Navient Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Navient third quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants 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 need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I want to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jen Irias, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hello, good morning, and welcome to Navient's earnings call for the third quarter of 2024. With me today are David Yohan, Navient's CEO, and Joe Fisher, Navient's CFO. After the prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. A presentation accompanies today's discussion, which you can find on Naviant.com slash investors. Before we begin, keep in mind our discussion will contain predictions, expectations, forward-looking statements, and other information about our businesses based on management's current expectations as of the date of this presentation. Actual results in the future may be materially different from those discussed here. This could be due to a variety of factors. Listeners should refer to the discussion of those factors on the company's Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. During this conference call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures, including core earnings, adjusted tangible equity ratio, and various other non-GAAP financial measures that are derived from core earnings. Our GAAP results, description of our non-GAAP financial measures, and the reconciliation of core earnings to GAAP results can be found in Navient's third quarter 2024 earnings release, which is posted on our website. Thank you, and I now will turn the call over to Dave.

Thanks, Jen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call and for your interest in that. The third quarter was highly productive along our transformation journey. Our results reflect healthy loan origination growth, strong expense discipline, lower levels of felt repayments, and include several other significant items. As a result, we are more than doubling our targeted share repurchases in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter. We variabilized a significant part of our expense base by outsourcing loan servicing to a third party. We recently completed the borrower conversion and are working to ensure a seamless transition for borrowers. We reached agreement with the CFPB to settle the nearly decade-long investigation and litigation. This puts these issues and the overhang of contingent liability behind us in a way that's consistent with our go-forward activities. We set out to explore strategic options, including divestment for business processing solutions. These businesses were not being fully valued within Navient, and they were not at sufficient scale to be cost efficient. Outsourcing servicing will lower our overall costs over time but would increase shared service allocations, especially IT, to BPS. Divestment of BPS now enables us to substantially reduce operating expenses across the enterprise. We determined the most beneficial divestment strategy was to separate healthcare from government services. These businesses have different growth, margins, valuation multiples, and customers. We closed on the sale of our healthcare business at a price of $369 million. This is an outstanding outcome that we think reflects the full value of that business. We remain in active discussions about the sale of government services in which growth, margins, and multiples are far lower than in healthcare. Government services operations rely much more heavily on shared service infrastructure than healthcare. These shared service expenses are not justified by the future revenues of the government services businesses, which will be impacted by developments during the quarter on key contracts. We've recorded a write down of the goodwill associated with government services as a result of these developments. We took additional steps to further reduce our corporate footprint. Our results for the quarter include restructuring expenses reflecting rightsizing actions. Turning to our core growth business, Earnest showed strong loan growth in the quarter across refi and in-school products. Year-to-date loan originations were $1.37 billion, 39% higher than last year. We are in good position to meet our planned origination volumes for the year. The Fed rate reductions in September and the current yield curve imply a lower rate environment into 2025. We have the readiness and the capacity to capitalize on expanded demand for our student loan refinance product when customers take advantage of opportunities to lower their rate, payments, or both. The tremendous progress we've made provides visibility into the remaining steps to complete outsourcing in healthcare, divest government services, and eliminate expenses. We continue to believe the robust cash generation and significant expense reductions that we anticipated from these actions are achievable. The elimination of shared services expenses will likely occur several quarters after the divestment of government services, with incremental reductions occurring along the way. We are adding $40 million to our planned share repurchases in the fourth quarter, which will result in a doubling of the amount we purchased in the third quarter. Additionally, We retired this month's unsecured debt maturity in the fourth quarter with cash on hand. After these uses, we are confident in our capacity to fund incremental loan origination volume that a lower rate environment might present. Our 2025 business plan will include a capital allocation among investments in loan growth, debt reduction, and distributions that we feel best positions us to deliver value to shareholders. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the work of colleagues across the company who made the third quarter so tremendously productive. I'm proud of the work they've done and the way they've come together and committed themselves to our transformation journey. Next, Joe will share our results for the quarter, which reflects strong performance against certain key metrics and includes some additional special items. With that, let me turn it over to Joe. I look forward to your questions later in the call.

Thank you, Dave, and everyone on today's call for your interest in Navient. During my prepared remarks, I will review the third quarter results for 2024 and provide updated guidance underlying our outlook for the remainder of the year. In the third quarter, we reported gap EPS loss of two cents. On a core basis, we delivered third quarter EPS of $1.45. The primary difference in the quarter between GAAP and core earnings is the exclusion of a goodwill and intangible asset impairment and amortization of 98 cents related to our government services business. Four other significant items that impacted the quarter include a $1.54 gain from the sale of our healthcare services business, 10 cents of regulatory expenses primarily related to the resolution of the CFPB lawsuit, 12 cents of restructuring expenses driven by the strategic actions we are undertaking to reshape and right-size the expense base of the company, and 15 cents of provision related to lower expected recovery rates on defaulted private education loans. Adjusting for these items, we earn 28 cents on a core basis and expect our fourth quarter EPS to be between 25 and 30 cents. I will provide further detail on our outlook and results by segment beginning with the federal education loan segment on slide five. The net interest margin increased to 46 basis points from 36 basis points in the second quarter as prepayments declined to just under a billion dollars from two and a half billion. We continue to see lower levels of prepayments than experienced earlier in the year as recent injunctions caused certain federal forgiveness benefits and resulted in lower consolidation activity. The SELP portfolio continues to perform as expected from a credit perspective. Compared to the prior year, our greater than 90-day delinquency rates improved to 7.3%, the charge-off rate improved to 14 basis points, and forbearance rates remained flat at 16.4%. Slide 6 illustrates the rise of prepayments over the last few quarters as borrowers consolidated to the direct loan program and the sharp decline that occurred this quarter. We continue to encourage borrowers who are experiencing or have historically experienced difficulty repaying their loans to understand and take advantage of programs that are only offered to direct loan customers. While we are seeing lower levels of prepayment activity, We cannot predict whether this level is temporary or reflects a more permanent change in prepayment trends. Our EPS guidance reflects prepayments in the fourth quarter that are consistent with what we have experienced during the third quarter. Now let's turn to our consumer lending segment on slide seven. Net interest margin in this segment was 284 basis points in the quarter compared to 317 a year ago and 289 in the prior quarter. Originations grew over 30% to $500 million compared to $382 million a year ago and are in line with our expectations as we remain focused on generating growth from high-quality borrowers. Late-stage delinquency and forbearance rates increased from the prior quarter to 2.4% and 2.8% respectively. The increase in forbearance is primarily a result of the disaster relief that is granted to borrowers impacted by a federally declared natural disaster. Much of this activity occurred late in the quarter, and we have since granted $92 million of additional relief in October from recent events. At the end of the third quarter, our allowance for loan loss for our entire education loan portfolio is $836 million, which is highlighted on slide eight. During the quarter, we released $5 million for FELP loans as a result of the prepayment activity in the quarter. New private education loan origination volume contributed $15 million to the allowance, and $21 million is related to the recovery adjustment I mentioned earlier in my remarks. Let's continue to slide nine to review our business processing segment. We achieved total fee revenue of $70 million and 20% EBITDA margins in the quarter excluding the $219 million gain from the sale of our healthcare services business and $138 million impairment related to our government services business. The decline in government services revenue to $42 million is primarily driven by an unfunded federal program within a government services contract. There is uncertainty as to when or if that program will receive congressional funding approval. For the remainder of the year, we expect government services revenue to be consistent with the third quarter. We will continue to provide services to the healthcare business for a period of time after closing. Our expenses and the offsetting revenue we receive under these transition services agreements, or TSAs, will be reported in the other segment. Let's turn to expenses beginning on slide 10. Total expenses for the quarter, excluding regulatory and restructuring expenses, were down 9% to $170 million. This quarter represents the first full quarter of our transition to a variable cost-based servicing structure. We are also providing services to MOHELA under the TSAs. The revenue and expenses associated with these services will also be reported in the other segments. We anticipate the completion of the transition services related to healthcare and to MOHELA to occur by the end of the first half of 2025. The completion of the TSAs are important steps in our ability to remove these expenses. We remain confident in our ability to achieve the level of expense savings we outlined at the beginning of the year. Turn to our capital allocation and financing activity that is highlighted on slide 11. We continue to maintain disciplined asset liability and capital management strategies with 83% of our education loan portfolio funded to term and an adjusted tangible equity ratio of 9.8%. In the quarter, we will purchase 2.1 million shares for $33 million. Given our current capital levels and outlook for cash flows, we plan to double the amount of purchases in the fourth quarter assuming we continue to trade at a significant discount to tangible book value. As we look at the next 12 months, we have $176 million of remaining authorization under the current plan. We have $1.1 billion of cash on hand, unsecured debt maturities of $1.1 billion, and the potential for a favorable rate environment that will allow for us to significantly grow our high-quality refinanced loan products. Our excess cash will be available over time to invest, reduce outstanding debt, and distribute to shareholders. In summary, our updated full-year 2024 core earnings per share outlook of $2.45 to $2.50 reflects the move to a more variable cost-based servicing structure, the completed sale of Xtend Healthcare, the resolution of legacy regulatory matters, and further execution on strategic actions to reduce our shared service expenses in order to enhance overall value for shareholders. As I close, I'd like to express my appreciation to Naviant team members for their hard work as we continue to execute on our strategic actions. Thank you for your time, and I will now open the call for any questions.

