Dan Henry
Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead
Thank you, Ali. Welcome, everyone, to Green Dot's Q3 2020 earnings call. It's been a busy and productive few months since we last gathered. We are pleased to report a better-than-expected third quarter, which we attribute to a number of factors, including our continued work to drive efficiencies and lower cost and increased demand for our products across our consumer, retail and B2B offerings. We remain focused on unlocking new opportunities and capitalizing on the accelerated shift from cash to digital banking and payments which was further eliminated by the pandemic and other dynamics taking place in the marketplace. As we end, we are already seeing benefits from our work-from-anywhere initiative from both a cost savings and talent recruitment perspective. In a few minutes, I'll pass it over to Jess to walk you through the details of our financial results, but I'd like to start by sharing a few highlights and my perspective on what contributed to a solid third quarter. I'm going to focus on three key areas of progress to stem back to the objectives I laid out earlier this year. These will include improving our financial performance and execution, refocusing and enhancing our BaaS strategy, and launching our new and lasting challenger bank initiative. While Jeff will cover the financial performance in detail, let me provide you with my take on the results for the quarter. Non-GAAP revenue increased 22% compared with the third quarter of the prior year. This higher revenue was driven by a combination of new and existing customers using Green Dot products to electronically receive your income, elevated deposit balances from stimulus funds received in Q2, growth in our BaaS partner fees and accelerated demand for digital banking and payments products. We also started to see recovery in areas of our business that were negatively impacted by COVID-19. Our total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2020 increased by $42 million compared to the third quarter of the prior year, and our margins expanded by approximately 100 basis points. A big component of the increase in operating expenses was related to growth of our BaaS business. We also had lower marketing expenses in the quarter. If you recall, Green Dot spent a majority of its full 2019 marketing budget in the second half of 2019. Finally, we had a few headwinds to margins, especially an increased revenue share with one of our key retail partners, higher transaction losses on our purchase volume and the timing-related expenses associated with incentive compensation for our employees. Moving on to our BaaS business. As we previously announced, we officially kicked off new relationships with Intuit and Kabbage in the third quarter, which further positions Green Dot to serve and Empower America's 30 million plus small businesses and entrepreneurs. Leveraging Green Dot's capabilities Intuit announced their plans to launch a QuickBooks cash account and Kabbage announced plans for Kabbage checking. We're also very excited about Kabbage's accelerated potential now that there are parts of American Express. Through these products, small business owners will now have access to more seamless, safe and value-driven banking and cash management for their businesses. We're incredibly proud to be a part of this movement, and look forward to deepening our partnerships with Intuit and Kabbage and doing more for small businesses in the future. We believe the opportunity for Green Dot to offer its services to the vast SMB segment is immense, and we look forward to providing you with more updates regarding this opportunity. On that note, you may have seen an exciting announcement last week about a new strategic investment and partnership with Gig Wage, which for those who may not be familiar, is a very impressive and fast-growing start-up, focused on creating a better financial ecosystem for the rapidly expanding gig economy. I met Gig Wage's founder Craig Lewis, earlier this year, it quickly became clear that we have similar goals and visions for the industry and for our customers and that we could do a lot together. Green Dot Led Gig Wage's Series A funding round, and we will serve as their infrastructure bank partner, enabling Gig Wage to launch a number of new financial solutions designed for 1,099 workers and their employers. As a strategic investor and BaaS partner, Green Dot has an exciting opportunity to grow this vertical and capitalize on the growing demand for better banking and payment solutions for the Gig economy. Also, we have a few new partners we will be announcing soon. Brands that everyone will know and recognize. One thing I want to reiterate is our commitment to partnering with Select high-impact and high-potential companies, meaning they are highly respected brands with very impressive reach or their start-ups with tremendous potential, which we will differentiate ourselves as a BaaS provider by acting, not just as a bank sponsorship, but also a true partner, providing end-to-end support, spanning technology, program management, call center support, fraud and our retail network and more which we consider a huge differentiator of Green Dot. Last but certainly not least, one of the most important and exciting areas of focus and progress has been unlocking our potential as a powerful challenger bank. Earlier this year, one of the goals I set for the company was to introduce a new direct-to-consumer bank, and that vision will come to fruition very soon. Last week, we officially launched our wait list for go-to bank, which is an entirely new and simplified digital banking experience that will offer meaningful value and features designed to save people time and money and manage and move money effortlessly. We chose go-to bank as our new brand by doing some pretty extensive research and because we want this product to be the go-to destination for modern banking and money movement for everyone wherever they go. Go-to will be a solution designed primarily for low to moderate-income consumers who are looking for and can benefit from a better way to bank and transact. And we plan to expand the target market as we enhance the product features and services over time. As one of the only challenger banks to actually be a bank, Go-to bank will position Green Dot to compete aggressively and profitably. When we launch early next year, go-to will offer a compelling value proposition to a wide range of customers, including the security and protection that comes with a member FDIC bank, an intuitive mobile app and experience where you can quickly set up and manage your account, no monthly fees when we use direct deposit, free in network ATMs, 10 times national average API and other valuable features and rewards. And our plan is to expand on those features quickly. This new brand and product set represent a meaningful and long-term commitment and strategy for Green Dot. So you can expect to see a lot more of this in 2021 and beyond. While we intend to spend to develop the Go-to bank brand and acquire customers, our marketing dollars will be based on a data-driven marketing strategy driven by thoughtful and rigorous return on investment requirements and expectations for lifetime value. Green Dot has a proud 20-year history of serving over 33 million customers through our retail direct to consumer products and many more through our banking partners like Walmart, Apple, Uber and other well-known innovative brands. We know how to build products and make money movement and access more seamless, intuitive and safe for everyone. We also know there is a significant of our population that continues to be underserved by the financial services industry and we have the opportunity to change that with go-to-bank. I encourage you to visit gotobank.com and join our weight list. As you may be able to tell, we have been incredibly busy laying the foundation to deliver value-added products and services to our customers directly as well as through our valuable BaaS partners. At the same time we are delivering on our commitment to right-size the cost structure and established sustainable operating leverage, which will create value to you, our shareholders. I would like to thank our valuable employees who have been working tirelessly through these challenging times. And with that I'll pass it over to Jess to walk through our numbers.