Solvar Limited (SVR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Solvar's FY '24 Financial Results 2024. We've got Scott Baldwin, the CEO and MD, presenting today, and Siva Subramani, the Chief Financial Officer. So just a couple of bits of housekeeping while we get the last few stragglers into the room. It's good to see some old faces and some new. But just one point is you can ask questions via the chat facility or raise your hand, and I'll pick up those questions at the end. But for now, the presentation is up on your screen. You should be able to see that. And I'll hand over to Scott and Siva.

Thank you, Tom, and thank you on behalf of Siva and myself, for everyone that's joined today to listen to the results for financial year 2024. Next page, Tom. For those of you that are new to the story, the Solvar Group is made up of 3 business units: Automotive Financial Services, Money3 and Go Car Finance. All of our businesses focus on customers that are underserviced or overlooked by mainstream funders, typically due to either their credit profile or the asset that the customer is looking to buy is why they are overlooked. Customers regularly tell us that they come to us for the personalized and flexible service that we offer, the communication, the fact that you can talk to us about your application for a loan. And for many of our customers, the asset that they're purchasing is often the largest asset that they will own. During the first half of this year, we revisited our strategy across the group. You've seen some of the results of that which led us to exit or run down our loan book in New Zealand as a result of many of the challenges that we've shared with shareholders over the last 18 months in our New Zealand operations. And our intention is to lower the debt that we've got exposed in New Zealand, as well as use the funds there to grow our commercial lending operation as we called out mid-July. In terms of our business, let's talk about our growing target market opportunity in commercial. As part of revisiting our strategy, we identified that while the commercial market is quite large, we think that there's an $8 billion of opportunity, typically in light commercial assets that we think our distribution network and our product can service. The group also has a very strong focus for those that are new in consumer lending, which is a very large market in Australia of $35 billion worth of assets funded each year. And our Money3 and AFS businesses focus on that asset class. Our focus over the next 12 months and beyond is very much on continuing to focus on those customers that are overlooked and underserviced by other lenders in the space. We also have a strong focus on driving the improvement on our return on equity in our group, and using our capital management to improve earnings per share in the group. Just going on to the results for financial year '24, you'll note that revenue is up slightly. All of these results are very much impacted by the decision that we made in New Zealand. You would note that originations in New Zealand tapered off in the second half as we went through an update of our strategy there and concluded that we would cease lending and repatriate that capital. Looking at the Australian business, we're delighted that the growth that came through both in loan book and revenue in the Australian business. You'll note that revenue grew with double-digit growth in the Australian operations. We're expecting similar growth through the Australian operations to come through in FY '25. We're also delighted that we maintained our yield across our portfolio because we know it's been important from investors' point of view to focus on top line yield for the assets that we fund as much as we focus on growing volume. And you can see that coming through with roughly a yield of 23% across the portfolio for the year. In terms of our net profit after tax, you would be used to us reporting statutory results, which is quite subdued this year. The normalized result of $29 million, very close to our cash profit that the business generated. There was a large one-off write down of goodwill and associated intangibles with the New Zealand business that we've had for some time, which has impacted the results considerably. Dividends typically have been around $20 million, $21 million of cash and with cash earnings around $29 million. We find that they will be sustainable now and into the future and are well covered. Bad debts, no doubt is going to drive some conversation and question about how things are going, but we are very happy that our bad debts -- we delivered a result that was within the upper end of our target range. We do anticipate that our bad debts for FY '25 will stay in a similar range. And why we're confident of that, as you will see, as we go through the slide deck looking at the Australian operations, the new originations, we're very much focused on those credit segments that drive lower bad debt. And given the challenges in the economy, we think that focus has been prudent to maintain our bad debt at these current levels, if not reduce them through the period. Cash position of $152 million, very strong cash position. Remember, $87 million of that is unrestricted. The rest of that is sitting in the warehouses that we use to fund the business. It is providing the business with considerable capital management flexibility, and shareholders will note that we have a share buyback in place. It has been on pause, as per our policy, not to trade in our stock after the end close of the financial year until the results are released. So depending on where the share price goes, that will resume tomorrow. In terms of our historical performance, you'll note that the group has had many years of strong historical performance. And we believe, as a group, we are very well positioned to take market share and drive EPS growth as we look for different ways to use our capital to grow the business and with the buyback, drive our EPS growth over -- sorry about that, over time. I won't dwell on our past performance, but particularly in terms of loan book growth in the Australian operations, we'll get to that when we focus on Australia because that will drive Australian revenue growth coming into FY '25. So you can see here revenue growth from $157 million to $173 million, given the growth in the loan book that you will see on the next slides. We've already set the business up to grow into FY '25. I'm delighted that yield came in at the upper end of the range of where we forecast the year ago that we would be. We are saying to -- shareholders should expect this FY '25 and beyond that, that yield will come down. But that is a result of the growth of the AFS business. The AFS business is around 21% of our portfolio today, which is a growth of around 3% from where it was a year ago. And given that the yields are lower, the OpEx is lower and the bad debt is lower on that business. You will see that the top line yield will come off a little bit, but overall revenue growth will be -- will continue through into FY '25 for the Australian operations. I'm sure investors will note that a slight reduction in new originations in Australia over the past 12 months as we focused on cohorts that have allowed us to drive the yield that we are after, as well as focusing on targets that have lower bad debts. Hence why while bad debts are at the upper end of the range this year, a little bit of that is driven through results in New Zealand and the economy. We're confident in what we're seeing in our portfolio that we will maintain bad debts within our range through the course of FY '25. The donut on the end is just the breakdown between our consumer and commercial segments of our business. We're quite confident that if we take the same focus that we've had on consumers into our commercial operations. Hence why we talk about setting it up as a dedicated business unit in our group, that we should see growth coming through in commercial, similar to what we've seen in terms of the consumer business over the years. So this is the loan book of the Australian operations growing to $791 million, double-digit growth in both Money3 and AFS, which is very good. As we start this year, we think that there is good opportunity to continue to grow the Australian loan book and hence revenues into FY '25 and beyond. We're seeing less competition in the market. We're also well placed, given our cash position compared to many of our peers, to take market share and grow throughout the course of FY '25. The other thing to point out to shareholders here is that there is significant headroom. We've replaced our debt facilities that we had in place a year ago as a result of Credit Suisse's exit from the market. We now have a new funder with an increased facility and headroom. And the other way to think about it is given the cash that is available in the market, that we think that there's enough partners that we have now, that as we need funding, that we will be able to access that as we continue to grow. In terms of our loan book quality, you'll note that our business is back to sort of similar levels around where we were through COVID. There hasn't been a material movement in our overall portfolio quality. I will call out that in terms of cash collection coming into July, we have had a number of tailwinds in our business. It is typically seasonally a time when people do get pay rises. So that has impacted our customer base. The government has also helped out there with a tax break for many of the consumers that we've lent money to, making it a little bit easier for them to repay their loans. And just on a side note, I mean, petrol prices have come down. We often find that as a result of that, there's a little bit money left in customers pockets that the start of this year has actually been very good for cash collections. So gives us the confidence that credit quality maintains throughout this year when you consider what's happening in some of those macroeconomic events, the lending that we've done over the last 12 to 24 months as well, in terms of the profile of the consumers that sit within our portfolio. Just talking briefly on our New Zealand operations, as we called out last month in August, we wrote the last loan into that portfolio closed at June 30, $139 million. We anticipate around $60 million coming out of that business to which we will prioritize to repaying some of the debt in New Zealand and also using the excess there to fund the growth of our commercial operations in Australia. Just talking about our commercial operations in Australia, we bought 2 businesses over the last several years. Both of them started with a loan book of around $50 million and we grew them from that point. We see separating commercial out as a dedicated unit within the group as our way of creating an organically grown business unit within the group that can make a contribution to the organization. Commercial loans won't be a standing start. You'll note that we do have $54 million worth of receivables in there. So we have had that book turnover. We have been looking at how that performs, what the bad debt looks like, how it seasons and the performance of that. And we feel confident that now it's right for us to leverage our distribution network that we have and grow that business. So if you think of some of the success of the Money3 business, in particular, has been funding used commodores. If you think of our commercial operations leading with funding used HiLuxes, it's a similar strategy there, slightly different borrower that we will focus on. And we know that there is demand there through our distribution channels that we have today. And just in terms of the assets that we are funding today, I think, HiLux is #1, The Ford series of Ranger and Wildtrak are #2, and third is the Isuzu D-Max. So typical assets that are driven and used for trade, so I think of sole traders and small businesses, subcontractors, they are assets that we intend to focus on initially as we continue to grow our experience and leverage that space. It is a big market there, serviced by a wide range of other players. So we think that we're well placed to talk to our distribution partners today about adding that product to sit alongside our consumer product to drive volume for them. I will hand over to Siva, who will take you through the financial results for financial year '24.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. You would note in the slide, as well as in the annual report, that we had changed the format of our presentation of profit and loss statement. This is to show the net interest income information in line with what other lenders present as well. There are 3 takeaway points I'd like to highlight in this slide. The first one you'll see that these are group results. And as Scott mentioned earlier, the group results have been impacted by New Zealand operations on a rundown mode. If I take only Australian operations, you'll see there is strong double-digit growth both in loan book as well as in revenue lines and flowing down to the profit on Australian operations. Impact, you'd see that we have disclosed normalized impact this year, both in half year as well as in the year-end results. Historically, we had only provided statutory information. The reason for that is 2 key items that we think we should highlight. The first one this year has been the continuing legal cost in relation to the regulatory action, which is set at $4 million for the full year, and the non-cash write-off of goodwill and other intangible assets related to the New Zealand operations. Adjusted for this, our NPAT comes at $29 million, which is on the higher end of the profit guidance we had provided to the market over the course of AGM and subsequent announcements. The third item that I would like to highlight is, we have disclosed our net interest margin below the net interest income line and you'll note that the group is still enjoying high teens in the net interest margin and this is calculated as net interest income over the average loan book. Then, I'll probably hand it over back to Scott.

