Bread Financial at RBC Conference: Strategic Insights for Growth

On Tuesday, 04 March 2025, Bread Financial Holdings Inc (NYSE: BFH) participated in the RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference 2025. The company’s EVP & CFO, Perry Beberman, provided a comprehensive overview of Bread Financial’s strategic direction, highlighting both challenges and opportunities. The focus was on disciplined financial services, risk management, and growth opportunities under CEO Ralph Vendretta’s leadership.

Key Takeaways

• Bread Financial anticipates an improvement in delinquency rates as inflation decreases.
• Spending volume grew modestly by 1% year-over-year in the fourth quarter.
• The company expects net interest margin to be slightly higher than in 2024.
• Bread Financial maintains a tight lending posture, resulting in better quality loan vintages.
• The firm is focused on responsible growth and optimizing its capital stack.

Financial Results

Spending and Lending:

• Fourth quarter spending volume increased by 1% year-over-year.
• Improvement in delinquency rates is expected, with loss rates anticipated to stay at or below 8.5% for the quarter.
• February saw a tick-up in delinquency due to the timing of tax refunds.

Net Interest Margin:

• Anticipated to be slightly higher for the full year compared to 2024.
• Influenced by prime rate reductions, delinquency improvements, and credit risk mix shifts.

Reserves and Capital:

• Reserves are considered prudent, reflecting economic conditions and consumer behavior.
• Over 50% of parent debt has been paid down, nearing capital targets.

Operational Updates

Credit and Risk Management:

• Maintained a tight lending posture, leading to smaller, better quality vintages.
• Potential growth as customer behavior improves.

Partnerships and Business Development:

• Diversified partnerships include AAA, NFL, and Saks.
• Competitive advantage in experienced team and partnership focus.

Expense Management and Efficiency:

• Focus on positive operating leverage through expense containment.
• Operational excellence program to drive down efficiency ratios.

Future Outlook

Economic Conditions:

• Monitoring inflation, employment, and consumer sentiment.
• Prepared for potential economic headwinds with adaptable strategies.

Strategic Goals:

• Focused on unlocking firm value through technology improvements.
• Responsible growth and disciplined capital deployment emphasized.

Q&A Highlights

Interest Rate Caps:

• Bread Financial views a 10% interest rate cap as unrealistic and potentially damaging.

CFPB Late Fee Rule:

• Hopes for a favorable ruling in ongoing litigation against the CFPB’s late fee rule.

In conclusion, Bread Financial remains cautiously optimistic about the future, with a focus on disciplined growth and risk management. For a detailed account, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - RBC Capital Markets Global Financial Institutions Conference 2025:

Unidentified speaker: Of Bread Financial. Terry, I just want to say congratulations to your Eagles. Oh, thank you. It’s a nice victory. I know.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: It was a really good victory, one, that we’re gonna cherish for a long time. And and something, you all probably don’t know, John’s next job when he decides to retire from what he’s doing, and hopefully, that’s not for a while, I think he’s gonna go become an NFL scout. So the day of the NFL draft, the first email I got was from John and said, hey. You just got one heck of an athlete. I was like, he’s talking to this guy, Cooper DeJene.

I’m like, who is this guy? If anyone doesn’t follow the Eagles, rookie, cornerback, tremendous players like the Christian McCaffrey of defense, tremendous big impact player during the Super Bowl run. So, thank you

Unidentified speaker: for that. He picked six in the Super Bowl.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: He did picked six in the Super Bowl on his birthday.

Unidentified speaker: Yes. He used to torture my college football team, and that was the reason.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: So that’s how you knew. Okay. Yes.

Unidentified speaker: We could talk about this. Should we talk about this instead? Waste your conversation for talking

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: about what’s happening in the economy, for sure.

