Abacus Life, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jay Jackson: It is. For us, you don’t need an auction to know the value of a life insurance contract. You need a calculator. It’s a simple solve for net present value. And with the consolidation in our industry, most of the capital is deployed through just a few companies. And because of that, it’s far more efficient than what it was. And that means that there’s a lot greater opportunity for the policy holder just to have a much better understanding of what their policy is actually worth with without having to pay significant intermediary costs to do so. And because of that, we’re able to acquire more policies in a much more efficient way, while at the same time the policy holder themselves can benefit by potentially having a larger capital piece to them. So, for us, it makes a lot of sense and frankly, we’re able to get to a much larger audience because of it.

Matthew Howlett: And on that, no, I mean, I see policy acquisitions up 30%. People get very excited when you look at the potential growth of Abacus. I mean, just walk us through what this TAM is, what this market opportunity is? I mean, you’re obviously leaving a lot on the table here. As your cost of capital goes down and you scale, I mean, growth just seems like it’s just could be huge going forward.

Jay Jackson: That’s exactly right. And that is exactly how we look at the business, right? I mean, you look at the addressable market, there’s still north of $200 million a year that lapses over the age of 65. And our industry barely scratches that, right? And so now we’re starting to look at this and say, alright — excuse me, $230 billion, not million. And we barely scratched the surface on that. As we now have what I think is really interesting, you have maybe life insurance carriers that are considering buybacks that adds and actually validates, they’re not a competitor to me. To me, they validate what we’re doing. And that provides additional education to these policy holders where they’re like, gosh, I should treat my policy like equity, not like debt.

Why would you ever let this thing go, let this policy last, stop making premium payments if it has a true equity value. And I think when you think about that education, if you think about our advertising, it’s all about education. We have a calculator. Nobody puts out a calculator, we put out a calculator so that people get educated, they understand that their policy has value, and it’s a real value. And because of that, now you start to look at how we start to capture or chase down that $230 plus billion that will lapse over the age of 65. It’s driven by education, transparency and legitimacy and validation. And when they see that, hey, we’re a public company, this is a real transaction, it provides a lot of comfort to those policy holders when they’re considering selling this transaction.

Matthew Howlett: It’s such a unique model. Last question, Jay and Bill. I mean, look, I got to commend you on the buyback. I mean, you’re one of the few companies that have gone public through respect who’s been doing this, and now you’re saying some of the warrants now are starting to get exercised, so there’s money coming in the door to you accretively. Just walk us through on the remaining warrants outstanding. Just talk about, that’s got to be just in — again, we haven’t seen a lot of companies going public via SPAC being such a unique envious position as you are.

Jay Jackson: Honestly, I’m not aware of many public companies via whether it was a SPAC, right? But just going public in the first year that also did a buyback. And we looked at it because we looked at our stock as a position and felt that it was an undervalued asset. And why wouldn’t we buy it back at those prices based upon the earnings and the fundamentals that we had at the time. And that response and narrative has been really well received publicly. And as a result of that, as the stock price, exceeded 1,150, which was the warrant exercise, price warrant holders are looking at our opportunity to own the common stock for the long term. And they’re converting those or exercising their warrants into common stock, which is effectively putting cash on our balance sheet.