Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Frontdoor’s Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. Today’s call is being recorded and being broadcasted on the Internet. Beginning today’s call is Matt Davis, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer and he will introduce the other speakers on the call. At this time, we will begin today’s call. Please go ahead, Mr. Davis.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining Frontdoor’s third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Frontdoor’s Chief Executive Officer, Rex Tibbens and Frontdoor’s Chief Financial Officer, Brian Turcotte. The press release and slide presentation that will be used during today’s call can be found on the Investor Relations section of Frontdoor’s website, which is located at investors.frontdoorhome.com. As stated on Slide 2 of the presentation, I’d like to remind you that this call and webcast may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to materially differ from those discussed here today. These risk factors are explained in detail in the company’s filings with the SEC. Please refer to the risk factors section in our filings for a more detailed discussion of our forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties related to such statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, October 28 and except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures throughout today’s call. We have included definitions of these terms and reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our press release and the appendix to the presentation in order to better assist you in understanding our financial performance. I will now turn the call over to Rex for opening comments. Rex?

Thanks, Matt and good afternoon, everyone. In the third quarter, Frontdoor delivered strong financial results. While this speaks to the progress our organization has made, there is still much more we are doing to build a strong foundation for the future. Starting on Slide 4, since the onset as a public company, Frontdoor’s vision is to redesign the home services space and become a top provider of residential repair and maintenance solutions and this vision remains as strong as ever. We believe the total addressable market for U.S. home services is approximately $400 billion and no one company has yet to provide an ideal homeowner experience. We believe that Frontdoor is well-positioned to become the industry leader over time. Home repair represents about 25% of the addressable home services market and it’s the most challenging segment to operate in as the customer already has something broken, and that’s where we have mainly operated over our 50-year history. Looking ahead, the long-term roadmap includes expansion into home maintenance services and eventually, home improvement as a way to appeal to a broader customer base. We are doing this by transforming the way we evolve the customer experience, from a difficult manual process to a seamless and digital best-in-class experience that homeowners will love. Our long-term vision remains the same: to provide excellent service and take the hassle out of homeownership. While the pandemic has presented a number of challenges to us, our contractors, our vendors and our customers, we still have made significant progress over the last few years. However, we are not satisfied at the pace of change and need to accelerate the advancement of our technology initiatives as fast as possible. I will speak more about that in a moment. Our first priority is to pivot and narrow our near-term…

Thanks, Rex, and good afternoon. Let’s now turn to Slide 7, and I’ll review our third quarter 2021 financial results. Revenue increased 7% versus the prior year period to $471 million, primarily driven by higher pricing in our home service plans and strong year-over-year growth in both ProConnect and Streem. Tight price accounted for 5% of our revenue growth, while volume accounted for 2% of our growth, primarily from ProConnect and Streem as the number of home service plan customers remained relatively flat versus the prior year period as volume gains and renewals were offset by challenges in the first year real estate channel. Looking at our home service plan channels, revenue derived from customer renewals was up 8% versus the prior year period due to improved price realization and growth in the number of renewed home service plans. First year real estate revenue was down 5% versus the prior year period, primarily due to a decline in the number of home service plans in this channel as a result of the tight existing home sales market, partly offset by improved price realization. Direct-to-consumer or D2C channel revenue was up 7% versus the prior year period, primarily due to improved price realization, driven by both our new product mix and normal rate increases. As a reminder, our new Good, Better, Best product mix in the D2C channel was launched earlier this year and consists of the Silver, Gold and Platinum offerings. These are higher-priced but more inclusive coverage products compared to our previous offerings, and we believe it will drive greater customer satisfaction and higher retention. Revenue reported in our other channel increased $6 million over the prior year period, primarily due to continued growth at ProConnect and Streem. ProConnect revenue was $4 million and Streem’s revenue was $3 million…

Thanks, Brian. As a reminder, during the question-and-answer session, we encourage you to ask any questions that you may have, but please note that guidance is limited to the outlook we’ve provided. Operator, let’s open the line for questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have the first question on the phone lines today from Jeff Schmitt of William Blair. So, Jeff, please go ahead. We have opened your line.

Hi, good afternoon. Question on ProConnect and it sounds like it’s on track to hit the $20 million of revenue this year. I think you previously said that would be kind of 80,000 service requests at a cost of $250 per request. Was curious if it’s tracking to that? And then you assume – you think revenue will double next year? Like how does that unit cost – does the cost per request go up in your assumptions, I guess, as you kind of rollout higher cost services?

