Redfin Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

September 30, 2024. I'm Meg Nunally, Redfin's Head of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today is Glenn Kelman, our CEO and Chris Nielsen, our CFO. Before we start, note that some of our statements on today's call are forward looking. We believe our assumptions and expectations related to these forward looking statements are reasonable, but our actual results may turn out to be materially different.

Operator

Please read and consider the risk factors in our SEC filings together with the content of today's call. Any forward looking statements are based on our assumptions today, and we don't undertake to update these statements in light of new information or future events. On this call, we will present non GAAP measures when discussing our financial results. We encourage you to review today's earnings release, which is available on our website at investors. Redfin.com for more information related to our non GAAP measures, including the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and related reconciliations.

Operator

All comparisons made in the course of this call are against continuing operations for the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Lastly, we will be providing a copy of our prepared remarks on our website by the conclusion of today's call, and a full transcript and audio replay will also be available soon after the call. With that, I'll turn the call over to Glenn.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Meg, and howdy, everyone. Redfin's 3rd quarter revenues grew 3% year over year to $278,000,000 in the middle of the range that we discussed on our last call. Our adjusted EBITDA profits of $4,000,000 were at the bottom of our guidance range, in part due to $4,000,000 of one time expenses that we didn't anticipate in our guidance. From the Q2 of 2024 to the 3rd, the share of home sales brokered by our own agents and through referrals to our partner agents fell by 1 basis point. Year over year, Q3 share fell by 2 basis points.

Speaker 1

In our previous call, we said we'd be roughly breakeven for the full year and now our 4th quarter guidance has set the boundaries of that range. 2024 adjusted EBITDA loss between $15,000,000 $22,000,000 This full year loss is larger than we expected. August September mortgage and brokerage sales were $7,000,000 lower than we forecast. When rates fell in August, we didn't count on a better housing market, but we also didn't expect it to get worse. We didn't forecast about $2,000,000 in one time cost for the rapid transition to RedfinNext, our plan to replace agent salaries with higher bonuses or $1,000,000 of one time costs from the integration of rent.

Speaker 1

Any year when we believe our competitors' aggregate ad spending hit historic highs while U. S. Home sales hit historic lows, we are glad to be coming out of 2024 with likely undiminished market share, a better sales force and a cost structure that gives us room to go on the attack. But still, I owe our shareholders an apology. We moved heaven and earth to make money in 2024, but we fell short of our goal.

Speaker 1

We'll keep driving toward profits. Our 2024 profits will be an improvement of about $125,000,000 over 2022, when U. S. Existing home sales were 20% higher than forecast for 2024. Over the past year, almost every dollar of revenue growth has fallen to the bottom line and now we're preparing to grow.

Speaker 1

Rising brokerage close rates and what we believe are industry leading mortgage and title attach rates should let us monetize an online audience better than any other real estate site. Already, sales execution is driving what we expect to be significant October share gains with momentum carrying through to November. Pairing our sales machine with more advertising should let us grow faster in 2025. Redfin.com's 3rd quarter visitors fell 4% year over year. As the housing market shows signs of life, we plan to increase ad spending significantly from 2024 to 2025.

Speaker 1

We'll also invest in extending our technology's core competitive advantages. At guiding online visitors to listings they'll love and scheduling home tours for customers ahead of other buyers at identifying serious home seekers in need of service. Already this month, we started to bid more for online visitors because of our increasing effectiveness at selling homes, mortgages and title service. Until October, we didn't account for mortgage and title profits when deciding how much to pay to meet a homebuyer. Our confidence that we can deliver better service to online homebuyers is based in part on the rapid expansion of Redfin Next, our plan to pay agents larger bonuses in lieu of salaries, which first launched in January to 4 markets responsible for 17% of our 2023 brokerage revenues.

Speaker 1

This percentage grew to 30% in May and to 74% in August until we completed the rollout last month. Our confidence in NEX isn't based on theory, but on results. Comparing 2023 to 2024 in the 4 initial NEX markets, the customers we met from January to June 2024 were 21% more likely to buy a home from us than 90 days of that first meeting. Other markets in those months also improved close rates, but only by 7%. In that same time period, close rates for luxury homebuyers increased 79% in the 4 pilot NEX markets compared to 28% in other markets.