Thanks, Siva. Just in terms of the outlook for this year, we expect to continue to focus our business on particularly growing the Australian operations, growing lending in consumer and commercial. We've called out that we have a particular focus on growing our commercial lending over the course of the next 12 months. Think of this as the year where we do have to do some work to set up our commercial lending platform. We need to tweak some of the commercial product that we have, but given the feedback that we've got from some of our distribution partners, but we're confident in being able to drive some volume there. We're very conscious though, to drive volume with the appropriate gross yield and hence produce the NIM that the business has been known for. Just a calling out because we know it's on people's minds. As soon as there is any material update or movement in regard to the regulatory matters that are ongoing, we will announce them to market. But at this point in time, there hasn't -- there really hasn't been any movement as dates are being set in progressing those matters forward, it will take some time as that process plays out. I know in terms of -- people are interested in what this year is going to look like in terms of the bottom line. We'd like to encourage everyone to come to the AGM where we will provide guidance, but we are confident of producing a normalized number that is in excess of this year's result. In terms of the market, we do get a lot of questions about what we see happening. We certainly have seen a number of our peers either pulling out of the market or ceasing lending, refocusing in that space. That's either because of the returns that they're getting or the capital that they have to deploy. As we called out at the start, we do have quite a strong balance sheet that is giving us optionality in our business to fund our organic growth, complete a share buyback which will improve the EPS for shareholders over time or potentially if prices do match, acquire and have some inorganic growth in our business. I understand that there's a number of questions that come through. I'll hand back to you, Tom, to read them out and take us through. And Siva and I will endeavor to answer those.

Thanks, Scott. Just let me take a look through. If there are any questions, you can raise your hand or submit any on the box. We give people a couple of minutes, Scott. Just one second, Allan Franklin is going to ask one, so I'll let him speak. Allan from Canaccord. How are you, Allan?

We can see that you've got him on mute, Tom. There we go. Hi, Allan.

Can you hear me?

Loud and clear.

Perfect. Good to see you all. Thank you for the updates. A couple of quick ones, please. Siva, I may kick off with you if possible. Just in terms of the cost base and sort of directionally understanding what changed through FY '24 and perhaps a little bit of guide on FY '25 if at all possible, just sort of noting, yes, I guess the employee cost base is up by about $6 million and the other costs, excluding fees, were up by about a couple. Now, I understand a fair chunk of that was sort of invested, invested through the first half and sort of seasoning through -- through the second half. Any other sort of detail you can sort of provide around what else we should consider on the cost base and any sort of moving parts there, please?

Yes, certainly, Allan. I think starting with the big change, you mentioned employee cost, as we mentioned through the course of the year, that there were 2 or 3 key factors that led to it. One was our investment in our risk and compliance teams. That was circa $2 million, $1.5 million being the full year effect for FY '24. The second one was there was general wage inflation, which we think across the industry is moderating into FY '25. And the third one is again one of cost in relation to technology enhancements that will again pave its way into productivity gains into FY '25 and beyond. So we see that a lot of the cost increases coming through in FY '24 are more one-off in nature and should either provide productivity gains or will disappear or stay flat more so with respect to risk and compliance type matters. The other line that you mentioned, which is our loan origination and servicing cost, the growth in there is more to do with our introducer model. So as you would know, we have tried to change our product mix by introducing more higher quality or products that cater to higher quality customers. And those products typically have a slightly higher introducer fee and that's part of what's driving that. The final item that I would probably also highlight back to the employee cost. You'd note that last year we didn't pay bonus. This is in FY '23. So there is also an impact of last year numbers, not including some costs that will come through in FY '24.

