AGNT, Inc.(AGNT)Q1 2026 法說會逐字稿

During the quarter, productivity drove more agents to reach their cap in Q1, resulting in a gross profit of $75.3 million. Operating loss of $8.8 million for the quarter improved 15% year-over-year from a loss of $10.4 million last year, primarily driven by improvements we made to streamline our operations in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was $4.1 million for the first quarter and above the midpoint of our guidance range of $2 million to $5 million, an increase of 88% over Q1 2025. Operating expenses were $84.1 million at the midpoint of our guidance range in the first quarter. And finally, we increased our cash position 6% year-over-year, ending the quarter with $122 million in cash on the balance sheet. On the next slide, I'll walk us through our financial results by segment for the quarter. The North America Realty segment continues to be the largest revenue and profit generator for the company with revenue of $965.1 million for the first quarter and $10 million in adjusted EBITDA, a 29% year-over-year increase as we begin to realize the benefit of cost-saving initiatives we put in place last year. International continues to be our fastest-growing segment, increasing 27% in Q1, while we continue to invest in community building activities like eXpcon Cape Town, as Leo mentioned previously. We continue to reduce operating expenses in North America Realty and other affiliated services segments as we realize the benefit of initiatives we put into place to streamline operations across both segments in 2025. On the next slide, I'll review our updated outlook for 2026 and the second quarter. Looking ahead, we remain focused on maintaining our financial discipline to drive sustainable, profitable growth, and we are providing our outlook for the second quarter and full year 2026. Starting with the second quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $1.36 billion to $1.45 billion, expenses in the range of $93 million to $97 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $16 million to $21 million. For the year, we are reiterating our outlook with revenue in the range of $4.85 billion to $5.15 billion, operating expenses in the range of $325 million to $345 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $50 million to $75 million for 2026. We are encouraged by our strong performance as we head into Q2. However, we are aware of the growing uncertainty and tightening macroeconomic environment. This, coupled with less visibility into the second half, has led us to reiterate our full year guidance at this time. In light of this limited visibility, we believe it's prudent to reiterate the full year guidance and reassess our outlook at the midpoint of the year. Along the same time, we will continue to stay financially flexible, reserve the right to invest where we see meaningful opportunities to support our agents, strengthen our technology platform and enhance long-term shareholder value. As always, our focus remains on executing with discipline, maintaining a strong balance sheet and continuing to build a more efficient, resilient and profitable eXp. And now I'll turn the call over to Glenn to wrap it up before we open the call to questions. Glenn?

Thanks, Jesse. I've been spending my time retooling SUCCESS since around July last year when I jumped in, and I've been running with the same playbook that we used in international in 2024. We brought staffing down about 60%. We spent about the last nine months replatforming the entire business. During this quarter, we welcomed Matthew and Kristen Ferry right after the end of the quarter to help us lead SUCCESS. Matthew, many of you will recognize the name in organized real estate. He's one of the most respected sales and life coaches of the last 30 years. Kristen, his wife, has been the operational engine behind his business for years and now brings that same capability to SUCCESS itself. That combination gives us a real team to scale, not just a marquee hire. And the green shoots are already showing. SUCCESS Certified Coaching has completed its first cohort. The second cohort started last week. On its own, SUCCESS Coaching should move SUCCESS into net income by 2027. We've launched SUCCESS Events and that success.events is also generating revenue. Before we built it, there was no single place to find personal development events across the entire vertical. Think of it a bit like the Zillow of personal development. Top personal development personas are now participating with us, and that participation is already producing revenue. For our agents, this means access to coaching, content and events that in any other context cost five- or six-figures to engage with, built directly into the overall eXp ecosystem. That's what I mean when I describe SUCCESS as the culture and growth layer of the eXp ecosystem. It's an asset our agents draw on that no other brokerage can offer. And in 2027, we're leaning into what made SUCCESS the definitive voice in personal development for more than a century. The lineage runs from our founder, Orison Swett Marden, through Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Og Mandino and, of course, Jim Rohn, whose worldwide intellectual property we hold. The principles those voices built, the new thought tradition, are being validated every day by modern neuroscience and psychology. And we have a signature offering coming that marries those two worlds, the wisdom that builds SUCCESS and the science now confirming it. I'm excited about what 2027 looks like for SUCCESS. Next slide, please. I want to close by describing what we're actually building because I think it's still underappreciated. This last week, we changed our ticker to AGNT. That wasn't cosmetic. It was really the clearest possible statement of what this company is and who it's built for. eXp is a platform business built by agents, built for agents, and the four connected offerings working in harmony are: eXp North America as a multi-model option through NextHome; International, our fastest-growing segment and expansion frontier; FrameVR, our virtual infrastructure; and SUCCESS, our culture and growth layer. No other brokerage on earth is built this way. And the multi-model expansion through NextHome is a real proof point. We can now welcome independents and entire offices that previously couldn't find a home with us without compromising what makes the eXp model work. What we offer agents, and what no one else can fully replicate, is a complete operating system for building a scalable, sustainable real estate business: a full stack marketing suite, world-class personal development through SUCCESS, health and wellness resources and a fully immersive global collaboration layer through Frame. Every investment we're making right now — the eXp Hub, AI Copilots, the listing intelligence platform, the App Store marketplace and the single-thread leadership model that puts a dedicated owner on every major bet — is designed around one goal: helping agents build businesses that grow beyond themselves. This is what's underappreciated about eXp, not the agent count, not the share gain, but really the fundamental architecture. And that's the eXp platform. That's the moat, and every quarter, the gap widens. I'll turn it back over to Denise for Q&A.

