Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the EZCorp 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lockie Gibbon. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us for the 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We will briefly discuss our corporate strategy and the financial results for fiscal year 2025. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call contains certain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expected operating and financial performance for future periods. These statements are based on the company's current expectations. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from those expressed due to a number of risks or other factors that are discussed in our annual, quarterly and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unless otherwise identified, results are presented on an adjusted basis to remove the effect of foreign currency fluctuations and other discrete items. I'm happy to report that our voting stockholder has re-elected our incumbent directors to serve another one-year term. We continue to be a global leader in pawnbroking and pre-owned and recycled retail. We now operate over 1,500 stores in the US, Latin America and the Caribbean, having added over 220 stores since the beginning of October 2024. Our model expands access to financial services through neighbourhood retail locations and promotes the circular economy by recycling pre-owned merchandise and jewellery. The fundamentals of our porn product continue to resonate powerfully with customers who need immediate access to cash. Our loans are non-recourse, meaning customers have no obligation to pay. They can simply walk away and forfeit their collateral with no further consequences. These small, short-term transactions serve millions of our customers who are underserved by traditional financial institutions but need immediate cash solutions, delivered in a highly respectful and efficient way. Now looking back at our exceptional fiscal year 2025 results. We delivered PLO of $303.9 million, which grew 11%, or 9% on a same-store basis. Inventory increased 28% to $245.2 million due to increases in PLO, layaways and purchases. Merchandise sales of $720.6 million increased 9%, with same-store sales up 7%. Merchandise margin remained steady at 35%. PSC of $483.5 million grew 11%, primarily driven by same-store PLO growth. The team's ongoing commitment to operational excellence continues to support exceptional profitability. Adjusted EBITDA grew 26% to $191.2 million, while margins expanded 170 basis points to 14.7%. Fiscal 2025 delivered record financial performance, improved our scale, continued our relentless focus on operational discipline by focusing on our people and our customers and enhanced our balance sheet with the largest financing in our history. as discussed in our first quarter fiscal year 2026 release we had a very strong start to the new fiscal year we continue to grow the company through exceptional operating performance the consistent rollout of de novo stores in latin america and the disciplined execution of exciting acquisitions across many of the countries in which we operate all enabled by a high performing team and a very robust highly liquid balance sheet Thank you to all of our 8,500-plus team members. Your dedication to serving our customers with passion and respect continues to drive our exceptional financial and operating results. We are very well positioned for the future with a highly resilient, exciting growth platform to capitalise on organic and inorganic opportunities to continue to drive superior returns for our shareholders. With that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator?
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment. And I'm showing no questions at this time. And I would like to hand the conference back over to Lockheed Gibbons for his closing remarks.
thank you everyone for joining today and thank you very much to our shareholders for your support throughout the year we're looking forward to presenting our financials at the end of this
quarter and we'll speak to you then thanks this concludes today's conference call thank you for participating and you may now just connect