Greetings. Welcome to ADT Inc.'s second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Derek Fiebig, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Thank you, operator. We appreciate everyone joining ADT's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Speaking on today's call will be ADT's President and CEO, Jim DeVries, and our CFO and President of Corporate Development, Jeff Likosar. Jim will provide an overview of our recent performance and our progress against the company's strategic objectives. Jeff will cover in more detail our financial performance and outlook for 2021. Also joining us for Q&A are Don Young, EVP and COO, Ken Porpora, Executive VP of Finance, and Jill Greer, Senior Vice President of Finance. This afternoon, we issued a press release and slide presentation of our financial results. These materials are available on our website at investor.adt.com. Today's remarks include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements.
Some of the factors that may cause differences are described in our SEC filings. Today's call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. For a complete reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our press release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim.
Thanks, Derek , welcome everyone to our call. We're off to a very solid start through the 1st half of the year, I want to thank our entire ADT team and our dealer partners for serving our customers so diligently and delivering solid results for our shareholders. During our February call, I outlined several key priorities for 2021, including growing our RMR additions and our recurring monthly revenue base, improving the performance of our commercial business, and driving innovation both through our internal expertise and through our strategic partners. Jeff will walk you through our 2nd quarter results in a few minutes. In summary, a number of areas within our business are performing exceptionally well. Our small business channel, our commercial segment, DIY, and our dealer channel are all delivering strong results. In the second quarter, across the business, we grew gross RMR additions by 28% versus last year.
We also see some opportunities. We're working to further increase volume in our direct residential channel, and on the expense side, we're making progress on addressing service cost pressures we experienced in the quarter. Overall, we feel very good about our results for the first six months and have good momentum going into the back half of the year. This evening, I would like to share perspective about what we've achieved as well as where we're headed, not just in 2021, but into the future. During the past several years, we have grown revenue by more than 20%, from just over $4 billion to more than $5 billion, with approximately 80% of that revenue from recurring monthly service to our customers. We've established a sizable commercial business through acquisitions and organic growth, now approximately $1 billion of revenue.
We've pivoted to include more smart home products, increasing the number of devices installed per customer from 14 to almost 20 today, which correlates to an increase in average revenue per unit. We've improved our service levels, increasing customer satisfaction with gross revenue retention improving from approximately 84% for legacy ADT to just under 87%. We have increased our revenue generation and strengthened customer satisfaction, which has translated into an improvement in our trailing 12-month revenue payback from 2.7 years to 2.2 years. Importantly, we've captured these positive outcomes in our financial results, growing our cash generation capabilities during the same time with adjusted free cash flow of $675 million last year. As to the direction we are heading in, at our core, ADT is a mission-driven company, and that mission is dedicated to making our customers' lives safe as well as simple.
From our SoSecure app offering free protection options to residential customers who have made us the most trusted name in the smart home security space to multimillion-dollar commercial installations, we deliver on our mission every day to over 6 million customers. ADT's scale and breadth of offering is unmatched in the marketplace. Our path forward is focused on three areas. The first is driving revenue growth through differentiated service to a larger customer base in our core business. The U.S. smart home and commercial protection markets are expected to grow steadily, with a total revenue opportunity north of $100 billion in the next five years, from just under $75 billion today. Through our direct channels, our dealer network, and our partnerships with leading home builders like D.R. Horton, we're connecting with more customers than ever before as we respond to increased customer demand for smart home automation.
Of note, our new customers are increasingly choosing more integrated offerings, we firmly believe that the more a customer interacts with their system, the greater the opportunity we have to build a longer-term rewarding relationship with them. This relationship is further solidified by the premium service ADT provides, from installation by best-in-class technicians to always-there customer service to operating the industry's highest certified monitoring centers. No one takes better care of customers than ADT's team of 20,000 people. We remain focused on the customer experience and continually research areas where we can modernize and refresh. By investing in our digital capabilities, we will deliver the level of service customers value most and provide it in a more streamlined, cost-effective way. We had an excellent quarter on the commercial side of the business. Our growth is largely attributed to higher market share.
We continue to seek tuck-in acquisition opportunities where we can increase our market footprint and expand the offerings we provide to our customers. The second area of focus on our path forward is driving adjacent growth. This includes building relationships with our strategic partners in spaces such as multifamily property management, building and construction, insurance, and ride-sharing. We're also actively looking at ways to further capitalize on consumer confidence in ADT's brand, which has earned tremendous trust with our customers and maintains over 95% brand awareness. The opportunities afforded to us run the gamut from expanding to new commercial verticals or beyond the home to new opportunities like automotive or solar. These adjacent markets provide potential growth and expand the market opportunities for ADT. Additionally, a number of the adjacent opportunities provide for deepening relationships with our current customers.
