Introduction:
What does it take to tell a compelling investor story when your company defies easy categorization?
For Soham Bhonsle, the answer starts with honesty — and ends with numbers. As Head of IR and FP&A at Compass, Soham sits at the crossroads of two demanding investor audiences: real estate investors who want to understand macro cycles, mortgage rates, and existing home sales, and TMT investors who want to talk artificial intelligence, platform economics, and tech-driven differentiation. Navigating both — often in the same day — requires equal parts analytical rigor and narrative craft.
Soham brings something rare to the IR seat: a decade of sell-side experience covering the housing sector. He knows what analysts are really asking when they dig into a model. He understands how fund managers weigh macro risk against idiosyncratic upside. And he knows that in today's market, investors expect IROs to go well beyond polished talking points.
In this episode, Soham pulls back the curtain on what modern IR actually looks like inside a fast-moving, founder-led public company — one that is constantly iterating, constantly growing, and never standing still.
From resetting the company narrative after a transformative acquisition, to feeding real-time investor feedback directly to the CEO, to making the case for why IR and FP&A belong together, Soham offers a candid and practical look at what it means to be a truly strategic IRO.
Let's get into it.
Balancing Tech and Real Estate
Mark Fasken: Compass sits at the intersection of both real estate and technology, which means that on a day-to-day basis, you're speaking to two very different investor audiences, often in the same day — or maybe one call after another, or one meeting after another.
Mark Fasken: How do you think about building a narrative that works for both of those audiences without diluting your story? And when you're speaking to those two different audiences, do you find you get pulled in one direction or another?
Soham Bhonsle: I think it's a really interesting question, right? Because we are sort of this — I call it a tweener — right, between tech and real estate. I think the way that I've tried to strike the balance is to acknowledge that the business itself is cyclical in nature, right? But that our tech platform does create differentiated outcomes for our agents and for our company. And so I think by doing that, you are creating credibility with investors — by acknowledging the macro piece of it, but then walking them through why we think we can outperform the market, for example, through the tools that we provide, or the advantages that we can provide with the tools, and our ability to lower our expenses and things like that. So I think it's really about striking that balance between both.
Soham Bhonsle: And in terms of, I guess, prioritization — I think a lot of that comes down to sort of the art, right, of the narrative. And if you, as an IRO, are sensing that someone wants to go deep into the macro piece of it, I need to be ready to sort of walk them through the macro piece, right? And talk about existing home sales, or what are the drivers. And if you have a TMT investor that wants to talk through the tech, I need to know and be up on AI, and I need to be up on what our tools are doing. So it's a little bit of art when you're getting pulled into two different directions.
Mark Fasken: And I'm always curious — when you're going to these meetings, have you gone to the extent of building out separate investor decks for those different audiences, or are you typically using sort of the same presentation? It's just that you find different questions are coming up, and so you sort of have to bob and weave depending on what questions are coming up in the meeting?
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah, I think we're not — we're not that great yet. I'm hoping to get to that point, but it is very much one sort of pitch, one deck, and then you walk through whatever was interesting to that investor and focus on certain areas.
Mark Fasken: And when you think about IR in real estate — I mean, we're always trying to understand what is unique about a particular sector. And so, when you think about real estate and sort of being in investor relations at Compass, what do you think is just different about speaking to real estate investors? Whether it's the KPIs that they're focused on, maybe geographies that you find are particularly successful for you — what stands out to you in terms of what's different?
Macro vs. Idiosyncratic Edge
Soham Bhonsle: I think in real estate, what's unique is that we're dealing with macro volatility, right? And so if you think about even geopolitical volatility at this point, because that all has an impact on the 10-year treasury rate, which is what drives mortgage rates here in the US.
Soham Bhonsle: So you're always sort of battling the macro. But my job as an IRO is to then bring it back to what's in our control, and what's idiosyncratic about our story, and why we think even within this macro framework, we think we can do better. And ultimately, I think investors pay for that, right?
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah, some folks want to own you for that macro upside or whatever in the future, but they also want to know what you're doing as a company to drive outcomes.
Mark Fasken: So where are you seeing success today? If you think about sort of those TMT investors that you're speaking to, the sort of core real estate investors that you're speaking to, probably a lot of generalists that you're coming across — is there a particular audience that you find the Compass story is resonating particularly well with?
