Good day, everyone and welcome to the Consumer Portfolio Services 2015 Fourth Quarter Operating Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, management has asked me to inform you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. I refer you to the company's SEC filings for further clarification. The company assumes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. With us here now is Mr. Charles Bradley, Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Jeff Fritz, Chief Financial Officer of Consumer Portfolio Services. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Bradley.

Thank you and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter year end conference call. Let's see, so it's good quarter. Overall, sort of the results we expected. I think couple of the highlights of the quarter, we set up a new credit facility, $100 million with Aeris Capital, that now brings our credit facilities to three, at $100 million each. With $300 million capacity we think we're pretty well set. In terms of going forward, we may yet -- I think as times run by, we may increase some of those volumes. I don't know that we would add any more players at this point. Other positive of the quarter, we launched while we -- I think our eight program which is the Bravo Program in marketing. It's a deeper cut than most of all of our programs. It has a higher coupon, a less lower advance, it seems to be being well received in the marketplace, so that will yet again expand our reach in the overall marketplace which we look as a very positive thing. The other thing we're doing was that we've launched our direct lending program, there is lots other folks who do that but we've started to do that, and that also looks like it's gaining ground. And these are just a couple of different areas where we're pursuing to sort of widen our available targets in the market and how we can expand and continue to grow. Another highlight was the managed portfolio past $2 billion. We in turn view that as an important part of our overall strategy getting to that critical mass. $2 billion is a big portfolio, it's getting us where we want to go, so again it's a milestone that's worth noting. So on the negative side, collections remain a challenge,…

Thanks, Brad. Welcome everybody. We'll start with the revenues. $95.3 million for the quarter represents a 1% increase compared to our third quarter this year, and a 14% increase over the fourth quarter of 2014. The year-to-date revenue is -- the full year revenue is $363.7 million, that's a 21% increase over $300 million for the full year of 2014. Generally all of this is of course driven by the portfolio growth. We originated $269 million in the quarter and the consolidated portfolio grew 4% for the quarter and 24% year-over-year. Moving on to the expenses, $79.5 million for the quarter, that is up 2% compared to the third quarter this year, $78.3 million, and up 15% compared to $69.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. Full year expenses $302.3 million, a 22% increase over the full year 2014. For the most part, those expenses are consistent with the portfolio in originations growth. The interest expense which we'll probably talk about a little bit more is generally widened out a little bit as cost of funds has increased gradually due to spread widening in the ABS deals and some of the cheaper deals running off a little bit as somewhat more expensive deals were getting on the books. Our provision for losses, $36.1 million for the quarter, actually down about a $1 million or 3% from the third quarter, and up 15% from the fourth quarter of last year. Full year provision for credit losses, $142.6 million, that's up 32% from $108.2 million of last year. And if you've been tracking this you can see that the provisions have been running pretty consistently between 7% and 8% of the average portfolio balance for the quarter. Pre-tax earnings for the quarter were $15.8 million, that's a 1% increase over the…

Thank you, Jeff. So going to a little more detail in the operations. In terms of marketing, our marketing staff is holding steady around 112, which is kind of where we wanted to be. I think we had sort of targeted somewhere between 110 to 120. And I think what we'll see instead of an all-out push to continue to grow marketing staff; we'll probably just grow it in sort of fits and starts as we go along. As I said, the first part was to hire them all, the next part was to train them all. And this point was the point where we want to see increased production across the Board, and it will appear at least from the fourth to the fourth quarter that we are seeing some improved production individually within the writing staff. So the market looks good. As I mentioned, we did launch the Bravo Program. Our normal advance on average across all other programs is around 114% of book. The Bravo programs significantly back of book. And so what we're doing is, we're looking for a customer who has certainly has credit challenges but we're giving ourselves a very secure position in the Viacom [ph], and yet being able to offer that package to the customers through the dealerships. And so you're really doing as you give in the dealership a deeper spot in terms of the overall mix of the CPS programs. There are some other folks out there in the country that do program similar to this and I think we've been able to -- what we think is it's one of the best of our worlds and make this program and put it together. We initially launched it with five dealers and we added 50 dealers. Today our currently 500…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John Rolin of JNE [ph]. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, guys. I want to go into the Bravo Program a little bit. Can you maybe give us a comparison to another product or we might have a little bit more information on; who you're lending to? Whether or not you or the dealer is participating in the risk? I just want to understand how bad product sits in competitively.

