Dave Feller
Analyst · Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open
Thanks, Craig. Good afternoon and welcome to Mogo's fourth quarter 2020 results call. I'm joined today by Greg Feller, our President and CFO. It's an exciting day for us here at Mogo and we're looking forward to walking you through all the things we've been working on and most importantly, where we're going. Over the last year, we've taken several strategic and financial steps that have fundamentally transformed our business. Our financial results for 2020 which Greg will discuss later, reflect the success of our efforts to quickly adapt to an uncertain environment and underscore the fundamental health, resilience and profitability of our business. In addition to the significant investment in the development of our own platform, we've accelerated our strategy with two acquisitions and a strategic investment, all of which we'll review today. The net effect is we're in an even stronger position to take advantage of the accelerating adoption of digital wallets and financial health solutions. We thought it would be helpful to start today with a popular Cathie Wood presentation that came up earlier this year and highlight the massive growth opportunity with digital wallet. We were obviously pleased to be featuring the report, but most importantly this report highlights the opportunity we've been focused on for building out our multiproduct app. The report highlights that these digital wallets are focused on low cost customer acquisition, building trust and then converting it to other products, so you continue to gain wallet share. Our digital wallets are valued between $250 and $1,900 per user today, but could scale to $20,000. The key is having the right products and experience to builds trust and drive conversion and adoption of other products. We think the key to becoming one of the main winners in the digital wallet space is how well you solve the problem of financial health. The wealth gap is real and is one of the biggest problems we face today. Although everyone has a bank account, the majority of people aren’t close to being where they want to or need to be when it comes to their finances and financial stress remains the number one stress across all demographics. In fact if you follow the traditional path that most people follow today, you'll find yourself with credit card debt, overspending, lack of saving investing and financial stress. A new survey out today highlight how pervasive the problem is with 54% of Canadians saying they don't have a financial plan. The fact is most people really don't know what to do to build wealth and get in control of their finances and for many that do finally figured out, they've missed valuable years of wealth building, which become very hard to make up. Our mission is to help people become financially healthy and we believe the key to achieving this is to not only have the right products, but even more importantly, an experience that gains building wealth. We are focused on building an experience that only helps people get on top of their finances, but helps them get on track to building real wealth and for most people, that should mean being on track to becoming a millionaire. We want to make building wealth one of the most compelling games you'll ever play. The highest form of motivation is doing something because it is fun, not because you have to and that's the key driver of our roadmap; i.e. building a gamified experience with the product to make it easier to practice the right financial behaviors in order to build wealth. So although you're hearing terms like super app, which generally refers to having a whole bunch of products in one app, we think the most important driver is going to be the experience you create around these products and how that experience actually helps the user improve their financial results. The biggest impact you can make on someone's finances, the more you will win. The good news, this is a game that everyone can win. The basis of our solution comes down to the fact that almost anyone can become a millionaire if they get on the right track with the right solutions early on. The numbers don't lie. Even at a $40,000 annual income, which is far below the average income of Canadians, if you follow the path here of 50-30-20 budgeting model based on your after-tax income where 50% goes to needs like food and shelter, 30% to wants like entertainment, travel and clothing and then invested 20% in equities based on historical returns, you would be able to retire by the age of 65 with $5.5 million and if you kept that going for another 15 years you would get to a staggering $23 million. Now even if you only met saving about half that amount, you still get to almost $3 million by age 65 and over $10 million age 80 and as we move into the future working later in life will become increasingly common. Now this assumes that someone never gets a raise and their income stays at the $40,000 level which obviously wouldn’t be the case for most people. The bottom line is even on a below average income, you could become a multimillionaire with the right habits, discipline and plan. Now when most people see these numbers, they're typically shocked as they thought the only way they could ever become a multimillionaire was that they made a lot of money or perhaps win the lotto. We believe that when it comes your finances and building wealth, controlling your spending is by far one of the most important and challenging parts of your money game as this is what determines whether or not you stay out of debt and whether you have money available each month to save and invest, which is really how you build wealth. As you saw on the previous page, you actually don't need to make a lot of money to become wealthy. We've all heard people making millions who have gone bankrupt. How you manage your spending is critical, which is why we put so much work in making the Mogo card a great tool. Again it all starts with your spending and based on the 50-30-20 budgeting model someone making $40,000 a year might have around a $1,000 a month available for paying rent and after paying rents and utilities and if they want to hit their 20% investing, which means you need to budget your