Alrighty. Okay, we'll kick this one off. Thank you, everyone. It's Patrick on the U.S. MedTech team, and delighted today with Jay, Carolynne, and Kevin to join us as CFO, Head of Investor Relations, and the head of the PDX business from GE HealthCare. Super topical, good for a tech conference as well on the Nasdaq side, so thank you so much for joining.
Yeah, Patrick, thanks. Thanks for having us here today. We appreciate the opportunity with Nasdaq, and thanks to the folks in the room who've joined us for our session today. We appreciate your interest in our company.
You guys had, obviously, you know, your Investor Day fairly recently, what, two, three weeks ago now, I think it was, on the New York side of things. I don't know if it's worth just, before we kick into the direct Q&A, just key points that you felt like you really wanted to communicate just high level about the business from that day?
Yeah, I think for us, it's about a real excitement around the future driven by innovation and supported by solid fundamentals. It starts with, you know, over the last year and a half since the spinoff, almost two years now, we've made tremendous progress in terms of delivering on a revenue profile, delivering on an innovation promise, and delivering on margin expansion, so a really good start as an independent public company, and then as we sit here today and look to the future, we were able to confirm and improve upon the midterm outlook that we previously shared from a financial standpoint. We expect compounded sales growth of mid-single digit, margin expansion of high teens to 20% plus, continued free cash flow conversion, and all of this is built on exciting innovation, be it in the pharmaceutical diagnostic business. We're so thrilled to have Kevin here today.
That's really a new feature that we've started to emphasize in the portfolio that was much less emphasized during the last Investor Day, and then in addition, continued progress in terms of enhancing leadership positions or bolstering our position in imaging and ultrasound and some of the core modalities, so really exciting Investor Day. We walked away incredibly excited. It's still available online, I believe, for those that want to watch that. It's a worthwhile exercise if you're interested in our company.
If we maybe start with the base market environment, maybe starting with the U.S., and then we can talk about some of the geographies. What are you hearing from, you know, the hospital executives on the willingness to invest in that side of things?
Yeah, the hospital environment has been good in the U.S. What we're seeing is a willingness to invest, in particular, in revenue-generating assets in hospitals, so we've seen a fairly buoyant environment. You know, if you look back at our third quarter results, we saw an 8% growth in the U.S. business, so really, really robust sales performance, and in addition to that, we had very good orders growth in the U.S. as well. We're pleased with that backdrop, and it's something that, you know, of course, we survey it every quarter, and we'll be conducting a survey in January as we really assess the health of the customer, but so far, so good.
Yeah, we did our usual year-end survey, and it sounded very good for the U.S. on the core imaging platforms. I mean, I guess as well, before we pivot off the U.S. into some other stuff, the base environment, I mean, PDX has been very strong.
Yep, absolutely.
What are you hearing from your customers in terms of, you know, patient volumes and the outlook going forward?
Yeah, look, I think as we shared at the Investor Day, when you think about our business, we segment into contrast media and radio pharmaceuticals. Contrast media, you know, we said two years ago we're expecting CT and X-ray contrast to double in the next 10 years. There's nothing we've seen in the last two years that would change that outlook. Look, and we're continuing to invest and to ensure the security of supply. And the number one thing our customers ask for in contrast media is security of supply. Make sure the product's there when the patients come in to scan. And that's what we invest, and that's what we're focused on every single day. When it comes to radio pharmaceuticals, it's all about innovation. You know, what can you bring to market in urology, cardiology, and oncology, you know, partnering with next-generation therapies.
When you think about Alzheimer's with lecanemab, donanemab now in the Alzheimer's space. Vizamyl, we've seen sequential growth since those products were launched, and we're investing behind that product. Flyrcado, which is our new imaging agent for myocardial PET perfusion, you know, better diagnostic efficacy, the existing standard of care with SPECT. Customers are asking us, when can you get us that product? We've got a controlled launch plan. We're going to be shipping at the end of the first quarter, but we're really excited about the growth in that product, as we shared before.
We're definitely going to drill into a lot of those. It's impossible to escape at least mentioning and questioning, to some degree, China. And it's a bit of a black box, obviously, for those of us externally. But how are you feeling about that for the imaging business?
