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ADT Inc. (ADT)

Q2 2021 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 4, 2021

$7.18

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to ADT Inc. second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to host, Derek Fiebig, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Derek Fiebig

Analyst

Thank you operator and we appreciate everyone joining ADT's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Speaking on today's call will be ADT's President and CEO, Jim DeVries and our CFO and President of Corporate Development, Jeff Likosar. Jim will provide an overview of our recent performance and our progress against the company's strategic objectives. Jeff will then cover in more detail our financial performance and outlook for 2021. Also joining us for Q&A are Don Young, our EVP and COO, Ken Porpora, Executive VP of Finance and Jill Greer, Senior Vice President of Finance. This afternoon, we issued a press release and slide presentation of our financial results. These materials are available on our website at investor.adt.com. Today's remarks include forward-looking statements and forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that may cause differences are described in our SEC filings. Today's call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. For a complete reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our press release. With that, I will turn the call over to Jim.

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Thanks Derek and welcome everyone to our call. We are off to a very solid start through the first half of the year and I want to thank our entire ADT team and our dealer partners for serving our customers so diligently and delivering solid results for our shareholders. During our February call, I outlined several key priorities for 2021 including growing our RMR additions and with our recurring monthly revenue base, improving the performance of our commercial business and driving innovation both through our internal expertise and through our strategic partners. Jeff will walk you through our second quarter results in a few minutes. In summary, a number of areas within our business are performing exceptionally well. Our small business channel, our commercial segment, DIY and our dealer channel are all delivering strong results. In the second quarter, across the business, we grew gross RMR additions by 28% versus last year. We also see some opportunities. We are working to further increase volume in our direct residential channel. And on the expense side, we are making progress on addressing service cost pressures we experienced in the quarter. Overall, we feel very good about our results for the first six months and have good momentum going into the back half of the year. This evening, I would like to share perspective about what we have achieved as well as where we are headed, not just in 2021 but into the future. During the past several years, we have grown revenue by more than 20% from just over $4 billion to more than $5 billion with approximately 80% of that revenue from recurring monthly service to our customers. We have established a sizable commercial business through acquisitions and organic growth, now approximately $1 billion of revenue. We have pivoted to include…

Jeff Likosar

Analyst

Thanks Jim and thank you everyone for joining our call today. As Jim described, we delivered a solid quarter, continuing our progress on many objectives, especially including growth in additions to recurring monthly revenue or RMR and improved commercial performance. For the second quarter, gross RMR additions increased by 28% compared to 2020, reflecting our investment in customer acquisition, our continued focus on differentiated service and offering and pandemic-related weakness last year. On a year-to-date basis, we have grown our RMR additions by 26% or 20% excluding this year's initial Ackerman purchases and the smaller bulk account purchases in the first quarter of last year. Our resulting RMR base grew to $352 million, an increase of $14 million versus last year. Over time, we expect RMR growth to lead to more monitoring and services revenue, which increased by 4% in the second quarter. We are fortunate that our portfolio includes a variety of customer segments that are enough to market. Our dealer channel has been especially strong and contributed a larger percentage of new RMR additions than we planned in the second quarter and the first half of this year. While they come somewhat higher incremental acquisition costs compared to direct addition, dealer generated accounts delivered solid returns. Importantly, we have remained disciplined while growing with early attrition on recent customer additions trending favorably. Our trailing 12-month revenue payback remained at 2.2 years through the second quarter despite this mix shift towards dealer. Total second quarter revenue were just over $1.3 billion with adjusted EBITDA at $542 million, both slightly exceeding our internal budget. RMR growth, improved commercial performance, lower bad debt expense and general cost controls all contributed positively to our results. Offsetting headwinds versus 2020 included the non-cash effect of our ownership model changes and higher service costs.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question is with Kevin McVeigh from Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much and congratulations. Jeff, just to follow-up on the guidance question, I noticed the slide wasn't in the deck. Are you reaffirming that the revenue and EBITDA guidance as well for the full year? And any reason why it's not in the deck or in the press release, the guidance?