Soham Bhonsle: In this very moment, it's interesting, because our stock was at $13 not too long ago, and now we're down to $7. So at $7, you're talking to more of the value folks — it's just at a better multiple for them. But at a higher valuation, you're talking to some of the TMT folks. I think the way that I sort of frame it is, you know, we have this tech platform, right? And we are gonna be able to drive things like title and mortgage through the platform that is independent of the macro, right?
Soham Bhonsle: We announced a great partnership with Redfin. We're gonna pass on leads to our agents. That's again, independent of the macro. We just did a large transaction, and so synergies that we can get from the business, right?
Soham Bhonsle: So these are all the idiosyncratic pieces to the story that I think I'm certainly passing on, but I think other IROs can think through as well.
Mark Fasken: For sure. And —
M&A and Narrative Reset
Mark Fasken: And we were just talking about there's never seemingly a dull moment at Compass. I think for a lot of IROs they feel like there's never, never a dull moment. There's a lot happening. And Compass is doing a lot around technology, but I know there's also a fair amount of M&A. And so, when you joined, I think you were joining as a major acquisition or sort of merger was happening. And so, what does IR — and sort of managing investor communication and investor expectations — look like when you're going through a transformation like that? Sort of the big merger that happened when you joined, but then along the road you've got a bunch of these other smaller mergers that are happening. And so, you're sort of trying to both communicate the day-to-day, but also help investors understand the big picture and the longer-term strategy.
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah. When I first joined, October 2024, we announced our largest transaction back then, which was for roughly $450 million. And that one, it made a lot of sense, right? Why we wanted to own that piece — we want to continue to drive growth through both inorganic and organic means. So it makes sense.
Soham Bhonsle: But fast forward to September of last year, we bought the number-two player in the industry, and it's changing the whole narrative of the company. Because prior to that transaction, Compass was an organic growth story plus some M&A, right?
Soham Bhonsle: And we still are that piece, but we're a much larger company, and we have more diversified revenue streams at this point. And so, how do you shift the narrative from just being sort of maybe one lever, to three or four different levers for revenue growth? You kind of have to go back to the drawing board and just rethink what's gonna drive this business forward. Talk to the leaders within the business — hey, where do we think we can change, right, and make this business better? It's a process of just going back to the drawing board in those moments.
Mark Fasken: How often do you do that? How often are you sitting down with management and rethinking the story, and looking back on meetings that you've had or conversations that you've had — whether it's investors or analysts — and saying maybe this isn't resonating in the way that it should, right? Maybe we need to change things.
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah. It's a great question. I think that's something that we, as a company — because we are founder-led, we are public, but we're founder-led — we are great at iterating, right? Because Robert, our founder and CEO, is an entrepreneur, founded this company 13 years ago, you're constantly changing things. And so, I think we take that same approach in IR, where — hey, if we're having conversations, and this kind of happened to us when we first announced the Anywhere deal back in September — hey, things were maybe not resonating. Like, we believe this is a great deal, so why are people not seeing it? So maybe we need to shift a little bit on some of the talking points. And I think we're constantly doing that. We're constantly listening for what resonates, what doesn't resonate. It's a constant iteration process for us.
Mark Fasken: There's a lot going on at Compass — whether it's organic growth, M&A, technology innovation. The company's sort of growing and changing all the time.
Mark Fasken: I think it's interesting hearing you talk about how you are just always listening to what investors and sort of what the capital markets community is saying about Compass, and then sort of adapting to that in a somewhat real-time basis. Not like a once-a-year, let's go back and rework our deck — it sounds like it's something that you guys are doing constantly.
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah, and I think it's a function of just us as a company. There's so much happening in the industry, and that's probably a separate conversation. But there's so much happening in the brokerage industry now. We're talking potential structural change to the industry in the way MLSs work. We're talking about M&A, we're talking about the macro recovery, right? And the macro doesn't stay the same all the time — it's changing literally daily because of the tenure and what's happening in the world. And then we're, as a company, always trying to think about, okay, how do we grow the business?
Soham Bhonsle: Okay, if this is not working, how do we change it? And so, I think that's what puts us in a position of like, it's constantly just iteration as well on the narrative. I don't know if that's the same in most other companies where things are kind of maybe more stable and there's that line of sight into exactly where the industry's kind of going.
Mark Fasken: No, I think it's very dynamic in the environment that you are in. And it sort of leads to my next question.
