Upstart Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Upstart First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode to prevent any background noise. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Sonia Banerjee, Head of Investor Relations. Sonia, please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to the Upstart Earnings Call for the First Quarter of 2026. Joining me today are Paul Gu, our co-founder and CEO, and Andrea Blankmeyer, our CFO. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, which include statements about our outlook and business strategy. These statements are based on our expectations and beliefs as of today, which are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and should not be viewed as a guarantee of future performance. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various risk factors that have been described in our SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as the result of new information or future events, except as required by law. Our discussion will include non-GAAP financial measures, which are not a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliations of our historical gaps to non-gap results can be found in our earnings materials, which are available on our IR website. With that, Paul, over to you.

Thank you, Sonia, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I want to start my first official earnings call as CEO by stating simply that the Upstart leadership team and I are here to build a high growth and high return business. I'm the founder at heart. I dropped out of college at 20 to start something. And now after 14 years, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't believe the upside ahead for Upstart was as good as that of any startup. In recent decades, there's been a growing trend for the fastest growing companies to stay private. And as a result, public companies are typically past their high growth years. We believe Upstart is not. As reflected in our three-year outlook of 35% annualized revenue growth, we expect to be one of the fastest multi-year compounders at our scale. Consumer credit is arguably the oldest, most economically foundational business there is, and today is the perfect time to reimagine it. Unlike in some areas, the application of AI to credit is an unambiguous good for the consumer, saving them time and money to use on the parts of life that really matter. For lenders, AI will transform credit from a structurally commodity-like business to one where the player who wins the technology and modeling race wins the market. With a decade-long head start, we believe that race is ours to lose. Capitalizing on this enormous market opportunity will require some investment. Fortunately, we have just the right business to fund it. Core personal loans, unsecured installment loans to consumers not conventionally considered super prime. Our significant and growing lead in technology built up over that decade plus gives our product there the best rates and best process in the market. making room for unusually high margins while still delivering the best product to the customer. You're going to hear me talk a lot more about this as CEO. Our core personal loan business makes a lot of money, and my first priority is to do a lot more of it. Businesses in today's world, especially in lending, can too easily put up big numbers that depend on even bigger equity bases. At Upstart, we have always treated equity as a real cost, and I intend to double down on that rigor. Our operating strategy is to reinvest the profits from core personal loans into building the best product and most trusted brand across every category of consumer credit. This approach allows us to simultaneously maximize earnings over the long run while running an extremely capital efficient business. Similarly, our funding strategy for loans will continue to be one that relies primarily on third party capital. As they say, the market is a weighing machine in the long run. And my bet is that the businesses with the most profits and the least dilution will weigh the most. Now I'd like to turn to Q1 and where we stand today. Originations grew 61% year over year and revenue grew 44% while profit declined marginally. These are strong results and put us comfortably on track to meet our full year guidance on both the top and bottom lines. These numbers reflect a mix of four factors. Secular improvements to technology and marketing, strong momentum in newer products in the super prime segment, the usual Q1 seasonal headwinds in borrower demand and annual employee-related expenses, and some planned investments. I'll focus on our platform and product strategy, and Andrea will walk through the numbers. As always, our most important growth lever is improving our underwriting model. In Q1, we increased the accuracy lead of our personal loans model over benchmark by 1.4 percentage points. Our model to manage now stands at 173.6%, while 87.4% of the total inaccuracy remains to be solved. This quarter, we extended the scope of our models to predict post-default recoveries, replacing the assumptions we'd used historically with the full strength of our AI models. This fuller view of loan economics lets us serve more creditworthy borrowers which drove approximately 3.5% more originations at equivalent risk levels relative to our prior model. Simply put, our lead over traditional credit scoring continues to grow. We're also moving quickly to maximize use of AI across every part of the business. In servicing and collections, we doubled daily AI assisted borrower conversation volume, brought that capability to our mobile app, and expanded our AI powered payment features. We also deployed AI driven quality assurance tools to review customer service calls, giving us a scalable, consistent way to continuously improve the borrower experience. Across our platform, we originated more than 425,000 loans in Q1. We believe more Americans are choosing to borrow from us than any pure FinTech platform. With well over 20 million unique consumers having created accounts to check their rate with Upstart, we are rapidly building towards being the most trusted brand in consumer credit. In auto, originations grew more than 300% year-over-year and 30% sequentially. Auto retail was a standout, with originations up roughly 13 times year-over-year and nearly doubling sequentially, driven by a rapidly expanding active dealer network. Our work to reduce friction for dealers is paying off. About a quarter of retail transactions in Q1 used the remote signature capability we launched late last year. We also rolled out a new feature that lets dealers generate firm AI-powered offers across multiple vehicles from a single customer application. And we deepened integrations with dealers' existing compliance and CRM tools, embedding Upstart more naturally into how they already work. Home originations grew approximately 250% year-over-year and 16% sequentially, driven by better marketing reach and efficiency. In Q1, more than one quarter of these loans were fully automated, and we achieved an average time to close of just six days from application to signing, a new record for us, and a fraction of the industry average of roughly 40 days. In early April, we also added richer bank account data to our HELOC income verification process, improving accuracy and the saleability of these loans to capital market partners. This progress in auto and home has set us well on our way to serving the full range of consumer credit needs. With growth strong and technology advancing rapidly, The time is now right for both products to begin shifting some of their focus from pure growth to unit economics. Last month, we also launched Cashline, our first unsecured revolving credit product. This is an important step toward our vision of always-on credit for every borrower, and we're thrilled by the early results. Looking forward, the next area we're focusing our product and growth efforts on is none other than core personal loans. I said earlier that the profits from this business are central to our strategy, and we have already begun taking action to grow it. While we would normally expect originations to decline sequentially in Q1, core personal loans were flat to Q4. That stronger than seasonal performance signals the early stages of the reacceleration we expect to continue through the rest of the year. Now I want to turn to the capital side of the business. Funding supply for loans is strong. Thanks to the pioneering work Sanjay and the capital team have done, well over half of our capital is committed. Year to date, we've expanded and deepened our forward flow relationships, securing over $4 billion in new committed capital. That includes about $2 billion in new commitments from Altura, Centerbridge, and Wafra, alongside renewals from Fortress and Blue Owl. Notably, we've closed a 24-month commitment, which is our longest deal term yet, designed to provide durable capital through market cycles. I'm also proud to share that this continues our track record of a 100% renewal rate with every partner since our first deal in 2022. Additionally, our recent securitizations totaling approximately $1 billion were multiple times oversubscribed with the most recent transaction upsized. This reflects strong secondary liquidity for our loans, even amid broader market volatility. We also included auto-secured personal loans in a securitization for the first time, an important milestone when it comes to new product funding. These results happening against the backdrop of market volatility in other areas of credit are a clear vote of confidence in our platform. We take the trust our capital partners have given us seriously and always treat credit performance as an uncompromising first priority. The average return of our last 12 quarterly vintages of loans exceeds U.S. Treasuries by 651 basis points. with every individual vintage exceeding Treasuries by at least 385 basis points. Finally, the bank charter. In March, we announced our application for a national bank charter. As I said earlier, our strategy for funding loans is to rely primarily on third-party capital, and the bank charter doesn't change that. We expect banks, credit unions, and institutional investors to continue to purchase the vast majority of loans originated on our platform. Bank Charter will, however, bring significant regulatory benefits to Upstart, including by expanding our addressable market across all 50 states, reducing the operational and financial cost of originating loans, and accelerating our technology velocity by enabling us to interface with regulators directly. These benefits directly support our growth and profit goals and will show up over the next few years. Now, I want to close by welcoming Andrea, who joined us as CFO in March. Andrea is an incredibly talented finance leader with a background in complex, novel business models. She's learning the ropes here faster than I could have hoped for and is already making an impact on how we plan, prioritize, and execute. It is now my great privilege to turn the call over to her for a discussion of our financial results.