The final area of focus is shaped by increased innovation, both through our internal expertise and through our strategic partnerships, especially through our relationship with Google. ADT was founded nearly 150 years ago. We are proudly one of the longest-tenured companies in American business. I'm even more proud of ADT's growing culture of innovation and reinvention, which is crucial to continuing to thrive in the future. Related to our commitment to innovation, it's been almost a year since we announced our Google partnership, along with their equity investment in ADT. Over that time, we've made progress while simultaneously learning from each other along the way. We're now offering integrated Google products such as the voice a ssistant, Hub Max, and piloting mesh Wi-Fi. Shortly, we'll be including the Google Doorbell in our portfolio of products with expanded offerings planned, including a refreshed DIY lineup in early 2022.
Additionally, we're working closely with Google to develop our joint marketing plans. We've already begun some marketing and promotions which feature Google product, and we're working with Google closely to develop our joint advertising plans, which we expect to deploy in 2022. During our planned fourth quarter Investor Day presentation, we'll present our long-term strategy for the company. We're looking forward to providing a holistic update then on our partnership with Google, both in the context of our current transformation efforts and our long-term strategy. I'll now turn the call over to Jeff to take you through our second quarter financial results.
Thanks, Jim, thank you everyone for joining our call today. As Jim described, we delivered a solid quarter, continuing our progress on many objectives, especially including growth in additions to recurring monthly revenue, or RMR, and improved commercial performance. For the second quarter, gross RMR additions increased by 28% compared to 2020, reflecting our investment in customer acquisition, our continued focus on differentiated service and offerings, and pandemic-related weakness last year. On a year-to-date basis, we have grown our RMR additions by 26%, or 20% excluding this year's initial Ackerman account purchases and the smaller bulk account purchases in the first quarter of last year. Our resulting RMR base grew to $352 million, an increase of $14 million versus last year.
Over time, we expect RMR growth to lead to more monitoring and services revenue, which increased by 4% in the second quarter. We are fortunate that our portfolio includes a variety of customer segments and routes to market. Our dealer channel has been especially strong and contributed a larger percentage of new RMR additions than we planned in the second quarter and the first half of this year. While they come at somewhat higher incremental acquisition costs compared to direct additions, dealer-generated accounts deliver solid returns. Importantly, we have remained disciplined while growing, with early attrition on recent customer additions trending favorably. Our trailing 12-month revenue payback remained at 2.2 years through the second quarter, despite this mix shift towards dealer. Total second quarter revenue was just over $1.3 billion, with adjusted EBITDA at $542 million, both slightly exceeding our internal budget.
RMR growth, improved commercial performance, lower bad debt expense, and general cost controls all contributed positively to our results. Offsetting headwinds versus 2020 included the non-cash effect of our ownership model changes and higher service costs. As you will recall, we changed our segment structure effective in January of this year, I will share a couple of comments on our segment results. The highlight in our CSB segment continues to be the strong RMR additions. We again also grew our net subscriber count in the quarter, and customers are increasingly selecting more integrated smart home systems. Interactive customers now make up more than 55% of our total CSB subscriber base, which contributes to a modest increase in average revenue per unit. Our CSB monitoring and services revenue, at $965 million, increased by 3% versus last year.
Installation and other revenue declined as planned, reflecting the non-cash effect of ownership model changes. Our broad offerings and best-in-class service set the foundation for future CSB growth. In our commercial segment, we continued performance improvements after a pandemic-induced set of challenges in 2020. Second quarter revenue grew by 23% in aggregate, with installation and other up 32% and monitoring and services up 12%. Our commercial segment also delivered strong EBITDA margins. We are very encouraged by our first half progress in commercial, and our strong backlog gives us confidence entering the second half. We also are pleased with our cash generation, which remains a priority even as we invest in subscriber acquisition costs and our next-generation platform. Adjusted free cash flow was $227 million through the first half of this year, in line with our internal plans.
We also continue to improve our capital structure to support our growth objectives, including the completion of three transactions during the past month. We renewed and improved our receivable securitization agreement, we extended our revolver to 2026 and upsized the capacity to $575 million, and most notably, we refinanced our $1 billion 2022 note with a new 2029 note. As a result of these and other transactions over the past several quarters, we have addressed near-term maturities, strengthened liquidity, and reduced our borrowing costs. We remain very comfortable with our overall capital structure and liquidity position, which enable us to invest in our future. As we look to the rest of the year, we are maintaining the full-year outlook ranges we shared in February.
If first half trends continue, we may be at the lower end of our adjusted free cash flow range due to more spending on subscriber acquisition costs. However, our full-year SAC spending depends on second half RMR additions, which are affected by residual dynamics from COVID-19 and other factors that have altered normal seasonal trends and quarterly comparisons. We continue to expect full-year RMR additions growth in the mid-teens with a lower growth rate in the second half compared to the first half as we originally planned. As always, we remain focused on the efficient deployment of capital to generate strong returns over time. In summary, we're entering the back half of the year with solid momentum. Our overall revenue and growth initiatives are expanding our RMR base, and our commercial business is performing well. We also continue to advance the longer-term objectives that will shape our next chapter.
