Velocity Financial, Inc. (NYSE:VEL) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 3, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Chris Oltmann – Treasurer

Chris Farrar – President and Chief Executive Officer

Mark Szczepaniak – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Steve DeLaney – JMP Securities

Stephen Laws – Raymond James

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Velocity Financial Second Quarter 2023 Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Oltmann, Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Chris Oltmann

Thanks, Danielle. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for the discussion of Velocity’s second quarter 2023 results. Joining me today are Chris Farrar, Velocity’s President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Szczepaniak, Velocity’s Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this afternoon, we released our second quarter 2023 results and the press release and the accompanying presentation are available on our Investor Relations website.

I’d like to remind everyone that today’s call may include forward-looking statements, which are uncertain and outside of the company’s control and actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of some of the risks and other factors that could affect results, please see the risk factors and other cautionary statements made in our communications with shareholders, including the risk factors disclosed in our SEC filings.

Please also note that the content of this conference call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, and we do not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. We may also refer to certain non-GAAP measures on this call. For reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures, you should refer to the earnings materials on our Investor Relations website. And finally, today’s call is being recorded and will be available on the company’s website later today.

And with that, I will now turn the call over to Chris Farrar.

Chris Farrar

Thank you, Chris. And we appreciate everyone joining the call today. We’re pleased to report another excellent quarter and thank all of our team members who worked so hard to support our mission. Our continued growth and earnings and book value are a result of a sound strategy and attention to detail from everyone at the firm.

Our origination pipeline is very healthy and we continue to be choosy with credit as we’ve seen increased demand with banks tightening their lending activities. This pullback has allowed us to create attractive risk adjusted deals for new portfolio loans. We recognized a 19% increase in originations versus the prior quarter, while holding expenses flat, which obviously improves our operating margins.