Hello and welcome to the eXp World Holdings Q3 2021 earnings fireside chat, via live stream in eXp World, our metaverse. My name is Courtney Chakarun, and I'm the CMO of eXp World Holdings. Today we will begin our Q3 earnings fireside chat with a conversation between Glenn Sanford, Founder and CEO of eXp World Holdings, and Justin Ages, an analyst at Berenberg Capital Markets, covering the intersection of technology and real estate. Following this initial 10-minute to 15-minute segment, we're gonna move into a 20-minute presentation, which includes a review of the Q3 financial highlights presented by Jeff Whiteside, CFO and Chief Collaboration Officer of eXp World Holdings, followed by Jason Gesing, our CEO of eXp Realty, who will share drivers of our accelerated growth and unique value proposition.
Finally, we'll return to Justin Ages and our leadership for a 10-minute continuation of the Q&A. Let's begin the earnings fireside chat with a review of the forward-looking statements. There will be a number of forward-looking statements made today. Should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements contained in the company's SEC filings. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Please see our filings with the SEC, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q, for a discussion of specific risks that may affect our business, performance, and financial condition. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or information. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and a replay will also be made available on expworldholdings.com. Now for a few logistics as we get started.
For those of you joining in eXp World, our virtual campus, what you will see here is all three screens. If you wanna see those, you can hit the stage zoom button to the right of your chat box. To zoom to a specific screen, you can hit the plus icon button above that screen. If you happen to see no slides or a gray slide, hit the refresh icon at the top, the right-hand corner of that screen to correct. While in eXp Virtual Campus, should you need any help or have any questions, please enter your comments in the chat box at the bottom on the left and a member of the team will contact you. As mentioned, the last segment of our fireside chat is a continuation of our Q&A.
Should you wish to ask any questions during our presentation, you can enter your questions by scanning the QR code presented on the screen. With your phone, or go to slido.com and type in the event code EXPIQ3. From there, you can submit a question or even vote up an existing question by giving a thumbs up to indicate that you would also like that question asked. This screen will remain up on the left-hand side of the stage so that you can see the questions. This time, I would like to turn the fireside chat over to Glenn Sanford and Justin Ages to start the earnings conversation.
Hey, Courtney. Thank you very much for that intro and, Justin, welcome to eXp, our eXp World. Justin is one of our covering analysts from Berenberg Capital. I'm gonna kinda turn it over to you to ask some questions and then we'll continue on with the various other presenters.
Great. Thanks, Glenn, and for the introduction, Courtney. It's great to be here with you and the rest of management on this world that you created, and congratulations on what I describe as a strong quarter, you know, agent count up over 80%, transaction volume up almost 100%, and importantly fueled by within transactions, which is, to me, especially impressive considering what some of your competitors are experiencing. Total revenue up, you know, over 90% as well. I think just another quarter of solid results really speaks to what you're doing in terms of enabling and incentivizing agents and growing the brokerage. I think that all resonates in the industry and attracts more talent, which drives even more success.
Onto the first question, you know, as we start here on the eXp campus, I think it bears mentioning that eXp has been kinda operating this metaverse for years. You know, recently there's been a lot of attention on virtual reality, where people are interacting with each other. How has eXp and its virtual campus, you know, benefited customers just 'cause you guys seem to be at the forefront of that?
Yeah. We've, you know, back in 2009, we looked at how to run a profitable real estate brokerage in good times and bad times, and the biggest single cost to run a brokerage typically is the bricks-and-mortar costs. I'd come out of technology, so what we looked at was virtual worlds for business back in 2009. We've been operating effectively, now in the popularized term because of Facebook, the metaverse, literally since 2009. We've operated on a number of different platforms and started on the Virbela platform, the one we're in now, in 2016, and we actually bought the company in late 2018.
Now we've got a number of customers from universities to large enterprises to consulting companies, et cetera, that have adopted, are using, have used, especially since COVID really impacted the marketplace last year. It's been a really interesting last 18 months relative to the use of other people using the platform. For us, you know, we've continued to mature it. We've got another platform called framevr.io, which is an entirely web-based accessible platform, which we're actually really excited about as well. We think there's a lot of future potentials, but it's been certainly the enabling technology that's allowed eXp to grow as rapidly and as ubiquitously across the world as it has.
Yeah, great. That makes a lot of sense. On to the quarter specifically, can you just give us a high level about Q3 and the drivers of the financial and operational performance?
You know, for us, you know, we always come back to the agent value proposition. You know, again, back in 2009, the big thing was to think about agents as being the most important part of the real estate brokerage, not the broker owner, not the franchisor, not the brand, but the real estate agent. By retooling our comp model to really recognize the agent as being central to everything that goes on in real estate brokerage, that's really created the drivers that have continued to propel us forward. Our revenue sharing model, where we're sharing out, you know, tens of millions of dollars every month in the form of revenue share.
Our equity plan, where we've shared, you know, based on, you know, today's valuation well in excess of $1 billion worth of equity to our agents and brokers. That has been a huge driver of both attraction, retention, and then also creates an opportunity for agents to help us grow the business. That's those have been the biggest drivers, and we believe will continue to be huge drivers going well into the future.
