Archive for 2017
In Advance Capital Secures $50 Million In Additional Financing
March 29, 2017New York, NY — On March 27th, Times Square-based In Advance Capital secured a $50 million credit line to continue the rapid growth of its merchant cash advance business. The eighteen-month-old company, led by founders Shalom Auerbach and Thomas Corliss, attributes its portfolio transparency, discipline, and strong relationships with investors as the key contributing factors in securing the additional capital.
“In an industry that is increasingly difficult to access capital, we are very pleased to have earned the confidence of sophisticated investors who have provided capital that aligns their objectives with ours, which is to provide fast and flexible working capital to small business owners experiencing the challenges and opportunities of high growth,” says Shalom Auerbach, IAC’s CEO. In Advance Capital has focused on creating a more streamlined process to facilitate its own growth, including a quicker underwriting process, while seeing 220% more applications within the last two months.
“In Advance is a testament that you can build and grow a company in a competitive industry if you concentrate on hiring top talent, servicing, and listening to your customers,” Corliss says.
“It’s all hands-on deck at In Advance which also makes our work environment a special place to work.”
In Advance is also please to announce its recent Executive Management addition to staff, Keith Nason as Chief Operating Officer. Keith Nason brings over 10 years of expertise to driving operational leverage, streamlining process and data science analytics.
About In Advance Capital
Founded in 2015, the company provides working capital to small business owners. To learn more, visit http://www.inadvancecap.com or call 646-412-3303.
Enrolling a Merchant’s “Debt” May Be Harmful… to the Merchant
March 29, 2017
How would you like to make $12,000 on a single referral?, a flyer directed at business finance brokers asks. This ad wasn’t offering a commission for brokering a loan or advance, but rather for enrolling a merchant’s debt into the company’s restructuring program. Debt restructuring, negotiation, or settlement is a booming cottage industry these days. Some of these debt restructuring companies promise ISOs that they will be completely discreet with referrals. Others offer them commission bonuses for achieving certain enrollment targets. It’s a way to monetize declined deals, they typically say.
For merchants, the allure of a restructuring company’s help might just be payment terms tied to their monthly budget. That’s allegedly what one NJ firm’s agreement says, in fact. “I hereby authorize [the company] to negotiate my unaffordable business debts and to enter into affordable repayment terms on my behalf based on my monthly budget,” reads a document submitted in a New York Supreme Court case involving Creditors Relief. And based on the marketing materials deBanked has reviewed from several similar companies, their definition of debt is so broad that it can even include things that aren’t debt, like merchant cash advances, for example.
Even if the restructuring company held a critical view of MCAs and believed them to be loans, treating them as such for the purpose of negotiation might actually cause harm to their customers. That’s because a well-formed MCA contract already offers payment adjustments at regular intervals to appropriately match a merchant’s sales activity. Depending on what the language says, a merchant might just have to call their funder and ask them to reduce the debits to reflect their current sales activity. And yes this goes for ACH-only deals. Even ones that could appear to have fixed payments do not actually have fixed payments. This is basically how all MCAs work by the way, so if you are a broker or funder and this all sounds foreign to you, you need to take this course ASAP.
The point is this: a merchant need not pay a fee to an outside company to restructure anything when sales drop because a free remedy already likely exists and is a key benefit to MCAs in the first place. And yes, I’m talking about MCAs with daily ACH debits. If you’re confused by this, you need to take this course ASAP.
The best advice a restructuring firm can give a merchant struggling with an MCA due to slow sales is to tell them to look for a reconciliation clause in their contract that explains how to get the payments reduced. Once the merchant finds it, have them call the funder and execute it. There’s no need to enroll anything, negotiate anything, risk breaching a contract, or pay a broker tens of thousands of dollars in commissions. The debt restructuring firm might not want merchants to simply take advantage of what they’re already entitled to however, because they stand to make no money that way. In this regard, mischaracterizing future receivable sales as loans only serves to carry out their agenda to confuse merchants about what their rights might be under those agreements.
I myself, am occasionally contacted by merchants who claim to be facing hardship and in one instance where a merchant had spoken to a negotiator, the negotiator didn’t tell him that the remedy he sought was already a natural provision of his contract. I helped him find it. He didn’t have to pay any fees which would’ve gone to pay someone a huge commission or end up in some crazy situation where he’s being sued for breach of contract. Think about this the next time you encounter a distressed merchant. Not everything is debt and that can be very much to the merchant’s benefit.