And at this time, we'll conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will come from the line of Bill Ryan from Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. First question is just on the expense side of the equation. You know, looking back at the announcement in January and the expenses that were outlined for the other segment, unallocated corporate overhead, I think the target was initially to kind of get to a $200 million annualized run rate. And then when I look at Q3 and it was $63 million in the other segment and you kind of take out some of the regulatory expenses, It looks like you're pretty much there if I did the math correctly and have the initial target correct. So looking into 2025, I know you said it might be a little bit slower cadence to reduce it, but are you kind of now targeting a level of expenses better than $200 million annualized run rate in an allocated corporate overhead?

Thanks, Bill. Good question. We're certainly pleased with the results so far this quarter from an expense takeout perspective. I would say also one thing to consider is we do have TSA expenses, as I mentioned in my remarks, that have moved from both the federal segment and then will ultimately move from the BPS segment into the other segment. That's going to represent a little bit less than $10 million in the fourth quarter, but those are things that we expect to take out. by the end of the first half of 2025. So in all, we are on pace to obviously be better than that $200 million and pleased with the results, but there's still a lot of work ahead of us.

Okay, and one follow-up, Joe. Some of your securitizations I know are kind of like in early amortization and due to going past the legal final maturity date. I believe there's a lot of cash trapped in these securitizations. What is the dollar amount of securitizations involved in this early amortization period, and what are the chances that those things could be called to release some capital to the company?

I can get back to you offline with a full dollar amount of each securitization, but as you mentioned, when the trusts get to that 10% level, They become full turbo features at that point, which means that they are not releasing cash to us. So we look at that on a trust-by-trust basis in terms of whether that makes sense economically to call the trust at this time. So there's no specific timeframe that I could give you of when we would call those, but it's certainly something that we look at based on the current funding environment and whether it makes sense to call the trust at those times.

Okay. I'll get back in queue. Thanks for taking my questions.

One moment for next question. Our next question comes from Sanjay from KBW. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good morning. Joe, could you go over what led to the expected decline in the recovery values of the private student loans and sort of how we should think about that going forward and the risk for more?

Sure. So, as you know, Sandra, you've followed this company for a long time, and we evaluate all of our critical accounting assumptions, certainly quarterly, but also take a bigger push in the third quarter. So, if you look to prior periods, you've seen us adjust that recovery rate more significantly in the third quarter. So, case in point, a year ago, we adjusted our recovery rate down, and that was about a $25 million impact. This quarter, it was $21 million, so we'll continue to adjust for that. I would say that as we look at the overall curve, we're comfortable with where we are now. The challenge for us is that these are very high-quality borrowers, that half of our book is certainly new originations, higher quality. The other half, very well-seasoned. So as these borrowers grow, ultimately hit that default, they have utilized a number of the programs that we have offered over the past, which makes it more challenging to recover. So certainly the risk to that is the entire RIPCO balance that we look at. It's roughly around $180 million, and it's something that we evaluate. But today we feel very comfortable with that 17% recovery rate. Okay, great.

And then just as we think about the path of interest rates as it goes down, I know this forward curve, I'm just trying to think about how we should think about the net interest margins across both asset classes on a go-forward basis and maybe just some sort of sensitivities, if you don't mind, Joe, just so that we inform our models accordingly. Thanks.

Yeah, I think... First of all, I think there's a significant opportunity for us if these rates play out the way that they're forecasted. Just from a rate drop perspective, the refi opportunity for new volume is substantial, something that we haven't seen in several quarters here. So you have to go back to 2021 when we were doing $6 billion of originations. I think there's a good opportunity here. We have a significant decline in rates. But you're right, that does cause pressure on our FELP NIM, as you've seen in the past with falling rate environments. The assets themselves reset daily, and the liabilities lag are either quarterly or monthly, so that does create additional pressure. Some of that pressure you actually saw in this quarter, although it occurred late in the quarter, and we would anticipate that on the FELP spread occurring into the fourth quarter. If you think about the guidance that it gave for quarterly guidance as it relates to EPS, that translates to roughly similar levels of NIM for the felt spread in the fourth quarter. And if the rates continue to decline as predicted, that would go into the first half of the year as well.

