Global Payments Inc (GPN) — Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. And welcome to EVO Payments fourth quarter and year-end earnings conference call. This call is being webcast today, and a replay will be available through the Investor Relations section of EVO's website shortly after the completion of this call. Please note that some of the information you will hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on currently available information, and actual results may differ materially from the views expressed in these statements, particularly due to the impact of COVID-19 on our business. For additional information on factors that may cause our actual results to differ from the views expressed in any forward-looking statements made today, please refer to today's press release and the risk factors discussed in our periodic reports filed with the SEC, including our 2020 10-K, which will be available on our website after the markets closed today. In an effort to provide additional information to investors, today's discussion also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. An explanation and reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their nearest GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release available on our Investor Relations website. We have also posted slides on our website detailing recent volume trends for the company to further assist with today's discussion. Today, we will discuss fourth quarter results and provide an update on the impact that the pandemic is having on our business. Joining me on the call is Jim Kelly, Chief Executive Officer; Tom Panther, Chief Financial Officer; Darren Wilson, President of the International Segment; and Brendan Tansill, President of the Americas Segment. I will now turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. We kicked off 2020 with strong financial performance that was abruptly affected by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in March and continuing through the remainder of the year. Despite the adverse impact of the pandemic, we had a successful year and took significant steps to improve our business by expanding our referral relationships, investing in key products and capabilities, enhancing our technology, and taking decisive actions to reduce our expenses and leverage. These key accomplishments were made possible largely due to the dedication of our 2,000 employees across the globe who were forced to react to the numerous ways in which the pandemic impacted our industry. They remained resilient through the many challenges we faced in 2020 and continue to deliver quality service to our customers and partners. I'm very grateful for our employees' determination to make this a successful year. Now I'd like to provide an overview of our recent volume trends. While volumes rebounded in the third quarter, they began declining in mid-October as restrictions were reinstated across most of Europe and in certain areas of the United States and Mexico to curb increasing infection rates. This resulted in fourth quarter volumes decreasing 1% sequentially and 5% compared to the prior year. For January, volumes were down 11% from the prior year as the strict lockdowns in Europe continued to negatively affect consumer spending. However, in February, volumes have improved slightly to a 9% decline over February last year as distribution of the vaccine rollout is now underway, and some governments have begun easing restrictions. We are encouraged by the diversity of our business and the resiliency of our merchants across all markets, but until government restrictions ease, it is likely that our volumes will remain under pressure. Turning to our financial performance. As compared to the third quarter, revenue was flat, while adjusted EBITDA increased 11% and margin expanded 380 basis points. Compared to Q4 2019 on a normalized constant currency basis, revenue declined 5%, while adjusted EBITDA increased 9% and margin expanded 500 basis points to 38%. These results reflect the negative impact of the COVID-related restrictions offset by our expense management. Tom will cover our 2020 financial performance and our outlook for 2021 in more detail later on the call. As we enter 2021, we are monitoring the vaccine distribution across all our markets as well as other key indicators that have a direct impact on economic activity, including government stimulus programs and cross-border activity. We are anticipating a strong global recovery in the back half of this year driven by pent-up consumer demand and expect the accelerated adoption of digital payments to endure. We will continue to manage our business through this crisis and are now a more efficient company with ample capacity to execute our long-term strategy of solid organic growth, coupled with targeted M&A, including bank alliances and tech-enabled investments. I will now turn the call over to Darren to discuss our European business. Darren?