If you work for a debt restructuring, settlement, or negotiation company, you should probably take this course too. It will help you understand MCA agreements and what remedies merchants already have at their disposal.
House Committee on Financial Services to Air ‘The State of Bank Lending in America’ at 2PM EST
March 28, 2017Update: The House has blocked streaming of this procession from any place other than Youtube
The Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit will hold a hearing entitled “The State of Bank Lending in America” at 2PM EST on Tuesday. According to a memo, “the hearing will examine recent trends in lending and how the current regulatory climate impacts the availability of credit for consumers and small businesses.” The premise is that community financial institutions have been lending less since the passage of Dodd-Frank and that this may be constraining consumer and small business access to credit.
Speaking on the panel before the Committee is:
- Mr. Scott Heitkamp, President and Chief Executive Officer, ValueBank Texas, on behalf of the Independent Community Bankers of America
- Ms. Holly Wade, Director, Research and Policy Analysis, National Federation of Independent Businesses
- Mr. David Motley, President, Colonial Companies, on behalf of the Mortgage Bankers Association
- Mr. Michael Calhoun, President, Center for Responsible Lending
We will attempt to live stream it on deBanked’s homepage when it airs.
Amazon Sure is Making a Lot of Small Business Loans
March 26, 2017
Amazon had $661 million in seller receivables at the end of 2016, according to their earnings report, nearly double from the year before. These receivables are from loans made to small businesses (primarily to purchase inventory) who are sellers on their platform.
Apparently the lending business is going well for them too, since they claim the allowance for loan losses is so small that it’s not even material enough to report. And similar to Square Capital, Amazon incurs virtually no cost to acquire these borrowers.
One year ago, company CEO Jeff Bezos said in a letter to shareholders that “there are over 70,000 entrepreneurs with sales of more than $100,000 a year selling on Amazon.” By then the company had already lent more than $1.5 billion to small businesses across the US, UK and Japan.
“We wanted to bring the same shopping experience that you have on amazon, which is the one-click shopping experience, to the lending program,” a spokesperson says in a 2014 video about the program. “Instead of going to a bank, having interviews, audited financial statements, a 3 week process and then only a small fraction of people getting approved, our process is literally 3 fields and 3 clicks.”
If Kabbage Wanted to Buy, Would OnDeck Sell?
March 24, 2017
A single line in a Reuters story was enough to cause OnDeck’s stock to jump by as much as 11% on Thursday. Industry blogs and news outlets had reacted pretty quickly to word of an unnamed source claiming that OnDeck is a potential acquisition target if Kabbage raises a new equity round. OnDeck closed for the day up only 6.5%.
BloombergGadfly columnist Gillian Tan, wrote that a deal was not very likely because of how much investors are already down since the IPO. “Assuming Kabbage were to propose a traditional takeover at a standard premium, it probably would be swiftly rejected by On Deck’s earliest investors, who still own a combined stake of more than 45 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg,” she wrote. “With the stock trading at less than a quarter of its 2014 initial public offering price, it would take a generous premium to get them interested.”
OnDeck also lent nearly twice as much as Kabbage last year and obviously still has faith in leadership considering that their pre-IPO CEO is still in charge. There’s little to suggest at this time that OnDeck would be willing to throw in the towel and sell out to a smaller, younger competitor and book a big loss for shareholders who have been with them since the beginning.
The day before the rumor started, OnDeck actually announced that it had increased its asset-backed revolving credit facility with Deutsche Bank by approximately $52 million to a total of up to approximately $214 million.
Citing Unnamed Sources, Reuters Reports Kabbage Possibly Looking to Acquire OnDeck
March 23, 2017
Reuters is reporting that Kabbage is in talks to raise equity capital to potentially use for acquisitions and that OnDeck is one of several targets under consideration. As Reuters attributed the OnDeck portion to just one of their multiple unnamed sources, it’s entirely speculative at this point.
From a theoretical perspective, would such a thing make sense?
Kabbage has momentum on their side right now. Their recent half billion dollar securitization that was finalized earlier this month was oversubscribed. Although they only originated about half the loan volume of OnDeck last year, Kabbage’s last private market valuation ($1 billion in Oct 2015) is nearly 3x as large as OnDeck’s current market cap.
