LendingClub Corporation (NYSE:LC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Switzer: My first one — yes. I have one real quick on, you guys have mentioned about the pricing pressure from — shifting from the bank purchasers to the asset managers. And it looks like the gain on sale margin in the marketplace went from about 5.5% to 5.2%, which is kind of the low that you’ve reported historically. Can you help us kind of quantify or give us an idea of how much lower that could go?

Drew LaBenne: Yes. I mean, it’s — we think that next quarter, we’ll probably take this steepest drop. And rather than quote that to you maybe, I think our gain on sale prices, we’re expecting to drop probably approximately 200 basis points. So, I think that would directly translate from the 5.2% downward. So that’s going to be a pretty — that’s going to be a decent size hit in terms of the gain on sale that we’re getting on those loans as we pivot to asset managers. But that’s also factored into our guidance for Q3.

Scott Sanborn: Yes. I’d add, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we are still quite actively engaged with bank buyers, both our long-term partners, but also new partners who are looking to join the program, both banks and credit unions. Based on the tenor of those conversations, though, I’d say, they’re all in internal management mode for now. And so that’s why we talked about — we certainly anticipate a return to the platform, but not until they’ve got some of their own issues addressed.

Tim Switzer: Okay. Yes, that makes sense. And then on the NII side of things, if you’re holding the balance sheet flat, I guess that implies a little bit lower on an average basis compared to Q2. Can you kind of give us an idea of how NII should trend over the rest of the year? Is it down in Q3, but then maybe flat in Q4?

Drew LaBenne: Yes, I think it’s a couple of things. So, one, the decline in average assets in Q3 is largely going to be from the cash impact that we spoke about before. So — and then the $200 million in loans we sold will have some impact as well. So, Q3, we’ll have a, I think, a modest dip with the recovery back in Q4 in terms of net interest income, at least the way we see it right now dependent on what the Fed does and other factors.

Tim Switzer: Okay. That’s helpful. That’s all for me. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you for your questions. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions waiting. So, I would like to turn the call over to Artem Nalivayko for answers and questions submitted by the email.

Artem Nalivayko: All right. Thanks, Sierra. So, Scott and Drew, we do have a few questions here for you that was submitted via email by our shareholders. So the first question here is, has LendingClub looked into launching any new products with something like better credit card for your members?

Scott Sanborn: So I touched on this very, very briefly on the calls. We are, in the next quarter, in Q3, going to be launching on a new revolving platform. The first use case of the revolving platform is going to be enabling an installment line of credit for existing customers who build back up credit card balances or for whom we didn’t pay off all their credit card balance in the first-go, and they’ve demonstrated good payment, and we can go after the rest. That’ll be in combination with this debt management and monitoring dashboard that we’re working on to help them see that. That’ll be the first use case of the revolve platform. We also have our purchase finance business that currently has a revolving product that we partner for to distribute that, that we could capture more economics by taking that over long term.