Thanks, Jim. For the quarter, European normalized constant currency revenue declined 7% year-over-year, which reflects the impact of the reinstated restrictions across the segment, including sharp decreases in cross-border activity. As you can see from the volume slide, our volumes demonstrated notable declines beginning in November, as lockdowns went into effect across our markets in the latter part of October. However, it's worth pointing out that these declines were much less severe than the April trough, as merchants and consumers have adapted their behaviors to manage through the lockdowns. This is evident in our contactless and Card Not Present volume, as well as our strong new merchant growth across most of our markets. During the fourth quarter, volumes were approximately 6% lower compared to 2019. This trend intensified through January, with volumes down 19% year-over-year as most countries remain completely locked down. However, in February, volumes have rebounded down to 11% as markets, such as Poland, have relaxed most restrictions. We are seeing that our other markets are starting to announce their plans to ease restrictions over the forthcoming weeks, coinciding with the vaccine rollout plans across the EU. Although the recent lockdowns have had an immediate effect on our European volumes and revenue, we continue to see positive business wins across our markets. Beginning with Poland, we saw steady new business activity in the fourth quarter as we continue to gain market share and expand our tech-enabled distribution network. In our Direct division, we continue to sign grocery chains to further increase our penetration in this vertical, which now represents approximately 30% of our Polish business. In our ISV business, we enabled PKN Orlen, the largest energy company in Central and Eastern Europe, to roll out a mobile payment application for their electric vehicle charging station network. We are now working with PKN Orlen to deploy the application in certain neighboring countries in the first half of this year. Finally, as I mentioned in our last call, we ran a successful e-commerce campaign with Mastercard and gained three exclusive long-term referral partners to support our Snap* e-commerce gateway going forward. Turning to Germany. In December, we enabled one of our customers to participate in the government-sponsored cashless Italy program, which was initiated to accelerate digital payments adoption. We are excited to have been chosen as the only foreign merchant acquirer to participate in this program and look forward to supporting the continued adoption of digital payments in Italy. In Ireland and the UK, our teams continued to demonstrate success in signing new ISV partners in the fourth quarter, including a restaurant software provider in the UK and a large ticketing software company in Ireland. We also continued our rollout of EVO COLLECT, our Pay by Link solution, which we have now implemented with 50 customers since its launch last fall. In Spain, our bank referral partner, Liberbank, recently announced it will merge with Unicaja to form the fifth largest bank in the country once the transaction is finalized later this year. Our Liberbank portfolio continues to perform well, and we're in the process of migrating these merchants to our proprietary processing platform. We expect this conversion to be complete in the first half of the year, which will provide our Liberbank merchants access to all of EVO's leading products and services. On a related note, Raiffeisenbank, one of our bank partners in the Czech Republic announced in February that it would acquire Equa bank by the end of the second quarter to expand its distribution in the market. As you may recall, we formed an exclusive strategic alliance with Raiffeisenbank in 2015 and have seen strong growth from this market. In 2021, we will look to capitalize on the accelerated adoption of digital payments that emerged in 2020. We remain focused on expanding our bank partner network and tech-enabled capabilities, both through proprietary investments and M&A, as we look to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the recent shift in consumer trends as the COVID-related restrictions are gradually lifted. I will now turn the call over to Brendan, who will provide an update on our Americas segment. Brendan?

Thanks, Darren. For the quarter, the Americas normalized constant currency revenue declined 4%, which reflects the steady improvement in our Mexican business, coupled with modest declines in our US business due to the pandemic. Beginning with the US, volumes for the quarter were approximately 8% below last year and remained at around that level through February. Our merchants are demonstrating the ability to adapt to the changing consumer behaviors, which is demonstrated by the continued increase in our contactless and Card Not Present volumes that we have experienced since the onset of the pandemic. In our B2B business, we continued to demonstrate strong double-digit revenue growth as we signed new merchants and converted existing gateway-only customers to our acquiring platform. We also integrated our PayFabric gateway to SAP's digital add-on solution to continue the build-out of our Delego acquisition, which we lapped at the end of September. In our domestic e-commerce business, we continue to grow and diversify our referral partner network and developed key relationships within the retail and healthcare verticals. Turning to Mexico. We have continued to see steady improvement in this market since the April trough. In the fourth quarter, volumes expanded 2%, and we have seen similar trends so far this year. These solid trends were helped by our diversified merchant portfolio, which includes large corporate customers that span across multiple verticals. In 2020, despite the negative impact of the pandemic, our merchant portfolio for this business grew mid-single digits, which further demonstrates the strength of our business. In addition, our performance in Mexico was supported by strong e-commerce revenue growth of 17% in the quarter. Before I turn the call over to Tom, I would like to provide a brief update on Chile. Although we previously anticipated securing regulatory approval by the end of 2020, we continue to await authorization to launch our business. The regulatory approval process has been extremely thorough due to EVO being the first international merchant acquirer in the market and has also been slowed by the pandemic and the summer vacation season in Chile. Operationally, we have completed all of the necessary actions to launch the business. Since our last call, we have finalized connectivity to the networks, leveraging our Mexican platform, continued building our leadership team, secured our business facilities, worked with the bank to develop a sales pipeline of existing BCI customers, and developed a sales and marketing campaign for the broader Chilean market. Our partner, BCI, remains extremely excited to launch the business, and we look forward to expanding into this high-growth region. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom, who will cover the financials in more detail. Tom?

