EVO Payments, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Julie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EVO Payments Third Quarter 2021 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you, Mr. Ed O'Hare, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Good morning, and welcome to EvoPayments' third 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 the reconciliation of those measures to the nearest applicable GAAP measures. Today, we will discuss our third quarter results and our overall business performance. Joining me on the call today 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. Evo delivered solid volumes and earnings this quarter as economic activity rebounded across our markets and accelerated card utilization continued. As you can see from the slides, the company demonstrated volume growth of 15 percent compared to the third quarter of 2020. And on a currency neutral basis, revenue grew 14 percent, adjusted EBITDA grew 25 percent, and margin expanded 341 basis points to 38%. We have expanded our margin by over 300 basis points for four consecutive quarters. The excellent execution of the executive team and our global employees has enabled us to grow revenue at an expanding rate while also reshape our cost structure as we actively manage through the pandemic over the last 18 months. We are committed to delivering positive operating leverage and increasing our margins while also investing in long-term growth opportunities. Tom will cover our third quarter financial results in more detail. Our financial results reflect our ability to execute on our well-established bank referral and tech-enabled sales strategies across both Europe and the Americas. We continue to work closely with our international bank partners to facilitate digital payments acceptance and expand our geographic distribution as we enter new markets. Additionally, we are experiencing strong demand for integrated payment solutions throughout each of our markets, and we remain focused on growing tech-enabled referral network to capture the global shift of software at the point of sale. Further, we continue to address unique in-market payment solutions through our global tech-enabled product suite, including new integrations and our proprietary gateway solutions, including ClearOne in Spain, Way2Pay in Ireland, SF Systems in Mexico, Pago Facil in Chile, and Anderson Zacks in the UK. By enabling frictionless integrations to any software solution, we gain access to the entire integrated payments addressable market, enhancing our ability to drive outsized market growth for acquiring and payment processing. In the UK, we recently integrated our Anderson-Zach omnichannel gateway and now have access to more than 20 additional active ISV partners whose legacy merchant portfolios we are working to convert to EVO's acquiring platform. Further, we are deploying our sales and product expertise to sign additional ISV partners and drive sales for our business as we capitalize on the accelerated adoption of integrated payments, which is particularly strong across Europe. Turning to Chile, I'm very encouraged by our early success in the market since commencing operation last quarter. Our strong sales efforts have enabled us to expand our merchant portfolio to more than 5,000 customers. As we move through the fourth quarter and into 2022, we are continuing to grow our business together with our bank partner, BCI, leveraging EVO's direct sales force and tech-enabled capabilities. Our tech-enabled channel in Chile includes our recently acquired e-commerce gateway in addition to a growing ISV network. Brendan and Darren will provide more detail on our segment performance later on the call. As the impact of the pandemic recedes, we will continue to grow our business through investments in our sales distribution, new product launches, and M&A. We are seeing increased M&A activity related to both bank partnerships and integrated solutions and will continue to pursue opportunities that meet our strategic and financial objectives. We anticipate our strong momentum amid the global economic recovery will continue through the fourth quarter and into 2022, and we are confident that we will be able to execute our strategies and generate solid top line and bottom line growth. Finally, as we announced yesterday, I'm very pleased to welcome Nikki Harland to our Board of Directors. Nikki currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Paradis Lagardère and was recently named to the 2021 list of Atlanta Top 100 Women of Influence. Her strong leadership skills and merchant experience will greatly benefit the board and the company as we continue to grow. I'll now turn the call over to Darren to discuss our European business. Darren?