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ServiceMaster Global Holdings Inc (TMX)
Q3Â 2019 Earnings Call
Nov 5, 2019, 9:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ServiceMaster's Third Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. Beginning today's call is Jesse Jenkins, ServiceMaster's Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer.
I will now turn the call over to Mr Jenkins, who will introduce the other speakers on the call.
Jesse Jenkins -- Senior Director of Treasury & Investor Relations
Thank you, Suzie. Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that throughout today's call, management may make forward-looking statements to assist you in understanding the company's strategies and operating performance.
As stated on Slide 2. All forward-looking statements are subject to the forward-looking statements legends contained in our public filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and are subject to the risk factors contained in our public filings that may cause actual results to vary materially from those contemplated in the forward-looking statements.
Information discussed on today's call speaks only as of today, November 5, 2019. The company undertakes no obligation to update any information discussed on today's call. This morning ServiceMaster issued a press release filed with the SEC on Form 8-K highlighting our third quarter 2019 financial results. The press release and the related presentation can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at servicemaster.com.
We will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures throughout today's call and we have included definitions of these terms in our press release. We have also included reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our press release and the appendix of this presentation in order to better assist you in understanding our financial performance. All references on the call to EBITDA are to adjusted EBITDA as defined in our press release.
Joining me on today's call are ServiceMaster's Chief Executive Officer, Nik Varty; and Chief Financial Officer, Tony DiLucente. Slide 3 of the presentation posted on the Investor Relations section of our website, shows the agenda, we will cover today.
I'll now turn the call over to ServiceMaster's CEO, Nik Varty. Nik.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Thanks, Jesse. And thank you all for your time today. I will start with the Q3 performance highlights on Slide 4. As we have shared with you over prior quarters, we are on a determined journey to become the best and most customer-centric pest control home and commercial services company in our industry. We understood that there will be challenges and some ups and downs as we make progress on this journey. We had to upgrade our people and much of our capabilities and investments needed to be made ahead of the profits that will come from these investments. We have also been focused on effectively managing legacy risks and issues such as termite damage claims and fumigation services. Despite these issues, we are convinced that we continue to make significant progress on our journey.
My team and I are absolutely committed to do what is needed to return our company to market-leading growth and sustainable margin improvements. We are determined to do this in a smart, deliberate and focused manner and to do it the right way to sustain these improvements. We will continue to focus on and prioritize our core business until we reach our goals. We will also aggressively and thoroughly address these hurdles quickly and decisively, both management issues and legacy issues. There will certainly be other setbacks along this journey, but we are improving visibility and management focus across all of our businesses that will allow us to address future issues in faster, more efficient manner providing increased performance consistency to our shareholders.
ServiceMaster delivered 7% revenue growth in the third quarter, as we continue to make progress on our strategic initiatives . Organic growth at Terminix was 2%, despite the comparison against strong prior-year organic growth rates, driven by improvements in start rates and completion rates. Acquisitions in Terminix accounted for 5% of the revenue growth in the quarter. As we strategically tuck-ins in the residential business and through the continued strong performance of Assured Environments and our urban strategy in New York City.
ServiceMaster brands also had a strong quarter, posting 5% revenue growth as initiatives to grow commercial national accounts and healthcare cleaning and disinfection gained traction. We remain focused on reimagining the customer experience in Terminix to drive better service levels. NPS scores in the Terminix business are up across all of our service lines through the hard work of our customer-facing technicians to improve our service delivery. These improvements lowered daily cancel rates and increased retention, excluding the impact of termite renewals in the Mobile, Alabama region. Terminix Commercial continues to build on a strong foundation of quality assurance processes leverage from Copesan to drive retention improvements of over 300 basis points versus prior year. Initiatives focused on consistent customer communication, quality audits and engaging with the customer during on-time appointments are driving better customer satisfaction that is translating to organic growth. Greg Rutherford and his team have done a tremendous job in a very short time in setting the business on a growth trajectory.
Through investments in the sales team, including a new VP of Sales, we can drive new customers at a higher pace into our improved service delivery network. Terminix Commercial also recently added significant capabilities and talent to the recent acquisitions of two Copesan partners; McCloud Services and Gregory Pest Control each add unique capabilities in high value verticals that will add to the depth of our commercial business. The leaders and technicians we added, we share our common culture of serving our customers, caring for our people and delivering results and will be a valuable addition to the team.
And finally, we are closing on the refinancing of our term loan book today that will allow us to take advantage of a strong debt market improve our interest rates and extend our debt maturities into the future.
Turning to Slide 5. Our value creation strategy focuses on three priorities. First, we are fully committed to continuing our progress on building the core of our strong businesses, which have high brand awareness in large, segmented and growing markets. While we continue to make progress, our Q3 EBITDA performance is a reminder that we still have more work to do. We also are continuing to expand our addressable markets through new geographies, innovative products and expanded service offerings. M&A remains a vital part of our longer-term strategy.