Thank you, Paul. I appreciate the warm welcome. And good afternoon, everyone. I look forward to spending more time with many of you in the coming weeks and months. It is a privilege to take my first earnings call at CFO. The Upstart team has built a highly differentiated AI powered credit platform, and the runway in front of us is enormous. I take seriously my responsibility as the financial steward of this platform, including the discipline Paul described around treating equity as a real cost and running a capital efficient business. I spend my first weeks here digging into the business and the plan, and Paul and I are fully aligned on our financial priorities. I look forward to updating you on our progress each quarter. Turning to Q1. Before I review the numbers, I'll provide some color around some of the factors Paul mentioned that were specific to the quarter and an expected part of our trajectory for the year. Starting with newer products, we continued to make progress growing our auto and home businesses and saw strong growth in super prime personal loan originations as well. This drove a sequential dip in our overall take rate and our contribution margin. Next is seasonality. At the top of the funnel, we typically see consumer demand for personal loans soften in Q1 as tax refunds reduce borrowing needs. This soft demand typically translates into lower conversion and a modest step down in contribution margin in Q1 versus Q4. Additionally, our business has OpEx seasonality in the first quarter of the year. with a step up in corporate costs associated with our compensation and benefit cycle, and the timing of our annual company-wide gathering. Finally, we made deliberate investments in talent in Q1. This sets us up to achieve our objectives for 2026 and beyond. Each of these factors, mix seasonality and investment, in addition to the platform and product gains Paul mentioned, was contemplated in the team's planning for the year. we are on track to deliver on our full year guidance. Now I'll walk through our Q1 results. Originations were 3.4 billion, up 61% from the prior year and 8% sequentially. Within this, total personal loan originations grew 6% relative to Q4, reflecting 26% sequential growth in super prime and better than typical seasonal performance in our core business. which was roughly flat sequentially relative to the historical Q1 step-down. Our newer secured products continue to scale, with auto originations up 32% sequentially and home up 16%. Taken together, these results demonstrate the strength of our core business and the growing contribution of our newer products to overall platform growth. Total revenue came in at approximately $308 million, up 44% year-on-year and 4% sequentially. This included revenue from fees of roughly $277 million, up 49% year-on-year and 4% sequentially, driven by growth in platform originations. Within fee revenues, servicing revenue continued to show solid growth, up 52% year-over-year and 22% sequentially, driven primarily by higher origination volumes along with an increase in fees connected with the sale of loans. Net interest income and fair value adjustments totaled approximately $31 million, up modestly year-on-year and roughly flat with Q4. Our contribution profits, a non-GAAP metric defined as revenue from fees minus variable costs for borrower acquisition, verification, and servicing, was $137 million, up 34% year-over-year but down 2% sequentially, primarily as a result of increased marketing investment to optimize digital channels and support new product growth. Contribution margin came in at 50%, down three percentage points from the prior quarter, reflecting the mix, seasonality, and marketing investment dynamics. We expect contribution margin in Q1 will be the low point for the year, barring any changes to macroeconomic environments. In total, GAAP operating expenses were $416 million in Q1, up 45% year-on-year and 14% sequentially. Variable expenses, borrower acquisition, verification, and servicing, rose 68% year-on-year and 12% sequentially, with the step-up versus Q4 reflecting marketing investments. Fixed expenses were up 31% year over year and 15% sequentially, reflecting the beginning of year investment and seasonal step-up in corporate costs I discussed earlier. I'll note that our fixed cost investments for the year were front-loaded into Q1, and we expect more modest sequential growth for the remainder of 2026. This sets us up for the adjusted EBITDA margin acceleration we've guided to as the year progresses. In Q1, we had a net loss of approximately $7 million. Gap earnings per share was negative $0.07, based on a diluted weighted average share count of $97 million. Adjusted EBITDA was roughly $40 million, with a margin of 13%. With this quarter's results, we are on track to deliver on our adjusted EBITDA outlook of $294 million for the year and to be solidly profitable on a gap basis. we ended Q1 with just over $1 billion in loans held on our balance sheet, up approximately $30 million from Q4. It continues to be our strategy to primarily rely on third-party capital to fund our growing originations. Notably, our secured products and other R&D loan balance declined modestly quarter over quarter, even as auto and home originations accelerated. More broadly speaking, as Paul mentioned, and supported by consistent credit performance, we've continued to enhance our capital platform. So far this year, we've signed more than $4 billion in committed capital partnerships, completed two securitizations for $1 billion in total collaterals, and increased the proportion of home and auto loans funded by a third party. Additionally, in February, we bought back 3.2 million shares of Upstart stock for 100 million, and we have about 122 million remaining under our current authorization. Looking ahead, we are reiterating our full-year guidance. This means that for full-year 2026, we continue to expect total revenues of approximately $1.4 billion, revenue from fees of approximately $1.3 billion, adjusted EBITDA of approximately $294 million, which equates to approximately 21% of total revenues and consistent with our prior guidance. Our guidance assumes a stable macroeconomic backdrop. Additionally, I'll share some color on the drivers and the shape of the year.

