Joe Fisher
Analyst · KBW. Your line is open
Thank you, Jack, and thank you to everyone on today's call for your interest in Navient. During my prepared remarks, I will review the first quarter results for 2021. I will be referencing the earnings call presentation, which can be found on the company's website in the investor section. Our first quarter results compared to our original outlook for 2021 is provided on Slide 4. We are off to a great start to 2021 as we are currently on pace to exceed all of our original targets provided at the beginning of the year. This quarter's results reflect the continued dedication from Team Navient to meet the challenges and needs of our customers. As a result of the strong first quarter and updated outlook, we are increasing the range of our original 2021 adjusted core earnings per share guidance by over 30% to a range of $4.15 to $4.25. Our outlook excludes regulatory and restructuring costs, reflects a favorable interest rate environment, and includes a 50% increase in planned full year share repurchases in 2021 by utilizing the remaining share repurchase authority of $500 million. Key highlights from the quarter beginning on Slide 5 include GAAP EPS of $2 and adjusted core EPS of $1.71. Lower delinquencies on both FFELP and private education loans, sold $1.6 billion of private education loans that resulted in total gains on sale and release of provision of $191 million. Originated $1.7 billion of private education loans, achieved BPS EBITDA margin of 29% in the quarter, strengthened our capital position and returned $129 million to shareholders in the form of repurchases and dividends. Let's move to segment reporting beginning with federal education loans on Slide 6. The net interest margin improved to 97 basis points, which led to overall net interest income increasing 9% to $144 million compared to the first quarter of last year, even as the average balance of loans declined by 9%. The increase from the year-ago quarter was driven by the favorable interest rate environment and ongoing improvement in funding costs. FFELP borrowers transition back to repayment. Total delinquency rates have declined 21% from the previous year to $3.8 billion. Fee income and operating expenses in this segment declined primarily as a result of the expected decreases in asset recovery volume, impact of COVID-19 on certain operational activities and improvements in operating efficiencies. Now, let's turn to Slide 7 in our Consumer Lending segment. The $180 million increase in net income was largely driven by the two loan sales that occurred in the quarter, which I will provide more color on in the following slide. The net interest margin of 299 basis points was in line with expectations as the decline from the year-ago quarter was largely driven by the increased percentage of our high quality private refi product within our consumer lending portfolio to nearly 40% of total loans. The delinquency rate declined 36% to 2.3% from a year-ago, and the charge-off rate fell to 68 basis points. As borrowers continue to transition out of forbearance, we feel confident that we are adequately reserved given the well seasoned and high credit quality of our portfolio. At this time, we have not incorporated a significant change in our economic forecast as it relates to the allowance. Although the trends we're seeing remain highly encouraging, excluding the provision release related to the loan sales, the remaining provision of $15 million was primarily related to $1.7 billion of newly originated education loans in the quarter. Let's turn to Slide 8, which highlights our loan sales. In the first quarter, we sold [ph] $1.6 billion of private education loans, consisting of $560 million of non-refi loans, and $1 billion of newly originated refi loans. The non-refi loans were all originated prior to 2014. These loans were primarily funded with unsecured debt, and we hold 8% of capital on our non-refi portfolio. The gain on sale from this portfolio totaled $46 million and resulted in the reversal of allowance for loan losses of $88 million. The second loan transaction consisted of a residual sale related to $1 billion of newly originated refi loans. We hold 5% of capital against refi loans, given the high credit quality and the low default rates that continue to outperform expectations. Gain on sale from this portfolio totaled $43 million and resulted in a reversal of allowance for loan losses of $14 million. The total gains associated with this transaction exceeded our last similar sale that occurred in 2019 and demonstrate the attractiveness of this asset class. The majority of the cash raised from these transactions will be used to reduce existing debt that was directly funding these loans, including unsecured debt and warehouse facilities. The gains on sale from these transactions combined with the acceleration of future cash flows and release of capital allowed us to increase our planned share repurchases for the rest of 2021 by $200 million, all while meeting our targeted capital thresholds. Our updated guidance presented today does not include any future loan sales. Let's continue to Slide 9 to review our Business Processing segment. In the first quarter, we continue to expand on opportunities that leverage our existing technology and infrastructure. This allowed us to achieve EBITDA margins of 29%, one more than doubling our total revenues to $125 million. The $68 million increase is largely due to supporting states in providing unemployment benefits, contact tracing and vaccine administration that we believe will begin to decline during the second quarter as the economy reopens, and these contracts are set to expire. The $37 million increase in expenses in the quarter associated with the growth in revenue in this segment, contributed to increased total operating expenses for the company of $7 million from the year-ago quarter. We continue to focus on improving our operating efficiencies across all of our segments as our growth businesses contribute a larger proportion to our overall revenue and expense. Let's turn to our financing and capital allocation activity that is highlighted on Slide 10. During the quarter, we repurchased 8.2 million shares at an average price of $12.23. At today's share price, our planned share repurchases of $500 million for the remainder of the year would reduce our outstanding share count by nearly 20%. In addition to the loan sales, we saw tremendous execution on the issuance of $2.8 billion of term funded ABS in the quarter with 1 billion related to the residual sale. For example, our FFELP issuance that priced in February was over 30 basis points tighter than the previous transaction that priced in the fourth quarter, and was our largest FFELP transactions since 2017. We continue to see increased demand for both our private and FFELP transactions. Our issuance of $500 million of unsecured debt in the quarter marked our lowest coupon ever printed for Navient's unsecured debt. On April 5, we retired $627 million of unsecured debt and have no remaining maturities for the rest of the year. These transactions demonstrate our ability to lower our cost of funds while managing our debt maturity profile to better align to the cash flow projections of our total education loan portfolio. We ended the quarter with an adjusted tangible equity ratio of 6.2%, which was in line with our updated forecast. The cumulative negative mark-to-market losses related to derivative accounting declined by 19% to $499 million in the quarter due to the increase in projected rates and the natural passage of time. Excluding these temporary mark-to-market losses, which will reverse to zero as contracts mature, our adjusted tangible equity ratio is 8.1%. Let's turn to GAAP results on Slide 11. We recorded first quarter GAAP net income of $370 million or $2 per share, compared with a net loss of $106 million, or $0.53 per share in the first quarter of 2020. In summary, the outperformance across all of our segments highlighted by our financing activity and growth businesses position us well to exceed our original targets, strengthen capital and increase returns to shareholders. I will now open the call for questions.