Opendoor Technologies Inc. (OPEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 3, 2022

NASDAQ US Real Estate Real Estate Management and Development conference_presentation 35 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#1

All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining our next session here. If you haven't been on yesterday or earlier today and you don't know me, I'm Ygal Arounian, I cover Internet here at Wedbush, lots of focus on real estate technology and real estate disruptors. Really happy to have Opendoor CFO, Carrie Wheeler with us next. Opendoor has obviously been central to the role that technology has been playing and disrupting the residential real estate market, its leading iBuyer, it's been playing a critical role in changing the home seller and buyer experience in many markets across the U.S. and many more coming up. Lots to go through here with Carrie. I really thank you so much for being here with us today.

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#2

Yes. Thank you for having me.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#3

So you guys just reported your earnings, just to start at a high level, kind of recapping last year, 4Q and your outlook for next year.

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#4

Yes, I'd be happy to. So it's good to be here. For us, 2021 was really just a record year across a whole host of dimensions, record demand from our customers. We saw record offers, record conversion rates, record Net Promoter Scores and that really just let us serve more customers than ever before. And we consistently outperformed our expectations and all the targets, we met out there. We pulled forward our financial plan by years, which was great, $8 billion of revenue, up 200% year-on-year, positive EBITDA, $60 million. Maybe most importantly, though, last year was this major proof point, and we feel like that customers are really demanding our service as a superior alternative to the traditional listing process. And we're just at the very, very beginnings of the move from offline to online for real estate.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#5

Okay. Great. So coming off that year where you kind of moved your targets forward, we saw stronger growth than we expect getting at the beginning of the year. I just wanted to get into some of the key things that investors have been focused on coming out of earnings. So the first one, there's been a lot of focus almost on the margins in 4Q. So maybe just start by explaining the move and the strategy to more quickly get rid of the inventory that you had? And how that impacted margins and why you did that?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#6

We call it selling responsibly, not getting rid of our inventory, Ygal. I'm just teasing. We acquired a bunch of homes in Q3, if you recall, we actually acquired 15,000 homes in Q3, which is a record number of homes for us. And then on our November earnings call, we said, "Hey, we're going to be slowing our acquisition pace in Q4," and as we work through those homes at the same time as we were seeing some operational capacity constraints, a combination of lots of volume, that's a good thing, but also at a time where we and other people in the housing market, we're seeing some labor constraints. So we were able to do that very successfully. We repaired and listed more homes than we ever had before in Q4. And we are successful in increasing our systems capacity so that going forward, we have higher throughput. The one part of relieving that capacity for us was to lean into clearing more homes, particularly at a time in Q4 where the market for demand for homes is still very strong. To us, Q4 demonstrated that the systems we built, they're strong, they're agile, they do what they're meant to do because we're always managing across how do we optimize for margin, how do we optimize for resell velocity and overall inventory health and we felt like we delivered on all accounts. We sold more homes certainly, you saw the outperformance on the revenue side, $650 million, and that was by design. And we gave up some contribution margin to do that, but we did that intentionally. And at the same time, we hit our EBITDA guidance, which was important to us that we came in the midpoint of that range. So that really was what happened in Q4.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#7

Okay. So just thinking about the operational efficiencies and capacities, you talk about buying 15,000 homes in 3Q. And I know there were some unique things going on right now just in terms of labor constraints and supply constraints. But you guys are aiming to get much bigger than you were in 4Q. So how do we think about as you get bigger, what you've learned and how you get to the operational efficiencies that can let you scale to where you want to go?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#8