Jeff Likosar

Analyst

No page just because there's really now news beyond what I said on the call. We are running the business so well in line with our expectations so far, we expect to be within the same ranges that we share at the beginning of the year. And as I described on the call, the ultimate cash will depend a bit on the RMR add in the second half of the year. And then the seasonal trends are affected, of course, by COVID dynamics last year, some of which are continuing to effect the trend this year. But our full year guidance remains in the same ranges as what it was at the beginning of the year.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

Great. And then just on the retention, I think the retention would beat my estimate by about 30 basis points And thoughts on that? And then is there any way to think about how the retention fits with smart customers related to the core residential in terms of the delta on that?

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Sure Kevin. So yes, we ended the quarter at 13.3% attrition. A little bit of color. We are favorable in lost to competition and non-pay relocation cancels like last quarter. We are a little worse year-over-year. We think some of that is the COVID effect of delaying relocations. We also experienced the expected headwind from the absence of the Defenders chargeback. On a T-12 basis, that's about 35 to 40 bips. So some of that was offset by our save efforts. And then to your point, there's some really good lead indicators in terms of the shift in product mix that should be a tailwind to retention. So for example, we know that customers with cameras and video services have better retention characteristics. And sales of command and video are at their highest level ever in 2021. And then not unimportantly, credit score correlates pretty heavily to attrition. And customers acquired in the first half of 2021 had the highest mix of credit scores in the past five years. So we felt pretty good about the quarter. And as you know, long term, we feel bullish on retention..

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst

That's great. Thanks so much. I will get back in the queue.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Ashish Sabadra

Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. I just had a question on the Google partnership. You have introduced some integrated products there and launched joint marketing. I was wondering if you can share any early results what kind of traction have you seen from the joint product and joint marketing? Thanks.

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Sure, Ashish. I will give a little bit of color on Google. And anticipating this question, I really want to start by giving, sharing some context with you. So, much of our work this year is about building a foundation for future growth. So we are developing our own software platform. We are improving our DIY offering. We are making investments in our commercial business and essentially putting the pieces in place to leverage the Google partnership over the long term. So it's in that context of building a foundation that I will share a couple of comments about Google and how things are coming along. As you would expect, we continue to feel good about the relationship with Google. We have got several products that are already integrated into the ADT ecosystem, the Mini, the Hub, the Hub Max. Mesh Wi-Fi is in pilot. We will have the Doorbell in our product portfolio still this year. We anticipate DIY product in Q1 of next year. As with a lot of our partners, not just Google, we are navigating supply chain. Our dates are based on successfully navigating the supply chain. But so far, it's going well. I have seen some of the early advertising work and it's very good. We are already in market with some light co-branding with Google. And we are working closely with them on quality testing and basically ensuring that the infrastructure, the supply chain and the customer experience is all in great shape.

Ashish Sabadra

Analyst

That's great. Good to hear the solid progress that you are making on that front. Maybe if I can ask a question on the commercial side. Obviously, really strong growth significantly beat our expectations and you highlighted strong backlog as well. You also mentioned share gains there. I was just wondering if you could provide any color? Are there some big wins? Obviously, you won the Dollar business last year. Any big wins there? And within the commercial, perhaps any products in particular that are gaining more traction? Any incremental color level will be helpful. Thanks.

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Sure. So I wouldn't point to ant single individual win. It's a lot of successful business across a pretty broad spectrum of customers. Our national account business is doing exceptionally well. We have just an outstanding team in that space. But I would say, the success is largely due to market share gains and it was across a significant customer base and across all of our products, fire, intrusion, card access and video. We had a solid Q2 with revenue. EBITDA is recovering well. As I shared on the call, our backlogs on June 30 were at another record level. Ashish, this continues to be a business where we are confident we can compete and win. We have got, in addition to a strong backlog, we have got a strong sales pipeline and we are pleased with our progress. Growth and margin improvement will always be linear in this business. We are playing for the long innings and investing in a number of new verticals, healthcare, government and education. But we think this business has a lot of runway and we feel great about the quarter.

Ashish Sabadra

Analyst

That's great. Thanks once again and congrats on a good quarter.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question is from Brian Ruttenbur with Imperial Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Yes. Thank you very much. A couple of quick questions. First of all on attrition. It was up slightly from the previous period. That's not necessarily indicative of anything. But I want you to address that and then talk about where you see attrition by year-end of 2021? And are we going to hold in that low-13%? Can we break into the 12%? Can you talk a little bit about that? And then I have a follow-up?

