You want to make sure customers with our underwriting that can pay their bills. So, that’s where we’re at. I feel like it’s a good place to be because we’ve tested into the smaller loan portfolio. We’re seeing how that’s performing. We know how to turn the dials up to when we feel like it’s the right time. But I don’t think it’s prudent necessarily to slam the accelerator down at this point in time, either. So, as long as we continue to make those right tradeoffs each and every quarter, I see things continuing to improve. I will also say that from a credit standpoint, the credit on the front book is performing in line with our expectations. Of course, everybody would like to have inflation go down faster, but we are where we are. And I would tell you that our one to 89 day delinquency bucket’s about 190 basis points below 2019 and 200 basis points below the fourth quarter.
And while delinquencies overall in the first quarter were up 20 basis points versus the fourth quarter, when you kind of normalize for the loan sale, it’s actually down 70 basis points. So, we’re seeing the trends, and although I don’t typically say this, I will disclose that the April delinquency number is below 7%. And that’s in line with the seasonal improvement that Harp talked about in the second quarter. So, we’re feeling good about pricing and the impact. We’re feeling reasonably good about credit, and we’re cautiously optimistic about when we can might lean back into more aggressive growth as macro conditions continue to improve.
Matt Dhane: Great. That’s helpful, Rob. I appreciate the color there. One other dynamic I did want to ask about is, you folks have entered a couple of new states here over the last several years. Just wanted to get some insights into how those have been developing relative to your expectations. And, yeah, just what more can you tell us around those newer states?
Rob Beck: Yeah. I mean, look, and, I think, it’s in the appendix of the supplement. But you can see that the ENR per branch for branches open less than a year is now about $3.7 million, up from $2.3 million a year ago. And same thing for branches open from one to three years. Now, with the environment we in, we haven’t added a ton of branches. So, that addressable market opportunity that we talked about from the new states, which is increased by 80%, in my mind is still largely untapped. And so, my expectation is we will add a few more branches this year. We’ve got some expense dollars, which may allow us to add more branches, and we’ll see whether that’s the appropriate thing to do. And then we’ll be looking in 2025, of course, to continue to go after that untapped market and maybe even look at additional markets. But overall, we’re pleased with the new states.
Matt Dhane: Great. Glad to hear that. That are my questions. Thank you, Rob.
Rob Beck: Great. Thanks, Matt.
Operator: There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Rob Beck for closing remarks.
Rob Beck: Great. Thank you, operator. Look, in conclusion, I’d just say we’re very pleased with the outcome of the quarter. As I said, I think, we’ve executed on all lines across the P&L. And that’s hard to do in any environment. So, we’re really pleased with the effort, and I’m extremely pleased with the team and how they’re executing. I talked about credit, I talked about pricing, continued expense discipline, that’s at the heart of what we do. And as I said, I do believe that having this small loan business that can price above 36% is a real competitive advantage. And in a couple ways, not only the pricing power, but it also gives you the customer flow in that allows you to, which is part of our core strategy, to graduate those customers to a lower rate loan and a higher dollar loan.
The customer is extremely satisfied by that. It improves their credit profile, and it’s core to the business that we’ve been building over the last 7 or 8 years in growing our large loan book. I would also say that the $50 million of small loans that we put on, which are higher risk and higher returns, a very key part of our strategy is also to balance that out with a more low-risk product, which is our auto-secured business. And our auto-secured business, we put on about $30 million over that same timeframe as the small loans. And that auto-secured business is very low delinquencies and losses. So, we’re balancing out this business, a barbell strategy between taking on a little bit more risk on one end, which gives you good returns and strong revenue yields, even though it’s slightly elevated losses and delinquencies.
And we’re balancing that out with that auto-secured book. So, everything we put in place and the hard work we did in the fourth quarter and the actions we took, we feel like they paid off for us in the first quarter. So, with that, I would just say, thanks, everybody, for joining the call and appreciate the call and have a good evening.
Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.