We remain excited by our future, and we are well-positioned to deliver positive results for our employees, dealer partners, customers, communities, and investors, both in 2021 and in the years to come. Thank you for joining our call today, and thank you for your support of our company. Operator, please open the call for questions.
At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. One moment, please, while we call for questions. Our first question is with Kevin McVeigh from Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.
Great. Thanks so much, and congratulations. Hey, Jeff, just to follow up on the guidance question. I noticed the slide wasn't in the deck. Are you reaffirming the revenue and EBITDA guidance as well for the full year? Any reason why it's not in the deck or in the press release, the guidance?
No, no page just because there's really no news beyond what I said on the call. We are running the business so well in line with our expectations so far. We expect to be within the same ranges that we shared at the beginning of the year. As I described on the call, the ultimate cash will depend a bit on the RMR as in the second half of the year. Then the seasonal trends are affected, of course, by COVID dynamics last year, some of which are continuing to affect the trends this year. Our full-year guidance remains in the same ranges as it was at the beginning of the year.
Great. Then just on the retention, I think the retention, you beat my estimate by about 30 basis points. Any thoughts on that? Is there any way to think about how the retention fits with smart home customers related to the core residential in terms of the delta on that?
Sure, Kevin. Yeah, we ended the quarter at 13.3 attrition. A little bit of color, we were favorable in loss to competition and non-pay. Relocation cancels like last quarter were a little worse year-over-year. We think some of that is the COVID effect of delaying relocations. We also experienced the expected headwind from the absence of the Defenders chargeback. On a T12 basis, that's about 35-40 bps. Some of that was offset by our save efforts. To your point, there's some really good lead indicators in terms of the shift in product mix that should be a tailwind to retention. For example, we know that customers with cameras and video services have better retention characteristics, and sales of Command and video are at their highest level ever in 2021. Not unimportantly, credit score correlates pretty heavily to attrition.
Customers acquired in the first half of 2021 had the highest mix of credit scores in the past five years. We felt pretty good about the quarter and, as you know, long term, we feel bullish on retention.
That's great. Thanks so much, I'm going back to the queue .
Our next question is from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking my question. I just had a question on the Google partnership. You've introduced some integrated products there and launched joint marketing. I was wondering if you can share any early results. What kind of traction have you seen from the joint product and joint marketing? Thanks.
Sure, Ashish. I'll give a little bit of color on Google. Anticipating this question, I really want to start by sharing some context with you. Much of our work this year is about building a foundation for future growth. We're developing our own software platform. We're improving our DIY offering. We're making investments in our commercial business and essentially putting the pieces in place to leverage the Google partnership over the long term. It's in that context of building a foundation that I'll share a couple of comments about Google and how things are coming along. As you'd expect, we continue to feel good about the relationship with Google. We've got several products that are already integrated into the ADT ecosystem, the Mini, the Hub, the Hub Max. Mesh Wi-Fi is in pilot. We'll have the Doorbell in our product portfolio still this year.
We anticipate DIY product in Q1 of next year. As with a lot of our partners, not just Google, we're navigating supply chain. Our dates are based on successfully navigating the supply chain, but so far it's going well. I've seen some of the early advertising work, and it's very good. We're already in market with some light co-branding with Google, and we're working closely with them on quality testing and basically ensuring that the infrastructure, the supply chain, and the customer experience is all in great shape.
That's great. Good to hear the solid progress that you're making on that front. Maybe just if we can ask a question on the commercial side, obviously really strong group, significantly beat our expectations, and you highlighted strong backlog as well. You also mentioned share gains there. I was just wondering if you could provide any color. Are there some big wins? Obviously, you won the dollar business last year. Any big wins there? Within the commercial, any products in particular that are gaining more traction? Any incremental color would be helpful. Thanks.
Sure. I wouldn't point to any single individual win. It's a lot of successful business across a pretty broad spectrum of customers. Our national account business is doing exceptionally well. We have just an outstanding team in that space. I'd say the success is largely due to market share gains, and it was across a significant customer base and across all of our products, fire intrusion, card access, and video. We had a solid Q2 with revenue. EBIT is recovering well. As I shared on the call, our backlogs on June 30th were at another record level. Ashish, this continues to be a business where we're confident we can compete and win. In addition to a strong backlog, we've got a strong sales pipeline, and we're pleased with our progress. Growth and margin improvement won't always be linear in this business.
We're playing for the long game and investing in a number of new verticals, healthcare, government, education. We think this business has a lot of runway, and we feel great about the quarter.
