Earnings Labs

Rocket Companies, Inc. (RKT)

Q2 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 4, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Joseph and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Rocket Companies' Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Sharon Ng, Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Sharon Ng

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Rocket Companies' earnings call covering the second quarter of 2022. With us this afternoon are Rocket Companies' CEO, Jay Farner; our CFO, Julie Booth; and our President and COO, Bob Walters. Before I turn things over to Jay, let me quickly go over our disclaimers. On today's call, we will provide you with the information regarding our second quarter 2022 performance as well as our financial outlook. This conference call includes forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and the assumptions we mentioned today. We encourage you to consider the risk factors contained in our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or further events, except as required by law. This call is being broadcast online and is accessible on our IR website. A recording of the call will be available later today. Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can also be found in our earnings release issued earlier today as well as in our filings with the SEC. And with that, I'll turn things over to Jay Farner to get us started. Jay?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Thank you, Sharon. Good afternoon and welcome to the Rocket Companies' earnings call for the second quarter of 2022. On today's call, I'll share how Rocket is leading during this time of rapid change in the mortgage market and how we're investing in Rocket's future. I'll discuss the transformation of our Rocket services and engagement platform and strengthening of our offerings in both purchase and cash out refinance mortgage products. The mortgage industry has shifted rapidly and is facing challenging times. Volatility and interest rates and declining consumer sentiment have contributed to overall uncertainty about the economy. In this time of flux, we have taken proactive steps to optimize our core mortgage operations by improving lead capture and allocation, launching new products, signing new partnerships and aligning our resources internally. Our senior most leaders, season industry veterans, who have navigated numerous cycles in the 26 years here at Rocket are as close to the business as they've ever been. We are adapting our mortgage operations to the current market environment and we remain focused on managing the business with discipline. Julie will walk through our cost management efforts in more detail a bit later. This is an energizing time for us. Our ability to constantly innovate to serve our clients better through our platform, particularly during these challenging times, will further differentiate us from our competition and will allow us to capture market share over the long-term. Once again, we are revolutionizing the Rocket platform, setting the foundation for our next stage of growth through the use of centralized data across all Rocket businesses, which creates additional touch points to drive revenue. We've always taken a long-term view of our businesses. Through every cycle in our 37 year history, we've adapted, invested and emerged stronger. Our track record has proven…

Julie Booth

Analyst

Thank you, Jay, and good afternoon everyone. As we navigate through these challenging and rapidly changing market conditions, Rocket remains focused on serving our clients, executing on our vision and investing in the key areas of our business. I will be sharing some detail on our cost management program, as well as the actions we're taking to drive short-term results while continuing to invest in our long-term growth. Year-to-date we have seen a seismic shift to a smaller mortgage market. The average weekly 30 year fixed rate mortgage jumped from 3.2% at the beginning of the year to nearly 6% at the end of June, the steepest and fastest rise in over 50 years. The rise in rates had a significant impact on rate and term refinance demand. More recently purchase demand has also been affected as consumer sentiment has declined at a rapid pace, the levels not seen in more than a decade and looming apprehension over the economy has driven fears of a potential recession. Consequently consumer behavior has changed significantly and in particular potential home buyers are staying on the sidelines. In Q2, Rocket Companies generated $1.1 billion of adjusted revenue. We delivered GAAP net income of $60 million resulting in GAAP EPS of $0.02 per diluted share. On an adjusted basis, we reported a loss of $0.03 per adjusted share. In the second quarter, gain on sale margin continued to show strength coming in at 292 basis points, which was above the high end of our guided range and largely consistent with recent quarters. As a reminder, Q1 gain on sale margin was 286 basis points after excluding the 15 basis point lift from the one-time benefits associated with the rapid move in bond markets in Q1. We generated closed loan volume of $34.5 billion and…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ryan Nash. [Goldman Sachs] Your line is open.

