Anywhere Real Estate Inc. (NYSE:HOUS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

we’ve got these two class action jury trials and then we got a couple of other multiple defending kind of industry class actions out there. And these are just the things we know about, the wild stuff in 2022 like Ukraine and the inflation stuff, what the Fed did on rates, we didn’t know a lot of those stuff. So end of the day, what happens with units will make a big difference in our — in all of our businesses effectively, including those title and mortgage results you saw in 2022 and what happens with the macro and some of these other things will make a difference on the cost side, but I think Charlotte given you the right way that we’re thinking about it right now and just like Charlotte gave you our January results, we’ll do our best throughout the year to keep you updated, just like we gave you our Q4 results six weeks ago, just you hadn’t, then you kind of — see what we’re using as we plan kind of going forward.

Charlotte Simonelli: The other thing – sorry, John, the other thing I would say is, because of where the housing market has been in the back half of last year, like the majority of that $200 million is identified. So, I felt very good about where we’re starting off the year from an identified perspective. The other thing I would tell you is, it does not include the more draconian things that we did during COVID. So hopefully that helps round out your thinking on the savings programs.

John Campbell: Yeah. That’s very helpful and it’s a very good point on the unit impact, I hadn’t thought about that too much. One more here just relative to your guidance for the full year, you guys said modestly positive free cash flow from operations. Charlotte, if we could dig into that for just a second, I know Cartus tends to have a pretty big influence on the working caps, if you could talk to expectations there and then also just moving down the total free cash flow, what else should we be considering relative to the CapEx and maybe your capital allocation program?

Charlotte Simonelli: Sure. So as far as Cartus goes, it actually was a drain for us in the fourth quarter, normally on a full year basis, we end up about zero on the securitization facility, give or take in a small single digits one way or the other. We actually had a pretty big drain of almost $50 million, so that unwinds in the first quarter. Now, I can’t tell you how we’re going to finish the year, but like I said, the majority of year that will neutralize over the year and we’ll end up on a zero basis, so it will benefit us in the first quarter and hopefully on a full year basis because of where we ended last year. So that’s how I would think about the securitization. Some other working capital components to think about as like all of our free cash flow working capital declines from last year really happened in the first quarter and for the reasons I called out in the script.

So we don’t anticipate having that impact us in the same way in the first quarter of this year. So working capital instead of being a hit like it was last year should actually be slightly positive for us. So other than that from a CapEx perspective as I called out, we’re being very judicious and we still have a healthy CapEx forecast. It’s on the lower end of what we’ve spent over the past sort of four or five years, but it’s still very healthy and that is obviously focused around two things, first driving our strategic goals, which is improving sort of the customer experience and part of that happens in technology and part of that happens on the facility side. So it’s still a healthy but focus budget, but on the lower end of what you’ve seen us spend over the past four or five years.