Madison Callinan: Great. I have a couple more questions, so I’ll hop back in queue.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we have a follow-up from the line of Madison Callinan with Canaccord Genuity. Madison, your line is open.
Madison Callinan: Thanks guys. So we don’t think you’ve had like a normal tax season since 2019. How should we think about PLO balances this season, both entering and exiting tax season?
Timothy Jugmans: The tax season is going to be interesting this year if it switches back to a normal tax season like we’ve had in 2019, which we — there’s nothing to say that it won’t, but we’ll wait and see. You’re definitely going to see the normal pay downs of PLO balances. It really depends on how far those balances get paid down. And then if they don’t get paid down that much, there’s probably also going to be the ability to sell a little bit more as well. So I think our business, the ability to help the customer, both on the loan side and on getting discounted goods to buy, allows us to go through that — our quarter 2 quite well during our tax season, but how that revenue is going to be made up is really dependent on how much the customer is going to get back in tax return.
Madison Callinan : Awesome. And then after catch up the year in 2023, can you give any additional color on store and G&A expenses for 2024?
Timothy Jugmans: The store expenses, definitely, we were definitely under what we expected this quarter. We do see those increasing on a sequential basis. Some of it inflationary, some of it in Latin America with the government mandated minimum wage increases and other benefit increases causing some of the effects to keep going through.
Madison Callinan : Awesome. And then last question for me. How should we think about your investment in Founders’ longer term? We’re just getting questions about share buybacks from investors.
Lachlan Given: Look, Founders is a high-performing business. It’s now the third largest pawn broking chain in the North American region. So it’s very, very quickly become quite a force, which is what we’d hoped. So we’re very happy with that investment. It’s producing even better returns than we expected. They have bought stores this quarter in Central America, which is exciting. So they’re now at 97 stores. The way we think about it long term is that we are very happy with the structure that we’ve obviously already spoken to investors about. But it’s a potential acquisition going forward and could be a source of really high growth for our shareholders. So we’re really happy with the team, with their performance. As I said, they’re delivering better returns than what we’d expected when we invested.
And I think ultimately could prove to be a great acquisition for us potentially. But for now, we are there to support them in their growth plans, and it’s a very exciting investment for us. On the share buyback side, obviously, we’re trying to balance our own growth with share buybacks. We listen to shareholders, obviously, and we assess this, every quarter, but we continue to buy back stock. We’ve done that very consistently across every quarter, and we see it as another good return on investment. We believe that our stock is very, very cheap. And so we are balancing buying that back with the really significant growth opportunities that we think we have just even in the regions in which we operate. So we’re trying to strike a balance between growth and scaling up our cash flows and our store base with what we see as a good return on investment in buying back stock.
So hopefully, we’ve been very consistent with that message and consistent across quarters. But great news is we’ve had a phenomenal start to the year, an outstanding quarter, and we are trying to balance those growth opportunities with share buybacks.
Madison Callinan: Thanks so much guys. And congrats on the quarter.
Operator: That concludes the question-and-answer session. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to Lachie given for closing remarks.
Lachlan Given: Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining today and thank you to our team. I think they have produced an outstanding quarter of financial and operating results for all of our shareholders, and we’re really looking forward to the rest of this year to continue to continue on this path. So thanks, everyone, for joining today, and we’ll speak to you through the course of the day. Thanks.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
