PROG Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PRG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

PROG Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PRG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript July 26, 2023

PROG Holdings, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.52 EPS, expectations were $0.65.

Operator: Standing by, and welcome to the PROG Holdings Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today’s program is being recorded. And now I’d like to introduce your host for today’s program, Mr. John Baugh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

John Baugh: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the PROG Holdings second quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me this morning are Steve Michaels, PROG Holdings’ President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Garner, our Chief Financial Officer. Many of you have already seen a copy of our earnings release issued this morning, which is available on our Investor Relations website, investor.progholdings.com. During this call, certain statements we make will be forward looking, including comments regarding our GMV performance and lease merchandise write-offs in future periods, shareholder return over time, our updated 2023 full year outlook and our outlook for the third quarter of 2023. I want to call your attention to our safe harbor provision for forward-looking statements that can be found at the end of the earnings press release that we issued earlier this morning.

That safe harbor provision identifies risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations discussed in our forward-looking statements. There are additional risks that can be found in our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, which we encourage you to read. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue emphasis on forward-looking statements we make today, and we undertake no obligation to update any such statements. On today’s call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP EPS, which have been adjusted for certain items which may affect the comparability of our performance with other companies. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in the reconciliation tables included with our earnings release.

The company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful insight into the company’s operational performance and cash flows and provides these measures to investors to help facilitate comparisons of operating results with prior periods and to assist them in understanding the company’s ongoing operational performance. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Steve Michaels, PROG Holdings’ President and Chief Executive Officer. Steve?

Steve Michaels: Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you being with us today as we discuss our second quarter results, share our thoughts on a few important Q3 metrics and provide an update on our full year 2023 financial outlook. We had another excellent quarter with Q2 GMV slightly beating our expectations, net revenues above the high end of our expectations and adjusted EBITDA well above the range we provided at the end of April. I’m proud of our team’s performance as they executed at a high level in what remains a challenging retail environment. The trend of fewer customers choosing to utilize 90-day buyout options and the strong portfolio performance that we discussed in Q1 continued into the second quarter.

As you may have seen in this morning’s earnings release, we are incorporating our year-to-date outperformance and reflecting these favorable trends in our increased outlook for 2023. The strong customer payment behavior we experienced in Q2 as evidenced by our year-over-year 260 basis point gross margin expansion, improved write-offs of 7.1% and adjusted EBITDA growth of $22.8 million or 43.7% resulting in a 12.7% margin. Our write-offs for the first half of 2023 were 6.5%, keeping us on track to deliver another year within our targeted annual range of 6% to 8%. The decline in GMV was largely due to our implementation of tighter decisioning in Q2 last year, which we believe accounted for approximately 2/3 of our GMV decline. As we look to July trends and our Q3 expectations, we anticipate the difficult year-over-year GMV comparisons to ease as we fully lap the introduction of last year’s tighter decision.

We have yet to see any indicators leading us to assume that retail sales will materially rebound through the balance of 2023. Though we have not assumed any benefit in the revised outlook we provided this morning, we believe that the current macro environment will result in tightening of lending practices from credit providers above us in the STACK. Additionally, past experience demonstrates that consumers benefit from our flexible payment options during periods of sustained liquidity pressures. Our teams are working well with their counterparts at our retail partners to find GMV growth opportunities, including promotions, point-of-sale materials and tech integrations that improve application flows and conversion rates. We are on track to grow our balance of share with several large retail partners in the second half of this year through new e-commerce integrations.

Our 3-pillared strategy to grow, enhance and expand remains focused on sustainable growth rather than short-term gains. PROG emphasizes dedication to our business development efforts. In a sluggish retail climate, our goal is to broaden new and existing retail partnerships, positioning ourselves for significant growth once conditions improve. We remain focused on regaining growth through sustainable strategies, including e-commerce, marketing and technology innovations, along with new retailer pipeline conversion. Our efforts to increase our e-commerce business are showing solid progress. We added nearly 4x the number of new partners in the first half of 2023 than we did in the same period last year, and the channel consistently contributes more than 15% of our total GMV.

