Ladies and gentlemen, greetings and welcome to the Regional Management Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please signal the operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Garrett Edson from ICR. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings announcement and supplemental presentation, which were released prior to this call and may be found on our website at regionalmanagement.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, I will direct you to page two of our supplemental presentation, which contains important disclosures concerning forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. Part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations, estimates, and projections about the company's future financial performance and business prospects. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today and are subject to various assumptions, risks, uncertainties, and other factors that are difficult to predict, and that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not place undue reliance upon them. We refer all of you to a press release presentation or recent filings with the SEC for a more detailed discussion of our forward-looking statements and the risks and uncertainties that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. Also, our discussion today may include references to certain non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found within our earnings announcement or earnings presentation and posted on our website at regionalmanagement.com. I would now like to introduce Rob Beck, President and CEO of Regional Management Corp. Thanks, Garrett, and welcome to our second quarter 2025 earnings call.

I'm joined today by Harp Rana, our Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. On this call, we'll cover our second quarter results, provide an update on our portfolio credit performance and growth strategies, and share our expectations for the second half of 2025. We delivered very strong financial and operating results in the second quarter. We generated net income of $10.1 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.03, an improvement of 20% year over year. Our results across all line items met or beat our guidance, including net income that was $3 million or 42%, better than the midpoint of our guidance. Our quarterly revenue reached a record level of $157 million. Total originations were also at a record high, and our annualized operating expense ratio was an all-time best. I continue to be impressed with our team's execution as we focus on driving growth improving our operating effectiveness, and delivering strong shareholder returns. Consumers in our target segment remain healthy. This has allowed us to responsibly grow our portfolio while also improving our credit performance. We grew our net receivals by $70 million sequentially in the second quarter on $510 million of originations. Our ending net receivals were up 10.5% year-over-year, in line with our expectations to grow the portfolio by at least 10% in 2025. At quarter end, our 30-day delinquency rate was 6.6%, an improvement of 50 basis points sequentially and 30 basis points better year-over-year. Our net credit loss rate of 11.9% was in line with our expectations for the quarter. The NCL rate improved 50 basis points sequentially and was 80 basis points better than the prior year period. Our credit tightening actions continue to yield positive results. We also manage expenses tightly in the quarter. Our operating expense ratio of 13.2% improved 60 basis points year over year, despite continued investment in innovation and growth, including new branch openings. We'll continue to invest in initiatives that will drive long-term returns while practicing sound expense discipline. In the second quarter, we had capital generation of $16.9 million, bringing total capital generation year-to-date to $26.8 million. Through the second quarter of this year, we returned an aggregate of $17.6 million in capital to shareholders via stock repurchases of $11.6 million and dividends of $6.1 million. Our book value per share reached $36.43 at quarter end. In sum, we're very pleased with our second quarter results. As I reflect on economic conditions and our team's efforts over the last several years, I believe the second quarter represents one of the strongest periods of execution since 2021 and early 2022, a time when inflation was stable, funding costs were low, and government stimulus was contributing to strong credit outcomes. We have very positive momentum, a growing, healthy portfolio, and remain well positioned to deliver strong results moving forward. Before handing things over to HAARP, I'll touch on a few strategic items. We opened two branches in the second quarter, bringing total new branch openings to 17 since early September of last year, of which 11 are in new markets in California, Arizona, and Louisiana. These branches are performing well and growing rapidly, and we expect to open another five to 10 branches over the next six months. We generally observe that new branches begin to generate positive monthly net income at around month 14 and pre-provision net income at around month 3. We view new branch openings as excellent investments and will continue to open new branches in new and existing markets with the pace of openings dependent on economic conditions. We also continue to execute on our barbell strategy, which focuses on growth in our high-quality, auto-secured, and high-margin small loan portfolios. Our auto-secured loan portfolio grew by $66 million, or 37%, year-over-year, from 10% to 13% of the total portfolio, and carries a 30-day delinquency rate of 1.9%. Meanwhile, our portfolio of loans with APRs above 36% grew by $50 million, or 16% year-over-year, increasing modestly from 17% to 18% of our total portfolio. These portfolios continue to perform well, have strong margins, and support our customer graduation strategy. On the expense front, we remain good stewards of shareholder capital. As a normal course of our operations, we regularly review branch-level financial and operating metrics and evaluate opportunities to improve network efficiency. In connection with those efforts, we expect to consolidate 8 to 10 branches this year into nearby branches. The G&A expense from these actions will be used to support our new branch openings in new geographies. In addition, earlier this month, we completed a small restructuring in our corporate offices with the general goal of streamlining our business processes to maximize efficiency. While this resulted in a restructuring charge in the third quarter, the G&A expense savings from the action will more than offset the charge within the quarter. Moving forward, we expect annualized G&A expense savings of roughly $2.3 million from this reposition. These savings will support our ongoing investments in technology and advanced data and analytics, which are already bearing fruit. For example, we developed a new front-end branch origination platform that will improve team member effectiveness, enhance the customer experience and ultimately benefit our operating efficiency. The new system facilitates a smoother, quicker, and more accurate origination process. We began piling the system earlier this year, have deployed the system within one of our larger states, and we will be rolling it out throughout our network over the next 18 months. We've also developed a new customer lifetime value analytic framework for direct mail marketing that consists of dozens of machine learning models that allow us to better optimize offer and selection criteria. We began using the new model in the second quarter and will fully deploy it in the third quarter. We expect to see significant benefits as it scales in use. Similarly, we'll be rolling out our new machine learning branch underwriting model starting in the third quarter, and we'll deploy it across our network as we implement our new front-end origination tool. These new models will allow us to improve volume while holding credit risk constant, improve credit risk while holding volume constant, or some combination of the two. Ultimately, the models will improve our mail selection, enhance our ability to monitor results, and enable us to optimize profitability. We expect that our team's efforts to grow our portfolio, increase our operational efficiency, and improve our credit performance will drive increases in net income and shareholder value. For 2025, we're forecasting full year net income of $42 to $45 million. Given the strong portfolio growth we experienced in the second quarter, there may be an opportunity for faster growth in the second half of the year. Where we land within the forecasted 2025 net income range will be driven by our portfolio growth, which directly impacts our provisioning for credit losses and bottom line results. Ultimately, our portfolio growth rate in the second half will depend on the health of our customers, informed by our credit metrics and macroeconomic conditions. I'll now turn the call over to Harp, who will provide more detail on our results.