We want to continue to invest to make sure that we have the lowest cost platform to let people transact for real estate. So we're going to continue to invest like we have been in areas like automation, virtualization, further centralization and having all those capabilities is what allows us to efficiently launch a bunch of new markets, like we did last year or to repair and sell through a record number of homes that we did last quarter. So some examples of that to make them more real world, we invest in things like proprietary tooling. So we have a construction management platform called Opendoor Scout. And one example of that is it allows us to automatically assign the right vendors to the right home based on their skill set and their available capacity. It helps us assign jobs quicker, helps us lower balance among vendors and helps us be more efficient. We've also done lots of work to be more virtualized and how we are able to process homes and be more centralized in terms of how we approach local processes and labor. And one example of that was launching virtual home self assessments last year. All told, last year, we did 6x more home assessments and repairs last year than we had before, and we drove about 110 basis points of structural cost improvements over the last year. So continuing this muscle of investing in the platform to drive down costs is something you could expect from us going forward.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#9

Okay. So going from 4Q to 1Q, the guide implies better margins in 1Q. So what's the bridge to get from where we were in 4Q to the improvements in 1Q? And then how do we think about the sustainability of your margins moving forward? I know you've given the guideposts of that kind of 4% to 6% contribution margin, but maybe something that often comes up is how to think about that in a flat, more declining HPA environment. We saw a couple of quarters of flat HPA. It seems like it's ticking back up here again a little bit. But what about in a declining environment as well?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#10

So our Q1 guide, as you mentioned, it does imply a sequential increase in contribution margins to around 5%, and as we indicated on the call, we are at a point, we're walking into Q1 in a real position of strength, very healthy inventories we indicated on our call. We've rightsized our operational capacity, and we're seeing strong demand for homes. So we feel good about how we're set up for Q1. More broadly, your bigger question about how do you manage margins over time relative to different HPA environments. Our business model is really designed to ensure that we can meet our annual margin target at 4% to 6% contribution margin, regardless of the home price environment we're operating in. And the way we do that is just how we price our homes. We are earning a return for providing liquidity and delivering a superior experience with certainty. And that return of the spread we need to earn is incorporated into every offer price. That spread gets dynamically adjusted for every single home, and it reflects the level of certainty we have for each home offer. Certainly, for us, it can be impacted by factors like what's the macro, whether it's the home price environment we're selling into, what's the rate of resale, as well as a myriad of specific home conditions, age of the home, depth of comparables, a number of things. If the level of certainty we have is lower, we are going to be more conservative in our offer price. And so obviously, the inverse can hold too. If we have a high degree of confidence in the offer price, we can be at the higher end of the range when we submit an offer to the customer. But it's really this ability to dynamically price homes in response to both micro and macro factors that allows us to manage, first of all, within that 4% to 6% annual margin range, and regardless of the home cycle we're operating in, it's a really important part of our business model.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#11

Okay. Well, pricing then plays a really important role. We'll get into that, I just want to spend some time on pricing and how you guys feel. You talked a lot about it last -- in the quarter, too. But before we get there, just I think one of the other things that caught people by surprise or maybe would love to hear a little bit more clarification on is just the way you talked about 1Q and Q2 and kind of the sequential kind of flat, down a little bit, 2Q is typically a much seasonally stronger quarter for housing. So can you just explain the dynamics you talked about pulling forward some demand. Just what are you seeing in 1Q and 2Q?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#12

Sure. As you said, we've had a lot of questions about this. So I appreciate you asking the question. First of all, all the indicators we're seeing today are positive. I mean our comments about the first half of the year was not meant to be commentary about the rest of the year, certainly, we expect our business to fill in any way. So without getting into guidance, we've already said, I'll just reiterate, we're set up to have another record year in 2022. We guided for Q1 to $4.2 billion of revenue at the midpoint. That's up 460% year-on-year. So tremendous growth. Part of that, though, is driven by the fact that we are seeing very strong sell-through rates for this time of year. We've also indicated that, as you mentioned, that we expected to see $8 billion of revenue for the first half. And as part of that, we're pulling a little bit of revenue, we think, from Q2 into Q1. The message we want to convey is that when home sales are going to close month-to-month and how revenue lands, intra-quarter for us can be a bit fluid per my pull-forward comment. But for the first half of the year, we expect revenues to be up 4x over last year, 4x, and that we do operate this inventory-based business. So we may see sequential quarterly shifts based on how do we adjust our resale pace relative to the market we're operating in, faster or slower and how our inventory balance changes quarter-to-quarter. Really, the best barometer to track for our revenue performance this year and beyond, it's going to be year-over-year growth rates for us.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#13

Okay. Was there anything within that comment about some of the dynamics that are playing out right now? Just -- I've heard others throughout the past couple of days talk about rates are going up, so some people are acting a little bit faster to try to get it ahead of that.