Speaker 1

Higher close rates have been one source of share gains in NEX markets, but another is our agent census. From the announcement of RedfinNext in October 2023 to June 2024, the 4 original pilot markets increased their agent census 22%. And it isn't hard to see why. Bigger bonuses let us compete for talent with fewer financial constraints because we no longer pay agent salaries. Entering 2025, our brokerage is focused on adding hundreds of high quality agents.

Speaker 1

Our Q3 agent census, which averaged 1757 agents grew 1% year over year. In October already that year over year growth accelerated to 8%. The flexibility that NEX gives us to hire more agents at different commission splits based on their sales experience is letting us form agent teams around our top producers. These teams give our best agents the capacity to cultivate sales from their network of 100 or even 1000 of past Redfin clients. Already in the past 4 months, we've hired agents into more than 50 teams and begun recruiting teammates for another 40 top producers.

Speaker 1

As we add hundreds of more entrepreneurial agents for the 2025 home buying season, we don't plan on adding any significant manager or support staff, which should lift gross margins. And as agents host more of their own tours and improve close rates, we can also allocate a lower percentage of revenue to the thousands of contractors who take customers on tour when a lead agent is busy. We expect gross margins to start increasing year over year in the Q4, though some of that will be because gross margins are also becoming less seasonal. Next, agents earnings are more volatile, limiting Redfin's margins in the summer selling season and improving margins in the winter. Since spring 2024, investors have asked us if we expect lower fees and lower margins due to the settlement of a class action lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors.

Speaker 1

When the reforms imposed by the settlement took effect in July August, the multiple listing services that agents used to share listings stopped showing the commission offered to a buyer's agent for each listing. Most homeowners are still willing to pay the buyer's agent, but many aren't setting that agent's fee in advance, instead planning to negotiate it alongside other offer terms. This by itself has been a major change, but to our surprise, the fee that is negotiated often seems nearly identical to what buyer's agents were earning before the settlement. Fees may fall when a new and potentially more competitive home buying season begins. Many of the buyers and sellers closing a sale this fall had hired an agent in the summer before the settlement had taken effect.

Speaker 1

Redfin has already sought to offer our home buying customers lower fees than other brokers. If more consumers seek better value from their broker in 2025, Redfin may expect larger share gains. And if homebuyers become more sensitive to brokerage fees, bundling mortgage and title services will become even more important. Of the brokerage customers who finance their 3rd quarter home purchase, 27% used Redfin's lender, down from 28% in the 2nd quarter, but up from 22% in the Q3 of last year. Again, more than 60% of eligible customers used our title services, which become a significant source of profit.

Speaker 1

In January 2025, we're trying new policies to increase mortgage attach rates further. Before concluding with the discussion of the housing market, let's turn to our rentals business, which is now competing aggressively for traffic. From April to October of this year, listings on our rentals websites, rent.com and apartmentguide.com increased from $262,000 to about $440,000 After the rentals and for sale traffic teams combined at outset of the year, in August rental traffic was flat after 17 months of decline. We saved $10,000,000 in 20.24 expenses on personnel and technology services, which is now funding more consumer advertising. From 2023 to 2024, we expect that our rentals media spending will have increased by $3,000,000 with an even larger increase planned for 2025.

Speaker 1

Our net bookings rose from $2,700,000 in the 2nd quarter to $6,000,000 in the 3rd. On the strength of improving traffic and better sales execution, we expect most of our 2025 growth to come from market share gains. But if the market keeps improving, we can grow faster. Home buying demand significantly strengthened since September 18th when the Federal Reserve cut rates by 50 basis points. Mortgage rates had already fallen in anticipation of the Fed's cut, but home buying demand had nonetheless been dreadful, leading to a new September low in the annualized rate of existing home sales, dollars 3,800,000 What has been even more bizarre is that since September 18th and even through last weekend, homebuyers have been mostly undeterred by an October increase in mortgage rates.

