Consumer Portfolio Services Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 12, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: The company originated $433 million in new auto loans, growing assets under management 16.8% year-over-year to $3.708 billion—its second-best Q2 in 34 years.
  • Positive Sentiment: It completed a $418 million securitization at a 5.43% all-in cost, the lowest coupon since 2022, which could bolster net interest margin if rates decline.
  • Positive Sentiment: Operating expenses fell to 4.9% of the portfolio—the lowest in at least ten years—enhancing efficiency as the business grows.
  • Negative Sentiment: Diluted earnings per share slid to $0.02 from $0.19 a year ago, weighed down by higher funding costs and smaller fair-value markups.
  • Positive Sentiment: Older 2022–23 vintages now comprise under 35% of the portfolio, with newer 2024–25 paper performing significantly better thanks to AI-driven collection improvements.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Consumer Portfolio Services Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Speaker 2

Thank you, everyone, and welcome to the Consumer Portfolio Services 2025 second quarter operating results conference call. Today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, management has asked me to inform you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements. Any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed forward-looking statements. Statements regarding current or historical valuation of receivables become dependent on estimates of future events, but also forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. I refer you to the company's annual report filed March 12th for further clarification. The company assumes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. With us here is Mr. Charles Bradley, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Denesh Bharwani, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr.

Speaker 2

Michael Lavin, President and Chief Operating Officer of Consumer Portfolio Services. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Bradley.

Operator

Thank you, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. Looking at the quarter, I think it's not quite business as usual, but we're continuing. We've kind of reached a new level in terms of originations. They're more recently slightly flat, but still stronger than last year. We've had a better first half this year than last year. The market appears to be a little cautious or flat currently, but nonetheless, we're on pace for a better year in originations this year than last year, and the second quarter shows that. We did just do another securitization, which, as much as it was recently, we usually talk about this securitization during the previous quarter call. It was $418 million with a 5.43% all-in cost. What's good about that is it's the lowest coupon since 2022.

Operator

Depending on what happens going forward, if there's some rate cuts, this is what would really, really help, both our NIM in terms of what we're doing going forward. A couple of rate cuts down the road would be very, very helpful. Nonetheless, the second quarter securitization went off very well. The fact that that market remains very strong is certainly key to our success going forward. We also continue to have an improvement in our operating expenses. OpEx is now the lowest it's been in the history of the company, or at least in the last 10 years. We're pushing to continue that trend. As we continue to grow, both with our cost-cutting measures and efficiency measures, and the fact that we're growing, we'll make that number even better. Those are real good highlights.

Operator

I think the other thing to talk about in terms of performance is, the 2022 and 2023 portfolio paper isn't the strongest, to say the least. We've been kind of waiting for that to run off. It is now less than 35% of the overall portfolio, still very significant. Nonetheless, as more new paper gets on and the trending in the new paper, both in 2024 and 2025, is significantly better so far. As time goes by and we're able to replace the portfolio, it becomes more sort of front-loaded with 2024, 2025, and 2026 paper, and the 2022 and 2023 paper continues to run off. You're going to get a little boost there that you really can't see because basically the bad paper's gone away and the good paper's replacing it. A very strong trend in terms of the quarter's production.

Operator

I'll have a few more comments on the industry, but for now, I'll turn it over to Denny for the financials.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Brad. Going over the financial results for the quarter, starting with top-line revenue, revenues for the second quarter were $109.8 million. That is a 14% increase over the $95.9 million in the second quarter of last year. That revenue is primarily driven by our interest from the fair value portfolio, which is now at $3.6 billion and yielding 11.4%, remembering that that yield is net of losses. The revenues for the quarter also include a $3 million fair value markup, which compares to a $5.5 million fair value markup in the prior year quarter. The fair value markup is a result of better-than-expected performance in our fair value portfolio. For the six months ended June 30, revenues were $216.6 million, which is a 15% increase over the $187.6 million last year.

Speaker 3

Moving on to expenses for the quarter, $102.8 million is a 15% increase over the $89.2 million for the second quarter of last year. The primary driver for the increase in expenses are the increases in interest expense, which is up 26% year over year from 58.7% this year, or from 46.7% last year to 58.7% this year. That increase in interest expense is largely due to increases in the volume of our debt, including our securitization debt, but there's also increases in rate increases that are built into that interest expense increase. Total expense for the six months, $202.9 million, is a 16% increase over the $174.4 million in the six months of 2024. Looking at pre-tax earnings, $7 million for the quarter is a 4% increase over the $6.7 million last year, and for the year-to-date period, $13.8 million this year compared to $13.2 million last year.

Speaker 3

Similarly, net income follows the same trends: $4.8 million for the quarter, $4.7 million last year, and for the six months, $9.5 million versus $9.3 million. Diluted earnings per share, $0.20 a share for 2025 second quarter compared to $0.19 in the prior year quarter. For the six months, $0.39 versus $0.38. Moving on to the balance sheet, a couple of things of note. Our finance receivables at fair value now stand at $3.56 billion, which is a 20% increase over the $2.96 billion last year, driven by healthy origination levels, $433 million in new auto originations in the current quarter, and puts us on pace for another stronger year in loan originations.

Speaker 3

On the debt side, total debt, which includes our warehouse credit lines, residual interest financing, securitization, ABS debt, and corporate long-term debt, was $3.4 billion at the end of June this year compared to $2.9 billion last year at the same time, which is a 15% increase. You'll see that our finance receivables are 20% higher year over year, but our debt is only 15% higher, which shows that our leverage is improving. Moving on to shareholders' equity for the second quarter, we finished the quarter at $303.1 million, which is an 8% increase over the $280.3 million last year, and it's the first time our equity has eclipsed the $300 million mark. Other metrics, looking at our net interest margin, $51.1 million in the second quarter is 4% better than $49.2 million last year. For the year-to-date period, $103 million is also 4% better than $99 million last year.

Speaker 3

As Brad said, core operating expenses are now below 5%. 4.9% in the second quarter is a 14% improvement over the 5.7% last year, and our return on managed assets, 0.8% compared to 0.9% last year. For the year-to-date period, same numbers, 0.8% versus 0.9%. I will turn the call over to Mike.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Denny. Looking at our sales and originations, as Brad said, fairly flat. In the second quarter of 2025, we originated $433 million of new contracts as compared to $431 million of new contracts in the second quarter of 2024. I will note, however, that the second quarter of 2025 is our second best Q2 in our 34-year history, so good work there. Our second quarter of 2025, that growth follows our year-over-year growth of 2024 over 2023 at 23.8%. The first half of 2025, we kind of produced the growth that we intended to do. At the end of the second quarter, our portfolio of assets under management stands at $3.708 billion, which is an increase from $3.173 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2024, a year-over-year increase of 16.8% in the portfolio.

Speaker 1

I think it's important to note that our growth in the second quarter came at a time when foot traffic was reported to be down at our dealership partners for a myriad of macroeconomic reasons, and competition also heated up quite a bit in the second quarter to scoop up less of that demand for our product. Despite these growth roadblocks, we did hold strong to our tight credit box in the second quarter, instead of relying on our strong brand of superior customer service and personal relationships with our dealer base to grow. To that extent, a few accomplishments: our originations department set records to help us become one of the fastest funding finance companies in the market by setting a same-day funding rate of 29%. That is the best in our 34-year history.

Speaker 1

We set a second-day funding rate of 57%, which is the best in our 34-year history. We got our deal turn time down to 1.18 days, which is the best in our 34-year history. To kind of put some finishing touches on our second quarter, we were putting the finishing touches on implementing an AI agent bot in certain processing tasks that should improve some of those metrics moving forward for the rest of the year. Not to be outdone, our sales department also contributed in the second quarter by increasing our capture rate to 6.71%, up from 5.96%. That is extremely helpful to our growth because we're facing fewer applications in the second quarter. That kind of offsets the demand by increasing our capture rate.

Speaker 1

Sales management was also able to backfill all of our open territories, and we promoted several inside sales reps to enhance our coverage across the country. While we do have a list of between, you know, 5 to 10 new territories to open in the near future, we are currently running at full capacity in sales to cover the country. Turning to credit performance, the total DQ greater than 30 days for the second quarter, including repo inventory, was 13.14% of the total portfolio as compared to 13.29% as of the second quarter of 2024. That is a slight improvement year over year, and that data is certainly a larger part of the trend of us lowering our DQ on a year-over-year basis.

Speaker 1

Of particular note, sort of looking at the first half of the year, we have seen improvement DQ sequentially month over month for five of the six months so far in 2025. A good trend there. Total annualized net charge-offs for the second quarter were 7.45% of the average portfolio as compared to 7.26% for the second quarter of 2024. Sort of looking at the bigger picture of the vintage performance, we continue to see significant credit performance improvements starting with 2023B and kind of continuing vintage over vintage through 2024. The 2024 vintage performance improvements are a direct result of our credit tightening that we did in early 2023 and continued throughout 2024. It's kind of early, but a sneak peek at the curves of our early 2025 vintages show, you know, a heightened chance of even better potential performance than the 2024. A good trend there as well.

