Earnings Labs

CoStar Group, Inc. (CSGP)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 20, 2014

$36.03

-0.58%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+8.20%

1 Week

+11.37%

1 Month

+11.09%

vs S&P

+10.37%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CoStar Group Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Rich Simonelli. Please go ahead.

Richard Simonelli

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to CoStar's Fourth Quarter 2013 Conference Call broadcast live from our headquarters in Washington, D.C. We're delighted you've joined us. And before I turn the call over to Andy, I have some really important information for you. So certain parts of this discussion contain forward-looking statements, which involve many risks and uncertainties that can cause actual risk -- results to differ materially from such statements. Important factors that can cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, those stated in our February 19, 2014, press release on fourth quarter and year-end results, and in CoStar's filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2013, as well as our Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2013, in each case, under the heading of Risk Factors. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to us on the date of this call, and CoStar assumes no obligation to update these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. As a reminder, today's conference call is being broadcast live and in color over the Internet at www.costar.com. And a replay will be available approximately 1 hour after the call until March 28, 2013. To listen to the replay, please call 1 (800) 475-6701 within the U.S. or Canada or (320) 365-3844 outside the U.S. and Canada. The access code is 318994. It's also available on our website right after the call. So without further ado, I'd turn it over to Mr. Andy Florance.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. 2013 was clearly the best year in CoStar's history. We had an exceptionally strong year in all aspects of the business, and we believe we are positioned to continue to grow at high margins for many years to come. I am very pleased with our outstanding financial results, which are the direct result of our entire organization of 2,000-plus professionals working hard to create valuable products for the huge community of commercial real estate professionals we serve. We increased revenue by $91 million in 2013, growing it to $441 million for the year. We continue to grow the top line to mid-teens, as our fourth quarter revenue was nearly $116 million, which is approximately 16% year-over-year growth. EBITDA for 2013 was $94 million. This is a 56% increase over 2012 and, by far, the most EBITDA we've generated in our history. Adjusted EBITDA margin accelerated to over 35% for the fourth quarter of 2013. In the fourth quarter of 2012, adjusted EBITDA margin was 25%. Margin expansion continued throughout 2013 while we continued to aggressively invest in the business. Our 12-month trailing renewal rate was 93% and 98% for customers who've been with us for 5 years. In 2013, we added nearly 4,800 new CoStar information subscription customers, which is the most we've ever added in 1 calendar year. Our annualized net new sales of subscription services in the fourth quarter was $15.8 million, an increase of 15% over the third quarter of 2013 and a 46% increase year-over-year. Our fourth quarter 2013 subscription-based revenue reached $87 million for nearly a 21% year-over-year revenue growth rate. So we're really quite pleased with our revenue momentum and our earnings momentum. The LoopNet acquisition integration has been extremely successful and beneficial for…

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Thank you, I think, Andy.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

I was more inclined to keep talking.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

I know. Yes, that was tough. I'm pretty impressed, Rich, you kept it under 3 hours. So as mentioned, we're very pleased with our performance during the fourth quarter and full year 2013. CoStar's information analytic and marketing services continue to show strong revenue growth, and the successful integration of LoopNet continue to be a big contributor to our growth in revenue and earnings. EBITDA margins continue to expand, driven by mid-teens revenue growth. Today, I'm going to principally focus on the year-over-year comparisons for the fourth quarter of 2013, and then also on our outlook for 2014 and beyond. Starting with CoStar Group's results for the fourth quarter of 2013, the company reported $115.6 million of revenue, an increase of 15.5% compared to $100.1 million last year. Full year revenues were $440.9 million, an increase of $91 million or 26% over revenues of $349.9 million for 2012. This revenue growth is driven by the core information service performance and the continued progress on cross-selling the LoopNet efforts, as well as strong revenue from the marketplaces. EBITDA increased 54% year-over-year to $31.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2013, up from $20.5 million in the prior year. EBITDA for the 12 months ended 12/31/2013, was $94.2 million, which is an increase of 56% or $34 million from EBITDA of $60.2 million in Q4 of 2012. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $40.8 million for Q4 2013, which is an increase of $15.7 million or approximately 63% compared to $25.1 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased significantly to 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2013 from 25.1% in the fourth quarter of 2012. You want me to repeat that, Rich?