Speaker 1

The increasing likelihood of larger tariffs and government deficits has made debt investors anxious. In my 19 months, excuse me, my 19 years of running Redfin, I've never seen homebuyers react so slowly to a rate drop that lowered monthly payments by 100 of dollars, then so unflinching as those savings disappeared. More and more, we live in our own reality and that reality is increasingly political. In September and even in October, a common source of anxiety among homebuyers has been the election, not just higher rates. With the election now over, many people who put off plans to buy or sell a home over the last 2 years may have run out of reasons to wait.

Speaker 1

Home sales may increase in 2025, but the housing market in the world are so volatile that no one can say for sure. Given that uncertainty, Redfin is glad to have made our core brokerage business more flexible and to have lowered our overall employee census, so we can quickly invest in advertising when we see more growth opportunities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Glenn. 3rd quarter revenue was $278,000,000 up 3% from a year ago. This marks our 3rd straight quarter of organic revenue growth. Gross profit of $102,000,000 was up 4% year over year and total gross margin was unchanged at 37%. Total operating expenses were $129,000,000 up $5,000,000 year over year.

Speaker 2

The increase was primarily attributable to a $4,000,000 increase in marketing media costs and a $3,000,000 increase in restructuring costs. These increases were partially offset by a $4,000,000 decrease in amortization expense as the intangible technology assets acquired with our rentals business completed their amortization. Our adjusted EBITDA was $4,000,000 down from $8,000,000 in the prior year. As Glenn discussed, this result was impacted by one time costs totaling approximately $4,000,000 Net loss was $34,000,000 compared to a net loss of $19,000,000 in the prior year. This was slightly worse than our last guidance range of $30,000,000 to $22,000,000 primarily due to $3,000,000 in restructuring expenses that were not contemplated at the time of guidance.

Speaker 2

These restructuring expenses resulted from closing our home repair service. Diluted loss per share attributable to common stock was $0.28 compared with $0.17 1 year ago. Now turning to our segment results, real estate services revenue was $175,000,000 down 1% year over year. Brokerage revenue or revenue from home sales closed by our own agents was down 1% on a 2% increase in brokerage transactions and a 3% decrease in brokerage revenue per transaction. Revenue from our partners decreased 11% on a 21% decrease in transactions offset by a 13% increase in partner revenue per transaction.

Speaker 2

Real Estate Services gross margin was 27.8%, down 260 basis points year over year. This was primarily driven by a 500 basis point increase in personnel costs and transaction bonuses, partially offset by 220 basis point decrease in home touring and field expenses as we've eliminated compensation for home touring and field expenses and replaced it with transaction bonuses for some employee agents. Total net loss for real estate services was $9,000,000 $9,000,000 compared to a net loss of $1,000,000 in the prior year, and our adjusted EBITDA was positive $5,000,000 down from $13,000,000 in the prior year. Our rental segment posted its 8th straight quarter of growth with revenue of $52,000,000 and growth of 9%. Rentals gross margin was 76.1% compared to 77.2% a year ago.

Speaker 2

Total net loss for rentals was $9,000,000 up from a net loss of $13,000,000 in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the 2nd Q3 was a loss of $436,000 down from a positive $624,000 in the prior year. Our mortgage segment generated $36,000,000 in revenue, up 8% year over year. Mortgage gross margin was 15.2%, up from 10% a year ago. Net loss for mortgage was $5,000,000 roughly unchanged from the prior year.

Speaker 2

Adjusted EBITDA loss was $1,000,000 up from the loss of $4,000,000 in the prior year. Our other segment generated revenue of $16,000,000 compared to $11,000,000 in the prior year as both our title and digital revenue businesses grew. Other segment gross margin was 54.2%, up from 40.4% a year ago. Total net income was $7,000,000 compared to $2,000,000 in the prior year and adjusted EBITDA was $7,000,000 compared to $3,000,000 in the prior year. Now turning to our consolidated financial expectations for the Q4 of 2024.

