World Acceptance Corporation Aktie

Good morning and welcome to World Acceptance Corporation's First Quarter Fiscal 2027 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

Before we begin, the corporation has requested make the following statement. The comments made during this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that represent the corporation's expectations and beliefs concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are about matters that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Statements other than those of historical fact as well as those identified by the words anticipate, estimate, intend, plan, expect, believe, may, will, and should or any variation of the foregoing and similar expressions are forward-looking statements.

Additional information regarding forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results or performance to differ from the expectations expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements are included in the paragraph discussing forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of the corporation's most recent Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 and subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC from time to time the corporation does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, John Calmes, Chief Financial and Chief Strategy Officer.

Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining our fiscal 2027 first quarter earnings call. Before turning to the numbers, I want to thank our team members across our company for the work they do every day serving our customers. The results we are reporting this quarter are a direct reflection of their execution and discipline. We are pleased with the first quarter results and more importantly believe we are well positioned for the remainder of fiscal 2027.

This quarter reflects steady progress against our core priorities. Growing the loan portfolio responsibly, improving credit quality, and maintaining a disciplined approach to expenses. We achieved adjusted earnings per share of $2.12 for the first quarter. Earnings benefited from a 4.8% increase in revenue, as well as a 13.4% decrease in provision expense. The revenue increase is due to continued year-over-year loan growth as well as a 91 base point increase in interest and insurance yields.

Importantly, our credit quality continued to improve as well. Our annualized net charge off rate decreased from 19.2% in the first quarter of last year to 18.2% in the current quarter. We also saw improvement in delinquency -- on both the front-end and back-end.

Most notably, front end delinquency decreased from 19.2% to 18.1%. These trends reinforce our confidence in the health of the portfolio and the strength of our underwriting. Our expenses outside of one-time costs related to the CEO transition, we saw modest increases in our G&A expense, and we expect to maintain this disciplined approach to expenses going forward.

At this time, Tobin Turner, our Chief Operating Officer, and I would like to open up to any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Kyle Joseph with Stephens.

Just wanted to get a sense for the kind of the timing in terms of the underwriting changes, when you guys tweaked them tighter and at what point, you know, you kind of undid those changes?

Great question. This is Tobin. We really tightened our portfolio, the whole credit box, really about six months ago. Kind of coinciding with the rise in gas prices. Thankfully, we've been pretty pleased with that's the way our portfolio has aged. Probably about a month ago, we started generally loosening a little bit, but I'd say we're still fairly conservative and with gas prices continuing to spike a little bit. I like where we are. We're more open than we were five months ago but we're still pretty conservative.

Got it. And then on the demand side, can you give us a sense for how things have trended? Call it year to date, you know, we had large tax refunds, but to your point, you know, a lot higher gas prices and just sort of any, you know, any changes in demand you've observed?

Demand has been, thankfully, pretty robust for us. The bookable apps we've seen have kind of decreased a little bit in conjunction with our tightening of the credit box. But overall, or systemically, we don't see a shrinking in demand. So we feel pretty comfortable with demand right now.

[Operator Instructions] This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Calmes for any closing remarks.

Thanks Drew, and thanks for joining our first corner earnings call. We appreciate your interest.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and welcome to World Acceptance Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, the corporation has requested that I make the following announcement.

The comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that represent the corporation's expectations and beliefs concerning future events. Such forward-looking statements are about matters that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Statements other than those of historical fact as well as those identified by the words anticipate, estimate, intend, plan, expect, believe, may, will and should or any variation of the foregoing and similar expressions are forward-looking statements. Additional information regarding forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results or performance to differ from the expectations expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements are included in the paragraph discussing forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of the corporation's most recent Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, and subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC from time to time.

The corporation does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Janet Matricciani, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2026 earnings call. I rejoined the company on April 13, and I'm pleased to be leading the team as we strengthen and grow our company. And I look forward to speaking with you in more detail in the quarters ahead. But for today, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Johnny Calmes, to walk through the quarter and the full year highlights. Thank you, Johnny.

