ADT Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 24, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: ADT delivered record recurring monthly revenue of $363 million (up 2% YoY) with total revenue up 7% and adjusted EPS of $0.23 (up 35%), alongside $500 million of adjusted free cash flow through H1 (up 38%).
  • Positive Sentiment: The company returned $589 million to shareholders year-to-date via share repurchases and dividends, reflecting strong cash generation and an efficient capital structure.
  • Positive Sentiment: Innovations such as the ADT Plus platform, Trusted Neighbor feature and Yale AssureTouch Smart Lock drove higher installation revenue (≈$1,500 per unit) and helped Nest Aware subscribers surpass 1 million while customer satisfaction reached a three-year high.
  • Positive Sentiment: AI integration advanced significantly, with 90% of customer chats handled by AI (resolving 50% without live agents) and an initial rollout of AI for voice calls to boost service efficiency.
  • Negative Sentiment: The State Farm partnership added just over 30,000 subscribers—below expectations—prompting a redesigned mover-focused approach to improve traction without material impact on full-year guidance.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
ADT Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Speaker 2

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Tiffany and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the ADT second quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Elizabeth Landers, Vice President of Investor Relations. Elizabeth, please go ahead. Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss ADT's second quarter 2025 results. Today's speakers are Jim DeVries, ADT's Chairman, President and CEO, and Jeff Likosar, our CFO. After their prepared remarks, we'll take analyst questions.

Speaker 2

This morning we issued a press release and presentation summarizing our financial results. Both are available at investor.adt.com. We'll reference our non-GAAP financial measures today. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in the earnings presentation on our website. Unless noted otherwise, all financials and metrics discussed reflect continuing operations. Non-GAAP cash flow measures include amounts related to our former Solar business through 2Q 2024. Forward-looking statements included in today's remarks are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for more details. I'm happy to turn it over to Jim.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Elizabeth, and good morning, everyone. I am very pleased that ADT is reporting yet another quarter of strong, strong financial results and cash generation as we continue to execute on our 2025 strategic priorities. Our results continue to demonstrate the resilience of ADT's business model. ADT ended the second quarter with another record recurring monthly revenue balance of $363 million, which was up 2% year over year. We continued to grow total revenue, up 6.7%, while balancing profitability and investments for the future. We also delivered very strong adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.23, an increase of 35%. Cash flow continues to be a highlight with adjusted free cash flow, including interest rate swaps, of $500 million through the first half, up 38%. This strong cash generation has enabled us to return $589 million year to date to ADT shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.

Speaker 1

Our customer retention also remains solid with attrition at 12.8%, down a tenth of a point from last year's second quarter and slightly higher than last quarter's record performance. I'd also like to note that during the second quarter, we completed a strategic customer portfolio acquisition of approximately 50,000 subscribers for $89 million. Jeff will provide more details about our results and full year outlook later in our call. First, I'd like to spend the next few minutes updating you on ADT's strategic focus areas, which remain consistent with the themes we've discussed on previous earnings calls. We are very proud of our progress to date and our progress towards delivering on our full year 2025 commitments.

Speaker 1

As I mentioned earlier this year, our primary objectives in 2025 are to continue execution of our strategy and, importantly, optimize and complete the rollout of our newly developed and launched capabilities, platform, and offerings. ADT's mission remains clear: to empower people to protect and connect what matters most, delivered through our differentiators—unrivaled safety, innovative offerings, and a premium, best-in-class customer service experience. As always, we are relentlessly focused on delivering unrivaled safety and peace of mind to our over 6 million customers who trust us to keep them safe every day. We continue to invest in our core monitoring capabilities, including the technologies and redundant infrastructure that have enabled 100% uptime throughout the first half of 2025. We also continue to advance new technologies and introduce features such as Alarm Messenger, which has enabled more than a 50% reduction in false alarms this year.

Speaker 1

One of the key components of our strategy has been investing in our product and experience ecosystem to develop new and innovative offerings for our customers. This includes further expansion of our ADT Plus platform to a larger percentage of our new customers, increased availability across additional sales channels, and enhanced capabilities to enable existing customers to enjoy some of the features available to new customers. We continue to see an increasing percentage of our new customers select our new ADT Plus platform who are also choosing larger and more comprehensive systems. With our reduced use of discounts and promotions, this is driving average installation revenue to approximately $1,500 per unit. Another contributor to this strong revenue is our Trusted Neighbor offering, which continues to generate positive customer feedback. As a reminder, this feature allows our customers to grant trusted individuals temporary access to their homes.