Speaker 2

Total revenue is expected to be between $237,000,000 $247,000,000 representing year over year growth between 9% 13% compared to the Q4 of 2023. Included within total revenue are real estate services revenue between $144,000,000 $150,000,000 rentals revenue of $51,000,000 mortgage revenue between $28,000,000 and $32,000,000 and other revenue between $13,000,000 $14,000,000 Real Estate Services gross margin is expected to be approximately 29%, up more than 600 basis points compared to the Q4 of 2023 due to the positive impact our Redfin Next program has on seasonality. Total net loss is expected to be between $32,000,000 $25,000,000 compared to a net loss of $23,000,000 in the Q4 of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between positive $1,000,000 and positive $8,000,000 compared to negative $13,000,000 last year. Now let's open the line for your questions.

Speaker 3

Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. And our first question comes from Yigal Arounian from Citi. Go ahead.

Speaker 4

Good afternoon. Maybe just to start with the profitability. And if we could, I guess a few things. If you look at the 4Q guidance, even if you hit the guidance in 3Q, it would have implied, I believe that the full year outlook would have missed. And so just want to think through what's kind of what's in the EBITDA number for this year?

Speaker 4

And as we translate into next year, is it for breakeven profitability next year? How do we think about the roadmap on that? And I think with maybe tying in the increase in marketing spend, how we should be thinking about that with the target of profitability as well?

Speaker 2

Sure. This is Chris. I'll start. So the primary difference from the way we were thinking about the second half of the year is related to 3rd quarter results, whereas Glenn mentioned, volumes were lower than we expected. That led to less revenue.

Speaker 2

And then on top of that, we had additional costs that we hadn't anticipated, particularly related to the NEX program. We've already addressed the extra costs that we had in the NEX program and made program changes. So those won't be continuing into the Q4 and into next year. So that's a piece that we've already addressed just in terms of the profitability. But again, most of the variance from what we were expecting in the second half of the year really did occur in the Q3.

Speaker 1

And just to comment on next year, we're not going to be issuing 2025 guidance, especially not now, but it's a fair question how we're going to be able to afford more marketing when we obviously want to make money. And the answer is that we are going to continue to find efficiencies in the business. We have come to the conclusion that at some level you do have to invest in growth and that the best investment in growth is in part going to be in media. Obviously, we're also continuing to enhance our website, trying to draw more organic traffic. But we are going to need to get further enhancements in our cost structure so that we can invest in growth and then we're going to need market share.

Speaker 1

We benefit somewhat because we made all these cost reductions in the second half that we'll get a full year benefit from in 2025. So we ended our concierge service. We're running more efficiently in our support organization. We eliminated sales managers. We've made some other cuts and we just think we can continue to get more efficient.

Speaker 4

Okay, great. That's really helpful. And just on RedfinNext and the expansion from the pilot markets into every market now, Any early indications of what you're seeing in those markets? And are they kind of following the trends that you saw in the earlier markets? And as you think about the expectations for share gain next year, what do you expect or contemplating from the ReGen X expansion in that's needed to reach the share gain that you're looking for?

Speaker 4

Thanks guys.

Speaker 1

Well, we're fairly optimistic about it for a few reasons. The first being close rate where a better agent has closed sales at a significantly higher rate given the same number of opportunities and that's especially true for luxury customers. So we often report on unit market share, but on a dollar basis, we think we're doing we're going to do even better. But the other factor is agent census that sometimes our agents have gotten too many customers or we've sent too much demand to partners because we haven't been able to recruit agents as quickly as we wanted to. And 3 of the 4 major markets where we had share problems over the past 6 months, we were actually understaffed.

Speaker 1

And so those markets are recruiting really successfully right now and it's a different profile of talent than we've been able to get before. So we don't want to count our chickens until they're hatched, but it's been a long time since Redfin has been adding hundreds of agents and we've never done that where the agents have been so experienced, some of them bringing sales to the company, albeit at lower margins. Understood. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 3

And our next question comes from Curtis Nagle from Bank of America. Go ahead, Curtis.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks very much. So maybe closing a few, Glenn, just I don't know, any view that in terms of this bump in activity that we've seen, I guess, through October that could perhaps be temporary, just kind of given the dynamic with rates and just kind of interested in your view there. And then curious your thoughts on 2025 adjusting home volumes, do we grow, how much, what are your thoughts there?

