MADISON, N.J., Nov. 7, 2019 // PRNewswire // - Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), the largest full-service residential real estate services company in the United States, today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2019.
"In the third quarter of 2019, we leveraged the strength of Realogy's size, scale and brands to grow our agent base, launch three new high impact products, and introduce two new high-quality lead generation programs," said Ryan Schneider, Realogy's chief executive officer and president. "We are energized by our new products and partnerships, which we believe will win more listings, attract more agents and franchisees, and drive growth."
"We delivered Operating EBITDA, generated positive free cash flow, reduced debt, and executed new cost efficiency programs which will generate incremental savings in 2019 and 2020," said Charlotte Simonelli, Realogy's executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer. "We are positioning Realogy for improving financial and operational performance and remain resolute in our goal to reduce leverage."
Third Quarter 2019 Highlights
Third Quarter 2019 Financial Highlights
The following table sets forth Realogy's financial highlights for the periods presented (in millions, except per share data) (unaudited):
Looking Ahead
Based on what the Company knows today and subject to macro uncertainty, we expect Operating EBITDA to be at the lower end of our previous guidance of $590 to $610 million for full year 2019. This guidance is based on us having around 5% volume growth in the fourth quarter with better balance between NRT and RFG. We expect to be below NAR's current fourth quarter transaction volume growth forecast of 13%.
Balance Sheet and Capital Allocation
The Company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $266 million. Total corporate debt, including the short-term portion, net of cash and cash equivalents (net corporate debt), totaled $3.3 billion at September 30, 2019. The Company's Net Debt Leverage Ratio was 5.2 times at September 30, 2019. The Net Debt Leverage Ratio is net corporate debt divided by EBITDA, as defined by the Senior Secured Credit Facility, for the four-quarter period ended September 30, 2019.
During the third quarter of 2019, Realogy Group used cash on hand to repurchase $93 million of its 4.875% Senior Notes at an aggregate purchase price of $83 million, plus accrued interest to the repurchase date. In conjunction with the repurchase, the Company recorded a gain on the early extinguishment of debt of $10 million.
The Company's Board of Directors decided that, effective immediately, it will no longer pay a quarterly cash dividend. The change in the dividend policy will accelerate deleveraging and support ongoing investment in the business.
The Company expects to prioritize investing in its business and reducing leverage over other potential uses of cash until it is able to reduce its Consolidated Leverage Ratio (as defined under the indenture governing the Company's 9.375% Senior Notes) to below 4.00 to 1.00 (see footnote b to Table 7b).
A consolidated balance sheet is included as Table 2 of this press release.
Investor Conference Call
Today, November 7, at 8:30 a.m. (ET), Realogy will hold a conference call via webcast to review its Q3 2019 results. The webcast will be hosted by Ryan Schneider, chief executive officer and president, and Charlotte Simonelli, chief financial officer, and will conclude with an investor Q&A period with management.
Investors may access the conference call live via webcast at ir.realogy.com or by dialing (888) 895-3527 (toll free); international participants should dial (706) 679-2250. Please dial in at least 5 to 10 minutes prior to start time. A webcast replay also will be available on the website.
Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY) is the leading and most integrated provider of residential real estate services in the U.S. that is focused on empowering independent sales agents to best serve today's consumers. Realogy delivers its services through its well-known industry brands including Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate, CENTURY 21®, Climb Real Estate®, Coldwell Banker®, Coldwell Banker Commercial®, Corcoran®, ERA®, Sotheby's International Realty® as well as NRT, Cartus®, Title Resource Group and ZapLabs®, an in-house innovation and technology development lab. Realogy's fully integrated business model includes brokerage, franchising, relocation, mortgage, and title and settlement services. Realogy provides independent sales agents access to leading technology, best-in-class marketing and learning programs, and support services to help them become more productive and build stronger businesses. Realogy's affiliated brokerages operate around the world with approximately 190,000 independent sales agents in the United States and approximately 110,400 independent sales agents in 112 other countries and territories. Realogy is headquartered in Madison, New Jersey.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Realogy Holdings Corp. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "projects", "estimates", "potential" and "plans" and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will", "should", "would", "may" and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. Any statements that refer to expectations or other characterizations of future events, circumstances or results are forward-looking statements.
