Douglas Elliman Inc (DOUG) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to Douglas Elliman Inc.'s Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. During this call, the terms adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA will be used. These terms are non-GAAP financial measures and should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, other measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations to the adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA are contained in the company's earnings release, which has been posted in the Investor Relations section of the company's website located at investors.elliman.com.

Before the call begins, I would like to read a safe harbor statement. These statements made during the conference call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements. These risks are described in more detail in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission's filings.

Now I would like to turn the call over to the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Douglas Elliman Inc. Howard M. Lorber.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Richard Lampen, our Chief Operating Officer; Bryant Kirkland, our Chief Financial Officer; and Scott Durkin, President and CEO of Douglas Elliman Realty, our residential real estate brokerage business.

On today's call, we will discuss Douglas Elliman's financial results for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2022, as well as current trends in our luxury markets. We will then provide closing comments and open the call for questions.

Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to honor our beloved colleague, Karen Chesleigh, who passed away earlier this week. As Vice President of Human Resources at Douglas Elliman and Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Douglas Elliman Realty, Karen was an integral part of our company for almost 2 decades, and we will miss her dearly. Our thoughts are with Karen's family and friends during this time.

Now we will begin by reviewing Douglas Elliman's financial results for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2022. Starting first with Douglas Elliman's financial results for the 3 months ended June 30, 2022. Douglas Elliman reported $364.4 million in revenues compared to $392 million in the second quarter of 2021. Net income attributed to Douglas Elliman for the 3 months ended June 30, 2022 was $10.2 million or $0.13 per diluted share compared to net income of $39.5 million or $0.51 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2021.

For the 3 months ended June 30, 2022, adjusted EBITDA attributed to Douglas Elliman was $19.2 million compared to $45.3 million in the second quarter of 2021. Douglas Elliman began operating as a stand-alone public company in 2022, following its spinoff from Vector Group in December 2021.

Expenses incurred by our public company operations are reported in the Corporate and Other segment on the operations of our brokerage business are reported in our real estate brokerage segment. Therefore, for comparison purpose, our real estate brokerage segment reported operating income of $21.6 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2022, compared to $43.2 million in the second quarter of 2021.

Adjusted EBITDA attributed to our real estate brokerage segment was $24.4 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2022, compared to $45.3 million in the second quarter of 2021. For the 3 months ended June 30, 2022, adjusted net income was $9.7 million or $0.12 per share compared to adjusted net income of $43.1 million or $0.55 per share in the second quarter of 2021.

I will now provide an overview of Douglas Elliman's individual market performance during the quarter. Douglas Elliman delivered the second highest quarterly revenue total in our history in the second quarter of 2022 despite a challenging macroeconomic environment and then in the quarter with a significant lack of listing inventory of luxury homes across many of our markets. We were also pleased to see increases in revenues and close sales from the New York City, Massachusetts, California and Texas markets in the second quarter of 2022 compared to the prior year period, during which we experienced record levels of activity across our company.

In June, we began to see a decline in commission receipts, and this trend continued in July. We believe this trend has been caused by less new listing inventory entering the market, financial market volatility as well as significant increases in mortgage interest rates.

Initially, this decline skewed towards the lower end of the market because of its sensitivity to mortgage rate increases. However, luxury markets recently experienced softness that we believe has been due, in particular, to volatile financial markets as well as in limited listing inventory of luxury homes that has existed since the end of 2021. We are optimistic that luxury markets will rebound as financial markets stabilize, and we remain laser-focused on selling luxury homes.

As we will discuss later, listing inventory has recently accelerated to its highest level since the pandemic began. Nonetheless, listing inventory remains below pre-pandemic levels, and this may provide a firm foundation for future price appreciation in our luxury markets. We are proud of our brokers who are recognized internationally for their expertise in selling luxury homes and continue to execute transactions in our markets. The highly profitable and luxury based New York City market remains our largest market and our management team continues to recruit brokers as well as market new development projects in the region. We are all aggressively growing our business in the Texas market, which continues to attract record buyer demand across the entire state. Homes reportedly averaged only 33 days on the market, and this time line is even lower in our luxury markets.

We are confident Texas will become a major market for Douglas Elliman in the future and have already added 125 agents from competitors in the state this year. These agents bring expertise in the local markets they serve and reported approximately $750 million of annual gross transaction value prior to joining Douglas Elliman.

Turning to Florida, the Hamptons and Colorado, while these markets significantly outperformed since the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been negatively impacted in 2022 due to lack of listing inventory, volatility in the financial markets as well as increased international summer travel.

From the fourth quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2022, lifting inventory in all of Douglas Elliman's markets declined by approximately 50%. We believe this limited listed inventory significantly restrained sales potential. However, as previously mentioned, we believe this trend will be temporary. The second quarter of 2022 saw listing inventory accelerate to the highest level since the pandemic began, though that still is below pre-pandemic levels, which we believe suggests that sales were slowing in these markets during the period.

As a result, we see a tremendous opportunity for growth in all of our luxury markets when market uncertainty subsides and limited listing inventory continues to drive higher home prices.

