Earnings Labs

Serve Robotics Inc. (SERV)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 27, 2015

$9.43

-4.70%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ServiceMaster Company's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded and broadcast on the Internet. Beginning today's call is Jim Shields, ServiceMaster's Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer, and he will introduce the other speakers on the call. At this time, we'll begin today's call. Please go ahead, Mr. Shields.

James E. Shields

Management

Thank you, Amanda. Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2014 earnings conference call. Today, you will hear from ServiceMaster's Chief Executive Officer, Rob Gillette; and Chief Financial Officer, Alan Haughie. For those of you who haven't had a chance to download the Investor Presentation from our website, I'll walk you through the agenda items shown on slide one. Rob will lead off by providing a summary of our full year financial results and then review our performance by segment. Alan will then review our consolidated results in more detail and provide full year 2015 outlook. Rob will then provide summary comments before opening the call to your questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that throughout today's call, management may make forward-looking statements to assist you in understanding the company's strategies and operating performance. As stated on slide two, all forward-looking statements are subject to the forward-looking statement legends contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and are subject to the risk factors contained in our public filings that may cause actual results to vary materially from those contemplated in the forward-looking statements. Information discussed on today's call speaks only as of today, February 26, 2015. The company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. This morning, ServiceMaster issued a press release filed with the SEC on Form 10-K highlighting our full year and fourth quarter 2014 financial results, and we have posted a related presentation, both of which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. We will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures such as adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income throughout today's call, and we have included definitions of these terms in our press release, which is available on our website. We have also included reconciliations of the relevant non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our press release and presentation in order to better assist you in understanding our financial performance. All references on the call to EBITDA are to adjusted EBITDA as defined in our press release and the figures labeled as such therein. I'll now turn the call over to ServiceMaster's CEO, Rob Gillette for opening comments. Rob?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

All right. Thanks, Jim. Thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. Good morning, welcome to our full year and fourth quarter earnings call. 2014 was a great year at ServiceMaster, these strong results that you see demonstrate that we are not only growing our business faster and more profitably, but also building a strong customer focus team that puts a premium on keeping our commitments. As for the results, total company revenue increased to $164 million or 7% versus prior year. The increase was driven by the introduction and growth of new services at Terminix, the continued development of the direct-to-consumer channel at our American Home Shield or AHS business, and the successful acquisition and integration of Home Security of America or HSA a home warranty business that we acquired in February of last year. Our EBITDA growth demonstrates the operating leverage in our businesses, as a significant portion of our revenue growth drops to the bottom line. In 2014, our EBITDA improved a $107 million or 24% compared to prior year. Cost reduction efforts and supply chain efficiencies also contributed to EBITDA improvement. When you take into account, the benefit of the roughly $25 million of cost transferred to TruGreen, approximately 50% of the revenue increase in 2014 dropped to the bottom line. Full year adjusted net income of $167 million improved $85 million or a 104% compared to prior year. Full year adjusted diluted earnings per share of a $1.47 increased $0.58 versus prior year. I should note that the diluted shares outstanding for the full year were 114 million compared with 92 million for the prior year as a result of our issue in 41 million shares in our IPO which closed on July 1. Cash flow was very strong, pre-tax unlevered free cash flow of…

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Thanks, Rob, and good morning everybody. I will now cover the fourth quarter results as shown on slide nine. Revenue for the quarter increased 8% or $44 million over the prior year, and I would say the year-over-year organic growth of the business was about 5% or $28 million out of that $44 million of revenue increase. The balance of the revenue increase of $16 million is largely due to acquisitions of which HSA, that Rob mentioned earlier, acquired in February 2014 represents the lion's share at about $14 million. The balance of the acquired revenue is in Terminix. There were however a number of other offsetting items within revenue that are worth mentioning here because of their impact on segment performance. About $6 million of the year-over-year revenue increase in Terminix is due to the non-recurrence of a revenue correction made in the fourth quarter of 2013 late into the timing of renewal revenue at that time. And for the company as a whole this was offset by a year-over-year decrease in revenue of about $7 million within American Home Shield relating to the relative timing of revenue between the quarters. This second item has no impact on full year revenue and you may recall that we predicted this in-year timing comparison during our second quarter conference call. And incidentally, the organic growth rates for the business segments, once these elements are removed, are very healthy at 5% each for Terminix and FSG and about 7% for HSA. The growth rate in American Home Shield is reflective of the growth in the direct to consumer channel. Gross profit increased by $25 million, of which about $6 million was due to acquisitions, again principally HSA. Therefore that $19 million of the increased gross profit was largely organic, representing a conversion…