Richard Simonelli

Analyst

[indiscernible]

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Okay. Adjusted EBITDA margins increased significantly to 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2013 from 25.1% in the fourth quarter of 2012. So when you look at the flow-through from incremental revenue down to earnings, one can sort of understand what happened here and how significant the earnings leverage is in our business. I think we've talked about this for years, but if you think about that flow-through, it is fairly significant. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2013 was $12.8 million or $0.45 per diluted share, which is an increase of $8.1 million from $4.7 million or $0.17 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2012. Non-GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2013 was $22.2 million or $0.78 per diluted share, which is a 76% increase from $12.6 million or $0.46 per diluted share from the fourth quarter of 2012. Amazing. Reconciliation of all non-GAAP net income, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA or any of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call to their GAAP basis results are shown in detail, along with definitions for those terms in our press release issued yesterday and are available on our website at www.costar.com, or you can just email richsimonelli@costar.com if you have questions. Cash and investments increased $33.3 million to $277.9 million as of December 31, 2013, up from $244.6 million at the end of the third quarter of 2013. Cash and investments exceeded total short- and long-term debt of $153.1 million as of December 31, 2013. Cash flow from operating activities was very strong at $35.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 and was $108.3 million for the 12 months ended December 31, 2013, which demonstrates, again, the strong cash flow characteristics of our business model. So $108.3 million of cash flow from operations. Phenomenal. At…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll begin with the line of Andrew Jeffrey with SunTrust.

Andrew W. Jeffrey - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Couple of questions. First of all, and I appreciate the success you've had with LoopNet cross-sell and the fact that it's no longer quite as relevant as a call-out metric. But it looks like we've got some nice acceleration in the fourth quarter. Are you still thinking about the potential LoopNet cross-sell in the same context that you have before somewhere between $120 million and $150 million opportunity, has anything changed in that regard?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

No. It still remains a massive cross-sell opportunity. In fact, December was an unusually high month of CoStar property subscriptions, I mean really surprisingly so. I mean, there's lots of different revenue drivers in the business, but if you look at a chart of new CoStar subscribers on the information side month by month, December stuck out -- stood out like Everest. So it's not going away, it's still there. We still have 50,000 to 100,000 people to try to sell our information who are not yet buying CoStar property or suite. So that remains a very important audience for us to sell to. Conversely, we're also very focused on selling the LoopNet marketing to the CoStar audience. But as a metric now, it sort of refers back the acquisition, and I want to get the sales people a little more focused on total revenue, not on a metric around an acquisition. So I'm just trying -- and then also, it's 2 -- it's a metric that's driving sales force behavior in a way that I think we want to pull them back from a little bit.

Andrew W. Jeffrey - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

So I assume some of the LoopNet cross-sell strength was reflected in the good net new growth against what was a pretty tough comp versus the third quarter?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

That's 100%, correct.

Andrew W. Jeffrey - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And with regard to the '14 revenue growth guide, I appreciate call it 200, 300 bps of headwind from some of these discontinued legacy LoopNet solutions on one hand. On another hand, it sounds like you've got a bolus of new sales people that should really become much more productive as the year goes on, perhaps as early as sort of late 2Q, early 3Q, following their ramp, could we expect CoStar to grow above trend line at some point -- for some period of time, because you've got a lot of new sales people, as you noticed, you are probably below trend-line productivity right now.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

They are below trend-line productivity. Like, well, they're where we expect them to be, which is below trend-line productivity. And their productivity over the next 2 or 3 years can grow typically 300%. And then again, I was looking at a chart last night that shows when we add a large number of new sales people to the mix, the existing sales people who act as mentors also come down a little bit. So I would expect them to begin to pick up their productivity as we move into the second, third and fourth quarter. But even if they pick up their productivity in the third quarter, those are bookings that's not going to really move the dial meaningfully on the revenue side. So, I mean, sure, I look forward to the point at which they are beginning to take effect, but we've been through this 2 or 3x in the past as we grew from 10 to 30 and then we went from 30 to 70 and from 70 to 120. Each time we do that, you put that expense out there, some anxiety around the 2 quarters where you're not seeing an immediate return and then you begin to see a new higher level of production. And I'd just stick with what we already talked about and stay reasonably conservative.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Yes, and I think, just to add onto that, to answer your question simply, the answer is yes. I think as you exit '14 into '15, I think we're setting up the back half of this year, at the end of the year and going into '15 I think should be a strong year. And obviously, each quarter, we're going to be reporting on the sales force and sort of productivity. As far as I said, if you look at it, the majority of sales force was ended -- or added sort of toward the tail half of last year. We actually at the sales conference, we're talking to people that actually had not started yet but came to the sales conference anyways. So I think the reality is you're going to spend the majority of the first half of this year with all your experienced people training all the other half of the sales force which is inexperienced. So I feel really good about it as we exit this year -- yes, as you exit this year and you go into '15, I definitely think we should be seeing increasing growth rates there, so I feel pretty good about it.

