All right, everybody, so continuing onto our consumer finance theme, we have the best of the bunch in the middle. Synchrony Financial CFO is joining me. Brian Wenzel, thank you, Brian, for coming.
Erica, thank you for the invitation. I guess that nicety is going to mean you're going to ask me tougher questions than both Christoph.
Block and Bridge.
And a Block and Bridge.
Let's start off with a top-of-the-house question. A lot has happened since we were last on the stage from both a macro and a policy standpoint. The first thing I really want to do is double-click on the health of the Synchrony consumer and how it may have evolved over the past year, given all the moving pieces in the background.
Yeah, great question, Erica. I feel like when I get asked this question, you feel like you're saying what everyone else is saying about the stability of the consumer. And I think if you go back a couple of years ago, as one of probably only two full-spectrum lenders in the United States, I think we were one of the first ones, I think, to say about there's a K-shaped recovery here. And we felt more pressure at the lower end. The high end was doing really well. I think if you look at what happened in the last year, you've seen that low end be really stable. That non-prime customer had been stable. Yes, there was some maybe noise in auto, subprime, etc. But that consumer is doing fairly well, relatively speaking, very stable. The high end has come down a little bit.
It feels a little bit more pressure. Maybe they're spending a little bit more, but that high end has a little pressure. Where you're feeling more of the pressure, which developed in the last year, is that prime customer rate in the middle. So think about someone that's in that 660, if you're using FICO, or 650, or if you're using Vantage, to 720. They are feeling the effects of, number one, their wage growth hasn't been as strong as others. And number two, affordability. When you think about real affordability around groceries and gasoline and housing and utilities and insurance and healthcare, that's weighing on that middle consumer a little bit more. So they have a little bit less disposable income. And we see that in some of the purchasing trends, as well as a little bit of the credit, but not in a bad way.
It's not concerning. You do see divergence, again, from that K-shape really into now in the middle.
So this is interesting because we've long been talking with investors about watch out for the vulnerable middle because it feels like, to your credit, you've talked about this K-shape for a while, but you've also started talking earlier about the stability in the lower end of the K starting to take place.
Yeah. The one thing about that consumer, that non-prime consumer, they understand how to get by, right? And they demonstrate that over time. They're the ones that are going to take multiple jobs. They're the ones that go into the gig economy. They're the ones who can make a dollar go further. It's that middle person who's maybe making $80,000 a year, $100,000 a year, but they haven't had to struggle. So when they have to struggle and go a little bit harder, it's not necessarily a muscle they've built up over time.
So to begin the year, investors were super excited on consumer finance names like your company, given what they thought to be or are seeing as tailwinds from the big, beautiful bill. I know you've taken this into account in your outlook, but maybe unpack what you think the impact could be and maybe sort of separate purchase volume and payment rates.
Yeah. So if you go back and just make sure we're working around it, an average refund is probably mid-$3,000, so between $3,000 and $4,000, depending upon where it is. When you look at the elements inside of the tax reform that happened last year, a lot of those benefits, when you think about it, accrue to some people who are probably going to make a little bit higher end on the spectrum, right? So you think about someone who's making $100,000, $150,000, they're going to feel some of the more soft deduction benefits, etc., that are going to kind of flow through to them. You then add in the combination that the withholding tables in 2025 haven't been updated, right? So when we look at what's going to happen, we view that the average refund amount is going to go up $1,000.
It's a little bit more to, I'd say, that higher income, right? $100,000-$150,000, less to the more moderate income. When we then pull that apart, what we sit back and say is that $100,000-$150,000 person who's now going to get a benefit of 26 withholding tables and that extra refund, more likely than not, does two things. Either A, they pay down debt, or B, they save, right? When you go to someone who's more moderately income-priced, they've been kind of getting by. They get a little extra dollars, and what they want to do is consume, right? So you're going to see what we think is more purchase volume-oriented activity from them. And I think you'll also see with the withholding tables getting updated in 2026, more velocity at that lower end consumer, that more moderately income consumer.
So again, when you think about our full spectrum, we have the tail to the top. We're going to see some may pay down debt, and we're going to see some that are going to spend more. So I think it's net-net. There's probably a little bit upward bias to the payment rate, but it'll be a little bit more neutral for us. Other people who may be geared higher in our full spectrum, I think, will have greater pressure, right, relative to pay down of existing balances.
Generally speaking, you could see both upward pressure in the purchase volume and upward pressure in payment rate, but relatively neutral to your financials.
