Welcome to Douglas Elliman Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded and simultaneously webcast. An archived version of the webcast will be available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website located at investors.element.com for one year. During this call, the terms adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss will be used. These terms are non-GAAP financial measures and should be considered in addition to but not as a substitute for, other measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss were contained in the company's earnings release which has been posted to the Investor Relations section of the company's website. Before the call begins, I would like to read a Safe Harbor statement. The statements made during this conference call that are not historical are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in or implied by forward-looking statements and described in more detail in the company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Now, I would like to turn the call over to the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Douglas Elliman, Howard Lorber.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Richard Lampen, our Chief Operating Officer; Bryant Kirkland, our Chief Financial Officer; and Scott Durkin, President and CEO of Douglas Elliman Realty. Our residential real estate brokerage business. On today's call, we will discuss the current operating environment and Douglas Elliman's financial results for the 3 and 6 months ended June 30, 2024. All numbers presented this morning will be as of June 30, 2024, unless otherwise stated. We will then provide closing comments and open the call for questions. Before I turn to our results, I want to begin with an update on certain matters. First, in July 2024, we were pleased to have received a $50 million growth investment from Kennedy Lewis, a leading credit-focused alternative asset management firm. We believe this positions us for strategic growth and expansion and we look forward to tapping into the network and knowledge base of Kennedy Lewis as we collaborate to drive long-term stockholder value. Second, in June 2024, we were pleased to receive preliminary court approval of our settlement of the pending seller class action litigation relating to real estate brokerage fees which will also result other similar pending litigation. Now we will discuss our outlook on our current operating environment as well as trends we are seeing in residential real estate. As discussed in previous quarters, generationally high interest rates have driven sustained listing inventory shortages across our luxury markets for more than 2 years. These shortages have resulted in significantly lower transaction volumes during this time. While we expect these industry-wide challenges will continue to impact results, we remain encouraged by recent improvements. First, our second quarter revenues and gross transaction values increased from the prior year period by approximately 4% and 7%, respectively. Further, average…

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Soham Bhonsle with BTIG.

So first one, I guess, Howard, more recently, we've seen an increase in inventory in some of your core markets like Florida and Texas and I think you sort of noted that in your comments as well. So I guess, wondering what you're hearing from agents as to why that's maybe not translated into more transaction unit growth this quarter. Because when I sort of break down your GTV performance into units in price, it looks like units were still down 3%. So any thoughts there would be helpful.

Yes. I mean, look, I think people are still waiting the inventory building a little bit because they're still waiting for rate cuts, okay? It's so you have inventory build and then there's really less buyers at most levels, or especially at the lower end levels in the market because of rates. So hoping that we will have some rate cuts before the end of the year. Who knows? I mean we'd be really happy with 2 quarter-point cuts but there's also been talk of 0.5 point cut and then 0.25-point before year-end. And we're sure we'll see the inventory really going down as people decide to make new purchases from the current inventory.

Okay. And then Bryant, I guess you did in the prepared comments, say, I think up 12% on cash receipts. Can you just remind us how that actually translates into revenue going forward?

Sure. I mean you can -- obviously, we've had really good performance in 2024 compared to 2023 up 12%. Our margins are running anywhere between 20% and 25%. So that really depends on regions going forward. But what we're seeing is a very strong market. And so just to add a little to the previous question, we are starting to see the impact of that listing as we've seen strong July, in particular. So it does take -- because we recognize revenue when the earnings process is complete. That's only when the sale occurs. So we think that looks positive going forward.

Okay, great. And then I guess on the capital raise, it sounds like you're looking to deploy that for growth. So can you maybe just talk about whether you envision that spend going towards tuck-in acquisitions? Or is it building out teams more organically? And then maybe just a market that you'd be looking to target.

Look, our expansion is basically limited to the states that really are no income tax states because that's where people are going. So it's a number of markets we're not in that we could be in. We've held back a little bit but we have really I think most of the no tax states covered now. We're in Texas. We're doing well in Texas. We're in obviously Florida. Florida is still booming as it's somewhat shocking almost because people are coming to Florida in droves [ph]. And they're coming from all over. Most people think like most of Florida, or a lot of it is coming from New York. But having said that, we see the California people also coming to Florida. And that's surprising. The general thinking was that anyone from California that wants to get out of the tax position there is going to go to Texas. Well, I think sometimes California is more aligned with Florida and we've heard that a few times that people are -- I have a neighbor in Florida on each side of me that came from California. So we know what's going on. And we're sort of happy with it and we're going to continue to be very careful with our money and work well. We will be working well with Kennedy Lewis and we will be hopefully getting involved. They are a big lender to developers, single-family home developers and we're hoping to pick up some of that business, if possible.

Okay. And then, Bryant on expenses. So it looks like you've been able to bring down the G&A line nicely. But my question is more around the go-forward. So if volumes were to begin to inflect next year or in the back half of the year, how are you sort of thinking about managing that line or just your fixed expenses in general, right? Should we expect that to continue to trend down as some of your prior actions sort of flow through? Or do you expect to add more folks to support the growth as you go forward?

So obviously, you're asking a question about scale and to answer your question, we do think we can scale expenses going forward. And we think that when revenues return that, that will impact the business favorably. But let's just talk about where we were and where we're going. So the contributions to our profits from the expense reductions really do reflect to work over the last 2 years. And this has been a gradual impact and it's been building as management has been very deliberate on these expense cuts and has been focused on continuing expenses in a judicious manner. And otherwise, we're not Pennywise, we are not foolish. We're focused on continuing to enhance the agent experience which that's the number 1 driver of long-term stockholder value. And while initially, the expense reductions came from lower advertising which is somewhat variable to revenues and personnel expenses we're now seeing the impact of the eliminations of leases and long-term sponsorships. So we'll continue to think smartly we'll continue to -- where there's a need to spend more on things like advertising, we will but we're going to continue to try to scale our expenses to the maximum amount possible.

