Encore Capital Group Inc

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Encore Capital Group's Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants' lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. And if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Bruce Thomas, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and welcome to Encore Capital Group's fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Ashish Masih, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Clark, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Bell, President of Midland Credit Management, and Craig Buick, CEO of Cabot Credit Management. Ashish and John will make prepared remarks today, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. Unless otherwise noted, comparisons made on this conference call will be between the fourth quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2019, or between the full year 2020 and the full year 2019. In addition, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements Subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of potential risks and uncertainties. During this call, we will use rounding and abbreviations for the sake of brevity. We will also be discussing non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings presentation, which was filed on Form 8 earlier today. As a reminder, this conference call will also be made available for replay on the Investors section of our website, where we will also post our prepared remarks following the conclusion of this call. Please note, at the conclusion of today's call, we will post our annual report to our website, which includes, among other items, a letter to shareholders and a copy of our Form 10-K. With that, let me turn the call over to Ashish Masih, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Bruce, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings call. As always, a primary goal of these earnings call is to help you understand how we look at our business and what metrics we track to measure our performance. I will start with a high-level recap of 2020, including our achievements. Then, I'll review our strategy, as well as key measures that are important indicators of the strength of our business. Next. John will review our financial results, after which I'll comment on our priorities for 2021 and beyond. Importantly, at the conclusion of today's call, we will also post to our website a first-ever annual report. It includes, among other items, a letter to shareholders, which provides me an opportunity to share my vision for Encore with you. We will begin with a look back at our performance in 2020. 2020 was an unprecedented year for Encore as we continued to execute on our strategy, delivered strong financial results, and reached several milestones despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic was in its early stages, our prior investments in technology and compliance enabled us to quickly provide safe working conditions for our colleagues and maintain full operational capability. For consumers, Financial hardship became more prevalent as a result of the pandemic, which for us meant that we would increasingly be called upon to do precisely what we do every day, engage in honest, empathetic and respectful conversations with consumers to help them resolve their debts. For the year, we delivered strong returns while achieving new highs for cash generation, collections, revenues and earnings. Thank you for joining us. as we continue to reduce our leverage which was down from 2.7 times to 2.4 times by year end. Our core business is relatively straightforward. We look to purchase portfolios of non-performing loans and attractive cash returns using funding with the lowest cost available to us. For each portfolio we own, we strive to meet or exceed our collection expectations while ensuring the highest level of compliance and consumer focus, as well as maintaining an efficient cost structure.