Yeah. I agree with you and all about that agent proposition model and just how it's driving growth. Then in terms of the housing market, can you give us a flavor of your view for the near term and over the longer term, both in terms of home price appreciation and transactions?
you know, my view, and I think our collective view is that real estate has been and continues to be something that is very much affected by monetary policy, whether it be interest rates or, you know, quantitative easing or whatever those things are that the Fed and others have done. As long as interest rates stay low, we think that, you know, real estate prices and real estate transactions will continue to be significant. From the perspective of not knowing what, you know, where interest rates specifically are gonna go, I have a personal view that there's an inherent need to keep interest rates low for a whole variety of reasons at a macro level.
From that perspective, I think that we're gonna continue to see a robust housing market going into 2022, you know, and potentially even beyond that.
Yeah, I agree with that sentiment, and it'll be interesting to see what the Fed will do over a timeline. You know, as I see, you guys will continue to take share. Part of taking share is, you know, really related to your ability to attract agents, you know, as you touched on briefly in the beginning. Can you speak to what the competitive environment has been and how you continue to find success?
Well, competitively, you know, we kind of invented this new model, a cloud-based real estate brokerage, and we you know, we really innovated on a number of different factors. We were first one to create a meaningful revenue sharing program, first one to actually provide an equity plan and to actually make those publicly traded shares. First company and still the only company operating in the metaverse, which then allows us to actually organize and collaborate and build community in unique and interesting ways, without having to have the you know, the costs and the constraints of physical bricks and mortar. Those have been really very compelling.
Of course, we think about the idea that we've been doing this so long that, you know, we're now over, you know, 67,000 agents, getting close to 68,000 worldwide, fastest growing real estate company in the history of residential real estate. We think that that first mover's advantage will continue to play out well for us. We've also built a model that, you know, is over the long haul, since at least, you know, Q4 of 2019 going forward, we've been profitable and that's resulted in our ability now to actually pay a dividend, which again, you know, sets us apart from other companies that, you know, may have a hard time, you know, reaching some net profitability, and distributing that in a meaningful way to their agents.
Yeah. I think the dividend definitely plays a role in attracting agents as part of kind of an agent incentive compensation. Along those lines, maybe you could, you know, take it a step further and talk about what eXp is doing to ensure that competitors cannot copy your business model and the success. I mean, you do have the first mover advantage and no physical presence, but, you know, what are you doing to kind of ensure that moat continues to stay?
Yeah, we've done certainly a number of things. You know, well, last year was an interesting year in terms of some of the acquisitions that we did. You know, SUCCESS Magazine and SUCCESS Enterprises, you know, that's the longest standing personal development brand in the history of personal development, which ties in well with real estate professionals. We've expanded that brand. We're creating opportunities for agents and brokers to potentially own SUCCESS Space franchises, which is kind of an interesting sort of juxtaposition against our cloud-based business model. There's the ability for people to actually stand up their own coworking locations, which can be a really good environment for connecting with other business people and other people in their local communities.
It's not a real estate office, but it's truly a coworking company with coaching and a cafe and some other things. We're continuing to really innovate and try new things. I think that's really one of the things that sets us apart is that we've not stopped innovating and trying new things. We've got, you know, SUCCESS Lending is also a joint venture that we put together. This month in November, we're in a great position to actually start to originate loans through SUCCESS Lending, and we're creating unique ways for agents to tie into that model as well. We think that, you know, just being a long-term profitable company that puts agents first is the best way to build a moat in the industry.
Yeah, I think that has played out and seems like, you know, you are taking the steps and building on kind of your innovative DNA to continue to grow and defend the company. You mentioned SUCCESS Lending, so I just wanted to touch on that for a second because I know it's still early days and you're seeing positive signs there. Then the other kinda service that you have, maybe you could just touch upon your iBuyer model and how it differs, especially in juxtaposition to today's news out of Zillow.
Yeah. I think, you know, I touched a little bit on SUCCESS Lending. You know, we're open now technically in about five or six states. We've got another five or six states that are in the process of opening up as we speak. We've got our first loan officer. We've got the president of the division has accepted an offer, and so we make some announcements next week about that at EXPCON. I think that'll be a good place to learn a little bit more as we kind of share more on SUCCESS Lending. You know, obviously yesterday, big news in that obviously Zillow decided to exit the iBuyer space. It's interesting.
Last year, during the downturn from COVID, you know, Zillow, Redfin, I'm not sure. I don't remember what Opendoor did specifically. I think they were the same. Everybody quit buying homes in the second quarter of 2020 because of COVID. We had a platform called ExpressOffer where we actually continued to operate and we actually transacted business. We actually put sellers together with instant buyers through our own marketplace without taking any balance sheet risk. We basically approached it from the perspective of, let's build a marketplace, let's connect people. There are always gonna be people who need to sell, want to sell, don't want to go through the hassle of actually listing their home for sale in a traditional way, and they're gonna be looking for a place to sell.
