Dave Q4 2025 Earnings Call - CashAI v5.5 Drives Record Margins and Tightens Credit, Setting Up $300M Buyback
Summary
Dave closed 2025 with a tidy one two punch, revenue up 60% to $554 million and Adjusted EBITDA exploding to $227 million, roughly a 41% margin. Management credits CashAI v5.5, a higher subscription mix, and disciplined marketing for the step-up in ARPU and the sharp improvement in credit performance, and it is leaning into that momentum with a bullish 2026 guide and a tripled share buyback authorization.
The upside looks real, but so does complexity. The company plans to move ExtraCash receivables off balance sheet with Coastal Community Bank to unlock more than $200 million in liquidity, will pilot a Pay in Four BNPL product with limited 2026 revenue, and remains in active DOJ discovery. The math looks tidy today, but investors should watch funding economics, the transition of receivables and the legal timeline as potential swing factors for the story.
Key Takeaways
- Revenue for full year 2025 grew 60% to $554.2 million; Q4 revenue was $163.7 million, up 62% year-over-year.
- Adjusted EBITDA for full year 2025 was $226.7 million at about a 41% margin, up 162% year-over-year; Q4 Adjusted EBITDA was $72.3 million, a 45% margin.
- Management reported an 86% flow-through of top-line outperformance to EBITDA for the year, signaling strong operating leverage.
- ARPU expanded 36% year-over-year, helped by underwriting improvements, pricing changes and a growing share of members on the new $3 subscription for new customers.
- Monthly transacting members, MTMs, are 2.9 million, with Q4 adding 867,000 new members at an estimated CAC of $20 and a gross profit payback under four months.
- ExtraCash originations hit a record $2.2 billion in 2025, up 50% year-over-year; average ExtraCash size rose 20% to $214.
- CashAI v5.5 materially improved credit metrics; 28-day DPD in Q4 was 1.89%, down 12% sequentially, and the company will use 28 DPD as its core delinquency metric in 2026.
- Gross profit in Q4 was $121.9 million, up 68% year-over-year, with gross margin at 74%, roughly 300 basis points higher year-over-year and 500 basis points sequentially.
- Net Monetization Rate reached an all-time high of 4.8%, up 29 basis points year-over-year; average revenue per ExtraCash origination net of losses grew 27% year-over-year.
- Management plans to begin transitioning ExtraCash receivables to an off-balance sheet funding structure with Coastal Community Bank next quarter, expected to free up over $200 million in liquidity and lower cost of capital.
- Coastal fees will be recorded as an operating expense, reducing non-GAAP gross profit while being added back for Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation; investors should watch how funding economics are presented.
- Board increased share repurchase authorization from $125 million to $300 million and management said it expects to execute aggressively given current market conditions.
- 2026 outlook: revenue $690 million to $710 million, up roughly 25% to 28%; Adjusted EBITDA $290 million to $305 million; Adjusted EPS $14 to $15; gross margins expected in the low 70s.
- Pay in Four BNPL product is in internal testing and expected to begin customer tests as soon as next month, but management does not expect meaningful revenue from it in 2026 while unit economics are optimized.
- Operational discipline: Q4 advertising and activation was $19.7 million, CAC roughly $20, compensation expense declined 7% year-over-year, and fixed costs excluding stock comp improved to about 19% of revenue.
- Risks and watch items: the DOJ matter remains in discovery with no material update, the Coastal off-balance sheet shift introduces funding complexity, and quarter-end calendar effects such as the Q1 Tuesday close can meaningfully affect provisions and reported credit metrics.
Full Transcript
Operator: Afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today’s conference call to discuss Dave’s financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2025. Joining us today are Dave’s CEO, Mr. Jason Wilk, and the company’s CFO and COO, Mr. Kyle Beilman. By now, everyone should have access to the fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings press release, which was issued today after the market closed. The release is available in the investor relations section of Dave’s website at investors.dave.com. In addition, this call will be available for webcast replay on the company’s website. Following management remarks, we’ll open the call for answer your questions. Certain comments made during this conference call and webcast are considered forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These forward-looking statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties that are described from time to time in the company’s filings with the SEC. Do not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which are being made only as of the date of this call. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements. The company presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, including Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA Margin, Adjusted Net Income, non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, Adjusted Earnings per Share, and compensation expense, excluding stock-based compensation as supplement measures of performance of our business.
