Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Rent-A-Center's Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your speaker for today.
Good morning and thank you all for joining us to discuss Rent-A-Center's Results for the Q3 of 2022. We issued our earnings release after the market closed yesterday. The release and all related materials, including a link to the live webcast, are available on our website at investor.rentacenter.com. On the call today from Rent-A-Center, we have Mitch Fadel, our CEO, and Fahmi Karam, our CFO. As a reminder, some of the statements provided on this call are forward-looking and are subject to factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. These factors are described in our earnings release as well as in our, the company's SEC filings.
Rent-A-Center undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. This call also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our Q3 earnings release, which can be found on our website, for a description of the non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mitch.
Thank you, Brendan, and good morning to everyone on the call today. This morning, we will start with a review of takeaways from the quarter and broader trends. I will provide an update on operating initiatives, Q4 guidance, and areas of focus heading into 2023. I'll then hand it off to our new Chief Financial Officer, Fahmi Karam, who officially joined the team a few days ago, to share his thoughts on joining the company, followed by a detailed review of the Q3 results and the Q4 outlook. Of course, then we'll take some questions. As was stated in our earnings release after the close yesterday, Q3 revenue was slightly over $1 billion. Adjusted EBITDA was $115 million, and adjusted EPS was $0.94.
Those results are at or above the midpoint of the updated guidance ranges we provided in late September. The explanation we gave in September for lowering our original Q3 guidance was that weaker economic conditions had affected demand for durable goods and customer payment behavior. Expanding on those comments for some additional perspective, the external environment has been an ongoing headwind for us since late last year after the stimulus program substantially wound down.
This has been compounded by severe inflation this year, pressuring discretionary income and savings for many less affluent households who we primarily serve. With respect to our business, this has caused a rise in delinquency and loss rates back to and temporarily above historical levels, as well as a decline in merchant partner volumes that are lapping household durable goods demand pull forward from 2020 and 2021.
On top of this, we think the number of non-traditional LTO co-consumers trading down has been limited thus far because overall employment remains strong and there's been ample credit access broadly. In summary, this is one of the more complex and challenging environments we've been through in a long time. While it's difficult to call timing, we believe conditions will normalize in our favor. At some point in the cycle, we should benefit from additional trade down to LTO as we have in the past, get past the effects of stimulus programs, see more normal inflation and more normal payment performance. While we're not satisfied with recent financial results, the company continues to generate considerable adjusted earnings and free cash flow, demonstrating the strong underlying fundamentals of our business and enabling us to support shareholders through capital distributions.
Through the Q3, we generated about 343 million of adjusted EBITDA, $2.83 of adjusted EPS, $363 million of free cash flow, and paid $1.02 per share of dividends and repurchased $75 million worth of shares in the Q3 and October. While we continue to face external headwinds, we are committed to optimizing financial performance by focusing on controllable factors like underwriting, commercial execution, and cost management. At the same time, we'll continue to position the company for a long-term success with investments in areas like technology, product, and talent. Shifting to Q3 results, consolidated revenues, as I mentioned, $1 billion decreased 13% year-over-year, with Acima down 19% and the Rent-A-Center business segment down about 5%.
The underlying factor behind the decrease was external conditions that led to fewer lease transactions with Acima and lower overall open leases compared to the prior year period, as well as higher delinquencies and losses. These trends led to lower rental revenues and merchandise sales revenues. Adjusted EBITDA of $115 million decreased 34.6% year-over-year, primarily due to lower revenues and higher loss rates compared to the prior year period, partially offset by lower costs in the current year period. Drilling down into our two key segments. Acima top-line trends were generally in line with our original Q3 guidance assumptions, with GMV down 23% and revenue down in the high teens.
That decrease in GMV was comping over 19% growth in the prior year and was attributable to a combination of weaker household durable goods demand from our merchant partners and tighter underwriting compared to the prior year. The underwriting changes we implemented in the H1 of the year are achieving intended results, with delinquency rates and loss rates down sequentially from the Q2.
With underwriting better aligned to the external environment, the team has been increasingly exploring and executing on opportunities to drive incremental GMV with favorable risk and margin profiles. In addition, we're making good progress on the commercial side and recently launched initiatives that improved our market position compared to the prior year and helped us displace incumbents. We continue to invest in technology and enterprise sales capabilities to improve the experience for both consumers and enterprise-level accounts.
The Rent-A-Center business segment continued to show resilient demand, with delivery slightly positive year-over-year. However, this was more than offset by higher returns and charge-offs in the current year, likely stemming from inflationary pressure on discretionary income. The net result was a 1.7% year-over-year decrease in portfolio value at the end of the quarter. Revenues were $474 million, with same-store sales down 5.3% in the current year. However, they're up 7% on a two-year stack basis. Collections continued to negatively impact rental revenues in the quarter, illustrated by a step-up in the 30-day past due rate from approximately 2.4% in the Q2 to approximately 3.4% for the Q3.
