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The 2022 Morgan Stanley US Financials, Payments, & CRE Conference

Jun 15, 2022

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

All right. Well, go ahead and get started here. Thank you very much to all of you for joining us this afternoon. Very excited to have senior management from Dave. Before we get started with Dave, I'm James Faucette, senior research analyst for Morgan Stanley covering the fintech space. We have Jason Wilk, CEO. Thanks for joining us. And Kyle Beilman, CFO. Thanks for being here, guys. Before we get started with my line of questioning, just be sure for any important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative.

So, Jason, I'm gonna put you on the spot while not to throw anybody under the bus, but earlier today, as people, somebody was reviewing my schedule, they said to me, "Dave, what's Dave?" And I said, "I think you'll be a great customer for Dave." As soon as Jason explains to us what Dave is.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. Good question, so we are a leading neobank with a best-in-class overdraft solution for consumers. Started the company back in 2017 with the pain point that most people are using overdraft as an expensive form of short-term credit, and so we looked at the landscape. We saw a bunch of neobanks that had been in market struggling to acquire users because they lacked this key value prop of offering overdraft to customers, and so our product today is a fee-free checking account with no minimum balance fees, and we have an overdraft solution that customers can get access to instant credit the same day they join to buy things like gas and groceries without paying the expensive overdraft fees that they're used to at a traditional bank. We've used this strategy to acquire over six million customers at this point. It's been a tremendous business.

In a little over five years, we've taken the company from a small office to a public company.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

And so, you know, within that, what are kind of the key accomplishments or developments that you know, for people that don't know Dave should be aware of, like size, reach, you know, who you're kind of targeting, etc.?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. So again, about 6 million customers today, and our total population of the TAM is around 160 million people. That's comprised of those that are financially vulnerable, which is about 35 million people who are typically overdrafting about 10 x-20x per year at a legacy bank, and they're paying about $400 a year in fees for traditional legacy FI. There's about another 135 million people who are overdrafting a handful of times per year but need help with things like building credit. They need help with things like saving money, investing advice, and that's more of the middle-class America. And we think that we are an everyday brand to go after all of these types of customers. I forgot to mention sort of the foundation of the name.

I mean, Dave sort of stands for Dave or Scoliot, but it's also supposed to be a friendly, everyday, approachable name that people feel comfortable with that's not gonna get gouged by fees.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

That's weird. When people forget my name, they just call me Dave, literally, like I have no idea why. So I can understand what you're saying.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So, you know, that being said, and so I think that's fairly easy to understand, at least for me, conceptually. But what do you think is the biggest or, at least has been the biggest misunderstanding of the market and particularly the stock market of Dave's business over recent months?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. I think it's been interesting to see our stock be affected by, you know, this inflationary environment because I think what people need to understand is that for the last couple of years, we've had a pretty large headwind for the business just given we were competing with the government for our core value prop of giving people money for everyday essentials like gas and groceries. With the trillions of dollars of stimulus coming in, people were less in need of a service like Dave. And so we impressively grew the business about 30% last year with that headwind. Now that we're seeing costs go up significantly with inflation and seeing the stimulus behind us, this is now an excellent time for customers to come to Dave.

If you look at things like Google Trends, we're seeing record numbers again back to 2019 levels of people searching for things like cash advance, overdraft, credit building, and the like. So I think the market's misunderstanding that piece. The second one is around the potential with rising interest rates if that's gonna affect our credit model at all as well. And we feel more confident than ever that we have no issues with anything related to loss rates. People, again, use us for gas and groceries. We're the last lifeline that someone wants to cut off. And the short duration of the payback that people use us for, given we are an overdraft solution, a lot of people use our product for just a couple of days. And the average duration that our customers borrow from us on for the overdraft is only eight days.

Even in an environment where we have challenges with collection, we can easily pare back the model or tweak it so the next pay cycle we can alter it to get back towards profitability. But those seem to be the two biggest misunderstandings right now.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

But we are more excited than ever about the future of the business.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So let's talk about the ExtraCash offering and, you know, obviously a big focus for, you know, the value prop that you're communicating to your customers and potential customers. But what keeps incumbent banks from competing with Dave on that front? And why do you think you haven't seen them move to emulate that more aggressively?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

We've seen a lot of lip service from the big banks who are trying to offer a more friendly overdraft solution. Ultimately, the customer base that is paying a lot of the fees is typically a customer that has been shunned away from the banking system, and they're being charged these significant fees. We don't think that the banks have been rushing to offer a solution like Dave because their cost structure is so much higher than ours that they actually need to charge these overdraft fees to make sense of banking a large majority of Americans in this country. You look at a typical large bank, they have 10,000 bank branches. They have 250,000 employees.