All non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules. You’ll find reconciliation tables and other important information in the earnings press release and Form 8-K furnished to the SEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Dave’s CEO, Mr. Jason Wilk. Please, you may begin.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. 2025 was the strongest year in Dave’s history. Revenue grew 60% to $554 million. Adjusted EBITDA reached $227 million at a roughly 41% margin. To put the year in perspective, we entered 2025 with guidance of $415 million-$435 million in revenue and $110 million-$120 million in Adjusted EBITDA. We raised guidance every quarter and ultimately exceeded the midpoint of that original revenue guidance by 30% and nearly doubled the original EBITDA guidance. In dollar terms, we outperformed on revenue by $129 million and EBITDA by $112 million, meaning we had an 86% flow-through rate on our top-line outperformance for the year.
Full year Adjusted EBITDA grew 162%, nearly three times the revenue growth rate, driven by gross margin expansion and the operating leverage embedded in our business model. I want to thank our incredibly talented and hardworking team for making that possible. The two key takeaways from this call are one, we once again demonstrated the durability of what we will now refer to as our growth algorithm, which is to sustain mid-teens member growth and low double-digit ARPU growth. ARPU expanded 36% year-over-year, and multi-transaction members accelerated 19%, which positions us well heading into 2026.
Our 2.9 million MTMs are still a small fraction of the overall 185 million customer TAM. We believe we’re still early in our journey to drive incremental ARPU through underwriting enhancements, new ExtraCash features and pricing optimization, and new credit products. The second takeaway is that credit performance resulting from CashAI v5.5 produced further improvement sequentially. Credit performance remains an input, not an output, to maximize gross profit dollars, which we again displayed in the fourth quarter. Gross profit and Net Monetization Rate were both records in Q4, further demonstrating the improving unit economics underlying our growth. Now let me touch on the key drivers of our growth strategy, starting with efficient member acquisition, our first strategic pillar. In Q4, we acquired 867,000 new members, up 13% year-over-year at a $20 CAC.
Our strategy is to deploy marketing spend to maximize gross profit rather than minimize CAC. This approach, combined with our improved unit economics, drove a $48 increase year-over-year in annualized gross profit per MTM, significantly outpacing changes in CAC. Our gross profit payback period improved by nearly a month year-over-year to under four months, which gives us confidence to continue scaling MTMs throughout 2026. Our second strategic pillar, engaging members with ExtraCash, continued to drive substantial growth. Originations reached a record $2.2 billion, up 50% year-over-year, driven by 19% MTM growth and a 20% increase in average ExtraCash size to $214.
CashAI v5.5, which was trained in our new fee structure and leverages nearly twice as many AI-driven features as our prior model, has now delivered a full quarter of performance. Our Q4 28-day past due rate improved 12% sequentially to 1.89%, outperforming our guidance of below 2.1% for the quarter. Leveraging direct visibility from connected bank accounts, CashAI maintains disciplined risk controls while delivering what we believe are the largest average disbursements in the single pay credit market. This differentiated underwriting capability strengthens our value proposition to support additional customer growth, allowing us to compound more training data for our AI models, creating a powerful flywheel that strengthens our moat. Our third strategic pillar is deepening engagement through Dave Card. Solo card spend grew 17% year-over-year to $534 million.
High-margin subscription revenue grew 92% year-over-year, benefiting from the full impact of our $3 monthly subscription fee for new members. As a proportion of our MTM base acquired under the new subscription pricing increases, we expect subscription revenue to become a more meaningful contribution to total revenue. Before turning it over to Kyle, I want to provide a few strategic updates. On Coastal Community Bank, we remain on track to begin transitioning ExtraCash receivables to the new off-balance sheet funding structure next quarter, which will begin unlocking meaningful liquidity and reduce our cost of capital. Kyle will provide additional details shortly. Turning to our Pay in Four product, we are well into internal testing and expect to begin customer testing as early as next month.
We believe this direct-to-consumer offering, which will not accrue compound interest or charge late fees, will be far superior and differentiated from traditional credit cards offered to our target market, which are optimized for customers who carry large balances at high APRs and incur excessive late fees. Leveraging Cash AI, we believe we can meaningfully differentiate our offering through superior underwriting and product experience while enhancing every aspect of our strategic pillars. We don’t expect meaningful pay in four revenue in 2026 as we remain focused on optimizing unit economics before scaling in 2027. Next, regarding the DOJ matter, the case is currently in the discovery phase. We have no material updates. We continue to vigorously defend that we believe we were in compliance with applicable law at all times. Lastly, I want to quickly touch on our thoughts on potential AI disruption in the software industry.