That's the way we're thinking about it, is relatively neutral. But again, we'll see. I mean, 55% of tax returns historically come by mid-March, 85% or so by mid-May. So you'll begin to see some of the effects in a lot of part of February kind of play through here a little bit. Again, depends upon the higher-end staffing, which has been a little bit more challenging. So they may be a little slower than history, but that's when you'll start to see the effects of it.
Just to contextualize this, and given how you frame the refund benefit and tailwind, do you have an update for where your median annual household income is or ranges or could be helpful for investors?
Yeah. We don't really break that out externally. What I sit back and say, we are full spectrum. Everyone kind of thinks about our business as being a little bit more non-prime. We're 27% non-prime, so less than where we were in 2019, less than some of our peers who play that full spectrum piece. But we also have a significant portion of the portfolio that sits in superprime, 760+. And part of that dynamic, it maybe just hit on a topic here related to the composition of the portfolio, Erica. People talking about the payment rate, what's driving the payment rate. We talk about promotional financing being lower, and we talk about the mix.
I generally have led people into, "Hey, we have less Non-Prime," which revolves in probably a 10% rate or, I'm sorry, payment rate is 10% versus a group that's probably more in the high teens, which is your Prime customers. If I pull that apart even further we haven't really talked about this, but we've seen about 700 basis points increase in Superprime, which carries a payment rate of about 31%. That's come at the expense of, again, of having less Non-Prime and less of that middle piece. That is also a byproduct of the credit actions that we've taken in order to get credit in control. And that's the mix. But we have a very significant percentage of the portfolio that is Superprime that's in there. And that's why, again, you look at the value propositions that we have. We do have top-of-wallet spend.
When you look at someone going into Amazon, getting 5% off, going into Lowe's, and getting 5% off, going into Sam's, our OnePay Walmart card has a very good value prop. So you're going to attract that customer in as well.
Definitely want to talk about Walmart, OnePay, but maybe just staying at a higher level. You talked about both average transaction value and average transaction frequency increasing throughout the year. What other signs of building consumer confidence are you looking for in your book?
Yeah. So let me just go back. We see very good trends when we look at average transaction frequency. We cut it two different ways, Erica. We look at it both from a credit grade perspective, and then we look at it generationally. Say, is there a cohort that feels like it's struggling either way? When I look at average transaction frequency, it's kind of up across all those metrics. So whether I look at it generationally or I look at it on the credit cohorts, they are trending in the same way. The slope is actually pretty much the same too. So there's not a segment demographically or credit-wise that we're concerned about. When I look at average transaction values, again, what you see is that Non-Prime and the Superprime are advancing in average transaction value.
The prime customer is down, I want to say, 20 basis points. So essentially flat. But that's where you see the pressure. So we see good momentum there. I think what we started to see in the latter part of 2025 is some areas more into discretionary. When you think about electronics, you think about other things that are not necessarily everyday purchases. That's what we're looking for. I was a little bit surprised about the consumer confidence that came out a couple of weeks ago because we've seen some green shoots in the portfolio. Home specialty has been significantly impacted over the last 12 months or so because that's a big ticket discretionary when you're thinking about generators, roofing, windows, large-ticket purchases. But we've seen that get less negative each quarter in 2025.
So the view is hopefully that the consumer feels good enough and they have the confidence to step into really what's a spring holiday season in home improvement into those projects. So we've actually seen positive momentum, at least quarter-over-quarter, inside home specialty. And we've seen a little bit of green shoots in cosmetic, in the health and wellness business. That's one where people have delayed procedures but had transaction value down into, "I'm going to get, say, a Botox procedure versus another one". But we've seen strength in audiology, which are bigger ticket. So again, for us, it's big ticket. And that's where you see when you go to the sales platforms, our home and auto platform, our lifestyle, those are bigger ticket discretionary. That's the biggest thing that we're looking for.
That's the one that holds us back a little bit is that person willing to go out and say, "Okay, I have the confidence to invest in my home or invest in something outdoors, let's say, in lifestyle.
I mean, you have pretty great partnerships, Lowe's, RH, Bob's Discount Furniture. So it sounds like you don't have much acceleration in your outlook in terms of some of this big-ticket stuff, that it could be upside if some of this turns.
