Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Newtek Business Services Corporation Q2 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference call, Mr. Barry Sloane, President and CEO. You may begin, sir.

Thank you, operator, and we appreciate everybody attending our second quarter 2016 financial results conference call. The call is hosted by myself, Barry Sloane, President and CEO of Newtek Business Services Corp., NASDAQ, stock symbol NEWT; as well as Jenny Eddelson, our EVP and Chief Accounting Officer. Jenny, I’d like you to read the forward-looking statement comment.

Sure. This presentation contains certain forward-looking statements. Words such as plan, believes, expects, plans, anticipates, forecast and future or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among other things intensified competition, operating problems and their impact on revenues and profit margin, anticipated future business strategies and financial performance, anticipated future number of customers, business prospects, legislative developments and similar matters. Risk factors, cautionary statements and other conditions, which could cause Newtek’s actual results to differ from management’s current expectations, are contained in Newtek’s filings with the SEC and available through www.sec.gov.

Thank you, Jenny. I would like to turn everyone’s attention to the PowerPoint that we have hung on our website, newtekone.com, go to the Investor Relations section and PowerPoint is there present and will also be archived along with the audio presentation of the call. I would like to turn everyone’s attention to page 2 of the presentation talking about Newtek’s differentiated BDC model, but also like to thank everyone attending the call today. We’ve had a very nice jump in our stock price with a preview of how our business has been doing over the last week or so. I also would like to remind investors that if you look at reports from some analysts that have followed us, the company has returned 25% to shareholders over the last three years, 25% over the last year. And from a performance perspective, the company anticipate subject to Board’s final approval, the payment of five cash dividend this year, which would include the payment received in January from the fourth quarter of last year. Last year, we benefited shareholders by doing a special dividend in the fourth quarter of 2015, the fourth quarter dividend effectively earned from the fourth quarter of 2015 was paid in January of this year. So investors that owned the stock as of January 1, based upon forecasts and the Board declaring dividends, should earn a forecasted $1.53 plus the $0.40 to equal 1.93. Now, let’s go forward. Why we think our business model is better? Importantly, we are internally managed BDCs. We say we don’t pay a 4% external management fee to an external advisor. Typical deal out there is 2 and 20. There’s a lot of fees that are going out the window that are not going into calculating the dividend yield. So in our…

$175, yes.

Right. So, I think or you smart investors can do the math. Obviously, BankUnited wanted the big portfolio, if it had a 10% premium over the face. So at the time it was not originating arguably they did not have anywhere near the business model that we have in terms of being able to produce value. So, I think these are two very good, comps for what we do. Page 26 drilling down to the portfolio of companies. Good quarter for the payments business. Adjusted EBITDA up 24%. When you look at our mark for NAV valuing about 5.8 times 2016, adjusted EBITDA look at the public, comps or high double-digits. Newtek technology solutions still unfortunately struggling. We believe very much in the management team and the vision. We believe we’ll be able to turn this as management is deploying a lot more resources into manage tech. We think this business has a tremendous opportunity for us and our shareholders. As every survey out there whether it’s Gartner or Forester is telling us that there’s going to be a significant large spend for independent business owners, particularly with security issues and technology, we’ll get this right. Slide number 30 just gives a general breakdown, this is not meant to value us on EBITDA across the whole business, but truly doesn’t make sense for anything relating to lending, but it just gives the marketplace a general understanding that close to 40% our cash flow and dividends comes from the recurring business service side of our business, which is tax at a beneficial rate to shareholders as qualified to the Fx [ph] once at the portfolio level. Slide #31, as we have mentioned in the previous quarter, Newtek Business Services Corp., Your Business Solutions Company, website newtekone.com, you can see there, we’re…

