Hessam Nadji
Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead
Thank you, Brad, and afternoon everyone and welcome to our first quarter 2016 earnings call. On behalf of our team, I’m very pleased to announce another quarter of growth for MMI as we celebrate our 45th year at the business. The first quarter of 2016 was marked by quite a bit of shift and changes in the sentiment at the macro level and the impact of the maturing rules in sales market and the aftermath of six years of impressive expansion. We’re seeing a dichotomy in the market with improved sentiment from the beginning of 2016 coupled with healthy real estate and economic fundamentals on one hand and increased investor and lender caution and a maturing real estate cycle on the other. In this environment was to achieve strong growth strengthened the fundamental drivers of the company and grew market share based on preliminary estimates. The company also set new first quarter records for revenue, number of closings and the size of our sales force. Our first quarter results were also helped by additional factors that I’ll expand on here in a moment. As expected, real estate fundamentals remain healthy and the overall market backdrop remains favorable to our business. However, we continue to face the slower pace of market sales growth, extended transaction time lines and challenging comps versus the first half of 2015. Looking at the first quarter results, we achieved revenue growth of just 12%, and grew earnings by 8.4% compared to the first quarter of 2015. Brokerage revenue in the firms core $1 million to $10 million private client business grew at a healthy rate of 9.8% year-over-year and accounted for 68% of total revenue. Private client transactions grew 10.8%, compared to the first quarter of 2015, which we believe points to additional share gains in this vital market segment. While key initiatives in further expanding our leading private client market position have been effective and remain a top priority, the quarter also benefited from a few other factors. To start with, we saw a jump in large property sales valued at $20 million and above. This is a function of continued growth within our institutional division, IPA, the completion of many larger transactions by our non-IPA agent, and typically higher volatility in the larger property transaction segment. The segment also included the closing of a large portfolio valued at nearly $500 million, which boosted revenue and dollar volume in the quarter. Last but not least, we also experienced some closing date variance with a number of transactions closing in late March as opposed to their scheduled completion in early April. This was simply a natural part of what occurs in our business from quarter-to-quarter and highlights the importance of viewing and analyzing our business model, over a longer term period as we have shared with you in the past. Key metrics such as the number of professionals and productivity also registered healthy gains in the first quarter, and over the past four months, we’re able to hire a 114 professionals with prior experience excluding interim, analysts and support staff. We continue to observe longer transaction timeline similar to the past two quarters due to lingering buyer and lender caution. We still view this trend as a natural part of the maturing cycle and the market’s response to several years of steady price gain. While a ratio of our died transaction remains stable and within the average in the past three years, transactions are still taking to longer to market, put under contract and close with a higher degree of closing date variability. Again, this is simply a reality of the business as the market transitions from several years of rapid expansion. Overall the number of transactions from our real estate brokerage business was up 9.1% over the same period last year with sales volume of $7.5 billion representing growth of 22.7%. Adjusting for their larger portfolio sell that I mentioned earlier, our brokerage sales volume was 14.7%, compared to the first quarter of 2015. As we’ve shared previously, expanding our specialty division is another critical component of our long-term growth plan. These include hospitality, sales storage, seniors housing, student housing, our IPA division and many other specialized property types. Over the past five years, growing this part of the business was a major part of my personal responsibilities. And as I have assumed my new role, I’m excited to have Al Pontius leading our Specialty Divisions nationally. As a long-term Marcus & Millichap veteran and previous head of our Office and Industrial Division and brings a deep level of expertise to the 16 specialties we service. During the quarter our overall sales volume in the Specialty division grew by 22% excluding the large portfolio sale I mentioned earlier. This also reflects a large increase in $20 million and above sale in this particular quarter, but the overall strategy for further penetrating each property niche with specialized services, branding, training and education is working well. Our financing division, MMCC, which is also a critical component of our long term growth plan registered transaction increase of 19%, volume growth of nearly 18%, and loan originator growth of 18.5% compared to the first quarter of 2015. These results reflect the added focus we’ve placed on expanding MMCC. We’ve just recently hired two seasoned management executives from the industry to support the various MMCC growth initiatives. Before turning the call over Marty for a more in-depth review of our financial results, I’d like to provide some color on the investment market and our business through the lens of four primary pillars. These are the macroeconomic environment, real estate fundamentals, capital markets, and of course investment sales activity. The macroeconomic environment remains sound, although many questions of durability of the economic expansion at the beginning of the year when international headwinds sparked volatility in the capital markets. Since mid-March, which was the turning point for improving sentiment, economic indicators have confirmed a moderate but steady piece of growth here in the U.S. first quarter hiring added 628,000 jobs just slightly ahead of last year’s pace and bringing the total employment up by 5.3 million jobs above the prior peak reached in 2008. This gives the United States economy and commercial real estate a sound footing in contrast to the tepid international growth that we keep hearing about. Strength in retail sales [indiscernible] market and wage growth also supports the notion of slower but steady growth with a foreseeable future. The second pillar real estate fundamentals also remains on track with supply and demand and balanced for all property tax. Vacancy rates remained range bound at health level despite increases in the pace of construction. This momentum supported elevated rent growth across all property types over the last year, which we expect to continue. The third pillar, capital markets have settled since the significant volatility we saw early in the year. The more patient Fed and lower interest rates are the silver lining of January and February rather wild ride in the capital market. Continued international uncertainty support capital flows in to the U.S. which is still viewed as the gold standard of safety. This should keep our interest rates low for the foreseeable future. There is plenty of debt and equity capital in the market place and lenders are competing to put money into work. Even though they’ve clearly a tightened commercial real estate underwriting standard and increased their level of deal scrutiny. While another Fed rate increase maybe back in the conversation by June, we do not anticipate the next eventual Fed action to disrupt capital availability for our business. On the investment activity front, although there has been media attention focused on contraction of investment sales during the first quarter, we believe much of this decline appears to be centered on entity level and major portfolio transaction. We believe transaction activity by individuals particularly in the private client market segment tends to be more stable. Primary estimates point to mid-single digit growth during the first quarter in individual transaction account. This is in line with the expectations of a market transitioning from several years of rapid growth to a still healthy inactive environment with slower growth. We continue to see strong buyer interest and multiple offers on available assets, but pricing expectations have widened and marketing time lines have expanded compared to last year as I pointed out earlier. So what do these terms and conditions really mean for MMI. First of all, we’re well positioned to further build on our private client market leadership. The $1 million to $10 million property sales market accounted for 43% of all sales and 60% of the commercial real estate commission pool in the marketplace over the past 12 months. Our tight alignment and leading share in the largest portion of the marketplace is a major advantage as we look to expand our market leadership within it. Second the increasing need for cash flow investment, higher yield and hard asset allocation will continue to generate capital flows into the commercial real estate. Sales growth in secondary and tertiary markets continue to outpace due to higher yields and improving local economy. Capital movement across the country and various property types highlights the power of the MMI platform and facilitating these transaction and strategy for thousands of our investors at any given time. As an example, 46% of our transactions over the past 12 months involved out of state buyers. Looking forward, we expect the four pillars of real estate to remain supportive of MMI’s business growth with some added volatility given the fluctuations in capital market. Our biggest risk remains an unexpected capital market or economic shock beyond the increase volatile we’ve already seen over the past six months. We are confident that we can continue to build one our success, but expect two factors to present challenges. First the slowing paper transactional growth and second a tough year-over-year comparison given the strength of our results in the first half of 2016. That said as we have demonstrated over our 45 year history we will continue to grow our company over the long term. With that I will turn the call over to Marty for an in-depth look at our financial results. Marty?