PROG Q2 2024 Earnings Report

PROG EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.92
• Consensus EPS: $0.70
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.22
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.92

PROG Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $592.16 million
• Expected Revenue: $573.23 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$18.93 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: -0.10%

PROG Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2024
• Date: 7/24/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 24, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

PROG (NYSE:PRG)., formerly known as Aaron’s, is a North American provider of lease-to-own and consumer finance solutions. The company operates through two primary segments: Aaron’s Business Solutions and Progressive Financial Services. Through Aaron’s Business Solutions, PROG offers customers access to furniture, electronics, home appliances and technology products via lease ownership arrangements, serving both individual consumers and small businesses.

The Progressive Financial Services segment provides lease-purchase and retail point-of-sale financing programs to customers with limited credit histories. Under its Progressive Leasing brand, the company partners with a network of retail merchants, enabling consumers to obtain merchandise through affordable, short-term leases with the option to purchase. This segment leverages a proprietary credit technology platform to underwrite and manage customer accounts.

Originally founded in 1955 by R. Charles Loudermilk, the business was named after his son, Aaron. Aaron’s grew through a combination of company-operated and franchised locations, going public in 1982 and expanding its footprint across the United States and Canada. In 2020, the company restructured and rebranded as PROG Holdings to better reflect its dual focus on specialty finance and rent-to-own solutions while separating its technology and homeowner services businesses into a standalone entity.

Today, PROG Holdings serves consumers in nearly every U.S. state and Canada, operating over one thousand company stores alongside a broad franchise network. The company also maintains an e-commerce platform that complements its brick-and-mortar presence, allowing customers to shop and manage their lease agreements online. PROG’s combination of flexible payment options and accessible financing is designed to meet the needs of customers who may not have traditional credit profiles.

PROG Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Our Q2 results surpassed expectations, with 7.9% GMV growth, $592.2M revenue, $72.3M adjusted EBITDA (12.2% margin) and $0.92 non‐GAAP EPS, all above the high ends of guidance.
• The company advanced its strategic pillars—Grow, Enhance, Expand—through new retailer integrations, a 250% YTD marketplace GMV lift, improved conversion rates and generative AI deployments.
• Tighter credit supply from prime lenders has boosted higher‐quality applicants in our funnel, aiding GMV and expected to continue benefiting performance into the rest of 2024.
• Management raised its guidance, forecasting high‐single‐digit Q3 GMV growth and full-year revenue of $2.40–2.45B, adjusted EBITDA of $265–275M and non-GAAP EPS of $3.25–3.40.
• Capital allocation priorities remain intact, with ongoing funding for growth and M&A, plus dividends and share repurchases—$438.8M remains under the current buyback authorization.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to PROG Holdings' second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star, one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising that your hand is raised. Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, John Baugh, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[John Baugh, VP of Investor Relations at PROG Holdings]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the PROG Holdings' second quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me this morning are Steve Michaels, PROG Holdings' President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Garner, our Chief Financial Officer. Many of you have already seen a copy of our earnings release issued this morning, which is available on our Investor Relations website, investor.progholdings.com. During this call, certain statements we make will be forward-looking, including comments regarding our revised 2024 full-year outlook and our outlook for the third quarter of 2024, the health of our portfolio and our expectations for write-offs for our Progressive Leasing segment for the remainder of 2024, our expectations regarding GMV for the third quarter and full-year 2024, and our capital allocation priorities, including our ability to continue returning capital to shareholders.

[John Baugh, VP of Investor Relations at PROG Holdings]

Listeners are cautioned not to place undue emphasis on forward-looking statements we make today, all of which are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update any such statements. On today's call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and Non-GAAP EPS, which have been adjusted for certain items which may affect the comparability of our performance with other companies. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in the reconciliation tables included with our earnings release. The company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful insight into the company's operational performance and cash flows and provides these measures to investors to help facilitate comparisons of operating results with prior periods and to assist them in understanding the company's ongoing operational performance.

[John Baugh, VP of Investor Relations at PROG Holdings]

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Steve Michaels, PROG Holdings' President and Chief Executive Officer. Steve?

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we are reporting our second quarter results as well as providing some thoughts on Q3 and our increased 2024 full-year financial outlook. Our team delivered a great second quarter, surpassing our expectations for GMV growth and exceeding the high end of our revenue and earnings outlook. Our success is rooted in strong execution, which balances growth with profitability. We've made significant strides in our 2024 priorities focused on enhancing customer and retailer experiences, deepening integrations with existing partners, marketing directly to consumers, expanding affiliate relationships through our PROG Marketplace, and collaborating with retail partners through omnichannel marketing and promotions. Our customers are positively responding to these initiatives, evidenced by an improvement in our conversion rates and a year-over-year increase in leases originated with new and reactivated customers.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Our internal efforts were complemented by lenders higher up in the credit stack having tightened approval rates in recent quarters. This has resulted in some higher credit-quality applicants entering our funnel. While this shift in credit dynamics doesn't directly convert to GMV one-for-one, these applicants did contribute to our Q2 GMV. We believe we will continue to benefit from this credit tightening as well as the internal growth initiatives I mentioned throughout the remainder of 2024. As a reminder, when we issued our outlook in late April, we had just reported a flat year-over-year Q1 GMV quarter, which had rebounded from a slow start to the year. We anticipated retail traffic headwinds in most of our leasable categories to persist in Q2.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

However, we remain confident in our strategic initiatives under Grow, Enhance, and Expand, and despite ongoing macroeconomic challenges, we are optimistic about achieving low single-digit Q2 GMV growth for our Progressive Leasing segment. I'm proud of our team's performance in delivering better-than-expected growth of 7.9% in Q2. Our focus on returning to growth has led to three consecutive quarters of flat to positive year-over-year GMV comparisons with a notable improvement this quarter. While Brian will dive into the implications the GMV performance will have on our business in the balance of 2024, our recent GMV trend has resulted in our gross leased asset balance, which is the primary driver of future-period revenues, ending the quarter close to flat compared to last year. In the second quarter, we achieved consolidated revenue of $592.2 million, surpassing the high end of our outlook range by $17.2 million.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Our consolidated Adjusted EBITDA reached $72.3 million, resulting in a 12.2% margin, primarily driven by GMV and supported by a healthy lease portfolio and disciplined spending. We are pleased with the Q2 portfolio yield for the Progressive Leasing segment. The write-off rate in Q2 was 7.7%, consistent with pre-pandemic Q2 2019, and we expect it to be the peak of quarterly write-off rates in 2024. Our non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.92 exceeded our expectations and was bolstered by a reduced share count from our share repurchase program. We are excited about how the strong performance in the first half of the year positions us for the remainder of 2024. Now, let me update you on our strategic pillars, Grow, Enhance, and Expand, which were key contributors to our GMV results in Q2.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Under our Grow pillar, focusing on business development with new and existing retail partnerships, we made significant progress in both regional and national markets. In the regional space, we onboarded new retailers and extended relationships with existing ones, achieving GMV growth that matched the growth rate of our national accounts. The Q2 results in the regional market showed a year-over-year increase in the number of active doors, coupled with an increase in GMV per door. Furthermore, despite the substantial growth, we maintained stable sales expenses and portfolio health across our regional accounts. Our PROG Marketplace, also under the Grow pillar, has delivered over 250% growth year-to-date through June 30, and we're on track to materially exceed our full-year expectations provided during the February earnings call.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

As I've mentioned before, this platform allows customers to shop anytime and anywhere through our mobile app, driving incremental traffic and sales to our network of retail partners. Additionally, our affiliate partnerships with leading retailers offer customers more choices, and last week's Amazon Prime Day, for example, was an extremely successful two-day event for our marketplace. In terms of direct-to-consumer marketing, we are creating personalized experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, making it easy for consumers to utilize our full range of products. Our investments in segmentation and automation capabilities are improving the customer experience. Under our Enhance pillar, we invested in technology projects, partnering with new and existing retailers to create seamless customer interactions. Through the first half of 2024, we completed two custom e-commerce integrations, including one with a large and long-time retail partner.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