We actually, you know, working with our team and doing some reviews even this last week, our iBuyer platform, ExpressOffers, has actually been profitable as a platform versus, you know, because we didn't take balance sheet risk and because we've got built-in margin as buyers buy properties through that. It becomes a great listing tool for our agents to be able to go in and show why a fully marketed listing might be a better option than going with the instant sale.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, probably the marketplace, at least at this point in time, seems to be one of the better ways to go in terms of the iBuyer model and being profitable. That sector is definitely what I think will make some competitors, you know, envious. Just last before we get into the presentations, can you just comment on the commercial segment? I know, switching gears a little bit. Are you seeing the model kind of resonate in the same way that you've seen in the residential segment?
Yeah, you know, commercial's a little bit. There's definitely a smaller number of agents across the country. We've got well in excess of 1,000 resimercial agents, meaning residential agents that are under the residential brand but also sell commercial. We're coming up to about 500 agents on the commercial side. It's a good growing segment of the business that we think will cross-pollinate and have other opportunities to go, you know, sort of back and forth between residential and commercial. It's, you know, again, fairly early days. I mean, we've been doing this for a little over a year on the commercial side with a true commercial leader, with Jim Huang and the team that he's assembled on the commercial side.
We think that it has the significant potential to make the same sorts of impact over time, as eXp Realty has done in the residential side.
Yeah, that's great. Confident in the growing segment. With that, you know, we can turn it over to the rest of the team to kind of present on the quarter.
Okay. I think next up is Jeff Whiteside.
All right. Thank you very much, Glenn. Thank you, Justin, for joining us today. Good morning, all, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2021 virtual fireside chat. Courtney, I think it's getting a little hot in here. Could you turn the fireplace down? Appreciate that.
Absolutely.
We had another strong quarter of growth, and I'm proud on behalf of the eXp World team to share our third quarter results with you today. On our highlight page that you see in front of you, starting with revenue, Q3 revenue was $1.1 billion. If you've been following us, we really like the word billion at eXp. 97% year-over-year, so an incredible growth continues here. Gross profit in Q3 was $79.5 million, an increase of 70% year-over-year. Our Q3 net income was $23.8 million, and that's up 60% year-over-year. You can see in a footnote and in the financials that that included a $12.9 million benefit from income tax provision, primarily driven by the stock-based compensation deduction.
We went through this last quarter, and basically, since we've shown consistent profitability in our company, we now have deductions in a major cost area of our business, and that would be stock compensation. That's a positive for our net income. Diluted earnings per share was $0.15 versus $0.10 per share, and that's +50% versus last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was $23.1 million, up 6% year-over-year. Lastly, on the summary page, our Q3 operating cash flow was $55.4 million, an increase of 44% from the same period last year. Now if we look at our key operating metrics and financial metrics, this chart is broken into two categories, operating metrics and financial metrics.
In looking at our operating metrics in Q3, and as a reminder, we at eXp run our business based on agent and employee net promoter score, so that you'll see ANPS and ENPS. You know, from our experience and how we run the business, we find that by measuring agent and employee feedback scores, we're able to focus our resources on fixing and improving key areas that are critical to our business success. We determine that if we keep the scores around 70 plus, growth, retention, and employee satisfaction all trend positively. Glenn started this a long time ago. You know, we're all big disciples of this right now.
You know, it—what you're gonna see, a 70 score. I might have went through this before, but a +70 score is world-class in terms of satisfaction, both from our agents and our employees. In our third quarter, our ANPS score was 69. Yes, that's a little lower than our goal versus 73 year-over-year. On a year-to-date basis, we're at 71, so we're feeling pretty good there. Our Q3 ENPS score was 79 versus 70. On a year-over-year basis, we're at 80 versus 72. The score is slightly down from where we want it to be, so we're working on a number of things from a process standpoint in our business.
Overall, the 71% year to date and the 80% year to date feels very good, and you can see the results on the metric page. In our realty business, in our model, adding productive agents to our platform drives unit sales, volume, and revenue. Our agent count, as was mentioned before in Q3, ended at 65,269 versus 35,877, with a growth rate of 82%. Just to give you a bit of a breakdown, Glenn mentioned that we're above 67,000 right now. When you look at our profile, we're about 10% global. You know, Michael and the team are doing a fantastic job. I mean, it's rolling out well.
We're gonna see significant growth in the future. 10% global, and then we got about 500 pure commercial agents in our company right now. You know, this is a big season for additions in that area, so Jim and the team are working hard on growing that number. In terms of unit sales, Q3 was 130,029 versus 75,392, and that's up 72% year-over-year and 103% year-to-date. Price per unit, as we mentioned before, is up 15%, so our average price per unit is $358,600. That's up 15% quarter and 15% year-to-date.
Volume, Q3 was at $46.6 billion versus $23.6 billion, up 97% year-over-year and 134% year to date. Our volume on a year-to-date basis, as you can see, is $111.2 billion. Fantastic results from a growth perspective in the company in Q3 and on a year-to-date basis. Now I will go to our financial metrics. We're in the bottom of the page. If we're just looking at our revenue, as we mentioned, $1.1 billion versus $564 million, up 97% in the quarter. $2.7 billion versus $1.2 billion. We're up 127% year to date on revenue.