Analyst Mindset and Numbers
Mark Fasken: You spent years before joining Compass covering the housing sector as an analyst. So you come from a bit of an analyst background. How does that analyst background impact the way that you approach investor relations?
Mark Fasken: Do you think it's an advantage? Do you think it changes the way that you communicate with investors and sort of the way that you think about investor engagement?
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah. It definitely has an influence, right? And I think the ability to be able to speak to an analyst and be able to say, "Hey, look, I was in your shoes." And, you know, if I put my analyst hat on, this is how I would think.
Soham Bhonsle: And I think that just gives analysts some comfort. And on the buy side, if you're coming from industry and you've covered this space, again, it gives you a little bit of credibility, I think, on what you're talking about — whether that's the macro or the tech piece, whatever that may be. I'm a little biased, obviously, but I think it does definitely help in sort of having those conversations.
Mark Fasken: I imagine it helps you have deeper conversations with analysts as well, right? You know the numbers really well. I mean, you run both IR and FP&A, which is sort of another part of this topic. I imagine it helps that you have a good command of the numbers. So when somebody wants to get into a model and start asking questions, you can get right in there with them if they want to.
Soham Bhonsle: I think that's absolutely right. I think there's kind of two benefits to that. One is, yes, I can talk about the high level — I can give you the high-level view, but if you want to go down into the weeds, I can go into the weeds with you as well. That's one benefit. But I think the other benefit is our management team is very busy, right? They're busy running the business. And so I'm always in the mindset of, hey, how can I free them up and save them time, right? Save my CFO time. And if you have a good handle for the numbers, you have a good handle for the industry, maybe investors aren't as reliant on having management there, and I can help them save some time.
Mark Fasken: On that comment about IR and FP&A, and you're sort of managing both of those roles — what's the case for keeping those two together at Compass? Do you think it's something that eventually will get broken apart, or do you think IR and FP&A will always sit together?
Soham Bhonsle: So, I'm running the FP&A for the Compass brand at this point, and we are going through this merger, so we're still determining what that kind of looks like. But if you think about the synergies that are between the two, I mean, I think they're fairly high, right?
Soham Bhonsle: When you're running FP&A, you're, by definition, forecasting the business. You are getting all the inputs to do that. And so you're understanding where the business is going, what's happening, what's not working, what's working. And that again translates back really well into telling the story and the narrative on the IR side, backed with numbers.
Soham Bhonsle: And so again, it gives investors some confidence that, hey, this is the person that is in the weeds, does know what's happening in the business, and can provide me good insight into the business.
Mark Fasken: We've had conversations with a few investor relations teams lately, whether it's been on this podcast or as part of panels that we've done.
Mark Fasken: And I think this is a recurring theme. And it goes back to our point around you being an analyst — really good IROs need to have a strong command of the numbers. But, you know, not all IROs come from an analyst background or a sell-side background, or they're not all accountants. Some people are maybe more communications-focused.
Mark Fasken: What advice would you give to an IRO who maybe doesn't have an FP&A, or a specific finance or accounting background, that would allow them to get a better control of the numbers and the stories so that they can have those deeper conversations with an analyst?
Soham Bhonsle: I don't know if I'm in a position to give advice — I've been doing this for a year and a half — but I can tell you how I would do it: just spend more time with your FP&A teams and understand the business, because I think the expectation for investors is changing, right?
Soham Bhonsle: Maybe five to 10 years ago, the expectation or the role was more of a communications kind of role, right? Today, when you're thinking about the landscape, you're talking to a lot of multi-strat hedge funds who are very in tune with the numbers and want to know what's happening with sort of a P&L.
Soham Bhonsle: And so, I think having a handle on that so you can have those conversations is super helpful. Again, saving time for management, and then maybe it's — hey, look, if you have some long-term investors that are more focused on strategy, that's when you can bring your management team to have those conversations and help them save time. If I can help my management team save time and know the numbers, it helps overall.
Mark Fasken: I think it's probably — to your point — a little bit of just flipping the prioritization. I know a lot of IROs focus on the story and the narrative, which I think is obviously very important, and investor meetings, which again, very important. But perhaps putting more emphasis on spending time with FP&A, and reading all of the releases, and going through the financials and making sure that they really understand them, and just doing that homework. Because to your point, I think that's what most of the investors are looking for these days.
