LendingClub Corporation (NYSE:LC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Sanborn: Yes. So if you look at that page, you can see 2021 and 2022, 2021 given that you still had some of the stimulus benefit from the pandemic was better, marginally better than our expectation. 2022 was marginally below, you put the two together and we’re pretty much on expectation across those two vintages as a total, which is roughly in line with what our expectation is for the year end.

Drew LaBenne: Yes. And I would just add. The 2022 vintage maybe marginally less than we expected, but still highly accretive in terms of value created for shareholders by putting it on the balance sheet at least as it’s performing thus far.

David Chiaverini: Got it. Thanks very much.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Giuliano Bologna with Compass Point. Your line is now open.

Giuliano Bologna: Thank you for taking my questions. Starting off, one thing I’d be curious about is thinking about how pricing is evolving and kind of thinking about the marketplace. Because you seem to have talked about in previous quarters is that there’s kind of a couple month lag on pricing and now that we’re kind of getting closer to kind of at least a slowdown in the Fed’s trajectory and hopefully very soon an end to the hike cycle. Is that really what you think will drive a return to volume as pricing catches up once that happens on the marketplace and just in general for the platform as a whole. And then when I think about the pricing that you’re getting, it looks like pricing was still a little bit lower in 4Q versus 3Q.

As we go forward, as pricing moved up, kind of going back to the commentary last quarter where you were saying that you’ve been pricing higher on different loan categories during the quarter. I’m curious if we think about the yield starting to increase on new originations versus the current HFI book on a go forward basis.

Scott Sanborn: I’ll start, Giuliano. I’ll see if I can remember all the questions that were in there. So if I missed one let me know. So, the step back, the rate driven pressure is the biggest driver of the volume reduction for especially the non-bank investors who’ve seen their cost of capital really, significantly increase. That’s where you’re seeing the pressure, and those buyers are primarily the non €“ buyers of the non-prime and the lower prime. And so we are both curtailing volume there due to that rate driven pressure and having to until we can get the price up share some economics in that same space. We’re now the last quarter, including us, the percentage of loans sold the banks is, we’re €“ we got to be in the seventies of percent.

So it’s really shifted to the bank buyers right now. We have continued to move prices up. We mentioned €“ we’ve testing at all times, price points across all of our risk cells and we think it’s important in an environment that is in and of itself is stable, making sure we maintain, take rates and understand the profile of the borrowers coming through. We are being deliberate about that. So, we’ve moved prices up another; I want to say roughly 40 basis points or so over the quarter. And we’re going to continue to push on that. So, we would expect, as the Fed slows down, again, ideally stops there’s a lag as you €“ as we mentioned before, Fed, the Fed moves, then credit cards move, then the market moves, and we move, and that, and so we would expect as that pressure abates there’s the opportunity for the marketplace to begin to reignite.