PRA GROUP INC — Call Transcript 2026

Welcome to the Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. Next up, we have PRA Group, Martin Sjolund, their CEO. PRA is one of the world's leading, charged-off recovery specialists, and they just unveiled their new 3 Vectors strategy last week, and Martin's gonna go through that in more detail. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Robert. Yeah, my name is Martin Sjolund. I'm CEO of PRA Group. I've been CEO for the past 14 years, but I've been in the company for 14 years. I've been running the European business for many years, and I recently stepped into the global CEO role. The first thing we wanted to do is just give you a sense for those of you who may not know give a sense of the PRA. This year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary, so we've been in this industry for a long time. We've got significant global scale and diversification, so we operate in 18 markets around the world. The U.S. is our biggest market, but our overall business is roughly split evenly between the United States and outside the United States. Currently we're looking at attractive market dynamics both in the U.S. and in Europe. We have strong momentum in our U.S. business. We've been on a journey in the U.S. to improve our operations but we're seeing good traction there, especially on legal, digital, and also moving to a more offshore-based model which I'll talk about later. Our European business has been doing really well. For more than seven years, we've been hitting or beating our targets there and delivering strong returns back into the company. The final point is we have a strong and diversified capital structure, so our funding situation is in a good place, and Rakesh our CFO, will talk about that in a few minutes. In terms of numbers, the headlines, last year we invested $1.2 billion in NPL portfolios around the world. That was our third highest year ever although it was down a bit from the year prior as we focused more on returns. We collected $2.1 billion in cash. That was up 13% on the year before. Our estimated remaining collections that's basically the cash we expect to collect from the portfolios that we own, rose to $8.6 billion, that was up 15%. Finally, we're very diversified, so I'll talk about that in a little while. We're in 18 markets. On the financials we released our earnings last week. I already talked about purchases and cash, you can see here on this slide here, our cash efficiency, which is basically When we collect a dollar how much of it do we get to keep, increased to 61%. We're seeing improving operational leverage and an improving cost position as we make improvements in the business. On the net income side, you can see on the bottom left, the -$305 was a non-cash goodwill write-down that we took in Q3. If you put that aside, our adjusted net income was $73 million last year, so it was up on $24. It's still not where we aspire to be. We still have work to do there, but we're pleased that we're making solid progress, and we have a plan that I'm gonna talk about to continue to improve this. The final point is really our EBITDA. You can see here the rolling 12-month EBITDA grew by 16%, so that's growing faster than cash. That also means that our leverage declined from 2.83 down to 2.73 last year. We peaked earlier the year before at around 2.9. We've made improvements in our leverage rate, and that's been a priority for us to get that down. Before I talk about the strategy, just to talk a little bit about the global market for NPLs. On the left, you can see our portfolio purchases over the last couple of years. You can see how we're diversified between Europe and the U.S. and also other markets, which ranges from Australia to Canada to Latin America. It shows some of the cyclicality that we have in the market, and the plan that I'm gonna talk about is really designed to help us make sure that we can deliver returns both in up cycles and down cycles. When we look at our data over many years, what's interesting, I think, is that PRA as a company and our industry actually has an interesting dynamic where when macroeconomic times are good we have good collections on our back book. That's the ERC I talked about. We usually collect well there. That means the banks are collecting well on their portfolios, and that means that the supply of NPLs could be more muted when the economic times are good. When economic times turn down, however, it creates an interesting opportunity because obviously then that's when the bank charge-off rates start to go up and the supply of NPL portfolios tends to rise. We have sort of an interesting dynamic here where there's opportunities for us both in a good economy but also in a weaker economy. One interesting observation that we've had is that the the bank charge-off rates tend to go up faster than our payer rates decline. What that means is that our customers tend to be fairly resilient even in an economic downturn because they're on long-term repayment plans that they can afford. I think this creates an interesting market for us, but it's also important to navigate it in the right way. These are some of the factors that I think about that we need to navigate when it comes to just the market, and then I'll talk about what we're doing. The first is just the cyclicality. Because the markets can go up and down, it's important to build highly efficient operations and a flexible cost model. We also work with our customers to try to arrange long-term payment solutions that they can afford. On the capital side it's capital intensive obviously as we invest in these portfolios, so having diversified funding, staggered maturities, and alignment on both FX and the duration of the portfolios is important. Rakesh will talk about that. Our goal is to have a strong balance sheet with moderate leverage. On the competitive side these markets can get very competitive from time to time, and it varies a lot by market. I think discipline and capital allocation is a critical success factor as well as a long-term perspective. For us also, we think that having access to a global pool of markets is very important because we do see the competitive trends and the supply trends change from time to time. What we do is try to think about where can we allocate the capital to get the best return for PRA, and that can vary. Having a range of markets to invest in has been an important tool for us. On the customer side, there's an ever-evolving trend here of the customer requirements changing. We need to move fast to build insight based on data, leverage technology, and have an omnichannel model that meets the customer where they wanna engage with us. We also need accurate underwriting based on the proprietary data that we have. Finally, it's the regulatory environment. The regulatory environment can be very complex, and I think in some ways that creates a bit of a moat around the industry because it's really only the largest players that can manage this in a, in a large, complicated market like the U.S. in particular. For us, a strong compliance culture and also a strong control infrastructure are really important elements. How we're gonna navigate this market is really down to this plan that Robert mentioned it earlier. We called it PRA 3.0. PRA 1.0 was kind of like when the company was founded and became a leader in the U.S. 2.0 is when PRA expanded and became a global company. For us, 3.0 is really about building the high-performing technology-enabled global allocator of capital. That's how I think about the business. There's three vectors here which we're gonna talk about. The first is capital and investing, the second is operations technology and data, and the third is people and culture. Rakesh, our CFO, is gonna talk about the first one, capital and investing. Great. Thanks, Martin. Rakesh Sehgal, CFO. Been at PRA for a little over three years. Back to Vector 1, as Martin mentioned, it capital and investing. Our strategy is to continue to be a highly disciplined investor focusing on the highest returns that we can get from our portfolio investments. We're also going to be very patient with respect to our investments. We're not going to grow just for growth's sake, and that's really important because ultimately what we are focused on are returns. By returns it's not about just the Gross Purchase Price Multiples, but ultimately it's the net returns. That means looking at really driving value and enhanced profitability. It starts with looking at what is the cost to collect, what is our funding cost, the timing of the cash flows, and then other elements like the contract terms that we have. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is to create a platform that can deliver sustained financial overperformance over the long term. We have a global investment framework. Irrespective of product, irrespective of geography, all our investments have to deliver certain return metrics, and therefore we're able to allocate capital to those highest return opportunities. Talking about geography, and this is important to us, we are globally very diversified. We're in 18 markets. You know, 50% of our ERC is outside the U.S. What that means is we can pick and choose where we invest our important dollars, but also it helps us mitigate any concentration risk we have in any market as well as across economic cycles. Increasingly, over the last few quarters, what we've been telegraphing is we're very focused on becoming more variable in our cost structure. Why is that? It's to create that flexibility with respect to flexing up and down depending on market volumes. Lastly, we're also being very strategic. We see enormous opportunity in the asset classes that we're in, but we're also looking at adjacencies that may deliver good returns. So we've been building capabilities, we've been testing portfolios, building out data, so we can invest in those opportunities as we move forward. Moving to the next slide. You know, we wanna be very prudent with our capital allocation, but that just starts with, us having a strong and diversified balance sheet. We believe our balance sheet is very strong. We fund ourselves through a combination of bank debt, bonds, and to a smaller extent, with deposits. We believe that our maturities are very well staggered. We have no maturities in 2026. We have ample liquidity of $1.1 billion under our three RCFs. We've got long-standing relationships with our bank lenders. Also we've got access to the capital markets in U.S. as well as Europe. Last year we tapped the Euro market, and we've got bonds outstanding, both sides of the pond now. We continue to explore alternatives to further diversify funding. Ultimately, what we are looking to do is to deliver more equity value for our shareholders, and that starts with really focusing on our business. Number one, it's prioritizing our investments, as I mentioned earlier, and delivering higher returns on our investments. Number two, it's about the investments we make in our business. Whether that's our operations in legal digital, our IT platform because again the goal is to create a very efficient platform that can deliver superior returns over the long term. Lastly, we're gonna continue to be opportunistic around buybacks to drive shareholder value. We did undertake $20 million of buybacks in 2025, and we have about $15 million remaining under our board authorization. Over to you, Martin. Thanks, Rakesh. I wanted to talk a little bit about our operating model. This is how I think about it. In the middle, you have data-driven insights. We're trying to understand our customer's journey through the debt cycle, and we're trying to optimize the channel mix to create the most optimal mix that we can for our customers and our portfolio. On the upper left you have building flexible legal capabilities. We've been spending a lot of effort on this over the past couple of years. We have a mix here of internal legal capabilities, where we're using our own platform and our own people to do this. This creates opportunities for automation, lower costs typically and more control as the accounts move. We also have an important external capability. There are channels where there are certain jurisdictions where because the volumes are smaller, it makes sense to work with partners. It gives us flexibility to scale up and down. Our legal model is really a matter of optimizing this mix and trading off the flexibility of the external partners with the cost benefits of doing this internally. On the upper right, you have the mix between onshore and offshore. Two years ago in the U.S., we didn't have any offshore capability at all, but we've worked hard to build that up. As of now as much as a third of our U.S. call center agents are based offshore. Having people offshore obviously creates a cost opportunity, and that enables us to penetrate the portfolios more deeply than we would have been able to before. We're also retaining a significant onshore presence too. We have very experienced collectors who've been around for a long time. They're good at complex cases. They're good at establishing a connection with customers. It's not an easy job, and we believe that they bring a lot of value to the business as well. This is something that we're using to kind of tune in what we think is the right mix for us. On the bottom left you have digital. This is something we focus a lot on, and it's actually the preferred channel, both because customers like to use the digital channel and it's also less expensive for us. Our digital cash collections grew by 25% last year. We're focused on rolling out omnichannel capability, by which we mean