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Enova International, Inc. (ENVA)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 2, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone and welcome to the Enova International Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2016 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to [indiscernible], Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Thank you, William and good afternoon everyone. Enova released results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2016 ended December 31, 2016 this afternoon after the market close. If you did not receive a copy of our earnings press release, you may obtain it from the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.enova.com. With me on today’s call are David Fisher, Chief Executive Officer and Steve Cunningham, Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast and will be archived on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before I turn the call over to David, I would like to note that today’s discussion will contain certain forward-looking statements based on the business environment as we currently see it and as such, does include certain risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our press release and our SEC filings for more information on the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the projections described in today’s discussion. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. In addition to the GAAP reporting, we report certain financial measures that do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. We believe these non-GAAP measures enhance the understanding of our performance. Reconciliations between these GAAP and non-GAAP measures are included in the tables found in today’s press release. As noted in our earnings release, we have posted supplemental financial information on the IR portion of our website. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to David.

David Fisher

Analyst

Thanks Lindsey [ph] and good afternoon everyone. I appreciate you joining our call today. I'm going to start by giving a brief overview of the quarter, then I will update you on our strategy for 2017 and finally, I will share our perspective looking forward. After my remarks, I'll turn the call over to Steve Cunningham our CFO to discuss our financial results and guidance in more detail. The fourth quarter wrapped up what we think was a good year for Enova and we're very pleased with the strong performance and momentum we continue to see across the business. Fourth quarter revenue was $202.4 million, an increase of 15% from Q4 of last year and at the high end of our guidance. Driving the increase in revenue was growth in net credit and our US line of credit portfolios. But we also saw healthy demand across our other products. We believe we offer the best products in our markets providing simple fast access to good quality credit for people and small businesses who have limited savings and who frequently do not qualify for bank programs. As we've discussed before over 47% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $400 financial emergency. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter were $35.1 million which was in line with our guidance of 32 to 37 million. Our EBITDA once again benefitted from our efficient marketing as well as continued solid credit performance. While we are aware that some of our competitors have seen pressure on their credit performance over the last 12 months, we have not. The sophistication of our analytics and the extensive experience of our team, which spans over 12 years has allowed us to effectively manage credit quality through product launches, multiple economic cycles, competitor shakeout and regulatory changes. We…

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Thank you, David. And good afternoon everyone. I'll start by reviewing our financial and operating performance for the fourth quarter and then provider our outlook for the first quarter and full-year 2017. Total revenue was $202.4 million in the fourth quarter, a 15.4% increase from the year ago quarter and came in at the high-end of our guidance range of $185 million to $205 million. on a constant currency basis, revenue increased 18.2% year-over-year. Revenue growth was driven by growth in total company loans and finance receivable balances which increased to $692.7 million, up 29.2% year-over-year from $536.1 million in the fourth quarter of last year and that was up 3.8% sequentially. Following one of our strongest quarters of origination volume in recent years, total company origination volume in the fourth quarter decreased 6.1% on a year-over-year basis and 11.8% sequentially. As David mentioned this was largely due to our decision to reduce marketing spend towards the end of the third quarter in order to balance growth and our profitability targets. These actions led to a slow start to originations in the fourth quarter. However, originations for the second half of the year, our typical period of seasonal stream in receivables growth year-over-year and with the strongest we've seen for a similar period since the second half of 2013. Domestically revenue increased 20.7% on a year-over-year basis and 5.2% sequentially to $173.9 million in the fourth quarter and accounted for 86% of our total revenue. In particular, year-over-year revenue growth for domestic installment loans and receivable purchase agreements, and for the line of credit products increased 18% and 39% respectively. During the quarter, we continued to see increased demand for our domestic line of credit in near-prime installment offerings which drove our domestic combined loan and finance receivable balances up…

David Fisher

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Steve and thanks everybody for joining us today. I will now open it up for your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first questioner is David Scharf with JMP Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

David Scharf

Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. David, a couple of things on the origination front and I appreciate all the color and I recall how you had mentioned you had hold back a bit, reined in some of the activity in the end of the third quarter. Can you provide a little more color on ultimately what are some of the factors maybe that are driving your decision to increase and decrease and fine tune the marketing spend from months to months. I mean, is there any material difference in just the quality of applicants, I’m just trying to get a sense for what some of the variables come into play are?