These new partners, along with upcoming e-commerce integrations with several existing retailers should contribute to our long-term GMV growth. We are also planning second half promotions and cross-marketing with many of our key retailers in support of GMV. One specific example of this is last week’s PROG Perks Week, where we provide daily offers from select retail partners to our large database of current and previous customers. We have run this promotion several times over the last 2 years with much success, and retail partners have enjoyed the incremental business the program drives. This is just one example of the benefit of being part of the PROG Preferred Partner Network. Our high customer retention, illustrated by consistent repeat rates of over 50% is a testament to our customers’ affinity for our leasing products and contributes to our higher than average lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio.

Lastly, our pursuit of new retail opportunities remains a key component of our strategy for long-term growth, especially in the current challenging retail environment that may motivate more retailers to seek avenues for revenue enhancement. We have added a number of regional accounts in the quarter and remain in ongoing discussions with many recognizable regional and national brands about the value Progressive Leasing can bring to their business and customers. We’re confident in our proven ability to increase share balance with existing retailers while converting retailers without a virtual lease-to-own payment option, and we’ll continue to build the relationships and technologies that will enable us to capture more of our industry’s $30 billion to $40 billion addressable market.

Under ENHANCE [ph], our technology initiatives aimed at improving the retailer experience and offering customers a more frictionless omnichannel journey are progressing nicely. And we believe those initiatives will bolster our GMV performance in future periods. Our tech road map is focused on 3 core areas: improving our customer-centric flexible lease platform, providing self-service tools to enable a superior retailer experience while helping the customer make the best and most informed choices and offering greater personalization for a streamlined shopping and decisioning experience. We are also developing products that we believe will boost our direct-to-consumer business and give retail partners easier path to identify and convert potential LTO customers.

We aim to enhance operating efficiency while addressing technical debt, an issue common in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape. Lastly, our PROG Labs R&D group is innovating ways to enhance customer service, personalization and decisioning through generative AI. As for expand, in Q2, we announced a new product called Bill, a credit management tool designed to aid consumers in enhancing their credit scores. Our leasing customers frequently express a desire to improve their credit profile. Bild, which is a blend of an installment loan and a secured savings account, both issued by WebBank [ph] can help to address this need while aiding in credit history and savings accumulation. Bill is a natural addition to our product suite, joining Progressive Leasing, Vivad 4 as inclusive and transparent financial products for consumers.

In addition to empowering our customers through their financial journey, we anticipate build will boost progressive leasing and Vive volumes catering to potential customers currently not qualifying for leases or loans. These pillars are underpinned by our robust financial health, marked by strong profitability, substantial free cash flow and a healthy net leverage position, all of which we expect to continue going forward. This financial strength enables us to invest in areas promoting future growth. Turning to capital allocation; we have acquired over 2.5 million shares of our outstanding common stock in the first 6 months of the year at an average price of $28.26 per share. These purchases account for approximately 5% of our outstanding shares.

Since the company spin transaction 2.5 years ago, we have reduced our share count by roughly 1/3. Year-to-date, we have generated $205 million of cash flow from operations, closing the quarter with a cash balance of $253 million. As a reminder, we typically generate the majority, if not all, of our operating cash flow in the first half of the calendar year, a seasonal pattern we expect again in 2023. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged, and we expect to fund growth, look for strategic M&A opportunities and return excess cash to shareholders primarily through share repurchases. While Brian will provide more detail on the upward division to our outlook for the year, I’d like to provide some high-level thoughts. Our first half earnings outperformed expectations due to tailwinds that may not carry forward into the remainder of the year with the same magnitude.

Stjepan Tafra/Shutterstock.com

Our updated outlook reflects ongoing challenges to consumer demand resulting from the macro environment. We expect that revenues in the second half of 2023 will show a mid- to high single-digit percentage decline as compared to the same period last year, primarily due to GMV performance in the first half of the year, resulting in a smaller lease portfolio balance. However, there is an easing in a difficult year-over-year GMV comparison as we lap last year’s decisioning changes. My summary is consistent with last quarter. Our strong first half far exceeded earnings expectations and as a result of the hard work of our teams and strong customer payment behavior. We have a proven track record of navigating through dynamic and challenging environments, and we will adjust as macro conditions evolve.

We believe our strong financial health and ongoing investments will drive compelling shareholder return overtime. I’ll now turn the call over to our CFO, Brian Garner, for more details on our second quarter results and 2023 outlook. Brian?

