It seems that the clouds have cleared for non-prime marketplace lender Elevate.
After delaying the pricing of its initial public offering in January of last year due to “market volatility”, Elevate filed its form S-1 with the SEC this morning, offering 7.7 million shares, valued at $12 to $14 per share.
The company’s CEO Ken Rees said in a letter in the S-1 that Elevate has “improved in almost every way” since the IPO process first started over a year ago.
More specifically, the alternative lender increased outstanding loans by 30% in 2016 compared to the prior year, while revenue grew 34%. By the end of last year, Elevate logged $4 billion in loan originations, with more than 1.6 million customers in the U.S. and U.K. combined. The company said it’s targeting the “New Middle Class” of approximately 170 million customers. From the CEO’s letter:
While we have not yet reached profitability, our principal charge-off rates have remained stable while our customer acquisition costs have continued to come down. Just as important, we ramped up our commitment to serve our customers and help them improve their financial wellness. We have lowered our average customer effective APRs over 40% since 2013, and we estimate that our customers have now saved more than $1 billion since 2013 over what they would have paid for payday loans. Furthermore, tens of thousands of our customers have appreciably improved their credit ratings with help from our reporting their successful payment history to a major credit bureau.
We believe that further improvements in technology, analytics and scale should benefit our customers. We are continually investing in advanced analytics that allow us to improve our underwriting capabilities. In addition, because we are a 100% online and mobile business, as we continue to grow we expect to generate economies of scale.
UBS Investment Bank is listed as the lead underwriter, together with Credit Suisse and Jefferies. The company will trade as ELVT on the stock exchange.