SHF Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 14, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Net income of $942k vs. a $17.6M loss last year, driven by an 84% reduction in operating expenses and a 204% increase in loan interest income.
  • Total revenue fell 12% YoY to $4.6M amid lower deposit activity and onboarding fees, with deposit balances down ~33%.
  • Launched a new lending program, issuing $550k in credit lines at non-predatory rates to underserved small/midsize cannabis businesses without real estate collateral.
  • Successfully exited a $3.1M defaulted loan, recovering full principal plus over $200k in accrued interest, which boosts portfolio quality and lending capacity.
  • Highlighted potential reclassification of cannabis to Schedule 3, which could alleviate 280E tax burdens and unlock new lending and deposit opportunities for clients.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
SHF Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Safe Harbor Financial Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one a second time. Thank you, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Phil Carlson of KCSA. You may begin.

Phil Carlson
Managing Director of Investor Relations at KCSA

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter 2024 earnings conference call for SHF Holdings, Inc., doing business as Safe Harbor Financial, which we will refer to as Safe Harbor or the company throughout the duration of the presentation. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that certain comments made on this call include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include statements with respect to the company's outlook and the company's expectations regarding its market opportunities and other financial operational matters. Each forward-looking statement discussed on today's call is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in such statements.

Phil Carlson
Managing Director of Investor Relations at KCSA

Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Additional information regarding these factors appears under the heading Risk Factors in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC, which are available at www.sec.gov and on our website at ir.shfinancial.org. The forward-looking statements on this call will speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Also, during the call, Safe Harbor will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our Form 10-Q, as well as today's earnings press release, which you can find on the company's investor relations website or on the SEC website.

Phil Carlson
Managing Director of Investor Relations at KCSA

All dollar amounts expressed today are in U.S. currency. Presenting today will be Sundie Seefried, Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Denney, Chief Financial Officer of Safe Harbor. I will now turn the call to Sundie. Sundie, please go ahead.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

Thank you, Phil, and welcome everyone to our Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. During the second quarter of 2024, we continued to solidify Safe Harbor's position as a leading financial services provider for cannabis-related businesses, continuing to diversify our income streams, improve loan capacity and portfolio quality, as well as enhance our product offerings. For the past 10 years, we have shaped our financial services platform to change in response to the cannabis regulatory landscape. The results we achieved in quarter two demonstrate that our business model has allowed us to operate efficiently with an improved revenue mix and higher interest income. In particular, for the quarter, we generated positive net income and gross profit. We also reduced operating expenses by almost 84% compared to the same period last year.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

Also important to note, loan interest income for the second quarter 2024 was up approximately 204% year over year to approximately $1.8 million. Before Jim dives deeper into the financials, I want to recap some recent highlights. In June, we successfully announced additional lines of credit issued, originating $550,000 for three long-standing Colorado cannabis clients. This strategic move exemplifies our firm commitment to supporting the capital requirements of the cannabis industry and addresses the growing demand from small and mid-sized cannabis businesses, a segment often underserved by traditional financial institutions. Our program offers normalized, non-predatory rates without requiring real estate collateral. We believe that this expansion of our lending platform could not only diversify our revenue streams, but also strengthen our position as a financial services provider in the cannabis industry.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

By filling this gap in the market, we believe that we're driving growth, enhancing client relationships, and solidifying Safe Harbor's market leadership. We anticipate this program will contribute positively to our bottom line while supporting the broader cannabis ecosystem. In July, we announced that we had successfully exited a $3.1 million defaulted loan. Originated in 2021 and secured by Class A industrial real estate in Denver, the successful exit was facilitated by the property's strong fundamentals, demonstrating the strength of Safe Harbor's underwriting process. In exiting this loan, we recovered the full principal plus over $200,000 in accrued interest, which will be reinvested into lending and credit line capacity. This was the only non-performing loan in the company's history, and its full recovery validates Safe Harbor's balanced lending approach.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

In addition, the outcome improves our overall loan portfolio quality and increases our lending capacity. I would also like to address the possibility of cannabis reclassification, which we believe would be a significant growth catalyst for the industry. Ahead of the July 22nd deadline, we submitted comments to the Justice Department regarding the proposal to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. Over 42,000 comments were submitted, with almost 93% of those comments in favor of changing cannabis' schedule, and 61% calling for a complete descheduling of cannabis. While the proposed change of rescheduling cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III wouldn't legalize cannabis or alter BSA and AML compliance requirements, it would represent significant progress for the industry. The reclassification would likely alleviate tax burdens under Section 280E, potentially strengthening our clients' balance sheets and income statements.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

We anticipate this change would create a more favorable business environment, enabling expansion of services and new market opportunities. The prospect of rescheduling cannabis could help level the playing field for cannabis businesses. Without the constraints of 280E, the Internal Revenue Code provision that prohibits businesses dealing with Schedule I substances from writing off business expenses on their federal tax returns, these businesses would potentially be able to produce stronger financial returns, increasing our ability to qualify them for more lending options, improve debt service coverage, and we believe increase our deposit balances. The benefits to the industry financial strength rolls up to the favor of Safe Harbor. Importantly, this development underscores Safe Harbor's continued relevance in the cannabis financial services sector. Our first-mover status and deep industry expertise position us uniquely to capitalize on the evolving regulatory landscape.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