First,

For the full year, we continue to expect growth in absolute contribution profit dollars to be within at least five percentage points of fee revenue growth. We plan to deliver this profit growth using two complementary levers, growing our core personal loan business, where margins are already strong, and continuing to improve unit economics on auto and home as they scale. Second, Marketing and OpEx growth should moderate in the remainder of the year relative to what we saw sequentially in Q1. Third, we continue to expect adjusted EBITDA to be weighted toward the second half of the year, driven by originations growth, improved contribution margin, and OpEx leverage as we progress through the year. To close, our performance in Q1 was right on track. We enter Q2, with momentum across our core business and our newer products, with consistent credit performance, and with a reinforced capital base. I also want to thank Paul, Sanjay, and the whole team for their support and partnership as I come up to speed. With that, I'd like to turn it over to the operator to begin Q&A.

Thank you. And if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach your equipment. Once again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. And we'll pause for just a moment. And again, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. Our first question will come from Mahir Bhatia with Bank of America.

Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations to both of you on the new role. So I guess in one cue, you guys called this out a little bit, originations were up 60%, revenues up 40%, but profitability declined. You highlighted some of the OPEX headwinds during the quarter. You're reinforcing the full year guide. So maybe just take a step back, since you're both newer to the rules, and just elaborate on how you're thinking about balancing near-term profitability versus reinvestment and growth. I guess specifically, is there a framework guiding that trade-off, or are you just comfortable prioritizing reinvestment at the expense of margins given the opportunity that you're pursuing?

Yeah.

I think the first thing I would say is that we are very much on track for our full-year guidance. We are reiterating the guidance on the year, and so a lot of what you're seeing in Q1 is is very specific to Q1, which are some seasonal effects and some sort of front-loaded investment effects. But I wouldn't say necessarily that as a matter of strategy, we've decided to make any changes to how profitable the business is going to be. We're very much on track for the annual guide, which does have $294 million of adjusted EBITDA there and net income positives. So we feel really good about that. I would say taking a step back and just thinking about the business on a go-forward basis, We do think there's an enormous amount of growth ahead of us. We think we can keep compounding revenue at a high rate for a long time here. And we certainly intend to do that. I think the math is just really clear that in the long run, this business is going to throw off the most profits and be worth the most if we capture that growth in that market share. And so we definitely want to be reinvesting. But as you heard me say earlier, we want to reinvest in a way that's capital efficient. And so a big part of the way we intend to do that is by growing in segments where we have high contribution margins and take those margins and reinvest those into growing the business. Some of that is, you know, from an accounting perspective, is going to show up as costs. And, you know, some of that is going to show up in ways that will decrease the near-term profitability. But they are sort of investment choices that we think we can make in a capital-efficient way to grow the sort of total long-term profits of the business.

Thanks. And then, If I could just ask a follow-up on the revolving product some more. Talk about the availability of that. Is it broadly availability? And also discuss the economics, funding partners, how you're thinking about that product evolving. It seems like a little bit of a credit card replacement. Is that the right way to think about it? Anything more on the revolving product? Thank you.

We don't have too much to share on that product yet other than, yes, it's out broadly. It's called Cashline. We're really excited about it. It had probably the best first day we've ever had for a new product launch. I think there's an enormous opportunity, enormous need in the market. It is a revolving-like product, and as it grows and reaches scale, we'll naturally, just like with our other products, figure out the right third-party partners to work with on the capital side. But for now, it's early days. We're getting the product right, and we're very optimistic about it.

Thank you.

We'll now take our next question from Kyle Peterson with Needham.

Great. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions. I wanted to follow up on the prior questions on expenses. I guess both in sales and marketing and G&A were a little higher than we expected. I know you guys called out some of the So I guess I just wanted to see geographically where did some of the seasonal expenses fall and were there any, you know, costs related to, you know, the announcement that you guys are pursuing the bank application? And I guess how should we think about that expense load moving forward as you guys go through the process?

Great. Thanks for the question, Kyle. So the expenses from a seasonality perspective are largely showing up in two places. So one is kind of on the payroll expense and with respect to our people. That's really related to the annual reset of our compensation and our benefit cycles. And then additionally, I'd say primarily in GNA is where we see costs associated with our annual company-wide gathering, which happens here in Q1 and represents seasonal upticks. And so those are the two largely the seasonal elements that we see here in the P&L. As we mentioned on the call, as we look out over the remainder of the year, our expectation is both on the marketing and the more fixed OpEx side for the business that we'll see more moderated sequential quarter-on-quarter OpEx growth relative to what we saw here in Q1.

Okay. I guess were there any material expenses from the bank application this quarter or nothing worth calling out?

That's a great point. There's nothing material this quarter. We are contemplating the expenses associated with implementing and sort of launching the bank in that application throughout the remainder of the year in the guide.

Okay. Thank you. And then I guess just to follow up on funding, it's been great to see the volume hold up. I know there's been a lot of concerns about private credit. I guess, could you guys give at least at a high level update, like, where kind of your funding comes from in terms of what is maybe stickier institutional money with more permanent forms of capital versus some of these either interval funds or BDCs that probably are suffering a little more with redemptions and such. I guess just if you could size up the relative nature of those and I guess how you guys feel about and feedback you guys are getting from your partners. I think that would be really helpful.

