Nu Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NU) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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And finally, data driven credit underwriting. Since our credit underwriting engine is built on AI machine learning, making it crucial to have sufficient data scalability, the faster we grow our customer base, the more refined and accurate our credit assessment becomes, strengthening our risk management practices and supporting responsible lending. Notwithstanding the fact that the maturation curve of new products usually take a year, we could not be more optimistic about the future given not only our early progress in these new launches, but also the upcoming additions planned for the second half, which include to name only a few: payroll loan portability and refinancing, INSS payroll loans, FGTS lending and Cuenta Nu, Colombia. As we have repeatedly stated, together with our customer attraction and cost differentiation, superior products and services foster our cross sell and upsell capabilities, which are essential for our business model, supporting retention, loyalty, growth and profitability.

With that, we would like to take your questions now. Thank you very much.

Operator: We will now start the Q&A session for investors and analysts. [Operator Instructions] I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Jorg Friedemann, Investor Relations Officer.

Jorg Friedemann: Thanks, operator. And our first question comes from the line of Tito Labarta, Goldman Sachs.

Tito Labarta: Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for the call and taking my question. Congratulations on another strong quarter. I guess, my question is on the level of provisioning good loan growth and I know the loan growth drives a lot of the provisioning. But just to think about it early NPLs showed a slight improvement there, and we’ve kind of seen that across the industry. Just to think about when provisioning can be — start to maybe become a tailwind, right? I mean, your gross margin did improve in the quarter despite that. But you mentioned in the past that the gross margins can eventually get to 60% level or so. I know when you’re much more mature. But if the credit outlook is improving, can that potentially be a tailwind in the foreseeable future?

Youssef Lahrech: Hi, Tito. This is Youssef. Thanks for the question. So look, we don’t provide guidance on credit quality or delinquencies or consequently provisioning from a forward-looking perspective. But I mean, you can take a look at how the coverage ratios have trended in the appendix of our earnings presentation, page 33, I believe. And from a coverage of 90 plus, it’s been fairly stable around 213%, 214%. And the coverage of balance generally mirrors NPL 90 plus. And it has been largely performing per expectations. So, to your point, should delinquencies improve, obviously provisions can become a tailwind, but we’ll see actual performance as it comes in.

Tito Labarta: Great. Thanks, Youssef. And if I could follow-up, I guess just a little bit on the loan growth. In particular, David, you highlighted payroll loans have now launched, I think any just initial color on how it’s tracking and if that can be significant in second half of the year, or is that more — will take a little bit longer. Because that could also be another potential tailwind to that cost of risk given just the risks on the payroll loans are a lot lower?

David Vélez: Yes. No, absolutely. So, we had to integrate a number of different contracts to launch Payroll Loans. We did that already. We’re up and running on Q2. We’ve been integrating the product, making sure it is a great product for consumers, easy to understand. We’re getting comfortable more and more with the type of feedback we are receiving. And I think you’ll start seeing us increasing the pace of originations over the next few quarters, if everything goes according to plan. But yes, I mean, I think over the next few quarters, you should start seeing meaningful demand. And again, this is the largest profit pool in financial services in Brazil. So very large market. And as we’ve said in the past, our customer base accounts for something like 35% of that entire profit pool.

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