Well, some of it's going to be based in the core. You look at the biggest part of our growth going from, call it, down 1 to mid-single digits is the core. And there is a good turn that's in there for some of that discretionary. Bob's was really excited about getting another top 10 furniture dealer here in the United States. RH is a great brand. There are going to be small impacts this year because they're second half. So they're not big. They're more, what I'd say, is 2026-oriented. And listen, Lowe's is a tremendous partner. They've been with us over four decades. And they continue to win in the space, in the do-it-yourself space as well as the pro space. So we're excited about that. But that's going to be some of the momentum.
And then how do we reinvigorate the growth in health and wellness that probably was more impacted from some of the credit actions we took? Yeah.
We have to touch on Walmart, OnePay. And you mentioned during the call that it is one of, if not the most successful program launch in company history. What's different this time versus your previous partnership? And what's resonating with consumers in terms of the current offering that's just driven this strong start?
Yeah. First of all, we are excited. Walmart is one of the most iconic retailers in the United States.
Trillionaire.
Yeah. It's just a fabulous company. Obviously, we have some history with them. We had a long 20-year relationship with them. We built a program from 0 to $9 billion. Now, a lot of things happened in 2018, 2019 that I'm not sure we're going to go back and revisit. But when they came back to us, we, first of all, thought it was a testament to our capabilities that we did separate in 2019. Now they're back. So we're excited, and they're confident in our abilities to deliver for their customers. When you go back to it fundamentally, the product back in 2018 was a more private label-led product. The value proposition was probably not as strong. Walmart, at the time, was very focused on everyday low price. It was trying to price down the card.
So there wasn't as much economic pool in there to kind of drive it. So what that resulted in was a higher loss content portfolio, a higher return content portfolio, but higher risk. I think if you look at the product set today, it's a much richer value prop. They tied it in with their Walmart+, where you can get 5% in-store if you're a Walmart+. That is a very attractive segment for Walmart to grow. So we fit right into their corporate strategy. They're pushing it. But the value proposition of the card is richer, number one. Number two, the pricing on the card for us provides a greater revenue pool to kind of support the activities around that. And those two things will give us a lower loss content than what we had before.
I mean, the content that we had before was close to 10% losses. This will be above our company average, but nowhere near what it was before. So you get a better risk-adjusted return that kind of comes through that. So that's number one, the product construct and the tie-in to their strategy. Two is it is one of the more technologically advanced programs. If you go into the OnePay app, the API tech stack that OnePay has and our callouts and how we integrate, totally seamless to the consumer. And some of our large investors who happen to be cardholders were very impressed with the way in which it's very quick. It's very seamless to the consumer. Even when you apply for a card, it auto-provisions into the OnePay app as well as your Walmart app. So technologically, it's much more advanced.
And then you just kind of put it in. You have a retailer that just has so much traffic, whether it's digitally or through the stores, kind of coming through every day. It's just exciting. And given that capacity, it's off to a strong start. And we look forward to it. We did one of the largest prescreens we've ever done, probably the largest in the fourth quarter. So we're optimistic about how that will turn out here in the first part of the year.
Great. And before we tie this all back to the overall company growth outlook, you have been fielding many questions on Synchrony Pay Later. Clearly less profitable than a line of credit option. How do you use this offering in order to expand the relationships with the customers that you meet through Pay Later? Or should we just think about this as a product that you're offering for merchants to enhance sales?
Yeah. So let me unpack that a little bit, Erica, because the premise of the question is, is a pay later product fundamentally priced to a lower return? If you want to talk about a pay-in-four product, clearly it is because the merchant doesn't want to pay that cost. It's very expensive. We do very little pay-in-four because economically, the merchant doesn't want to pay it. We're not going to just take a loss later. We do it when we feel it's opportunistic. A lot of our pay later happens in the 6, 12 months, primarily 18, 24, and then we go longer. In our business, what's really important with pay later is that you have a set of products that I can walk into a merchant partner and say, "I can give you an installment loan. I can give you a secured card.
I can give you a private label card. I can give you a dual card. I can give you a commercial private label card. I can give you a commercial dual card." So I can meet the needs of your consumer where you want to do. And it depends upon certain products. An installment product may work better for a certain consumer than another one. And when we offer a multi-product, though, what we do with our partners and the way we structure economics is one product's not disadvantaged, generally speaking, than others, right? We try to sit back and say, "You, as the merchant, shouldn't be advantaged to say, 'I want one product,' and I shouldn't be advantaged to say, 'I want another product,' right?" We try to align those economics. And that makes more sense. And you got to take a step back.