I think it's not a huge risk to think our product will flaw like a few other lenders out there. I think for fun we can take either a Westlake or a CACC to both run programs with a lend back of book. They had the dealer participate in the risk and the upside, and they do different things in terms of -- I guess, CACC had some inventory stuff they did and then they had some pools where they had to have a certain number of loans and things like that. I'm not sure whether what's like this or something like that but they might. We don't do any of that but we do like the idea of lending back a book. We like the idea of having the dealer participate in the risk on the upside, which are both aspects of our program. We do not require a 100 loan pool or anything like that. This program was starting just like all the rest and I think one of the reasons we're not overly concerned with maybe dealer concentration is because we have a ready broad dealer base and so sort of the good Bravo loans will offset the bad Bravo loans as such. Having said that, we haven't bought 50 of these things yet. So we're not lighting anything on fire in terms of how successful it's going to be. But it is being very well received and it's working very well in terms of being added across the board to our dealer programs.

Just staying with this for one moment. I mean, this is kind of the first time we've heard about the Bravo Program, and then also coincidentally the quarter in which CACC lost the patent on their Cap System for which they sued many competitors including the other one that you mentioned, Westlake in your comments. I mean, is this time to try to exploit a GAAP, an opportunity in the market to go in with something maybe more attractive to the dealers or that 100 loan pool cap and put your brand on a similar type of program?

It was sort of interesting that legal thing came out because obviously we have this over for a long time, so we weren't overly concerned, and you couldn't generate anything up fast enough to say, gee, they lost their patent or whatever, let's go play. So no, it's not really what we were doing. Having said that, certainly the aspect of having that lowered to your program, CACC has been a very successful company for a long, long time, and so much like when one of the things we did, I don't know, five years ago as we said, gee, the independent market is really good. There is a part of the independent market that performs very well and they seem to get to charge and offer a lot more money, and so we made a big move to go in the independent market. Before we are about an 80:20 franchise versus independent, now we are about 60:40. And so, that was a big move for us and it has been very, very successful. I think looking at Bravo you might want to look at it in the same sort of light. We lend, we barely tick up into what you call the maybe the non-prime guys. I mean 2% to 5% of our business even remotely near those folks. On the other side, you go shorter down the spectrum fairly far, but in all of that we would still be turned to credit lender because we are advancing booker better and therefore we need the guys to perform. This would be going into that other end of the woods a little bit where now you got to bug about you can take risk of your credits and you could be very well paid for it. And so, yes, obviously…

Okay, then just one last question. The allowance ratio is down quite a bit, sequentially, and it hadn't been in prior fourth quarters. I'm just curious with delinquencies in repose up quite a bit. Why are the relatively sharp drop in the allowance ratio?

Well there is two parts of that. One, if you look back historically the allowance ratio isn't all that different than it was a year ago. It is almost exactly the same as a matter of fact. We did do a charge of sale in the fourth quarter that pushed it down a little bit, and so I think that put a little noise in there. But generally speaking the allowance balance is anywhere from that sort of 3-7-3-8 number up to 4-2. We do a lot of analysis based on the pools themselves. And so if not, like you sit there and say we don't target a specific number for the overall allowance. It's all done on a pool-by-pool basis and say you sort of come up with an aggregate, and so this quarter that aggregate just comes in a little bit lower. And we've got a few comments or questions on that already. John, one of the things you pointed out, the DQ in the repo inventory were high in the fourth quarter and increased in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, and that repo inventory in particular will drag its share of the allowance out of the allowance or finance receivables and down another asset for the repo over classified. And so you have, kind of a little bit of a fourth quarter event, we have some sort of high stress kind of credit performance and what you already saw which was higher levels of DQ in repos.

Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Scharf of JMP Securities. Your line is now open.

Yes, good morning. Wondering if we can circle back to get a little more sense for how we ought to think or maybe you are thinking about volume growth this year. I mean, there are obviously a lot of moving pieces and you highlighted out. It sounds like application volume over the last couple of months, where do that sort translating into? What historically has been a big seasonal lift in the spring, whether that comes through? But, just given the level of competition out there, what you are seeing in terms of pricing and buy rates as well as just trends in new car purchase or used car purchases. I want to get a better feel for whether sort of an 8% to 10% growth in originations is still something that is achievable this year?

Well to the easy part, we think 8% to 10% is a good target for us. As I said in the three areas that's somewhat the easiest because I think we grew about 12% last year to the extent it's close a little this year you could get into that 8% to 10% range hopefully pretty easily. To ask me what's really going to happen you got to wait until April because it's just too early to tell. What's interesting is, 'cause this is almost sort of verbatim from a year ago when I said, gee, it's too early to tell whether it's going to be a flat year again or whether it's going to be a big year, and last year was a flat year. We didn't get the big push in, sort of February, March, April timeframe. This year, the early indications are we will. And having said that, it's very hard I can't tell just yet whether we're going to do really well that or whether it's going to be mild or short lived. So it's very hard to say, certainly wouldn't be in a position to say where going to go 25%. But I think I could feel fairly confidently say 8% to 10% is a good range given that we did 12% last year anyway. But it is interesting that things are up. In terms of competition, there is a chance out there. We've actually increased our APR slightly in the midst of this which tells you a little bit that maybe there isn't quite as much pricing pressure or competition floating around, you might think. And again, this is very early return so it's very hard to say. But at the moment we haven't given a price to sort of get this big influx of applications. Whether other people are being a little more conservative or slowing down, it's very hard to say. We haven't heard that per se, particularly the big guys. The smaller guys maybe they are having a little trouble. But maybe ABS market or the Wall Street market is pushing them a little harder. I mean, I think the critical mass things is very important in terms of whether what we'll call the Wall Street not liking our industry, and so maybe that has something to do with it. But to sort of trying to give you a short answer, yes I think 8% to 10% is not a bad number, something just off of last year is a safe bet and we'll have to see how this first quarter goes as to what that real growth number is going to look like for the rest of the year. In terms of competition, I think we'd call flat to normal maybe it may slightly ease, we'll see.

Got it. Well you answered my next question which was on competition, but I'll raise it nevertheless because we seem to be hearing sort of conflicting commentary. I mean obviously, large one, obviously couple of large banks throughout 2015 sort of pulled back a little bit from Subprime Lending, Santander has noted that they kind of sacrificed some market share in the fourth quarter, and at the same time anecdotally we heard comments about a little more aggressive terms out there. But, small private lenders on the margin can't move the whole market. In general, is your sense that this big pick up in application volume in just the last couple of months is probably most related to the fact that a lot of your dealers are seeing some of their go to lenders pulling back?

I'd be guessing but I might say that's possible. I mean, if you sort of look at the history of the industry, Santander and some large parts has taken the role of AmeriCredit. Back in the day AmeriCredit was the gorilla, sort of, when AmeriCredit move things move. And so Santander started calling back and changing how they buy or raising the prices, I don't know, I honestly don't know, so as we heard they haven't done too much differently, they are still there. But the extent they do move then generally we may not be quite the first to know that we should be, but each time they do move that would have a significant impact in the industry. It's almost like, I use to reference Capital One. Capital One is a tremendous lender, they do lots of things great. When Capital One wants to go into subprime we all know it in a minute because they buy a lot, and so they haven't really moved off to where they have been in a long time, but that's a good example. If Capital One wants to buy a little dipper, we would see it. If Santander changes their buying pattern, we'll probably see it quite soon. And so those are sort of the things you were looking for. If we see a big thing out of Santander or if we see a big thing out of whoever else, then we'll notice it. Today, we haven't heard much. A small little noises here and there but not enough to really comment on.