Underlying and supporting all of these initiatives is the critical progress we are making to reimagine the customer experience. Better service levels are the basis of our company mission, where we start with serving our customers. We are making progress on a customer first culture change that will realign every person in the organization to think about how we are making things cleaner, healthier and safer for all of our customers. Culture changes take time and there are many milestones along the way. But we are prioritizing this important aspect of our strategy and beginning to show meaningful results that are gaining traction.
Turning to Slide 6 I would like to highlight the progress we are making on improving our service levels and what we are building to take this even further into the future. In residential pest, continued execution on the basics of customer service are driving improvements in the base business. Continued progress on our initiatives to never miss an appointment, speaking with customers before and after every service visit and improvement of our service delivery and effectiveness have helped drive 3% year-over-year improvement in both daily cancellation rate and NPS scores in the quarter.
We still have a long way to go to achieve our goal of best-in-class service levels and delivery, but it is nice to see continued progress in these areas. Commercial pest continues to show a dramatic year-over-year improvements as well. We are communicating more consistently with our customers and striving for on-time delivery of service and best-in-class responsiveness. Our initiatives are being well received by our customers as evidenced by NPS ratings at a 4% higher score year-over-year. These improvements are translating quickly to customer retention, as again trailing 12 month retention is up over 300 basis points from a low base in the prior year.
Despite the recent challenges in our termite business in the Mobile, Alabama region, the remainder of our termite business continues to grow. Excluding this region, our daily canceled rates have improved 6% year-over-year. Our NPS scores driven by customer service and quality actions we are taking have improved 2% year-over-year.
Through a clean sheet initiative, a completely revamped service delivery model has been developed that focuses on improving process capabilities at every customer touch point. This ultimately will provide a much better customer experience and termite protection. The findings from this initiative and the completed validations are being used as a basis for our sales force implementation.
Labor efficiencies improved customer and employee retention and digitized workflow are a few of the many benefits that will come from the sales force initiative. One particular area of importance to us that we will be monitoring closely in the pilot branches in Arizona are improved documentation capabilities. A vital aspect of our services is the ability to document for performed. With sales force all the information on prior services, customer signatures and chemical application will be digitized and at the fingertips of everyone across our company.
Turning to Slide 7. Terminix has long enjoyed a leading market position in the termite business. A key part of the value proposition to our customers is a best-in-class warranty against damages, which has allowed us to build that position. The profitability levels of the business have historically included spending approximately 4% to 4.5% of termite revenue annually in the settlement of these from our termite damage claims nationally and the base of our business outside of the Mobile, Alabama area continues to operate at these historical levels.
Most of these claims are handled directly with the customer and involve relatively minor repairs. But a few occasionally involve litigation is the payment of damages. In the past few years, we have seen an increase in the number and average cost of termite damage claims in the Mobile, Alabama area related Formosan termite activity. We also have seen an increase in the number of termite damage claims in that region that involve litigation. These two trends have increased our termite damage claims costs as a percentage of termite revenue between 7% and 8%. Given the increased volume we have seen, we expect additional cost increases in 2020 before our mitigating actions fully take effect and we begin to gradually return them to historical norms.
I'd like to reiterate that the cost increases above the historical trend are attributed almost exclusively to Formosan termite activity in the Mobile, Alabama area. We are not seeing trends of this kind, in any other geography even though with Formosan termite activity. We have been focused on managing damage claims since January of 2018 and the mitigating actions we are taking are showing positive signs. Consistent with our larger business initiatives we began with improvements across the board in our customer service levels. This includes better training of our technicians, our application of chemicals and a rigorous new customer inspection process.
At the beginning of 2019, we began a pricing initiatives in the Mobile, Alabama area to better align the cost we changed -- we charge termite customers with the actual cost we incurred to provide services in the area. We anticipated some customer reductions as a result of the pricing change, but they have accelerated faster than we originally projected, and as a result are impacting termite renewal revenue and profitability in the short-term. As these customers renew their contracts we conducted a detailed inspection and when necessary retreat their properties. We have added a dedicated Quality Assurance team that is solely devoted to these inspections and retreatments.
Another key initiative was to increase awareness of these issues in the area and train technicians more effectively on inspection methods to identify and document aspects of Formosan termite activity that are different from subterranean termites. The inspection and documentation process is vital to insure we set customer expectations regarding property damage that may predate our treatment and conducive conditions that may limit our treatments effectiveness.
Another action we have taken is to improve our claims management process through a third party administrator. This administrative and helps us any new claims that may arise in the faster pace than our historical norms. In the long run we believe these actions will help us return to our historical damage claim norms. However, as we actively inspect properties, retreat at risk properties and results claims faster than our historical base, they are impacting us negatively in the short term.
Our termite services work effectively on Formosan termites and we have a list of initiatives we have been driving to limit our legacy risk exposure. Unfortunately, this issue will take us time to fully resolve, but the mitigating actions we are taking are aimed at returning us to our normal profit levels in termite over time. The termite business remains attractive with strong value propositions to our end customers and strong profitability.
