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Earnings Transcript for DAVE - Q1 Fiscal Year 2023

Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Dave Inc. Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Jason to begin the conference. Jason, over to you.
Jason Wilk : Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm very proud of our team's performance in delivering another strong quarter for Dave members and shareholders. In Q1, we grew revenue by nearly 40% year-over-year and were flat sequentially in line with our expectations given the seasonality of demand for our ExtraCash product during tax refund season. Our variable margin and unit economics continue to improve, driven by a combination of substantial improvements in credit performance, all renegotiated key vendor contracts and continued processing cost efficiencies. This margin expansion, coupled with lower marketing spend and fixed cost operating leverage, allowed us to more than halve our adjusted EBITDA loss for the second consecutive quarter, building on our progress in Q4 and advancing our path to profitability. I believe our improved profitability drivers over the past 2 quarters validates our operational strategy and positions Dave for success as we further cement ourselves as one of the leading neobanks in the U.S. Our affordable member-centric banking products have already drawn millions of customers to Dave, and we look forward to continuing to execute on our strategy of becoming a superior banking product for everyday Americans. Now to dive a little deeper into the quarter and our progress against our strategic growth initiatives. Our first area of focus is to acquire banking customers efficiently at scale by marketing top-of-mind liquidity pain points. Our key value proposition of being a neobank that helps people access short-term liquidity for their everyday expenses without incurring overdraft fees continues to resonate strongly, driving efficient member acquisition. In Q1, we added 587,000 new members and grew our monthly transacting numbers to 2 million, representing 34% year-over-year growth. We were able to achieve this growth despite seasonally lower demand for ExtraCash as tax refunds help to support the liquidity needs of our audience during tax season. These seasonal dynamics typically lead to lower response rates on our campaign, which is why we tend to moderate marketing spend in the first quarter. However, we actually reduced our CAC by 4% sequentially and nearly 40% relative to the first quarter of 2022. We believe these favorable acquisition trends demonstrate the strong demand for our products that should help to reinforce our overall growth objectives for the year. As Kyle will outline in a moment, we plan to ramp up marketing spend in the second and third quarters as we believe we can achieve even more attractive returns on investment at greater scale in those periods and reaccelerate growth. Our second focus area is to engage customers by delighting them with instant access of up to $500 of extra cash using our proven AI-driven underwriting models. In the first quarter, ExtraCash origination volume grew over 45% to $798 million on a year-over-year basis, driven by both growth in numbers as well as higher ExtraCash limits compared to the prior year. On a sequential basis, ExtraCash originations remained flat, reflecting the tax refund-driven seasonal dynamics I described earlier. From a monetization standpoint, our unit economics are durable and margins are improving. Average revenue per origination remained steady. Our 28-day delinquency rate was a record low, improving by nearly 100 basis points sequentially and 67 basis points year-over-year. As we've discussed on our last several calls, we believe our underwriting and risk management capabilities are a competitive advantage and that this quarter demonstrates just how powerful our model is. Even against a challenging consumer credit backdrop, we're making gains. As mentioned earlier, we moderated marketing spend in the quarter to better match market demand for ExtraCash around tax refund season. Consistent with our plan to ramp up marketing spend over the balance of the year, we expect ExtraCash originations to accelerate as demand normalizes seasonally with additional tailwinds based on the challenging macro backdrop impacting our numbers and broader TAM. Our final focus area is to create deeper payment relationships with our members by accelerating adoption of our Dave Debit Card. We are ultimately working towards becoming a primary destination for our members to deposit their paychecks, putting Dave at the center of their financial lives. Utilizing ExtraCash as a conversion point for initial card usage, we are continuing to make meaningful progress in growing Dave card spend. Average transaction per monthly transacting member grew to a record 5.4 in the first quarter. We had another quarter of record Dave card spending volume, increasing 12% sequentially and 62% on a year-over-year basis as the Dave card continues to gain traction. We anticipate these positive trends to persist, supported by an exciting product road map that is aimed at capturing this opportunity. I remain optimistic about our outlook. We're delivering significant value for our members, solving their fundamental pain points and building loyalty that enables us to deepen our relationships with them. We have an innovative road map that I'm confident will allow us to deliver even more member value. We're doing this while building a durable and defensible business model with strong growth and attractive unit economics with significant upside from here. Overall, we're tracking well against our strategic growth initiatives and our commitment to achieving profitability in 2024. With that, I will turn the call over to Kyle to take you through our financial results. Kyle?
Kyle Beilman : Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we get into the specifics, I just want to echo Jason's sentiment. We're happy with our Q1 performance as our top line metrics were in line with expectations. We're demonstrating our differentiated underwriting and risk management capabilities, delivering our margin-enhancing initiatives and making progress on our strategic priorities. All of these has led to another quarter of closing the gap to profitability while maintaining strong liquidity with net cash increasing quarter-over-quarter. Our total GAAP revenue in Q1 was $58.9 million, up 38% from Q1 last year. Our growth was driven by increases in our monthly transacting member base, improved ExtraCash monetization and stronger Dave card engagement. First quarter GAAP revenue was roughly flat sequentially and in line with our expectations given the negative seasonal effect of tax refunds on demand for ExtraCash during the first quarter. Non-GAAP variable profit in Q1 increased 91% to $34 million, representing a 56% margin relative to our non-GAAP revenue compared to a 41% margin in the year ago period. The increase in variable margin was primarily due to markedly lower provision expense in the first quarter, the renegotiation of a key vendor contract that went into effect January 1, as well as ongoing processing cost enhancements that we've discussed on the last couple of calls. We do not expect variable margin to remain at these elevated levels in the quarters ahead, given the dynamics related to loss provision, which I'll describe in a moment. However, we do anticipate variable margin for the balance of the year to remain notably above 2022 levels and for the full year to fall comfortably within our established annual guidance. Moving to our first quarter operating expenses. The provision for credit losses decreased 13% to $12 million compared to $13.8 million in the year ago period. As a percentage of ExtraCash originations, the provision declined to 1.5% in the first quarter compared to 2.5% in the year ago period. The decrease was primarily attributable to 2 main factors
Jason Wilk : I'd like to thank everyone for joining the call today as well as our dedicated team for their continued commitment to driving the growth of the business and ultimately achieving profitability. Dave has a bright future ahead, and I look forward to providing further updates on our next call.
Operator:
Operator: There are no further questions at this time. Before I close the call, please note that certain comments made in this conference call and webcast are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company's filings with the SEC. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements, which are being made only as of the date of this call. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to any forward-looking statements. The company's presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA as supplemental measures of performance of our business. All non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with the SEC rules. You'll find reconciliation charts and other important information in the earnings press release and Form 8-K furnished to the SEC. This now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.