Douglas Elliman Inc.

Welcome to Douglas Elliman, Inc.' 's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings 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 adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA are contained in the company's earnings release. which has been posted to 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. The statements made during this 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 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 afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our first earnings call as Douglas Elliman. This is a meaningful milestone for our company, our employees, and our agents nationwide. Joining me are Richard Lampin, our Chief Operating Officer, Brian 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 recap the spinoff of Douglas Elliman from Vector Group, discuss why the U.S. residential real estate market continues to demonstrate strength, and discuss our fourth quarter financial performance. We will then answer your questions before concluding today's meetings. Let me begin by reiterating the key points of our strategy as an independent company. As a standalone publicly traded company, Douglas Elliman leverages its talented team of agents and employees, as well as a comprehensive suite of real estate technology, marketing, and public relations to unleash its growth potential. The company plans to create stockholder value through the expansion of its footprint, accelerating our adoption of cutting edge prop tech solutions continued recruitment of best-in-class talent, acquisitions, acqui-hires, and operational efficiencies. With a brand name synonymous with luxury and our comprehensive suite of technology-enabled real estate services and investments, Douglas Elliman is positioned to capitalize on the highly attractive dynamics in the U.S. residential real estate market. According to CoreLogic, U.S. homeowner equity has grown 31.1% year-over-year as of Q3 2021. As we expect, this trend will continue. In fact, new and existing home sales in the U.S. are forecast to grow to approximately 7.5 million units in 2022, up from 7 million units in 2021 and 6.5 million units in 2020. The growth in our markets is further strengthened by increased mobility driven by the continued migration to low-tax states as well as COVID-related remote work flexibility, leading to increased demand for greater space and multiple homes. This strong demand, combined with low inventory, has resulted in significant price appreciation in many regions, particularly across our luxury markets. The lore of Douglas Elliman's highly coveted markets also remains strong from the growth in millennials entering the housing market who are generationally inclined to buy. These dynamics have propelled Douglas Selman to a record of $51.2 billion in gross transaction value or closed sales in 2021, up from $29.1 billion in 2020. We believe this momentum can continue for the residential real estate industry and, in particular, Douglas Selman, because of our strong presence in leading luxury markets. Factors that we believe will fuel future growth include the growing importance of millennial buyers and the return of international buyers. According to recent data from the National Association of Realtors, millennials represented 37% of purchases in 2020 and 53% of new mortgages. The National Association of Realtors also reported that the volume of international buyer purchases decreased from 74 billion in 2020 to 54.4 billion in 2021, a 27% drop meaning the significant increase in overall transaction volume occurred even without one of the traditional underpinnings of the market. We are optimistic that international buyers who are particularly attracted to our luxury markets will return to the U.S. residential real estate market in 2022 and drive increased transaction volumes. We can meet the current and predicted robust demand thanks to our Douglas Elliman agents who are among the most successful and most visible agents in the United States. We pride ourselves on our decades-long history of recruiting high-profile, best-in-class agents who are attracted to the strength of our platform and our luxury brand. Our agents are consistently ranked among the best in the business and are supplemented by our exclusive relationship with Knight Frank and its international network. This is an invaluable referral and knowledge-sharing relationship that is truly singular in the U.S. residential brokerage community and provides our agents with unprecedented global exposure to important luxury buyers and luxury markets around the world. The economics of these luxury markets are attractive and commission rates are strong. And with many of our closed sales and cash, we believe our revenues will be less impacted by rising interest rate environment than our competitors. The results in Element having a 2021 average price per transaction of $1,580,000 per home substantially higher than our leading competitors, it is important to note that our luxury brand resonates with higher average sales prices across all our markets. Our average price per transaction is $1.45 million per home outside of New York City, which is well above the national average. We believe this creates a large runway for us to continue to grow our business, not only in our existing markets, but in complementary markets as well. In addition to organic growth through recruiting in our major markets, we have significant opportunities to increase our market share in adjacent markets where the element name is well known and trusted. While New York City remains our largest market with $16.2 billion in gross transaction value or closed sales in 2021, our South Florida market continues to show strength with $14.6 billion in gross transaction value or closed sales and average selling price was approximately $2 million per home in both New York City and South Florida. We also maintained a strong market share in both New York City and South Florida. Our market share in the New York City for the quarter and year was 22%, and our market share in South Florida for the quarter and year was 20% and 21% respectively. In Florida, we are building on our strength from Miami to Palm Beach, and we are also increasing our presence on the west coast of the state. Recently, for example, We have experienced significant growth in Naples and St. Petersburg and are looking to expand on the Gulf Coast into Sarasota and Tampa. On the East Coast, we recently opened in Vero Beach and Jacksonville. The presence of our Douglas Hellman development sales and marketing platform provides us with a competitive advantage in the New York, Florida, and California markets in particular. Douglas Hellman development marketing allows us to recruit star agents while also enhancing client experience. Gross transaction value for DEDM was $3.2 billion in 2021, and our pipeline is strong. DEDM's business model is a core competency of ours, and it will continue to serve as one of our competitive advantages as we expand into new luxury markets. In particular, we are actively working to expand Douglas Ellman Development Marketing's presence in Texas. We have made a strategic decision to aggressively grow our current business in Texas. We are actively recruiting top agents and talent in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, and we believe Texas could be a major market for us in the future. Beyond our residential brokerage, Douglas Elliman is further differentiated by our ancillary services and approach to technology. We believe our differentiated approach to technology will also boost our growth. Unlike our peers, whose build-and-buy models require spending large outlays on internal resources, Douglas Ellman sources, uses, and invests in best-of-breed products and services that can be easily integrated into our technology foundation. This leading-edge technology provides us a competitive advantage, which allows us to be flexible and nimble while keeping our balance sheet asset light. Ellman's adoptions of technology and investments in early-stage disruptive prop-tech companies keep our subsidiary regenerations on the cutting edge of the industry with new solutions and services. With that backdrop, let us move on to Douglas Elliman's financial results. Douglas Elliman maintained a strong balance sheet with cash of $214.3 million at December 31st, 2021. We believe this liquidity places us in a position of strength in the market. For the three months ended December 31st, 2021, Douglas Salmon reported 334.2 million in revenues compared to 267.5 million in the 2020 period. The increase in revenues was primarily from increased commission and other brokerage income because of the strong residential real estate market and the luxury markets we serve. Net income attributed to Douglas Salmon is 20.2 million or 26 cents per diluted share for the three months ended December 31st, 2021. compared to net income of 14 million or 18 cents per diluted share in the prior year period. For the three months ended December 31st, 2021, Douglas Ullman reported adjusted EBITDA of 21.3 million compared to 16.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the three months ended December 31st, 2021, adjusted net income was 18.6 million or 24 cents per share compared to adjusted net income of $15.2 million, or $0.18 per share in the fourth quarter of 2020. For the year ended December 31st, 2021, Douglas Elliman reported $1.35 billion in revenues compared to $774 million in 2020. Net income was $98.8 million, or $1.27 per diluted share for the year ended December 31st, 2021 compared to a net loss of 46.4 million or 60 cents per diluted share in the 2020 period. For the year ended December 31st, 2021, Douglas Selma reported adjusted EBITDA of 110.7 million compared to 22.1 million in 2020. For the year ended December 31st, 2021, Our adjusted net income was $100.5 million or $1.29 per share compared to adjusted net income of $14.1 million or $0.17 per share in 2020. In summary, Douglas Elliman demonstrated strong fourth quarter and full year results in 2021, and we believe we have a strong platform for continued growth. We're excited to officially operate as a standalone company and to have access to the public markets. and we are committed to creating a sustainable long-term value for shareholders. With that, we will be happy to answer questions. Operator?