Those 30-day past dues, as you can see on slide five, have leveled off at approximately 3.7% for the past three months and should start to decline with additional underwriting changes and collections initiatives that have been implemented. Skip/stolen losses as a percentage of revenue increased to 5.8% in the Q3, up from 4.2% in the Q2 and 3.4% last year. Our underwriting approach has been pretty consistent over the past year, which leads us to believe the sequential uptick in loss rates is likely the result of persistent high inflation depleting some customers' ability to cover expenses. We started tightening underwriting in the Rent-A-Center segment when we saw this delinquency rise in the summer.
To reduce the risk of losses going any higher, we're continuing to adjust our underwriting, and we will continue to refine it. Although we project losses will remain in the high 5% range for the Q4, with the leveling off of the thirty-day past due ratio I previously mentioned and the additional measures were taken, we should start to show signs of improvement as we move into fiscal 2023. Looking out over the next few quarters, other top priorities for the Rent-A-Center business include further developing our extended aisle services, improving our customer retention strategies to optimize returns, enhancing our digital customer experience through more personalized offers, and testing smaller tech-enabled store footprints, just to name a few.
For Acima, our top priorities are identifying opportunities to drive favorable risk-adjusted growth, such as adjusting the value proposition to improve performance and pushing further into fast-growing channels and product categories. We'll also continue to advance our enterprise sales pipeline. Over the past few months, Acima signed new regional merchant partners and continues to have a strong pipeline of additional potential new retailers. We remain confident in the company's long-term growth prospects and continue to invest in our ability to deliver significant profitable growth. When you put the pieces together, we expect our business will generate Q4 revenue of between $975 million and $1.025 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $95-$110 million, and EPS of $0.65-$0.85. Fahmi will provide additional guidance commentary here in a few minutes.
Looking at the big picture, the underlying fundamentals of the company remain solid, with compelling top-line growth opportunities, good profitability, strong free cash generation, and a sound balance sheet. We believe we're on the right track to navigate this challenging environment. I'd like to thank the entire team for their continued dedication and their strong efforts throughout the quarter.
As we announced in late September, the entire Rent-A-Center team and I are extremely excited to have recently brought in Fahmi Karam as the Chief Financial Officer. Fahmi joins Rent-A-Center with over 20 years of experience in both finance and accounting, most recently as the Chief Financial Officer of Santander Consumer USA. We think Fahmi's prior experiences and deep understanding of both the non-prime consumer and data-driven lending will provide valuable insight and help drive growth opportunities for Rent-A-Center moving forward. With that, I'll turn it over to Fahmi.
Thank you, Mitch, and good morning, everyone. I'll start today with a brief overview of my background and what attracted me to the opportunity of joining Rent-A-Center. Then I'll review Q3 financial performance and Q4 guidance, after which we will take your questions. For the past seven years, I've worked at Santander Consumer USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Santander, in several different roles. Most recently, and for the past three years, I served as the CFO. Santander Consumer USA was a publicly traded company until January of this year, when Santander acquired the remaining outstanding minority shares. I joined Santander Consumer from JP Morgan, where I spent over a decade in investment banking, and before that, I started my career at Deloitte on the audit side.
The decision to join Rent-A-Center was really based on my desires to contribute to the building and evolution of what I believe can be an even stronger company. One that can make a difference in the lives of our customers and create tremendous value for our shareholders. I believe that addressing the needs of financially underserved consumers is a great mission and a highly compelling market opportunity, with millions of U.S. households in need of these types of alternative financial solutions.
With Rent-A-Center's leading omni-channel lease-to-own business, coupled with a strong margin profile and a healthy balance sheet, the company is very well-positioned to execute on its strategic objectives and grow the business profitably. I feel that my experience and skill set should enable me to have a significant impact on the company's success in capitalizing on these opportunities. Moving on to the financial results.
As Mitch discussed earlier, the external environment is the biggest factor that impacted Q3 results, pressuring demand for consumer durable goods and our customers' ability to make. Consolidated rental and fees revenues decreased 10.9% year-over-year, which was led by a 17.5% decrease for Acima compared to a 4.3% decrease in the Rent-A-Center business. Merchandise sales revenues decreased 23.1%, mainly from a 24% decrease for Acima and a 20% decrease for the Rent-A-Center business. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $115 million was down 34.6% year-over-year in the Q3, with a 33% decrease for the Rent-A-Center business and a 26% decrease for Acima.