Thank you, Rob, and hello, everyone. I'll now take you through our second quarter results in more detail and provide you with an outlook for the second half of the year. On page four of the supplemental presentation, we provide our second quarter financial highlights, Our net income of $10.1 million and diluted EPS of $1.03 were supported by a solid portfolio and revenue growth, a healthy credit profile, expense discipline, and a strong balance sheet. For the third quarter, we're projecting net income of roughly $14.5 million. Turning to pages 5 and 6, we had record total originations of $510 million in the second quarter, up 20% year-over-year. Loan volume was driven by strong performance from our digital channel, auto-secured product, and the 17 de novo branches we've opened over the past 12 months, the latter of which generated 24% of our year-over-year growth. Our total portfolio reached record levels at the end of the second quarter, and is expected to cross $2 billion in the third quarter, while our ending net receivables per branch reached $5.6 million on average. We continue to believe that key economic markers, including wage growth, the number of open jobs, the unemployment rate, and the direction of inflation, are favoring our customers and that our customers tend to be resilient and adaptable. These conditions have allowed us to grow our portfolio while maintaining a tight credit box. Looking ahead to the third quarter, we anticipate that our ending net receivables will increase roughly $55 million to $60 million sequentially and that our average net receivables will be up roughly $75 million sequentially. Turning to page 7, total revenue grew to a record $157 million in the second quarter, up 10% year-over-year. Our total revenue yield and interest and fee yield each moved up 50 basis points sequentially to 32.9% and 29.4%, consistent with seasonal patterns. Total revenue yield improved 20 basis points year-over-year from the improved credit performance and ancillary product revenue. In the third quarter, we expect total revenue yield of 32.8%, a 10 basis point sequential decrease due portfolio mix, and for the fourth quarter, we anticipate a further decline in revenue yield due to seasonality. Moving to page 8, our portfolio continues to perform well. Our 30-plus day delinquency rate at the quarter end was 6.6%, 50 basis points better sequentially, and a 30 basis point improvement year over year. Our net credit losses in the second quarter were better than our forecast, and our net credit loss rate of 11.9% improved 50 basis points sequentially and 80 basis points year over year due to credit tightening and effective portfolio management. Our second quarter net credit losses include a 2.1 million, or 40 basis points, impact from prior year hurricane activity. In the third quarter, we expect our delinquency rate to rise gradually, consistent with seasonal patterns. We anticipate that our net credit losses will be approximately $51 million in the third quarter, or a net credit loss rate of approximately 10.3%, a 30 basis point improvement from the third quarter of last year. The expected sequential improvement in our net credit losses in the third quarter is consistent with seasonal patterns, and the expected year-over-year improvement in our net credit loss rate in the third quarter is reflective of the overall improved credit quality and performance of our portfolio. For the fourth quarter, we expect a sequential seasonal increase in our NCL rate. Turning to page nine, we increased our allowance for credit losses in the quarter by 3.7 million to support portfolio growth. Consistent with our outlook, our allowance for credit losses rate declined to 10.3 percent due to the release of the remaining hurricane reserve against the associated net credit losses in the second quarter. Looking to the third quarter, subject to economic conditions and portfolio performance, we expect our reserve rate to remain steady at 10.3% at the end of the quarter. Flipping to page 10, we continue to closely manage our spending while still investing in our growth, capabilities, and strategic initiatives. Our annualized operating expense ratio was 13.2% in the second quarter, an all-time best and an improvement of 60 basis points from the prior year period. In the second quarter, a revenue growth outpaced our G&A expense growth by more than five times. In the third quarter, we expect G&A expenses to be roughly $65 million to $66 million. Turning to pages 11 and 12, our interest expenses for the second quarter was $20.4 million, or 4.2% of average net receivables on an annualized basis, better than our outlook on lower average debt and lower fees. Our cost of funds increased year over year as lower fixed rate debt has matured and we funded our growth with higher fixed and variable rate debt. Even with the increased cost of funds, we're pleased with the way we've managed our interest expense over the past few years. As of the end of the second quarter, 84 percent of our debt was fixed rate with a weighted average coupon of 4.5 percent. In the third quarter, we expect interest expense to be approximately 22 million or 4.4 percent of average net receivables and for the fourth quarter we expect the cost of funds rate to increase further to 4.5 percent moving forward we'll continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with ample liquidity and borrowing capacity diversified and staggered funding sources and a sensible interest rate management strategy aside from investing in our growth and strategic initiatives we continue to allocate excess capital to our dividends and 30 million share repurchase programs. Our board of directors declared a dividend of $0.30 per common share for the third quarter. Pursuant to our buyback program, we repurchased approximately 165,000 shares of our common stock in the second quarter at a weighted average price of $30.36 per share. Finally, I'll note that we provide a summary of our third quarter 2025 guidance on page 14 of our earnings supplement. That concludes my remarks. I'll now turn the call back over to Rob.

