Real Matters Inc. (REAL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2026 Real Matters Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please call the number on the during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lynn Borgard, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Real Matters Financial Results Conference Call for the third quarter ended June 30th, 2026. With me today are Real Matters Chief Executive Officer Brian Lang and Chief Financial Officer Rodrigo Pinto. This morning before market opened, we issued a news release announcing our results for the three and nine months ended June 30th, 2026. The release accompanying slide presentation as well as the financial statements and MD&A are posted in the financial section of our website at realmatters.com. During the call, we may make certain forward-looking statements which reflect the current expectations of management with respect to our business and the industry in which we operate. However, there are a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from our expectations. Please see the slide entitled Cautionary Note regarding Forward-looking Information in the the accompanying slide presentation for more details. You can also find additional information about these risks in the risk factors section of our annual information form for the year ended September 30th, 2025, which is available on CDAR Plus and in the financial section of our website. As a reminder, we refer to non-GAAP measures in our slide presentation, including net revenue, net revenue margins, adjusted net income or loss, adjusted net income or loss for diluted share, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margins. Non-GAAP measures are described in our MD&A for the three and nine months ended June 30th, 2026, where you will also find reconciliations.

to the nearest IFRS measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brian. Thank you, Lynn. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. Our third quarter results delivered solid growth demonstrating the strength and resilience of our business as we continue to build momentum across our segments by adding new clients and growing market share. Third quarter consolidated revenues increased 13% year over year to $51.5 million, and consolidated net revenue increased 15% to $13.7 million. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $.7 million, up 117% year-over-year, reflecting the operating leverage in our model as volumes scale. We launched 10 new clients in the third quarter, including two channels with a new Tier 1 lender and a top 100 lender in U.S. title. well as a top 30 lender in U.S. appraisal. In U.S. title, we are now live with three tier one lenders, one of the largest U.S. mortgage servicers and holders of mortgage servicing rights, and one of the leading U.S. digital financial services platforms. These wins further position this segment as an increasingly important growth engine for In U.S. appraisal, we maintained leading position on lender scorecards in the third quarter. Our revenues were up 14 percent, and we posted net revenue of $9.2 million, up 7 percent from Q3 2025, and adjusted EBITDA was relatively flat year over year. U.S. title revenues increased 70% year over year to $4.7 million, driven by a 127% increase in refinance origination revenues and a 56% increase in home equity revenues. Net revenue margins improved to 56.9% from 2.6% in the previous year quarter as a result of a higher proportion of refinance origination revenues in the segment. We onboarded five new title clients in the third quarter, including two channels with our third tier one lender. Overall, market share gains and higher refinance market volumes drove a 138% year-over-year increase in refinance origination volumes in the segment, which allowed us to narrow or adjust loss to 1.3 million in the third quarter. We have hit our stride in US Title and our sales team continues to pursue opportunities to expand our client base. We're now live with three tier one lenders, one of the largest US mortgage servicers and holders of mortgage servicing rights and one of the leading US digital financial service platforms. Year to date, US Title originally imagination volumes increased 170% year over year, driven primarily by 11 new clients. This momentum reinforces US Title's role as an increasingly important growth engine for the company. Volume scale through new client wins and market share gains, we expect the benefits of that scale to translate into meaningful improvements in our financial performance. Turning to Canada, net revenue margin remains strong at 19.2% up 50 basis points year over year and the business delivered adjusted EBITDA of $1.2 million despite a lower addressable mortgage origination market. With that, I'll hand it over to Rodrigo. Rodrigo? Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. The US mortgage market saw modest improvement in the third quarter, with the average 30-year conventional fixed rate mortgage at 6.4%, approximately 40 basis points lower than the average rate in fiscal Q3 2025. The 30-year rate opened the quarter at 6.46% and declined through April before reversing course in May as geopolitical tensions put upward pressure on the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield and pushed rates higher. States remain range-bound in June, closing the quarter at 6.49%. The average 10-year Treasury yield and 30-year mortgage spread remained near 200 basis points during the quarter, consistent with recent quarters, but is still about 30 basis points higher than historical norms. Against the backdrop, third quarter purchase origination volumes grew modestly year over year consistent with industry estimates, while refinance market activity continued to build off a low base. Turning to our third quarter financial performance, I'll start with our U.S. appraisal segment, where we recorded revenues of $37.3 million, up 14% from the same period last year. Revenues from purchase mortgage originations increased 7% year-over-year, and refinance originations revenues increased 80%, principally due to higher addressable market. Home equity revenues increased 18% and accounted for 26% of the segment's revenues, reflecting a higher addressable market for home equity transactions. Other revenues increased 153% year-over-year due to market share gains with existing