The Pay Later product, while it was branded in the last couple of years and kind of exploded here, I think, as a name in the post-pandemic period, we've been doing Pay Later, essentially equal pay promos for decades inside our revolving accounts. So the technology already exists. It's just the consumer experience, which is terrific on the front. You can argue that the back-end experience is probably not as great for the consumer given multiple payments each month, not understanding what your balance may be, etc. But our strategy has to be part of a multi-product and not to have a loss leader but do that. And the final piece around Pay Laters is what we'd like to be able to do is, how do I take that relationship with someone just taking out a 6- or 12-month installment loan?
Can I migrate that person to another product inside our ecosystem? It's just a cost of acquisition.
Let's now take it to your outlook. You talked on the call that your mid-single-digit loan receivables guide contemplated credit shifts that you took in late 2025. You published your monthly data earlier this morning. The loan growth down 50 basis points year-over-year, the best we've seen since February 2025. Maybe contextualize what you're seeing to start the year.
Yeah. Again, you love to ask the multi-part questions. So I'm going to unpack this. So let's talk first about the loan growth. It was just under 50 basis points down. I think I shared with you just before I came on one of the interesting things. Again, when we talked in our January call on the fourth quarter earnings, we had seen purchase volume accelerate off of what we saw in the fourth quarter, which is 3%. So it meaningfully accelerated into January. That acceleration happened until we had this wonderful snowstorm, which I know you love being in New York, snowstorm and ice storm across a vast majority of our country.
When we look at the subsequent 4 days after that storm, the first 2 days after that storm, we were down everywhere other than the west, which didn't feel the effects of it, anywhere from 30%-50% in purchase volume year-over-year. Then the next 2 days, we were down mid-single digits to low double digits. That took out, do the math however you want, probably between $300 million and $500 million of sales. So the loan receivable probably will look a little different at the end. But we can't control weather. I'm going to sound like a retailer. Can't control the weather. But we felt good about sales. When you look at credit, credit, we're happy with it.
Delinquencies, again, outperformed seasonality for us when I look at it versus 2017-2019, were 7 basis points better than what we would normally say is seasonality. So that early-stage delinquencies continues to perform. The loss rate being sub-5, you have to cycle adjust it because we only had 25 cycles. But we felt good about that. And so as we entered the year, you could have sat back and looked at our 90+ delinquency. And this was somewhat telegraphed with regard to that. The question is, where do you go forward? Now, again, we did a lot of the actions changing some of that credit mix in the third and fourth quarter. That will take about a year to season. So some of that will come in in the back half of the year. But we're pleased with where we're heading that way.
I think what we're going to continue to look at is, has the portfolio continued to perform inside delinquency? And then too, what's happening with the macro? And I think the macro feels more stable than it has probably in the last year, if I say that, but a little bit more stable.
Yellow, greenish?
I'd say more stable. Unless you're going to put a color on it, right? So I think the tariff effects have not been as punitive. I think some of it has been more noise in the press than it has been reality. I think the tariff rates are still in the low teens or mid-teens. I think when you look at unemployment, there are just natural barriers to the unemployment rate moving up, even though we use Moody's. And Moody's hasn't risen to 4.8, at least to the end of last year. We'll see what they come out with next month. But unemployment remains in check. And inflation's going to be tough to get to too. So it's probably going to wobble here a little bit throughout 2026, which probably puts much of the administration's dismay, probably put pressure on continued lower interest rates.
On your outlook slide, you indicated that net interest income should grow in 2026 but didn't quantify. How should we think about net interest income growth relative to that receivables growth expectation?
Yeah. This was a tough one because we used to provide guidance down all the line items and try to get people to the right place. And I think the unfortunate thing, while we have some analysts like yourself who are very good, there's some analysts who had a more difficult time taking that and getting to the right outcome. So we decided to maybe pivot, just get you to the.
EPS.
EPS at the end of the test and say, "Listen, you guys can get there different ways." So we're not providing specific guidance on neither net interest margin or NII. But what I'd sit back and say, it's fair to assume that NII should grow, right, when you look at the framework that's in there. We try to outline it. You're still going to see positive benefits of the pricing actions we took over the last couple of years in the portfolio. I think interest rates are going to kind of largely be neutral, right? So any effects that you get off of the reduction in interest-bearing liabilities comes off investment yield and then comes off a prime rate on the asset. So they'll generally wash out. Depending upon how you think about credit, you're going to have late fees move one way or the other way with reversals.
