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The high-flying sector is primed for a correction, industry leaders said this week. Declining credit standards are one of the top concerns.
April 16 -
Marketplace lenders are aggressively marketing their loans as a way to refinance expensive credit card debt. And with more affordable interest rates and faster loan application processes, there's reason to believe that firms like Lending Club and SoFi will beat out banks.
April 14 -
Lending Club lost $9 million in the fourth quarter, hurt by expenses tied to its highly publicized initial public offering and by other costs.
February 24
Lending Club stayed on its fast-growth trajectory in the first quarter, as loan originations and operating revenue more than doubled from the same period a year earlier.
The marketplace lending firm reported $1.64 billion in loan originations, a 107% increase from a year earlier, and $81 million in operating revenue, which was up 109%.
The San Francisco-based company, which has been making investments designed to fuel continued growth, reported a net loss of $6.4 million in the quarter. That narrowed from a $7.3 million loss a year earlier.
Lending Club also revised its outlook for full-year revenues to $385 million to $392 million, which was up $5 million to $7 million from earlier guidance.
[Coming this November:
Chief Executive Officer Renaud Laplanche said in a news release that Lending Club grew faster than it planned in the first quarter. He attributed the growth in part to borrower-acquisition deals the company has struck.
In one such deal, Lending Club will facilitate loans to small businesses that are members of Sam's Club, the Walmart-owned retail chain.
As the largest U.S. marketplace lender, Lending Club operates a website that stands between borrowers and investors, and generates revenue from origination fees. The firm's online platform originates loans to small businesses and consumers.
Shares in Lending Club, which opened at $15 on Dec. 11 and rose 56% in their first day of trading, have fallen 25% since then, to $17.58. Still, the company had a market capitalization of $6.5 billion after the stock market closed Tuesday, even though it has yet to earn consistent profits.
Lending Club originated $718 million in loans in 2012, $2.1 billion in 2013, and $4.4 billion last year. If the pace of first-quarter loan originations continued over the course of 2015, full-year volume would top $6.5 billion.
"The strong momentum from the fourth quarter carried into the first quarter," the firm's chief financial officer, Carrie Dolan, said in the news release, "and we continue to execute on our strategy of fast yet disciplined growth."
