All right, welcome everybody, and thank you for joining us today at the Sidoti Year-End Conference. My name is Brendan McCarthy. I'm an analyst with Sidoti, and I'm very pleased to welcome Oportun Financial, ticker is OPRT. Joining us from the company will be CEO Raul Vazquez, as well as Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Dorian Hare, and before I hand it over, a quick reminder: the Q&A tab is located right at the bottom of your screen. Feel free to type in any questions throughout the presentation, and we can save time for Q&A at the end, but with that said, I'll hand it over to Raul.
Thank you, Brendan. We appreciate being invited to speak today, and thank you as well to the audience for joining us today. I am Raul Vazquez. I'm the CEO of Oportun Financial. With me today is Dorian Hare, our SVP of Investor Relations. My apologies. Today, I'm going to be presenting our current investor presentation dated November 2025, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.oportun.com. For those who are less familiar with Oportun, we offer borrowing and saving solutions that help our members build a better financial future. Our products are really designed holistically to address two of the most fundamental challenges to financial health and resilience, which are access to affordable credit and the ability to build adequate savings. Since our founding in 2005, we have originated approximately eight million loans, extended more than $21 billion in credit, and helped 1.3 million members build credit histories.
To give you a sense of scale, financially, our most recent guidance provided on our November 4th earnings call indicated our expectation to generate $950 million-$955 million of revenue this year, along with $137-$143 million of Adjusted EBITDA. We have been GAAP profitable on a GAAP basis, or I'm sorry, we've been profitable on a GAAP basis for the last four consecutive quarters, generating $31 million in earnings. Oportun is a mission-driven organization, and we define our mission as empowering our members to build a better future. We do so through our three products: Unsecured Personal Loans, Secured Personal Loans, and our award-winning Set and Save savings product. Our target market is comprised of Thin File and No-File low to moderate-income individuals who we believe are traditionally underserved.
Our customer base is both English and Spanish-speaking, and we engage with them via our bilingual retail and contact center teams and through our mobile app and digital capabilities. Let me now share more details on our product offering. Unsecured personal loans are the largest and most profitable part of Oportun's business. They allow our members a fast and convenient way to address pressing financial needs, such as car repair or a security deposit on an apartment they want to rent. Our competitive differentiation in personal loans stems from our focus on underserved communities, our advanced technology and data capabilities, our AI-driven underwriting, and our ability to tailor our products to meet or exceed the expectations of our members. For loans originated in the third quarter of this year, the average loan size for unsecured personal loans was approximately $3,100.
The average term was 26 months, and the weighted average APR was 35.8%, which, as I'll discuss in a few minutes, provides a strong value proposition for our members. We also offer a secured personal loans product, which is secured by a member's car. We are excited about the expansion of secured personal loans this year because we've been able to grow it at rates of approximately 50% every quarter, and in this last quarter, in Q3, it grew to represent 8% of our own portfolio compared to 5% a year ago. Through the first three quarters of this year, credit losses for secured personal loans have run over 500 basis points lower than for unsecured loans.
Furthermore, as you can see here, secured personal loans originated during the third quarter are expected to generate approximately twice the revenue per loan compared to unsecured personal loans due primarily to the higher average loan size for these loans, which, as you can see here, was approximately $6,400 in the third quarter, while the average term was 35 months and the weighted average APR was 34%. As I alluded to a couple of minutes ago, our value proposition is supported by the fact that we deliver significant savings to our members as compared to alternatives that are generally available to them. You'll be able to see here that competitor products and payday loans are, on average, approximately seven times more expensive.
I now want to spend a bit of time explaining our proprietary underwriting engine, which is a key differentiator for how we operate and how we serve our members. Our underwriting is 100% centralized and 100% automated with no exceptions. There is no one with the title of underwriter at Oportun. We have used AI and machine learning to analyze billions of data points, producing over 1,000 end nodes that enable highly precise credit and fraud decisions, including who we approve and for how much money. We leverage multiple independent frameworks in our decisioning, including number one, our alternative data score, which allows us to score 100% of customers, even those without a credit score or credit file. Number two, we also leverage raw data from the credit bureaus to formulate our own custom bureau score.
Number three, we verify income 100% of the time, thus formulating a borrower's ability to pay. And then finally, the fourth one is that we have been using Plaid to successfully access bank transaction data for several years, which has allowed us now to build an independent bank transaction model score as well. So in total, we've built an underwriting platform that can respond quickly and is also able to modify underwriting parameters overnight if market dynamics shift. Now, I'd like to provide you with some color on our loan fulfillment and servicing. Beyond the lower prices I just talked about, we keep our members satisfied by offering a diverse set of channels, allowing them to engage with us in the way that suits them best.
