SHF - Q1 2024

Executive Summary

• Q1 performance showed resilient top line with revenue of $4.05M (-3% y/y) and a swing to net income of $2.05M (vs. $(1.41)M) on materially lower operating expenses (-36%) and favorable warrant/deferred consideration marks. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $1.09M (+165% y/y), reflecting cost actions and mix shift toward lending.
• Mix shift continues: loan interest income rose 251% to $1.64M as the loan book nearly tripled y/y, while depository and onboarding fees fell 28% to $1.62M amid fewer accounts/balances after the 2023 Central Bank exit.
• Balance sheet/liquidity improved modestly: cash was $5.6M (vs. $4.9M at 12/31/23); working capital turned positive (~$0.32M), though management still disclosed substantial doubt about going concern given recent history and obligations.
• Outlook: management expects FY24 adjusted EBITDA “slightly better” on “modestly higher” revenue vs. 2023 ($3.6M Adjusted EBITDA on $17.6M revenue); catalysts include potential rescheduling to Schedule III (positive) while SAFER Banking viewed as neutral given persistent BSA compliance needs.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Lending scale and mix: loan interest income rose 250%+ to $1.64M as the loan book nearly tripled y/y; lending represented just over 40% of Q1 revenue. “Our loan income increased 250% y/y to $1.6 million” (CEO).
  • Cost discipline: operating expenses declined 35.8% to $3.73M; Adjusted EBITDA improved to $1.09M; management cited lower G&A, amortization/depreciation, stock comp, and insurance costs.
  • Profitability inflection and cash generation: net income of $2.05M vs. $(1.41)M; operating cash flow of $1.48M vs. $(0.23)M y/y.

• What Went Wrong

  • Depository pressure and client attrition: depository fees fell 28% to $1.62M; active client accounts dropped to 757 from 1,040 y/y following the Central Bank relationship termination in July 2023.
  • Investment income decline: investment income fell 45% y/y to $0.77M on lower balances and fewer new accounts.
  • Going concern language and Nasdaq bid deficiency notice present overhangs despite near‑term improvements.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Benjamin, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Safe Harbor Financial Q1 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Thank you. I would like to turn the call over to Erika Kay. Please go ahead.

Erica Kay (VP of Investor Relations at KCSA Strategic Communications)

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Q1 2024 earnings conference call for Safe Harbor Financial. Before we start, please note that remarks made today include forward-looking statements, including statements with respect to the company's outlook and the company's expectations regarding its market opportunities and other financial operational matters. Each forward-looking statement discussed on today's call is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in such statements.

Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements, and reported results should not be considered as an indication for future performance.

Additional information regarding these factors appears under the heading "Risk Factors in the Company's Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission," or the SEC, including the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, as well as limitation factors included in the forward-looking statements in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2023, which are available at www.sec.gov or on our website at ir.shfinancial.org.

The forward-looking statements in this call, we speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any of these statements. Also, during the call, Safe Harbor will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release, which you can find on the company's investor relations website or on the SEC website.

Finally, the content of this call may contain time-sensitive information accurate only as of today, 13 May 2024. SHF Holdings Inc. undertakes no obligation to revise or otherwise update any statements to reflect events or circumstances other than the date of this call. All dollar amounts expressed today are in U.S. currency. Presenting today will be Sundie Seefried, Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Dennedy, Chief Financial Officer of Safe Harbor. I'll now hand the call over to Sundie. Sundie, please go ahead.

Sundie Seefried (Founder, and CEO)

Thank you, Erica, and welcome to our Q1 2024 earnings call. We entered 2024 with our most expansive suite of financial compliance products and services in place. In the Q1, we specifically focused on advancing newer lines of business as we continue to drive more diversified income streams and enhance our position as a premier financial services provider for cannabis-related businesses, or CRBs, across the country.

It is important to understand the significance of our lending program in the context of the obstacles CRBs continue to face, even with regulatory changes in motion, when trying to gain access to capital to grow their businesses. Traditional banks and credit unions remain hesitant to engage in cannabis financing due to the industry's complex structure, and if they do participate, loans often carry high interest rates with less favorable terms compared to loans provided to businesses in other sectors.