You can't really make that work on non-Durbin interchange and a model where you have to service that customer with bank tellers and the like. Dave's technology model where we only have 300 employees, which can service this 6 million customer base and using data science to underwrite people gives us a significant cost advantage that we can offer the solution at this type of rate.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

We don't think banks can compete with a free overdraft solution that looks and feels like Dave at all. There's also, you know, add on to that, there's a lot of technical advantage we have in the way that we design this product. So a typical bank overdraft, you have to spend all your money before you can access overdraft.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

With Dave, we built a unique model where we give our customers a free checking account, and we give them a secondary account called ExtraCash. In that account, they can choose to save for a rainy day or overdraft whenever they need it and send that money to their spend account to use with their Dave card right away, or they can send the money out to their external account, whenever they want as well. So it's not even a cost advantage. It's a technology advantage we have as well.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. So you mentioned that maybe stimulus in some ways was a bit of a competitor, at least for your customers, as that was being distributed in 2020 and 2021. What are the other kind of cyclical tailwinds or headwinds that you've observed with usage of ExtraCash over the past few years? And I guess one question we have of that, you know, occurs to us or we've heard from other investors is this a product that's correlated with delinquencies or unemployment or something else?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah, and the answer is, we can service unemployment customers. We can service a recessionary economy. Ultimately, if someone loses their job, that could be net negative for most traditional lenders. But for someone like Dave, we can actually use that recurring unemployment income to be underwritten to.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Help customers get access to overdraft. So the only environment where Dave has challenges is in that stimulus environment. A return to normalcy, an inflationary environment, a recessionary environment are all net tailwinds for the business. And I think we just need to do a better job of educating investors that that is, is the reality for us. As far as the different tailwinds that we've had behind us, we're just using a lot more of our data to improve the product. We're testing out Dave 500 right now, so we'll have $500 of overdraft, which is the best-in-class offer of any, any banking product in the country. And then this month, we also launched ExtraCash Credit Builder. So we're gonna be the only overdraft solution that can actually help you build your credit.

We think that's gonna be a meaningful tool for things like retention and engagement and ultimately helps us improve financial health of our members to offer more credit products to our users over time.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. Now, you know, once again, kind of building on other products here, what's the tipping product and how does that business work? And, you know, let's just start there. Can you give a description of what that is and how that works?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. So we monetize the ExtraCash product in with two optional fees. So you can actually use our product entirely for free by getting approved for ExtraCash. And effectively, when you get to our disbursement screen of where do you want that money sent, you can send it to an external account instantly for a fee. You can send it externally to a bank account for free over ACH rails. You can send it to your Dave Debit Card for a discount to spend it now instantly. In addition to that, we have a tip-based model. So a customer can choose to give us a pay-what-you-think-is-fair type fee for the use of our service. And compared to a $34 overdraft fee that's typical at a bank.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Up to $100 a day, we often find the majority of our customers like to tip Dave something. That was a model we brought to market back in 2017. This was such a new product to market, we weren't sure what to charge for it, and so we decided to go with a tip-based model to do some price discovery. It turned out people loved that model. We figured it was defensible from the big banks 'cause who the hell wants to tip their bank? And now, fast forward to today, we've got a very defensible revenue stream for us in the tips.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