So there's a lot of gives and takes. And then you have the growth math of accelerating growth that puts a little bit of headwind into NII. But it should grow year-over-year if you're growing your assets in that mid-single digits.
Just a follow-up question there. I think half of your NIM expansion in 2025 was 3 PC impact. Maybe frame it in how much more impact is left if it's 100%? Are we 80% through?
Yeah. So if you think about when we put that in, we said 50% gets priced in the first 12, 75% in 2, and then there's a tail that kind of goes down. So if you think about where you exited out of, if you just straight-lined it, just do that math for a second. You're in the 60% range. So you sit back and say, "Okay, it's going to not be as incrementally large in 2026 as it was in 2025, but still it's a positive effect on it." Again, you're going to get prime rate and some other things on the interest yield line. But again, net interest margin should expand as well, maybe not as significantly as 2025, but it should go up because those tailwinds continue to bake into the portfolio.
Again, I think there is a little bit of a transitory year here in 2026 because when you go from a position and when we always talk about growth math, the biggest part of growth math is reserves, period. That is far away. But when you change and you're putting assets on that are lower yielding assets for a period of 12-18 months and you go from -1 to a mid-single digit, that creates a headwind. The same way you get a headwind if you're mid-single digits and going to low double digits. It works the same other way. When you have people who have grown very fast and they slow the growth rate down, there's a big tailwind that should happen on NII. Again, we're going into the wind right now, but NII and NIM should increase in 2026 versus 2025.
Just a follow-up here. You are sitting in a bunch of excess liquidity, which is about 11 basis points on the margin. How should we think about are you continuing to sit on this cash as the growth comes in, or are there other ways to redeploy this?
Yeah. We'd first like to redeploy it through growth.
Receivables.
Yeah. That's the first priority in our equation. When I look at the equation, and this is where you have to take a step back, we're kind of caught into this metric. Everyone focuses on NIM, and it could be a headwind to NIM. But if I'm raising money at 3.5% in a high-yield savings and I'm getting north of that from the Federal Reserve to have cash there, it's economically okay. It may screw up the metric. Maybe the right way to think about it is to take your interest-bearing liability costs minus the investment portfolio yields and just strip it out of the margin. Then you get the noise away. But again, we're not going to try to run off the liquidity because we want those relationships with the customers. If it got very negative, then I think we'd think about it differently.
But we want to grow. We want to put the money to work. It's not necessarily for us. We're intensely trying to build liquidity or trying to hold excess liquidity.
Taking all of this into account and just reminding investors that expense growth in line with receivables growth is part of this framework, your RSA is expected to increase in 2026 versus 2025. Can you grow PP&R in 2026?
Yeah. I mean, if you just went through the equation that I had, you should be able to grow PP&R. I know there's a lot of focus on OPEX. And I think when we got to mid-single digits, we were saying, "Okay, we put a notables page in the back." And I try to be transparent. If you strip out the negative notables that were in 2025 and grow off of that, it's growing generally in line with that receivable growth. Now, again, there are a couple of things that are happening inside of there that at times, as a business, we feel we want to invest in that are good investments for us. One is around growth. Now, a lot of people said, "Okay, is that Walmart?" No. Walmart's in 2025. But you are launching Lowe's.
You are going to launch 2 other programs in the back half of the year. And then there were some strategic investments that we wanted to do on our technology side that we felt really were an important part for us to make sure we did not fall behind and we stayed leading in some of our capabilities. So we decided to invest a little bit more. And we kind of said that because I think it's important for investors to understand whether it's the growth in these programs that, again, create a little bit of a headwind this year, whether it's investments in technology, that is going to be the best thing. So as you look to 2027, you get back to what's hopefully double-digit EPS growth and maintained or accelerated growth as you go forward.
Let's double-click on those investments that you just mentioned. What are your top three investment initiatives in 2026? And of course, I have to ask you the AI question, right?
Sure.
How could that potentially impact the productivity at Synchrony or program profitability for your merchants?
Yeah. So the number one strategic investment that we continue to lean into because it's the area that is the most attractive to us is growth and health and wellness, right? We're expanding the products that they're leaning harder into. The dual card that we have with CareCredit provides incredible economics for us. I think we're continuing to look at ways in which we have a tremendous network, whether it's dentals or vets, but there are dental practices. We're getting three applications per month. How do I get that to be more productive? We put new products in there. A couple of years ago, we bought Allegro, which brought us an installment product. Installment has taken off. So it allows us to get into the bigger ticket side of that business. So we're investing both on a product side and through distribution, through the providers that's there.