Looking at the P&L drivers, the primary contributors to the decrease in adjusted EBITDA were lower revenues and higher loss rates, partially offset by cost control measures. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 11.2% for the Q3 compared to 14.9% in the prior year period due to the same factors that drove changes in EBITDA. Moving on to the segment results. Acima GMV decreased 23% year-over-year during the Q3. This was mainly driven by a decrease in lease applications compared to the prior year period that resulted from lower durable goods demand and our merchant partners, which was primarily attributable to pressure on consumer discretionary income and cycling over the impact on demand from stimulus programs in 2021. Underwriting changes made in the H1 of 2022 also contributed to the decrease in lease applications.
Acima segment revenues decreased 19.1% year-over-year, with rental revenues down 17.5%. This was primarily due to lower GMV year to date through September and a higher provision on delinquencies compared to the prior year. Merchandise sales revenue also decreased year-over-year, mainly from the decrease in GMV over the past two quarters, as well as fewer customers electing to use early payoffs due to the previously discussed macroeconomic factors. Skip-stolen losses in the Acima segment increased approximately 30 basis points year-over-year to 9%, but decreased 260 basis points sequentially from the Q2 of 2022, consistent with our forecast. This improvement illustrates Acima's ability to adjust underwriting to effectively manage risk in a changing environment.
Adjusted EBITDA during the Q3 was $63.6 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.6%, which decreased 130 basis points year-over-year. The margin decrease is attributable to lower current year revenue driven by the lower GMV over the past two quarters of 2022. Sequentially, EBITDA margin improved by 260 basis points due to the improvement in loss rates from the Q2 as our underwriting initiatives began to materialize. Moving to the Rent-A-Center segment, revenue decreased 5.4% in the Q3 compared to the prior year period, with same store sales down 5.3%. The decrease in revenue was primarily due to the rental and fee revenues, which were down 4.3% as a result of lower percentage of lease payments collected.
Merchandise sales were also lower compared to the prior year period, reflecting lower use of early payoffs by our customers, primarily due to the effects of the wind down of stimulus programs in 2021. Skip/stolen losses increased 240 basis points year-over-year to 5.8%, primarily driven by macroeconomic pressures on our core consumers. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 670 basis points year-over-year to 16.2%, primarily due to lower revenue and higher loss rates, both driven by the worsening macroeconomic environment since the prior year period. Below the line, net interest expense was $22.7 million compared to $19.7 million in the prior year. The effective tax rate on a non-GAAP basis was 26% compared to 24% in the prior year.
The non-GAAP diluted average share count was 59.6 million in the quarter compared to 68.2 million in the prior year period. GAAP diluted loss per share was $0.10 in the Q3 compared to a diluted earnings per share of $0.31 in the prior year period. After adjusting for special items that we believe did not reflect the underlying performance of our business, non-GAAP diluted EPS was $0.94 in the Q3 of 2022 compared to $1.52 in the prior year period. Year to date, we have generated $412 million of cash flow from operations, $363 million of free cash flow. During the Q3, we paid a quarterly dividend of $0.34 per share.
From the Q3 through October 2022, we repurchased 3.5 million shares at approximately $21.21 per share. Taking into account the shares purchased through October, the company has approximately 285 million remaining on its current share repurchase authorization. In addition, at quarter end, we had a cash balance of $166 million, gross debt of $1.4 billion, net leverage of 2.6x, and available liquidity of $540 million. Shifting to the financial outlook, I will add some additional details to the Q4 financial guidance that Mitch addressed. Note that references to growth or decreases generally refer to year-over-year changes unless otherwise stated.
For Acima, we expect Q4 GMV will be down in the mid-20% range year-over-year as economic conditions continue to pressure demand for durable goods at merchant partners. In addition, underwriting standards are tighter in the current year following the changes we made in the H1 of the year. Revenue should be down low-to-mid-20% range, reflecting a lower lease portfolio value heading into the Q4 and lower current year GMV. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin will be in the low double-digit range with a loss rate of around 9%.
For the Rent-A-Center business segment, we expect portfolio value will finish in the Q4 down low- to single digits compared to the prior year, with modest growth in deliveries offset by higher returns reflecting the pressure on customers' discretionary income. Revenue and same-store sales should be down mid- to high-single digits, primarily due to lower rental and fees revenue resulting from a smaller portfolio and lower collection rates. Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be between 16% and 17%, with the loss rate to remain in the high 5% range while our underwriting and collection initiatives take full effect on the portfolio. The Mexico and franchising segments should generate Q4 EBITDA similar to the Q3. Corporate costs are expected to be up low- to mid-single digits year-over-year.
Below the line, Q4 interest expense should increase $3 million-$4 million sequentially from the Q3. Depreciation and amortization and the effective tax rate should be similar to the Q3. Regarding capital allocation, the top priorities continue to be dividend payments, debt reduction, and opportunistically repurchase shares similar to what we did the past few months. Thank you for your time this morning. We will now turn the call over for your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. The first question will be coming from Jason Haas of Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions.
