Jay Levine
Analyst · Moshe Orenbuch with Credit Suisse
Thanks, Craig and thanks for joining of this morning. Before we get into the slides, I want to say that the second quarter was a very good quarter for us with consumer insurance EPS of $0.96 versus $0.36 in last year's quarter, with solid performance on credit, growth, operating expenses, funding and importantly, integration. We feel very good about our business, our operating model and our competitive position. Let me begin on Slide 2 with some comments about our second quarter performance and a discussion of the key drivers of our business. First, average net receivables were up 12% year-over-year. Total receivables growth was a tad slower this quarter as the blocking and tackling of the integration of OneMain became more tangible. The timing of our integration activities is meeting all of our expectations and some cases, even ahead of plan. Given the near term introduction of new programs and the associated training requirements, it's not surprising that loan growth has slowed down this quarter, but our focus remains on capturing the fall long term benefits of the acquisition, principally around responsible profitable growth. Credit performance this quarter was consistent with our expectations of lower credit charges with net charge-offs improving to 6.95% from 7.5% in the first quarter and with delinquencies stable as well. Keep in mind that the 6.95% charge-off ratio includes a 35 basis point net benefit from the alignment of our credit policies. Both our own customers set performance as well as the overall economic environment which is a key driver of our customers performance, continue to look healthy. We're seeing continued positive trends in job growth, including the addition of almost 180,000 private sector jobs in July and no signs of deterioration in the economy. Given our market opportunity, we have no plans to relax our underwriting standards to gain volume and we continue to manage credit risk with the same conservative orientation we have always had. As a result, we remain confident in our outlook for the full year 2016 net charge-offs in a range of 6.8% to 7.3%. With respect to the balance sheet, we have brought our leverage down to just over 11 times and we remain highly focused on working towards our long term leverage target of 5 to 7 times debt-to-tangible equity. We expect to be within that range by mid-2018. In terms of funding, in spite of market volatility, we're pleased to have completed four ABS transaction so far this year, including our first and highly successful Auto ABS issuance. In addition, after the end of the quarter, we completed the sale of portfolio and mortgage loans from our legacy real estate portfolio, with proceeds of approximately $250 million which will also help further reduce leverage and minimize future borrowings. Our mortgage portfolio is now under $450 million from almost $10 billion at the time of our IPO in October of 2013 and we will continue to look for opportunities to reduce it further. Turning to Slide 3, I want to begin with a couple comments on our business model in the context of today's environment. As we've said in the past, our model is built on a footprint of 1,800-plus branches in 44 states with a presence in communities all across the country. Our market opportunity is enormous, representing between 75 million and 100 million people with approximately $250 billion of refinanceable debt and borrowing needs. Importantly, about 88% of Americans live within driving distance of one of our branches. This presence is highly valuable in today's environment as it gives us a tangible understanding of what is going on in every market we serve which helps us manage credit risk in real time. Our local branch presence creates a unique and very personal engagement with our customers and a real understanding of their individual financial circumstances. Importantly, it also allows us to verify the borrower's income which is an important element of our underwriting process and focuses on each borrower's ability to pay. The powerful combination of our branch presence and sophisticated analytical capabilities represent a significant competitive edge that is virtually unmatched today. Importantly, even with our extensive footprint, we're benefiting from changes in technology which allows us to see far more applications than ever before as increasing numbers of prospective customers choose to begin the loan process by applying online. Our branch network has a much broader reach today as a result of the most significant initiative this Company has undertaken, the acquisition of OneMain last November. The integration of Springleaf and OneMain remains on track and I would like to share a couple of highlights of our progress. First, later this year we plan a full rebranding of the Springleaf branch into OneMain which will allow us to present one unified branch to our customers and further enhance the recognition of the OneMain brand. Second, we have made meaningful progress on implementing the technology integration required of the two networks. By bringing the two branch networks together under one technology platform, we will be well positioned to generate incremental growth and meaningful cost savings. Turning to Slide 4, I want to emphasize how significant the OneMain acquisition has been to realize in the long term earnings power of our Company and how positive we remain about the acquisition. Our principal focus continues to be on reinvigorating profitable growth and risk adjusted returns at OneMain, with our first initiative being the rollout of direct auto lending. We introduced direct auto lending to the former OneMain branches in December of last year and shortly after closing and by the end of April this year we were originating direct auto loans in all 1,800 of our branches. Our early success with the rollout contributed to a meaningful