In Q3, for example, 56% of our loan applicants used multiple fulfillment channels, including our retail stores, contact centers, and mobile and digital platform to complete their applications. Notably, 77% of applicants used our mobile and digital channel for at least part of their applications, and when it comes to payments, in addition to our own locations, Oportun offers over 100,000 partner payment locations to our members at various PayNearMe, MoneyGram, and CheckFreePay affiliated facilities. Now, I'll provide you with more information on our Set and Save product. It was rated the number one app in its category by Bankrate last January and recognized by Forbes last October as an outstanding personal finance app for simplifying your money. Members can seamlessly integrate their existing bank accounts into the platform and set personalized savings goals.
Our AI engine then analyzes members' income and spending patterns to determine a safe, optimal allocation toward their goals. Funds are automatically transferred over time to help members reach their targets effortlessly. On average, our savings product helps members set aside $1,800 annually, contributing more than $12.2 billion in savings for our members since its launch. Building on our progress in 2024, we have continued to advance our three key strategic priorities in 2025, which are improving credit outcomes, strengthening the business economics, and identifying high-quality originations. Regarding credit outcomes, note that as shared on our November 4th earnings call, we shifted originations more towards existing members in Q3, with 70% of the volume coming from existing members compared to 64% in the first half of the year. We also tightened credit during Q3 in response to our 30+ delinquency rate, landing at the higher end of our internal expectations.
On strengthening business economics, our focus is on continued efficiency gains. During Q3, we improved our risk-adjusted net interest margin year over year by 231 basis points to 16.4%. That metric includes portfolio yield, net charge-offs, cost of capital, and loan-related fair value impacts. We also improved our adjusted OpEx ratio year over year by 133 basis points to 12.6% of our own portfolio. Both measures contributed meaningfully to the strong operating leverage we delivered during the quarter, driving adjusted ROE higher by 19 percentage points year over year and sharply increasing our adjusted EPS from $0.02 last year to $0.39 this year. Finally, we're continuing to identify high-quality originations, including by leveraging our referral program, which has been our second most active channel for acquisitions right after direct mail. Q3 referral-driven originations grew 25% to $31 million.
That was a part of our overall Q3 originations of $512 million, which were up 7% year over year. That's the fourth consecutive quarters that we've grown originations under our ongoing conservative credit posture. Within that, secured personal loan originations were up 22% year over year, and we're pleased that SPL is now available in eight states after we launched the product in Nevada and Utah during the second quarter. Let me now shift to some details on our current underwriting practices and strong Q3 credit performance, a key testament to the significant progress that we've made. A key pillar of how we can successfully underwrite personal loans in this environment is the stability of our hardworking members, an outcome that's driven by our credit underwriting model, which actively identifies people with strong stability in their communities.
I mentioned before that we verify incomes for personal loan members 100% of the time. For third-quarter originations, the median gross income of approved borrowers was approximately $50,000. Additionally, our Q3 borrowers had an average of 5.4 years at their current job and 5.6 years at their current residence. 95% of approved members had their loan proceeds dispersed to their U.S. bank account rather than opting to receive disbursements in the form of a check, and finally, our managed portfolio as of Q3 featured borrowers with an average VantageScore at origination of 662, which is at the lower end of what's considered a prime score. Shifting to credit performance, you can see on slide 15 that our front book of loans originated since July 2022 continues to perform quite well, while our back book of pre-July 2022 loans continues to roll off.
Furthermore, our recent front book credit vintages have generally outperformed previous ones. On our November 4th earnings calls, we shared that losses on our front book 12+ months after disbursement were approximately 700 basis points lower than those on our back book, which is an improvement from the prior 400 basis points that we had seen when tracking our front book performance. This progress reflects our ongoing refinements to our credit model. And you can see on slide 17 of our investor presentation that our 30+ day delinquency rate and dollar net charge-offs have improved year over year for 7 and 8 consecutive quarters, respectively. That said, our 30+ day delinquency rate did come in, as I mentioned earlier, at the higher end of our internal expectations, so we've tightened credit accordingly.