Turning to Slide 8. I will touch on the difficulties we have had in our outsourcing of fumigation services and what we are doing to resolve them. In order to resolve potential legacy risks related to fumigation operations, the company outsource completion services to third-party provider. This common industry arrangement allows the company to maintain its position with customers as a whole service pest control provider. In our attempt to rapidly across these risks, we experienced execution missteps, which resulted in higher than expected outsourcing costs, which impacted our bottom line. We are implementing the correction plan to improve performance through better subcontractor management and negotiation of better pricing with our service providers to ensure that the business have attractive economics going forward.
And before I turn it over to Tony to go over the financials, I will briefly touch on the European market expansion strategy on Slide 9. Our Nomor acquisition will contribute approximately $60 million in revenue and $14 million of EBITDA and strategically position us as the number four player in the European pest market which is a second largest pest market in the world.
Europe is roughly $3.8 billion market growing faster than GDP that exhibits many of the same attractive dynamics of the US market. It's a highly fragmented market with the top four providers accounting for less than 50% of the market and the remaining portion consisting of approximately 8,000 businesses. We have an opportunity to expand on our global account presence into Europe to existing relationships we have in place at Terminix Commercial and Copesan. Svein Olav Stolen and his highly experienced team know the market and the underlying dynamics and have a history of both organic and inorganic growth in the European Pest industry.
We plan to work from a strong foothold we have in the Nordics to expand our presence over time into the broader EU. In addition, we acquired a smaller global accounts-focused business in the UK to help us build foundational capabilities to serve Europe-based global accounts. It was very important for us to separate the management and reporting of these businesses, so as not to slowdown the progress we are making in the transformation of Terminix. Dion Persson will take ownership of the European operations and help Svein and his team work an independent growth strategy in the region. There will be more to come, but I'm excited about the attractive opportunities in front of us.
And with that, I will turn it over to Tony.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Nick and good morning everyone. Turning to Slide 10, let's start with the Q3 consolidated financial summary. Revenue grew $32 million or 7% to $528 million. Terminix grew organically $9 million or 2%, excluding $3 million of year-over-year revenue decline from the previously discussed divested fumigation services line. Revenue from acquired businesses at Terminix added $20 million or 5% growth in the quarter, predominantly through tuck-in acquisitions in residential pest in the Assured Environments acquisition in commercial pest ServiceMaster brands added $3 million or 5% in the quarter, including strong growth in key focus areas of the business; commercial and national accounts and healthcare cleaning. We also saw approximately $4 million in revenue in the period from the September 6 acquisition of Nomor Holding AB in Sweden and Norway.
As a reminder, Nomor will be reported in the Corporate and Other operations area of our financials to allow clear visibility to the base Terminix business and better align with the management structure of the business. Excluding the $11 million in the prior period for historically allocated American Home Shield costs, EBITDA in Q3 would have been down $9 million year-over-year. EBITDA was lower in the period primarily due to increased investments in the Terminix business, low revenue flow-through due to termite renewals, the fumigation issues previously described by Nik and increases in termite damage claims.
Turning to Slide 11. I'll discuss the Terminix revenue growth by channel. Overall, Terminix delivered revenue growth in all channels. Starting with the termite and home services column on the left side of the chart, revenue increased 3% in the quarter 2% of which was organic. Termite renewals were down $1 million or 1% in the quarter, predominantly due to higher than expected customer cancellations in Mobile, Alabama area of the country. We expect this trend to continue into the fourth quarter. These termite renewals convert to EBITDA at a high level and I'll discuss the impact of this in the next slide.
In the fourth quarter, we will be lapping a $2 million one-time acceleration of revenue related to an accounting methods change for a bundled pest in termite services offering that we made in order to comply with new revenue recognition standards. We currently expect to see a decline in termite renewals in the fourth quarter due to both of these issues.
Termite completions at home services were up 8% in the quarter, including 6% organically based on pricing realization and unit growth in both core termite and home services, driven by accelerated marketing spend in the quarter. Approximately 47% of the $71 million in termite completions is related to core termite sales, which were up 4% year-over-year.
Home services completions, which include attic installation, wildlife exclusion and crawlspace encapsulation represent 53% of the revenue in this category and were up 10%. The strong performance in termite completions, coupled with our improved customer service levels sets us up for renewal growth of 2020.
Residential pest control services were up 6% in the third quarter of the prior year including 2% organically. Organic growth in residential pest control was driven by price realization in the quarter and improvements in daily cancellation rates. This growth came despite lapping a strong prior-year organic growth quarter, driven by one-time accelerations of start and completion rates that are difficult to meaningfully improve beyond certain levels.
Commercial pest control revenue was up 13% versus prior year, including 1% organically. Organic growth in commercial pest was driven by the 300 basis point improvement in retention rates, offset by lower one-time sales predominantly in bed bug services, which have been soft all year.
Acquisition revenue contributed the remaining 12% growth in the quarter, predominantly from the Assured Environments out of New York City. The new additions of McCloud and Gregory will ensure that acquisition revenue growth continues into 2020, as we grow our size and capabilities in commercial pest control.