Thanks, Harp. Before we wrap up, I want to take a moment to thank the entire regional team for their dedication and outstanding execution during the second quarter. Your hard work continues to drive our success and positions us for long-term growth. We're extremely proud of our results this quarter. Record revenue, strong net income, responsible portfolio growth, discipline expense management, and improved credit performance. These achievements reflect the strength of our strategy, the quality of our execution, and the resilience of our business model. Looking ahead, we remain focused on accelerating growth, investing in strategic initiatives like branch expansion, advanced analytics, and technology enhancements, and further strengthening our credit performance. These actions will enable us to deliver sustainable, profitable growth, and long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you again for your continued support and confidence in regional management. We're excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to updating you on our progress in the quarters to come. I'll now open up the call for questions. Operator, could you please open the line?

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. The first question comes from the line of David Schroff from Citizens Capital Market. Please go ahead.

Different initiatives, origination, look beyond just kind of the near term 90, 180 day guidance. Is it a ranking of where you see the most operant can provide us related or product related? Or should we just think of this as, you know, always fine-tuning among all the different aspects?

So, great, Dan. Great question. Thanks for joining. So, here's how I would answer that question. I'm giving the context of what I think we accomplish this for in doing so. First and foremost, what I would say is, you know, we have a lot of levers for growth, which is, you know, reflecting, you know, all the investments we've made in the various initiatives over the last several years, including what, you know, has been a pretty challenging time during the high inflation period. And so it puts us in a unique position where we can pull those levers based on, you know, what we see in the health of the customer and, you know, the macro conditions or the macro environment. So, you know, the drivers of the growth for us have been a combination of, you know, state expansion and new branches, many of which are in those new states. You know, our auto-secured lending, which we've been leading into digital underwriting, which you can see was very strong in this quarter. And also the advanced analytics that we've invested in, which, you know, helps us to really fine-tune our underwriting, you know, and marketing strategies to deliver, you know, increased growth if we choose to or to, you know, use those models to moderate losses so we can optimize using those advanced analytics depending on the market conditions. So, you know, what I would say to you is, and this isn't mutually exclusive, but if you look at the $187 million of growth we had in E&R year-on-year, you know, our lower-risk large loans grew $147 million, which was 79% of the growth. And that was, you know, almost by-groupled the increase in our small loans. The auto-score loans increased by $66 million, and obviously that's a subset of large loans, But that was 35% of our growth. And it's now 13% of our portfolio. And as I said, you know, 30-day delivery rates is 1.9%. So, you know, attractive, you know, low-risk business. The 17 new branches that we opened since September contributed $45 million to growth, which is about 25% of the overall growth. And then if you just look at new states, you know, that was 97 million growth or roughly 52% of the growth. And most of that growth was, you know, at rates below 36%. So, you know, the takeaway is, you know, we are achieving this growth without losing our credit standards, okay? In fact, even on a high-margin business, the rate of 36%, only increased marginally from 17% of the portfolio to 18% of the portfolio. So as we look ahead, we're in a great position to be able to have all these levers to pull. And, of course, you know, with our advanced analytical tools, we can pull those levers to lean into growth where we think we're going to optimize returns depending on what the market market is like. And so, you know, I think it's a great place to be. And in terms of where we expect to go for the rest of the year, you know, look, it really depends on, you know, what we see as the health of the customer, which at this point, you know, we're seeing credit performance, which is, you know, spot on with what we expected from the very beginning of the year. And so we have an opportunity to grow faster, I think, if we choose to in the second half of the year. But we're going to let the credit performance and any macro developments kind of guide where we end the growth in the full year.

