Carrie Wheeler
Analyst · JMP Securities. Your line is now open
Good afternoon. Also on the call with me today is Christy Schwartz, our Interim Chief Financial Officer; and Dod Fraser, President of Capital Markets and our Enterprise Business. I am looking forward to speaking with you today, not only because it’s my first earnings call as CEO, but because of our clarity as to the path ahead, which I believe will make Opendoor stronger than before. While navigating a major housing cycle has not been easy, we have never lost sight of our vision. We are building a managed marketplace for residential real estate that will enable consumers to buy, sell and move at the tap of a button. Challenging times like these have the benefit of increasing urgency, demanding focus and putting teamwork front and center that’s energizing and part of why I decided to take the CEO role. It’s clear to me what our value proposition is for customers and where we need to focus at this moment. I also believe deeply in what we are building towards. Our value proposition is incredibly strong, about 99% of home sellers still go through the traditional real estate process, a process that remains offline and certain and totally broken. Customers come to us because they create the certainty and convenience of our cash offer that they cannot get anywhere else. Even in this moment of high spreads, we are able to convert over 10% of resellers and earn an NPS of nearly 80. We stand alone in what we are able to offer consumers today. Given our current coverage of almost 30% of all real estate transactions in the U.S. today between our buy box and the markets we are in, we have a significant runway for future growth. As for right now, we are highly focused on stabilizing our core business and ultimately returning to positive free cash flow and we are making solid progress. As of year-end, we sold or were in contract to sell two-thirds of the loss making homes acquired before the housing market reset, also known as our Q2 cohort and we expect we will be behind it shortly. The homes we have acquired since the reset are outperforming our expectations and are on track to deliver contribution margins in line with our 4% to 6% annual margin target once they are fully sold. However, we have lowered our acquisition volumes via higher spreads in our offers, coupled with lower marketing spend. We expect to keep relatively high spreads in the near term given continued uncertainty into how the housing market will perform. That said, we have reduced our spreads from last year’s record level, based on early indicators of stabilization in the housing market and we will continue to do so as we see more consistent positive macro sign. Ultimately, we would expect lower spreads to translate into higher acquisition volumes. In the meantime, we are going to manage our cost structure in light of how expected volumes are pacing this year and next, with the goal of returning the business to adjusted net income profitability in 2024, assuming some normalization in the housing market. In addition to stabilizing our first-party business, we are aligning on three key areas in 2023 to further our progress towards building the managed marketplace for residential real estate. First is to enable more sellers to choose Opendoor. No matter the macro backdrop, sellers value the certainty and simplicity that an Opendoor offer provides. This year, we are focused on diversifying our demand funnel so that more home sellers start the journey with Opendoor. The recent launch of our Zillow partnership is one key example set to substantially increase our reach in a scalable and efficient way. We are also expanding our list of certainty product, which gives sellers the option of listening on the MLS, while retaining the certainty of an Opendoor offer that they can take at any time. Second is to realize greater operational efficiencies throughout the business by shifting our focus from building for scale and velocity, to strengthening our foundational pricing, operations and customer platforms. This includes continued improvement in pricing capabilities to increase offer competitiveness and inventory turns. We will also invest in refactoring our tech platform and infrastructure to enhance productivity and reduce fixed expenses. We are going after at least 100 basis points of margin improvement from all these initiatives by year-end, the full impact of which we expect to realize in 2024. I will be disappointed if we don’t do better than that. And finally, we are building exclusives, our third-party product offering that will be critical to creating a managed marketplace. This will position Opendoor to have a mix of on- and off-balance sheet transaction volumes to enable capital efficient market share gain for years to come. We plan to scale this product in three phases; first, we are focused on perfecting the consumer experience; second, we will build liquidity and network effects in an individual market; and third, we will refine our playbook and scale to all markets. Given our highly focused investment approach this year, we expect to be in Phase 1 and 2 for 2023, meaning we will go deep in selected markets to build liquidity and selection that’s required for a great user experience. While our ambitions remain significant long-term, we are realigning our near-term goal to 30% of transactions in our marketplace by the end of the year in those markets where we have launched exclusive. As we look ahead, we are energized about our future. We have set clear goals that will stabilize the business in the short-term, while strengthening our foundation for the long-term and we believe we have the team, the balance sheet and plans in place to ensure we realize these goals. With every customer we serve, we are more convinced that the current process of buying and selling a home is broken and that Opendoor is in a position like no other to continue to transform the status quo and be the category winner that we have always envisioned. With that, I will pass the call over to Christy to discuss our financial highlights.