David Fisher

Analyst

Yeah. Sure. Happy to provide a little more color there. So Q3, business is doing great, quality was doing great, acquisition cost was doing great, but new customer volume was running so high as we discussed at the time, that if we would have kept going, we would have had really strong revenue, but very high marketing expense and very high provisioning and we had probably missed our EBITDA number. And we decided not to do that. So we slowed down new customer marketing, which resulted in lower levels of originations plus higher profitability and the decision we made as a public company that as a private company, we probably never would have made. As we enter Q4, we had to then get the growth engine back going and it's not a switch you can just flip immediately. You got to, if you’ve got TV, you’ve got to get it going again. If your pipeline with lead providers has dried up, you've got to get it restarted, reactivation of that customer acquisition model just takes a little bit of time and we try to build a little bit of that in to our Q4 numbers. We didn't and we built enough that we still were able to hit our numbers, but it's just that ramp up in October in to the beginning part of November just took a little -- just took some time. And some of it was expected and most of it was expected, which is why we're able to still hit our numbers, but we just wanted to highlight that it did take some time and that's why origination, new originations in dollars were down somewhat year-over-year. We ended the quarter just fine. December was a really, really good month. We started off 2017 strong. We got those acquisition channels opened back up during the quarter and they're all working great now. So we're feeling really good heading into the beginning of 2017 here.

David Scharf

Analyst

Good. I appreciate that color and just digging into the product mix, sort of same kind of question once again relating to the type of customer you're seeing, the falloff in origination, well, the deliberate kind of pullback in originations from Q3 to Q4, it seemed to be most pronounced in the near prime segment and I hadn't really noticed, but taking a look back now sequentially, I really see just how rapidly that net credit product had been growing from the beginning of the year to Q3. And any growing pains you’re seeing in that product performance in particular or any?

David Fisher

Analyst

It's a longer buying cycle in that product in the short term, short term product, we cut some direct mail, the larger channel for the near prime product and that just goes through cycles that take longer to reactivate than maybe the short term product where there's more lead providers, which you can turn back on a little more quickly. So just took a little bit longer to reactivate net credit than it did the shorter term products, but the business still grew 43% year-over-year. The flip side of the slower growth in the fourth quarter was good profitability as we mentioned, we ended up over $25 million of EBITDA contribution, which was well above the 20 million we were guiding to. So that business is still looking great. Credit performance has been really good. Unit economics continued to improve. So we don't have any serious concerns over the net credit product right now.

Operator

Operator

Our next questioner is Bob Ramsey with FBR. Please go ahead.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Hey, good evening, guys. Maybe a quick follow-up to David's question. So it sounds like it would be fair to expect originations to be up year-over-year in the first quarter here, now that the marketing is kind of ramping back up?

David Fisher

Analyst

We feel -- origination volumes start off the year at or above our expectations. Q1 last year was particularly strong for origination numbers. I don't exactly have our forecast this year versus last year right in front of me. Q1, if you go back and listen -- if you go back and look at our conference call from last year, we usually see a pretty sharp drop in originations in Q1, just because the tax season in the US, we saw less of a drop last year and that's the only reason I'm hesitating because Q1 origination levels were pretty high last year, but all in all, the business is doing well in Q1. Origination levels have started, originations have started to get so much stronger than we expected. So we’re feeling really good about the strength of the products heading into the New Year.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Okay. And then on the marketing line, I mean, the expense came in certainly better this quarter than I was looking for. I don't know how much of that is timing as they say it sort of maybe took a little longer to restart the engines on that front and maybe how much is marketing efficiency. How should we think about the marketing spend in the first quarter of ’17?