I would also like to note, strong year-over-year growth of 8% or $2 million in our product sales business. We have seen strong results this year in product sales driven by a concerted effort to grow this channel. However, it's important to note that these sales flow through to EBITDA at approximately 10% and have a much different profitability profile than our base Terminix businesses.
Overall, Terminix revenue grew 7% in the quarter, including 2% organically as we continue our focus on improving service levels and driving organic growth. We expect to see organic growth at Terminix of between 2.5% to 3% for the full year. Just like the third quarter, we will be lapping starting completion rate improvements in residential as well as the $2 million accounting method change in termite renewals.
Turning to Slide 12. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter decreased $9 million or 11% to $72 million, reflecting a margin of 15.7% below original company expectations. Working across the bridge on the bottom of the slide, you can see organic revenue growth of $6 million converted to $2 million in the quarter. This includes the lower margin flow through of product sales as well as the impact of lower termite renewals in the Mobile, Alabama area. This mix shift, particularly as it relates to termite renewals was more severe than expected and factors into our [Indecipherable] quarter.
As Nik discussed earlier, we had a $4 million in profitability erosion related to the execution of the outsourcing of fumigation services. The outsourced cost of fumigation completions were higher than anticipated. Price increases attempting to recover the cost, increased cost volumes to decline significantly. This resulted in decreased volume and lower margins combining to drive this $4 million miss. We expect continued declines in the fourth quarter, bit of a focused action plan that will soften the margin declines and improved volumes as we head into next year.
Acquired revenue growth of $20 million contributed $4 million to EBITDA or a margin of 20% in the quarter. Excluding our European pest acquisition, which is reported in Corporate and Other operations, we expect more than $25 million from acquisition revenue in the fourth quarter to contribute approximately 20% EBITDA margins. We had $6 million of investment in growth and productivity in the quarter, including $2 million increased sales and marketing, which produced higher new units in core termite and home services, $2 million in investments in our customer experience platform with Salesforce technology and $2 million to optimize our commercial pest business.
This represents an increase from prior guidance, predominantly in marketing spend to drive new leads. The results of $2 million in increased damage claims expense due to the increased Formosan termite activity in the Mobile, Alabama area of the country. Termite damage claims, particularly, claims that involve litigation are difficult to estimate in both size and timing, but currently we expect the year-over-year increase from damage claims of approximately $4 million in the fourth quarter. Original estimate at termite damage claims expense improving in the back half of the year through the mitigation actions we implemented in prior periods. These results were below our expectations for the quarter with profitability impacted by revenue mix shift in addition to the larger than expected impacts of damage claims in fumigation outsourcing. As Nik has discussed, we are actively addressing these issues and we are confident we can return to the levels we are expecting in this business.
Let's move to Slide 13 and talk about ServiceMaster brands Q3 performance. ServiceMaster brands delivered a strong quarter with revenue increases of 5% or $3 million to $63 million. The increase was driven by our initiatives to grow commercial national accounts up again this quarter by 7%. We are also gaining traction on our expansion in healthcare cleaning and disinfection, which was up 13% on the year. In total, we saw 3% growth in royalty revenue in the period converting to EBITDA at a high margin.
Adjusted EBITDA was up $2 million or 7% in the period, primarily due to the flow-through of royalty revenue growth. The brands team continues to focus on improving its ability to support our franchises through centers of excellence in key verticals and geographies, including healthcare and reconstruction. As we anticipate the fourth quarter, it is important to note that we will be lapping the benefits we received the 2018 from Hurricane Florence and Michael.
Moving to Slide 14. I'll discuss our cash flow for the quarter. Free cash flow of $191 million year-to-date improved $22 million or 30% year-over-year and free cash flow conversion improved over 300 basis points to 57%. Reduced cash interest driven by debt reduction after the frontdoor share monetization and a reduction in property additions, as we cycle construction related costs from the move of our global service center to downtown Memphis were the primary drivers of the improvement.
Looking to the uses of our cash. You can see, we continue to invest in strategic acquisitions and have spent $345 million year-to-date excluding both Gregory, McCloud that we closed in early October. We ended the period with $140 million of a value -- of available cash. Cash generation at 57% of adjusted EBITDA continues to be a strong story for the company. Our continued focus on working capital improvements and EBITDA conversion remain priorities for the businesses. We remain diligent in the uses of the generated capital, ensuring all investments we make, provide returns for investors at rates well in excess of our cost of capital.
Let's move to Slide 15 to look at another way we are adding value through our recent refinancing. We will be closing on a debt refinancing that will enable us to take advantage of a very receptive debt market to refinance $441 million in secured debt with a new $600 million Term Loan B. This loan extends our maturity by approximately three years, while also lowering our interest rate by 75 basis points. On the right side of the slide, you will see our capital structure post this refinancing. Our total net debt leverage ratio after the transaction is approximately 3.5 times. As we have long discussed, we have the cash flow and flexibility to extend our debt levels in a responsible manner for the right opportunities. That being said, we are still targeting a net debt level of between 2.5 times and 3.0 times. After the refinancing, we expect the run rate of cash interest to be roughly equivalent to today, while reducing our blended interest rate to below 5%.
