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spk00: Good morning and welcome to the RE-MAX Holdings fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call and webcast. My name is Brandi and I will be facilitating the audio portion of today's call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Andy Schultz, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Schultz?
spk04: Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to RE-MAX Holdings fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings conference call. Please visit the investor relations page of REMAX.com for all earnings-related materials and to access the live webcast and the replay of the call today. If you are participating through the webcast, please note that you will need to advance the slides as we move through the presentation. Turning to slide two, our prepared remarks and answers to your questions on today's call may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include those related to agent count, franchise sales, financial measures and outlook, brand expansion, competition, technology, housing and mortgage market conditions, capital allocation, dividends, strategic and operational plans, and business models. Forward-looking statements represent management's current estimates. REMAX Holdings assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in the future. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. These are discussed in our fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results press release and other FCC filings. Also, we will refer to certain non-GAAP measures on today's call. Please see the definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures contained in our most recent quarterly financial results press release, which is available on our website. Joining me on our call today are Adam Contos, our Chief Executive Officer, Kerry Callahan, our Chief Financial Officer, Nick Bailey, REMAX Chief Customer Officer, and Ward Morrison, President of Moda Mortgage. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to REMAX Holdings CEO, Adam Contos. Adam? Thank you, Andy, and thanks to everyone for joining our call today. Looking at slide three, a surging housing market underpinned our strong fourth quarter results and provided a fitting capstone to what was an unforgettable year. Our employees are supporting our affiliates while working largely from home, and they will continue to do so until it is safe to return to the office on a larger scale, hopefully sometime later this year. I'm proud of our team and the terrific work they did in 2020. We remain encouraged by the trends we are seeing in our business. With a buoyant housing backdrop, expected contributions from our recent acquisitions, and an upward progress in our legacy business, we think we're poised for meaningful growth in 2021 and beyond. Highlights of the fourth quarter included revenue of $72.4 million, adjusted EBITDA of $23.8 million, adjusted diluted EPS of $0.47, total REMAX agent count increased up over 5% year-over-year, and finished at almost 138,000 agents. And model franchise sales finished on a high note, capping a record year. Turning to slide four. On our third quarter call, I spent some time discussing our overall M&A strategy and our exciting acquisitions of Wimlow and Gadbury Group. Since then, many people have asked us to frame up our future market opportunity. And in summary, we think it is sizable. Excluding the marketing funds, we generated just over $200 million in revenue in 2020, and the vast majority came from our REMAX brand. We think it's possible we could double that top-line figure over time from our existing opportunity set, with an incremental $200 million revenue opportunity evenly split between our mortgage and real estate business lines. Wood will provide a little more color on our mortgage opportunity in a few minutes. On the real estate side, in addition to possible acquisitions of independent regions, our drivers of organic growth include growing agent count, increasing agent productivity, taking market share, monetizing our technology domestically and globally, pricing, and much more. The acquisition of Gadbury Group also brings compelling incremental revenue opportunities. Additionally, as part of the technological transformation of RE-MAX, we have significantly invested in our data and analytics capabilities. There are exciting revenue opportunities for us in the data and analytics space, and as they come increasingly into focus, we will provide additional details as warranted. Lastly, M&A remains an important part of our growth strategy. We continue to explore intriguing complementary opportunities in and around our core business of franchising, mortgage, and real estate, which we believe would have the potential to expand our market opportunity significantly. Turning to slide five. The U.S. housing market continued to soar in January as closings grew 13.5% from a year earlier, according to the REMAX National Housing Report. Notably, while this increase was impressive, it does represent a step back from the blistering monthly sales pace, which has dominated housing since early summer. Based on the 53 Metro surveyed, January's year-over-year