Katapult Q2 2025 Earnings Report

Katapult EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -$1.63
• Consensus EPS: -$1.13
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.50
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Katapult Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $71.89 million
• Expected Revenue: $70.45 million
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.44 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Katapult Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2025
• Date: 8/13/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Katapult (NASDAQ:KPLT), an e-commerce focused financial technology company, provides e-commerce point-of-sale lease-purchase options for nonprime consumers in the United States. The company's technology platform provides nonprime consumers with a lease purchase option to enable them to obtain durable goods from its network of e-commerce retailers. It also offers Katapult Pay, a one-time use virtual card technology that makes lease purchasing and transactions. The company was formerly known as Cognical Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Katapult Holdings, Inc. in February 2020. The company is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

Katapult Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Q2 operational beat: Gross originations grew 30.4% year-over-year, revenue increased 22.1%, and the company delivered slightly over $300K in positive adjusted EBITDA, surpassing guidance.
• Positive Sentiment: The app marketplace continues to gain traction with app-originations up 72%, KPay originations rising 81%, and 60% of total originations now starting in the app.
• Positive Sentiment: Catapult expanded its merchant ecosystem by adding 48 new direct or waterfall merchants, with its top 25 merchants’ gross originations up 28% year-over-year (65% excluding Wayfair).
• Positive Sentiment: In June the company completed a debt refinancing, increasing its revolving credit line to $110M, extending maturity to December 2026, and lowering interest rates by 150 basis points.
• Positive Sentiment: Catapult raised its full-year guidance, now expecting 20%–25% gross originations growth, at least 20% revenue growth, and a minimum of $10M in positive adjusted EBITDA.

Presentation

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Catapult Holdings Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer Cohen Coe, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Jennifer Kull, VP & Head - IR at Katapult]

Welcome to Catapult's second quarter twenty twenty five conference call. On the call with me today are Orlando Zaas, Chief Executive Officer Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer and Derek Medlin, President and Chief Growth Officer. For your reference, we have posted materials related to today's call on the Investor Relations section of the Catapult website, which can be found at ir.catapultholdings.com. Please keep in mind that our remarks today include forward looking statements related to our financial guidance, our business and our operating results as noted in the earnings release and slide deck posted to our website for your reference. Our actual results may differ materially.

[Jennifer Kull, VP & Head - IR at Katapult]

Forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are described in today's earnings release and our most recent Form 10 Q and which will be updated in future periodic reports that we file with the SEC. Any forward looking statements that we make on this call are based on the beliefs and assumptions today and we disclaim any obligation to update them. Also during the call, we'll present both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. Non GAAP financial measures should be considered supplemental to and not replacements for or superior to our GAAP results. A reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included with today's earnings release and is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website.

[Jennifer Kull, VP & Head - IR at Katapult]

Finally, all comparisons are year over year unless stated otherwise. With that, I will turn the call over to Orlando.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Thank you, Jennifer, and welcome to everyone joining us this morning. We had a terrific second quarter across the board and we're excited to dive into the details of this progress. I'll start with a brief overview of our results and then turn it over to Derek who will walk you through a more detailed summary of our operating momentum. Nancy will then provide you an update on our strong financial results, discuss the highlights of the debt refinancing which we completed in June and provide you with an outlook for Q3. We'll then open it up for your questions.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

During the second quarter, we exceeded our expectations for gross originations, revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Q2 gross originations grew 30.4% year over year beating our outlook for 25% to 30% growth. Second quarter revenue grew 22.1% also exceeding our outlook for 17% to 20% growth. And while we anticipated delivering about breakeven adjusted EBITDA, we reported slightly more than $300,000 in positive adjusted EBITDA. These strong results coupled with our Q1 success have led to an incredible first half performance.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Year to date we have grown gross originations by nearly 23% and revenue by approximately 16% putting us on track to exceed our original gross originations outlook despite tough comps in the second half of the year. Our exciting vision of building a successful two sided marketplace shopping destination for lease to own consumers has become a reality. Perhaps this is best illustrated by our continued growth we're seeing in both total app originations and the PayPay originations. During

