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 the 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 and 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 continue, plus we have several 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 amazing. 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.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning everyone. Our third quarter financial performance was strong and above expectations, as Scott indicated. The consolidated results included revenues at $742 million, adjusted EBITDA at $88.7 million, and adjusted EPS at $1.19, up 10%, 15%, and 29% respectively. On a year-to-date basis, we have executed and delivered growth in similar fashion in the face of COVID-19 headwinds, a further testament to the essential services nature and enduring ability of our businesses to perform in challenging market conditions. Financial highlights for the 9 months to date include: 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 the 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.

Your first question comes from George Doumet with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Yes, good morning guys and congrats on 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 and 40% organically, with the two 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. You guys also spoke 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?

I want to clarify the difference between large losses and storm activity. Large losses are a recurring aspect of our business that we anticipate will happen regularly, though not necessarily every quarter. We expect to see large losses every year. Some of these will result from storms, while others will arise from non-storm incidents like fires and water claims. We are not specifically disclosing the volume of large loss work being undertaken. Instead, we aim to provide guidance regarding our hurricane-related work and large storm events. For this quarter, that includes the Iowa windstorm and Hurricane 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. 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 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 operational and we had moved past this situation, we would be demonstrating our typical organic growth of 3% to 5%. In the third quarter, our core business, including most of our ancillary services, showed an increase compared to the previous year. This is significant as it reflects our win-loss ratio and indicates where we might stand, which falls within that range. There are no substantial issues other than the normal fluctuations with our ancillary services. While collections and project management have seen declines, certain aspects continue to be affected by COVID, although these impacts are not as significant as the closures of amenities.

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 have a specific percentage, but I would say that the majority of our work comes from our national account relationships. These are the customers we engage with, especially during events. Over the past year, we've definitely made progress by adding new accounts and increasing the share of our existing ones. In simpler terms, if we focus on key acquisitions and exclude the impact of the two events, Global experienced organic growth of over 10% for the quarter, which largely reflects our positive 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 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 the 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. That's helpful. As you look to Q4, there are many factors to consider. On a net basis, it appears to be flat, along with the backlog and storm activity. Can you quantify what that number looks like as you approach Q4?

We have a strong backlog and are actively working on projects in Louisiana and Iowa, along with several large loss jobs in progress. While Q4 may not reach the level of Q3, it will be close and remain strong.

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 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 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 the 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?

As I mentioned earlier, the situation varies from job to job and storm to storm, or event to event. In some cases, we could exceed a 10% margin during certain events. I would consider the margin we achieved this quarter from those events to be fairly typical.

Okay. Is it fair to say that…

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

If we consider the hurricane activity over the past five years, if we have around $50 million in hurricane activity during a specific quarter, would we usually expect it to align with the average global margin, at about 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 unified message. And so we're very excited both for 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? It will take a little more legwork to get the deals over the finish line?

I believe that encompasses everything. There is competition, but we have a pipeline and specific priority regions, areas, and companies. Our tuck-under program has been established for over 20 years, and building these relationships does take time. Therefore, we anticipate that it will 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 organizations with Midwest relationships. And they, as I said in my prepared comments, 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 piggyback 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 about 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…

I was curious if the work done during the quarter to speed up activity at those facilities has started, as it seems quite positive. This could potentially create a competitive advantage that might lead to future market share gains.

We are helping the communities we manage reopen their amenity facilities that were previously closed due to COVID, and many of them still remain partially open or closed. As part of our responsibility as the manager of those communities, we provide this service, and the amenity management aspect has long set us apart. There are very few full-service management companies that offer that additional service.

Right, right. That makes sense.

I wanted to revisit the brand aspect. I believe this quarter marks the first time brand revenue has nearly equaled residential revenue. I'm curious about your thoughts on the future revenue mix of the company, considering your current growth plans. It appears that over time, the brand revenue could potentially align more closely with that of the residential side. What do you envision for the brand mix and its implications for future margin improvements?

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's 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 been 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. 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 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.

Did your restoration business notice any activity related to the wildfires out West in the third quarter, or do you expect to see any in the fourth quarter?

We are serving our national accounts in California, but the amount of work wasn’t significant during the quarter, and I don’t anticipate it will be in the fourth quarter either. This mainly pertains to retail offices, distribution centers, air quality, and smoke damage. We are supplying air scrubbers instead of relying on manpower, which changes the revenue potential compared to some of the other stores we are working with.

Okay. If you were to rank natural disasters based on the opportunities they create for restoration, wildfires would be at the bottom while storms would be much higher.

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.