Gross margin was $79.5 million in Q3, and that's a 70% growth in dollars year over year. Now as a percentage, it was 7.2% in Q3 2021 versus $46.8 million and 8.3% in Q3 of 2020. We did see a downward pressure in our gross margin percentage in Q3, and that was primarily driven by increased volume, increased capping, and the increased unit prices. As we move down the P&L to the SG&A, you'll see that our SG&A was $68.4 million versus $31.6 million in the quarter. That's up 116% and 180 versus 85, which is up 111%. To touch on that, obviously that goes down to our operating income.
Our operating income was $11.2 million versus $15.2 million. Year over year, we had a decline of 26%. Year-to-date operating income was $32.6 versus $23.8, so we're up on a year-to-date basis by 37%. We did see downward pressure on operating income in Q3, and it was driven by incremental investment in our growth areas. All right? You know, our big growth areas, and I'll touch on this a little more on the next page, but global residential expansion, commercial expansion, technology investments, SUCCESS, affiliated service investments. In the quarter, we invested roughly $10 million in those areas, and these are all big future growth areas for our company. On a year-to-date basis, we invested about $25 million in these growth areas.
you know, we're very fortunate in our company to have a core business in the U.S. and Canada really doing very, very well. Giving us the opportunity to make these investments, and that's why we're seeing a bit of a dip in the operating income line. We believe that will pay off in a big way into the future. Net income is $23.8 million versus $14.9 million, so up 60% year-over-year in the quarter, and $65.7 million versus $23.3 million, up 182% year-over-year year to date. Adjusted EBITDA, you can see is $23.8 million versus $21.8 million, up 6%, and $64.9 million versus $41.2 million, up 50% on a year-to-date basis.
We've had, as Glenn mentioned before, we've had positive adjusted EBITDA since Q3 of 2018. We've had continued positive net income in the company since Q4 of 2019. As we look at operating cash flow, see that we are at $55.4 million versus $38.5 million, up 44% in the quarter, and $156.8 million versus $74.1 million, up 112% in the year. You know, the positive operating cash flow continues in the company with the investment and with zero debt on the balance sheet. We have zero debt on the balance sheet, and we're able to fund our business, invest in our business, do our buybacks, and we still have a very healthy balance.
As a company, you can see our cash equivalent number of $98.1 million. We've decided as a leadership team and a board that we wanna keep that number around $100 million. That's where it's at after all these investments. We're feeling very good about the growth in the company. We're feeling very good about the investment, where we're putting our money, for future growth. We have a very healthy balance sheet at the same time. Now on to some recent highlights, more on our focused growth areas. My last page here is, excuse me. Recent highlights include the following. Paid our first cash dividend in Q3, and we have declared a dividend for Q4. That has to be approved by the board, and that already we've done that.
Very, you know, we've achieved positive accumulated earnings and shareholder equity. That $0.04 share was paid in Q3 and will be paid again in Q4. We've established SUCCESS, as Glenn talked about. Now we're starting to get the states open. We're starting to make sure the staff's in place, and we're gonna start promoting that in a big way. Our share buyback as we've continued with our efforts to offset the dilution in the company and we repurchased $53.2 million of common stock in Q3. Those are the highlights.
On the right-hand side of the page, the great growth, as I mentioned before, and performance from our U.S. realty business has enabled us to invest in key future growth areas that include, you know, realty again on the domestic front, you know, from a marketing and productivity for scale. All sorts of technology investments going into our U.S. business. Global expansion, you heard a lot about it and, you know, we're at 17 countries right now. Team's doing a fantastic job. We gotta get the right people in place. We're starting to get scale in some of the bigger countries, and we'll continue to grow that as time goes on. Then Commercial, as Glenn talked about. You know, we're building awareness, education, and growing our agent count at the same time.
From a technology innovation standpoint, you know, we continue to invest in Virbela and FRAME. As you've heard all the press recently, I mean, we've been doing this for a long time and running our business, and the results that you see are really on the back of this virtual platform of Virbela. Continue to invest there. Alex and team are doing a fantastic job. Showcase, we're investing in our IDX business, agents, tools, and portals. Gonna be a lot of new things coming out of that group this year. Actually 2022. Then mobile apps and international revenue share is something that we're doing in our core technologies that we've added to support our agents. Finally, affiliated services at Success.
We're coming up with brand-new lead generation and proprietary routing. Scale coaching. We're scaling the coaching program right now, and we're going into a digital expansion as we speak. Overall, very, very happy with our results. Very fortunate to be able to invest in growth for the future, and we believe very heavily that that's gonna continue, as time goes on. At this point in time, I'd like to introduce Jason Gesing, who's our CEO of eXp Realty, and he'll expand on our agent growth and key drivers of success.