Yeah, great question and one I'm excited to talk about. Funding has been a real area of strength for us. It's been an area of strength because I think fundamentally in the markets, the capital is going to flow to the places with the best performance. The performance that we've had on the credit side and that our partners have been able to see over the last couple of years has been exceedingly strong earlier in the prepared remarks I shared about the performance over the last 12 quarters and the spread to treasuries being very consistently high. And our partners have been able to see that. And as a result, year to date, we've been able to add over $4 billion of additional capacity. And most of that capacity is coming in the form of committed capital deals. So these are deals that have commitments over an extended period of time. I mentioned that we now have our first 24-month deal. That's a new high for us in terms of how long these deals are committed. And that's so important to us because fundamentally, we have a lot of confidence in how our credit is going to perform, but we don't have a lot of control over what happens in the outside world with market volatility, market perception, what's going on in other categories of credit, whether it's software or something else. And so from our perspective, it's a huge de-risking to be able to do deals with partners that believe in the credit and want to sign up for a commitment over an extended period of time that can get us through any potential market cycle that arises. And so we think of that as a real win, and we've been able to get a lot of partnerships going that have that extended commitment in place. And so we feel very good about where we are on loan funding.

Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Simon Clinch with Rothschild and Company Redburn.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering, just on the point about funding and the long-term capital commitments, Paul, when we think about the signings you've had recently, could you perhaps just describe whether the economics of the sharing of risk have changed in any way or how that's sort of evolving as these newer deals are being renewed?

Yeah, sure. So we do have risk sharing as a component in many of these deals. And investors can see some of the details about that in our earnings presentation. I would say those deal terms have largely stayed consistent to improving over time. And certainly, like anything as as we do more of these and we do them at greater scale and we sort of prove how they work, we expect over the long run that the terms will work better and better for us. But certainly, they've been consistent and consistent and improving. And so there is a risk sharing piece of these deals that is capital that we think is well spent. It's a very small percentage of all the capital that funds these loans. And, um, increasingly that is capital that from our perspective, uh, is expected to earn a quite healthy, strong return. So, uh, so capital well spent and certainly fits within the framework of running a capital efficient business that we talked about.

Okay, great. Thanks. And, and just as a followup, just going back to the balance sheet loans, um, They were up marginally, sequentially. I think usually when we see a lot of new funding commitments or agreements coming through, sometimes they come with up on purchases of loans off your balance sheet. It doesn't look like we've seen that. I was wondering, could you talk about the dynamics of that, please? And is a billion dollars really the kind of the level that we should be expecting on a go forward basis?

Sure, Simon. Yeah, I'm happy to take that one. So really what we see, we expect to see some degree of normal course fluctuation on the balance sheet size on a quarter-on-quarter basis, just driven by the timing of sales. And that's largely what we saw here in Q2. You know, it is our expectation that as we look out over the remainder of the year to see some step down in that overall balance in the rest of the year relative to Q1. With respect to the dynamic of back book sales versus forward flow, we saw both, a mix of both on the balance sheet in the quarter. I think what was very good to see when it comes to the strength of the capital platform is in Q1, we did see a higher proportion of our originations on auto and home sold directly through to third parties versus what we saw in Q4 and in 2025. So making very good progress on that front on the secured products. And then otherwise just have this timing dynamic on the balance sheet that we do expect to see from time to time.

Okay. Thank you.

We'll now take a question from Dan Dolove from Mizuho.

Oh, hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Got two quick questions. I'm looking at, I think it's slide 22, and that's the expected cash flow versus the upside-downside. I mean, it looks like the trend is widening there. Maybe can you explain some of the dynamics, and then I have a quick follow-up. Thank you.

Sure. I'm happy to speak to that.

And then Sanjay can chime in here as helpful. So basically, we sort of see it widening out. That's really reflective of just the increased capital co-investment amount. And so you sort of see the max upside, max downside is really just reflective of the total dollars that are at stake and co-invested here. Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. It does. I do have a quick follow-up. Can you just give some comments about the overall health of the consumer that you're seeing? I think it'll be helpful for investors and congrats again.

Yeah, certainly. Um, we, um, We see the consumer, the American consumer, as largely stable over the period. In fact, we've seen the consumer largely stable really since late last year. We've been kind of in a pretty tight range of what we call the upstart macro index. And from our perspective, stability is a really good thing. That's all we ever ask. Certainly, an improving consumer could be a tailwind, but a stable consumer is a good one from our perspective. And that's what we've seen We are, like everybody else, you know, we watch developments, but probably where we're unique is that we are very committed to being a model-first, model-led company. And so we let our models detect, you know, all that's going on in terms of consumer repayment patterns, both in the aggregate and at the segment level. And we just, we haven't seen, you know, any of the factors in the news come into play in a significant way yet. And so consumer stable.

That's really encouraging. Thanks, Cindy.

Our next question will come from Peter Christensen with Citi.

Good evening. Thanks for the question. Congrats on the committee capital levels. That's great to hear. Just would love to hear your take, at least on demand, that you hear more on the at-will side from some of your bank partners there, and then I have a follow-up.

Yeah, and feel free to follow up if this isn't what you're asking about. But we have been announcing and signing deals with partners, both that are sort of traditional financial institutions, banks and credit unions, as well as with institutional investors that are, you know, private credit or another form of institutional capital. So both sides, the demand for loans has been very healthy and growing. That's, again, against the market backdrop where there have been concerns in other categories of credit, in particular in software and some other areas. But for us, because of the strong performance, the demand from both types of institutions have been very strong, and we've been doing deals in both places.

That's helpful. And I just want to dig into conversion rate seasonality a little bit here. You did have a little bit of a step down last year in 1Q as well. Maybe it was a little bit more profound this year around. But generally, as we look at the conversion rate and how it progressed last year, kind of peaked into Q and then, like, leveled off and stayed fairly flattish in the second half of 25. Should we think about that progression being the same – or at least expectations right now for the remainder of 26, and at least on the 1Q sequential step-down, which is seasonal, it seems like it was a bit more than in previous years. Just wondering if you have any additional comments on that. Thank you.

