Rocket Companies, Inc.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rocket Companies, Inc., first quarter 2026 earnings call. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to Sharon Ng, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Rocket Company's earnings call covering the first quarter 2026. With us this afternoon are Rocket Company CEO Varun Krishna and our president and CFO Brian Brown. Earlier today, we issued our first quarter earnings release, which is available on our website at rocketcompanies.com under investor info. Also available on our website is an investor presentation. Before I turn things over to Varun, let me quickly go over our disclaimers. On today's call we provide you with information regarding our first quarter performance, as well as our financial outlook. This conference call includes forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and the assumptions we mentioned today. We encourage you to consider the risk factors contained in our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or further events, except as required by law. This call is being broadcast online and is accessible on our investor relations website. A recording of the call will be posted later today. Our commentary today will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for reported results can be found in our earnings release issued earlier today, as well as in our filings with the SEC. And with that, I'll turn things over to Varun Krishna to get us started. Varun.

Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining our first quarter 2026 earnings call. There is a lot happening at Rocket. So I'm going to keep this simple. Three things matter this quarter. First, we delivered strong performance in a volatile market. Second, we are using AI data and distribution to create opportunity instead of waiting for the market to hand it to us. And third, Rocket is no longer the same company that it was three years ago. The shape of our business has not just changed, it has fundamentally evolved. So let's start with the quarter. Adjusted revenue came in at $2.8 billion above the high end of our guidance range. That is not an accident. It reflects the durability of our model, the strength of our execution, and the discipline and resilience of our team. We do what we say, we say what we do, and we have done that through some of the most volatile operating conditions this industry has ever seen. That consistency is not cosmetic. It defines Rocket. Our $2.1 trillion unpaid principal balance stands out for both scale and quality. In Q1, we generated over $1 billion in income from servicing fees. The power of that portfolio is simple. It creates stable cash flow, it balances the company, and it gives us a built-in engine for future growth. When you combine that with our origination business, you get a massive recapture platform that expands the top of our funnel without traditional client acquisition costs. That is a rare combination, recurring cash flow, deep client relationships, and built-in upside when the market moves. Net rate lock volume was $49 billion, up 19% from last quarter. We gained market share in both purchase and refinance quarter over quarter and year over year. Adjusted EBITDA reached $738 million, with margin expanding to 26% from 23% in the prior quarter. Adjusted diluted EPS was $0.15 compared with $0.11 in the fourth quarter. Now, when I look at the housing market, there are two forces at work. The first is the market itself. Rates, affordability, inventory, consumer confidence. Q1 was a wild ride. Rates moved down through the early part of the quarter. The 30-year fixed rate went from 6.15% in January to just under 6% by the end of February. That helped spark both purchase and refinance activity. Then volatility returned. Rates moved back up to 6.5% in March. Affordability tightened. The spring season started unevenly. You can see it in the data. Existing home sales in March were down 1% year over year and nearly 4% from February. That's the market. It moves. It stalls. It surprises people. We do not build rocket around being surprised. The second force is much bigger, AI. AI is changing how every industry works, and housing is one of those industries. For decades, housing has been slow, manual, fragmented, and expensive. Consumers have carried too much of the burden. Agents, loan officers, and servicers have fought through too much friction, too many steps, too many handoffs, too much waiting. Artificial intelligence fundamentally changes that. real-time data predictive insights and intelligent automation can make the homeownership experience faster simpler more personal and more affordable a lot of companies are talking about ai right now some are still trying to find a strategy others are bolting tools onto businesses that were never built to use them properly that is not rocket we have been building toward this for years Over the last six years, we have invested more than $500 million in AI automation and the infrastructure underneath it. So when people ask what AI changes for Rocket, the answer is clear. It helps us scale what we already do well. That distinction matters. AI without proprietary data is not much of an advantage. AI without distribution is not much of an advantage. AI without workflow integration, not much of an advantage. The advantage really comes from putting it all together. At Rocket, we have the client's data, servicing relationships, brand, technology, loan officers, agent network, marketing engine, and operating discipline to put AI to work where it actually matters. Not in a demo, not in a lab, in the business at national scale. When AI is woven into the homeownership experience, we can do things others simply cannot match. A client can describe their dream home to Redfin and find listings that fit what they actually mean, not