Thank you, Barry. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today’s call. I’d like to start with some financial highlights from our second quarter 2016 consolidated statement of operations on Slide 37. In total, we had investment income of $7.2 million, a 28.6% increase over $5.6 million in Q2 2015. The majority of this increase was from the growth and dividend income period-over-period. We had a $706,000, or 39.5% increase in dividend income for the second quarter of 2016 versus the same quarter last year. Specifically, we earned dividends from Premier Payments of 450,000, $1.5 million from Universal Processing Services, 330,000 from Newtek Technology Solutions, and 200,000 from small business lending. Overall, our dividend income from our controlled investments was $2.5 million for the three months ended June 30, 2016 versus $1.8 million for the same period last year. During the quarter ended June 30, 2016, we’ve recognized that $1.5 million loss on lease related to the recognition of the remaining liability associated with the West Hempstead office space that we vacated to move to Lake Success, which was a significant contributor to the total expense increase of $3.4 million period-over-period. We also incurred approximately $755,000 in interest expense related to the notes due 2021 and 2022 for the 2016 period versus zero in the prior period. Other G&A increased approximately 39.7% quarter-over-quarter and was due to an increase in referral fees and loan processing costs of approximately $402,000, which was a result of our increase in loan funding quarter-over-quarter. We also had some additional expenses that occurred specifically in the first-half of the year related to the 2015 audit, stock, and valuation work as well as an IRS audit determination, which accounted for approximately $400,000 in additional G&A that will not repeat in the second-half of the year.…

Thank you, Jenny, and we appreciate everybody attending today. We will roll into Q&A just a couple of quick comments as we saw some analysts notes, I want to reiterate. There’s some general comments on income, I’m going to repeat this didn’t hurt [ph]. We have the majority of our income in the third and fourth quarters of this year. And that’s a story we’re sticking to it. On the SG&A, as Jenny pointed out, there were some people looked at a large jump in SG&A, while we happen to have a lot of one-time expenses that come in, in the second quarter. A lot of them are relating to public company expenses or ordering thing, et cetera, we don’t expect to have that type of growth. We believe our margins and the majority of our cash flows are stable. Margin, we’re growing. So part of the SG&A is referral fees paid to third parties, but that’s variable, and can I know historically it’s been at about 75%, what that number was for the second quarter?

I believe it was around 75% again.

Okay, so no change there. It’s just that – you do more loans. They pay more fees. That chose in the SG&A, and I guess, when everyone sees the case in the queues, they’ll be able to see that no alarm for raising expenses. I will tell you Jenny and I and the executive committee have probably made some changes in compensation that probably reduced our payroll by about $1 million over the last quarter. That’s just a function of looking at team members at all levels, particularly senior executives that are not performing up to standards from an accountability standpoint and making changes. That’s not to say that we won’t hire those people back, but to be frank with you, most of these people we don’t miss. As part of being in a large organization, when I worked with Smith Barney, I remember, understanding a while via regular routine of downsizing and heading back. It’s not really hard to get rid of the time top to bottom 10% of your workforce and then adding back and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. With that said, I’d like to turn this call over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Leslie Vandegrift with Raymond James.

Good morning. I’ve just got quick modeling question to start out, sort of, you went through the other G&A increases this quarter, and I’m afraid I missed the first and the last one, the increase in referral fees and loan processing costs did you say $400,000 this quarter?

Yes, that’s correct.

Okay. And then on the board fees, was that 200 or…?

42 – it was 42,000 for the quarter.

42, okay, got it. All right. And then on the dividend income from the quarter, you had $2.5 million this quarter that was $1.8 million last year, and will that closer to the $2.3 last quarter? Is this the same portfolio companies that are now paying regular dividends that we can look to at a different mix each time and kind of how many new players in there, whether that was paying dividend income?

