In short: On the watch list, not owned: "we have as of yet not fully pulled the trigger." It hits his screens (cheap on many metrics, "valuation protection"), he's met the impressive founder-owner Clive Kinross twice — but he wants to meet the underwriters first, because balance-sheet strain is the one thing you can control, and goeasy is the cautionary precedent. His past UK analogue, International Personal Finance, "always looked cheap and then got taken private."
Propel lends small amounts of money online to borrowers with weak credit, mostly in the United States. The stock has been punished for two reasons: goeasy, a bigger Canadian lender in a similar business, blew up and Propel got tarred with the same brush; and investors are worried about a US consumer credit squeeze in a "K-shaped" economy, where Propel's customers are on the losing branch.
Morrison likes what he sees on the surface — it screens cheap on several measures, giving what he calls "valuation protection," and he has met founder-owner Clive Kinross twice and found him impressive (he prefers founder-led businesses). But he hasn't bought. For a lender, the thing that kills you is your own balance sheet and your loan-decision process, and that's the one risk you can actually control amid all the macro noise, so he wants to sit down with the people who actually approve the loans before committing. His cautionary reference is a UK lender he owned, International Personal Finance, which "always looked cheap and then got taken private" — cheapness alone doesn't get you paid. Verdict: on the watch list, diligence in progress.
39:40And so we have as of yet not fully pulled the trigger. We're actually going back and forth right now. I want to go and meet their underwriters. I've met the founder. Very impressive. We like businesses where they're founder led, founderowned. So — this is Clive Clive Ken Ross up. — Yeah. Yeah. So met him.
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