Terrific. Thank you very much, Jeff. I appreciate it. Good morning, everybody. Good to be here. I'll just provide a little bit more context in terms of our growth trajectory that that Jeff shared. You can see the curve. As Jeff mentioned, we're up 82% year-over-year in our agents, more than 67,000 agents across the globe. If you look at it, there's really three primary drivers, as Jeff mentioned. The first is U.S. residential performance. You know, but we've really been able to continue to attract top-producing agents and teams, and that's really what it boils down to.
If you really wanna get a flavor for the type of person that's joining the company, I'd encourage you to go to life.exprealty.com, where you can see profiles of a number of the folks that have joined us recently, other members of the community. Just yesterday, we did a profile on a 28-year-old gentleman out of Arizona, team of 12, does $200 million in volume, dominates his local market. He came here because this is a company, he said, that recognizes the agent and it's the agent first. For his team members, there's an opportunity to give them things like equity, like ownership, and access to healthcare, which is an important piece in an industry where many agents are left without it.
You know, the other thing too is that every time we add somebody, an influencer, somebody who's been very successful in the business, sort of owns their local neighborhood, it really triggers the network effect and can grow at an even more and greater accelerated rate. Sometimes that's because the people who join are out there and they're attracting agents they wanna make part of their business, but sometimes it's just because somebody learns about it. The gentleman I referred to just a moment ago found out about eXp because somebody else in his market joined, and that prompted him, if nothing else, to ask questions. What is eXp? What's it all about?
Ultimately, the more questions he asked, the more answers he received, the more determined he was to make this the place for his future, and now he's here. Obviously, you know, the way we operate, we've got an innovative model. We have an innovative platform here. It's really allowed us to expand globally in a time where initially when COVID arrived, we weren't sure that we could, and I would submit, you know, in a way that probably nobody else can. In the last year, we've added 10 countries to the footprint. Most recently, in the third quarter, we added Panama and Germany. We think Germany's a great market. I think I read somewhere, you know, the last 10 years, the seven largest cities in Germany have grown upwards of 123%.
We're picking good markets, and we're finding great leaders. On commercial, I do wanna say, go to some of these industry conferences. Jim Huang is really a credible leader, done a great job. Commercial typically lags the residential industry in terms of innovation and technology by a number of years. In addition, you know, historically, commercial agents have earned a much smaller percentage of the overall commission dollar than folks in residential. So we're really a very compelling offer for true commercial agents. If you go to some of the industry conferences, whether it's ICSC or CCIM, they are speaking about eXp Commercial from the stage, and they're describing it as the future of the industry.
We think we have a great advantage there. The platform that we have has just been, you know, instrumental in creating that awareness and that success. You know, quarterly, we're having symposia that Jim and Stephanie are putting together. We've had, I think the first one was about 1,500 agents. Now looking for about 7,000 registrants, and they come in here. They get exposure to Virbela. They understand how the world works, and they're getting certification. Those have been great events for us in order to create awareness. I will say our iBuyer platform is thriving at the moment. We have more than 6,700 agents who are participating. They're certified. They're able to submit properties on the platform. They're receiving offers from iBuyers.
I'll also point out that earlier in the year, we started very quietly a relocation division, and we're really excited about how that's going. We're gaining great traction there, and I think that we're set up and structured as one big company to really serve the needs of relocation very, very well. Jeff talked about, if we go to the next slide, NPS metrics. I think the thing here, not to belabor, but it's important to understand that the value prop really impacts NPS as well. Of course, we got a whole team that is you know conducting the surveys. They're closing the loop when they get feedback, but the value prop has a lot to do with it.
You know, one of the things here with our ownership, our agents, they see unlimited upside, but they have to earn it, right? To get the stock. They either have to sell property, or they have to help the company grow. They, once they do that, there's really no limit. If you compare that to some other companies who maybe will offer, you know, a signing bonus or something upfront with a fixed period of years, it's a one-time benefit. You know, essentially what we've seen is that a lot of the agents at these companies, the moment the lock-up period ends, that they're looking for a new opportunity. I think because our agents are earning their equity, because they're earning everything they're doing, they're really invested in agent ownership.
For us culturally and in terms of our growth, it has been an absolute key driver and one that I always like to talk about. I just wanna say Virbela has just been phenomenal for us. You know, it really has allowed us, you know, agents, real estate agents are people. They wanna be around other people. They don't like to work in isolation. You know, in the last two years, we've demonstrated more than we ever have before that this environment that Virbela really allows for the type of, you know, interoffice banter, you know, collaboration among colleagues.
I think last week our agent experience team had a Halloween costume party. You know, that's just one example of the types of things that we do in here, along with the 100 hours of training and all sorts of stuff. So, I think at that point, I think that's pretty much everything, and I'll turn it back over to Justin. Thank you very much for having an opportunity to be part of the meeting.
Awesome. I think it's you, me, Jeff, and Justin to do the Q&A, so.
Yeah, great. Thanks. Thanks for the presentations. Just wanna start, I guess on the financial side. Pretty impressive, Jeff. Can you kind of dig into what's really driving the top of the line? I know we've talked about attracting agents. How do you know, see that tracking going forward?