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Q2, total app originations, which are originations that started in our app and may be consummated elsewhere, grew 56% to $43,100,000 This means that approximately 60% of our gross originations started in our app marketplace. KPay originations, which are a subset of total app originations were $28,300,000 and growth accelerated to approximately 81% year over year. This means that the remaining $14,800,000 in gross originations were traffic and sales that we delivered to our merchants, solidifying our role as a growth partner. Our growth continues to be supported by strong customer affinity for our marketplace offering. During the second quarter, our NPS score was 63, up year over year and 58.4 of our gross originations came from repeat customers.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

While a lot of our business is being driven by existing customers, we are also continuing to grow new customers. During Q2, for Catapult overall, we grew unique new customers by approximately 40% and this was the third quarter of accelerating year over year growth. We are very excited to bring new customers to our marketplace ecosystem through our expanded marketing efforts and new merchant and waterfall relationships. And encouragingly, even with our new customer growth and our continued focus on converting customers interested in lower lease values, lifetime value or LTV remained relatively flat year over year. We are taking a holistic approach to growing the business and we believe we are extending our runway for growth by creating a marketplace that appeals to a variety of consumers with a wide range of shopping needs and credit backgrounds.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

In doing so, we are leveraging our marketplace to connect consumers and merchants seamlessly, enabling commerce whenever and however the consumer wants to shop. We believe our results for the 2025 illustrate the strength of our marketplace offering. As we navigate the ebbs and flows of the macro economy in the second half of the year, we will remain focused on our top initiatives, which are: one, consumer engagement two, merchant engagement three, referral partnerships and four, improving our unit economics and capital structure over time that we can improve profitability and sustainably generate cash. With that, I'll turn the call over to Derek to discuss our operating progress in more depth. Derek?

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Thanks, Orlando, and good morning to everyone. We're so excited about the progress we've made year to date and about the value we're creating for both our customers and merchants. So let's begin with the progress we're making against our consumer engagement initiative. As we have discussed previously, one of our most important goals for 2025 is driving top of the funnel activity. And this quarter, we made significant progress on this front.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Total Catapult applications, which includes those incoming from Direct, Waterfall, our app, Marketplace and PayPay, increased more than 91% year over year. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth, and we are so excited about the success that we're seeing here. Not only because we believe we can continue to leverage conversion strategies to drive sustainable gross originations growth, but we also see this as a way to build a bigger pool of consumers who are familiar with the Catapult brand, which is a vital input to our ability to deliver incremental sales and growth to our merchants and our partners. As Orlando mentioned, we grew our unique new customer count by about 40% in Q2. This led to overall customer base growth of approximately 32%, demonstrating how we are monetizing this top of the funnel activity.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

We are also closely monitoring other global business performance indicators that we believe will be drivers of lifetime value. Two of those indicators are customers with multiple leases and cross shopping. During Q2, the number of customers who had more than one current lease was up more 16%, and this cohort of customers grew to approximately 29% of our total lease portfolio, up about one percentage point year over year. Likewise, cross shopping activity, where a customer has two or more current leases and these leases are with two or more different retailers, also increased year over year. If we look at our portfolio of unique customers during the second quarter, cross shopping customers who entered into multiple leases with more than one retailer grew about 74% year over year and represented about 25% of our gross originations during the quarter.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

These results are driven by its trifecta of key ingredients. First, we're continuing to build deeper and broader relationships with our merchant and waterfall partners who remain an important source of customer referrals. Second, we are working hard to enhance the consumer journey and experience, which is driving engagement, conversion and high customer satisfaction. Perhaps most importantly, we are continuing to strengthen the reach and the utility of our app marketplace. Today, we are able to direct more traffic and incremental sales to our merchant partners than ever before.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

This is allowing us to play a more prominent role with merchants while driving our own business performance. We have taken control of our own destiny in a way that benefits Catapult and every participant in our ecosystem. So let's move on to a quick discussion of our app marketplace and KPay performance. As a reminder, when we talk about app marketplace performance, we're referring to activity and originations that begin in our app. Our marketplace allows Catapult to be a brand partner to our merchants.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

This means that even if a customer starts their journey in our app, they are able to interface with our merchants' partners' brands, websites, and user experiences seamlessly, allowing Catapult to become an extension of their brands. Customers then have the option to complete their transactions on a merchant partner site or within our app, giving them choice in their shopping journey. Since we are able to track their journeys, all of this activity is included in our total app marketplace performance data, allowing our merchants and other partners to understand the impact our marketplace can have on their growth. In addition, although we also highlight some KPay data points separately, app marketplace performance also includes KPay. A good way to think about this is our app marketplace includes all activities stemming from when a customer starts their journey in our app.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

This activity and these transactions are what I was referring to when I talked about controlling our own destiny. We have the most influence over all of this activity. Let's start with the app marketplace velocity. During Q2, the number of gross originations in our app marketplace grew approximately 72% year over year, driven by the factors we discussed earlier: healthy repeat customer activity, robust conversion, cross shopping and an increase in the number of customers with more than one current lease with us, among others. In addition to these drivers, we're continuing to lean into a variety of marketing and pricing campaigns that are drawing more and more eyeballs to our marketplace.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

We believe we are certainly succeeding in our efforts to fuel top of the funnel activity, which is leading to strong gross originations growth. However, we also see multiple opportunities to leverage this incredible application growth into even higher gross originations growth. For example, while conversion rate in Q2 held relatively steady with Q1 of this year, it is down year over year. We are hard at work strategizing about ways to make our lease offers even more compelling, such as new and innovative pricing strategies and partnerships so that we can gradually close the gap between application growth and lease origination growth. We're happy with the progress we're making to acquire customers from new sources.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

We also believe we can crack the code on converting more of these shoppers, which would create considerable upside for our gross originations. Transactions continue to fuel a lot of this growth, and we are incredibly excited about its potential. As Orlando mentioned, PayPay gross originations grew 81% during Q2, which represented 39% of total gross originations, up from about 28% of our total gross originations in 2024. As a reminder, PayPay and related activity refers only to those leases that originated using our PayPay feature to checkout. Overall, we continue to see engagement within our app increase as more and more consumers turn to the Catapult marketplace as a shopping destination.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

During Q2, our app was opened 3,800,000 times, an acceleration from Q1 of this year. Altogether, during the 2025, our app was opened nearly 50% more during the same period of last year. This engagement also drove our KPay unique customer count, which grew by nearly 87% year over year, an acceleration from Q1 growth. This was also accompanied by another quarterly increase in KPay conversion rate. Beyond marketing and strategic pricing initiatives, we're continuing to add features and functionality that are making the Catapult App Marketplace customer journey even more compelling.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

For example, we upgraded our app experience to include a feature called most popular products that showcases what customers are shopping for the most. In addition, we recently launched three new KPay enabled merchants, Qatar Center, Pottery Barn and Sam's Club, in response to feedback from our customers. We are very pleased with our app marketplace performance, but this is only part of our growth story. We continue to lean into our relationships with our direct and waterfall merchants to position Catapult as a partner of choice. During Q2, direct and waterfall merchants accounted for approximately 61% of total gross originations, and gross originations for this group of merchants grew about 11%.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

If we exclude the home furnishings and mattress category, our direct and waterfall gross originations grew approximately 56% year over year. Our team continues to execute a strategy that is allowing us to do more with existing merchants and partners and introduce new ones to the Catapult marketplace. During Q2, we added approximately 48 new direct or waterfall merchants or merchant pathways to our ecosystem. As a reminder, pathways include new or existing merchant partners that launch a new website or an in store experience that includes Catapult as a direct or waterfall LTO offering. These pathways are tantamount to a view go to market channels for the Catapult LTO.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

They provide new ways for consumers to discover and engage with our offerings. We also continue to work with our merchant partners to test a variety of new pricing and promotional strategies focused on driving conversion and consumer engagement, particularly during key sales moments. For example, during our Spring Living and Mother's Day campaign, our efforts led to nearly 30% gross originations growth and nearly 40% application growth compared with the same period last year, and the list was even more pronounced for those merchants who opted into co promoting the campaign with us. For those merchants who participated, they saw a 300% year over year increase in gross originations. In addition, while Amazon Prime Day occurred during the third quarter, we put these types of strategies to work during this sales event, and we are very pleased with the results.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Even when accounting for the longer length of the event this year, we saw a significant increase in gross originations year over year. We will remain focused on looking for innovative ways to partner with merchants to take advantage of key sales events. We continue to closely monitor the success and health of our top 25 merchants. This quarter, this cohort of merchants once again grew robustly. Gross originations growth has accelerated for the past three quarters and was 28% in Q2.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Finally, one other topic that is top of mind for us are potential macroeconomic headwinds. While lease to own solutions have historically benefited when prime credit tightens, we continue to finesse scenario plans that would allow us to inoculate our business against macro uncertainties such as increasing tariffs or rising inflation to the extent that we can. This revolves around working with our merchants to create initiatives that will allow us to react quickly to challenges stemming from new economic policies and trends. Before I turn it over to Nancy, I just wanted to give you a few quick thoughts on our partnership activity. We continue to focus on monetizing our assets as the foundation for new partnerships that will drive top of funnel traffic and referrals and help us to present an even more robust product offering to our consumers.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Ultimately, our goal is to give our customers more choice and drive more velocity in our marketplace, and I am pleased with the progress we're making. We delivered a great first half, and I believe we're positioned to continue along this positive trajectory throughout the balance of 2025. We believe we are executing a strategy that is leveraging our unique marketplace assets as we look for incremental growth opportunities that will allow us to create value for all of our stakeholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Nancy for an update on our financial results and outlook. Nancy?