Thanks, Brendan. And good morning, everyone. For the quarter, EVO's constant currency revenue declined 5% compared to the prior year when normalizing for certain payment network incentives and non-volume-related fees in the prior year for both Europe and the Americas. On a constant currency neutral basis, normalized adjusted EBITDA increased 9% and margin expanded 500 basis points to 38%. Including these incentives and fees, constant currency revenue declined 10%, adjusted EBITDA declined 6% and margin expanded 158 basis points. Sequentially, fourth quarter volumes and revenue were flat, while adjusted EBITDA and margin improved 11% and 380 basis points, respectively. These solid results are despite the continued compression in revenue spreads, which have been impacted by the shifts in merchant and transaction mix, coupled with declines in cross-border activity. We remain confident that as the pandemic abates and economic activity rebounds, our spreads will return to historical levels, and revenue growth will accelerate. With respect to our segment performance, in Europe, year-over-year, constant currency revenue declined 15%, and adjusted segment profit declined 20%. However, on a normalized basis, revenue declined 7%, and adjusted segment profit increased 4%. In the Americas, year-over-year constant currency revenue declined 7%, and adjusted segment profit declined 1%, while on a normalized basis, revenue declined 4% and adjusted segment profit increased 6%. The mid-single-digit normalized EBITDA growth and 400 basis point margin expansion in both of our segments reflects the targeted costs that we have eliminated from the business while gradually growing our merchant portfolio. Adjusted corporate expenses for the quarter were $5 million, which declined approximately 15% from the prior year. Adjusted net income of $21 million for the quarter increased 3% compared to last year. Adjusted net income per share was $0.23, which declined $0.02 compared to the fourth quarter of last year due to the preferred share issuance in April. On a normalized basis, adjusted EPS increased $0.04 or 21%, inclusive of these additional shares. At the end of the quarter, dilutive shares totaled 94 million, an increase of 11 million weighted average shares compared to the prior year. During the quarter, we continued to manage our cash flows by limiting our CapEx spend to $8 million, a decrease of 36% versus the prior year. Approximately 75% of our CapEx spend was related to point-of-sale terminals in our international markets to meet the strong merchant demand, which continued through the fourth quarter. We ended the year with leverage at 2.9 times, a significant improvement from 4.2 times at the end of 2019. Our strong liquidity and low leverage, coupled with $400 million of available cash and unused capacity in our credit facilities, provide us the financial resources to capitalize on M&A opportunities that are likely to become available as economic activity resumes. Turning to our outlook. As you can see from the slides, volumes have remained under pressure during 2021 due to the previously discussed government restrictions across all of our markets. As a result, we expect first quarter revenue to decline modestly compared to last year. Despite these near-term headwinds, our experience last year demonstrated that volumes will strongly rebound once government restrictions are eased. Our outlook for the year assumes a strong recovery in the second half of the year, as we lap the initial impact of the pandemic and COVID-related restrictions are lifted across our markets. For 2021, we expect revenue to be 10% to 12% above 2020, adjusted EBITDA to grow 16% to 20%, and margins to expand between 200 and 250 basis points compared to 2020. With that, I will turn the call back over to Jim.

Thank you, Tom. In 2020, we strengthened our balance sheet and improved our margins. Our business remains well-positioned to capitalize on the global economic recovery and the accelerated adoption of digital payments. We look forward to continuing to expand our distribution through existing sales channels and acquisition-related opportunities in 2021 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to the operator to begin the question-and-answer session. Operator?