Thanks, Justin. Appreciate it. Yeah, I , We went through some numbers even as recently as this morning, and as you can see, the agent count, the productive agent count absolutely drives revenue. We, you know, to put it in perspective, we did half a billion dollars in 2018, and that's in the entire year. Now we're on a year-to-date basis, we're up to $2.7 billion. I think that, if even if you take a 50% growth rate, we're at 82% year-to-date. If you take a 50% growth rate over a five-year period, you're up over 500,000 agents. I think between the U.S., one thing I've talked about before is this kind of network effect.
I mean, when I was here in 2018, we had, you know, a few very successful attractors and influencers in our business. Now after traveling through the country and seeing what's going on, we have hundreds of these people in the U.S., so hundreds of very strong agent leaders in the communities across the U.S. Then as we've talked about, the opportunity international for us is tremendous. We're just getting traction there right now. We're very confident that this is gonna continue from a value proposition to the agents, both domestically and globally. We can see this kind of growth rate continuing as far as we can see.
Yeah, that's great. We can definitely see how that's gonna kind of drive, especially, you know, the combination of both, the U.S. and international. Switching to some of the cost lines and gross margin in particular. I know you touched upon kind of what that's driving and what bumped that up, but maybe you could just, you know, discuss that a little further and where that's been trending and where you expect it to go.
Yeah, sure. I mean, traditionally prior to COVID, we used to have a seasonality to the business where we would have higher margins. Q1 and Q4, volumes go down. Basically what we're seeing now is the volumes being, you know, huge across the entire industry. The reason the gross margin has moved down slightly, you know, is a direct result of the number of agents having success with our model and capping in addition to the volume and then in addition to the price per unit, right? What we're kind of seeing is we're so far in Q4, although we don't. You know, as we look at, we're seeing more seasonality going into Q4 a little bit.
We're seeing some of the slowdowns across the markets, although we can't. This is crystal ball. We're seeing it getting a little more normal, whatever that's gonna be, and gross margins going up slightly in the fourth quarter as volume goes down and it gets to more traditional model. That's kind of what's going on. I mean, what it's doing for us though, as you can see, is it's really driving market share. I think, you know, in the not too distant future, we'll be able to talk about market share and, you know, where we are and things like that. That's kind of what's happening.
As Glenn mentioned earlier today, I mean, we're doing all sorts of things in the business from an investment standpoint to grow our margins both internationally and domestically, and then on top of that, finding the right opportunities to add incremental operating margin to the business, things like affiliated services and other services we can provide in our company.
Yeah, I guess it's kind of, you know, a little bit on the one hand, it's a good one to have, and on the other, you know, as you see kind of the more normalized approach and then margin ticking up because less pressure from the agents. Can you provide us, because I know investors are interested, in what % of agents are capping and, you know, where and do you see it staying around there? I know as we talk, you know, quarter- to- quarter, there's obviously gonna be a little fluctuation, but just in general terms.
Yeah. I mean, we actually don't break that out right now, Justin, in the financials because of the growth of the company. I mean, we're still. I think we added 11,000 agents, whatever it was gross. We still don't have a stable number to report on that.
We don't do that. You know, obviously there's an increase of probably, you know, somewhere around 30% more agents happening, capping as we've seen in the past, because of the market, because the volume in the market. You know, I think as we get more normal, well, I'm not even sure when we'd get normalized on growth. Because we have so many new people coming on and so many thousands of new agents, we don't really put a stick in the sand and say, "This is the number," because, you know, the growth is just beyond having a reasonable number on that.
I think a safe number, you know, 30% more agents are capping than they were prior to the volume going through the roof in the
All right. No, thanks for that, and I appreciate the color there. Then I guess my last question really for you or the rest of the team can kind of weigh in on these investments that you're making. Which one kind of excites you the most? Is it something about productivity or, you know, teaming up agents to learn from each other and grow from there? Just getting your thoughts around that.
Glenn, you wanna take that one?
Yeah. Certainly, you know, from just an agent attraction perspective, I mean, we've been investing in a number of different lead gen initiatives, and I think that lead generation is always something that's valued at the agent level. Between our Showcase IDX investment, which is building out exprealty.com, ExpressOffers. We actually launched a platform maybe two quarters ago called Success Experts, which is a lead gen platform for some displaced folks that were displaced by Dave Ramsey's organization. But we continue to invest in sort of lead gen and then being able to create opportunities for agents to be in front of consumers. From my perspective, that's the biggest driver from an agent perspective.
From an overall company perspective, I think the big investment that I'm most excited about is SUCCESS Lending. You know that you know in my mind if we can figure it out, and I say that, but I think we've got a path to figuring it out this time around. We went and approached mortgage twice before, and we've learned a lot from both of those experiences. I think that we've got an opportunity to crack the code on having an in-house lending opportunity that can get some traction. If that does get traction, that will meaningfully move the needle from a gross margin perspective and a profitability perspective. We're again very early stages.
