Welcome to the Third Quarter Investors Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Legal counsel requires us to advise that the discussion scheduled to take place today may contain forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties.

The actual results may materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements contemplated in the forward-looking statements.

Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in forward-looking statements is contained in the company's annual information form as filed with the Canadian Securities Administration 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 October 28, 2020. I would now like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Scott Patterson. Please go ahead, sir..

Thank you, Tiffany. Good morning and welcome, ladies and gentlemen to our third quarter conference call. Thank you for joining today. I'm pleased to be here with our CFO, Jeremy Rakusin to walk you through the strong quarterly results we posted this morning, which exceeded our expectations in both divisions.

We obviously continue to be impacted by the pandemic across every business. But the remarkable efforts of our teams in combination with the resiliency and diversification of our business model are enabling us to drive growth through this period.

I will start us off and provide a high-level review of the numbers and some color around our performance and then Jeremy will dive in with a more detailed look at our financial results.

Total revenues for the quarter were up 10% over the prior year comprising organic growth of 7% and the balance from acquisitions, primarily tuck-unders to our commercial restoration platform including Roland, which closed at the beginning of the third quarter and contributed healthy results.

EBITDA was up 15% year-over-year and reflects 50 basis points of margin improvement, driven by higher margins at FirstService Residential and lower corporate costs. Jeremy will provide more margin detail in his prepared comments. And finally, earnings per share were $1.19, up 29% over the prior year quarter.

At FirstService Residential, revenues were flat versus a year ago. Last quarter, we reported revenues down 9% year-over-year, so we are very pleased with the bounce back in quarterly revenues.

The sequential increase primarily reflects reopening of amenities and facilities and an increase in the property and ancillary services we provide to our communities, as we move closer to our pre-pandemic staffing and service levels.

Over the last 60 days, we have worked closely with our clients to successfully open up club facilities and amenities, while following CDC guidelines to ensure the health and safety of our residents and associates.

However, we still have many facilities in the Northeast, California, Florida and our Canadian markets that are only partially open or still remain closed.

These facilities, which include community pools, fitness areas, spas and restaurants, represent about 20% of our amenity management revenues and offset the organic growth that we would otherwise have shown. Looking forward, we believe Q4 will closely resemble Q3 in terms of year-over-year performance.

While we don't believe many of our open amenity facilities will shut down, it is unclear when our closed amenity facilities will reopen. Moving on to FirstService Brands. Revenues for the quarter were up 24% with organic growth at 15% and the balance from several restoration tuck-under acquisitions over the last year.

Our home service brands including California Closets, CertaPro Painters, Floor Coverings International, Pillar To Post and Paul Davis, generated top line revenue down slightly from the prior year. This group was off about 20% in Q2 versus a year ago, so a sequential improvement in Q3 is significant.

Leads and sales activity were growing through the quarter but our ability to install and service inside the home still faces COVID-related headwinds. At this point for this group, we expect the fourth quarter to be flat to slightly down versus a year ago with a building pipeline providing some tailwinds for us as we head into Q1 of 2021.

Century Fire was up low-single digit versus the prior year. The service and inspection side of the business has come back strongly relative to Q2 but was still down modestly year-over-year, which tempered the growth in sprinkler and alarm installation.

And finally, our commercial and large loss restoration platform Global was up significantly versus the prior year, over 70% including acquisitions over 40% organically.

Global benefited from two significant weather events, Hurricane Laura and the Iowa wind storms, which together generated work that accounted for about 25% of Global's revenues in the quarter.

In addition, Global secured a number of large loss claims during the quarter across North America, which together with the storm work more than offset the steep declines experienced in claims from its hospitality vertical. The success this quarter reflects well on the strategic priorities we have been executing against.

These include expanding our geographic footprint, adding new national accounts and increasing our share of existing national accounts. In particular, we benefited from the expansion of our footprint during the quarter.

Our acquisitions of CATCO in Missouri, Perfection in Illinois and Roland primarily in the mid-Atlantic led to significant incremental work during the quarter.

