As the company acknowledged an inquiry from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Credit Acceptance leadership discussed its sales force during a good portion of its latest conference call with investment analysts.

Credit Acceptance shared as a part of its second-quarter finance report that the company expanded its sales team by “roughly” 20 percent year-over-year in an effort to broaden its active dealer network, which stood at 7,635 as of June 30. On the same date a year earlier, the figure stood at 7,181.

The company classifies active dealers as ones who have received funding for at least one contract during the quarter.

Chief executive officer Brett Roberts described the volume of active dealers joining the company’s network as “OK,” acknowledging the 910 stores to sign up during the second quarter marked a 13.9-percent improvement versus the same quarter a year ago.

“But sequentially we had a decline in active dealers,” Roberts said. “So I guess the goal, obviously, is to sign up more dealers than we’re losing. We didn’t do that in Q2, but we hope to do that in the future.”

The company also noted its dealer attrition rate deteriorated slightly in Q2, rising to 21.5 percent. A year earlier, the rate stood at 17.5 percent.

Credit Acceptance defines attrition according to the following formula: Decrease in consumer loan unit volume from dealers who have received funding for at least one dealer loan or purchased loan during the comparable period of the prior year but did not receive funding for any dealer loans or purchased loans during the current period divided by prior year comparable period consumer loan unit volume.

Roberts pointed out that Credit Acceptance’s current sales team is double the size of what it had been a few years ago, and the company is expecting to “increase it a little bit more.”

Roberts told conference call participants, “I think if you look at the last time we increased the sales force, it took us about two years to roughly double the sales force, and really, almost three years before productivity got to where it was before we started the expansion. So it was overall about a five-year process to double the sales force.

“We’re not trying to double it this time, and hopefully, we’ve learned a little bit from the first time. But it’s still more of a long-term driver than a short-term driver,” he continued.

With a larger team comes more expenses. Credit Acceptance reported for Q2 that its 11.9 percent or $6.5 million increase in operating expenses stemmed from an increase in salaries and wages expense of $2.6 million, or 8.6 percent. This was primarily related to our servicing function as a result of an increase in the number of team members along with an increase in sales and marketing expense of $2.5 million, or 21.0 percent, due to an increase in the size of its sales force.

Roberts explained that having a robust sales force can help Credit Acceptance navigate the challenges of a competitive auto-finance landscape.

“Our outlook is that we're planning on the current difficult environment lasting for the foreseeable future,” Roberts said. “And if that turns out to be too pessimistic, then that’s great. But that’s what we’re planning for. And so I guess we look at the numbers. We feel like our chances of growing are a lot better if we have a little bit larger sales force, so that's what we're working toward.

“We had two quarters of negative unit volume change. And this quarter was up, but it was only up 1 percent,” he continued. “I don’t think that the additions to the sales force really added much to that at this point. They’re very new. They’re still getting up to speed. And I think, again, the increase in the sales force is something that will pay off next year or the year after. Probably not this year.”

Overall performance

As Roberts mentioned, Credit Acceptance generated a 1-percent year-over-year lift in origination volume during the second quarter. The amount financed grew by a larger amount, 7.1 percent year-over-year.

“Dollar volume grew faster than unit volume during the second quarter of 2017 due to an increase in the average advance paid per unit,” the company said. “This increase was the result of an increase in the average size of the consumer loans assigned primarily due to an increase in the average initial loan term and an increase in purchased loans as a percentage of total unit volume, partially offset by a decrease in the average advance rate due to a decrease in the average initial forecast of the consumer loans assigned.

“While we were able to grow unit volume modestly during the most recent quarter after two quarters of declines, our overall progress in growing unit volumes has slowed considerably over the last six quarters,” Credit Acceptance officials continued. “This trend reflects the difficulty of growing the number of active dealers fast enough to offset the impact of the competitive environment on attrition and per dealer volumes.

“In addition, in response to the decline in forecasted collection rates experienced in 2016, we adjusted our initial collection forecasts downward during 2016. While the adjustments have been modest, we believe these adjustments have had an adverse impact on unit volumes,” the company went on to say.

All told, Credit Acceptance reported that its Q2 consolidated net income came in at $99.1 million, or $5.09 per diluted share, up from $84.9 million, or $4.17 per diluted share, for the same period in 2016.

After seeing the top-line metrics, the investment community pushed Roberts for some clarity on how Credit Acceptance portfolio vintages are performing in an effort to spot future trends.

I think that the clearest number to start with if you're trying to understand loan performance is the net cash flow change for the quarter that’s disclosed,” said Roberts, who noted that the company’s Q2 total net cash flow change was $8.8 million. “It’s a positive number, but it’s obviously a very small one.

“The total undiscounted cash flows that we’re attempting to forecast are somewhere around $5.8 billion,” Roberts continued. “So when you have an $8.8 million move, that’s basically flat.”

After the analyst rephrased the question, Roberts added, “Again, I think the main takeaway is if you’re looking at $5.8 billion in cash flows we’re trying to forecast, if you look at the results for this quarter or really over the last six quarters or even longer than that, the cash flows have been remarkably stable. So I think that's a good thing, and that’s really the main takeaway

CFPB matters

Credit Acceptance stated its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company now is contending with an inquiry from the CFPB along with ongoing actions involving the Federal Trade Commission and Maryland’s attorney general.

“As of June 2017, we were informed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity is investigating whether the company may have violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B,” Credit Acceptance said in its SEC filing.

“We are cooperating with the inquiry and cannot predict the eventual scope, duration or outcome at this time. As a result, we are unable to estimate the reasonably possible loss or range of reasonably possible loss arising from this inquiry,” the company continued.

During the conference call, Wall Street observers asked Roberts to elaborate about what the CFPB inquiry is entailing.

“We don’t have a lot to add to what's in the (filing),” Roberts said. “The CFPB is fairly sensitive regarding disclosures of ongoing matters, so we try carefully to walk the line between our obligations to the SEC and to shareholders and the sensitivities of the CFPB. So I won’t try improve upon what we put in the (filing).”

The filing indicated that the inquiry from the FTC stems from Credit Acceptance allowing dealers to use GPS and starter interrupt devices while Maryland’s attorney general is looking into the company’s repossession and sale policies and procedures within the state.