Operator: The next question comes from Mark Hughes of Truist.
Mark Hughes: Thanks. Good afternoon. Rakesh, could you give the number of the $22 million change in recovery? Could you break out by the outperformance in the quarter versus the expected change in future collections?
Rakesh Sehgal: Sure. So the outperformance in the quarter was $18 million that we mentioned earlier, and then $22 million is the total, so four is the difference which is the change in expected future recoveries.
Mark Hughes: Okay, great, understood. The tax rate for next year, this year, it’s in the low 20s. Is that a good bogey for next year or something different?
Rakesh Sehgal: Yes, I would just focus right now for this year. So what we’re telling you is for Q4, Mark, is to model in a low 20% range. We’ll come back to you as we move into 2024 what you should model in for next year.
Mark Hughes: Okay. And do you have any of you, you talked about credit normalization. It’s interesting to hear your description of the consumer. Your consumers don’t seem to be under pressure. How do you view this evolving? There’s some potential. I think [inaudible] has talked about the normalization extending for a few more quarters and then maybe stabilizing. Do you have a view on any of that?
Rakesh Sehgal: Yes, look, obviously the consumers that we have around their own journey, that’s probably different from the consumers around some of the larger money center banks. As I mentioned, Mark, earlier in my remarks, we looked at how our consumers are performing. And look, we’ve seen limited evidence of them being under pressure today in the U.S. We anticipate cash collections to continue in the coming quarters as we engage with them, especially through all the initiatives that we were talking about earlier. So I view this as a tailwind in the sense that as credit normalizes further, because some of the remarks made by the banks was, they still expect credit to normalize further. Some of them actually reduce their credit cost this quarter. So we view that as a positive from a supply perspective. So all-in-all, between the consumer, where they are, and they are our customers today, and the increased supply coming, we view that as a tailwind for our business.
Mark Hughes: And then I think you had mentioned some new sellers. Any way to characterize the pace with existing sellers, what the magnitude of the new sellers? Are there others that are exploring debt sales as well?
Rakesh Sehgal: Yes, so look, these are sellers that have been in the market. We just haven’t engaged with them previously. So this is a positive for us as we expand the number of sellers from whom we buy and we get on their panels. So this is not changing our product focus. So it’s still looking at the credit card, the PLCC space, and the areas that we’re in today, and just expanding the number of sellers that we buy from.
Operator: The next question is a follow-up from Bob Napoli of William Blair.
Bob Napoli : Thank you for the follow-up. Just a little more commentary on Europe. I mean, it seems that an international player or Australian player, talked about a much tougher collections environment, payment plans being canceled, or something like that. Another competitor just talked about how challenging, and it seems like your European business is doing somewhat better. I mean, you’ve talked about competition, but how do you explain PRA’s international commentary versus what we heard out of the other public company out of Australia and other competitors discussing Europe?
Vikram Atal : There might be, it depends on the markets in which different players are presented, Bob. I can’t comment on who you’re referring to, but our business is fairly well distributed across Europe with the Nordics, Poland, UK, and then Southern Europe. And similar to what Rakesh mentioned, there might be a market or two where large payments are impacted, but that has not affected the payer rate, right. So the volume of customers making payments remains stable even in those markets that might be experiencing slightly more stress. And so that has an impact on the timing of cash versus the totality of cash we will generate. So we certainly are seeing no particular stress, and as you can see, from our results over many quarters, our business in Europe has been performing consistently and consistently well.