And our guidance shows that we expect these trends, these slightly higher delinquencies, to result in a higher 12.45 annualized net charge-off rate at the midpoint for the fourth quarter. We expect a slightly elevated loss rate to be temporary. It'll impact Q1 of 2026 as well before easing by next year's second quarter as our recent tightening actions take hold. Now, I'm going to turn the presentation over to Dorian for a financial review, including more details on our Q3 results and outlook. He'll also detail for you our increase in adjusted EPS by guidance at the 4% guidance by 4% at the midpoint, driven by continued expense discipline and our lower cost of capital. The strong results that Dorian's going to share with you are a testament to our team's execution, and we continue to be highly focused on driving shareholder value in 2025 and into 2026. Dorian?
Thanks, Raul, and good afternoon, everybody. During the third quarter, we met or exceeded each of our guidance metrics while delivering strong GAAP and adjusted earnings per share. We reported total revenue of $239 million. We achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of GAAP profitability with $5.2 million in net income and diluted EPS of $0.11. We were also profitable on an adjusted basis for the seventh consecutive quarter with adjusted net income of $19 million and adjusted EPS of $0.39. While maintaining credit discipline, originations of $512 million were up 7% year over year. Operating expenses of $91 million were down 11% from the prior year, reflecting our ongoing cost discipline. Adjusted EBITDA was $41 million in the third quarter, and adjusted net income of $19 million was an improvement of $18 million from last year, principally driven by reduced operating expenses along with our improved credit performance.
Adjusted EPS also increased markedly year over year from $0.02-$0.39. Turning now to our outlook for the full year, we set the expectation on our November 4th earnings call for loan originations growth in the high single digits range. And due to additional cost-saving measures that we've identified, we indicated that we expect full year 2025 operating expenses of approximately $370 million, down from the $380 million we previously anticipated, for a full year 10% full year reduction from 2024's $410 million. On the earnings call, we increased our full year Adjusted EPS guidance by 4% at the midpoint to $1.30-$1.40 per share, representing strong growth of 81%-94% versus last year. We also indicated that we expect to be able to further grow our Adjusted EPS in full year 2026 from 2025 levels.
On a GAAP basis, we reiterated our full year GAAP profitability expectation for 2025 and also set the expectation for GAAP profitability in this year's fourth quarter in particular. Regarding our capital and liquidity, as shown on slide 12, we deleveraged during the quarter by reducing our debt to equity ratio from 7.3 times to 7.1 times quarter over quarter, supported by GAAP profitability and $99 billion in operating cash flow, of which $31 million was used to pay down debt. This means that we've now reduced our leverage from the third quarter of 2024's peak leverage level of 8.7 times by 1.6 times. Much of our focus on reducing debt outstanding has been on repaying high-cost corporate debt, which carries a 15% rate.
We've now repaid a total of $50 million since the facility's inception in October of 2024, resulting in an annualized run rate reduction in interest expense of $7.5 million. Since the end of the second quarter, we have continued to demonstrate our ability to consistently access the capital markets at favorable terms. We successfully executed our ABS transactions in August and October. Both transactions achieved sub-6% funding costs and a AAA rating on their senior notes. In addition, we expanded our warehouse facility capacity by adding a new facility and modifying an existing one, thereby extending our average maturity and reducing our average cost of capital. Importantly, without the full benefits of these actions, our third quarter interest expense declined sequentially by $3 million from $60 million- $57 million.
Also, as of September 30th, our total cash was $224 million, of which $105 million was unrestricted and $119 million was restricted. Before I hand it back to Raul, I'd like to update you on our progress towards our long-term unit economic targets, which you can see on this slide here. We continue to make significant progress in the third quarter. Adjusted ROE was 20%, which was a 19 percentage points year-over-year improvement. The increase was driven principally by cost reductions and improved credit performance. We continue to focus on further optimizing credit performance, reducing expenses as a percentage of loan principal balance, and reducing leverage to drive improvements in shareholder returns on our path towards attaining 20%-28% ROEs on a GAAP and full-year basis over time. Raul, back over to you.
Thanks, Dorian. To close, I'd like to emphasize three key points.
First, we're pleased with our third-quarter results, achieving GAAP profitability for the fourth consecutive quarter, a GAAP ROE of 5%, and an adjusted ROE of 20%, which are all significantly improved relative to a year ago. Second, we've made important progress in strengthening our capital structure, lowering leverage, and reducing our cost of capital. Those are all improvements that position us well for the years ahead. And third, on our last earnings call, we raised our full-year adjusted EPS guidance expectations again to a range of $1.30-$1.40, reflecting year-over-year growth of 81%-94%. And we shared in the earnings call that we expect to grow our adjusted EPS further in 2026. Our disciplined execution across credit, efficiency, and quality growth has delivered consistent progress for over two years now.