And let me add something to what I was talking about before an expansion. Our way of expansion now is not to go buy a company or not to start from scratch but what we do is we go into markets and most of these developers are -- do business in multiple states. So like, for instance, we have projects in Tennessee coming up. We don't have an office in Tennessee. We have a broker. And so that may be just for a while just doing new development projects which is a great part of our business. And that's pretty much how we save money in opening other markets.

Okay, understood. And just last one. On split, Bryant, it was up 150 basis points. And look, we've seen pressure across the industry. Can you just maybe talk about some of the dynamics that play there.

Yes, of course. And this is a similar asset to the first quarter but I'll give you the walk forward. So nothing has changed on the grid that we paid to agents in recent years. And we're looking region, if you look at the region to region condition split, they're completely consistent. But what's happening is our margin analysis is really sensitive in mix given the number of markets we're in. So specifically, Florida which is a higher commission state increased from 27% of our existing home sales in the '23 second quarter to 30% of existing home sales in the second quarter of 2024. That accounted for -- if you look at the difference between that and New York City, that accounted for about half about 0.5% of the 1.5% change in the margin. The remainder was due to the Douglas Elliman development marketing which you know that business is sensitive to revenue recognition accounting because we only recognize revenue and related profit on that business when the earnings process is complete or the sale closes. And as Howard said, we have a tremendous pipeline in that and that looks good for future profits. The final impact was higher commission payouts on a percentage basis and that was due to -- we're an ultra-luxury realtor. I mean that's the bottom line. That's our market, ultra-luxury and we had some really significant record-breaking transactions of 9 bigger transactions during the quarter and that's going to result in lower margins. But at the same time, it's going to result in higher absolute gross profit.

Our next question comes from Peter Abramowitz with Jefferies.

Yes. So if we just look at overall transaction value in your business versus the overall market, it would seem that you gained market share this quarter. So just wondering if you could provide any context or comments around that. Maybe what drove that and if you think that's something that's sustainable going forward?

Obviously, record-breaking sales drove. We have the best agents. We're ultra-luxury residential real estate broker.

Just to add, we have, I think, in the whole industry, in the whole country, we have the highest level of sales. Our average sale this year was $1.8 million, I think, right? The rest of the companies, even companies, no matter what size they are, I don't think there's anyone that's even close to that. I think they're all $1 million or less.

I believe you're correct, Howard and we also are in markets that, in addition to record-breaking sales in addition to being the name ultra-luxury real estate, we also are in markets that are less mortgage rate sensitive, mortgage rates were very high in the second quarter. So we are going to outperform in a quarter like that from that rate -- from the interest rate perspective.

Okay, that's helpful. And then a question just overall on the macro backdrop, obviously, some volatile and wild moves in the market. And there seems to be maybe a little bit more concern around a recession today than there was a couple of weeks ago. Just if you could help us think through impact your business. I know that your core buyer is maybe less impacted by the macro backdrop and not as sensitive. But have you had conversations internally about how that affects the business? And could you help us think through, if we do go into a recession, how we should think about sort of the go-forward sort of medium term?

Yes. That's a tough question because we don't know how the recession would be if there even is one. We keep hearing how many times that we heard about it, oh, recession is coming, recession is coming. I don't think there's going to be any serious recession, there may be others that the opposite; but I still say that we are in the best position in the industry to weather a recession. And that's what's important because when you come out of that recession, if there is one, we'll be the number 1, we'll continue to be the number 1 broker in the country.

Got it. And then one more, if I could. I think, Howard, you mentioned in your comments toward the end there, just on strategic market expansion. Could you touch on maybe some of the markets where you're thinking that may be a possibility, whether it's acquiring new teams or potentially just kind of beefing up for recovery, just markets overall, where you think the business could be expanding over the next year or two?

Yes. As I said, one of the ways we're doing it without spending a lot of money is through new development. Because in some of these markets, there's really pretty much no one that does new development sales. So that's what we're doing, as I said in Tennessee and that's how we're building our -- pretty much all our markets, all our newer markets, including Texas and including Las Vegas. We have some great projects and you don't have to spend much money to do that because we have the back office part of it in New York and Florida and that can service the whole country pretty much. So we're not building -- we're not going in and opening a taking 5,000 feet and opening a big beautiful new office that we're not doing. We want to get business first before we open the office. And that has worked pretty well for us because we're very well known in the new development business. I mean, we have huge market share in -- if you look at Florida, a huge market share in Florida and we haven't been there that I guess how long have we been to Florida?

11 years.

10, I was going to say 10 years, 10, 11 years. And we built up where we're the number 1 broker in Miami Beach, we're the number 1 bulk broker in Palm Beach County. And we're all the way up pretty much, we go halfway up on the east side and we're now on the West Coast of Florida. And they really don't have anyone that really knows the new development business like we do. And that's really been a huge help. And so we're going to be going to places where there's business. It doesn't matter really where they are. If we can do it and do it economically and make money, we're doing it.

All right, that’s all for me. Thanks for the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, those are all the questions that we have for today. Thank you for joining us on Douglas Elliman quarterly earnings conference call. Hope you have a good day and this will conclude our call.