that we can connect with customers and interact with them in many different ways. We're testing new things like rich communication services in Europe, and also we have a mobile app under development in one of our European markets. In the U.S., we're investing in enhancing our digital marketing capability. On the bottom right, you have the mix of internal collections versus external DCAs or debt collection agencies. In the U.S., we haven't had a tradition of using external DCAs up until recently, but outside the U.S., we've been doing this for many years. We have dozens and dozens of DCAs across many markets. I have markets where we have 100% in-house collections, and I have markets where we don't have a single person, and we rely only on external partners. What I've found is there's no one silver bullet here. The markets tend to evolve, and being able to strike a balance between these two has worked, I think, been the most effective way to manage it. Internal collections gives you a cost advantage because you're not paying for someone else's margin. It gives you control of the data and a better ability to control the offers that you're making. On the other hand, using external DCAs can bring you specialist capabilities, it can help us benchmark our own performance, and it can also give us flexibility, in particular on cost if we can scale up and down the marginal portfolios using these external DCAs. This gives you a sense of the leverage. There's actually trade-offs across all of these, and what we try to do is to find the optimal balance of these different channels you know solving for cost, how we can control the data, and also the flexibility that the model gives us. If I shift over to technology, our goal here is really to create simplification, flexibility, and efficiency. In our European market we've already come a long way on this. We've already got all of our European markets on one common cloud. We've gone through a multi-year consolidation and simplification of our core collection systems. We're nearly there on that one. We've already rolled out one cloud-based omnichannel solution for dialing, texting, and chat across all the European countries, and we've consolidated our data in a way that allows us to have central business intelligence for all of our European countries. I can go in now and see every portfolio we have, exactly what was collections yesterday, how is it tracking? That's an important capability to have. On the U.S. side, this modernization has also been underway for a few years we still have more of i would say, a longer way to go there. We're transitioning from physical data centers into the cloud. We expect that to be complete this year. We're looking at how we can simplify our legacy system in the U.S., moving to a more modern collection platform. That's something that's gonna be an ongoing project for the next couple of years. On the contact platform side, we're transitioning from a legacy contact platform to this cloud-based omnichannel solution. Again, we'll have one platform across the world, that's something that we expect to have in place in 26. Overall, we're investing in building, I would say, a flexible and modern technology platform that's gonna i think, allow us to connect better with customers, it's also gonna save us cost in the future. This leads me to AI. I think AI has a lot of potential for a business like ours. If you think about it, we've got an enormous proprietary data set. You know, PRA has acquired more than 70 million customers over the years. We have hundreds of millions of documents. We have billions of call recordings. The opportunity to mine all this data and to make sense of it and leverage it is, I think, a big opportunity. We also run massive scale, repetitive, and standardized processes. You know, we make hundreds of millions of calls, we do hundreds of thousands of legal filings, and we process enormous volumes of customer interactions. Again, because these things are standardized, there's i think, an opportunity between the proprietary data that we have and the massive scale of these processes to really leverage some of these AI tools. How we're doing that already, one is we're leveraging our global footprint. You have different capabilities, but also different regulatory environments in different countries. The nice thing about that for us is it allows us to try things in certain countries that are more flexible. Some examples of use cases that we're already piloting is involves using large language models to mine legal documents, to mine unstructured data. If you imagine we have all these customers interactions, there's notes on the system from every call we've made, there's documents sitting in all kinds of different databases. Some of it is structured, some of it is unstructured. Before AI it was complicated for us to go in there and make sense of that's something we're now able to do. We're piloting interactive chatbots starting in some of our European markets. The final piece is talent. In order to get anywhere on AI, we need to have people who know what they're doing. We've started recruiting the people that we need. An example of that, we recently set up a Charlotte office, we did that because we felt that would give us access to a wider talent pool than we had in our headquarters in Norfolk. Sure enough, we've been able to hire a senior AI leader there from one of the big banks who I believe is gonna help us take this to the next level. In terms of the question is obviously, well, what value is this gonna bring? These are some of the ways that I think about it. There's additional customer insights to inform the collection strategy, customer engagement. You know, we can run these chatbots 24/7, whereas the call center isn't open 24/7. Supporting different types of collection activities from compliance. You know, calls have to be scored for compliance, that's a manual exercise. We'll be able to leverage these tools to do that. It can also help us reduce the manual labor for these standardized processes and optimize our underwriting, and finally, to also help us accelerate the delivery of some of these technology projects that I talked about. Already today, we're seeing that the software developers can use this for coding for example to speed it up. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's not gonna happen overnight, but I think that over time we're gonna see that AI is gonna make a significant difference in a company like ours. The other thing I wanted to talk about is cost. You know it's in our business it's extremely important to run a cost-effective and lean model. The first piece there is really having a cost control mindset. When I took over as CEO, we started looking at cost, and last year we started making reductions. We took out 115 corporate and overhead roles which was a difficult thing to do but it was necessary to make the operating model more lean. We also started reducing our onshore agents. Reducing our onshore agents. We've reduced that by 548. As we shift to offshore and reduce the onshore, the net number of reduced by 42%, but we saw our cash collections continue to grow. The. As we think about the future, we're gonna continue to bring, try to use different techniques to make sure that we're running the model in as lean of a way as we can. That's very important because you have a cycle, as I said at the start, we need to be able to make returns both when the cycle's in a good place, but also if it turns down. The second point is really about building this variable cost structure to handle that. I've talked about a few of these things already, but having a network of DCAs here in the U.S. enables us to have more flexibility in our capacity. We're also leveraging standardized technology. I talked about the omnichannel platform and so on. That allows us to invest in technology and deploy that across multiple smaller markets, and that's how we get the scale benefit in a place like Europe, where we're fragmented across a lot of small markets. Any one of which may not have been worth it to invest in this technology, but we're able to move it across these markets and get scale. The final piece then is really around people and culture. I think any strategy is really only as good as the people who are gonna execute on it. We've had a big focus on creating talent hubs. I mentioned this Charlotte office. We need to make sure that we're in locations where we have the kinda talent that we need. Secondly is building a high-performance culture with more of an entrepreneurial mindset, having clear metrics and objectives. I know this sounds really obvious and trivial, but it's actually difficult to implement. We've been successful with this in our European markets and having a framework that's called OKRs, objectives and key results. We're really deliberate about measuring the initiatives that we're planning and the results that we expect, and it allows us to track progress very clearly. The final point here is really around shareholder aligning incentives to shareholder interests. In our industry, this is very important because we buy long-term cash flows but have short-term incentives. Finding the right alignment there i think is an important element, and it's something that I've been focusing on, and we can talk more about that later. In terms of how this all comes together into our plan, the first part is around being disciplined about investments. What we've said is we don't wanna grow for the sake of growth. Our focus is to focus on returns. We've said that we're planning to invest somewhere between $1 billion-$1.3 billion per year in 2026. Right now as it looks, we think it'll be similar to 2025. As a result, we expect to grow our Adjusted EBITDA. We've had a good trajectory on this over the past couple of years, and we expect the trajectory to continue. Our goal is for Adjusted EBITDA to grow faster than cash, meaning that we're getting operating leverage from all of these initiatives. We have a lot of focus on leverage. I mentioned that earlier. It ticked down to 2.73 at the end of last year. We're planning for that to trend down to the mid 2x area based on the plan that we have. Finally, we wanna grow our returns. All of this is ultimately about returns. Our goal is to continue to grow our annualized returns. I say annualized because of the way the accounting works, individual quarters sometimes can have some volatility due to the accounting. Overall what we're focused on is making sure that our annual returns are progressing in the right direction. We wanna get to a return on equity that you would expect to have from a specialty finance company like ours. We believe we have a plan here to get us to that place. That's really our plan. Thank you, Martin and Rakesh. We do have time for some questions, if anybody's got any questions in the audience. I mean, I have some. On one at a time. On the technology front, you mentioned obviously AI and a lot of that for the data analysis, it's kinda the back end, and then also you've run the chatbots. AI's capable of video, audio, et cetera. I mean how do you expect to use those technologies in direct interfacing with the customer? Also how does that play into the regulatory rules given they're evolving on the AI front? Yeah, good question. I mean, here in the U.S., you need consent in order to proactively go out to the customer. That's something we need to work out how that would work here. There are markets in Europe where you don't necessarily require that. We think that using AI is a way to make it easy for the customers to engage with us, whether it's through chatbots or through voice bots. One of the examples that we're piloting is doing payment reminders. Before, we would have the agents calling out doing payment reminders, but now we can have the AI voice bots doing that. We're starting with simple applications that already save us cost on the people side. There's a lot of opportunity, I think, to leverage this in more and more ways as we go forward. I tried to outline there's really a whole range here. In some ways, we've been using AI for a long time. If you consider machine learning to be AI, we've been using that for underwriting for a long time. It's moving so fast that I think there's going to be big potential here. We have the ERC that we have. It was underwritten based on the cost model we had at the time when we bought it. If you look at the future i think that some of these tools and techniques are gonna be opportunities for us to create more value. Got it. Thank you. Then on kind of... How do you feel about your headcount, right? I mean, AI tools, et cetera. I mean, you've grown cash collections even with the headcount coming down. I mean, do you expect that headcount to be level and the operating leverage to come from just continued you know same headcount growth, if you will? You know, how do you expect that to be a component of this increasing efficiency over the next couple years? Yeah. I mean you know as this slide here tried to show, it's really a matter of balancing this with different levers and channels that we have available. There are accounts that we can place with external DCAs that we may not have been able to work ourselves previously. There's a balance between onshore and offshore collectors that we can, that we can operate, and also the digital channel. The more we can engage with customers through a digital channel, the more that takes away the need to be making calls. That said, I think we're still gonna need all the elements of that mix. It's just a matter of fine-tuning those proportions. Also depending on the volume of accounts we buy and the types of accounts we buy. Got it. Thank you. I think that's all we have time for right now, and there is a breakout in Cordova Three downstairs. Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Welcome to the Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. Next up, we have PRA Group, Martin Sjolund, their CEO. PRA is one of the world's leading, charged-off recovery specialists, and they just unveiled their new 3 Vectors strategy last week, and Martin's gonna go through that in more detail. Thank you. Welcome to the Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference. welcome to the raymond james institutional investor conference Next up, we have PRA Group, Martin Sjolund, their CEO. next up we have pra group martin sjolund their ceo PRA is one of the world's leading, charged-off recovery specialists, and they just unveiled their new 3 Vectors strategy last week, and Martin's gonna go through that in more detail. pra is one of the world's leading charged-off recovery specialists and they just unveiled their new 3 vectors strategy last week and martin's gonna go through that in more detail Thank you. thank you