Yeah, no real change in our perspective. Like, so we had a point of view on the third quarter call. We commented that as we look to the first half of next year, we don't really anticipate benefit of stimulus. And we said that because, you know, as we looked at where we are at, and we outlined a four-step process to getting to an order, completed order, pre-tender all the way through to awarding the final order, it's taken a long time to get things through that. And while we've seen some increase in pre-tender activity, which I think is good and potentially promising, it really is too early to say. And, you know, I think it's going to be a muted impact in the first half of the year, and then we'll just have to watch. So this is an open question for us.
You know, at the Investor Day, I said, we'll wait until we give guidance in February in order for us to get as much information as we can around the market evolution, because this year has proven very hard to forecast.
I absolutely promised Carolynne no 2025 guidance questions. Don't worry. I'm not going to drop that on you.
Thank you.
I mean, within that China market, like, how much do you think is a function of, it's impossible to know really, but the macro side versus the, because they have the anti-corruption, you know, behavior. Is there a discussion internally on the relative weightings of those two?
It's hard to say. Actually, there's three, because there's anti-corruption, there's waiting for stimulus, and there's macro. And so there's three different elements in play. And I think perhaps each of them is playing a contributory factor to the overall kind of stagnancy that we've seen in the market. And it's really hard to discern, because, you know, even if a hospital were going to invest, you know, they might wait just because of lack of clarity. They might wait because of lack of funds available to them, just generally speaking, given the challenging macro environment. It's really hard to say. But, you know, as this shakes out, I would take a step back and just say, you know, as we've looked at China over the years, it's been a really important catalyst for growth. And in any given year, you know, there's volatility. Growth up 20%, growth down 20%.
A lot of volatility on a year-in, year-out basis. But overall, over time, it's been a good market for us. And to the extent that that continues, I think it's, you know, we expect that to be going forward.
I'd love Kevin to pivot a bit to the PDX business.
Sure.
Probably the most frequent question coming into me from the buyer side is around Flyrcado.
Yep.
The potential size. You know, maybe for this audience, it might be worth giving a bit of a background to the product, and then we can go into the.
Sure. So Flyrcado is a next-generation imaging agent using PET technology for the imaging for the myocardial perfusion procedure, which is the diagnostic for coronary artery disease. The existing standard of care is using SPECT technology. So think about looking at images on television 10 years ago and comparing that with a high-definition image you would see through a PET camera. The PET agent has much higher diagnostic efficacy and, for particular groups of patients, a much greater application.
Now, when you think about the rollout of that, you know, CT has been historically a little bit more cardio oncology.
Yep.
So how do we think about the extra demand that it could generate for CT as a modality? And then also what that means for the speed of rollout?
Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's a question we get many, many times now. I mean, the product was just approved by the FDA, and we've announced pricing. We're putting in for pass-through pricing right now. We expect to be shipping the first commercial doses towards the end of the first quarter next year. Just to put it in context today, there's 6 million of these procedures performed in the United States. About 5%-10% of those are done on PET today. So as you think about the ramp-up over time, there's a first step of looking at the installed base of existing users who are using PET for cardiac procedures. But then you say, right, how do you then expand that PET installed base to increase the capacity in the system over time? And that will be a pull-through over time.
That's, you know, I wouldn't put a timeline on that right now, but that's part of our role as a company now in terms of building out supporting healthcare systems to build out that infrastructure. You know, I think the reimbursement changes in the U.S. have certainly helped that environment now and improved that investment case as well. Our first target is to launch the, you know, to get approval, which we've done, first commercial patients during the first, towards the end of the first quarter. Then we'll build out over time. As we indicated at our own Investor Day, you know, we're targeting revenues in excess of $500 million by 2028, by the start of 2028.
So, I mean, you mentioned it, so it feels like very topical. Maybe give a little bit of background for those in the audience not familiar with it, the reimbursement change that happened more broadly and what that impact could be for you guys.
Sure. So today in the United States, if you go in for a PET diagnostic procedure as an outpatient in the hospital, the hospital receives a flat fee for that exam that combines both the diagnostic pharmaceutical tracer and the cost of doing the scan itself. And I'll give an example of that. We have a product, Cerianna, which is used for imaging patients to identify estrogen-positive tumor burdens. That's a diagnostic that probably costs about $3,000 to the hospital. But when the hospital scans the patient today, they do an exam on the 10th of December today, they'll be reimbursed $1,500 for that procedure, both for the combined PET scan and the radiopharmaceutical. From January the 1st, they'll receive two payments. They'll receive a payment of $1,500 for the scan, plus a further $3,000 for the diagnostic pharmaceutical.
