Wondering if it was the information in the WSJ article that makes you think this or is there something else that shows it?

Genuinely interested.

Thanks,

I can’t write for anyone else, but by all OBJECTIVE analyses, and the FT “sniff test*” for the past 2-3 years, and recent cost cutting maneuvers, Bilt is highly UNprofitable and many here think it is unsustainable (in its current iteration) and headed for bankruptcy.

Of course the CEO is going to claim “all is terrific” right up until the moment they file for bankruptcy protection. Just like many others, he’s laughing all the way to the bank where he put a good part of the venture capital money claiming it as his salary.

(* “sniff test”: Etymology, noun, (idiomatic) an informal check of an idea or proposal, using one's common sense or sense of propriety. Synonym: reality check)

More and more signs are pointing me in the direction of: transfer points out fast!

I agree that the biz doesn't pass the sniff test and is likely unsustainable in current form, but there's no hard evidence that Jain lied when he said Bilt is "profitable." Of course, "profitable" is a bit vague. There's a report out that says Bilt achieved positive EBITDA in April 2022.

To me, it sounds like Bilt is profitable but only because Wells is taking a loss on the business by paying Bilt a large credit card customer acquisition fee and 0.8% of rent payments (per WSJ article). When Wells recuts that deal, Bilt probably won't be profitable anymore.

There are many ways to account for stuff when you’re not a public company, so…. I’ll leave it at that

Yup, reminiscent of the world’s oldest business accounting joke. FT rules preclude the usual ethnic assignments.

Company CEO is interviewing candidates for the vacant CFO position. Says to the first candidate “I’ve read your résumé, you’re obviously very well qualified, I like to keep these interviews short and simple, tell me, how much is 2+2.” First candidate says “that’s easy, four.”

CEO says the same thing to the second candidate who pulls out a computer and spends five minutes banging away at the computer keys, looks up and says “four”.

Third candidate, CEO says the same thing. Candidate jumps up out of chair, slams the office door closed, runs to the windows and pulls down all the window shades, rips every computer cable and telephone line out of the wall, looks around to make sure no one else is listening, walks up to the CEO and whispers in CEO’s ear “whatever you want it to be”.

One of the biggest ones (and very publicly) for small companies to be EDBITA adjusted profitable - the Trump tax cuts also changed it so that R&D especially for engineers need to be amortized over five years, which means that one of the largest expenses for any tech company won't show up for quite a few years. For a rapidly growing startup, revenue of $10M and employee costs of $40M would be a real loss of -$30M per year, but on paper there's been a profit of $2M.

Looks like Ankur & Co. took the criticism to heart.

The first round of emails had this wording:

In the latest round of emails it was updated to:

Finally! I'm in the top 2% Mom!

TPG posted a Q&A with Richard Kerr from Bilt. In it they mention that in addition to capping rent day bonus points at 1k (down from 10k), they are also removing tax payments from eligibility for bonus points. I actually scoured the email and the terms and conditions they currently have posted for rent day and for the card in general and don't see any mention of this. I'm surprised - I get that people (including me!) were using this to make large tax payments but it seems unnecessary to do this since they're capping the bonus points at 1k anyways.

Here's the link:

https://thepointsguy.com/news/interv...lt-rewards-vp/

Drip drip drip

Here's the link: https://thepointsguy.com/news/interv...lt-rewards-vp/

> For example, only 15% of Bilt Rewards members also carry our cobranded Bilt credit card, and we found an incredibly small percentage of them were consuming a disproportionate amount of resources, taking away from what we could offer to the broader base.
> We discovered that bonus points on tax payments during promotions accounted for 20% of our bonus category costs, yet only 0.8% of cardmembers (or 0.12% of our total members) use the card for taxes.

I will report back that I did my Bilt Soulcycle class and it was pretty fun.