Speaker 1: Great. Thanks, Robert. Yeah, my name is Martin Sjolund. I'm CEO of PRA Group. I've been CEO for the past 14 years, but I've been in the company for 14 years. I've been running the European business for many years, and I recently stepped into the global CEO role. The first thing we wanted to do is just give you a sense for those of you who may not know give a sense of the PRA. This year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary, so we've been in this industry for a long time. We've got significant global scale and diversification, so we operate in 18 markets around the world. The U.S. is our biggest market, but our overall business is roughly split evenly between the United States and outside the United States. Great. great Thanks, Robert. thanks robert Yeah, my name is Martin Sjolund. yeah my name is martin sjolund I'm CEO of PRA Group. i'm ceo of pra group I've been CEO for the past 14 years, but I've been in the company for 14 years. i've been ceo for the past 14 years but i've been in the company for 14 years I've been running the European business for many years, and I recently stepped into the global CEO role. i've been running the european business for many years and i recently stepped into the global ceo role The first thing we wanted to do is just give you a sense for those of you who may not know give a sense of the PRA. the first thing we wanted to do is just give you a sense for those of you who may not know give a sense of the pra This year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary, so we've been in this industry for a long time. this year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary so we've been in this industry for a long time We've got significant global scale and diversification, so we operate in 18 markets around the world. we've got significant global scale and diversification so we operate in 18 markets around the world The U.S. is our biggest market, but our overall business is roughly split evenly between the United States and outside the United States. the u.s is our biggest market but our overall business is roughly split evenly between the united states and outside the united states Currently we're looking at attractive market dynamics both in the U.S. and in Europe. We have strong momentum in our U.S. business. We've been on a journey in the U.S. to improve our operations but we're seeing good traction there, especially on legal, digital, and also moving to a more offshore-based model which I'll talk about later. Our European business has been doing really well. For more than seven years, we've been hitting or beating our targets there and delivering strong returns back into the company. The final point is we have a strong and diversified capital structure, so our funding situation is in a good place, and Rakesh our CFO, will talk about that in a few minutes. In terms of numbers, the headlines, last year we invested $1.2 billion in NPL portfolios around the world. Currently we're looking at attractive market dynamics both in the U.S. and in Europe. currently we're looking at attractive market dynamics both in the u.s and in europe We have strong momentum in our U.S. business. we have strong momentum in our u.s business We've been on a journey in the U.S. to improve our operations but we're seeing good traction there, especially on legal, digital, and also moving to a more offshore-based model which I'll talk about later. we've been on a journey in the u.s to improve our operations but we're seeing good traction there especially on legal digital and also moving to a more offshore-based model which i'll talk about later Our European business has been doing really well. our european business has been doing really well For more than seven years, we've been hitting or beating our targets there and delivering strong returns back into the company. for more than seven years we've been hitting or beating our targets there and delivering strong returns back into the company The final point is we have a strong and diversified capital structure, so our funding situation is in a good place, and Rakesh our CFO, will talk about that in a few minutes. the final point is we have a strong and diversified capital structure so our funding situation is in a good place and rakesh our cfo will talk about that in a few minutes In terms of numbers, the headlines, last year we invested $1.2 billion in NPL portfolios around the world. in terms of numbers the headlines last year we invested $1.2 billion in npl portfolios around the world That was our third highest year ever although it was down a bit from the year prior as we focused more on returns. We collected $2.1 billion in cash. That was up 13% on the year before. Our estimated remaining collections that's basically the cash we expect to collect from the portfolios that we own, rose to $8.6 billion, that was up 15%. Finally, we're very diversified, so I'll talk about that in a little while. We're in 18 markets. On the financials we released our earnings last week. I already talked about purchases and cash, you can see here on this slide here, our cash efficiency, which is basically When we collect a dollar how much of it do we get to keep, increased to 61%. That was our third highest year ever although it was down a bit from the year prior as we focused more on returns. that was our third highest year ever although it was down a bit from the year prior as we focused more on returns We collected $2.1 billion in cash. we collected $2.1 billion in cash That was up 13% on the year before. that was up 13% on the year before Our estimated remaining collections that's basically the cash we expect to collect from the portfolios that we own, rose to $8.6 billion, that was up 15%. our estimated remaining collections that's basically the cash we expect to collect from the portfolios that we own rose to $8.6 billion that was up 15% Finally, we're very diversified, so I'll talk about that in a little while. finally we're very diversified so i'll talk about that in a little while We're in 18 markets. we're in 18 markets On the financials we released our earnings last week. on the financials we released our earnings last week I already talked about purchases and cash, you can see here on this slide here, our cash efficiency, which is basically When we collect a dollar how much of it do we get to keep, increased to 61%. i already talked about purchases and cash you can see here on this slide here our cash efficiency which is basically when we collect a dollar how much of it do we get to keep increased to 61% We're seeing improving operational leverage and an improving cost position as we make improvements in the business. On the net income side, you can see on the bottom left, the -$305 was a non-cash goodwill write-down that we took in Q3. If you put that aside, our adjusted net income was $73 million last year, so it was up on $24. It's still not where we aspire to be. We still have work to do there, but we're pleased that we're making solid progress, and we have a plan that I'm gonna talk about to continue to improve this. The final point is really our EBITDA. You can see here the rolling 12-month EBITDA grew by 16%, so that's growing faster than cash. We're seeing improving operational leverage and an improving cost position as we make improvements in the business. we're seeing improving operational leverage and an improving cost position as we make improvements in the business On the net income side, you can see on the bottom left, the -$305 was a non-cash goodwill write-down that we took in Q3. on the net income side you can see on the bottom left the -$305 was a non-cash goodwill write-down that we took in q3 If you put that aside, our adjusted net income was $73 million last year, so it was up on $24. if you put that aside our adjusted net income was $73 million last year so it was up on $24 It's still not where we aspire to be. it's still not where we aspire to be We still have work to do there, but we're pleased that we're making solid progress, and we have a plan that I'm gonna talk about to continue to improve this. we still have work to do there but we're pleased that we're making solid progress and we have a plan that i'm gonna talk about to continue to improve this The final point is really our EBITDA. the final point is really our ebitda You can see here the rolling 12-month EBITDA grew by 16%, so that's growing faster than cash. you can see here the rolling 12-month ebitda grew by 16% so that's growing faster than cash That also means that our leverage declined from 2.83 down to 2.73 last year. We peaked earlier the year before at around 2.9. We've made improvements in our leverage rate, and that's been a priority for us to get that down. Before I talk about the strategy, just to talk a little bit about the global market for NPLs. On the left, you can see our portfolio purchases over the last couple of years. You can see how we're diversified between Europe and the U.S. and also other markets, which ranges from Australia to Canada to Latin America. That also means that our leverage declined from 2.83 down to 2.73 last year. that also means that our leverage declined from 2.83 down to 2.73 last year We peaked earlier the year before at around 2.9. we peaked earlier the year before at around 2.9 We've made improvements in our leverage rate, and that's been a priority for us to get that down. we've made improvements in our leverage rate and that's been a priority for us to get that down Before I talk about the strategy, just to talk a little bit about the global market for NPLs. before i talk about the strategy just to talk a little bit about the global market for npls On the left, you can see our portfolio purchases over the last couple of years. on the left you can see our portfolio purchases over the last couple of years You can see how we're diversified between Europe and the U.S. and also other markets, which ranges from Australia to Canada to Latin America. you can see how we're diversified between europe and the u.s and also other markets which ranges from australia to canada to latin america It shows some of the cyclicality that we have in the market, and the plan that I'm gonna talk about is really designed to help us make sure that we can deliver returns both in up cycles and down cycles. When we look at our data over many years, what's interesting, I think, is that PRA as a company and our industry actually has an interesting dynamic where when macroeconomic times are good we have good collections on our back book. That's the ERC I talked about. We usually collect well there. That means the banks are collecting well on their portfolios, and that means that the supply of NPLs could be more muted when the economic times are good. It shows some of the cyclicality that we have in the market, and the plan that I'm gonna talk about is really designed to help us make sure that we can deliver returns both in up cycles and down cycles. it shows some of the cyclicality that we have in the market and the plan that i'm gonna talk about is really designed to help us make sure that we can deliver returns both in up cycles and down cycles When we look at our data over many years, what's interesting, I think, is that PRA as a company and our industry actually has an interesting dynamic where when macroeconomic times are good we have good collections on our back book. when we look at our data over many years what's interesting i think is that pra as a company and our industry actually has an interesting dynamic where when macroeconomic times are good we have good collections on our back book That's the ERC I talked about. that's the erc i talked about We usually collect well there. we usually collect well there That means the banks are collecting well on their portfolios, and that means that the supply of NPLs could be more muted when the economic times are good. that means the banks are collecting well on their portfolios and that means that the supply of npls could be more muted when the economic times are good When economic times turn down, however, it creates an interesting opportunity because obviously then that's when the bank charge-off rates start to go up and the supply of NPL portfolios tends to rise. We have sort of an interesting dynamic here where there's opportunities for us both in a good economy but also in a weaker economy. One interesting observation that we've had is that the the bank charge-off rates tend to go up faster than our payer rates decline. What that means is that our customers tend to be fairly