Dave Feller
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open
Thanks, Craig. Good afternoon. And welcome to Mogo second quarter 2020 results conference call. I am joined today by Greg Feller, our President and CFO. It’s certainly been a challenging few months in many respects in response to this global crisis we have had to act quickly to make changes. We have effectively stopped lending and marketing as we focused on reducing costs and rethinking our growth strategy. We are now beginning to do some lending and working on developing new marketing campaigns to support some exciting new products that we expect to begin in the fall. As Greg will discuss we believe the results of Q2 show how resilient and profitable our model can be. We have worked -- work ahead of us, but as we will discuss today we are pleased with the recent performance and excited about our new products and what we see as a very compelling value proposition that is highly differentiated from others in the market today. Again, I just wanted to say thanks to our team members who have done unbelievable job during these challenging times. Before 2020 we were already seeing this shift from traditional banking to fintech, given their innovative products, digital-first experiences and enhanced value propositions. These new companies are occupying an increasing share of the customers’ financial wallets, and although, it started with simple things like free credit score it’s now moving into more important parts of the financial wallets including spending investing. But the issues we face today have really put the shift into hyper drive. The financial health crisis was here before COVID and now almost 5 million Canadians are with either without jobs or have had their incomes affected, even those who haven’t are looking for ways to save and improve their financial health. This is accelerating the demand for digital-first products that are accessible to all and really help to solve the challenges consumers are having with their finances. Our product roadmap is driven by the goal to make Mogo the app that does this. We believe these trends are leading to what we call sustainable finances. Traditionally, sustainability for businesses was a three piece profit, people and planet. For the individual we believe its financial health, people and planet. People aren’t just looking for great digital experience, they want products to make it easier for them to be in control of their finances and also live a more sustainable lifestyle. Consumers have the power to not only improve their own financial well-being, but make an impact with their money. How you spend your money matters. It impacts not only whether you are in debt or able to save and invest. But it’s also increasingly a way for people to support things they care about including social injustice and the environment. Just like ESG investing is taken off the same trend is coming to spending. The link between finances and living sustainability -- sustainably are undeniable. This is a key part of what guides us on our strategy today and is clearly reflected in our recently launched new MogoSpend in account. We designed Mogo as a mobile-first digital experience and a focus on building innovative and unique products. Our mission remains to make it easy engaging for people to get financially healthy, as well as to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Every one of our members has a bank account. Our goal is offer them value and utility they aren’t getting from their banks. And in particular products and an experience that makes it easier to achieve their important financial goals. Similar to the Cash App in the United States, we have built a simple asset today includes five core products. The app is free, takes only three minutes to open an account, there’s no impact on your credit score and it gives you instant access to these products. Each one of them is unique and together they form a very compelling value proposition in the Canadian market. We spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to help consumers live more sustainable lifestyle and this led us realizing the link between financial health and planet health. Nowhere is the link stronger than your spending, managed effectively and you will spend within your means, have zero debt, money for saving and investing, and help solve one of the biggest issues of our time, climate change. Our value proposition is designed around a simple concept, zero debt and zero carbon footprint. If we learn anything during COVID is that being financially healthy is more important than ever, every penny counts and debt continues to be the biggest driver of financial stress. 56% of Canadians carry credit card debt today. The driver of this debt and the stress is overpaying on credit cards that has been designed to not only make it easy, but actually incentivize with their reward program. MogoSpend was designed with features that make it easier for consumers to budget, to save money and avoid debt, and help pay down debt. Getting out of debt continues to be the number one financial goal of Canadians nine years in a row and today is the number one reason why our members sign up for the card. Just like it makes sense to have a separate account for your savings, MogoSpend was designed to give all Canadians a separate spending account from their bank account for free. As that separation makes it easier to budget and avoid spending money that was meant for something else. It also has features like spending analysis that makes it very easy to see at a glance how much you are spending on a monthly basis, so you can easily track your progress, something that isn’t easily seen with typical banker account or credit card. But we wanted to go further in the just budgeting and believe that designing experience that also helps tackle what is arguably the biggest existential threat of our lifetime, climate change. Sustainability is a megatrend, whether it’s ESG investing our consumers moving away from animal-based protein to plant-based proteins like beyond meat. Increasingly consumers are looking to make a positive impact and are voting with their money. When it comes to climate change, 82% of Canadians believe it’s a serious problem. Most importantly climate change is directly linked to our spending and in an estimated 72% of CO2 comes from our own consumption. Everything we buy and spend our money on has a carbon footprint and if that carbon footprint that’s the main driver climate crisis. As you can see from this example, the carbon footprint of a jacket is estimated 66 pounds and because MogoSpend automatically offsets 1 pound of CO2 for every dollar spent, not only does it fully offset your carbon footprint in many cases including this one, you can actually be climate positive on your purchase, i.e. offset more CO2 than you create. Now for those that aren’t familiar with offsetting, it’s a growing industry that focuses on supporting carbon absorbing initiatives such as tree planting or saving for us from deforestation. We partnered with the banker based company that specializes in helping companies go green and get carbon neutral. We have also done an analysis on our own business and going forward we will actually be carbon positive. In terms of the card program, the specific offsetting project is focused on preventing an area of the Amazon Rainforest from being cut down. We will also be bringing this project into the app so users can only see how much CO2 they are offsetting, but easily see how every time they spend they are helping save the Amazon Rainforest. By getting people to also link their spending to the impact on the planet, it’s another way to help them control their spending, as it helps create an emotional link to your spending and