increase in home sales sold was more in line with the rate of sales increases we saw in the pre-COVID months of December 2019 and January 2020. On average, homes sold quickly last month with days on market averaging just 40 days, nearly three weeks less than the 59 days average from January of last year. But while the growth in sales moderated, other key metrics show the after effects of housing's 2020 record-setting second-half rebound. For example, January inventory dipped to the lowest level at any time in the 13-year history of the report. And January 2021 marked the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year inventory declines over 30%. January's supply of inventory totaled just 1.7 months and mirrored the report record set and matched three times last year. With inventory tightening, sales prices continued their unrelenting March higher. Median sales price of $285,000 was a record for the month of January and 11.8% higher than a year ago. Uncommonly low interest rates, the ascent of the millennial homebuyer and the prospect of working from anywhere are converging to shape a housing market unlike any other. Supply and affordability issues remain the greatest threats at the moment. Overall, we see the current trends in the housing market as a reason for optimism, and we remain confident that our brokers, agents, and loan originators are positioned to take full advantage of these mostly favorable conditions. With that, I'll turn it over to Nick. Thanks, Adam. Good morning, everyone. Looking at slide six, overall agent count grew at a nice clip, up more than 5% year over year. We added almost 7,000 agents worldwide during 2020, and especially impressive feat during a global pandemic. Our agent count performance outside the U.S. and Canada grew at a robust 16% during the year. We saw widespread growth globally with certain countries in Europe, South America, and Africa among the standout performers. We also added agents during the fourth quarter throughout Canada, finishing up almost 2% for the year. Again, another notable performance given our leading market share as well as the events of 2020. After a very solid third quarter, agent count in the U.S. held steady during Q4. Looking ahead, we remain focused on recruiting and retention and creating more opportunities for our affiliates. We expect the macro housing environment will remain robust in the coming year with strong demand outpacing supply. The battle for listings will stay highly competitive, and agents who are experienced, productive, and armed with seller-focused tools, such as our first app, should enjoy an edge in that regard. We believe our efforts will pay dividends in 2021, and we expect to grow our agent count, including the U.S. and Canada this year. We've made significant investments over the past few years to enhance and improve our value proposition, and we continue to invest heavily. To ensure we're delivering the tools, resources, and competitive advantages that help REMAX agents continue to outpace their competitors, we've looked at our fee structure and decided to make a small adjustment. Effective April 1st, 2021, and July 1st in New York State, the monthly continuing franchise fee in the U.S. company-owned regions will increase by $5 per agent. This investment will ensure continued expansion of the systems and services that help REMAX affiliates stand out in their market. Turning to slide seven, over the past couple of years, we've added powerful technology and talented colleagues via our acquisitions of Booge, First, and Gadbury Group alongside our Experiancer Next technology team. Our substantial organizational realignment last year to create a single unified tech team is now complete. This team of over 200 members maximizes collaboration, focuses on user experience, and operates with purpose, passion, and excellence. The goal is to harness our tremendous capabilities to deliver the best unified agent consumer experience possible. As we build out our platform, simultaneously simplify the user experience with expanding its capability set, we solicit and receive valuable feedback from our network. That constant feedback loop helps us drive adoption and keep us on track with effectively servicing the needs of our highly productive network. And we continue to see increasing adoption of our tools and technology. With almost 22,000 websites created on our Booj platform, our enhanced digital presence continues to drive business to our network of highly productive agents, which in turn contributed to a 50% year-over-year increase in leads in 2020. The first app is the best tool I've seen when it comes to helping agents identify existing contacts who are most likely to sell a home soon. Right now, with such a narrow pool of homes being listed for sale, I think the Purse app is an absolutely essential competitive tool. We've expanded our inside sales force and designed targeted marketing campaigns to help agents understand the product and its capabilities. We also believe adoption will increase as agents become more familiar with the app, and we look forward to sharing more and more of our agent success stories powered by Purse. As Adam alluded to earlier, our investments in data and