From a defensibility perspective, we believe Dave has a sizable moat. We’ve invested significant time and capital in building the necessary regulatory and operational infrastructure and relationships across bank partnerships, payments infrastructure, compliance, capital markets, and a large network of customized vendor integrations who operate at scale. Additionally, and most importantly, we’ve established a massive proprietary data set on credit performance and servicing interactions to refine our models, which is impossible to replicate without significant user scale and capital investment to absorb losses. Second, in a scenario in which AI creates dislocation in the economy leading to lower incomes or higher unemployment and government-assisted income, while origination per user could potentially decrease slightly, we believe this would be more than offset by the large increase in Americans looking for and for whom we can underwrite for short-term liquidity.
Overall, we believe our business will continue to benefit from AI innovation. AI technology allows us to make CashAI more powerful, build and market more valuable products for our members with an efficient team, and support speed and scalability across all aspects of our operations, all of which are expected to lead to more growth opportunities and operating leverage for our business. Looking ahead to 2026, we believe our growth algorithm remains durable. Our momentum, combined with disciplined investment and the continued evolution of CashAI to improve ExtraCash credit performance and enable new credit products, helps position us to deliver the growth and profitability embedded in our full-year outlook. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Kyle for additional detail.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Thanks, Jason. Good afternoon, everyone. Today I’m going to walk through the core drivers of our fourth quarter and full-year performance, a concise overview of credit, our balance sheet and capital allocation updates, and our 2026 outlook. Let’s start with the key trends that shaped our results. Our growth algorithm remains incredibly strong. We accelerated MTM growth for the third consecutive quarter, driven by efficient member acquisition, higher conversion and reactivation rates from successful product and marketing initiatives, and continued strong retention. On the ARPU side, underwriting enhancements, including the impact of CashAI v5.5, combined with our updated pricing model and a growing mix of members on our new subscription tier, were key drivers of growth. In the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue of $163.7 million, up 62% year-over-year and 9% sequentially.
For the full year, revenue reached $554.2 million, up 60%, driven by each component of our growth algorithm performing above expectations. As Jason alluded to earlier, our credit performance demonstrated the strong fundamentals underlying our profitable growth. In the fourth quarter, our 28-day delinquency rate improved 14 basis points sequentially to 2.19%. Our 28 days past due, or DPD metric, which we introduced last quarter, improved 26 basis points or 12% sequentially to 1.89%. Below the initial guidance we provided last quarter and the preliminary results that we shared last month. The DPD metric more closely aligns with industry standards and removes noise associated with assets with different duration profiles.
Note that we will stop reporting on the 28-day delinquency rate in 2026 as we fully transition to 28 DPD as our core delinquency rate metric. Seasonally, the first quarter typically reflects our lowest delinquency and loss rates due to the additional liquidity members receive from tax refunds, and performance to date in Q1 is tracking consistent with that pattern. Given these improvements in credit, alongside the expansion we’re seeing on ARPU, our Net Monetization Rate, defined as ExtraCash revenue net of 121-day losses as a percentage of origination, expanded 29 basis points year-over-year to an all-time high of 4.8%. Average revenue per ExtraCash origination net of losses grew 27% year-over-year. Gross profit reached $121.9 million in Q4, up 68% year-over-year.
Gross margin was 74%, up approximately 300 basis points year-over-year and 500 basis points sequentially. The sequential improvement was primarily driven by a lower provision as a percentage of revenue, reflecting continued improvements in credit performance from CashAI v5.5 and a favorable quarter-end calendar dynamic as Q4 ended on a Wednesday rather than a Tuesday in Q3. For the full year, gross profit was $401.5 million, up 68%, with a gross margin of 72%, up approximately 400 basis points year-over-year. Looking ahead, we expect gross margins in the low 70s range in 2026, up from our previously guided range of upper 60s to low 70s, supported by improving credit performance and growing subscription revenue mix.
