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spk12: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to New Bay Corporation's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Mamone, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Mamone.
spk03: Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us this morning. With us today are Philip Thayer, chair and CEO, and David Schwartz, CFO. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and webcast and is copyrighted property of Nuve. Reprodcast of this information in whole or in part without written consent of Nuve is prohibited. Earlier this morning, Nuve issued a press release announcing financial results for the three-month and full-year period ending December 31, 2022. The release, as well as an accompanying supplemental slide deck, is available in the events section of our investor relations website, investors.nuve.com. During this call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the applicable securities law. Such forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of a business or development in New Bay's industry to differ materially from anticipated results, performance, achievements, and developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Information about these factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results or performance can be found in New Bay's filings with the Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority and on the company's website. Our discussions today will include non-IFRS measures, including adjusted DPDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted net income per share. Management believes non-IFRS results are useful in order to enhance our understanding and our ongoing performance, And they are not a supplement to and should be and should not be considered in isolation from a substitute for IFRS financial measures. Registration of these measures to IFRS measures is available in our earnings release and MDNA. We'll open up the call for your questions after our prepared remarks. During that portion of the call, in order to get to as many people in queue within the allotted time, we ask that you limit to one question and one follow-up. And with that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Phil.
spk11: Thank you, Chris, and a warm welcome to you as a new member of the Nuve team. I'd like to start by thanking our more than 2,000 colleagues around the world for their relentless effort and commitment to supporting our customers and driving the success of our business. 2022 was an exceptional year for Nuve, and I'm so incredibly proud of everything we accomplished together. It's so early days, and we are still very much on the ground floor. We remain heads-down focused, executing on our strategic initiatives, investing in the business, and expanding our use cases, all the while maintaining both our just-debit down margin and enviable free cash flow profile throughout the year, which, in our opinion, is class-leading within the broader Hygro FinTech landscape. I'll share some insight here later in my prepared remarks to help you frame our fourth quarter and full-year performance. Today, Nuvei enables leading discretionary and non-discretionary use cases, supporting online retail, e-commerce, marketplaces, online gaming, video and social games, financial services, travel, B2B goods and services, healthcare, faith-based and nonprofit, education, government, and utilities. And naturally, we fully intend on continuing to scale and expect to add more use cases as we continue growing both organically and inorganically. We've totally transformed the business from both a vertical and a distribution perspective, substantially expanding our time to now include global e-commerce, integrated payments, and B2B, with a lot of white space for continued growth globally. With all of this, we've maintained our differentiating and compelling financial profile, which features a unique combination of growth, profitability, low capex, and high free cash regeneration. In February, we completed the acquisition of Paya, and as a reminder of the strategic rationale for the transaction, first, it enhances our ability to grow our footprint in integrated payment markets, which is one of the largest and most attractive opportunities in payments. Second, it diversifies Nuve's business geographically, giving us a much bigger scale in North America with entry into new, large, under-penetrated, non-cyclical vertical markets and significantly augment our existing distribution. Third, it significantly expands NuBase presence into the large and under-penetrated B2B payments market. Fourth, it accelerates our existing growth strategy, which is driven by product innovation, geographic expansion, growth within our existing customers, as well as the acquisition of new customers. In addition, the transaction spans our M&A scope to include ISVs, B2B, and proprietary software opportunities. And fifth and finally, the combination reinforces our differentiated and compelling financial profile. The integration with Pi is going to plan, and while early, we have identified several incremental use cases with the potential to drive some very compelling revenue synergies. We're off to an excellent start, and the acquisition is accreted in the first year, so we're really excited about what Pi delivers to you today in 2023 and beyond. As we think about the year ahead, it's really a continuation of all the things that got us here. Being focused on our strategy, transforming the business, and pursuing the opportunities we have in front of us to further grow the platform. We will continue our disciplined approach to hiring and investing in the business as appropriate. As stated, we've never pursued growth at all costs. We'll also continue to allocate excess capital to shareholders in efficient ways, similarly to how we prioritized share buybacks last year, repurchasing approximately 5% of our public float. Turning now to our financial results, total volume for the fourth quarter was the highest it's ever been in any previous quarter, driven by broad-based strength across our platform and exceeded $40 billion, increasing 28% on a reported basis and 33% on a currency-to-currency basis over the prior year's fourth quarter. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $220 million. Revenue at constant currency of $233 million grew by 10% and was towards the high end of our outlook range. Most importantly, fourth quarter revenue on a constant currency basis, excluding digital assets and cryptocurrencies, grew 26%. It is our hope that this additional disclosure helps you appreciate and frame the momentum of the business. Taking it one step further, that 26% growth rate means that we face approximately $35 million of revenue headwinds in the quarter, which is comprised of $12 million from changes in foreign exchange rates and $23 million from digital assets and cryptocurrencies on a constant currency basis. And remember that because we are an at-scale platform, the majority of those dollars flow to the bottom line. So the fact that we generate just an EBITDA of $86 million with a 39% margin in the quarter reflects our outstanding performance. Looking at the full year results, total volume of $128 million increased 34% on a reported basis and 39% on a constant currency basis, reflecting our rapidly growing market share. Revenue increased 16% to $843 million, or 22% growth on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA increased 11% to $351 million, and free cash flow increased to $303 million. We are really pleased with our results and are motivated and encouraged as we execute forward with strong momentum exiting Q4 and entering 2023. Taking a closer look to our results by region, in North America, revenue grew 17% and 12% respectively in the fourth quarter of the full year. It is worth highlighting that for the first time, our e-commerce direct channel in North America represented our largest distribution channel in the region. and grew 65% compared to last year's fourth quarter and increased 54% for the year. We've made great progress here and continue to invest in both senior talent and distribution as we focus on establishing a leadership position in this region. In EMEA, revenue declined by 9% for the quarter but increased 18% for the year. results in Q4 were mainly due to the negative impact and fluctuations of foreign exchange, as well as the volatility in digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Remember that the majority of that exposure originates from European operators. In LaTown, we continue to see our business accelerating rapidly, driven by our investments in the region, with significant new business and wallet share expansion from current customers expanding into those countries. As a result, revenue increased 90% and 45%, respectively, in the fourth quarter of the year. In APAC, Revenue grew up by 107% for the quarter and 36% for the year as we're scaling our acquiring capabilities in Singapore and Hong Kong and starting to see real momentum. More recently, we launched in Australia, which is an exciting new market for Nuve and one in which we've already attracted significant customer interest for our solutions. So our momentum in both LATAM and APAC is strong and it is our objective to accelerate by expanding our geographies in those regions. Turning now to operating trends for the fourth quarter. Notably, we saw some of the largest volume days in our company's history, including intervals of processing more than 500 transactions per second as we supported our customers during peak periods in the quarter, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These were record-level activities for New Way and represent approximately two times previous transaction-per-second peaks. What's exciting about these record activity levels is that we're seeing real momentum from our accelerated position in new verticals as we scale, and this additional exposure creates a steadier baseline that helps us to offset historical seasonality. Double-clicking for the quarter, we saw online retail grow 253%, travel by 81%, online gaming by 39%, and video and social games by 38%. Beyond these verticals, our growth was widespread, except for digital assets and cryptocurrencies, which for the fourth quarter was down approximately 58% compared to last year's same quarter, with indications that it has bottomed and stabilized. Whether or not that turns out to be the case, it's important to reiterate that this vertical is no longer material to NewBank, given all the great work we've done further diversifying the business and growing organically and inorganically. Based on the fourth quarter revenue from digital assets and cryptocurrencies, We expect this vertical's contribution to revenue will continue to decline and only represent approximately 5% going forward. Moving on now to updates on our go-to-market efforts. We've made amazing progress over the past two years investing in our brand, growing our global direct sales team, and increasing our distribution across all regions, ensuring that both we and our technology are local and accessible in language and in time zone to our customers with presence around the world. We've enhanced our commercial organization structure, established our sales enablement team, and created a dedicated strategic accounts group focused on target accounts across all verticals of focus. And combined, these initiatives are helping us drive greater productivity. I'm really pleased with the progress we've made, and naturally our plan is to push further and harder to demonstrate our capabilities around the world. Our capabilities gives us the right to win our fair share of new business, and we're winning as you've no doubt seen. To help frame the momentum in the business and our advancements in our go-to-market, new business revenue, excluding digital assets and cryptocurrencies, increased 23% in this year's fourth quarter. And we're really winning the who's who in our verticals, including enterprise-level customers last year, like FanDuel, Sheen, Epic Games, OnBuy, Lottomatica, Le Pen et Bleu, Air Transat, Unibet Italy, Turkish Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Radisson Hotel Group, DraftKings in Ontario, WestJet, Rappi, and more recently Vitex, amongst many others. These new customer wins along with a deep and growing pipeline are a great indication that our investments