Soham Bhonsle: And then Glenn, I think historically you’ve said, you sort of want to target that 250,000 agents or so in the U.S., but I guess given the recent events, does that sort of change your view on sort of the growth algorithm, so to speak, right, where maybe focus on agent recruiting over maybe profitability or do you start to think a little bit more about increasing profitability going forward to sort of drive the growth?
Glenn Sanford: Yes. So, one of the things, obviously, if you look at obviously our segmented financials and you start — the reason why we broke out North America is because North America is actually a profitable business unit for us. And the reason why we aren’t super profitable is because of the other things, international being one of them. So I think the path to the 250,000-agent range in the U.S. or North America, I mean, it’s — I mean, these are goal numbers. I think, the path is there. It’s really around making sure that we provide the tools, systems and platforms for agents. Who knows what might happen in terms of organized real estate in general, and that could change the algorithm in that regard. But as it currently sits, I think that that would take us to somewhere around 15ish percent of the industry, so about 3, 4 times where we’re at right now.
And I think that makes sense mentally for me based on how we’ve grown. Obviously, the higher interest rate slowing down people leaving the business pushes things out. But I think there’s always going to be a robust housing market and as long as we can build out a platform for agents, they’ll be here.
Soham Bhonsle: Right. I think, Jeff, just one more, I guess, with the lawsuit that came out on Tuesday, does it sort of change your appetite or thought process around buybacks going forward?
Jeff Whiteside: I mean, we’re talking about that internally. So, we haven’t made a decision, but it’s definitely something we’re looking at. But at this point in time, we haven’t made a decision.
Denise Garcia: And our next question comes from our analyst, John Campbell from Stephens.
John Campbell: On the agent count growth, I’m hoping you guys might be able to shed some light on maybe the moving parts. For starters, if we could just maybe go through the — or unpack the U.S. versus Canada versus international growth. And then the recent growth trends, they seem to be a little bit lumpier. You guys are converting, doing a good job converting independent brokerages and then also just kind of bringing on larger teams. I’m wondering if that’s kind of the expectation moving forward, at least over the near term into the market rebounds.
Glenn Sanford: It is definitely a big focus of us is focusing on the — making sure, I mean, Boost and Thrive, they’re obviously focused at brokerages and large teams. And the largest part of our churn has been that low non-producing brand, new agent in the industry. And I think that’s really put pressure on us. That’s why — even if our — even if our numbers stay relatively flat into through Q4 and obviously, not sure when it’ll take back, most of that churn is still coming from the producers that don’t really put numbers up on the books. So, it is — but we do think about what does it take to bring in a Bean Group or — and we’ve got a number of brokerages. I don’t know if Leo, you have it, I know Michael Valdes would.
But the number of brokerages that are currently coming through the Boost program, it’s pretty substantial, the number of people who are very interested in moving over. Because with the tough housing market, our Boost program is not that dissimilar than if they were to go and outright sell their brokerage, based on their EBITDA numbers. But we’re able to do it in a way that makes sense for them and makes sense for us for them to come over. So, it’s going to be — we’re going to have a number of brokerages, I think, especially if the market continues to have issues that are going to want to come over, and this makes it easier. And by the way, we were already doing some version of Boost for every single brokerage that converted over prior.
We just didn’t give it a — we hadn’t given it a name. We’d have to negotiate with each and every one of them. What this does is, it actually makes everything more transparent and above board and actually sets our expectations on both sides of what does it mean to move your brokerage to eXp and to become part of the eXp ecosystem. And for us, it’s a filtering tool, because if they don’t go through the cultural alignment questionnaire, which is part of the beginning process, and that doesn’t match up with the type of brokerage of people that we want to be in business with, we don’t take it any further. So, it’s really helped us a lot, but it’s also made it us more visible as a viable place to move their brokerage.
John Campbell: Okay. That’s very helpful. And then, any kind of color on the agent growth by region?
Glenn Sanford: Jeff, do you have any breakdowns? I know the U.S., I think it grew kind of somewhere sub a 1,000 this last quarter, and international…
Jeff Whiteside: Yes. I mean, most of the growth in the quarter was in the U.S. International is — it’s relatively flat, but they are kind of working some of the bumps out along the way. And then Canada actually was pretty strong. So, those are kind of the three drivers. The U.S. commercial business is relatively flat. So, that’s not something we are aggressively going after at this point in time. We are still building the programs, building the business. But most of it John is driven by the U.S. in this quarter.
John Campbell: That’s helpful. And then on the class action suit, I mean, I know you guys have spent a lot of time, we have spent amount of time with investors on it. But it feels like we are at a stage where it’s almost like be careful what you ask for. Buyers end up having to pay for their own agents if listings are no longer cleanly and fully aggregated. We are going to go back in time and lose the market efficiency it feels like. So, Glenn, you talked to HomeHunter, which does sound very interesting. I wanted to get your take on eXp Exclusives. It seems like that might rise in importance if the market does go down that route. If it goes down that route in a hurry, it seems like you have got to a foothold to do something on your own. It’s almost like one of the main advantages you have is being a scaled largest brokerage in the U.S. So, I just kind of want to get your take on the strategy behind it, and what maybe it could be over time.
Glenn Sanford: I think, Leo really worked on the eXp Exclusives quite heavily. And I worked on homehunter.global, two different pieces of the puzzle that ironically could be really significant long-term assets, depending on how fragmented the industry comp becomes from a consumer perspective. And so, it does feel like some of the efficiencies would — if they went the other way, these would be tools that would definitely help us. And there are — we are one single large brokerage. And so, the ability to do things internally and to provide benefits for consumers most on the sell side and the buy side is pretty significant when you think about the fact that we did do the most transactions of any single brokerage in the U.S., and you start to think about what does that mean in a changing market?
