PRA Group, Inc.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the PRA group conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Lauren Parton, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for PRA Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Kevin Stevenson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Pete Graham, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will make forward-looking statements during the call, which are based on management's current beliefs projections, assumptions, and expectations. We assume no obligation to revise or update these statements. We caution listeners that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Please refer to the earnings press release and our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these factors. The earnings release, the slide presentation that we will use during today's call, and our SEC filings can all be found on the investor section of our website at www.pragroup.com. Additionally, a replay of this call will be available shortly after its conclusion, and the replay dial-in information is included in the press release. All comparisons mentioned today will be between Q2 2022 and Q2 2021, unless otherwise noted. And our America's results include Australia. During our call, we will discuss adjusted EBITDA and debt to adjusted EBITDA for the 12 months ended June 30th, 2022 and December 31st, 2021. Please refer to today's earnings release and the appendix of the slide presentation used during this call for reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable US GAAP financial measures. Before we begin, I would like to take a minute to welcome Najeeb Mahdaman as our new Vice President of Investor Relations. As we announced via press release last month, he will report to me and lead our Investor Relations program. Najeeb has a wealth of IR experience and will play a critical role in expanding our investment story to new audiences while deepening our current investor and analyst relationships. We are very excited to have him join our team and meet you all. And with that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Kevin Stevenson, our president and chief executive officer.

Okay. Well, thank you, Lauren. And thank you everyone for joining us this evening. I want to start off things, uh, talking just briefly about what we're doing in the community. In June, we had the official grand opening of our new net zero carbon halo facility in Kilmarnock, Scotland. Many of our senior leadership team members from both the U.S. and Europe attended in what was truly a proud day for PRA. Members of Scotland's Parliament and community leaders were attended for the celebration, along with several banking institutions and consumer assistance charities. It was a great atmosphere, really reinforcing our values of working together and making a positive impact. To provide some more color on the Halo building, it's the new center of our U.K. business. which is our second largest market globally. This not only demonstrates our commitment to Chemarnik, where we are one of the largest employers, but also our commitment to the environment and ESG, all the while providing our employees a facility which is cutting edge, both digitally and environmentally, and one in which they can be excited to come to work each day. Along with the grand opening of HALO, we are continuing our long-standing tradition of charitable giving Since our founding in 1996, we made it a priority to invest in communities where we work and live. 2021 was a record year for us in terms of charitable giving, and we are continuing to make these impactful contributions in 2022 despite all that's going on in the world these days. Shifting gears now to Q2. We had another solid quarter led by the performance of our European operations. Please keep in mind, though, that similar last quarter, prior year comparisons will be skewed given the global excess consumer liquidity that our industry, as well as many other industries, experienced during 2021. This excess liquidity contributed to record collections for us in 2021. In Q2 of this year, total cash collections were $444 million globally, an 18% decrease year over year. However, it's important to be aware that we beat our expectations, which Pete will cover in more detail later.