Lending Club may be back on track with banks, but not soon enough to help its fourth quarter results.
2016 was a tumultuous year for the online lender. The company set high goals for the fourth quarter, including its determination to generate $2 billion in loans. The lender’s very narrow miss of this goal (the company generated $1.99 billion) was helped by contributions from its old friends: 31% of Lending Club’s funding came from banks this past quarter, according to yesterday’s earnings call.
That’s a noted uptick from bank contributions in the previous quarter, which totaled to 13% of overall funding.
The company’s President and CEO (since last May, when Renaud Laplanche left the position) Scott Sanborn attributed the rise in bank contributions to the “attractiveness” of the company’s assets.
Sanborn stated on the call:
We set a target to help our bank partners close out their rigorous diligence, so that they could return to scale. I’m pleased to say that our efforts have paid off as not only are all of our key bank investors back buying on the platform, but we’ve also welcomed multiple new bank partners over the last few months. This is a clear testament to the attractiveness of our assets and of our ability to help banks efficiently deploy their capital and to consumer credit. It is also a testament to the strengthening of our control environment.
While banks are back to buying, 4Q is the third consecutive quarter where Lending Club has had to record a loss. The nearly $2 billion that the company originated this quarter is higher than its third quarter results, but is down 23% year over year. The lender also saw quarterly rise in revenue, ending 4Q with $129 million in revenue—a full 15% higher than its revenue in the previous quarter.
The company’s stock reacted accordingly to the news, continuing a downward slide. The shares have fallen 7% to hover at about $6.10 per share at the time of this reporting.
To learn more about alternative lending, join us in San Jose on March 6-7 for Bank Innovation 2017, where the best conversations in fintech take place. Request your invitation here.