Morning.
Morning. Maybe to start with somewhat of a high level one. Over the past several quarters, we've seen the Acima skip/stolen losses get out above your range. It seems like those are coming back down now, which is good, but at the same time, we're also seeing the Rent-A-Center business. It looks like those, you know, are starting to peak up above your range. I'm curious just to hear your thoughts on, like, what's driving that from a high level perspective, what's driving the difference in performance between those businesses?
Sure, Jason, this is Mitch. When you look at the slides we provided with the new metrics, like on page five, the Rent-A-Center past due rates, you can see that jumped in July and August, the 30-day rate. It was more delayed in Acima from an impact standpoint. Other than before that, it was pretty normal, and before July and then certainly August. You know, it's a different business, so it's not surprising that it would be delayed. It's a little bit different customer and so forth, certainly more need-based customer and those types of things. The collections are a lot different in Rent-A-Center with the 2,000 stores and local collections and all that versus call center.
We weren't seeing it until late summer when the inflation really, you know, got away from us, I guess you'd say. The good news is, as you can see on that slide, it's been level for three months now. We started tightening in August. We're doing more now. We would see that coming back down as we get into next year. It's not gonna affect Q4 a lot as far as the similar numbers being in the high fives. But when you get into next year, you can see that leveling in the last three months is, you know, gonna pay dividends, and it's gonna come down from there now that it's leveled off. It's not still going up. We're making changes to get it back down into more normalized levels and feel good about the changes we're making.
You know, you're right. We fixed Acima when that got out of line, as you can see on that slide. I think that might be slide four. I'd say fixed. Obviously, in this environment here, you know, you're tweaking almost every day and looking at different accounts and e-com versus in-store and all that every day. We'll do the same thing with Rent-A-Center, get it back in line. Good news is it's been level now for about three months.
That's great. Thank you. Then maybe to focus in on the Rent-A-Center business, if I caught it right, I think you said you're expecting EBITDA margin, I think that was for the full year of 16%-17% now. Just curious if that's a good run rate to use going forward. Just if there's any risk, you know, that could come in as the portfolio, I guess it starts to shrink now.
Hey, Jason, just a clarification. The 16%-17% was for the Q4.
Yes, it's high. It'd be higher for the year, but that'd certainly be the run rate in the Q4, the 16%-17%. Of course, that's with a high fives loss rate, right? You know, when you look at a run rate at the Q4, and then, you know, if that's one and a half to two percent higher than the high end of our range, you know, that gives us. If you said, "Well, can you do 16-17 next year?" I'd say, "Well, we got, like, 2% help going into next year when you think about maybe 1.5% is better because it'll take a few quarters to normalize at the beginning of the year." You know, there's some tailwind there when you look at it as a run rate.
That's great. Thank you for clarifying that.
Thanks, Jason.
Thank you. One moment while we prepare for our next question. Our next question will be coming from Kyle Joseph of Jefferies. Your line is open.
Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for having me on and taking my questions, and welcome aboard, Fahmi. Let's start on Acima. Just hoping to get a sense for, you know, the GMV contraction, you know, how much of that is underwriting versus just the macro pressures and, you know, trying to get a sense for the growth rate as we lap the underwriting changes you made at the start of the year.
Yeah, I think it's hard to tell the exact number for between underwriting and retail traffic, but you know, it's more retail traffic in Acima than it is the underwriting, honestly. Especially in the furniture segment, which is, you know, more than two-thirds of our business or at least two-thirds of our business there. It's just been way down, the applications from and the traffic in retail furniture. I think it's more that than the underwriting. You know, we still believe long term it's a 10%, double digit, I should say double digit growth business. Not predicting that for 2023, but I think longer term it's a double digit growth model. Obviously, enterprise accounts have a lot to do with that as we add those.
You know, next year, you know, you wouldn't expect more than -20% when you start comping over -20%, right? I can't tell you, don't wanna get too much into next year yet, but I can't tell you that it's gonna be that, you know, double digit growth next year just because we're lapping -20%. It just depends what happens in the macro, which obviously signs aren't all that great, of any change anytime soon. You know, more it's the retail traffic. You know, I know we'll get asked if not by you, Kyle, in a couple of minutes about trade down. Not seeing a lot of trade down yet. Seeing some, a little bit. Think more is coming.
I think everybody believes more is coming, you know, as credit tightens, as all that credit availability that came out of the pandemic dries up and is drying up. You know, based on Fed comments yesterday, I think, you know, as lenders above us in near prime and prime will tighten. You know, tightening is coming. It's just a matter when. It's been a little slower this time around as compared to other slowdowns just 'cause unemployment and things like that are still so good.