Andrew W. Jeffrey - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

That helps a lot. And maybe just a quick housekeeping question, perhaps for Rich, can you tell me the number of subscription client sites you had at your end?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Yes, Rich.

Richard Simonelli

Analyst

Good question.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

I'll put you on the spot, Rich.

Richard Simonelli

Analyst

It's about 20,000.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

22,838.

Andrew W. Jeffrey - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

22,838.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

I just -- off the top of my head.

Operator

Operator

And next, we will go to the line of Brett Huff with Stephens Inc.

Brett Huff - Stephens Inc., Research Division

Analyst

You, Brian, in your sort of long-term outlook and, Andy, you mentioned this to the doubling the $800 million number, one of the questions we get a lot is can you give us a little bit more color on the total addressable market so that we can feel comfortable how you all get there. And you've addressed pieces of this over time, multifamily and et cetera. Could you just give us a quick tour through the addressable market and the rough sizes as you see them or whatever color you can give us on that so we have sort of a holistic view on that.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Sure. I'll give you something I was looking at last week, which is a slightly nerdy answer to your question but we took -- I took longer-term revenue trends for Washington, L.A., Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, just a number of sort of prototypical markets for us. And I look and I took those revenue streams, the subscription revenue streams and LoopNet revenue streams and I divide that revenue by the number of people in the particular city we are serving with that revenue stream. And then I set the starting point not to a calendar date but to quarter 1, quarter 2, quarter 3, quarter 4, and then did a polynomial regression on the revenue growth path of those different cities. And it's really quite amazing. So like if you look at Los Angeles, it grows at 0.004 x squared, which x is the quarter that's you're in as a revenue per person and population. So we're reaching and -- and our score on that is 0.994, and you get basically a 0.94 on Washington the same way. So you get a really tight, really tight sort of polynomial on these revenues and you get exactly the same formula on several of these older markets. So what's that mean? That means that Washington is now generating about $4 per person per year in the population. And a newer market like a Charlotte might be doing $1 or $2 per person per population, but it's following the exact same curve. Now if I take all the markets, if I take all the markets which range from very young like Toronto, which is -- we may have a contract at this point, which would make it day 0, and an oldest market like Washington D.C., and you just accelerate them on this curve.…

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

As Andy goes to come up for air, I'll add about 30 seconds to it and I'll keep it short. But I think that when you look at the fact we're approaching, essentially with my guidance close to $500 million of revenue this year, and you go back to something he said at the end, where we have the charts and our slide deck that shows you what percent for brokers, single digit for owners, single digit for retailers, everybody else, you're just -- you're sort of basically looking at the overall market as less than 10% penetrated. If you're already doing $500 million, you're already selling into all those, obviously 10% in the $500 million gives you a $5 billion market. And then that's for the products and services we have today, with the people we know about already selling into those groups. So it's not fictitious numbers or we're not selling into these groups, it's what we're doing today. And then, of course, if you said globally it's 2 to 3x that, obviously, we'll be plucking off Toronto and again slowly over a couple of decades, we'll pluck off other cities internationally, you can multiply that by 2x to 3x. And to me that's the opportunity with the sort of where we are today and then, of course, you know we like to do things to expand that opportunity. So we have no, in my view, that's the very simplistic way I look at it. There's no shortage of opportunity at $500 million, I think to get to $1 billion or $2 billion over the next decade, 2 decades is very reasonable. It won't even approach half of what the opportunity is today here in the U.S. and where our platform is today. And, of course, you could always multiply that globally. So that's sort of my 1 minute add on to Andy's?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

And intuitively, typical information is about 1% of new asset class and you can say global commercial property is approximately $50 trillion. And you can do the math from there and it will clearly indicate that the size of the market opportunity is larger than our current meager revenues.