And then on the fees that you are charging for immediate access, particularly if you're pushing it to another account, etc., has there been any meaningful regulatory attention on that at all? Or, you know, kind of what's the current temperature, I guess, of policymakers around some of those fees?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. So the unique way we built the ExtraCash product is it's an account that's offered through our bank sponsor. So it's a bank-originated model, which we feel very comfortable about. We've had, you know, many meetings with regulators in the past, one including the CFPB back in 2020. And we've given up, you know, tons of data, and we ended up being one of the few companies to ever get a no-action letter from the agency because what they found through all of our data is our product is so helpful in nature to customers compared to the legacy overdraft system that these small, instant transfer fees that we charge for consumers and tips are all completely voluntary. And the instant transfer fees are pretty analogous to a Cash App or Venmo.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Instant transfer fee for accessing your own funds. So with all that in mind, we feel very confident about the position we have for the business.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So, you know, we've begun this conversation talking a lot about, like, the you know, the attention-grabbing value proposition that Dave brings to the market and how that's different than what the incumbent banks are doing, etc. But talk us through, like, the bigger picture, longer-term vision for Dave Banking. You know, how do you see this business in the long run? What products and services do you wanna be able to deliver? And how do you think you're gonna stack up against the incumbent banks and legacy providers?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. So for us, the long-term path is around customer graduation. We're really excited about that opportunity to help members improve financial health and help them level up to different products that they otherwise would not have access to. The mission of our business is to build products that level the financial playing field. And so it's really to deliver products for everyday Americans that those who are financially healthy are getting access to. That's sort of the grand mission for the business. And ultimately, what we're sort of seeing there and what we're actually putting into action is things like getting people more of what they need. Dave 500 is really key for people to go.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Buy bigger amounts that they need to go fulfill more everyday financial emergencies. Credit builder is gonna be there for help to help people get from that 580 to the 620. And then Dave should be there ready and willing to approve the person right away when they're in line and ready for a better and bigger credit product. We think that we can offer the whole sort of spectrum of services to our members. We'll have sort of a crypto product later in the year, via our FTX partnership. FTX now has investing and trading as well. So.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

It's not, you know, out of the question we could be getting into that at some point. But we do wanna really focus in on, like, the core value prop of the customer around banking and credit, as our, as our main value props for the user.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So with that being the kind of main value props, as you just put it, how should we think about, you know, ARPU or revenue potential trajectory over time? And, you know, I've got to imagine, and one of the things that we talk about with a lot of the companies that we cover is that you basically have, like, 40% of the U.S. population today that doesn't have a full suite of banking and financial services, right? And a lot of that just has to do with age.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

It's millennials and Gen Zs. But the beauty is they will, over the next 20 years, most of them are gonna be incrementally better customers over time. So how should we think about that revenue potential over time? And is RPU the right metric? Or what are the things to track there?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. I think it's RPU and lifetime value. So I think it's a great time to be with Dave because we're so early on in our monetization life cycle of our customer base. I mean, today, we monetize off of interchange, off of our banking product. We monetize off of optional fees on our ExtraCash business. And then we have a $1-per-month subscription fee, which is tied to financial insights, which our Credit Builder will be rolled up into. And so when I think about, you know, future monetization, there's a lot more opportunities for us to add more things into our subscription product to increase pricing there, in more of a freemium model. Additionally, I think there's a lot of opportunity within additional credit expansion as well.

Whether we do that through a partner model or whether we actually take on some balance sheet risk there, the RPU expansion opportunity there is huge. The fact that we're already offering overdraft credit to the lion's share of our members, when we're ready to offer that customer a more traditional product and we can pre-approve them for it 'cause we have their data and we have all their KYC already, the attach rate to that is gonna be huge, just like the attach rate was huge when we launched banking to our consumers with 50% of our people that were opting into our banking service early on. We'll get those same kind of attach rates for the rest of the products we develop.

That means huge RPU expansion opportunities, which will equate to more retention and obviously massive LTV acceleration.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So on those incremental products, I mean, look, it's easy for us to imagine what those could be. But what are the products and services that Dave Banking is focused on for kind of the next cycle or the next 12 months to 18 months , 24 months , 36 months? And where should we be focused on in terms of what you wanna bring to market next?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

It really is a big focus on ExtraCash, the credit building component, credit monitoring, and then the graduation into that next credit product.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

I think that's where our people should be focused on right now. I think it is worth noting, though, that this company was profitable as recently as 2018 and 2019.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Mm-hmm.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

We front-loaded a lot of headcount expansion to go build out our banking business and other components, and so the need to believe for us to get back to profitability, even with just our core offering of today, we have great unit economics, and so the need to believe is pretty low for us to get back to profitability just doing what we're doing. I think that's something that investors really need to pay attention to, and anything we do in and above RPU expansion with new credit products will just accelerate that path to profitability and more.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. I've been monopolizing questions here, but if anybody does have a question, please feel free to raise your hand. We'll get you a mic. On that last point of profitability, given the current capital environment, how are you thinking about balancing between investments for growth versus profitability? And, you know, what are your current expectations around medium-term cash flow and some of these other things that people are more focused on maybe than they were nine months ago?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

