Oportun Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:OPRT) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rick Shane: Got it. And when we think about these things normally, what we would be looking for is some sort of slowing of the year-over-year change and rate of delinquencies. Is there anything that when you look at that vintage from, because again, we can see the charge-offs, but we can’t see the delinquency trends on a vintage basis. Are there indications there that start to give you comfort that over the next three months or six months that curve will start to flatten out other than – just anything other than burnout?

Raul Vazquez: Yes. Well, we’ve always felt that our members have a high willingness to pay. The challenge anytime they become delinquent is a challenge say and the ability to pay. So the couple of things they give me confidence, Rick, when I think about this, number one is, you know, because you watched this very carefully and we all got information just a few days ago on this, the employment market continues to be exceptionally strong. Number two, though, I did mention earlier, inflation is coming down slowly. It’s just – it ends up being quite sticky. The good news is it is coming down, right. So we think that a combination of a strong employment market with inflation starting to abate a bit, and then the actions that we can take on our side, whether it’s a temporary reduction in payments, other things just to help someone really improve their cash flow over the span of say, 30 days.

Those are the sorts of things that we’ve seen help us in the past when someone is dealing with a temporary problem in making their payments. So that’s really what gives us confidence is. Things are improving a bit economically while the job market stays very strong.

Rick Shane: Got it. Okay. Very helpful. Thank you.

Raul Vazquez: Thank you, Rick.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please state your questions.

Steven Kwok: Hi, this is actually Steven Kwok filling in for Sanjay. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one I had was just around the fund book loss rates that you expect. If I were just to do the math of the first half versus your full year guidance, it implies a back half of the year, about 10.5% at the midpoint. Just curious as to how we should think about what part of that is from the front book versus the back book and from a longer term perspective, what is a more normalized charge off rate you expect to get to?

Jonathan Coblentz: Yes, Steven, great question. So, I think our long-term goal ultimately is to get back to our 7% to 9% charge-off range. We’ve been pretty consistent about articulating that. In terms of the second half of the year I agree at a high level with your math in that our guidance comparing the full year to 1Q actuals and 2Q guide suggests lower levels of losses in the second half of the year. I won’t state a specific number about that, but you can do the math and kind of back into it. And then you know, the back book is still contributing, but it’s going to contribute less. Right? As Raul mentioned a moment ago, and you can see this on Slide 10 of our deck, we’ve shown the expected dollar decline of the back book. It’s about $1.6 billion at March 31, and by the end of the year it’s going to have declined by $900 million to about $700 million outstanding. So, we expect less and less contribution.

Steven Kwok: Got it. And then just I’m curious as to within the full year charge-off guidance, what type of assumptions are you using on the macro side? Has anything changed relative to the prior guidance on that?