loanDepot, Inc.

Good morning and welcome everyone to Loan Depot's second quarter conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you would like to ask a question during the call, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. I would now like to turn the call over to Gerhard Erdely, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. I'm Gary Herger, Daily Investor Relations Officer here at Loan Depot. Today, we will discuss Loan Depot's second quarter results. We are excited to share our financial results and other highlights of the quarter with you. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's operating and financial performance in future periods. These statements are based on the company's current expectations and available information. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to risks or other factors that are described in the risk factors section of our filings with the SEC. A webcast and a transcript of this call will be posted on the company's investor relations website at investors.loandepot.com under the events and presentations tab. On today's call, we have Loan Depot founder, chairman, and CEO, Anthony Shea, and our Chief Financial Officer, Patrick Flanagan, to provide an overview of our quarter as well as our financial and operational results, outlook, and to answer your questions. We are also joined by our Chief Capital Markets Officer, Jeff DeGurion, our Chief Analytics Officer, John Lee, and our Chief Revenue Officer, Jeff Walsh, to help address any questions you might have after our prepared remarks. And with that, I'll turn things over to Anthony to get us started. Anthony?

Thank you, Gerhard, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be with all of you on the call today. Thank you for joining us. I look forward to sharing my comments and answering your questions. What was in 2020 arguably the strongest mortgage market in history, fueled by the unique circumstances of the pandemic, ended in the second quarter of 2021. While others see headwinds, we see opportunity because Loan Depot was purpose-built for this moment in time. This is precisely when a diversified at-scale marketing powerhouse like Loan Depot will shine. Our model was designed to capitalize on this changing landscape, and we are continuing to increase purchase volume, aggressively recruit loan officers, launch new joint ventures, and new product offerings like the Loan Depot Grand Slam, all while focusing on operational efficiencies and investing in our technology backbone. Based on data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, our model is succeeding, as evidenced by the growth of our market share over the past year. It took us 10 years to grow to 2.3% market share and just one additional year to get to 3.3%. leaving 96.7% of the market for us to go after in the future. In the same time period, we also achieved year over year and quarter over quarter increases in customer impressions and contacts as a result of our powerful data science and machine learning models that dramatically widened our top of funnel marketing reach. It's easy to do business and look attractive when interest rates are low, volume is high, and margins are fat. However, when markets shift, weaknesses are exposed. When interest rates rise, originations shrink and margins vanish. And that's precisely when we gain market share with our scale, brand, and diversified origination model. Companies that lack brand, technology, diversified reach, and a suite of service offerings will not be successful in delivering customer or shareholder value. Looking across the landscape of mortgage providers, we see lower gain on sale margins resulting from overcapacity and increased competitive pressure, particularly in the wholesale partner channel. We have noted previously that the industry will consolidate towards proven leaders as market shifts. We will withstand that pressure and, in fact, we can actually apply some pressure to the competitive landscape. Our purposely diversified origination model guards us against margin compression in any particular channel, affording us a competitive advantage to profitably take market share. Because of our marketing power, its massive scale, and our ability to fully leverage it, we demonstrate a nimbleness and versatility that relatively few can. Our marketing machine is one of our greatest assets. and able to successfully feed our direct lending loan officers as well as our in-market and partner teams. Our ability to nimbly and successfully load balance in this way drove an 87% year-over-year and 31% quarter-over-quarter increase in our purchase mortgage transaction volume. Complementing our customer acquisition and production skill is our brand. recognition of which increased 9% quarter over quarter. We have deliberately invested in our brand, helping it become the second most recognized brand in the industry today. Thanks to our popular Home Means Everything campaign, our organic website traffic has increased 200% over the past quarter. In addition to our national broadcast campaigns, our partnership with Major League Baseball served over 406 million impressions in the second quarter. We just passed the all-star break, and with the league championship series approaching later this year, we expect to substantially grow our brand recognition without significant additional cost. Disruption in the market today is all about better serving the home buyer or seller with easy-to-navigate bundle real estate services that simplify a complex and stressful transaction. While others have approached this from the real estate side, we use the power and scale of our industry-leading top-of-the-funnel digital marketing power with our strategic and purposeful sister companies and other Loan Depot assets to create a bundle service for our customers that most of our competitors simply cannot touch. To that end, we recently announced the launch of the Loan Depot Grand Slam, Powered by Miller Home. As most of you know, a constellation of important companies sit underneath Loan Depot umbrella. We provide real estate services through Mellow Home and mortgage services through Loan Depot. In addition, we also provide title, escrow, and closing services through our ACT and CUSA companies, and insurance services through Mellow Insurance. This strategy has been executed for many years with strategic acquisitions and organic bills. The Lone Depot Grand Slam bundles each of these items, all of which are necessary for closing, into one easy package to delight and simplify the customer's journey of homeownership and to increase revenue for us in each transaction. This will ultimately provide greater return on and leverage of our marketing spend. Constant interaction with our competitors, with our customers throughout their entire home ownership experience via multiple touch points complete the five wheel effect and increases our top of funnel velocity. Today, Loan Depot is more than a mortgage company. We're a digital commerce company committed to serving our customers throughout the home ownership journey. we are uniquely positioned to provide exceptional value and a reason to return to us long after the initial home financing transaction is complete. The Loan Depot Grand Slam represents a significant step towards our vision to become the most trusted homeowner fulfillment company in the world. There's an energy and enthusiasm at Loan Depot. We're growing and remaining very true to our public statements about our intentions, abilities, and the ways in which we can, do, and will deliver for our customers. While we are proud of our progress, much of our energy is derived from the fact that we are just getting started. We are always looking for new opportunities to grow and further accelerate our long-term strategy. I am excited about what the future holds for our customers, our team, and ultimately our shareholders. With that, I'll turn things over to our CFO, Pat Flanagan, who will take you through our financial results in more detail. Pat?