Yes, Leslie, I’m going to ask this question. Yes, on everything what you said. Look, it’s a little bit of the fact that in our banc-serv in there, the ITAS portfolio, we’re doing well in payments. So and mind you, we closed the quarter out with cash. So, this is a living, breathing model and it’s difficult to follow, I’m not arguing and it’s not. But unlike a portfolio of debt securities would leverage, we just have to figure out coupon clipping. This is going a little bit back and forth. So I’m not quite precise, but we expect to get an increasing amount of dividends from our portfolio companies. Here is the important aspect. We believe our return on equity in the 7(a) business is risk adjusted 25% to 30%. We believe when we’re acquiring businesses in the business service space at 4.6 times EBITDA, look, I’m not saying, we’re always going to be a fixed maybe you’re either at 8, but look at 6. You’re getting close to a 20% pre-tax return without any leverage, paid a tax there, we’ll leverage on Europe in the 20s. So I’d say would you rather invest in a company that’s managing these business, knows the businesses for 10 years, and in general these types of returns would leverage with the ability to grow and move towards market multiples of bigger companies with bigger size than investing mezz capital or high risk loans to be able to get the 10% or 11% or 12% coupon with leverage. That’s really what the model is and I appreciate your question. I know it was a little bit on a tangent, but we feel very about our guidance. We tend to do what we stay we’re going to do, and we would love everyone to sort of stick to what we’re telling them and we’ll be in good shape.

Okay, all right. And then kind of a final question here on, you went through your leverage and 76% this quarter that well under the cap at one-time there. But kind of going forward what kind of target leverage can we see, obviously, you sell off the unguaranteed or the guaranteed piece, and so that reduces that a bit each quarter, but with the increase in originations, what can we look to –it’s kind of a target or maximum you’d be willing to go to what kind of each new loan as you have to meet the regulatory test each time you do that?

You just said – you just finished strong, we’re going to meet the regulatory test.

Okay. I mean, is there a [Multiple Speaker] max you’re willing to go to or?

Yes, the regulatory max. So I know that might make people nervous out there, but it shouldn’t that’s how we manage our business. And I don’t have any SBIC debt. And I don’t have a lot of leverage on my business services businesses, which have a gross value of, I think, a $100 million. I got $20 million of debt on it, and I’m trying to get you guys to look at us differently, I think it’s really important. I need you to look at us differently. We’re now like the other guys, because if you count the other guy’s BDC SBIC debt, they’re over levered. So here is my job. My job is to make sure I comply with the BDC reg. And my job is to manage the equity markets, and investor markets and to grow this business, because if I can get this business vigor and consistently pay a double-digit dividend, we’re going to be just like the other guys. So I’m trying to avoid getting put into the box.

Okay. All right. Well thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Leslie.

Our next question comes from Mickey Schleien with Ladenburg.

Yes, good morning, Barry and Jenny, a couple of questions. Just speaking from personal experience, I’ve noticed the implementation of the chip card processing seems to be really hit and miss depending on the vendor, and certainly the wait time for payment processing seems to be longer than when we used to swipe. So I’m just curious what kind of obstacles or opportunities that’s providing you in your processing business?

Mick, I appreciate the question. I think when you look at EMV, Euro Master Visa and chip cards, I hate to say this, but market confusion is an opportunity. By the way and also can – and hurt you if you’re not communicating with your clients as to sort of what the standard there is. So we do have clients that frankly there is point-of-sale systems. So they have investments in. And there’s stock, because they can’t get any of the compliant solution and/or as you’re familiar with when you go into some of your locations and you put your chip card into a terminal, some of the terminals having an ordinate amount of time to clear the transaction. There’s also been some recent studies that say, it’s not that difficult to steal the data off a chip. So with that said, this is where the entities that are more nimble really paying attention to their customers, doing an outreach. But markets don’t have all the solutions for EMV. The worst thing you can do with a client is not to talk to them and be silent. So our goal is for our customer service people and our outstanding unit to inform customers without there what’s important. We also do have an advantage that if we have a client that had an antiquated terminal, antiquated POS system, and their good credit, we can also provide them funding to enable them to protect themselves and to grow their business in a difficult world or environment. So that’s how we sort of holistically look at the relationship with customer. This is an opportunity and the Payments business is going to change and it’s going to churn and it’s going to be different.