Thanks, Janet. We are pleased with the results of fourth quarter and more importantly, we feel we are positioned very well for fiscal 2027. We achieved earnings per share of $7.70 for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, including the impact of one of our senior executives retiring, which had an after-tax impact of approximately $0.25 per share. Total revenue for the quarter increased 7.4%, driven by an increase in loans outstanding and yields. We also had a fantastic tax preparation season, where we saw returns prepared increase 13%.

Interest fee and insurance income increased 5.4%, and we expect similar increases in the coming quarters. After a buildup in field personnel in the third fiscal quarter to address service gaps, we reduced headcount in the field by 5% in the fourth quarter. This will reduce personnel expense in the coming quarters relative to the third and fourth quarters of fiscal '26. We expect personnel expense to be between $47 million to $49 million in the first 3 quarters and slightly higher than that in the fourth quarter. We increased our loans outstanding by 4.4%, while also decreasing our delinquency in both rate and dollars. This should lead to higher revenues and lower charge-offs in the coming quarters. We also intend to rely less on new customers in the coming year, which should have a positive impact on credit metrics. Further, we repurchased an additional 37.8 million of shares during the quarter. This is in addition to shares previously repurchased during the fiscal year, equates to 16.5% of our outstanding shares at the beginning of the year. At this time, we would like to open it up to any questions you may have.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question for today comes from Kyle Joseph with Stephens.

Welcome back, Janet. Just wanted to start on everything that was going on macroeconomically. It sounds like you guys obviously had good growth of your tax revs, but just kind of want to talk through the impacts of the bigger tax refunds on loan demand and credit and then how much of that was offset in March by the increase in gas prices?

Sure. So Kyle, we actually have Tobin Turner, our Chief Operating Officer, here with us on the call, and he can speak to some of the impacts that we're seeing from gas prices or not seeing.

Yes. We're definitely, thank you, Kyle. We're watching our most recent vintages very, very closely. So far, we seem fairly pleased with their performance. we've kind of been watching our credit box around the margin pretty tightly. So at the present, high gas prices are definitely on our radar, but we're not seeing a significant impact in our most recent vintages, at least yet.

And as you can see, our front-end delinquency and back-end delinquency looks really strong and improvement over March of last year. So yes, certainly something we're watching, but there's no clear indications that it's having an impact so far.

Got it. And then, yes, nice to see another quarter of loan growth, but just remind us any leverage limitations you have there? How much growth can you actually do, obviously, balancing repurchasing shares as well?

Sure. Yes, there's no leverage limitations. But in general, the goal is to kind of grow in that mid-single-digit range kind of where we were this year, maybe a little higher.

[Operator Instructions]Seeing no additional questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Matricciani for any closing remarks.

Yes. I'd just like to say thank you very much for your interest in our company, and we very much look forward to our path ahead.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and welcome to World Acceptance Corporation's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, the corporation has requested that I make the following announcement. The comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that represent the corporation's expectations and beliefs concerning future events.

Such forward-looking statements are about matters that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, statements other than those of historical fact, as well as those identified by words anticipate, estimate, intend, plan, expect, believe, may, will and should or any variation of the foregoing and similar expressions are forward-looking statements.

Additional information regarding forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results or performance to differ from the expectations expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements are included in the paragraph discussion. Forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of the corporation's most recent Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025 and subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC from time to time. The corporation does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chad Prashad, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fiscal 2026 Third Quarter Earnings Call. There are a few important aspects of the portfolio to cover in more detail. While we originated 16% more in new customer volume during the quarter, we actually ended the quarter with 25% more outstanding ledger in our active new customers than the same quarter of last year. And our new customers are again our riskiest customer segment. This 25% increase in the new customer outstanding portfolio required around an $8 million additional provision for this customer segment in the same quarter last year.

The third quarter had the highest new customers since the same quarter of calendar 2021. Already, early performance indicates that these continue to be good investments in line with expectations. Compared to the prior high volume mark of the third quarter of calendar 2021, the first pay defaults are already 19% lower, relatively speaking.