We have a robust pipeline of additional integrations with new and existing retailers for the back half of 2024. Additionally, our search engine optimization efforts are yielding positive results. By consolidating our consumer servicing portal, store locator, and shopping experiences under the same domain as the Progressive Leasing website, we have achieved year-over-year growth in organic search traffic and customer applications. Also, under our Enhance pillar, our PROG Labs R&D group implemented generative AI solutions to boost productivity and improve retailer and customer experiences. PROG Labs rolled out OpenAI's enterprise ChatGPT and developed a number of internal apps to streamline operations, gain productivity, and reduce demand on technology resources, enabling them to focus on higher-value opportunities. Additionally, our new AI platform scales internal training and equips our sales team with retailer-specific materials, improving compliance and customer conversion rates.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

We are piloting several other value-creating generative AI solutions for both internal and consumer-facing areas, which we will share in the near to midterm. In Q2, under our Expand pillar, we focused on our omnichannel marketing strategy to automate cross-promotional consumer journeys. This approach allows us to personalize offers at a customer segment level, featuring relevant products from our portfolio. We drove incremental Progressive Leasing GMV through cross-marketing efforts, which include successful email campaigns and mobile app integration with Four, our buy now, pay later product. To summarize, our team delivered an outstanding quarter, making considerable strides on our strategic and financial priorities, which resulted in Q2 exceeding the high end of our revenue and earnings outlook. We improved customer metrics, sustained a healthy lease portfolio, exercised disciplined spending, and achieved GMV growth.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

By collaborating with our retail partners on omnichannel technology and marketing initiatives, we further increased balance of share. Our updated outlook takes into account the impact of our strategic initiatives and the benefits we expect from the tightening of the credit stack above us, offset by the current challenges we see to consumer demand posed by the macroeconomic environment. Our history of successfully navigating dynamic and challenging environments gives us confidence in our ability to adapt as conditions evolve. We expect Q3 GMV to grow in the high single digits, and our updated full-year revenue outlook reflects the GMV outperformance. We anticipate our write-offs to remain within our targeted annual range of 6-8% while profitably growing GMV.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Finally, on the topic of capital allocation, our priorities remain unchanged, and we expect to continue to fund growth, look for strategic M&A opportunities, and return excess cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Brian Garner, for more details on Q2 results and remainder-of-the-year outlook. Brian?

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Our strong performance this quarter demonstrates our ability to deliver on our strategic priorities and financial framework, which emphasizes growth alongside a healthy portfolio and prudent spending. For the second quarter in a row, we exceeded GMV expectations and surpassed the high end of our outlook for revenue and earnings. Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.92 per share beat the high end of our outlook by $0.17. I want to echo Steve's enthusiasm regarding our first half results and how it positions us as we move forward in the second half of 2024. Our teams have been driven and diligent throughout an uncertain macro environment over the last several years, and I'm proud of their performance. We are focused on sustaining our momentum and strategically navigating the periods ahead.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Starting with the Progressive Leasing segment, GMV exceeded our expectations with a 7.9% year-over-year increase, surpassing our initial projection of low single-digit growth. This outperformance reflects the significant stride our teams have made with our strategic initiatives, which are driving GMV performance and we believe will impact results positively throughout the remainder of the year. Additionally, we benefited from the impact of tightening of credit supply above us. Our GLA balance at the end of Q2 of 2024 was down 0.7% compared to the same period last year, a material improvement from the previous six quarters of mid-single to low double-digit declines. We expect the GLA balance to turn positive during Q3 and improve throughout the remainder of the year, contributing to the revenue growth implied in our revised outlook.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Q2 revenues for the Progressive Leasing segment declined 0.8% from $574.8 million in Q2 of 2023 to $570.5 million, primarily driven by the Gross Leased Asset balance being down 4.7% as we entered the quarter, partially offset by higher 90-day early purchases as compared to the same period last year. Similar to Q1, revenue outperformed our expectations, primarily due to the larger-than-expected portfolio size. The Q2 portfolio performance for Progressive Leasing was better than expected, contributing to earnings results. Additionally, the percentage of customers choosing to exercise their 90-day purchase option has returned to pre-pandemic levels. Our gross margin of 32.6% in Q2 of 2024 was 40 basis points lower compared to Q2 of 2023, primarily driven by normalized levels of 90-day purchases period compared to historic lows in 2023.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

The provision for lease merchandise write-offs was 7.7% in Q2, which is consistent with the pre-pandemic period of Q2 of 2019 at 7.6%. We expect Q2 to be the high point in quarterly write-offs and anticipate full-year results to be within our targeted annual range of 68%. Progressive Leasing's SG&A expense in Q2 was $74.4 million, a decrease of $3.9 million, or 5%, compared to $78.3 million in the same quarter last year. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A expense has decreased by 60 basis points year-over-year from 13.6% of revenue in Q2 of 2023 to 13% of revenue in Q2 of 2024. As a reminder, this improvement is primarily due to the restructuring actions taken in Q1 this year. Despite these cost-cutting measures, we have maintained our investment in marketing, sales, and technology to drive GMV.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Adjusted EBITDA for Progressive Leasing decreased slightly from $75.6 million and 13.2% of revenue in Q2 of 2023 to $73.8 million and 12.9% of revenue in Q2 of 2024. The adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.9% is at the high end of our 11%-13% annual margin target for the Progressive Leasing segment. The segment achieved a strong margin despite a slight decrease in revenue, aided by our Q1 restructuring actions and disciplined spending. Q2 2024 consolidated revenues were $592.2 million compared to $592.8 million in the same quarter last year, driven by the smaller portfolio of the Progressive Leasing segment entering the quarter, offset by GMV growth, along with an increase in customers exercising their 90-day purchase options. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $72.3 million and 12.2% of revenue compared to $75 million and 12.7% in the year-ago period.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Looking at our balance sheet, we ended the second quarter of 2024 with $250.1 million in cash and gross debt of $600 million, resulting in a net leverage ratio of 1.26 times trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA. We remain undrawn on our $350 million revolver at the end of the quarter. We paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share in June, and during the quarter, we repurchased 1.03 million shares of our common stock at a weighted average price of $35.67 per share. We have $438.8 million remaining under our recently reauthorized $500 million share repurchase program. With respect to our view on the remainder of the year, I'll now touch on a few key aspects of our third quarter and revised full-year outlook, which was provided in this morning's earnings release.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

We are optimistic about the remainder of 2024 based on the positive trends we have observed to date. We believe our GMV momentum will carry into the second half of the year and expect to end Q3 with a high single-digit GMV comparison year-over-year. This growth is underpinned by the assumptions that the benefits we experience from credit tightening will continue into the second half of the year, coupled with the ongoing progress with our strategy across grow, enhance, and expand that Steve addressed in detail. We believe these efforts will help us gain market share across both regional and national accounts. As I mentioned earlier, GMV performance in the first half of the year has improved the GLA balance, which is roughly flat year-over-year going into Q3 and expected to improve over the remainder of the year.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

This expected improvement in GLA benefits revenue for the remainder of the year and is reflected in our increased 2024 revenue outlook. As we actively manage the portfolio while growing GMV, performance is expected to remain within our targeted yields. Q3 gross margin will have a difficult comparison to Q3 of 2023 for the Progressive Leasing segment due to the below-average levels of 90-day purchases last year. Our revised consolidated outlook for 2024 calls for revenues in the range of $2.4-$2.45 billion, Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $265-$275 million, and non-GAAP EPS in the range of $3.25-$3.40.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

This outlook assumes a continuation of benefits from credit tightening above us, alongside a difficult operating environment with current trends of soft demand for leasable consumer goods, no material changes in the company's decisioning posture, no meaningful increase in the unemployment rates for our consumer base, an effective tax rate for non-GAAP EPS of approximately 28%, and no impact from additional share repurchases. In summary, this quarter's performance is a testament to our collective efforts, strategic expertise, and strong execution combined with credit trends that we believe are favorable for our business. We deliver better-than-expected GMV growth, a healthy portfolio, and maintain disciplined spending. Our free cash flow generation allowed us to return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. We appreciate your interest in PROG Holdings, and I'll now turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, simply press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the candidate roster. Now, first question coming from the line of Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

[Brad Thomas, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Hi, good morning, and congrats on the execution here in the quarter. Steve, I wanted to just jump in first in talking about some of the growth drivers in the business. I was hoping you could just give us a little bit more color, maybe even quantify to some extent how you're thinking about the drivers of GMV going forward here in the balance of the year and how much comes from the established retail base that you have, these important partners that are still seeing some tough times. How much is it improvement from them versus some of the growth initiatives that you have? Thanks.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah, thanks, Brad. Good morning. Yeah, GMV, we're pleased with the GMV performance, and it was strong and pretty consistent throughout the quarter. I'll talk about the second quarter, and then we can talk about what's baked into the outlook for the balance of the year. But the team's partnered well with our partners to your question about existing retailers. And we were able to get a few initiatives that we had been working on for some time over the goal line during the quarter. So that's going to help us with our productivity within existing retail partnerships. The marketing team also had a hand in it, both in the form of partner marketing with our retailers as well as direct-to-consumer marketing. And as we called out in the prepared remarks, we're encouraged by the momentum in our regional business.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

It's been a renewed focus for us, and I'm pleased with the progress that we've made thus far. And we're really just getting restarted, I would say, in that area. We also called out that the credit supply dynamic was at play and probably a little bit more observable this quarter than in previous quarters. We did see evidence of tightened supply above us in the stack. And those apps are not. It's not just about top-of-the-funnel dynamics and apps. It's just one part of the picture. We have to continually work to improve the experience and remove friction from the onboarding process in order to convert those apps into funded leases. And we had a few improvements not only in the DTC or direct-to-consumer area, but also in particular retail installations there.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

So we're pleased with the execution because, as you noted, in many of our top retailers, they're still facing down traffic and down comps. And so to be able to have this growth is, we're pleased with that. We expect the momentum to continue and to somewhat even accelerate, as evidenced by the fact that we guided to high singles in the third quarter for GMV growth. We did add some retailers, mostly in the SMB space and the regional space. But we've got a good pipeline and look forward to continuing the growth.

[Brad Thomas, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

That's very helpful, Steve. If I can ask a follow-up just about sort of the retail landscape, I think there's news of Conn's filing for bankruptcy today and with plans to close at least some stores. You used to partner with them. I don't believe you were in them at all. There's other retailers that you partner with that obviously have closed stores and may be at risk of bankruptcy themselves in the future. I guess the question I have is, if you could talk a little bit about your relationship more directly with a customer than just a retailer and how you maybe try and take advantage of situations where there might be someone like Conn's that goes away and how you continue to navigate this landscape where the retail roadmap is changing almost every day.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah, thank you. You're right. It's a dynamic environment. Just for clarity, we do not partner with Conn's currently, but it is an important thing that I've talked about before, and we've gotten much, much better on that and more sophisticated, I would say, over the last number of years. We have good visibility into our customers, where they were onboarded from, what their purchase habits have been. We're working on AI and other personalization efforts to try and predict what they may want next. More fundamentally, we communicate with our customers directly and can say, "Mrs. Customer, the store in your area has closed. Maybe you'd like to take advantage of the going-out-of-business sale.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

But after that, we've got these other fine retailers that we partner with in your area that we could direct you to." And in fact, we could create offers for some type of promotional activity or some type of incentive to make sure that they stay in our preferred partner network. So it's a very good touchpoint that we have. And with this dynamic environment, I think we'll be flexing those muscles more than we probably have in the last number of years.

