BofA maintained a Buy rating and $101 price target on CoStar Group Inc (NASDAQ:CSGP) in a note Tuesday, stating traffic to one of the company's websites has soared.
Traffic to the company's Homes.com site is "making moves," said BofA analysts.
"CoStar published a release after the close highlighting that its residential website, Homes.com, experienced 100mn+ unique visitors in September (according to Google Analytics)," they explained. "This is a material leap from 38mn monthly unique visitors in June and 2x its 50mn near-term goal."
"This level of traffic also compares to Realtor.com's and Redfin's 74mn and 52mn unique monthly visits as of their quarters ending June 30th, 2023. This bodes favorably for the company's eventual monetization efforts," they added.
Despite the bump-up in traffic, BofA notes that the monetization plans for Homes.com are unchanged, with the company planning monetization of the website in the second quarter of 2024.
They explained: "At first, we thought this was a change from its plan as of its 2Q23 call. And we think this could cause some investor confusion because many (us included) thought monetization could start in 1Q24. However, the company is commenting that their plans have not changed since 2Q23."