I really liked the way Bear outlined his expectations prior to earnings last quarter. So in the same spirit, I’d like to share a few of my expectations for UPST’s upcoming November 9th earnings.
Prior Belief: Revenue will come in at $250 million (up 282% YoY and 29% sequentially), or higher. Last quarter, the company beat the high end of their guide by $34 million and $250 million would be a similar beat. 29% sequentially is obviously a slowdown from 60% but 60% annualized is 555% so that’s definitely not sustainable. 29% sequentially annualized is 177% and that certainly ain’t too shabby!
Prior Belief: Upstart will do around 400,000 loans during the quarter. Looking at past seasonal patterns, Q3 usually seems to be strong. With an average loan amount of $9,000, the total transaction volume would be around $3.6 billion. At a 7% take-rate, that’s right around my estimate of $250 million. 400,000 loans is a lot of loans, that’s about 4,444 loans per day for the quarter.
Prior Belief: Non-GAAP EBIT of more than $60 million. Last quarter came in at $59.5 million so I’d like to see some increase sequentially in dollar amounts.
Prior Belief: Guidance will be raised by $100 million to $850 million. Over the last two quarters, annual guidance was raised by $100 million and then $150 million. If we don’t see a similarly sized raise, it may raise questions about management’s ability to forecast their business. That’s the thing about UPST, it’s not SaaS so maybe I should give them some slack on this. But if they only raise $50 million this quarter, it begs the question why they wouldn’t have just raised $100 million last quarter and then $100 million this quarter. Then, it would’ve been nice and easy – 3 raises of $100 million over three quarters. So that’s my thinking why I want it to be at least a raise of $100 million.
Would be curious to hear other people’s expectations for UPST!
Best,
Fish