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#14

We were asked that question, too. I -- perhaps, right, we can -- maybe there's a little bit more demand because people are rushing to kind of get a home or home purchases and they finally capitulated that high housing prices are here to stay. We are certainly seeing a really strong demand for our homes and really high, like historically high clearance rates. And that was the genesis of some of the pull forward comments.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#15

Okay. All right. So pulling out a little bit to bigger picture, nothing comes up quite often as the balancing growth versus profitability and then free cash flow being free cash flow positive. So how do you think about that balance and what you need to do to be free cash flow positive? I know you weren't in 4Q, but you're still building and growing, so.

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#16

We are. Listen, both matter, both matter a lot. We want to build a sustainable long-term business. an we want to drive growth, lots of it. But we're going to do that with having consistently positive unit economics, and we're going to drive improving profitability over time. And that's really important to us. If you look below our contribution margin level, which is the best indicator of our unit economics, we've shown that we continue to leverage our operating expenses. So we've been leveraging our technology, our marketing, our G&A as we scale. But we're going to balance that with the fact that we're still -- I believe in that very early part of the S-curve. We're going to continue to invest in having a platform that allows to manage $50 billion or more revenue. So we're always balancing those 2 things. But to your point on free cash flow, which is an important milestone for us. I think the best proxy to point you to for operating free cash flow is our adjusted net income line. That's something we look at very closely, and we're actually pretty darn close to being free cash flow neutral. To get there, we have to be at EBITDA margins of around 150, 200 basis points, and we were at 70 basis points last year. So the 2 elements that drive our overall EBITDA margins, one is our contribution margin and then how much operating expense do we have in the system. We've talked a lot about operating comfortably in that 4% to 6% range for CM. So just for the sake of argument, let's take the high end of that range. We've shown we can operate there. So 6% contribution margins to get down to 2% EBITDA margins, you'd have to believe that our OpEx would be in that 4% range. And we've shown that we consistently leverage our operating expenses, 11% of revenue in 2018. I think they were a little less than 6% in 2021. And that's based on revenue, but that lags actually where our business is. So if you think about based on acquisition GMV values, we are actually less than 4% on an ac GMV basis in 2021. So 6% CM, 4% OpEx, we're getting close. That gets to the 2% EBITDA. That would put us at adjusted net income positive. We exited last year with 70 basis points of EBITDA margin, an adjusted net income loss of $116 million. So I mean, it's a real -- it's a material number, but it's shrinking, also pretty close. So we're getting very close to being free cash flow positive. And as I said, that's an important milestone for us to drive to.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#17

So one of the other really important parts of the lines within all that is interest expense. You're still debt financing a lot of the homes. And as rates go up, that's a question that has come up more often as well. So maybe just help us understand the impact of higher rates on your holding costs, opportunities to offset interest expense right now with lower borrowing costs over time as your business matures. I think it will be great to kind of have a bridge between higher costs right now and your opportunities to lower your interest expense as you scale and grow?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#18