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by 2. Again, to ask a question, press star 1. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. The first question comes from Rick Wick Roy with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Hi, everyone. This is Rick Roy on for Dan Fannin at Jefferies. First, congratulations on your first investor call post-spinout. Appreciate being a part of it. And yeah, with that, just going into the non-commissioned expenses, so clearly solid numbers right off the bat, sales and marketing down and option support seemingly down to fourth quarter of last year levels. Would you characterize this as kind of a return to seasonality? Or I guess in other ways, would you call this a reasonable run rate going into 2022 or even the first quarter for that matter?

Well, we hope it would be a reasonable runway, but I will say, you know, we still do have some positions open, and they've been hard to fill. So our payroll costs probably will go up sometime in the near future. We're hoping, because that means we're able to hire the people that we feel we need to continue our growth. BK, do you have any comments?

I think one of the real stories here is the cost reductions we made between 2019 and 2021. And looking at what we call the non-activity-based costs, which are all costs except for discretionary compensation or bonuses or advertising expense, we're roughly down about $21 million since 2019. And if you subtract out acquisitions we've made, that number is closer to $26 to $27 million.

Got it. Thank you. And, um, and if I may ask a follow-up, uh, that's all right. Um, so you alluded into, uh, expanding into the Texas and South Florida markets, uh, going into 2022, is that kind of where you'd also characterize, uh, activity levels in terms of, uh, markets that you plan or is that, uh, sort of, or I guess, uh, where are you, um, where, or, uh, yeah.

We already opened in Texas, so we're just starting to build. We're hiring lots of people, lots of brokers. Revenue is doing well, and on a month-to-month basis seems to be going up pretty substantial. We do have other in mind, and as we strategize, is that we really are making a push just on the low-cost states, low-cost states as it relates to state taxes or no-cost states like Florida for no taxes. We are looking at Arizona. We're looking at Nevada. We're going to consider probably Tennessee at some point. Then we still have lots of places we could build that into the existing states we're in, but in slightly different markets like Florida is a big state. I think we can really build a much bigger business in Florida, uh, Texas also.