The expanded footprint in storm-affected areas gave us an on-the-ground presence and ability to sell the larger capability and resources of Global, which resulted in work that far exceeded the previous capacity of each tuck under. We have also made tangible progress in landing new national accounts. Several of which contributed during the period.

A number of the new accounts are in Canada, which led to strong year-over-year organic growth in our Canadian operations. This is particularly impressive in a market that is estimated to be down by over 20% due to moderate weather and COVID.

Our backlog heading into Q4 is quite robust, our work in Louisiana and Iowa continues, plus we have a number of large loss jobs in process. We expect a strong Q4 with revenues well above prior year and approaching those achieved in Q3. We are very pleased with our momentum in commercial restoration.

The operating leadership at Global has done a fantastic job in terms of strategic execution. We have a lot of work ahead of us in this business, but our path is clear and we remain very excited about our opportunity. Before I hand off to Jeremy, I want to recognize our operating teams and frontline staff across FirstService.

The perseverance and positive energy that I see and hear about every day is awesome. We have a strong culture, built around customer experience. It permeates every brand and motivates our teams and it is the principal reason behind our ability to deliver 7% organic growth in a very tough pandemic environment. Jeremy let me hand off to you..

Revenues of $2 billion even, up from $1.73 billion in the prior year period, an increase of 15%; adjusted EBITDA at $203.8 million, a 19% increase over the $171.3 million last year, aided by both growth on the top line and an improvement in our consolidated margin by 30 basis points up to 10.2%; and adjusted EPS of $2.44, up modestly over the $2.38 per share reported for the same period last year.

Our adjustments to operating earnings and GAAP EPS in providing adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS respectively are disclosed in this morning's earnings release and are consistent with our approach in prior periods. I'll now walk through our segmented highlights for the third quarter.

At FirstService Residential, we generated revenues of $374.8 million in line with prior year. Scott referenced the year-over-year decline in our amenity management services from COVID-related facility closures, which tempered top line growth.

Our EBITDA for the division increased 5% to $41.8 million with our margin increasing by 60 basis points to 11.2%. The margin improvement was primarily attributable to strong growth in our higher-margin transfers and disclosures revenue driven by increased velocity of home resales in the quarter compared to prior year.

Shifting over to our FirstService Brands division, we reported revenues of $367.2 million for the third quarter, an increase of 24% versus the prior year period. Scott has already provided color on the topline drivers of growth for the quarter.

EBITDA during the quarter increased to $48.7 million, up 19% over the prior year and our margin came in at 13.3% down compared to 13.7% in last year's Q3.

Margins improved at our home improvement brands from prior expense reduction initiatives offset by the impact of stronger topline growth at our lower-margin company-owned operations in restoration and fire protection. Our consolidated EBITDA and operating earnings also benefited from a 50% reduction in corporate costs versus the prior year quarter.

Compensation expenses were lower reflecting a focus on cost containment in the current environment together with favorable foreign exchange. Below the operating earnings line we achieved superior earnings per share growth of 29% in Q3.

Two key drivers compared to the prior year quarter were an improved 24% tax rate and lower interest expense where we benefited from both a lower cost of debt funding and significant debt paydown. Contributing to the debt paydown was another quarter of strong cash flow.

Before working capital changes, cash flow from operations was $67.5 million, up in line with the earnings increase at 28% over the prior year quarter. Operating cash flow after working capital was $42 million, a little more than double the prior year as we continue to effectively manage our working capital during the pandemic.

On the capital deployment front we outlaid $9 million in capital expenditures during the third quarter with $31 million now incurred year-to-date. These are both lower than prior year levels again reflecting cost containment discipline and tracking well within the pacing of our $45 million full year CapEx target.

We also spent $65 million in acquisitions during the quarter with the rolling restoration transaction comprising the bulk of that total. Our deal pipeline is active across our service lines with the reacceleration of our tuck-under acquisition program after having gained greater comfort in navigating through the pandemic environment.