analytics capabilities have been critical to the effectiveness of our robust tech offerings. Fragmented data is a fundamental industry challenge driven by rules, regulations, and the independent nature of our industry. We have standardized this data and clean data today is, in my opinion, the oxygen that powers agent success. It allows real estate agent websites to work, leads to be generated, and MLSs to be more abundantly available. Data also drives how consumers engage start to finish in the real estate process and ultimately drives more consumers to a REMAX agent. Our ability to harmonize and standardize fragmented data from across the industry improves all efficiencies within the consumer agent experience, and in the process, we control our destiny from a data and analytics standpoint. With that, I will turn it over to Ward. Thanks, Nick. Moving to slide eight, as Adam mentioned, Motto had a terrific year, our best year yet in our short history. In 2020, the Motto Network generated almost $2.5 billion in loan volume and helped 10,000 families finally realize their dreams of homeownership, effectively doubling 2019's results. We had three core areas of focus in 2020, franchise sales, unit profitability, and technology, and we achieved major milestones in each of them. We also continue to improve, innovate, and mature in virtually all facets of the business during this past year. Regarding franchise sales, we had a strong fourth quarter. In fact, it was our best quarter ever with 24 franchises sold. For the full year, we sold a record 71 franchises, up over 35% compared to 2019. Our strong performance is quite an achievement for any franchise, let alone one only in its fourth year of existence. We are making great progress in our lead generation and prospecting efforts, In addition to expanding within the REMAX network, we are selling to independent real estate companies and teams, as well as brokers and teams affiliated with other national brands. We expect to add to our momentum and have established a new annual franchise sales target, expecting to sell between 60 and 80 franchises this year. Once a franchise sale is completed, our customer success team constantly strives to improve the support process required to assist our franchisees to get licensed, open, and operational. With just over 140 open offices as of December 31, we anticipate that we should have about 200 open offices at the end of this year. But as excited as we are about Model's current momentum, it is only half of the mortgage story. We acquired Wemo last year in order to solve one of our franchisee's primary pain points, finding steady, dependable, and economic loan processing services. Model and Wemo now collectively form what you will increasingly hear us refer to as our mortgage business. And as Adam mentioned earlier, we believe this business could generate $100 million or more in annual revenue over time. We continue to believe we can open at least 1,000 model stores eventually, and perhaps many more than that, generating a $50 million-plus annual revenue opportunity. And furthermore, we believe Winglo's total available market opportunity is substantial, just as large as model's potential or even larger. This year, one of our primary areas of focus is the successful integration of Wienlo. We are currently ramping up resources to handle processing for our anticipated model loan volume. We have begun processing loans for a limited number of model franchisees and look forward to expanding that to more of the network throughout the year. The best in class Wienlo technology provides the only enterprise solution of its kind in the mortgage brokerage space. While purchased primarily to support auto-franchise deeds, Lean Low will continue to serve clients and market its products throughout the mortgage brokerage industry, serving as an additional channel of growth for REMAX Holdings. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Carrie.
spk01: Thank you, Ward. Good morning, everyone. In addition to reviewing our fourth quarter performance, I want to expand on Adam's earlier comments about our growth trajectory and then outline our Q1 and FY21 outlook. Moving to slide nine, Increasing existing home sales and motto growth drove strong organic revenue performance during the fourth quarter, with much of that revenue flowing through to the profit line. Our key leading indicators, REMAX agent count, and motto franchise sales continued to grow. Fourth quarter revenue, profit, and margins all exceeded our expectations. And our cash flow generation remained solid as we converted 70% of adjusted EBITDA into free cash flow during 2020. Total revenue was $72.4 million, an increase of approximately $4.3 million, or 6.2%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. Organic revenue rose 4%, primarily due to increased broker fees from higher existing home sales, rising home prices, and motto growth, partially offset by reduced event income due to COVID-19 restrictions and previously announced agent recruiting initiatives. Acquisitions contributed to increased overall revenue, by 2.1%, and FX was negligible. Recurring revenue streams, which consists of continuing franchise fees and annual dues, were virtually flat to the fourth quarter of 2019, and, excluding the marketing funds, accounted for 61.8% of revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared to 66.6% in the same period in 2019. Looking ahead, we are excited to be holding our annual agent conference next month. Due to the fact that the majority of agents will participate virtually, we anticipate that our Q1 revenue will be approximately $1.5 million less than our historical run rate and should be largely offset by associated cost savings. Also, for the full year 2021, we believe the runoff of legacy booze revenue should decrease both revenue and adjusted EBITDA by about $2 million this year. Looking at slide 10, selling, operating, and administrative expenses were $40.