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Sure. Thanks for the question. So there's not a great deal to add beyond what I shared already. The favorability for us was largely around lost competition and non-pay. I am hesitant to predict where we are going to be at the end of the year. We have got a headwind, as I mentioned, from the absence of the Defenders chargeback. That's about 35 to 40 bips. But there's just a number of positive lead indicators. Our customer care metrics are improving. Our service backlog is currently at a six-month low. We had fewer service requests in July than any of the last nine months. Our customer save efforts are tracking nicely, Brian. So I feel good about it over the long term. I would love to get into the 12% and even lower than that over the long term, but hesitant to predict how we will end the year.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. And then about the commercial recovery, that's the next question. Can you address, you guys are gaining a lot of market share. Can you maybe say what you are doing in terms of gaining that market share? Is any of this in new office? Or is it retrofitting offices? Talk a little bit about that because I am seeing out there in the market with the lead-gen and others, suppliers as well as providers, that new office is dead, retrofit is on the way up. And I want to know where you are gaining your traction in the commercial space?

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Yes. It's across the business. There's, for sure, some retrofit work. There's some new construction. I think that accounts for about 105 or 12% of our revenues. But it's a business that, for us, is hitting on a lot of cylinders. And it's tough to tie it to a particular sector. I shared this earlier. We have got a fantastic leadership team in commercial, great commercial technicians and you win in this business by great service and building a reputation for great service. And Brian, that's what the team is doing day in and day out. And we are being rewarded for it.

Brian Ruttenbur

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

George Tong

Analyst

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Your gross RMR additions were strong this quarter, up 28% which actually accelerated from 1Q. And I think the prior indication was that once you would be the peak for those RMR additions. So could you talk about perhaps was there any pull-forward in gross RMR additions in the quarter? And if not, would you say you have an improved outlook from what you had previously for full year gross RMR additions, given your strength so far in the first half of the year?

Ken Porpora

Analyst

Hi George, Ken. I agree. We have 28% revenue in the quarter for Q2. And as Jim mentioned the high quality of performance at the credit scores and the number of the devices. So it was a great installation quarter for us. I would like you go back at last Q2 and look at 2019 just to kind of normalize, especially Q2 last year has really been in the top versus 2019 Q2 it's actually up 13% in probably the same period. So pretty healthy RMR growth. We did see that across multiple channels. Dealer is probably the first one that comes to mind but DIY, small business, as Jim mentioned and also residential direct showed that year-over-year growth. So Q1 was boosted by acumen and Q2 was heavy organic growth and we worked out, I guess, pretty neatly compared to Q2. Jeff mentioned in his comments that the we don't anticipate the same level of growth in the second half of the year, but we like where we are at from a growth perspective, especially with our RMR base, ending at 4% higher for the quarter.

Jeff Likosar

Analyst

And George, just to follow-up to the Kevin's question. Again, no change to our perspective on the full year where we have shared previously we expect our full year growth rate to be in the mid teens. And that goes with the financial ranges that we shared. And had we really more invested a bit more SAC vice versa growth into the growth with now direction to reduce the SAC. It generates more cash flow but consistent with our full year guidance unchanged and what we shared back in February.

George Tong

Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And then we are getting closer to Google joint product launch in the second half of the year. Could you perhaps elaborate on what the remaining milestones are in order to make that a successful launch? And at this point, do you have the messageablity to contemplate including some benefit of impact from the launch into your full year guide?

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Hi. George it's Jim. We won't include or I would say very minimally include any incremental revenue as a result of Google. We have a handful of products in play. That significant advertising for Google and ADT together will be next year. In addition to the product that we have now, the only new product and an important product and a product that we are anxious to have in the portfolio, but the only new product will be the Doorbell. And so there's light touch promotional work today. There's some light touch co-marketing today, but nothing incremental this year built into our plan as a result of Google.

George Tong

Analyst

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Kenneth Williamson with JPMorgan. I am sorry. We actually have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. And I will now turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.

Jim DeVries

Analyst

Okay. Thank you operator. And in closing, I would like to extend my appreciation to our ADT employees and our dealers. We had a terrific first half of the year. I am proud of your collective efforts. Thanks as well for everyone joining our call evening. We are optimistic about the second half of the year and ADT's future and looking forward to the growth ahead. Have a good night, everybody.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.