LPT Realty reaches major milestone in IPO lead-up 

LPT Realty and its new luxury-focused sibling brokerage Aperture Global Real Estate are one step closer to being a publicly traded company — and the first residential real estate brokerage IPO since Real Brokerage began trading in June 2021. 

This week, the company announced that it has reserved a combined stock ticker, LPTA, with Nasdaq for its planned initial public offering. LPT Founder and CEO Robert Palmer told Real Estate News in January and again in May ahead of Aperture's launch that he was focused on making moves to get the company IPO-ready by the end of 2025.

The company now appears to be closing in on this goal.

No launch date just yet: Due to the sensitivity surrounding the regulation of public offerings, Palmer declined to offer a target IPO launch. However, he told Real Estate News that by reserving a stock ticker symbol, the company is effectively signaling that they "reasonably expect to use the symbol within 24 months of reservation." 

The 'A' in 'LPTA' is important: Palmer highlighted the symbol letters, emphasizing that Aperture is "a real part of the story" in the growth and development of LPT Realty and beyond. The combination of LPT and Aperture has become special to agents, Palmer said, "by giving them more choices." Meanwhile, the two brands together — which will compete directly with other publicly traded brokerage brands like eXp and Compass — will make the company "more attractive to investors."

Palmer believes combining cloud-based LPT and upscale luxury-focused Aperture may offer some insulation to real estate's extreme cycles, as the brands hit different market categories and agent populations. Palmer referenced the recent Compass and eXp earnings reports, which showed record revenue and principal agent growth at Compass while eXp "arguably had one of their worst quarters in recent times."

"So I think it just really shows how, from a business standpoint, the two models can be very complementary," Palmer said. "They really don't compete with each other that much. We don't see a lot of competition for agents or listings between Compass and eXp today — we don't expect to see it between LPT and Aperture in our ecosystem."

Waning importance of a high agent tally: Michael Valdes, who served as eXp's chief growth officer before joining LPT last year to lead international growth efforts and oversee Aperture's launch, signaled more growth and discussions with big teams.

The company has "firm commitments" with "about 100 or so luxury agents" who have qualified to join Aperture, Valdes said. He touted success in ultra-luxury markets in Montana and London, and plans for expansion in Monaco, Dubai, Madrid, Mexico City and beyond.

Palmer, who confirmed in January that LPT had about 15,000 agents, declined to comment on exactly where the company's overall agent count stands today, stating that revealing certain data could complicate the IPO.

However, with the emphasis on Aperture and the upscale luxury market, "agent count becomes less important of a metric," Palmer said, comparing the productivity and revenue of Compass agents with those at eXp. 

"You look at eXp with 90,000 agents and a cap model, and they drove less revenue than Compass did with 20,000 principal agents on their uncapped model and higher price points," Palmer explained. "So we're actually having a lot of these conversations internally as we prepare the KPIs that we're going to share with markets."