Understood. Um, and if I could speak one last one in here, uh, just taking a look at, uh, cash levels, uh, especially, you know, relative to the current market cap, um, do you, uh, do you all have plans for a future share repurchase in the, in, um, in the upcoming years?

We, we, we have no plan right now for any, uh, future share purchase. If we believe, based on the way the market is, that we should, then we would consider it. It's nice to have over $200 million in cash, and it's also nice not to have any debt, like some of our competitors do.

I was about to address that. We did announce in conjunction with the spin-off our plan to pay a 20-cent dividend per year and would expect that the announcement for the first one for the first quarter will be coming shortly.

Got it. Thank you for addressing all my questions.

Thank you, Mr. Roy. The next question comes from John Misoka with Lautenberg Bauman. Please proceed.

Good evening. So I guess specifically with the New York market, what kind of trends are you seeing? How close are you at this point to kind of a more normalized mix of kind of New York transactions in your kind of current markets or current kind of market spread versus what we were seeing would say pre-pandemic?

Well, let me say this, you know, pre-pandemic is really not the whole story. New York City suffered starting in around 16. It trended down 16, 17, 18, 19. Part of it was because taxes, you know, there was a mansion tax and a change in a change in transfer taxes and mortgage recording taxes. And then they floated what they call the Peter tear tax. That didn't happen. Thank God. But I think that this pickup was not just because of COVID, although COVID, sorry to say when so many people, you know, passed away from it, but it did help, you know, the marketplace, different type of living that people were looking for. But I think that people have a renewed, you know, renewed good feeling about the city. And probably a big part of that is the change in government. And there's, you know, yet to be seen yet how far that's gonna go. but I think surely a fresh face that is saying the right things, uh, was much better than we were living with before as, uh, as the mayor. Um, so I'm, you know, we're, we're pretty, we're, we're pretty, uh, bullish on New York city. And then, as I mentioned, uh, in my remarks, we're expecting the, uh, international buyers to be back. And that's always been a pretty good part of our business. So, and a lot of that was high end business. So, uh, You know, we're quite happy the way it's going in New York at this point.

I mean, I guess understanding it's a bit of a moving target because you're expanding into new markets and that's going to kind of create further diversity. But if you look at the portfolio or the kind of markets you're in as it is today, what would you kind of expect a more normalized mix of New York City transactions in terms of like a rough percentage?

You mean how much of the total business will be coming from New York?

Correct.

Well, if we did 16 billion... Yeah, I mean, if we did 16 billion out of 50, so that was 30-something percent out of 50. So, yeah, look, the other markets haven't completely matured. You know, we've been in New York. The company was started in New York in... 1911. So it's been in New York City for a very long time. So it's hard to say. But, you know, because New York could stay stable, but the percentage could go down because we expect big growth in Texas, big growth in California, and big growth in the Boston area. So I don't know how you can sort of figure the percentages or quite honestly how important it is I believe that we're going to do more business. I can't tell you exactly what percentage is going to come from, you know, go to or come from what state, but I think that right now things are strong and people are worried, you know, a lot of, you know, who isn't worried about what's going on or is worried, but how they react is buyers. So everyone was worried about interest rates going up and that's going to spook the buyers. But the fact is, what we've seen in history, that as interest rates start going up, buyers come to the market right away because they don't want to lose their opportunity. They're afraid they'll be priced out of the market. And then when you add inflation on top of that, that's an added reason for them to make a decision of buying now. So I think we're in for a few years still of a very strong market.

Okay. You mentioned the balance sheet position and cash position. How should we think about maybe deployment of that kind of dry powder and kind of balance sheet availability in terms of doing more kind of acquisitions and expansion through M&A?

Well, there's only four things we could do pretty much, right? Someone asked about stock buyback. We could do that. We can increase the dividend. We can make acquisitions. Uh, we could, uh, you know, increase our spending to, uh, to get more agents, um, where it's necessary, uh, grow the business and open new regions. So that's really the only place is to spend the money. There really isn't. Like I said, we're in an enviable enviable position of not having any debt. So it's nothing like we're around the corner. We're going to have to pay, you know, uh, our debt. We don't have any debt. And as we continue, um, if we make the type of money that we made this year and next year, we'll have a lot more than $200 million. It's pretty simple. And then we'll decide. At some point, we'll do something for the stockholders. And again, you could argue whether that, besides our regular business acquisitions or expansion, but there's always a trade-off. Like half the people think stock buyback's better. Half the people think raising dividends is better. So we'll have to deal with it when the time comes. But we're surely not going to do any of those things very quickly. We want to give ourselves at least a full year as a public company and see where we are at the end of the year.

Okay. That's very helpful. I'll hop back in the queue. Thank you very much. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Masoka. Ladies and gentlemen, those are all the questions that we have for today. Thank you for joining us on the Douglas Elliman Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. This will conclude our call. We hope you have a good evening and you may now disconnect.