Inman

EXp Realty posts strong first quarter, will start trading on Nasdaq

eXp Realty

Fast-growing cloud-based brokerage eXp Realty will start trading its stock on Nasdaq next week after posting strong earnings for the first quarter of 2018, the company announced Tuesday.

EXp Realty, through its parent company eXp World Holdings, had already been trading on OTCQB, the middle-tier venture market. The company applied to uplist to Nasdaq in April. Moving up to Nasdaq requires a larger market cap and trading volume.

Agents who work for eXp Realty earn company stock for their production and for accomplishments like recruiting other agents.

In its earnings release, the company claimed that revenue in the first quarter of 2018 increased a whopping 188 percent to $62 million from $21.5 million the year prior and 37 percent from $45.4 million revenue in the last quarter of 2017.

The company noted that its cash flow was now at $3.9 million, compared to only $157,286 a year earlier.

The company’s net loss increased as well, however, to $10.7 million from $2.9 million the year earlier.

“During the last year, eXp Realty became the largest residential real estate brokerage by geography in North America and nearly tripled agent count. Our record results are fueled by our tremendous agent and location growth,” eXp World Holdings CEO Glenn Sanford said in a statement. “Receiving approval to list on Nasdaq brings us one step closer to enhancing the value we deliver to our agents and shareholders, and we are excited to start trading on Nasdaq very soon.”

The virtual brokerage claims to be the largest by geography in North America, operating in 49 states and two Canadian provinces. The company’s cloud-based “eXp World” platform is a game-like virtual reality arena, similar in look to the old massively multiplayer online game “Second Life,” where agents create avatars to attend classes and network with other agents and business associates.

Credit: eXp World

In its earnings report, the company said the number of agents and brokers with eXp Realty tripled year-over-year from 3,118 one quarter into 2017 to 9,290 in this report. EXp Realty passed the 10,000 agent mark in April, the company said.

The company posted residential transaction sides closed in the first quarter of the year at 9,473, from 3,432 a year earlier. That represented a transaction volume of $2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2018, up from $807.6 million a year earlier.

Email Emma Hinchliffe