FirstService - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the FirstService Corporation first quarter investors conference call. Today's call is being recorded. Legal counsel requires us to advise that the discussion scheduled to take place today may contain forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements contemplated in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's annual information form, as filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and in the company's annual report on Form 40-F, as filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Today is Wednesday, April 26th, 2023. I would like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Scott Patterson. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Thank you, Shannon. Good morning, welcome everyone to our Q1 conference call. Thank you for joining. As usual, Jeremy Rakusin is on the line with me today, and together we will walk you through the results we released this morning, results that reflect continued very strong growth in both divisions. Total revenues for the quarter were up 22% over the prior year, with organic revenue growth at 17%. Again, this quarter boosted by particularly strong growth in our Brands division. EBITDA was up 32%, reflecting a margin of 8.1%, a 60 basis point increase over last year's Q1, primarily resulting from operating leverage in Brands. Earnings per share were up 16%. We're very pleased with our performance to start the year and confident that it sets us up for a strong 2023.

I'll summarize the results for each division and then pass it over to Jeremy to provide more financial detail. At FirstService Residential, revenues were up 13% with organic growth at a very strong 11%. The organic growth reflects net new contract wins and increases in labor and services provided to existing accounts. We entered this year with momentum off the back of a strong sales in the fourth quarter and solid client retention. Our growth was broad-based across North America, with particularly strong results in the Southeast and Texas, driven by wins in our high-rise and lifestyle verticals. Speaking of high-rise, at the end of March, we were very pleased to close on the acquisition of Crossbridge Condominium Services, the largest condo management company in the Greater Toronto market. Together, we are now the clear leader in the fastest-growing high-rise condo market in North America.

Sandro Zuliani and Tracy Gregory have led Crossbridge for many years, and we are delighted that they are partnering with us and will continue to lead day-to-day operations. Looking forward to Q2 and the balance of the year, we expect to show similar low double-digit top line growth for FirstService Residential, with organic growth likely settling in at a high single-digit level. Moving on to FirstService Brands, revenues for the quarter were up 30%, with organic growth at 23%, driven by very strong results at our restoration brands and Century Fire. Our restoration brands, Paul Davis and First Onsite, together recorded revenues that were up about 40% over the prior year, with almost three-quarters of the growth coming organically. We generated $75 million-$85 million from named storms during the quarter, including Hurricanes Fiona and Ian and Winter Storm Elliott.

Sequentially, it's a similar level to the revenues generated in Q4 and significantly higher than storm-related revenues in Q1 of last year. Winter Storm Elliott impacted a very wide geography. It's difficult to nail down revenues directly relating to the event, which is why we have the range this quarter of storm-related revenue. During the quarter, we were excited to expand our Paul Davis company-owned platform with the acquisition of one of our largest franchises with operations in Houston, Raleigh, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. We're partnering with Bob Hillier across these three major markets, and together we have ambitious growth plans. The Paul Davis brand has significant opportunity in these markets. Looking forward in restoration, we expect another strong quarter upcoming. Our backlog remains solid. It's up significantly over prior year levels, which will lead to strong year-over-year growth in Q2.

Including the impact of recent acquisitions, we expect to show growth in Q2 of about 40% relative to a weak quarter for us in 2022 that was light on storm-related revenue. The back half of this year is difficult to forecast at this point. We expect to have some Hurricane Ian-related backlog that carries into Q3, but it is too early to quantify. In general, activity levels are strong for our restoration brands, and we feel very good about our market penetration and positioning relative to our competition. Moving now to Century Fire. We had another very strong quarter with organic revenue growth in and around 20%. I said in my prepared comments at year-end that Century has momentum across all its service lines, and that's what we saw during the quarter.

