Credit Acceptance Corp (CACC) 2010 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Credit Acceptance Corporation's Second Quarter 2010 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. A webcast and transcription of today's earnings call will be made available on Credit Acceptance website.

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Credit Acceptance Senior Vice President and Treasurer, Doug Busk.

Thank you, Huey. Good afternoon and welcome to the Credit Acceptance Corporation Second Quarter 2010 Earnings Call. As you read our news release posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at creditacceptance.com, and as you listen to this conference call, please recognize that both contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Federal Securities law.

These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties include those spelled out in the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information included in the news release. Consider all forward-looking statements in light of those and other risks and uncertainties.

Additionally, I should mention that to comply with the SEC's Regulation G, please refer to the adjusted financial results section of our news release, which provides tables showing how non-GAAP measures reconcile to GAAP measures.

This afternoon, Brett Roberts, our Chief Executive Officer, and I will provide some comments relating to our operational and financial results, as well as our liquidity position. After we've concluded our prepared remarks, we have set aside some time for questions. To assist us in answering your questions, we also have Ken Booth, our Chief Financial Officer, with us today. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Brett.

Thank you, Doug, and thanks to everyone who's joined us this afternoon for the call. In our earnings releases, we report both GAAP and adjusted results. Internally, we focus almost exclusively on adjusted results, as we believe the adjusted results more closely reflect our true economic performance. The results that I will refer to in the next few moments are all on an adjusted basis.

For the most recent quarter, we earned $41.7 million, compared to $30.1 million for the same quarter in 2009. Earnings per diluted share were $1.32, a 37.5% increase over the $0.96 reported last year.

We think about our results in terms of the amount of capital invested in the business and the return we earn on that capital. Average capital invested for the quarter was almost $1.1 billion, which is up 6% from the second quarter of 2009. Although we intend to grow the size of our business over time, growth was not the reason for our strong results during the most recent quarter.

Instead, our results improved because we improved our return on capital. Our after-tax return on capital was 18.5%, compared to 13.9% for the same period of 2009. As we discussed in the release, our return on capital improved as a result of higher yields in our loan portfolio, lower operating expenses, and an increase in other income.

Our primary financial performance metric is economic profit. Economic profit is a function of three variables -- the return on capital, the cost of capital, and the amount of capital invested.

Our incentive plans are based on growing economic profit. Growing economic profit requires us to either improve the spread between our return on capital and the cost of capital, or grow the amount of capital invested. Over the last nine years, we've been successful at both growing the amount of invested capital and improving the spread between our return on capital and cost of capital.

As a result, economic profit improved from a negative $5 million in 2001 to a positive $79 million in 2009. During the most recent quarter, economic profit was $28.8 million, a 55.7% increase over the $18.5 million reported in the same quarter of last year.

As I mentioned in our last conference call, if we are successful in growing economic profit in future periods, it is much more likely to come from increasing the size of our business rather than from increasing our return on capital. The return on capital produced in the most recent period is at the high end of the historical range and reflects a very favorable competitive environment that is not expected to continue.

In fact, in late 2009, and so far this year, we are seeing competition return to the market, as capital is now less constrained than it was during 2008 and much of 2009.

In both the fourth quarter of 2009 and during the first quarter of 2010, we made pricing changes that have reduced the return we are earning on new business in exchange for more volume. The objective of these pricing changes is not to achieve a fixed growth target, but instead these changes are intended to maximize the amount of economic profit we generate on new originations. This requires us to appropriately balance unit volume and profitability per loan.

We are confident that the pricing changes we have made thus far have been consistent with this objective. Our ability to grow economic profit in the future will depend in large part on to what degree competition returns to the market. At this time, Doug will provide some additional comments on our operating and financial results, as well as on our liquidity position.

Thanks, Brett. The first thing I would like to discuss is consumer loan performance. Consumer loan performance is one of the most important variables that determines our financial results. The most important time to assess consumer loan performance is at the time of origination, since that is when we determine the amount of the advance to the dealer.

If we're able to accurately assess consumer loan performance at the time the loan is originated, we will likely attain our target return in capital and produce acceptable financial results. Since assessing consumer loan performance at the time of origination with precision is difficult, we set advance rates so that, even if loan performance is less than we expect, the loans that we originate are still highly likely to be profitable.

Over all, consumer loan performance during the quarter June 30, 2010. exceeded our expectations at the beginning of the quarter. Forecasted collection rates for loans originated in 2009 and 2010 increased, while the forecasted collection rates declined slightly for loans originated during 2006 and 2007.

Moving to loan volume, the dollar and unit volume of consumer loan originations increased 42.2% and 22.7%, respectively, during the second quarter of 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009. These increases were due primarily to pricing changes implemented during the last four months of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.

