World Acceptance Corporation Q4 FY2026 earnings call

Janet Matriciani rejoined as Interim President and CEO on April 13th. CFO Johnny Karmes noted fourth quarter earnings per share was $7.70, total revenue increased 7.4% driven by loans outstanding and yields. Tax preparation season returns repaired increased 13%, interest fee and insurance income increased 5.4%. Field personnel headcount reduced by 5% in fourth quarter. Loans outstanding increased 4.4% with decreased delinquency. Intend to rely less on new customers. Repurchased $37.8 million of shares during quarter, equating to 16.5% of outstanding shares at beginning of year

Not applicable as no specific product segment financial performance details provided

Expect similar increases in interest fee and insurance income in coming quarters. Personnel expense expected to be between 47 - 49 million in first three quarters and slightly higher in fourth quarter. Intend to grow in mid-single-digit range, maybe a bit higher

Macro factors like gas prices are on radar as they could potentially impact, though no clear indication of impact so far

Q: Hey, good morning. Welcome back, Janet, and thanks for taking my questions. 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.

A: Sure. 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. Yeah, 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, man, high gas prices are definitely on our radar, but we're not seeing a significant impact in our most recent ventures, at least yet. And as you can see, our front-end delinquency and back-end delinquency looks really strong and improving over March of last year. So, yeah, certainly something we're watching, but there's no clear indications that it's having an impact so far.

Q: And then, yeah, 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?

A: Sure. Yeah, 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 than that.