Speaker 1

Well, it's been shocking as I said. I've been doing this for a long time and usually there's a very strong in person relationship between mortgage rates and sales activity. But even on Election Day, November 5, we were surprised to see how many people were touring homes. We just have really good real time data throughout the funnel because of our vertical integration and it's been really strong. And both Chris and I sit there pinching ourselves because sooner or later it's going to take control if rates keep climbing above 7%.

Speaker 1

There are people regardless of what they read in the media or how long they've been waiting are just priced out. So I do expect the laws of physics to still apply to the housing market and it's really hard to predict what's going to happen. I think there's so much geopolitical question right now, plenty of confidence about the new President and his plan for the economy, but also some concern about inflation driven by tariffs and just deficits. So it's really hard to say what's going to happen to interest rates. Mortgage backed securities investors are worried about it.

Speaker 1

That's why rates have traded up on really no Fed news, even including today. Rates have just gone up some because of geopolitical anxiety. So it's really hard to say. If you're asking me, I do think 2025 is going to be better than 2024, especially kind of the September low, hitting 3.8. That's a number that's just way outside the strike zone of what we've seen over the past 20 years.

Speaker 5

Got it. And then just kind of a quick follow-up in terms of the market share dynamics in 3Q dropped a little bit, I think a couple of this year over year. What drove that maybe due to the transition to NEX or just kind of what's going on there?

Speaker 1

Yes. Well, you win some, you lose some. We expect to get back to a cadence of taking share every quarter. Maybe it won't be by leaps and bounds, but there should be a steady gain of share every quarter. That's been the long history of Redfin.

Speaker 1

And in this case, I think some of it is that earlier in the year, we had less traffic growth. Homes dotcom was advertising so aggressively. It's been an unprecedented level of advertising and we had actually pulled back and that's part of the conclusion that we've drawn about 2025 that we've just got to get our cost structure to a place where we can increase advertising. And some of what's going on for full year profits is that we're actually leaning into direct marketing because we've got more mortgage and title profits from every customer. We're more confident that we can buy that at a profit.

Speaker 1

It won't be end year, but it will be over the course of the season, which stands or straddles 2024 2025. So, I just think we have to get one step more aggressive about demand generation because we really believe that we can close those sales better than ever before.

Speaker 5

I guess just with all due respect and just kind of a natural follow-up, if I don't know how aggressive Homes.com is being in the market right now, but if that it sounds like impacted your return hurdles, thinking about 25 and a big step up, do you think that perhaps that could be tricky if they're still spending so aggressively?

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean, look, it's a competitive market. We're not asking for any forbearance from investors because we're bigger or smaller than one company or another. But I do think that having a new entrant in the market affected us somewhat. So I don't expect them to increase their budget from 2024 to 2025.

Speaker 1

I think they've been clear on that point that they don't expect to do that. And we expect to increase ours. So spending more on growth and less on other areas could lead to growth and it would be sort of a speculative investment if our traffic weren't growing right now. We've got year over year growth in October November, and that's not even based mostly on marketing expense. That's just getting back in the horse on organic traffic growth.

Speaker 5

Okay. Appreciate the comments. Thank you, Glenn.

Speaker 3

Thank you. And our next question comes from John Campbell from Stephens. Go ahead, John.

Speaker 6

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Glenn, I just maybe want to touch on Clear Cooperation policy. I know that's a pretty hotly debated topic right now in the industry. Maybe if you could just kind of recap your stance there?

Speaker 6

And then just assuming if you can just play a scenario if that were to be eliminated, maybe in what ways that would affect Redfin positive or negatively?

Speaker 1

Well, our position has been the pro consumer position. Buyers

Speaker 4

want

Speaker 1

to see all the homes for sale. It's plain that that is what's in the best interest of the consumer. It's plain that the regulators were going to see it the same way. So we've just been pleased to see that so far the National Association of Realtors has supported that. And if it were to change, we run the largest brokerage website in America.

Speaker 1

So if we get into some battle with other brokerages about how we're going to market listings privately on our own website, we think we're in a better position than other brokerages because of our website's reach. So that's our position.

Speaker 6

Yes. That makes sense. And then I want to touch on Seattle or just maybe the broader Puget Sound area. I mean, obviously, that's your top market. So maybe if you could talk to October, from what we're seeing, it looks like a bit of a breakout, I think, across close sales, spending home sales, new listings, price acceleration, like everything Wait

Speaker 1

a minute, John. Are you querying the Northwest MLS about our Seattle market share?