Various factors that could cause actual future results and other future events to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, include, but are not limited to: adverse developments or the absence of sustained improvement in general business, economic or political conditions or the U.S. residential real estate markets, either regionally or nationally, including but not limited to a decline or a lack of improvement in the number of homesales, stagnant or declining home prices or a reduction in the affordability of housing, increasing mortgage rates and/or constraints on the availability of mortgage financing, insufficient or excessive home inventory levels by market and price point, a lack of improvement or deceleration in the building of new housing and/or irregular timing or volume of new development closings, the potential negative impact of certain provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the "2017 Tax Act") on home values over time in states with high property, sales and state and local income taxes or on homeownership rates, and/or the impact of recessions, slow economic growth, or a deterioration in other economic factors that particularly impact the residential real estate market and the business segments in which we operate whether broadly or by geography and price segments; the impact of increased competition in the industry and for the affiliation of independent sales agents on our results of operations and market share; our ability to successfully develop or procure technology that supports our business strategy; continuing pressure on the share of gross commission income paid by our company owned brokerages and affiliated franchisees to affiliated independent sales agents and sales agent teams; our geographic and high-end market concentration; our inability to enter into franchise agreements with new franchisees or renew existing franchise agreements at current contractual royalty rates without increasing the amount and prevalence of sales incentives; the lack of revenue growth or declining profitability of our franchisees and company owned brokerage operations or declines in other revenue streams, such as third-party listing fees; negative industry or business trends (including further declines in our market capitalization) may have a further impact on our valuation of goodwill and intangibles; the extent of the negative impact of the discontinuation of the USAA program in the third quarter of 2019 on our future revenues and profits derived from affinity program referrals from our Broker Network (including revenue to Cartus, RFG and NRT); the loss of another significant affinity client or multiple significant relocation clients or changes in corporate relocation practices resulting in fewer employee relocations, reduced relocation benefits and/or increasing competition in corporate relocation; an increase in the experienced claims losses of our title underwriter; our failure or alleged failure to comply with laws, regulations and regulatory interpretations and any changes or stricter interpretations of any of the foregoing (whether through private litigation or governmental action), including but not limited to (i) state or federal employment laws or regulations that would require reclassification of independent contractor sales agents to employee status, (ii) privacy or data security laws and regulations, (iii) the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) or other federal or state consumer protection or similar laws and (iv) antitrust laws and regulations; risks relating to our ability to return capital to stockholders including, among other risks, the restrictions contained in our debt agreements, in particular the indenture governing our 9.375% Senior Notes due 2027; risks associated with our substantial indebtedness and interest obligations and restrictions contained in our debt agreements, including risks relating to having to dedicate a significant portion of our cash flows from operations to service our debt and risks relating to our ability to refinance or repay our indebtedness or incur additional indebtedness; and risks and growing costs related to both cybersecurity threats to our data and customer, franchisee, employee and independent sales agent data, as well as those related to our compliance with the growing number of laws, regulations and other requirements related to the protection of personal information.
Consideration should be given to the areas of risk described above, as well as those risks set forth under the headings "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2019, June 30, 2019 and September 30, 2019 and our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, and our other filings made from time to time, in connection with considering any forward-looking statements that may be made by us and our businesses generally. We undertake no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements, to report events or to report the occurrence of unanticipated events except as required by law.
Non-GAAP Financial Measures
This release includes certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under SEC rules. As required by SEC rules, important information regarding such measures is contained in the Tables attached to this release. See Tables 1a, 7a and 8 for definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and Tables 1a, 4a, 4b, 5a, 5b, 6, 7a and 7b for reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP terms.
Because of the forward-looking nature of the Company's forecasted non-GAAP financial measures, specific quantifications of the amounts that would be required to reconcile forecasted Operating EBITDA to forecasted net income are not readily determinable. The Company believes that there is a degree of volatility with respect to certain of the Company's GAAP measures which preclude the Company from providing accurate forecasted GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations. Based on the above, the Company believes that providing estimates of the amounts that would be required to reconcile the range of the non-GAAP measures to forecasted GAAP measures would imply a degree of precision that would be confusing or misleading to investors for the reasons identified above.