Unidentified speaker: So attendance is up. People are more interested in financials, maybe not today, but people are more interested in financials. So I think most of us are familiar with Bread Financial, but give us a 30,000 foot overview for the company. And I think particularly interesting what you guys do given all of the noise in the economy.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes. So our company is a tech forward payment company, consumer lending, predominantly credit cards. I think about that is full spectrum lending from where we offer co brand cards, private label, installment lending, as well as our proprietary cards and a large direct to consumer savings set of products. So very interesting space right now in that what’s going on with the economy, what does that all mean to the consumer, and we have a tremendously experienced credit shop, been in the business since the mid-1990s, very experienced leadership. The company’s been going under transformation under Ralph Vendretta, our CEO, who joined five years ago, brought in deep experienced leaders to complement the existing team and really focus this company on the lending products instead of the, I’ll say, more internationally diversified set of companies that this company had previously owned.

So now we’re operating this place more like a disciplined financial services company as, I’d say, financial specialists expect in terms of how you look at our results, how we manage risk. And it’s been recognized by regulators, rating agencies with the progress that we’ve made.

Unidentified speaker: Yep. Okay. And like all sessions, we’re open open for q and a. So if you have a question, put your hand up and and we can get a microphone in your hands. So full spectrum consumer lending, core funded, much much more cleaned up than it was four, five years ago when you got here.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Much more cleaned up. We can actually find a capital ratio now. So it’s pretty good. Yep. Okay.

Unidentified speaker: A lot of focus on the economy and the consumer. It’s kind of a battleground, I guess. And we hear it internally. I hear it externally as well. But just give us the Bread Financial overview, the economy, what you’re seeing and what the consumers are saying.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes. I mean, we’re on this two to three year, I’d say, path of consumers dealing, at least the ones we serve, are the near prime to prime customer, and they’ve been dealing with this persistently high inflationary environment for at least two, three years coming out of COVID, and that’s what’s been driving up loss rates. And we’re expecting as inflation comes down, employment stays strong, that those wage growth will continue to outpace inflation as it’s been doing the past couple of quarters. We continue to see improvement in delinquency, which then means you’re going to have lower losses and we’ll get back to our expected target returns in the mid-20s return on tangible common equity. Right now, I’ll comment a little bit on the first quarter than what we’re seeing.

We’ve signaled already that we expect February to see a tick up in delinquency and some of that’s driven because of the timing of the tax refunds, right. So it really didn’t occur in February. The refunds are starting to come back on pace and that’s in March. And so we’re hopeful, I say hopeful in that, if consumers do what they say they’re going to do, we expect to see some of that, those refunds pay down debt. So that’s something we’re going to watch very carefully over the coming days and weeks.

So you’ll see loss rates go up, I’ll say seasonally for February with the day waiting. There’s only twenty eight days in the month you annualize that, it ends up. So that’ll be in the high 8% range as we’ve previously articulated, but sets us up for the quarter at 8.5% or below and that still holds for what our expectation is. And then from there, we expect to see some improvement as the year goes on. The pace of improvement is really going to be macro dependent and with what’s going on now, clearly, it’s a little more uncertainty.

Unidentified speaker: What do you think you need to see to get the confidence that February, Crest, March gets better?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: I’ve already seen it. So for what we see in the delinquency stages, right, you have a really good line of sight into the next six months because you have your early entry rates and then where customers are in the different delinquency buckets and how they’re rolling. We see some slight improvement in those roll rates. So I’d say we’ve got a pretty good line of sight until what the next six months looks like.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. So prepare for it in the monthlies. March seems to be performing in line with what you expect. Yes. Fair?

Okay. Spending volume standpoint, what are you seeing in terms of consumer spending? It’s moderated a bit, but it still feels like it’s okay. Talk a little bit about what you’re seeing there.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes. In that fourth quarter period, we saw about 1% growth year over year. We’ve been very disciplined with credit. Consumers have had pulled back some. So, now I think we’re at the point of where we say it’s stable.

We’re still seeing solid spend out of the millennials and Gen Z. But I think what you’re watching now, like we all are, is consumer sentiment has started to come down. And that was in advance of the recent days where tariffs were going about. And you’re starting to hear some commentary of some companies who are planning to increase pricing. But spend is important.