And is there any sense of sensitivity to rates? So if you have another 100 basis points next year, how should we think about what that does to the NIMs?

So you start actually getting a pickup from that 100 basis points in terms of the pickup of floor income. So I would say if you're thinking about 100 basis points and that's, say, 25 or evenly distributed over the quarters, that should start to offset as you get beyond 50 basis points. And once rates finally settle down, if it's a flat, low-rate environment, you get back to the NIMS that we've historically experienced.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Rick Shane from JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks, everybody, for taking my questions. I have to cue in a little faster than Sanjay because I wanted to talk about the change to the reserve policy or the recovery policy. Only other question I have is you've talked about increasing the cadence for repurchases in the fourth quarter, should we see that as a ongoing sort of target run rate as we move through 25?

Thanks for the question. We set out on the strategic actions. We talked about our ability to generate some cash through the divestment of BPS. as well as the cash flows from our loan portfolio. And we've talked about three potential uses of that, investing in loan growth, share repurchases, and reducing debt. You know, in the fourth quarter, we've got a little bit of all three of that, if you will. I think our, you know, and as we look at our tangible book value, for example, It increased this quarter by almost $2.20 a share, so it's up around $21. At today's sale price, the opportunity for us to buy back our stock at roughly 75% in that asset value feels pretty attractive to us. As we look into 2025, we're going to complete the business plan. We'll have a combination. You should expect a combination of growth of debt reduction, share repurchases, and investment in loan growth that we think best provides value to shareholders. It'll depend on market conditions, rates, the value of our shares, et cetera. So, you know, stay tuned for the 2025 plan and think about the environment in a changing mix as conditions may change.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Just one other sort of housekeeping, and this isn't housekeeping because this is obviously a pretty sensitive issue to the folks impacted. But in the prior quarter, you talked about an 80 to 90% reduction in force over time. Where do we stand in that process now? And what does the trajectory of that look like through 25? Do you expect to be most of the way through that by the end of next year?

We're about halfway through that. That half is accomplished largely through the MOHELA transfer, which occurred on July 1st. It also occurred largely through the healthcare transaction, which occurred mid-September. And then there have been incremental reductions in our corporate expense footprint over time. The GS, government services transaction, if we can find one and we're working hard to do so, would be also a significant chunk of that. And then there's still some remaining wind down work and further reductions in corporate expense footprint. So we're about halfway along that journey as we sit here today. We have clear visibility into what the other steps are to get us to the target and the guidance that we've given you around that.

Terrific. Thank you. And again, I do realize for the folks impacted, that's a sensitive issue. So thank you for taking the question.

One moment for our next question. Our next question is from Mark DeVries from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Yeah, thanks. I was hoping to get an update on kind of where you think you are in your efforts to grow um, the in-school lending business, you know, how many of the target schools are you now kind of on preferred lenders list and making loans? How much room is there to go? How much room is there to share or to grow share wallet at those schools? And also any anticipated uplift to kind of your, your market share from, um, from resolving all your issues with the CFPB.

Hey, Mark. Uh, so look, we, um, We feel like we just concluded a successful peak season in in-school. We met our targets for that. You saw the robust loan growth we had across both refi and in-school products. I would remind you that we have a particular swim lane, as I like to describe it, in that market. The market as a whole, of course, includes... schools like for-profit schools that we do not offer loans in in the schools that meet our criteria we feel good about our penetration in terms of preferred lending lists and we're going to leverage that as we have in this season to seek out the kind of borrowers that we feel best meet our economics our credit profile places where we feel like we can succeed you know our market share still remains in the low single digits there. I don't anticipate, I don't think the CFPB matter I think is a question of a contingent liability that was an overhang on the company. I don't think it was an impediment to our in-school product and so I don't think it'll be a catalyst for anything different occurring in that market either.

Okay, got it. And sorry if I missed this, but any updated timing on when you think you might complete a government services sale? And am I right in thinking, given kind of the impairment of the goodwill, that you've kind of marked it to where you think it's likely to sell and therefore it won't be, you know, a meaningful P&L event when it happens?