In addition, we continue to make credit box improvements on a regular basis. In some cases, those changes are due to credit performance in small credit and geographical pockets. But the majority of improvements in underwriting are to drive a faster return on the initial investment and increase long-term ROI with our most loyal customers. This is a long-term investment that will continue to improve both credit performance as well as customer retention, when combined, will continue to improve long-term yields.

As we noted, yields improved 84 basis points year-over-year, as income has also improved. We expect this trend to continue due to improved rates in a few states, continued discipline with credit limits and underwriting, improving customer retention as longer tenured customers are also lower risk for us and continued smart investments in our customer base and overall ledger.

Our customer base has grown substantially around 5.4% organically year-over-year. To put that in perspective, last year, we grew 2.2% year-over-year and declined in the 2 years prior to that. One of our largest growth years was in fiscal year 2022, where we experienced a 5.6% increase in our customer base organically.

As mentioned earlier, the first pay default rates on our new customers made during the third quarter of this year are already 19% lower, relatively speaking to new customers of that same year of fiscal 2022. Organic growth in ledger is 2.4% year-over-year compared to a decline of 2.4% last year.

Our average outstanding loan has declined around 2.5% in average balance year-over-year. That's due to the increased discipline around our underwriting and larger investments in new customers who are typically at lower balances. Again, this all combines to improve gross yields. Year-over-year earnings comparisons are complicated with the headwinds during this quarter of increased share-based comp expense, personnel expense as we have temporarily overstaffed to improve our branch team members, investments in new customers as well as our provision for loan losses. However, we remain committed to a long-term soundness and profitability of the portfolio and operations.

We're most excited about putting several years of shrinking the portfolio behind us and continuing to see these gross yields grow. The customer base continues to expand and customer retention and tenure continues to improve. As one of our largest investments, we continue to be focused on improving branch operations and personal management. This year, we've already repurchased nearly 600,000 shares reducing our outstanding shares by 11% in the first 9 months of the year.

We have over $60 million of remaining capacity for repurchases, which is approximately 9% of the outstanding shares as of yesterday's closing price, which will be a total of around 20% of outstanding shares this year.

As a mid-quarter update, we're very early in our tax filing season, and we've already seen substantial improvement year-over-year in both the volume of filings as well as the revenue. While the current ice storm has affected approximately 10 of our states so far this week by some portion of their branches being closed, we are optimistic and continue to be optimistic that we'll experience an increase in tax filing volume and revenue throughout this quarter.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank Clint Dyer for his incredible contribution to the company over the last 30 years and to celebrate his upcoming retirement. Clint has added tremendous value to our branch leadership over the decades and has produced many of our key leaders under his mentorship. We wish him the best in his upcoming adventures.

I'm also grateful to our branch leadership under Clint for their commitment to world embracing the new style that Tobin Turner has brought in and stepping in to lead branch operations during the transition. Tobin brings his deep knowledge of analytics and marketing as well as retail operations to his approach of the management structure. We are excited about the current portfolio in this trajectory, which again includes substantial customer base expansion, strong loan growth, improved loan approval rates while maintaining credit quality, stable and improving delinquency, lower cost of acquisitions and improving yields as well as declining share count. All of which ultimately returns value to our shareholders through strong earnings per share growth.

At this time, Johnny Calmes our Chief Financial and Strategy Officer, and I would like to open up to any questions you have.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today will come from Kyle Joseph with Stephens.

I totally get the dynamics of the portfolio growth and particularly related to new consumers. But just looking for an update on kind of the health of the underlying consumer aside from that. Obviously, there were concerns in the fall, particularly related to the auto segment, but just any trends you've kind of seen in the consumer since then? And then how you're thinking about the outlook in the tax refund season with all the headlines of it that the consumers expect to get larger tax refunds?

Yes. I would say from the overall consumer perspective, we haven't seen a degradation in collections or in credit quality. There has been, I would say, a slight increase in demand. There's also been a significant decrease in our cost of acquisition for our higher credit quality new customers, which may be related to that, may not -- not really super sure on that one. But we haven't seen a significant change in our consumer behavior, whether it's due to tariffs or other expenses.