Obviously, it’s a driver of our loans and one that we had a modest outlook for the year. We weren’t overly, I’ll say, enthusiastic that spend was gonna really rebound this year, but it was gonna be moderate throughout the year. And I think that’s right now, it looks like that’s how things are playing out.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. And then touch a little bit on the margin as well. I know there’s some seasonality in the first quarter. Just let’s get that out of the way and touch a little bit about on your expectations there.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes. That’s probably the number one question I get outside of credit quality now is net interest margin and all the moving parts within it. It’s one of the hardest numbers to forecast and to give some sort of, I’ll say, guide around it. And to give context, with the prime rate reductions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 100 basis points, that’s pulling through into our first quarter net interest margin in that we are slightly asset sensitive. So the variable rate loans come down, but the liabilities that we fund at, when you think about CDs year out, eighteen months, two years, they are getting regenerated every month, but if they’re going to reprice slower.

So in time, it’ll catch up to that 100 basis points reduction. And then if later in the year right now, there’s two rate cuts forecasted, my guess is with everything going on, if inflation starts to tick back up, highly unlikely we’re going to see those rate reductions. But that’s an element. At the same time as we have delinquency improving. So every month that delinquency improves means we’re going to have lower build late fees, which then further reduces net interest margin yield because that’s up in our yield calculation.

And then as you improve the credit risk mix, again, you price for risk to consumers who have a better risk score coming in the door will get a lower APR compared to those that are new to credit or just starting out, will have higher APR. So that shift is occurring. So you have those, Alconas, as headwinds to net interest margin. And the tailwinds are the CFPB mitigations that we and others in the industry have been putting in place through the means of higher APRs. They take years to, I’ll say, burn in to the full effect on the back book and other fees.

So that’s a piece. And then as you have gross losses improving, you actually have a lower reversal of interest in fees versus prior periods, so that becomes a tailwind. So you’ve got all these moving parts and what’s happening is it really will look different as you move throughout the year based on where you are in credit improving, lower build late fees, the mitigation actions that we put in place, taking more and more hold and that’s where we’re at. But we’ve signaled for the year that we expect full year net interest margin to be slightly higher than 2024 and that you’ll see some seasonal moves happening in the quarters.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Okay. So over time, it probably improves? Should improve. Yes.

Okay. You mentioned tightening before. You guys have taken some tightening actions. Talk a little bit about that and what you think the impact has been on growth and then also transactions. Yes.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: A couple of years ago, I’d say two, three years ago, coming out of COVID, there’s a lot of stimulus in the marketplace. And Tammy McConaughey, our Chief Risk Officer, does a tremendous job, managing credit, deeply experienced, has an experienced team. And you recognize that credit scores were, I’ll say, being inflated because of the COVID stimulus. You think of it as a head fake. It was just a matter of time before those credit scores came back down when the consumer reverts back to their typical borrowing patterns.

And so we maintained a bit more of a tight lending posture in ’twenty two all the way through ’twenty three and again through ’twenty four. So the vintages were smaller, better quality. So as this pressure has emerged from inflation, it affects the entirety of the back book for all the accounts and customers who had borrowed prior to those vintages being booked like the older vintages. And those are performed the newer vintages are performing better. They’re just smaller in size.

And so similarly, what we’ve done with the existing customers, we’ve not been offering a lot of line increases. So one of the models of this business is you bring in the customers, you hopefully say yes to more people you can approve and you give them a low line and over time as they demonstrate good payment patterns, you can increase their lines and let their lines grow in time as they mature their credit profile. In this environment, we’ve remained pretty restrictive on that, but it is a nice tailwind to growth as we bring people in and we then begin to see that improvement. We’re expecting sometime in the back part of this year. We’d start to see some of that unwind, but it’s really going to be dependent on the customer behavior.

Unidentified speaker: And do you feel like it’s steady state at this point? Are you loosening, tightening steady state?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: I’d say it’s more of a tightened posture in that you’re always doing some swap sets, meaning that the credit’s not a binary, is it black, white, there’s always gray, and you’re always looking for those pockets where, okay, you can approve more, give a little better line, but then others receive, okay, that you need to tighten or say no. So it’s always swap in, swap out. But I’d say, broadly speaking, pretty neutral, stable, a tight posture.