With the growth of the cannabis industry, we believe that the need for our unique service platform would increase considerably, and we would remain a crucial partner for cannabis and other high-risk banking businesses. We believe our creative and methodical approach in building the company's platform has enabled national business scaling. The platform's policies, training, monitoring, and processes are all well established and supported by expert talent. We anticipate this combination of intellectual property plus human capital talent will provide a competitive advantage as we focus on continued growth. Looking ahead, Safe Harbor will continue to lead with lending and further cement our unique position in the cannabis financial services market. We are just one of a handful of financial service providers capable of providing CRBs with access to compliant deposit tools and traditional lending.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

We remain committed to supporting the cannabis industry through regulatory change, and as the regulation evolves, we are well positioned to capitalize on these changes. With our unique service offerings and product suite, we believe new lending opportunities will continue to drive organic deposit growth. As we have seen, traditional financial institutions are either unable or unwilling to replicate our business model due to its complexity and difficulty to execute. Certainly, our attention remains on growing the business with a focus on increasing our client deposit base, attracting newly legalized markets, continuing to seek existing financial institutions, and expand lending opportunities. With our ability to serve large MSOs in every legal market across the country, as well as our continued pursuit to roll out additional service offerings, we believe we are well positioned for future growth.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

I'd now like to hand the call over to Jim to discuss our financial results for the quarter and six months ended June 30th, 2024. Jim?

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

Thank you, Sundie, and good afternoon, everyone. Our second quarter 2024 total revenue was $4 million, down approximately 12% from total revenue of $4.6 million in the comparable prior year period. For the six months ending June 30, 2024, total revenue was $8.1 million, down approximately 7.6% from total revenue of $8.8 million in the comparable prior year period. The decrease in total revenue was driven by lower interest income and lower deposit activity and onboarding income, offset by substantially higher loan interest income. The number of active accounts and the aggregate deposit balances of the active account holders at the end of the second quarter of 2024 were lower by approximately 33% versus the prior year period.

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

Notwithstanding the fewer accounts and lower balances, the volume of account activity per account was higher in our second quarter of 2024 versus the comparable prior year period. Additionally, loan interest income was up by more than 204% in the period ending June 30, 2024, versus the prior year period. Moving down the income statement, operating expenses in the second quarter of 2024 were approximately $3.7 million versus operating expenses in the second quarter of 2023 of $22.5 million. Recall that the company incurred significant impairment charges to goodwill and long-lived intangible assets in the second quarter of 2023. After removing these one-time non-cash expenses, operating expenses for the second quarter of 2023 were $5.6 million.

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

The lower operating expenses in the second quarter of 2024 versus the second quarter of 2023 were primarily attributable to lower stock compensation expense and lower consulting and professional services related expenses. Consequently, net income reported in the second quarter of 2024 was $942,000, compared to a net loss of $17.6 million in the prior year period. For the six months ending June 30, 2024, the company reported net income of $3 million versus a net loss of $19 million in the same prior year period. When adjusting net income for interest, taxes, and depreciation and amortization expense, and further adjustments to exclude non-cash, unusual, and/or infrequent costs, we compute an adjusted EBITDA, which management believes is a measure to evaluate our operating performance.

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

A reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA is provided in the press release and Form 8-K filed with the SEC earlier today. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ending June 30, 2024, was approximately $974,000 versus $850,000 in the comparable prior year period. For the six months ending June 30, 2024, the company reported Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.1 million versus $1.3 million for the first half of 2023. Moving to the balance sheet. As of June 30, 2024, the company reported cash and cash equivalents of $6.1 million, compared to $4.9 million at December 31, 2023.

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

Cash provided by operating activities through the second quarter of 2024 was $2.7 million, versus cash used by operating activities approximately $965,000 in the comparable prior year period. This improvement was mainly due to previously cited lower operating expenses in 2024 versus the prior year period. Turning to our liquidity, the company reported a net working capital on June 30, 2024, of approximately $302,000, versus a net working capital deficit of $135,000 on December 31, 2023. Looking ahead to the balance of 2024, we expect to report full-year revenue for 2024 in the range of $17-$18 million and full-year Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $3.75-$4.25 million.

Jim Dennedy
CFO at Safe Harbor Financial

With that, I will now turn the call back to the operator to open the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question, and you may rejoin the question queue if you have additional questions. Again, please press star one to join the queue. With no questions at this time, I would actually like to turn the conference back over to Sundie Seefried for any additional or closing remarks.

Sundie Seefried
Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial

Thank you. I would like to thank you all for joining us on today's call and for your support for Safe Harbor Financial. We are grateful to our investors as we continue to grow our innovative financial services platform during this exciting time. I will now ask the operator to close the line.

Analysts
    • Jim Dennedy
      CFO at Safe Harbor Financial
    • Phil Carlson
      Managing Director of Investor Relations at KCSA
    • Sundie Seefried
      Board Member, CEO, and President at Safe Harbor Financial
Powered by Quartr