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Thanks, Derek, and hello to everyone joining us this morning. I would echo Derek's sentiments about our strong year to date performance, which positions us to deliver on our full year goals. Let's start with a few insights on our top line performance. We have now grown gross originations for eleven consecutive quarters. Gross originations grew 30.4% to $72,100,000 which was slightly above the top end of our outlook range.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

In addition, if we exclude Home Furnishings and Mattress gross originations, Q2 gross originations grew 62% year over year. And as Derek mentioned, we are making significant progress on our top of the funnel activity, which bodes well for future growth. Excluding Home Furnishings, applications for our total business grew 158%, and our total approved applications in dollars grew by nearly 130%. As we continue to refine and improve our conversion funnel, we believe we have all the ingredients to sustain and accelerate top line growth. As Derek also noted, gross originations for our top 25 merchants grew 28% during the quarter despite the fact that our largest merchant, Wayfair, continues to face category challenges.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

If we exclude Wayfair waterfall performance, our top 24 merchants grew more than 65% year over year. On the revenue front, we had another great quarter. We delivered $71,900,000 or 22.1% growth in Q2, which was above our outlook for 17% to 20% growth and marks the ninth consecutive quarter of year over year growth. This growth reflects continued strong collection trends. Gross profit for Q2 was approximately $11,200,000 an increase of approximately 12.5% compared with $9,900,000 last year.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

And gross margin was 15.5% compared with 16.9% gross margin in Q2 twenty twenty four. Similar to our performance in Q4 twenty twenty four and Q1 twenty twenty five, our gross profit and gross margin were both impacted by strong gross originations growth in Q1 and Q2. This growth drove higher lease depreciation costs, and the impact of this, as we have discussed in the past, is front loaded. We have continued to effectively manage write offs as a percent of revenue. During the second quarter, this metric was 9.8%, up 50 basis points from Q2 twenty twenty four performance and within our 8% to 10% target range.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Moving on to expenses and profitability. Our disciplined approach to expense management, coupled with our top line growth, is at the center of our financial model. This philosophy fuels our decision making, and it is a core component of our Laurentum growth strategy. This approach allowed us to deliver another quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, which was ahead of our breakeven expectation. We believe we are well positioned to further improve upon this performance in 2025.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Let me walk you through some of the puts and takes that impacted Q2 adjusted EBITDA. We've already talked about our front loaded lease depreciation and the impact rapid growth has on in quarter gross profit. This noncash expense drives cost of sales higher. And given the strong growth we've continued to see, the related depreciation expense remains a headwind to adjusted EBITDA. Total operating expenses, up 0.2%, were essentially flat versus last year.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

We remain committed to fiscal discipline even as we strategically invest in our growth initiatives. Excluding underwriting fees and servicing costs, which are variable, depreciation and stock based compensation, which are noncash expenses, and excluding costs related to the settlement of litigation and debt refinancing, our Q2 fixed cash operating expenses were up slightly to 9,200,000 a 0.6% increase compared to last year. During the second quarter, loss from operations was $1,400,000 compared with $2,600,000 loss from operations for Q2 twenty twenty four. Overall, our continued focus on fiscal discipline and top line growth allowed us to deliver $300,000 in positive adjusted EBITDA for Q2, which was slightly above our breakeven outlook. We are proud of the progress we have made on this front and believe we have the right strategy, initiatives and discipline in place to deliver continued growth.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow. As of 06/30/2025, we had total cash and cash equivalents of $9,000,000 which included $5,300,000 of restricted cash. As of the end of the second quarter, we also had 80,600,000 in outstanding debt on our revolving credit facility. As many of you have seen, on 06/12/2025, Catapult entered into a new refinancing agreement with Blue Elk Capital. The new agreement refinances our previously existing $90,000,000 revolving line of credit and approximately $32,000,000 term loan.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