Sure. So we -- as we said in our call, first of all, we are modeling for increasing rates, but we expect the impact of this interest rate increases on our P&L to be pretty manageable. On a unit cost basis, from an average home, we're expecting around 20 to 30 basis points of increase. That's a relatively small impact, you think of our overall cost structure on a per home basis. But perhaps more importantly, we embed those additional costs back into how we give offers to customers. So it will go back into -- just as we reflect selling costs and holding costs, mean cost of interest, if those experience an increase, we'll go back into what we're sending back to customers. Certainly, there's assumptions that go into that guidance. We're assuming an average level of inventory turns. We're assuming where is the forward LIBOR curve, and how our facility mix may change over time. We have been slowly changing the mix to have a little bit more fixed rate versus floating. We continue to diversify our facilities, extend them, have a broader swath of lenders. And to your point about where costs could go over time, securitization, we've always said is part of our longer-term road map. So we'll continue to look at that.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#19

Okay. Is there like a time line with the securitization? Is that something you've spent any time on right now? Or are you thinking about it more down the road?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#20

It's in our nearest turn time line, I think. Obviously, the market will do what it will do, but it's something we're focused on.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#21

Okay. And the last question on financing, just get questions also about raising equity to fund working capital needs, maybe not with where the stock is today, given the environment, but how do you think about raising equity?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#22

At a high level, I mean, we were very well capitalized today. If you think about what we have on our balance sheet, over $10 billion of borrowing capacity, $2.2 billion of cash, I mean that alone would imply that we have the ability to acquire well over $30 billion of home volume. So based on what we have today, we feel very well capitalized to kind of fulfill our growth plans well within our means.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#23

Okay. All right. So let's switch gears from financing and the quarter and the margins and just talk fundamentals a little bit and opportunities for Opendoor. So you -- coming back to this conversation, you highlighted a bunch in your investor letter and on the earnings about the improvements in pricing you made. Obviously, that's probably the most critical factor of everything you do. I don't know, maybe you view it differently, but I feel like it is. So in many ways, it is the most critical part. And just a question that's come up a lot more as well after Zillow's exit, so maybe you could just help share the messages a little bit more about the pricing algorithm, the model, why you've been successful there, why you think you can be successful regularly without giving away too much of your secret sauce?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#24

Well, I can't tell you our secret sauces, but I can confirm for you that for us, pricing is absolutely core to what we do. It is something that Opendoor has been investing in religiously, from day 1 as a core capability, 8 years of investment, and that's not going to abate. When we talk about pricings, like it's a very broad term because for us, pricing means our home acquisition models and processes, our forecasting capabilities, our resale and inventory management systems, our risk management framework. There's a lot of stuff that goes into pricing. So it's a really important function for us. What fuels pricing, besides a team of very smart people, is a wealth of data. And we're not just talking about third-party public data sources. No, what we are also collecting is this mass of proprietary offline data from all of our home assessments that you can't get publicly. We've done 375,000 home assessments so far. And in every one of those assessments, we collect unique data points you can't collect online, and those are unique to us. And then we're applying our data processing capabilities to all the data we're ingesting. And so for example, we're doing things like proprietary labeling of millions of images, and we're leveraging computer vision and AI techniques to assess every home's value and condition. I mean, other flavors, like one of the things we do is I think there's a sense that it's just all about the model. And for sure, we've made lots of that since in model sophistication. But we've also done a really good job of integrating systematic modeling with like the human insight and the human overlay. At the same time we're doing that, we like working on how do we accelerate our feedback loops all the time, because core to being good at pricing is being dynamic about it. Like we always want to be able to react every day to changes in macro and micro conditions, and that responsiveness is critical to having quality pricing and certainly, how do we manage our margins, especially in periods of volatility. So that's -- without revealing the secret sauce, as you said, I mean, that's a bit of a flavor to what we're focused on in pricing.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#25

Great. So moving on to market expansion, you went from -- as a big part of your success in 2021, your growth, you went from 21 to 44 markets. You're going to add some more this year, but at a slower pace. Those markets you are adding are larger markets, you'll continue to expand your buy box there. And so how does that grow your serviceable market in 2022 just between the markets and the buy box? How should we think about that?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#26