Okay. Thank you for that, Barry, it’s useful. Couple of modeling questions, I don’t recall if you mentioned in the prepared remarks, did you fund any 504 loans in the quarter?

Did not.

Did not. And are there any synergies available that you can talk about in the – from the banc-serv acquisition?

Yes, I appreciate that, Mick. Yes, I think one of the main synergies is the banc-serv could, number one, speak to their smaller banks that currently see a loan opportunity and just say well, I can’t do more than $1 million loans, I’m not going to do it. So banc-serve will now be referring those opportunities, but they have to get out and market this, not just to the bank, but then to the bank staff and train people takes a while. Although, I will report we already funded some loans from banc-serv, that’s synergy number one. Synergy number two is, they had relationships – I’m sure many of those relationship are looking for an outlay for their payments of business on agency basis, because they’re all smaller. They can have their own payment processing in-house. They can’t do their own payroll in-house for their clients. They all have an insurance agency, because these are $100 million institutions, maybe $2 billion. But for a banking institution today, the regulators are really getting to focus on fewer things, and there’s capital allocation issue. So that’s the second area where there’s really good synergies.

I appreciate that, Barry. And my last question is, GLS reported that SBA 7(a) prices were down about a percent during the quarter. I’m just curious what your thoughts are on 7(a) pricing in the second-half of the year?

Well, as you can see ours were steady. So now, I think there are certain issuers that have prices that are down. We have not found that. The function – pricing is a function of expectations of voluntary and involuntary prepayments. Voluntary, obviously, is going to – actually I’m going to pay loan off in voluntary in the fall. It’s somewhat of a function of the interest rate environment, which I think is extremely favorable to prices. And I don’t – we don’t and there is one other thing, Mickey, with respect to our prices. The mix of 10-year loans versus 25-year loans, which I don’t have that data at the moment. But I don’t think there has been a tremendous change one way or another, but we do keep an eye on that. So, realistically speaking, if we’re doing our 10-year loan pricing is typically 2 to 4 points less than our longer-term price.

Barry can you – would you be willing to share your assumptions in loan for 7(a) loan pricing that support your budget for the year?

I’ll just say, I think it’s consistent with our view that we do not see any major changes in the interest rate environment, that mostly see maybe a quarter-point rate hike from the bad. We see tremendous amounts of liquidity. We see with the market that’s got a GDP of 1% or 2%. There is an insatiable appetite for structured product was that the rated securities or a government guaranteed. So I think the best thing that we could comment on is stability, but also Mickey, you could look at our dividend guidance and you could probably back into that number.

Yes, I appreciate that. Those are all my questions for today. Thanks for taking them and look forward to talking to you soon.

Thank you, Mickey. I appreciate the questions.

Our next question comes from Arren Cyganovich with D.A. Davidson.

Hi, thanks. Just in terms of the ramp in the second-half, clearly you can see from SBA fundings that you’ve done just first-half relative to your guidance, you’d have a nice pick up there. And you mentioned the Payments business is obviously more purchase volume in the second-half. Is there any other aspects of your business that tend to boost your earnings in the second-half of the year beyond those main things?

Yes, I think, I’d be a little bit too aggressive to stay in third or fourth quarter. But I think the move to the Lake Success office, that’s got four businesses and one unit, recent hires that we’ve made, capital that we’ve raised. We are significantly better and more efficient than we were a year ago. The technology solutions, recent addition of our Chief Information Officer, Nilesh Joshi building out more models with our debt team in Phoenix. So I mean, I think that, as we grow and get bigger, we’re just in a better spot. We have more resources. We able to get more attractive capital. It’s expensive to be a $200 million public company. I mean, I’ve got $500 million company, so big expensive to be $500 million company, being a $200 million. But we’re raising technology and that’s the key to being a survivor in the economy today. If you’re not investing in technology, which enables you to acquire credits more cost-effectively process, business opportunities more cost-effectively, you will not be in these business, there is no way.