That's great. Thanks once again. Congrats on the good quarter.
Again, as a reminder, if you have any questions, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. Doing so will ensure that you join the question queue. Our next question is from Brian Ruttenbur with Imperial Capital. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. Thank you very much. A couple of quick questions. First of all, on attrition. It was up slightly from the previous period. That's not necessarily indicative of anything, but I wanted you to address that and then talk about where do you see attrition by year-end of 2021, and are we going to hold in that low 13%? Can we break into the 12%? Can you talk a little bit about that? I have a follow-up.
Sure. Thanks for the question. There's not a great deal to add beyond what I shared already. The favorability for us was largely around lost competition and non-pay. I'm hesitant to predict where we're going to be at the end of the year. We've got a headwind, as I mentioned, from the absence of the Defenders charge back. That's about 35- 40 bps . There's just a number of positive lead indicators. Our customer care metrics are improving. Our service backlog is currently at a six-month low. We had fewer service requests in July than any of the last nine months. Our customer save efforts are tracking nicely, Brian. I feel good about it over the long term. I'd love to get into the 12% and even lower than that over the long term, hesitant to predict how we'll end the year.
Okay. Thank you. About the commercial recovery, that's the next question. You guys are gaining a lot of market share. Can you maybe say what you're doing in terms of gaining that market share? Is any of this a new office, or is it retrofitting offices? Talk a little bit about that, because I'm seeing out there in the market, with Allegion and others, suppliers as well as providers that new office is dead. Retrofit is on the way up. I want to know where you're gaining your traction in the commercial space.
Yeah. It's across the business. There's for sure some retrofit work. There's some new construction. I think that accounts for about 10% or 12% of our revenues. It's a business that for us is hitting on a lot of cylinders, and it's tough to tie it to a particular sector. I shared this earlier. We've got a fantastic leadership team in commercial, great commercial technicians, and you win in this business by great service and building a reputation for great service. Brian, that's what the team's doing day in and day out, and we're being rewarded for it.
Great. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Your gross RMR additions were strong this quarter, up 28%, which actually accelerated from 1Q. I think that the prior indication was that 1Q would be the peak for gross RMR additions. Could you talk about, perhaps, was there any pull forward in gross RMR additions in the quarter? And if not, would you say you have an improved outlook from what you had previously for full-year gross RMR additions, given your strength so far in the first half of the year?
Hey, George. It's Ken. I agree. We had 28% year-over-year growth in the quarter for Q2. As Jim mentioned, a high quality of performance with the credit scores and the number of devices. It was a great installation quarter for us. I like to back out last Q2 and look at 2019 just to kind of normalize for COVID, especially Q2 last year. That's really when it popped. Versus 2019 Q2, it was actually up 13% over the same period. Pretty healthy RMR growth. We did see that across multiple channels. Dealer is probably the first one that comes to mind, but both DIY, small business, as Jim mentioned, and also residential direct showed that year-over-year growth. Q1 was boosted by Ackerman. Q2 was heavy.
Organic growth the work outs we have, I guess, a pretty easy compare Q2. Jeff mentioned in his comments that we don't anticipate the same level of growth in the second half of the year, but we like where we're at from a growth perspective, especially with our RMR base ending up 4% higher for the quarter.
Okay, George, just follow up to Kevin's question. Again, no change to our perspective on the full-year, where we've shared previously, we expect our full-year growth rate to be in the mid-teens, and that goes with the financial ranges that we shared. As we grow more, we'll invest a bit more SAC and vice versa if the growth goes in another direction that reduces SAC and generates more cash flow that's consistent with our full-year guidance, unchanged from what we shared back in February.
Got it. That's helpful. We're getting closer to the Google joint product launch in the second half of the year. Could you perhaps elaborate on what the remaining milestones are in order to make that a successful launch? At this point, do you have enough visibility to contemplate including some benefit or impact from the launch into your full year guide?
George, it's Jim. We won't include or I'd say very minimally include any incremental revenue as a result of Google. We have a handful of products in play. The significant advertising for Google and ADT together will be next year. In addition to the products that we have now, the only new product, an important product and a product that we're anxious to have in the portfolio, but the only new product will be the Doorbell. So there's light touch promotional work today. There's some light touch co-marketing today, but nothing incremental this year as a result built into our plan as a result of Google.
Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Kenneth Williamson with JP Morgan. I'm sorry, we actually have reached the end of our question and answer session. I'll now turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you, operator. In closing, I'd like to extend my appreciation to our ADT employees and our dealers. We had a terrific first half of the year. I'm proud of their collective effort. Thanks as well for everyone joining our call this evening. We're optimistic about the second half of the year and ADT's future and looking forward to the growth ahead. Have a good night, everybody.
This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your line at this time. Thank you for your participation.