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Okay. Great. Thanks, Alan. As I said earlier, 2014 was a very good year, besides from the strong financial results, the ServiceMaster team worked hard to spin-off TruGreen, execute our IPO, refinance a substantial portion of our balance sheet, realigned the Franchise Services Group under AHS and recently completed a secondary offering. We're excited that we have a dedicated and motivated team in place focused on growing ServiceMaster's top and bottom line. ServiceMaster has a unique set of capabilities and we are just beginning to realize their potential. With the rollout of the new services in Terminix and the realignment of the Franchise Services Group under AHS, we're in the early stages of taking full advantage of the ability to provide essential, high quality services to our customers. We have learned a great deal over of the last 18 months about the power of the ServiceMaster business model and I'm confident, we can take these learnings and continue to build on our success in the future. I'll now turn it over and get into Q&A. So turn it back to Jim. Thanks.

James E. Shields

Management

Thanks, Amanda. Thanks Rob. Amanda, you can open it up to call to questions now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our first question comes from the Anjaneya Singh with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I'm wondering if you can first discuss the conversion of the Merry Maids branches to franchises. How quickly do you expect to get this implemented will this be for the entire I think 73-ish to 75 branches? And then also what sort of plans does this – might mean for the franchise under Terminix. What's your view on those is there are potential for that increase or do you perhaps make those company owned if you could just discuss that strategy as well? Thanks.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Okay. I'll kick it off. It's Rob. Thanks for the question. First, as Alan mentioned, we believe that Merry Maids is a better franchise operation and branch operation whereas conversely we think Terminix is probably a better branch operation for us to run for all the reasons that we talked about and the ability to leverage the business in our performance. So we think the model in Merry Maids is going to benefit by having local owners pursue and grow the business and that'd be the primary focus of what they do. So as Alan said, the shift will change the revenue number in total, but over time we think expand the margins. So we did start out with – I think 73 branches is correct in that range. And so we're in the process of negotiating and positioning to sell those businesses with the objective of having this complete within the year, which is why we concluded that in our outlook as Alan described. So we continue to look at opportunities to expand the Terminix footprint. And we would – we like to do the work ourselves because we have the quality servicing capabilities and then the revenue opportunity to grow with customers with some of these new services. So, that's really a contrast between the two. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Got it. And one other one on AHS, you seem to be seeing steady improvements in retention there this year. Wondering what you're attributing that to, is it primarily a function of your penetration in the direct-to-consumer channel or is it the restructuring of the warranty plans that you'd mention on past calls? And the blended retention rate including HSA seems to be flattish implying HSA retention continues to go down. Could you just discuss the puts and takes there? Thank you.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes. Good question. Thank you. As you said, as AHS, a great proportion of the AHS business is in direct-to-consumer that will move the retention rate on average upwards because retention as we've discussed on prior calls have direct-to-consumer channels, certainly in the first year is higher than that of the real estate. The business HSA that we acquired is entirely a real estate business. Therefore by default, because of the – just in the simple mechanics of that business actually has a lower retention rate fundamentally because it's primarily real estate. And so, that business coming into the mix does modestly reduce the average retention rate. But in the AHS business, when viewed alone, the retention rate for both the real estate and the direct-to-consumer channel are themselves rising slightly. So – and overall I would say we're very, very happy with the way retention rates are progressing. What we're really seeing is a mechanical, modest mechanical change because HSA is a real estate business. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Understood. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Baird. Please go ahead.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. I had a couple of things I wanted to run through here and really Rob just starting on the Terminix segment to start out with here. These new services have been let's say a pretty strong growth driver here for the last few quarters. I think in the past, you've talked about how as your sales people get better at selling that, they'll get more efficient. Where are we in that ramp recognizing that like mosquito is still relatively new? Some of these other ones are a little bit more tenured, but where are we in that ramp? Is there potential more acceleration in sales of those new initiatives as we move here into 2015? Is that what's contemplated in the guidance?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes. We think that there really is and in varying stages of each of these new services we introduced throughout the year, and as you said, some have been around a little longer than others, but I think really we translated the exclusion services and only got started with mosquito in 2014. So we think there is significant upside there. On the sales side, we retained a number of sales people which normally we would not have done and kind of developed this third season, because of the sales of exclusion and installation into the winter months, so and our cost per sale stayed flat. So the payback was great and we are happy about that and we hope to be able to achieve more growth in 2015 through these additional services, because we're just getting started. So we're pretty excited about it and it enables us to grow revenue per customer as well.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you for that. And then just on Terminix, I think I heard Alan say that the outlook was for flat this year. I guess with I think the last couple of years has been down modestly. Is that just because this was 2014 had a weak swarm and you feel like you can make some of that up or what's the confidence around being flat rather than down over the last few quarters, few years maybe.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