So by unbundling those two, the hospital is now getting reimbursed for the value of the diagnostic. They're getting the value for the diagnostic. It encourages companies like ourselves to invest in technology in this space and encourages hospitals to use next-generation diagnostic imaging agents and gives patients greater access. So we believe this is going to be a real game changer. We're absolutely supportive, and it's really opening up the market now going forward.
Do you ever sense from conversations with facilities how many instances there were historically where they might have used an isotope or tracer or something like that, and then they weren't because of the negative economics? Like, even just qualitatively.
Yeah, I think one example I'd use is probably in the space of Alzheimer's imaging, where there's, you know, to get onto Alzheimer's therapy, you need to demonstrate the presence of beta-amyloid. There's two ways to do this. You can either use a lumbar puncture , which is a relatively low-cost but invasive procedure for the patient, or you can use a beta-amyloid PET scan, which is non-invasive and actually has a lot more data in that scan and has, I would argue, has much more diagnostic potential going forward. If a hospital has to diagnose three patients to identify the one patient that goes on to therapy and the cost of doing the expensive PET scan is $3,000 or $4,000 and they're not being reimbursed, that's significantly loss-making for the hospital.
You know, we believe, and we've seen the indications now as we look into 2025, moving away from these invasive lower-cost procedures to what is a much higher quality diagnostic for the patient. That's just one example of migrating, moving forward. And I'd expect you to see this in other areas as well.
Last one on PDX. Always with U.S. companies, like, it's, you know, forbidden to talk about competition. But how do you view, like, the competitive environment overall, who's investing, who's not, and the relative advantages you guys have for being a real owner of both the imaging side and the tracer side?
Yeah, look, I do think we have a huge advantage in terms of having both diagnostic pharmaceuticals as part of GE HealthCare and all of the imaging equipment, because it enables us to position ourselves as a company, not just as the provider of a beta-amyloid diagnostic or a coronary artery disease diagnostic, but as an enabler of the care pathway for the hospital. So I will go in with our commercial teams. We'll sit down more broadly with the hospital and say, what's the challenge you face on theranostics? How can we help you solve that as a company? What's the challenge you face in terms of scheduling patients in the Alzheimer's care pathway? How can we help you do that as a company? And it gives us a position that we wouldn't otherwise have.
We've got some great competition out there, but we focus on what our customers ask for, which is security of supply, which is innovation, and which is being able to deliver that solution.
Yeah, I mean, in the case of Alzheimer's, it's interesting because not only is there an imaging agent constraint, there is a potential PET scan constraint.
Yep.
There's a potential MR constraint. How you orchestrate that for the hospital and solve that problem holistically, we think we're best positioned to solve something like that. Same with cardiac imaging and a number of other care pathways as well.
And I'd love to actually, Jay, to pivot into the margin side of things. At the group level, I think one of the positive surprises a lot of people had this year was, despite a difficult volume and mix environment, the gross margins, the operating margins came in way ahead of, I think, where anybody really expected. Maybe for the audience and those who are less familiar, a bit of background for how that was achieved and what that means for margins going forward.
Yeah, we were really pleased with the overall margin performance at the company, at the gross level, at the EBIT margin level as well. What was, I think, most interesting is, you know, this has been accomplished. We are accomplishing this in the face of a reduced, unplanned sales environment. Because of the dynamics that we referenced in China, our sales are coming in lower than expectations by several percentage points. Despite that, we've been able to deliver on margin expansion. It really has come down to a few different things. First, this whole idea of productivity initiatives in our manufacturing facilities, we have been intensely focused on implementing a lean culture at the company. In lean, you have a number of metrics that are managed at a corporate-wide level: safety, quality, delivery, cost, and innovation.
You filter those down throughout the organization, and you have initiatives designed to target them. One key area is how do you improve the cost profile of your manufacturing, of your sourcing? We implemented an enterprise-wide initiative in this area a couple of years ago. I have to say it's paid very substantial dividends for us. We talked a little bit about, in the last couple of earnings calls, we talked about some of the things we're doing to reduce platform costs, to reduce sourcing costs, to enhance productivity of our manufacturing facilities. We've talked a little bit about that. You know, it's hundreds of examples across the company, coordinated centrally to drive the outcome that we're looking for. That's one piece. The second piece is, you know, we've had some innovation and supportive pricing that's been robust.