Ryan Nash

Analyst

Hey, good afternoon, everyone.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Nash

Analyst

Jay, maybe to kick it off, I know in the remark – in your opening remarks, you mentioned that you're going to continue to execute on a prudent cost management approach. I think you even said another $50 million to $150 million of cost reduction next quarter. Can you maybe just talk a little bit more about what's driving some of the cost declines? And if we're going to be in a mortgage market, sub 2 trillion, I guess how much more cost leverage is there beyond? What you've identified and where do you think you can maybe take the run rate too in this kind of environment?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes, I'll let Julie make some comments on how we think about the cost moving past Q3. But I think just to frame up how we think about this, we've got our core mortgage business, right? And so, although I look across all of RKT, I think about the operations, underwriting core mortgage technology, and how that is functioning on different mortgage volumes. And we strive to have that as a profitable part of our business. We then have our platform and we talked a lot about that in my prepared remarks, because if you think about a mortgage market, whether it's 1.7 trillion, 1.8 trillion, 2 trillion, and no one's sure, but you've got to find a way to bring down the cost to acquire. And what you're watching right now in the industry is there's still too much capacity and people are fighting very hard for every particular loan that may be out there. And so strategically win in the long run. We've got to make sure that our engagement rates with our clients are up. Our lead flow is still very, very strong, but not every client is ready to transact right now. In particular, we reference this, the purchase market has slowed a bit because people are concerned about the increase in their monthly payment. So how do we stay engaged with that client? How do we increase conversion of those leads over time, driving down our cost to acquire and increasing the lifetime value of the client. We've done a lot of work on the services side of our platform. So offering homes, offering auto, offering solar, which is growing rapidly. But the acquisition of Truebill, now Rocket Money, that's our engagement side of the platform with the budgeting, with the managing of assets in…

Julie Booth

Analyst

Sure. I'll make a few comments on expenses here just to add to that. So looking at the second quarter here, we've reduced expenses by $300 million over the first quarter and exceeded our target of $200 million by $100 million. So we've really taken a lot of moves to reduce our cost into the quarter here. And as we look ahead into the third quarter, we have opportunity of about another $100 million. So if you add all that up $400 million, that's an annual run rate of $1.6 billion of savings. So significant cost reduction has already taken place. As we look ahead, there's more opportunity. We do believe, as Jay mentioned on the vendor cost side of things. Some of these things take a little bit longer to work into as our contracts mature, as we look at how these are going to be coming for renegotiation. We will still see some of these cost savings happening going forward as well. So there's opportunity there. The actual attrition we believe there will be some of that. We will continue to fall throughout the year [indiscernible].

Ryan Nash

Analyst

Got it. That was very helpful color and context regarding the entire platform and how do you think about it. So maybe if I could just squeeze in one follow up, Julie or Jay, so rates have obviously come in a bit and I'm just wondering, do you think this at all helps the trajectory of volumes, particularly on the refinance side? And do you think 3Q represents the trough for volumes just based on the market conditions and if so or not, what do you see as the drivers of originations from here if market sentiment doesn't improve as Jay you highlighted, you expect 2023 to be challenging to, what do you see as the drivers of originations as we look forward given the uncertainty in the economic backdrop?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes. I think that in a moment where you’ve got to transform your business, and how you’re thinking about it. The current environment that we’re in is causing like I said, a lot of kind of scrambling, and scraping and so forth, more capacity has to come out. We’re very fortunate in our ability to continue to invest. And I touched on this, it’s not investing in, although we have a little excess capacity that excess capacity for us is staying around because as we implement all these things, we’re working on with our engagement platform for the rest of this year. And that drives market share game we’ll need that capacity as we move into 2023, as we grow our market share again. So it would make a lot of sense for us to go through a significant capacity reduction only to turn around and have to hire again, four or five months later. But I don’t see a lot of people in the mortgage space making the millions and millions and millions of dollars of monthly investment that we’re making in an engagement platform like that. I don’t see folks signing up, partners like Santander, like we are. And so I think we’re going to see the rest of the industry contract as we continue to move forward. And without something that allows you to bring a client onto your platform and continue to work with them, maybe it’s a second mortgage product that we just released. Another thing that, again, without our tech platform, there’s no way we could go on from not having that to doing all the programming, creating the docs and launching it less than 60 days. Our capital markets team is working on additional products that we’ll launch as we get into the second half of this year to help our client base. So, we’re going to leverage all of that tech, but those type of things that will allow us for a market share, if you don’t have those things, I think it’s going to be a challenge for you to grow market share as we finish up this year, and roll into 2023.