resilient even in an economic downturn because they're on long-term repayment plans that they can afford. I think this creates an interesting market for us, but it's also important to navigate it in the right way. When economic times turn down, however, it creates an interesting opportunity because obviously then that's when the bank charge-off rates start to go up and the supply of NPL portfolios tends to rise. when economic times turn down however it creates an interesting opportunity because obviously then that's when the bank charge-off rates start to go up and the supply of npl portfolios tends to rise We have sort of an interesting dynamic here where there's opportunities for us both in a good economy but also in a weaker economy. we have sort of an interesting dynamic here where there's opportunities for us both in a good economy but also in a weaker economy One interesting observation that we've had is that the the bank charge-off rates tend to go up faster than our payer rates decline. one interesting observation that we've had is that the the bank charge-off rates tend to go up faster than our payer rates decline What that means is that our customers tend to be fairly resilient even in an economic downturn because they're on long-term repayment plans that they can afford. what that means is that our customers tend to be fairly resilient even in an economic downturn because they're on long-term repayment plans that they can afford I think this creates an interesting market for us, but it's also important to navigate it in the right way. i think this creates an interesting market for us but it's also important to navigate it in the right way These are some of the factors that I think about that we need to navigate when it comes to just the market, and then I'll talk about what we're doing. The first is just the cyclicality. Because the markets can go up and down, it's important to build highly efficient operations and a flexible cost model. We also work with our customers to try to arrange long-term payment solutions that they can afford. On the capital side it's capital intensive obviously as we invest in these portfolios, so having diversified funding, staggered maturities, and alignment on both FX and the duration of the portfolios is important. Rakesh will talk about that. Our goal is to have a strong balance sheet with moderate leverage. On the competitive side these markets can get very competitive from time to time, and it varies a lot by market. These are some of the factors that I think about that we need to navigate when it comes to just the market, and then I'll talk about what we're doing. these are some of the factors that i think about that we need to navigate when it comes to just the market and then i'll talk about what we're doing The first is just the cyclicality. the first is just the cyclicality Because the markets can go up and down, it's important to build highly efficient operations and a flexible cost model. because the markets can go up and down it's important to build highly efficient operations and a flexible cost model We also work with our customers to try to arrange long-term payment solutions that they can afford. we also work with our customers to try to arrange long-term payment solutions that they can afford On the capital side it's capital intensive obviously as we invest in these portfolios, so having diversified funding, staggered maturities, and alignment on both FX and the duration of the portfolios is important. on the capital side it's capital intensive obviously as we invest in these portfolios so having diversified funding staggered maturities and alignment on both fx and the duration of the portfolios is important Rakesh will talk about that. rakesh will talk about that Our goal is to have a strong balance sheet with moderate leverage. our goal is to have a strong balance sheet with moderate leverage On the competitive side these markets can get very competitive from time to time, and it varies a lot by market. on the competitive side these markets can get very competitive from time to time and it varies a lot by market I think discipline and capital allocation is a critical success factor as well as a long-term perspective. For us also, we think that having access to a global pool of markets is very important because we do see the competitive trends and the supply trends change from time to time. What we do is try to think about where can we allocate the capital to get the best return for PRA, and that can vary. Having a range of markets to invest in has been an important tool for us. On the customer side, there's an ever-evolving trend here of the customer requirements changing. We need to move fast to build insight based on data, leverage technology, and have an omnichannel model that meets the customer where they wanna engage with us. I think discipline and capital allocation is a critical success factor as well as a long-term perspective. For us also, we think that having access to a global pool of markets is very important because we do see the competitive trends and the supply trends change from time to time. i think discipline and capital allocation is a critical success factor as well as a long-term perspective. for us also we think that having access to a global pool of markets is very important because we do see the competitive trends and the supply trends change from time to time What we do is try to think about where can we allocate the capital to get the best return for PRA, and that can vary. what we do is try to think about where can we allocate the capital to get the best return for pra and that can vary Having a range of markets to invest in has been an important tool for us. having a range of markets to invest in has been an important tool for us On the customer side, there's an ever-evolving trend here of the customer requirements changing. on the customer side there's an ever-evolving trend here of the customer requirements changing We need to move fast to build insight based on data, leverage technology, and have an omnichannel model that meets the customer where they wanna engage with us. we need to move fast to build insight based on data leverage technology and have an omnichannel model that meets the customer where they wanna engage with us We also need accurate underwriting based on the proprietary data that we have. Finally, it's the regulatory environment. The regulatory environment can be very complex, and I think in some ways that creates a bit of a moat around the industry because it's really only the largest players that can manage this in a, in a large, complicated market like the U.S. in particular. For us, a strong compliance culture and also a strong control infrastructure are really important elements. How we're gonna navigate this market is really down to this plan that Robert mentioned it earlier. We called it PRA 3.0. PRA 1.0 was kind of like when the company was founded and became a leader in the U.S. 2.0 is when PRA expanded and became a global company. We also need accurate underwriting based on the proprietary data that we have. we also need accurate underwriting based on the proprietary data that we have Finally, it's the regulatory environment. finally it's the regulatory environment The regulatory environment can be very complex, and I think in some ways that creates a bit of a moat around the industry because it's really only the largest players that can manage this in a, in a large, complicated market like the U.S. in particular. the regulatory environment can be very complex and i think in some ways that creates a bit of a moat around the industry because it's really only the largest players that can manage this in a in a large complicated market like the u.s in particular For us, a strong compliance culture and also a strong control infrastructure are really important elements. for us a strong compliance culture and also a strong control infrastructure are really important elements How we're gonna navigate this market is really down to this plan that Robert mentioned it earlier. how we're gonna navigate this market is really down to this plan that robert mentioned it earlier We called it PRA 3.0. we called it pra 3.0 PRA 1.0 was kind of like when the company was founded and became a leader in the U.S. 2.0 is when PRA expanded and became a global company. pra 1.0 was kind of like when the company was founded and became a leader in the u.s 2.0 is when pra expanded and became a global company For us, 3.0 is really about building the high-performing technology-enabled global allocator of capital. That's how I think about the business. There's three vectors here which we're gonna talk about. The first is capital and investing, the second is operations technology and data, and the third is people and culture. Rakesh, our CFO, is gonna talk about the first one, capital and investing. For us, 3.0 is really about building the high-performing technology-enabled global allocator of capital. for us 3.0 is really about building the high-performing technology-enabled global allocator of capital That's how I think about the business. that's how i think about the business There's three vectors here which we're gonna talk about. there's three vectors here which we're gonna talk about The first is capital and investing, the second is operations technology and data, and the third is people and culture. the first is capital and investing the second is operations technology and data and the third is people and culture Rakesh, our CFO, is gonna talk about the first one, capital and investing. rakesh our cfo is gonna talk about the first one capital and investing

Speaker 2: Great. Thanks, Martin. Rakesh Sehgal, CFO. Been at PRA for a little over three years. Back to Vector 1, as Martin mentioned, it capital and investing. Our strategy is to continue to be a highly disciplined investor focusing on the highest returns that we can get from our portfolio investments. We're also going to be very patient with respect to our investments. We're not going to grow just for growth's sake, and that's really important because ultimately what we are focused on are returns. By returns it's not about just the Gross Purchase Price Multiples, but ultimately it's the net returns. Great. great Thanks, Martin. thanks martin Rakesh Sehgal, CFO. rakesh sehgal cfo Been at PRA for a little over three years. been at pra for a little over three years Back to Vector 1, as Martin mentioned, it capital and investing. back to vector 1 as martin mentioned it capital and investing Our strategy is to continue to be a highly disciplined investor focusing on the highest returns that we can get from our portfolio investments. our strategy is to continue to be a highly disciplined investor focusing on the highest returns that we can get from our portfolio investments We're also going to be very patient with respect to our investments. we're also going to be very patient with respect to our investments We're not going to grow just for growth's sake, and that's really important because ultimately what we are focused on are returns. we're not going to grow just for growth's sake and that's really important because ultimately what we are focused on are returns By returns it's not about just the Gross Purchase Price Multiples, but ultimately it's the net returns. by returns it's not about just the gross purchase price multiples but ultimately it's the net returns That means looking at really driving value and enhanced profitability. It starts with looking at what is the cost to collect, what is our funding cost, the timing of the cash flows, and then other elements like the contract terms that we have. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is to create a platform that can deliver sustained financial overperformance over the long term. We have a global investment framework. Irrespective of product, irrespective of geography, all our investments have to deliver certain return metrics, and therefore we're able to allocate capital to those highest return opportunities. Talking about geography, and this is important to us, we are globally very diversified. We're in 18 markets. You know, 50% of our ERC is outside the U.S. That means looking at really driving value and enhanced profitability. that means looking at really driving value and enhanced profitability It starts with looking at what is the cost to collect, what is our funding cost, the timing of the cash flows, and then other elements like the contract terms that we have. it starts with looking at what is the cost to collect what is our funding cost the timing of the cash flows and then other elements like the contract terms that we have Ultimately, what we are trying to do is to create a platform that can deliver sustained financial overperformance over the long term. ultimately what we are trying to do is to create a platform that can deliver sustained financial overperformance over the long term We have a global investment framework. we have a global investment framework Irrespective of product, irrespective of geography, all our investments have to deliver certain return metrics, and therefore we're able to allocate capital to those highest return opportunities. irrespective of product irrespective of geography all our investments have to deliver certain return metrics and therefore we're able to allocate capital to those highest return opportunities Talking about geography, and this is important to us, we are globally very diversified. talking about geography and this is important to us we are globally very diversified We're in 18 markets. we're in 18 markets You know, 50% of our ERC is outside the U.S. you know 50% of our erc is outside the u.s What that means is we can pick and choose where we invest our important dollars, but also it helps us mitigate any concentration risk we have in any market as well as across economic cycles. Increasingly, over the last few quarters, what we've been telegraphing is we're very focused on becoming more variable in our cost structure. Why is that? It's to create that flexibility with respect to flexing up and down depending on market volumes. Lastly, we're also being very strategic. We see enormous opportunity in the asset classes that we're in, but we're also looking at adjacencies that may deliver good returns. So we've been building capabilities, we've been testing portfolios, building out data, so we can invest in those opportunities as we move forward. Moving to the next slide. What that means is we can pick and choose where we invest our important dollars, but also it helps us mitigate any concentration risk we have in any market as well as across economic cycles. what that means is we can pick and choose where we invest our important dollars but also it helps us mitigate any concentration risk we have in any market as well as across economic cycles Increasingly, over the last few quarters, what we've been telegraphing is we're very focused on becoming more variable in our cost structure. increasingly over the last few quarters what we've been telegraphing is we're very focused on becoming more variable in our cost structure Why is that? why is that It's to create that flexibility with respect to flexing up and down depending on market volumes. it's to create that flexibility with respect to flexing up and down depending on market volumes Lastly, we're also being very strategic. lastly we're also being very strategic We see enormous opportunity in the asset classes that we're in, but we're also looking at adjacencies that may deliver good returns. we see enormous opportunity in the asset classes that we're in but we're also looking at adjacencies that may deliver good returns So we've been building capabilities, we've been testing portfolios, building out data, so we can invest in those opportunities as we move forward. so we've been building capabilities we've been testing portfolios building out data so we can invest in those opportunities as we move forward Moving to the next slide. moving to the next slide You know, we wanna be very prudent with our capital allocation, but that just starts with, us having a strong and diversified balance sheet. We believe our balance sheet is very strong. We fund ourselves through a combination of bank debt, bonds, and to a smaller extent, with deposits. We believe that our maturities are very well staggered. We have no maturities in 2026. We have ample liquidity of $1.1 billion under our three RCFs. We've got long-standing relationships with our bank lenders. Also we've got access to the capital markets in U.S. as well as Europe. Last year we tapped the Euro market, and we've got bonds outstanding, both sides of the pond now. We continue to explore alternatives to further diversify funding. You know, we wanna be very prudent with our capital allocation, but that just starts with, us having a strong and diversified balance sheet. you know we wanna be very prudent with our capital allocation but that just starts with us having a strong and diversified balance sheet We believe our balance sheet is very strong. we believe our balance sheet is very strong We fund ourselves through a combination of bank debt, bonds, and to a smaller extent, with deposits. we fund ourselves through a combination of bank debt bonds and to a smaller extent with deposits We believe that our maturities are very well staggered. we believe that our maturities are very well staggered We have no maturities in 2026. we have no maturities in 2026 We have ample liquidity of $1.1 billion under our three RCFs. we have ample liquidity of $1.1 billion under our three rcfs We've got long-standing relationships with our bank lenders. we've got long-standing relationships with our bank lenders Also we've got access to the capital markets in U.S. as well as Europe. also we've got access to the capital markets in u.s as well as europe Last year we tapped the Euro market, and we've got bonds outstanding, both sides of the pond now. last year we tapped the euro market and we've got bonds outstanding both sides of the pond now We continue to explore alternatives to further diversify funding. we continue to explore alternatives to further diversify funding Ultimately, what we are looking to do is to deliver more equity value for our shareholders, and that starts with really focusing on our business. Number one, it's prioritizing our investments, as I mentioned earlier, and delivering higher returns on our investments. Number two, it's about the investments we make in our business. Whether that's our operations in legal digital, our IT platform because again the goal is to create a very efficient platform that can deliver superior returns over the long term. Lastly, we're gonna continue to be opportunistic around buybacks to drive shareholder value. We did undertake $20 million of buybacks in 2025, and we have about $15 million remaining under our board authorization. Over to you, Martin. Ultimately, what we are looking to do is to deliver more equity value for our shareholders, and that starts with really focusing on our business. ultimately what we are looking to do is to deliver more equity value for our shareholders and that starts with really focusing on our business Number one, it's prioritizing our investments, as I mentioned earlier, and delivering higher returns on our investments. number one it's prioritizing our investments as i mentioned earlier and delivering higher returns on our investments Number two, it's about the investments we make in our business. number two it's about the investments we make in our business Whether that's our operations in legal digital, our IT platform because again the goal is to create a very efficient platform that can deliver superior returns over the long term. whether that's our operations in legal digital our it platform because again the goal is to create a very efficient platform that can deliver superior returns over the long term Lastly, we're gonna continue to be opportunistic around buybacks to drive shareholder value. lastly we're gonna continue to be opportunistic around buybacks to drive shareholder value We did undertake $20 million of buybacks in 2025, and we have about $15 million remaining under our board authorization. we did undertake $20 million of buybacks in 2025 and we have about $15 million remaining under our board authorization Over to you, Martin. over to you martin

Speaker 1: Thanks, Rakesh. I wanted to talk a little bit about our operating model. This is how I think about it. In the middle, you have data-driven insights. We're trying to understand our customer's journey through the debt cycle, and we're trying to optimize the channel mix to create the most optimal mix that we can for our customers and our portfolio. On the upper left you have building flexible legal capabilities. We've been spending a lot of effort on this over the past couple of years. We have a mix here of internal legal capabilities, where we're using our own platform and our own people to do this. This creates opportunities for automation, lower costs typically and more control as the accounts move. We also have an important external capability. Thanks, Rakesh. thanks rakesh I wanted to talk a little bit about our operating model. i wanted to talk a little bit about our operating model This is how I think about it. this is how i think about it In the middle, you have data-driven insights. in the middle you have data-driven insights We're trying to understand our customer's journey through the debt cycle, and we're trying to optimize the channel mix to create the most optimal mix that we can for our customers and our portfolio. we're trying to understand our customer's journey through the debt cycle and we're trying to optimize the channel mix to create the most optimal mix that we can for our customers and our portfolio On the upper left you have building flexible legal capabilities. on the upper left you have building flexible legal capabilities We've been spending a lot of effort on this over the past couple of years. we've been spending a lot of effort on this over the past couple of years We have a mix here of internal legal capabilities, where we're using our own platform and our own people to do this. we have a mix here of internal legal capabilities where we're using our own platform and our own people to do this This creates opportunities for automation, lower costs typically and more control as the accounts move. this creates opportunities for automation lower costs typically and more control as the accounts move We also have an important external capability. we also have an important external capability There are channels where there are certain jurisdictions where because the volumes are smaller, it makes sense to work with partners. It gives us flexibility to scale up and down. Our legal model is really a matter of optimizing this mix and trading off the flexibility of the external partners with the cost benefits of doing this internally. On the upper right, you have the mix between onshore and offshore. Two years ago in the U.S., we didn't have any offshore capability at all, but we've worked hard to build that up. As of now as much as a third of our U.S. call center agents are based offshore. Having people offshore obviously creates a cost opportunity, and that enables us to penetrate the portfolios more deeply than we would have been able to before. There are channels where there are certain jurisdictions where because the volumes are smaller, it makes sense to work with partners. there are channels where there are certain jurisdictions where because the volumes are smaller it makes sense to work with partners It gives us flexibility to scale up and down. it gives us flexibility to scale up and down Our legal model is really a matter of optimizing this mix and trading off the flexibility of the external partners with the cost benefits of doing this internally. our legal model is really a matter of optimizing this mix and trading off the flexibility of the external partners with the cost benefits of doing this internally On the upper right, you have the mix between onshore and offshore. on the upper right you have the mix between onshore and offshore Two years ago in the U.S., we didn't have any offshore capability at all, but we've worked hard to build that up. two years ago in the u.s we didn't have any offshore capability at all but we've worked hard to build that up As of now as much as a third of our U.S. call center agents are based offshore. as of now as much as a third of our u.s call center agents are based offshore Having people offshore obviously creates a cost opportunity, and that enables us to penetrate the portfolios more deeply than we would have been able to before. having people offshore obviously creates a cost opportunity and that enables us to penetrate the portfolios more deeply than we would have been able to before We're also retaining a significant onshore presence too. We have very experienced collectors who've been around for a long time. They're good at complex cases. They're good at establishing a connection with customers. It's not an easy job, and we believe that they bring a lot of value to the business as well. This is something that we're using to kind of tune in what we think is the right mix for us. On the bottom left you have digital. This is something we focus a lot on, and it's actually the preferred channel, both because customers like to use the digital channel and it's also less expensive for us. Our digital cash collections grew by 25% last year. We're also retaining a significant onshore presence too. we're also retaining a significant onshore presence too We have very experienced collectors who've been around for a long time. we have very experienced collectors who've been around for a long time They're good at complex cases. they're good at complex cases They're good at establishing a connection with customers. they're good at establishing a connection with customers It's not an easy job, and we believe that they bring a lot of value to the business as well. it's not an easy job and we believe that they bring a lot of value to the business as well This is something that we're using to kind of tune in what we think is the right mix for us. this is something that we're using to kind of tune in what we think is the right mix for us On the bottom left you have digital. on the bottom left you have digital This is something we focus a lot on, and it's actually the preferred channel, both because customers like to use the digital channel and it's also less expensive for us. this is something we focus a lot on and it's actually the preferred channel both because customers like to use the digital channel and it's also less expensive for us Our digital cash collections grew by 25% last year. our digital cash collections grew by 25% last year We're focused on rolling out omnichannel capability, by which we mean that we can connect with customers and interact with them in many different ways. We're testing new things like rich communication services in Europe, and also we have a mobile app under development in one of our European markets. In the U.S., we're investing in enhancing our digital marketing capability. On the bottom right, you have the mix of internal collections versus external DCAs or debt collection agencies. In