clients. U.S. appraisal net revenue was $9.2 million, up 7% from the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Net revenue margins decreased by 160 basis points year-over-year to 24.6%, primarily due to the distribution of transaction volumes as it relates to geographies, clients, and product mix. Third quarter U.S. appraisal operating expenses increased 13% year-over-year to $5 million, driven mainly by higher salaries and benefit costs. We generated U.S. appraisal adjusted EBITDA of $4.2 million, up 1% from the prior year quarter. And posted adjusted EBITDA margin of $1.2 million. margins of 45%. Turning to our U.S. title segment, third quarter revenues increased 70% year-over-year to $4.7 million, driven mainly by refinance origination revenues, which increased 127% due to market share gains with existing and new clients, as well as higher market refinance volumes. Home equity revenues increased 56% supported by market share gains with existing clients. Home equity and REO revenues accounted for 41% of the segment's revenues compared to 50% in Q3 2025. U.S. Title net revenue was $2.7 million, up 83% from the third quarter last year, and net revenue margins improved by 430 basis points to 56.9% from 52.6% in the third quarter of 2025. His margin expansion was primarily driven by a higher proportion of refinancing revenues in the segment, combined with higher volumes. U.S. title operating expenses increased 24% year-over-year, primarily due to additional hires to accelerate the deployment of new title clients, and to a lesser extent, salary increases, higher benefit costs, and higher courier costs as a result of higher volume serviced. We reported an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.3 million for the U.S. title segment compared to the $1.7 million loss in the third quarter of fiscal 2025 as higher net revenue was partially offset by higher operating expenses. In Canada, third quarter revenues were $9.5 million, down 5% year over year, mainly due to lower addressable mortgage origination market. Net revenue was down 3% due to lower revenues, which were partially offset by a 50 basis points increase in net revenue margins. Canadian segment adjusted EBITDA decreased modestly to 1.2 million compared with 1.3 million in Q3 2025. Overall, in the third quarter, consolidated revenue increased 13% year-over-year to $51.5 million, and consolidated net revenue increased 15% to $13.7 million, primarily driven by growth in our U.S. appraisal and U.S. title segments. We delivered positive consolidated adjusted EBITDA of 0.7 million, more than double the 0.3 million reported in the third quarter of fiscal 2025. And this marks the fifth consecutive quarter of positive EBITDA for our business. Our performance reflected meaningful operating losses. as volumes increased due to new clients and market share gains and higher addressable market volumes in our U.S. appraisal and U.S. title segments. We ended the quarter with a very strong balance sheet with no debt and cash of $40 million at June 30, 2026. The modest decrease in our cash balance from prior quarter was mainly due to the timing of collections and changes in working capital. We remain focused on driving top-line growth through new sales and market share gains, which will support greater operating leverage and stronger financial performance over time. At the same time, we are carefully balancing the capital needs of the business, continuing to invest to meet the demand and future growth while maintaining a stable market. strong balance sheet. With that, I'll turn it back over to Brian. Brian? Thank you, Rodrigo. Our first quarter financial performance continued to reflect the positive effects of new client launches, market share gains, and enhanced operational efficiencies. These outcomes underscore our business model's capacity to deliver considerable operating leverage as transaction volumes grow. Our year-to-date performance further demonstrates the benefits of scale, with revenue up 17% and adjusted EBITDA increasing 150%. Over the past nine months, we launched 25 new clients across our U.S. segments, the highest number of clients launched on a fiscal year-to-date basis since we went public. New Client Wins helped drive an 11% increase in U.S. appraisal origination transaction volumes and a 170% increase in U.S. title origination transaction volumes, despite the despite a market that remains well below historic averages. Against today's uncertain economic backdrop, it is more important than ever that we focus on what we can control. Pursuing large addressable markets where we have a clear competitive advantage and can win an outsized share. Our network management platform has been at the core of that advantage for more than two decades and we will continue investing to maintain our edge, including by leveraging AI to enhance our capabilities and drive operational efficiencies. We also have one of the strongest client bases in our industry and we intend to build on that trust we have earned with those clients to support continued growth. At the same time, we will continue to explore opportunities to strengthen our growth profile and broaden our revenue streams. Looking ahead, we are confident that our strategy will continue to drive value for shareholders. As volumes scale from these new client wins and market share gains, we believe RealMatters is well positioned to capitalize on the operating leverage in our model, continue investing in our platform leveraging AI capabilities, and driving toward our target operating model. With that operator, we'd like to open up for questions now.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please stand by as we compile a Q&A roster. Our first call comes from the line of Doug Taylor from National Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you. Good morning. Congrats on the new customer momentum in the quarter. I'll start with some questions there. Obviously, it's a positive proof point on your execution and the things that you can control in this market. You'd spoken to having a healthy pipeline of customers of RFPs and things like that in recent calls. Is this a, you know, a, a, an elevated level of conversion of a bunch of this or does that pipeline continue to expand and support that that new customer win momentum can continue at the sort of paces pace you've enjoyed so far this year.