David Fisher

Analyst

Yeah. I think it's a mix of both. It definitely again took a little bit time to reactivate the marketing kind of at -- especially October and the first half of November. And so that's a low number for Q4. As you know, we typically spend less in terms of marketing in Q1 than we do in other quarters, again just in the face of softer demand, especially in the US as we talked about because of tax season. And so I think, as a result of the combination of the two, you can see marketing expense for Q1 of this year probably be below what we saw in Q1 of last year and maybe even a little below what we saw in Q4.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Okay. All right. That's helpful. And then thinking about the other expense line, so I know you said there was the reversal of the business factor now or some piece of it. How much was that of a benefit this quarter?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

I'm sorry you're asking the TVB or earn an adjustment?

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Yes please.

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

That was just a little above $3 million.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Okay. Got it. I guess actually maybe I did see that then broken out in the release, so I just didn’t realize what I was looking at, which line was that in, you said that was in the G&A, right?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

That’s correct. And it is broken out in the adjusted EBITDA lines.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Perfect. Got it. Thank you. And then do you have the yield on the net credit loans this quarter?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yes. It’s hanging around, right around 55%.

Bob Ramsey

Analyst

Got it. And is the yield on new production any different than the yield on the portfolio at this point or is there still a bit of a drift there?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. I would say it's probably holding fairly steady to a slight maybe upward drift, but not dramatically. It's been hanging around the mid-50s for quite a few quarters now.

Operator

Operator

Our next questioner today is John Rowan with Janney. Please go ahead.

John Rowan

Analyst

Good afternoon, guys. David, in your prepared remarks, you talked about credit not getting worse. But there was a little bit of a deterioration in net credit or in, not in net credit, but in the net charge-off rate that you guys report in one of these tables. Can you just put that up, I know it wasn’t a big change, but just curious how you see credit being stable and the number was up just a little bit?

David Fisher

Analyst

Yeah, I mean look, it always moves around a little bit month to month, quarter to quarter, there are seasonal variations. There is product mix variations and it's also, even like the day of the month, the quarter can end on can have a pretty meaningful difference in those numbers. So we're looking at the more finite version, metrics that we look at on credit. First, payment defaults, ultimate charge-offs. We're seeing very, very stable. So it's really just factor of seasonality, kind of month timing and the mix.

John Rowan

Analyst

Okay. And then Steve, you gave some guidance for the gross profit margin, you said 50% to 60%, I assume that's an appropriate range for 2017 and maybe discuss what type of seasonality we're going to see. There has been so many moving changes over the last couple of years. I just want to make sure that we encompass the right type of seasonality in the gross profit line?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. You typically see stronger gross profit margins in the first half of the year. And then you see it weaken as we grow and again it gets back to that, those factors that I mentioned, it tends to be lower in the later quarters of the year.

John Rowan

Analyst

But that number, that 50% to 60% is appropriate for 2017, correct?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. That’s correct. That’s the right way to think about it.

David Fisher

Analyst

And just near the higher end of that range, middle to higher end of that range, earlier in the year and kind of middle to lower end of that range later in the year.

John Rowan

Analyst

Okay. And maybe can you guys just talk a little bit about the ABS facility that you set up for the high rate loans. It's not -- there aren't a lot of these facilities out there, and you’re not the only one who issues them, but maybe just talk about how it's structured, what type or rates and advance rates you're seeing in them. I just want to get a better understanding of how these high rate ABS facilities are structured?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yes. So I mean this was an opportunity to create liquidity across the final segment of net credit and it was an opportunistic trade, which made a lot of economic sense for us. In our release, our 8-K, we actually posted the rate, it's right around 13% in terms of the cost and the advance rates are pretty similar to what you see at around 80%. So it's a pretty straightforward structure that we can add to and utilize to create liquidity across that higher end of the APR spectrum.

David Fisher

Analyst

And I would just tell you the way to think about the margin on that with that rate of around 13% that I mentioned, the average APR on the collateral is around 120%.

John Rowan

Analyst

Okay. I'm not going to ask you guys about the CFPB, but what about the TCPA? If the Trump administration takes a different approach on it, do you see any benefits in your collection efforts by, basically you'll be able to call people on their cell phones through an automated dialer?