We're also investing in ISVs and other ways where consumers are going to shop or not going to shop, going to pay their medical bills, etc. That investment in health and wellness is number one. I think number two is the customer experience. We launched a refreshed marketplace that we're trying to drive. We're trying to drive more capabilities around the consumer. The experience with the consumer, we had multiple apps. We're trying to consolidate it and make it easier to do business. And how do I get from having 1.6 products per customer to a greater multiple of that? Then a third area, I'd say I'm going to give you four: AI and cloud. Cloud would be cloud support. I'll put that at the bottom. We'll be about halfway through our journey, a little over halfway through our journey on cloud.
AI is one where we're leaning in. Think about three elements here as you think about the benefits. There's capacity, there's productivity, and there's growth. We're leaning into all three. We have a foundational element. We have a Synchrony GPT that allows people to do things easier in their job. We're bringing AI to financial analysis and other things inside the company. When you think about some things in HR, those are foundational elements. They're creating capacity to do things better. Where we look at it from a productivity standpoint, if you think about our business, take a couple of what I'll call claims-type management. You think about a dispute. You have to intake a dispute. You have to gather any information from the customer. You go to the merchant.
You get the media. You compare it. You analyze it. You decide it. And you tell the customer. That's a very labor-intensive process. So we're creating agents and a process by which we can automate that and have a decision by the machine versus having someone have to do a bunch of that work. That can be a significant amount of productivity. You then roll that out to complaints and ultimately to fraud, which also create customer friction for that. So that's a great productivity-type example. On the growth side, we're leaning into agentic commerce. Agentic commerce is probably three-five years out. So as much as people think it's here, there's a lot that has to get done, whether it's just even how you authenticate, who authorizes the transaction, how do you make sure that is? But we are working with the apps.
So you think about how do you get to the ChatGPTs, the Claudes, the Geminis where it's going to happen in an app? How do you get to browsers where agentic commerce can happen? You got your merchants and providers who are trying to get agentic agents on their site. We're creating an agentic agent on our site to go along with Joy, which sits inside our marketplace. So if you want to see Seahawks themed in, you can put that in there. It will bring you back products from our merchant base that has that. Now, how do you get the agentic agent to go buy that? So we're going to introduce it there. We're betting across all the different lanes because we don't know who wins.
I think you're going to see a curve where it's going to be commodities first before someone will sit back and say, "Well, it's a dress shirt," etc. So leaning across whether it's growth, productivity, or foundational elements inside our company.
I just want to point out we have less than 10 minutes left, and we're just getting to the credit quality question.
Okay. That's a good thing.
It's a good thing. It's a very good thing. Of course, your monthly metrics came out, and delinquency continues to improve, down 10 basis points year-over-year, and net charge-offs are down 100 or a few basis points year-over-year. Where are we in terms of the rate of improvement and the impact from your credit actions? And when do you think we're going to start seeing stabilization in those credit metrics?
Yeah. So I think you are seeing stabilization. I think we are tracking probably in line to slightly better in seasonality now. I think you're kind of at that point. We're going to continue to watch it. The question I get quite frequently, Erica, is, "Well, what do you have to see to do more, right?
I mean, open the credit box.
Change the credit appetite a little bit more. A, we want to be able to see continued stability in our credit metrics, number one. We want to see stability because we have a shared consumer in other people's credit metrics. And three, we want the macroeconomy to have some kind of faith. As I said multiple times, we're probably coming at phases. And if this performs, I think in the front half of the year, we're going to look again and say, "Okay, is there something more that we can do on credit?" The one thing I do want to hit on, we try to do on an outlook page, and maybe I didn't do the best job of this. But when you look at the outlook page, what we try to say is, "Listen, we're going to mid-single digit growth. Credit stable." And we expressed it more.
People kind of took it as guidance. We're saying, "Listen, credit stable. It's not something that we view as going to deteriorate. It's not going to get way better. It's just stable." And I think people are trying to interpret whether they're trying to guide up or guide down or where it was. But anyway, credit, it's stable. And again, for us, it provides a tailwind. And I think we were more disciplined than probably every other issuer. Your previous speaker has a very different product, right? When you're paying a fee-based product, you tend not to go as delinquent as often on that product. So outside that, I would say we probably manage credit better than almost everyone in the industry.