Brett Huff - Stephens Inc., Research Division

Analyst

That's helpful. And one follow-up question, on field sales, you mentioned a bunch of different numbers, Brian, on the field sales, what it was, what it is. What I'm trying to get to is if the average person who's 3 months in, Andy, I think you said is $10,000 in bookings a month and goes over, call it, 3 years, whatever the number is, to $30,000 of bookings a month. And I'm trying to do the math right where I can multiply that times. Are there 50 people who are sub-3 months in the field sales?

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

No, I think 80 or 90. If you look at it, I'll give you the numbers again. We have 212 sort of core field reps today. It was versus 124 last year so if you apply a modest turnover to the 124, you figure out we're at 212 now, essentially half our sales force has been here, has experience, and half is in the first quarter or 2. So that will ramp up over the next. Like I said, as you start to get through the back half of this year, and then I think we should be going into 2015 with a fairly strong ramp on the sales productivity. And then, of course, that will continue to ramp through '15 and into '16. So I think the increase in size of the sales force will really carry us through the back half of this year and then through '15 and '16. And I think there's plenty of opportunity for upside with the productivity in the sales force. Obviously, the better job we can do to get them up to speed faster, the better the numbers can be.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

I just want to give you the exact formula. It is revenue per person to population equals 0.0004 x squared where x is the quarter, how many quarters you've been in the market, and then there's an [indiscernible] adjustment, which is not really relevant.

Operator

Operator

And next we will go to the line of Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

So a couple of questions for you. On the $10 million of sunsetting [ph] of the old products, should we just, I mean, obviously on an annual basis, you back that out from the base of 13, and that gives you about a 14% to 16% growth rate for 2014. But should we think about that being just spread ratably across the quarters, $2.5 million a quarter or are you going to give us an adjustment each quarter?

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Yes, I mean, I think it just spread throughout the year. I'm not going to keep -- I think I probably won't talk about it the rest of the year, I mean I think we sort of gave you -- I prepped everybody last year, I gave it you guys this quarter. Now we'll just move forward. It's spread pretty ratably. I mean essentially what it is, is we have 0 people in our sales force selling 2 or 3 or 4 different products that we believe are redundant. So those will just sort of burn off throughout the year. These are monthly and quarterly contracts that have high churn, they're old stuff that's redundant, so I'm obviously not going to talk much about it but it will be spread pretty much throughout the year.

Richard Simonelli

Analyst

And only that these products are not just redundant, these products are products that are -- we provide -- we feel they provide less value to the customer and they are -- have a substitution effect against higher-priced, more valuable products to the customer.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

On annual contracts.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

We believe all these revenues we give up this year comes back in later time periods with a better client relationship, higher renewal rates at a higher price point.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Got it. Now can we think about having some EPS drag as well over those products that were basically not contributing a lot to the bottom line?

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Yes. And I basically factored all that in and I factored both the revenue and the earnings in my guidance, so I think it's pretty much now will be spread throughout the year. And I think you won't really see much of it after that.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Got it. Now on the selling of the commercial real estate broker advertisements on the LoopNet sites, how should we think about that in terms of potential revenue? I mean how many territories are you thinking about initially? What are you able to charge per month, it seems like it could be significant.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

So depending upon what the client is buying is basically a share of voice, or they're buying a percentage of the searches in a particular ZIP code that they might be interested in. So if you're a New York broker, you might be buying office searches in 10019. So that ranges from a couple hundred dollars a month for some ZIP codes on up to thousands of dollars a month for another ZIP code. You can buy -- in that case, you're buying anywhere from 10% to 100% of the share voice. And the more share voice sold, the price goes up in that particular ZIP code. This is, I believe, this is comparable to the main revenue drivers for a Zillow or Trulia or a Move. So I believe that this is something that has well over $100 million of revenue potential. It is only a handful of people in our sales force who are selling it today. We are basically opening up the software and providing the basic training required to the rest of the sales force to begin to enable them to sell it. And then we'll be looking at selling it from inside sales teams as well. So it will take us probably 6 months to really get this ramped up to everyone selling it and folks beginning to figure out what their particular sales pitch is around the particular product.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