Moving now to Douglas Elliman's financial results for the 6 months ended June 30, 2022. For 6 months ended June 30, 2022, Douglas Elliman reported $673.3 million in revenues compared to $664.8 million in the 2021 period. We are proud to have delivered these record revenues for the first half of the year. Net income attributed to Douglas Elliman for the 6 months ended June 30, 2022, was $16.8 million or $0.21 per diluted share compared to net income of $53.4 million or $0.69 per diluted share in the 2021 period.

For the 6 months ended June 30, 2022, adjusted EBITDA attributed to Douglas Elliman was $31.9 million compared to $61.6 million in the 2021 period. For comparison purposes, our real estate brokerage segment reported operating income of $36.1 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2022, compared to $57.4 million for the 2021 period. Adjusted EBITDA attributed to our real estate brokerage segment was $42.1 million for the 6 months ended June 30, 2022, compared to $61.6 million for the 2021 period.

For the 6 months ended June 30, 2022, adjusted net income was $16.2 million or $0.20 per share compared to $57 million or $0.73 per share in the 2021 period. Douglas Elliman also maintained a strong balance sheet with cash of $202.1 million at June 30, 2022.

In summary, Douglas Elliman has performed well thus far in 2022 despite a challenging market, and we believe our differentiated platform and approach positioned us for continued growth. Looking ahead, we are focused on creating stockholder value through strategic market expansion, continued recruitment of best-in-class talent, operational efficiencies and further adoption of innovative solutions to empower our agents.

In addition, during the second quarter, we were pleased to pay another $0.05 per share dividend to our stockholders. It is our expectation that dividend will serve as a key component of our capital allocation going forward. With that, now we will be happy to answer questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Dan Fannon with Jefferies.

I wanted to just follow up and clarify a few things because I think you said inventories were clearly down, and I think you mentioned into July as well, but then you mentioned that they are improving. So I just want to understand the dynamics as you think about inventory and activity here in kind of the more shorter-term, are things better than improving from where they were in the second quarter? Or I'm sorry, I was just a bit confused by the commentary.

Yes. I think the commentary really was they have improved. They started improving, obviously, because the market has slowed down, but they're still below where we were in inventory pre-pandemic. So the pandemic took a lot of inventory out of the market, and that has lasted up until this last quarter pretty much. And now it is starting to improve. So as we see more inventory, we believe, obviously -- it's obviously better for business. but the lower inventory sort of squeezes the buyers, some of the buyers out of the market. But also it brings higher-priced inventory. The inventory, obviously, starts -- still going up in price, which somewhat is not that hard to understand, but the fact is, I think, we could all think about it and the fact that if there's not a lot of great inventory around, people that want that inventory, they're going to pay whatever price they have to pay. So the sales may be not that great, but the pricing is going to move up. And as the inventory -- as more inventory comes in, the prices may stabilize more, which is not bad either because we've had such a big run-up. Did I answer your question?

Yes. No, that makes sense. And I guess as you think about the other inputs of interest rates, and you mentioned financial markets volatility both of those seem to be happening together, which is an additional headwind. But you mentioned the high end, which I think you've discussed in the past about that market being more resilient to higher rates, but really the incremental here is, obviously, you've got equity markets and bond markets moving a lot more. That has been the incremental kind of negative in terms of the market?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. I think -- yes, look, I think that the mortgage rates, when they talk about, well, it's now down, I think I saw it this morning, like 5% [407], but they're talking about 30-year fixed rate mortgages. The buyers in the luxury market do not use 30-year fixed rate mortgages. So -- and there's still plenty of adjustables in the 3s. And then obviously, in the luxury markets, these are generally customers that have private banking relationships and so forth where they could get better rates and/or just taken out of their account at 150 basis points and wait for rates to come down to go into a traditional 10-year, 7- or 10-year addressable mortgage. So I think it's really more the financial volatility than it is really the actual fact of the rates being higher.

Okay. Makes sense. And then you mentioned 25 agents in Texas that were brought on in the quarter. Can you give us the total in that region now and where that sits in terms of the number of agents?

BK, do you have that number?

Yes. The Texas region had, for the first half of the year, $23 million in brokerage revenues. And as far as the region over the last 12 months, we think it's about $40 million. So we're growing.

But the question is how many agents? Do you know how many agents?

300.

300. Okay. Texas is a big state. We have to -- we do a lot of recruiting to get those numbers up.

Yes. Makes sense. And when we think about just the cost base in that recruiting and you've said being efficient in managing the business in aggregate more efficiently. As we think about the first half expense levels in a revenue environment that's not -- let's just say, it doesn't get better, but it kind of stays around here. Is there efficiencies to be had within the expense base? Or are these reasonable run rates and how we should be thinking about EBITDA and profitability?

Well, look, the different markets that we're in have different commission structures. That's just the way it is. So in New York, it's the most profitable, and it always has been because the commissions rates that you pay have been lower somewhat as opposed to like California, which is probably the highest in Florida for the top end brokers. But really, we're not looking at that. We're looking at the bottom line and the best way to improve on the bottom line is there are cost cuts that we can make.