For us, it's we think it's a solid way to plan the business simply because we're not relying on that kind of activity to drive revenue growth or margin. And so by doing that, we think it's a conservative way to plan, and some of the smarter guys in Terminix may be able to tell you that we can correlate weather and conditions to a swarm or activity. I'm not smart enough. So we don't know and it's only getting started, and we're about where we would anticipate this month and a little bit into the year. So it's difficult to predict and I think we're positioned well to capture it, if the activity occurs. But we think it's a good way to plan the business and focus on showing a lot of these other services and expanding our relationship with customers.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Okay. And then maybe just one final one for Alan. Coming out of the IPO, I think there was some expectation that you guys would be guiding on EPS, but I was wondering if you could help us here knowing that one thing that you mentioned was the roll-off of some of the amortization. Can you help us get – you gave us the pro forma interest expense. We've got the tax rate. But can you help us understand I guess that amortization piece and what this could mean for what we should be thinking of on EPS?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes. Sure. It's basically, I mean just one second, because it moves off during the year. The amortization I referenced, about $9 million, right. And so the rate, it's going to fall off to about $3 million or $4 million by 2016. So we'll see something like on average $9 million and $9 million for each of the first two quarters of 2015. And then it will fall to roughly $2 million or $3 million per quarter for the last two quarters of 2015, and then to like $1 million or $2 million thereafter. So it's about that pattern. So it almost entirely disappears for the second half of the year almost entirely.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Okay, that's helpful. I'll leave it there. Thank you, gentlemen.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of George Tong with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

Adrian S. Paz

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

Hi. This is Adrian Paz on for George Tong. I just wanted to look at EBITDA margins, very strong performance there. And I want to see, really if there was any benefit from lower fuel costs stemming from a drop in oil and other things that benefited margin that, aside from revenue flow through?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes. Yes, sure. Fuel costs, there is really only one business that incurs fuel cost of any significance they're not that significant and that's Terminix of course, where they basically have our own labor force and their own trucks. And generally, we spend roughly $40 million or spent roughly $40 million on fuel in last year, 2013, by that. And we probably saved $5 million or $6 million this year on fuel costs, so we're about 50% hedged though. So we have basically benefited in 2014 from roughly half of our fuel cost floating and getting the benefit of that reduction, and in 2015, all things being equal, we'll sort of replicate that degree of saving again. So there are some fuel cost savings in the 2014 numbers and there will be a modest amount, $5 million or $6 million I think of savings in 2015 compared to 2014. And the rest of the let's say the margin improvements in this business stem from the fact that the businesses are all pretty scalable. So, the businesses have capacity for growth whereby when we bring in new volume as a rule, we can bring that in our variable margin with minimal increase in fixed costs. So, the reason the margins expand is basically because the majority of our businesses have roughly a 50% variable margin. So, when we bring revenue in, we get that good flow through to the bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that we, as we've said, do choose to invest in growth and selling and marketing. So it's the scalability of the business and the operating leverage that comes from having such healthy variable margins and fixed costs that can stay largely fixed with volume.