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, an increase of $5.6 million, or 15.9%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, and, excluding the marketing funds, represented 74.6% of revenue, compared to 69.2% in the prior year period. Selling, operating, and administrative expenses increased primarily due to higher equity-based compensation expenses and personnel costs, largely from acquisitions and discretionary bonuses. These increases were partially offset by cost savings measures implemented in 2020, as well as lower bad debt expense due to strong collections. Our cost savings initiative enacted last year has largely ended. The notable exception is that our travel and events related expenses are expected to be muted, at least initially, in 2021. Also, we anticipate legal expenses will run about a million dollars higher this year due to ongoing industry litigation. Moving to slide 11, we have been meaningfully reinvesting in our business for future growth over the past few years. We believe those investments will start making a positive difference in our financials beginning this year, and then even more so in 2022. As Adam mentioned earlier, we believe we are poised for meaningful growth in 2021. Even normalizing for the COVID-related fee waivers, we extended to our affiliates during the second quarter of last year. We expect to grow organically in the mid-single digits in 2021, in addition to expected top-line contributions from our Wienlo and Gadbury Group acquisitions. From a profit perspective, our business model has significant leverage. As we ramp up the top line, we expect margin expansion to resume likely next year. Also, as we mentioned last quarter, margins will be adversely impacted initially in 2021 due to our first Wienlo and Gadbury acquisitions, but that impact should lessen as the year unfolds and each acquisition gets closer to break even. Despite an estimated net investment in first Wienlo and Gadbury of between two and a half and three and a half million this year and other ongoing investments in our business, we expect to grow absolute dollars of adjusted EBITDA in 2021. We expect our new businesses from the past four years, Motto, First, Weimlo, and Gadbury Group, to individually and collectively flip from a net investment to positively impacting earnings over the next year. Alongside the expected improvement in our RE-MAX business, we would be disappointed if we didn't generate at least 10 million more in adjusted EBITDA in 2022 than we anticipate for 2021. This assumes no additional acquisitions and, of course, that the housing market remains as healthy next year as we expect it to be this year. Our business continues to generate a healthy amount of cash flow. We will remain disciplined and allocate capital to the best potential value-creating opportunities. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We plan to allocate capital to acquiring independent regions, reinvesting to drive future organic growth, exploring other strategic acquisitions and partnerships, and returning capital to shareholders. Turning to slide 12, the company's first quarter and full year 2021 outlook assumes no further currency movements, acquisitions, or divestitures. For the first quarter of 2021, we expect agent count to increase 4.5% to 5.5% over first quarter 2020, revenue in a range of $71 million to $75 million, including revenue from the marketing funds in the range of $18 to $19 million, and adjusted EBITDA in a range of $21.5 to $24.5 million. For the full year 2021, we expect agent count to increase 4% to 5% over full year 2020, revenue in a range of $300 to $310 million, including revenue from the marketing funds in the range of $71 to $74 million, and adjusted EBITDA in a range of 103 to 107 million. Now, I'll turn it back to Adam.
spk04: Thanks, Carrie. Moving to slide 13, we entered 2021 with positive momentum. Our end markets are enjoying a nice tailwind right now. We have made some targeted strategic moves to capitalize on those dynamics over the past few years, which we believe will increasingly show up in our financial results starting this year. We believe we are poised for meaningful growth in 2021 and beyond. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.
spk00: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star, then the number one. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. The first question comes from the line of Anthony Pallone with JPM Securities, LLC.