Our balance sheet continues to be strong in support of these initiatives. At quarter end, our net debt was $446 million resulting in leverage of 1.6 times net debt to trailing 12 months EBITDA. Our liquidity and debt capacity remained strong with $575 million of total undrawn availability under our credit facility plus cash on hand.

These metrics remained largely in line with the prior second quarter demonstrating the ability of our operations to generate free cash flow to internally fund our acquisition spend during the quarter. In closing my prepared comments, we reiterate our outlook from the second quarter earnings call.

We are on the back half of the year we called for flat consolidated topline growth and margins consistent with prior year absent any storm-related activity.

This baseline is consistent with what we see for the remaining quarter and then adding the impact from recent storm related and large loss claims backlog at global; our consolidated results should see modestly positive growth in Q4.

During our next scheduled earnings call in early February summarizing our 2020 year end results, we will provide some high-level comments on our outlook for 2021. I would now ask the operator to open the call to questions. Thank you. .

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of George Doumet with Scotiabank. Your line is open..

Yes, good morning guys and congrats on the yet another strong quarter..

Thank you, George..

Scott, I think you might have mentioned this in your prepared remarks on the restoration piece, but I might have missed it.

Can you just tell us how much GRH was up year-over-year? And can you maybe talk to the improvement in margins in that business?.

It was up 70% including acquisitions 40% organically with the two weather events the two principal weather events driving about 25% of the revenue for the quarter. That's what I disclosed in the prepared comments.

Jeremy do you want to talk about the margin?.

Yes George. Margin is pretty comparable to prior year..

Okay. Okay. You guys also spoken about the large loss portfolio currently at GRH.

Can you maybe give us a sense of the size of that portfolio? What's in that backlog?.

Well, George I want to differentiate between large loss and storm activity. Large loss is a part of our business that we expect to be recurring, perhaps not every quarter, but certainly every year, we expect large losses. Some of them will come from storms; some of them will come outside of storm activity, fires accidental, water claims and so on.

So we don't -- we're not disclosing necessarily how much large loss work we're doing. What we're trying to provide guidance around is the hurricane work the large storm work. And for this quarter, it was the Iowa windstorm and Laura in Louisiana..

Okay. Thanks for that. And I think Scott you might have alluded to this last quarter.

But just wondering if you expect the safety protocols in the main business to impact utilization rates especially I guess in the context of what we seem to be a pretty strong second wave?.

It has definitely reduced capacity at many of the facilities that we manage. And that in turn has reduced our level of service which is essentially the number of people we have on-site associated with that facility. We thought that that would perhaps when we spoke last quarter; I think we were thinking most of our amenities would be open by year-end.

It's clear now that that will not be the case and we'll be dealing with this well into 2021..

Okay. Okay. One last one if I may. It looks like you guys mentioned the home services. There's a pretty strong backlog that's built in that part of the business, but the inability to get into homes.

So just wondering, if you look into next quarter, is that going to kind of impact our ability to convert some of those to sales?.

I think it will in Q4. I think Q4 is going to look similar to Q3 in that respect. The -- home sales are up, home prices are up, home equity is up. And generally that bodes very well for home improvement. Longer term into 2021, we think our home improvement businesses are going to increase and show some strength.

The timing around when we're able to fully convert leads into jobs is a little bit uncertain right now..

Okay. Thanks for your answers..

Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon with William Blair. Your line is open..

Thanks and congrats on the results. Within residential obviously really good stabilization there and get some good detail on the impact from some amenities still being closed.

Is that the only major drag you're seeing on organic growth in 3Q and as we look at 4Q? And I guess asked another way, if amenities were fully opened, would you be back to the normal 3% to 5% organic range that you've normally targeted? And will it be tough to drive organic growth without amenities opening back even more broadly?.

Yes. If amenities were fully back and we were through this, we'd be showing our 3% to 5% organic growth. Our core business in the third quarter including most of our ancillaries was up over the prior year. And this is -- it's important. It represents our win-loss ratio and is reflective of where we might be and it's in that range, Stephen.