Just one follow-up on your maybe in an over-reserved position, which is understandable in the wake of the kind of April 2nd announcements. Given all of the constructive commentary you provided about, you know, is the allowance, is the kind of flat allowance rate or reserve rate guidance you're providing, should that be taken as an indication that that's probably a normalized level? or are there certain other things you're on the lookout for that could potentially lead that reserve rate below 10%?

So David, I'll answer that. So when we look at our feeble allowance rate, as you know, it's based upon our portfolio mix and our growth. And we look at product, FICO, and delinquency steps. So we look at credit and delinquency trends in terms of what we see internally. And then we overlay macro on top of that. So what you saw this quarter in terms of the 10.3% and how that came down from last quarter, we had signals that we would be releasing, you know, the remaining hurricane, which we did. So that's part of that 10.5 to the 10.3. The macro improved, and that's another reason why you're seeing a come down from 10.5 to 10.3. So we've got the improvement of macro currently in the numbers that are calculated in the allowance for the quarter. Now, as you know, every quarter, we'll take a look at, you know, revised macros, and if there is an opportunity for the reserve to come down lower based on macros, but also our own friends and our product mix, you know, we take a look at that every quarter. But right now, in terms of, and you're probably looking at our guidance, you know, it's comfortable in terms of where we're guiding to in third quarter at the 10.3%.

Great.

Thank you very much. Yeah, and I'm just going to add a little bit here, just on the health of the customer, as we're saying it. You know, I would say the customers are generally doing pretty well, and they're making smart choices. You know, our customers tend to do a pretty good job of, you know, finding ways to mitigate, you know, stressful times. Unemployment, as everyone knows, is low. It was nice to see the economy grow last quarter, and we're still seeing real wage growth in our customer segment, and there's still 7.5 million, you know, open jobs out there, and many of those roles fit on our, you know, customer profile. You know, I do think immigration may further boost – the immigration restrictions will further boost wage growth and job prospects for our clients. And then if we look at the OBBB or OBBB bill, however you want to say it, you know, I think it's likely positive for our customers based on everything we've seen. A little early to tell, but we generally view that as positive. And, you know, look, the uncertainty right now in these tariffs, I think there's a little bit more certainty than there was. And inflation is still a little elevated, but I think the view from, you know, most market fund incidents, you know, any tariffs will be more of a one-time shock to inflation rather than one that's, you know, perpetrate, you know, increased inflation continuously. So, you know, that's not to say that we're watching, you know, the performance of our customers and having to tighten credit where we want. In fact, as I think I've said numerous times, we're always, you know, turning the dials tighter here to address where we might see stresses. But at this point, I think the consumer is holding out pretty nicely.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Alexander Villalobos from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

This is Alex here instead of John Hecht. I wanted to ask you a little bit about how we should think about yields going forward. Potentially, there might be a rate cut later this year, but definitely a year from now, we should be expecting lower rates. So just kind of, you know, what is the playbook with yields? Should we expect to kind of maintain higher pricing as interest expense goes down? Just kind of how we should think about that.

So, Alice, when you say yields, are you referencing funds?

Yields. Interest income.

So revenue yield. Okay. So, in terms of revenue yields, Alex, so I think we've guided in terms of, you know, where revenue yields will be in third quarter. In terms of how we price, we price in terms of competition. So, you'll always price in terms of the right product or at the right price for the right customer. So, that's how we price, and we'll take a look at how our competitive pricing is to make sure that we don't have adverse selection. So we'll continue to monitor that. And if there's opportunity to, you know, look at pricing, we will definitely do that.

And then on the interest expense side, in, you know, in the future, is there any, you know, ability to kind of switch to like a better cost of funds, source of funds versus mezzanine debt?

So, Alex, what we do is, you know, we manage profit funds, you know, quite effectively. If you look at what we've done over the last several quarters, you can see that we basically maintain profit funds within, you know, a 4 to 4.3 percent range. So we've done a very good job through the cycle managing profit funds. Now, part of that is because of, you know, how much of our book is set, 84% of our book is set. And so when you're modeling, we're looking at cost of funds in the future, even though interest rates may come down through FedCut, what we have to remember is that we have securitization that they put on the books at very, very low rates. Those will come due, and they will reach that at market rate. So you will see our cost of funds go up, you know, especially in, you know, we've guided higher cost of funds in third quarter. We've guided even higher cost of funds in 4.5 in fourth quarter. So that's sort of the baseline as you look to model into next year. And then when you look at next year, you should really look at the securitizations that we have coming to and what the weighted average cost of those securitizations are. And then if you were to just look at the last securitization that we booked, that would give you a pretty good indication of how cost of funds is going to change and increase into next year.

Perfect. Yeah, that was my question going forward. Awesome. Thank you so much, and congrats on the good results.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kyle Joseph from Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Let me echo congratulations on a strong quarter. I just want to talk about the originations mix. In the quarter, it looks like small, you know, decelerated a little bit, large, accelerated. Just wondering, you know, is that a function of demand, a function of competition, or is it really just, you know, one quarter is not enough to really call it a trend?

Yeah, I'll take that part. You can jump in. And, you know, as I said, our large loans, you know, grew nicely year on year. I think a big part of that is driven by the increase in our secure business. I think in, you know, our digital originations, you know, bigger concentration in the larger loans, better quality, and that's done with invention. I think even in the new states when we enter, you know, particularly when we're renewing small loans into larger loans, that's a generalized theme that we're growing our larger loan book faster than our small loan book. And, you know, I'll say this, and look, I'm not going to give you a definitive view of, you know, where, you know, the greater than 36% business will be over time, but I do think it's going to decline as a percentage of the portfolio because of the levers I just mentioned. you know, the growth of new states, the digital, larger loans, the auto-secured, all of which, you know, helps improve the quality of our portfolio. And, you know, I think they're all originated in interactive returns. Do you have anything?

No, I think not that much.

Yeah, that's helpful. And, Jen, just one follow-up on OpEx. Appreciate the guidance for 3Q, but as we think about that going forward, It sounds like there's some puts and takes in terms of branch consolidation versus new builds and then some, you know, restructuring you did at the corporate level. But, you know, how you're thinking about whether it's, you know, marketing on its own or expense and, you know, how that compares to kind of your expectations for loan growth overall.

Yeah, I mean, if we lean into faster growth in the second half of the year, you know, we have gotten to a minimum E&R grew up to 10%. Now, the second quarter we grew up about 10.5%, which was about $15 million higher than our guidance on E&R. And so pretty healthy beat on growth in the second quarter. So, as we look at the second half of the year, there is an opportunity potentially to grow faster. Again, we'll have to see what the macro conditions, you know, hold and support. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, there could be opportunity and there could be additional expenditure to go along with that. Naturally, you want to take advantage of that. But, you know, look, I think everybody knows, you know, higher growth, you know, does impact short-term net income due to CESOL, as you say, the lifetime losses up front. And so that's part of the reason or is the reason for the range of the full year. But faster growth is just going to propel higher earnings from next year. And so, you know, I think that, you know, we're sitting in a good position where we see the opportunity to grow and potentially take advantage of it if market conditions warrant it.