Valuations in the industry have changed a lot over the last 18 months but there’s no doubt that Kabbage has become a unique competitor. At LendIt, company CEO Rob Frohwein revealed a bit of their secret sauce when he said that their customers borrow from them on average 20-25 times over the course of 4 years, whereas their competitors make only 2.2 loans to their customers on average.
There is a general view in this industry that acquiring a competitor adds little value other than more marketshare. Kabbage, however, may potentially believe that (1) OnDeck is too undervalued to pass up (2) That OnDeck could generate better margins using Kabbage’s strategy (3) That OnDeck’s partner relationships would add additional value (4) That the company cultures are compatible enough to make an acquisition work (5) that the combined entity would allow them to better align their political and regulatory agendas.
We mustn’t forget however that a single unnamed source is pretty weak to go off of. One possible reason that someone would want to report that OnDeck is an acquisition target is to cause a temporary spike in their stock price. (and I certainly do not have any position in the stock)
For now, it’s fun to think about such an acquisition scenario and we’ll report more, if and when we hear anything.
OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow Talked Tech Worker Shortage in Canada on BloombergTV
March 22, 2017On BloobergTV Canada, OnDeck CEO Noah Breslow explained what he thought the country could do to boost innovation. The discussion stemmed from Canada’s decision to set aside C$800 million over the next four years to carry out that objective.
Breslow said that since Canada has excellent schools, those graduates can be nurtured into forming businesses and creating business investment opportunities. He also said that vocational training towards today’s new working-style job would be beneficial as well, whether it’s jobs for people who can design the latest algorithm or people who can build systems and data centers or can rack servers together.
When asked if perhaps government intervention was not the answer to achieve this, Breslow said that there are two ends of that spectrum, and where he believed intervention could be helpful was in the formation and talent development and formation incubation stage of companies. For later-stage companies, it was probably not appropriate, he said.
Breslow also expressed his belief that a permissive immigration policy is important and that there should be less friction to bring in skilled workers to Canada.
You can watch the full video below to hear the rest:
In This Online Lender’s Earnings Report, Profits, MCAs and Term Loans
March 22, 2017Limited details were offered when Enova, a publicly traded company, acquired The Business Backer (TBB) in June 2015. For one, the Cincinnati Business Courier had the exclusive, which one might not describe as the typical go-to source for online finance news. But TBB was not typical. Based in Blue Ash, Ohio as opposed to New York City or San Francisco, the company had originally focused on offering merchant cash advances before eventually expanding their suite of solutions to include other products.
According to Enova’s earnings report, TBB had been purchased for $26.4 million with an estimated contingent $5.7 million of that being based on future earn-out opportunities. There was a caveat though. If future operating results exceeded expectations, that contingent amount could increase over time, but not beyond where the total consideration paid for the company exceeded $71 million. As of 2016’s year-end, that contingent amount had increased by $3.3 million.
Enova’s report makes several mentions of their merchant cash advance business or as they call them, receivable purchase agreements (RPAs). For the most part, they obscure the financial metrics of this aspect by lumping it in with installment loans. These installment loans are described as “multi-payment unsecured consumer installment loan products in 17 states in the United States and in the United Kingdom and Brazil” with repayment periods of two to sixty months, so yeah, they’re pretty different.
Their RPA customers, however, “average approximately $1.5 million in annual sales and 10 years of operating history while those who obtain an open line of credit account average approximately $450 thousand in annual sales and 7 years of operating history,” the report says. These lines of credit are primarily offered through a business lending subsidiary called Headway Capital.
While companies like Lending Club and OnDeck grab all the headlines, Enova describes itself as a “leading technology and analytics company focused on providing online financial services.” And in 2016, they extended nearly $2.1 billion in credit to borrowers and had a net income of $34.6 million.
On the company’s Q4 earnings call in February, Company CEO David Fisher said, “There currently seems to be a bit of a shakeout occurring in the non-bank small business lending and financing industry. A number of our competitors have either ceased funding or completely shut down over the past several months. From the intelligence we were able to gather, this is largely due to credit issues and their portfolios. As we mentioned last quarter, we have taken a more methodical approach than some to growth for our small business products. And we’re now seeing the benefits of that approach. Recent advantages of our small business book are performing well and the unit economics continue to improve especially as acquisition costs have dropped following the shakeout I just mentioned.”
Enova’s small business financing portfolio only constituted 12% of their loan portfolio at the end of last year. And at $13.70 a share, the company’s current market cap is larger than OnDeck’s.