improvement in origination growth at the former OneMain branches. It's worth noting, that well the rollout of direct auto at OneMain has been very successful, it does come with a trade-off of giving up some growth on the unsecured side. Historically at OneMain, certain higher risk customers would have been offered unsecured loans, but with our push to credit risk we would require the additional security in order to make the loan and not every potential customer is willing to provide that collateral. While this does impact our growth it reflects our conservative orientation toward credit risk management. Looking at earnings per share as a simple measure, in the second quarter of 2015, our consumer insurance segment of Springleaf earned $0.38 per share and in the second quarter of this year we earned $0.96 with the benefits of the acquisition just starting to kick in. Looking ahead, by capturing the benefits of the acquisition and continuing to execute, we expect to reach a run rate in consumer insurance segment earnings exceeding $1.50 per share by the third quarter of 2017 and we see continued upside from there as we grow receivables against our largely fixed-cost branch network. Let's turn now to Slide 5. As I've already highlighted this morning, our plans call for an acceleration of growth at OneMain and on this slide I will walk you through some of our larger scale initiatives, all of which were key parts of the Springleaf playbook as we reinvigorating growth over the past few years. Bringing OneMain to the level of Springleaf on these key initiatives will dramatically increase average net receivable growth and we believe should add at least $1.5 billion of incremental annual originations over time. As you all know, we have had tremendous success with our direct auto program, generating over $1.7 billion of loans since rollout and we see a similar opportunity at OneMain. We have already originated about $250 million of new auto receivables at OneMain and we see this initiative adding over $1 billion of new originations over the next 12 months. Our local merchant referral program has been another important [indiscernible] channel at Springleaf. We launched this program in 2013 and in the first half of 2016 generated about $360 million of receivables on an annual run rate basis. We're in the process of rolling out the program to the 1,100 OneMain branches, so it's too early to post numbers, but we expect this program to be well received. This program is all about leveraging our local community relationships to assist local merchants whose customers need financing for big-ticket purchases such as ATVs or HVAC equipment. Outside of new products and channels, we also see a large opportunity to enhance origination growth at OneMain through more effective management of digital leads and conversions. Conversion rates for Springleaf on applications that start online are about double those of OneMain where historically there was less emphasis and resources committed to this channel. As we bring the OneMain branches to the same level of efficiency as Springleaf, with similar symptoms and additional applications, we expect to see significant origination growth. Turning to Slide 6, I want to discuss the significant progress we've made on a couple of integration initiatives. Since closing on the acquisition, we have highlighted the opportunity to reinvigorate growth while increasing the level of secured lending at the former OneMain. We showed good progress on these goals in the second quarter. Average net receivables, excluding the receivables in the main branch sale, reached $13.1 billion on the quarter, up 2% sequentially from the first quarter. As you can see on the chart, Springleaf continues to grow at a healthy pace, 16% annualized, while the former OneMain growth is coming in slower. Also, auto secured loans as a percentage of production have grown meaningfully to 33% of originations at OneMain in the second quarter, terrific early progress. Turning to Slide 7, we remain confident in our full-year charge-up guidance of 6.8% to 7.3% and from where we're today, believe we're likely to come in near the midpoint of the range. In the second quarter we experienced a typical seasonal decline in credit losses, as well as a benefit from aligning our credit policies, as well as a negative impact from the branch sale. The net effect of these was 35 basis points with the principal impact coming from the bankruptcy policy change. On a full-year basis, the net effect of these is reflected in our guidance. Excluding the 35 basis point benefit, our net charge-off ratio was 7.3% for the second quarter, well within our expectations. The quarter rate also included the impact of the drag from the sale of $600 million in current receivables to Lendmark. In the second half of this year, the denominator effect of the branch sale will continue to impact the charge-off rate, in addition to the flow through of losses on the delinquent accounts retained in the branch sale transaction. As we discussed last quarter, our Q1 charge-offs are supported by the stable trends we're seeing in early stage delinquency, demonstrated in the chart on the right hand side of the slide. We have laid out the actual net charge-off rate for each quarter beginning with the first quarter of 2015 with an overlay of our 30 day to 89 day delinquency rate on a two quarter lag basis. As you can see, delinquency is seasonally lower than the first quarter which is the primary driver of seasonally lower charge-off rate in the third quarter. Our second quarter early stage delinquencies will largely determine our fourth quarter charge-offs. The sequential increase of 28 basis points from 1Q to 2Q is largely in line with last year's increase of about 22 basis points. Let me add that we're also seeing improvement in late stage roles. Now I would like to turn the call over to Scott to continue with our financial review.