just what they typed. A service and client can be notified when it's time to refinance, understand their options, and move through the process in minutes. A home buyer can get pre-approved when it is convenient for them, not when the industry feels like picking up the phone. That is where this gets extremely powerful. Let me give you two examples. First, Agentic AI is now managing client prospecting and outreach at the top of the funnel. That includes helping clients find homes through conversational search, reaching servicing clients when they are in the money, and pre-qualifying purchase clients. This gives us the ability to contact, engage, and qualify our entire book along with new leads across chat, voice, and text. Prospecting used to be one of the most time-consuming and lowest converting activities for our loan officers. In some cases, a loan officer might dial 14 clients just to get one on the phone. Now, AI works those leads with precision. It knows the client's preferred time and channel. It uses our proprietary data to personalize the experience. It helps us reach the right client with the right message at the right moment. When you service one in six mortgages in America, speed and scale matter. When the market moves, we need to move at a level most of the industry cannot touch. AI prospecting has reduced loan officer prospecting time from up to two hours per day down to zero. That time is now being used with clients who are already engaged and pre-screened, driving conversion higher by double digits. That is not theory. That is production. Here's the second example. In late February, we launched AI-powered purchase pre-approval letters. The process is fast, simple, and it's available 24-7, no loan officer assistance is required. Clients can get pre-approved when it works for them, and they are doing exactly that. 40% of our digital pre-approvals are now completed outside of traditional business hours. In just a few months, agentic pre-approvals have grown to 10% of all pre-approvals. We are generating more pre-approval letters overall with a lower percentage requiring loan officer involvement, while driving 33% higher conversion through AI. That is the model. Automate the work that should be automated. Let our people spend more time where judgment, expertise, and human connection matter most. Create a better experience for the client and better economics for the business. Last quarter, I talked about an incremental $1 billion in monthly volume driven by our AI innovations. With our latest launches, we have added another billion dollars in volume per month. Our launch velocity has also changed fundamentally. We are now pushing out new features and experiences five times faster than we were just two years ago. That means faster scale, higher conversion, more capacity, and better unit economics. Turning now to integration, we are tracking very well against our major milestones. We now expect Mr. Cooper expense synergies to be fully realized by the end of 2026, one year ahead of the original plan. That is a major proof point. Integration is not putting logos next to each other. It is making the company work better, faster, and with more force. That brings me to who Rocket is today. Three years ago, we began reconstructing the company. We made aggressive moves to restructure, refocus, and reorganize Rocket into something much larger than a mortgage lender. In 2025, we built the foundation. We expanded the ecosystem. We strengthened the platform. We widened the top of funnel. We improved distribution. In 2026, we are bringing it all together across search, origination, servicing, data, and of course, artificial intelligence. That is how we create our own opportunity. We are not waiting for a perfect rate environment. We are not waiting for the market to normalize. We are building a company that can win in the market we have and take even more ground when the market improves. So when you think of Rocket today, you should think of three things. Platform, distribution engine, and ecosystem. These are not slogans. They are the machinery of the company. No one matches our top of funnel when you combine home search, marketing, and servicing recapture. No one matches the combination of our brand, scale, distribution, and data. We have hundreds of thousands of real estate agents in our network and more than 10,000 loan officers and broker partners. We have a technology platform custom built for this industry. We have proprietary data that gets smarter with every client interaction. That is very hard to copy. Others may copy pieces, a feature here, a workflow there, a marketing claim, a model, a partnership. But a piece is not the system and the system is what matters. Scale matters. Servicing matters. Recapture matters. Distribution matters. Data, compliance, and execution all matter. Without those things, AI is just a tool. With those things, AI becomes leverage. And then there is culture. Culture is still one of Rocket's sharpest advantages. Whether someone came from Legacy Rocket, Redfin, or Mr. Cooper, they're here because they believe in the mission to help everyone home. That matters more than people think. We are ambitious. We are competitive. We want to win badly. But we also care deeply about the client, and we care about each other. That combination is rare. Hard edge, real heart, that has always been Rocket. For 40 years, our culture has helped us move through change before others were ready. It helped us lead through the internet era. It helped us lead through mobile. And it is helping us lead again in artificial intelligence. We do not wait for change. We engineer it. That is who Rocket is today. This quarter shows the model is working. The AI work shows the model is getting stronger. And the company is built to take ground in whatever market shows up. With that, Brian, over to you.