Oportun is a more resilient business, even amidst ongoing macro uncertainty, supported by our dedicated team and our loyal members. With that, Brendan, we're happy to answer any questions from you or the audience.
Great. Thank you, Raul and Dorian. We can now open the floor for a Q&A here, and our first question, why don't we start with the macroeconomic environment? I know it's been on the top of mind for investors. How would you describe the economic environment at this point in time? And really, how has Oportun's borrower base held up?
So we think that the borrower has held up very well. We think our customer is very resilient. Our customer is continuing to really think about how do you make your paycheck stretch to meet all of your needs. So we're pleased with the resilience that the customer has demonstrated.
From an economic perspective, it was great to see the Fed cut rates today. We think that that's a positive. We think it's going to help create a stronger economy in 2026, but I think even they are indicating that the path of the economy isn't entirely clear and that they want to wait and gather more information before deciding what level of rate cuts we can expect next year. We're of a similar kind of position. We think that it's not entirely clear, and as a consequence, as I mentioned during the comments, our credit box we consider as being pretty tight and conservative, and we think it is the right thing to do to keep our credit box conservative and to look for opportunities to drive improved profitability through lower OpEx, lower interest expense, and potentially seeing if there's more opportunity within pricing.
That's helpful.
And as a follow-up question, maybe you could talk about your total addressable market and maybe how that might change over time depending on different economic conditions.
Yeah. So we focus on low to moderate-income consumers that we don't think are being served well by traditional providers of credit. If you go to the page that shows the pricing, Dorian, we don't expect big changes in the addressable market. We think that the number of people living paycheck to paycheck is higher now than it was, say, 10 years ago. And unfortunately, it's likely to be even higher 10 years from now. Most of the alternatives that are available to our borrowers, this is some work done by a nonprofit called the Financial Health Network, are significantly more expensive than Oportun. That includes online-only payday, online installment, traditional payday.
So we think that there is still a lot of opportunity for us to take share. As the economy's path becomes clearer and as the economy gets stronger, we're going to drive growth by just putting more marketing through the credit box that we have right now. We don't even think that we'd have to open up from a credit perspective. We would just have to spend more on marketing because we think that there is an opportunity for us to take quite a bit of share given how much more convenient access to our product is and how much cheaper it is.
That makes sense. That's helpful. On underwriting, you mentioned in Q3 you tightened underwriting as a response to the small uptick in delinquencies. Right. How do you feel about current underwriting guardrails at this point in time?
And do you think it may be prudent to further tighten underwriting or maybe loosen underwriting to drive originations? How can investors kind of think about that dynamic?
We're certainly not looking to loosen underwriting to drive originations. So if anything, we continue to fine-tune based on the numbers that we see. There is the slightly elevated delinquencies and losses that we're going to see in Q4 and Q1. The bulk of that is really attributed to the fact that we made more loans to new borrowers in the first half of the year than we intended. And I mentioned that we went ahead and made an adjustment for that, where 70% of originations in the third quarter went to returning members compared to 64% in the first half of the year. So what we're seeing right now is just a bubble working its way through.
It's still going to be a very good thing for the business because those new borrowers, those incremental new borrowers, will be more profitable repeat borrowers in the second half of next year. But we're just going to see that mix drive those higher delinquencies and losses for Q4 of this year and Q1 of next year. But absent that, I feel really good about the originations. I feel good about the stability of our loss performance, Brendan.
Got it. And your secured personal loan product has been growing really nicely. Maybe you could talk about the credit impacts there and maybe longer term, what you think the loan portfolio mix might look like for Oportun.
Yeah. So we really like that product. The portfolio has been growing at about 50% year over year every quarter.
The last quarter, our portfolio was $209 million for the secured product, and that was up 48% year over year. Definitely has a positive impact on losses because the loss performance on that product, given the fact that someone is pledging a car that they own outright as collateral, the loss performance of that product for the first three quarters of this year was 500 basis points lower than for the unsecured product. So it's helping us drive better credit performance. It helps with the profitability of the business because not only are losses lower, but the profit, I'm sorry, the revenue is about twice the size compared to the unsecured. So this is our number one growth priority as an organization. We've now come up with acquisition programs that are specific to secured personal loan products.
We're working on reducing friction in the funnel of the application process for secured. And we're even trying to figure out how do we feature it more prominently in all of our marketing and in our website to drive higher growth. Ultimately, we'd love to see that be 50% of the business, but that's going to take many, many years because we still want to grow this in a very thoughtful way. But that's the kind of potential that we think exists with this business.
