Compass touted the strongest third-quarter results in company history on Tuesday during the brokerage’s first earnings call since it announced the $1.6 billion planned acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate.
Third-quarter market share, revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow all hit records for the company’s third-quarter performance, but the company also incurred significant losses, in part due to the Anywhere deal. Compass has been a publicly traded company now for 18 consecutive quarters.
While avoiding commenting in detail on the pending transaction with Anywhere, CEO Robert Reffkin expressed optimism and shed some light on how he expects the future with Anywhere to unfold.
“We continue to be confident in our ability to get the [Anywhere] deal approved as we firmly believe that this is a pro-competitive deal that will bring more choice and better products to homesellers, to homebuyers, to real estate professionals, to franchise owners,” Reffkin said during an investors call Tuesday morning. “As one of the largest shareholders at Compass, I believe this combination is highly compelling for all our shareholders.”
Reffkin generally expressed confidence in his company’s business model and put forward an agent-first attitude. What follows are some of the highlights.
Upward momentum
Compass agents will be relieved this quarter to see many of the brokerage’s major metrics swinging positive.
Revenue was up 23.6 percent year over year to $1.85 billion as transactions also increased 21.5 percent. Organic annual revenue growth was up 11 percent, and revenue growth attributable to the firm’s acquisitions completed since July 1, 2024, was up 12.6 percent.
Operating cash flow was up 102 percent year over year to $75.5 million, and cash and cash equivalents were $170.3 million by the end of the quarter.
Meanwhile, Compass’ quarterly market share increased by 83 basis points year over year to 5.63 percent. The number of principal agents also grew by 22.8 percent year over year from 17,542 at the end of Q3 2024 to 21,550 this quarter.
The firm’s owned-brokerage agents increased their total transactions by 21.5 percent year over year to 67,886 transactions during Q3 2025. Gross transaction value also increased 22.5 percent year over year to $70.7 billion.
Despite that positive momentum, however, Compass’ losses grew substantially.
The company’s GAAP net loss was $4.6 million during Q3 2025 compared to $1.7 million the year before, which was in part accounted for by merger expenses of $7.5 million related to the Anywhere deal.
Not counting the merger expense of $7.5 million, the company’s net income would have been $2.9 million this quarter, the firm noted.
Insights from Christie’s International Real Estate transaction
During the third quarter, Christie’s International Real Estate — which was acquired by Compass in early 2025 — added on four new affiliates and brought six additional affiliates into its pipeline, Reffkin said during the investors call.
He added that those who are wondering if the firm will be able to continue to grow organically post-Anywhere acquisition should look to the Christie’s Real Estate deal as a “blueprint.”
“On agent count and retention, since we closed, we’ve been able to increase the number of net new principal agents in the business,” Reffkin said of the Christie’s Real Estate agent count. “Total principal agents didn’t decline post-close — they increased.”
Title business has also grown since that acquisition, as has title and escrow market coverage, mortgage services, the profitability and attach rates in these ancillary services, and the firm is on track to achieve its $30 million cost synergies (a reduction in costs due to increased efficiencies in the combined company) with Christie’s Real Estate through the deal, Reffkin added.
“What we’ve been able to demonstrate in the CIRE transaction is that we can 1) grow agent count, 2) increase T&E attach, 3) improve mortgage JV profitability and 4) achieve the synergies that we’ve set out to achieve,” Reffkin said. “In summary, we have proven an ability to drive both top- and bottom-line growth in CIRE post-close and to do so organically.
“I expect Anywhere agents to also see the positives of coming together to get the best of both worlds. And while we recognize that the Anywhere transaction is clearly much bigger in size, we are confident that we can replicate the CIRE playbook at Anywhere over time.”
Reffkin also doubled down on the anticipated cost synergies that Compass expects out of the Anywhere deal. At the time the transaction was announced, the company said it had a net cost synergy target of around $225 million, but in the earnings call on Tuesday, Reffkin said he was making a “CEO commitment” to increase that figure to more than $300 million in net cost synergies.
AI impacts
Reffkin also made a strong commitment to promoting artificial intelligence (AI) tools at the brokerage, noting that the firm has launched a mandatory AI training initiative for employees, which includes using AI for transaction, legal and finance tasks.
“The goal is to find better ways to work and become more efficient by leveraging AI to support routine tasks today and more complex tasks in the future,” Reffkin said.
In the last couple of quarters, Compass agents have also been beta testing Compass AI 2.0, which will be available to all agents by the next quarterly earnings call, Reffkin said.
“What I’ve been particularly pleased to see is that some of our agents have already been testing it live with their clients during listing appointments, which is helping elevate them in the eyes of their clients,” the CEO said. “This is the power of agentic AI in action, which breaks down complex manual processes into actual steps that the AI can handle autonomously. This ability to automate administrative work will ultimately allow our real estate professionals to focus on what matters most, which is serving their clients.”
The benefits of AI have expanded as chatbots are starting to provide agents with leads, Reffkin said.
“I’m now hearing a significant shift in increased revenue coming from ChatGPT and similar generative AI chatbots,” the CEO said. “Specifically, I’ve had dozens of top real estate professionals tell me they’re getting free business from today’s conversational AI platforms as homebuyers are now asking models like ChatGPT for the best agents in their market.
“And here’s the critical distinction,” Reffkin continued. “Unlike real estate portals that divert buyers to the highest paying agents, AI models like ChatGPT are sending buyers to agents that have verifiable, real-world data — things like transaction history, unique listings and client reviews. This is a major tailwind for Compass because we are home to so many of the industry’s highest-performing real estate professionals who have a lot of this verifiable, real-world data. Ultimately, we believe that as search in the residential real estate category evolves towards AI-based search, it will unlock a whole new era for agents at Compass.”
