CoStar Group: A Real Estate Data Giant Sitting Well Off Its Highs

## Why CoStar today

CoStar Group (NASDAQ: CSGP) has moved a long way from where it once traded: the current price of $29.68 sits only 11.2% above its 52-week low of $26.68, and a full 69.5% below its 52-week high of $97.43.

## What the Manifest signals say

CoStar carries a **quality percentile of 95.7** — quality is our 0-to-100 ranking of a company's fundamental excellence relative to the rest of the database, built from financial strength, EPS stability, and relative sales growth and profitability. A rank in the mid-90s puts CoStar in rarefied company.

That quality breaks down unevenly, though. **Financial strength sits at 88.7 (out of 100)**, comfortably strong. **EPS stability is only 39.1 (out of 100)**, which tells us earnings have been considerably more variable than the typical name we track — worth weighing against the quality headline. Add financial strength and EPS stability to the quality percentile and CoStar's **core score is 223 (out of 300)** — just short of the 225 threshold we use as a rough marker for "core holding" candidates, but close enough to be squarely in the conversation.

The centerpiece for this feature is **PAR (Projected Annual Return) of 17.9%** — our estimate of annualized total return over roughly the next five years, built from the growth outlook, projected profitability, and the valuation the market is likely to assign down the road. With MIPAR (the median PAR across everything we follow) at 9.3%, the sweet spot band runs from 14.3% to 19.3%. CoStar's 17.9% lands inside that band, which is why it's today's feature. This is the analyst flavor of PAR — hand-curated in Mark Robertson's file — built on a **growth forecast of 13.2%** and a current **P/E of 20.4**.

CoStar pays no dividend (current and projected yield both 0.0%), so the entire projected return here is expected price appreciation, not income.

## Risk context

CoStar's EPS stability of just 39.1 signals meaningfully more earnings variability than the typical company we track, and that's worth weighing directly against the quality and PAR signals above before drawing any conclusions.

## The bottom line, for research purposes

CoStar combines top-decile quality, a sweet-spot PAR, and a stock trading closer to its 52-week low than its high, with earnings volatility (EPS stability of just 39.1) that tempers the quality headline. That combination is exactly the kind of tension worth studying further. As always, this is a starting point for your own research, not a conclusion about what to do with the stock; weigh it against your own goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance.