Triumph Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:TFIN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

But we’re going to have to navigate these waters and something may surprise us along the way, but I feel very good about where we sit relative to the collateral position we have in our loan book and the underwriting we did when we were – 2 years ago when a lot of these credits would have showed up.

Michael Perito: And then just last, I’m sure there’s questions so I want to ask too much here. But just on the factoring outlook near term. As you mentioned, Darrin, it sounds like there continues to kind of be incremental events in the industry that kind of gives you guys the clarity that you think the recessionary kind of trends could continue for some time. How do you – do you have any near-term outlook or expectations around kind of invoice volume and average invoice size that we should be thinking of? Or even if it’s just directionally kind of what you think that the current environment mean for you guys as we think about the model?

Tim Valdez: Mike, I’ll take that one. We still see the freight market very soft. And one thing that we look at very closely to monitor that is how the freight market is reacting to fuel. In the third quarter, you fuel increased significantly, where it took a long time for rates to actually catch up. We didn’t see improvement in the rate until late in the quarter. and even still in a vibrant market, those items or those numbers will move more in lockstep. So we see increase in the average invoice amount, not so much as demand driven as more expense driven through the fuel side of the business.

Michael Perito: Got it. Okay. But I guess in high level, it’s good. The EBITDA margin improvement on TPA comes at a nice time for you guys to be able to sustain investment in that business even if the factory business is a little light for the near term? Okay. I appreciate all the color.

Aaron Graft: You’re welcome.

Operator: Our next question comes from Thomas Wendler from Stephens. Thomas, your line is open. Feel free to unmute.

Thomas Wendler: Hey, good morning, everyone.

Aaron Graft: Good morning.

Thomas Wendler: I just wanted to go back to TPA. Can you give us an idea of what the critical mass for the network volume looks like? And then maybe how the conversations are going with moving some of the legacy pricing up closer to that $5 per transaction target?

Melissa Forman: Yes. I think I can take that, Aaron. My – our projections for critical mass, we think that what the industry needs is for us to be processing and hopefully making payments on 1 out of 2 brokered freight transactions over the road transactions. Right now, we are touching about 1 out of 3. And so our goal is to continue to build out the network and bring on clients to get to that position and then further beyond. In terms of the $5 per transaction pricing, all of our pricing models for new business have been updated to include the per transaction pricing. However, there are always going to be some cases where we have to be creative and how we price deals to get them on board onto the network and the value that they create for all the participants, there’s creativity that happens there. But there has been substantial progress made in repricing existing clients as well as holding pricing on the new business that we are chasing today.

Thomas Wendler: Great color. And then sticking with TPay, can you give us some color around the expansion of network participants into verification only brokers? What does that opportunity look like with your audit only clients?