Unidentified speaker: Yep. Okay. Okay. You mentioned earlier, you talked about credit stabilizing, some of the delinquency trends getting better or less worse. Talk a little bit about your level of confidence in seeing credit eventually improve.

And what are some of the things that you’re looking at and watching?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Well, a month ago, my confidence was a bit higher in terms of credit improvement because of things that we were seeing internally and the outlook for the economy. Today, as the new tariffs have gone into place, it was a thing that we called out during our earnings call. That’s something we’re very watchful of and cautious about because 95% of economists had said that tariffs are going to put upward pressure on inflation. And that is something that we were optimistic about that will continue to gradually come down throughout this year. Now, I think it’s a bit more uncertain of what that looks like.

And already, we’re seeing some major retailers say, all right, in the next few days, they’re going to start to increase prices, whether it’s the big store retailers or electronics retailer. And reading today that the tariffs on Canada could increase fuel prices at the gas pump by $0.4 to $0.7 That’s kind of counter to what I thought was this administration was hoping to achieve. But, you know, we’re guessing there’s a means to an end and hopefully, you know, we’ll know more in the next six months. But as of right now, my confidence in, the, I’ll say, inflation continue to drift down is not as high as what it was.

Unidentified speaker: Yep. Okay. And you’ve talked about in the past that kind of the K shaped recovery.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: You’ve been very clear about that. Very clear. Cumulative impacts on the lower end. Yep. Okay.

Do you have much higher end exposure? And are you seeing call it moderate to higher end, there’s been a lot of focus on that?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Through the diversification that we’ve had over the past number of years since Ralph joined and with Val Greer, Chief Commercial Officer and her business development team, they’ve done a really nice job diversifying our partners. And when you look at the types of partners, whether it’s AAA, the NFL, some of the newer ones in electronics and Saks coming on, We are getting more exposure to Prime and Prime Plus customers through that, which is good. The idea is to have a diversified, I’ll say, verticals of industries, of spend, of risk cohorts. It just makes for a, I think, a better business. And that’s what we’ve been able to do.

So we do have more exposure, but we are certainly not, I’ll say, over index to the super prime customer or high prime, the way many of the other issuers are.

Unidentified speaker: Yes. There’s just a lot more focus on the higher end slowing down, which is why I asked that. Okay. I think I probably already know the answer to this. But on reserves and CECL, I think I don’t want to say conservative, but you’ve been conservative.

I don’t know if that’s the right word. But what does it take for your reserve level to eventually come down? And do you feel like if maybe this tariff thing develops into something worse that you have adequate cushion in your current reserves?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yeah. I’d like to think the word prudent is a better word from my seat because when someone says conservative, it means I’m sandbagging the reserve, and that’s not the case. In fact, I unfortunately have been more right than wrong on what was going to happen with the economy and the consumer more broadly. We made an early call on what we expected to happen when inflation was remaining high and it played out that way, right? It manifested itself into higher losses.

I think I was optimistic that we’d be able to dial it back a little bit on our weightings into the severe and severely adverse scenarios or adverse in severely adverse scenarios. But right now, it looks like you kind of have to hold the line a little bit on the credit risk overlay and then just let that reserve rate drift down as the credit quality improves. So as the credit quality improves, the model will run and hopefully kick out a lower reserve rate and those things should go in tandem. And then, when we all have confidence that we have a good handle on what the implications of these this current administration’s policies are to the consumer, that would allow us to unwind a little bit of that, the risk posture on the credit risk overlay.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Good. Can you talk a little bit about you’ve won some business recently and you continue to be open for business. Is it competitive? And do you have a competitive advantage you feel like with the types of clients you’re trying to

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: onboard? Yes, we’re definitely open for business. If anybody knows a good partner who wants to have a great financial institution to serve them, we are definitely open for business. And we have had a number of good wins and there’s more wins in the pipeline that we’ll be able to share when it’s the right time. And the pipeline is robust.

And we do have a right to win. I mean, the thing that is great about our business, it’s, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve got a really deeply experienced skilled team who understand the partnership business. And this is our business. This isn’t 10% of what we do. This is a 95% of what we do is the partnership business.

