Opendoor Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:OPEN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Carrie Wheeler: Hi Nick. It’s Carrie, you would imagine that a fixed cap channels continue to grow, potentially and outstrip some of the direct-to-consumer channels that we may be driving with paid marketing. We should be able to leverage our overall marketing cost over time. Where we want to make cost effective paid marketing investments so long as our spreads allow us to do so, right that’s another driver of volumes, but we’re not going to invest those dollars. If it’s not high returns. So let’s say it evolves over time, but our long-term objective for sure is to continue to leverage our marketing spend and we’ve been able to do that as we’ve grown in scale, we draw an awareness. We’ve been able to market nationally. One of the things we called out in our most recent shareholder letter is that as we’ve reduced our paid spend we have leaned into, what we think it’s been some pretty good creative around the brand side.

And even though take marketing expenses and jump 80% brand awareness for us has been sustained static, which is great. It’s testimony I think to just what our premium of customers are continuing to know about trying to know about Opendoor and come to us more organically so more to come.

Nick Jones: Great. And then any comments on the kind of 2024 objectives. Is there any change in kind of cadence or timing? To some of the positive adjusted EBITDA, net income and $10 billion annualized run rate. Are those kind of goals still intact?

Christina Schwartz: Yes, this is Christy here. Happy to take that question. We absolutely remain committed to returning to A&I breakeven point next year and assuming some level of market stabilization that would come at a steady state of $10 billion annualized revenue. It requires us to take volumes from where they are today 2,200 which Carrie talk to a little bit earlier. And we absolutely believe that we have the balance sheet, the fixed rate capital structure and the cost structure to return there.

Nick Jones: Great, thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Tomasello with KBW. Your line is now open.

Ryan Tomasello: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Just unpacking the OpEx commentary, but further here is the $100 million quarterly run rate enough to support the $10 billion breakeven target? Just trying to understand how we should think about any investment needs balancing the efficiencies. You’re getting on the partnership side and making sure models are rationale here? Thanks.

Christina Schwartz: Hi, Ryan. Thanks for the question. It’s Christy, and yes the $10 billion breakeven target, there is three basic components. There is the contribution margin targets, the adjusted OpEx and interest expense. For breakeven, we need to be at the higher end of our increased contribution margin target range of 5% to 7%. We expect to be in 4% to 5% for adjusted OpEx and 2% to 3% for interest expense.

Ryan Tomasello: Okay. That’s really helpful. And then I guess just more of a nuance question in terms of acquisition funnels. Curious if you’re seeing any uptick in the amount of homes you’re buying from the institutional side like SFR REITs or even the short-term rental players given that those platforms seem to be calling their portfolios there – is that an attractive way to kind of supplement the acquisition pipeline here?

Dod Fraser: So, obviously we’ve been engaged with those partners for our entire existence. So, we’re very close to all of them. I certainly can’t comment on specific individual partners. But I do think we are a use – in the same way that we were useful for consumers to provide that simplicity and certainty, we can do the same thing for institutions. So, we are actively talking to them both about their disposition strategies and their acquisition strategies, because obviously that we can help solve for both of those.