Blend Labs, Inc. (NYSE:BLND) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Nima Ghamsari: Actually, I think you you said it right, which is I feel like our value proposition actually really marries up well to this where a lot of the banks that are being affected had really a high concentration in commercial business, but not as much consumer business. And so a lot of them are trying to figure out how to build that consumer muscle, which is exactly in the direction that we play. That’s how we help our customers win, that’s how we help our customers continue to grow, their customer base have better lifetime value with those customers, better economics on a per customer basis, or diversification within their customer base. And so if anything, I think that some of this — in the long run, again, we don’t want to be part of any sort of macro situation like what we are going through now.

I think it’s — while we do have good faith in the Fed, we are definitely — we don’t want to see Silicon Valley Bank going under, that’s been a stable in the tech world for a long time, even without our exposure. But in the long run, it’s going to allow companies who use systems like us to be even better and even stronger and we are excited and we are a premier software partner for them going forward, not for Silicon Valley Bank but in general, I should say, for the banking industry.

Winnie Ling: Up next is a follow-up question from Terry Tillman from Truist Securities.

Terrell Tillman: This will be a easy one, I promise. I think you all talked about the gross retention was at about 97% in 4Q. Should we expect that maybe that could drift a little bit lower on a gross basis, because of maybe some of the fallout in the non-bank mortgage provider side? Or just anything more you can share about how you are thinking about gross written retention in the near term?

Nima Ghamsari: We are not sharing any forward numbers there, but you’re exactly right where we are seeing independent mortgage banks sometimes get consolidated. And so because gross retention is calculated based on the total customer base, even if that customer gets acquired by another customer or the LOs at that customer go to another one of our customers, if doesn’t — we don’t get the uptick on the gross retentions from going to another customer. So even if the consolidation is good for us, gross retention could in theory go down. We don’t have forward looking numbers on that. We are reacting as we see things. And so a lot of the retention, a lot of the times when we churn our customers, because they — like we said, they go out of business with some consolidation. So that’s where we are paying attention. And I think, generally, we think consolidation is good for us.

Winnie Ling: Thank you, everyone. That concludes our Q&A and today’s earnings conference call. Thank you, everyone again for joining us.

Nima Ghamsari: Yes. Just a quick closing remark. Yes, thanks for everyone to join us. I know there’s a lot going on in the banking world. Like I said, we’re paying close attention to it. And I just want to clarify, when I said earlier that there’s no material risk, we’re monitoring very closely. We don’t foresee anything but we’re reacting in real time. So as we see things, we’re paying attention. And obviously, the banking sector is very dynamic right now. So I just wanted to clarify that point where there’s a lot of unforeseen things that have happened in the past few weeks that we don’t want to overstate what’s happened or not. But

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