That's great. And looking at the all credit products, how many customers ultimately become repeat customers?
Oh, the majority of customers have success and apply for a second loan. We do full underwriting with people, whether it is the first time we've dealt with them or the fifth time that we've dealt with them.
So one of the statistics that we do share is that on any given quarter, 70%-80% of the portfolio is in the hands of repeat customers. We like that because that customer had a lower cost to acquire. That repeat customer has lower losses and a lower cost to service overall. So that is part of our business, is being able to provide such great service that our customer chooses to stay with us and get a second or third loan with Oportun.
Got it. And looking at the credit profile of the loan portfolio, maybe you could talk about the long-term target range for net charge-offs for the business and maybe steps that you can take to ultimately get there.
Sure. So we're close to our target. Our target is really 9%-11%. The losses for us this year will be at 12.1%.
So we feel like we can see the 11% from here. A couple of things I think need to happen. Number one, we're going to continue to have that conservative credit posture that I mentioned. And that's really going to help us on the numerator because that ratio of losses, as our audience knows, is dollar losses as the numerator, and then the average portfolio balance is the denominator. So as long as we continue to have a conservative credit posture, we feel like we're going to do a good job on the dollar loss piece. We could use a bit of growth because the growth then would help the denominator get bigger, and that would bring the ratio down. But we don't think growth is the answer when the economy is uncertain. So right now, the portfolio is projected to shrink 2% this year.
That's an improvement over the 8% reduction last year. But we're not going to try to grow our way to more profitability if the economy doesn't support that. We'll drive profitability through lower cost of funds, through OpEx reductions. And if necessary, we can look at additional opportunities from a pricing perspective.
Got it. That makes sense. That's very helpful. And looking ahead, you've taken up guidance a couple of times this year in 2025, executed really well on expense reductions. I guess looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, what factors might really cause an outperformance to your expectations or even an underperformance?
Well, on the underperformance, certainly if there was some sort of big macro disruption, if inflation were to go back to 9%, something that right now there's no indication of that, but something that were severe and unexpected, those are the things that are always torture for any lending business, something that is rapid and sharp, but thankfully, right now, there's no indication that that's coming, Brendan, so we feel that, as I mentioned earlier, the customer is resilient and stable right now. In terms of improved performance, I think there are several things. Number one, we had interest expense decline $3 million quarter over quarter because we're paying down very expensive corporate debt, so we think as we continue to pay that down, that's going to allow us to improve profitability. We've improved cash levels even as we have paid down $50 million of debt.
That cash right now is being used for two things: to fund growth and number two, to pay down debt. But at some point, we would look forward to having a conversation with the board once we get closer to our target six-times leverage ratio of additional uses of capital. And the stock right now trades at a discount to book value. So at some point in the future, if that hasn't corrected itself and we're generating the kind of cash that we do right now, stock buyback would be the sort of thing that we would talk to the board about. Again, that's not a priority right now. Right now, we're paying down debt. But as we make progress there, I think it'd be an opportunity.
And then just finding a way to be able to drive some growth as the economy becomes more clear, that's the other thing that could drive better performance, Brendan.
Absolutely. And maybe it's a final question. It looks like trading at right around four times the midpoint of 2025 EPS guidance. And you hinted to further growth likely coming in 2026. What are investors really missing here or why is now a great time to look at Oportun stock?
So I think now is a great time to look at it because, number one, we've established a consistent record of GAAP profitability. So we've improved the financial performance of the business.
If you were to look at our profitability on a pre-tax basis, because we had a little bit of noise in the tax rate this particular quarter, but on a pre-tax basis, GAAP net income was up $54 million year over year in Q3. So I think we've established that track record of profitability. Number two, leverage declined from 8.7 times- 7.1 times. Our target is six times, and we see a clear path to six times. So I think that that's the sort of thing where we'll be able to check the box for those people that are concerned about that. And then number three, this group is dedicated to hitting those ROE targets of 20%-28%. And we'll do it by pulling the different levers that you see in our unit economic page. So I feel like the team is executing well.
The trajectory of the business is clearly improved. And I think people just potentially need to forget the old headlines of what happened in 2022 and 2023 and be much more focused on where the business is today and where it's going.
That's great. Well, we're rolling, Raul, Dorian. We really appreciate the time and the overview. We'll wrap up there.
Thank you, Brendan. Really appreciate the time.
Thanks for joining us. Take care.