And to add a little color to that, Bill, so I think that when you look at that sort of funny I looked back at some of these company like Trulia and Zillow, I mean they have like 1 million, 2 million in their first year, 1.5 years. So I have less than 1 million in my model. The fact that we're starting to be -- right now it's basically being tested with a handful of people really won't be fully rolled out, as Andy said, for 6 months or so. Again, I think this is something that comes in the back half of this year where because there -- could there be some upside from that? And the answer is yes, then obviously I would expect in '15, '16, '17, I think this can be a long driver of revenue for years to come.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. Now on the sales force hiring, you've had a big surge of hiring and I had a couple of questions there on that. The first is, once you get through this surge, as you kind of think out to 2015, 2016 and beyond, what are you thinking about in terms of how much you'd like to be growing the sales force? And then the other question is have you been looking at hiring some more experienced sales people who would be able to hit the ground running for some of the other segments that you are developing?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

So I believe the -- fairly confident that the rate of addition for the existing core business will absolutely come down, we will not be growing 70% next year, 70% the year thereafter. We'll continue to grow at a slower pace, more measured pace. And while we may be able to hire folks who may have more experience with the advertising side, specifically something like a Trulia, a Zillow, it's more -- our business is fairly unique and there are not a lot of sales people that have experience in what we sell, so unfortunately, there is not a ready pool of folks who know how to sell this particular set of products to this particular audience. It's probably a dozen or so not working for CoStar.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Bill, just to add a little bit more color to that, too, is that if you actually looked at this, we talked about this pretty extensively last year. We are changing out the plumbing in the hotel while we're still selling the rooms. So we are -- the total sales headcount that I gave you guys is only up 5% or 6%. It wasn't like we added a lot onto the total amount but we have to carefully move them and in a lot of cases, replace it to increase that field sales force, right. And then we talked about this pretty extensively actually for the past 4 or 5 years, so we did that. And if you look at the sales numbers, we are putting up some pretty strong sales numbers. So I think I feel good about -- that was a very careful sort of moving of numbers. So the total sales people, which we went back to the LoopNet acquisition, we said, hey, in total, we have enough, we just don't have them in the right areas. So I think we did a -- I think we did a good job of essentially doing what we told people we were going to do, now we have to get them up to speed. I would like, as we move into '15, '16 and beyond to continue to see the field sales force growing, the core field sales force which is driving the core of the business up, those numbers up 10%, 15%, 20% for years and years to come because of the size of the opportunity. I think obviously we have to swallow this down this year. But again, it doesn't mean the total size of the sales force has to grow that much because I think, again, it's just moving them into the right places. So I feel pretty good about where we're entering this year. And I think by the end of the year, we'll all feel pretty good about the productivity.

Operator

Operator

And next we will go to the line of Michael Huang with Needham. Michael Huang - Needham & Company, LLC, Research Division: Just a couple of quick ones for you and then we'll wrap this up, hopefully. So I apologize if I missed this, so with respect to Fusion, I was wondering if you can kind of help us understand how Fusion may be impacting ASPs and sales cycles and maybe close rates? And what are your assumptions kind of around how Fusion kind of has been perceived in the marketplace?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Sure. So remember, Fusion, the concept of rehabilitating the overall product suite and eventually integrating a lot of these acquired components into 1 integrated software suite is a multiyear effort. And we think it's probably 5 major product releases each time, putting out 5 major product enhancements is sort of a rough approximation of the way I think about it. And so what we released recently was just round 1. So we've got 20% of the way there, we've got a fair amount of work to go and a number of years to do it. I believe it is short in the sales cycle. I believe it's increasing the close rate. We are still in a mode where we are keeping our pricing somewhat aggressive to trying to get additional share and convert more people in from the LoopNet information side where they were paying pretty much 1/5, 1/10 of what they were paying for the CoStar side. I think it is when you look at the CoStar-property-only renewal rate running in the 94.5% range, something like that, it's -- I think that it is contributing to a higher renewal rate. So when I look at cancellations, it is -- I think it's helping their, which contributes to overall net growth. And more importantly, our clients like it. Our clients are just really quite happy with the product and we feel better about the business when the clients are happy. And I just got one note that someone just slipped into me, we got our first Canadian contract, so JLL just signed up for our Toronto services. So we now have revenue in Canada. Michael Huang - Needham & Company, LLC, Research Division: And just as a final question for me. And I'm not sure if I missed this one, so as you were thinking about LoopNet and some of the cross-sell activity that you saw there, I think in the past maybe you have provided what the close rates were kind of around from the opportunities you were going after, I was wondering how you did, exiting the year given the strong contribution from that and what's your assumption around that going forward?