Ryan Nash

Analyst

Thanks a lot for the colors.

Jay Farner

Analyst

All right, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Barker [Piper Sandler]. Your line is open.

Kevin Barker

Analyst

Great. Thanks for all the color on the operating efficiencies. Just a follow up question, some of that what Ryan’s already asked. You had $1.3 billion of expenses, was there any additional $61 million in there from the changes in the movement of employees, embedded in that $1.3 billion? And then where could we expect a lot of the expenses to come out within going into that third quarter, is a lot of it G&A and marketing expense? Or is it other items that can really drive is some of the efficiencies that you laid out?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes, we’ve got continued thoughts around marketing, although as you probably know from a performance marketing perspective. We’re very thoughtful about making sure that we don’t cut anything that is profitable for us there. And again, as we start getting more and more signal around how that marketing will work, not only in the short run, but the long run it allows for us to continue to spend marketing there. We’ll continue to see attrition, as Julie talked about, we’re being really thoughtful about that. If there’s attrition in places that are critical for us, from a technology perspective to keep building out the platform, then we can – we will backfill, but in another places we won’t. And so to continuously those salaries drop there’s additional work with the vendors and contracts that we’ve got as Julie referenced before. Even once you go through and identify areas where you need to make adjustments, either renegotiating and or waiting for contracts to season can take a bit of time. It’s not something you can work through in a matter of a month or a quarter. So all that work continues forward and will continue to move forward. And we’re pretty diligent about it. We’ve got a great team here in our procurement group and they’re working every single day to be smart, but I just want to reiterate smart, but also making sure that we have all the proper resources to do what we’ve always done in years past, which is to grow market share. And so, as we think about the expenses, and we think about the revenue, we’ll continue to work on the expenses, but our main focus is driving up that revenue by bringing down the increase in the conversion rates and bringing down the cost to acquire our clients. And that’s what I referenced in my remarks. Our senior leader team, we’re dedicating many, many hours a week reviewing line by line where all of our resources are at the work that is being done. I’ve not seen, I’m not going to say that this is more intense than ever before, but we are an equal intensity than we’ve ever been in the 27 years. I’ve been at the organization in terms of being all over these projects. And I’m watching a team of people that are highly energized because they see the work that we’re doing that no one else is doing that will really differentiate this company moving forward to be far broader than just a mortgage lender. So Julie, if you have any, anything I’ve missed there?

Julie Booth

Analyst

The only thing I’ll add to that, have you asked a question about the $61 million in career transition expenses, you’re correct that $1.3 billion does include $61 million of expenses in connection with that career transition program. We have couple of non-recurring items this quarter, that was a $24 million item as well related to just the tax adjustments so we made. So expenses would’ve been $1.276 billion in the second quarter, had not been for those couple of adjustments.

