Mogo Inc. (NASDAQ:MOGO) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

From a product perspective, Trade right now, we’re feeling really good about where it is in terms of the user experience, the feature set. During this period of time, we’ve done a lot of surveys, a lot of customer interviews, continue to see, as I mentioned, some really kind of positive traction and signs of meaningful product market fit. And so, we are at a place where we are happy to continue to bring on more users right now. And I think one of the things is there is not a lot of features that we think are missing in Trade, but there’s definitely enhancements to come that we obviously believe will help increase the growth rate of the product. A lot of our focus is increasing growth organically, both by focusing on our members, but also bringing certain things into the product that make it a lot easier for people to kind of spread the word and share it just given the value prop.

So, getting to some of those items, once we get over on the efficiency items, will help accelerate the growth rate of the trade product.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Scott Buck from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.

Scott Buck: First, interest revenue was still 40% or so of total rev. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing from the consumer in this kind of environment? I mean any credit deterioration we should be thinking about?

Greg Feller: Yes. Thanks, Scott. So look, we’ve taken a very conservative, and I would say, prudent approach in this environment. You — if you’ve seen our balance sheet, you will see that, this quarter, our loan book actually decreased. So loan receivables decreased for the second quarter in a row on our balance sheet, which obviously is a sign that we are being really conservative on the originations. Having said that, we’ve actually seen improving credit trends over the last couple of quarters, and that’s actually reflected somewhat in our loan loss provision, which was down sequentially from Q3 to Q4 by over $1 million. So, we actually are seeing quite positive signs on the creditworthiness and the health of our customers.

And so, we’re actually feeling pretty good about that right now. We’re going to continue to, I think, be pretty conservative as it relates to lending until we have sort of more visibility on this macro environment. One of the other things I would say is, look, our loan — our average loan size is just over $1,000. So it’s a small loan. It’s a very small payment. So it’s got high affordability in terms of where it ranks in our customers’ wallet. We’ve got, as you know, close to 20 years of history of lending through multiple cycles, including the global financial crisis. So we feel very good about our ability to sort of manage through this period. And the other thing I would actually just say is, look, some of the — by far, the biggest driver, ultimately, of loan loss performance from a macro perspective is just overall unemployment and it actually stayed relatively strong — or employment levels have stayed strong.

And so — but the areas that the market you have seen it anecdotally have been more in the — in kind of the higher income white-collar jobs, which generally are not our target customers. They’re more kind of the service level industry where you’ve sort of seen less there. So that actually, I think, bodes well also. But I’d say those are probably the key highlights there.

Scott Buck: That’s really helpful. And my second one, the Company is well capitalized. You’re going to be generating some cash this year. How should we be thinking about buybacks here? Is there a chance for acceleration? Or how do you kind of view that?