Looking ahead, we now expect total ServiceMaster revenue for the full year 2019 of between $2.07 billion and $2.08 billion or growth of 9% to 10%. The $25 million increase from previous guidance is primarily by acquisition contributions from our European pest operations, as well as, the recent McCloud and Gregory acquisitions in commercial pest.
We now expect acquisition revenue of approximately $130 million for the year including over $40 million in the fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected between $415 million and $425 million for a ServiceMaster EBITDA margin of approximately 20%. The $20 million reduction from prior guidance includes approximately $10 million in damage claim expense from prior expectations. The previous damage claim expectation included year-over-year favorability from mitigation actions that are taking longer than expected to show results in the Mobile, Alabama area of the country.
It also includes a $10 million reduction from the combined impact of fumigation, outsourcing, execution issues in termite renewal reductions in Mobile, Alabama. We also spent an additional $5 million on growth initiatives primarily additional marketing in Q3 that helped accelerate new units in termite completions and home services. These increases were offset partially by approximately $5 million of EBITDA contribution from new acquisitions.
At Terminix, we expect organic growth rates for the full year between 2.5% to 3% when normalized for the impact of our fumigation divestiture. In the fourth quarter, we expect more than $25 million in revenue from acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 is expected to be impacted by the previously discussed damage claims expense and fumigation services, offset by conversion of continued organic and acquired revenue growth.
At ServiceMaster Brands, we expect mid-single digit growth and slight margin pressure as we grow EBITDA dollars by expanding our commercial cleaning national accounts business and driving active initiatives to generate value for our franchisees and customers. ServiceMaster Brands will also be lapping the area wide hurricane weather events our Florence and Michael from the fourth quarter of 2018.
At Corporate and Other operations, we expect over $50 million in revenue from our European pest operations. We expect the full-year effective tax rate to be between 21% and 23% given the tax free gain from the monetization of our frontdoor shares. That said the Q4 effective tax rate is expected to range between 26% and 28%, as the rates normalize post the monetization. And given the refinancing we expect cash interest to be between $80 million and $90 million annually going forward.
And with that, I'll turn it back over to Nik for final comments. Nik?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Thanks, Tony. We are fortunate to have an incredible pest business in a wonderful industry with an outstanding brand, leadership position and strong customer relationships, led by our devoted frontline associates. As we complete year two of a complete transformation of this business to address its underperformance, I remain encouraged and confident in our business fundamentals and in our ability to continue on our journey to build from the strong foundation we have developed over the past two years.
Over the last two years, we have improved our NPS scores and are starting to see consistent traction in our retention numbers as well, highlighted by recent rapid gains in our commercial business. We have added much needed commercial capabilities in high value verticals to our targeted acquisitions. We have also made improvements in our field operations by focusing on the fundamentals, improving our safety records, on-time services, customer communication cadence, service and inspection protocols, as well as, start and completion rates. Even though we have accomplished a lot in the first two years of our transformation, a lot remains to be done. As we are reminded by our underperformance of this quarter.
We have identified and are rapidly addressing the three key items that caused this performance, which are legacy termite damage claims, sub par execution of our outsourcing of our legacy residential fumigation business and a much lower conversion from our revenue mix, largely driven by lower termite renewals. These items emphasize that we must and will focus on improving our execution for both current and legacy initiatives and work toward setting and meeting achievable expectations with improved analytics and project management cadence.
Our underperformance this quarter also reinforces our need for commitment to our cultural transformation, which we have started rolling out this year. We are focusing on improving our problem solving, project management and analytical capabilities. We are investing in a much-needed Salesforce operating system, which will create a major upgrade in our industry in our ability to serve our customers and make the jobs of our frontline easier.
We are working on a clean sheet initiatives in our termite journey and are targeting 2020 for the roll-out. This frontline led transformation is a breakthrough opportunity that can differentiate our ability to serve our customers. These commitments will ensure that we will be positioned to drive continued and sustainable profitable growth and allow us to regain our profitable growth leadership in pest.
Let me also address our change in leadership in our residential pest business. Matt Stevenson who was a strong contributor to the actions needed in the first two years of our transformation journey. His ability to focus on and drive improvements in our fundamentals was critical to turning the tide for this business and was responsible for the early successes we have seen in returning to organic growth and improving customer metrics. As we move to the next phase of our transformation journey, we felt a change needed to be made as we looked at the items we now need to address, primarily sustainable operational excellence, backed by a strong operating system.
I remain confident in the progress we're making on our journey and our ability to continue to drive sustainable and profitable growth and appreciate your support and patience as we continue on this challenging and rewarding transformation.
I will now turn the call back over to Jesse to lead us through a Q&A session.
Jesse Jenkins -- Senior Director of Treasury & Investor Relations
Thanks, Nick. As a reminder, during the Q&A session. We encourage you to ask any questions that you may have. But please note the guidance is limited to the outlook we provided in our press release and webcast presentation. Additionally, since the queue is long this morning, please limit yourself to a single question, so that we can get to everyone in the allotted time.
Suzie lets open up the line for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Michael Hoffman of Stifel. Please go ahead.
