eXp World Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

We will be working with many more software deals, lead partners at no additional cost for agents, including providing tracking information that our agents have been asking for. The success of the luxury division encourages to launch additional divisions this year, Farm & Ranch, Sports and Entertainment and Green to help our agents further differentiate themselves from our competitors in all markets. While we expanded and hired, Chief Learning Officer, Bryon Ellington, you can expect to see more announcements in training and coaching, including some familiar faces that were partnered within our eXp ecosystem. We’re also launching a live streaming real estate radio station to further establish our agents as thought leaders in the space. This station will feature podcast channels, content creators and industry experts to discuss news trends, strategies and tactics to grow agent businesses and it’s expected to be live soon.

And last but not least, I’m personally focused on continuing to help our agents increase their productivity and operating business more efficiently in 2024. We will be paying close attention to unit economics through an SG&A to unit cost as a new KPI to measure efficiencies in 2024. On that note, I’ll pass it along to Kent to provide additional insight into Q4 and 2023 financial results.

Kent Cheng : Leo, thank you. Fourth quarter NPS increased to 77, which was an outstanding result of our investment in operational excellence in 2023. Due to our compelling agent value proposition, we increased our agent count by 2% year-over-year. While we off boarded a significant number of unproductive agents during the fourth quarter, resulting a decrease in our agent count from the third quarter, we retained our most productive agent cohorts. Our real estate transaction unit grew 6% year-over-year, outperformed the industry. This was really a remarkable outcome and thanks to the hard work of our higher productive agents and dedicated staff. Our two most important financial objectives are revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Our fourth quarter revenue was $983 million, an increase of 5% year-over-year.

We generated $0.5 million adjusted EBITDA compared to $3.6 million in prior year quarter. Reported gross profit was $71 million a decrease of 15%. You might recall, we started to report agent growth incentive stock compensation expense in the cost of sale in 2023. In the previous year, the expense was reported in the sales, general and administrative expenses. If this expense has been excluded in both years, 2023 gross profit would have been consistent with last year. Reported SG&A was $89.4 million, a 5% decrease from the fourth quarter in the prior year, primarily due to the above mentioned reallocation of agent growth incentive stock compensation to the cost of sale. In addition, the fourth quarter including approximately 8 million of onetime cost related to ESP con and a provision for workforce reduction.

Net loss was $21.2 million in Q4 2023 compared to a net loss of $7.2 million in Q4 2022, driven by $9.2 million of impairment charge related to Virbela segment and $8 million onetime SG&A cost as I mentioned previously. Adjusted operating cash flow was $42.3 million and we repurchased $25.9 million of share during the quarter. In the next slide, I will provide more detail about the driver of our revenue change in the fourth quarter. This chart helps to explain what drove the change in the fourth quarter revenue between 2022 and 2023. 2022 revenue was $933.4 million, indicated by the bar on the left. 2023 revenue was $983 million indicated by the bar on the right. The year-over-year increase in revenue was $50 million or 5%. The increase was attributable to a $45 million increase in the North America Realty segment, which consists of the U.S. and Canada and a $6.5 million increase in International Realty segment.

I will dive into more detail of the $45 million revenue growth in North America Realty segment, which included the bars under the heading North America Realty segment revenue change plus $45 million. Our agent base grew 2% and contributed $21 million of additional revenue. According to NAR, Assistant Home Sales and U.S. Census Bureau’s New Home Sales data, U.S. residential home sales size decreased approximately 8% which pressured our agent production. We calculated the negative impact of lower home sales to our revenue as $62.6 million. Normalized the impact of lower home sales of the overall markets, an increase of our agent productivity over prior year contributed $42 million revenue increase. Higher home sales prices and more affordable – more favorable commission mix also brought in $30.8 million incremental revenue.

Lastly, our focus on growing our lease, rental and other ancillary services contributed additional $13.5 million revenue. I will discuss some financial for the quarter on the next slide. On the slide, you can see our Q4 2023 segment revenue and adjusted EBITDA for each of our four business segment and the breakdown of corporate and elimination. Our North America Realty segment was primarily driver of the revenue and profit of the company. Revenue was $965 million, an increase of 5% over prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $8.6 million. International Realty segment revenue was $16.3 million an increase of 67%. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $3.6 million. Virbela contributed modest amount of revenue and its adjusted EBITDA was $1.9 million. The other segment, which is primarily SUCCESS, also contributed modest amount of revenue and generated a small adjusted EBITDA loss.