spk04: Thanks. Good morning. My first question revolves around just U.S. agent count. Can you maybe give a little more color as to just more broadly, given the strength in housing, whether you're seeing just more agents move into the market and just the general opportunity set there as you try to reinvigorate growth, I guess, into 2021 on that front? Sure. Hi, Anthony. This is Nick. Thanks for the question. When you look at total realtor count in the U.S., the National Association of Realtors just several months ago announced that they hit an all-time high in membership. So we have seen an increase of licensees coming into the market in general, and that does affect some companies. It affects us slightly, but at the same time, we are not the destination for every single agent. We focus on more of the top-producing full-time associates, so a lot of those new agents are not our primary targets. That being said, though, obviously the pool is large, and the investments that we've made in recruiting over the last year are bearing fruit, and we expect those to show good results for the upcoming year. Okay. And then this decision to increase the continuing franchise fees, can you just refresh us on where they stand today on a monthly basis? And then I guess if I'm doing the math here right, it would seem to add – maybe $4 million a year to revenue? Is that getting sort of the order of magnitude right?
spk01: Hey, good morning, Tony. It's Kiri. So, you know, with regards to the increase on average in the company-owned regions before the increase, average is about $128 per agent per month. That increase, it is going into effect on April 1st. So the impact to 2021 is actually closer to the $2 million range.
spk04: Okay. Got it. And then this last one, sticking with you, Kerry, can you just give us some sense as to run rates, stock comp, whether the fourth quarter is an indication or whether that was just outsized?
spk01: Yeah, so the fourth quarter was a little bit outsized. You know, on a go-forward basis, kind of looking in that $7 million a quarter range, a lot of that really is tied to the incremental stock comp from the two acquisitions that we did in the third quarter of 2020, where we used some equity as a part of that. So I think about $7 million per quarter run rate for 21 is a good estimate.
spk04: Okay, great. Thanks for the help.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Ryan McVaney with Zillman and Associates.
spk02: Yes, thank you. Good morning and nice job on the quarter. I'm curious on the mortgage side of things with Motto. So has there been any shift in the last year, maybe even more recently, the last six months in terms of kind of the interest list of who's showing up for you guys? And obviously very nice to see the progress with both kind of REMAX franchise owners as well as other, you know, players within kind of the brokerage space with other brands. But I guess there's a lot of discussion about the potential of just the wholesale broker channel in the mortgage market more generally and, you know, potentially getting to a point where there's, you know, some movement of mortgage professionals out of the retail channel to the wholesale broker channel, more directly to the broker side. So just curious, maybe for Ward, are you seeing that movement grow? You know, thus far, do you expect that movement? Any thoughts you could share there would be helpful. Thank you.
spk04: Yeah, Ryan, we're still very full of brokerage. You know, about 74% of our sales continue to be real estate of about. about 61 of the overall total are still remax but we're continuing to grow the the other brands the national brands whether it's you know uh kw teams or exp teams c21 sotheby's compass we pretty much have started to expand across and as soon as we get into a company or an entity for instance they just start to refer us out to their other people so we've gotten additional kw teams additional exp teams recently um what we're really you know seeing now or hope to see is that movement as the tenure goes up we tend to have more purchase money transactions in our particular mottos because we're tied to a lot of real estate companies So as the 10-year goes up and the market changes a little bit and the refines slow down, we think that's only bullish for brokerage and mottos in general that are tied to real estate companies. So I think we're going to see some good movement out of retail into brokerage this year, particularly if the 10-year continues on its trend up that we all think it might this year a little bit more, because mottos continue to emphasize that purchase money. So that's the key for particularly our network in brokerage.
spk02: That's very helpful. Thank you. And Adam and Nick on the Canadian side of things. So you called out in the in the release, you know, some nice growth in the quarter and agent count. I'm just curious, can you can you give us an update on kind of the general macro side of things within Canada and, you know, sort of what's driving that the lift that you had had this quarter?
spk04: Sure. When you look at Canada as a whole, we definitely look at it, you know, across the country and with the Toronto, greater Toronto area and the Ontario area just economically has seen just an incredible boom with no sight of slowing down. And so just That has worked in the favor of a tremendous growth in the market and the opportunity, which I think in turn has helped our growth as well. And I'll add a little bit to that, Ryan. And great question. Thank you. You know, when you look at the COVID response to or the COVID tailwind that's been given to the housing market, we do see that just as much throughout Canada as we have in the United States. you know, kind of the flight to suburbs as well as, you know, the emergence of larger home buying sectors with the, you know, the wealthy millennial things of that nature. And that has been extremely prolific in Canada as well. It's a great housing market throughout North America, I guess you could say, you know, when it comes to looking at the tailwinds and they seem to be consistent throughout the continent.