Yes. No, listen, we want to serve customers nationwide ultimately. We're making good progress against that. As you already said, 23 new markets last year, actually 45 now because we had San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. And we've also been increasing our buy box coverage and that was over 50% last year. I think it would surprise people to know that in the markets we're in, we cover, meaning we can underwrite, over 60% of the transactions in those active markets. It's a really big number. For this year, we expect to unlock what we'll call serviceable market growth that's in line with what we achieved in 2021. But as you said, the mix of how we're going to get there might be different. Certainly, it will include a bunch of new market openings, but more larger market sets such as like the San Francisco Bay Area that was recently launched, and we're going to continue to expand buy box. And for us, buy box can be price point. It can also mean home type, condos, townhomes, other variables, age, what have you. We'll continue to kind of press where we can reasonably on buy box expansion. We want to increase market share penetration. And so those are the 2 ways we're going to go at it. If you think about where we ended up last year, we had aggregate market share of 1.6% across all of our markets. So we seem to kind of edge up. So a small part of the overall real estate market, but getting there. But if you think about where we were in our most mature markets, we had over 3% share. So continue to kind of have more markets, mature those markets, we'll continue to kind of increase share over time, whether that's being in more places or just being able to say yes more often because we have a higher buy box.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#27

Okay. A follow-up on that because it comes up quite often also is just -- you started in markets where -- Phoenix, the Southern markets were maybe a little bit more homogeneous markets. And as you go to San Francisco, it's larger cities. The question about how is it -- is it harder to kind of expand in those markets? And what are some of the challenges there? Just talk about how you feel about that point. How translatable is the learnings from the earlier markets into those kind of markets as you started to shift there?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#28

Yes. I mean we feel that we've come out of 2021 really having honed our playbook for how do we go into a new market and what are all the things we need to do. I know people kind of go to San Francisco. I mean San Francisco for us is 200 ZIP codes, right? So it's like Nevada, all the way down to -- I'm going to make something up, Monterrey. I mean it's a big swath. Lots of markets within that market, certainly. And the similarities for how you approach San Francisco and that 200 ZIP codes is frankly, pretty much like we approach all the other markets. I mean, there's a ton of back testing of the model that we do, a ton of data collection to make sure the model responds the way we would expect it to respond. And then our approach is to be relatively conservative when going to market. We're going to be pretty judicious in terms of how many homes we acquire upfront, how we see those cohorts season over time, ensuring that they show up in a way that's consistent with our underwriting expectations, and then we'll start to kind of allocate more capital, allocate more marketing and grow into those markets. We had really good success with the 2021 cohort, still very, very young. But we've sort of seen that respond consistent with our expectations, and we'll expect to continue to do so in new markets, more similarities than you would think in terms of launch.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#29

Okay. I think this ties in well with the previous question. Just with Zillow leaving -- Zillow exiting the market and what the impact has been. Has there been a near-term impact on pricing, sales? Anything else there? What's a longer-term impact in your view? And how does it change the trajectory of the plane for your long-term opportunity?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#30

You and I have talked before about this, we've always defined our competitive set as that 99% of transactions that are offline. I mean that is our competitor. And we are disintermediating that traditional broken listing process. So for that reason, despite the change in kind of who's in the market, our day-to-day really hasn't changed. I mean, that is what we're focused on. But certainly, like our long-term position as the market leader and innovator has only been strengthened. And strategically, no one is working harder than we are to give customers this digital seamless solution. And we're seeing customers demand our product, and we feel like we're still just getting started. And ultimately, we want everyone to start their journey with the Opendoor, and we think increasingly, like the road map for that, is even clearer, so.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#31

Okay. Is there any sense that -- or -- I want to use the right word, but just around home affordability as rates go up a little bit and we continue to have HPA, any of that has an impact for iBuyers in particular?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#32

