Industry News
Enova Posts Q3 Results, Admits It is Dealing With Regulatory Situation
October 28, 2021
Enova’s Q3 report is very brief and to the point. Through both its consumer loan and business loan operations, the company generated a net income of $52M on $320M in revenue.
“We are pleased to again report a strong quarter of growth across all of our businesses,” said David Fisher, Enova’s CEO.
There was no mention of OnDeck by name this time around, its major small business lending division. Instead, Enova was sure to draw attention to a regulatory inquiry it had received from the CFPB.
“The Company has received a Civil Investigative Demand (‘CID’) from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (‘CFPB’) concerning certain loan processing issues,” the company stated. “Enova has been cooperating fully with the CFPB by providing data and information in response to the CID. Enova anticipates being able to expeditiously complete the investigation as several of the issues were self-disclosed and the Company has provided, and will continue to provide, restitution to customers who may have been negatively impacted.”
The language is particularly concessive. Whatever happened, they felt the need to self-report it and to provide restitution to customers.
This is likely to be queried in more detail during the company’s earnings call this evening.
Robinhood Posts Rough Q3
October 26, 2021
Robinhood revealed a steep $1.3B loss on Tuesday. Thought it was highly attributable to share-based compensation, several areas of their growth went into reverse. Transaction-based revenues, for example, were only $267M in Q3, a sharp drop from the $451M in Q2.
That’s not all. Assets Under Custody, Average Revenue Per User, and Monthly Active Users all shrank as well.
“This quarter was about developing more products and services for our customers, including crypto wallets,” said Vlad Tenev, CEO and Co-Founder of Robinhood Markets, in the company’s official statement. “More than one million people have joined our crypto wallets waitlist to date. With 24/7 live phone support, we believe that Robinhood is becoming the most trusted and intuitive platform for retail and crypto investors. And looking ahead, we’re committed to delivering tax-advantaged retirement accounts to help everyone invest for the long term.”
Update on the Direct Lending Investments Case
August 15, 2021More than two years after the SEC charged Direct Lending Investments with fraud, work is still being done to manage the fallout. The firm was placed into receivership and since then $102.83M has been distributed back to 739 investors. Overall, the Receiver expects to recover somewhere between $215M and $265M, far short of the $789.6M supposed portfolio value at the time the Receiver took over.
Much of the shortfall can be attributed to poor investments in businesses that fell outside of what it promoted to investors. For example, $191M is tied up (and likely unrecoverable) in international telecom receivables, a far cry from the online lending industry it claimed to deal exclusively with.
Direct Lending’s former CEO, Brendan Ross, is still out on bail pending trial on related criminal fraud charges. He was indicted in August 2020. The trial was recently postponed and is now scheduled to take place on March 1, 2022.
One party that took heat over Direct Lending Investments, was the firm’s auditor, Deloitte. The Receiver sued Deloitte over the firm’s “improper clean audit opinions” in 2016 and 2017 that helped create the perception that Direct Lending Investments was managing its business on the up and up. Deloitte settled the case and agreed to pay $31M.
SoFi Posts $165.3M Q2 Net Loss
August 15, 2021SoFi put up a dastardly net loss of $165.3M last quarter on only $231.3M in net revenue.
The hit should be a one-off, according to the company.
We remeasured our valuation allowance during 2020 as a result of the deferred tax liabilities recognized in connection with our acquisition of Galileo, which decreased the valuation allowance by $99.8 million. The absence of that tax benefit, together with significant non-cash stockbased compensation expenses and fair value changes in warrants primarily related to the fair market value of SoFi stock, were the largest contributors to the current period net loss.
Wannabe Business Lender Sentenced to Six Years in Prison
August 11, 2021
Justin Cheng’s website said his company, Celeri Network, could help business owners get a loan between $5,000 and $5 million. Rife with all the familiar lingo commonly found on loan broker websites, Celeri Network gave the appearance of an everyday small business finance company.
Unfortunately for unsuspecting customers, Cheng took his own approach with applicants, telling them that they had to pay upfront refundable “due diligence fees” to help them secure funding. Of course, when the funding never came through, he failed to deliver refunds to the tune of $380,000.
That was only the tip of the iceberg for Cheng who was sentenced to 72 months in prison this week for a litany of schemes including this one.
According to the Department of Justice, “Cheng used the identity of other individuals to submit online applications to the SBA and at least five financial institutions for a total of over $7 million in government-guaranteed loans through the SBA’s PPP and EIDL Program for several companies controlled by CHENG, namely Alchemy Finance, Inc., Alchemy Guarantor LLC d/b/a “Celer Offer,” Celeri Network, Inc., Celeri Treasury LLC, Wynston York LLC, and Neo Bellum Industries Inc.”
Representing also that he had more than 200 employees when he never had more than 14, he successfully secured $2.8M in PPP funding altogether.