Alarm and sprinkler installation, inspections and repairs, and national accounts all up organically by double-digit %. The backlog at Century is stable, bid activity remains solid, and we expect continued strong results over the balance of the year, albeit against tougher comps. We expect double-digit organic growth, not at the same elevated level as the last two quarters. Now onto our home service brands, which as a group, were up close to 10% over the prior year, with organic growth accounting for about two-thirds of the lift. We're pleased with this performance in an increasingly uncertain environment. Leads are down at our home service brands as homeowners pare back or delay projects due to higher interest rates and the threat of a recession. Our teams remain confident that we will continue to drive growth this year.

I said it before, the markets are huge, and the work is there, even in a flat to down home improvement environment. Let me now call on Jeremy to review our results in detail.

Jeremy Rakusin (CFO)

Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. I'll start by summarizing our first quarter results on a consolidated basis, which in broad-based terms, largely resembled our prior Q4 reporting period. The common theme being very strong organic growth across the board, with the incremental revenue performance driving margin improvement and superior operating earnings growth. For the quarter, we reported revenues of $1.02 billion, a 22% increase over the $835 million for Q1 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was $82.1 million, up 32% versus the prior year's $62.3 million. This yielded an 8.1% margin for the quarter compared to a margin of 7.5% in the prior year quarter. Our Adjusted EPS was $0.85, up over the $0.73 per share in the prior year.

We delivered this strong 16% year-over-year earnings per share growth even in the face of higher interest costs, which were more than double versus Q1 2022. Our adjustments to operating earnings and GAAP EPS arriving at adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS respectively, are consistent with our approach in prior periods. I'll now summarize the segment results for our two divisions. FirstService Residential generated revenues of $446 million, up 13% over last year's first quarter, while EBITDA was $32 million, a 5% increase over the prior year. The EBITDA margin for the division came in at 7.2%, down 50 basis points versus the 7.7% margin last year.

The margin was impacted by a higher mix of low margin, labor-driven services which grew significantly as we both won new contracts and increased the penetration of existing accounts. During the seasonal trust Q1 period for a portion of our amenity management offering, this ramp-up of labor without associated revenue accentuated the margin impact. For the coming second quarter, we expect our residential margin to be roughly in line or mildly lower than the prior year period. Shifting to our FirstService Brands division, we reported revenues of $573 million during the first quarter, up 30% over last year's first quarter. EBITDA came in at $54.8 million, a 52% increase versus the prior year quarter. The division margin increased to 9.6%, up 140 basis points versus last year's 8.2% level.

On our last earnings call, we had forecasted the margin improvement driven primarily by our restoration operations, which capitalized on weather-related storm activity during the current quarter compared against the mild weather patterns last year. For upcoming Q2, we are anticipating Brands margin improvement on the back of a similar sequential contribution from our restoration operations as the current quarter. Turning to our consolidated cash flow, we generated $63 million of cash flow from operations before working capital changes, up 24% over last year's first quarter. Working capital investments absorbed this operating cash flow, as is relatively typical during our seasonal trough Q1, when some of our businesses ramp up operations for their balance of year peak cash flow periods. These working capital requirements also included a significant increase in accounts receivable at our restoration operations due to the storm-driven activity over the past couple of quarters.

This AR increase, in fact, reflected a more than $70 million swing versus Q1 2022, which lacked any meaningful weather activity.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Capital expenditures during the quarter were just over $20 million, up modestly year-over-year. We maintain our CapEx guidance for the year of roughly $100 million and $80 million on a normalized basis, excluding one-time office moves described in our prior Q4 call. During the quarter, we deployed approximately $80 million of capital towards three tuck-under acquisitions, which were a little larger than our typical size tuck-ins. We continue to be active in cultivating our deal pipeline as we look to be assertive in the current environment. Our balance sheet. With the cash flow commentary I just provided, we closed the quarter with net debt of just over $700 million, resulting in leverage as measured by net debt to trailing twelve months EBITDA at 1.8x.