are yielding excellent results. Paya as well has reported continued success across their partner ecosystem, including more than a dozen new signings in the fourth quarter. New business launches and activations have driven strength within its focus verticals with particular momentum in government. And our early engagement with Paya partners has been excellent in terms of keen understanding about the global go-to-market opportunities in front of us. Moving on now to our product and technology. We are a global technology company with more than 550 engineers. We're passionate about innovation, never standing still, and as a result, continuously investing in product in order to drive more feature functionality within our platform. Our right to win is powered by our technology stack that goes far beyond acquiring, helping our customers connect with their customers in any currency, country, or payment methodology, all via single integration. This flexibility allows our customers to onboard with us, select the appropriate module a la carte that best fulfills the need at the time of onboarding, and grow with us by expanding solutions, geographic reach, and payment mediums as their own business evolves. Our platform operates freely as a gateway, a payment orchestration layer, or full processor depending on region of operation and customer requirements. This flexibility allows us to prioritize global expansion by entering markets as either a paying facilitator via VIN sponsorship or full licensing and self-sponsorship, all in a seamless experience for our customers. In North America, we have historically used third-party processors to clear and settle transactions on our behalf, which is known as back-end processing. But in the fourth quarter, our journey to enable our platform accelerated with a successful pilot to authorize and clear transactions as we do in all other regions. Some of the immediate benefits upon project completion will include driving significant efficiencies, enhancing transaction approval rates, simplifying global reporting, enhancing transaction interchange qualifications, streamline customer experience, facilitate reconciliation, and drive an overall reduction in cost, thereby enhancing our margins. As for the longer-term structural benefits, we will control the entire global roadmap with the ability to accelerate the pace of new product innovation and further distance ourselves from peers as one of the few truly global payment enablers. As you can appreciate, this is another major milestone which we expect to complete over the next 18 months. In addition, we launched more than 150 platformer product releases in 2022. Selected launches in the fourth quarter include expanding our alternative payment methods, now supporting 603 methods available to our customers, end-to-end local card acceptance, clearing and settlement for Visa and MasterCard Australia via our own licensing and processing, in-country direct acquiring in Belgium for local card network Bancontact, acquiring services for American-sponsored cardholders in the Canadian gaming market, And these are just a few examples of recent product launches. So a lot of great momentum which continues to set us apart from our competitors. And remember that each new product solution expands our TAM and offers us an incremental platform to grow with our customers as we remain focused on relentlessly helping them execute on their own growth initiatives. Just as importantly, with each new product launch, we increase the gap relative to both new and subscale entrants into our ecosystem. As we look to the year ahead, we think it's helpful to revisit the main building blocks of our growth algorithm. The first building block is that we grow with existing customers and now B2B and integrated payment partners by adding new geographies and new capabilities along with leveraging our customers' own growth vectors. The second building block is a compounding effect of the previous year's new business cohort, which drives a greater contribution the following year. To better illustrate this dynamic, for each of the past three new business cohorts, Revenues more than doubled from those vintages in year two. The third building block is new in-year business, which as I just highlighted, has been accelerating. And the fourth building block is inorganic via strategic M&A. With that framework in mind, we're already off to an excellent start to the year with a strong January and February. It's noteworthy that February average daily volume were above January and results for the first week of March are encouraging. In addition to this early momentum, we're not seeing a slowdown and remain on schedule with our pipeline conversions and new merchant implementations. With respect to the integration with Paya, I'm very pleased with what I've seen so far. While it's early, we are motivated by the revenue synergies and have found incremental use cases for our technology beyond our original expectation. As I've mentioned previously, we continue to invest in the business and our priorities for 2023 are investing in our commercial, technology, and product teams as appropriate, launching in five new geographies, and scaling our open banking, embedded finance, and unified commerce offerings. Finally, turning to capital allocation for 2023, aside from debt repayment and continuing to be opportunistic with strategic M&A, we'll prioritize our excess cash towards share buybacks. Turning to our outlook for the year, we expect revenue of between $1.22 billion and $1.26 billion for reported growth of between 45% and 50%. Unpacking this further, we expect Nubase organic growth rate excluding digital assets and cryptocurrencies to be between 23% and 28%. And thinking about our growth cadence, remember that we are lapping a strong crypto comparable in the first half of the year, so we anticipate that our growth will accelerate in the second half of the year. Before handing it over to Dave to cover more details about our financials and our outlook, I'd like to formally welcome our new colleagues from PIA, and once again, thank and congratulate all our new big colleagues for an exceptional year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave.