Adrian S. Paz

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

Great. Helpful. And also I wanted to touch base on the Pest Control segment. I know you discussed previously commercial opportunities there. I want to see where progress was with penetrating the commercial markets and maybe give a little color on the competitive landscape and how it differs competing in that space versus residential.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Certainly, yes. As you probably know, we are relatively new to the commercial space. And prior to the last 12 to 18 months, haven't really had let's call it a dedicated sales team for attacking the commercial business. It is different in terms of the protocols and it's also different in terms of the nature of the relationship that a sales guy has to have with either the owners or the building managers for our commercial business. So, it's different in many respects. The expertise is the same, but the nature of the – as I said, the service protocols, the timing, as a service delivery and the selling exercise are all different. The margins from our perspective, from what we've seen are broadly the same. The pricing of an individual offer maybe higher than so is the cost to serve. So these kind of met off. We are seeing good growth in that area. I'm not going to – we don't publicly disclose the rate of growth in the commercial sector for us but it is growing. And also – what we also have seen is an increased demand for out of period work. So, part of the reason for our growth in past this year is in fact, as we increase our – the number of commercial contracts that we have, the number of additional visits that then get requested which are charging paid for as it was – extra charges for visits outside of a normally scheduled visits. So again that's been an area of growth. But that's one of the advantages of growing in that commercial space. But generally speaking, commercial businesses are more likely to want an immediate service to solve the problem as and when it occurs.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes, it's Rob, just to tell on to Alan a little I'd say the competitive front still similar to what we described in other calls in that most of our opportunity and business expansion in terms of share and position is directed at the independents and continues to be. So, we're I think the team has done a great job, improving the model having commercial specific tax, as well as commercially specific salespeople as Alan mentioned and then this national accounts focus that we had. So, we're pretty happy with the progress and we over to continuing in 2015.

Adrian S. Paz

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks you so much.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dan Dolev, Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Alan, can you maybe walk us through the organic growth by sub segment of Terminix, you mentioned I think it was $28 million for total. Can you give us the actual numbers in terms of organic like-for-like pest, termite and other?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Actually, I don't think I can at this point Dan. We haven't – I don't think we disclosed the separation of how our and where our acquisitions have landed in terms of commercial pest and termite business. We don't – we haven't actually disclosed that publicly.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Right. But the overall impact, the overall impact on Terminix from M&A was how much?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes. It's about 1.5 points, something like that. So again – we're – we've fit in pretty closely to what I've described as the sort of long term growth trend where it's 1.5 points to 2 points from pricing and the same from acquisition and the same from organic growth. When I described organic growth in this context, the context that I spoke earlier on combining pricing and volume growth as opposed to acquisitions. So not dissimilar to what we said before about the fourth quarter in the year.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Understood. And then a question on the franchises, I think I believe you mentioned that the EBITDA margin impact in 2015 from FSG is going to be neutral. Is that a correct statement?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Sorry, the EBITDA dollars by virtue of the Merry Maids, the transfer from Merry Maids to franchisees will be natural. The margin of course will go up, because the EBITDA will be flat.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Right.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