On the tax filing side, we are seeing definitely an increased demand in taxes and tax filings. We are expecting to see larger returns of larger refunds this year. A lot of that is probably due to some of the tax law changes last year that would affect our customer base in particular. We have also changed marketing sort of last minute early in January, late December to really attract customers who are going to be in some of those segments, customers who are either paid but through tips.

And so there's a might be experiencing refunds this season or other sort of changes in the tax code from last year. But on the tax filing side, we do remain optimistic this will be a very strong tax year for us.

Got it. And then yes, just shifting to G&A, the growth there, I get the sense it is largely incentive comp and the majority of that was stock-based comp. I think a couple of calls ago, you gave us kind of a little bit of a schedule in terms of how long it would be elevated. Can you just walk us through if there's any sort of -- if it should be elevated in the coming quarters or how you would expect the personnel line item to trend coming first?

Yes. So you should start to see that incentive line come down starting with Q4. There was a share-based comp grant last December that has been fully expensed at this point. And there will be another sort of cliff in December of next year. And -- but also the sort of the field level incentives could sort of tighten a little bit as we move forward as well.

So I do expect to see some decent decreases in that incentive comp expense going forward.

[Operator Instructions] The next question will come from Guy Riegel with Ingalls & Snyder.

Question in the report -- earnings report, you had talked about an increase in head count in the field level offices, branch offices. And then -- and you spoke about deciding to have a reduction in the headcount going forward of 3% to 5%. Why the increase? And then why the decision to decrease?

Yes. Great question. So first, the decision to increase was building up a quality team in anticipation of some reduction in some underperforming team members and also some underperforming parts of the company.

So really, it's building up in advance of turnover. We've done it across, I would say, roughly 80% of the company and about 50% of that was done very quickly. There's still sort of a lagging period where in anticipation of turnover, some underperforming team members we're holding on to some of our unperforming team members a little longer than anticipated as we're building up the base there, if that makes sense.

So really, it's just building up in anticipation of that turnover. So we should expect to see the reduction pretty quickly within this quarter.

I see. And the underperformers was -- as it related to their ability not to collect or just any color on that?

Yes. It's related to a number of things. One of those is their ability not to collect. I think just overall performance in general, engagement, that's sort of thing in the current operating environment.

Okay. And one last question. I don't know if you have -- you don't have a crystal ball, but the headlines related to a 10% cap on credit cards. Was any of that related to underwriting -- I mean you guys underwrite your -- the loans you make. Was there any discussion about your area?

So as far as I know, there's been no discussions how that would relate to installment loans. But I would imagine with a 10% rate cap with the current cost of capital in the environment, there will be a severe reduction in access to credit cards.

My rough estimate would be somewhere around the 750 to 780 credit score. Anyone who's below that would probably see a severe reduction in their access to credit. I think it would definitely drive up demand for our product or for installment loans in general. But aside from that, in our own credit card portfolio currently is still very small. I believe we currently have expanded with active customers, and I believe it's 46 states. But again, we're still very small in general, just a few million dollars outstanding. And so we can pivot very quickly on that end, if needed, but I don't think for now, there's really any serious implications negatively for our major portfolio.

This will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Prashad for any closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you for joining our third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call, and this concludes the earnings call. Thank you.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and welcome to World Acceptance Corporation's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions].

Before we begin, the corporation has requested that I make the following announcement. The comments made during this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that represent the corporation's expectations and beliefs concerning future events.

Such forward-looking statements are about matters that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties. Statements other than those of historical fact as well as those identified by the words anticipate, estimate, intend, plan, expect, believe, may, will and should or any variation of the foregoing insular expressions are forward-looking statements.

Additional information regarding forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results or performance to differ from the expectations expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements are included in the paragraph discussing forward-looking statements in today's earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of the corporation's most recent Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, and subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the SEC from time to time. The corporation does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements it makes.

