The rumor mill is starting to suggest that the funding sources for online lending are starting to losen up. The from Bloomberg has Western Asset Management purchasing as much as $1.5 billion loans over time from the LendingClub (LC) platform. The subsidiary of Legg Mason (LM) has $460 billion in assets under management so the deal amounts to a very limited amount of the assets under management.
For LendingClub, the deal would be enormous for confidence in the platform and the stock. The company forecast Q2 originations in the $1.8 billion range so anything that amounts to a couple hundred million per quarter will be highly material to returning to growth. More deals like this will leave the stock very cheap with an enterprise value around $1 billion and revenues in the $400 million plus range without growth.
Disclosure: No position