Douglas Elliman Inc.

Welcome to Douglas Elliman Inc's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. An archived version of the webcast will be available on the investor relations section of the company's website, located at investors.elliman.com for one year. 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. Before the call begins, I would like to read a Safe Harbor Statement. The 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 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 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 discuss trends in residential real estate, Douglas Elliman's financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30th, 2022, and performance in our luxury markets. We will then provide closing comments and open the call for questions. I would like to begin by discussing the current operating environment for residential real estate and why we believe Douglas Hellman is well positioned despite the challenging market. As we discussed in the second quarter earnings call beginning in June, we saw a decline in commissions from existing home sales and this trend continues to date. We believe this decline has been caused by a limited supply of new inventory significant increases in mortgage interest rates and volatility in the financial markets. As our industry enters a down cycle, Douglas Hellerman is positioned to take advantage of significant opportunities due to our key strengths, which provide competitive advantages and include a global network of best in class agents and the outstanding relationship we have with them. We have added 336 net agents in 2022. In addition to successfully recruiting agents, we are very proud of our 88% agent retention rate. Each year, we provide opportunities to bring Element agents together so they may establish referral relationships that help to retain important transactional business within Douglas Element. One reason agents join and remain on the Element team is our world-class development marketing business, which has a hybrid platform that distinguishes us from our competitors. The platform combines our leading agents with an experienced team of 80 employees in development marketing, to represent the most exclusive new developments in the United States. And because our approach encourages our agents with expertise in a luxury home resale business to market new developments, the development marketing business often serves as a pipeline for future resale transactions for our agents. Our second key strength is the Douglas Elliman brand. Backed by a 111-year reputation, the brand represents the finest in luxury real estate across the key markets. most of which are less sensitive to mortgage interest rates. Our key luxury markets are complementary with similar home purchases. We continue to expand into markets with similar characteristics. Having recently expanded to Las Vegas, Nantucket, and New Canaan, Connecticut, we have also expanded in existing markets with new offices opening in Newport Beach, California, and Basalt, Colorado. Third, our distinct approach to technology provides our agents with state-of-the-art applications designed to increase their productivity and business. Many of these innovative applications have been identified by our New Valley Ventures PropTech investment subsidiary. Our relationship with these cutting edge transformative companies as an investor and client enables us to discover new innovations that benefit our agents at a low operating cost. Our agents have embraced these enhancements and technology is a critical component in recruiting agents from competitors. And of course, our final key strength is our financial profile. We have a long history of profitability and current liquidity of approximately $193 million of cash at September 30th, 2022, and no debt. This power provides us with opportunities to increase our core brokerage business, as well as scale our overhead expenses by entering new markets. I would like to address the listing inventory shortage, which continues to be a key characteristic of the housing market where we are active. The sudden increase in borrowing costs in 2022 has restrained potential supply from entering the housing market as homeowners remain reluctant to part with a mortgage rate obtained through purchase or refinance over the past several years. Therefore, the unusual low listing inventory levels, particularly in the luxury sector, have restrained sales potential, keeping a firm base in place for pricing. As a result, we have seen and are continuing to see luxury listing inventory at lower levels or entering the market at lower levels than before the pandemic ever began. However, we believe the tight supply will gradually ease as time passes and consumers adjust to higher interest rates, and sellers, when forced to sell, will adjust prices accordingly. Importantly, in residential real estate, luxury markets are usually the last markets to enter a down cycle and the first markets to emerge when the cycle ends. So we see a tremendous opportunity for growth in all luxury markets when market uncertainty subsides. Now turning to Douglas Selman's financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30th, 2022. Beginning with our financial results for the three months ended September 30th, 2022. The three months ended September 30th, 2022. Douglas Selman reported 272.6 million in revenues compared to 354.2 million in the third quarter of 2021. Net loss attributed to Douglas Sumlin for the three months ended September 30th, 2022 was 4 million or 5 cents per diluted chair compared to net income of 25.2 million or 32 cents per diluted chair in the third quarter of 2021. For the three months ended September 30th, 2022 adjusted EBITDA attributed to Douglas Sumlin was 124,000 compared to 27.8 million in the third quarter of 2021. Douglas Hellman began operating as a standalone public company in 2022, following its spinoff from Vector Group. Expenses incurred by our public company operations are reported in the corporate and other segment, and the operations of our brokerage businesses are reported in our real estate brokerage segment. Therefore, for comparison purposes, our real estate brokerage segment reported operating income of $1.5 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2022. compared to $25.5 million in the third quarter of 2021. Adjusted EBITDA attributed to our real estate brokerage segment were $5.1 million for the three months ended September 30, 2022, compared to $27.8 million in the third quarter of 2021. For the three months ended September 30, 2022, adjusted net loss attributed to Douglas Edelman was $4.0 million, or $0.05 per share, compared to adjusted net income of $24.9 million, or 32 cents per share in the third quarter of 2021. Moving now to Douglas Edelman's financial results for the nine months ended September 30th, 2022. For the nine months ended September 30th, 2022, Douglas Edelman reported 945.8 million in revenues compared to 1 billion in the 2021 period. Net income attributed to Douglas Edelman for the nine months ended September 30th, 2022, was $12.8 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, compared to net income of $78.7 million, or $1.01 per diluted share, in the 2021 period. For the nine months ended September 30, 2022, adjusted EBITDA attributed to Doug Assignment was $32.1 million, compared to $89.4 million in the 2021 period. For comparison purposes, our real estate brokerage segment reported operating income of $37.6 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2022, compared to $82.9 million for the 2021 period. Adjusted EBITDA attributed to our real estate brokerage segment were $47.2 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2022, compared to $89.4 million for the 2021 period. For the nine months ended September 30th, 2022 adjusted net income attributed to Douglas Elliman was 12.2 million or 15 cents per share compared to 81.9 million or a dollar five cents per share in the 2021 period. Douglas Elliman also maintained a strong balance sheet with cash of approximately 193 million at September 30th, 2022. In summary, Douglas Elliman has shown enduring performance in 2022, despite a challenging market and we believe our differentiated platform and approach position us for continued long-term growth. Our proven management team has a successful history of navigating many economic cycles and applying financial discipline that balances the importance of maintaining revenue while also judiciously analyzing operating expenses to create long-term stockholder value. During the great financial crisis of 2008, our business was concentrated in the New York metropolitan area, and by 2010, revenues had returned to 2008 levels. Further, by 2010, net income increased to a then record. These examples demonstrate both the power and tenacity of our agents at a Douglas Ullman brand name and luxury markets, as well as the decades of experience this management team has in creating opportunities that appropriately reflect the current economic environment. 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 third quarter, we were pleased to pay another 5 cent per share dividend to our stockholders. It is our expectation that the dividend will serve as a key component of our capital allocation going forward. With that, we will be happy to answer questions. Operator?