Brian Garner: Thanks, Steve. Let me start by summarizing our Q2 highlights. For the second quarter in a row, we exceeded earnings expectations as we effectively managed our P&L in a highly uncertain environment. I want to thank the teams for their perseverance in managing portfolio health and SG&A expenditures in a retail challenged environment and for the pursuit of sustainable long-term growth opportunities. During the quarter, our customer payment behavior remains strong as elevated portfolio yields contributed to increased gross margins in the period. Similar to Q1, we saw fewer customers choosing to utilize 90-day purchase options, yet our write-offs remained within our targeted annual range. As always, we are actively managing portfolio performance as consumer behavior and lease outcomes change.

Q2 consolidated revenue declined 8.7% year-over-year due to a lower portfolio balance entering the period. However, revenue exceeded expectations, driven by strong portfolio performance. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased by 43.7% to $75 million from $52.2 million in Q2 last year. Our better-than-expected consolidated adjusted EBITDA results were primarily driven by our Progressive Leasing segments, lower SG&A, lower write-offs and stronger gross margins and the favorable SG&A was driven by our focus on operational efficiencies. Non-GAAP diluted EPS increased to $0.92 per share, growing 76.9% from $0.52 per share in Q2 of 2022. We continue to demonstrate the resiliency of our business model and our capacity to adapt to revenue headwinds while preserving margins and cash flow, and I’m extremely proud of our team’s efforts to deliver these results.

For our Progressive Leasing segment, GMV decreased 14.7% year-over-year, which was slightly better than our internal expectations. We have improved the year-over-year GMV comparison from a 17% decline in Q1 to a 14.7% decline in Q2 and believe we are trending to a mid-single-digit decline for Q3. As Steve mentioned, we believe roughly 2/3 of the negative GMV comp in the first half is driven by the proactive steps we took to tighten our decisioning in Q2 of 2022, which has improved our write-offs and profitability. Q2 revenue declined 8.9% and was impacted by a lower gross leased asset balance throughout the quarter, ending the period down 10.7% year-over-year as well as a decline in 90-day buyouts during the period, partially offset by improved portfolio yield.

However, similar to last quarter, year-over-year gross margin in Q2 improved 260 basis points to 33%, primarily driven by strong customer payment behavior and lower levels of 90-day buyouts as fewer customers have elected to utilize the early buyout option. These lower buyouts in the first half of the year translated into higher margin outcomes in Q2 as write-offs remained at acceptable levels. Our revised outlook anticipates 90-day buyout activity and write-offs to follow pre-pandemic seasonal trends for the remainder of 2023, resulting in a slight decrease in gross margins versus the first half of 2023. For rest Lease’s SG&A expense in Q2 was $78.3 million, a decrease of $3.6 million or 4.4% compared to $81.9 million in the same quarter last year.

SG&A as a percentage of revenue increased slightly to 13.6% compared to 13% in Q2 of 2022. I — we expect that for the remainder of the year, SG&A as a percentage of revenues will be higher compared to the first half of 2023. We will continue to operate efficiently through a challenging consumer demand environment while balancing investment in key technology platforms, marketing and business development. Progressive leases write-offs were $41 million or 7.1%, down from 9.8% in the previous year’s period. The sequential quarterly increase in write-offs in the first half of 2023 was driven by seasonal trends, resulting in year-to-date write-offs of 6.5%. We remain on track to end the year within our targeted annual write-off range of 6% to 8%.

Moving to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $253 million of cash and gross debt of $600 million, resulting in a net leverage ratio of 1.14x our trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA of $304.1 million. In the second quarter, we purchased 1.1 million shares of our common stock at a weighted average price of $32.65 per share and have $265.4 million remaining under our previously authorized $1 billion share repurchase program. To summarize our outperformance to expectations in the first half of 2023, we actively manage the portfolio return while driving efficiencies in our cost structure and the shift we observed of fewer customers choosing to utilize 90-day buyout options resulted in higher gross margin. I’d now like to touch on a few key aspects of our Q3 and revised full year outlook, which were provided in this morning’s earnings press release.

