Vishal Garg
Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to Better 2.0. It is so great to be back with you all. Getting here was a hard-fought battle, and we won the proxy contest because our shareholders believed in us. I would not be on this call today without you, to every shareholder who took the time to sign and send back a green consent card to our employees who kept serving our customers through all of this and to our business partners who stuck by us. Thank you for continuing to believe in Better. You gave us the opportunity to get this company back on track, and now, it's on us to deliver. Better 2.0 is a return to the culture that grew this company exponentially in our early years, from $500 million in loan volume in 2017 to $58 billion in loan volume funded in 2021, from about $3 million a quarter in revenue to $430 million a quarter in revenue in 2021 and to a company that at its peak was generating $50 million a month in EBITDA. What drove that? Speed, ambition, accountability and a relentless belief that AI and machine learning could help make mortgage and home finance better for all Americans by making it cheaper, faster and easier. Somewhere along the way, we started adding a ton of things we didn't need. And now that I'm back with perspective, having spent nearly 2.5 months on the outside, I can clearly see what we need to do to bring that culture of growth and drive towards profitability back to Better. This is a company that as Better 2.0 is centered on creating value for our shareholders, our customers, our partners and our employees. I want to briefly recap what's happened over the past few months to provide the backdrop to our results. On August 3, I was removed as CEO. I spent the next week reflecting on what I do well, what this company does well and what we both need to get better at. I sought advice from shareholders, partners and people I trust, and then, we fought back. Our advisers told us that only about 1.7% of proxy contests seeking to replace a public company Board succeed, and it could take a year to two. Shareholders representing 52% of the voting power supported us, and we won the proxy contest in 2 months, the fastest public company proxy return to date. During that time, decisions by the prior Board and Interim CEO, Daniel Lewis, hurt the business. $12.8 million of shareholder cash was spent on a proxy contest and a poison pill that was put in place. More specifically, during this time, partnership launches that we had lined up stalled, employee morale suffered and our conversion, most importantly, slowed. We can see it in the operating data. During my absence under Daniel Lewis and the prior Board, just within the months that I was out, loan officer talk time fell by 29%. E-mails and responses sent by salespeople to customers fell by 20%, and the production hours spent by our staff as logged in by our Tinman system fell over 25%. The fact is the amount of effort, and therefore, productivity and that reflected in our results suffered. Our September and August results are, therefore, challenged, and this has carried into Q4. When I came back, we assessed the situation and concluded that in the current rate environment, where the 10-year rose 15% in Q3, we had to focus on changing the culture, increasing effort and productivity and lowering our cost base. To that effect, since my return, we have delayered our management and corporate structure by letting go of managers across the company for over $3.5 million of annualized savings. Those management responsibilities are now performed by AI agents and dashboards and delivered directly to the most senior people in each part of our organization. These cuts are not temporary. They are roles forever eliminated by AI and will not return as we scale volume. Furthermore, due to Tinman's capabilities, we can identify the employees who remained continuously productive and adapted to using AI. In this market, they found ways to do more with less, help customers and earn more money. By way of example, since we've implemented AI lead routing, we have seen weekend lock volume 2x from October 24 to the 31st. In addition to these operational improvements, we began taking strategic actions, rebuilding the Board by appointing Bing Gordon, Founder of Electronic Arts; Steve Sarracino, Founder of Activant Capital; and Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X, to the Board. We removed the poison pill and dismissed the litigation. We finalized terms on the Birmingham Bank sale with the buyer placing GBP 10 million in escrow, which has now been converted into Tier 2 capital into the bank. And we kicked off the share buyback program, where we have repurchased 6.9% of Class A shares so far. We also committed to a new level of transparency. Every Tuesday, we publish a Better 2.0 scorecard showing what is complete, what remains outstanding and where time lines have accelerated or have slowed down. As we have said before, we will keep publishing it until we reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven, which is our North Star. Through these scorecards, we have already announced completed actions expected to deliver $30.4 million in annualized savings towards our target of approximately $64.2 million. On a quarterly basis, these completed actions represent $7.6 million in savings. In Q4, we expect to achieve an additional $7.4 million to $9.4 million in quarterly savings, and we expect adjusted EBITDA basis operating expenses of $45 million to $47 million. Our goals for Better 2.0 are simple. First, reach breakeven as soon as possible. This is our top financial priority, and we are pushing on every lever we control, converting more customers, taking costs out and using AI to make our people more productive. Second, expand distribution, adding new partners with large established customer bases allows us to scale volume and revenue without upfront customer acquisition spending. Third, expand AI across sales, operations and corporate functions. We are moving from a human powered by AI company to an AI-first company where AI does the work first and the people focus on what AI