So productivity is going to increase in part because of seasonality, in part because we are recruiting higher productive agents in Q1 and going into Q2 as well.
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you. And then I have one related to the Verus Title joint venture. Could you just talk a bit about how that’s going? I think you mentioned it in the prepared remarks, but just how it’s been going so far?
Marco Fregenal: Yes. So we announced the joint venture in mid-Q1. The company started April 1. And yes, we were very – we’ve been very pleased with our results thus far in terms of number of agents interested, numbers that joined the JV. We believe that the Texas JV is going to have a significant impact on EBITDA. So this is why we haven’t made a statement that we are going to look at doing many of these across the country, right? It is part of the partnership with our agents and it helps our agents earn more income and helps Fathom earn more income. So we look forward to implementing more of these partnerships across the country. But the early results of the JV have been very, very promising. And that’s why we made the statement that we are looking into doing other JVs across the country. And I think by the end of the year, there will be several more JVs across different states for Verus.
Unidentified Analyst: Great. Okay. Thank you very much.
Marco Fregenal: Of course. You’re welcome. Thank you.
Operator: The next question is a follow-up question from Raj Sharma with B. Riley. Please go ahead.
Raj Sharma: Yes, hi. Thank you for putting me back online. Marco, I wanted to understand the agent growth has been really hard, tough. And what are you expecting in the next few – could we expect in the next few quarters? Do you think there’d be acquisitions of small groups? And have changed the fees, has that impacted agent growth at all?
Marco Fregenal: So great question. What they see – let’s talk about the fees first? And when we implemented the fees, we know that it would have a little bit of a negative impact. So we did lose some agents because of the fees. And that will be a normal thing, and that happened in Q4, which had part of the negative impact in Q1 was related to losing some agents, not a many, but we lost some agents who were higher-producing agents. And again, we anticipated that. As we look at the market, we made the statement; we are seeing an enormous amount of activity in the market in terms of [indiscernible]. Small brokerages, teams, and including large brokers as well. So there is a great deal of activity in terms of that. We do anticipate that Q2 – sorry, Q3, it will be, Q3 and Q4 be significant in terms of agent growth.
And that’s our goal. If I – we would discuss that there are goals to return to 20% to 25% agent growth, at least. And we believe that we will do that in Q2 – I’m sorry, in Q3, second half of the year, and that’s related to just the activity. Now I want to be very clear that we are going to be – we’re going to do this in a very intelligent way, and we’re going to do this in a very careful way. And so we’re going to be very opportunistic on how we do that. But we do believe that we have a number of workovers as well as some small M&A activity happening in the second half of the year. We will make sure that not only these are impactful in terms of EBITDA; they will certainly all be accretive, and we have a positive impact in terms of the profitability of the business.
But Raj, there is a lot of activity, and we anticipate some of this taking place in the second half of this year.
Raj Sharma: Great. Thank you. Thank you for the color. Just on the operating cash burn, I understand now you obviously have plenty of cash from the transaction. But your positive EBITDA, what is that – for the second quarter, is there a guidance for the operating cash flow?
Marco Fregenal: No, not at this point. I mean, we – our operational cash burn in Q1 was about, I believe, $974,000 and with a negative EBITDA by $1.5 million [ph]. So you can kind of deduct the difference in the other costs, right? We think that our EBITDA will be in the $200,000 to $500,000. So we do anticipate some small cash burn in Q2, but we certainly are working hard to minimize that as much as possible. So your comment is accurate that we have plenty of cash now to run the business, but not only to run the business but to grow the business, and we’re very excited about that. We think, again, the second half of this year is going to be very meaningful to Fathom in terms of not only growing the Realty business, but growing the mortgage and the title business as well.
There are also – we talk about workovers for the real estate business, but there are plenty of workovers for the mortgage business as well and for the title business. And this is one of the reasons, by the way, why ELG has significantly increased its revenue and we forecast positive EBITDA in Q2. It is because of the significant increase in loan offers [ph], right? As Joanne pointed out, we increased the number of loan offers into the business, which have led into more business, right? And so we are looking at a market that has the potential for growth in terms of workovers in all three facets of our business. And that’s why we feel enthusiastic about the future.
Raj Sharma: Great. Thank you for answering my questions. I’ll take it offline. Thanks.
Marco Fregenal: Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. This does conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back to Marco for any closing remarks.
Marco Fregenal: Thank you for joining our call today and for your interest in Fathom. For those of you who are Fathom’s shareholders, thank you for your trusting us. We’ll continue to work hard and look forward to sharing future updates with you. Have a wonderful week. Thank you all.
Joanne Zach: Thank you.
Operator: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