Speaker 1

In April, we enhanced this offering with the launch of the new Yale Assure Touch Smart Lock, which integrates seamlessly with ADT Plus and Trusted Neighbor for an elevated security experience utilizing fingerprint recognition. In addition to these innovative offerings, we remain focused on delivering the best in industry customer experience. We are pleased that ADT's customer satisfaction remains at a three-year high, including a record NPS during the month of June. ADT's results demonstrate the cumulative benefits from our focus on continuous improvement across customer experience metrics, agent satisfaction, and areas such as virtual service, first call resolution, customer onboarding, and agent training. Additionally, our partnership with Google remains strong, and our Nest Aware subscriber base has now surpassed 1 million customers, highlighting the continued strength of our collaboration and growing smart home adoption.

Speaker 1

Turning to our State Farm partnership, since our original launch we have generated slightly more than 30,000 subscribers. While this volume is below the level we projected at this stage of the partnership, we're pleased that these customers report high satisfaction with the program. As we near the three-year anniversary of our partnership, we're working together on redesigning our approach and leveraging our combined learning to explore a new program related to prospective movers who are relocating. We hope to gain more traction with this new approach. We also remain pleased with our progress with ADT's Remote Assistance Program and early artificial intelligence efforts. Approximately half of our service calls continue to utilize remote alternatives rather than requiring in-home service visits, allowing us to efficiently serve our customers while avoiding thousands of truck rolls, which ultimately contributes to reductions in our field service costs.

Speaker 1

Our initial AI efforts remain focused on our customer care operations with an emphasis on improving the customer service experience for both our ADT customers and our employee agents while also improving overall efficiency. We built on our first quarter AI progress with 90% of our customer service chats processed by AI agents, and we are now resolving nearly half of these chats without the need for a live agent interaction. Utilizing the knowledge we've gained from our experience with chat, we have now started our initial rollout of AI agents for voice calls. We remain excited about the opportunities to leverage AI to support and serve our customers more efficiently. In closing, I am confident in ADT's outlook, and we remain committed to delivering value for our customers, employees, and shareholders. I want to say thank you to the entire ADT team for their dedication and performance.

Speaker 1

I remain incredibly proud of this team as well as encouraged for the opportunities that lie ahead. Thank you for your time today. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff.

Speaker 3

Thanks Jim and thanks everyone for joining our call today. I'll take the next few minutes to share some additional detail on our second quarter results along with an update on our full year outlook. Like Jim, I'm very pleased with our first half performance and our progress towards achieving our full year 2025 objectives. As Jim mentioned, our very strong cash flow remains a highlight. We generated $274 million of adjusted free cash flow including swaps in the second quarter and $500 million through the first half, up 38%. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $191 million or $0.23 per share, and year to date we have generated adjusted earnings per share of $0.44, up 22%. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $674 million, up 7%. Key drivers of this performance include our RMR growth, overall efficiency, and the non-recurrence of a prior year legal settlement.

Speaker 3

Our adjusted earnings per share also benefited from our repurchases enabled by our strong cash generation and efficient capital structure. Our top line was also very strong with total revenue up 7% to $1.3 billion. Monitoring and services revenue was up 2% driven by a record $363 million RMR balance, also up 2%. Installation revenue was $197 million, up $60 million, driven by our continued mix shift to our ADT Plus platform and the outright sales of relevant equipment. During the quarter, we generated 242,000 new subscriber additions, adding $14.3 million of new RMR inclusive of our bulk accounts purchase. Another highlight in the quarter is that our leverage ticked lower and is now at 2.8 times adjusted EBITDA with net debt of $7.5 billion. Additionally, we continue to enjoy a very efficient weighted average interest rate of approximately 4.4%.

Speaker 3

We finished the quarter with $45 million of unrestricted cash on hand and no outstanding revolver balance. I'm also happy to share that we recently received lender commitments to fund an incremental $550 million of our existing 2032 term loan. The pricing on this facility is very favorable at SOFR +175 basis points. We also entered into swaps to fix the effective interest rate, which at a little over 5.3% is lower than the 5.75% April 2026 notes we will redeem with the proceeds. We expect the loan transaction to close tomorrow and, along with our ongoing cash generation, are very well positioned to repay our remaining 2026 notes. As Jim mentioned earlier, we continue to return significant capital to shareholders enabled by this efficient capital structure and our cash generation.