Thanks. And looking at your loan pipeline, just to help me understand the different buckets approved pending closing loans and upgrading prequalified. What’s the ratio of close for this different buckets? Loans and underwriting the – typically I think bulk of those actually g into closing, or is it more of a kind of a smaller proportion?

I think the best way to look at it at the moment would be, we’re probably closing between 2.5% to 5% of gross referrals. When you get down to prequaled and underwriting, you gets a little sticky, because it can be nasty. But I can give you a wide range if that’s helpful. I think in prequaled, you’re looking at between 50% and 65%. Now when a loan is an underwriting, that’s – you got stuff to take it out, it just rolls that into future quarters, because targets and appraisal, there’s not a certain amount of information, so it’s very hard to figure really to close it down. I would say the best way to the outside world to manage that would be to really look at gross referrals to try to do forecasting, as well as I know you guys don’t like to do this, closer to the management team’s guidance as what they think we’re going to quote. I know, we’ve actually been pretty good at it. So I think that’s a best way to look at it right now. I would say the underwriting component, in particular, can be volatile, and although, it’s been close as bucket, but let me just say this. Here is the easy one, approved pending closing, 90% to 95%.

Okay. And then just, I guess, a little bit more details on the banc-serv acquisition. If you could tell me a little bit more about what they do? How they can fit into your lending business and what it actually takes to drive that incremental originations that you think they can provide for you?

Sure. Banc-serve in the industry is known as LSP lending service provider. And their service loans for third-party servicing portfolio is about $550 million, they assemble and underwrite. So for a smaller financial institution or non-bank lender that can afford the multimillion dollar investment in SBA loan assembling, SBA loan underwriting, SBA loan servicing to comply with 1,600 page policy and procedure manual. So they want to put loans on their books in their own, at least, in their own license. They subcontract out that to an SBA like banc-serv, that provides that service. Banc-serv has been in the business, I think, over 11 years. It’s really good at it. They’re one of the market leaders. So when they help the smaller banks do, dissemble, underwrite and service, important the credit decision resides at the bank. So they make no credit decision, credit decision is made at the bank. So I think that that’s kind of what banc-serv does, and they levered their staff. They generate cash flow. And for us they’re really good conduit into these entities that wanted to do other things what banc-serv does. And that’s banc-serv is – staying is banc-serv, you get their name on their building. They’re powered by Newtek. They do go over once a day, we don’t, but we think it’s a great acquisition. We picked up a great executive in [indiscernible] that’s very dynamic, and we look forward to working with banc-service portfolio company and its shareholder.

Okay. So – but you won’t be combining any kind of servicing aspects of the two business?

No.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Lisa Springer with Singular Research.

Good morning, Barry, and congratulations on a good quarter.

Thank you, Lisa.

I wanted to ask you about the two acquisitions in the Technology Solutions space. Could you give us a little bit more color on those, and if you’re seeing there maybe other acquisition within that space to get the business to where you wanted to be?

Lisa, I appreciate it. I mean, we were able to do ITAS, Deer Valley, and like one-times revenue, it was a lift of service and software right in their data center, it was pure cash flow. We’d love to do those. There’s tiny, obviously, it’s got a lot of money, but it works. In banc-serv, we bought it at a low cash flow multiple. We see growth opportunities within their core business, but realistically, let’s say, and given your banc-serv is able to refer $30 million or $50 million of loans to us that on a gross margin basis of worth 9 or 10 points that’s $3 million or $5 million. If I get the fact that we now have introductions at the 300 other entities, that can introduce payments, technology, insurance, payroll to us. Those are the kinds of things that we think are good things for banc-serv customers and for our shareholders, and we’ll pay referral fees back to banc-serv.

Okay.