Alicia Swift
Investor Relations
(973) 407-4669
alicia.swift@realogy.com
Trey Sarten
Investor Relations
(973) 407-2162
trey.sarten@realogy.com
Danielle Kloeblen
Media Relations
(973) 407-2148
danielle.kloeblen@realogy.com
Elliott Frieder
Media Relations
(973) 407-5236
elliott.frieder@realogy.com
Table 8
Non-GAAP Definitions
Adjusted net income (loss) is defined by us as net income (loss) before mark-to-market interest rate swap adjustments, former parent legacy items, restructuring charges, the (gain) loss on the early extinguishment of debt, impairments and the tax effect of the foregoing adjustments. The gross amounts for these items as well as the adjustment for income taxes are presented. Adjusted earnings (loss) per share is Adjusted net income (loss) divided by the weighted average common and common equivalent shares outstanding. We present Adjusted net income (loss) and Adjusted earnings (loss) per share because we believe these measures are useful as supplemental measures in evaluating the performance of our operating businesses and provides greater transparency into our operating results.
Operating EBITDA is defined by us as net income (loss) before depreciation and amortization, interest expense, net (other than relocation services interest for securitization assets and securitization obligations), income taxes, and other items that are not core to the operating activities of the Company such as restructuring charges, former parent legacy items, gains or losses on the early extinguishment of debt, impairments, gains or losses on discontinued operations and gains or losses on the sale of investments or other assets. Operating EBITDA is our primary non-GAAP measure.
We present Operating EBITDA because we believe it is useful as a supplemental measure in evaluating the performance of our operating businesses and provides greater transparency into our results of operations. Our management, including our chief operating decision maker, uses Operating EBITDA as a factor in evaluating the performance of our business. Operating EBITDA should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for net income or other statement of operations data prepared in accordance with GAAP.
We believe Operating EBITDA facilitates company-to-company operating performance comparisons by backing out potential differences caused by variations in capital structures (affecting net interest expense), taxation, the age and book depreciation of facilities (affecting relative depreciation expense) and the amortization of intangibles, as well as other items that are not core to the operating activities of the Company such as restructuring charges, gains or losses on the early extinguishment of debt, former parent legacy items, impairments, gains or losses on discontinued operations and gains or losses on the sale of investments or other assets, which may vary for different companies for reasons unrelated to operating performance. We further believe that Operating EBITDA is frequently used by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in their evaluation of companies, many of which present an Operating EBITDA measure when reporting their results.
Operating EBITDA has limitations as an analytical tool, and you should not consider Operating EBITDA either in isolation or as a substitute for analyzing our results as reported under GAAP. Some of these limitations are:
Free Cash Flow is defined as net income (loss) attributable to Realogy before income tax expense (benefit), net of payments, interest expense, net, cash interest payments, depreciation and amortization, capital expenditures, restructuring costs and former parent legacy costs (benefits), net of payments, impairments, (gain) loss on the early extinguishment of debt, working capital adjustments and relocation receivables (assets), net of change in securitization obligations. We use Free Cash Flow in our internal evaluation of operating effectiveness and decisions regarding the allocation of resources, as well as measuring the Company's ability to generate cash. Since Free Cash Flow can be viewed as both a performance measure and a cash flow measure, the Company has provided a reconciliation to both net income attributable to Realogy Holdings and net cash provided by operating activities. Free Cash Flow is not defined by GAAP and should not be considered in isolation or as an alternative to net income (loss), net cash provided by (used in) operating, investing and financing activities or other financial data prepared in accordance with GAAP or as an indicator of the Company's operating performance or liquidity. Free Cash Flow may differ from similarly titled measures presented by other companies.
SOURCE Realogy Holdings Corp.
Realogy's company-owned real estate brokerage, is the largest residential brokerage company in the United States, operates under several of Realogy's brands and also provides related residential real estate services.