And I think that environment, you know, for us, this idea of really focusing on the value that we provide to our customers is something that's essential and part and parcel to what our sales teams do every day and really protecting price where possible and protecting the value of new innovation. And then the final piece is, listen, we've done some cost optimization activity outside of manufacturing. This doesn't show up in gross margin, but shows up in operating margin in the area of G&A and some of the sales and marketing functions. And what this is about is effective use of resources, in particular, taking a fresh look as we come off TSAs. You know, we've had transition service agreements in place with GE, and we're really proud that we're essentially complete coming off these TSA agreements.
We should be good by year-end and with maybe one or two residual agreements of a very small nature, so a huge lift to get us to independence, but what it's allowed us to do is really think about the IT support that our business provides and optimizing that. Same with finance, same with real estate, and all of those things have attendant opportunities. That's been a feature in our numbers this year. You saw really good performance on the SG&A line, and a lot of that's enabled by some of these moves that we've put in place, which will continue to next year.
A quick point just to add, Jay mentioned that we've been able to drive margin even while we've been operating in a low-growth environment, but we've also been able to do that even while we continue to invest more in R&D, which is the future of the company.
Yep. That's a good point. And is it fair to say that, you know, the Investor Day, for those who are not aware, you added a plus to the midpoint and put a cap on it? Is it fair to say that, you know, since joining, your sense has been that you've been running ahead in terms of the cost savings versus what you originally expected? What were some of the things that surprised you that caused you to put the plus on? Yeah, I think probably, and thanks for pointing that out, because it was subtle, but for us, it was important, which is, hey, we're tracking better than we expected from a margin standpoint, and despite some of the volatility that we described earlier.
For me, the biggest surprise is as I've gotten into the productivity initiatives and the impact that that can have on a fairly mature manufacturing network, but really putting in place this lean program can have a profound impact. Because, you know, the SG&A opportunity, I expected, and it kind of came in as expected. Innovation, I knew there would be a positive impact from that. Pricing, I, you know, I had a good sense of that. But probably the biggest one for me that, you know, has gone really well is this idea of productivity initiatives. And when we started the year, we had a lot, you know, we had a lot of risk adjustment against this productivity number.
You know, we've been able to sort of move forward without that risk adjustment to a large extent, allowing us to maintain and even grow margins versus our original expectations.
One of the trends in the industry has been for multi-year, multi-system deals with large IDNs that have been much less one-off in nature and much more of like a long-term agreement, at least on the imaging side. How do you guys think about that? Does, like, the visibility that that gives you relative to price and margin and how you invest, do you think that those things ultimately end up being margin accretive for you because of the visibility and the ability to plan your cost base relative to presumably, in some instances, a little bit lower pricing if it's a massive 10-year deal, just conceptually?
Yeah, I think they could be margin neutral to positive in some instances, depending on the situation, and it comes down to what do we do really well as an organization. And Kevin and I described it a little bit, which is, hey, we can solve problems in a comprehensive manner, bringing the full portfolio to bear to help hospitals solve problems, but then in addition to that, you know, we sell really special innovative products. We have a world-class sales team, and, you know, in our investor day, Catherine talked about some of that capability, and then also, our service organization, I would put up against anybody, and so you put those things together, and it's a very compelling offer. What it gives hospitals is the ability to plan and be thoughtful about, you know, how they're going to be supported by a key vendor.
What it gives us is revenue predictability on both the service and the supply side. So, yeah, of course, there may be some margin trade-offs, but generally speaking, these deals are very attractive on an overall economics basis to us.
PDX, the margin structure is obviously very, very good.
Yep.
Growth probably accretive to the group in that way. Is there any reason to think that that margin could keep going up or remain stable? Is there anything that would, given the reimbursements got better, is there anything that would ever depress it? I mean, it seems like it would go up.
Yeah, look, if you look at the portfolio, I mean, this year we've expanded margins probably about 350 basis points. You know, we're now north of 30%. We expect that to continue to grow going forward, particularly as the balance of the portfolio starts shifting towards radio pharmaceuticals and that growth going forward. You know, we're investing more in R&D than we've ever done. We've got a very focused investment on the pipeline. But, you know, with all the things Jay talks about, we're continuing to drive productivity in the core of the business. We're continuing to launch new products that are accretive at a gross margin level. And that's the trend going forward.