Kevin Barker

Analyst

Okay, great. And then your leverage is very low. You have a lot of cash. You mentioned that over $8 billion access to liquidity today on a pro form of basis, is there anything you could do to potentially accelerate your revenue diversification efforts, besides, which you’ve already built within Rocket Homes, or Rocket Auto perhaps maybe look at M&A opportunities to potentially diversify or offset some of the revenue headwinds you see on the mortgage side?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes, I think that’s a great question. And we’ve got our team out constantly looking at those opportunities. If you think about the waterfall approach, you’ve got the bottom services layer that actually generates the true revenue Mortgage, Homes, Auto, Solar is growing rapidly. I know, I kind of touched on it just briefly, but all the tech work that we did in Rocket Loans to really build an AI-driven loan agnostic technology platform. So, whether it’s a solar loan today and a auto refinance loan for an example, tomorrow, that tech allows us to do that very quickly. So that’s the revenue component of that. You’ve got the top of the funnel, whether it’s our Quicken Loans site, our Core Digital, LowerMyBills site, our Rocket Mortgage site, other assets we’re building, then you’ve got the middle layer, the engagement layer. So as we drive traffic in, you’ve got to find a way to make sure that you can engage that high end base. And so when we think about M&A, you think about other services you can add to drive revenue, and you think about other ways to drive top of the funnel. It’s a critical that we – that’s why we said 2,000 people accelerating the growth of the engagement layer, because that’s the kind of secret sauce that unlocks our ability to bring the clients in, keep the clients in. And that’s why the growth of Truebill doubling in a year is so exciting. Because it’s taken us so many years to get to a place where we’ve gotten north of two million people now, I think almost 2.6 million in our servicing book. But to watch and be able to add millions of people a year where they’re linking their bank accounts, where we have access to their credit data, their asset data that informs all those up funnel to how we’re buying leads or engaging with classic goes down funnel into how we generate revenue. That component is critical. So that’s why we really are trying to point out. The work we did the last two quarters. And the work we do the next two quarters. It gets us to kind of Phase 1 completion of that engagement layer, which unlocks all the other M&A activity that we’re doing right now.

Kevin Barker

Analyst

Okay. So in regards to M&A you still see it as an opportunity we’re still looking at things right now, even in the market [ph]. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Jay.

Jay Farner

Analyst

This is correct. Yes.

Kevin Barker

Analyst

Thank you, Jay.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Doug Harter [Credit Suisse]. Your line is open.

Doug Harter

Analyst

Thanks. Can you just talk about the impact on rates that you’re seeing on both purchase, and cash out refinance kind of as you went through the second quarter into the third?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes. Certainly I think we’re all seeing the fact that’s taken many consumers out of the market right now. That was why growing the second mortgage home equity loan was so critical for us, because it allows us to monetize lease flow today. But more importantly, it allows to put that client into our servicing portfolio and into Rocket Money and be there to service them tomorrow. So, we’ve really got a waterfall approach here. The first to cash out refinance on the primary mortgage. The second is the – second HELOC loan, we’ve now just rolled a few days ago, maybe last week, if I remember correctly. And then we’ve got our Rocket Loans loan for those that don’t fit. I know we referenced the fact that our beta credit card from Truebill was in market. So, we’re really stacking a full suite of products that allow a client who’s looking for cash out. And I think we’re all watching the word comes out every week that consumer debt continues to grow. And as inflation occurs that the variable rates keep rising. So there’s more and more demand. We’ve just got to have a full product selection for those clients. And again, I think we uniquely position to health clients across the board where others that we compete with aren’t. Now purchase is another interesting thing, because if slight increase in interest rate is fine, certainly for all purchasers, but first time home buyers as well, the increase we’ve seen probably pooled off purchases more than we had expected going from Q2 and into Q3, which is reflected in some of our guidance. Our team is working on ways to solve that for consumers to help them have an affordable payment and still purchase a home and we’ll talk more about that as we get into further – future kind of earnings calls or press releases when we can discuss those things. So it is having an impact. That’s why it’s so critical that all these other investments that we’re making we accelerate. So, we can find those avenues to grow even as the mortgage market itself may shrink for a while.

Doug Harter

Analyst

I guess, just to follow up Jay, on kind of what the economics look like on home equity loans, if you looking to sell those to someone else would you put those on your balance sheet what type of gain on sale margins might you be able to generate on those?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes. We’re in a unique position to be thoughtful about that. And as you know, we use some of our cash do sell funding for a while, especially when there’s a nice opportunity for us to gain interest income on that. In most cases, at some point in time, we do wind up securitizing or selling mortgages, whether they’re first or seconds. And so we’ll kind of continue to keep that same philosophy there. So that’s kind of how we think about. From an economics perspective, I think it’s really important to remember, although the revenue, because these loan sizes are smaller, although the revenue is lower, the cost of price underwriting close we’ve already got capacity, number one. And number two, there’s no cost to acquire. Those types are already here, we’re already bringing them in up for a first mortgage. And so if the second makes more sense, we’re not incurring any additional marketing costs. So at the end of the day, the profitability and the loan still looks good, even if the loan size is closer to a $100,000 versus $200,000 and $250,000. So that’s how we think about that particular product. And then again, as I referenced, there’s other products that follow after that, again, all of those represent revenue opportunity plan engagement with no cost to acquire.