Yeah, Mark, so we're working urgently to do that. Obviously, we've been working on that transaction for some time. It takes... uh, more than one party to do that. We're working hard at it. I'm not going to give you a prediction on timing, but know that we are in active discussions and, and, and we're working, uh, you know, very hard on, on that, uh, on that piece of that for sure.

Got it. And on the latter part of the question, is it, am I right that it won't be a panel event in all likelihood when it happens?

Yeah, I think when we, uh, sorry, when we, um, took the goodwill impairment, we've obviously taken into account where we think we are and where we might end up if we get a sale transaction.

Got it.

All right. Great.

Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Terry Ma from Barclays. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you. Good morning. I was wondering if there's any way for you to kind of size the addressable market for refi loans. If we do get 100 basis points, a great cut. I think you called out 2021. You guys did about $6 billion, but I think the rates were much lower, so the addressable market was also much higher.

Yeah. Thanks, Terry. Good question. I think the way I've always thought about it and talked about it with investors is that you've got about $1.5 trillion of loans that are at the Department of Education, so within the direct loan portfolio. If you think about just 10% of that portfolio that's looking to lower their payments and looking for that opportunity, I'd say 20% of that qualifies for our programs. That puts you in roughly a $30 billion market. That's obviously significantly higher than where we are today. And I would say the big wild card in all of this is in terms of for those borrowers, is 100 basis points enough for them to move and take advantage of that lower rate versus the opportunities that are there from various forgiveness programs at the direct loan level? So I would say that's how we think about it as a total addressable market. And I just point back to, as you mentioned, a few years ago, we were able to do $6 billion. So I think there's a potential sizable opportunity available to us over the next couple of years that these interest rate forecasts play out.

Got it. That's helpful. And I may have missed it, but the buyback guide for the fourth quarter, the $70 million, should we kind of expect that kind of run rate to continue in future quarters?

Yeah, Terry, actually, the amount that we're targeting in the fourth quarter is $65 million, so that's double what we did in the third quarter. And I would say, look, for going forward, what we've tried to do is put ourselves in a position where we have financial capacity and financial flexibility to choose among three different use of proceeds, if you will. One is loan growth. Joe just talked about the sensitivity of the total addressable market and our opportunity to take advantage of that. And so if we have a low rate environment and we have the demand for that product, then we will allocate, we intend to allocate some capital and resources to take our fair share of that increase in the marketplace. We have the capacity and flexibility to do that as well as make financial decisions about share repurchases, I talked earlier about the fact that our tangible book value increased by $2.20 in the quarter, and so we now trade at a 75% value of tangible book value. We think that's an attractive opportunity for the rest of our shareholders to buy back the company's shares at 75% of net asset value, and we took advantage of the cash on hand in the quarter to pay back debt. So it's a question of capacity and flexibility that we've developed and we'll take advantage of opportunities as we see them that we think best can deliver value to our shareholders.

Got it. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Moshe Orenbuck from TD Callen. Your line is open.

Great, thanks. Just wondering, you know, you mentioned the $21 tangible book value. As part of the planning process, you know, have you given thought to what type of return you'd need to earn on that to be able to sell at that tangible book value? And, you know, is that something that you would expect to get to? Or, you know, what steps does it take to get to that? And, you know, do you think it's something you'll reach in 25, 26? Like, how do you think about that in broad brush terms?

So when you say to sell, what are you referring to?

You know, in the marketplace, you know, you, you mentioned a 75% price to net asset value, right? For, for, for stocks to trade at or above book value, they need a certain level of return on tangible book, right?

So my point is just that we see a discount to, there is a discount. the tangible book value today with our shares, we have the financial flexibility to buy them back. I'm not making a statement about above that amount. We're just making a statement about in the fourth quarter and the current opportunity. Here's, you know, we think this is a good use of proceeds for the rest of our shareholder base.

No, and I certainly appreciate that. I'm just wondering if you kind of, you know, gave thought to that as part of the planning process. Because, you know, what has happened is you've sold BPS is, you know, EPS, all other things equal goes down. You offset some of that by buying back the stock, maybe all of it, maybe more than all of it. But in other words, you still have, you know, kind of portfolios that are in amortization. So I just wanted to know, you know, how to think about that, the level of returns on that tangible book values.

Yeah, so we're in our growth business in earnest. We're pricing to earn, you know, mid-to-double-digit returns on there as that becomes one of the things about getting rid of divesting BPS is earnest then becomes relatively a bigger part of the model. And so at the margin on loan growth, we're targeting, you know, mid-teens returns in that particular business.