[Brad Thomas, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Very helpful. Thanks so much.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, Brad.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Hoang Nguyen with TD Cowen, Your line is open.

[Hoang Nguyen, Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen]

Hi guys, and congrats on the very strong quarter. I just wanted to talk about credit tightening a little bit. It looks like from your outlook, it seems that you guys are incrementally more positive on the trade down from lenders above. So I just want you to confirm whether that is true. And maybe when we think about the environment right now, inflation is coming down. Maybe things have gotten a little bit better versus maybe three months ago. So I mean, how sustainable do you think this trade down would be? And have a follow-up.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Sure. Well, I would agree with your characterization that we're incrementally positive. But it's not just about trade down. It's about our execution and the initiatives that we have that are recently deployed as well as things that we've got on the roadmap. Trade down is a factor in it. We talked about it. You'll remember we kind of were braced for it for a number of years, and it really didn't happen. We started to see some evidence of it in holiday of 2023. And it was in two, I'll call it, facets. More customers that were coming into the retail environment where we thought, or we observed, were in need of a payment plan. And that doesn't necessarily mean us. It could mean that they were appropriately partnered with a prime provider, and that's fine.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

But more customers needing a payment plan and then couple that with less of them being approved by the providers in the stack above us does tend to have a funnel dynamic for us, which is positive for us. We read all the public reports from the prime providers, and you'll see that maybe some of their DQs are stabilizing. But they stabilize because of some tightening efforts on their part. So I'm not calling for an intensity or an increasing benefit. I think the tightened conditions are here, at least for the rest of this year. I don't think they're going to continue to tighten, but the tightened conditions have had an impact at the top of our funnel, and we feel pretty good about that continuing. But more impactfully are the things that we're doing on the execution front. We'll see what the view is for 2025.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Right now, we're not calling for increased tightening, but we believe that the tightening that's in the market will stick around for a little bit.

[Hoang Nguyen, Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen]

Got it. And maybe about your PROG Marketplace, I mean, very strong growth there. I mean, can you talk about historically, I mean, how have you guys been successful in converting a PROG Marketplace relationship into a direct integration relationship? Thanks.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah, that's a great question. The marketplace is an exciting area for us, and it's really growing very quickly. Its origins, and it's started from really because we already partner with some of the best retailers in the country. It started with just another way for our customers to shop with our retail partners. It is another evidence of us driving traffic back into the retail environment and helping to demonstrate the value that we provide to the retailers that we partner with. It has morphed into some affiliate relationships with retailers that we don't have partnerships with. We're not going to specifically call out any retailers, but I can tell you that we have had conversations with and had conversation starters due to the volume coming through on the marketplace.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

In fact, there's been one retailer that we got a call from that we had been having conversations with already, but we got a call from them saying that they had enough volume coming through their customer service line that they wanted to get a one-page tear sheet for their call center agents to talk about our program. And then it kicks start on the BizDev side too. So we're encouraged about just the volume of the DTC motion generally, but also as a complement to our BizDev partnership efforts.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Bobby Griffin with Raymond James, Your line is open.

[Bobby Griffin, Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James]

Good morning, buddy. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the performance this quarter.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, Bobby.

[Bobby Griffin, Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James]

Steve, I guess I wanted to circle back to the GMV upside and maybe ask it a slightly different way and maybe unpack it a little bit more. But when you guys saw the upside this quarter, was it a function that the initiatives that you've been working on and we've talked about got over the finish line sooner? Or is the actual impact from these initiatives greater than maybe what you guys were forecasting and they're having a greater impact at a quicker rate than what maybe the team was thinking the impact from these investments would be contributing?