So, look, I think for us, the important thing again is that we already have proven we can be a profitable business in the past. And we front-loaded quite a bit of hiring to get to 300 people, which is still an incredibly lean team when it comes to.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Comparing us to other fintech companies in the space that have had to do layoffs. And so when I think about our ability to get back to profitability, it's just taken a very disciplined approach to growth on the customer side. And we're gonna continue to invest in growth right now as we're seeing record-low numbers for us to acquire customers with a lot of people pulling back from marketing spend. And we, fortunately, you know, completed our transaction to go public in January, raised another $100 million from FTX. So we've got a $300 million balance sheet right now, one of the most dry powder companies in the country right now with a business with great unit economics.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

So we're gonna just continue to invest in growth. And if anything, the areas we're gonna continue to just be mindful is additional headcount growth. Leading into 2022, already we had a diligent approach to hiring headcount as it was. We have 300 people, but our plan for the entire year was only to hire 55 people before this marketing turned down. So we didn't really need to do anything from a correction perspective to keep ourselves with that clear line of sight towards profitability. And our CFO, Kyle, here has been, you know, very mindful of us keeping that profitability view in near sight.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

If that's from a hiring perspective, what about, like, retention? And one of the key things that people worry about, particularly for younger companies and this kind of equity market or stock market downturn, is retention and how you may have to shift the compensation packages for people. Historically, in downturns, you know, employees have expressed an increased preference for cash over stock, etc. So, what's your current thinking around, not just hiring, but maybe more importantly, retention and what the compensation packages, etc., will need to look like to do that?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Fortunately for us, we haven't raised a lot of capital and at major valuations.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

If you look at the history of the business, we've only raised $60 million of equity capital prior to taking the company public.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

I don't know of many businesses that have used that little amount of capital to get to a public offering, and we only raised a Series A and a Series B to get there. The Series B, but between the Series A and the Series B is probably when the lion's share of our well, the lion's share of our employees we hired is from the Series B and beyond.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay. Got it.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

And so, no one, even at this, you know, even at these depressed prices right now, which I think is temporary, you know, most people are still in a pretty decent position versus a lot of companies that have raised at these massive private valuations, which are probably in a world of hurt for people that are significantly underwater on their options. So for us, you know, we're not doing any make-wholes right now. It's like, let's just work on this together and let's, you know, keep performing on the business because performance is what's gonna get us out of this. And then we can reassess next comp cycle in the beginning of 2023 to see if there's any areas where we need to gross up certain high performers or not. But we're feeling good about performance. We're feeling good about retention.

Ultimately, because we're such a mission-driven company, most people join the business of Dave because they really care about the customer segment. They really care about making a difference for everyday American consumers. And Kyle and I have laughed about it before. We wish people were more equity-driven at the business, but now that's actually helping us quite a bit that, you know, the mission.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Driven piece is really, you know, a tailwind for retention.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. So we got a question here. We have Mike here in the front.

Hey. Thank you. Look, just a question on brand. Obviously super important just given customer acquisition, trust, disruption versus incumbent banks. Can you just talk about the efforts historically in building the Dave brand and then any initiatives going forward in terms of maximizing that and really expansion to other products as well?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. Brand's something we've cared a lot about from the very beginning. You know, we spent a big chunk of our first seed check to buy the dave.com domain name. It was a really strong brand. We wanted something that, you know, felt very challenger in nature with the Dave versus Goliath type, brand that we, we built around the business. We're continuously using the Dave Bear logo and making sure that that's evident through all of our advertising. And we're gonna be exploring a lot more new channels, as well as introducing sort of more of a, like a physical mascot will be showing up in more of our advertising to extend our lead in brand recognition. Of the top 50 leading fintech apps in the App Store, you know, we are the only one with sort of a recognizable figure.