Doug Harter

Analyst

Thanks, Jay.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of James Faucette [Morgan Stanley]. Your line is open.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Hi, James.

Blake Netter

Analyst

Hi, this is actually Blake Netter on the line for James. Thanks for taking my questions.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Sure.

Blake Netter

Analyst

So first off in the current environment your strong balance sheet gives you the flexibility to play offense and defense. So looking ahead, how are you planning on leveraging this optionality to your advantage?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Well, I think we’ve touched a bit on it already, but we’re going to continue to be prudent around our expense management. I think Julie and team did an incredible job of kind of exceeding our expectations in Q2. And as I referenced already, the group is all over the next quarters as well to ensure that we’re being thoughtful there. But the other caller had had asked, the first step is the folks that we’ve got on the building the engagement platform and all the services I talked about, if we were to go back in time five or 10 years, and we didn’t have all of these opportunities, you wouldn’t have those 2,000 plus people working on it. Right. And so that’s why I referenced. We kind of think about, or I think about the business in three tranches, mortgage kind of separate, and then you’ve got this investment. So in the services and engagement platform, and that’s how I think about it. It’s a capital investment that we’re making because the best use of our capital is to build out this technology that maximizes our marketing, that reduces our cost to acquire that increases our lifetime value. So when we think about our investments, we say what’s out there from an M&A perspective? What could we build internally? And how do we get to this place where we grow market share in 2023? And that’s where we’re putting a big chunk of our capital right now is that internal investment in technology. But we’ve also got Scott Elkins and our kind of the acquisitions team out there looking at opportunity. We need to be thoughtful about the fact that we’re not all the way through this cycle. And so others who don’t have the same ability to invest may continue to see their value drop. And if so, we’ll be thoughtful about when, and if we pull the trigger on those acquisitions, when it’s the right timing, but certainly one very strong possibility for us to get into niche markets that we want to enter into that fits nicely into our ecosystem.

Blake Netter

Analyst

Okay, great. And as a quick follow up given where the markets heading, how much in operating losses are you willing to endure? Would you sell some of the MSR books to reduce cash burn, or conversely, would you be willing to buy servicing portfolios of others in your – as you seek to gain market share?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Well, buying MSR is very interesting, especially as we think about how those MSRs will interact inside of everything I’ve just described to get not only short term returns, but better lifetime value. And certainly we’ve demonstrated the fact that we’re thoughtful, but not afraid to deploy some of our cash or have a small burn. Like you just talked about if we’re deploying it in technology and product strategy, building tech, that’s going to build our business. And that’s where that capital’s doing today. But more of our focus is, how do we leverage that to grow market share in 2023, which will make us a stronger company. And that’s where our mindset is here. It’s not a long-term thought around burning cash. It’s about investing now to see growth in 2023.

Blake Netter

Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mihir Bhatia [Bank of America]. Your line is open.