It's probably worth calling out too, Allan, that our employee base has reduced by about 5%. So if you look at the number of staff that we had in FY '24 to the number of staff that we start the year with, it is down. And you should anticipate some other reductions there as a result of the decisions that we've taken in New Zealand.

Yes. Sure. And then perhaps just a second query around the book guide and then just trying to sort of piece together what you're implying there. So appreciate the New Zealand book goes back towards sort of $80 million to $90 million. And then looking through that, there's somewhere between 7% and 11% book growth. Just the deviation between the 2, does that come down to sort of commercial success in the commercial markets? Or how are you sort of thinking about that range and how did you come to that number, please?

I think you're right, Allan, in pointing out that in FY '25 there is going to be 2 key factors opposing each other. New Zealand book will definitely drag the overall group's receivable balance down by circa $60 million, $70 million. And the growth that you're going to see in FY '25 is more expected to come from commercial as well as the consumer business, both in Money3 and AFS. We expect that the market conditions are starting to improve on the back of reducing inflation and hopefully we all believe that we are at the peak of the rate rises. So these 2 factors should start to help the industry open up in terms of demand and then we see that we are -- with our cash position, we'll be well placed to capitalize on those opportunities and hence we think we should have good growth in Australian operations coming through in FY '25.

We expect to see some decline in price of used assets which will -- we think will buoy the band in that space. I think there's still a number of people that have been waiting for the right price because we have come off a high and we have certainly seen record new car sales which tends to flow through that will no doubt lower, not materially, but it will reduce used car prices, our expectation, but we think that will help feed some demand.

Scott, question from Raymond Wang. Two questions. So first question is, do you see any regulatory restrictions to the repatriation of the capital from the New Zealand subsidiary? It's first part of the question. And second part, I think you've already touched on it, but you might want to expand your answer is, do lower used car prices impact the ability to recover any bad debt?

Look, in terms of New Zealand, no, we don't. In fact, we will use -- we have brought some money back already from New Zealand to Australia, always encouraging Siva to think of when is the best price differential between currencies. But we have brought some money back already. I think our focus at the moment will be on reducing the level of debt that we have in New Zealand. So, no, I don't anticipate any concerns there at all. The -- sorry, what was the second question?

Second question was to do with lower used car prices in market and the ability of that on the bad debt recovery.

No. Look, we don't -- in Australia, we don't repossess and sell many vehicles relative to the portfolio of near 60,000. It's not our core strategy. We would rather allow people to sit in the car a little bit longer and pay at reduced payments. It's a better outcome for the consumer, and long term it's a better outcome for us. Please do keep in mind that while we do write a number of 5-year loans, the typical tenor of a loan is between 3 and 4 years. So in terms of that residual value risk, you have to see a lot of depreciation for the residual value of the asset to be under the loan amount, typically. And in this current time, while the residual value will come down, it's still several thousand dollars at the end of the loan and it doesn't take that long for the loan amortization to drop below the residual value of the asset. So as you get to the tail end, it's not something that concerns us greatly. I think what has the biggest impact on bad debt has been just general inflationary pressures on consumers, rent and others. So that has a bigger impact on people's ability to pay. And the coloring to that is in July, where we've seen consumers with a little bit more optimism, a little bit more money in their pay packet, and the benefit of the changes to the tax rates have come through, which have seen dishonor rates come down. In terms of other pre-indicators of what the future portfolio is going to look like, you'll see in the annual report where we say, while our business has grown and we do have more customers at the end of June than we have had a year ago, our complaints are coming down. People are adjusting to the cash flow situation that they're in. They're making their payments, and we feel that we are managing that well as a business.

Thank you. Okay. If anybody else want to ask a question, then please raise your hands. Otherwise, we'll give it another 30 seconds. And if any people have questions they want to ask on a one-on-one basis, reach out to me. My details are on the slide deck or the announcement. Otherwise, thank you for your time today and we look forward to speaking to you again.

Thank you all for taking the time to dial in. We appreciate the -- appreciate you listening to Siva and I.

Thank you.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you.