spk02: That's great. Thanks, Adam.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Vikram Malhotra with Morgan Stanley.
spk03: Thanks for the questions and a nice quarter. I just was hoping you could expand a little bit more on the future revenue opportunity you talked about through the various businesses. Maybe just if you could break it out a little bit more, talk about potential timing and just related that as the revenue grows, Can you give us a sense of how the EBITDA margin is likely to trend versus sort of the prior few years?
spk04: Hey, good morning, Vikram. Thank you. And we're excited about the future revenue opportunities and the diversification that we're building into the business model, particularly through the data technology as well as the expansion of Motto and how all of those things lend a tailwind to potential REMAX growth and opportunity, as well as the global expansion so that we can continue to infuse these different opportunities globally as they become available. So we've been... relatively understated in our excitement so that we could start building upon the data monetization opportunities. So, you know, we have started pulling back the curtain a little bit more on that and our growth of that infrastructure given, you know, the acquisitions that we've made and particularly one that we're encouraged by is the commercialization capabilities of the very experienced Dadbury group that we've acquired recently when it comes to our data and monetization skills. So with that, I'll hand it over to Carrie to dive a little bit deeper.
spk01: Yeah, thanks, Adam. So, Vikram, you know, we really tried to frame up what we think the opportunity is just with our existing assets and really looking at the business now kind of across two segments between real estate and mortgage. You know, on the mortgage side of the house, as Ward was talking about, we've got a lot of momentum with mortgage. motto. So, you know, really trying to frame this up as aspirational and over time what could be achieved. And so, you know, we've talked historically about, you know, scaling motto to be a thousand open offices. If we could do that over time and we think there is momentum to do so, that's a $50 million plus revenue opportunity. Then you layer on top of that, we know Ward previously was talking about just momentum coming into the mortgage brokerage channel. If we can capture even a portion of loans that are coming through a thousand motto office footprint, again, we think that that opportunity is, you know, as significant as it would be from our legacy motto royalty fees. And then flipping onto the real estate side of the house, for the last several years since the IPO, we've talked about allocating capital to independent regions. Over time, if those catalysts can come to fruition, albeit opportunistic, that's about a $50 million top line. revenue contribution. And then Adam was talking about other levers in terms of data monetization, looking at how we monetize our global footprint where we've had tremendous growth, continuing to leverage all of the recruiting and retention initiatives that Nick is working on. pulling on pricing, looking at just continued tailwinds from a macro perspective. That's what we're really bullish about over time as we think about our existing footprint. But then I think there's even opportunities on top of that because of the leverage in the business, the cash flow generation that we have. in terms of expanding into other adjacencies. And so that's what we're excited about. You mentioned the margin as well. And I think that that's an inherent strength to our business model. There is inherent leverage there. If we get the top line going, which we're definitely seeing some confidence in that in 21, we think the margin can follow over time.
spk04: And I'll just close up with just one kind of final bow on this whole thought, Vikram. And that's that ultimately our goal is to make the real estate agent, the franchisee, and the loan originator and loan mortgage broker. smarter and better capable of helping the consumer in this whole process. So when it comes to all of these things making each other better, we feel that that entire process works to benefit each other in this, and that's how we create a greater tailwind in that holistic growth.
spk03: Got it. That makes sense. Just going back to franchise fees, can you remind us sort of – I mean, it seems like this increase in the U.S. is after a long time. Can you remind us sort of the thinking more broadly on both franchise fees and annual dues, sort of a more – a systematic increase like you have, I think, in Canada, if I'm not wrong? And how do you think about how much to increase that number by?
spk01: Yeah, so thanks, Vikram. Good question. Right now we're really focused on the continuing franchise fees increase. We're always looking at and evaluating the value proposition, the tools and services that we're providing to the network, and we'll make decisions with respect to pricing going forward. But right now what we've committed to is the increase in the continuing franchise fees.
