PRA Group yesterday announced a net loss of $3.8 million for the second quarter of 2023, compared with profits of $36.4 million during the same period a year ago, and newly installed Chief Executive Vikram Atal said the company is focused on “optimizing business processes” which includes looking at using offshore or outsource operations as a means of lowering costs.
For the first half of 2023, PRA Group lost $62.4 million, compared with net income of $76.5 million last year.
Worldwide, the company collected $419 million during the second quarter, down from $444 million during the second quarter of last year. Collections in the Americas and Australia accounted for about 50% of the money that the company collected. In fact, Atal mentioned during a conference call with analysts that Europe represents more than half of the company’s estimated remaining collections.
During the call, Atal, who took over as CEO at the end of March, mentioned that the company is in “advanced discussions” with third parties to expand its outsourcing and offshoring capabilities, and that it was “rationalizing the capacity” of its U.S. collection sites by closing an office. When asked about the move by analysts, Atal said moving operations offshore was about reducing costs more than anything else.
“… this whole notion of offshoring and outsourcing is not just on collections and voice, but we have enormous amounts, as a company, right, enormous amounts of data management that we need to do at every level of our processes, from the starting of the relationship to executing it,” Atal said, according to a transcript of the call. “So we’re looking at, as I just told you, we’re looking at voice, we’re looking at data, we’re looking at all of the optionality that we have, and over the next several months, we hope to be able to make decisions around that, that would be helpful, but all of it would be in conformity with our contracts.”