Credit availability was at an all-time high coming out of the pandemic. The pull forward, all those kinds of things . You know, I think the trade down's coming. We're not predicting anything for next year at this point. We will be comping over low, you know, the -20 kind of numbers. I think long-term, we, you know, is the way to think about that business in the double-digit range.
Yeah. No, very fair. That's a good transition to my next question. You mentioned lack of trade down, but you did highlight at least at Rent-A-Center, you're seeing kind of improving delivery trends there. You know, what's driving that? Is that, you know, are we lapping? Are we getting to the point where, you know, all the merchandise that consumers acquired in 2020 and 2021, we've gone through that product cycle. Is it kind of a more bargain-savvy customer you're seeing? What's driving the kind of demand improvement or delivery improvement you mentioned at Rent-A-Center?
Yeah, good question. You know, that's there was slight delivery improvement quarter-over-quarter. You know, portfolios under pressure 'cause, you know, people can't pay as well, so there ends up more returns and obviously there's more charge-offs affecting our portfolio. But still, from a demand standpoint, you think about the seven-year same store, two-year same store stack, the 7%. I don't think we said it in our prepared comments, but I'll say it now. Our portfolio in Rent-A-Center is down. We talked about it being down year-over-year a little bit. Down by the end of the year, we expect it to be low- to mid-single digits%. Against September 30, 2019, the portfolio is up 20%.
You know, a lot of the focus today is gonna be loss rates we've never seen before, 5.8%, and certainly we're not happy with those and we're gonna, you know, we're doing something about that and we're, you know, a little happy. I say a little happy 'cause we got a lot of work to do. A little happy about that 30-day number on slide five being consistent for three months. We're not happy with that. That's where a lot of our focus is too. We can't forget, at the same time, a portfolio of 20% going back to Q3 of 2019. The business is still very strong. Jason was asking, you know, is 16, 17%, you know, what do we think going forward?
Even those before you add a more normalized loss rate and projected EBITDA rates. Anyhow, more specifically to your question, I think the difference in Rent-A-Center versus like Acima is, you know, Rent-A-Center depends on their own traffic, whether it's in-store traffic or e-com traffic. Acima depends on retail partner traffic. Retail partner traffic's a little more discretionary. Rent-A-Center traffic has always been, and you know, Kyle, I've done this a long time.
Rent-A-Center traffic's always been more need-based than, you know, what happens in a retail store. Not that some of that's not need, but almost all of what Rent-A-Center gets is need-based. We see it, you know, much higher conversion rates than Acima, things like that. When customers come to Rent-A-Center, there's a need and we fill it. I think that's, you know, the needs come back first before the discretionary.
I think that's one short answer to your question, need over discretionary first. I think there wasn't as much pull forward in Rent-A-Center because, you know, customer couldn't afford as much. The Rent-A-Center customer couldn't afford as much, so there wasn't much pull forward. Now, you say, "Well, but look at your same store sales, there had to, you know, back then there had to be a lot of pull forward."
Remember, most of the same store sales was driven by higher retention and people keeping it a lot longer and paying out rather than returning. So, there wasn't a tremendous pull forward. Nothing likes in retail. So, I think those are the sorry I rambled a little bit there. I get a lot of things go through my mind when you ask those questions, Kyle, but those are the. Maybe that last part is my short answer.
No, I appreciate it. That's a great color. Thanks for answering my questions.
Thanks, Kyle.
Thank you. One moment while we prepare for the next question. Our next question will be coming from John Rowan of Janney. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, guys.
Morning.
Morning.
Fahmi, welcome back. I wanna talk a little bit about this notion of trade down, and I'm gonna put Fahmi on the spot a little bit here. I wanted you to discuss kind of what triggers it. You know, we're seeing it pretty specifically, I believe, at least in subprime auto, right? ABS spreads are really getting wide for, you know, really kind of tertiary issuers. There's a big trade-down into some of the lenders of last resort, as, you know, things tighten up, specifically driven by the ABS market. I'm wondering if you could talk about what triggers the trade-down, who's above you? How do they fund? Or if it's something else, what gets that ball moving toward, you know, consumer migration into your typical cohort? Thanks.
Yeah. Hey, John, good to speak with you again, and I appreciate the question. The short answer to your question is liquidity. When there's ample liquidity out in the market, you'll see a lot of lenders lean into providing credit. There's still ample liquidity out there, just more expensive than it was in years past. You've seen some of the other lenders talk about it, specifically on the auto lenders. Credit is still strong, liquidity is still there, and they're still lending. Until you start seeing them pull back as credit deteriorates, they're still going to be active.