Great. Good morning, guys. And thank you for taking my questions. Wanted to start off…

Good morning.

Just - yeah, good morning, everyone. Looking at Europe and some of the bank consolidation that we've seen there, how are you guys thinking about that as there was a net positive or negative? I know it sounds like from your commentary, you're more encouraged by it this time around than maybe what we saw in the past, but just kind of wanted to get your updated thoughts there.

Good morning. I would say that we are very encouraged, as you could see. We mentioned - or Darren mentioned in his prepared comments that one of the banks that we're aligned with in Spain has already announced a merger, so I think the same experience will likely be seen in other markets. If you look at our history in Europe, when we first entered the market in, say, '12, '13 timeframe, banks were looking to raise capital. As time progressed, banks were looking for digital solutions. It was less about needing to raise money and more about raising capabilities to meet the needs of their customers. Coming out of the pandemic, our expectation, as we said in our comments, in the back half of this year, and we're already starting to see inquiries from banks in the European market and other markets, that are either looking for one or both of these solutions. Expectations are that we will see an uptick in inquiries. Given our positioning in the market, across essentially all markets across Europe and our strong footing in a number of those markets with leading financial institutions, I think it positions us very well to have a successful year on the M&A side in '21.

Great. I appreciate that color. Very thorough. And just Tom, two quick questions as we look at the financials. I caught that you would expect revenue to be down slightly in the first quarter. But if we just look at the volume trends, say, January through February, kind of down 10% in aggregate. Just curious, what does that sort of triangulate to from a revenue perspective? Meaning, what's sort of that revenue impact given the volumes being down there? And then just a quick follow-up. How should we be thinking about FX for 2021? I'm assuming that's a bit of a benefit. Thank you.

Yeah. Hi, George. Good morning. We said before that there's strong correlation between our volume trends and our revenue trends. As we said in my prepared remarks, we'll see revenue also decline relative to last year's quarter. It's something that's hard to peg in terms of exactly where the spread is going to be, but I think that 10% year-to-date decline is something to anchor off of. March, as you know, was when the pandemic started to hit, particularly in Europe, so the comparable related to March may be a little easier. I think that, that modest decline would be in that range of where you see the volumes. With respect to FX, if you look at where the banks are projecting the dollar, we do expect it to be a tailwind in 2021. It has been a little bit of a tailwind, particularly with respect to the euro and USD. Peso, not as much. The peso has been a little bit more volatile. That's to be expected with Mexico's sensitivity to oil. Overall, I think we would expect FX to be a tailwind given the European Bank's position versus where the Fed is. The trends that we see will continue, and that's what the general consensus is out in the marketplace.

Great. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Thanks.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. I wanted to ask about how the pandemic may or may not have impacted the sort of bank partnership pipeline. Is the appetite on the side of banks right now whose merchant processing volumes are likely subdued right now? Are they looking more aggressively at trying to perk up that business? Or has there been sort of a delay in decision making about wanting to partner with someone like yourselves to accelerate growth there?

If you remember back to our last call, I had made a comment that these bank partnerships, at least the ones who are in the industry, generally last for 10 years. We have one that goes out 20 years. The inability to travel and to interact with the leadership team for them to us and vice versa definitely chilled some of the enthusiasm for banks. Going into '20, we had a strong pipeline of banks that we were talking about, and then everybody hit the brakes when COVID reared its head. I think coming out of it, we'll start to see financial institutions, as I've said on the prior question, that we're already starting to see inquiries where bankers are getting engaged.

Okay. Thank you. And a follow-up for me is on margins and the margin outlook in 2021. It came in a little bit below our model. We were expecting margins to look around 37%, sort of like what they look like in the second half of 2020. And first of all, super appreciative, by the way, that you've provided guidance, which many of your peers haven't. So keeping that in mind, any particular drivers to call out? Any more of the COVID-related cost savings, for example, that might be flowing back in, in '21 relative to expectations?

