Jay Levine
Analyst · Barclays
Thanks Craig and good morning. Turning to slide 3, I will begin with an overview of the highlights for the quarter. First, we are really pleased to report another quarter, a very strong growth in core earnings, up 28% year-over-year to $64 million. We continue to reap the benefits of the positive operating leverage that comes from grant receivables growth. This has been a very powerful lever for us over the last few years. Once we close on OneMain in the coming months, we expect to utilize many of the growth strategies that have been so effective at Springleaf, to augment receivables growth at OneMain and drive earnings growth for the combined company. This was also the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year portfolio growth above 20%. Average receivables per branch reached $4.7 million in the quarter, driving significant margin benefit because of the largely fixed cost base of our branches. Net charge-offs were a bit higher this quarter than last, which I will discuss in a moment, but we expect charge-offs to come down in the second quarter, and we remain very comfortable with our full year net charge-off guidance of 5% to 5.5%. And last, we remain on-track for closing the OneMain acquisition in the third quarter of this year. Let's now turn to slide 4 and get into some of the details; as I said, we continue to emphasize receivable growth per branch, because of the tremendous operating leverage this provides. Let me give you some key steps; in 2012, we had average receivables per brand of $2.5 million, and by the end of the first quarter of this year, that had grown to $4.7 million, nearly double. Also at the end of 2012, 60% of our branches managed under $3 million of personal loan receivables. Today, that number has declined to fewer than 10% of our 830 branches. At the same time, over the last 12 months, the number of branches managing over $5 billion of receivables, has more than doubled, going from 117 last year to over 250 branches today, and I am really excited to say, that we now have three branches with over $10 million of receivables. Let me remind you of the impact that has had; in 2012, we earned about $90,000 pre-tax per branch. For 2014, we nearly tripled this number, earning $267,000 on average per branch. In the first quarter of this year, we hit $315,000 per branch on an annualized basis, more than triple where we were in 2012, and we still see significant upside from here. Our strong growth in receivables results from a number of factors. First, the U.S. economy remains stable, which has contributed to solid customer demand for our loan products, and a larger pool of qualified prospects. Second, our digital operations continue to drive increased applications and volume. Today, about 70% of new customer applications, and over 45% of new customers begin online; an interesting sidebar to this, is over 20% of our digital volume, is coming from mobile applications, more than double what it was a year ago. And lastly, we have continued to centralize a number of functions that were historically done in our branches, including the servicing of all accounts over 90 days past due, which has created greater origination capacity in our branches. Before we leave the slide, let me also highlight the growth we have seen from our direct auto product, and the potential it brings. Auto originations reached over $200 million in the first quarter, about 24% of our total originations, with very positive growth trends month-over-month. Looking ahead, we expect to see full year originations annualized well above our first quarter run rate. To illustrate the potential financial impact of our direct auto loan product, let's take a look at the table on the bottom right corner of the slide, and compare the unit economics of the unsecured loan versus our auto loan. In very simple terms, and assuming the loans are both outstanding and unamortized for a full year, on average, our net interest margin on a $4,000 unsecured loan, would be approximately $1,000 versus $1,900 on a $1,300 auto loans, in both cases, before losses. The auto loan generates almost double the net interest margin dollars, in spite of the lower yield on the auto product. In addition, based on our experience with our existing hard secure portfolio, we are very confident that we will see lower percentage losses in the auto product, and lastly, since our servicing costs are basically the same for both types of loans, the marginal contribution to earnings from auto should be far greater. Turning now to slide 5, let's take a look at the trends in gross yield and credit metrics. Gross yields in branch portfolio declined about 10 basis points from the fourth quarter, at just under 27%, even with the meaningful increase in the growth of our direct auto product, which represented about 24% of our volume this quarter. As I said in my earlier comments, our auto loans carry lower average APRs than our personal loans, so we are pleased that overall yield has held up so well. Earlier in my comments, I discussed our continued progress on centralizing certain branch functions, including late stage delinquencies. A key element of this, was to make sure our account management policies and programs are consistent across our servicing platform, including how we work with customers going through challenges, including bankruptcy. As a result, in the fourth quarter, we updated and standardized our charge-off policies for bankrupt accounts, which had the effect of reducing fourth quarter charge-offs by a few million dollars, largely in the month of November and December. On a run rate basis, excluding the bankruptcy reduction, net charge-offs in the fourth quarter would have been about 5.4% compared to the 5.6% charge-off rate we reported for the first quarter. The policy change, as recently implemented, will have a rolling impact on future quarters, with the benefit occurring only in the fourth quarter of 2014, when we implemented the change. Importantly, our 60-day delinquency rate was 2.53 at the end of the first quarter, 29 basis points lower than the fourth quarter, reflecting typical seasonal trends, as well as the small build-up that occurred in connection with the policy change. We feel strongly that our shift toward more auto secured loans should lead to lower loss rates over future quarters. One year ago, 45% of our book had titled collateral. As of 3/31, we were at 51% and we expect that level to continue to grow, with the popularity of the auto program. Based on the delinquency levels we are currently seeing, combined with the shift toward auto secured loans, we feel very comfortable that the net charge-off will drop for the full year and fall within the 5% to 5.5% range. Before I turn the call over to Macrina, I want to give you a brief update on the status of our planned acquisition of OneMain. First, we continue to anticipate closing in the third quarter of this year. This has been our expectation from the time we announced the deal in early March, and it continues to be our expectation today, for which all appropriate planning has taken place. As we described the preliminary perspectives for our recent equity offering, the antitrust division of the Department of Justice is reviewing the transaction, which is certainly not unusual for the transaction of this size, and we intend to work with the DoJ to resolve any questions they may raise. As we also said in the preliminary perspectives, when we spoke to the DoJ, they told us to expect to receive a civil investigative demand or CID, which is a request for documented information related to the acquisition, and as is customary for a business combination of this size, particularly when, as in this case, no Hart-Scott-Rodino filing was required. Again, as we disclosed, we received the anticipation VID on April 28th. Now, as we turn to slide 6, I am going to ask Macrina to pick up from here.