Mike Hug
Analyst · Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Yes. So with, let’s say, roughly $800 million in securitization, right, a 5% interest increase represents about $4 million, right? So really, when we think about the interest rates that we’re currently getting charged in the ABS markets, they are the highest they have been really since back in 2009. So when we think about where they’ll go, we would like to think that in the future, they start to trend back down. Obviously, we were in a cycle for the last few years where the rates were incredibly low. As Michael mentioned, we’re doing what we can to grow the portfolio in the higher FICO bands to offset the higher expense that we’re seeing. But the benefit we get from the ABS transaction, at least the last transaction, was a $43 million increasing our cash. So moving it from the conduit to the ABS transactions generates $43 million. And with our share price, where it was at, that’s one of the big reasons we were able to accelerate share repurchases. So we would like to think that they will move back down. One unusual trend we’ve seen this year is as rates have gone up, spreads had widened as well, and usually it goes the other way as rates go up, spreads tighten a little bit. So can’t predict the future, but they are, like I said, at really high levels right now when you look back historically and would like to think that they start to trend back down. The other thing on the advance rate, even though our advance rate is coming in a little bit lower, in the 12 months following the date of the transaction, we recover about 40% of the cash that didn’t get captured in the bigger advance rate. So it is a small timing issue. It’s not like the cash disappear spreader but we recover almost half of it in the first 12 months. So that cash will be coming back to us very quickly throughout 2023, which is why we’re confident in our free cash flow generation next year. And one of the reasons we talked about the timing, the timing that we’ve talked about from the cash flow standpoint is the lower advance rate pushes cash collections to next year. And then secondly, as of the end of the third quarter, we have over $100 million more in receivables this year than we did at the end of last year, that won’t get in an ABS transaction until next year. So when you look at it on a cumulative basis, it kind of all works out. But in the short-term, when you mentioned on a calendar year, the buildup in the receivables portfolio is taking our cash conversion down this year, but like I say, it gives us confidence in our cash conversion next year.