On revenue, yes.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

So can you quantify maybe in terms of like the guidance, in terms of I think it's like the 100 basis points guidance. How much of that would be from consolidated – from the FSG?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes. Sure. The – it depends how fast we go in terms of the divestitures of the Merry Maids brands. And a very rough number is about – there is about $55 million of revenue – $55 million to $60 million of revenue in branch revenue in Merry Maids and hence the – therefore that's contributed to the range. So again we will have some of that revenue this year because obviously we have – it's nearly the end of the first quarter and we haven't made a significant number of divestures or transfers to branches yet, so obviously we've got one quarter of that revenue will largely be in our first quarter results. So you can then take that $55 million or $60 million and assume that the biggest drag on revenue would be three quarters of that number so $40 million to $45 million at most...

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Right.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Depending on how quickly we progress throughout the year. As Rob said, the goal is to get all divested by the end of the year.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Understood. And the last question more of a long-term question, we've done work recently about what really drives LBO-driven IPOs and one of the conclusions that we reached is almost counterintuitive don't pay down the debt, don't pay a dividend, do M&A and CapEx, is the fact that you're so eager to pay down the debt is that because of lack of opportunities, is there small valuations or maybe this is just a decision from up above to pay down the debt just want to get some color on that?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Up above.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

I think he means me.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

I meant, I actually meant God.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes, right. There is something comforting about getting the debt level below your revenue which I don't know why I find that, but I just think it's been a focus I mean I know that we wanted to get it down, we've made great progress as we said in the last eight months, $1 billion, so that's pretty phenomenal and then we focused on continuing to improve the cash flow which believe or not we think we can do to get us to the flexibility and latitude. So, it's not, it's not as if we're not continuing to look at acquisitions and we'll do that. And when we find the right ones, we'll acquire them and add them and we'll balance it with paying down the debt overtime. So, we're continuing to grow and expand margin in the business and the multiples get reasonable pretty quick.

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Thanks, Dan.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Thanks

Dan Dolev

Analyst

Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Denny Galindo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Denny L. Galindo

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Good morning.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Good morning.

Denny L. Galindo

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

You guys have talked about increasing AHS penetration through direct marketing, and these customers have a longer lifetime value. So, I guess that kind of implies margin pressure in the short run, but ultimately expanding margins in the long run, as you kind of retain these customers longer. And I guess it seems like it would lead to high retention rates. Can you talk about like how we should think about this lag? Do you get to a point soon where you really start to see kind of an increase in the margin expansion year-over-year in this business due to increased rate or maybe if you can give some more color there?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes, certainly. It's actually tough one to unravel. It's very easy to me to unravel it then muddle it up again. So, the way to think of it is that within a 12 month period, given the marketing actually precedes the acquisition of those customers. Within a 12 month period, we make a modest loss on those customers, they tend to make one extra claim a year. And then of course there is the marketing cost of acquisition. So, we have an interest in dynamic emerging in relationship between 2014 and 2015, in that we spent heavily in 2014 in the second half. So, the second half of 2014 has actually born, embedded within pretty good margin performance, the marketing cost for the customers that will come online in 2015. So, 2015 won't bear the equivalent marketing cost for those customers. And the rate at which we grow that business is dependent on the rate at which we put those marketing dollars in. So, provided again our margins in all other aspects of the business continue to be healthy it effectively provides fuel for us to continue to market to invest in that marketing. And if you think about the guidance we've given for 2015, the $610 million that's one of the reasons we've just basically expressed a minimum, because depending on how the business performs and the rate at which we bring on new customers and the effectiveness of the marketing that's already out there now will determine how rapidly we grow that business and how much we refuel it with in 2015.

