John Flynn
Analyst · Stephens. Please go ahead. Your line is open
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for Open Lending's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I'd like to start today by reviewing our third quarter highlights and the progress we've made on our growth objectives, then Ross is going to discuss the broader car manufacturing and lending landscape and provide an update on our OEM opportunity. Finally, Chuck is going to review our Q3 financials and our updated outlook for full year 2021. Now to our high-level results, we're very pleased to report another record quarter at Open Lending. Q3 '21 certified loans increased by 138% to 49,332 certs. We reported revenue of $58.9 million, which was an increase of 98% and adjusted EBITDA of $42.1 million, which was an increase of 113% as compared to the third quarter of 2020. We're very encouraged by the continued growth in our credit union and bank line, where we achieved a 91% year-over-year increase in certs for the third quarter 2021. This was driven by the addition of new accounts, further penetrating existing customers and expansion of our refinance program. First, on the existing customer side. During the quarter, our top 10 customers, excluding OEMs have increased their certification volume by 185% year-to-date 2021 as compared to the same period in 2020. One way we are growing our existing customer wallet share is by adding new credit unions and banks to the refinance program. During the quarter, we onboarded 11 new accounts and now have over 40 credit unions and banks that are acting as funding sources behind these refinance channel partners. Our refinance volume was nearly 30% of our total certs in the third quarter '21. As a result of our flexible business model, our refinance channel has accommodated consumers by allowing them to modify their existing terms and lower their payments during these challenging times. We mentioned on our last call that our largest credit union customer had recently implemented our refinance program, lowering the bottom credit score from the 620 to 560. As a result of this implementation, we're happy to announce that this initiative has been a huge success and they have increased their volume by 5x and continue to grow. This is one example out of many of how impactful our partnership can be with our customers. Continuing to grow the refinance channel is one way we'll be able to help offset the temporary headwinds associated with affordability due to inflated values of used cars and the chip shortage, which are, in turn, impacting car sales, both new and used. Again, Ross is going to touch base on this topic in a few minutes. On the new customer side, we signed 16 new accounts in the third quarter, and four of these were Tier 1 accounts classified as over $1 billion in assets and two with assets over $8 billion. Momentum has also continued into the fourth quarter with seven new contracts signed and nearly 20 have active implementations underway. In certain cases, where permissible, we will announce the names of these large new customers once they've go online on the lenders protection program. Many of the inbound calls that we're getting from the larger credit unions are related to the fact that they're all going to need to comply with CECL in 2023. And based on the recent webinar that we co-hosted with KPMG, these financial institutions all have less than a year to prepare. We will continue to focus on this very important growth opportunity over the next 12 months. We're also focused on three other initiatives that position us for long-term growth. First, I know we've touched on this previously, but we continue to explore third-party funding sources to purchase loans, what we call a permanent capital vehicle. While the initiative is young, we're very encouraged by the progress to date of these third-party funding institutions utilizing our lenders protection platform to underwrite and decision loans. To clarify, we will not have any legal ownership in these funding sources. Second, we are in the early stages of work towards the ability to provide additional products to include better decisioning on prime loans as well as the ability to ensure other asset classes. Third, expanding our business insurance partnership relationships, as you know, we provided tremendous value to our insurance carrier partners, and we believe the ROE generated for the insurer are well in excess of other lines of business due to high underwriting profitability and low capital charges. Our current partners are very pleased, and we're in discussions with a few more that will give us even more capacity as well as help us with our initiative to possibly expand into other verticals. As a reminder, these are unique and value-added partnerships, which are exclusive in nature. On October 25 through the 27, we held our annual executive lending roundtable. We had over 200 credit union and bank executives joining us here in Austin, Texas, for three days of roundtable discussion. This event was the largest attended conference we've hosted since founding the Company. It was a clear indication that our lending partners are hungry for new ideas on how to grow their auto portfolio in the absence of chips and new car inventory. Before I turn it over to Ross to review our OEM business as well as the global semiconductor supply chain impact to our business, I would like to remind everyone of a few key points. As you've heard us say on previous calls, over 80% of our business is typically used cars. With inflated used car values, it's making it increasingly difficult for our target market, that's consumers with scores of 560 to 680 to be able to qualify for a loan due to the payment to income threshold that we have in place. With that, I'd like to offer a couple of insights based on our prior experiences during these types of cycles. For starters, this pandemic-induced recessionary cycle has presented patterns that we're familiar with based on over 20 years of data and history. Heading into recessions, we typically see supply in excess of demand as end market conditions soften. Conversely, off the market trough, we experience a period of insufficient supply as demand returns. We also see specific metrics that at times can forecast the inflection point. Currently, we are experiencing very low levels of dealer inventory, low levels of incentives offered by dealers and dealers transacting with the highest quality of buyer from a credit score perspective. In some instances, new vehicles are selling over MSRP and used car inventories are being priced up. While it can be challenging to know when we have precisely turned the corner, and reached that inflection point, we do know that in prior cycles, the recovery spans a period of 6 to 18 months. Over that time frame, pricing inevitably moderates and consequently, volumes increased notably. We do believe that we will be well positioned to capture our share of the estimated 5 million plus units of excess demand that currently are forecasted. It is important to note that we continue to be disciplined in the way we run our business. While others in the market are relaxing underwriting standards, we remain steadfast in our position that we want to set our partners up for long-term success by delivering appropriate risk-adjusted returns on their auto loan portfolio. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to Ross.