David Fisher

Analyst

Yeah. I mean the changes to the rules this year have had a small, but not huge impact to our business. We found some good ways of engaging with our customers that we haven't been able to that to kind of make up for some of the change in the regulations, to the extent that gets changed, it'll probably be a win for us, because we’ll be able to do the things we’re doing now plus the things we were doing before, but it wasn't a huge negative for us. So it wouldn’t be a huge upside if those get rolled back.

John Rowan

Analyst

Okay, last question. What's the tax rate for 2017?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. I don't expect it to be radically different, but probably just a little below 40%.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next questioner today is John Hecht with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

John Hecht

Analyst

Good afternoon guys. Steve, you discussed some, I guess we’d call it opportunistic flexibilities in your business in the sense that you got to basically estimate your numbers. And if you get more cautious in credit, you can reduce growth and you get the benefit from a lower provision and vice versa to get to your final goals. I guess the simple question is, maybe you don't have to go line by line, but generally speaking from a trend set in terms of origination growth, marketing margins, gross margins. I mean should we just sort of fake that your base case scenario is maybe a continuation of what we saw last year and that you have flexibilities on both sides of that. Anything meaningfully changed in terms of what we should think about in terms of the big inputs there?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. I mean I think we talked about an expectation of continuing with a higher proportion of new customers, which David talked about how that impacts marketing. That also will have an impact on how we provide for losses, but that was a trend that we saw for most of 2016. So it is a little bit of a continuation forward and you will notice that we did widen ranges on a few things to take into consideration and to give us some flexibility around being able to accommodate demand and new customer mix coming in.

John Hecht

Analyst

Okay. And then when I count for that, I guess the reverse expense this quarter, did your G&A was in the, I don’t know, like 24, 24.5 range. Is that a good base case that we should think about through 2017?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. We want to hold the line on G&A.

John Hecht

Analyst

Okay. And then final question, just given where your -- the growth in the net credit product and so forth, what -- are you guys set for funding for 2017 or do you need to expand the facility or how do we think about any funding requirements?

Steve Cunningham

Analyst

Yeah. I think we are in good shape with our capacity for net credit.

Operator

Operator

Our next questioner today is Tom White with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Tom White

Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking my question. So I guess somebody else didn't want to ask about CFPB, but maybe I’ll ask one in there. I imagine your visibility there maybe is not that great, but if you could just comment a bit on whether, how you guys are thinking about prior timeline for implementation, whether things may change between now and then? And then just a little bit more color on the small business opportunity. It seems like you guys are standing a bit more constructive on that. Is that kind of purely opportunism because of some of the shake-out or is there, just maybe a bit more color there on how your views changed about that opportunity? Thanks.

David Fisher

Analyst

Yeah, sure. So on the CFPB, I wish we had more visibility. I can tell you, as days go on, we feel and we felt pretty good the day after the election and I think as time goes on, we feel even better that the rules, if there are any eventual rules, will be more favorable to us than the proposed rules that we’ve previously seen. I wish we knew more than that, we don't. For all we know, a year from now, there's no more CFPB. I mean, it could be that dramatic or it could just be a delay in implementation. I would say the one thing we feel more sure about is it's highly unlikely there will be any new rules before 2019. And so that that continues to get pushed back. And I would say there's a good chance it would be later 2019 at the earliest. And so that that's certainly a positive from that perspective, one time, we were talking end of ’17 and we were talking early ’18 and late ’18 and now I think we're talking sometime later in ‘19. So to the extent there are rules, I think it's 2019. To the extent there are rules, they’re certainly likely to be more favorable to us than the proposed rules, but there certainly is a scenario where there aren't any rules. There aren't any significant rules. So, obviously we’ll keep an eye on it going forward. I think we'll know more, although not a complete visibility, complete clarity, I think we'll know more at our next earnings call and certainly be willing to talk more about it, more about that. And in the small business space, it's always a space we saw had a lot of opportunity. It did looked really crowded…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] This will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to David Fisher for any closing remarks.

David Fisher

Analyst

Great. Thank you and thanks everyone for joining us today. It was great to be able to wrap up 2016 on a strong note and as we said, we're very optimistic heading into the New Year. So we look forward to speaking with you again at the end of Q1. Thanks and have a good evening.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.