Great. Thanks, Glenn. I'll kick it off with a question for everyone on the team before we open the call to questions from the audience and analysts. So Leo, I'll start with you. Can you speak to how adding an award-winning franchise model like NextHome complements our core cloud brokerage? Specifically, how does this multi-model approach allow us to capture a broader segment of the market that was previously out of reach? And what does this mean for our competitive moat heading into the second half of the year?

Thanks, Denise. Adding NextHome gives us an advantage because we can now attract independent brokers and franchises coming off of their franchise agreement. There are many folks who have woken up in the last 24 months, completely caught off guard by new ownership structures ranging from private equity to other publicly traded companies. Some of those companies' views differ substantially from how they may view the world, from putting the consumer first to transparency and the thought track around how we display listings. We realized that in the shifting landscape, having a chassis to give us the optionality to add these folks is incredible. And you have to appreciate the iterativeness of platforms. When Glenn started, this was for the agent; we became the home of the team. Now we've realized that as we continue to grow, there's an opportunity for the folks that will probably never be at a cloud brokerage, and we just added a complete new lane and a green shoot opportunity.

All right. Thanks, Leo. Jesse, one for you. With the integration of NextHome, the financial mix of the company is evolving. Can you discuss how NextHome's model differs from eXp's core cloud-based brokerage model?

Yes. Thanks, Denise. And Leo just touched on a big part of the deal thesis: it does allow us to capture revenue from those agent teams and independent brokerages that we historically may have had to pass on because they were more aligned with a franchise model. By making eXp now a multi-modal platform and providing this chassis, it allows an on-ramp to some pretty large opportunities that we see in the near term. Specifically, speaking to the financial differences: a franchise offers very predictable recurring revenue over multiyear terms and contracts. They typically have higher gross margins as well. NextHome is especially asset-light and very aligned to the eXp model, even though we are slightly different in the offering between franchise and brokerage. As a franchisor, they have very little corporate overhead. So as you continue to scale, you see expanded margins in that platform specifically.

Thanks, Jesse. And Glenn, one for you. How do you see personal development and SUCCESS impacting eXp?

Yes. So I think it really comes down to the idea that we've expressed literally since we started the company, which is that real estate is fundamentally powered by human beings who have developed sales skills, scripts, dialogues, lead generation. More importantly, it's their mindset and how they see themselves in the world. SUCCESS has been doing that for 129 years. The more we can expose agents to how to think better and operate better, the more it raises the overall consciousness of the organization — we're more aligned, more connected, share vocabulary and shared ways of doing things that reinforce themselves. I always think about the fact that eXp really has historically been a personal development company that just happens to sell real estate. With that lens, we became the largest single customer of SUCCESS magazine even before we bought the magazine because of our belief in personal development being so fundamental. This continues to give us more access, and as I've been diving into personal development since jumping in as Managing Director last July, it's becoming more and more obvious the places where we're going to be able to make meaningful upgrades for our agents and brokers who want access to people on the SUCCESS side of the house as well as a lot of the content that they get just by being part of eXp.

All right. Thanks, Glenn. Now I'll move over to our analysts to ask questions. But for now, I'll take our first question from Tom White at D.A. Davidson.

