Barry Sloane
Analyst · KBW. Your line is open
Good morning everyone my name is Barry Sloane, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Newtek Business Services Corp. Stock Symbol NEWT in the NASDAC we welcome you all to our second quarter 2017 financial results conference call. On the call with me today helping me throughout the presentation will be Jenny Eddelson, our Chief Accounting Officer. I’d like to point everyone's attention to the fact that they can follow the conference call newtekone.com, the PowerPoint presentation is on the site in the Investor Relations section and will also be archived there from audio perspective. With respect to that presentation if you go to slide number one there is a note regarding forward-looking statements. It's important that everybody has an opportunity to read and review that. Going into the presentation on slide number two, we always like to take a look at our historical stock performance. Newtek’s 12-month total return at June 30, 2017 including reinvested dividends, 41.5%. Our total rate of return year-to-date for June 30, 2017 including reinvestment dividends for six months 7.1%. A five-year return, 27% [ph] a three-year return 49.1%, a one-year return 27.7% all these returns are taken off of Bloomberg. On slide number three we are looking at our second quarter 2017 financial highlights. I would like to point out with the specificity one of the things that the company does desire to do in addition to a paying dividend, growing its dividend is seek to provide value and grow our net asset value. We would like to point out that on a per share basis, we had an increase of 1.7% over the course of six months on the year-end to June 30, 2016 and over the quarter it was four tenths of 1%. We had a net investment loss of 1.7 million for the three months ended June 30th compared to a net investment loss of $4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2016 on a year-over-year comparison. Our adjusted NII as difference to the adjusted NII primarily and the net investment loss on the GAAP perspective as most BDCs do not have regular what we refer to as reoccurring events which is capital gains because of our loan sales that's the primary difference between the GAAP net loss and the adjusted NII, so our adjusted NII came in at 7.2 million or $0.41 for the three months ended June 30th, an increase of 44% over adjusted NII of 4.9% in the year prior. So many other factors that are increasing our income, rates have risen three times in the last eight months so an increase in drive is interest income on the portfolio. The total size of the portfolio has grown from 211 million to a little over 240 million over the course of six months. So, all these factors are leading to increases in overall income. Our debt-to-equity ratio at the end of June 30, 2017, 81% and our total investment portfolio increased by 13.6% to $392 million. Moving forward to slide number five, in the second quarter we announced the closing of an investment in a new wholly owned control portfolio company IPM an Information Technology consulting company that provides professional services and also offers hardware and software to commercial enterprises. We are proud to announce in the second quarter that S&P increased its rating on our loans securitization class A notes on the 2014-1 from single AA+. We are also happy to announce that our servicing portfolio came in at 1.1 billion on June 30, 2017 an increase of 24.8% over the same year and we re-launched or redesign our website newtekone.com your one solutions company. On Slide number 6 we focus on dividends, our second quarter dividend was $0.40 a share, second quarter dividend of $0.40 was 14% increase over the $0.35 dividend in the second quarter of 2016. The total of the first and second quarter dividends equally $0.76 per share an increase to 8.6% over the total first and second quarter in 2016. We're forecasting and reconfirming $1.57 in cash dividends per share in 2017. Last year 47% of our cash dividends were paid in the form of qualified dividend, we do expect the percentage of our 2017 dividends to qualify for preferential tax treatment. Our loan business is growing faster than the other businesses. I don’t think it will be at 47 a range to of 30% to 40% might be more appropriate going forward. Looking at our SP [ph] lending highlights for the first six months of the year, our fundings were up 20.7%. We're going to focus a little bit on one of our controlled portfolio companies Newtek business credit that provides inventory, receivable line of credits as well as 504 loans. We funded 4.8 million of 504 loans during the first six months of the year. From a referral perspective, our referrals are up this year versus last in the first six months 25.7% receiving 4.7 billion in loan referrals. Through our 14-year history we have approved over 3000 SBA 7(a) loan totaling over $2 billion. We're announcing today that we are increasing our SBA loan origination guidance, previous guidance was 400 million we're bumping that up to 415 million for the year, that will represent a 31% increase year-over-year, this year referrals versus last year and a 4% increase over the previous guidance. On Slide number 8 an important factor of our success