Got it.

Certainly, if the big banks pull back, that certainly doesn't hurt us one bit so that's hard for us to see because you don't really get in a position where our people are reporting back that we're losing all these deals to Wells Fargo or somebody. I mean, Wells Fargo taking the top piece of the business of standard course. So to the extent that we're getting a little more of that business because they're not buying quite as aggressively, then it must be hard for us to really see that it would happen. And so when the big banks move marginally, it's tough to see because that's the top end and it's still only be a really sort of, not the minimums, but a smaller impact in terms of what we would actually get from what we call loosely the trickledown theory.

Got it, got it. That's helpful color. And just lastly, I'm turning to credit. I guess, Jeff, if we sort of excluded the sale or charge offs on the quarter of around $5 million which fairly unloaded some recoveries. I'm guessing the net charge off rate was probably closer to 7%. Based on your qualitative commentary about some of the customer behavior maybe feeling like it, it was more recessionary or getting closer. Should we be, I mean is our best guess in net losses on annual basis trickling with less denominator effect if originations grow 8% to 10%. Is north of 7% a reasonable thesis?

Yes, I think so, we've seen levels of several percent in the past and actually that charge off sale was closer to $6million dollars and so the normalized charge off rate for the quarter would be along 7% and within our model with the spreads we're getting even with the RBS [ph] costs, that's still something that we think is just within the working basics of them all.

Got it, got it. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of JR Bizzell of Stephens Inc. Your line is now open.

Yes, good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. Brad, maybe, or Jeff, thinking about kind of your monthly originations. Just wondering if you could kind of give us, maybe not specific numbers that kind of a cadent throughout the quarter. Was there a specific month that was stronger than the other?

No, fourth quarter, generally speaking I've been looking but October is usually okay, then November and December slide off, and that was generally the same trend last quarter. And then generally recovers back to what we might think of as October level and then we wait and see how February, March and April go. And I think that trend line is still sort of there.

Okay, great. And switching gears, I was wondering on that new third revolving credit facility that you all have. I wonder if it provides any more flexibility and underwriting that maybe the other two revolvers limited for you guys.

Well yes it did J. R. in fact a couple things for one; we carved out the ability to finance the Bravo loan. So we didn't want to get our cart before horse on the Bravo loan generally saying. I think that had a financing source for them, so we worked with those lenders, showed them, and originated a single loan at that time. We showed them the guidelines, what we intended and so we have, I think really just a limited bucket at this time, like a $10 million bucket to finance to as receivables but we don't want that allow us to get the wheels turning and then we can expand it as the volume requires. In addition, all these lines, all three of the lines have all kinds of concentration limits and things that protect the lender to keep us from deviating too far from our normal path of originations, and one of the areas that we were bumping up against on the other two facilities was what we refer to as extended term, basically 72-month contracts. And so when we went to negotiate this new facility we told the lenders, this is important we want a lot more capacity on the 72-month contracts and we got that, and so now when go back and renew the existing facilities with the existing lenders we have a new template to work with and that's kind of what we've been doing all along with this facilities.

Great, and then building off that Jeff and Brad as well. If you're going to have a little more flexibility and at least $100 million of that revolver to go after that more extended term, what does that mean for growth, maybe longer term with the current setup and similar to what you said once you renegotiate the additional? Does that limit being extended on term allow you to be a little bit, maybe not more aggressive but allow you to have more paper fall into the past?