Don't forget, 2021 was an unbelievable year which -- hopefully, we won't have another pandemic and we'll never see like anything like that. But the fact is, we have corporate overhead that is adjustable that like for bonuses and so forth. So we're going to do whatever we have to do to make sure that our bottom line is acceptable and that keep moving forward. And so I think you're going to probably not see that until more like the end of the year or into next year but that's what the plan is. If it keeps up at a lower level, obviously, we're going to make changes because we watch it very carefully.

Understood. I guess is there a way to put a dollar amount around what that -- I would -- the expense amount that's subject to, obviously, your end bonus or that isn't the committee or infrastructure? Just thinking about things like G&A and others, I know you have public company costs and other things that have come into the fold this year. But it's not -- so I guess, summary of what you said, you're not necessarily doing anything proactively today, but you could potentially do that if things persist?

Of course. Well, you brought up one like bonuses. Of course, obviously, the bonuses would be less if we make less profits. That's the way it's supposed to be. So that goes without saying. And we're trying to be more efficient which I think we're doing a pretty good job of. And we may save some money in certain areas. We're going to look at it again. And we're going to be very careful in spending the money. Very careful.

Down on Page 15 of our presentation, there's a slide that shows what we've done since 2019. And this only covers the real estate brokerage segment's operating expenses that does not cover the public company expenses. But in the non-activity based and nontechnology based expenses, we dropped that from $201.5 million in 2019 to $183.0 million. And that -- and if you think about it, that's a 9.1%, 9.2% drop. And that has occurred as inflation has been, what, 12% since 2019. So we're really laser-focused on that.

And by the way, the other factor is that unless something changes drastically as it relates to people coming to the office, we have a lot of leases. And we're not -- we're really going to have a program of really looking at it very carefully and not renewing leases and consolidating offices. We think that just makes sense.

Yes. Understood. That makes sense. And I guess, last one for me. Just with regards to agent recruiting, we already went through Texas. Are there other markets that you would put or how would you stack rank markets in terms of your priorities of attracting productive agents?

Well, I think the 2 biggest recruiting states, sort of, are that we're doing right now that we see action in is New York and Florida. Both of those has a lot of brokers, they have a lot of good brokers, and we really have built market share. And if you look at Florida, we did last year, what, $16.5 billion. and Florida, which is sort of a new region for us. It's not very old, and we're not all over the state. We're pretty much just in the Southeast and we started opening some on the West Coast of Florida, a couple of offices.

But we did -- I think we did just under $15 billion in what's pretty much a newer market for us. And I will say when it comes to our new development business, we have -- there is not a lot of new development now in New York because land prices are still high, construction cost is still high. And there's some product on the market that hasn't sold yet and developers are a little shy about going into new projects, although there are some new projects. In Florida, we have a huge backlog of new projects. That will be done over the next 2 to 3 years. So that's going to be a big plus for us also.

Your next question comes from the line of John Massocca with Ladenburg Thalmann.

So maybe just given the commentary around inventory picking up in kind of June and July, have you gotten any feedback from the agents about maybe why that is, why the kind of increase of supply? Is there any kind specifically driving that?

Well, the increase in supply only comes from lower sales. It's pretty much simple. And also, it could be that people were waiting for whatever their reason of going into the market with what they want to sell. But realistically, I think it's really more of a sales go down, that's what happens. Our inventory builds up. That's what's supposed to happen. And I think it's pretty much that. BK, in the numbers, have you seen anything different?

No, that's what I'm seeing, Howard.

Yes. I think that's pretty much what it is.

Okay. And then looking at the different kind of regions in which you operate, you mentioned that -- obviously, been a lot of strength in New York and Massachusetts and California and maybe a little bit less relative strength in Florida. I mean, I guess is that basically because you're lapping obviously kind of very historic levels of transaction activity or on a dollar basis? Or is there something actual kind of, I guess, absolute weakness in those markets that you're seeing?

Well, I would say that a little bit of both. I mean, I think the fact of New York, a lot of people don't realize the peak New York year that the way we figure it and look at it was somewhere around 2015, 2016. So '17, '18, '19, pre-pandemic were not great years. And they were not great years because of the changes in the increase in managing tax, transfer taxes, all the government rules the loss, obviously, people leaving because the loss of the [soft] deductions over $10,000.

So all of a sudden, that market picked up, but it picked up from a level that was not moving up for probably 4, 5 years as opposed to some of the other markets where they were moving up during those years. So it's hard to exactly pinpoint it. We're happy it's happening. I mean, I think New York may be different than some other people, how they speak about it. I think New York is still going to be a very strong market. In fact, I've been quoted as saying that I think New York is going to be the #1 second home market to the world, which I think most people would say that, that's always been London. I think what we need for that to happen, though, actually is the dollar has to get a little weaker against the other currencies. I think that's why we're not seeing the international business this summer that we thought we would see because of the strength of the dollar.

Ladies and gentlemen, those are all of the questions that we have for today. Thank you for joining us on Douglas Elliman's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. This will conclude our call. We hope you have a good day, and you may now disconnect.

Thank you.