and being able to deliver value to shareholders is as we grow demonstrate our operational capability and our financial results, we've been able to lower our cost of capital. That’s been done through increasing our Capital One Bank line from 50 million to 100 million with a rate reduction of one a quarter percent for the unguaranteed loans and a one a quarter percent on the guaranteed loans. We also increased our Goldman Sachs line from 38 million to 50 million and we have a range of rate declines beginning at 1% on the margin decline to 2% depending upon how much leverage we pull down on the line. Very importantly, Newtek and our registration statement is now stale, it's in the process of getting repositioned, reinstituted with the SEC. We have moved to a strategy when appropriate to use an after-money structure for selling common shares, did exercise that slightly in the second quarter, we’re able to raise money at a 2% discount and right at the market, it was great vehicle, this is contrast for us raising larger blocks of money at 3% to 6% discounts from the last trade and 5 to 6-point underwriting commissions. On Slide number 9 we always like to point our differentiated BDC model and why we believe if you are looking at BDC investments, a lot of investors look at us just not as a BDC but they look at us as a general investment opportunity but for those investors are focusing just on Newtek as the BDC because we are different BDC. Number one most of the BDCs are externally managed so we don’t pay proverbial two and 20 out to ourselves, all of our expenses are fully loaded. Importantly from a risk perspective, in order for most BDCs to be able to pay out that market clearing dividend of 9% or 10%, whatever it might be, they've got to invest in riskier asset classes. CDO equity, mezzanine investments, subordinated debt with an equity kicker, all types of instruments that yield between 10% and 14% and it was some leverage on it. In Newtek our loan portfolio was primarily a senior secured loan portfolio, the average balance of our loans of 180,000 on the uninsured. We are currently originating between 600,000 to 700,000 if you include the guarantees so when you look at our loan portfolio of 240 million you've got a tremendous diversification in loan balance, in geography, in industry type and where loans originated, this diversification we believe significantly reduces our risk. But also, all quarterly adjust over prime and without a cap. So as rates move up with half of our portfolio not being levered this provides a lot of value to our shareholders in a rising rate environment. From an interest alignment standpoint, the President and the CEO owns about 5.8% of the common outstanding shares, my interest is very much aligned with the outstanding shareholders. No equity investments in CDOs is no SBIC, even though it doesn’t count as leverage, that's actually debt, you got to pay the interest, you got pay the principal back one day, so we look at our model and we look at the rewards that we are giving shareholders the levels of risk. We just think it's better. We think it's better because investors are investing effectively particularly in the controlled portfolio companies and operating businesses and these are businesses that we are active in, we control them, manage them these are businesses that we typically owned for over 10 years and in our lending business we have really good control, a great track record in history and you are dealing with senior secured loans, small balances and a lot of diversification in there. Moving to slide number 10, I think it's important to note when you are investing in Newtek and lot of people who are investing in Newtek because they are hopeful and we've been able to deliver it so far that it will continue to increase dividend, then you had to hopefully increase the NAV, our strategy is based upon continued growth in loan originations, organic growth in the operating businesses and the controlled portfolio companies, and strategic investments within the business solutions footprint to enable to take our private smaller company valuations NAVs to public company valuation NAVs. On the acquisition side on Slide number 11, the current pipeline we are currently looking at making investments in two PEOs is very beneficial particularly our businesses that we are trying to cultivate that have really significant HR needs, health insurance needs and benefits needs. We're also looking at acquiring a B2B outbound call center, this would be a great adjunct and finally give us the ability to professionally, systematically call out to our existing client base as well as the client base in our alliance relationships. Looking at our merchant processing portfolio that's a unique technological and operational platform at and we're also looking at a value-added reseller and professional services provider. We always take a look at Washington, particularly in today's environment every business should, there is currently a bill that’s come out of the House, small business committee, sponsored by Jim Henslin, called Choice, 2.0. The Choice Act would allow BDC to increase their leverage from 1:1 to 1:5 to 1. The value for an entity like ours as well as other BDCs is the next approximately $120 