A few months ago Brex announced a $200M securitization backed by corporate charge card receivables.
This is the 4th securitization by the 7 year old company and provides interesting insights into their business.
A quick overview of Brex:
– Brex offers corporate charge cards for startups and enterprises
– Founded in 2017
– Raised $1B+ in equity
– 20,000+ clients
– $40B+ in overall transaction volume since launch
Business Model:
– Interchange fees
– Monthly subscription for their bank accounts and cards
Growth:
– Brex grew origination volume 8x in 30 months ($100M/month in June 2019 to $800M+ per month by March 2022)
– Peak monthly origination volume of $800M+ per month in March 2022 (~$10B annualized)
– As of Dec 2023, the monthly volume has dropped to $579M per month (~$7B annualized)
Underwriting:
– Brex underwrites using cash balance in the company’s account
– Generally offers 10%-20% of the cash balance as a limit
– Monitors the balance real-time and adjusts the limit accordingly
– Outstanding balance is expected to be paid fully every month
– Given the reduction post-COV*D, Brex has tightened the underwriting criteria and reduced limits for accounts.
– Emigrant Bank and Fifth Third Bank are the primary partner banks
– Nelnet Servicing is the backup servicer
2024-1 Securitization Metrics:
Since launching in 2018, Brex has put top-notch performance metrics and extremely high stickiness.
Cash coverage (bank account cash balance) was not a common underwriting criterion for corporate charge cards but Brex has shown a strong performance history.
The pool consists of $326M of seasoned receivables across 13,249 accounts.
Key metrics:
– Avg balance: $34,974
– Avg cash balance: $4.5M
– Avg active credit limit: $270,122
– Avg cash coverage: 12.9x
– Top industry: Software (18.5%)
– Top state: CA (41%)
– Top 10 obligors: 4.9%
– 87% of the principal balance has 4x+ cash coverage and 38% have 10x cash coverage
– 80%+ of the customers have $1M+ cash balance
– ~70% of the customers have connected their bank accounts
If you add all the variations of the word “software”, it accounts for ~50% of the overall balance.
Healthcare and related industries are a distant second with 20%-25% of the overall balance. It makes sense given that Brex launched products focused on that segment.
Monthly repayment rates have consistently been greater than 99%, mostly above 99.5%. This dropped to 98.8% during COV*D but has come back up since then.
Excess spread on the deal is 47.99% – which is insane.
30+ day delinquency has stayed minimal at 0.34%.
If a company is more than 1 dpd, Brex revokes card privileges until the company is current.
Normalized charge-offs are ~0.20% per month, they spiked during COV*D but have come back since then.
Cumulative lifetime losses on the portfolio are just 0.92% since inception.
A tranche also has ~25% credit enhancement as a combination of overcollateralization, subordination, and reserve account making it a low risk yield.