There's two answers to that question. First of all, we have huge amount of empathy for customers who are trying to compete in this home price environment. I mean it's punishing, right? It's very hard. Our focus has been on how do we do things that enable people to be better home buyers, more successful home buyers at the same time as they're also looking to be home sellers. And we view our role in the market as removing all the friction, all the inertia to move and make it easier to buy and sell. So that's home affordability and this HPA at some point, it will be lower than it is today. I mean that's just the way the housing cycle works over time. But again, like our business is very keyed off to transaction volumes. Those happen in all rate environments. 2003, 6% mortgage rates, 5.4 million homes. So like our business is designed to be cycle agnostic, and that's really what we're focused on proving out over time to the market, is that affordability may wax and wane, but I don't see there's an impact in our business. What's really fueling our business you talked about is the secular, just massive sea change from offline to online. And given we're 1% of the market today, that's only going to continue to propel us forward.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#33

Okay. All right. Great. So let's move and talk about ancillary products and services, that's another critical part of the story. Still earlier there, but expect it to be -- grow in importance. So you called out Opendoor Complete, Opendoor-Backed Offers, particularly this quarter. Maybe just highlight for us what those products are and how they fit into what you're doing?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#34

Sure. So Opendoor Complete, we announced that back in November. We view that this will be a hero product for us long term because it's really about integrating all of our products and services to buy and sell a home into one single streamlined experience. So people can track where they are in the process via a single dashboard, via a single person if that's the kind of help they want and just help them kind of put the whole process together. And as you know, selling a home is hard, buying home is hard, doing both together, extra hard, and we're enabling customers to line up the timing of those 2 transactions, avoid double mortgages, avoid a double move and just put those 2 things together. With Opendoor Complete, it will let us do what we're focused on is converting the 2/3 of our sellers who are also looking to be buying a home and to go on to be buyers with Opendoor. And with that, we want to make the process more seamless, as I said, but also it creates a good jumping off point for us to attach other services. And certainly, the one we're focused on today is mortgage services. Still in the early stages for us, and we're focused more on raising awareness amongst our buyers in a few target markets, and we find an experience. But ultimately, I think Opendoor Complete provides the capabilities to do what I just -- we'd indicated around services attached. You mentioned Opendoor-Backed Offers, I think, another product -- new product innovation that we launched earlier this year, last year, really a cash buyer product, empower buyers with the ability to make an all-cash bid, improve their chances of winning their next home. It's been very successful in driving incremental buy with Opendoor volume up 5x since we launched our cash offer product.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#35

Okay. Great. So it's driving volume at buying with Opendoor. What about for the mortgage product? I feel like that is the type of product that can attach mortgage at much higher levels. Or are you talking about buy with Opendoor collectively with mortgage?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#36

I'm talking about buy with Opendoor kind of collectively. I mean, Opendoor-Backed Offers, we would allow, certainly, we'd encourage people to avail themselves of Opendoor Home Loans, we don't require it. So that's -- it is another way to attach certainly mortgage to the Opendoor-Backed Offers program.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#37

Okay. We've talked a little bit less about list with Opendoor, sell with Opendoor, a solid product if someone doesn't ultimately sell their home to you. Is that still part of the kind of opportunity long-term goal? .

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#38

That was -- that is our List with Opendoor product. I'd say really our core focus and the product that we're most focused on driving because we think it's a superior experience for the customer is to sell direct to us through the traditional sort of sell direct process and that when we get people alternatives, it's really not the core of our focus.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#39

Okay. You've made some interesting tuck-in acquisitions over the past few quarters, RedDoor is kind of the most recent one there. How does that expand in mortgage capabilities, new technology? How has M&A strategy helped improve your tech and contribute in general?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#40

Yes. So RedDoor, and we made a couple of other acquisitions last year in Pro.com and Skylight, all of those were about acquiring teams who were as focused as we are had to solve customer problems in real estate. It was also about acquiring technology and capabilities that can pull forward our road map to allow us to empower consumers to sell by move, a tap of a button. RedDoor specifically has built this best-in-class digital mortgage experience via a very elegant consumer application that enables a homebuyer to get prequalified within 60 seconds. So we're working on integrating that into our offering and plan to launch that later in the first half of this year.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#41

