A Year of Progress: A Look Back at 2024 with MCS CEO Craig Torrance
2024 was a year of progress for MCS—one that included the acquisition of a new company, the addition of a new business line and doubling the revenue of our existing business. MCS CEO Craig Torrance shares his insights on the year’s biggest wins and how the team successfully overcame challenges to continue moving forward.
3 key measures of success
Coming off a monumental 2023 that saw MCS build two new businesses (property services for commercial properties and single-family rentals) and acquire Chain Store Maintenance, expectations for 2024 were high. According to Torrance, the company topped 2023’s performance across all of its business lines.
“Generally, it was a year of progress company-wide. The business more than doubled in terms of both revenue and profitability, financially performing far above where we were last year across all the businesses,” he says. Three key metrics illustrate MCS’s overall progress:
- Top-line revenue growth: While underlying volumes were somewhat flat across the Mortgage Services business due to industry shifts, the company’s total revenue grew more than 100% in its Commercial and Residential Services business lines.
- Gross margins: MCS also expanded its gross profit margins through concerted efforts to improve efficiency, from automating systems where possible to reviewing and retooling existing processes to increase their effectiveness.
- Cost containment: In an environment of rapid growth, keeping costs in check can be challenging, so it’s essential to balance the need for more resources (and related spending) while delivering value for customers and shareholders.
“We had a great year financially, and while we’re still aiming for more growth and a larger market share, we made tremendous progress overall and had remarkable success in getting our Government Services new business off the ground, acquiring a company and growing our existing business lines,” Torrance says.
Sustained growth
MCS continued its growth in 2024 with an acquisition and the addition of a new business line. We acquired Five Brothers Asset Management Solutions, a top-five company in the mortgage space, facilitating our expansion into the reverse mortgage services market. This new arm, which included the addition of new team members and new technology, has already been successfully integrated into MCS.
Our newest line of business is Government Services, which offers interior and exterior facility maintenance services, as well as post-disaster inspections, to U.S. federal agencies backed by our nearly 40 years of experience. MCS has already been awarded its first contract, and continues to bid on other opportunities.
“In the last eight months or so, we’ve been building that team and developing technology and processes to serve the government market,” Torrance says. “Now we’re bidding on additional contracts, and we’re already nearing the finish line on several of them.”
Innovation through technology
Over the last two years, MCS completed a tech stack migration that took our entire infrastructure from an internally managed data center to a hybrid cloud model. This shift created more opportunities for innovation in areas from project management and expense management to video conferencing—all while reducing costs and improving stability and cybersecurity. In 2024, this work allowed MCS to complete our SOC 2 Type 2 certification, a third-party audit that assesses an organization’s security controls and practices.
“This is a major achievement for us, but it’s not our endgame,” Torrance says. “We have more plans for improving cybersecurity, additional automation capabilities, and leveraging AI to enhance quality control and streamline processes. Moving to the cloud protects us while creating more opportunities for innovation.”
Operational excellence
Technology wasn’t the only area of innovation for MCS in 2024. As always, our employees stepped up and delivered. An internal Operational Excellence team was formed to focus on the various projects being undertaken across the business—a list totaling around 70—with the aim of assessing their value in relation to our business objectives to make sure everyone is working toward the same goals. This has allowed the company to better prioritize business needs while improving collaboration.
Responding to shifting customer needs
The commercial space has seen a shift from an asset-light vendor engine toward a self-performing model across different regions, where businesses are going to multiple companies that self-perform to achieve the highest quality and lowest cost for services. MCS has been able to meet these shifting needs and grow our business by emphasizing our self-perform capabilities and doubling down on our service centers in various markets.
In the mortgage space, ESG is emerging as a competitive requirement, and MCS has been making strides, particularly with our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives.
“DEIB is important for a successful business,” Torrance says. “A diverse, engaged workforce that’s inclusive makes the company better. You can feel the difference—there are more ideas being shared, more people willing to raise their hands and help.”
Increased engagement from these initiatives is already apparent. For example, Torrance conducts “Coffee with Craig” sessions with front-line employees each week where he asks what he and the company can do to make their job better and make MCS better as a company. “I hear everything, concerns big and small, and the fact that they are willing to share is how we get better,” he says.
A year of progress
In 2024, MCS achieved its financial and strategic goals. While progress in business never moves in a straight line due to factors within and beyond a company’s control, Torrance says it’s the overall success an organization can achieve through managing them that matters.
"We focus on ‘What can we control? Let's go do that.’ And this team has been exceptional at reacting, being resilient and making it all happen. I think 2024 has been a ramp for us to accelerate through and continue to deliver great performance for the business, with all the new talent, new technology and enhanced customer experience that we’ve made progress on. I look forward to us continuing this ramp of progress in 2025 and beyond.”
Move Ahead With MCS
Learn more about MCS and its property services capabilities by visiting MCS360.com or find us at an upcoming industry conference.