Got it. And just as a follow-up, you separate out the credit losses on the two pieces in your private portfolio. They're roughly equal, the legacy book and the refi book. Have you talked about what the margins are on those two? You know, the average is in the 280s, right? But you separated out what the margins are on the legacy piece versus the refi piece.

Yeah, we have not disclosed that historically, but typically the refi is below 2%, and historically on the legacy assets, they've been above 4%. Got it.

Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come flying now. Nate Richam from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. you previously talked about looking to get more lifetime value from your earnest relationships, potentially through like product extensions. Can you give us any update to what strategies you're implementing there? And like if these product extensions are through your partner marketplace or like some kind of new product you plan to introduce? Thank you.

Yeah. So, you know, we, we've talked about, Ernest has a number of platforms that it's, uses to try to help students navigate through their education journey and help young professionals and graduate students manage their debt. And those programs are, at the moment, all those are offered at no additional charge, if you will. They're a way to attract, to help customers, help our target segment get engagement with them, help drive engagement, top of the funnel kind of activity for us. The opportunity there, which we're looking at, is how do we increase engagement? And with increased engagement, are there other opportunities to monetize those relationships? And so that could include driving volume to our existing products. It could also include trying to drive volume to other products that we could manufacture or others could potentially manufacture. Those are some of the possibilities. We're still in the early stages of that, so we don't have anything to announce, but that's among the range of possibilities that we're looking at.

All right, that's all from me.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Jeff Adelson from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, I guess I was just curious. I know your delinquency rate has been on the private lending product has been increasing pretty steadily for a few years now. I know some of that is probably a bit of the mixed shift that's going into the in-school versus refi product, but could you help us maybe pull a piece what's happening within each bucket on delinquency trend and how we should think about that going forward?

Sure, Jeff. So if you just look at the various delinquency buckets on the private side, so from 31 to 60, early stage buckets have been fairly flat. If you look year over year and just prior quarter, we have seen an uptick in late stage delinquencies. Overall, our charge-off expectations over the last couple years have been at 1.5% to 2%, and that's been relatively consistent. Just reiterated, as I said in my remarks, that we did see an uptick in terms of forbearance that was granted in the quarter, just to see a disaster relief. So what that will do is that additional $92 million that I referenced that we've seen occur in October is that will actually reduce delinquencies next quarter slightly, but we would anticipate that that would flow back through over the course of the year. So while we do think they'll be slightly elevated from the levels that we're seeing today, we feel we're adequately reserved for any future charge-offs.

And have you guys noticed any impact so far from any of the changes in government action, specifically the end of the on-ramp earlier in October?

No. If you look at our FFEL portfolio, it's been fairly stable here, and this is something that we've been preparing for for several years in terms of borrowers getting back into repayments. So you may remember a couple of years back, we were talking about this and from a reserve perspective had started obviously watching that and preparing for it at that time. So at these early stages, we have not seen any impact.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our last question for today will come from Ryan Shelley from Bank of America.

Your line is open. Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. I just wanted to ask about the upcoming debt maturity, the 6.75 note due June of 25. How should investors think about you addressing that? Are you guys considering coming to market to refinance? Are you considering just paying down? Any color there would be very helpful.

Sure. So today we sit on $1.1 billion of cash. We have roughly $1.4 billion of unencumbered loans with $1.2 billion of that being our private portfolio. We have an additional $3 billion of over-collateralization in our felt portfolio that we can borrow against. as well as another nearly $2 billion of OC in our private credit portfolio. So all in all, we have $7.4 billion available to us to address any upcoming maturities on top of the additional cash flows that we expect to see over the next nine months. I would say that we just paid off the maturity in October this last Friday, so that does reduce that overall position cash and debt by $500 million equally, but we feel very comfortable with where we are

sitting from just the cash available plus the cash generated and to the extent we need to borrow against any of the items i listed we have available liquidity there as well got it um so understood on that front would you considering issue uh would you consider issuing in the high yield market again or are you uh comfortable with those resources

We certainly evaluate that, and if you look over the last couple of years, we've tried to be opportunistic when possible. So right now we're very comfortable with our current position, but I'm certainly not going to rule anything out. If the markets are attractive, we may take advantage of that.

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, I would now like to turn it back over to Jen Arias for closing remarks.

Thank you, Victor, and thank you, everybody, for joining us this morning. This now concludes the call. Please contact me if you have any follow-up questions.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.