Speaker 6

Exactly. So yes, if you could talk to whether you're seeing that within your system and just any kind of broad commentary on Seattle?

Speaker 1

I'm not going to comment on one market after another because I'll just encourage more analysts to be like you, John, and then where would we be. But in markets that have transitioned to RedfinNext, we are adding agents and it's a pretty straight line when you have enough demand. You add agents, you're going to get more sales. So that has been the dynamic. We should have transitioned to RedfinNext a long time ago.

Speaker 6

Makes sense. Thanks, Matt.

Speaker 1

Yes. Well done, John.

Speaker 3

And our next question comes from Jay McCanless from Wedbush. Go ahead, Jay. Sorry.

Speaker 7

Thanks for taking my questions. I was going to ask first, if you think about just the average home sale, I mean, how much more are you paying out to a Redfin Next agent for the same dollar sale that you would have paid last year?

Speaker 1

Twice as much if the agent sourced it himself, but most of our sales are sourced by the website. So we have no competitive advantage with agent sourced sales. No brokerage does. That's why it's a low margin business. But when we source the sale ourselves, which is the overwhelming majority of our sales, it is at the same or better margins than what we did with our classic pay plan.

Speaker 1

We actually modeled it to be the same, but what we've discovered is first that the agents close sales at higher rates. And when you have a higher close rate, it actually improves gross margins because we're paying other support staff to handle touring. And then second, they're doing better at the high end. And then third, they're more independent. All of those let us get leverage over margins.

Speaker 1

So in August, we did a cut where we transitioned some sales managers to be individual contributors, so they could carry revenue for us or they left the company. And some of that's just driven by an early experience we had in San Francisco, one of the first next markets where agents said, the worst part about this job is meeting my manager. And Chris said, I'm only too happy to solve that problem for you. You can meet him once a month if you have questions.

Speaker 7

And then I know you don't want to talk about 25 guidance, but is 600 basis points improvement something that might be realistic as we think about modeling 25 under this new plan?

Speaker 1

Chris, what 600 basis points is he talking about?

Speaker 2

This is for Real Estate Services in the Q4. And to answer that question, mostly you should think about the shift of our business to Redfin Next as being neutral on gross margin. So Glenn described that on a per transaction basis, we do pay higher bonuses under Next than we did previously, but we've reduced the fixed compensation, the salary for the agents. And so really this is about taking dollars that were previously fixed or in salary and moving them to transaction bonuses.

Speaker 1

The Q4 gain is in part seasonal. We tried to emphasize that in the script. So our margins were lower in the summer and that's because it's more volatile for the agents. So they make pay while the sun shines. But then in the winter when we used to sustain significant margin damage paying agent salaries, we don't have to anymore.

Speaker 1

So we hope that you can see that across 4 quarters when we start lapping the full rollout of NEXT on October of 2025.

Speaker 7

Okay. Sounds good. Thank

Speaker 3

you. Thank you. And our next question comes from John Catawbaoumi from Jefferies. Go ahead, John.

Speaker 2

Hey, thanks for taking the question. This is Vincent on for John. Just a quick one here on maybe some examples of areas in the business where you could look to source some of those further efficiencies for funding the ramp and advertising that you have planned for 2025? Thanks.

Speaker 1

It's a fraud question when the call is open to the general public, but what's sacred to us is our investments in growth. So we're going to continue to fund building a better search experience, having it be engaging, funding artificial intelligence to drive better listing recommendations, which brings users back to the site and just drives overall traffic. And we're also going to fund investments in technologies that can help us with a fairly long sales cycle, improved close rates. So when we invest in artificial intelligence to contact customers who have been out of touch with us and identify which ones are most likely to transact, that's a good bet. Everything else is on the table.

Speaker 6

Got it.

Speaker 2

Appreciate the answer. Thanks.

Speaker 3

And there appear to be no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back to Glenn for any closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Only that we appreciate all of your questions. Thank you so much for listening to me and Chris rattle on. See you in 3 months.

Speaker 3

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.

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