Maybe to touch on capital allocation, because you guys are pretty cash generative and that side of things. You know, you obviously have your core markets well covered. I know some private companies where you have venture stakes in them and things like that. So how do you think about M&A? How do you think about the priorities and the direction?
Sure. Taking a step back, we do really like the cash flow generating ability of the company. It's very strong. Balance sheet's in a good spot. So as we look forward over the next several years, we really do have an opportunity to deploy a lot of capital. I don't really see the need to pay down a lot of debt. We may do a little bit, but we don't have a huge need on that front. And so what it comes down to is organic investment in the business and then inorganic. To the extent that we have R&D opportunities, if Kevin has ideas or some of his other colleagues have ideas, we'll look at them very carefully. But we do feel good about the overall spending and that we're not passing up on a lot of great ideas. So we move on to inorganic investment.
And, you know, we've done a number of transactions over the last several years, and you can expect us to continue to develop and invest. As we look at financial criteria, you know, we want something to be revenue accretive, you know, EPS accretive in the near term, attractive ROI. But then also this idea of tilting us to recurring revenue has a lot of advantages. One of the reasons we like Kevin's business so much is because of the durable nature of it. It's fairly consistent in terms of performance. And so we do give nods to those kinds of businesses. So from a financial standpoint, that's the criteria that we've laid out. From a strategic standpoint, you know, what I would say is there are a lot of assets in or near our imaging business.
For example, MIM is a great example of a deal that we recently did. What MIM does is it brings radiation and oncology workflow and management tools that allow hospitals to more efficiently manage that particular area. And it's got a great pipeline today of sales opportunities. It's tracking very well relative to the model that we put forth. And the most interesting thing about this is, you know, if you think about it, prior to MIM, what would happen is when we were selling our products, a lot of times our customers would either buy somebody else's because they liked the MIM alternative, or they would buy our product with MIM attached to it. So it was a great example of a natural tuck-in strategically that filled a gap in our portfolio. Caption Health is another great example.
Our ultrasound devices today, for the most part historically, could only be used by sonographers. Now with the addition of Caption, you have untrained people able to get ultrasounds. And so really nice tuck-ins. I think that's an important area for us. We'll continue to look in the PDX arena. And then in the monitoring business, because of the disparate nature of the product portfolio and the strong presence that we have in a number of different areas in hospitals, it really does open it up to a lot of things that are near adjacencies. And so we'll look at those. Now, to your point, we look at this at a number of different phases. If the target's appropriate, we can acquire it straight up. But if it's smaller and not the right time, then we do have an active venture portfolio that we manage and invest in.
It's not dedicated venture funds, but we'll make venture investments along the way.
Yeah, I've definitely run into those. I mean, for each of you maybe, and I know this was a tricky question, but you do a chunk of these meetings, you meet a bunch of the sell side and the buy side, stuff that you're surprised, you know, Carolyn, stuff that you're surprised doesn't come up more or gets like excessive focus. Like, areas that you feel just don't get asked about, but for you internally are very valuable.
Kevin and I were having a discussion just this morning about when I first joined the company about a little over three years ago, there really was not a lot of interest in his business, which always surprised me because I obviously recognize the value in that, and it's been a complete 180, tremendous interest because things are starting to accelerate in radio pharma, so that was a little bit of a surprise that has definitely turned the corner.
Yeah, and I think the one thing I'd add to that is we get less questions about our pipeline of upcoming products. And we're really excited about the pipeline. We've got eight assets under development right now, which are just as exciting as, you know, we all talk about Flyrcado and Vizamyl, the products that are coming to market, but we've got a great pipeline coming through as well.
Yeah, and Jay, on your end?
Yeah, I think you touched on it, but we don't spend a lot of time with the capital deployment opportunity that we have going forward. Because if you just take the balance sheet where it is and then run the math forward on cash flow generation, it's a really interesting and compelling story that I think, you know, with the strong franchises that we have, really lends itself to an expansion strategy. So we spend a little bit of time on that, but it's one that we don't get too many questions on. But I would agree also this idea of PDX has really started to perk up because there's some incredibly exciting launches that we have ongoing.
