EVO Payments, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the EvoPayments second quarter 2021 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ed O'Hare. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to EvoPayments' second quarter earnings conference call. Our press release and slides detailing the company's recent volume trends are available on the investor relations portion of our website. Before we begin, I want to remind all listeners that EvoPayments desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Certain statements in this conference call, such as projections regarding future performance, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the act. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information on these factors, please refer to our press release and filings with the SEC. Please refer to our press release for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in today's call, along with reconciliation of those measures to the nearest applicable GAAP measure. Today we discuss our second quarter results and our overall business performance. Joining me on the call is Jim Kelly, our Chief Executive Officer, Tom Panther, our Chief Financial Officer, Darren Wilson, President of the International Segment, and Brendan Tansel, President of the America Segment. I will now turn the call over to Jim.

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased with our second quarter financial results and business performance, despite lingering COVID restrictions in our markets. We are seeing positive trends across our business, including new merchant wins from our bank and tech-enabled referral networks, the build-out of proprietary capabilities in our product and services suite, and the continued adoption of digital payments, which began accelerating in 2020. Given our positioning, I'm confident in our ability to capitalize on additional growth opportunities during the second half of the year and into 2022. I'd like to begin by reviewing some of our recent announcements. As many of you are aware, since our last call, we launched our operations in Chile with our bank partner, BCI, acquired a leading e-commerce gateway in the market to complement our JV, and most recently, completed the acquisition of a UK-based omnichannel payment gateway, which expands our integrated payments offering in Europe. We look forward to leveraging these investments to continue expanding our global distribution. Darren and Brendan will provide more detail later on the call. Now I'd like to provide a brief overview of our recent volume trends. As you can see from the slides, the company demonstrated strong growth of 33% year-over-year and 11% compared to 2019. We delivered these results through our strong sales efforts and superior customer service, coupled with the continued card adoption trends across Europe and the Americas. As our markets, especially Europe, fully reopen and economic activity returns to pre-pandemic levels, we expect our volumes to continue to increase. Turning to our financial performance, compared to the second quarter of 2020, on a constant currency basis, revenue grew 23%, Adjusted EBITDA increased 34%, and margin expanded 300 basis points to 35%. The strong results we demonstrated reflect the easing of COVID-related restrictions across our markets and our efforts to realign the company's cost structure over the last 18 months. Tom will cover our second quarter financial performance in more detail later on the call. We look forward to building on our recent accomplishments as we continue to execute on our long-term strategy of solid organic growth coupled with M&A. Our acquisition strategy remains unchanged, partnering with leading financial institutions in new and existing markets and acquiring tech-enabled assets that enhance our merchant offering and augment our distribution channels. Across the markets, we have recently seen an increase in M&A activity as evidenced by our previously mentioned announcements, and we are well positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities as we move forward. Finally, as we announced yesterday, I'm pleased to welcome Stacey Peniasu to our Board of Directors. Stacey has extensive global experience from her time at the Coca-Cola Company and her current position at Graphic Packaging International. Her expertise will be a great addition to Evo as we continue to expand our international footprint. And I'll turn the call over to Darren to discuss our European business. Darren?