Speaker 3

In addition to our $47 million dividend payment, we repurchased and retired 12 million shares during the quarter for an aggregate price of $96 million. Through the first half we have returned $589 million to shareholders. As we look to the second half, we are on track to deliver full year results and consistent with the guidance we shared in February, we are therefore reaffirming our full year guidance ranges for total revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow. Additionally, we are increasing our adjusted earnings per diluted share range by $0.04 to $0.81 to $0.89 per share, reflecting our lower diluted share count. I will note that the timing of marketing expenses, working capital flows, cash interest, and potential tariffs will affect our second half relative to the first.

Speaker 3

We expect third quarter adjusted EBITDA and EPS to be similar to or slightly lower than the second quarter and a larger sequential decline in adjusted free cash flow. The most significant specific driver is the timing of cash interest, which we expect to be approximately $70 million higher in the third quarter. Despite ongoing uncertainty as to the exact amounts, we continue to believe we can absorb our tariff exposure within our full year guidance ranges. With the first half of the year behind us, I am exceptionally pleased with our progress and remain confident in delivering our full year objectives. Like Jim, I want to thank all our employees, partners, customers, and investors for helping us deliver a very strong first half of the year. Thank you everyone for joining our call today and for your support of our company. Operator, please open the line to questions.

Speaker 2

If you would like to ask a question, press star and then R1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, simply press star one. Again, we will pause for just a moment to compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, thanks.

Speaker 1

Good morning. You completed a bulk account purchase for $89 million this quarter that added around 50,000 customer accounts. Can you talk more about what made this account purchase, bulk account purchase, economically.

Speaker 3

Attractive and your appetite for future bulk account purchases?

Speaker 1

Sure. George, it's Jim. Good morning. We have, as you know, executed bulk deals. I think five of the last six years in Q2, we brought on, as you mentioned, 50,000 accounts. These were acquired from a single seller. The accounts had high density, good credit scores. As you know, we always build in attrition protection for ADT, and we did so again. This time the returns for bulk are generally consistent with our dealer business. The bulk pipeline is strong. I'd say probably stronger than we've seen even in the last couple of years. We'll continue to review bulk as an option for incremental subscriber ads.

Speaker 3

Very helpful.

Speaker 1

Can you provide an update on your State Farm partnership, how that's progressing?

Speaker 1

Tracking in terms of.

Speaker 1

New states being.

Speaker 3

Launched and new customers being acquired?

Speaker 1

Sure. I mentioned on the call our program to date subscriber adds is right around 33,000. Candidly, George, the trajectory has been positive for us, but the pace and the volume isn't what I think either party had hoped to achieve. We're right now in the process of designing a new approach that's focused on movers, on prospective customers who are relocating. It's not necessarily the last effort in trying traditional distribution with State Farm new states, the same tactics that we've been focused on in the past. It's a fresh tactic and we'll lean in and see if we can get some better traction here. Lastly, it's probably worth mentioning we conservatively budgeted new subscribers from the State Farm partnership. We're hopeful, I'm hopeful the new approach carries some momentum.

Speaker 1

Even if it doesn't, the results won't be material to our gross adds budget or delivery of our financial commitments. Thanks for the question, George.

Speaker 3

Very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Your next question comes from Peter Christiansen with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Good morning. Thanks for the question. Nice results here, gentlemen. I want to get back to the bulk purchase that you did in the quarter. We figure LTV to CAC somewhere in the mid threes potentially, which sounds great. I was just wondering, Jim, can you just talk about when you think about these bulk purchases, the opportunity to uplift a lot of these customers, convert them on to new systems. How do you think about the incremental value that you can drive by fully merging these customers onto the ADT platform, particularly with a lot of the new products and solutions that you've been delivering. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Yeah, thanks Pete. The playbook for us on bulk is a well-established playbook. We have a team that's focused on it. We do a really good job converting customers. There is, to be frank, some heightened attrition at the beginning of the conversion. That is why we build in the attrition protection usually for 12 months, sometimes a little bit longer. The swing to our monitoring and our service is something that we do well. I mentioned, Pete, we always look for high density, have accounts in a concentrated geography that helps us with service costs. We are conscious of the equipment that we're acquiring. This most recent acquisition, bulk acquisition, had high-quality equipment we feel great about, and we pay a lot of attention to the credit scores and ensure that we have a high credit quality customer when we bring them on board.

Speaker 1

All in all, I think it's a well-worn playbook, one that we execute well. I'm optimistic this will be a supplemental way for us to grow subscribers going forward.

Speaker 3

One point I might add is, as Jim notes, the returns are very strong. You can think of it similar to dealers, a little bit less efficient at the time of acquisition. Your point about the acquisition cost is because we have insight into the other characteristics, including the attrition protection, including knowledge of the account base. Your specific question about seeking to upgrade those customers or have additional sales or revenue opportunities over time, we don't underwrite based on that, but that for sure would be an opportunity. We speak of their terms where we're not banking on that.