It's a good observation. You're right about that. So there's two different effects going on with conversion rate. The first is a seasonal effect, and that happens every Q1. Every Q1, there is a noticeable reduction in borrower demand for loans related to tax season and tax refunds. And that happened this year, just like it happens every year, and is an important part of the story. But with respect to the conversion rate metric specifically, this particular metric has a lot going on in it. It used to be a much simpler metric when we really just had one product, one segment, what we now call core personal loans. But now because we've got a mix of products in there that serve consumers up and down the spectrum, there's pretty significant mix effects going on here. And this metric in recent quarters has become increasingly affected by our small dollar product, which is still a relatively new, not totally mature product. But the small dollar product, because they're very small loans, don't have a big impact on the sort of origination dollars or the financials of the business. But they do have a quite outsized impact on the unit count conversion rate, just like how many loans in the numerator converted. And so we did have a decline in the small dollar product in Q1, and that had an outsized impact on the conversion rate metric that we cite. So, you know, this is something we'll think about, you know, how to improve going forward. But just from a metric perspective, I mean, but from a, you know, from a core personal loan perspective, you know, that business actually had very stable conversion rates, unseasonally strong conversion rates and unseasonally strong volumes as we talked about earlier.

That is super helpful, Paul. I appreciate it. Sorry, just one follow-up on that. You know, considering Upstart Macro Index is doing marginally better, at least on a trailing basis. Should we expect some of that small dollar mix shift impact perhaps bleeding a little bit into 2Q?

We don't have any specific guidance on the small dollar product volumes at this time. I would say that the seasonal effects, of course, will run off as we get further into Q2, just as we get past tax season, obviously. So that will no longer be a factor. But you are right that there is an effect where a small dollar sort of sometimes can move inversely with core personal loans just because it sits after core personal loans most of the time in our approval funnel. So that can be a dynamic, but we don't have any specific guidance on the small dollar numbers. They're not a very large part of the overall financials right now.

Gotcha. That's very helpful, though. Thank you.

Our next question will come from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Just a couple of, maybe a follow up on forward flow agreements and then just more strategic question. So on the forward flow details, obviously you've been really active there, but just wondering on top of the ability to sign those, are you seeing any change from those partners with respect to target gross yields or return on equity? Any internal metrics that are changing at all, especially given kind of the environment that people have pointed to?

Well, as I said earlier, we've been able to do these deals against challenging macro backdrop, and we've been able to do them with largely consistent to improving deal terms. And that includes the kinds of spreads that people are looking for above benchmark rates. So And ultimately, it's all downstream of credit performance. If credit performance wasn't good, then that wouldn't be true. We might not even be doing some of these deals. But because credit performance is strong, ultimately, everything else is downstream of that. The amount of spread you need is a function of how much risk you perceive there to be and underperformance and all of that. So we've been really happy with the way we've been able to do these deals, and we expect to continue doing them.

Got it. And then I wanted to ask about the HELOC product. Obviously, really good growth and the highlight of being able to look at a six-day or so process versus up to 40 days as being the industry norm. Just talk about where you're seeing, at least in these early days, that speed advantage show up. I mean, I've got to imagine maybe it's everything, but wondering if you're seeing outsized benefit in higher conversion, lower CAC, loss selection, partner appetite take rates, anything like that. And where's that mix coming from or what's driving that? Is it cross-sell from personal loans or direct-to-consumer? Just trying to get a little flavor of the type of customers you're seeing in HELOC, what they're responding to and where they're coming from.

Yeah, you're absolutely right that being able to run a six-day process is huge. It's a huge advantage in the HELOC product and It does manifest in all of those places that you listed. You get better conversion. Better conversion necessarily means lower CAC. The other place that is really, really directly impactful for the HELOC product is in the operational cost of originating one of these products. Every time you can move a loan from one that has a heavy dose of manual work involved to one that can either be fully automated or just require a tiny bit of manual work, there's very significant ops savings there. I talked earlier about how we're now turning our attention towards optimizing the margin profile on these new products, and a big part of that is right in here of getting the process right and getting the cost down associated with that. So technology and getting that six-day process are just a huge, huge part of making that happen. From a how do we find customers for HELOC perspective, it's also we do a wide range of things, but probably compared to our personal loans product, we do have a heavier dosage of cross-sell from the existing customer base. And that will be an increasingly important part of our strategy going forward. Just because as I talked about, you know, we have a growing and very large population of people that have established a relationship with upstart you know over 20 million people have created accounts at some point to check their rate that means we've got a lot of information on these people we've got a relationship with them they think of us as a place for credit and as we get more offerings that can serve americans across the full economic spectrum across all types of credit needs that's going to be a really powerful thing and it's already showing up in key lock and our ability to cross sell that's great detail thank you so much

We'll now take a question from Will Nance with Goldman Sachs.

I appreciate you taking the question. I just wanted to follow up on the commentary around the 5% spread between CP and revenue from fees, and I was wondering if you could talk about kind of the framework for thinking about that, particularly in light of the ramp of new products, which I understand puts some pressure on that spread, but maybe isn't something you want to artificially throttle. Can you just talk about the puts and takes there and what would cause you to come in above or below that level?

Thank you.

Thanks, Will. And yeah, you're sort of hitting the nail on the head there. And so we're looking to grow contribution profit within five points of fee revenue growth this year. That is sort of the lag on contribution profit dollar growth relative to revenue is primarily driven by mix and the strong growth in our newer secured products, as well as in Prime. And it still represents very substantial sort of contribution profit dollar growth against the platform throughout the year. And so if you look at the things that are going to drive that contribution dollar growth on the platform this year, it's really the two things we alluded to in our comments earlier. First is, you know, continuing to lean into the strengths on our core personal and product and to drive the growth of originations there, which are quite accretive from a margin perspective. And second, it's going to be driving the continued growth of these secured products alongside the continued improvement on the unit economic performance of those products. So as those products grow in scale, that will contribute to improved contribution margin as we continue to drive more automation in our process and reduce friction in the process that will help improve the unit economics there. And as we continue to improve and increase the sell-through of the products off the balance sheet, that will also help drive the unit economic performance of those products, representing sort of a tailwind to the contribution profit dollar expansion throughout the course of this year. So that's really how we're thinking about it. You know, we are looking to continue to sort of hit that number on a contribution profit dollar basis, very important from a platform perspective. And those two levers are the things that are going to drive it.

Got it. I appreciate that. And then if you could just talk about, I think you had a comment around seeing the early signs of acceleration. You mentioned unseasonally stronger contribution margins and better than seasonality performance in the core personal products. So just maybe talk about what you're seeing that is allowing you to outperform seasonality and make the comment that you expect to accelerate that over the course of the year. Thanks.

Yeah, so these comments were in reference to the core personal loan business. Core personal loans, you can think of this as our historic personal loan product offered to consumers that are not conventionally defined as super prime. And so these borrowers have long been the place that our business has had the largest competitive advantage. We have a very large amount of differentiation in our ability to underwrite these borrowers compared to what the market offers. And as a result of that, we've had very strong pricing power historically in this segment. Over the last year, I would say that we've been very focused on on establishing our foothold in new products, especially in home and auto, and also balancing out the platform by getting very competitive and having a set of great rates to offer very prime customers. We've had maybe relatively less focus on this core personal loan segment. With the success we've had in home and auto, we've been able to redirect more focus back to the core. That growth is basically driven by investments in technology, improvements in that funnel, improvements in marketing directed towards that customer. And so we've just been doing those things. Those are all kind of durable improvements that we make. And we make those, you know, week after week, month after month. And they compound, they add up. And so we're starting to just see some of those benefits come into the Q1 results. That's why it was able to beat its sort of seasonal expectations and run ahead of those. And we expect you know, that to continue through the year where we keep reinvesting back into this product and widen its technology lead, improve its sort of marketing, reach more people. And by doing those things, we will see this product grow more, which in turn will generate more contribution profits for the rest of the business to use and reinvest.

And just to put some numbers on what we're seeing here in Q1 versus previous years. So in Q125 and Q124, Core personal loan saw about a 10% quarter-on-quarter decline. And so this year we're seeing flat originations. And that's sort of what we're looking to, additionally from a numbers perspective, to speak to that better than seasonal performance.

Got it. Appreciate you taking the questions.

Our next question will come from John Hecht with Jefferies.

Afternoon, guys. Thanks very much. You guys talked about some of the seasonal factors and product shift changes with customer acquisition costs, but I'm wondering, is there anything going on at the unit level? Have you seen any changes to origination fee structures in various products, and or are you exploring different channels of customer acquisition? Anything going on there just to talk about that piece of the business?

No, no, no, no large fundamental changes there. I would say we we we still use the sort of a full range of marketing channels that we used before. We've made improvements across many of those, leading to some of the some of the wins and better than seasonal numbers that that we've had. We have largely, you know, we talked last quarter a lot about our intentional strategy not to not to max out on take rates from borrowers, and we've stuck to our strategy there. So we are very intentionally not maximizing profitability of the business. If that was our North Star, short-term profitability, I think we could have a lot more of it by squeezing more out of take rates and fees, especially in certain segments. But that's not our strategy because we don't think that is the best way to maximize the long-term value here. We think there's just incredible value associated with winning over customers and building relationships with them and leaving a little bit of extra on the other side of the table. So we've been doing that. We've stuck to that strategy with respect to how we think about origination fees. And when we go out and do marketing, we certainly keep in mind that it's valuable to win over a customer and it's not all about maximizing the profit on day one.

And then with that in mind, any comments on whether it's recurring customer activity or Maybe I can even think about it as direct-to-customer activity or cross-sell, any kind of signals you're seeing there?

Yeah, we certainly do both. We think it's really important to have a lot of repeat customer activity. We are increasingly focused on what we think of as returning user activity, so these aren't necessarily people that got loans with us before, but you look at that 20-plus million number, those are all people that have decided to come check their rate from Upstart at some point, and maybe they couldn't get approved the first time. Maybe they couldn't get the sort of type of loan or the dollars of loans that they were looking for the first time, so they didn't accept. These are all perfect candidates for people as we've got more and better products to go back to. And so certainly, we do more and more of that, and that's something that we want to maximize. But we're also still so early in our growth journey. You know, 20 million is just a fraction of the U.S. population. And as the player in the market that uniquely we think can serve the entire spectrum, you know, from having great rates for people on the very prime end to having great offers for people at the other end of the spectrum, we think we can be sort of a full spectrum offering. And so we think our addressable market is a lot more than 20 million Americans. And so we want to keep adding new people into the database. And so we're going to keep marketing to do that. And that, you know, you put those together, and I think in the long run, you're going to have a very, very valuable business.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Our next question will be from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler.

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Just wanted to go back to the bank charter issue. Could you walk us through maybe some of the key regulatory milestones ahead there? And what's the expected timeline before you start realizing some of these operational and financial benefits that you talked about? Thanks.

Yeah, we're excited about the bank charter. As you mentioned, the benefits are primarily regulatory. So just to clarify in case that was lost on anybody, but we expect to get nice improvements that are both operational and financial out of doing the bank. But it is not a balance sheet strategy. It is not something that we're doing to change how we fund loans or how much capital the business needs to operate. In terms of process from here, we have submitted our application with the OCC. It's for our national bank charter, and we're working with OCC on pieces of that application. We don't have any specific guidance on the exact timing of this. That's going to come in our work with the regulator, but we're very motivated, and I think the regulators have been really constructive in how they've worked with us and other companies in this current situation.

Okay, great. Then maybe just a quick one. You bought back $100 million of stock in the first quarter. I think you have like a little over $100 million left on the authorization. How are you thinking about the pace of buybacks, I guess, throughout the rest of the year? And, you know, how do you balance that kind of with some of the balance sheet co-investment and new product funding needs? Thanks.

Yeah, well, I'll go back to saying that we think capital efficiency is really important to us. We want to think of equity capital as a real cost. We want to think about metrics in per share terms as often as we can. And so in the long run, we're just going to be thinking about how do we maximize the earnings of the business and how do we minimize the amount of dilution in the business. And so whenever there are opportunities afforded by a combination of considerations of available cash and liquidity and financial outlook, and the price is right, we're going to be looking at an opportunity to use stock buyback dollars. Now, having said that, the reason we aren't always buying back all the time is that we just have so much growth ahead of us that the threshold for doing that is really, really high. We know that there are so many growth opportunities that we can invest in operationally that our threshold for using cash for any other purpose is going to be really high. But yeah, once in a while, I think we'll have that opportunity in the market. And whenever that is, we will certainly consider doing it.

All right, great. Thanks for the color.

We'll now move to Vincent Kaintech with BTIG.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to follow up on the bank question, and I actually wanted to focus on the economic implications of becoming a bank. I thought it was interesting on Upstart's blog post when you highlighted about $200 million of annual frictional costs and also the lack of you know, being able to be in certain geographies or certain customers. I wondered if you could elaborate on that, you know, how difficult is it and could you really remove 200 million of annual frictional costs, you know, that would be big versus your EBITDA guidance of the 294 million. So just kind of wondering, like, you know, how difficult is it to achieve those things? Do we see that in economics in terms of EBITDA or does it come from higher transaction volumes or some combination? Thank you.

Yeah, so a lot of that 200 number is really in missed opportunity on the revenue line. So I think it might show up in a different place than you would think if you were just thinking about these as true kind of like friction costs. But the way it manifests is a few different things. The first is that we have a number of states and segments of the market where we can't operate or we're limited in how much we can operate because of because of state level regulatory issues and having a national bank charter to operate through resolves most of those and gives us access to sort of the full market up to the 36% rate limit. So that's a big deal. I mean, that's just, you know, TAM that we're missing out on today that directly gets solved by having access to the national bank charter. The second issue are direct kind of operational and financial costs associated with the way we operate today. And that is, you know, we originate loans through a large network of many financial institutions. And that comes with both direct financial costs, you know, that are paid or earned by the financial institutions instead of us, or, you know, the cost of friction and managing that sort of complex system of many players originating. And then the last is, so those I would say are the kind of really concrete costs that go into that 200 number. And then there's a separate thing, which is more of an intangible, doesn't go in that number, but I think it's just as important. And that is that it's obviously, we think, a decade where there's going to be substantial advances in AI, that AI is going to do a lot to transform consumer credit. And I think every regulator is going to naturally be asking questions about that, wanting to understand that, wanting to work with the leading frontier companies in doing that. And we just felt that from our position as the company that's been doing this longest, we should have a direct relationship with the regulators in helping them understand what it means to apply AI in the context of lending, help them get that right, and do that directly as opposed to trying to do it through a large number of intermediary financial institutions.

Okay, great, that's super helpful, thank you. Switching topics, if you could maybe kind of going back to the topic about take rate, you know, seeing the transaction volumes grew 61% year-over-year and your overall revenues grew 44% year-over-year. I'm wondering if you could kind of talk about how we should expect that dynamic going forward. And when you talk about, say, improving the unit economics of auto and home, I know you said that you didn't want to maximize profit, but does part of improving the unit economics involve the revenue side or is that primarily on the cost side? Thank you.

Great. Thanks for the question, Vincent. So with respect to the take rates we're seeing here in Q1, those are largely a reflection of the dynamics we've spoken about previously. So it's about the growth of our newer secured products, as well as makeshift to prime in personal loans. All of those have been growing very well. And so those have largely manifested in take rate that has come down year on year, as expected, right? And that's something we were expecting here in Q1. in addition to the seasonality dynamic we spoke about before. So we typically do see some softness in take rate in Q1 relative to Q4, kind of associated with the softness in demand, all of which is quite expected. As I sort of step back and think about the remainder of the year, a couple of things. One, take rate is not a metric that we – it's really an output metric for us, not kind of like an input metric, if that makes sense. And so largely as take rate moves in the business, it's going to be reflective of of kind of changing mix on the products. That being said, as we alluded to before, a key driver of kind of the ability of the platform to deliver contribution profit dollar growth this year is going to be the improving unit economics on our auto and home products throughout the course of the year, where we've already seen meaningful progress on that over the course of the last year, but we expect that progress to continue. And to your question, that should show up sort of up and down the P&L. So it will come from both improvement in efficiency on the cost side, driven by increasing automation, as well as just the benefits of scale and kind of having more loans kind of moving through the platform. And we do expect it to show up in improving take rates on average across the sort of secured product set as we look throughout the remainder of the year, driven primarily by an expectation of increased sell-through of loans off the balance sheet to third parties.

Okay, great. Very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question will be from Juliano Molana with Compass Points.

Good afternoon, and congrats on the results. As a first question, last quarter you mapped out an expectation of around $100 million of revenue from Gila-Lacamato between a ballpark 4% upfront take rate and 2% servicing. Is that still the rough expectation? And then when I think about that, One thing that I noticed this quarter is that, you know, within the servicing line item, there was a step up in kind of the other fees, which is historically the end of MS. It's closer to $3.9 million. Is that anything related to servicing some of those, you know, key locker auto loans?

And how should we think about that going forward?

Yeah, thanks for the questions, Giuliano. So on the first point, on the $100 million or so fee revenue from auto and secured, that continues to be sort of in the right ballpark in terms of what we expect. The sort of the take plus servicing that Sanjay spoke to last quarter represents more of, I would say, sort of the medium term take rate for that product set in aggregate. So may or may not fully achieve that inside of 2026, but sort of more over a one to two year time horizon as those products grow and scale.

And on your second question, I'll be, oh, sorry. Go ahead, sorry.

On your second question on the other fees and servicing, I might need to follow up with you on that one, but I can certainly do that.

That's very helpful. And then thinking from an execution perspective, as you sell more of those loans and you flow more through, should we expect servicing fee revenue to be an incremental driver, especially on the margin side? Because you're probably spending disproportionately on marketing and other expenses on the front end. But then a lot of the revenue from the growth of those new products is really deferred and realized over time.

I think I'm understanding your question, and yes, that would be the case. As we sell these loans through, it will, in terms of how it impacts revenue, will allow us both to recognize kind of fee recognition or take rate up front upon the sales of those loans, but You know, especially on our auto product where we expect to have a higher proportion of the compensation come from servicing, we will also be generating a servicing revenue that we'll recognize over time and we'll offset those servicing costs that we bear.

That's very helpful. Congrats. I'm in a position and I'm sure we'll probably follow up later. Thank you so much. Thank you.

We'll now take a question from Rob Wildhack with Autonomous Research.

Hi, everyone. I just wanted to follow up on that comment around medium-term take rate and servicing rate for the HELOC and auto. In your experience, do you have any sense for how long a new product takes to reach mature unit economics? Andrea, you mentioned maybe not 12 months, but 12 to 24 months, will they be mature by then or is there scope to improve beyond sort of that one to two year timeframe?

