America’s Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRMT) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

John Rowan : Yeah. But I mean there’s got to be a covenant in there. I just want to make sure you’re not close to the covered in sort of a turbo amortization.

Vickie Judy : Yeah. No, we have availability triggers that we watch and review closely. And as I mentioned, we have $86 million of additional availability at the end of October. And we’re not expecting to trip any covenant triggers there. And then we have our ABS that we’re going to call here in the next days or so or less this month in December, which will bring some additional collateral into that ABL pool and then we’re also looking at another securitization later in the month. So we’ve got flexibility there. And then as I mentioned, too, we also have our active shelf out there should we need to use some other type of funding in the future.

John Rowan : Okay, thank you.

Doug Campbell : Thanks, John.

Operator: Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Caintic of Stephens. Your line is open.

Vincent Caintic : Good morning. And thanks for taking my questions. First on credit, so I appreciate all the detail you gave with that. So the 30 days accounts 30 days past due came down quarter-over-quarter, yet the credit provisions went up. And so I’m curious what changed in your thinking that drove the credit provisions higher. In the press release, it says higher credit provisions were onetime. So I’m wondering if the higher credit provisions is related to say onetime higher credit losses that we experienced this quarter. And so reserves should come down as the back book of the portfolio comes down over time? Or is credit — is the consumer deteriorating further going forward, so we should expect to keep this higher credit reserve rate going forward? Thank you.

Vickie Judy : Sure. So a large piece of that credit reserve analysis is just based on actual losses that have happened. And so when you see an increase of losses in the quarter like we saw, that’s going to roll through the entire portfolio with an expectation that some piece of that continues. So some of it’s just a math equation that results in that higher output. As we look at our delinquencies, as we look at the pools that we have out there, yeah, there would be some expectation that as we move forward here, that would be able to be reduced at some point in time in the future. But we’ve got to work through what’s currently in our portfolio, and we’ll continue to review that quarterly.

Doug Campbell : Yeah. I’d add also the increase in those unit losses during the quarter was really, really sharp. Again, I mentioned peaking in September coming down in October. And then, again, most recently in November, it came down yet again. So we’re encouraged by that, but it’s tough for us to sort of gauge where that’s going to end up. But us keeping our delinquencies in line and seeing positive trends in terms of the unit losses, those are really good indicators. But we got to see what sort of pans out. The environment is still challenged for our consumers, and that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. We’re doing everything we can to help them be successful.

Vincent Caintic : Okay. That’s very helpful. And I guess maybe to put it another way, is there a way to say that, hey, your underwriting has changed such that you’re targeting a certain loss rate that’s lower than where we are now. Maybe if you could give some detail of what — like I understand that the current book or the portfolio that was written this past year is probably the tough spot, but trying to get a sense of the forward portfolio that you are writing going forward. Are you targeting something that’s lower than where the back portfolio is?

Doug Campbell : Yeah. So there’s a couple of drivers there, Vincent. I think about it this way. If we’re targeting higher down payments and better rated customers, I would expect the loss rate to come down, especially when you feather in the fact that we’re really focused on the asset, right, and how it performs in the portfolio, which should drive better recovery rates, right? But all that remains to be seen. We have to prove that out, but we’re doing all the things to sort of get us to that future place. So you’re 100% right that I think that’s where we’re headed and that’s where we want to be focused on. We don’t know what that means yet, right? We need to get these cars cycled through and keep more of these cars and help drive cheaper cars into our portfolio also which help with default rates. So there’s a lot going on, but we’re trying to do all of those things to drive a differentiated results here than we’ve experienced recently.

Vickie Judy : Vincent, I would also add to that, that it is a subprime consumer. And we’re working to structure the deals for success as best we can. But as you know, these consumers live paycheck to paycheck. And that’s why our servicing after the sale and how we help them through those events after the sale are so important in how we service them. So again, we have to keep that in mind the consumer that we’re dealing with in the aspect of that.

Vincent Caintic : Okay. Okay. That’s helpful. And then definitely on the sales activity. So the sales per store per month declining this quarter. I was wondering if you could give specifically October since that seemed to be the weakest in the quarter? And then how much of the impact was driven by the onboarding of the LOS system. You’ve gotten a lot of stores now within that. So I’m just wondering maybe what sales would have been without that onboarding? And just generally, how you expect sales to be going forward? Is there still more pressure plus your tighter underwriting or the changes you’re making now we can see some sales growth going forward? Thank you.