Realogy Reports Financial Results For First Quarter 2019

MADISON, N.J., May 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Realogy Holdings Corp. RLGY, the largest full-service residential real estate services company in the United States, today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2019, including the following highlights:

• Revenue was $1.1 billion, a decrease of 9% compared to the first quarter in 2018 largely due to lower transaction volume at NRT.
• The Company's combined homesale transaction volume (transaction sides multiplied by average sale price) decreased 9% compared with the first quarter of 2018.  For reference, the National Association of Realtors reported that homesale transaction volume decreased 4% in the first quarter of 2019 compared to 2018.  The differences were primarily driven by geographic concentration and an increase in the competitive environment especially in a few specific geographies.
• Operating EBITDA was negative $4 million, a decrease of $38 million compared with the first quarter of 2018 with lower transaction volume partially offset by expense management. (See Table 4)¹
• Net loss was $99 million compared to net loss of $67 million for the first quarter of 2018.  Basic loss per share was $0.87 compared with basic loss per share of $0.51 in the first quarter of 2018.
• Adjusted net loss per share was $0.67 compared with adjusted net loss per share of $0.38 in the first quarter of 2018. (See Table 1a)²
• In the first quarter of 2019, Realogy generated free cash flow of negative $172 million (See Table 6)³.  The company reported net cash used in operating activities of $103 million in the first quarter of 2019 compared with $130 million in the first quarter of 2018.

"In the first quarter of 2019, Realogy moved aggressively to deliver new marketing, technology and data products for our affiliated agents, roll out new pricing models and realize new efficiencies across the business," said Ryan Schneider, Realogy's chief executive officer and president.  "Despite continued market headwinds and an increasingly competitive environment, we remain intensely focused on executing our strategy and improving our value proposition to drive greater success for our affiliated agents, our franchisees and ultimately, our shareholders."

"We realized meaningful cost savings and operational realignment across the company during the first quarter," said Charlotte Simonelli, Realogy's executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer.  "We remain on track to achieve $70 million in cost savings in the full year 2019 and are actively pursuing additional opportunities across the business."

In the first quarter of 2019, Realogy's 190,800 U.S.-based affiliated independent sales agents helped consumers with approximately 263,000 homesale transaction sides.  In aggregate, Realogy achieved homesale transaction volume of approximately $91 billion in the first quarter of 2019 with $60 billion at RFG and $31 billion at NRT.  RFG homesale transaction sides decreased 10% and average homesale price increased 2%.  NRT reported a homesale transaction sides decrease of 9% and an average homesale price decrease of 2%.

In the title and settlement services segment, TRG closed 32,000 transactions in the first quarter of 2019, which was a 14% decline driven by the lower housing market and refinance volume.  Our mortgage joint venture achieved profitability in Q1 2019.

In the relocation services segment, Cartus initiations were up 1% and referrals were down 4%.  Cartus generates highly qualified leads for its network of affiliated agents and helps them to build their businesses.  Cartus generated referral opportunities for agents that resulted in approximately 80,000 in-network homesale closings for Realogy and its brands in 2018.

Balance Sheet and Capital Allocation

The Company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $243 million.  Total corporate debt, including the short-term portion, net of cash and cash equivalents (net corporate debt), totaled $3.6 billion at March 31, 2019.  The Company's net debt leverage ratio⁴ was 5.2 times at March 31, 2019.  At year end, the Company's net operating loss carryforwards were $855 million, which it expects will allow it to continue to pay minimal cash taxes through 2020.

A consolidated balance sheet is included as Table 2 of this press release.

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 to below 4.00 to 1.00, although the Company currently anticipates continuing its quarterly cash dividend.

Investor Conference Call

Today, May 2, at 8:30 a.m. (ET), Realogy will hold a conference call via webcast to review its Q1 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.

About Realogy Holdings Corp.

Realogy Holdings Corp. 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 190,800 independent sales agents in the United States and approximately 111,100 independent sales agents in 112 other countries and territories. Realogy is headquartered in Madison, New Jersey.

Footnotes:

¹  Operating EBITDA is defined 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, losses on the early extinguishment of debt, asset impairments, gains or losses on discontinued operations and gains or losses on the sale of investments or other assets.

²  Adjusted net income (loss) is defined as net income (loss) before mark-to-market interest rate swap adjustments, former parent legacy items, restructuring charges, the loss on the early extinguishment of debt, the tax effect of the foregoing adjustments and adjustments to the reserve for uncertain tax positions.

³  Free Cash Flow is defined as net income (loss) attributable to Realogy before income tax expense (benefit), net of payments, net interest expense, cash interest payments, depreciation and amortization, capital expenditures, restructuring costs and former parent legacy costs (benefits), net of payments, loss on the early extinguishment of debt, working capital adjustments and relocation receivables (assets), net of change in securitization obligations.

⁴  Net corporate debt divided by EBITDA, as defined by the Senior Secured Credit Facility, for the four-quarter period ended March 31, 2019.

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" 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; increased competition in the industry and for the affiliation of independent sales agents; 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; the loss of a 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) 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 quarter ended March 31, 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, 4, 5a, 5b, 6, 7a and 7b for reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP terms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 loss on the early extinguishment of debt, the tax effect of the foregoing adjustments and adjustments to the reserve for uncertain tax positions.  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, losses on the early extinguishment of debt, asset 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, losses on the early extinguishment of debt, former parent legacy items, asset 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:

• this measure does not reflect changes in, or cash required for, our working capital needs;
• this measure does not reflect our interest expense (except for interest related to our securitization obligations), or the cash requirements necessary to service interest or principal payments on our debt;
• this measure does not reflect our income tax expense or the cash requirements to pay our taxes;
• this measure does not reflect historical cash expenditures or future requirements for capital expenditures or contractual commitments;
• although depreciation and amortization are non-cash charges, the assets being depreciated and amortized will often require replacement in the future, and this measure does not reflect any cash requirements for such replacements; and
• other companies may calculate this measure differently so they may not be comparable.

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, lease asset impairments, 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.

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SOURCE Realogy Holdings Corp.