Encore Capital Group reported profits of $43 million for the fourth quarter of 2019 and $168 million for the whole year, compared with $47 million in the fourth quarter of 2018 and $116 million for all of 2018.
Total revenue for the company was $367 million for the fourth quarter and $1.4 billion for all of 2019, compared with $339 million and $1.3 billion for the corresponding periods of 2018.
“2019 was a terrific year for Encore in which we delivered record results in nearly every important aspect of our business,” said Ashish Masih, Encore’s president and chief executive officer, in a statement. “We set new highs for global collections, revenues, ERC and earnings. We also made significant progress on a number of our strategic priorities, which include concentrating on the valuable U.S. and U.K. markets, where we have our highest risk-adjusted returns, innovating to continually enhance our competitive advantages, and strengthening our balance sheet while delivering strong results.”
The company continued to increase its investment in purchasing new portfolios of debt, Masih said during a conference call with analysts. Traditionally, Encore has spent about $500 million a year in buying debt portfolios, but increased that to about $600 million in 2018, and $680 million in 2019, he said.
During the call, Masih was also asked about the new proposed rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would require additional disclosures when collecting on time-barred debt.
“The practices we have, actually, is going to have no impact,” Masih said. “Our current practices meet or exceed their proposals. And there are three specific areas that they proposed, whether it’s disclosures on a recurring basis and whatnot. So we are already doing these and more, in some cases, in terms of frequency of disclosures, we actually disclosed more often than this new rule requires, it may be beneficial to us in some ways. So this will have zero impact on us when it gets into effect.”