Given our success in serving over 750 clients through our proven compliant cannabis finance infrastructure and facilitating over $22 billion in deposits across 41 states since our inception in 2015, incorporating lending into our platform was a natural extension for the business. Safe Harbor is one of just a handful of financial service providers capable of providing CRBs access to compliant deposit tools and traditional lending. Our results in the Q1 demonstrate the success we have achieved in developing this high-margin business channel to further enhance our competitive position.

To provide some perspective on growth of our lending program since it was first introduced in 2022, it is important to understand how our revenue composition has evolved over the past year. Given our success working with financial institutions to onboard, monitor, and ensure compliance with CRB funds, we accrued a strong deposit base from which to lend.

To address our clients' increased requirements for growth capital, we have worked closely with our financial partners to lend against deposits. Increased deposits result in higher lending capacity. Given Safe Harbor's unique lending capabilities, we believe new lending opportunities will help drive strong organic deposit growth.

When we began ramping up our lending program in Q1 2023, loan interest income was a nominal percentage of our business at approximately 11%. At the end of Q1 2024, the value of our loan book nearly tripled year-over-year, and loan income represented just over 40% of revenue in the quarter. The results clearly demonstrate market acceptance of this truly unique capability and support our goal of creating a more diversified income stream.

Our business model centers on leveraging our experience in cannabis finance and our proprietary and compliant FinTech platform to create a one-stop-shop financial service center for cannabis businesses across the country. By expanding our product and service offerings, we have proven our ability to scale and differentiate Safe Harbor from the competition, which experienced high barriers to entry in providing the same array of services due to the high level of compliance, oversight, and monitoring required.

Today, we are less reliant on our depository fees to drive our growth. We are now operating multiple synergistic business channels with increasing income being derived from loan interest, lending fees, and investment income. As a result, I am pleased to report that in the Q1 of 2024, our loan income increased 250% year-over-year to $1.6 million in the Q1 of 2024, compared to $466,000 in the comparable period of 2023.

As I mentioned, during our Q4 2023 call, our deposit base has decreased due to the July 2023 termination of our master services and revenue sharing agreement with Central Bank in Arkansas. As a result, our total number of client accounts dropped from 1,040 as of 31 March, 2023, to 757 as of 31, March 2024, which negatively impacted our quarterly depository fees. For the Q1 of 2024, these fees decreased 28% to $1.62 million compared to $2.25 million in the Q1 of 2023.

A decrease in depository fees does not surprise us due to the present market and need to increase deposits at all financial institutions. We anticipated this change in the market and remain competitive with our pricing to continue to retain and attract new clients. Our primary focus is to continue to attract lending opportunities, which in turn create relationships with businesses in the long term.

We believe the key takeaway from our Q1 results is our ability to provide our customer base with additional value-added products and services, such as our high-margin lending program, where we believe we will remain at the forefront of the cannabis finance industry. In addition, with a greater array of financial tools now available for our platform, we are positioned to capture new customers and, in turn, add new deposit accounts.

We will lead with lending as more and more financial institutions with sizable bank balances look to Safe Harbor to support the additional banking needs of these cannabis businesses. Many of these financial institutions do not want to attempt to replicate our model, as it has proven extremely difficult to execute. Our near-term growth strategy is to acquire portfolios from banks looking to exit the business, increase our deposit base, and further leverage our platform to meet the demands of CRBs across the country.

With the rollout of more and more deposit and credit tools, along with our ability to serve large multi-state operators, or MSOs, in every legal market across the country, we are strategically positioned for growth. For example, with the launch of our interest-bearing commercial deposit accounts in 2023, more and more CRBs are recognizing the breadth of our service offering.

It is also important to note that our business fundamentals remain strong, resulting in continued improvement to our bottom line. We impactfully reduced our total operating expense by over 36% to $3.73 million in the Q1 of 2024, compared to $5.8 million in the Q1 of 2023. These improvements improved operating efficiency to deliver positive net operating margins.

Before I turn the call over to Jim to discuss our Q1 results, I would like to discuss the incredible step forward made recently in legitimizing the cannabis industry with the proposed rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I substance to a Schedule III substance and what this means for our industry's growth as well as Safe Harbor's.

We believe the rescheduling of cannabis will be a significant catalyst for the industry, leading to greater access to traditional financing channels that have far too long been inaccessible. The prospect of rescheduling cannabis would go a long way in evening the playing field for our cannabis businesses. Without the constraints of Section 280E, the Internal Revenue Code, which prohibits businesses dealing with Schedule I substances from writing off business expenses on their federal tax returns, these businesses can deliver much stronger financial returns.

