Encore Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:ECPG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ashish Masih: Yeah, Mike. So — as I just mentioned in the response to the previous question, the performance of collections under forecast was less than 1%. And it was — if you look at any forecast that’s a pretty good outcome to attribute that to any one variable that would not be possible or the right thing to do. Now given your student loan comment, we’ve actually gone and looked given the changes that have just come about. We track every call. We’ve looked at speech data. When they found the consumers really not impacted by student loan payments at least in our consumer base. We found much less than 1% of consumers even mentioned student loan repayment as part of a long conversation with the account manager. So it’s minuscule and immaterial from that point of view. Again I just want to call out the impairment you mentioned that’s a $4 million collection under forecast and it’s a very small percent of the total ERC or the book value.

Mike Grondahl: Got it. And the second question was just, sort of, what years were most affected. It sounds like 2021 and 2022 are where your biggest headaches are. Can you verify that? And then just, how do you determine that the impairment is enough? I mean, why shouldn’t it be more?

Ashish Masih: Yeah. That’s a good question. Sorry, I didn’t address Mike. So actually in our Q by vintage will be disclosed the changes in recovery. Now I recognize that’s a combination of actual performance plus any change in the forecast of the timing. So the biggest numbers were 2021 and then would be 2022 and 2019, which actually had a overperformed in the past and the positive was 2023. Again I’m talking US vintages. And Cabot’s European vintages, they are across spread across and there are some positives and some negatives. So to your other question, we always have the best estimate prepared for every quarter. And then we look at past data and put our process that’s heavily audited and whatnot to make any revisions to the forecast every quarter.

So at this point in our best estimate we’ve incorporated everything that’s out there. Now if you add cumulatively take the nine-month view some of those vintages have taken some of those hits over the quarters, but 2023 vintage has continued to outperform the initial expectations as well. So there’s some puts and there takes.

Mike Grondahl: Got it. And I mean this is the fourth quarter in a row that, I think, sadly we’re spending too much time talking about impairments and maybe not enough time talking about the robust purchases or the purchase pipeline. But because it’s been four quarters in a row, do you guys I don’t know get any latitude to maybe increase the provision just so we’re not dealing with this or continually dealing with it?

Ashish Masih: No, it does not work that way. Jon can chime in as well. But — and again for the four quarters the three quarters have been very small. And I wouldn’t call the word impairment. This is per [indiscernible] your forecast and then you have performance or under and then you have a change in forecast, right? So I would also remind Q1 2022, Q2 2022 for US, we had very, very large increases in future expected recoveries of $125 million in Q1 and I’m going by memory maybe $60 million in MCM for Q2. So, again, if you take a longer view there are some puts and takes and I agree with you these are just small variations to talk about as much time. The thing that we’re most excited about as you mentioned is the strong purchasing MCM is doing, the capital allocation we can do from Europe to US, and the multiples we are seeing and the ERC we are building up for future collections, revenues and therefore earnings.