Jeremy Rakusin
Analyst · the Canadian Securities Administrators and in the company's annual report on Form 40-F as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Today is February 5, 2025. I would now like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Scott Patterson. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Gigi
Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. As you just heard, we are pleased with the strong fourth quarter and full-year results we delivered, particularly when looking back to what we outlined as our annual growth objectives at the beginning of 2024. We saw increasing momentum throughout the year and ultimately matched or exceeded our financial targets across the board. The fourth quarter specifically showed strong outperformance in aggregate for our two divisions, which more than offset significant negative non-cash foreign exchange adjustments and corporate costs outside of the operating segments. I will elaborate with further details in just a moment. During the fourth quarter, our operating results included consolidated revenues totaling $1.37 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $137.9 million, 27% and 33%, respectively, with our margin at 10.1%, up 50 basis points compared to 9.6% during the prior year. Our Q4 adjusted EPS was $1.34, up 21% over last year's fourth quarter. For the full year, consolidated revenues increased 20% to $5.22 billion, including 4% organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $513.7 million, up 24% over the prior year and yielding a 9.8% margin, up 20 basis points compared to 9.6% in 2023. Adjusted EPS for the 2024 fiscal year was $5.00, up 7% versus 2023. Note that these comments on our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS results reflect adjustments to GAAP operating earnings and GAAP EPS, which are disclosed in this morning's release and are consistent with our approach in prior periods. Now walking through the quarterly and annual results in our two divisions, I will lead off with FirstService Residential. For Q4, revenues were $521 million, up 5% versus the prior year period, and the division reported EBITDA of $46 million, up 6% quarter over quarter. Our margin for the quarter was 8.8%, matching the prior year period. For the full year, revenues were $2.1 billion, increasing by 7% over 2023, including 5% organic growth. Annual EBITDA increased 6% with our full-year margin at 9.3%, in line with the 9.4% margin for 2023. The division performance matched our expectations both for 2024 as well as the long-term targets of mid-single-digit annual organic top-line growth with annual margins remaining within our typical 9 to 10% margin band. Looking next at our FirstService Brands division, the very strong fourth quarter included revenues of $844 million, up 45% compared to Q4 2023, and EBITDA came in at $100.7 million, up 65% year over year. The significantly higher profitability was driven by the contribution of our Roofing Corp acquisition acquired in late 2023, as well as improved margins on an organic basis. The brands division margin during the quarter was 11.9%, up 140 basis points over 10.5% in the prior year quarter. Our restoration brands saw higher margins driven by operating leverage from the strong top-line growth that Scott described in his comments. We also had improved margins within Home Services as our California Closets company-owned operations continue to reduce their promotional activities and optimize their labor costs compared to the prior year quarter. The strong finish to the year in the brands division produced robust annual growth metrics, with revenues eclipsing $3 billion and up 32%, while EBITDA grew 40% over the prior year. Our full-year 2024 brands margin came in at 11%, 60 basis points over the prior year of 10.4%. Finally, two remaining points to highlight regarding profitability below the operating division lines. First, we reported significantly higher corporate costs of almost $9 million in the fourth quarter compared to just over $1 million in Q4 of 2023, with almost all of the variance driven by non-cash foreign exchange movements related to the translation of Canadian dollar debt from a prior acquisition. This FX adjustment had a negative impact of eight cents on our adjusted earnings per share in the fourth quarter. For the full year, our corporate costs were $25 million compared to a little over $14 million versus the prior year, and once again, non-cash foreign exchange movements were the principal driver for the significant increase. Secondly, our annual interest costs were 75% higher in 2024 than the prior year due to the higher rate environment as well as increased debt levels to finance our roofing platform and subsequent tuck-under acquisitions. This tempered our annual EPS performance to 7% year-over-year growth, which was a meaningful gap to our top-line and operating earnings growth rates. In the fourth quarter, we started to see our EPS growth approach our strong operating growth performance as interest rates have started to moderate. I'll now summarize our cash flow and capital deployment. For the year, we delivered cash flow from operations totaling $285 million, which was up modestly versus 2023. Normalizing our operating cash flow to exclude working capital movements, given prior year pickups, we saw a 19% increase on a year-over-year basis. We fully redeployed our cash flow with over $300 million allocated to support our continued growth, two-thirds going towards our tuck-under acquisition program, and the remaining third towards capital expenditures for our existing operations. Our acquisition spending during the year totaled $212 million, largely directed towards expanding the geographic footprint of our Roofing Corp operating platform. Our capex for 2024 tallied just below our annual target of $115 million. In 2025, we expect total capital expenditures to be approximately $125 million, growing in lockstep with our operations and remaining in line with historical investment trends measured relative to our revenues and EBITDA. In addition to these capital allocation priorities, we also announced yesterday a 10% dividend increase to $1.10 per share annually in US dollars, up from the prior $1.00. Our consistent and robust growth in financial performance over the long term has allowed us to establish a track record of healthy annual dividend hikes of 10% plus over the past decade. We are able to allocate our dividend returns because our balance sheet continues to remain strong. At 2024 year-end, our leverage sits at two times net debt to adjusted EBITDA, down slightly from the prior year-end notwithstanding the significant acquisition activity I noted earlier. We have approximately $360 million of liquidity through our cash on hand and undrawn portion of our bank credit facility. This level is ample for our foreseeable needs, and with the strong support of our bank syndicate and long-term note holders, we have the ability to tap into incremental debt capacity as necessary. Looking forward, Scott has already provided some color on the top-line growth outlook for the individual brands. Aggregating those indicators, the upcoming first quarter consolidated revenue growth will approach 10%, and this pacing should continue into Q2 as we benefit through the incremental contribution from roofing acquisitions that closed in mid-2024. In the back half of the year, we will revert back to consolidated mid-single-digit top-line growth without accounting for any further tuck-under acquisitions. Piecing this together for the full year, we expect our businesses to collectively deliver high single-digit top-line growth. In terms of our consolidated margin, we expect Q1 to be modestly higher versus the prior year, with the residential division margin roughly flat and our brands division margin up on the continuation of the same themes as recent quarters. These positive brands margin dynamics will moderate in Q2 and beyond, assuming no additional significant weather-driven events and large loss claims in restoration. For the full year, we expect brands division margins to be modestly up, and our FirstService Residential margins to be flat to potentially slightly up. This will drive incremental consolidated EBITDA margin expansion during the year compared to 2024. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, please open up the call to questions. Thank you.