the U.S., we haven't had a tradition of using external DCAs up until recently, but outside the U.S., we've been doing this for many years. We have dozens and dozens of DCAs across many markets. We're focused on rolling out omnichannel capability, by which we mean that we can connect with customers and interact with them in many different ways. we're focused on rolling out omnichannel capability by which we mean that we can connect with customers and interact with them in many different ways We're testing new things like rich communication services in Europe, and also we have a mobile app under development in one of our European markets. we're testing new things like rich communication services in europe and also we have a mobile app under development in one of our european markets In the U.S., we're investing in enhancing our digital marketing capability. in the u.s we're investing in enhancing our digital marketing capability On the bottom right, you have the mix of internal collections versus external DCAs or debt collection agencies. on the bottom right you have the mix of internal collections versus external dcas or debt collection agencies In the U.S., we haven't had a tradition of using external DCAs up until recently, but outside the U.S., we've been doing this for many years. in the u.s we haven't had a tradition of using external dcas up until recently but outside the u.s we've been doing this for many years We have dozens and dozens of DCAs across many markets. we have dozens and dozens of dcas across many markets I have markets where we have 100% in-house collections, and I have markets where we don't have a single person, and we rely only on external partners. What I've found is there's no one silver bullet here. The markets tend to evolve, and being able to strike a balance between these two has worked, I think, been the most effective way to manage it. Internal collections gives you a cost advantage because you're not paying for someone else's margin. It gives you control of the data and a better ability to control the offers that you're making. On the other hand, using external DCAs can bring you specialist capabilities, it can help us benchmark our own performance, and it can also give us flexibility, in particular on cost if we can scale up and down the marginal portfolios using these external DCAs. I have markets where we have 100% in-house collections, and I have markets where we don't have a single person, and we rely only on external partners. i have markets where we have 100% in-house collections and i have markets where we don't have a single person and we rely only on external partners What I've found is there's no one silver bullet here. what i've found is there's no one silver bullet here The markets tend to evolve, and being able to strike a balance between these two has worked, I think, been the most effective way to manage it. the markets tend to evolve and being able to strike a balance between these two has worked i think been the most effective way to manage it Internal collections gives you a cost advantage because you're not paying for someone else's margin. internal collections gives you a cost advantage because you're not paying for someone else's margin It gives you control of the data and a better ability to control the offers that you're making. it gives you control of the data and a better ability to control the offers that you're making On the other hand, using external DCAs can bring you specialist capabilities, it can help us benchmark our own performance, and it can also give us flexibility, in particular on cost if we can scale up and down the marginal portfolios using these external DCAs. on the other hand using external dcas can bring you specialist capabilities it can help us benchmark our own performance and it can also give us flexibility in particular on cost if we can scale up and down the marginal portfolios using these external dcas This gives you a sense of the leverage. There's actually trade-offs across all of these, and what we try to do is to find the optimal balance of these different channels you know solving for cost, how we can control the data, and also the flexibility that the model gives us. If I shift over to technology, our goal here is really to create simplification, flexibility, and efficiency. In our European market we've already come a long way on this. We've already got all of our European markets on one common cloud. We've gone through a multi-year consolidation and simplification of our core collection systems. We're nearly there on that one. This gives you a sense of the leverage. this gives you a sense of the leverage There's actually trade-offs across all of these, and what we try to do is to find the optimal balance of these different channels you know solving for cost, how we can control the data, and also the flexibility that the model gives us. there's actually trade-offs across all of these and what we try to do is to find the optimal balance of these different channels you know solving for cost how we can control the data and also the flexibility that the model gives us If I shift over to technology, our goal here is really to create simplification, flexibility, and efficiency. if i shift over to technology our goal here is really to create simplification flexibility and efficiency In our European market we've already come a long way on this. in our european market we've already come a long way on this We've already got all of our European markets on one common cloud. we've already got all of our european markets on one common cloud We've gone through a multi-year consolidation and simplification of our core collection systems. we've gone through a multi-year consolidation and simplification of our core collection systems We're nearly there on that one. we're nearly there on that one We've already rolled out one cloud-based omnichannel solution for dialing, texting, and chat across all the European countries, and we've consolidated our data in a way that allows us to have central business intelligence for all of our European countries. I can go in now and see every portfolio we have, exactly what was collections yesterday, how is it tracking? That's an important capability to have. On the U.S. side, this modernization has also been underway for a few years we still have more of i would say, a longer way to go there. We're transitioning from physical data centers into the cloud. We expect that to be complete this year. We're looking at how we can simplify our legacy system in the U.S., moving to a more modern collection platform. We've already rolled out one cloud-based omnichannel solution for dialing, texting, and chat across all the European countries, and we've consolidated our data in a way that allows us to have central business intelligence for all of our European countries. we've already rolled out one cloud-based omnichannel solution for dialing texting and chat across all the european countries and we've consolidated our data in a way that allows us to have central business intelligence for all of our european countries I can go in now and see every portfolio we have, exactly what was collections yesterday, how is it tracking? i can go in now and see every portfolio we have exactly what was collections yesterday how is it tracking That's an important capability to have. that's an important capability to have On the U.S. side, this modernization has also been underway for a few years we still have more of i would say, a longer way to go there. on the u.s side this modernization has also been underway for a few years we still have more of i would say a longer way to go there We're transitioning from physical data centers into the cloud. we're transitioning from physical data centers into the cloud We expect that to be complete this year. we expect that to be complete this year We're looking at how we can simplify our legacy system in the U.S., moving to a more modern collection platform. we're looking at how we can simplify our legacy system in the u.s moving to a more modern collection platform That's something that's gonna be an ongoing project for the next couple of years. On the contact platform side, we're transitioning from a legacy contact platform to this cloud-based omnichannel solution. Again, we'll have one platform across the world, that's something that we expect to have in place in 26. Overall, we're investing in building, I would say, a flexible and modern technology platform that's gonna i think, allow us to connect better with customers, it's also gonna save us cost in the future. This leads me to AI. I think AI has a lot of potential for a business like ours. If you think about it, we've got an enormous proprietary data set. You know, PRA has acquired more than 70 million customers over the years. We have hundreds of millions of documents. We have billions of call recordings. That's something that's gonna be an ongoing project for the next couple of years. that's something that's gonna be an ongoing project for the next couple of years On the contact platform side, we're transitioning from a legacy contact platform to this cloud-based omnichannel solution. on the contact platform side we're transitioning from a legacy contact platform to this cloud-based omnichannel solution Again, we'll have one platform across the world, that's something that we expect to have in place in 26. again we'll have one platform across the world that's something that we expect to have in place in 26 Overall, we're investing in building, I would say, a flexible and modern technology platform that's gonna i think, allow us to connect better with customers, it's also gonna save us cost in the future. overall we're investing in building i would say a flexible and modern technology platform that's gonna i think allow us to connect better with customers it's also gonna save us cost in the future This leads me to AI. this leads me to ai I think AI has a lot of potential for a business like ours. i think ai has a lot of potential for a business like ours If you think about it, we've got an enormous proprietary data set. if you think about it we've got an enormous proprietary data set You know, PRA has acquired more than 70 million customers over the years. you know pra has acquired more than 70 million customers over the years We have hundreds of millions of documents. we have hundreds of millions of documents We have billions of call recordings. we have billions of call recordings The opportunity to mine all this data and to make sense of it and leverage it is, I think, a big opportunity. We also run massive scale, repetitive, and standardized processes. You know, we make hundreds of millions of calls, we do hundreds of thousands of legal filings, and we process enormous volumes of customer interactions. Again, because these things are standardized, there's i think, an opportunity between the proprietary data that we have and the massive scale of these processes to really leverage some of these AI tools. How we're doing that already, one is we're leveraging our global footprint. You have different capabilities, but also different regulatory environments in different countries. The nice thing about that for us is it allows us to try things in certain countries that are more flexible. The opportunity to mine all this data and to make sense of it and leverage it is, I think, a big opportunity. We also run massive scale, repetitive, and standardized processes. the opportunity to mine all this data and to make sense of it and leverage it is i think a big opportunity. we also run massive scale repetitive and standardized processes You know, we make hundreds of millions of calls, we do hundreds of thousands of legal filings, and we process enormous volumes of customer interactions. you know we make hundreds of millions of calls we do hundreds of thousands of legal filings and we process enormous volumes of customer interactions Again, because these things are standardized, there's i think, an opportunity between the proprietary data that we have and the massive scale of these processes to really leverage some of these AI tools. again because these things are standardized there's i think an opportunity between the proprietary data that we have and the massive scale of these processes to really leverage some of these ai tools How we're doing that already, one is we're leveraging our global footprint. how we're doing that already one is we're leveraging our global footprint You have different capabilities, but also different regulatory environments in different countries. you have different capabilities but also different regulatory environments in different countries The nice thing about that for us is it allows us to try things in certain countries that are more flexible. the nice thing about that for us is it allows us to try things in certain countries that are more flexible Some examples of use cases that we're already piloting is involves using large language models to mine legal documents, to mine unstructured data. If you imagine we have all these customers interactions, there's notes on the system from every call we've made, there's documents sitting in all kinds of different databases. Some of it is structured, some of it is unstructured. Before AI it was complicated for us to go in there and make sense of that's something we're now able to do. We're piloting interactive chatbots starting in some of our European markets. The final piece is talent. In order to get anywhere on AI, we need to have people who know what they're doing. We've started recruiting the people that we need. Some examples of use cases that we're already piloting is involves using