Speaker 1

Another positive note, we saw an uptick in auction recoveries in the quarter, which we hope is a sign of things to come as lower recoveries over the last year has been a bit of a burden on our losses. We are encouraged that, in addition to our responsible credit policy, which we've always done, our unique collection practices also contributed to the credit performance improvements. Kind of looking back, in 2024, we had our supervisors collecting the toughest vintages. In 2025, we kind of switched that up to form a specialized team of our best staff collectors, headed by the best supervisors on specialized teams to tackle those toughest vintages. As we saw in the 2024 performance, that strategy worked. What we're seeing so far in the early 2025s, the team idea is working as well.

Speaker 1

In addition, the second quarter also saw our use of AI agent bots become in full blossom. With AI agent bots handling the outbound dial-up calls, this has freed up our experienced human collectors to make more intensive manual efforts to collect the tougher accounts. For example, our human collectors were able to have more time to make text message communications with their customers, nearly doubling the amount of those communications, which is kind of key to collecting the subprime debt because, as we've learned over time, text messaging has turned out to be one of the best debt collection tactics in the space. A few early performance notes on our AI agent, they've helped reduce our potential DQ percentage, hitting a payment rate of 31%. The escalation to live agent transfer rate is low, indicating an increasing comfort with our customers.

Speaker 1

The right party conversion rate is strong at 48%, and the right party connection rate is only less than a percent below our human right party connection rate. The RPC data is important to note because all of those metrics typically result in a payment, a promise to pay, or a future date of payment. Finally, as I mentioned, the slight uptick in recoveries, even though most of that performance is out of our control, we are working hard to improve a few things that we think we can control to improve those recoveries, such as improving the timing of repossession and the sale of the vehicle to improve the recovery amount. Another factor to improve sale timing is the dearth of available repossession agents in the market that we faced. We are getting those cars repossessed later and sold later.

Speaker 1

We are fighting this dearth by forming direct relationships with smaller regional agents and trying to bypass the three or four major forwarding agents in the space. A few more notes before I hand it back to Brad. As he mentioned, our OPEX as a percentage of the portfolio was 4.8% for the second quarter. I was scratching my head to think that we had a better quarter than that from an OPEX percentage, and I don't think we have. We do expect the OPEX to continue downward as our portfolio grows, and we're also continuing to strategically look for scale in our operations as we grow. Management remains mindful of the macroeconomic headwinds facing our business because, as we know, it's not always what we buy, but the environment that we're buying in. We noted the recent job reports and ever-so-slight uptick in the unemployment rate.

Speaker 1

We're keeping our eye on the tariffs and the future rate cuts. For example, the CPI report came out this morning, which is pushing the odds of three or four rate cuts maybe for the rest of the year to be in our favor, which would help our business. We're also reflecting on what we're hearing from our dealership partners about foot traffic and from our collection staff on what they're hearing in the trenches from our customers. Taken together, we're still continuing to be putting forth tactics of being one of the more responsible lenders in the space as we grow the portfolio continually. With that, I'll kick it back to Brad.

Operator

Thanks, Mike. In terms of the industry, as noted, there's kind of a light foot traffic in the dealerships these days, probably people are waiting to see what both interest rates are going to do and the economy is going to do. We seem to be handling that rather well. I think in terms of the industry itself, we keep reading about some potential M&A activity that would be helpful for our comps and helping what we look for. We'll see if that ever turns into anything. As mentioned, the interest rates are supremely important. We'll see what happens. The good news is we don't particularly think interest rates are going to go up. We hope they go down, how much we'll see, but anything, any movement downward helps us. Equally as important is the unemployment rate, which at the moment seems fine.

Operator

As much as job hiring was down and revised a bit, a bunch, unemployment is what we really care about. Hopefully it doesn't get to the point where unemployment begins to go up. As long as those kind of trends hold, we should be fine. As mentioned numerous times by everyone, our focus going forward will be on the efficiencies, continued growth, and collecting the age portfolio to the best we can to have the impact going forward as small as possible. Generally speaking overall, I think the economy, everybody's kind of curious what's going to happen, both with interest rates and whether the economy is actually stalling or whether it's going to be fine. My feeling is if they cut interest rates even a little bit, the economy will do just fine. All those are good things for us.

Operator

It's kind of like the way to look at it, kind of the overall picture. What we've always said is we care most about unemployment. Unemployment appears fine, at least for now. We don't like higher interest rates. No one's mentioning interest rates coming up. Our terms of our collection and our efficiencies are all doing good and improving along with our growth. We're kind of in a position where in the second quarter, the first two quarters have gone very well, but the future looks bright in terms of mostly positive things should happen rather than negative things. Those positives being the old portfolio runs off, our efficiencies continue to improve. I'm hopeful the economy continues to do well, the interest rates come down, and we get to grow a lot. We'll see. Thank you all for joining us. We will talk to you next quarter.

Speaker 2

Thank you. This concludes today's telecall, friends. A resale will be available beginning two hours from now for 12 months via the company's website at www.consumerportfolio.com. Please disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.

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