There isn't anything else that is a significant -- there's lots of ups and downs with our ancillaries. Collections are down, project management is down. There are certain things that COVID continues to impact, but it's not material like the amenity closures are..

Okay. Got it.

And then on the national accounts and restoration, how much of your work within the restoration business now comes through the larger national accounts? How impactful at the recent wins then? Is there a way to bring the traction there and what that could mean over the next few years?.

I don't know that I have a percentage. I mean it's -- I would say most of our work comes through our national account relationships. These are the customers that we mobilize around particularly when there's an event. We've made traction definitely in the last year in adding new accounts and also when increasing the share of our existing accounts.

So, we're definitely making progress. Let me put it another way. Key takeaway acquisitions and you take away the impact of the two events Global grew organically by over 10% for the quarter. And that would be largely reflective of our momentum with national accounts. .

Got it that’s really helpful. Appreciate your color. Thanks..

Your next question comes from the line of Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open..

Thank you. Sorry I was on mute there. Good morning guys, thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to circle back around on the brands business. And I know Scott you gave some good color around the storm-related activity and what the impact was in the quarter.

When Q3 was a -- Q3 2019 was an unusually weak period you were able to give some sort of more specific revenues and EBITDA impact.

Is that something that you're able to do for this quarter, or should we just work with the math that you gave us and figure it out on our own?.

Ask me more specifically Stephen what exactly do you want?.

Is there any way to quantify the dollar and EBITDA impact from on a year-over-year basis from the two major storms that were so significant to organic growth?.

Yes. Okay.

That $45 million range thereabout?.

Okay.

So $45 million to revenues?.

Yes.

Are you able to disclose what the EBITDA impact was? Jeremy?.

Yes. Again Stephen it's pretty comparable to how the business performed overall in the quarter. I mean each event is going to be different in terms of mix of types of jobs. But for this quarter the types of jobs that we did at those two events resembled the margin for the business as a whole including the non-storm event. .

Okay. Okay. No, that's helpful. And then maybe as you look to Q4 obviously there's a lot of moving parts. But on a net basis you're sort of seeing like a flat underlying -- flat underlying plus just the backlog and the storm activity.

Are you able to quantify like what that number looks like as you roll into Q4?.

Well we -- as I said in my prepared comments, we do have a strong backlog. We continue to work on Louisiana and Iowa. We have a number of other large lost jobs in process. Q4 may not get to the same level as Q3, but it will be close it will be strong. .

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Turning to the residential business, one of the things that you talked about recently was a lot of homeowner associations weren't looking to sort of change operators.

Have you seen any movement in terms of like market share gains on the core property management side of things, or a lot of HO is still on a holding pattern with respect to switching out their service providers?.

Yes. No we're starting to see it. Our sales have been off. I think I've mentioned that the last couple of quarters, but we're starting to see a pickup. And I think as we As we head into 2021 we'll settle back into that win-loss rhythm that drives the 3% to 5% organic growth. That's our expectation currently. .

Right. Okay, that’s it for me. Thanks guys. Appreciate it..

Thanks Steve..

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Logan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. .

Thank you and good morning. Jeremy, appreciate your comments on the dollar impact of the storm activity in Q3.

So just to confirm that was $45 million of revenue and about a 13% margin that would be roughly $6 million of EBITDA?.

No. Okay. First of all $45 million is a ballpark number, but the division Global's margins are lower than the 13.3% for the division. I was talking about the margin on those two storm events resembling the margin for the rest of the business at Global. It would be lower than 13%. It would be more in the 10-ish range. .

Okay. So about a 10% margin and kind of a ballpark $45 million figure in terms of revenue.

Was there any storm activity of consequence in Q1 or Q2, or would this be it for kind of the 9-month period to date?.

Yes. There was nothing of any significant consequence in the first half of the year. .

That's great.