Just wanted to also just clarify the comments on the call on the reserve. Should we expect there to be continued reserve release in 2026?
Yeah. When you're growing mid-single digits, the question becomes, and I hate to be cute on the answer, are you talking reserve release on a rate basis or dollar basis? I think it's tough when you're growing mid-single digits to sit back and say you may have an absolute dollar release. What you may see is more posting in dollars being partially offset by rate.
Ratio. Yeah. To some ratio. Yeah.
Yeah. So that's what you would hope. But that gives you confidence, right, back to credit, that your next 12-month outlook and losses look good and the macro looks good.
So Stress Capital Buffers are frozen for the current participants. What does that mean for you? This is supposed to be the year for you to be a participant, right?
Well, as you say, Erica, we are a little bit more unique. So this was our first time officially into the CCAR process. The good news or bad news, I don't know how you want to look at it, but we are delayed from getting our Stress Capital Buffer, in theory, until 2028. We have the ability to opt in in 2027, but that's not something we don't have to decide today. And we are set under the rules today at the initial Stress Capital Buffer at 250 basis points. So again, we'll participate in the process and go through that, but we won't really get another Stress Capital Buffer until 2028. The one thing I'd say is, and part of this goes back into, I think what the Federal Reserve is doing is actually very smart.
The people have been very open to listening to questions and issues around the stress-testing models. They have been very accommodative to date. I think that what they didn't want to do was run a 2026 that would give, if they're trying to reform the process, the wrong answer and then turn around a year from now. So I think what they did was smart. We appreciate the partnership with them around that. And again, we're part of the run, but expect 250 as their Stress Capital Buffer.
Regardless of what your Stress Capital Buffer is going to be of a ton of capital, and you returned 13% of market cap in 2025, how should your investors think about how you're approaching buybacks in 2026?
Yeah. And I want to delink it a little bit from C-Corp because we always run stress tests.
Anyway.
We ran stress tests anyway. So our target level is always informed by how we think the business performs under scenarios that the Fed run, but we also run our own punitive type of scenarios that are custom done. So that really guides us in our principles. And listen, the strength of this business model is we generate a ton of capital. We are probably one of the higher-returning return businesses in the asset class. So we generate a ton of capital. We have a bunch of excess capital. Even when I change the growth ratio of the business and go into mid-single digits, we have a lot of capacity to do that. So regardless of the C-Corp process, we want to be aggressive but prudent to get that down. Is it going to happen in six months? The answer is no.
But again, we're going to be aggressive with the capital return because it is a position of strength for us, really, to drive value for shareholders.
So just before I ask my last question, I just want to remind the audience that if you scan the QR code, you can type in your question, and I can ask the tough question for Brian for you, or we have mics in the room, and you can ask the question the old-fashioned way. So finally, I do feel like sometimes, particularly in the beginning of the year, there can be a lot of messages lost, right, as analysts try to unpack the guidance. So what do you think are the key takeaways that you want to reemphasize as you think about 2026 that you think got lost a little bit in the call?
Yeah. So I already hit on the one big one, Erica. People say, "Well, is credit deteriorating? What are you trying to do? Credit stable." And if I go back and change that slide, I sit there and say credit stable on the slide. But that's what we're trying to convey. And I think people try to overread that. That's number one. I think number two, when we talked about significant investments, what we tried to bring back to people and convey is when you look at EPS in 2025 versus 2026 and what's happening, you have a big reserve swing year-over-year, which is a big part of the investments in growing the portfolio, number one. We had a bunch of expenses relating to the OnePay Walmart launch in 2025. We got different expenses for Lowe's and some other things in 2026, plus we're excelling technology.
That creates an investment in the business that we sit back and say that is the right investment for the medium and long term. Because again, we're looking to next year, in 2027, to be double-digit EPS growth, again, maintain to expand the growth on the receivable level as we move forward. So those are great investments for us. I think people are trying to discern whether that was Walmart, do you have to pay more to get the growth? This is about things that we really want to do for the business that make a ton of sense. So no, we don't have to spend more. Our model, because we have such a low-cost acquisition, we don't have to spend a ton of money on kind of doing marketing to the consumer. That's where we have leverage. But at times, you're going to want to invest in the business.
Those are the two big things around we don't have to spend more for growth, and credit is really stable.
Great. 30 seconds. Any final questions for Brian from the audience? All right. Brian, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.