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chad Prashad, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fiscal '26 second quarter earnings call. There are a lot of great things to report in the portfolio. But before I get into those, I want to spend some time discussing a few unusual and one-off events that impacted this quarter, and then we'll open up to any questions you have.

First, we had a $3.7 million onetime expense from the early redemption of our bonds. This is approximately a $0.57 earnings per share impact after tax within the quarter. Second, even though we discontinued and disposed of our Mexico operation years ago, we had a $1.3 million discrete tax-related expense this quarter. There are no additional items related to our prior Mexico operations that we expect to impact any future business or financials. But this $1.3 million expense represents approximately $0.26 per share after tax this quarter.

We had the most new customer growth in the last 4 years this quarter, and this growth primarily in new customers, which are our riskiest customer segment, resulted in a new customer portfolio at the end of Q2 that is 35% larger year-over-year. This marginal increase in provision is solely due to the increased new customer base is approximately $5 million, solely due to new customers in the portfolio at the end of the second quarter. This represents approximately $0.78 per share after tax. These 3 unusual events in this quarter have a total impact of around $1.61 per share after tax on the quarter.

Additionally, our long-term incentive comp changes make for year-over-year comparisons rather difficult. Last year, we reversed around $18.1 million in long-term comp from a prior plan, which benefited that quarter. Conversely, this quarter, we expensed around $5.8 million of long-term comp plan, which is about a $23.9 million net increase in our long-term incentive comp expenses when you're comparing year-over-year quarters.

As you think about future quarters, the long-term incentive expense is front-loaded and will remain around $5.8 million for the third quarter before reducing by around $2 million in the fourth quarter and the following 2 quarters before reducing further.

All right. That covers the major one-off and unique impacts within the second quarter. Now turning to the portfolio. Our new customer origination volume is up around 40% year-over-year at the end of the second quarter. Year-to-date, our new customer origination volume is up 35% and back to pre-COVID levels, actually in line with the first half of both fiscal year 2019 and 2020. This is a remarkable feat given the last few years of shrinking reduced growth.

Additionally, the first pay default rate, slow file or delinquency rate of these new originations are in line with our fiscal 2019 and 2020, new bar originations. We're very grateful for all of the hard work by so many folks within our teams and very pleased with these results. They are able to return to healthy growth with good credit quality, maintain low first payment default rates while also increasing our portfolio yield by over 130 basis points year-over-year.

When we include our returning former customers and look at all non-refinance originations, originations increased 15% year-over-year in the second quarter, making it the highest volume second quarter on record with the exception of fiscal year 2020 -- 2022.

Year-to-date, the first half of the fiscal year had 14% higher loan volume than last year. Again, the highest volume on record for the first half of the fiscal year with the exception of fiscal year 2022. This is especially important for our portfolio of health as our repeat customers are lower credit risk, have a lower cost of acquisition and servicing and help with overall retention, yield and lower delinquency. All of this has helped us grow the portfolio nominally by 5.5% more this year relative to last year. We ended the second quarter with our portfolio up 1.5% year-over-year, compared to a starting position of being down 4% at beginning of the year on April 1 year-over-year.

Other great improvements to our capital position include, as we previously mentioned, this quarter, we repurchased and canceled the remaining $170 million of our bonds and stood up a $175 million warehouse facility. Also in the quarter, we completed a new credit agreement, increasing commitments to $640 million and allowing for stock repurchases of up to 100% of net income which is an increase from 50% of net income in our prior agreement, and an additional $100 million of upfront repurchase allowance in addition to the 100% of net income, which begins January 1, 2025.

For that repurchase potential, we've already repurchased 9.1% of our shares so far year-to-date, which is around $80 million, with additional capacity repurchased another $77 million this year, or approximately 8.6% of outstanding shares at yesterday's price for a total potential repurchase of around 17.7% of outstanding shares, again at yesterday's share price.

We're excited about the current portfolio and this trajectory, which includes substantial customer base expansion, strong loan growth, improved loan approval rates while maintaining credit quality, stable and improving delinquency, lower cost of acquisition, improving yields, declining share count and ultimately returning enhanced value to our shareholders through strong EPS growth.