Michael Edward Hoffman -- Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated -- Analyst
One question, Jiminy Cricket because I got like 20 So, I guess, I'm going to focus on retention and I'm trying to figure out the messaging, did retention not improve in residential, but it did in commercial? And if it didn't driven improve what are you doing to get it restarted to improve again?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Retention, Michael. Good morning. The retention improved across all our product lines; in residential pest, in termite as well as in commercial pest. In commercial pest, we saw a significant improvement of 300 basis points. As you know for quite a few years, this business was in decline and we've been supporting it with great talent being built up, carving out it out as a separate business unit and bringing in some incredible capabilities through some of our partnerships with Copesan and some verticals that we've acquired since then like Assured.
On the residential side, we did see improvements. In termite there were almost flattish, but positive if you exclude the loss we faced in the Mobile, Alabama area, which was a result of finally trying to match our pricing with the cost to serve in that area, but we do see continued improvement. We've seen quite a substantial improvement over the last three quarters of retention on residential pest and I'd like we said, we have to continue to work on sustainable practices. So, we've improved the underlying basics, much better on-time performance, better completion. We continue to maintain a high level of start rates, but we have to continue to do that 75,000 times a day that we knock on doors of all our customers.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Tim Mulrooney of William Blair. Please go ahead.
Timothy Michael Mulrooney -- William Blair & Company LLC -- Analyst
Good morning.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Good morning, Tim.
Timothy Michael Mulrooney -- William Blair & Company LLC -- Analyst
So, if I only have one question, it's this, Nik, why should investors have confidence that other cities outside of Mobile, won't also become more litigious?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
It's a good question, Tim. As we've seen with Formosan termites they -- there's a possibility of them existing and we've seen them below the sort of 35th north latitude in non-desert like, desert like conditions. But we've seen much more aggressive activity where the soil composition and certain conditions exist like the River Deltas in Mobile, Alabama area and predominantly we've also seen it in New Orleans. Now in New Orleans, we do not serve our customers directly there, so that doesn't impact us. But we've seen the activity significantly. In other areas, do exist but over the years since we've seen the spike in claims in the Mobile, Alabama area, we have not seen any similar trend in other areas. As you know since starting 2018, we have put significant improvements in service quality in terms of documentation, in terms of inspection, training, retreatment, better inspection so we don't had a pre-existing conditions. And we're also working directly with our customers to settle any of their issues directly with them, rather than it becoming costly litigations in the future.
But as I said, we've -- first of all, I think we got to understand that we did offer -- we do offer a differentiated warranty offering, which has allowed us to become the market leader in the past because the primary concern for people is the value of the home. Now allowing that we've seen about 4% to 4.5% as a termite damage claim cost across the nation in -- whether it's for Formosan termites or otherwise. And the increase is almost exclusively related to the Formosan termite activities as you know, being very invasive in that area, but we have not seen that trend at all in other areas at all, so.
Operator
Thank you . Our next question comes from Toni Kaplan of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Jeff Goldstein -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Hey, this is Jeff Goldstein on for Toni. I'm just going to follow up on that last question, if I can. So, just on this termite liability that is out there. Could you help us understand what is the maximum liability you could face in terms of the dollar figure. So, I know 2% of the Formosan activity is in the Mobile, Alabama area, but I think you just mentioned some other cities that it possibly be in. So, just given like the litigation that's out there, and maybe theoretically if all the homes that were in the Mobile, Alabama area filed some type of damage claims. Just in terms of a dollar figure, how should investors be thinking about the liability that exist. Thanks.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, I think the best -- this is Tony DiLucente, I think the best way to look at this is is that across the country, our termite damage claims expense are running about 4% of revenue. They're running higher in the Mobile, Alabama area and that drove our percentage up to 7% to 7.5% this year. The -- it's -- it appears that this is really isolated to this one area for us where we have these unique soil conditions kind of close to a River Delta. We don't see the exposure anywhere -- like this anywhere else at this time. It's hard for us to predict with any certainty, what's going to happen in the future, but that's our best estimate right now.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
And if you've seen the 7% to 7.5% kind of rate starting in 2000 -- early 2017 and there was discussions in Q1 of 2017 around this. So, we pretty much have been able to manage within that range. And we believe given the actions that we've put in, with the consistency and strength, which we've been operating in those -- in this area, we believe at least in the future it's -- that we will be able to return to the historical norms as we see these things going to continue to be managed better.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ian Zaffino of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Ian Alton Zaffino -- Oppenheimer & Co. Inc -- Analyst
Hi, great, thank you very much. Also wanted to ask on the termite damage claims side . How are you thinking about price and retention levels and trying to match basically the pricing with the cost to serve. And then also basically, how do you think about pricing versus kind of cost mitigation as you charter store kind of the termite damage claims to historical levels. Thanks.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Yeah, good morning, Ian. So, as you know in this area since January of 2018 right after I was able to completely assess the situation. And we've been putting some strong practices in place and we realize that -- in order to serve this particular area with the activity we had, we had to use several methods such as much more stringent inspection regimen. We have to retreat certain areas. We had to power down on what we call dual defend, depending on liquid and bait in some houses. So we have to enhance the pricing in this area to match the cost to serve. And we've seen some, we had expected, but it was -- we saw a much larger than expected decline in customers in this area. So, as customers continue to renew with us. We obviously do reinspections and retreats and much, much more improved documentation as we go forward on these cases. But we've seen that at least we're now pricing these in line with what we believe the cost of service and continue to match that and increase that as we see the service levels being increased.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Gary Bisbee of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, please go ahead.