And when we think about normal core storm activity in any other year would it typically be in line with the average margin for Global, or would there usually be a higher flow-through to EBITDA in most cases?.

Again back to my prior comments -- with the prior questions with the earlier analysts. It does vary from job to job and storm to storm event to event. We could get higher than 10% in some event situations. I would call this kind of a down the fairway type of margin that we got this quarter from those events..

Okay. Is it fair to say that….

So your question more focused on the margin as opposed to the -- how much top line revenue, as a percent of the annual revenue.

Your question is more driving to the margin?.

Yeah.

If we think about the last five years of hurricane activity would -- like if we get say, $50 million of hurricane activity in a given quarter, would it typically flow through, in line with the average global margin, at roughly 10%?.

Yeah. That means….

Or will there be some element to fixed cost that drives kind of a higher margin for the incremental revenue?.

No. In many instances that extra volume would drive operating leverage and higher margins in these particular events, there were some lower margin work that kind of netted out to something in line with the overall global business performance for the quarter..

Makes sense, appreciate that. Maybe taking a step back and thinking about the business more broadly, when we look at the impact of the rebranding, the momentum with national accounts.

How should we think about organic growth over the next three years say, as opposed to say the 10% that was delivered ex-weather in Q3?.

I think the 10% is a number we're very, very proud of this year. Certainly, organic growth is a priority for us, in all our businesses. And we would expect mid-single digit, at a minimum, in this business. But the rebranding is currently targeted for early 2021.

And our experience with FirstService Residential really shows us how powerful this can be when you're bringing many brands under, one, with a unified message. And so we're very excited both that launch in 2021 and think that that could be, an accelerator certainly over the near-term after launch..

And would it still be fair to say that, you have a view to potentially double the size of restoration over say a five-year period?.

Absolutely..

And in terms of your pipeline, would that deal flow be more kind of near-term, given some of the dislocation in the marketplace, or is there sufficient capital chasing these deals that there's a lot of competition.

And it will be a little more legwork to get the deals over the finish line?.

I think all of the above. I mean there is competition. But we do have a pipeline. And we do have a priority regions, and areas, and companies. But, like our tuck-under program has been in place for over 20 years and it takes -- it does take time with these relationship deals. And so we expect it to be a multiyear effort..

And last question for me, before I turn it back. You've done a number of tuck-unders, for Global since you acquired it.

Can you give us some color on the synergies, between the acquisitions? Like, would there be an ability to cross-sell or augment services in one component or geography in the same way that you've done with Century Fire over the years?.

Yeah. A lot of it at this early stage has been about the footprint and expanding the footprint and taking advantage of the presence in those regions both to greater share of our national accounts and their facilities in that region.

But also, to be there on the ground, when there is a weather event and we saw that this past quarter, with the Iowa windstorms. We had two tuck-unders CATCO and perfection Midwest tuck-unders that we've completed in the last year. And these are very strong regional organization with Midwest relationships.

And they as I said in my prepared comments, they were able to leverage those relationships into work, that far exceeded what they were capable of previously as a stand-alone entity. And that's part of our strategy to leverage these relationships and leverage their national accounts. And with Roland we've done the same.

They've got strength, in the healthcare vertical. And with a number of national organizations and we've been able to partner with Roland and leverage those in the past quarter..

Yeah. It's a great color. I appreciate the commentary. That’s all for me. I’ll turn the call back..

Your next question comes from the line of Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Your line is open..

Hi, good morning gentlemen..

Good morning..

Hi..

So I just want to piggy back on one of the earlier questions around residential.

Because one of the things that I thought was fairly interesting is the commentary and I really appreciate the color that you gave on some of the work that was done on the ground to work with the service offering openings and getting as much of activity with those facilities as possible.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit on whether or not you're seeing any change or increase in outsourcing activity for some of these managers.

And maybe compare that to potential market share gains that may be coming from actual operational competitors as opposed to increased outsourcing growth?.

Marc, we have not seen any increase in outsourcing. And we really haven't seen any changes in the past quarter in the competitive environment around these facilities or residential property management more broadly. I don't know if that….

