World Acceptance Corporation (WRLD) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to World Acceptance Corporation's Second Quarter Fiscal 2027 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. Before we begin, the corporation has requested that I make the following announcement. The comments made during this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that represent the corporation's expectations and beliefs concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are matters that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. And statements other than those of historical fact as well as those identified by words anticipate, estimate, intend, planned, expect, believe, may, will and should or any variation of the foregoing and similar expressions are forward-looking statements. Additional information regarding forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results or performance to differ from the expectations expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements are included in the paragraph discussing forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of the corporation's most recent Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 and subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC from time to time. The corporation does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes. At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, John Calmes, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining our fiscal 2027 2nd quarter earnings call. We are pleased with our second quarter results, and more importantly, we believe we are well positioned for the remainder of fiscal 2027 this quarter reflects steady progress against our core priorities: growing loan portfolio responsibly, improving credit quality and maintaining a disciplined approach to expenses. . We achieved adjusted earnings per share of $1.92 for the second quarter. Earnings benefited from a 3.2% increase in revenue as well as a 7.7% decrease in provision expense. Importantly, our credit quality continued to improve. We saw improvement in delinquency on both the front end and back end. Most overly front-end delinquency decreased from 20% to 18.9%. These trends reinforce our confidence in the health of the portfolio and the strength of our underwriting. On expenses, we saw improvement in our G&A expense, and we expect to maintain disciplined approach to expenses going forward. At this time, Tobin Turner, our Chief Operating Officer, and I would like to open up to any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] The first question will come from Kyle Joseph with Stephens.

I want to pick your brain on what's going on macro, specifically. Just kind of want to get a sense for how sensitive is the consumer or your consumer to gas prices? Is it to the point where you kind of see delinquencies kind of move in line with gas prices or are we at the point where gas is less of an important portion of their budget?

Yes. Historically, we've always seen that gas prices will have an impact on the -- our customer, right? But right now, we've been pretty conservative in our underwriting. So overall, the credit metrics continue to improve. So I guess you could ask with the where they've improved about more than they have, if we didn't have sort of higher gas prices, it's hard to know that for sure. But in general, with our portfolio, because we've been pretty cautious on our lending, the overall portfolio has seen improvement.

Yes. And then a lot of variables there. So hard to pinpoint for sure. But yes. And then in terms of kind of the strategy going forward, are you guys -- I mean, obviously, it's paying off, you guys are putting up strong credit results here, but are you kind of happy growing kind of the existing customer base being a little bit more cautious, call it, on on new consumers? Is that kind of the plan, at least for the medium near term, given what's going on macroeconomically?

Yes, that's right. So we're focused right now on the blocking and tackling and getting the fundamentals right of the operations and then taking a cautious approach to lending. So we -- right now, we're a little looser than we were, say, in the March quarter, but we're still a lot tighter than we were at this point last year. So we may continue to kind of put some of those levers to increase growth a little bit, but I wouldn't expect any dramatic change in our growth trajectory in the near term.