Okay. Anything else to kind of talk about in terms of M&A.? You've been focused on the tech side. You're the largest by volume clearly. But any -- is there any kind of consolidation in the space that makes sense at all? Obviously, your biggest competitor has left. But anything else that's not on the tech side that makes sense in the M&A landscape?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#42

I think we'll continue to be opportunistic as it relates to how we approach M&A. For us, we want to work with founders and teams who are equally passionate about how do we solve all the thorny pain points in real estate, where we can acquire efficiently the technology and the teams that can put forward a road map, we're certainly open to that. But I think we'll continue to be opportunistic in how we approach M&A going forward.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#43

Okay. And then I wanted to circle back to the market. And one of the things we've talked a lot about just -- in a strong market, you've benefited from higher HPA, but actually talk -- and you guys have talked a lot about how your product makes more sense and is a stronger product in not a strong market where the seller needs more liquidity. I just come back to that discussion. It's been a while, and it looks like the market remained strong this year. There's still a ton of demand, but have your views evolved there at all? And how do you think about that liquidity? And how you kind of -- how you make that shift in that type of market?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#44

Yes. I mean our views have stayed very consistent. If you recall, when we first went public just a little over a year ago, I mean, the big question was, can this product actually thrive, will there be enough demand for it in what was determined to be -- in the seller's market. And for sure, it's been a seller's market. And the answer is we've had no constraints in our ability to attract consumers or acquire homes. And the reason being that people do not want to go through the additional listing process. It is wretched, it is offline, it's time consuming, it's uncertain, all the things you know. I think you've been through it recently, I think you moved. It's not the thing most people want to engage in and we give them an incredibly elegant, delightful certain fast experience. And that's what's driving our business, certainly in what has been one of the greatest seller markets of all time. Ultimately, we are providing a service, and we're giving liquidity and we're giving certainty. And the value of that certainty only goes up in less certain times. And so you can imagine a market that is less robust in terms of HPA, selling your home is a less certain proposition. Our value proposition should only increase in that scenario.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#45

Okay. And last one, just going back to market share and the 99% offline as being your competition. If I remember correctly, you might need some of your -- some guidance here, but it was 4% market share, was that collectively for iBuyers? Or that was for Opendoor to hit your original targets? Just as you're -- as you've grown kind of faster than you've expected, has your view on what part of the market iBuyers can capture, or maybe not even iBuyers, just this new kind of tech model, whether it's power buyers or iBuyers, what kind of share that they can capture over time? Has your view changed or evolved around that at all?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#46

Yes, I think we're increasingly convinced of it. I don't think our macro views have changed. We talked about, again, we came public a little over a year ago, getting to $50 billion of revenue, 100 markets, 4% market share, nothing about that has changed. That is the path we're marching towards. I just think, to your point, we've pulled those expectations forward. We're 2 years ahead of our plan, well ahead of where we thought we'd be in terms of scale and market share at this point, and we've got a lot of momentum. So no, I mean, people ask all the time, how much of the real estate market is going to go online? I don't have a crystal ball. I do know that for a true seller who comes to us, they convert at incredibly high rates, north of 35%. So that's one indicator, how big can this market be and I think it's enormous.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#47

Okay. So as we wrap, any other color or comments you'd like to share just as closing remarks?

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#48

No. Thanks for having us. Listen, we're really proud of our results in 2021. As I said, 2022 for us is shaping up to be another record year. I think as my comments just probably indicated, we have more conviction than ever that what we're building is really going to change the real estate's transacted, and we're just in the very early stages. And we're going to continue to perform. And then we're heads down and executing to deliver on that vision. So thank you for asking all those good questions today.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#49

Great, Carrie. Thanks for being here with us. It was a pleasure, and we'll speak to you soon.

Carrie Wheeler

executive
#50

All right. Thanks, Ygal. Bye.

Ygal Arounian

analyst
#51

Thanks.

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