In the near term, we believe the potential of rescheduling will attract more capital to the industry, allowing for greater growth and financial stability. In effect, these businesses will have more money to deposit into their bank accounts, which potentially lead to greater lending opportunities for Safe Harbor. The rescheduling of cannabis would be a huge win for the cannabis industry, including Safe Harbor. As more financial institutions open their doors to cannabis businesses, we expect the demand for our services to support these businesses will dramatically increase.

Issues with payment networks will unfortunately continue to exist, leaving the industry predominantly cash-intensive, in addition to the fact that cannabis will remain under the Controlled Substances Act. Another catalyst for the industry's growth is the SAFER Banking Act, which will allow state legal cannabis businesses to transition from being primarily cash-based operations and allow the industry participants to gain greater access to traditional financial institutions.

While this act is moving closer to becoming law, it does not eliminate the need to meet the compliance and oversight requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA. Most financial institutions are either unable or unwilling to undertake the compliance management needed to process these funds. Therefore, we view the SAFER Banking Act as a neutral event for Safe Harbor, given the continued need to navigate the BSA.

It is becoming increasingly important to ensure new businesses entering the market are properly processed and managed. Over the past 10 years, we have tailored our FinTech platform to expand with the evolving cannabis regulatory landscape. Our ability to streamline operations and ensure proper compliance is unmatched. The cannabis industry remains complex and will continue to change. We pride ourselves in our unique capability to consistently deliver trusted financial services to the cannabis entrepreneurs nationwide. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jim to discuss our financial results for the quarter ended 31, March 2024. Jim?

James Dennedy (CFO)

Thanks, Sundie, and good afternoon, everyone. Total revenue in the Q1 of 2024 was $4.1 million, compared to $4.2 million in the prior year period, primarily attributable to a decrease in investment income and deposit activity and onboarding income.

This decrease was a result of fewer accounts being opened and lower deposit balances in the current period versus the prior year period. The decline in these two revenue streams was offset by a substantial increase in loan interest income by more than 250% in the current period to $1.6 million, versus the prior year period of $466,000.

Operating expense in the Q1 of 2024 decreased by more than 35% to $3.7 million, compared to $5.8 million in the prior year period. The lower operating expenses in the Q1 were primarily driven by significantly lower compensation and employee benefit expense, including stock-based compensation expense, lower advertising and marketing expense, and lower general administrative expenses.

The company reported net income in the Q1 of 2024 of nearly $2 million, versus a net loss of $1.4 million in the prior year period, primarily due to the company generating positive operating income during the Q1 of 2024 and favorable changes to the fair value of our warrant liability and the fair value of deferred consideration owed to the Abaca shareholders.

When adjusting the net income for interest, taxes, and depreciation and amortization expense, and further adjustments to exclude non-cash, unusual, and/or infrequent costs, we compute an Adjusted EBITDA, which management believes is an important measure to evaluate our operating performance. A reconciliation of net income to Adjusted EBITDA is provided in the press release and current report of Form 8-K filed earlier today. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter ending 31, March 2024, was $1 million, versus $409,000 in the prior year period.

Moving to the balance sheet at 31, March 2024, the company reported cash and cash equivalents of $5.6 million, compared to $4.9 million at 31, December 2023. Cash generated by operating activities in the Q1 of 2024 was $1.4 million, versus $232,000 of cash used by operations during the same period in 2023. The improvements in cash flow were mainly due to a decrease in operating expenses.

Turning to our liquidity, our net working capital in the Q1 of 2024 improved to just short of $318,000, versus a working capital deficit of $135,000 reported at 31, December 2023. The improvement in our working capital is primarily attributable to lower operating expense and a greater number of performing loans at better rates than at year-end.

Looking ahead to the full year for 2024, we expect to generate slightly better adjusted EBITDA on modestly higher revenue compared to our full year of 2023, which reported $3.6 million of adjusted EBITDA on $17.6 million of total revenue.

The reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to GAAP net income for the full year of 2023 was provided in the Form 10-K for 2023 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 25, March 2024. We will provide updates to this guidance in the subsequent earnings call throughout the year. With that, I will now turn the call back to the operator to open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand to join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again.

If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening by a loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not unmuted when asking your question. Again, press star 1 to join the queue. There being no questions in the queue, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.