Some of the -- no, no it's -- I was curious as to whether that had begun in just though the work that had been done during the quarter to accelerate the pace of the activity at those facilities seem to be quite positive.

And it seems as though that would be a competitive advantage that could lead to future the future market share gains?.

Well, I mean we are -- just to be clear we were helping the communities, we manage reopen their amenity facilities that were previously been closed due to COVID. And still in many cases remain partially open or closed.

So as part of our responsibility as manager of those communities to provide that service and the amenity management piece has long been a differentiator for us. There are very few full-service management companies that provide that ancillary service..

Right, right. That makes sense. And then I wanted to sort of circle back on the brand side. I think -- and I'm not 100% certain but this quarter represents the first time where brands revenue was nearly matched that of the residential side.

And I was wondering if you had any thoughts as to going forward what the overall revenue mix of the company could be given the current growth plans that you have it seems as though over time that that brand revenue mix could ultimately or on a longer term basis not just storm relative on a longer term basis approach that of the residential side and what that brand mix could ultimately be for future margin gains?.

I think it's going to tilt continue to tilt towards brands. There is more acquisition, tuck-under acquisition activity in that division. And your organic growth would be a bit stronger over the next few years in that division. So that will continue.

Jeremy, do you want to add to that?.

Yeah. I mean, I think that's something we've been saying for several years. And to echo Scott sentiments, Marc, more tuck-under growth particularly at restoration and fire protection in those newly added platforms over the last five years.

And as those grow faster and they bring a higher division margin, it will uptick the consolidated margins, all other things being equal. The brands division margin being higher than the resi one and both just to maintain flat margins. If brand is growing faster it assists the consolidated margins..

Make sense. Thank you very much. I appreciate all the time, Jeremy..

Thanks, Marc..

Your next question comes from the line of Frederic Bastien with Raymond James. Your line is open..

Hi, good morning guys. Just a follow-up question on the last one that was asked. On the M&A front you partly answered my question by saying your focus would still be on the Global or at least the restoration and the Century business and expanding the services there.

Are you starting to see or more interesting opportunities in other verticals that you're either already in or verticals that you might be interested in getting into?.

Well, Frederic we do have activity across all of our platforms currently in the pipeline. So I think restoration has certainly in front and center in the last year following the Global acquisition. But we expect to close deals over the next 12 months really in every division.

We -- I would say there's nothing in terms of new platforms that we're looking at. We have lots of opportunity and lots of activity currently in our current platforms. .

Okay. And when we look at your revenue, sort of, growth profile what you've been, sort of, telegraphing the street you look longer term to look at 5% organically and add another 5% through acquisitions.

In the current environment, would you expect that you're able to exceed that M&A growth rate of 5% on a go-forward basis?.

No, not necessarily. I don't think the current environment has really changed our view. .

Okay. Fair enough. That's a good answer. Also a quick question. Just for my own benefit.

But did you see any -- does your restoration business see any seen in the third quarter or expect to see in Q4? Any activity related to the wildfires out West?.

Some, I mean, we're servicing our national accounts in California. But the level of work was not material to the quarter. I wouldn't expect that it would be in the fourth quarter. It primarily relates to retail offices, distribution centers, air quality and smoke damage. So we're providing air scrubbers for equipment versus manpower.

And -- so it's quite different in terms of the revenue opportunity relative to some of the other stores we're dealing with. .

Okay.

So when -- if you were to rank the natural disasters in terms of opportunities it creates for restoration wildfires we've kind of rank at the bottom whereas storms are way up there?.

Certainly for us at this time, we don't have the same presence out west than we do in some of these other areas. So that's a factor. But in general, I would say, yes. .

Okay. That’s helpful. Okay. Thank you, Scott..

There are no further questions in queue at this time. .

Thank you, Tiffany and thank you everyone for joining us today. Be safe and we'll talk at year end..

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the third quarter investors conference call. Thank you for your participation and have a nice day..