It’s important to note that Q1 ends on a Tuesday, which typically marks the intra-week peak in outstanding receivables and, as a result, drives higher provision for credit losses despite favorable underlying credit trends. All else equal, the Tuesday close creates adverse impacts to the provision both sequentially and year-over-year. To touch on a few other P&L items, advertising and activation costs were $19.7 million in Q4, up 34% year-over-year, as we leaned into user acquisition given the significant returns and sub 4-month payback periods we continue to generate on our marketing dollars. As we look to 2026, the first quarter is typically our softest from a marketing efficiency standpoint due to tax refund dynamics. As a result, we are moderating marketing investment in Q1 to offset seasonal softness and ExtraCash demand.
While average tax refund amounts appear modestly higher year-over-year, likely reflecting recent tax reform, we are not seeing demand impacts outside of normal seasonal patterns. For the remainder of the year, we plan to moderately expand marketing investment above fourth quarter 2025 levels. Turning to fixed costs, compensation expenses in Q4 declined 7% year-over-year and were roughly flat sequentially. Excluding stock-based compensation, fixed expenses as a percentage of revenue improved to approximately 19%, down roughly 800 basis points year-over-year, highlighting the operating leverage inherent in our platform. Taking all this together, fourth quarter GAAP net income was $66 million compared to $16.8 million in the prior year period.
Adjusted EBITDA reached a record $72.3 million, up 118% year-over-year, representing a 45% margin, an expansion of approximately 1,100 basis points. For the full year, Adjusted EBITDA was $226.7 million at a 41% margin with a flow-through rate of 86% from gross profit. Regarding our Coastal Community Bank funding arrangement, we remain on track to begin transitioning ExtraCash receivables under the new off-balance sheet structure next quarter. Upon full implementation, we expect to unlock over $200 million in incremental liquidity, reduce our cost of capital, and enable us to repay our existing credit facility by mid-year. We anticipate the fees paid to Coastal under this new arrangement will be recognized as an operating expense.
As a result, the associated expense will reduce non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin will be added back for Adjusted EBITDA purposes. When you combine our year-end cash position with the incremental liquidity expected from the Coastal transition and our continued free cash flow generation, our forecasted cash balance at the end of the year represents a meaningful double-digit percentage of our current enterprise value, providing significant flexibility to execute our capital allocation priorities. To that end, our board has approved an increase in our share repurchase authorization from $125 million to $300 million. We believe this expanded program reflects our confidence in the intrinsic value of our shares and our firm commitment to returning capital to shareholders while continuing to invest in profitable growth. Given the current market backdrop, we expect to begin executing aggressively against this authorization in the near term.
Let’s turn to our outlook. As Jason alluded to, we’ve established a medium-term baseline growth algorithm where we expect MTM and ARPU growth rates to be in the mid-teens and low double digits respectively. Given the size of our TAM and the additional product expansion opportunities ahead, we believe this algorithm is a sustainable baseline for the next several years while also giving ourselves the ability to outperform. For 2026, we expect revenue to be in the range of $690 million-$710 million, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 25%-28%. We expect Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $290 million-$305 million.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: For the first time, we are introducing Adjusted Earnings per Share guidance, reflecting our focus on driving per share denominated value creation as a result of our focus on opportunistic share repurchases at scale. For 2026, we expect Adjusted EPS to be in the range of $14-$15. This guidance assumes estimated annual effective tax rate of approximately 23% for 2026. Our outlook is built on a continuation of what we proved in 2025. Mid-teens MTM growth, continued ARPU expansion driven by origination size, pricing, subscription mix, and a disciplined investment posture. We plan to make modest and incremental investments in new product development and go-to-market capabilities that we believe will drive future growth while continuing to expand annual Adjusted EBITDA margins.
In closing, the execution we demonstrated throughout 2025, raising guidance every quarter, accelerating MTM growth, significantly expanding margins, and improving credit performance while scaling originations, provide a strong foundation for 2026. We believe our competitive moat continues to strengthen through CashAI, we have significant opportunities to drive shareholder value with our strong balance sheet and compelling product roadmap for many years to come. With that, we’ll conclude our prepared remarks. Operator, let’s open the line for questions.
Operator: Thank you so much. As a reminder to ask a question, simply press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. That is star one one to get in the queue. One moment while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair. Please proceed.
Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst, William Blair: Hi, good afternoon, guys. Nice results here. It’s great to see the flywheel, Jason, as you described it, spooling up. I wonder if you could give us a sense sort of how close you think you are to kinda optimizing credit outcomes and gross profit growth, you know, namely driven by average ExtraCash loan size and whether, you know, as you approach what you think the limit is under 5.5, whether you start to roll out 6.0, and I guess how seamless that transition will be. I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves here, but I’m just trying to think ahead about how the growth algorithm perpetuates over time.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Andrew. It was a fantastic quarter. You know, look, I think we plan for this year with our growth algorithm to continue chipping away at average origination size growth. We think there’s a lot of room left to run in V 5.5, but we will start to be testing V 6.0 later this year. As we rolled out V 5.5, you could see that we can test those new models pretty rapidly. We started testing the first versions of V 5.5 early in the summer, and we had our first full month rolled out in September. I think that’s just a real testament to how fast the duration is of our ExtraCash portfolio.
Our book turns over every eight to 10 days, and when you combine that with our CashAI algorithm that is able to look at cash flow data, it just presents a sort of an unparalleled position to sit within short-duration consumer credit compared to our peers that are doing longer duration install and lending or open line credit card.
Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst, William Blair: Okay. I look forward to seeing the progress there. If I might, one follow-up. To the extent that Dave Card is important for ecosystem monetization, any thoughts on sort of how to perhaps incentivize behavior such as disbursement of ExtraCash balances into Dave Card accounts? Would that be something that’s worth investing some CAC on or do you think that’s sort of a natural, maturation process that just takes place with time?
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: We’ve seen historically about 30% of all ExtraCash dollars flow onto the Dave Card. We see that as a meaningful way for us to drive our third pillar of our strategy, which is to deepen engagement with our members. We do plan on new credit products helping to also deepen that relationship. The debit card is strategic to our longer-term roadmap, although I’d say our more near-term roadmap is focused on new short-term credit opportunities like the Pay in Four product, which we’re very excited about testing with existing employees right now in-house and expect to start testing with customers sometime in April. Excited to, you know, continue to see more products being shipped with CashAI. I think that’s where we really have a lot of differentiation, not a ton of differentiating within debit other than giving customers discounts to adopt the product.
I do suspect that over the many years we do more for our members within credit, the chance we have to win more of their direct deposit will grow over time.
Andrew Jeffrey, Analyst, William Blair: Okay. Thank you. I look forward to using the Pay in Four product. Appreciate it.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Yeah, thanks so much.
Operator: Our next question is from Ryan Tomasello with KBW. Please proceed.
Ryan Tomasello, Analyst, KBW: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Given the visibility you have into your members’ spending from the cash loan underwriting, are you able to size how much of your members’ monthly spend that Dave is currently capturing? Then with the new Pay in Four product, you know, how do you view that contributing to unlocking more of that, of that wallet share and ultimately, you know, capturing more of everyday spend and moving more up wallet with your members? Thanks.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Right. Ultimately, the Dave Card is capturing about 30% of our customers ExtraCash spend. If you look at the overall direct deposit adoption of the company, we don’t have significant penetration there, so it’s hard to say what overall spend penetration we have of our customers wallet share. As far as the Pay in Four product, we look to that as another way to drive incremental engagement. Would expect the limits of that product to be pretty significantly larger than ExtraCash, roughly 50% to 2x the limit. With that tend to grow more within the credit TAM, which we see with our customers using things like other EWA products, other BNPL products or traditional overdraft, which is still our primary competition here. Kyle, anything to add there?
Ryan Tomasello, Analyst, KBW: Got it. Sorry, go ahead.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: I think you largely covered it, but I think from an income perspective, you know, we see customers have, you know, roughly $3,000-$4,000 of income coming into their connected accounts with us. If you look at the average ExtraCash amount today as a proportion of that, you know, total income, it’s relatively small, and see, you know, the overall spending potential to increase. If you wanna think about, you know, just total sort of credit origination and therefore how much wallet share is that capturing as a % of income. Yeah, we’re in a very, you know, low, very low penetration of that overall equation there and view the Flex card to be a meaningful opportunity to capture more of that wallet share, as Jason mentioned.
Ryan Tomasello, Analyst, KBW: Got it. Yeah, that 3,000-4,000 I think is very helpful to contextualize the opportunity. Then, just as a follow-up, within the guidance, can you give any color on the range of 28-day DPD rate that you’re baking into the guide for the year for that 25%-28% growth?
