Visit www.OpportunityAtOportun.com to Download the Presentation
NEW YORK, June 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Findell Capital Partners, LP, (together with its affiliates, "Findell," "we" or "us") one of the largest stockholders of Oportun Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:OPRT) ("Oportun" or the "Company"), today released an investor presentation highlighting the urgent need for additional independence and consumer finance industry expertise in the Company's boardroom.
In the presentation, Findell outlines what it sees as the legacy Board of Directors' (the "Board") failure to effectively oversee management and instill accountability:
- CEO Raul Vazquez turned Oportun's simple lending business into a money-losing fintech platform – destroying nearly $1.5 billion of stockholder capital in the process – by exploding its cost per loan, massively increasing its net charge-offs and pursuing disastrous acquisitions, including the approximately $211 mm purchase of Hello Digit, Inc.
- As a result of these strategic missteps, the Company's revenue and earnings deteriorated, leading to a roughly 76% collapse in the stock price from September 2019 through March 2023.
- Oportun has severely underperformed its closest public peer, OneMain Holdings, Inc., in terms of net charge-offs, OpEx ratio and stock price performance.
- Management's long-term targets for return on assets ("ROA") and return on equity ("ROE") are subpar and conceal the Company's weak annual percentage rate and overly high leverage.
- Not a single legacy Board member has lending experience, let alone subprime lending experience. Several directors also appear to us to have conflicts of interest based on their previous working relationships with each other and with Mr. Vazquez, as described in the presentation.
- Despite the Company's poor performance under their oversight, the legacy directors have remained on the Board for years – even when failing to receive a majority of votes in favor of their election – and continue to control the Board's committees and other leadership positions.
Findell also notes how the addition of independent lending expertise has benefited Oportun over the past two years and details the Company's opportunities for value creation:
- Our engagement – including the appointment of Scott Parker and Richard Tambor, two Findell-identified directors with lending expertise – led to positive operating and governance changes, including a 61% reduction in OpEx per loan and a more than 206% total stockholder return.
- The election of independent director candidate Warren Wilcox, who has highly relevant expertise in subprime lending and a deep understanding of Oportun's business, will help eliminate the legacy directors' control of the Board and lead to better oversight of the Company.
- Oportun has ample room to reduce its corporate overhead by $80 mm and run at an OpEx ratio of less than 12%, which would bring the Company more in line with competitors.
- The Company should remove its self-imposed 36% interest rate cap, which has driven significant underperformance and prevented Oportun from serving large swaths of customers.
- Oportun should target pre-tax ROA of 8-10% while maintaining a conservative leverage ratio to yield >40% ROE.
- Findell believes Oportun could achieve more than $22 per share1 if it reasonably reduces annual operating expenses to $325 mm by the end of 2026 and does not dilute stockholders any further.
***
We urge stockholders to vote FOR the election of Warren Wilcox and AGAINST the reelection of failed CEO Raul Vazquez on the WHITE proxy card. Visit www.OpportunityAtOportun.com to learn more.
Contact:
Findell Capital Management, LLC
88 Pine Street, 22nd Fl.
New York, NY 10005
[email protected]
OR
Saratoga Proxy Consulting LLC
John Ferguson
[email protected]
______________________________
1 Assuming a pre-tax ROA of 8-10%, $3 billion in outstanding loans and a market multiple of 6-7X earnings.
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/findell-capital-releases-presentation-on-oportun-financial-302482852.html
SOURCE Findell Capital Management, LLC