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah, that's a great question. Maybe a little bit of both. Initiatives never get over the goal line as quickly as I want them to, so I would never say that it happens sooner. But obviously, we have to partner with the retailer and make sure it gets prioritized if it requires tech resources. So we had a few things that we had. What I've learned over the time is it's difficult, it's dangerous, if you will, to bake in GMV or business results from an initiative that you think or is scheduled to get done in a particular month or in a particular quarter. And so you may see some conservatism from us by thinking it's on the roadmap for Q2, but we haven't baked in the upside in Q2 because we have been burned by that before.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

So maybe, yes, through that, some things got done faster than we had planned, which basically means they got done on time as opposed to being delayed. As far as the impact of those items, yeah, I mean, I think on the margin, it's probably slightly better than we were expecting. And that's coupled with, it's hard to unpack that because it could be coupled with just general app funnel dynamics. That isn't necessarily trade down. It could just be customers that need a payment plan more, and they're in our market already. Maybe last time they bought during the stimulus period, they paid cash, and this time they're looking for a payment plan. So it's kind of a multiplier effect that we got some initiatives across the goal line, and those initiatives were met with more apps. So it was more productive.

[Bobby Griffin, Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James]

Okay. Perfect. Appreciate that. And then I guess two other quick ones, maybe one for Brian. Just on the lease merchandise write-offs being the high watermark, what is the driver behind that? Is that just a function of kind of how we roll through the rest of the year from a revenue standpoint, or is it some leases rolling off the books? And then how much pressure can you give any color of just how much pressure the gross margin might see versus last year in 3Q? I think you called out some dynamics in the 90-day buyouts.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah. Thanks, Bobby. Yeah, with respect to the write-offs, as you go back the last few years, Q2 generally has bled down into Q3. So Q3 has been lower than Q2 just from a seasonal perspective. But I think part of what's playing into what we're seeing, and it goes to your second question, is when we talk about trade down and the benefit we're seeing from the credit providers above us, unsurprisingly, what we've observed with some of these incremental leases, and while many of them are in the early stages, the propensity or the tendency for them to steer towards electing a 90-day purchase seems to be higher than your typical lease. And so that's going to have, and at the same time, you may see some write-off impact from those, but it's early, and we're watching those.

[Brian Garner, CFO at PROG Holdings]

So from a gross margin perspective, that higher 90-day is baked into a reduction sequentially from Q2 to Q3 in our anticipated gross margins. And we'll watch that. The yield overall is still very strong collectively from these pools, and we don't have any level of concern about getting to where we need to be from a profitability standpoint on these leases. They just tend to skew or appear to skew towards 90-day a little bit more. So that's going to help your—that's going to likely trend more favorable from a write-off perspective, but come with higher 90 days. So that's what we're seeing there.

[Bobby Griffin, Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James]

Thank you. I appreciate the details, and best of luck here in the third quarter.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, Bobby.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Anthony Chukumba with Loop Capital Markets, Your line is open.

[Anthony Chukumba, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the strong quarter as well. I was just wanting to see if we could get a little bit more color about those cross-marketing efforts, those successful cross-marketing efforts. You mentioned email. But if you can just kind of dimensionalize that for us? Like how exactly—I mean, is that how are you kind of sharing the information with the retailer? Who's sending the email out? Is any of this in their circle? I just want to get a little bit more color on that. Thanks.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Sure. Yeah. The marketing efforts as it relates to the partner marketing with our retailers really come in a lot of forms. But I'm very proud of the team. We get a lot of kudos and a lot of positive comments from our retail partners about our marketing team and how they kind of view them as an extension of their marketing team. And so it could be, to your question, it could be a co-branded email that comes from us to our database. We're always very careful about channel conflict, but we can hit the database with a message from one of our partners. It could be a promotional campaign, like a reduced IP promo that the retailer promotes. It could be we have another retailer who does a tremendous amount of mailers promoting the program.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

In their particular instance, they have got a name for the leasing program that they promote. But the partner marketing is a big and growing part of our efforts. And I think we've talked in previous calls about PROG Perks Week, where we have retailers that partner with other retailers, and we'll have a mail piece or an email piece that goes out from us that has two different retail brands on it, and each of them offering a promotional item for our consumer. So it takes a lot of different forms. And it's not just email. It's also SEO and digital marketing and display and other things, most of which is done with partner marketing, but some of which is done just from our DTC efforts as well.