large language models to mine legal documents, to mine unstructured data. some examples of use cases that we're already piloting is involves using large language models to mine legal documents to mine unstructured data If you imagine we have all these customers interactions, there's notes on the system from every call we've made, there's documents sitting in all kinds of different databases. if you imagine we have all these customers interactions there's notes on the system from every call we've made there's documents sitting in all kinds of different databases Some of it is structured, some of it is unstructured. some of it is structured some of it is unstructured Before AI it was complicated for us to go in there and make sense of that's something we're now able to do. before ai it was complicated for us to go in there and make sense of that's something we're now able to do We're piloting interactive chatbots starting in some of our European markets. we're piloting interactive chatbots starting in some of our european markets The final piece is talent. the final piece is talent In order to get anywhere on AI, we need to have people who know what they're doing. in order to get anywhere on ai we need to have people who know what they're doing We've started recruiting the people that we need. we've started recruiting the people that we need An example of that, we recently set up a Charlotte office, we did that because we felt that would give us access to a wider talent pool than we had in our headquarters in Norfolk. Sure enough, we've been able to hire a senior AI leader there from one of the big banks who I believe is gonna help us take this to the next level. In terms of the question is obviously, well, what value is this gonna bring? These are some of the ways that I think about it. There's additional customer insights to inform the collection strategy, customer engagement. You know, we can run these chatbots 24/7, whereas the call center isn't open 24/7. Supporting different types of collection activities from compliance. An example of that, we recently set up a Charlotte office, we did that because we felt that would give us access to a wider talent pool than we had in our headquarters in Norfolk. an example of that we recently set up a charlotte office we did that because we felt that would give us access to a wider talent pool than we had in our headquarters in norfolk Sure enough, we've been able to hire a senior AI leader there from one of the big banks who I believe is gonna help us take this to the next level. sure enough we've been able to hire a senior ai leader there from one of the big banks who i believe is gonna help us take this to the next level In terms of the question is obviously, well, what value is this gonna bring? in terms of the question is obviously well what value is this gonna bring These are some of the ways that I think about it. these are some of the ways that i think about it There's additional customer insights to inform the collection strategy, customer engagement. there's additional customer insights to inform the collection strategy customer engagement You know, we can run these chatbots 24/7, whereas the call center isn't open 24/7. you know we can run these chatbots 24/7 whereas the call center isn't open 24/7 Supporting different types of collection activities from compliance. supporting different types of collection activities from compliance You know, calls have to be scored for compliance, that's a manual exercise. We'll be able to leverage these tools to do that. It can also help us reduce the manual labor for these standardized processes and optimize our underwriting, and finally, to also help us accelerate the delivery of some of these technology projects that I talked about. Already today, we're seeing that the software developers can use this for coding for example to speed it up. I think there's a real opportunity here. It's not gonna happen overnight, but I think that over time we're gonna see that AI is gonna make a significant difference in a company like ours. The other thing I wanted to talk about is cost. You know it's in our business it's extremely important to run a cost-effective and lean model. You know, calls have to be scored for compliance, that's a manual exercise. you know calls have to be scored for compliance that's a manual exercise We'll be able to leverage these tools to do that. we'll be able to leverage these tools to do that It can also help us reduce the manual labor for these standardized processes and optimize our underwriting, and finally, to also help us accelerate the delivery of some of these technology projects that I talked about. it can also help us reduce the manual labor for these standardized processes and optimize our underwriting and finally to also help us accelerate the delivery of some of these technology projects that i talked about Already today, we're seeing that the software developers can use this for coding for example to speed it up. already today we're seeing that the software developers can use this for coding for example to speed it up I think there's a real opportunity here. i think there's a real opportunity here It's not gonna happen overnight, but I think that over time we're gonna see that AI is gonna make a significant difference in a company like ours. it's not gonna happen overnight but i think that over time we're gonna see that ai is gonna make a significant difference in a company like ours The other thing I wanted to talk about is cost. the other thing i wanted to talk about is cost You know it's in our business it's extremely important to run a cost-effective and lean model. you know it's in our business it's extremely important to run a cost-effective and lean model The first piece there is really having a cost control mindset. When I took over as CEO, we started looking at cost, and last year we started making reductions. We took out 115 corporate and overhead roles which was a difficult thing to do but it was necessary to make the operating model more lean. We also started reducing our onshore agents. Reducing our onshore agents. We've reduced that by 548. As we shift to offshore and reduce the onshore, the net number of reduced by 42%, but we saw our cash collections continue to grow. The. The first piece there is really having a cost control mindset. the first piece there is really having a cost control mindset When I took over as CEO, we started looking at cost, and last year we started making reductions. when i took over as ceo we started looking at cost and last year we started making reductions We took out 115 corporate and overhead roles which was a difficult thing to do but it was necessary to make the operating model more lean. we took out 115 corporate and overhead roles which was a difficult thing to do but it was necessary to make the operating model more lean We also started reducing our onshore agents. we also started reducing our onshore agents Reducing our onshore agents. reducing our onshore agents We've reduced that by 548. we've reduced that by 548 As we shift to offshore and reduce the onshore, the net number of reduced by 42%, but we saw our cash collections continue to grow. as we shift to offshore and reduce the onshore the net number of reduced by 42% but we saw our cash collections continue to grow The. the As we think about the future, we're gonna continue to bring, try to use different techniques to make sure that we're running the model in as lean of a way as we can. That's very important because you have a cycle, as I said at the start, we need to be able to make returns both when the cycle's in a good place, but also if it turns down. The second point is really about building this variable cost structure to handle that. I've talked about a few of these things already, but having a network of DCAs here in the U.S. enables us to have more flexibility in our capacity. We're also leveraging standardized technology. I talked about the omnichannel platform and so on. As we think about the future, we're gonna continue to bring, try to use different techniques to make sure that we're running the model in as lean of a way as we can. as we think about the future we're gonna continue to bring try to use different techniques to make sure that we're running the model in as lean of a way as we can That's very important because you have a cycle, as I said at the start, we need to be able to make returns both when the cycle's in a good place, but also if it turns down. that's very important because you have a cycle as i said at the start we need to be able to make returns both when the cycle's in a good place but also if it turns down The second point is really about building this variable cost structure to handle that. the second point is really about building this variable cost structure to handle that I've talked about a few of these things already, but having a network of DCAs here in the U.S. enables us to have more flexibility in our capacity. i've talked about a few of these things already but having a network of dcas here in the u.s enables us to have more flexibility in our capacity We're also leveraging standardized technology. we're also leveraging standardized technology I talked about the omnichannel platform and so on. i talked about the omnichannel platform and so on That allows us to invest in technology and deploy that across multiple smaller markets, and that's how we get the scale benefit in a place like Europe, where we're fragmented across a lot of small markets. Any one of which may not have been worth it to invest in this technology, but we're able to move it across these markets and get scale. The final piece then is really around people and culture. I think any strategy is really only as good as the people who are gonna execute on it. We've had a big focus on creating talent hubs. I mentioned this Charlotte office. We need to make sure that we're in locations where we have the kinda talent that we need. That allows us to invest in technology and deploy that across multiple smaller markets, and that's how we get the scale benefit in a place like Europe, where we're fragmented across a lot of small markets. that allows us to invest in technology and deploy that across multiple smaller markets and that's how we get the scale benefit in a place like europe where we're fragmented across a lot of small markets Any one of which may not have been worth it to invest in this technology, but we're able to move it across these markets and get scale. any one of which may not have been worth it to invest in this technology but we're able to move it across these markets and get scale The final piece then is really around people and culture. the final piece then is really around people and culture I think any strategy is really only as good as the people who are gonna execute on it. i think any strategy is really only as good as the people who are gonna execute on it We've had a big focus on creating talent hubs. we've had a big focus on creating talent hubs I mentioned this Charlotte office. i mentioned this charlotte office We need to make sure that we're in locations where we have the kinda talent that we need. we need to make sure that we're in locations where we have the kinda talent that we need Secondly is building a high-performance culture with more of an entrepreneurial mindset, having clear metrics and objectives. I know this sounds really obvious and trivial, but it's actually difficult to implement. We've been successful with this in our European markets and having a framework that's called OKRs, objectives and key results. We're really deliberate about measuring the initiatives that we're planning and the results that we expect, and it allows us to track progress very clearly. The final point here is really around shareholder aligning incentives to shareholder interests. In our industry, this is very important because we buy long-term cash flows but have short-term incentives. Finding the right alignment there i think is an important element, and it's something that I've been focusing on, and we can talk more about that later. Secondly is building a high-performance culture with more of an entrepreneurial mindset, having clear metrics and objectives. secondly is building a high-performance culture with more of an entrepreneurial mindset having clear metrics and objectives I know this sounds really obvious and trivial, but it's actually difficult to implement. i know this sounds really obvious and trivial but it's actually difficult to implement We've been successful with this in our European markets and having a framework that's called OKRs, objectives and key results. we've been successful with this in our european markets and having a framework that's called okrs objectives and key results We're really deliberate about measuring the initiatives that we're planning and the results that we expect, and it allows us to track progress very clearly. we're really deliberate about measuring the initiatives that we're planning and the results that we expect and it allows us to track progress very clearly The final point here is really around shareholder aligning incentives to shareholder interests. the final point here is really around shareholder aligning incentives to shareholder interests In our industry, this is very important because we buy long-term cash flows but have short-term incentives. in our industry this is very important because we buy long-term cash flows but have short-term incentives Finding the right alignment there i think is an important element, and it's something that I've been focusing on, and we can talk more about that later. finding the right alignment there