On the other side, we do spend a lot of time talking about China, which, you know, I take a step back and say, long term, it's a really good business for us. We spend a lot of time on tariffs, you know, a lot of questions recently on that given the upcoming administration change. So we'll navigate our way through that.
Of course. Amazing. Perfect timing. Thank you so much, and thank you, everybody, for joining.
Thank you.
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It's more to this time. Are you okay, still?
I'm good. Thank you.
Okay.
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I can see it already on the clock. Thank you.
It's like comfortable for you there. Table, is that right? Is that right with the table there?
Yeah, yeah, that's right. We're from Virgin.
Okay, perfect. Well, welcome, everyone. And thank you to the team from CoStar for joining us. We've got Chris, the Chief Financial Officer, and Rich, who's the Head of Investor Relations with us. So you guys held an Investor Day last week. And certainly the way it seemed is it was an effort to maybe widen the aperture a little bit that investors look at the business with. Is that the right way of looking at what you were doing? And perhaps you could touch a little bit on the sort of key messages you were trying to get across in the day.
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for having us and thank you for being here. And I think you're spot on in sort of what our objectives were. You know, I think people to some degree underestimate the breadth of CoStar Suite and how rich and deep and rich it is from a content, from an analytics capability, from a data perspective. And so part of the mission for the Investor Day was really just to make sure people understood what we offer, the value proposition. Also, most importantly, how integrated our businesses are, how, you know, a lot of our data and businesses feed each other's businesses and come to align each other and make things more valuable. So clearly part of it was to get people reacquainted and make sure they understand CoStar Suite, the TAMs that have expanded.
So not only do we have our original TAMs, but we've expanded those TAMs over the last five years with new products like Lender and with the Owners Module. And with Apartments.com, the fabulous growth that that enterprise has had since we acquired it over 10 years ago, but also how that data feeds into CoStar Suite and provides better data analytics for subscribers to CoStar Suite. Obviously, the LoopNet business continues to grow on its mission to digitalize the commercial real estate space globally. And so that was part of the objective. And the other job was to make sure people really understood our Homes.com value proposition, what we're trying to do in the market. We are trying to create a completely different business model than what exists in the U.S.
The business model we're trying to create is more akin to what exists in the rest of the world versus what's sort of been built out in the U.S. And, you know, we're about nine months into it and we feel really good about the early signs, but we still have a ways to go.
Let's pick up on the Homes.com part there. You said, I sort of think it being two years in, but as you said, perhaps it's February, perhaps it's more like one year in reality.
Ten months.
Quite right. 130 million users, if I'm not mistaken. So could you elaborate a little bit for those who aren't aware of the difference in model about what it is that's differentiated about Homes.com, what you're trying to achieve in terms of the sort of the business model paradigm compared to what exists now?
Sure. So the U.S. and Canada are very unique markets from a residential real estate perspective. In that, we have something called an MLS system, which creates ubiquity for listings, i.e., when you're a real estate broker and you get a listing, you put it on what's called an MLS, which are sort of mutual organizations. There's over 500 of them in the U.S., and they create a sort of digital imprint of what you're selling. And so what has been created in the U.S. to try to take advantage of that model is basically models like Zillow and Realtor, which have built great businesses, basically through consumer eyeballs to their sites, generate buyer leads so people are interested in maybe buying the properties that they're looking at.
Then those buyer leads are monetized, i.e., they're sent to sort of algorithms that figure out who the best buyer is of that buyer lead from an agent perspective, and they sell them to that market. So that's an over $2 billion revenue market for those companies. The model we're trying to create is actually more akin to what many of you may be more aware of in sort of the U.S., I'm sorry, in Europe or Australia, which is our belief is that the purpose of a real estate portal is to sell a property and to focus on the listing agent who's trying to sell that property.
So providing a digital marketing experience for listing and selling that property to provide a marketing capability for the agent to build their own brand, to build their own business, and also to generate leads, but leads for the listing agent or for the sellers that they can over time monetize and get value out of. We think of, if you're a real estate agent, if you win a listing, that's your asset, that's your IP, and therefore you should look to generate as much yield or return off of that asset as possible. And so that's the paradigm or the business model we're going down. And as was just mentioned, we're about 10 months into it. We feel great about the traction we have thus far, but, you know, we think there's a huge TAM and a huge opportunity, so we're early days.