Moving to financial results, we recorded strong financial results for the quarter, with GAAP net income of $49 million, or $1.55 per diluted share, compared to net income of $36.2 million, or $1.15 per diluted share, for the same period in 2009.

As Brett mentioned, we also disclose adjusted financial results. We do so to help shareholders better understand our financial performance. Our adjusted results include several adjustments to our reported GAAP results. An explanation of each of these adjustments is contained in our earnings release.

On an adjusted basis, consolidated net income for the quarter was $41.7 million, or $1.32 per diluted share, compared to $30.1 million, or $0.96 per diluted share, for the same period in 2009. The increases in both GAAP and adjusted net income for the quarter were due to an increase in the yield on our loan portfolio as a result of an increase in the yield on more recent loan originations and, to a lesser extent, a reduction in operating expenses and an increase in other income.

Partially offsetting this was an increase in interest expense due to an increase in our pre-tax cost of debt as a result of the $250 million senior note offering completed on February 1 of 2010; the impact of fixed fees on lower average outstanding debt balances during the quarter; and the higher pricing on our revolving credit and warehouse facilities that occurred when these facilities were renewed in the second and third quarters of 2009.

In addition, our GAAP results were negatively impacted by an increase in the provision for credit losses and positively impacted by a reduction in our effective tax rate. The provision for credit losses increased to $1.8 million for the quarter from the negative provision of $3.8 million for the same period a year ago.

Under GAAP, when forecasted future cash flows decline relative to the cash flows expected at the time of loan origination, a provision for credit losses is recorded immediately as a current-period expense, and a corresponding allowance for credit losses is established.

For purposes of calculating the allowance, dealer loans are grouped by dealer partner, and purchase loans are grouped by month of purchase. As a result, regardless of the overall performance of the portfolio of consumer loans, a provision can be required if any individual loan pool performs worse than expected.

The reduction in our effective tax rate during the quarter was due to the reversal of previously accrued tax reserves and related interest as the result of the completion of the IRS audit.

The last topic that I want to discuss today is our liquidity. As a result of the securitization completed in the fourth quarter of 2009, the senior note offering that was completed in the first quarter of 2010, and the renewal of two of our revolving credit facilities during the second quarter of 2010, we are in a very strong liquidity position.

On June 18, 2010, we initiated a tender offer to repurchase up to 4 million shares of our common stock at a purchase price of $50 per share. This tender offer expired on July 19, 2010, and we repurchased the full 4 million shares at a price of $50 per share, for a total purchase price of $200 million. After completion of the tender offer, we have over $200 million in unutilized borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facilities.

And now, I'd like to turn it back over to Brett.

Thanks, Doug. This concludes our prepared remarks for this afternoon. We would now like to welcome your questions.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) Doug [Athican], Price Waterhouse Cooper.

Good morning. Thank you for taking the call. I'm just wondering -- you had mentioned that you're seeing competition return to the market as capital is no longer as constrained as it was. Are you seeing that competition returning from existing lenders buying down into your portfolio, or are you seeing new lenders coming back into the marketplace?

I think it's both. It's a very large market that we operate in. There is hundreds of companies that operate in the space that we operate in. We know there's more capital out there; the ABS market's opened up. We're seeing both existing players write more volume and start to ramp back up again as well as new entrants. In general, when capital is more available, we're going to see more competition and that's what we're seeing.

Great. Thank you very much.

Randy Heck, Goodnow Investment.

Hi Brett, hi, Doug. Two questions -- one, what does your pro forma cost of capital, or debt capital, look like with the new deals going forward versus what you reported in the second quarter?

And secondly, the comments on the competitive environment -- how does it look today to you versus at the start of this year?

I'll handle the first question. If you consider the new pricing on our credit facilities after we renewed them in the second quarter, and pro forma the stock buy-back that we completed early in the third quarter, we expect that our pre-tax cost of interest would be approximately 7%.

As to the competitive environment--

The 7% compares to what for the first half, roughly?

Oh, 9.5.

Okay.

Randy, I think the best way to answer the competition question -- we obviously grew volumes very nicely in the second quarter. We're earning a very nice return relative to where we've been historically. So you'd have to say it's still a favorable competitive environment. I don't think there's any way to answer whether it got a little bit tougher in the second quarter or not. I mean, with capital more available, it's going to get tougher in the future. I really can't tell the difference between the first and second quarter other than we grew nicely and we're making a nice return on the business that we're writing, so we're still happy with the environment.

Okay, thanks. Keep up the great work.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) I'm showing no father questions in the queue; I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Busk for any additional or closing remarks.

We'd like to thank everyone for their support and for joining us on our conference call today. If you have any additional follow-up questions, please direct them to our Investor Relations mailbox at IR@CreditAcceptance.com. We look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thank you.

Once again, this does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. Attendees, you may now disconnect.