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

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Ryan McKeveny with Zelman and Associates. Please go ahead.

Ryan McKeveny: Hi, good morning. Thank you. Charlotte, so on the cost savings, so realized $150 million this year, $200 million expected next year, so that $350 million in total. I think that compares to an expectation or a target of $300 million that you laid out at the Analyst Day between 2022 and 2026. So can you talk about how much of the 2022, 2023 dynamic is kind of structural cost actions that you were planning to take maybe just at a later point in time that are being pulled forward? Or how much of the cost actions are more variable with the pullback in volumes, such as marketing spend?

Charlotte Simonelli: Yes. That’s a great question. So to your point, we had a goal of about $300 million and you can see that we’ve already delivered or we’ll expect to deliver about $350 million in these two years alone. How I think about it, is it’s kind of like two-thirds, one-third, so a lot of this is structural stuff that we are — you can call it pulling forward. I think we weren’t really specific about which year these savings were going to happen when we did Investor Day, anyway, I think this is, this is the right cadence for how we would want to go attack some of those permanent structural savings. So, I feel good about the progress against our goal but to that point, a third of it probably is more variable tied to the housing market and to Ryan’s point earlier, if the housing market comes back faster, some of that costs might come back faster too.

So I kind of think of it as like 60, 40 or two-thirds, one-third of sort of more structural savings versus tied to the housing market and variable or temporary.

Ryan McKeveny: Got it. Okay, that’s very helpful. Thank you. And then one higher level one, so, if we go back in time to the reality days, even Cendant Days in the GFC, obviously very tough from a volume and profitability perspective, but there were some operational offsets in the numbers at the time. So commission splits to the agent went down, commission rates to the consumer went up, franchise royalty rates went up, so it is kind of partial offsets against the volume environment at that time. I guess I’m curious as you look at the business today and going forward in this tough environment, is it possible that some of those partial offsets flow into things? Or is there any reason that it’s different this time than previous volume declines?

And I know your commentary on the split suggest continued upward pressure at least modestly in 2023 but just curious if there are kind of levers beneath the surface in tough volume environment, that may trend in a slightly better direction. Thank you.

Charlotte Simonelli: That’s a great question. Why don’t I start off and then let Ryan fill in with other thoughts that he might have. So the fact of the matter is, like if you think of the royalty rates and if you think of average broker commission rates and things that are structural to this business, they’re not really moving in a favorable direction because of either size consolidation in franchisees or the mix of homes that are being sold tend to be at higher price points these days, which tend to garner slightly lower average broker commission rates. So I don’t anticipate those things changing unless the mix of homes that are being sold with inventory coming back on, and that may help us in the future, but I don’t really see that helping us in 2023 per se.