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Yeah, I mean, roughly speaking, where we were at in Q4, we had about 1.89% DPD rate in Q4. If you extrapolate that out to our 121-day loss metric, it implies about 1.3%. I’d say that’s largely where we expect things to fall. That roughly tracks to the low 70s% gross margin guidance that we provided. Really our approach with the loss rates isn’t to think about managing them lower from here. It’s how can we just continue to increase monthly transacting members with loss rates kind of sustaining in that level.
Ryan Tomasello, Analyst, KBW: Great. Thanks, guys.
Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, if you do have a question, simply press star 11 to get in the queue. Our next question is Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank. Please proceed.
Neev Ioffe, Analyst, Citizens Bank: Hey there, guys. It’s Neev Ioffe on for Devin. Some quick questions. I guess on the pay it forward, it’s great to hear that you see, I guess, kind of on the last question, how the revenue will compare, you know, over time relative to ExtraCash. Do you guys have any concern that the product itself will cannibalize a portion of ExtraCash as it begins to roll out?
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: We’re anticipating some cannibalization, but ultimately view those products to be pretty complementary. We do see pretty significant penetration of our customers using online BNPL today, which we’ll be quite differentiated from. With that, they’re still using ExtraCash because the use cases are quite different. ExtraCash primarily used for bills, gas, groceries. Today, we don’t view ourselves winning any of the discretionary spending that we do see our competition within BNPL winning. Expect some cannibalization, but again, mostly view those to be pretty complementary.
We also would expect, even though the monetization of the Pay in Four product will be slightly less than ExtraCash because of the heavy demand from our customers and feedback around giving more duration, we do expect longer retention or higher retention of that product, would view actually LTV to be higher of Pay in Four. We actually wouldn’t even mind if there was cannibalization given the higher LTV profile of the business. Importantly, I think with Pay in Four, we do expect it to be a meaningful new UA go-to-market for us, it could unlock more incremental marketing scale, is that even if you look at it from that perspective, cannibalization is not as relevant.
Neev Ioffe, Analyst, Citizens Bank: All right. Great. Thanks. I guess, my next question may be a smaller one, is on the subscription charges for Dave Card. Obviously new members are now paying $3. Are the grandfathered accounts gonna be changing over anytime soon, or will they remain at $1?
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: The current plan right now is.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: They’ll remain at the...
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Sorry, go ahead, Jason.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Yeah. I was just gonna say, you know.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: The current plan is.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Yeah.
Neev Ioffe, Analyst, Citizens Bank: Go ahead, Kyle.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: The current plan is for us to keep those folks at $1 per month, though we do see there being optionality around that in the future. We’d like to compare that, if and when we ever made a change with additional product value that we’d be delivering to those customers. I would say no for now, but we’d reserve that right in the future to make a change there.
Neev Ioffe, Analyst, Citizens Bank: Okay. Awesome. Thank you, guys.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Vafi with Canaccord Genuity. Please proceed.
Joseph Vafi, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Hey guys, good afternoon. Great results here once again. Maybe we just kind of double-click on the balance sheet impact we’re seeing. You know, obviously moving off balance sheet for ExtraCash, but Pay in Four. What does that mean for the balance sheet moving forward if that product’s successful? Then maybe just, as follow-up, you know, as you roll out your guide here for 2026, you know, guidance is, I think it’s an important part of The Dave Story and investment case. Any changes or updates to your general philosophy around guidance, relative to the market opportunity you’ve seen, you know? Obviously you’ve outperformed materially against your guidance, maybe if you could kind of refresh us on your guidance philosophy and, you know, any learnings or updates to that philosophy versus a year ago?
Thanks, guys.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Hey, Joe, it’s Kyle. Thanks for joining and appreciate the question. Maybe just to start off on the balance sheet impact for Coastal with respect to the ExtraCash product. To recap for everyone, we plan to move all of our receivables or the majority of our receivables to Coastal in an off-balance sheet structure where we maintain full economic exposure of the assets. We’re just effectively paying them for utilizing their balance sheet. So that should free up about $200 million at current levels of cash as those receivables migrate. So it’s a really capital efficient structure for us. We will plan to mimic that structure for the BNPL product as well.