spk04: Yeah, and the one thing I would just add to that is it's been approximately five years since we've made an adjustment in that particular category. And given the investments that we've made and where we are, it seems to make sense on timing.
spk03: That makes sense. And then just last one, from a branding standpoint, this may be down the road, but given now you have sort of multiple boards or multiple business lines, I'm wondering sort of, Is there a view or thought, could there be a benefit by just unifying it all under just like one brand? I know it's Model Mortgage and Booj and others, but I'm just wondering, just from a branding perspective, do you envision sort of having these business lines under different brands or, you know, eventually could it just be one Remax brand?
spk04: Yeah, that's a question that we've been kicking around and analyzing very, very carefully. However, there are benefits to having multiple brands, and there are benefits to being known as the particular and very succinct focused leader in your space. So definitely considerations that we've taken a look at, but we're not necessarily willing to strip away some brands that we've been building as very strong at this point to combine them. And we want to make sure when people hear a name, they know what that name refers to. And that's, you know, brand matters. Ward, you want to add a little to that? Yeah, Vikram, I also think something like Motto, you know, gives you the example where if we would have called it Remax Mortgage, we wouldn't have been able to sell outside of our network. So by calling it Motto Mortgage, it creates an independent nature that allows us to expand across the whole real estate ecosphere and sell to other brands. So I think as we look at adding brands, it's trying to figure out is it only real estate specific? where we're going to sell within just the REMAX base versus whether we're going to sell outside. And if we're going to sell outside, we may keep branding separate so that we can still attract those people who may not be attracted to the REMAX name at the onset. So that's sort of where we're looking at.
spk03: That's a good point. Thanks so much for the time. Thanks.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William Blair.
spk05: Hi, thanks. Good morning. When you think about the 200 million top line opportunity, how much of that could come from better monetization of the agent base outside of the U.S. and Canada? Any thoughts on how you could drive better monetization there over time?
spk01: Yeah, so, I mean, I think it's really a two-pronged approach because I think if you think about overall our competitive advantages, our global footprint and the 50,000-plus agents that we have in over 110 countries and territories is absolutely a competitive advantage. You know, we think over time, you know, we could double that base, and that's an incremental $10 million just at the existing revenue per agent. But I think the true opportunity set there lies with enhanced value proposition and really looking at how we leverage our data and technology infrastructure. And that's a huge focus of ours right now, obviously starting in the U.S., a deliberate focus on Canada in the near term here in 21, but already proactively thinking about how we expand on that over time and increase that revenue per agent to that base outside of the U.S. and Canada.
spk05: Got it. That's helpful. And then within the 2021 guidance, and apologies if I missed this, any detail on how much of a drag to adjust the EBITDA you've included from the recent tech acquisitions, Wimlow, Gallery First? I know you said the drag should moderate through the year, but just any detail on the rough four-year drag you'd expect?
spk01: Yeah, so looking at the rough full-year drag, it's kind of in the $2.5 to $3.5 million range, and that's embedded in the guidance. I think the thing that's really exciting, though, and want to make sure that was captured, you know, was included in the scripted remarks, is we do think that, you know, the foundation is being laid here in 21, and you're seeing that in the top line, but we would be disappointed if, you know, that kind of collective group of acquisitions didn't contribute, you know, at least you know, call it 10 million more in earnings in 2022. So it's kind of a $3 million drag next year. And then we're expecting, you know, that we believe that we can see some nice earnings tailwind in 2022.
spk05: Great. Thank you.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Godisseau with Compass Pointe.