Got it. That's it for me. Thanks very much for taking my questions. No, that's great.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1. The next question comes from the line of Vincent Kaintick from BTIG. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I did want to follow up on the guidance. So I wanted to ask about your philosophy around guidance and how much conservatism is baked into it. And when I look at your good second quarter results versus your guidance, you handily beat it. loan growth was, what, 22% higher than guidance. Revenue yield was 30 basis points higher than your guidance. And the expenses were lower, so your net income was 40% above your own second quarter guidance. So I wanted to ask, first, maybe what changed in your performance versus what you were expecting when you gave the guidance? And then when I look at the third quarter, you know, third quarter guidance calls for lower loan growth than what we saw in the second quarter and the revenue yield declining quarter to quarter. So, I just wanted to ask how much conservatism is baked into all of that. Thank you.

No, that's, you know, a good question. I would tell you that when we were getting guidance for second quarter, we were coming off the first quarter where, you know, buying growth wasn't where we, you know, had hoped it would be, and that's part because it was strong tax season and some weather. And, of course, the biggest backdrop was just all the uncertainty about, you know, tariffs and the potential for a hard landing. So, you know, I think as we started to see, you know, things evolve a little bit and we saw customer demand, you know, be there and for the segments where we get a good return, We were able to lean into the growth faster, and that's what we should do. But as I noted in the document, we also, obviously, having a mind towards the future and things were going to slow down, we took actions on expenses. And we, you know, ran the place to be as efficient as possible. We took some restructuring actions. And some of these things, you know, you just can't get guidance on because, you know, we're working the numbers and the results each and every month of the quarter. So as we look ahead in terms of conservatism or not, I don't think there's 100% clarity on where tariffs are going to go. And so part of the reason why we're getting a range on full year income is it's very much dependent on how much growth we choose to do.

Okay, that's very helpful on how you think to my guidance. I really appreciate that. Separate question. I noticed in one of the slides, and some very helpful detail on all the slides, one of the slides is that you were talking about your store growth. the receivables per store is actually higher for the one to three year old source than for stores older than three years and I thought that was interesting I was wondering if maybe you can describe like what's what's driving that and if there's any learnings this is on slide I think six of the presentation deck I just thought that was very fascinating that there's there's so much growth there so I'm wondering about the opportunities for the rest of the stores thank you Yeah.

Again, great question. The driver of that is most of those stores are in the newer states, which have less range density. And so, you know, we're seeing, you know, bigger stores on average than what we'd have in our lacy states.

Okay. That's helpful. That's all I have. Thank you. Great. Appreciate it.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of John Rowan from Jannie Montgomery Scott. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Just a quick question. So, you said that there was a restructuring charge in the third quarter, correct? Because you did come in below your G&A guide for the quarter, but whatever the restructuring expense was was recognized in the second quarter, correct?

Yeah, so there was a restriction charge in the second quarter, but you will have savings through, I'm sorry, in third quarter. And, but you will have, so the restriction charge will be recognized in third quarter and you'll have savings in the second half of the year.

Yeah, and it's neutral, if not positive, in the third quarter.

Okay, and just maybe one simple question. So, if I look at guidance and you look at the net income guide and maybe you go toward the, let's just, for argument's sake, say you're at the middle of net income guide for the year. That would kind of indicate a slightly down net income third to fourth quarter. It's been a while since we've had kind of clean back half of the year, given all the loan sales you've had in prior years. And obviously things change as you kind of lean into small loan growth. Is that kind of the typical seasonality that we should expect going forward?

I think your question is, do we hardly grow faster than the second half of the year? and in general, that's true. And I think that the library here is just simply how fast we're going around in order to, depending on the environment, and then to next year.

And really, we have to navigate through the allowance that we have to take for the incremental growth. Okay. All right. Thank you. Great.

Thank you, John.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Bill Dezalem from Tyre 10 Capital Management. Please go ahead.

Thank you. A fantastic quarter. A couple of questions here to start with. The digital originations stepped up meaningfully from the prior quarters. Would you please discuss the dynamics behind that, please?