You know, it will require us to invest a little bit in the receivables there, but the overwhelming majority of those receivables will also sit at Coastal. Again, a very capital efficient approach to growing that product. Then with respect to the guidance, you know, as we’ve talked about in the past, our goal is to put out numbers that we have very high confidence in delivering upon. We think that’s a really important part of our, you know, approach in building relationships and trust with the Street, and we’d largely, you know, continue with that same approach for 2026. I will say, kind of rewinding back to this time last year, we had just rolled out our new fee model. I know we were optimistic around that.
We wanted to give ourselves, you know, a little bit of flexibility with the guidance and be a little bit maybe more conservative than we would have been otherwise, just given the kind of the early innings of the performance data that we’d seen to date. You know, that I think allowed us to outperform a bit more than what we had expected because the results of that were, I’d say beyond expectation. Yeah, just to recap, conservative approach to the guide, wanna give ourselves the ability to outperform, and I think we’ve beaten raised every quarter for the, you know, the last 3-plus years now, and we’d like to be in a position to continue to do that moving forward as well.
Joseph Vafi, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Great. Thanks, Kyle.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Joe, just put some numbers behind that. You know, we still believe in this growth algorithm we just talked about on the call, which is to sustain mid-teens user growth and mid-double-digit ARPU growth. If you think about last year, ARPU is 36% as a result of the new fee model. Just, you know, significant outperformance as a result of that. We expect a growth of return more to normalcy this year.
Joseph Vafi, Analyst, Canaccord Genuity: Got it. Great results, guys. Thank you very much.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Thanks, Joe.
Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, if you do have a question, simply press star 11 to get in the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Stephan with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed.
Jacob Stephan, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Hey, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions. Nice quarter, nice guide. I just wanted to touch on the MTMs. Obviously you saw an acceleration in growth here in Q4. Maybe, you know, along with the subscription price increase here, maybe you could just talk about kind of, you know, do you see customers leaving with the subscription at $3 a month, and then coming back more often, or is there any kind of comparison to the $1 per month subscription? Any color there is helpful.
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: I think it’s worth noting that we were in testing with the higher price point subscription, testing everything from $0, $1, $3, and $5 price points for about six months, and we wanted to make sure that we were measuring both conversion and retention impact. We landed on the $3 because we saw no impact to retention or conversion. It gave us a lot of conviction to roll it out for new customers. I think that helps answer your question there. Importantly, we didn’t wanna raise the price on existing members because we already increased revenue per user pretty significantly through the new fee model last year. I didn’t feel the need, given the improvements in ARPU, to need to increase the subscription price as well.
I would expect we’d have success there should we want to, given the performance of the new customers on that model.
Jacob Stephan, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: That makes sense. Maybe could you kind of help us think, you know, was the acceleration in growth, I mean, was that, you know, better marketing strategy, or do you think it was, you know, kind of economic driven? Any color there?
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: I would say that was more driven by things that we have done from either an underwriting perspective or product improvements, or marketing improvements, as opposed to anything that we’ve seen in the macro. I mean, if you just look at the, you know, sort of the activity rate of MTMs as a percentage of total account holders, we’re growing that number faster, than what we are the total account base. I think that just speaks to the improvements that we’re making in from a product perspective and conversion, and retention to drive, overall MTM growth. We’re, we’re excited to continue to, invest in, you know, just making ExtraCash the number 1 product in the market.
As Jason mentioned, we think that, the Pay in Four product as well will give us another opportunity to acquire customers at the top of the funnel, efficiently and, drive additional retention as we’re fulfilling more of their credit needs over time.
Jacob Stephan, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Got it. Maybe just one last one. Impact, kind of tax refund season is upon us here. I know you said Q1 is, ends on a Tuesday, your guys’ least favorite day, but maybe help us think through kind of any impact that you’re seeing from kind of the tax refund cycle currently?
Kyle Beilman, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, Dave: Jason, you wanna take that one?
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: I think we’re ultimately seeing pretty much a normal tax refund season. We are seeing refunds up about 10%. You know, nothing near what people were worried about seeing that we would potentially see significant refund increases over last year. Ultimately through the quarter, seeing no significant business impacts, and that’s just business as usual here.
Jacob Stephan, Analyst, Lake Street Capital Markets: Got it. Very helpful. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks so much.
Operator: Thank you so much. This concludes our Q&A session. I will pass it back to Jason Wilk for closing remarks.
Jason Wilk, Chief Executive Officer, Dave: Thanks, everyone. We appreciate it.
Operator: This concludes our conference. Thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect.