Black Knight, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Black Knight second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Steve Egerton in Best Relations with Black Knight. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Black Knight Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Jabbour and Chief Financial Officer Kirk Larson. Our results released this morning and the press release and supplemental slide presentation have been posted to our website. This conference call is being recorded and will later be made available on our website. This call will include statements related to the expected future results for our company and our therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our projections due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The risks and uncertainties that forward-looking statements are subject to are described in our earnings release, Form 10-K, and other SEC filings. Today's remarks will also include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Additional information, including reconciliation between our non-GAAP financial information to the GAAP financial information, is provided in the press release and supplemental slide presentation. This call will be available for replay via webcast through Black Knight's Investor Relations website at investor.blackknightinc.com. I'll now turn over the call to Anthony.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. Like last quarter, this was another exceptional quarter for Black Knight. as we continue to deliver very strong financial results and execute against our strategic growth initiatives. Specifically, we delivered organic revenue growth of 11%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 21%, and adjusted EPS growth of 10%. We're able to achieve these results due to the strength of our integrated end-to-end platforms and strong execution of our growth strategies. As a result of our strong performance in the second quarter, our confidence in the outlook for the remainder of the year, and our two recent acquisitions, we are raising our full year guidance again. I'll now walk you through how each of our businesses has contributed to these positive results. Starting with our servicing software business, we had another strong sales quarter, finding three new MSP clients, which brings our total to eight new clients so far this year. With these wins, we now have 90 MSP clients, including the 19 new clients that are currently implementing MSP. These implementations, along with existing clients' current loan acquisitions and second lien conversions, will add more than 2 million loans to MSP over the next 18 months. We also signed 16 new servicing digital clients in the second quarter, which means that 67 of our 90 MSP clients, or nearly three-quarters of our clients, we use servicing digital as a way to deepen their customer relationships, improve satisfaction, and ultimately increase retention. We continue to add capabilities to the servicing digital platform through integrations with our loss mitigation, automated valuation models, and product pricing and eligibility, or PPE, solutions. Regulatory compliance also remains a top priority for servicers. Together, our servicing digital and loss mitigation solutions give clients the ability to proactively work with their customers to electronically offer the most appropriate loss mitigation workout options. In fact, we signed six new loss mitigation clients during the second quarter. Moving on to our origination software business, in the mid-tier market, we signed seven new Empower deals in the second quarter, matching our strong sales in the first quarter. To put this in perspective, so far this year with our 14 signings, we have already signed more Empower contracts than we signed during all of last year and 2019, and are on track to meet our commitment of signing 20 to 30 new Empower clients by the end of the year. In addition, the enhancements in capabilities and breadth of services provided by our acquisition of Optima Blue last September has already resulted in multiple cross sales opportunities. including bundling our PPE with all seven Empower clients sold in the second quarter. This acquisition is also creating opportunities for us to upsell Empower to current OptimaBlue clients. During the second quarter, we added 42 new clients to our PPE solutions and 13 new clients to our hedging and trading platform. Year to date, we've added 95 new PPE clients and 24 hedging clients. and the sales pipeline is the strongest it has ever been. Moving on to the data and analytics business, this was another business that demonstrated continued momentum coming off of a strong first quarter and again achieved strong financial results in the second quarter. We signed three new clients to the Rapid Analytics Platform, or RAP. There are now 21 clients able to use this powerful cloud-based analytics tool to make more informed decisions and set strategies for future growth. In addition to wrap sales, the DNA team had great success selling our behavior models, property data, and AVMs. The acquisition of Collateral Analytics last year continues to result in further cross-sale success. By integrating Blackknight's property data set along with Collateral Analytics AVM, we are delivering a superior solution that provides enhanced value to our mortgage clients. Lenders and servicers continue to realize the value of leveraging our innovative end-to-end technology across the mortgage continuum. As an example, four of the eight companies that signed MSP contracts this year also signed agreements to implement Empower, and each is leveraging our data and analytic solutions. And as a result, we now have 27 enterprise clients. Our strong momentum extends beyond sales, as we continue to identify, develop, and deliver innovative solutions that create significant value for our clients and their customers. As I've mentioned previously, our next generation customer service solution enables our clients' customer service representatives to see the same screens and information as the borrowers they're assisting. They can easily access all relevant information, so they can truly help their customers quickly and efficiently. This innovative solution goes beyond improving satisfaction for the borrower. Because it is easy to use and enables customer service representatives to succeed at their job, it also helps improve employee satisfaction. We understand that retaining talent is a challenge in today's economy. As we deliver innovative solutions, our focus is twofold. To create a better borrower experience while giving our clients tools that are easy to use and that help them increase efficiency. Within our origination software business, we recently introduced two new suites as part of our actionable intelligence platform, or AIP. The first is the fair lending suite, which automates industry standard regulatory reporting and delivers analytics focused on fair lending practices related to fallout. The second is the mortgage call report suite, which automates the process of reporting loan officer status and production results. Both suites provide information to the lender when they need it, helping them make the right decisions at the right time, while decreasing the risk and increasing operational efficiency. These are just a couple of examples of the new AIP suites that we have launched recently, and we have many other suites being developed. By combining our technologies, expertise, and data and analytics in the AIP, we're helping our clients transform their operations. We also continue to enhance the work that AVA, our AI solution, is able to do. We are excited to see AVA's ability to support high accuracy levels and increase volumes from our clients. Finally, during the second quarter, we integrated our Optimal Blue PPE with Empower and added pipeline monitoring, which synchronizes the data between the two systems and continuously monitors for loan scenario data changes that could affect pricing or eligibility. Because this enhancement automates the data synchronization, which is traditionally a very labor-intensive, error-prone process, lenders benefit from greater efficiency and pricing that is always fully up to date. Next, I'm going to provide an update on how we're integrating our recent acquisitions to add further value and strength to our already powerful end-to-end solution set. We believe M&A is a great tool to supplement our internal innovations which is why we have completed six acquisitions since March of 2020. Last month, we completed the acquisition of Top of Mind Networks, which developed SureFire, a market-leading CRM and marketing automation platform that is designed specifically for the mortgage industry. The SureFire platform allows lenders and brokers to send a regular cadence of regulatory-compliant communications to homebuyers during and after the buying process to help them stay top of mind so that when customers look to refinance or purchase their next home, they'll reach out to the lender who has continually provided value since the initial interaction. With the SureFire platform, lenders can easily send company-branded educational and engaging content and videos to prospective customers at major milestones during the origination process. Here are a few examples. When a prospect completes an application, they'll receive an email with information about the mortgage process and what to expect. Or, when an appraisal is ordered, they'll receive a video about what the appraisal is and why appraisals are necessary. Each piece of content is created by mortgage marketing experts who have been building a comprehensive library of information relevant to homeowners for more than two decades. This content is useful for first-time homebuyers as well as repeat buyers to help create a positive and memorable buying experience. Because its outreach is automated, it allows the lender to focus on generating new business, while the Surefire system helps them create customers for life. In fact, lenders who use Surefire have reported closing twice as many loans as they did before implementing the platform. Top of Mind also has a mortgage-specific CRM with data fields and integrations to external data sets that are relevant for loan officers, while also providing work tasks that help lenders be more efficient. With customer retention as one of the most significant challenges lenders and brokers are facing, this was a perfect tuck-in acquisition for Black Knight. The Top of Mind platform is being integrated into both our Empower and new broker loan origination systems, as well as our point-of-sale solution and PPE. Of course, we will continue to support integrations with other technologies. We also plan to expand this innovative platform to improve growth recapture, and retention throughout the real estate and mortgage continuum. In the near future, Top of Mind's platform will be integrated into Servicing Digital to expand our clients' opportunities for retaining their clients. Then, we plan to integrate it into the Paragon MLS platform to deliver enhanced lead generation opportunities for realtors. In early May, we acquired EMBS, the leading provider of performance data and analytics on agency-backed securities. Clients use this data to get critical insights that help them make more informed investment decisions and better manage portfolios of agency-backed securities. Since the acquisition, the feedback from clients of both companies has been very positive. We have already had success cross-selling the EMBS data to Black Knight clients and have used it to enhance our monthly data reports, like the Mortgage Monitor. In summary, during the second quarter, We had very strong sales, delivered more innovative solutions, and further integrated the acquisitions we've made over the last year and a half. We remain laser focused on providing value and superior support to our clients, which has been foundational to our success. Thank you for your time today. I'll now turn the call over to Kirk.