Pre-Paid Legal Services released their reports on new memberships and new sales associates enrolled for the third quarter 2008. Overall, numbers were down compared to last year. Not surprising given the current state of the economy, but were up slightly over the second quarter.
For third quarter 2008, memberships produced decreased 6% percent while new sales associates enrolled decreased 13.2% percent compared to the same time last year. The one bright spot was the active membership base which increased 0.1% percent from the previous year.
The company also reported that their membership persistency rate was 73.5% for the 12 month period ended September 30, 2008. The membership persistency rate is the percentage of members who still enrolled at the end of the 12 month period who were enrolled at the beginning. This was a slight increase from the 12 month period ending September of 2007.
Pre-Paid Legal has been working hard during the past few years on a share repurchase program. During the 3rd quarter the company returned $9 million to shareholders through the repurchase of over 200,000 shares of common stock. Since the program began in 1999, the company has returned almost $400 million to shareholders.
Earlier in the year, Pre-Paid ran into some problems with Barry Minkow and the Fraud Discovery Institute. Although there has been no word lately, Minkow can be relentless and I’m sure he will cause more problems in the future. For now however, while the company’s numbers weren’t spectacular, given the current economy, they aren’t doing too badly.
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