Analyst
Thanks. Sadly , I'll continue on the same line of questioning. So, I guess, my question a little different though. You alluded to this continuing for a while, I think, Nick, you said into 2020. Can you give us just a sense as to how you think this impacts next year? What part of the cost, is it just higher claims, is it cleaning up all the litigation. And and as part of that, also, I'd like to understand how much revenue you expect you're going to lose, i.e, the bridge that you gave for the change in full year guidance lumped in renewal reductions and the fumigation that's not real helpful as a $10 million. Can you tell us how much is the revenue reduction and how much was the fumigation and really what matters to next year is what I'm getting at?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Yeah, good morning, Gary. I'll answer the first part of it. And I'll ask Tony give you the bridge answer on that one. As I mentioned earlier that we've seen across the country our normal cost of doing business in termite was about 4% to 4.5% on that -- different kinds of damage claims that we -- based on a warranty that we serve. And we still see an incredible value proposition in this business and highly profitable us including that cost. We've seen overall in 2017 that that cost has gone up to 7% to 8%, right, 7% to 7.5% right now. And we've seen the volume increase from our mitigation actions. So the -- this issue is, we've seen -- so we started working more directly with customers. So, that obviously resulted in some non-litigated claims, but per claim that helps us better with the dialog with the customer than these becoming expensive litigations in the future. We are expecting, as we mentioned -- as Tony mentioned earlier this cost to go up slightly in the fourth quarter and we see that continued marginal increase into 2020. So, we believe it should be right around that range to slightly higher in 2020. As we -- as our actions eventually start bearing fruit and reducing litigated claims, reducing even issues and claims we have with better documentation and better service as we go forward. Thus allowing us, we believe that we can get back to the historical affordable 4 to 4.5 range in the future.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, and Gary, you bring up a good point. Obviously the -- this will have some impact in 2020. Our estimates are roughly $2 million in renewable revenue, but I think we have to stay focused on the fact that it's important that we take into effect with the cost to serve is in these regions and adjusted our pricing accordingly for that and we're -- so for the long run, it's definitely the right move, but it will have some impact in 2020.
Jeff Goldstein -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Dollar incremental in the fourth quarter which, it sounds like is a $4 million swing year-over-year, but is there something in this fourth quarter number. Is there a kind of an accrual or is there some sort of big lumpsum settlement or something. I'm just trying to understand why it's such a big jump from 3Q to 4Q. And then, I think we're all trying to understand really what the jumping-off point into next year is going to be, is it this fourth quarter kind of run rate. If you could give us the full impact I guess for 2019 maybe that would be a helpful number to have and then kind of use that as a starting point for 2020. Any additional color there. Thanks.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, This is Tony. I'll take that one. So, in Q3 termite damage claims were roughly $2 million higher year-over-year. They're going to be $4 million higher year-over-year in Q4 that brings you to $6 million. The other $4 million relates to the fact that it was our expectation that we would actually have a reduction in termite damage costs in the year. We've seen higher volumes of non-litigated claims, which is -- which in some ways is good for the long-term because we're aggressively working those in the right way. And so that also, it was a little bit contributed to some high claims that were awarded to litigated side. So that's what really drove that $4 million. Why we didn't realize that $4 million lower than expectation, so that's the bridge of the $10 million.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Judah Sokel of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Judah Efram Sokel -- JP Morgan Chase & Co -- Analyst
Hi, good morning. How are you?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Good morning, Judah.
Judah Efram Sokel -- JP Morgan Chase & Co -- Analyst
Good morning. You referenced the fact that it can take years to fully settle the claims that come out of the termite practice, but -- but the one in 3Q arising from the 2016. So how long do you expect it to take until we've cycled through all potential claims from policies that were underwritten before you started your mitigating activities -- your mitigating actions in 2018. Thanks.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Judah, there were practices in place where these things were served well. As you see, given the nature of this -- the case, there are some homes that we haven't sort of seen [Indecipherable] but as these go by there's a lot of discussion. But more and more as we settle non-litigated claims, treat better. And the legal part of this is really tougher time, especially both in terms of timing and severity. But the more our practices take -- more houses we reinspect, more retreatments we do and the more we continue to settle these at reasonables with our customers in a non-litigated way, it continues to mitigate our future risk. So, it's difficult to predict, but we believe we are continuing to improve the future exposure within the limits.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jamie Clement, Buckingham Research. Please go ahead.