No. I think, I mean all we really are doing is sort of having the lines conform to what we buy. I mean we certainly are going to more aggressive, we're not going to buy anymore extended term. I think on the margin, the difference in extended term is a couple of points. It's not, it's almost just a little bit of what we call the lines, the new line is slightly more user-friendly than the last line, and the last line was slightly more user-friendly than the line before that. So it's not nearly the difference as you might contemplate. It certainly was never intended to get a new line to buy a bunch of deeper stuff and stuff like that. So no, none of those things. Really the new line, we did want to have, the Bravo program is sort of a specific kind of lending and so neither of the other lines supported that, and so we didn't need to bucket that with support of Bravo and we put that in the new line, and I would guess to extend Bravo actually works and that's what it's supposed to do. We would then go back and try and add that element to the other line. But generally speaking the lines are all fine. We just needed another one. The overriding reason to get the third line was capacity. It does, it might be slightly more user-friendly than the last one so on and so forth, but that's really the only element. It does give us some room in some concentration areas, but not enough for us to think this should be a new focus. The only real difference between what we bought before and we buy going forward would be Bravo and maybe some direct lending as that starts going to. And having said that, we're hoping Bravo could maybe during 2016 gets like 5% of our production on a good day. None of it is going to be sort of a game changing thing in the short term, but it does give us the ability, like I said with getting to be independent. Overtime it can be a very significant game changing event.

Great, and then last one for me. Sticking with you Brad, last quarter you kind of reference choppy consumer sentiment and your views kind of on the consumer health. Just wondering, and I know when you prepare March you made some comments. But just wondering, overall, 30,000 for view of the consumer and how you all are kind of thinking about that as we move into '16.

Well like I said the most interesting thing about our 30,000 for view of the consumer is the consumer seems to have changed. Nobody wants to talk on the phone. Everybody has a smart phone, everybody wants to do things through texting and messaging, and yes I guess we should have been, or anyone in the industry should be more aware that this is the new trend and it's going to continue to evolve. The good news is we're kind of right there and following along with it, that's all good. But, I still think, so in terms of the technology, that's interesting and new. But again, I think certainly we and most people keep up with it no problem, but there is a moment there where you're going to lose a little ground and try to get everything working the right way again. And I can say it's almost, you can almost start putting in terms of the collection picture a few events. One, the regulatory environment was the one that we have three years ago. And so with regulatory environment, everyone including us, have to be collected in a different way, and so we spend all our time re-educating, retraining and so on and so forth, and then sort of find out sort of late in that game that, gee, customers don't want to talk on the phone as much as they used to. And so you have to sort of reach on things a little bit that way. And so, it's always been, it seems to be a bunch of little things change in the way these works. Now probably the third thing is, again, it's a little interesting that whether this is the new norm of customers running their accounts to DQ and then paying when they need to pay or whether the economy is a little weak right now it's causing that. We don't really know, but like I mentioned earlier it does seem a little different that the customer isn't as inclined to pay as quickly as they have in the past. Whether that's a technology thing, whether that's an economy thing, we just don't know. And whether it's a fact with the regulatory environment, you can't push them quite as hard as you used to, you can sort of pick your poison but all of them are having effect of higher delinquencies, hopefully not higher losses, but potentially slightly higher losses, and so we'll have to see how it plays out. We think the customers, they understand that working with CPS or other subprime lenders is, the number thing is re-establish your credit, now our whole educational thing with customers is that, gee, running your DQ at 20, 30 and 60 days isn't going to help your credit much. So, that's sort of the view from 30,000 feet of our customer today.

Thanks for all the detail.

Thanks JR.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Hick [ph] of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Yes, thanks very much. We've talked about, I think we can model giving your anticipation in marketing and originations, balance sheet directionality. But I wonder given the trends with respect to delinquencies and charge offs, can you give us a sense where you think your AOL coverage might go over the course of the next year.

You mean the percentage of the allowance?

Yes.

Yes. I mean I think we've expected the allowance percentage to continue to hover around that 4%. When we talk about the net allowance, the finance receivables allowance had been around 4% for some time, while we call the gross allowance which takes into account the repo inventory component has been hovering around 5%. We don't see any reason at this time for any significant changes in those trends.

