Real estate giant Compass saw its stock price plummet Wednesday after news broke that the New York Attorney General’s office is investigating it over antitrust concerns.
Shares at the tech-based behemoth dropped 12.69% to $7.54 after noon on Wednesday, Seeking Alpha reported. By Thursday morning shares rebounded a bit to $7.92.
“I think the stock was hit by [the investigation news] yesterday,” Oppenheimer financial analyst Jason Helfstein told The Post. But, he noted, real estate stocks generally were low Wednesday due to oil concerns and interest rate conditions. Thursday, he added, is generally “a more favorable day for tech stocks.”
The market will likely need a few days to digest the antitrust investigation news before any clear impact on Compass’ stock price would become apparent.
AG Letitia James’s office confirmed to The Post that there is an anti-trust investigation underway at Compass, now the largest residential real estate firm in the country with 340,000 real estate professionals.
The Real Deal reported Wednesday about the AG probe, claiming a message it viewed indicated that agents with the AG’s antitrust division reached out to executives at some of New York City’s top brokerages for information as part of an inquiry into Compass.
Compass and Anywhere — parent company to Corcoran, Sotheby’s International and Coldwell Banker — together accounted for 40% percent of transaction volume in Manhattan in 2024, according to Helfstein, potentially putting it in violation of merger guidelines from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission. “Mergers can violate the law when they eliminate substantial competition between firms,” the guidelines indicate.
“We don’t know if they’re actually going to charge Compass,” Helfstein said. “They might come to the same conclusion as the federal government.”
Robert Reffkin’s Compass and Anywhere announced in September they were merging, subject to the DOJ review.
DOJ antitrust staff pushed to investigate the merger, but senior officials overruled them and cleared the deal.
On Jan. 9, Compass announced that it had completed the $1.6 billion acquisition, which US Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in the aftermath was “far ahead of schedule.”
The deal generated $1.2 billion in revenue in the first quarter, according to Compass’ first-quarter earnings call with analysts.