Liquidity, including our cash and undrawn bank revolver balance, is approximately $380 million. Our leverage is conservative and liquidity is ample to achieve our growth targets. Looking forward, our outlook for the full year is relatively consistent with the high-level indicators I provided with our 2022 year-end results in February. We see the previous 10% annual revenue growth target ticking up to the low teens percentage range for three reasons. One, strong Q1 performance. Two, restoration backlog conversion driving incremental revenue in Q2. Three, recent tuck-under acquisition contribution. We are maintaining our view that consolidated margins will be relatively in line or possibly slightly higher versus prior year. That concludes our prepared comments. Shannon, you can now open up the call to questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To exit the question queue, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Michael Doumet with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning, guys. Very impressive quarter. Nice to see the organic growth. First question on FSR. You know, I appreciate raising prices in residential is always a challenge. You know, given the lower margins, I'm assuming in part due to the, you spoke about the mix, but also the lower retail activity. I wonder if the thinking, you know, with you and maybe some of your peers here, is that prices need to continue to trend higher to offset some of these pressures and build back towards historical margins. Maybe to expand on that, you know, are you seeing any increase in churn? If not, you know, can we assume that the 2%-3% can continue for, you know, several quarters potentially?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Yeah, I think, Michael, we're probably, you know, we continue to make some progress. I think our 11% organic growth, probably, 3% of it is price. We will make our way back to our historical margins. In this business, we can't recoup our cost increases immediately. The competitive environment really, I think prevents that. So we're in a, you know, we're always in a mode of balancing margin with organic growth. I think that will continue. We're confident that our margins will make their way back to historical levels. Don't forget that transfer and disclosure income, which is a high margin ancillary, is still well below historical levels.

We can't increase prices on core management or other services to recoup T&D because again, that will settle in at its historical average as well.

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

No, I think that's really helpful. Thanks for the color. The second question, I think you get asked, a version of this question at every conference call, so I'm keeping with the tradition. Just on home improvement, you know, if I look back through 2019, it looks like the cumulative growth, you know, 2022, 2021 particular, was about 50%. You know, the rates of growing are slowing and obviously there are concerns. I guess just to get a better sense for the sustainability, of the last two years, any way you can break down price and market share just to give us a sense for, you know, how much those contributed to that growth?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Well, in that business, we have been able to pass along cost increases. You know, the last couple of years have been very strong organic growth years, 20% plus. We were probably close to half of that, maybe high single digit in price. In terms of sustaining growth in this market, you know, the thesis and the strategy is that we have leadership positions but very modest share. These markets are huge, and there is an opportunity for us to grow even in a down environment. That's the way, that's certainly the belief system within our teams, and that's the situation we're in now. As I said in my prepared comments, our teams are very confident we'll grow this year.

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Maybe just as a follow-up, you know, if I am to presume that promotional activity is picking up, any implications for margins?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Did you say promotion activity?

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

Promotional activity.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Yeah

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

Either increased marketing or promotional.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Yeah. No, that's actually, that's actually very true. You know, headwinds are stronger in this business than they were at year-end, and definitely seeing consumers defer decisions and cut back on job size. For us, we see it as an opportunity to take share, take more share, we are investing in marketing and promotion. That will temper any operating leverage that we might have otherwise seen with increased revenues. It also, you know, we were talking about price increases a minute ago. It also sort of changes that dynamic too. We'll probably see, you know, stable pricing this year, if not a bit of discounting.

Michael Doumet (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks a lot, Scott.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daryl Young with TD Securities. Your line is now open.

Daryl Young (Director Institutional Equity Research)

Hey, good morning, guys, and congrats on the good results. Just following up on the residential property management side. If you strip out that 3% price growth, you're still delivering huge market share wins and volume growth. Is there anything that's changed in the market that's allowing you to perform so strongly? I'm just wondering if maybe there's an increase in HOA outsourcing or if there's something following the pandemic where boards are more inclined to go with professional services or any color you can give there 'cause it's very strong.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

No, I don't think anything fundamental, like that, Daryl. I mean, you know, we had a very strong sales quarter in Q4 and solid retention, which gave us some momentum coming into Q1, which certainly helped, and, you know, we will certainly focus on continuing to drive that balance between wins and losses. The other modest boost we had in the quarter was increased labor and services at existing large communities. In some regions, in our south region in particular, we have cost plus contracts that specify a certain number of employees on site. We have been challenged through the pandemic over the last few years to fill all of these contracted positions due to labor shortages. In the last year, certainly relative to Q1, we have significantly reduced our open positions.

In a cost plus environment, that drives revenues. That's we'll see that over the next few quarters, as well, some of that, but it's not, something that we'll see ongoing.

Daryl Young (Director Institutional Equity Research)

Got it. Okay. Then just with respect to the investments being made in the restoration platform, and the spend that's ongoing there, can you give us any updates on how far along you are? I know you've sort of said it's gonna continue across this year, but are there any benchmarks or indications you can give us on when that drag may subside?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Jeremy, you wanna grab that?

Jeremy Rakusin (CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Scott. Yeah, Daryl, one of the major initiatives is onboarding our branches onto our, you know, operating platform that we built out. It's largely technology driven, and I'd say we're approaching, you know, the halfway mark on that. We've got over 100 branches that we need to, you know, get onto the single platform. I've said before, you know, we're gonna be into 2024 before we're complete with that, and then there'll obviously be additional small modules on the edges that we'll be, you know, continuing to optimize. It's into 2024 and then we should be, largely, you know, done with the major wave of these investments.

Daryl Young (Director Institutional Equity Research)

Got it. Okay. I'll jump back in the queue. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Stephen MacLeod (Managing Director, Equity Research)

Oh, great. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Just wanted to follow up on the residential business. I know you gave a little bit of color around, you know, organic growth was quite strong, but just curious if you can give a... You know, are a lot of those gains coming from market share gains? If so, you know, is it just the natural attrition that happens in the market, or is there something else going on where you're being more competitive and driving, you know, that above average organic growth rates?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

You know, we continue to have success in the high rise and large lifestyle communities where we have scale and expertise and we're seen as experts. These are large communities, often with 100+ people on site. These are staff members that need to be recruited, onboarded, trained, managed, and it's complex. They also require, you know, a broad service offering, food and beverage, amenity management, event planning, and so on. Our expertise in this area is well known and it's less competitive for us. We do have certainly a greater win rate when we have opportunities in front of us like this. It's a sweet spot for us and a focus of ours. I think it's primarily those verticals, Stephen.

Stephen MacLeod (Managing Director, Equity Research)

I see. Okay. That's interesting. Would you characterize the runway for those incremental, contract gains in that in those verticals, you know, high rise, large lifestyle communities? Is that a large addressable market or is that sort of more of a niche, segment of the market?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

No, it's large. It's large and it's, this is not new for us. I mean, this is, you know, many years this has been a, certainly a component, a significant component of our growth. You know, I think the 11%, this boost I described from filling open positions, you know, and price, you know, we're not far off our historical rate, you know, when you take those into account.

Stephen MacLeod (Managing Director, Equity Research)

Okay. I see. That's helpful. Thanks, Scott. Just on the brands business, Jeremy, you talked a little bit about the margin expectation for Q2. Just curious, would you expect or maybe too soon to say, would you expect to see a similar type of margin gain in Q2? Secondly, I guess on the back of what was a strong Q1 margin and what's expected to be ongoing margin strength in Q2, you know, do you feel like you're well positioned to drive margin growth in the brands business on a full year basis?

Jeremy Rakusin (CFO)

Well, for Q2, for sure. I don't know if it'll match 140 basis points, but we'll have meaningful margin improvement in Q2, again, largely due to what we see as a similar contribution from restoration as we got this Q1. Frankly, you know, Q1 mirrored Q4. Three pretty similar quarters of restoration, incremental revenue from the weather-driven activity and day-to-day wins as well. That's gonna drive consolidated margin improvement. For the back half, I think we gotta be cautious. We need to see, you know, it's not just about restoration, it's the other businesses as well. Restoration in particular, really dependent on whether we see weather, you know, in the latter half of this year.