Hey, Ramsey, it's Tom. Just to kind of square up on the numbers, I think margin for Q4 was around 38%, so I don't - we may need to catch up more on just where you're seeing margin for the quarter. I think with respect to Q4, it was a relatively clean quarter as we restored salaries in the back half of the quarter. The first two quarters were a bit noisy as we were going through various transitory expense reductions and reinstating some furloughed individuals. I think those quarters we were trying to normalize for some of that activity. But the 38% for the fourth quarter was a pretty clean number. I don't think you can just take that and roll it forward because there's natural seasonality in our business and the impact of the pandemic. You'll see some ebb and flow of that margin on a quarterly basis. But on a full year basis, as we said in our outlook, that we expect margin accretion, despite some of the first-quarter headwinds of 200 to 250 basis points. So I think that puts us around 35%, 36% for the year, despite a little bit of challenges in the first quarter, while we patiently wait for governments to reopen their markets.

All right. Got it, Tom. Apologies if I misspoke. I intended to say 37% in the second half rather than the fourth quarter, but you noted. Appreciate your commentary. Thank you.

Yeah. Very good.

Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to ask on the confidence in the spreads returning. Does that infer you're structurally not seeing any change in pricing and yields, and this is just a mix issue? I know your SMB versus enterprise mix in some of the European countries vary, so just trying to get a better sense of that expectation.

Yeah. Yes, Tien-Tsin, this is one of the areas I'm optimistic about. When things do reopen, we will not only see a volume improvement driving revenue but also a spread and rate improvement. If you look at our quarterly trends over 2020, you saw a significant rotation down due to several factors: one, cross-border activity became virtually nonexistent. We saw a little bit of a rebound in the third quarter, but it was short-lived before the markets locked back up. Cross-border will likely be one of the last things to return, based on what you've read from the government. They're going to reopen internally before they reopen borders, but that will be something that will help us. The merchant mix clearly saw large retail and grocers with high volumes but lower spreads due to their pricing power. We've seen an increase in debit card volume, creating less spread. But we are confident that the rotation from cash to card is permanent, and we expect to see more of the economy running on card rails.

Yeah, Tien-Tsin, we also saw a strong rebound during the summer months as the initial lockdowns opened up. It's not just speculation; we've actually seen it. So as Europe begins to thaw from the pandemic, we anticipate a significant rebound for the company.

Just one last comment. We are not seeing pricing pressure, and we continue to see good retention rates within our merchant portfolio.

With the world reopening, we will see a return to normalcy in yields, likely accompanied by high incremental margins. I wanted to ask you, Tom, about the normalized figures you mentioned regarding the pass-through fees. Should we take those into account as we analyze the passenger fees from 2021? I want to ensure our modeling is accurate.

No. I mean, it’s been a few weeks since Visa and Mastercard released their earnings, but they mentioned the fact that their incentive costs were down. Our incentives that we earned from the brands in the fourth quarter were down as well. I would love to say that a year from now, when we're talking about the fourth quarter of 2021, we've seen that return. But for now, in our outlook, we are not counting on that for 2021; we'd rather it be something that provides us an added boost if it returns.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Guys, hello? Can you hear me?

Hello, Ashwin. Yeah. We got you.

Okay. Hey, so I wanted to find out tech-enabled as a percent of total mix perhaps by segment of country. And through the pandemic in general, I think you've seen a step-up in that part of it has performed better. How do you think the mix evolves through the course of '21?

Well, Tom can take this specific breakdown. But yes, the tech-enabled business, our B2B business performed exceptionally well compared to the rest of the market and continues to do so. Our ISV business domestically is heavily oriented towards hospitality. Our UK business, predominantly ISV-oriented, was one of our best performers this year. Our Canadian business had its best year in tech-enabled business. We have seen very strong pockets of growth across the markets, especially as we continue to grow our merchant portfolio. I think there will be an individual recovery rate across our markets, but we're optimistic about growth in all of them.

Sure. Ashwin, on the numbers for the company, tech-enabled represented about 35% of revenue for the year. That's up 300 basis points from last year, so we continue to see some good growth across all of our markets. The US makes up most of that 35%, but we see strong growth in European tech-enabled as well. Overall, the mix shift has been a gradual process, but we're excited about the momentum and hope to see that continue to accelerate.