On the next slide, I will recap the full year financial performance on a consolidated basis. And next slide, please. Agent NPS was 73, an increase from 71 in 2022. We completed nearly $0.5 million transaction unit in 2023. Our real estate sale transaction unit growth outperformed the industry. 2023 full year revenue was $4.3 billion, a decrease of 7% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $57.5 million, a decrease of 5% from prior year. However, we are able to maintain adjusted EBITDA relatively stable to 203 level, despite a significant market decline. Reported gross profit was $324 million, a decrease of 5% year-over-year. As I mentioned before, in 2023, we began including agent growth incentive, stock compensation expense and cost of sale. If this expense has been excluded from both — from cost of sale in both years, 2023 gross profit would have been consistent with 2022.

Reported SG&A was $331.3 million, an 8% decrease from prior year, primarily due to the above mentioned reallocation of stock compensation expense. If the expense has been excluded from both year 2030 SG&A will have been flat compared to 2022. 2023 net loss was $9 million, primarily due to $9.2 million non-cash, one-time impairment charge recorded in the Virbela segment. The decline net income year-over-year was primarily due to Virbela impairment charges, increased agent growth incentive stock compensation and a higher effective test rate. Finally, we repurchased $161 million of share during the year. To give you some perspective of a share repurchase in 2023, we purchased 10.1 million shares, which is equivalent to 91% of share issued via our agent growth incentive and agent equity plan.

And now I will take you through the full year 2022 to 2023 revenue change analysis. 2022 revenue was $4.498 billion indicated by the bar on the left. 2023 revenue was $4.281 billion indicated by the bar on the right. The year-over-year decline in revenue was $370 million. The North America Realty segment contributed $333 million revenue decrease, partially offset by an $18 million revenue increase in the International Realty segment. Let me dive into more detail of the North America Realty segment revenue change in 2023. Our agent base grew 2%, which contributed $280 million of additional revenue. According to NAR, Assistant Home Sales and U.S. Census Bureau’s new home sales data, U.S. residential home sale sites decreased approximately 17.3%.

We calculated the negative impact of lower home sales to our revenue was a reduction of $759 million. Normalized the impact of lower home sales of overall markets, our Asian productivity improvement contributed an increase of $93 million revenue. Higher home sales price and a more affordable commission mix — a more favorable commission mix brought in additional revenue $11 million. Lastly, growing our lease, referral and other ancillary services contributed $43 million revenue additionally. In summary, due to our superior agent value proposition and the resilience and hard work of our agents and staff, our revenue growth outperformed the industry. Next, I will take you through a full year segment performance. 2023 North America Realty segment revenue $4.2 billion decreased 7% year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA was $91.1 million. Again, our core North American realty business was profitable. International Realty revenue was up 50% to a record $53.4 million in ’23. Due to our continued investment in the international royalty, adjusted EBITDA loss was $13.7 million. Virbela revenue was down 14% in 2023, while adjusted EBITDA loss improved by 41% year-over-year due to cost reduction actions. And revenue in other segment was down 6% in 2023 to a $4.8 million with adjusted EBITDA loss $3.8 million. And next slide we’ll summarize the highlight. This slide summarizes our highlights for the year, most of which I have discussed in the previous slides. What’s important to point out is our plan for 2024 that Leo mentioned previously. At the end of the year, we identify approximately $20 million of cost saving and other profit improvement initiative for 2024.

We will continue to monitor our business volume and cost base and identify additional profit improvement opportunities throughout 2024. We are well positioned for 2024. I’m confident ESP will emerge from current market downturn into a much stronger position to capitalize the future market growth opportunity. And with that, I will turn it back to Denise to take your question.

A – Denise Garcia: Great. Thanks, Kent. I’ll kick it off with a question for each speaker before we open the call to our analysts and questions from the audience. First, starting with you, Glenn, agent count grew 2% year-over-year, but it declined slightly from the third quarter. Can you discuss what happened to your agent count from the third quarter to the fourth quarter?