Yes. Thanks for your question, Jeff. I don’t believe we ever said $250 per request, maybe back into that number. But certainly, 80,000 service requests for this year. In terms of next year, we’re certainly targeting doubling revenue. It really comes down to the mix. So that’s why I’m a little hesitant to back into the $250 number because we plan on having the – expanding our trades with appliance and electric plumbing and HVAC. And so that number will be, I think, somewhat fluid based on the type of work we do. We also plan on expanding our maintenance services, of HVAC tune-ups, upgrades, that type of thing. So it’s going to really be dependent on the mix. So I think it’d be hard to give a concrete dollar amount for each service request.

Okay. And then the investments in ProConnect and Streem, just to scale them, I think you mentioned it would be around $30 million of SG&A. Is that all going to hit this year or I guess how much are you expecting? Is that going to be the majority of the cost or should we expect more in next year to scale those?

Well, that’s – the number that Brian indicated earlier are for this year. Certainly, as we move into next year, I think the majority of the cost will be around marketing. So I think that we need to look at a couple of different things. One is, certainly, we will continue to use search and digital for ProConnect. I think there is also a great opportunity to cross-sell to our existing AHS customers, which is certainly a great way to lower our acquisition cost. And then I’d also look at – we’re really trying to drive more major services as well, which will also lower our CAC. And then the last thing I would point out is, which I made in my prepared remarks, is that at least in the appliance trade, we’re seeing mid-single-digit repeat business. And that’s one of the key indicators, I think, one for success in the program; but two, to also lower our overall marketing cost. And so that will really help us scale going into 2022.

Okay, great. Thank you for the color.

Thank you.

Thank you. We now have a question on the line from Cory Carpenter of JPMorgan. Cory, your line is open.

Great. Thanks for the questions. I had two. Just one on claims. Clearly, I know they came in lower than you were expecting. But just curious, I mean, are those basically back to pre-pandemic levels today or maybe even below pre-pandemic levels? And what are you – what expectations are you assuming for that next year? And then on ProConnect, Rex, maybe could you just provide a little more detail around kind of why you made the decision here to balance more profit in growth next year? Any more color you could provide there would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure, Cory. I’ll start with ProConnect, and then I’ll hand it over to Brian to talk about kind of overall gross margin or cost. As I stated in my prepared remarks, I think we’re growing well. As you recall, we’re in 35 cities. Our plumbing and electric trade expansions took a little longer to ramp than we anticipated, but we’re continuing to apply these and our other learnings to our go-to-market strategy. And so what we don’t want to do is kind of overheat the market from a marketing perspective if we’re not ready from an expansion perspective. So that’s why we – that’s what we mean by kind of balancing the market, if you will. And then as we consider expanding into our current base, kind of the cross-sell initiatives, we want to make sure we have enough offerings in terms of maintenance services for our customers as well. So I think everything is kind of – is growing well. We just want to make sure that we have enough selection for customers to drive that repeat business that I talked about earlier. Brian, do you want to take the COGS question?

Sure, Rex. Thanks. And Cory, thanks for the question. Service request trended pretty close to pre-pandemic levels in Q3, which is a great trend for us. And we really saw no impact from the Delta surge that we anticipated. So that was good news as well. And looking forward, I think we’re cautiously optimistic about Q4 and then going into 2022, but we’re going to watch the trends really closely. But at this point in time, the trends look pretty good as far as service request across trades, especially the pandemic trades of plumbing and appliance.

Great. Thank you, all.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have another question on the line from Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer. So, Ian, please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. You guys, I believe you mentioned labor shortages. Can you please, talk a little bit more about that? How are you going about getting around that? Where is that actually hurting your business? And what type of inflation should we expect from that? Thanks.

Sure. I’ll take that. This is Rex. So certainly – well, one of the things we’re very proud of is our contract relations team has done a phenomenal job of continuing to strengthen the community we have with our contractors. Our percent of preferred this year is one of the highest levels it’s, I think, been as – since our – certainly as a stand-alone company and maybe overall. One of the areas where we are seeing signals, anyway, from our contractors is in our network contractor. So those who we kind of use sparingly and trying to kind of grow them and becoming more of our direct dispatch or our preferred contractors. And so certainly, those contractors are beginning to feel the squeeze from a labor perspective. They tend to be smaller players for us and I think in the industry overall. And so continuing to be able to recruit and retain skilled tradespeople, I think, is beginning to create an issue for them. I think the great thing for us is that because we have this relationship with our preferred providers, we seem to be weathering that storm pretty well. I think the only thing from a preferred perspective that maybe causing some issues are things like office staff, but I think the team has done an incredible job of really kind of working our way through what’s certainly a very tight labor market.