And we think that's something we can lean into that just leads to that brand recognition in an industry where there's a lot of copycats and commoditization.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So when you think about brand and competitors kinda going after and sometimes, you know, I feel like people that we talk to, they feel like it's a winner-take-all market. And I'm like, look, 40% of the population, like you said, it's like 130-140 million people in the U.S. You don't need to have, like, be winner, right? Like, it's. There's gonna be a lot of opportunity there. But on the flip side is there are a lot of big names that are kinda chasing the space, right? Like, you start with, you know, clearly, you know, you mentioned Cash App and Block is kinda going after that with a slightly different value proposition. Ultimately, we think some of the credit providers like BNPL providers will become and start to offer their own banking-type offerings, etc.

So, how do you feel about the landscape? Where do you think there are advantages for Dave beyond the brand? Right now, you mentioned the recognition. But beyond brand, where do you feel like you have advantages? And where do you think that there's work to be done for Dave?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

So I think we're taking the approach of the anti-kinda super app. I mean, we don't think that people want a bank as a service where it's just only one of 10 things that you do.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

I have not seen that strategy work for anyone at meaningful scale. And so for us, we really wanna lean into being the best banking experience that's attached to the best credit experience. And we have not seen that be deployed very well yet with anyone in the market. So to the extent we can continue down that path, we think there's a lot of benefits to that strategy. And one of there's only a handful of people that are really laser-focused on being that banking product for the everyday American consumers and having that be their primary objective. And we haven't seen anything with the kind of unit economics that we have around the banking businesses given the credit component that we've attached to it.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it. And then I know you kinda touched on this initially, but what about the higher interest rate environment? Like, and you know, how does that impact the puts and takes for Dave? And, I guess maybe said differently, what are Dave's sensitivities to interest rates? Like, where do you get benefit versus challenges, etc.?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

So the benefit is we'll get some spread on the savings accounts that we have for our customers.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

For the money sitting in the checking accounts. Our customers don't have a ton of discretionary savings, so I wouldn't say that's a major area of revenue we're gonna see a tick up. But I'd say as far as where we're defensible is on the extra cash business, we have a credit facility of $100 million to service the entire population of six million customers. The amount of turnover that the facility sees each month because the average duration is so short on extra cash means that we can service this entire base with a tiny facility. I think Kyle can confirm. I mean, I think in Q1 to service the entire population, I think we used like 40 million of the credit facility.

So that's pretty unheard of from an exposure perspective of how many people that can use this great product which has great economics and.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Not have to tap into that. If anything, we could just use our equity capital and pay no interest rate, as the revolver that we use with Victory Park has an, you know, interest rate that revolves or floats with inflation.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

So we're not really super sensitive to cost of capital just given that it doesn't take a meaningful balance sheet to operate the product. But I think that.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

More from a macro view, and we've kinda touched on this in this conversation, is like the high interest rate environment is leading, you know, sort of a symptom of the inflation that we're experiencing.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yep.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

For the customer. That's a sort of a net tailwind for us both from a growth and engagement perspective. We feel really well-positioned that this is a time for us to really accelerate.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Is there a point at which, you know, you mentioned kinda that spread on deposits, etc. You know, what's the point that you're preparing yourself for that you've gotta be more competitive on deposit interest rates, etc., to be able to continue to attract those and grow that part of the business?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

We haven't seen the need to do that yet. I mean, our go-to-market is very much, you know, putting people in real situations where they need access to the extra money they need. And it's as of right now, we have not seen anything meaningful to go out and market a large interest rate type product because we know the cost attached to spending with the debit and ultimately using the extra cash product is probably gonna be pretty, pretty low. And so right now, it's like a nice-to-have for our members that they can earn additional interest we could pass on if we, if we wanted to. But haven't seen that be a big thing for us yet.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

Yeah. We're really focused on just the credit-oriented value props. And those seem to resonate a whole lot more with our customers than, potentially, you know, some sort of yield associated with balances.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Our average customer, they're gonna make way more money in interest if they just cut down the bank fees they pay by switching their bank service.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Over to Dave. I mean, the average customer, we see they're paying $400 a year in bank fees. And so if they could just come start banking with us, save that, that money, that alone is gonna help make a meaningful dent in people's ability to save and, and purchase.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

So, now, just quickly on industry structure, like, the banking industry in the U.S. has long been defined by very active levels of M&A and consolidation, right? Like, that's just kinda the way it's always worked. Now, over the last few years, that's been a little bit slower generally, and particularly for, you know, companies like Dave. There probably has been good reason why, you know, if you're an incumbent, you don't go buy a Dave or somebody like that, right? Like, the growth opportunities for you have been so good that incumbent shareholders have preferred that they just buy back their own shares rather than buy somebody like Dave.