That's why when Mitch said we still haven't seen the trade-down happen yet to the degree you would expect and we've seen in prior cycles, we do expect it to happen at some point but just hasn't come through through the door here just yet. Things like unemployment still remaining strong. As unemployment starts to tick up, as we expect over the next several quarters, you'll start seeing some more credit tightening above us. The spreads in the ABS market does shrink some margins for some of the other players, but you don't see them pull back just yet because liquidity is there. Once liquidity starts drying up, you'll start seeing some credit tightening. Unemployment will be impactful for that, and then you'll start seeing the trade-down come our way.
You know, you'd think, Fahmi, that with the I mean, in underwriting, when everybody even starts to tighten, right, they tighten from the bottom.
Yes.
You don't tighten at the top, right?
Yeah.
The prime customers. You tighten at the bottom, which is good for us. As soon as there's any significant tightening there.
Yeah.
Any even insignificant tightening could be significant to us, right? That's why it usually happens a lot faster than this, but you don't have 3% unemployment numbers.
That's right.
Usually in a downturn like this either. When that happens, it comes to us first, right? Because you don't tighten underwriting all through the bins. You start at the bottom.
Yeah. I think for us, looking at others' delinquency rates ticking up, you know, they've been normalizing, but they haven't hit pre-pandemic levels yet. Another early indicator for us will be delinquencies on some of those other larger financial institutions.
Especially the near primes and the, you know, which is even more important to us than the big ones, right? The secondaries are even the more important ones so.
Yeah. I think your point is valid there, that they tighten from the bottom. You know, coincidentally, obviously we're seeing when we look at the ABS markets, right? Especially in auto, which seems to be moving a lot faster here, probably because of collateral values, is that, you know, lower tranches of these deals that are going out are the spreads widening out a lot faster in those tranches. I'm just trying to read the tea leaves, you know, if we're looking at other lenders that may be accessing certain forms of liquidity, if we see certain tranches of spreads blowing out a lot faster than others, you know how that flows through. That was just the point of my question, and that's it for me. Thank you.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from Anthony Chukumba of Loop Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Good morning. It's Anthony Chukumba, actually. So two questions. First question, you know, Acima, certainly understand, you know, the fact that there was this demand pull forward, and so receptions are down and obviously you have tightened credit. But was wondering if you can give us any visibility in terms of what's going on with your door count in Acima.
Yeah, good question, Anthony. You know, relatively flat in the Q3. A little bit of growth. You know, there's always ins and outs in that number, but a little bit of growth in the Q3. So, you know, a couple of real good regional accounts. We don't usually go by names, but we got a couple of good regional accounts coming on board, some that are coming on board as we speak. But there's growth there that the -20% GMV kind of numbers are not because the merchant count's down or anything like that. It's really just the traffic in the retail stores.
Got it. That's helpful. Then my second question, and it sort of segues into what, you know, what the discussion has been. As you think about, you know, what has to happen in, I guess, both parts of your business, you know, to kind of turn the tides here, you know, from this sort of very unusual time period that we're going through. Like, what would help more? Would it help more if inflation abated or would it help more if the, you know, sort of long-awaited credit trade-down was to start to happen?
Good question. You know, I wanted to say yes, but I don't wanna both, right? Is obviously the best. I would say the latter is better for us, honestly. I mean, I'm not an economist and Fahmi can opine, but I'd say the latter. You know, the trade-down at this point is maybe more important than even the other. Just because the subprime customer, our customer, has been hit hard for the whole year. You know, my experience is they tend to adjust. You know, you don't see that in our loss rate, but you can see it in the credit starting to level off. Some of that was us not tightening until recently, when the numbers spiked in July and August.
Our customers tend to adjust. It's not like that business has fallen apart with the inflation, like we talked about with the two-year stack and the way the portfolio is. You know, I think because the subprime customer's already gotten hit and tends to adjust, that probably the latter is if I had to pick only one out of the two. What do you think, Fahmi?
Yeah. I think if you think about it from where we are today, to your point, that our core customers already kind of been hit hard by inflation.
Yeah.
Hopefully that's most of the way peaked, if not hopefully trending down next year.
Right.
Where the growth for us would come is from people coming down and trading down.
More so than like-
More-
More so than inflation coming down 1% a quarter or something like that.
I agree. I think it probably is the latter, but both would be nice.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's very helpful and good luck with the Q4.
Thanks, Anthony.
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from Bobby Griffin of Raymond James. Your line is open.
Good morning, Bobby. Thanks for taking my questions.
Yes.
Hey, Bobby.
I want to kind of maybe ask a little bit more of a high-level question, but as we think about the puts and takes, you know, going forward in the earnings power of this business model, it seems like there's some opportunities to get loss ratios back down into more normal ranges, which would be a positive for profits. Then at the same time, the portfolio's gonna enter 2023 at a much smaller level in each of your two main businesses. Just help us calibrate which one of those is a larger deal as we think about, you know, tuning up our models.