As a reminder, the guidance we provided on our Q1 earnings call in late April, assumed headwinds on GMV with easing in the year-over-year comparison starting in July. The gross leased asset balance, which is a key driver of future period revenue was expected to decline further at the end of Q2. Although we anticipated margin pressures as we move throughout the year, we assumed our lease portfolio performance and our low 90-day buyout rates would drive Progressive leases margin to improve year-over-year. We projected 90-day buyout activity to be lower year-over-year for the remainder of 2023, although the variance was expected to narrow compared to Q1 over the course of the year. Our performance in the second quarter gives us reason to believe that GMV is trending slightly better compared to what we expected in April.

In addition to our favorable year-to-date performance, we feel a higher degree of confidence in our portfolio performance going forward. Lastly, although SG&A as a percentage of revenue will increase as we move through the remainder of 20.3%, we will evaluate the timing and return of our investments to align with revenue trends and future growth opportunities. As a result, we are raising our full year revenue and earnings outlook. We anticipate the Q3 GMV year-over-year comparison to ease to a mid-single-digit decline as we lap last year’s tightening. Our revised consolidated outlook for 2023 includes revenues in the range of $2.36 billion to $2.39 billion; adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $270 million to $280 million and non-GAAP EPS in the range of $3.10 to $3.25.

This outlook assumes a continued soft demand for leasable consumer durable goods, no material changes in the company’s decision posture and effective tax rate for non-GAAP EPS of approximately 27% and no impact from additional share repurchases. Consistent with last quarter, our base case outlook for the remainder of the year considers current consumer trends but does not assume further economic downturn, a material negative impact on the employment of our customers or a material benefit from tightening by providers above us in the credit stack. I will now turn the call back to the operator for questions. Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Kyle Joseph from Jefferies.

Kyle Joseph: Thanks for having me on taking my questions. Just curious your thoughts on kind of the health of your underlying consumer. Obviously, some moving parts in terms of less early buyout activity, but ongoing stable credit performance, obviously, the employment environment is very strong still. But just kind of get a sense for the overall health of the underlying consumer and potentially, if there are any sort of green shoots of improving demand or consumer confidence there?

Steve Michaels: Yes. Thanks, Kyle. I guess I’ll start. When we spoke last quarter, we talked a lot about fewer consumers choosing to utilize a 90-day buyout option and its impacts on the overall margin — the gross margin of the business. But what we are trying to assess at that point was how will those pools continue to mature? And would those customers that otherwise during a regular tax season that have — would have utilized their 9 buyout option, how would they perform. So far today, through Q2, the verdicts that they’re performing fairly well. They’re making their payments. There are still active leases. And so that’s a good sign for the health of our consumer. You mentioned in kind of one of your data points there, strong employment, and that is always a big factor in our business, and we’re not seeing any signs of weakness in the employment side of the business or economy, I should say — as it relates to cost pressures and inflation rolling over, I think that’s probably also fairly good news.

You can see it in our portfolio performance and what we talked about in the prepared remarks around strong portfolio and strong customer payment behavior. The only — what I would say, wild card that’s out there is a very fluid and developing situation related to this student loan repayment that is facing us in the fall. And there’s a lot of puts and takes on that to who will be impacted and what may happen between now and then. So I would say, generally, it’s pretty good shape for the consumer with a little bit of a wildcard in the future that may or may not materialize.

Kyle Joseph: Got it. Very helpful. And then just one follow-up for me. I think on last quarter’s call, you guys addressed kind of credit availability broadly. And I think you mentioned you saw some initial signs of tightening from the above or trade down in other words. And any update there?

Steve Michaels: Yes. What we said last quarter was that we had only very recently begun to see some change in our applicant in the top of the funnel, if you will. And the best way we have to monitor that is basically the FICO scores or — and even our own internal risk scores of our applicants in the top quintile of our app funnel. And what we saw in late April that had just recently begun, we did continue to see throughout the quarter. So we have seen a drift up in our FICO scores throughout our app funnel, but certainly at the — in the top quintile. There — as has been widely reported, there has been some FICO inflation. So a 660 might not perform like a 660 did a couple of years ago. So we’re paying attention to that as well.

As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, it’s difficult for us to, at this point in the year, determine how large, if any, the benefit from that will be for us. But — and so it’s not baked into our outlook, at least the material benefit is not big in our outlook. But we do believe and have believed for a long time that it is a potential tailwind for our business.