Okay. Great, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. We now have a question from Mike Ng from Goldman Sachs. So, Mike, please, go ahead when you ready.

Hey, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the question. I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color around your assumptions when you talk about the high single-digit revenue growth rate in 2022. Should we assume that real estate in 2022 realizes a similar decline as you’re looking for in the fourth quarter? Any additional information there would be great. And then also on 2022, I’m sorry if I missed it, but is the 50% gross margin outlook for 2021 a good way to think about next year? I certainly appreciate that there is cost inflation that you’ll have to manage there. Thank you.

Brian, you want to take that one?

Yes. I’m happy to, and please jump in, Rex. The first question about the ‘22 revenue guide, Mike, that’s what I wrote down here. Yes, we’re guiding towards something similar to the past this year and last, which is sort of in the 8% range. And I think based on the trends in real estate, first year real estate, we will have another – the revenue growth will be negative next year as well in the real estate channel just because of the way the business builds over time. And we’ve got to rebuild our volume. We will get price and mix, but we’re going to have volume challenges in the next year until the back half of the year, and then it will begin to grow hopefully towards historic rates. It will be a good year for D2C. We think that’s going to rebound nicely, and also renewals will have maybe comparable to this year, maybe a little less, but that will all build towards that 8% revenue growth year-over-year. Is that helpful?

Got it. Thank you.

And then your other question was – I’m sorry, I forgot it already.

Gross margin – 50% gross margins?

Yes. The challenge is going to be – I think, as I mentioned prepared remarks, that I think dynamic pricing will continue to be working very well for us, and all the process improvements we’re making will flow through. But I’m concerned about inflation like every other CFO that you’ve probably heard in the past few weeks. We just don’t know what’s going to happen. We see parts and equipment availability is improving each month and not to pre-pandemic levels. But the inflation on labor, raw materials, transportation, I think, are going to drive prices higher, the parts and equipment heading into next year. So that’s a concern. And I really don’t have a good feel for global commodities, Mike, whether it’s steel or copper, resins, what have you. And it just feels like those will be challenged, at least until the back half of next year, which will keep the inflation pressure on. So, based on that, that’s what we will factor into our gross margin calculus for next year. The benefits of dynamic pricing and process improvements offset by potentially higher inflation.

Great. Thank you, Brian. And I appreciate all the incremental color.

Thank you.

We now have Youssef Squali from Truist Securities. So Youssef, please go ahead when you are ready.

Yes. Hi. This is Nick Cronin on for Youssef. Thanks for taking my questions. Just one for me. What roles dynamic pricing played in the margin – gross margins in the current environment? It looks really good this quarter. So, any more color would be helpful. Thanks.

Yes. Hi. It’s Rex. Certainly, it played a part. There wasn’t, I think the overarching part. As Brian mentioned before, we have had a lot of process improvements as well as, I think we also had lower service requests as well. The issue, I think it’s a good issue with the price as we continue to optimize our models. This quarter, we – for our highest usage, highest-cost customers, we had higher price increases. While it’s still inelastic, we did see higher than expected cancellations for those customers, which again does flow to higher profitability. But I wouldn’t say it was the key driver of the profitability this quarter, but certainly helped. And so in terms of dynamic pricing, we have since adjusted those models so that we continue to retain those customers and ramp up the pricing over time so that we are able to keep the customer and continue to keep the revenue as well. But the real – I think the real driver, as Brian pointed out in his prepared remarks outside of dynamic pricing were really around our process improvements, which include higher percent of preferred, some of our technology improvements. Certainly, as we continue to tweak our algorithms around dispatching and some of our customer service software, that’s definitely helped us as well. But really the – it’s all the cross-functional effort of the team, coupled with good weather and lower service requests, especially for HVAC, were the main drivers this quarter. Brian, feel free to chime in there.

No. I think you nailed it.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. We now have Bryan Wynn of Credit Suisse. So Bryan, your line is open.

Hi guys. It’s Bryan on for Kevin. I appreciate you taking the questions.

Hi Bryan.

Our first one here is – hi guys. Yes, our first one here is just on – as it relates to the macro environment, you sort of touched on how, obviously, it’s impacting your competitors as well. So, we are just curious, have you seen the macro environment cause these step changes in the competitive environment overall? And given you guys are I think 4x the size of your next largest peer, do you think maybe these cross-currents could be – serve as an opportunity for some share gains, recognizing obviously that the TAM overall is pretty underpenetrated, but just any thoughts there?