i think is an important element and it's something that i've been focusing on and we can talk more about that later In terms of how this all comes together into our plan, the first part is around being disciplined about investments. What we've said is we don't wanna grow for the sake of growth. Our focus is to focus on returns. We've said that we're planning to invest somewhere between $1 billion-$1.3 billion per year in 2026. Right now as it looks, we think it'll be similar to 2025. As a result, we expect to grow our Adjusted EBITDA. We've had a good trajectory on this over the past couple of years, and we expect the trajectory to continue. Our goal is for Adjusted EBITDA to grow faster than cash, meaning that we're getting operating leverage from all of these initiatives. We have a lot of focus on leverage. I mentioned that earlier. In terms of how this all comes together into our plan, the first part is around being disciplined about investments. in terms of how this all comes together into our plan the first part is around being disciplined about investments What we've said is we don't wanna grow for the sake of growth. what we've said is we don't wanna grow for the sake of growth Our focus is to focus on returns. our focus is to focus on returns We've said that we're planning to invest somewhere between $1 billion-$1.3 billion per year in 2026. we've said that we're planning to invest somewhere between $1 billion-$1.3 billion per year in 2026 Right now as it looks, we think it'll be similar to 2025. right now as it looks we think it'll be similar to 2025 As a result, we expect to grow our Adjusted EBITDA. as a result we expect to grow our adjusted ebitda We've had a good trajectory on this over the past couple of years, and we expect the trajectory to continue. we've had a good trajectory on this over the past couple of years and we expect the trajectory to continue Our goal is for Adjusted EBITDA to grow faster than cash, meaning that we're getting operating leverage from all of these initiatives. our goal is for adjusted ebitda to grow faster than cash meaning that we're getting operating leverage from all of these initiatives We have a lot of focus on leverage. we have a lot of focus on leverage I mentioned that earlier. i mentioned that earlier It ticked down to 2.73 at the end of last year. We're planning for that to trend down to the mid 2x area based on the plan that we have. Finally, we wanna grow our returns. All of this is ultimately about returns. Our goal is to continue to grow our annualized returns. I say annualized because of the way the accounting works, individual quarters sometimes can have some volatility due to the accounting. Overall what we're focused on is making sure that our annual returns are progressing in the right direction. We wanna get to a return on equity that you would expect to have from a specialty finance company like ours. We believe we have a plan here to get us to that place. That's really our plan. It ticked down to 2.73 at the end of last year. it ticked down to 2.73 at the end of last year We're planning for that to trend down to the mid 2x area based on the plan that we have. we're planning for that to trend down to the mid 2x area based on the plan that we have Finally, we wanna grow our returns. finally we wanna grow our returns All of this is ultimately about returns. all of this is ultimately about returns Our goal is to continue to grow our annualized returns. our goal is to continue to grow our annualized returns I say annualized because of the way the accounting works, individual quarters sometimes can have some volatility due to the accounting. i say annualized because of the way the accounting works individual quarters sometimes can have some volatility due to the accounting Overall what we're focused on is making sure that our annual returns are progressing in the right direction. overall what we're focused on is making sure that our annual returns are progressing in the right direction We wanna get to a return on equity that you would expect to have from a specialty finance company like ours. we wanna get to a return on equity that you would expect to have from a specialty finance company like ours We believe we have a plan here to get us to that place. we believe we have a plan here to get us to that place That's really our plan. that's really our plan

Speaker 3: Thank you, Martin and Rakesh. We do have time for some questions, if anybody's got any questions in the audience. I mean, I have some. On one at a time. On the technology front, you mentioned obviously AI and a lot of that for the data analysis, it's kinda the back end, and then also you've run the chatbots. AI's capable of video, audio, et cetera. I mean how do you expect to use those technologies in direct interfacing with the customer? Also how does that play into the regulatory rules given they're evolving on the AI front? Thank you, Martin and Rakesh. thank you martin and rakesh We do have time for some questions, if anybody's got any questions in the audience. we do have time for some questions if anybody's got any questions in the audience I mean, I have some. i mean i have some On one at a time. on one at a time On the technology front, you mentioned obviously AI and a lot of that for the data analysis, it's kinda the back end, and then also you've run the chatbots. on the technology front you mentioned obviously ai and a lot of that for the data analysis it's kinda the back end and then also you've run the chatbots AI's capable of video, audio, et cetera. ai's capable of video audio et cetera I mean how do you expect to use those technologies in direct interfacing with the customer? i mean how do you expect to use those technologies in direct interfacing with the customer Also how does that play into the regulatory rules given they're evolving on the AI front? also how does that play into the regulatory rules given they're evolving on the ai front

Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. I mean, here in the U.S., you need consent in order to proactively go out to the customer. That's something we need to work out how that would work here. There are markets in Europe where you don't necessarily require that. We think that using AI is a way to make it easy for the customers to engage with us, whether it's through chatbots or through voice bots. One of the examples that we're piloting is doing payment reminders. Before, we would have the agents calling out doing payment reminders, but now we can have the AI voice bots doing that. We're starting with simple applications that already save us cost on the people side. Yeah, good question. yeah good question I mean, here in the U.S., you need consent in order to proactively go out to the customer. i mean here in the u.s you need consent in order to proactively go out to the customer That's something we need to work out how that would work here. that's something we need to work out how that would work here There are markets in Europe where you don't necessarily require that. there are markets in europe where you don't necessarily require that We think that using AI is a way to make it easy for the customers to engage with us, whether it's through chatbots or through voice bots. we think that using ai is a way to make it easy for the customers to engage with us whether it's through chatbots or through voice bots One of the examples that we're piloting is doing payment reminders. one of the examples that we're piloting is doing payment reminders Before, we would have the agents calling out doing payment reminders, but now we can have the AI voice bots doing that. before we would have the agents calling out doing payment reminders but now we can have the ai voice bots doing that We're starting with simple applications that already save us cost on the people side. we're starting with simple applications that already save us cost on the people side There's a lot of opportunity, I think, to leverage this in more and more ways as we go forward. I tried to outline there's really a whole range here. In some ways, we've been using AI for a long time. If you consider machine learning to be AI, we've been using that for underwriting for a long time. It's moving so fast that I think there's going to be big potential here. We have the ERC that we have. It was underwritten based on the cost model we had at the time when we bought it. If you look at the future i think that some of these tools and techniques are gonna be opportunities for us to create more value. There's a lot of opportunity, I think, to leverage this in more and more ways as we go forward. there's a lot of opportunity i think to leverage this in more and more ways as we go forward I tried to outline there's really a whole range here. i tried to outline there's really a whole range here In some ways, we've been using AI for a long time. in some ways we've been using ai for a long time If you consider machine learning to be AI, we've been using that for underwriting for a long time. if you consider machine learning to be ai we've been using that for underwriting for a long time It's moving so fast that I think there's going to be big potential here. it's moving so fast that i think there's going to be big potential here We have the ERC that we have. we have the erc that we have It was underwritten based on the cost model we had at the time when we bought it. it was underwritten based on the cost model we had at the time when we bought it If you look at the future i think that some of these tools and techniques are gonna be opportunities for us to create more value. if you look at the future i think that some of these tools and techniques are gonna be opportunities for us to create more value

Speaker 3: Got it. Thank you. Then on kind of... How do you feel about your headcount, right? I mean, AI tools, et cetera. I mean, you've grown cash collections even with the headcount coming down. I mean, do you expect that headcount to be level and the operating leverage to come from just continued you know same headcount growth, if you will? You know, how do you expect that to be a component of this increasing efficiency over the next couple years? Got it. got it Thank you. thank you Then on kind of... then on kind of How do you feel about your headcount, right? how do you feel about your headcount right I mean, AI tools, et cetera. i mean ai tools et cetera I mean, you've grown cash collections even with the headcount coming down. i mean you've grown cash collections even with the headcount coming down I mean, do you expect that headcount to be level and the operating leverage to come from just continued you know same headcount growth, if you will? i mean do you expect that headcount to be level and the operating leverage to come from just continued you know same headcount growth if you will You know, how do you expect that to be a component of this increasing efficiency over the next couple years? you know how do you expect that to be a component of this increasing efficiency over the next couple years

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean you know as this slide here tried to show, it's really a matter of balancing this with different levers and channels that we have available. There are accounts that we can place with external DCAs that we may not have been able to work ourselves previously. There's a balance between onshore and offshore collectors that we can, that we can operate, and also the digital channel. The more we can engage with customers through a digital channel, the more that takes away the need to be making calls. That said, I think we're still gonna need all the elements of that mix. It's just a matter of fine-tuning those proportions. Also depending on the volume of accounts we buy and the types of accounts we buy. Yeah. yeah I mean you know as this slide here tried to show, it's really a matter of balancing this with different levers and channels that we have available. i mean you know as this slide here tried to show it's really a matter of balancing this with different levers and channels that we have available There are accounts that we can place with external DCAs that we may not have been able to work ourselves previously. there are accounts that we can place with external dcas that we may not have been able to work ourselves previously There's a balance between onshore and offshore collectors that we can, that we can operate, and also the digital channel. there's a balance between onshore and offshore collectors that we can that we can operate and also the digital channel The more we can engage with customers through a digital channel, the more that takes away the need to be making calls. the more we can engage with customers through a digital channel the more that takes away the need to be making calls That said, I think we're still gonna need all the elements of that mix. that said i think we're still gonna need all the elements of that mix It's just a matter of fine-tuning those proportions. it's just a matter of fine-tuning those proportions Also depending on the volume of accounts we buy and the types of accounts we buy. also depending on the volume of accounts we buy and the types of accounts we buy

Speaker 3: Got it. Thank you. I think that's all we have time for right now, and there is a breakout in Cordova Three downstairs. Thank you. Got it. got it Thank you. thank you I think that's all we have time for right now, and there is a breakout in Cordova Three downstairs. i think that's all we have time for right now and there is a breakout in cordova three downstairs Thank you. thank you

Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. thank you