You know, Q3 will be, if we're comping against last year, there wasn't much to speak of. You know, that could be apples to apples if we don't get weather. You know, Q4, if we're looking at further, you know, we had a strong Q4 in 2022, it really will be dependent on what weather does in that business. All the other businesses are performing very well on the margin front.

Stephen MacLeod (Managing Director, Equity Research)

Okay, great. That's it for me. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Stephen Sheldon (Research Analyst, Technology, Media, and Communications)

Hey, good morning. Congrats on the results. First question here on Century Fire. I know there are some concerns about construction activity slowing here given the macro challenges. Curious how you're thinking about the risk of slowing construction activity weighing on the growth trajectory of the fire business over the next few years, just given that new construction is at least one factor supporting growth there.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Certainly, Stephen, we're keeping an eye out on our bid activity and backlog. You know, our backlog's in a position that gives us visibility really for the balance of the year, and we feel comfortable with the balance of the year. As you suggest, certainly, as I said, headwinds in the home improvement market and often residential is a precursor to commercial. We're very cognizant of that. I would say in this last quarter, you know, service in particular led the way for us in terms of growth, so we feel very good about that. We continue to focus on that balance between new construction and service repair and national accounts. It's a fair point.

Stephen Sheldon (Research Analyst, Technology, Media, and Communications)

Got it. This is a question I've asked before in restoration, but how do you think about the strategic benefit of having scale on both the residential and commercial side of restoration? Specifically, has that benefit changed at all or become even more important, especially in times like this where there's a lot of work and storm-related work and where you can maybe, you know, better or more dynamically allocate labor resources? Just any updated thoughts on that?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Scale in commercial and residential independent of each other is very important as you know, our national commercial occupiers, owners, managers look to consolidate their vendors. So it matters. Having a branch network matters and certainly in residential it matters. Paul Davis, with 330 locations, is positioned well with national insurance carriers. Together, we're not necessarily collaborating in terms of workforces, but there is lots of referral work back and forth, and there are joint efforts in terms of presenting and positioning ourselves with insurance companies to be the residential and commercial solution. we won a couple accounts together, and so that's really the big opportunity, referrals and working together with insurance companies.

Stephen Sheldon (Research Analyst, Technology, Media, and Communications)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Frederic Bastien (Managing Director, Head of Industrial Research)

Good morning, guys.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Good morning.

Frederic Bastien (Managing Director, Head of Industrial Research)

Morning. You made your 2 largest deals in the past 5, 6 years or so, when credit tightened and private equity paused. We're certainly seeing this kind of dynamic currently. In light of this, can you please tell us how, on a level of maybe 0 to 10 or 1 to 10, how excited you are about the pipeline of M&A opportunities, whether, you know, that's large deals or more tuck-in opportunities?

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Well, the pipeline's solid, Frederic. I don't wanna throw water on your, you know, your excitement, but, you know, we have a, we have a number of tuck under transactions in process, but they're, they are our typical type of tuck under deals, small family-owned businesses. You know, we're very pleased with the deals we've announced this year at Paul Davis and FirstService Residential. Our activity levels are balanced, but certainly, nothing significant in the works. You know, as Jeremy said in his prepared comments, we have a conservative balance sheet. We have a significant amount of liquidity available to us. Like you, we believe that this is an opportune environment for us and, you know, we're ready for an opportunity if we have a shot at it.

Frederic Bastien (Managing Director, Head of Industrial Research)

Thanks, Scott. That's all I have. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Scott Patterson for closing remarks.

Scott Patterson (CEO)

Thank you, Shannon. Thank you everyone for joining this morning. We look forward to our Q2 call. Have a great day.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the FirstService Corporation first quarter investors conference call. Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.