While I will refer you to our SEC filings for more detailed summary of the new terms, let me highlight the key points of the transaction. Under the terms of the new refinancing agreement, liquidity for our revolving line of credit was increased by $20,000,000 to $110,000,000 This includes a higher advance rate that will increase over time, allowing Catapult to borrow a higher amount against our eligible asset value. Our current advance rate has been increased to 95% from 90%, and we expect this to increase to 99% in the fourth quarter. The maturity date was also extended to 12/04/2026. The new agreement also reduced the interest rate on the facility.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

The interest rate for the revolving line of credit was reduced by approximately 150 basis points. The interest rate on the term loan was fixed at 18% and has been structured as a payment in kind loan with cash interest deferred and added to the loan balance. In consideration of this new agreement, Catapult issued warrants to Blue that give them the option to purchase up to 486,264 shares of our common stock. We also agreed to repay the term loan by 06/30/2026, or Blue Owl will be allowed to convert the term loan into equity. Several of these terms required stockholder approval, and we called a special meeting of stockholders that took place on August 6, during which the necessary terms were approved.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Again, for a full description of the refinancing agreement, please refer to our SEC filings. Moving on to cash performance. Cash used for operations for Q2 twenty twenty five was $3,200,000 compared to $1,400,000 of cash generated from operations in Q2 twenty twenty four. The year over year change was primarily due to changes in net loss, adjusted for noncash charges and higher spending on property held for lease, partially offset by changes in working capital. Turning to our Q3 twenty twenty five and full year 2025 outlook.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Based on quarter to date results, we expect the following for the third quarter: gross originations growth in the range of 25% to 30% gross originations, excluding the home furnishings and mattress category, are expected to continue to grow at a much faster pace than our overall gross originations Revenue growth in the range of 20% to 25% and between 3,000,000 and $3,500,000 of adjusted EBITDA. Based on our year to date results, our operating plan, year over year second half comps and our macroeconomic expectations, we are raising our 2025 outlook for gross originations and reiterating our full year revenue and adjusted EBITDA outlook. We now expect gross originations to grow between 2025%, an increase from our original outlook of at least 20% growth. Gross originations, excluding the home furnishings and mattress category, are also expected to continue to grow at a much faster pace than our overall gross originations during full year 2025. We are reiterating our outlook for revenue growth of at least 20% and at least $10,000,000 in positive adjusted EBITDA.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

For added context, neither our Q3 outlook nor our 2025 outlook assumes any extraordinary impact from potential tariffs or tightening or loosening above us. We are grateful to our team who have been the driving force behind our strong performance during the 2025. We believe we are well positioned for the second half of the year and look forward to reporting back to you on our progress. With that, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q and A. Operator?

[Operator]

Your first question comes from the line of Anthony Chukumba with Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

[Anthony Chukumba, MD & Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC]

Good morning. Congrats on strong quarter. Just had a quick question. The lease merchandise charge off rate was up 50 basis points now. That was obviously within your targeted range toward the high end.

[Anthony Chukumba, MD & Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC]

Just wondering what drove the year over year increase? And also how do you expect that to trend for the remainder of the year?

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Hi, Anthony. It's Nancy. Thank you for the question. We see fluctuation in the quarterly results of the write offs. This is not something we're concerned about outside of our within our 8% to 10% range.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

And right now, we're considering our customer is very resilient. There is some macroeconomic factors out there and the tariffs are still looming, but we feel very comfortable that within this eight to 10 range is what we expect the future to look like with respect to write offs.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Okay. Anthony, this is Orlando. Also, June is always our toughest month around delinquency. So it's it's more of a summer trend that we always see. We expect it to be back to normal next quarter.

[Anthony Chukumba, MD & Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC]

Got it. And and just well, just one last question. In terms of the, you know, the waterfall and the direct partners, any commentary just in terms of what the pipeline looks like right now for, for new partners?

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Yeah. Thanks, Anthony. Derek, you want to take that one?

