Realogy Holdings Corp., the largest full-service residential real estate services company in the United States, recently reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2019.
“In the second quarter of 2019, we delivered substantial profitability and progress on our strategy,” says Ryan Schneider, Realogy’s chief executive officer and president. “In the quarter, we continued to enhance our value proposition with new products, new partnerships and new technology and data offerings, all designed to drive future top and bottom-line growth for Realogy.”
“The solid financial performance we delivered in the second quarter was driven by improving home-sale transaction volume, moderating agent commission splits and strong cost management,” says Charlotte Simonelli, Realogy’s executive vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer. “We continue to believe we will see sequential improvement with a return to positive transaction volume growth in the third and fourth quarters and are committed to using our strong free cash flow to reduce our debt and to invest in our business.”
Second Quarter 2019 Highlights
- Generated Operating EBITDA of $245 million
- Delivered net income of $69 million and Adjusted net income of $95 million
- Tracking to achieve $70 million of realized cost savings with 60% of actions already completed toward this target. Through Q2 2019, $22 million of the $70 million in cost savings identified for 2019 have been realized through the income statement.
- Reduced net corporate debt by $113 million from March 31, 2019
- Increased agent engagement with Social Ad Engine, the marketing product we launched with Facebook/Instagram in the first quarter of 2019. Thousands of marketing campaigns have already delivered over 85,000 leads for our agents.
- Expanded Listing Concierge to about 60% of the NRT footprint with agents continuing to achieve higher commission rates from home sellers compared to agents who do not use the product
- Continued moderation in commission split pressure, up only 21 basis points year-over-year
- Grew the NRT agent base approximately 2% to 51,000 in the second quarter of 2019
Looking Ahead
Based on what the company knows today and subject to macro uncertainty, we forecast positive transaction volume growth in the third quarter with sequential improvement in the fourth quarter and expect Operating EBITDA in the range of $590 to $610 million for full year 2019.
Balance Sheet and Capital Allocation
The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $270 million. Total corporate debt, including the short-term portion, net of cash and cash equivalents (net corporate debt), totaled $3.5 billion at June 30, 2019. The Company’s Net Debt Leverage Ratio was 5.3 times at June 30, 2019. The Net Debt Leverage Ratio is net corporate debt divided by EBITDA, as defined by the Senior Secured Credit Facility, for the four-quarter period ended June 30, 2019.
The Company expects to prioritize investing in its business and reducing leverage over other potential uses of cash until it is able to reduce its Consolidated Leverage Ratio (as defined under the indenture governing the Company’s 9.375% Senior Notes) to below 4.00 to 1.00.
For more information, please visit www.realogy.com.
