Courtesy of Better Home & Finance
Digital lender Better.com will finally become a publicly traded company more than two years after it announced its Wall Street ambitions.
The debut comes nearly two weeks after shareholders at special purpose acquisition company Aurora Acquisition Corp. voted to combine with the mortgage player. The business combination has closed, the companies said, and Better Home & Finance will begin trading Thursday morning on the Nasdaq stock market under the symbols “BETR” and “BETRW”.
“We’re really excited to be taking the company public at a time that’s obviously a really bad time for the mortgage industry,” said Vishal Garg, founder and CEO of Better, and director of Better Home & Finance. “But $550 million of additional capital will position us to be a company that can both survive this downturn but also thrive.”
The firm’s sponsors, affiliates of SoftBank and NaMa Capital, formerly known as Novator Capital, will provide approximately $565 million in combined capital infusions at the time Better goes public. The funds will rejuvenate the firm which has endured both mass layoffs and significant quarterly and annual losses following the end of the refinance boom.
The company ended last year with just 1,300 team members, a fraction of its 10,400 headcount in 2020, and is reeling from an $889 million loss in 2022, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. It’s also facing two lawsuits, including one accusing it of misleading investors, although the SEC recently declined to recommend any enforcement action.
Garg, who took a leave of absence amid criticism following an infamous Zoom firing in late 2021, said the company has emerged from its previous struggles much stronger.
The business in the past 20 months undertook two internal cultural reviews, bolstered its leadership, crossed a $100 billion origination threshold and today is promoting its One Day Mortgage and technology bona fides. Better also claims it has decreased its quarterly losses 73% year-over-year, and shed approximately $1 billion in costs.
In an interview with National Mortgage News, Garg, Chairman Harit Talwar and Head of Financial Innovation Nneka Ukpai described how they kept the merger intact, how Better will pivot to meet the market and how it plans to disrupt the industry.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