I won't deny that I've heard that their events are fun, as they should be since they're partly subsidized by Bilt. My partner and I attended a free Soul Cycle class and enjoyed it. I've heard good things about some of the dinners and other experiences. But, for most people, that and the occassional (capped now?) transfer bonuses are not incentive to spend $50k or earn 200k points on the card post-Rent day nerfs. I was counting on tax payments to maintain Platinum going forward. I have little incentive to earn 1x on my tax payments when I can earn 2.62% cashback on my BofA card, 2x on a Capital One Venture X, or 1x on my Hyatt or United card but have it help towards status that will definitely help me versus Bilt status that may or may not be useful.

If the transfer bonuses were guaranteed then you could see a value prop in getting the status. Otherwise you're just hoping for something that may never come.

I used to spend a lot on the 1st - pre-pay all of the month's bills, buy gift cards etc. This plus the loss of AA - they just sock-drawered themselves for me.

Is it clear that we'd even earn 1x on tax payments?

What does he mean by "Bilt today is a loyalty platform for the home and neighborhood"? Is it just dining rewards network participation? But any airline participates in this program.

No, and that was part of the point of my original post. In the TPG Q&A, they say tax payments will no longer qualify for bonus points on 10/1. I can't find anywhere in their terms and conditions where it talks about tax payments. I would assume that bonus points means the rent day bonus points and that they would otherwise still earn 1x, but who knows. I don't see why they would care about giving out 1x on tax payments, though. If giving 1x for everyday spend, which should be the most profitable scenario for them, is something they want to curtail, something is seriously wrong.

“We discovered that bonus points on tax payments during promotions accounted for 20% of our bonus category costs, yet only 0.8% of cardmembers (or 0.12% of our total members) use the card for taxes.”

I wonder if the change also applies to the 5X promotion when people get a new Bilt card. Tax payments would have been the way for me to rack up a ton of charges in the first five days.

Have people still been getting the 5x offer? I haven't heard about it recently and the last person I referred (June) didn't get it.

I didn't get the 5x offer when I changed from Evolve to WF.

No idea. Maybe it was silently killed or cut back? WF would probably be thrilled if the card was less appealing if it helps curtail their losses.

Bilt just raised $150 million in equity funding, according to Bloomberg. The gravy train just might continue.

Friend got that offer on new card last month

Paid my $600 semi-annual car insurance bill yesterday, and realized this was the last time I'll even be able to get full Rent Day credit on that kind of purchase, to say nothing of the normal-priced meals I bought and the one Lyft ride I took. Maybe 10,000 points was an amount they could've cut down, but capping it at 1,000 points will absolutely disincentivize a lot of spend on my card; that insurance payment will never again be made on the Bilt card, for example.

You're capped at 1000 bonus points, not 1000 points. Your insurance payment on rent day is 600 bonus points, 1200 total.

Math is...not my specialty. Thank you!

Mission accomplished, I guess.

They don’t want your spend on rent day only.

Right, but their total non-rent charge volume (i.e., the volume on which they can collect interchange fees) will precipitously decline now by a meaningful amount - I'm guessing 20-50%.

I'm still not sure if they make or lose money on each charge though.

The doubled travel (4X) and dining (6X) charges on rent day were probably massively unprofitable. Everything else at 2X was probably not very profitable either, considering that unlikely other card issuers they presumably split whatever is left of the merchant fees with WF in some form.

If they really lose 20-50% of their charge volume, would that be solely because of people who only used the card on rent day? If so, washing them out of the program seems to be the plan. But if they also lose everyday spend that people were making on top of the rent day charges, that wouldn’t seem good. But Bilt, of course, has the data that shows how people are using the card. If I had had the card, I probably would have only used it for dining (everyday, to gamble with potential rent day transfer bonuses) and rent day double earnings purchases.

In the end, profitability also very much depends on the details of the redemption deals and how cardholders use the points. Maybe those massive bonus deals on rent day transfers don’t cost them a lot if foreign carriers try to use them to break into the US market. And now few people will be able to reach high enough status to get those big bonuses in transfers, it seems.

Right - your last sentence is the key to me: now that next year I'll have no chance of getting Platinum status, I won't carry this card in my wallet anymore. I'll make my five charges per month, maybe put some things on it on Rent Day, and I'll be done. I had been putting dining on it pretty heavily, but I'll stop.

Sure, their data show where the charges went, but the psychology of a card losing its luster is going to be a little more complicated to calculate out.