Speaker 3

That's good to hear. Certainly sounds like a lot of opportunity customers. Jim, I also want, I would love to dive a little bit into Trusted Neighbor. What are you seeing from initial feedback there and pick up of the product? How do you see things trending with it, with that new launch?

Speaker 1

Sure. Some context that I shared on the last call and I'll share on this call is that Trusted Neighbor is the initial product to launch. It's the first part of an overall product-led strategy to drive growth for us. Trusted Neighbor was launched in August of 2024. It's still relatively early, but we continue to be optimistic. Pete, Trusted Neighbor represents I think something north of 10% of our do-it-for-me installations. The customer response has been really positive. Our field sales and technician response has been positive. Very importantly, the average installation revenue for our installs that include Trusted Neighbor is north of $2,500, pretty meaningfully above our overall average. It's got good traction out of the gate and feel great about the install revenue.

Speaker 1

That's good to hear. Glad to see that expanding. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, good morning, this is Ronan Kennedy. I'm from Manob. Thank you for taking my questions. You mentioned Jim, in the prepared remarks, efforts around increased availability across additional sales channels. I think on the prior calls you talked about an emphasis on sales process and go-to-market optimization initiatives, refining structure, bundling, pricing, marketing. Can you provide more color around these in an update and if, for example, that includes say more deliberate focus on DIY or other efforts.

Speaker 3

Sure.

Speaker 1

Ronan, thanks for the question. We're always working, I think, on sales process and optimization, testing new bundles, testing new pricing. One of the more meaningful shifts that we've undertaken over the course of the last 12 months, and I'd say accelerated in the last six months or so, is a process change to focus on what we call tech engineers. The customer is sold an initial basic system, and when the tech engineer arrives at their home, arrives at their premise, the technician both sells and installs the equipment in one consistent motion. We've had really good success with install revenue using this technician engineer construct. The customer feedback has been positive because the sale and install can happen simultaneously, and it's been a nice change and a nice win for our organization.

Speaker 1

Across all offers, pricing, process, we're constantly adjusting the knobs and dials, Ronan, and trying to improve conversion.

Speaker 1

That's very helpful, thank you. If I may go to attrition for a follow up. Actually, a two part question. Can you provide color on the drivers of attrition, and then as far as relocation having been a headwind to gross ads but a tailwind to attrition, how should we think about the puts and takes to that under, you know, differing scenarios of the housing market, say if it continues to remain challenged versus when it picks up, and if there's anything to be mindful of there such as lapping a relocation tailwind benefit.

Speaker 1

Sure. So a little bit of color on attrition specifically related to relocation. As you know, we ended the quarter at 12.8% attrition, down 10 basis points from last year. A couple ticks up sequentially. Color on Q2 non-payment cancellations were modestly higher than last year. Relocation losses were actually modestly lower than last year. Voluntary losses were a bit worse than last year. We had a large loss in our multifamily business that accounted for about half of our voluntary losses. Save rates were modestly down as well. All in all, a pretty good quarter for us. You're right that relocation losses, relocation being down, is a good guy when it comes to attrition and a bit of a headwind when it comes to gross adds.

Speaker 1

Despite that fact, we had a pretty decent quarter on the gross adds front, and as you heard a minute ago, supplemented by some pretty good return bulk. Last thing I'll mention on attrition, we continue to feel optimistic. I think this was in the prepared notes. Our NPS continues to improve. We had our best scores in three years on NPS, all-time record in June. Call center metrics are clipping along nicely for us, continue to improve, and the customer response to self-service has been really positive. As I've said a bunch of times, attrition improvement won't be linear, but we are optimistic about where it can go longer term.

Speaker 1

Thank you. I appreciate all the insight there. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Your next question comes from Ashish Sabhadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hey, good morning guys. This is William Qi on Parashi Sabhadra. Appreciate you taking our question. Let me ask if you could maybe spend a little bit of time just on your views on the macro environment. I know there's a lot going on, but you know, curious how you're seeing kind of the general end client behaving. If there's any developments on that. You mentioned kind of a modest uptick in slower payments the prior quarter, though not notably material. Curious if there's any updates on that front.