Mihir Bhatia

Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. And thank you for taking my question. I wanted to maybe just touch on the partnerships a little bit. You announced Santander in Q2 today, maybe just expand a little bit on those partnerships specifically, actually on the Q2, just is that tied to the sales force partnership you previously announced? Or is this just another way to serve credit unions? And just generally maybe to broaden out the discussion also, it seems like you’re leaning in a little bit on partnerships here over the last few quarters. Maybe just talk at a high level about that decision. Is it just driving more volume to the platform? What happens once the customer is on your platform? Can you actually treat them as Rocket customers or [indiscernible] customers of the bottom? Thanks.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes, that, I think you’ve kind of touched on all the reasons why we’re very interested in this. We think that partnership opportunities will accelerate because all the questions we’re getting here, many folks who engage in mortgages, one of their business lines will probably decide to move out of that space as we continue forward through the end of this year and into next year, creating opportunity for us to step in and be there, their mortgage partner. And this is really leveraging the technology, the client experience and the brand that we’ve built. If someone’s thinking of getting out of the space, but wants to remain offering that for their client. I think we’re really obvious choice for them. And so that we think that partnerships will, will continue. Q2 is different than sales force, similar concept, but different technology platform that we’re using. So sales force gives us reach into a certain set of banks and credit unions. Now Q2 gives us reach into another set of hundreds of banks and credit unions. And so it’s an exciting moment in time. And through the end of this year, we’ll be finding those first banks and credit unions and plugging them in as we enter into 2023. So partnerships are strong. It’s a we’re differentiated in that space. And so you’ll continue to see us do more and more of that as we move forward.

Mihir Bhatia

Analyst

Thank you. And then just, if I could just follow up one, but you mentioned, we’ve talked a little bit about your strong balance sheet. I did want to ask, even on quite a few products now, solar, home equity, credit card, how much, how many of those are you funding off your balance sheet currently? And is that like the near term goal is like, just fund those off the balance sheet and as they grow then diversify out to other partners? Or do you have partners for something like credit card where there’s like actually an issuing partner its small for brand like relationship?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Well, as we always talk about, Julie can comment, we’re a capital light business. So, if we see an opportunity to leverage the, the cash that we have for a short period of time to cause it’s nice spread between the lending rate and where we’re either borrowing money or using your own cash, we’ll do it. But it’s a small portion of the lending with you because in the end we’re selling those loans to partners, et cetera, securitizing them. We’re not going to hold them for a long period of time.

Julie Booth

Analyst

That’s why I completely agree, Jay, and as we think about these new products that we’re getting into, we do look to sell those into either a whole loan market or into a securitization. If there is a market for that right now, there’s not a group securitization market. So, we have some loan sales arrangement setup for those products so that we, while we may finance them for a short period time, when we’ll be selling those and having those be off of our balance sheet.

Mihir Bhatia

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark DeVries [Barclays]. Your line is open.

Mark DeVries

Analyst

Yeah. Thank you. Jay, I think you mentioned several times, you see the need for industry to remove capacity. Interesting to getting your thoughts on how long you think it’ll take for capacity to fully rationalize go to the industry and kind of what the implications are for margins over the coming quarters?

Jay Farner

Analyst

Yes, it certainly has taken longer than we have seen in the past. I think that’s a function of course, of 2020 and 2021 and people building up reserves. And so their ability to kind of hang on through the cycle a bit longer than usual. I don’t know, if I have a crystal ball to tell you when the capacity will come out, but I have a feeling we’ll see that steadily happen here, moving forward. There’s the strategic advantage I’ve already touched on whether there’s excess capacity or not, for our ability to drive down the cost to acquire, which is more powerful than 10 basis points or 15 basis points in margin in either direction. The other important component, and I’ll bring this up now, as we have multiple business lines and we think about our gain on sale margin. One of those, of course, is our TPO lining, and we’ve got a great set of partners. We work with them very, very closely. We’re going to be launching new products for them as we get into the second half of steer to strengthen their business. But we’ve also made it very, very clear that moving forward, if you’re not a partner of ours, we will be taking advantage of all of our data, information, our massive sales force, their incredible skill to win those partners over into our retail channel. And so we’ve launched some initiatives here in the last a few months to really dial that in strategically find each one of those clients and start bringing them aboard. So that’ll change a have an impact on margin as well as we move more towards that retail channel, winning those clients again, protecting the third party originators that are partners of ours, but being very clear about the fact that we’re going to be full steam ahead, if you’re not a partner of ours winning those clients onto the Rocket platform using our retail group.

