Blend Labs, Inc. (NYSE:BLND) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dylan Becker: Hi, guys. Appreciate you taking the question here. Maybe Nima starting with that as you’re thinking about streamlining on the innovation front right kind of managing the cost structure here. How do you think about going deeper in value versus broadening kind of the capability set? I know Builder likely enables a lot of both. But wondering how you’re thinking about the evolution and ensuring kind of product excellence with further revenue diversification across different product lines?

Nima Ghamsari: Yes. Going back to what I said to the earlier question I think making existing customers more successful almost always leads to more revenue for Blend. And so going deeper is always the first primary focus because it leads to either deeper add-ons or more revenue per unit on the core product. And that — because you’re happier customers who are getting more return on their investment. And so going deeper we’ve shown this historically our revenue per unit because we’ve gone deeper and deeper has grown materially in the last two or three years. That being said I think we are looking at — sort of think about it on the cadence of maybe one approximate new product area a year that we’ll go and expand into. That will be an expansive area a new market opportunity for us.

And it could range from whether it’s small business commercial these are not specific ones we’re working on to AI products that we’re looking at just something we’re going to look at on a regular basis the leadership team and make sure we’re focusing on where the market needs the most help in advancing their technology stack.

Operator: Our next question comes from Nikhil Vijay with KBW. Nikhil, your line should be unmated

Nima Ghamsari: Nikhil, if you’re speaking we can’t hear you.

Nikhil Vijay: Hi. Can you hear me now?

Nima Ghamsari: Yes. We can.

Nikhil Vijay: Sorry, about that. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, I just wanted to touch up on what you have discussed earlier regarding the potential to consider strategic actions to bolster the balance sheet with respect to the term loan or Title365 put option. Can you please provide any update on your thinking there in terms of the options or potential timing? And then I also have a quick follow-up on platform fees

Nima Ghamsari: Absolutely. We’re going to reinforce the message we’ve shared Nikhil which is — we continue to emphasize the potential that we have in terms of different actions that we can take. We’re going to be opportunistic starting first and foremost with the actions that we’re taking across this company to get us to the path of profitability, which actually allow us to have expanded opportunities in front of us. There’s nothing for us to in essence comment on today on the term loan or on the put option beyond what we’ve already shared.

Nikhil Vijay: Got it. Understood. And then as a follow-up on the platform fees, can you briefly discuss the platform fees you have been implementing across the different platforms. Are there material enough to increase the recurring revenue mix of the business over time? And more broadly, can you also talk about your approach to recurring versus transaction revenue models going forward?

Nima Ghamsari: Yes. I think just to give a backdrop of what the platform fees are for with Blend Builder you still get the same amazing solutions that you could get out of the box previously with Blend. But for people who want to have access to a more powerful platform, you get more APIs, much more flexibility in the flows, get a lot more integration capabilities. And so it basically allows them to get a lot more from the same product that they would have been getting from us five years ago, because it’s such a modern platform. And so, in terms of how material it’s going to be to our overall revenue, we haven’t shared that broadly but it is a meaningful value to our customers and we charge a fair amount for that value that we provide to our customers. What was the second part of the question, Nikhil. Was it about recurring versus transaction-based revenue? Maybe Amir, you can take that one.