Yes. I can’t – certainly, I think the biggest thing we have going for us, Bryan, is our scale. When you think about our buying ability, when you think about our supply chain team of how we are expanding our parts and replacements availability, I think that certainly, we have greater buying power over our competition. But we don’t have any definitive data that would prove that, obviously. But what I do think we have data is, if you look at our gross margin compared to some of our competitors, I do think that we are winning that category. And that’s through a lot of work that we have done over the last 2.5 years, 3 years as it relates to inserting technology where we can further our scale. And that’s around dynamic pricing. That’s around improving our supply chain. We now have an appliance portal. We have the ability preposition some of our fast living inventory. And really increasing our efforts around customer experience, not only is better for the customer, but some of the things we are doing is actually better for gross margin as well. So, we think that the real share gains will come as we continue to focus on making the customer or service experience more of a digital one. We are committed to really providing more self-service options, which will hopefully lower cycle time and increase a more digital experience, so it should lower cost as well. So, it’s all about removing friction from our processes and making it better for the customer. We think that’s how we win overall vis-à-vis our customers.

Makes sense. And then our follow-up here was just obviously a lot of capacity on the balance sheet. And I appreciate the commentary on kind of how you guys are thinking about M&A. But can you just remind us what sort of framework do you employ, be it return hurdle or whatever the case may be, when evaluating potential deals? And if you could just comment on – in each of the verticals what valuations are looking like from your standpoint? Thanks so much.

Bryan, feel free to chip in here. But certainly, as it relates just to M&A, I mean if you want to, Bryan, certainly talk about our overall capital allocation strategy. But as it relates to M&A, we are still in the same viewpoint as it relates to looking for technology that helps further that digital experience I just talked about. We think our acquisition of Streem is really starting to pay dividends as it relates to – especially our appliance customers being able to kind of see what they see virtually and really provide a very different experience. So, we will continue to look for technology either tuck-ins or adjacencies to help us with that. And then as it relates to kind of a roll-up strategy, if you will, for other home service plan companies, we are certainly not against that. We still think that valuations in services overall seems to be still very, very high. And so one of the things that I think that we are continuing to deploy is a very disciplined strategy as it relates to making sure we are not giving away our synergy values. And so we look at a lot of things, but I think we have a very high bar in terms of if we acquire something we want to ensure that it’s truly accretive for our investors. Brian, anything you would add to that?

I guess I would only add that you have mentioned in your question about capital allocation. Overall, Rex, Matt and I have really been laser-focused on capital allocation pre-spin and over the past 3 years. And we have been investing in the business. We have made a few small acquisitions, one modest, another modest one in Streem. And we knew at some point we were going to repay debt, refinance our debt. We paid our debt, which we did earlier this year. And while we are looking for acquisitions and nothing on the horizon, as Rex mentioned, that we think is the right value for us. So, that sort of leads into why we announced the share repurchase plan was we have got a refinancing debt repayment behind us. We have been investing strongly in the business. We had a lot of cash on the balance sheet. We generate a lot of cash. I think we mentioned we had to generate $170 million to $175 million this year free cash flow. So, we thought it was a great time to announce the share repurchase plan that our Board approved and return value to shareholders that way. So hopefully, that’s helpful.

We now have Brian Fitzgerald of Wells Fargo. So Brian, I have opened your line.

Thanks. Got a lot of questions answered. Maybe one on what you just touched on, the benefits from the process improvement. I am wondering how much runway you see there for additional benefits. And then you just touched on Streem a couple of times. How does that fit into the process improvements? How is it rolling out post your purchasing it? And is it deploying to your playbook? Is it deploying faster? Are you seeing better synergies and more impacts than you originally thought with Streem?

I will start with stating that we can talk about the cost side after that. Certainly, this year has been, I think a good year as it relates to Streem and our ability to integrate it within our business. We have been rolling it out over kind of our core home service business this year. Customers and contractors, when they use it, seem to really enjoy the ability to really look at or have someone look at kind of what they are seeing. And we think that is the future of the company as it relates to – we founded the business 50 years ago and what hasn’t changed as you kind of roll a truck to kind of see what’s wrong. That just seems like a really antiquated way when now we can have almost a Zoom-like call with the customer. We can see what they see in terms of problems. But in the future, we will be able to predict what’s going on, and we will be able to understand or predict what is that we are looking at. We should be able to understand what our supply position is in terms of the replacement parts or replacement overall. So, once we build all the kind of back-end capability of doing that, it becomes a very differentiated tool for not only for Frontdoor, but also for our contractor base in general. So, it helps us continue to even build the base within our existing contractor base. But the other thing I am really excited about for Streem is I think it’s an incredible ESG benefit in that we are not rolling trucks to kind of understand the issue. That is far better for our environment and far better for our future world as well. And so we are…

No. That was spot on, Rex.