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from a line of Daniel Finn and from Jeffries. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to just follow up and and understand specifically maybe what you are doing differently in this type of backdrop. Clearly, as you said, the macro rates to kind of inventory are all kind of working against kind of what might be a more normalized activity and revenue environment. So as a management team, in terms of how you're thinking about managing the business, you said, You kind of gave some general terms, but I was hoping you'd get a little more specific in terms of what you guys are actually doing differently today and thinking about even into next year versus, say, you know, six months ago.

We have been going to process to evaluate costs related to leases, such as expenses related to travel, non-agent facing administrative support and special events. The support and services we provide to our agents distinguishes us from our competitors. We do not intend to reduce anything that's agent-facing. That we want to leave alone because that's one of the reasons we are bringing in new agents and agents are staying with us.

Okay. And so you mentioned a couple new markets and expanding. Is that, I guess you mentioned Las Vegas, Nantucket, New Canaan. Are those new here in kind of third quarter and as you think about prospectively, we should still kind of continue to think about more markets and kind of the historical level of growth maybe that you've been putting forth in recent periods?

Yeah, we're looking at those new markets. And basically, we're opening in markets in a slightly different way than those that just go out and buy other companies. We generally try to find a few good brokers in those markets and bring them in with us and rent, in many cases, temporary space or small space to get started. We do not spend a lot of money in opening or buying offices. We really never have. We bought a company once in California. That was probably it. Then we made some very small purchases, money in the hundreds of thousands. just to get some people to come over to us. So we're really not big spenders as it relates to opening new businesses and new markets. We're not going to just go there, hire space or buy another company and hope that it works. So we're very careful in opening new offices. So we're going to continue if we find the right situation and the right people.

Understood. And as you think about the inventory challenges, um for the industry within the markets where you have you know strong market share is there any differences um or some a little bit better for versus new york or just just trying to get a sense of i know it's kind of those are broad trends of higher rates and everything that's happening you know across uh across the uh the u.s but are you just hoping a little more delineation between the markets

yeah i i mean you know when when you look at new york new york is actually performing pretty well compared to some of the other markets but then again if you look back to last year you know everyone likes to compare to 2021 and 2021 was something that i don't think anyone really understands how it happened and what happened so quickly and you know to make comparisons compared to 2021 is really, you know, to me doesn't seem to make much sense because the real fact is who says that 2021 is the base year, you know, yet 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 to look at also. And we are still, I believe better than we were. 2019 was the last, the last year before the pandemic. So I think, you know, we're, we're, we're in pretty good shape. And I think that the luxury markets generally hold up pretty good. As we're talking about it now, it's just a matter of the inventory. We still see lots of buyers at that level, but there's very little inventory because the price has moved up a lot. People are just holding on from last year. So, but that's going to soften at some point.

Okay. And then just lastly, if you could provide an update on kind of the new development, you know, marketing and, you know, how that, what kind of prospects that's that shows today, or if that's also, you know, in, I would assume also showing some signs of slowdown, but, um, any update around that would be helpful.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, there is not a lot of new development in New York because nothing started during the pandemic. So we do have projects that, you know, were left over from before. And if you knew projects coming up, but the, uh, the most robust new development market for us is that is Florida. where we have a very big schedule of new projects coming on the market over the next 18 months in the billions.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, that next 18 months, is that more back half the next year that we should start seeing it come on? No, no, no.

No, they're starting now. They're starting now. We've opened a couple, you know, in the last few months, projects. Usually in Florida, you're not going to open them during the summer. So starting a couple months ago, we've opened a couple. And we're going to be opening more. Probably every month, we're going to have things opening in Florida.

Great. Thank you for taking all my questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, those are all the questions that we have for today. Thank you for joining us on Douglas Elliman's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This will conclude our call. We hope you have a good day and you may now disconnect.