Yeah, great question. The beauty of our business is that there's not really any moment where we deem a product mature because the margins ultimately are driven by the level of differentiation that have been created by our technology. And so it was a lot of years before our core personal loans product reached its current level of take rates and its current contribution margins. We were doing that for probably seven, eight years before we got to levels like the ones that we have today. And that's basically because year after year, the models kept getting better, the level of automation kept getting better. And that's really the thing that allows you to be able to get pricing power in that market when the next best offer is so far away that you can increase the take rates there and still have the best product. That's where it makes sense to start ramping that up. So I would say we are very much in a position today where these products have found a great fit in the market. We are ready to start optimizing their margin profiles. But it's not like they're going to be done optimizing this year or even next year or probably even the year after that. They're going to just keep getting better as we create more space for differentiation and therefore more space for pricing power. And we view that as a fundamentally very good dynamic in our business where we can keep on improving the technology that keeps on creating more differentiation, which then allows us to have more pricing power. But we do expect these products to get meaningfully better in their margin profiles in the near term.

Okay, thanks. And just wanted to ask, too, about the cash line product.

Can you talk a little bit more about who the target user is for that? Is it something you see as a complement to personal loans or maybe more of a substitute for someone who doesn't need or want $15,000, $20,000? And then, you know, what about the economics there, like origination fees? And do you expect that those are balances and loans that will sit on your own balance sheet? Just any color you could provide there would be interesting. Thanks.

Yeah, Cashline is a product designed for someone who has generally a need for a smaller amount of credit, but on a more regular basis. So if you think of personal loans as a one-shot $10,000 loan, A cash line is, we're talking about hundreds of dollars, but something that you might access multiple times a month, multiple times a quarter. And so the design of the product needs to be very different, but it's actually still a really valuable loan, a really valuable customer because it's accessed so frequently over a period of time. So that's who it's designed for. In terms of its funding, yeah, in the... In the medium term, as that product grows, it's going to have its own dedicated funding partners that are the right home for it. But because the product is so short term, the loans are so small, it's not a major factor in the balance sheet today. And it's not something that we're particularly worried about.

And we'll now take our next question from David Sharp with Citizens Capital Markets.

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I had a couple questions, but both related to how we ought to be thinking about the impact of kind of the shifting origination mix, specifically more prime personal loans, HELOC, by definition, is going to be more of a prime borrower. And first, just focusing on capital, it looks like a third of your retained risk on the balance sheet is the beneficial interest, sort of the co-investing. Should that relationship or percentage drop over time? as a bigger part of your business becomes prime focused? Because it seems like, you know, the investor part of the marketplace is going to require, you know, risk retention to a greater extent, the lower rate of the credit. Can you just kind of walk us through if, you know, the balance sheet is going to change as the mix shift of your originations change?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think I maybe want to start by just correcting a misconception about the required level of risk sharing. I mean, really, when we thought about, you know, we looked at our business over the last few years, strategically, one of the most fundamental convictions we had was that we had confidence in our credit, but we didn't have control over what happens in the outside market. And so there would be market environments where funding was less available and And there would be market environments where funding was more available. And much of it would be outside our control, even if our credit was performing well. So we thought it was strategically critical to us in our desire to build the sort of largest provider of consumer credit that we needed to have capital arrangements and capital partnerships that could endure through market cycles. And so our putting in risk, a small portion of risk sharing into some of these deals was fundamentally in exchange for having committed capital over multi-year windows. And so we don't view that necessarily as a requirement. It's certainly not a bad thing. We actually view it as something pretty innovative that allows us to solve one of the most important sort of fundamental challenges in a fast-scaling business like ours. Coming back to your question on newer products and prime mix and how that will affect it, I think you are right that the sort of primer products will tend to have a lower sort of level of capital required from a risk sharing perspective. But I wouldn't necessarily leap to the conclusion that the ultimate mix will be any particular sort of mix of primeness. And that's because we have so much growth in multiple product categories right now. We're putting a lot of focus on growing that core personal loan segment, which is an extremely strong segment for us, a very profitable segment. We have a lot of growth in the auto product, auto, which is a product that every American across the entire economic spectrum needs. And you are right that, of course, the HELOC product tends to be a more prime product. But depending on the sort of exact rate at which each of these products grows, you could end up either, you know, with any particular mix of primeness.

Got it. Understood. That's helpful. And maybe just as a follow-up, sort of applying maybe the same rubric to kind of the medium term, you know, the three-year guidance. I mean, 35% revenue CAGR is obviously significant. And margins going from 21 to 25 is a material as well. But You know, the margin increase is possibly maybe not as much of a pickup as we would expect with revenue kind of more than doubling, increasing two and a half times over that timeframe. Is that related at all to kind of product mix, or should we just interpret that as three years from now, you still anticipate being in growth mode and probably still in an above-trend period of investment spending?

Yeah, more of the latter. So we are expecting this business to grow at a significant amount for a long time. Obviously, we gave the three-year guidance of 35% CAGR, but maybe the interesting thing about that from from the perspective of your question, was that 35% was approximately the same amount of growth that we got into in the first year as the later years. And so maybe you might infer from that that it's not heavily front-loaded like it might be for a business that you expect to grow a lot and then basically just taper off. We think the market opportunity here is so large across so many new categories of credit that we hope to be doing this for a very long time. And so I it is our working expectation that there will be great opportunities to reinvest profits into continuing to grow the business over time. And, you know, I couldn't tell you today, you know, given we've got three years of guidance, I couldn't tell you what is going to happen in year four, year five, year six. But if I had to guess, I would guess that there's going to be great opportunities to reinvest for some time. And so that's what's in our plan today.

Okay, understood. Thank you very much.

And it appears there are no further telephone questions. I'd like to turn the conference back to Mr. Gu for closing comments.

Great. Well, thank you everyone for your questions and for your time today. I just wanted to leave you with a few things I hope you can take away from our conversation. First, Q1 was strong and puts us comfortably on track to deliver our full year outlook on both revenue and profit. Second, core personal loans is our superpower. It has great margins and we're going to do a lot more of it. Third, home and auto have found their places in the market, and it's time to make them profitable. And finally, the opportunity ahead for us, for AI to remake consumer credit is enormous, and we intend to go after it while making every dollar of capital count. Thank you to our team, our capital partners, and our shareholders. We look forward to seeing you next quarter.

And once again, that does conclude today's conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.