Yahoo Finance Blend Labs, Inc. (NYSE:BLND) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Blend Labs, Inc. (NYSE:BLND) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 8, 2024
Blend Labs, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Winnie Ling: Good afternoon, and welcome to Blend’s First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Winnie Ling and I’m Head of Legal and People for the company. Joining us today are Nima Ghamsari, Co-Founder and Head of Blend; and Amir Jafari, our Head of Finance and Administration. After Nima and Amir delivered their prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions moderated by our Investor Relations Lead, Bryan Michaleski. You can find the supplemental slides on our Investor Relations webpage at investor.blend.com. During the call, we’ll refer to certain non-GAAP measures, which are reconciled to GAAP results in today’s earnings release and in the appendix to our supplemental slides. Non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP results.
Also, certain statements made during today’s conference call regarding Blend and its operations, in particular, its guidance for the second quarter of 2024, may be considered forward-looking statements under Federal Securities Laws. The Company cautions you that forward-looking statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties and a number of factors, many of which are beyond the company’s control could cause actual results events or circumstances to differ materially from those described in these statements. Please see the risk factors we’ve identified in our most recent 10-K, 10-Qs and other SEC filings. We’re not undertaking any commitment to update these statements if conditions change except as required by law. With that said, I’ll now turn the call over to Nima.
Nima Ghamsari: Thank you, Winnie, and good afternoon, everyone. Amir and I have a lot to share today given the company’s recent strategic announcement, as well as several important business highlights since our last earnings call. We’ll first discuss the investment we received from Haveli last week, which involved $150 million capital infusion, as well as the beginning of a partnership that will deliver value across our business and most importantly, to our customers. This has several strategic outcomes for us, including the elimination of interest costs and the improvement of our balance sheet, which for the first time as a public company is debt free. With this investment, we’ve enhanced our financial flexibility and can focus on what we’ve always done best, which is innovating for our customers in the mortgage and consumer banking space now and for the foreseeable future.
We also made progress in some important customer deployments, including the official go live of Navy Federal Credit Union, new membership and deposits that occurred last month. Early data points indicates that was a very successful launch, and our financial results for the rest of the year will be inclusive of the Navy Federal Credit Union partnership. Beyond them, we’re also working on a robust pipeline of other deployments that is active and growing, including another top 10 credit union that’s in the process of mortgage rollout. On top of that, I’m happy to announce the team signed a new seven-digit contract with a credit union last week and Blend is going to help them streamline their deposit account opening experience. We’ve been thinking them through how to tailor our solutions to better fit the needs of specific segments, in particular, credit unions that come in different sizes yet collectively serve a large swath of customers.
This deal is a direct result of focusing on the unique needs of this specific customer segment. And lastly, as far as our financials go, I’m excited to report that our unlevered free cash flow was negative $1.3 million in the first quarter, which is a huge improvement from last quarter. And on top of that, that includes cash outflows exceeding this amount relating to certain non-operational items like settlements of litigation, contingencies and restructuring actions, and so, in aggregate, we see this as a testament to our execution and a reminder that we are on the cusp of achieving our positive cash generation goal. Before I pass it on to Amir, who will go into more detail on the first quarter’s financial results and our Q2 guidance, let me dive deeper into these highlights.
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