Earning a Seat at the Table
Mark Fasken: I want to talk a little bit about the mentality at Compass. You mentioned this earlier — Compass is still a founder-led business, high-growth, public company, but it seems like still operating with a bit of a startup mentality. Still very innovative, still very fast-moving. And how does that impact the IR function? Does that make your job easier or harder? How does that show up in the day-to-day work that you're doing?
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah. It makes it dynamic, it makes it fun. But I think you have to know it's gonna be different every day, and you have to be comfortable with that sort of environment. You have to be entrepreneurial in the way you approach the role, and that's how I kind of think about it. No day's gonna be the same, and we're gonna have to be adaptable to what's happening in the business, right? You have to have that entrepreneurial kind of mindset in this role — that's how I think about it.
Mark Fasken: Yeah, absolutely. And we kind of talked about this a little bit — having an entrepreneurial mindset, sort of adapting to change, whether it's listening to what investors are saying and reworking your messaging. I mean, you've mentioned a few times sort of thinking from the perspective of, how do I save my management team's time? And I think a lot of the time it's like, how do you become a proxy for your CFO, as an example? I mean, people are always gonna want to meet with the CFO and CEO and everything.
Mark Fasken: Yeah. But to the extent that you can do that first few meetings and get people up to speed so that they can have a more meaningful conversation, I think that's a very value-add way of looking at investor relations.
Mark Fasken: There's a lot of talk about how do you get a seat at the table, quote unquote, in IR. It seems like in the year and a half that you've been at Compass, you've done a good job of establishing yourself as a trusted advisor with the management team. What does that look like for you? When you think about having a seat at the table, how involved are you with the management team when it comes to strategy and thinking about investor communication and sort of planning out what IR is going to look like at Compass?
Soham Bhonsle: Yeah, I think what I try to do is constantly give our management team and the business heads feedback on what we're hearing from our larger shareholders. I think it's helpful perspective — it's not necessarily gonna drive change, but it's good to hear a different perspective. That's one thing. But I think given my background — the decade that I spent on the sell side, having covered the entire housing space — I try to sort of provide my view as well, whether that's to our strategy teams, whether that's to our growth teams. I think folks that are curious and want to drive change can do that in this seat, right, and have that influence. You're not necessarily gonna go and change operations, but you can have an influence. And I think it also then comes down to the company you're with.
Soham Bhonsle: It has to be a company that is also willing to listen, and again iterate if they need to based on feedback that they're getting. I don't know if that's how it is in every environment. But at Compass, I think we pride ourselves in sort of listening, adapting, changing, iterating. And that's how we kind of drive growth.
Mark Fasken: I think there are, as I said, a lot of IROs that are looking to get — again, sort of quote unquote — a seat at the table, and more involved with management teams. So what's your advice for people? You talked about being curious and providing that feedback. Any other things you think IROs should be doing, or could be doing differently, to establish that level of credibility?
Soham Bhonsle: I think the first thing, when you're getting into the seat, if you're new to the seat, is consistency and creating credibility, right? Once you have that confidence, then I think you can go into conversations and say, "Maybe think about it this way," or, "Hey, our investors are saying this — what do you think about it? What do you think about what they're saying?" So I think it's first establishing yourself, becoming credible, becoming consistent, and then trying to have more of those conversations over time.
Mark Fasken: It sounds like when you say building the credibility — just from the conversation we've had — it sounds like getting to know the numbers, getting to know the industry, understanding the sector. These are all sort of basic things that a lot of IROs are doing when they're getting started.
Mark Fasken: It sounds, though, like you're also having a lot of more in-depth conversations with your investors to just understand, like, what do you think of the story? And then you're compiling that and feeding that back to the management team wherever possible to say, you know, this is resonating, this isn't, these are some of the concerns.
Mark Fasken: Is that something that you're doing in real time? Or are you, like, doing a weekly report that you're then summarizing and sending over to the management?
Soham Bhonsle: Real time. Whether that's over text, or that's email, or a voice note, whatever that may be — I think I'm constantly trying to give feedback to our management team, just so they know, they understand where the market is, where the pulse is on things.
Soham Bhonsle: We have this saying at Compass — we have these entrepreneurial principles, but one of them is: collaboration without ego. And that's a big one for us. I feel comfortable going to our CEO and providing him with feedback. I feel comfortable going to our CFO. And so, how do you create that culture of just openness and willingness to listen, so that you don't get bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy and move fast — which is another entrepreneurial principle at Compass.
Mark Fasken: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.
Soham Bhonsle: Thank you.
