goeasy Ltd.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the GoEC's third quarter 2023 financial results 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 will need to press TAR11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press TAR11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Farhan Ali Khan. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. My name is Farhan Ali Khan, the company's Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Development Officer, and thank you for joining us to discuss CoEasy Limited's results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. The news release, which was issued yesterday after the close of market, is available on Globe Newswire and on the GoEasy website. Today, Jason Mullins, GoEasy's president and chief executive officer, will review the results for the third quarter and provide an outlook for the business. Hal Curry, the company's chief financial officer, will also provide an overview of our capital and liquidity position. And Jason Appel, the company's chief risk officer, is also on the call. After the prepared remarks, we will then open the lines for questions from investors. Before we begin, I remind you that this conference call is open to all investors and is being webcast to the company's investor website and supplemented by a quarterly earnings presentation. For those dialing in directly by phone, the presentation can also be found directly on our investor site. All shareholders, analysts, and portfolio managers are welcome to ask questions over the phone after management has finished their prepared remarks. The operator will call for questions and will provide instructions at the appropriate time. Business media are welcome to listen to the call and to use management's comments and responses to questions and any coverage. However, we would ask that they do not quote callers on the said individual who has granted their consent. Today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements. I am not going to read the full statement. I will direct you to the caution regarding forward-looking statements, including the MD&A. I will now turn the call over to Jason Mullins.

Thanks, Farhan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. The third quarter was the strongest in the history of our company. We produced record originations, record loan growth, and reduced credit losses to generate record earnings and a very healthy return on equity. As we discussed over the last several quarters, a challenging macro environment puts immense pressure on smaller scale companies, driving more demand toward those with scale such as GoEasy. Similar to last quarter, the number of companies bidding directly against us within Google Paid Search was down nearly 40% year over year. Furthermore, we continue to see evidence that the banks and other prime lenders have tightened credit, resulting in high-quality borrowers turning to lenders like GoEasy when they are seeking credit. For example, in our automotive financing program, The portion of our originations in our top two risk tiers has increased from 50% to 80% over the last 24 months. As a lender, increased demand enables us to be more selective about where we allocate capital and which loans we underwrite. As such, the proportion of applications we funded during the quarter was less than 15%, down from 17% last year and 22% the year prior, due to our highly disciplined approach to managing credit in times of economic uncertainty. As a result, the credit quality of the loans we are writing continues to strengthen. The third quarter was the eighth consecutive quarter of an increase in the weighted average credit score of our loan originations. with this quarter being the single highest ever at 617. This is a very clear way to measure the combined impact of our proactive credit tightening, shifting product mix, and the higher credit score of the consumers who are using our products. We also continue to benefit from our highly diversified distribution and acquisition platform, with approximately 300 easy financial branches, 100 easy home lending kiosks, and over 9,100 merchants across our automotive and point-of-sale financing programs, we are highly accessible to the 8.5 million non-prime consumers that use our wide range of lending products. During the quarter, we also officially launched the first version of our new GoEasy Connect mobile app and web platform after several months of in-market testing. At the end of October, we had almost 66,000 app downloads across both Android and iOS devices with an 85% sign-up rate. Since launch, the mobile app has also generated over 6,500 applications per credit across our entire product suite. The combination of healthy demand, less competitive tension, and the performance of our strategic business initiatives produced another record level of applications per credit at 528,000, up 30% year-over-year. This also led to another consecutive quarter of record new customers at over 42,700, an increase of 16% over last year. Originations in the quarter were a record 722 million, up 13% over the third quarter of 2022. Organic loan growth was a record 230 million at the high end of our quarterly forecast. At quarter end, our loan portfolio finished at 3.43 billion, up 33% from the prior year. As we continue to optimize pricing amidst a higher-cost borrowing environment, the average interest rate we charge our borrowers has now stabilized. During the quarter, the overall weighted average interest rate charged to our customers was flat at 30.1%, but still down from 31% at the end of the third quarter last year. Combined with ancillary revenue sources, the total portfolio yield finished within our forecasted range at 35.3%. Total revenue in the quarter was a record $322 million, up 23% over the same period in 2022. As expected, our disciplined approach to risk management and favorable product mix shift have continued to produce stable credit performance despite the challenging macroeconomic backdrop. During the quarter, the annualized net charge-off rate decreased to 8.8%, down 50 basis points from 9.3% in the second quarter of last year. Our loan loss provision rate also reduced to 7.37% compared to 7.42% in the previous quarter. I will also remind everyone that both our long-term net charge-off rate guidance and our existing loan loss provision are based on a base assumption of a mild to moderate recession, which incorporates unemployment rising close to 7% in 2024. As such, we are confident we can continue to sustain stable credit performance even in a more stressed environment. With a keen focus on managing expenses and the corresponding economies of scale, the business is also benefiting from significant operating leverage. During the quarter, our efficiency ratio, specifically operating expenses as a percentage of revenue, reduced to 28.6%, an improvement of 400 basis points from 32.6% in the third quarter of last year. After adjusting for unusual items and non-recurring expenses, we reported record adjusted operating income of $130 million, an increase of 37% compared to $95 million in the third quarter of 2022. Adjusted operating margin for the third quarter was a record 40.4%, up from 36.2% in the same period in 2022. Adjusted net income was a record $65.2 million, up 34% from $48.6 million in the third quarter of 2022, while adjusted diluted earnings per share was a record $3.81, up 29% from $2.95 in the third quarter of 2022. Adjusted return on equity was 26.6% in the quarter, an increase of 170 basis points from 24.9% last year. With that, I'll now pass it over to Hal to discuss our balance sheet and capital position.