PRAA
#You know when you start looking at quarterly performance, you really can get mixed up because the timing of the purchasing in the prior two quarters has a lot to do with that.
And so, my initial recommendation would be for you to go back and look at last year's purchasing timing.
Last year, there was a much heavier level of purchasing in Q1 and that makes a difference in terms of timing and how things will go quarter by quarter.
So, it's a lot easier to look at these things on an annual basis.
When you start looking at Q3 over Q3 and Q4 over Q4, you can get really mixed up in this metric.
I mean it's a very dynamic issue and, as you would expect, it's one that we weigh based on buying opportunities that we're observing, conversations with our bank group and trying to read where our room to lever comfortably would be.
And then, obviously, another input that we watch is what's happening with our share price.
So, it's definitely a dynamic set of variables that we're constantly trying to read.
I mean I think you're ---+ I don't know ---+
Exactly.
But we also have a dynamic income statement.
So, I think that your equation is very simplistic and I don't know that we can ---+
---+ fairly draw conclusions from it.
Thanks.
Again, <UNK>, we're not giving guidance for 2016 and so, we're just trying to let you guys know what we're looking at.
That's all and that's as far as we're going with it.
But I mean if there's some confusion about what we call GAAP and what we don't call GAAP.
GAAP, obviously, had all the expense in it this past year.
That's right.
No.
They change a requirement and they ask for a different document type and then we have to go get that document type and supplement our filings with that.
So, we often have it on hand and, in other scenarios, we can go get it.
So, it's really just a timing lag.
It's nothing more than that.
In other cases, we're dealing with disclosures, which may lengthen our talk times and may impact collector productivity and we need to push back against that with other analytical enhancements.
Yes.
<UNK>, so for a company that doesn't give guidance ---+
---+ I'd say we're being dragged into an uncomfortable conversation.
We're simply trying to point out that the headwind that we face due to U.S. supply is causing us to rethink that long-term growth goal that had been stated historically and that we believe a more reasonable way to look at it is in terms of a single-digit growth rate as opposed to what we had talked about historically.
And, again, we are talking about I would say a medium-term period of visibility as opposed to declaring something for the very long term.
So, we're in a period of transition right now.
We feel as though the large sellers are going to be returning at some point, but we don't know when.
And, until we get that stimulus from them building, we are in this period where more interesting growth is going to be more difficult unless we're able to do more in U.S. core or Europe.
I would say that, over the years, the investor community, and you in particular, seem to have been able to model our cash flows, if nothing else, very accurately.
I don't see anything around our business that would cause those kind of (inaudible) to not work any longer.
We wanted to make sure that everybody understood that our ability to replenish that insolvency funnel was difficult and remains difficult.
But the cash flow from the ERC that's on the books, again, I know of nothing that's going to cause it to behave in a manner that's dissimilar from how it's behaved in the past.
Well, I mean I would say, by virtue of the fact that we've been steadily moving up yields on portfolios that we have acquired over time, including ---+ take a look at the multiple expansion on the 2014 portfolios.
We are realizing higher yields than we had underwritten at time of acquisition.
I think that our view is that a lot of that is being driven by some tailwinds that the consumer has had over the last year, year-and-a-half, and some strategy and analytical improvements that we've employed.
I think our view is that pricing, especially in the U.S., continues to be quite competitive.
And I don't think that we would characterize the U.S. pricing market as softening, at least, at this point.
Thank you, Operator.
That concludes our Q4 2015 earnings call.
Thank you all for joining us.
We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.