As a second part of that question, if we look at the back half year of 2022 earnings of the business, is that a good baseline for today's economic environment of what this business can earn without any meaningful trade-down? Or is there anything else there that we should think about?
Did you say the guidance for the Q4? Was that the last part of your question?
Yeah. It was just saying if we look at, you know, what this business is implied to earn in the H2 of 2022, is that a good baseline of like the earnings power of this business in today's economic environment without any meaningful trade down or without any change in the consumer? Was the second part of the question.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good question. We don't wanna get too far ahead, but I'll just talk long-term. You know, we don't wanna talk too much about 2023, but the run rate in the Q4 is, you know, certainly the place to start thinking about the long-term without trade down if you're not gonna plan any trade down in. You know, the portfolio is what the portfolio is. It's down. You know, there's a little bit of a tailwind to these numbers based on the loss rates, like you said, you know, from an EBITDA standpoint. But on the other hand, you know, we're forecasting a 20% negative comp in GMV and, you know, on the Acima side for the Q4.
There is puts and takes there, like you said. I think the run rate for the Q4 is the place to start. Like I said, there's some tailwind in the losses. From an EPS standpoint, there's gonna be some tailwind in going forward in lower share counts. But yeah, without factoring in trade down, there's nothing else that's gonna say, "Oh, no, don't forget there's another, you know, the Q4 is being impacted by X." There's really isn't anything like that, Bobby. That would be the place to start thinking about the long term.
Yeah. There's a lot of uncertainty in the market. It's tough to get too far ahead of ourselves on 2023. We do expect continued headwinds.
Yeah
As we enter into next year. Mitch mentioned some of the GMV comps. Those should improve year-over-year trends next year as we get further and further away from the stimulus quarters in 2021. Revenue could be pressured as demand comes down, especially on the Acima side versus the Rent-A-Center-
Even, Fahmi, if those comps are zero because you're comping over the -20, zero isn't gonna drive the run rate of EPS the Q4 higher.
You know, on the EBITDA side, depending on how inflation takes hold and how the recession takes hold, you could see some pressure on losses, even though we expect the Rent-A-Center ones to improve from the Q3 results. If you think about interest expense, a lot of our debt is variable rate, and so if we continue to see rate hikes there, you're gonna see a bigger impact in 2023 than you did in 2022. Definitely some puts and takes and a mixed bag. 2023, when you compare it to the last couple of years, could see some pressure.
Yeah, it certainly wouldn't be the way the last couple of years are.
Yeah.
More on the run rates along the years.
Okay. That was it for my questions. I appreciate it. That was exactly what I was looking for. Best of luck here in this tough environment.
Thanks, Bobby.
Thank you. One moment while we prepare for the next question. The next question is coming from Carla Casella of JP Morgan.
Hi. I just had a quick question on the same store sales decelerated from 2Q into 3Q, and we saw some of your peers not see that same deceleration. I'm wondering, is it becoming more promotional out there, or if you think you lost any share in the core business?
I suppose deceleration is one way to think about it, Carla. I suppose pure numbers being higher than our competitors are another way to think about. When I say pure numbers, I'm talking about, well, for the quarter and then the. There's like a 10% difference in two-year stack comp against our competition, and even the quarter was better. If the decel I hadn't looked at the deceleration, honestly, that if there was a difference between us and the competition from a deceleration standpoint. I'd say our same store sales. You think about the portfolio being down less than 2% and same store sales being down 5.3%, a lot of that's the collection rate because the portfolio would say we should have been closer to -2 rather than -5.
Now, some of that was sales because of the merchandise sales, because there's a lot of payouts in the prior year. Still, maybe it should have been, you know, -3% instead of -5%. A lot of it's collections, you know, the payments that drove some of those losses. We got a lot of work to do getting our collections back in line. No, I don't think we've lost any market share, though.
Okay, that's great. Just your thoughts in terms of capital allocation and, you know, debt paydown versus share buybacks. Do you set a leverage target? You know, is there a certain level where you expand your share buybacks or versus focusing on paying down debt?
Yeah. Look, our long-term average or our long-term target for our net debt ratio is about 1.5 times. We did buy back some shares through the Q3 and the first month of the Q4. We just thought where the shares were trading, it was a compelling value for us to go ahead and buy back shares. We'll take a balanced approach, obviously, keeping in mind the uncertainty in the market that we just mentioned, especially around the share buybacks. We'll take a balanced approach, and we'll be opportunistic. The priorities haven't changed from a capital allocation standpoint.
It's just longer term.
Yeah.
Like you said.
Okay, great. The 1.5 is. It's not that you'll halt. You'll wait on buybacks until you get to that level?
No, that's just a long-term target for us to be at that, around that 1.5 times level.