Doug, thanks for the question and appreciate the commentary around the pipeline movement. In fact, as we mentioned, year to date, the 25 new customers that we've brought on is, for us anyway, is a record. We've gone public. So we do feel that the investment that we made 18 months ago when we went out and said we were going to put some more sales capabilities around title. I think that's really paid off and we're starting to see the benefits of that investment. And as you know, we have a very strong stable of customers on appraisal. So again, we celebrated this past quarter bringing another top 30 into that group, which we've now got a significant number of those top 30. So that was a good win for us. But importantly, with that appraisal, customer base, we are able to cross-sell and leverage that base into Title. So that, I think, also is what we're seeing coming through, Doug. The pipeline for us is, one, the installed base that we have, and two, new customers that we've brought on. And so, again, if we look at Title this past quarter, we have a very good mix of new customers that we've brought on, and we talked about one of the biggest digital financial services providers being a new customer, but we also talk about onboarding our Tier 1 from appraisal, one of our Tier 1s, and onboarding them into two channels on title. Okay. So short answer would be I think we're seeing the benefits of executing against our appraisal installed base as well as bringing in new customers after some investment in our title sales capabilities.

So the OK, thank you for that. I'd like to ask about the non bank service customer, a new area for you, and I've heard that the ramp has been pretty strong so far, and I guess, you know, as a reference customer in that area, have you been able to leverage that success there? Is it too early for that sort of, you know, thing or how is the pipeline in that new area developing?.

Great. So I think you're referring to last quarter we announced one of the biggest servicers in the US that we brought on the platform. So the ramp up, that is now our biggest contributor on our title business. So they've ramped up quite well. And we know by our feedback on performance that we have found our way to the top of their scorecard very quickly. So again, when we then reflect forward on that, Doug, I think as we look forward, there's the opportunity both to start bringing on and growing market share with the new customers that we've brought on this year. So that's definitely opportunity number one. And to your question around sales pipeline looking forward, there continues to be a very strong pipeline there. So we're feeling optimistic that we can leverage the work that we've done and your comment on a particular channel of servicing, we continue to pitch in that channel. But across the whole business, I think the pipeline is quite healthy, both on title and appraisal.

Maybe one more for me. I'll ask an AI question because it's trendy right now. The investments that you reference making in your prepared remarks and you've spoken about previously, I know you operate in an area where in some cases your customers can govern the pace of adoption of some of the newer technologies and they're not the fastest. is moving organizations technologically. I mean, is there something you're seeing from them that's prompting you to go faster with some of those investments, or is more of this internal to your organization? and efficiencies versus improvements to the customer-facing product.

Well, so I think there's, to address that, I think there's sort of two answers to that question, Doug. Answer number one is some of our customers are very innovative. I mean, yes, they're all, I think, embracing AI at different paces, but we definitely have some customers that I would say are on the leading edge of AI innovation, and they are very innovative. They are working very closely with us on how we can jointly leverage AI into the business. And then secondarily and very importantly, because of course we have more control over this, is our platform. So our platform has been the differentiation in our business historically, which has us at the top of all the scorecards from a performance standpoint. And so our view is that AI now gives us the opportunity to do two things. One, enhance the customer experience, so continue to drive up our performance and differentiate our performance versus our competitors. So that's sort of piece one. And then piece two, of course, is taking a look at operational efficiency and And so we have definitely moved the business and and AI more into the operating infrastructure than it simply being an innovation program. So I think that's sort of been the flex in the business over the last quarter or two. And so we're going to continue to focus on making the workflow more efficient and continuing to drive better performance for our customers so we can continue to build market share.