Got it, got it. And then as we try to kind of build up the model, you guys have talked obviously a lot about transaction growth and how that works. Could you talk about sort of merchant counts perhaps as another part of the mix or perhaps an indicator of share gains?

Sure. We saw relatively stable merchant count across the portfolio, but we saw really good retention levels. The level of closures was well down relative to prior years. That may surprise you in the middle of a pandemic, which demonstrates the resiliency of our merchants. As storefronts have an opportunity to get back to normal, I think there will be opportunities for good new business activity in the future.

Thank you. And good morning.

Hi, Bob.

A question on the - I guess, as you look out over the next 3 to 5 years, which portions of your business - I don't know how you want to break it out by country. I mean, Poland and Mexico, obviously, each 20% of the business, they were coming in. But prior to the pandemic, a little more than that maybe. Then your e-commerce, your B2B business, what is going to be the driver of the right growth rate as we come out of the pandemic organically? And which markets do you think are going to be the largest organic drivers?

Okay. Yeah. I think both Poland and Mexico will continue to be strong growth drivers. Mexico is somewhat under-penetrated compared to Poland in terms of cards. Another driver will be our push into Latin America. We see Chile as a fast grower, as we are aligned with a significant financial institution in that market. The B2B business will continue to be our fastest grower in the U.S. and at some point, eclipse our traditional business. The investment we are making in tech-enabled, ISV, and e-commerce will also help accelerate growth across our European markets. Our strategy has been about expanding our distribution with partnerships and enabling new capabilities to drive more customers.

Thank you. Can you just give a little more color on your B2B strategy, Jim? I mean, how do you fit into the market? Are you looking to expand that?

You know what I'm going to do? I'm sitting right next to Brendan, who has that direct responsibility, so I'll let Brendan tackle it.

Great. Hey, Bob. So on B2B, today, we are exclusively on the accounts receivable side. We inherited a B2B gateway through our acquisition of PayFabric. We integrate our payments capabilities into large ERPs. We've developed solutions for SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, and we are looking to further integrate into smaller ERPs as well. We leverage our network of referral partners to reach larger merchants. The market for AR payments in North America is about $25 trillion, of which $1 trillion is card. We are also seeing interest in the accounts payable side, where we could simplify the payables cycle. The goal here is to build a one-stop shop to handle both sides of payments.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Brendan, I also wanted to ask on - just on Mexico. Is the improvement in Mexico something economic there? Or is it something you guys are doing? Can we look at that as a template for other countries?

Good morning and thanks for the question. The resiliency in Mexico is a reflection of both our strong merchant base and the banking market's structure. We work with Banamex, which serves many of the largest merchants in Mexico. Our relationship with them allows us to benefit from those strong client volumes, although it does create a bit of a headwind with respect to pricing because larger customers generally have greater pricing power. I think the BCI partnership in Chile will look very similar as we begin to develop those relationships.

Yeah. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty out there. If we could predict that, we would be doing something else probably. But based on our judgment and expectations, Q1 is going to be impacted by the continued lockdowns and weather-related challenges, particularly in the U.S. From what we saw in January and February, it would be reasonable to think we would see a slight recovery in March. Overall, we expect Q2 to be healthier, but based on government signals, full releases will not occur until late in Q2, so we predict modest pickups in Q2 and a robust recovery in the second half of the year. As governments ease restrictions and allow more normal commerce, we expect strong economic growth in the second half.

Good morning, everyone. This is Cathy on for Jason. So I know you guys provided 2021 guidance, which was helpful, but I also wanted to see if you guys could share your 2021 expectations by region. For example, which regions are you expecting growth to return faster in, which markets are still lagging? Thanks.

Thank you for the question. I don't know that we can break it down any finer than what we've outlined thus far. I think where you'll see the most significant rebound is Europe, given that they are experiencing the most significant lockdowns. As those ease and too many nations begin to progress towards that recovery, we should see a bounce-back effect. The U.S. is expected to see strong growth as well with vaccinations advancing rapidly, but the strongest recovery in our internal view should be in Europe and the later part of the second quarter.