Denny L. Galindo

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just on margins just broader at the corporate level, you've talked about this 50% incremental margins this year it's a little higher I guess because the Merry Maids – the Merry Maids piece. But how much of this margin expansion is due to kind of one-time things that you've been able to do on the cost side? And how long could this kind of regime of like being able to generate 50% incremental margins last?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

That's a good point. If you look at the gross margin, the gross margin improvement, I don't know it sounds glib to say it's got nothing to do with cost control because that's not true, costs are under control. But the area where we've taken out functional cost is as you point out in SG&A, the largest piece of that being the transfer of $25 million of cost to tubing. Obviously that piece can't be replicated we are now running at a leaner level but we can't necessarily by that, say mechanism take out another $25 million. But if you think about what Rob – when Rob described, how we're taking a different view of the business and as he said looking at the AHS model as somewhat representative of the way we see ServiceMaster evolving in the future, we still see opportunity for us to let's say reorganize ourselves and do certain things more efficiently to free up cost for future growth. So we still do see some runway on cost reductions, as we manage our function or the functional side of this business more efficiently.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes, and primary one of the primary reasons we continue to think about, how we do things and I mentioned in the AHS business, I mean you got good revenue growth expansion the penetration opportunity of 3% to 4% of the households and because more and more we're doing it through the web or the self-service model we continue to drive that up our actual cost to serve goes down right, so a pretty good model and that's why I mentioned I want to translate the best practices continue to drive value added capabilities into that self-service model including sales and then as Alan said it's like last year we get ahead in terms of financial performance and we have opportunity we'll continue to invest in growth like we did in the second half of 2014 and also to drive awareness and expand the business, so it's a balance.

Denny L. Galindo

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

And then lastly, just thinking longer term strategically, there has been different schools of thought from the investors I talk to on the Franchise Services Group. And some people wondered if you should just spin it off or sell it. I think when you move to put it under American Home Shield, it seemed like that was less of a possibility, but I think maybe moving away from the company owned branches to franchises actually makes it seem an easier thing to spin it off or split it off. What are you thinking about now in terms of the future of that business? Does it fit? Do you want to just improve it first and then sell it or do you think it fits long term with the other businesses?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

We think that there is opportunity. If you think about our ability to facilitate services through independent contractors, our own people and more and more we're expanding the capabilities and service provided by the Terminix team and then through franchisee partnerships. It gives us latitude and capability to do a lot of different things. So, we have longstanding relationships with franchisees that are great providers of services, whether it's disaster recovery or on the clean side or any of the other brands that we have. So, we think we can do a better job of working with them to grow their business and as a result, ours. So they have capabilities to do things that we don't presently do today and we think that service can be value added to our customer base of nearly 5 million customers if we position ourselves and that capability appropriately. So, that's what we're working on.

Denny L. Galindo

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Sure. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Gary Bisbee with RBC. Please go ahead.

Jon P. Lanterman

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is actually Jon Lanterman in for Gary Bisbee. Just to piggyback on that last question on Franchised Services. I guess this is the one segment that was maybe a little disappointing in the quarter. So are you seeing some of the same issues that you kind of highlighted last quarter with the state licensing and then I guess with the new realignment and management? What kind of timeframe for this segment to start to see some better performance? Thanks.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

So we would expect to see improvements in 2015. And I think I've mentioned before, I think one of the greatest opportunities that the team at Franchise Group has is to take capabilities that exist in the larger ServiceMaster and extend that capability to our franchisees. I mean there's so many things that we do in the business that can add value to our franchisees and if we focus as a company, I think we can grow our penetration there. And it's less known, but I mean we have less than 5% penetration in the disaster recovery market in total through our franchisees. So, there's we think opportunity to grow and expand the business and add value to the overall equation. So, I would anticipate to see Marty and his team make great progress in 2015 and start to grow the business and improve the results.

Jon P. Lanterman

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead.

Okay. Great. And then just a quick question on the guidance, I guess. Looks like you guys are calling for a roughly 5% revenue growth and then at least 10% EBITDA growth, so this implies continued strong margin expansion. Can you just talk a little bit about where this comes from? Is that just the scalability of the business or is there any special segment that kind of stands out there?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes, the scalability of the business clearly, which we think has significant runway. But also as I've mentioned before, we're going to see good growth I believe in American Home Shield given the number of customers acquired at the tail end of 2014 through the marketing effort. So certainly I think we're looking at a good year of growth for American Home Shield and as I said again that's a business with extremely healthy variable margins also. So that's a principal theme really.