I also think that all of the Bilt evangelists (me among them) who've been out there telling everyone, renter or not, to get this card will tone it down and recommend other cards instead. But they've also started advertising pretty heavily, so it's not all about word-of-mouth anymore.

Anyway, I also doubt this is the last of the negative changes unfortunately. I'm guessing we'll see something along the lines of rent only getting a point per $2 or something (which, granted, is still better than nothing).

So I was definitely pretty unprofitable for them with the vast majority of my non-rent charges coming on rent day for taxes, insurance payments, expensive travel purchases, etc. I had already secured platinum for next year with nearly 60k of non-rent spend YTD. I'm going to wait and see how the rent days promotions look for the rest of this year and early next year to decide where to put those charges going forward, but I'm skeptical it'll be worth the opportunity cost of putting it on other cards, especially if they're capping the transfers at 50k like they did with Alaska going forward. I still plan to use it for rent and dining and some smaller charges on rent day, up to the 1k cap.

I'm confused. What do only 15% of BILT users have the BILT credit card? What value do NON BILT credit card holders derive if they don't get full points for their rent?
Thanks.

I joined in June and got 5X for 5 days from the date the card arrived at home.

If you live in a property that has a partnership with Bilt (https://www.biltalliance.com, they claim 4M+ properties), I think you can pay directly with the app without the credit card. I don’t live in one so maybe someone else can provide more color.

You can also link your non-Bilt credit or debit card to Bilt and earn purchases on restaurants. Similarly, you can also earn points on Lyft.

Lastly, you can pay rent with a non-Bilt credit card and pay a 3% fee. You earn 250 points by doing this but it isn’t advisable.

I wonder how many non-renter people are there like yours truly who created an account a while ago (maybe mid/early 2023) with the idea of perhaps signing up for the credit card and in the meantime played the rent day trivia game to earn a few points every month. I never ended up getting the card, but transferred around 5000 points to AS recently (life changing, I know). And I did it twice because I also managed an account for my wife.

Without commenting about “don't get full points for their rent”, Bilt Rewards is (basically) a loyalty rewards program with transferable points, like Chase UR and AmEx MR. The Bilt Credit Card is 1 way to earn points in the program. “NON BILT credit card holders” can earn and transfer/redeem Bilt Rewards points.

SADLY, none of these explain why only 15% of BILT users have got the credit card because that's the only mechanism that gets you 1 point per $1 of rent. The avg rent in the USA is $2K, which means an easy 24,000 points each year. Why do 85% of BILT users choose to forego this?

I found a Reddit thread where it said if you live in a Bilt Alliance property as a non carhdholder you only get 250 points instead of 1x.

If you generously say that the Bilt points are worth 2cpp, 24k points per year is $480 per year or $960 every two years. If you count this as one of your 4 personal SUBs per two years, you can find better SUBs than that. Not counting the 5x for the first 5 days with max $10k spend.

The other answer is ... a lot of people find credit cards scary and don't want to apply for new ones?

SUBs they are good; but the fact is that there is simply no other no fee option that gets you 1 point = 1 rent dollar, PERIOD. And for all those who pay rent, it makes perfect sense because like you say, otherwise an average renter is leaving $480 or close to $500 annually on that table.

As I said, I don't pay rent (or HOA fees) so getting the credit card would not impact any earnings beyond the credit card. Maybe Bilt has a ton of members who, like me, don't actually rent. Also, there are probably a ton of "conservative" renters who don't want another credit card. If you visit personal finance forums, you will find plenty of people who have one or at most two cards and zero interest in getting more.

I agree that if I was a renter, I would have been more inclined to get a Bilt Mastercard, too. But if we igore the (unpredictable) rent day transfer bonuses, the earnings of the card didn't really beat other cards in my fleet (say, my CSR), so without a guaranteed SUB I was never convinced that getting the card was worthwhile for me.

Thought this was kind of interesting: my building management recently switched to one who is a Bilt partner. This showed up in the elevator a couple of days ago - so the building seems to have some incentive to promote it.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...742c97a52f.jpg