Awesome. I appreciate it guys.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. We now have a question from Aaron Kessler of Raymond James. So Aaron, please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. A couple of questions, one just on the follow-up to the D2C rebound that you kind of said you have good confidence in for ‘22. Just a couple of factors that give you that strong confidence in that D2C rebounds, is it easier comps, pricing, etcetera? And then maybe just on the follow-up on the inflation costs, assuming you can kind of adjust dynamic pricing how quickly can you adjust that if we do see greater-than-expected inflation costs as well? Thank you.

Sure. I will take the last one first. As it relates to dynamic pricing, with the exception of real estate, we can make pricing changes fairly quickly. As it relates to renewals, which is two-thirds of our revenue, we can make it in less than a week. So, it’s pretty quick. In terms of your question around D2C, what gives us confidence is, a lot of the things that we talked about for this quarter are truly behind us. I think we have an opportunity to continue to diversify our demand mix. We have pivoted to new sources of demand. And I think the team is – I think we are seeing the level of execution that we saw previously. We reevaluated our conversion funnel to improve our sales process. Sales teams now understand our new product lineup as it relates to the good, better, best. And we have made a lot of improvements to our e-commerce site through A/B testing and optimization. So, those are the things that gives us confidence that direct-to-consumer should rebound next year. Keep in mind that from a unit perspective, it will take a while for it to show the numbers since we recognize revenue 12 in time. But we will see the added benefit of both better mix and price going into next year as well. So, that’s what gives us confidence for direct-to-consumer going into 2022.

Got it. Thank you.

We now have the final question on the line from Justin Anderson of KeyBanc. So Justin, Please go ahead when you are ready.

Thanks. I haven’t heard that variation in my last name before. But Rex, I appreciate that you are rationalizing spend in ProConnect given market conditions. Should we be viewing this as a temporary pause or more of a shift in the business? And perhaps related to that, are there factors that would cause you to ramp up that investment and drive more expansion there again? So, that’s question one on ProConnect and the investment dynamics. And then just digging into the labor dynamic more, what do you think is the biggest drive – gating factor towards really broadening out the selection that customers see? Is it really just labor at the existing contractors, or do you actually need to broaden out the types of contractors you are working with as you go market-by-market? Thank you.

Yes. Good to hear from you, Justin. I think taking the last question first, I think we need to continue to expand our maintenance services for our existing customers as well as expand our core trades in our existing ProConnect markets. So, just a quick history lesson here, we started with primarily appliance. We moved to Columbia Electric and were in HVAC in a couple of cities. We needed to further expand those, and I really want to see the – in terms of your question, of what makes you go faster. I want to see greater repeat business. I want to see our ability to cross-sell to our existing AHS customers. All things we have seen, our plumbing and electric trade expansion, like I said, took a little longer to ramp, but are beginning to perform, because it all really comes down to once we get – see a lowering of our customer acquisition cost and see repeat business that gives me – as well as a good customer experience, that’s what gives me optimism to pour more money into the market, knowing we will get more stickier demand, if you will. So, those are the things that we look at and continue to drive with. But keep in mind, it’s – we are 2 years into the journey. We went from basically zero to $20 million the first year. Confident we can double it next year. If we see a greater opportunity, we will definitely invest more to grow ProConnect. From a labor perspective, certainly one of the things we are watching carefully is making sure that there is labor there for these jobs. So far, it hasn’t been an issue. But again, it’s a small base, right. So, just like we are watching labor very closely in our broader contractor market as it relates to home service plans, we are doing the same thing as it relates to ProConnect. And so far, it’s not a mountain we can’t climb.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Justin. As we have no further questions on the line, I would like to hand back to Rex for some closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. While we are facing some near-term headwinds, our long-term vision remains as strong as ever. We are still delivering strong profitability and growth despite unprecedented real estate market conditions, a difficult global supply chain and ongoing challenges from the pandemic that will last into 2022. We will continue to look for opportunities to grow faster while transforming our service experience into a digital one. We are playing the long game, and we are focused on strengthening our foundation to deliver strong and consistent growth in the future. I look forward to talking to you in our next earnings call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for joining Frontdoor’s third quarter 2021 earnings call. Today’s call has now concluded.