Some of the digital originations, I think we just had our affiliates. We had some good loans we made to book through the affiliates. Our branches became more productive in terms of booking those leads, and we were also able to book larger loans through the affiliates, and that's really what you see show up on the business page.

You said that sounds like that is a repeatable and sustainable going forward as opposed to a one-off phenomenon.

Yeah, you know, look, the digital partners have been driving, you know, really nice growth. We obviously review those partners and credit performance, you know, regularly. And so, you know, there will always be some modulation in terms of, you know, the level of digital originations relative to other opportunities. because, you know, at the end of the day, as you know, we are trying to maximize the bottom line returns. So there may be quarters where we might, you know, slow the digital a little bit and, you know, grow other parts of the portfolio faster. You know, again, you know, we're always looking at where, you know, as Anna said, what it tells us is the right thing to do on a risk-return basis.

Great. Thank you. And then, as you pointed out, your revenues grew five times faster than expenses. Is that somewhat normal now, or was there something special that came together to make that happen this quarter?

Well, you know, look, the investment dollars are always a little bit episodic. You know, we have invested a fairly significant amount of money in our technology platform and our advanced analytics, you know, adding additional branches. And so, you know, one of the things that could change that dynamic is if we, you know, open up a significant number of branches. Now, we're guiding to five to ten more branches in the next six months, kind of what we did in the second half of last year going into the first quarter. But what I would say is it's all about growth. And, you know, we had record originations, $510 million, which was up almost 20% this year. That drove the record E&R in the quarter, which was up $70 million, over 10.5%, which drove, you know, record revenue of, you know, $157 million, out of 10%. And so, that top-line growth is, you know, it's critical to create scale in this business. And so, over time, you know, and we've done this now consistently for five years, we're looking to continue to drive down an operating insurance ratio. Now, I will add to that, and we don't have a way to quantify this, but the new front-end platform that we're rolling out in our branches, and we have that now in one state, I mean, that is dramatically improving the decision in time for each and every loan for, you know, customer origination. And, you know, that's going to lead to productivity improvements where, you know, for the same level of expense, we hopefully can generate more volume or more time on collections. And so, you know, where that's going to play out over the next 18 months as we roll out across the network, we'll start to see. But we're very much investing not only for top line room, but we're investing to be a more efficient organization.

Excellent. And then one additional question that emanates from me not having enough time to do my homework here, but your guidance for the third quarter equates to, assuming 9.8 million shares, $1.45 to $1.50 of earnings, which is meaningfully above what you just reported. So what's the primary swing factors that are leading to that meaningful uptick in earnings in Q3 versus Q2?

Well, I'll take a crack at it. Mark's going to correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the top line growth from the higher volumes in the second quarter and volumes in the third quarter. It's continued to extend its discipline, and we're expecting further improvements on NCLs And the funds, I think, are, you know, pretty much in the same ballpark. They have a slight pick up. And so, you know, that's driving, you know, strong bottom-line growth. And, you know, look, where the volume ends up similar for you, we'll see. But, like I said, we have lots of levels for growth.

Yeah, he got that right, Bill. So all of those things. You know, A&R is growing, so that is going to help. NCL usually, you know, comes down in third and quarter, and we've got 51. So, based off of where we are now, you can see that that's contributing. Interest expense is going to take up just very, very slightly, but, you know, relatively flat compared to other things. But those are all things that are going to derogate 14.5 that we have. Great.

Well, congratulations again on a solid quarter and having things develop as you as you had forecasted or guided last quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, I would now hand the conference over to Rob Beck for his closing comments.

Well, thanks again, everyone, for joining today. You know, look, as we said, we're, let's say, extremely pleased with quarterly results, which really were strong and close to all our team metrics. You know, it's clear to me that the capabilities that we developed over the recent years, you know, positions us that they didn't even deliver, you know, strong growth and long-term share over value. You know, look, as I said and I'll reiterate it, our investments, you know, over the recent years in group states and branches, our house-secured business, our digital capabilities, and our advanced credit models and analytics, you know, really support our growth while also keeping credit risk in check. You know, in the second half, we'll see how customer health is doing, if it stays the way it is, and we'll inform our growth in the second half of the year by, you know, our credit metrics and macroeconomic conditions. So, again, thanks, everybody, for joining this evening, and enjoy the rest of your summer.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the Conference of Regional Management has now concluded. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect your lines.