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

I do apologize because I do not have that particular number. What I can guesstimate is that it did continue to track as we thought it would because, again, the surprising -- based upon the surprising increase in CoStar subscriptions in December, it was an unusual number. I cannot believe that the rate did not continue to move upward, so it's probably approaching that 40%. We also invested a lot of -- I mean a lot of time and effort in the third and fourth quarter in training managers and sales people on how to effectively do the cross-selling of LoopNet to CoStar on the information side. So I think that drove the conversion rate up, and I think that's what caused that higher surge in that core -- in the core business in December.

Operator

Operator

And next, we will go to the line of Todd Lukasik with Morningstar.

Todd Lukasik - Morningstar Inc., Research Division

Analyst

I guess we're going to get to see Canada operations broken out the next quarter like you do the U.K., Brian. Kind along those same lines, I did have a question about international markets and, Andy, you mentioned potentially more markets eventually in Canada. You talked about the acquisition you'd made in France, I'm just wondering if you can give any more color there about where you might look to go next and when we might expect to hear a definite announcement about that?

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Sure. So I would like to see us get to profitability and a respectable margin in Canada dramatically faster than we got to profitability on the new platform in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom, I believe was unusually complex because it's one of the most sophisticated commercial real estate markets in the world and we had 8 little companies we were integrating and that just made the -- and modifying the data model across all of those were a little more complicated. So I think, Canada, will get profitable quicker there. We would like to see the United Kingdom and potentially, Canada, at the 30% margin range before we really consider aggressive additional international expansion. One of the things on future international expansion is we would probably do that expansion in closer alignment with our biggest international customers. So we have conversations from time to time with our biggest international customers about how we might be able to meet their needs on -- their needs to have Internet marketplaces to generate leads for their listings globally. If we were to do a more LoopNet-like product internationally, I believe that is much lower investment cost with a faster return. You can begin to generate revenue in markets, learn the nuances of the markets and then later come in with the more expensive heavy investment commitment CoStar property traditional full information model. So bottom line is do not look beyond Canada, do not look for any sort of EBITDA dilution in the near term from international expansion. You'll see more domestic initiatives -- and significant domestic initiatives. And -- but we want to -- we still want to be able to show the investors the proof point that this is an international business, and that we'll be able to deliver on that promise intermediate term.

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

And just to add to that, so I mean, my translation to that is what I have been saying, I think, for the last year or so that over the short term, the next few years, there's no significant international plans but definitely in the 5, 6, 7 year model -- as you get to the bigger models, clearly we're demonstrating this business can do very well internationally, hence the 2x to 3x the current opportunity.

Todd Lukasik - Morningstar Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Got you, okay. That's helpful. And then, Brian, you mentioned the high incremental margin on the incremental revenue. I think if I calculated the incremental adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter, it was actually over 100%. Is there anything in particular about 2014 where the incremental adjusted EBITDA margin, we should expect that to be lower than what the potential long-term run rate is?

Brian J. Radecki

Analyst

Yes, so I'll add to this quickly and then I think we'll wrap it up after this question. So yes, I mean, if you look -- I mean, I've got that question, I've always said historically, if you look at our gross margin line, we're actually over 72% now, 72.5%, something like that, it was in the low 60s prior to LoopNet. So each incremental dollar, you pay out a little commissions, you have some costs but essentially, you drop in $0.70 to $0.80 to the bottom line, obviously because of the acquisition over the past 2 years we have been working synergies out in the business though it appears like you're getting over 100%, which is awesome, right. I mean, nobody can argue with that. So I think that this year, and if you look at the long-term, clearly we feel good about the 30% to 35% range we set out last year. And I feel very good about the long-term of being over 40%. We talked about this year in the first quarter, in the first half of the year, if you just look at every year, our EBITDA margins are lower in the first half of the year, than in the second half of the year so I expect them to be where my guided range was for Q1, and then I expect to see them slowly increase throughout the year because obviously we're still investing some piece into the business, it's not a pure 100%. So I don't think I can run at a 100-plus percent forever but I feel pretty good when I -- and I've said it for years, we can drop $0.70 to $0.80 to the bottom line, still invest in the business and really grow this thing. And it goes -- I mentioned that, when you look at the significant growth in that and you look at the significant operating cash flow, this is the business model we operate in and it's unbelievable.

Andrew C. Florance

Analyst

Thank you very much. And I appreciate all of you joining us for this year-end conference call. We look forward to updating you on our progress shortly. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.