million worth of funding that we would need prospectively to grow our business opportunities, we will most likely have that instead of issuing shares. Now most people sort of ignore risk, I don’t, so we're adding more debt on taking on more risk but the amount of risk adding 0.5% in leverage to the asset is very minimal, very manageable. When you think the banks will leverage 6:1, 8:1 and 10:1 and we're just looking to go up a little bit, very manageable and we think this would be very beneficial to shareholders if it occurred. Question is does it potentially occur this year, does it occur next year, this is the type of bill that would be attached to budget, economic development you never know but on positive note small businesses very bipartisan today. So, we are optimistic, frankly in the past the former SEC Chair was not a huge fan of BDC, there's a new SEC person that the President has nominated and we think that particular SEC Chair will be more favorable to several of the things on Slide number 12 including the AAFE for investment companies this is key because it prospectively will change a view point from the SEC would allow BDC to be re-included provided a qualify for size into the rest of 2000 or the S&P 500. Moving to Slide number 13, we're proud of the performance of our small business lending group has by our Chief Lending Officer, Peter Downs and his great management team with the largest non-bank government guaranteed lender in the United States including banks of 17th largest. It's important to note we're not new to the market of making loans, to small and medium size businesses, we have a 14-year track record of loan default frequency and severities. We've issued 7 S&P rated securitizations, AA and A. And we're following in the footstep of a business and industry where the 7(a) program has been around for 61 years and has historically provided money to the US Treasury. Looking at our growth in the pipeline on Slide number 14, our originations grew 20% over the first six months of this year. Our referrals are growing by 25.7% and when you look at our pipeline it is also growing. I would like to note that the deploy in loans and underwriting are really due to an improvement in process. We have less loans sitting in underwriting for considerable periods of time, so we're happy that that segment of our pipeline that’s actually less could be able to clean out of underwriting loans and section. Slide number 15, I can tell you over the history of our calls as a BDC, how many times you get the question about rates rising affecting our business, we had three quarter point increases in rates for the Federal Reserve in the last seven or eight months and the prices obviously have not only hit on higher. In fact, we stated that the price changes here are driven by pre-payment expectations which are driven by voluntary and involuntary defaults. We think that obviously our credits have been good, the market's credits have been good that doesn’t change prepayment expectations and unless you have a white-hot economy where real-estate values are going through the roof, business owners are getting several bids on their business, it does not lead to a lot of prepayments or transactional volume. On Slide number 16 we report on our percentage of performing loans as a percentage of the portfolio 3.5%. On slide number 17 our charge-offs as of June 30, 2017 as a percentage is 45 basis points, and that's for a full 12 months period ended June 30, 2017. Slide number 18 and 19 I will not go into as they are standard slides in our presentation, but we certainly feel that particularly new investors and we've spoken to many in the last few months are interested in that math and they could certainly give you a call and go over them. On Slide 21, one of our portfolio companies CDS or Newtek business credit which it is known as starting to get some nice traction. These are the quarterly and pretax numbers. These do not include any gains on sales from 504 loans in which they sit. We are optimistic, we think this business actually has an opportunity of getting into the seven-figure earnings club, maybe not this year, but certainly next year. A lot of the income off of this is based upon our inventory line of credit and receivable line of credit program but the 504 portfolio is also mixed into Newtek business credit. When you go to slide number 22, there is a very full description of the 504 loan programs which we have optimism that this business will be a factor and will grow over the course of time. The 504 program is a loan program on to the SPA that allows us to sell 100% of the components of the loan loss, a 40% second which gets taken out by government debentures and a 50% commercial real-estate loan first which we've been able to sell two financial institutions in the secondary market. Slide number 23, shows how a typical 504 loans is cut up. Slide number 24, shows the return on equity and economics of 504 lending. Rounding out our portfolio opportunities we have our value, our payments business which includes the merchant processing business of UPS was confident Premier payments, we have owned and operated our Wisconsin based business for over 10 years, Premier for over two years. We anticipate we will be at around 