So then how is your AOL based on a level, or are you looking forward to some sort of period of time and charge off anticipation, how do we think about that from a modeling perspective?

Well it's a challenge from a modeling perspective because we literally do it on a monthly static pool basis, and each monthly vintage pool gets its own schedule of provision expense and expected losses, and then those losses are charged to that pool's provision and then the whole thing, all 60 months, call it five years' worth of the existing portfolio is all aggregated to come up with any given periods, provision expense charge offs and remaining allowance. So for you guys, from the outside, particularly we're not the only company you cover, it's pretty detailed and complicated. But if you were looking for a shortcut, I think you'd go with these two big analytical ratios, like 7.5% to 8% provision expense and then try to manage an allowance of something close to 4% on a net basis. That's assuming that our portfolio continues to grow at something like, these intended to, well it's been higher in the past. But something like these expected growth rates.

Okay. And then, with respect to, I know I've heard tax refunds came a little later this year. But entirely early February, are you seeing the seasonal snap back in delinquencies and charge offs at this point in time or is it too early to get I guess?

It seems like we're doing okay, but again the quarter is not even half over. So, but it's not a negative, let's put it that way.

Okay. And then with respect to the Bravo, and I know these are early on. Ad staff and the servicing side, or does servicing as a structure is currently well set for the kind of a more direct and deeper subprime products?

I think we won't change the servicing at all. I think as much as we're getting a lot of questions on Bravo now. A couple of years ago or maybe a little over a year ago, we started doing title ending, and we pulled the plug on that about, I don't know, 15 minutes later. So this isn't worth getting massively wind up, like this is going to be a huge game changer yet. But it is interesting that it's a good program, it's been very well received in the market. It's not big enough for us to do anything different in terms of staffing and such. But, yes we think it's a cool program and we think it could do really well.

Okay, I appreciate the color. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mitch Sacks of Grand Slam. Your line is now open.

Hey guys, I wanted to extend a little bit about the comment you guys are talking about with respect to funding cost and cost of delinquencies with respect to pricing in the market for what you guys and your competitors are charging for loans. I think you started to see a little bit of firming. Do you think if delinquencies and funding cost continue to trend the way they are that you'll be able to, you or your competitors will be able to start to raise price in the market to try to help offset the new impact?

Yes, and started to take in a couple pieces. I think, I don't know if the delinquency has a big impact in terms of pricing. I don't think Wall Street, I mean, yes you're selling rated bonds and so I think the fact that they're subprime is sort of what changes the price compared to a prime or something else, not I think to the extent that people started getting worried about delinquencies and charge offs and things like that. Then as you go down the stack of bonds to the lower more riskier bonds, the pricing on those will go up. And again, that's probably not even that big a deal because the bonds you care about is the top couple, so I don't know that credit performance. At the moment Wall Street certainly seems to have a very low opinion on our industry anyway, so I don't know that that opinion you can get a lot worse in terms of having a pricing effect. So that part doesn't particularly concern me. I think the cost of funds, there is two other parts. In terms of cost of funds, the fact that Wall Street is now certainly demanding a significant higher premium, it's not just us, we look around and everybody else is getting tagged just as hard. The bar is certainly going up rather quickly, and I think I mentioned this in the past. The old cost of funds used to be around 5% and now it went down all the way down to just around 3%, and now it's getting very close to where 5%, might be just around the corner. That's going to have the most significant impact. Now to the last part is can we raise prices? I mean we might be able to raise…

In history because the funds are significantly higher, was the APR that the consumer is paying much higher also?