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Sure. Thanks, Orlando. Hi, Anthony, and thanks for the question. So pipeline is looking really strong, and I think the reason for that is part of our strategy has been to add new, consumers to our ecosystem where we can introduce consumers to our merchant partners, and that strategy is working. Our merchants are getting to see new customers coming to their site and walking into their stores, and that's really helping solve a problem that merchants are having right now, which is either footfall or or clicks.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

And so, the pipeline has been strong across different segments, specifically in auto and home furnishings and furniture and appliances, electronics. Just across the board, we're seeing strong interest of different sizes, omnichannel merchants and e commerce merchants.

[Anthony Chukumba, MD & Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Buck with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

[Scott Buck, MD & Senior Technology Analyst at H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC]

Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess first up, you've seen a nice uptick or acceleration in applications. Could you go into a little bit of, excuse me, color on on what you're doing on the sales and marketing side to to drive this higher level of activity?

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Scott? Derek, can you take that one too? Sorry. We're in different locations.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Hi. Hi, Scott. Thanks for the question. Yes. This has been a a major priority for us over the last twelve months in terms of of adding to the top of the funnel.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

And, and the reason for that is it's you know, our channels for the market come through our merchant partners, but also through customers that we can source ourselves and then distribute out to our merchant community. And so over the last, year plus, we've been, working intentionally on our digital marketing strategy, customer referral strategy, and bringing customers that are, fitting our profile and our segmentation that are looking for a a fair, transparent product that can help them acquire the durable goods that they're they're looking for from high quality merchants. And so we've been really intentional about, building in some of those, factors ourselves, engaging with merchant partners that have a lot of traffic, and then helping to support, approval rates and conversion down the funnel. And so we think that we have a whole lot of, of opportunity there to continue to expand on that strategy at the top of the funnel. Meanwhile, our team is is working, feverishly on on improving everything down a funnel so that we can turn those into origination dollars.

[Scott Buck, MD & Senior Technology Analyst at H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC]

Perfect. That's helpful. And then second, I know Nancy touched on it when talking about the guide, not including any kind of change in the competitive environment. But I'm curious what you're seeing from your competitors in terms of either moving up and down the the credit ladder or, being a little more creative around pricing. I'm just kinda curious what the environment looks like from that perspective.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

I can take that one as well. So from, from a competitive set, you know, we think about it in a couple of different ways. So first of all, up above us in financing spectrum, we we we've seen, not any significant, tightening up above us, other than what we saw in 2023. It's been fairly consistent. There does seem to see be some variability in what you see in terms of the, in store experience versus online, but online has been quite stable.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

I do think that from a from a pricing and a market standpoint, the way that Catapult thinks of things is, optimizing, both for the risk, but also for conversion and repeat rate. So with our our clear communication with customers and then our strong affinity that we build, we can give unique pricing to each consumer to be able to convert at the highest rate possible as well as have a great outcome in terms of the customer's performance. And so we've really leaned into that to help, drive more conversion for our merchant partners. And and, you know, they they're supportive of it. Right?

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

They're at the end of the day, they wanna see monetization as many, transactions as possible, but they want customers to come back again and again. And so from our standpoint, we think that's the winning play. We've invested in that in terms of our platform, within our communications and marketing strategy, and and we're seeing the results. It's been exciting.

[Scott Buck, MD & Senior Technology Analyst at H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC]

Perfect. I appreciate that, Derek. Thanks for the time, guys.

[Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer at Katapult]

Thank you.

[Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer at Katapult]

Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Orlando Diaz for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director at Katapult]

Thanks, operator, and thanks to everyone joining us today. We're really excited about the potential for our marketplace, and I believe that we are on the path of scaling our business both from a volume and profitability perspective. On behalf of the leadership team, I want to thank the Catapult team for their tireless efforts that are allowing us to turn our marketplace vision into reality for the benefit of everyone in the Catapult ecosystem. We look forward to chatting with our investors as the year progresses. Please reach out to Jennifer with any questions or feedback. Thank you again.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Jennifer Kull, VP & Head - IR
• Orlando Zayas, CEO & Director
• Derek Medlin, President & Chief Growth Officer
• Nancy Walsh, Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Anthony Chukumba, MD & Senior Research Analyst at Loop Capital Markets LLC
• Scott Buck, MD & Senior Technology Analyst at H.C. Wainwright & Co., LLC