“Cheng transferred over $1 million abroad, withdrew approximately $360,000 in cash and/or cashier’s checks, and spent at least approximately $279,000 in PPP loan proceeds on personal expenses,” the DOJ found. “These personal expenses included the purchase of an 18-carat gold Rolex watch for approximately $40,000, rent and move-in fees for a $17,000 per month luxury condominium used by CHENG, approximately $50,000 of furnishings for the condominium, a portion of the purchase of a 2020 S560X4 Mercedes, and purchases totaling approximately $37,000 at Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry, Gucci, Christian Louboutin, and Yves Saint Laurent.”
Far from finished, Cheng also announced the launch of a blockchain-based peer-to-peer lending platform and sold more than $400,000 in digital tokens through “materially false and misleading statements and omissions.”
“Cheng, 25 of New York, New York, pled guilty on April 20, 2021, to one count of major fraud against the United States, one count of bank fraud, one count of securities fraud, and one count of wire fraud,” the DOJ said.
IOU Introduces the “Cash Back” Concept to the Small Business Loan Market
August 4, 2021
Immediately following news of a management shakeup, small business lending company IOU Financial introduced a first-of-its kind offering to eligible customers, cash back.
“Available only to qualified new clients,” as the announcement says, the IOU Cash Back Loan enables borrowers to benefit from perfect payment history by receiving 3% of the original loan back in the form of a cash rebate.
According to Carl Brabander, the new EVP of Strategy, this is not a gimmick where the rebate can only be applied to a future loan or loaded up onto a gift card.
“The merchant would receive the cash back amount by ACH directly to their bank account,” he writes, “provided they (a) have a perfect repayment history and (b) apply for the rebate within 30 days of repaying the loan, using the cash back certificate we would have sent them when the loan closed.”
Translated into dollars, this reward could be sizable given that IOU’s average loan size hovers around $100,000 and can go much higher.
“The IOU Cash Back Loan gives us the opportunity to give something back to new clients that put their faith in us to fund their growth plans,” said IOU CEO Robert Gloer in a public statement.
The cash-back loan concept was developed scientifically through focus group testing, the company claims.
The sudden flurry of activity emanating from IOU can probably be attributed to a deal struck last year when Neuberger Berman, an investment manager with $374B under management, acquired a 15% stake in the firm.
Brabander says that IOU is very bullish on the rest of the year and 2022.
“We see small business coming back strong now that the 2nd round of PPP has finished working its way through the system,” he says. “That’s why we’re investing heavily in products (ex. Cash Back), technology (our IOU360 platform) and distribution right now…”
Wave of Management Changes Come to IOU Financial As it Ramps Up For the Future
August 4, 2021
Small business lender IOU Financial is undergoing one of the largest management shakeups of 2021. The company announced a slew of new hires and new roles for existing team members early this morning.
Joining the company are:
- Carl Brabander, EVP of Strategy
- Jason Stevens, VP of Loss Mitigation
- Sam Abolgar, VP of Finance (US)
New roles are as follows:
- Madeline Wade, EVP Operations
- Stewart Yeung, EVP of Finance
- Jeff Turner, EVP of Risk Mitigation
- Richard Zapata, VP of Engineering
- Lori Haygood, VP of Compliance
IOU founder Phil Marleau also recently completed his planned transition from CEO to an advisory role. President and COO Robert Gloer has taken over as CEO as previously announced.
The burst of change at IOU is perhaps unsurprising given that Neuberger Berman, an investment manger with $374B under management, acquired a 15% stake in the company last year.
“IOU’s new management structure lays the groundwork for growth and innovation,” Gloer said in a public statement. “With this team in place IOU Financial has never been in a better position to achieve rapid growth through innovation in the areas of technology, products and distribution.”
Enova Originated $400M in Small Business Loans in Q2
August 3, 2021Enova, the international lending firm that owns the OnDeck brand, reported Q2 small business loan originations of $400M. That brings the year-to-date figure to $722M, approximately half of the volume OnDeck was producing prior to Covid. (OnDeck’s 2019 originations were $2.475B)
“OnDeck’s performance continues to exceed our expectations,” said Enova CEO David Fisher during the quarterly earnings call, “and we will easily exceed our forecast of $50 million of annual cost synergies, primarily from eliminated duplicative resources, as well as $15 million in run rate net revenue synergies.”
Cash has also come pouring in.
“…While we originally thought that OnDeck’s legacy portfolio would have very little value, we now expect to receive over $220 million of total cash from the acquired portfolio, net of securitization repayments,” Fisher said. “In fact, we’ve already realized over $100 million from the legacy portfolio.”
Although ISOs (aka brokers) will remain an important part of driving OnDeck’s growth, Enova is happy that OnDeck brings more to the table.
“The good news about OnDeck, is at least they had a direct channel and a pretty good direct channel because of their terrific brand on the small business side, where our small business products had no direct channel,” Fisher said. “It was all through ISOs. So, we gain that capability through OnDeck.”
Enova reported $80M in net income for the quarter on $265M in revenue.