No. I mean if you go back to the last cycle as an example, in the last cycle the banks are the lowest cost of funds are playing. Our APR was on the 18.25, today it's 19.25 maybe a little bit more. So from the last cycle our APR is up a full point because the banks aren't really playing in a significant way like they did before, and we have the nice part of having ABS cost way down. And so I think in past cycles we're able to charge more than before and the pricing was a lot less. I think a lot will depend on who's in the market. I think if a couple of big guys pulled back or went away, you could raise your prices and eat the whole thing no problem. But it's a little early for us to make those kind of guesses. But I think, like I said, pricing pressure on other folks doesn't particularly hurt the bigger folks because they said they know what they're doing and we would fall into that kind way. So I think the little guys want more than us. And I think things sort of moved around a little bit because other folks are doing it, you might be able to recover some of your car. But again, what I'd rather do is let other people slow down or pull out and then I just get up to $150 million a month or something great for you won't care what the price is because obviously, remember that the basis of the business is extremely profitable, and so as much as in the short term I'm hurt a little bit, in the long-term it doesn't hurt us at all.

Okay, thanks very much.

Thanks, Mitch.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line Lucy Webster of Compass Point. Your line is now open.

Hi, thanks. Good afternoon. Do you guys have the average price where you did share repurchases during the quarter and the remaining dollar amount on your authorization?

The average price for the last three quarters starting with the second quarter of '15, average price is $6.21 a share, and we bought 25,000 shares give or take. In the third quarter the average price is $5.85 a share and we bought about 183,000 shares. In the fourth quarter the average price $5.18 and we bought almost 600,000 shares.

And then I can take it a step further, Lucy. We've acquired shares subsequent to year end as well. We've acquired almost 400,000 shares subsequent to year end, at something like an average price of $4.15, and we have about $3.4 million remaining on our board authorization.

Okay, great.

Yes, plenty to get us to the next board meeting, I'm sure about that.

Yes. And then just more broadly in terms of leverage. I know that you guys have historically run higher than peers perhaps, but I was wondering sort of longer term, 1-year, 5-year view, what are your thoughts there? Are you comfortable with these levels, or do you think that comes down over time? Any color there would be helpful.

I think from a debt point of view, our debt is kind of disappearing. So, we sort of look at it in terms of corporate debt that you're going to have to pay back, and then the debt that's in securitization debt is on balance sheet but the securitizations are going to pay it out. And so, if you look from just corporate debt center we're not very leveraged at all. So instead you throw in the big securitization debt where, leverage. And so the problem we have is if we grow and we're successful that leverage is going to increase because the portfolio is going to get larger and there is going to be more and more debt to extend. The magic answer is, gee, if the stock is $12 or something or whatever the stock price, you so much equity and you lower the leverage. But even that would be sort of a Band-Aid because if you continue to grow and you're successful that leverage will come right back because the portfolio is just going to get bigger and bigger, and what accounts for the vast majority of the leverage is the securitization debt. So it's a little, I think if you're going forward to try and figure out how to guess the leverage or what it would be, you can sort of run the same earnings you're looking at and you can run the same growth you're looking at and that leverage will probably increase. On the other hand if you want to throw in a stock price of $10 down the road and sell a bunch of shares to lower the leverage you can do that too. But we're not going to swear to that.

Right. All right, thanks it's very helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks, Lucy.

Thank you. And I am showing no further questions at this time. I'll hand the call back to the management for any closing remarks.

I appreciate all the people who attended. I appreciate all the good questions. Like I said, I think the fourth quarter went very well. 2016 might prove to be a bit more interesting year in terms about the industry and Wall Street, but we've done this for a long time and whether Wall Street wants to slow down or cause more than that it's just going to be another small bump on the road. And in the end we're going to continue in our goal to get to be very large and very successful, and that's the way it's going to go. So, again thank you all for attending and I will see you again in April.

Thank you. This does conclude today’s teleconference. A replay will be available beginning two hours from now until March 2, 2016 at 11:59 PM by dialing 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406 with the conference identification number, 49943840. A broadcast of the conference call will be available live and for 90 days after the call via the company's website at www.consumerportfolio.com. Please disconnect your lines at this time. You have a wonderful day.