helps you be more mindful of it, which is also key to stick into a budget. The payment market in Canada is simply massive at almost $10 trillion a year. Now this includes cash, credit cards, debit cards, checks, EFTs, et cetera. But if you just look at the cash, credit and debit card market, it’s close to a $1 trillion dollars a year. With COVID cash has actually accelerated its move to digital and using a prepaid card like mobile is equivalent to cash, but with a lot more benefits. Compared to debit cards where banks charge an average of $15 a month for unlimited use, the advantage is compelling, not only is it free, with many features that make it much easier to control your spending than a debit or credit card, it comes with what we see as the ultimate reward program, saving the planet. In fact if all Canadians move their spending to MogoSpend Canada could achieve one of the UN’s top climate goals of reducing CO2 by 50%. We are also one of the first companies in Canada to implement Visa Direct for real-time transfers and now customers from three of Canada’s big five banks can instantly link and not only do real-time transfers that are free, but easily set up automated transfers. Once linked, transferring money from one of these banks to your mobile spending account is just as easy as transferring it between accounts of the same bank. So now millions of Canadians can easily use this free app and card to control their spending, and help solve climate change without any of the hassles of switching banks. This is why we think the opportunities are so large. We have been working on this product in different forums for several years now and I have learned a lot. Although, it has definitely taken longer than we would hoped, we are excited about the impact that this product will have. We announce that the card is now available to anyone signing up. However, we have still been rolling out our marketing slowly as we continue to gather feedback on the best way to communicate the value proposition. We are currently working on the development of an ad campaign that we plan on launching this fall. Since 2008 fraud, identity fraud is increased by 15000% and as our lives continue to move to the digital world, identity theft continues to rise and the risk of each one of us face of becoming a victim of identity fraud continues to go up. Unlike when someone fraudulent uses your credit card, which is typically covered by your credit card company, ID fraud is on you and it can be devastating including preventing you from getting a mortgage. There are an estimated 20 million Canadians in the target market for this product and we estimate that less than 10% currently have a solution. The bureau charged $20 a month with no mobile app experience. As the first free mobile first identity fraud protection products in Canada, this is truly a game changing value proposition and something we believe everyone will increasingly realize they should have. We have been working on this over the last quarter and actually expected to go live later this week. This will obviously be a product that not only helps grow our member base, but also helps drive engagement. Like MogoSpend, we expect to include this in our marketing campaign debuting this fall. Bitcoin is up just over 60% year-to-date versus just under 4% for the S&P 500, which is one of the reasons it has been getting increased attention by consumers. It’s also been a key part of the success of apps like the Cash App in the U.S. Similar to them our focus is really on simplifying things as the average Canadian has yet to own any Bitcoin, with Mogo you can buy as little as $1 with a Bitcoin. And instead of focusing on all cryptos, we only offer Bitcoin and it is part of our broader value proposition. One more thing you can do in the mobile app, you can do in your bank app. Given our pause on all marketing over the last few months, we haven’t been focused on leveraging this. But plan on including in our upcoming campaign. Mogo is also the first app in Canada to offer free credit score monitoring and although many of the banks now offer a credit score in some way, still no banks today in Canada actually offers monthly monitoring of your Equifax bureau and none of them offer it for free. By itself credit score monitoring is something that doesn’t have as much power to draw new members as once did, but it’s still something that consumers expect and need to manage their financial health. So as part of an overall holistic financial solution, it’s still matters and it still helps drive engagement. Lending is what our business was initially built-on and we believe remains one of the key strategic advantages even in the current environment where we had record unemployment are small and affordable loans have proven resilient. We have slowly started to originate new loans and we will continue to do so slowly as we monitor market conditions and credit metrics. Again our goal continues to be to offer the best rates across the entire credit spectrum. Today, we are doing some of the higher rate loans that our balance sheet, given the high yield and our cost of capital. We have also partnered with one of Canada’s largest some private lenders Goeasy that is funding a segment of these customers. And we have also recently signed a referral partnership agreement with the bank where we will be referring prime loans. Our goal is to ensure we have the best-in-class offering across the full credit spectrum and expect the partnership and referral model to continue to expand. We expect to announce this partnership shortly. Our unique close media partnership is one of the keys of growing our member base over million members. Although, we have effectively positive marketing in the last few months we believe or post media partnership will continue to be a key driver of growth. And as we get back to marking, launching our ad campaigns for our new products including Spend and Protect, this partnership helps us get in front of approximately 18 million Canadians a year and is very complementary to our other marketing channels. As I mentioned earlier, referral partners are one of the ways we are looking at increasing our product offering and driving new revenue. We recently signed agreements with two partners that we will be announcing shortly. We have always been looking for great partner for a high interest rate savings account and we are excited with the partner we have chosen, and as I have already mentioned, we have also signed referral partner for prime loans. Our goal is to create a best-in-class offering and although we will continue to consider fully integrated solutions, partner referrals will be an increasing part of our strategy. Unlike fully integrated partners, they are much easier to execute and can be a great entry point to a fully integrated experience. As we have mentioned in the past, there are many more partnership opportunities including insurance wealth et cetera. With our newly available MogoSpend are upcoming free identify fraud protection. We believe we have built the unique and compelling value proposition that is unrivaled in the Canadian market. We believe our strategy of offering many free products alongside an increasing number of ways to monetize is how we can build a high growth model alongside a strong economic model. In summary, we have taken decisive actions in recent months from a financial perspective and strategically to enhance our value proposition and clearly align with the trends towards financial health and sustainability. We believe these changes not only protect us in the near-term, but they position us for well for renewed growth and expansion from multiple revenue streams as we look out to 2021 and beyond. I will turn the call over to Greg to review the financials. Greg?