So we love startup programs. We call them de novo programs. If business is trying to start something from ground up, we are there to do that. We can customize things to make the program be what they want it to be. If it’s a program that’s in existence, it could be $500 to $2,000,000,000 in loans.

That’s kind of our sweet spot too. So we can grow with them, we can deepen them. And the reason why we have a right to win, it goes down to capabilities, focus, the willingness to partner and work with them. We want to grow the programs together. And that’s why we’ve won some of the programs that we’ve gotten because we’ve won them from larger institutions who don’t, I say, pay attention and care for that partnership the same way we do.

We’re not focused on the big branded products in our portfolio. We’re focused on them first.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. It’s nice you have a pipeline. I appreciate you sharing that. Do you feel like you have an advantage? You kind of alluded to it, but an advantage against some of the larger competitors?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: I do in that, well, some of the larger ones, I think, want scale. And I get it. Like, I came from a large institution, and you look at the other large institutions, they focus on the programs of scale, meaning 5,000,000,000 to 25,000,000,000 in size. Those are big and often with thinner returns. And if you’re going to put manpower, get person power against it, you know, you you want it to matter.

And for us, what matters are those 500,000,000 deals, things like that, they matter. And we can make the partner feel like they matter. So the secret sauce for us, it’s the people we have at our company who care about the partners, the relationships, a number of partnerships we have have followed some of those people in our client partnership space to be with us. So that is an advantage. And then I think focus matters.

You’re seeing some big players, I think, and I’m not using them by name, big merger may be happening, may mean that the smaller programs that are in their portfolio are less strategic to them. And again, we have an advantage in that. We’ll certainly look for the opportunity when it’s right to go forward.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Question? You have bipartisan bill in the Senate to cap The question was around the potential 10% cap on card interest rates. We can also get into late fees later, but thank you for that question. That’s a good one.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yeah. So I appreciate your commentary on it narrative. Ridiculous, stupid. I didn’t use those words, by the way. That was a quote.

But it was a quote from someone in the audience. I’m not going to deny that that’s a great perspective. This is the thing where you know, when someone comes up with 10% as a rate cap, you know, I just say, okay, let’s look around the room and say, who in here wants to loan each other money unsecured at 10%? And I’m going to guess no one here is going to sign up for that, and I wouldn’t sign up as a lender. So if they want 95% of Americans to not have access to credit, imagine what that’ll do to the economy.

Right. It would stall it. Now with that said, there’s been lots of crazy ideas thrown out there. That was certainly a populist one. There’s one view that says, our advisors who are deep into Washington politics said they went with 10% because they knew there’s no way it would pass because it is that ridiculous.

And so, at least they can say the Trump administration tried, it just didn’t go through. I don’t think that would pass from safety and soundness measures, OCC, FDIC. I think there would be massive resistance against a 10% cap. It’ll do a lot of damage to the industry and to the economy.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. I hear you. Most people think about credit a year ago at our conference. There’s always some drama around our conference, but they forget that the late fee rule dropped last year at our conference, so that was fun, for you. What’s the latest on the late fee?

How do you handicap the outcome?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Yes. The latest on the late fee is the CFPB largely looking like it’s getting smaller, maybe getting dismantled in some parts. There seems to be a view that if they lose in court, and so right now on February 10, Judge Pittman requested that the CFPB file a brief with the CFPB’s intention on what they’re going to do with this late fee rule. Our hope is that this follows through in litigation. This way, the judge rules, you have a finding that it was not a legal rule that the industry prevails and that would be good for the industry to have that precedent on the books.

And then, anyone down the road that wants to think about it understands that the card act provides that a late fee is a deterrent, it’s a penalty fee and is not a cost to collect fee. And that would be a good thing for this to go. And so if it goes through what we expect, I think the last of the briefings are supposed to be filed because the normal course through the May, expect a ruling sometime in the few months after that, although the judge may already have written it, I have no idea. So, thinking by November, this is resolved hopefully favorably to the industry. And with the CFPB’s current posture, there’d be an expectation they would not appeal, and then this thing is over.

Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker: And if it’s over, what happens?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: If it’s over, then we go on to the discussions as they are active all the time with our brand partners. Again, partner keyword. There’s a partnership business here. Our goal is to offer credit to our retail partners, so they can unlock sales and offer credit to their customers. It’s what’s the implications of higher APRs, different fees?

Are we seeing adverse impacts to consumers? Does it mean that there’s more opportunity to invest more in the program? So, we continue to grow the program with them through marketing or value to the customer. And that’s just it’s always ongoing. It just means with the higher APRs that are in effect, do they stay for a while?

And then eventually, do they get competed away, which would be my expectation.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Has it impacted the ability to move partners or gain new business, the late fee piece of it?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: It really hasn’t. Because this has been an industry wide issue, everybody’s caring for it. What I’d say is pretty similarly. There’s only so many levers to pull on and you’re running what if you’re making sure the contracts care for what needs to happen should this cliff event happen where the late fee drops and what it means to their partner compensation, the revenue share, what it means to consumer pricing, what it means to tightening underwriting. So, I think there’s the industry is pretty rational and everyone’s trying to solve for similar returns.

So, if you’re I think you’re seeing a normal cadence of RFPs come to market, the renewal rates are the same. I mean, again, it goes back to this partnership. So long as you’re not upsetting the partner and doing something that’s way out of market, again, you have the same chance then of renewing that partner as you would have before because they’re going to get the same answer if they go to one of our competitors.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Positive operating leverage, We’ve talked about that for 2025. Maybe there are some more headwinds on revenues. I don’t know. But how do you feel about the ability to generate positive operating leverage kind of regardless of what happens on the revenue side?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: I feel really good about delivering positive operating leverage. The degree to which we deliver it will largely be macro dependent. We have done a really good job containing expenses while still investing heavily into our technology, servicing platforms, collections. We instituted something called operational excellence. In fact, there’s an article I hear came out in the Wall Street Journal where it might have been an interview with me that was just posted I think today.

But the operational excellence I’m passionate about and it’s been embraced by our company, it’s culture changing and it’s something where we’re coming up with lots of ideas from the people, you’re looking at transformational streams and it’s a way in which we’re able to, I’ll say, drive down our efficiency ratios over time while still investing in this business, which is critical. And it’s something we’re passionate about, and we understand it’s in our DNA now, and this is something where I feel very confident that we’ll be able contain our expenses and then, you know, hopefully see revenues improve as we move throughout this year.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Any others? Just I wanted to ask, it’s been a wild five years in consumer finance and especially for your company. You guys have done a lot of work. And maybe this is a better question for a day ago or late last week.

But is the hard work done? And are we at an inflection point in your business? You feel like the losses are cresting and it’s more of a macro driven outlook for your company at this point or what’s left to do?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: It has been quite the ride. We have simplified our business. We’re focused. We’ve taken care of our balance sheet. We’ve paid down over 50% of our parent debt.

We were way over leveraged when I joined. Our capital ratios were anemic. We’ve almost hit our capital targets that we set out there. We’re very disciplined with capital deployment. We’re focused on being opportunistic on improving and optimizing our capital stack, which we’ll continue to do going forward.

I think we are at this inflection point where we have fixed a lot of the things with this company, and now it’s on to attacking growth opportunities as we generate excess capital. And we’re focused on the right things. We have a terrific chief technology officer that’s got a vision for where we’re gonna take our platform and be more nimble with delivering tech for our customers and our partners. We’ve got a good pipeline of new partners. So I really do feel like the value of this firm is about to be unlocked.

Okay.

Unidentified speaker: So the message is feeling good about the way things are going, a little bit of maybe near term cautiousness or watching closely in terms of the direction of the economy, feel good about reserves and capital. What else?

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: I think that’s right. It is look, macro is going to determine the pace at which growth occurs with the consumer. But with everything we’ve got in place around credit, risk management, capital, the growth pipeline, you just got to stay disciplined. We talk about responsible growth. We’re focused and doing it the right way.

Unidentified speaker: Good. Thank you, Perry. Appreciate it.

Perry Beberman, EVP & CFO, Bread Financial: Thanks, John. Go Birds.

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