spending. That's why avoiding credit cards are critical as it's so easy to overspend and then not only not have any money to save and invest but end up with credit card debt like a large percentage of Canadians today. Like a debit card, this is your own money. There is no credit and no overdraft available and is designed to help you keep up-to-date on all your spending and how much you have left, so you have a better chance of sticking to it. Our goal is to make this most compelling card in your wallet and the easiest way to stick to a budget. One of the cool features of the card is the new Bitcoin cashback program. The mobile card is the first card in Canada to offer the ability for someone to earn Bitcoin with every purchase and help them get in the habit of saving and investing while they're spending. Perhaps most importantly, let anyone participate in Bitcoin for free without risking any of their own money. If there was a 10% cash back card, how many people would switch to it? Well, if you are earning 1% Bitcoin cashback five years ago, the value of the Bitcoin would be worth over hundred times of that which means it would have been equivalent to 100% and cash back and over the last 12 months alone it would be worth over 7%. Today there's no card in Canada that comes close to this and instead of accumulating air miles, you're accumulating an exciting and speculative asset class that can be converted to cash with one click and without having to risk any of your own money. Although it's still early days in terms or our Bitcoin cashback experience, we're already seeing some very positive trends for members who have it activated. These users are spending on average over three times more than a non-Bitcoin cashback user. In order for members activated Bitcoin cashback today, they must refer at least one friend. This is also helping to drive increase sharing. Again this is all game of finding experience, so you can actually make sticking to a budget and moving away from credit cards, an exciting and compelling experience and get our members to make this a primary spending card in their wallet. Many experts say that the two basic opportunities for businesses to solve over the next decade is the wealth gap and climate change and we believe they're linked. The MogoCard is also the first card in Canada that also help you offset your carbon footprint while you spent and given 72% of carbon comes from our own consumption, having a card that offset to CO2 as you spend is the easiest way someone can live as your carbon lifestyle. Again this is all the game of find the experience and make controlling, spending and spending less money, one of the most engaging and rewarding things you can do. I'm building wealth while doing my part of climate change. That's what the next generation consumers expect and that's what we're trying to deliver. Controlling this part of the customer's wallet is not only one of the most important part of helping them achieve their financial goals, but is also one of the most important drivers of engagement and tries building that helps drive adoption about their products and greater share of wallet. Bitcoin is clearly one of the most compelling and exciting new technologies of our lifetime. Every day we see more people and companies looking to invest and get exposure to this new asset class. We were one of the first companies in Canada to offer Bitcoin and they're first offered alongside a broader product offering. Our value proposition today is very simple and compelling. Unlike most other crypto offerings in Canada, we are actually the only one offering just Bitcoin and our members don't have to worry about taking custody of it. We continue to believe there's a large and growing segment of consumers who aren’t crypto enthusiasts, but are looking for a simple and trusted way to invest in this new asset class. We saw significant growth last year in Bitcoin training, although coming off a lower base, we saw just over 14 times growth in trading volume. This growth has also continued in Q1 with January and February over 20 times versus the same period last year, but perhaps even more interesting is what we're seeing in terms of behavior of these users and their engagement. An active Bitcoin member is nine times more engaged than a non-Bitcoin member and this translates into more conversion into other products as well as likelihood to refer others. We announced the launch of our Bitcoin Rewards program last year and we're continuing to build up this experience. Obviously, rewards are a key part of Gamification and can really help drive behavior. What's unique about this program is it gives all those who want to participate and gets Bitcoin but aren’t willing to risk their own money a way to do it. Not only are we adding Bitcoin rewards as incentives to try our products, but we're also building in hidden Easter eggs another Gamification technique where users find hidden rewards. This could be something like after 100 transactions on the MogoCard, a user gets a Bitcoin reward or by practicing dollar cost averaging. We continue to be excited about the impact this work program can have on our user behavior and really help improve engagement and ultimately help them get closer to their financial goals. Although many people are concerned about the volatility of Bitcoin, you can't deny how exciting it is and in fact it's one of the elements that makes it so exciting and getting our members excited and even addicted to playing their wealth building game is exactly what we're trying to do. The big news today is our announcement of the Moka acquisition and before I talk about how this will accelerate our growth strategy, let me first walk you through what makes Moka a great finance app. Phil and his team has done a great job of building Moka and in such a great fit in so many ways, not least of which is how similar our names are. Most importantly, they have been hyper focused on helping Canadians improve their finances by making it easier than ever to not only save money, but invest it. Their core solution today is an automated saving and investing product, that happened by rounding up purchases that members link cards or cards and Moka enables them to link any credit or debit card so that every