[Anthony Chukumba, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question coming from the line of Vincent Caintic with BTIG, Your line is open.

[Vincent Caintic, Managing Director at BTIG]

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to also echo the great results. First question, wanted to actually focus on your discussion about the regional account growth. I know in the past, I think investors think about PROG Holdings as being more of a national account and some of the competitors as being regionally focused. It was interesting and great to see the account growth on the regional side for PROG Holdings. If you could talk about your efforts in more detail, so sort of what you're building up there, what you see as an opportunity, and where we can expect that to go, that'd be helpful. Thank you.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah. Thanks, Vincent. Yeah, the regional space or the SMB space has been of particular focus from certainly the competitive set and on our calls recently. It's been a renewed focus of ours. The way I think about the business is really kind of like you described it, bifurcated. There's the enterprise side, and there's a certain way that you support and partner with the largest retailers. Then there's a different motion for the regional players. Within the bifurcation of the business, regions can also be split into pillars with super regionals, regionals, and then what I call the long tail or the small SMB shops. It's a big business, and there's a lot of business out there to do, and we compete very well in that space. We have had a renewed focus on it.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

We made a change in leadership that focuses on attacking that business. In the quarter, there was a particular focus on reactivating doors that we had maybe lost some productivity in or potentially had gone completely dormant. We had some success there. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we saw an increase in doors as well as productivity per door, specifically in the regional space. We saw it in the national space as well, but in the regional space. That was key. We did add a few new partnerships, and we expect to continue to do that. As I've said in the past, the regions are very competitive, and churn is fairly common.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

So far, and it's early, but so far, we've achieved these gains without really having to increase the resources in the regional team as it relates to a salesforce either inside or outside. But when we identify high ROI opportunities to increase that team going after that GMV, we'll absolutely do that.

[Vincent Caintic, Managing Director at BTIG]

Okay. Great. That's super helpful. Thank you. And second question, so separate topic from what we've been discussing, but on regulation. So there's been, I think, two days ago, we saw one of your competitors and the CFPB have their disagreements made public. And then separately, the CFPB is going after another one of your competitors. I think there's a hearing in Utah this Friday. But wanted to kind of get your broad thoughts about regulation and maybe how those topics, to the extent they do affect, or how they relate to PROG Holdings. Thank you.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Yeah. I mean, I guess limited comments. We're aware of the activities, as you can imagine, and the multi-year investigations that have led up to those activities. We've read the complaints, but can't comment. We don't generally comment on litigation that we're in, let alone litigation we're not in. It's hard to predict what could happen in the future, but it's something we closely monitor and take very seriously, which is why we work really hard to be a very transparent and flexible provider of our solutions to our customers. And we take that. We're very proud of that and take that very seriously. As far as this is a highly regulated business. It's been that way for a long time. The states is where a lot of the action is. These happen to be at the CFPB level.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

I guess all I would say as it relates to PROG Holdings, we're not aware of any investigations of us at this time, whether they be at the federal level or the state level, and haven't received any written notices or inquiries indicating such.

[Vincent Caintic, Managing Director at BTIG]

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks very much.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thanks, Vincent.

[Operator]

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Steve Michaels for any closing remarks.

[Steve Michaels, President and CEO at PROG Holdings]

Thank you. I'd like to thank you guys again for joining us this morning and for your continued interest in PROG. Our teams are executing well, and we are excited about our accelerating return to growth, coupled always with a healthy portfolio performance. We look forward to updating you again in October with our Q3 results, and we hope you have a great day.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Brian Garner, CFO
• John Baugh, VP of Investor Relations
• Steve Michaels, President and CEO

Analysts

• Anthony Chukumba, Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets
• Bobby Griffin, Managing Director of Equity Research at Raymond James
• Brad Thomas, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Hoang Nguyen, Equity Research Analyst at TD Cowen
• Vincent Caintic, Managing Director at BTIG