James Martin Clement -- The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated -- Analyst
Good morning, gentlemen. Changing gears a little bit, it seems when you would you announced Nomor, platform acquisition and obviously, your longer-term leverage target is maybe a little less than where you are today. How high would you take leverage in the short run to tax of businesses on the Nomor.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Well, yeah, thanks, Jamie. Like we said all along, our target is 2.5 to 3, no doubt about that. We set for the right opportunity, we would -- we would go over that for a period of time. And with our strong cash flow, eventually bring that back into the 2.5 to 3 range. So, how much higher, would we go above the 3.5 we -- we don't really have any plans right now to go any higher. And obviously, I think we're -- we're pretty comfortable going up to the 3.5. But going any higher than that, probably not in the short-term.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
And Jamie we are pretty -- we generate significant cash, not only from our base business, but also we look at the targets that we bring in are pretty cash flow rich as well in terms of the kind of business we have. We've -- and we've spent two years really building in line with our strategy where we want it to boost our commercial business, which drove the acquisitions of things Copesan, Assured, Gregory and McCloud. We believe we've added not only revenue, which is not the primary reason for doing this. The primary reason was adding the much-needed capabilities to become one of the strongest commercial business in the future. And as we can see that has benefited us significantly in terms of continued improved retention rates and finally starting to see positive growth and stringing quarter-by-quarter positive numbers. So, we have -- we've brought in a new VP of Sales in this business. We are strengthening the sales function there to add continued new sales in addition to the retention that we're driving some. So these have paid their dividends and I believe we've got tons -- a lot of the capabilities we actually needed.
We don't have anything sort of large, the feature in the horizon at this stage, but that doesn't preclude us if opportunities come on play. We'll continue to focus in the future on very smart tuck-in type opportunities that give us strong density going forward. But these are maybe -- a much smaller in size, larger numbers that doesn't really impact in a big way how we look at our leverage ratios.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from George Tong, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
George Tong -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Hi, thanks, good morning. I wanted to go back to the termite claims activity. You've previously indicated that visibility into claims can be somewhat limited. Can you discuss what initiatives you have to improve visibility into claims costs? And provide more clarity into how you expect claims costs to basically go back to 4% of revenues from 7.5% to date?
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
The best way, George, we can -- we address this is, we -- the customers that we serve we have gone back into the high-risk area as we continue to reinspect, we understand the situation a lot better. We continue to retreat as needed. We continue to have conversations with our customers and that's how we -- and one of the big thing we've done is, instead of handling the process in-house we've engaged about a year ago, a little less than a year ago with the third-party administrator who has brought a lot of professional cadence and discipline in how we approach these customers and address any open issues before they become sizable by any nature. So, it's better to understand those, treat those in time and move forward, and that's one of the reasons why it gives us confidence that -- and we've seen some incredible results from the actions we've taken, so -- but these things take time to materialize.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Andy Wittmann of Baird. Please go ahead.
Andy Wittmann -- Baird -- Analyst
Great. I guess my question is for Tony, and it's actually focused on the third quarter a little bit more. I wanted to understand the EBITDA bridge. I guess, it's kind of based on slide number 12 and -- and specifically, like a lot of the items listed in this bridge, you guys knew about when you gave your guidance for the year, growth investments in particular, dissynergies are two of the larger buckets on this list. So -- and if the fumigation kind of offsets the acquisition EBITDA impact. So, when I look at all of this and I look at kind of -- of how the quarter came in. It feels like there are other things in the quarter, which negatively impacted EBITDA. And I was wondering if you could go through some of those factors that may be we're also in the -- in the EBITDA results for the quarter that maybe aren't bridged here or could have been reasons for a little bit of the shortfall that we saw in the results.
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the one thing that I wanted to mention was on the organic revenue conversion that's -- that's a little bit lighter than we expected. Mainly because we saw a different mix than we were expecting. We had a large increase in product sales and we had the lower termite renewals that we have already talked about and given the the profitability of termite renewals that is a very significant part of the other miss, I guess, in the expectations.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Although mainly the termites, if you look at the renewals, Andy, bulk of those or a huge majority of those were customers that we ended up losing in the Mobile
Andy Wittmann -- Baird -- Analyst
Alabama area, which is -- where we did not have the move and so in the short term, it was much faster, more accelerated than we had expected, but in the long term, they should be helping our cause as we continue to manage the situation.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to our host for any closing remarks.
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Thank you again for your participation in today's conference call and webcast. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available on our website in about an hour from now. Thank you for your continued interest in our company.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 58 minutes
Call participants:
Jesse Jenkins -- Senior Director of Treasury & Investor Relations
Nikhil Madhukar Varty -- Chief Executive Officer & Director
Anthony D. DiLucente -- Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Michael Edward Hoffman -- Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated -- Analyst
Timothy Michael Mulrooney -- William Blair & Company LLC -- Analyst
Jeff Goldstein -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Ian Alton Zaffino -- Oppenheimer & Co. Inc -- Analyst
Analyst
Judah Efram Sokel -- JP Morgan Chase & Co -- Analyst
James Martin Clement -- The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated -- Analyst
George Tong -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Andy Wittmann -- Baird -- Analyst