So you certainly sound in that sense a better proposition. It's also high margin if you look at the global peers from the sake of the financial side of it. From an agent point of view, though, it is a big shift in the paradigm of what they've been looking at before. So we can perhaps touch on the sort of sales force dynamic in a sec, but could you touch a little bit on the balance you've had between selling Homes.com and helping people actually understand what that value prop is and what that journey's been like?
Yeah, so a great question. So in the U.S. today, real estate agents spend between $12 and $15 billion a year marketing, marketing their properties, marketing themselves. They do that through flyers they send out through the mail, postcards they send out through the mail, advertisements and magazines, Facebook, radio, et cetera. So part of our value proposition is to shift some of those marketing dollars to our platform. We're not asking them to spend more. We're just asking them then to really be digital advertisers versus more old line bricks and mortar type advertisers. And so in that process, we've had to build out a dedicated sales team to really attack that opportunity. And we really got into that in earnest probably a couple of months after launch.
We actually used our entire sales force, which is about 1,200 strong, to sell Homes.com out of the gate, but they weren't a specialized sales force. Over the last seven or eight months, we've been building out a dedicated sales force specifically just for Homes.com. We're at roughly 200 salespeople today. Our hope and expectation is if we're on track, we'll have about 600 plus salespeople by the end of next year.
How do you, I guess this question goes to the broader business because you've got a sales-driven business across the whole sort of spectrum, but how do you get right that balance between sort of foot on the floor trying to get the growth going, but also the productivity of that team and building out that team, getting the right quality control? What are the sensitivities around how you think about that part?
Yeah, it's a great question, so out of the gate, when we launched, we actually took our entire sales force and we applied them to Homes.com, and they did exactly what you think salespeople did. They sold the product, and they sold a lot of it out of the gate, but realistically, they were probably selling to the wrong real estate agents. Our target market is really real estate agents who list multiple properties a year. There's roughly 1.6, 1.8 million "real estate agents" in the U.S. Probably about five or 600,000 of those are our TAM, the people we think who should be utilizing or subscribing to our services, so versus just selling to everybody, the building of a specialized sales force will actually provide a much more targeted sales pitch. We will actually really only sell to people who will need and use the product.
That's that 5-600,000 TAM, and therefore, we'll pretty dramatically reduce a churn we've seen in the portfolio out of the gate as people have cycled through the value proposition and people who don't have listings not realizing value and therefore dropping their subscription, so we're kind of midstream in that, but we feel good. We've got a great new head of sales in place. He's been building the sales pipeline. We've redefined our sales messaging and our value proposition over the last six months, so I feel like we're in a great position today.
I think what we also added too is a big service element to it as well. A lot of the agents are lone wolves out there, even though they're part of a company. And so what we find is that we actually offer them a lot of help as they're developing sales pitches, going out on special occasions when they get a listing, celebrating with them, but also acting as a resource for them to help them market because many of them aren't necessarily used to using digital advertising to their advantage. So that's going to be a big plus in what we're doing. So I guess it's a little bit of the utilization of how much they're serving as much as they're selling is the balance of it.
It's one of the secret sauces, I think, of what you see throughout CoStar, its history, is that we don't just have a sales force and a service force. We have a sell and serve model. And we think that that's really good for a number of reasons. One is it keeps the promises real when you're the salesperson and not trying to pass them off to somebody else. It also makes a stronger bond between the person that you're working with so that there could be future upsells along the way. And so we've used it quite successfully in the CoStar Suite, definitely in Apartments.com and LoopNet. And now we're just going to apply the same model here to what we're doing on Homes.com.
And how do you think about the total investment? Clearly, the sales force is going to grow, but how do you think about total investment next year, the mix of those different buckets of spend for homes?
Yeah, so this year we'll spend about $900 million in Homes.com, and that's sort of broken down 60% marketing, which is SEM, SEO, online advertising, et cetera, and then the other 40% is building out content. Our site's a little unique, and we have real detailed content around neighborhoods, videos, photographs, schools. We even have things like air quality, noise pollution overlays, so pretty detailed overviews on the neighborhoods in the homes we're selling. And the other 40% is really building out the content, the sales team, and the technology, and we've publicly disclosed that we're probably going to spend roughly the same number in 2025. The mix will shift a little bit because the dedicated salesforce is going to grow, and that'll lead a little more into that at the expense of, to some degree, marketing and technology, but that $900 million.