Right.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Carla.
Thank you. One moment while we prepare for the next question. The next question will be coming from Brad Thomas of KeyBanc. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks. Good morning, Mitch. Good morning and welcome, Tony. My question was around the outlook for margins in the Rent-A-Center business. It's obviously got a very long history of having, you know, very attractive margins through, you know, good times and bad times. But we're coming off of, obviously, record levels of profitability the last couple of years. Can you just talk about, you know, for one, that question of what you think sort of normalized margins are for Rent-A-Center and, you know, maybe how that's changed structurally? Just what sort of levers you have on the fixed and variable cost side as we think about perhaps, you know, some challenges ahead with, you know, comps getting a little bit slower there. Thanks.
Sure, Brad. Good morning. Good question. I think, you know, we talked about the 16%-17% range now, and that's with losses in the high 5s. With normalized, you know, you're, you know, at that 18% range, maybe a little north of it, 18%. Can we. You know, we get the question a lot, can we get back to 20%? I don't know. Certainly. You know, what happens from a portfolio standpoint has a lot to do with that. The other thing about the 18% is, you know, payments are. You know, if we get back to 18% with those lower loss rates, the or normalized loss rates, the, you know, payments will be better. So the, you know, revenue collected number, the retention's better.
You know, maybe you can get back there. I think the run rate with a little tailwind for the loss number coming down is the right way to think about the long term of that business. The labor costs over the last 18 months have obviously gone up like they have for everybody in the store. We've been able to offset it with hours. A lot more is coming from e-com, which helps us reduce our hours in stores. Technology helps us reduce our hours in the stores as far as how many customers you have to call versus texting and so forth.
There's some offsets there, but I think in the short term, if you thought of the 16%-17% as a normalized loss rate, you'd be close to the long-term number. What we can do in the long term, we are testing some smaller sq ft to take some of that overhead out from a real estate standpoint as e-com grows and stores become half fulfillment centers for e-com and half handling the business that comes in the store.
We're looking at the long term, what can we do from a real estate standpoint to reduce those costs on the real estate? Not necessarily reduce locations but reduce actual size of locations is a big one. We always are looking at our trucks and are we being efficient with how many trucks we have on the street and so forth, and the labor, as I mentioned. Those are the big ones, from a fixed cost standpoint.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Brad.
Thank you. Our final question will be coming from Vincent Caintic of Stephens.
Hi.
Your line.
Thanks for taking my question. Just one, you know, I appreciate the commentary about the tough environment. I wanted to focus on your cash flow, though. You know, even though the environment's been tough, your cash flow has remained resilient, and encouraging to see the share repurchases and of course, your dividends still strong. I'm wondering, you know, as things are tough and maybe GMVs not growing as fast and not putting the free cash flow back towards, you know, issuing leases, how you're thinking about the resiliency and cash flow, and if not for growth, you know, what else could you do? You know, and maybe to follow up on the, you know, your appetite for share repurchases or other forms of investing that capital. Thank you.
Sure, Vincent. I'll start. Fahmi can jump in. The cash flow is strong when it's even stronger with -20% GMV in the large segment of, like, Acima. You know, the best news for us will be a little less cash flow next year and more, you know, buy more product, right, down the working capital side, 'cause that's the better long-term play. In the meantime, our capital allocation hasn't changed what Fahmi talked about. You know, we do have a long-term goal of getting down to 1.5 times. We'll be opportunistic on share repurchases as we were the last three months. Going forward, it really hasn't changed from a capital allocation standpoint.
Yeah. I mean, I would just reiterate what we said earlier around the uncertainty left in the market. Obviously, we feel good about where we are today from a liquidity standpoint, having about $540 million of available liquidity to us. We've demonstrated that if we feel like the best use of that cash is buying back shares, that we did that. We did a lot of that in the October timeframe. We are mindful of the environment that we're heading into. We'll take a balanced approach. You know, the waterfall is invested in the business, you know, pay down debt and opportunistically buy back shares and return capital to our shareholders. We'll continue to be very thoughtful in our approach around capital allocation and utilize that free cash flow as best as we can.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Vincent.
Thank you. That concludes the Q&A session. I would like to turn the call over to Mitch Fadel for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone for your time this morning. We appreciate it. We appreciate your support. We're working hard in a very uncertain environment, and we'll continue to do that. We'll continue to focus on the things we can control, like our costs and our underwriting and our capital allocation.
That Fahmi was just talking about, and we'll continue to focus on the company and building the team, like bringing people in like Fahmi to build a team, to be able to accomplish the great things that we know we can accomplish, still believe we can accomplish. You know, maybe it's a little bit of a delay with the uncertain environment, but we got a lot of things left to do and look forward to doing them and accomplish them over the next number of years for you. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You all have a great day.