6 billion in processing by the end of the year, we have the business on our books at 6.3 times forecasted EBITDA looking at the public comps that rolls double-digit. As we continue to grow the business, grow the opportunity and maybe I will take advantage of the transaction that CardConnect recently did with First Data. These businesses when they are sizable enough can trade in double-digit multiples. Lot of opportunities in the payment processing space, if you go to our website let's see what our position in the market is. We are a solutions based company, we are not positioning on price, we offer security, hardware and software initiatives, mobile payments, state-of-the-art ecommerce platform and specific and specialized reporting for clients. On Slide number 27, we just made a recent investment in a company called IPM to add to our technology portfolio companies in addition to manage Tech Solutions. Look at the valuations on slide number 27 as a public company's versus ours and our technology business is a reposition segment for us. We still have our 99,000 business accounts including 70,000 domains. We believe that we're well positioned to take advantage of the transformation to cloud based business opportunities and we're really excited about positioning ourselves in the market. Our strategy which is illustrated on Slide number 29 is we are the company; Newtek is the company to manage your technology solutions. We have a five-point plan to do this. We go into businesses and we listen. We understand what they have, how their business works, what's their operation, what's their hardware, what's their software, what's their labor internally, what's their labor externally we take note of that which is [indiscernible] free. We then go back to them with a plan, it’s a plan that we can charge upfront or it’s a plan that we could load in to a backend solution. We can finance that over the course of time. We can sell them the hardware and software, all latest, greatest state of the art solutions that are coming out of the Citrixs, the VMwares and the other institutions that we deal with. We’re able to implement and deploy, so unlike going it's an online company buying a server, buying software where you got to do it yourself, we can actually deploy that, we can deploy that by IPM, we can deploy that out of managed tech solutions. And lastly, we manage the hardware and software for our clients. What does that mean. Whether they want to keep the hardware and software on premise which we don’t think they should, or they want to move it into Amazon or Microsoft, which is a cloud based environment, we can manage it for them 24/7 or they can put it in our environment which is in Scottsdale in Phoenix, in New Jersey, in London and in Singapore. We give a five-point program the client can take anyone of the five points, they can take one, they can take two, it could basically tell us we want you to do the whole thing. We want to hold you accountable and responsible, very different approach in some of the major consulting firms that will go in, give a plan, charge for the plan and then they are done. We're fully accountable and responsible and we'll work with small, to medium sized businesses, commercial accounts, enterprise entities to manage their technology solutions and operational platforms. On Slide number 31, I want to point out two recent hires, great talent Jessie Davis, Co-Founder and Creator of creative mobile technologies for those New York, Florida a few other city based individuals on the call when you go into a taxi cab and you see that big contraption in the back that’s got media and ability to take payments, that’s creative media [ph], Jessie helped develop that, has a long-standing carrier in developing solutions to wrap around business processes and operations. Jessie has been brought in to help, number one, increase and improve the client experience to acquire our products and services; number two, make them more productive and efficient for our own staff internally to service our clients and three, to finally get us in the position to be able to market efficiently and properly our master center database. Tom West [ph] another recent hire COO of Newtek Manage Solutions working closely with John Raven to help build up our business and our five-point technological plan. In summary we're a differentiated business model, we've demonstrated really great returns of a five years, three years and one year. We believe you're investing in an asset that have lesser risk than the average BDC and based upon our our return profile historically we have really done a good job in the marketplace. We have a 14-year track record in lending so we are not new to the business, we've been through up-cycles, down-cycles up-credit down-credit. The portion of the portfolio we are investing is geographically diverse, it is industry diverse and 180,000 principal balance of each. It’s a floating rate portfolio that should rise as interest rates rise without the leverage portion of it incurring interest expense rising along with it. Management’s interest are very much aligned with the outstanding shareholders by a very the large stake of outstanding shares. With that, I’d like to turn the financial presentation over to Jenny.