We're just gonna be announcing our first loan officer division president, and all that next week at EXPCON. We're really excited about what that might look like.
Yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of value in kind of adding those services and those other products. As you mentioned, the lead gen initiatives. Building off of that, I guess, you know, switching to questions about agents specifically and maybe more for Jason. What would you say are the biggest drivers of kind of agent attraction and retention? Obviously, you know, you have the incentives and now there's the dividend and also the awards. Second part of that, just taking a question from the Slido, what does your roadmap look like to get agent and employee net promoter scores even higher?
Yeah. Well, thank you. I think first of all, you know, to get. We have put it in place. Rebecca Etchison oversees a team that, and all she really is focusing on is NPS. Part of that team is to make sure that when feedback comes in that is anything less than a seven or an eight, we're following up. The members of the team are closing the loop, as they say, and addressing the concern. I think continued focus on that, and also identifying other areas where we might be able to introduce the survey, right? You know, there's always more and more experiences that our agents are going through as part of the ecosystem.
I think if we're good about identifying which are the ones that impact the overall experience the most and can introduce surveys there, then you know, hopefully get the scores even a little bit higher. For me, you know, the big drivers of growth are absolutely agent ownership. You know, we've had a great model. We've had you know, a strong revenue sharing model all throughout the time of our existence. Really it was when we introduced agent ownership back in 2014, 2015 that from my perspective, we really started to grow. You know, there's a lot of power, I think, in having people who are owners and have a great deal of diversity in their experience, you know.
This is one of those industries where people come from, you know, they come to it from medical education. We've got a cardiologist that's an agent with us in New York City. There's so much diversity of background and experience. Now you add the global component, so this is now a multilingual environment. It's a multicultural environment. Add all of that together as fellow owners and where everybody is really driven to build the very best company they can because they own a piece of it, and that itself is a really large impetus for growth. I think it's a great driver, and one that I think, you know, I won't speak for Glenn, but I know we're both very proud of it.
Yeah. Thanks, Jason. I think that kind of gets back to this virtuous cycle that more agents come, they like the platform, and then more agents stay and more come, and that, you know, drives more success. In terms of recruitment, what can you give us a little detail on the composition of agents who join eXp from word of mouth versus those that are recruited? You know, a little of that flavor.
Sure, yeah. I mean, it really is all word of mouth. You know, occasionally we'll get an agent that inquires without having spoken with anybody, and we've got an inside sales team that will follow up with that agent and then get that prospect in the hands of one of our agents who doesn't have anybody yet. What you won't see, we don't advertise on billboards. We're not on TV. We're not competing with our agents, so it really is all word of mouth. It's all organic, and that's what makes it so powerful. Obviously, as a company, we're supporting that in whatever way we can. We're offering resources and tools. We've got marketing and training efforts that are really helping agents attract and build their businesses. We're using social media to drive awareness, thought leadership, and our conventions. Over the
I think our last three big conventions we've had inside of Virbela, they've been phenomenal events. As Glenn mentioned, we'll be in Las Vegas next week. These events are really, they're great in so many ways, but for me, they've always demonstrated more than anything else that the relationships that take root inside of Virbela translate so well into real life. Conversations pick up where they left off. It's all word of mouth. I will say that, you know, we have a lot of people that will bring guests to those events, and I would say that the overwhelming majority of those people that come as guests ultimately end up joining. They're great for us as well.
Yeah, I think it's kinda hard to argue with the results of the agent growth that we've seen. Switching to international, in the prepared remarks, I think it was mentioned around 10% of the base is international. Can you just refresh how many countries you're currently in and where do you see how many countries by the end of the year and maybe into the first half of 2022?
Yeah. Well, I think we're in 18 today with the addition of Panama and Germany. There's a number of other markets that we're looking at, but we haven't announced them yet. You know, we're always considering new markets that really complement and align with our business growth strategy. You know, as we build the global brand, we're looking to see what strategic countries contribute to us creating global footprint that really maximizes agent count, revenue and transactions. You know, you mentioned, Justin, the 10%. Just for a little bit of perspective, you know, it took us from 2009 to leap day of 2016, February 29th of 2016, to hit 1,000 agents in the United States, and we launched in India in November of 2020, so just one year ago and we're already over 1,000 agents.
The model's resonating globally. I think in addition to all of the benefits that we've all discussed here today, rev share, equity, the tools and the training, there's so much knowledge to be shared about how to approach the practice of real estate in this market versus that market, and what can an agent in France learn from an agent in California that might help them build a better business? Because everybody's aligned, everybody wants the same thing, everybody's a fellow owner, that help is in abundance. You know, couldn't be more excited about international and that is the investment that we're making that excites me the most.
Oh, all right. Thanks for that color. So it sounds like, you know, the agent growth is mirroring that of the U.S. and it's all driven by kinda eXp's, you know, putting agents at the core of the business. Can you just touch on what the fundamentals are like in international countries? What I mean by that is, obviously you go in expecting a return, but are the commission structures similar? Are they more, are they less? And cost basis as well.
