CoStar Comps, REIS and EBAY, announce earnings

REIS group ended the 1st quarter of 2016 with earnings of $1.6 million, up from $1.2 million for the same period in 2015. REIS is best known for its proprietary database containing detailed information on commercial properties in metropolitan markets and neighborhoods throughout the U.S. including information on apartment, office, retail, warehouse, self storage, seniors housing and student housing properties. It’s primary customers are real estate investors, lenders, and other professionals for whom the company seeks to streamline buying, selling and financing decisions. The bump in quarterly revenue is attributed to a corresponding increase of subscribers to their flagship REIS database. Much of this however came from the company’s single largest subscriber, an imminent risk the company continues to circumvent. The percentage of revenue attributed to the single largest subscriber increased from 2.7% of total revenue in 2015 to 11.4% of total revenue for the quarter just ended. REIS also collected substantially more payments during the period ended March 31st. More aggressive collections netted the company $7 million of earnings previously tied up in accounts receivable. Compared to the year prior when the company had $13 million of earnings locked in accounts receivables.

EBAY INC also reported earnings of $482 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016. The figure was down $142 million for the same period in 2015. The global ecommerce website primarily focuses on classifieds includes their namesake marketplace “Ebay” and the marketplace for event ticketing “Stubhub”. EBAY owns several smaller classifieds sites including Mobile.de, Kijiji, Gumtree, Marktplaats, among others. Despite an increase in both Net Revenue and Gross Profit, the company spent more on sales/marketing and product development; $19 and $18 million respectively. However, the greatest portion of the decline in quarterly revenue was attributed to a one-off earnings of $177 million booked during the same period in 2015 after the separation of its then wholly owned subsidiary PayPal. PayPal now trades as an independent publicly traded company with ticker on The NASDAQ under the stock market ticker “PYPL”.