Dave Inc. (NASDAQ:DAVE) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Kyle Beilman: Hey, Gary I think the — just to add to that the important dynamic to call out that we touched on in our notes was just that we had an increase in subscriber-only MTMs in the quarter, which is just I think a reflection of the benefits of the new billing system that we rolled out. So that’s — that was the dynamic that we wanted to kind of expand upon in the notes, like I said.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. The quarterly delinquency rate going down fairly dramatically year-over-year and sequentially, is it you’re feeling — I know you’ve got this great model and all that, but is it your feeling that as you are proliferating more in the market and getting more positive press or whatever, that you are starting to drive a little bit stronger socioeconomic kind of individual to the Dave platform?

Jason Wilk: I would say, as we expand our set of channels for marketing, we are seeing a broader consumer and tend to tick up in age as we look at channels like television. But ultimately, I would look at the delinquency performance improvement really just as a testament to the ExtraCash CashAI engine, which is all AI-driven and is continuously looking at the previous performance of the book and looking at the real-time events we have on the customer, most notably real-time access to their checking account data, which we know their income and sort of employment status.

Kyle Beilman: And just to add to that real quick, Gary. Jason touched on the time-on-book dynamic. As we increase the retention rate of our customer base over time, the average tenure of origination has also gone up, which leads to better performance on the delinquency rates because as you can expect, the longer that someone is with the company as a customer, the better performance that we see on the credit side. So we expect that to also just further support the performance moving forward as retention continues to improve.

Gary Prestopino: I mean, do you have a metric you can share with us of recurring ExtraCash?

Kyle Beilman: We have not called that out explicitly, but the number of existing customer repeat originations in a given month or quarter is in excess of 95%.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. That’s a good stat. What else did I want to ask here? Yes. You said the attach rates on the Dave Card with the ExtraCash are about — grew 10%. I think when we first started talking, you were at about 30% of ExtraCash advances on the Dave Card. Where are you now?

Kyle Beilman: Pretty consistent, Gary. It’s right around the 30% of originations gets sent to the Dave Card, and about 50% of new customers are trialing the Dave Card with an ExtraCash origination within their first couple of months as a customer.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. Okay. And then just lastly, I don’t want to get ahead of the skis here, but you would often — we talked about the fact that 20% adjusted EBITDA margin was a target for the company. It looks like you’re at 17.6% this quarter and really in the early stages of your life span here, any changes to that potential target there given what — how well you are performing?

Kyle Beilman: Gary, I don’t recall putting a specific long-term EBITDA target out there for the company, certainly not something that we’ve established, as part of our outlook. I certainly — I don’t want to comment too much on that 20%. I think there’s just a ton of operating leverage built into the business model that as we continue to grow that there’s a significant margin potential here that is, I would say, well in excess of that 20%. That’s not something that we’ve discussed as a management team and as part of our disclosures.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Zachary Gunn from FT Partners. Your question, please.

Zachary Gunn : Hey, there. And thanks for taking my question. I guess, I saw in the deck that you fully rolled out the percentage-based fee structured to all members in 4Q. I know that’s a change from the previous per dollar fee structure. We were just curious if you’re seeing kind of any headwinds in larger origination sizes or any changes in consumer behavior with that? Just any commentary there would be great.

Kyle Beilman: Thank you for joining the call, Zachary. I appreciate it. So look I think that — nothing really to speak of there. It’s been a positive change for us from a monetization standpoint, that just brings more consistency to the monetization as we scale up origination sizes. And we’ve seen customers respond well — and what we like about the model is that it just really incentivizes us and aligns us with our customers, to be able to pull them up the limit curve and kind of provides the right incentives for us to continue to do that. So, yes, it’s been a positive change.

Jason Wilk: I would just add, the customer is less price-sensitive and more credit-responsive. And so as Kyle mentioned, the percent-based pricing has allowed us to better scale the limit for the members. So it’s been a good business member value exchange.

Q – Zachary Gunn: Got it. That makes sense. And then just as a follow-up, you mentioned improved credit performance and I get that there’s some benefit in the quarter from tax refunds and seasonality. But can you maybe just give us some commentary on the credit box? Are you holding that the same? I know there’s comments about the macro being challenging. So just anything, in terms of what you’re seeing, with the credit box right now.

Kyle Beilman: I think Q1 performance is really just demonstrative of the continuous improvements that we’ve made to our underwriting system. Over time, we’ve originated ExtraCash nearly 100 million times to date. And so that’s just a significant amount of performance data for us to continue to refine our models. And so, that just allows us to kind of better risk split between the portfolio, find new ways to segment customers to again, sort of align the right amount or the right offer with the right risk profile of our customer base. So, we’re continuing to feel very good about the performance there and our outlook for performance for a number of reasons, as we continue to just refine the model as I spoke of. There’s the benefits of just average time on book going up over time, that’s supportive of better delinquency performance, and just a really important and key focus of ours to continue to drive performance out of the portfolio here.

So it’s — we’re feeling good overall about the trajectory of it moving into the — throughout the rest of the year.

Q – Zachary Gunn: That makes sense. Thanks so much.

Jason Wilk: Thanks, Zachary.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question is a follow-up question from Devin Ryan from JMP Securities. Your question, please.