SBA On PPP Numbers: One Million Loans, $247B (So Far)

In just over a week, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has approved more than one million loans, for a total gross dollar value, as of April 13, of $247.5 billion.

Those loans, the Small Business Association (SBA) stated in the “Paycheck Protection Program Report,” were sourced across 4,664 lenders.

In terms of the mechanics of the loans themselves, an important provision of the PPP program is loan forgiveness. SMBs with fewer than 500 employees can receive 2.5 times their W-2 payroll if they apply. The loans are forgiven if the firms that receive the loans keep their payroll constant over the next eight weeks.

Applications are being taken through the end of June.

Drilling down into the details, the biggest subsector to get funding to date – measured as a percentage of gross dollar value of approved loans – was construction, at just under $34 billion dollars, representing 13.7 percent of the total to-date tally.

The professional, scientific and technical services subsector got 12.2 percent of the approved total, a percentage nearly matched by the manufacturing industry.

The overall average loan size, reported the SBA, was $239,152.

Accommodation and food services firms got 9.2 percent, or $22.7 billion. Retailers received just under 105,800 loans and 8.6 percent of the approved dollars, or $21.2 billion.

In terms of the loan size, the SBA reported that the bulk of approved loans, at 725,058, were $150,000 or less, representing more than 70 percent of all approved loans by number and 15 percent of the total allocated dollars.

There were 156,590 loans spanning between $150,000 to $350,000, indicating 14.4 percent of total approved dollars and 15 percent of the count.

On a state-by-state level, New York has seen 40,975 loans approved, for a total value of $11.7 billion. Texas has had more than 88,000 loans approved, worth $21.8 billion. California has logged just under 55,000 loans, for $20.8 billion.

As has been widely reported, the PPP got off to a bumpy start, as several big banks were slow to set up web portals to accept loans.

And, as has been the case, every 10 days PYMNTS has been “going into the field” via Main Street reports to gauge the financial health and overall sentiment of more than 700 SMBs. Those firms have been desperately trying to staunch the cash burn caused by a steep falloff in revenues amid COVID-19, as shelter-in-place mandates across 44 of 50 states have helped freeze demand. The average firm surveyed by PYMNTS had 28 employees and revenue of  $1.5 million.

Coming into the PPP launch, 71 percent of these SMBs said they had already taken steps to reduce operating cash flow pressures, including reducing payroll (cited by 38 percent of firms) or even stopping payment of their bills (33 percent).

In our latest survey, on April 6, one in four of the SMBs we queried said they still did not think their business would outlast the pandemic – and 40 percent, or four in 10, stated that they “weren’t sure” they could survive.

At the time of that survey, roughly 25 percent of the firms we contacted had applied for PPP funds, including 35 percent of contractors, 41 percent of manufacturers and 50 percent of restaurants.