At this time, Johnny Calmes, our Chief Financial and Strategy Officer, and I would like to open up to any questions you may have.

[Operator Instruction]. And your first question comes from John Rowan with Janney.

My apologies, the phone broke up -- my phone broke up a little bit when you were talking about the 3 discrete items, I got into $0.26 from Mexico, but what were the other 2 to get to the $1.61?

Yes. So we had $0.26 in Mexico. We had $0.57 due to the $3.7 million early redemption of our bonds and approximately 78% -- or $0.78 EPS impact from around right at $5 million increase in our provision solely due to more new customer growth this second quarter than last second quarter.

Okay. So I just want to make sure I understand a little bit more about the -- some of your operating expenses going forward. So you had $25 million, an increase of $25.4 million in personnel expense because of the grants, right? But I'm assuming that that's up $25 million versus the $18.5 million reversal last year. So is it safe to assume that there's like $6.9 million, the net difference of that in personnel expense this year -- this quarter, going down to $5.8 million next quarter and then down to $3.8 million a quarter, for that $1.8 million a quarter after that. Does that sound correct?

Yes. Sounds good.

Okay. And then kind of 1 last housekeeping question. So obviously, you had a GAAP loss for the quarter. I'm assuming the diluted share count is just the basic share count. Can you tell me what the -- but the period end diluted share count was? Or the period end share count and then what the dilution is, we can maybe get an idea of what the diluted share count is with positive earnings?

Yes. So the quarter ending share count is up $4.8 million. And the dilution usually runs in the 100,000, 200,000 shares, depending on obviously where the share prices and other factors.

Your next question comes from Kyle Joseph with Stephens. Go ahead.

Just want to get your sense for the health of the underlying consumer and kind of any changes since the last time we talked. Obviously, there's been a lot of headlines, primarily in the auto space and concerns about the consumer. And I recognize you guys have some portfolio mix shift going on. But just stepping back and talking about the health of the underlying consumer and how that's impacting both demand and credit?

Yes, it's a great question. So we do track how our consumer is performing on other loans. And yes, we have seen the same sort of weakness that you're reading about the papers, especially in the auto loans. However, for us, we haven't seen any major signs of weakness. We have proactively tightened our credit box for new customers multiple times so far this fiscal year, very marginal tightening typically on the very low end. Nothing really substantial in terms of overall approval volumes. But in terms of performance, we haven't seen anything major that would impact the portfolio today.

Got it. And then you guys talked about originations growth and new customers and just kind of want to get an update on marketing efforts that have been driving that and where you guys have been having success in kind of an update on the competitive environment as well.

Yes. So on the marketing side, we've done a number of things that have, I think, been very successful. We are very much a test-and-learn sort of environment. We have brought some modeling in-house on the -- for solicitation models, propensity to respond and couple those with overall performance expectations. We have a couple of very successful tests this past quarter that have dramatically reduced our cost of acquisition for pre-approval campaigns, primarily new customers. This fiscal year, we have made some substantial changes to the way that we market to our former customers in order to increase our repeat business. We've seen substantial reductions in overall cost of acquisition here as well.

Now with that being said, we haven't anticipated returning back to the $20 million-plus sort of marketing budget that we used to have in marketing. We're, for now, looking to aim for modest growth, somewhere in the mid to low single digits on the portfolio side, which is mid to high single digits on the customer base side.

So all that is kind of tailwinds in terms of growth, but we're still maintaining sort of smaller budgets on the marketing front. We are seeing increased demand and sort of increased application volume from customers in general. So maybe that's also helping to fuel our lower cost of acquisition.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks for taking my questions.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Prashad for any closing remarks.

In closing, I want to thank our absolutely amazing team across the country as well as those here in Greenville. I'm very grateful for their commitment to their customers and to our team members every day. They are helping our customers to establish and rebuild credit while meeting their immediate financial needs.

Thank you for taking time to join us today. This concludes the second quarter earnings call for World Acceptance Corporation.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.