Jon P. Lanterman

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead.

And then how long do you think this marketing spend is kind of elevated or is this going to be a continued theme for a little while?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

As we said earlier on a couple, in answers in response to some of the earlier questions, it does depend on the rate of profitability. But let's say the right decision is to maintain heavy investment in that marketing, because we haven't found a point where there are diminishing returns in that investment if you see what I mean. So we put essentially $1 into marketing and we get the appropriate customer. So at this point in time, this model continues to be highly effective and highly cost efficient in terms of bringing in customers. So we'll continue doing that as long as we can. Given that this, the home warranty business has penetrated roughly 3% to 4% of the 70 million owner occupied homes in the U.S. I think every time we grow in the direct-to-consumer channel, we're essentially growing the market, not just our share of it. And I think there is significant runway for us to continue to do that and we will endeavor to do so.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

And the message I think is that versus maybe years past that we maintained consistent investment, where I think historically we may have backed off in the second half of the year or something like that. And if you look at the most recent past, last year we invested heavily and when we get the opportunity to do that we'll continue to do it, because we can see the correlation of the spend to the growth as Alan said.

Jon P. Lanterman

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Sara Gubins with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Faton Begolli

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Hello. This is actually Faton Begolli calling in for Sara Gubins. So my first question is on, in recent January and February trends, did the weather have any discernible impact? Was there any impact from the snow storm shut-downs in the Northeast?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Not discernible, a little bit of cost in terms of claims in AHS, but minimal and probably wash out within in the quarter. So nothing surprising, not near the deep freeze that occurred last year. If you think about pipes bursting or other things, but still there's been pretty good incoming demands for the ServiceMaster Restore team. So nothing unusual really about the weather aside from snowfall in Memphis, Tennessee. We're enjoying it.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

State of emergency.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Yes.

Faton Begolli

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

All right. Thanks for that. And could you perhaps quantify for us, revenue growth expectations by segment?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

No. I'm sorry. We haven't done – we haven't disclosed that much in our guidance. So we're unfavorable, we have to wait for, yes, sorry, no.

Faton Begolli

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Okay. All right. And my question is on competitive dynamics. Are you seeing anything on the pricing front worth noting?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

No. We often talk about how inelastic, many of our products are, in terms of pricing and that continues to be the case, from everything we've seen.

Faton Begolli

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Thank you.

James E. Shields

Management

Yes. I think we have time for one more question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Baird. Please go ahead.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my follow up. Did you talk about what's your expected proceeds were for the company owned Merry Maids sales?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

We didn't – but its minimal impact overall some – not a negative, but slight positive but not measurable from your perspective really.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Yes.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Okay. So the one times revenue rule of thumb that you sort of term in excess nowhere close to what a Merry Maids average?

Robert J. Gillette

Management

They were not created equal necessarily.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

I didn't think so I just wanted to make sure that we weren't going to make some crazy assumption here. And then, just in terms of the outlook for M&A and the other side. Is there anything substantial or that's in the – can you just I guess question is – can you talk about the pipeline is there anything larger in there that would be maybe unusual or what's the outlook for M&A in maybe 2015 compared to what we saw in 2014?

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Best way to answer this is that that there are large targets out there. There's nothing imminent, but that doesn't mean that we don't look. If you think about Dan's question earlier. It doesn't mean we don't have our eyes open for the right sizable acquisition if it met our criteria. But there's nothing – there's nothing immediately in front of us in that regard, but we're always looking.

Andrew J. Wittmann

Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Right.

James E. Shields

Management

Okay. Amanda. Thanks everybody for joining the call today. We appreciate everybody's participation and this will be the end of call.

Robert J. Gillette

Management

Great. Thank you.

Alan J. M. Haughie

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.