger, you have affordability because of price, but also mortgage rates. There's a lot more on the positive side on a year-over-year basis. Much more inventory, more than 20% more inventory than there was this time last year. It looks like it's 27%. And the end of this sentence, I'm going to wait until mortgage rates come down.
So for the last three years, up until September 18th, it was like, "Oh, I'm going to wait until rates come down." Because you thought when the Fed lowers rates, the general public view would be like, "Well, the mortgage rates must come down."
The fact that with the Fed bringing down rates and mortgages going up, and then of course what's happened in the presidential election and potential tariffs and all that, people were like, "Okay, fool me once, fool me twice." This is a new normal. And so now the pent-up demand isn't being delayed by this hope that rates are going to come down. So affordability is still an issue, but not that I'm going to wait till rates come down, which is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Yep. Just want to see, yeah, in the back.
Pardon me if you've covered this, but talk about the implications of LA and what the activity levels are, how big it is within your system. [inaudible].
Yeah, so I'll focus on the human aspect, which is, I don't know if we've seen anything like this since Hurricane Katrina, where such a large swath of people were impacted. I've called dozens and dozens and dozens of our people who either don't have a home anymore or the home just at Compass or their home is contaminated and they won't be able to come back in for what they believe six months.
Yeah. And yeah. It's worse than when you talk to people. They say this is worse than you could possibly imagine. And I think people are really struggling. People are really struggling. There's a physical state, then there's the mental state. It's difficult in both, and we're doing everything we can as a company to support our people and to support the community.
Anything else from the audience? Yeah.
[inaudible] At one of the smaller brokerages, what percentage, what would the split look like for a typical agent from the buy-side conditions versus the sell-side conditions?
I don't know for the smaller brokerages what the difference would be. But what I do know is the CEOs of the smaller brokerages are talking to us more than ever before. And the agents that are in small brokers are talking to us more than ever before because we can give them more advantages. We were able to give them more advantages before all the NAR stuff. We gave them more than more now. It was just like tech platform, but now it's more.
Understood. Any other last question here? We have another minute or two. But if not, maybe just to wrap a bow on this, what are some of the key items that would make 2025 a success for Compass?
For me, it's a successful integration of Christie's getting through and getting a really good start on synergies. I'm going to say it is really continue our OpEx discipline. Again, it's the thing that just keeps, it allows us to invest in ourselves. It allows us to maintain, and so our ability to make sure that as we're seeing volume come up, which just means we have to drive efficiencies on the agent side, continuing to grow our agents at that 6 to 700. Those to me are the big measures of success.
Yeah. Look, I think ultimately it's multiple expansion. And so OpEx just has to be contained. It just has to happen. And it will happen. And we'll get better and better at it. Someone brought up a long time ago, Amazon in the 2001 downturn, they forced them to raise a lot of money before.
They forced them to focus on costs versus revenue growth. And then they got really, really good at it and helped them for decades later. I think that the same theme will happen here. OpEx will continue to be part of the core pillar of our strategy that enables everything else.
But in terms of multiple expansion, I believe that we are going to be able to show you that our inventory will drive our inventory advantage will drive a financial advantage, a sustainable one in multiple different ways, from more traffic to more leads to our agents, helping our agents get more listings, making this a place where agents want to come and stay more, where they see the value of more, and where buyers want to work with our agents and be on our platform.
There will be a lot of different ways, and we'll be able to expand on them in more detail and more numerically. But I want at the end of this year for you to say Compass has a higher multiple and deserves it because in addition to being everything that a core brokerage firm, a traditional brokerage firm is supposed to provide to agents, they have an end-to-end platform that makes agents better.
I think of more of like the Shopify model, but then their inventory advantage that makes everyone better, all their core stakeholders better, sellers, buyers, agents, and traffic and platform and more.
Great. Well, let's leave it there. Thanks, everyone who attended. Have a great day.