Speaker 1

Sure. Thanks for the question. I'd start with some context. Our business we feel is very resilient in most any environment, and while we're not insulated from the macro environment, we tend to be an organization and have a model that performs well in any environment. Relocation is trending down, I think, across the country a bit. That, as I mentioned on the earlier question, provides a bit of a headwind when it comes to gross ads. Fewer bites at the apple, but it's a nice tailwind for us on retention. Non pay has increased from last year. We're watching it very closely. The increase has been relatively modest in non pay cancellations. Labor market's cooling a bit. That's been helpful to the cause from an employee retention perspective. I'm not sure if it's considered macro or not, but we're watching tariff pressure closely.

Speaker 1

That's obviously difficult to predict given the frequency of change. We have a team focused on it, and as Jeff Likosar mentioned in his prepared remarks, we can manage the net exposure to tariffs within the 2025 guide.

Speaker 3

One thing I would add on the resilient point is, as you know, most of our revenue is recurring in the truest sense of the word recurring. If we start to see trends or dynamics, we tend to see them with enough foresight that we're able to make other adjustments in our business, which is why we're able to, even in this environment, even with some uncertainty, affirm our guidance and, as you saw, increase our EPS guidance in the results or the release we put out today.

Speaker 3

Thank you, that's very helpful. Maybe just to follow up on the State Farm side, curious if you might be able to provide additional color on some of the learning points on the initial stages of the partnership and how that's informed the new redesign strategy.

Speaker 1

Sure. The central thesis is one that I continue to believe that by having professionally monitored 24 devices in the home, that can be a source of claims mitigation, large claims mitigation, in fire and water in particular. I also think that there's the potential to use the data, with customer consent, use the data that the sensors provide to help provide more sophisticated, more precision in the pricing algorithms. The new program that we're contemplating is focused, as I mentioned, just on movers, customers, prospective customers that are changing geographies. We're working together with State Farm and an external organization that has some very deep digital expertise to design a new tactic around those movers and see if we can't get a little more volume than what we've had to date.

Speaker 1

Understood. Thank you very much. Appreciate the color.

Speaker 1

Sure.

Speaker 2

Your final question comes from Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi, good morning, this is Yehuda Silverman on for Tony Kaplan. Just had a question on subscriber growth.

Speaker 2

Demographic trends in general.

Speaker 2

It's been relatively stable past few quarters and years, around 6.4 million customers. Just curious, aside from bulk purchases, what are some ways that you could take market share?

Speaker 2

Are there any changes to your target?

Speaker 2

Demographic or any products or themes that you think are shaping the industry in the midterm or the long term?

Speaker 1

Sure, I think we continue, I continue to be bullish on our core DIFM business. I'm excited about the product roadmap. I like the direction we're heading in terms of premium customer service. There's some differentiation that I think we'll be able to deliver around monitoring quality and speed on the monitoring front, and I continue to be bullish on DIFM. DIY for us, we had tightened our credit standards. We were returns focused. We're making some changes to the go-to-market on DIY, the product set, and cost in DIY so that we can more assertively compete in that space. It's a little bit of a hiatus the last handful of months, and I think by the end of this year, early 2026, we'll be able to compete more effectively in DIY. I continue to be bullish on the Small Business channel.

Speaker 1

That too is an area of increased focus for us. We have a new leader over the SMB space, and I think that's the third leg of the stool that helps us get some traction on gross ads. We also have been talking a couple of times on the call about bulk acquisitions. Frankly, our Dealer channel was down a little year over year. We replaced that volume with bulk acquisitions. I think Dealer will get back on track in the second half, and bulk opportunities are more plentiful than what they've been historically.

Speaker 3

I would add a little bit further to, I believe it was Ronan's question about optimization. A lot of those things are to do with the nature of the offer, the recurring price versus the upfront price, when we offer financing and when we don't. Some of those, when Jim says knobs and dials, are related to that. There are also things related to features. One of the reasons, in fact the main reason, that we transitioned to our proprietary ADT Plus platform was to enable things like Trusted Neighbor. We continue to make adjustments, some smaller, some larger, including some of the things that you see with respect to biometric lock, the home away automation feature that we noted. Those are also the kinds of things that we're able to put in front of customers who are more attracted to a particular feature or a particular use case.

Speaker 3

As we look beyond 2025, we would expect more of that as a means of driving growth as well.

Speaker 2

Great.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 2

That will conclude our question and answer session, and I will now turn the call back over to Jim DeVries for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Tiffany, and thanks everyone for taking the time to join us today. ADT had a strong quarter and a strong, strong first half of the year. We're confident, as we reiterated earlier, in achieving our financial commitments for 2025. I'd like to again extend my appreciation to our ADT employees and dealer partners. Thanks again everybody, and have a great day.

Speaker 2

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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