Great. Maybe just a follow-up for Leo on the NextHome deal, and congrats on that. But I guess the last few weeks here, you've had the two national leaders in cloud-based models make acquisitions of franchise models. Leo, can you maybe talk a little bit about why you think that is and why now? I understand maybe going after these agents or groups of agents or indies that weren't suited for the national model. But I'm just curious if there's anything else—industry-wide dynamics or competitive forces—that resulted in you guys making this deal? And maybe just comment on—I think this is the first domestic brokerage you guys have ever acquired, maybe the first kind of brokerage model that you've acquired anywhere. Does this open a new potential kind of vein of growth that you guys might look to consolidate more brokerages?

Tom, that's a perfectly fair question. One is the timing is interesting and similar to the other ones, but I appreciate that this conversation probably started in earnest in September. The process took time, and unlike the other deals where announcements happened quickly, this one is closed and we're off to the races. The press release that drops around noon is probably really indicative of the opportunity I see in front of us. There is a gentleman by the name of Albert Maggers in the Gold Coast of California who's joining NextHome with 200 agents. That is way outside their typical office size and speaks to the opportunity that James and I saw when we started this conversation last year. If you see the trend, most of the acquisitions of franchises have been a growth company buying a legacy company that's contracting at very large percentages, 5% to 7% per year. That's not what we did. We specifically went for a young, growing, well-recognized, highly rated franchise system because I see an opportunity where some legacy players owned by new ownership are seeing contraction, and that created a massive opportunity for us. I think part of the strategy is to stay nimble and see opportunities even six, 12 or 18 months out. Directionally, we're seeing a huge opportunity that wasn't present even 24 months ago. And on positioning, as a Section 16 officer of a public company, it's my fiduciary responsibility to stay curious about any acquisition that's accretive to our shareholders and market share. I do see that we now have a chassis that keeps us available and nimble for the optionality ahead.

Okay. And maybe just a quick follow-up for Jesse—or anyone. You affirmed the full year guide. You obviously have NextHome now. Can you help us get a sense of what you think the contribution from NextHome might be this year?

Yes, sure, I can take that. At this point in time, it's more of a strategic addition to our platform. Their financial contribution will frankly be modest when you layer it against our full consolidated results in the near term. We are more focused on the long-term value that it brings in incremental agent production and margin. Specifically to answer your question, it's not currently included in our full year guidance at this time. That's something we're going to evaluate when we fully incorporate this in Q2 and look to reiterate full year guidance at that time, Tom.

Thanks, Tom. Now I'll go over to Michael. Michael Brindos from Benchmark. If you'd like to ask a question, you can go ahead. All right. We're working on those technical fixes there. I'll move over to Stephen Sheldon from William Blair. He asked us a couple of questions via e-mail. He wanted to know, first, Leo, how much are you planning to integrate NextHome versus letting it operate a more stand-alone? And beyond the franchising capability, what else does NextHome bring to the table in terms of technology or other capabilities that eXp can leverage broadly?

Thanks for the question. The most important point is there will be no changes to the NextHome brand. It will operate as a stand-alone brand because it is a different offering and a separate chassis. NextHome was a nimble and highly strategic acquisition for us. Part of the appeal is having a second chassis as well as the leadership. In a world where consolidation and roll-ups are happening, it's wise not to underestimate the leadership groups that come together because we are in a very specific independent contractor-driven business that is personality-driven and people follow people. We have very large buying power, so there will be synergies on technology that we purchase across the board. During due diligence, we were pleasantly surprised by the similarities. They're 42% virtual; many of their franchisees use shared spaces like Regus, and there are a lot of similarities in tech stack with the other vendors we offer. There are going to be interesting synergies as we go forward.

Great. Okay. And another one from Stephen Sheldon: 'Great to see continued strong agent NPS but it did step down a touch sequentially. Is there anything to call out there?'

Yes, that's a great question. That's one of the reasons Glenn started with NPS and the focus on it. Anything in the 70s is considered good. If you were to have an 80-plus, someone's almost gaming the system. We're students of Fred Reichheld; he's on our board, and I've read the book cover to cover. You never want to game the system. NPS is a real-time smoke detector system, and we were able to identify the dip. It's one quarter versus multi-quarter sequentially, and that's actually a perfect example of the metric being used in action.

Great. All right. And over at Slido, we have already answered the questions that we got there. So thank you, everyone, for joining us on our first quarter earnings call. This concludes the call. As always, please stay connected by visiting eXp World Holdings for the latest updates on eXp news, results and events. Additionally, you'll find a recording of this call and our latest investor presentation on the Investors section of our site. Thanks again for joining, and this concludes our First Quarter Earnings Fireside Chat.