spk04: Hey, good morning. Maybe just a question for Nick. You talked about kind of the agent consumer experience in your script. I was wondering if you could just kind of talk a little bit more about how Booj and your technology team is really evolving that. We've had some kind of increased acquisition activity in the tech space between showing time, home snaps. So just wondering if you view any competitive implications there. Yeah. So, first off, in terms of the agent-consumer experience, that is twofold. One, that we're looking at kind of the buyer-seller experience, how they utilize our assets that are public in search and how they interact with agents, how we tie consumers to agents via the tool set. And that's part of the reason that now we've been, gosh, just about a year since launch, we've increased leads by over 50% year over year to the network partly due to how we're engaging consumers in the platform. The other piece of it as we look at pulling the platform together for a better agent experience to serve the consumer is creating essentially a single type of ecosystem. One of the biggest challenges we have in the real estate industry or an agent has is disparate systems with multiple logins that agents do their business with. So as we look to solve this, if we make the agent experience more seamless, that allows them to connect and stay tied to their database. And you can see that with the example on leads that I mentioned and also with the testimonials and some of the results that we're seeing out of our first app, which is all tied to how agents are staying connected to their consumers. This is really showing or shining a light on the fact that we have such low, low inventory and agents being connected to the AI machine learning and a single ecosystem is really driving overall efficiency for top producers. Got it. Appreciate the thoughts there. And then switching gears, maybe one for Ward. Just on the WEMLO acquisition, wondering what work there is to do on the integration side and how quickly do you think the motto is model franchises can ramp up on the WEMLO platform? Yeah, I think they can ramp up pretty quickly. One is licensure. We have to make sure we're licensed in all the states that the models are in. So trying to get up in all 38 states that model is currently up and then getting some level of compliance around disclosures in those states as well. Fairly simple process, so it's really just taking it. We're looking at it. We've ranked all the states that motto are in, which ones we have the most mottos, the easiest mottos, the easiest states. We've already ranked all that and started making calls and getting those particular mottos up and running. You know, I think our intent moving forward will be any new motto we probably will put onto the WEMO platform quicker than even existing. You know, as we sell, they won't know any difference, so we can get them using that platform fairly quickly. But then the existing mottos, I think we can roll out during the course of this year and have the opportunity for any motto in any state that we're licensed in ready to go. Remember, I think the other thing is that WEMO is going to sell outside of motto. And, you know, the mortgage broker channel probably did, you know, on average, on an average year, they do about 1.2 million loans within the broker channel. You know, our total addressable market, if we could just pick up, you know, 5% of that, that's the kind of number that Kerry was talking about. You know, we're talking about $50 million at, you know, $800, $900 a file. So... The upside is very, very possible there, and that's what we're excited about, not only mottos, but, you know, outside the industry as well. Because we think the technology that we purchased through the acquisition is outstanding when it comes to processing and can be manipulated to be more like a loan brokering system in the future as well. Great. Thanks.
spk00: Your next question comes from the line of Tommy McJoint with KBW. Thank you.
spk06: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. So just to clarify, did the $10 million change from 21 to 22, the $3 million drag to a $7 million contribution, did that include Motto, or is that just more kind of the other tech-enabled solutions?
spk01: Yeah, so I guess a couple things to keep in mind there, right? If you look at the – what we were really saying with that $10 million is kind of if you look at the point estimate for the earnings guidance this year, as you move ahead to 2022, we'd be disappointed if that – earnings didn't grow by 10 million dollars so just wanted to make sure to point that out and clarify it um and yeah look we are looking we are we did include um you know motto motto in that basket of uh of companies as well just because it's historically been a net investment and so we're kind of just packaging everything together um because we're excited that we think that the the net investments across all of those businesses this year are going to turn in 2022.
spk06: Okay, got it. Thanks. And then, as we kind of think about those businesses, do you guys have like a planned or targeted kind of long term organic growth rate for those businesses and not looking at, you know, model or rematch, but looking at these kind of these new solutions that you've acquired?
spk01: Yeah, so we haven't really broken it out that way, right? We're really looking at what initiatives and what levers can we pull to just drive overall top line organic growth. You know, we are expecting for 2021, even excluding the fee waivers that were granted in 2020, you know, kind of that mid single digit range of organic growth. And I think as we're starting to see momentum here on the top line, it would really look at it more in aggregate.
spk06: Okay.
spk00: Makes sense. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you, Operator, and thank you to everyone joining the call today. That concludes today's session. Have a great weekend.
spk00: This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
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