Thank you. I'll pass the line. Thanks, Doug. Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen McKilson from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. I was going to ask about the competitive situation. Just amongst your more mature customers, how are they thinking about allocating market share in this tougher rate environment? And maybe how has their thinking changed since the start of the year?.

Well, so I would say, as I mentioned already, Steven, we continue to dominate the scorecards and performance. So I feel like versus our competitors, there's no change. I think we continue to be competitive. be in a good position to gain market share. What happens in the market when the volume is low, it gets a little bit harder to differentiate on performance. Hence my commentary around technology investments, investment in the platform, and potentially leveraging AI. So from a competitive standpoint, What we have seen just at the very front edge is some of the lenders are looking at consolidating some of their vendors. So, again, we find ourselves in a very strong position when they do that because we are top of the scorecard. So there's often market share benefits for us. when lenders do decide to start consolidating. As I say, we've seen a little bit of that in the past quarter. I think that's probably the best answer I can give you around the competitive landscape right now. I would say some of the more regional players, I think, are finding it quite difficult right now. So we'll see what sort of shakes out this quarter, but I think we're well positioned.

How do you expect the investments to ramp over the next two to four quarters in AI? Is this going to primarily flow through operating expenses or is there going to be some capitalization?.

Yes, Steven. So as you know, and based on our past practice, we do capitalize parts of the investments we do, but we take a conservative approach. We don't capitalize all the investments. So looking from an adjusted EBITDA perspective, We expect to see some increases in the range of 10, 20% over the next couple of quarters associated with those investments. It's nothing substantial, but you'll likely see mainly in our corporate OPEX line, that's where we hold or record our technology investments. So you likely see some small increases over the next couple of quarters.

corporate OPEX. All right, great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.

Thank you, Stephen. Thanks, Stephen. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. Our next question comes from the line of Gavin Fairweather of ATB Cornmark. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Okay, good morning, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just to start on the industry transition to the new appraisal form, I did see recently that Solidify is the first to be certified there. So maybe you can just, you know, discuss how you're managing that transition internally and also in the network and if you see any potential opportunities to turn that into a competitive advantage.

Thanks, Gav. Yes, so it's the new forms just for education. It's the new appraisal forms. They're being reformatted. It's in fact actually a fairly significant transformation for the industry. It's the first time they've done this in decades. So, Gavin, there is a fair bit of work. There is a fair bit of sort of technology around it, which which is why I think we found ourselves in a very strong position around it. To your point, we were the first in market. We are now with our biggest tier one customers. We are now conducting transactions in this new environment. It's called UAD 3.6, so we're now in this new environment. And I think there is opportunity, Gav, in market share with our big players. So this is only impacting the appraisal side of the business. And because we have been first to market and because we are very well set up for this, there is a trigger date which is November. And lots of our competitors I think are struggling, at least that's what we of course we hear from our lenders and in the industry. So our view is that we are hearing from lenders that we may be the only only provider right now that is doing UAD with some of them. And with other players, we're actually hearing from new customers on the opportunity to potentially go to market with them in this new UAD, new appraisal type environment. So it's required some investment, we've shared and we've talked about in the past. The good news is, come November, some of that, at least from a tech standpoint, we're almost there. So we're pretty well set up technologically. There is still some operational work, as I say, just because it is such a significant transformation. So we've got our appraiser network. sort of fortified, we've got all our top appraisers now UAD compliant. So I think we are ahead of the industry and I think there will be some opportunity from a market share standpoint potentially from a new customer standpoint on the appraisal platform to win some new business. So I think we're well set up sort of from a franchise standpoint in appraisal for the next three to five years, because this will take a while for the whole industry to migrate, Gav, but I think we're on the front edge.

Appreciate that. Thank you. And then in your closing remarks, you talked about looking for opportunities to accelerate growth. I'm curious if you were just referring to new logos and share gains and existing channels, or if you're kind of teasing out maybe some non-obvious areas like purchase title or other channels.

Yes, so I mean I'd say we're always continuing to look for future growth, Gav. And so we talked I think a fair bit around the platform, so some investing in the platform, potentially leveraging some AI capabilities, and then depending on how the market does, we decide if we need to invest in capacity. But we're very careful about balancing our capital needs of the business. So we're going to continue to maintain a very disciplined approach to capital while maintaining maintaining balance sheet strength and continue to look for growth vectors within the business and beyond.