Within our model, commission structures will vary a little bit country to country. You know, the bedrocks are the same, right? The core brand deliverables, you know, competitive splits, ability to reach 100%, so having a capping model, stock where we're allowed to issue it and the ability to build a global organization. Anyway, that, I think. Can you just restate the question? I apologize.
No, it was just, this is the U.S., and in terms of the return profile that you're expecting.
Yeah. Like, you know, outside of our model, and it varies again, you know, you look at the countries and sort of the state of affairs in these countries varies greatly. If we look at the United Kingdom, which was the first country that we went into back in, I guess it was 2018, you know, agents, estate agents in the United Kingdom are accustomed to receiving a stipend that's just enough to maybe pay the bills. And after that, when it comes into the estate agency, the agent is gonna end up with about 5% or 10% at most. You know, we come in, we offer, you know, 70% with a capping model and revenue share and equity.
You know, it takes a little bit of an adjustment for that estate agent who's accustomed to getting the stipend, but if they're able to pull it together and they're able to stick through it's a long sales cycle in the U.K., they come out on the other side and they're more excited about their business than they've ever been. They're making a heck of a lot more money.
All right, thanks. That makes sense. You mentioned in your prepared remarks about the relocation business and how you're excited about that. What's driving that decision to get into the business, and do you see kind of synergies down the road that, you know, you have obviously people looking for houses, people looking to sell houses, all part of a relocation? If you could just comment on that, please.
Yeah. We decided to move forward because the right opportunity for it. This is a great example. Our agent, one of our agents came to me and said, "You know, I've got this person who's done relocation on a national basis in a number of different organizations." You know, that leads to a conversation, and then that sort of illuminates the opportunity. If you got the right people, then you go and you pursue the opportunity. We're building great relationships, whether those are affinity relationships or relationships with various organizations. Our agents are excited about this. You know, with the future of work, I guess very much still, you know, I guess up in the air in terms of, you know, whether people are gonna be in an office or not be in an office.
We do know that a lot of people have moved out of urban areas. They've moved to more outlying areas because of remote work. I think the opportunities for relocation will proliferate over time.
Yeah. Great. That's helpful. Just turning to a couple other questions, from the audience, from the management team. I'm just gonna read this one. The history of turning your largest OpEx into assets like SUCCESS and Virbela, is kvCORE something that you can build internally? Is that a large expense?
I'll touch on that. It is technically something we can build internally. kvCORE is a pretty mature product. We bought Showcase IDX with some of the ideas of actually building functionality over time. We're probably, in terms of actually having a product that could be at parity with kvCORE, still another year out, even though Showcase, we now have probably 80%-90% of the listings in the United States now featured on exprealty.com, which is run out of the Showcase platform. With that, we've got a lot of really unique enhancements that will be different from what would be in an agent sort of CRM lead generation style platform.
We're pretty excited about, you know, what we're able to do with Showcase, but we're also excited about our, you know, continued relationship with Inside Real Estate and kvCORE because we have. I think I talked to Joe, their CEO last week, and, you know, we have something like 20 million contacts of potential consumers that have been generated into the kvCORE platform, which is a lot of potential business that's locked up in that platform and that ecosystem, which may make more sense to continue to mature than to just move over to a different platform.
I appreciate the incremental color there. Just last, 'cause we're bumping up against time, I'll just read this one. SaaS software sales are long, expensive process outside of eXp's core capability. How do you plan to grow Virbela, and any plans to break out the revenues expense related to that?
Yeah. Last year, you know, when we bought Virbela, we bought it for the primary reason is that it had truly enabled us to build at the time, you know, a company in the hundreds of millions of dollars of market value, now in the billions. That single enabling technology allowed us to get to where we're at today, as quickly as we did. COVID kind of created an opportunity to start to sell it. The number of customers that we're supporting on the Virbela platform, we think that collaboration technology is something that we need to invest in for ourselves, but also through that, be able to offer it to other customers. framevr.io in my mind, sort of represents the next generation of Virbela.
Entirely web, mobile, Oculus, you know, ready out of the box. With it, you know, the features and functions of Virbela are slowly but surely getting to the similar type of scale while Frame's in beta. I think that the cool thing about Frame versus Virbela is that Frame should be able to be very much of an e-commerce transaction without much needed work. Virbela itself, it's a custom client developed for each particular customer. So there's a lot more work involved. Whereas Frame VR, we think really represents something that can just be bought and used by anyone from an educational institution, an elementary school to which we do have schools using it to enterprises.
Trello and Atlassian just did an event in FRAME, and we've got a number of other companies that have done similar types of things. We think the future of you know immersive technology will include both types, but I think FRAME represents another step forward, and with that would come much more of a SaaS-like sales model that could be pretty exciting if again if we can figure it out.
Yeah, pretty tough to argue with where the world is moving. That does it for the questions. I wanna thank you for having me, and I'll turn it back over to you, so you can you know, kinda close us out.
Awesome. Thanks, Justin. Courtney, any last words?
Well, thank you for joining us today. This concludes the eXp World Holdings Q3 2021 Earnings Fireside Chat.