But with the world changing and whether it's among neobank competitors or others that are, as you characterize, a more super app or incumbents, with the availability of capital generally changing, do you see opportunities? And how do you think about what the right moves are strategically vis-à-vis the others? Does it make sense for Dave to look at weaker neobanks or those that are still private or aren't functioning as well and vice versa? Does it make sense or would it make sense for Dave to be part of a bigger organization? So how are you thinking about the landscape and potential for reinvigoration of M&A?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

I think consolidation from the major incumbents, you know, was. They probably were staying away just from valuation multiples.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. Sure.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

It doesn't. I don't think it really had made sense. Now that valuation multiples have pared back pretty considerably, I think we may actually see one of these guys come in and make a move. Haven't seen it yet, but we're still pretty early into this new.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Downturn cycle. As far as what we would pick up in the market, there's probably not a lot we would do right now just given where we are. We wanna be protective of our cash position as well. But.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

If the right thing did present itself, it'd be something we could either pick up a ton of users for really cheap, knowing that it's hard to acquire a ton of users overnight without seeing CAC increase, or it'd be a technology advantage that we thought that it'd take us a long time to build or that we could significantly bolster our gross profit on an existing product that it'd be better for us to own than rent.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, you guys are public, obviously, but one of the things that we've heard as complaints though is like for those that maybe should be cheap in the private markets, like the realization maybe of their position and the ultimate impact on valuation seems to be slower in the private markets than it has been in the public markets. I mean, is that.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

It's coming.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

What you've seen? But, but you think it's coming?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah. It's coming. I think that's gonna come to roost pretty significantly over the next, you know, six to nine months, especially for a lot of these companies out there that were, you know, heavy burners, really reliant on venture capital to grow their businesses. You know, that faucet's off. I think we're gonna see back to the point around consolidation, that'll be a big part of the market where there's some activity.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting because, you know, kinda to your point, Jason, and is that there are organizations out there that have a lot of customers, but that's also they've kinda started off with a value prop that was reliant, as Kyle was saying, on a lot of VC burn to make it function. And so if that gets cut off, then you've got a user base without really a great path to monetize, right?

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

That's right. That's right. And so those can be potentially interesting for us or others, right, where we have very solid monetization, very solid unit economics. You plug something like that in with, you know, good growth, from a UA perspective, then that becomes pretty interesting.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yeah. Absolutely, so you guys have some basic credit products, etc. I mean, does it make sense to like, is the next step just revolving credit or do you start to branch into other areas? Like, it seems to me, it's been really fascinating to see how, you know, some have said, "Well, we don't wanna do a revolving credit. We're actually gonna start with a personal loan. We may wanna do something in auto." And everybody's kinda got their own angle and reasoning.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Yeah, and it's a little early for us to reveal plans for that right now. I mean, we're looking at a bunch of different things at the moment.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Got it.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

But I think for us, it's very clear to us and we wanna point out that we wanna own the customer relationship.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

Any products for us are more around that daily use case or more sort of frequent orientation as opposed to any sort of marketplace model or something like that where we're really not controlling the customer relationship. So that's pretty critical to our strategy and how we approach the business.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Absolutely. You won't see Dave owning a lead generation marketplace or anywhere we're gonna be losing control of the customer. I think that's the only way for us to build long-term.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Lifetime value is to have people under our roof.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Just in the last minute or so, how does the Dave customer base demographic compare to, you know, the population as a whole and maybe what other neobanks have done? Is it similar? Is it different? How, where is it different?

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

I can't say exactly for other neobanks, but our audience does skew younger, so it's 80% under the age of 30, and so we feel that that's a great opportunity for us to build a long-term relationship with these members. And starting, like I said, with our ExtraCash product, which is a great way for people to buy the essentials they need without incurring fees and then building credit from there, and Dave will be ready and ready and waiting for that person to graduate to the next product and the next product from there until ultimately they maybe buy a house with us one day.

James Faucette
Senior Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Right. Well, that makes sense. Jason, Kyle, that's all the time we have. Really appreciate you taking time to come chat with us about Dave. It's pretty exciting.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Thanks.

Kyle Beilman
CFO, Dave

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Jason Wilk
CEO, Dave

Thank you.

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