Mark DeVries

Analyst

Okay, great. And just a question for Julie on the margin guidance looks like you’re calling for a little bit of weakness, Q-over-Q. Is that a reflection of you expect a little bit more weakness across channels? Or is it more of a mixed shift to lower margin partner channel?

Julie Booth

Analyst

It is attributable to mix and that is driving at decrease in margin. We are seeing the direct-to-consumer margin holding very nicely quarter-over-quarter. And the other thing that’s impacting margins is that in July, as we have moved around with it, we do have MSR component of the gain on sale margin. That was a fairly significant driver of our guide down as well. And that changes quarter-to-quarter, but that was part of it too.

Mark DeVries

Analyst

Got it. And then just one last quick one on the Santander partnership, are they going to be offering that in their branches or is this going to be exclusively a digital offering for them?

Jay Farner

Analyst

No, I think it’s across the board, how they’re going to interact. So, they’ll be offering that. My understanding is to the loan officers that are in their branch system that can plug directly in and guide clients into our Rocket ecosystem.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Arren Cyganovich [Citi]. Your line is open.

Arren Cyganovich

Analyst

Thanks. I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about the Rocket Solar opportunity, and how are you having these loans funded? Are they in being used in warehouse lines and then sold to bank partners? Or is it purely capital markets? Just curious, because they’re generally solar loans are fairly large in size.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Well, yes, a few things and just taking a step back on solar. There’s three really important components here. Number one, and I know I point this out a lot. We are assisting the millions of clients that come to us for a mortgage. And so it’s an interesting opportunity for us because there’s no cost to require these clients as we bring them into our solar platform. Number two, we’re engaging in the actual assistance, helping the clients plan out the solar. So it’s not just financing, we’re doing the sales of that as well. And there’s a nice revenue opportunity attached to that component. Now, the thing that we’ve just plugged in is the actual solar financing itself. And so Rocket Loans will be providing that, when it’s appropriate, we like to leave ourselves many solar partners, including Rocket Loans. And then of course, once the solar loan is originated within 12 months to 18 months, typically people will roll the solar into their first mortgage. So, we’ll really create, we’ve got lower expenses that our competition, while we create three revenue opportunities through that client, as we help them, save money, on their utility bills. And of course, they are very excited about helping the environment as well. Now, Julie can just – kind of speak to what we’re doing or what Rocket Loans is doing with the solar loan itself. Because you have flexibility there too.

Julie Booth

Analyst

Yes. As I mentioned, when we enter into new products, we do look to get liquidity in markets for those, what we’re doing in solar for right now is self-funding those at the point of origination, but it will be for a very short period of times, we do have a partner that will be buying those loans from us. We may look to get warehouse financing down the road if we need it right now, though, we’ve got the capital to be able to do that while we start up this channel.

Arren Cyganovich

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And there’s just another question on, on the expense decline the, how much of the, say roughly 400 million over the, the next quarter and in this past quarter is variable. Because you’re, I would assume that a decent amount of that is, is variable just cause your, your production levels have dropped off a decent amount.

Julie Booth

Analyst

Yes. A portion of that is certainly variable. When you think about the, the commissions that we have, the production costs that we have associated with origination that did come down, but a substantial portion of this is us looking at additional vendor costs that we can impact through contract renegotiation other things that we are doing to impact those costs. So it is a mix of both looking at marketing, marketing, and down, as you saw by about a $100 million quarter-after-over and other things that we’re doing outside of production to impact those costs. That answer’s your question.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the Q&A session. Jay Farner CEO. I turn the call back over to you.

Jay Farner

Analyst

Thank you. And thanks everybody for joining today. And in particular, thank you to the team members for joining, as I’ve said here on the call and in the correspondence, I’ll be sending out shortly. The opportunity that we have right now in this market to lean in, to invest and to differentiate and really transform this company again is, is like maybe the four or five times prior that Julie referenced in her remarks. And so we appreciate all of your commitment to what we’re doing because it’s going to make all the difference in the world as we grow this company moving forward. So thanks to all of our team members and thanks everybody joining we’ll see you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.