So looking ahead, we’re always looking for new acquisition. We always take a look at cost of capital and where we’re going. We’ve got nothing that’s really warm or hot on the fire.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Our next question comes from David Scharf with JMP Securities.

Hi, good morning, Barry. Most questions have been exhausted, but just wanted to check in. First, I may have missed it, can you just count what would need to be sort of one-time versus next year in Q2?

At time was in SG&A? Yes, I’ll let Jenny answer that.

Yes, we had some one-time expenses related to our SEC audit or SOX audit valuation work. And we also had a IRS determination that occurred in the first-half of the year, totaling approximately 400,000 to $450,000. So those expenses that are sort of one-time should not reoccur in the second-half of the year.

Okay, about 450? Got it. Okay and then on the compensation side, the comment about reducing, but there was a $1 million run rate that was effectively produced during Q2?

Yes.

Okay. And as we net that out against some of the management additions, I mean, just trying to get a sense for how we ought to be thinking about sort of a net change going forward?

25.

Mainly gross margin?

Yes.

Okay.

Look, I think we’re very expense conscious here, I can assure you that.

Question just fine tuning that’s all just to understand. Thanks.

Yes, I appreciate it. Yes.

Got it Barry, on the merchant side any, obviously, a lot of acquirers that and as you mentioned been battling some of the EMV conversions. Is the issues around just some of the point of sale terminal conversion issues and so forth. Has there been among the small merchant face any sense of delayed purchasing more on the sidelines, or are we kind of over that EMV front?

Yes, that’s a great question. I’ve been very surprised even with the smaller merchants are just – I don’t know where the really smaller ones, you’re talking like 8,000 a month or maybe 20,000 a month, they’re not involved. I mean, they just, they’re kind of zero in the headlines. And I’ve also, I don’t know if you found some other another participants, we’ve less fortunate or industry. We have not seen and probably [indiscernible] my mouth shut, but let me just make this comment, it hasn’t really been an issue on either side.

Got it.

Yes and I’m surprised at it.

Okay. And for those types of merchants, I mean, is integrated payments even they require better demand in the market pretty much well situated with, I want to say, plain vanilla merchant processing, but is there any…

I mean, I think the ultimate trend is got to be – everything has got to be totally encrypted. But we’re not there yet. There’s no real universal solution out there that anyone is pushing and we think it’s just been. It’s just really been a messy rollout, and I think – I don’t think it’s been, I mean, OE you wouldn’t see and these are MasterCard stock, but it just really hasn’t been done very well and the big processors, it really haven’t fully captured, what needs to be done, and the customers are kind of shaking their head and the customers demand, and the customers were not having.

No, clearly, that’s all, perfect. Thank you.

Thanks David.

Our next question comes from Scott [indiscernible] with Merrill Lynch.

Hi, Barry, congrats on a great quarter.

Thank you, Scott.

Could you give us a little bit more color on the banc-serv, obviously they’re bringing over EBITDA and have you guys sort of run a one plus one is five to give us any kind of what they’re really going to be able to bring in terms of leverage cross-selling opportunities et cetera?

Well, I’ve just try to keep it simple and we put out for example conservatively $30 million of originations in 2017. That – if that’s totally incremental that would be worth about $3 million.

Okay.

That has nothing throughput there, EBITDA that we bought the business on.

Right, okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it.

Here I’m not showing any further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the call back over to your host.

All right, I really appreciate – the quarter appreciate the analyst work and following us, the questions were great today. I also appreciate obviously the safety investments, community has put in Newtex, particularly recently obviously January and February, we are top for the market. We also had few entities moving the portfolio around that has been in the stock for over 10 years. We understand that and we appreciate having people back in forth. But I think based upon some of the calls that I get to change will get, investors are starting to understand the business, the opportunity, we’re definitely not in a box like everybody else. So we really appreciate, people paying attention, doing the work, Jenny and I also available to answer questions. Once again thank you very much for your face in the company and look forward to reporting in the third quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.