IRVINE, Calif. -

Consumer Portfolio Services chairman and chief executive officer Brad Bradley repeated the formula the company needs to reach a $2 billion portfolio: purchase $125 million worth of vehicle contracts each month.

Simple enough, right? Well, Bradley acknowledged the path to reach that level isn't easy, and CPS might not hit the target until 2015.

"In sort of taking a step back from where we sit today, I think in '07 we're having a real good year, and things fell apart. Then in '08, '09 and '10 is all about surviving and we did. And '11, '12 and '13 has been starting to grow again, we did some in '11, more in '12 and '13 was a good year. So, we've now put three good years behind us after getting through the recession," Bradley said during the company's quarterly conference call with investment analysts last week.

"We kind of think from a big picture that '14 and '15 could be very good years, at least from that big picture of the economy and so we now think at least we have two more years to continue what we have done in the last three," he continued. "We think the company certainly has the experience, infrastructure to do just that.

"The wildcard is what the competition is going to do," Bradley went on to say. "We are not overly worried about the competition. If competition gets too heated, that will create more opportunities. We've bought six different companies over the years, so one way or another we will pick up some people who grew too fast."

Personnel and human capital are the elements CPS intends to use to reach its targets. Bradly indicated its marketing team is up to about 100 staffers. The level could reach 140 if CPS increases its workforce to the point it did during the height of its last productive period.

"Our goal currently is to get to 140, which would be right about where we were probably the max last time around. There seems to be lots of sort of untapped areas geographically across the country, which is good for our growth and expansion plans," Bradley said.

The CPS boss didn't divulge the specific personnel numbers the company has in its originations department, but Bradley is also confident that the personnel is available to push the company toward that $2 billion portfolio objective.

"One of the things we started doing last year last year and continued to do this year is we staffed up ahead of time originations which allows us to get tremendous dealer attention and response as we can grow each year," Bradley said. "It worked up brilliantly last year. We will expect it to be very helpful this year.

"One of the things lots of friendly competitors do is they grow and then it's very hard to handle growth both in terms of originations and also then in terms of collections," he continued. "We obviously have our experience in this area and we have done a lot to really sort of excel in this niche."

Elsewhere in CPS operations, the company is expecting its collections department to become busier in 2014. According to its Q4 financial report, delinquencies greater than 30 days (including repossession inventory) stood at 6.87 percent of the company's total owned portfolio as of Dec. 31. That figure is up the same date a year earlier when it came in at 5.55 percent.

"We have seen a little bit of seasonal uptick versus September, which we would have expected and year-over-year increases that we have talked about as our larger vintages from 2012 and 2013 are seeing slightly higher credit losses are coming more into the portfolio and seasoning further," CPS senior vice president and chief investment officer Robert Riedl said.

As those loans continue to mature, Bradley emphasized, "we continue to work on improving the collections both the general performance, the attention of the customers, basically overall everything, and that looks like it should have starting to pay dividends."