purchase they make is grounded up and then at the end of the month, that money is debited from their bank account and instead of just going into the savings account, it's invested. Unlike some of the background of features, Moka is agnostic and can be linked as many cards as you want and instead of putting it into low interest rate savings account, the money is being invested. What's more is they enable their members to do this through a TFSA, RRSP or nonregistered account. The average Moka customer saves over $1,000 annually through this program. What's also impressive is they manage to do this through a successful subscription program where they now have over 100,000 active monthly paying subscribers. Members are also given the additional ability to either add or move to a set monthly investment amount and today over 50% of their subscribers have both roundup and recurring deposit set up. So a member can begin their investing journey with simple roundups and then graduate to higher and more automated monthly investing program, all for a low fee of $3 a month. In addition to this, Moka has several other great features including bill negotiation with help members lower their bills. The average savings on this program is over $200. Their debt management solution can help anyone who is struggling, get help them pay it off on a program. Many people get struggled accounts for plan to get a debt and this could be a great help in need before you can begin building wealth. They also have a Cash Back rewards program and an on-demand financial coaching that's powered by certified financial planners. It's easy to see how Moka is a perfect complement to Mogo and our solutions and as every product and feature they have become complementary to ours and dramatically helps improve the impact we make on someone's finances. Again we couldn’t be more excited to welcome the Moka team to T-Mobile. With the acquisition, we will greatly expand our product capabilities and total addressable market and the estimated $5 trillion wealth management industry. Globally we're seeing a massive secular shift to digital wealth platforms. Moka will enable us to fill our biggest product gap Mogo Wealth will give our members the ability to save and invest through TFSA RRSP and nonregistered accounts. Again over 50% of Canadians don't have a financial plan and a big part of that comes down to not knowing how to build wealth and what to invest in. What's more, 45% of Canadians 18 and over don't have a TSA or RRSP account, the two main accounts that Canadians need to be using to save, invest and build wealth, again a massive opportunity. One of the unique things about Moka is they also have a solution that doesn't require a large initial deposit to get started unlike many of the solutions today in the market and anyone can get started with as little as a $1 a month. As you can see, our goal is to build an experience that helps our members build long-term wealth and makes it easy for them to see how they're performing and importantly helps them keep their eye on their price in terms of dollars and starting track for. Again if someone is earning $40,000 a year, invested 20% of their after-tax earnings in the market based on historical performance, they can easily become a millionaire. Having solution and the holistic experience that enables this is a big gap in the market today and we're excited to get this product to our members. We've always talked about our strategy of working alongside your bank account with the goal of one day enabling our members to make the full switch to Mogo. We're currently working on our new digital bank account that will enable our members to make this switch. This new digital account will function similarly to checking account in that members can have their paycheck set up for automated deposit, have automated payment such as mortgage come out of their discount as well as enable P2P. Perhaps most importantly, this will enable us launch features and benefits that are exclusively for direct deposit customers i.e. customers who make Mogo their primary banking relationship. These include launching things like early payday. Obviously this has been very successful with companies in the US. This is one of the key ways they've been able to capture a large share of the market and get consumers to move away from their traditional bank account. Bringing these three accounts together, you can see how it will be set up, so that it actually helps automate budgeting for our members. Your paycheck gets deposited, your spending budget goes into your spending account and 20% gets automatically invested. Again this is what people need to automate their money in a way that helps them stay out of debt and build wealth, everything that today's solutions don't deliver on. Obviously, most members won't start at this level, but our goal is to continue to nudge them to improve their spending and help them get closer to that 20% goal. We've long been planning to launch free stock trading and we're also excited to announce that this acquisition will speed up our plans to do this. Along with bringing in crypto trading to our strategic partnership with Coinsquare. Although we believe strongly in automated wealth building program to a low-cost ETF, there is also a growing retail trend in stock trading and investing. Although there are many people who want a more passive investment approach there is also a growing number of consumers that want to invest directly in stocks and cryptos and in the long run, we think most will incorporate both into their investment strategy. Our goal is to also design into a way that helps their members to see how they're performing versus benchmark performance of the S&P 500. As an investor I will want to know if my self-direct investment strategy is more effective than an easier and more passive strategy versus getting myself that I'm doing well, again another gap in today's market. Free trading is now the standard in the US and so far in Canada, there is only one option for investors and that option has a lot of room for improvement and that's what we plan on doing. Our goal is to launch this before the end of this year. With that, I'll ask Greg to cover the transaction and financials in more detail. Greg?