Consumer Portfolio Services Inc. will expand its Irvine, Calif.-based facility by October, Jeff Fritz, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said during the first-quarter earnings call, and the company is also looking to expand its Las Vegas headquarters to accommodate the addition of new collections and servicing employees.
“I haven’t made any final decisions, but we are evaluating some more space here in the Las Vegas area,” he said. There are a couple of other entities — companies not directly in the auto lending space, but who have collectors and servicing employees — that have shut down operations in Las Vegas over the last year, Fritz added. “We have hired a few of those people and there are more of those people available. We like the kind of servicing people we have hired here in this area, so we are looking at some more space to take advantage of that labor pool.”
CPS reported $319 million in originations in the second quarter, up from $270 million the same time a year prior. CPS delinquencies were at 8.6% in 2Q, down from 1Q’s 8.9%, but still up from the same time a year prior when delinquencies were at 7.5%, according to the earnings report.
“The quarter went very much as expected,” Charles Bradley, chairman and chief executive at CPS, said during the call. “We continued with a small increase in originations, and our goal this year has been to grow what we will call ‘moderately.’ We’re not trying to emphasize growth. We are certainly not trying to decrease growth, but again, we are trying to pick up the business where we can without pushing for it or stretching for it.”