cannot do. Fourth, establish clear ownership and accountability. Every initiative in Better 2.0 has a target and a date, and you will see them in our weekly scorecard. And fifth, improve execution speed and consistency. We will hire and reward for ambition, agency and achievement, and we will hold ourselves to industry standards or greater on every step of the funnel. Now turning to third quarter results. Loan volume was $1.4 billion, up 15% year-over-year and within our guidance range, while industry volume remained flat over the same period. In our August 3 Board meeting, we expected over $53 million of Q3 revenue and believe that if it weren't for the proxy fight, we would have hit our target. Total net revenues were $45.1 million, up 9% year-over-year and fell below our guidance range. Both interest rate headwinds, oil prices and the general uncertainty around the Iran war weighed on loan volume. And we believe the prior Board's proxy contest lowered conversion and pushed out partner launches. Our adjusted EBITDA loss was $29.7 million for Q3. Excluding proxy-related legal, PR and other expenses of $12.8 million, our adjusted EBITDA loss would have been approximately $16.9 million, within our guidance range. However, in our August 3 Board meeting, we expected an adjusted EBITDA loss of $12 million and believe that if it weren't for the proxy fight, we would have hit our target and beyond. Our Tinman AI platform was the principal driver of growth. Platform loan volume grew 64% year-over-year to $792 million and 57% of total loan volume, up from 40% a year ago as our channel mix continues to shift towards the platform. Now that we have a renewed focus and drive with Better 2.0, there is exciting growth ahead of us. Expanding our distribution channels is our top growth priority. Just last week, we launched Better's AI-powered HELOC with a large existing partner. HELOC is the right product for the current rate environment, and this partner serves a large customer base with significant home equity. We are building on the experience capabilities developed through our existing relationship with this partner to accelerate the rollout and scale of this partnership. In wholesale, we are full speed ahead with 39 mortgage brokerages signed, representing total addressable home equity volume of $400 million per year. We believe we have a product that achieves brokers' goals and a real right to win most, if not all, of this volume. Brokers want competitive rates, fast answers and confidence that their borrowers will have a smooth experience all the way through closing. That is what we are building with TinmanGo. We are starting with HELOCs with plans to expand into non-QM and conventional mortgages, building out a full product suite for brokers in a one-stop shop, where both HELOCs and mortgages are available in one unified platform powered by AI in the broker's pocket, rendering instant decisions for rates and eligibility in a way that no other platform in the industry does today. In addition, we are rebuilding momentum across our partnership pipeline. Four of the large partner opportunities that stalled under the prior Board remain in sight, and we are moving discussions forward with each of them. These opportunities are central to how we intend to scale, bringing Tinman to partners with established customer bases and growing our reach without a corresponding increase in customer acquisition spend to an embedded finance product that lets each of our partners expand into mortgage and HELOC and serve more of their customers with more products. In direct-to-consumer, we are optimizing for profitability rather than volume. That means lower customer acquisition spend with $13.2 million in annualized CAC reductions already in place, better lead to lock and lock-to-fund conversion and AI-enabled lead routing. Together, these initiatives give us more volume at a lower cost. Partner and wholesale growth adds revenue without adding proportional acquisition costs, and AI-driven conversion lets us grow revenue at our lower fixed cost base. That is how we scale. That is how we get to profitability. Turning to recent activity. Volume before the proxy contest started in July was $496 million. That volume once the proxy contest started in August 3 was $464 million for the month of August, $435 million for the month of September and $345 million for the month of October, where the real damage from the loss of productivity and work effort in August and September was felt in funded loan volume in October. We believe that the changes in the sales and operations team that we have implemented in the last week of October and this first week of November will dramatically turn this around. And while we face seasonally light loan volumes for the months of November, December and January, we will be able to still showcase productivity and growth because of the changes that we have made. All of these initiatives will take time to ramp, but we believe they represent important building blocks for the business as we enter 2027 and seek a return to profitability and growth. We want to be transparent about both the headwinds we are facing and the progress we are making. We believe the operational changes underway, combined with our expanding partner and broker channels. Thirty-nine mortgage brokers signed since we've returned, multiple partners implemented and launched and signed and many more to go position us to improve performance and drive profitability and growth. We will continue to keep you all updated weekly with our scorecard reporting until we hit adjusted EBITDA breakeven, so you can track our progress against our Better 2.0 goals. We have a lot of work ahead, but we have a clear set of priorities: get to profitability, restore growth, bring costs down and get Better 2.0 to sustainable growth and profitability. Better 2.0 is about executing with urgency and holding ourselves accountable for the results. You'll continue to hear directly from us about the progress we are making and where we need to do better. Thank you all for your continued support. With that, I'll turn the call over to Loveen.