spk07: Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. My comments will cover three main topics. I'll start by reviewing our financial performance for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022. I'll then discuss our outlook for the first quarter and fiscal year 2023, And finally, I'll address the updates to our medium-term targets. Looking first at our reported results, total volume for the fourth quarter increased by 28% to $40 billion. It was 15% above the high end of our outlook range. The stronger than expected results were driven by our focused execution. On a cost and currency basis, total volume increased 33% to $42 billion, with e-commerce representing 91% of total volume. For the full year, total volume increased 34% to $128 billion. And on a constant currency basis, total volume for the full year increased by 39%. Revenue for the quarter was $220 million. Due to the global nature of our business, and as we have seen in prior quarters, revenue in the fourth quarter was negatively impacted by $12 million due to foreign currency volatility. On a constant currency basis, revenue grew 10% to $233 million and was aligned with the high end of our outlook range. Excluding the impact on digital assets, revenue at constant currency grew 26% during the quarter. We believe this figure best captures the performance of the business. For the full year, revenue increased 16% to $843 million, but considering the $41 million headwind from currency volatility, revenue at constant currency grew 22%. Due to the scalable nature of our business model, we focus on driving incremental gross profit dollars by expanding our solution set to gain wallet share from both existing and new customers. Gross profit increased to $170 million in the fourth quarter and $672 million for the full year. Gross margins were stable with the prior year periods at 77% for the quarter and 80% for the full year. Moving now to expenses. Selling, general, and administrative costs in the fourth quarter increased 5% year-over-year to $148 million. SG&A expenses for the full year increased $160 million. More than half of this increase relates to non-cash share-based payments, which were higher primarily due to new grants to employees who joined as part of past acquisitions, as well as the grants for the entire employee base, which occurs every fourth quarter. It's important to note that as a result of high exercise prices and share price performance thresholds, a large proportion of the outstanding share-based awards are either significantly out of the money or fail to meet the performance condition at the end of the fourth quarter. As a result, approximately 5 million units are not considered diluted in terms of diluted shares outstanding. In addition, we expect that share buybacks will exceed dilution resulting from the exercise of share-based awards in 2023. Employee compensation, other than share-based payments for the year, increased by almost 46 million. The increase year-over-year reflects investments, such as in our product, technology, and commercial teams, to drive growth as well as an increase in headcount from the three acquisitions completed in 2021. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $86 million, which is above the top end of our outlook range. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 39% in the quarter, which was also above our outlook range. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA increased to $351 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 42%. Looking at other line items on the income statement, Net finance costs was $2 million compared to 4.5 million in last year's fourth quarter. We earned higher finance income of 7 million, primarily due to a higher interest rate environment, partially offset by an increase in finance costs of 4 million to service our debt. For the full year, net finance costs was 9 million compared to 14 million in fiscal 2021, with the change being driven by similar factors as well as a remeasurement gain of $6 million associated with share repurchases earlier this year. Income tax expense in the quarter was $6 million, representing an effective tax rate of 38%. Income tax expense for the fiscal year 2022 was $26 million, which translates into an effective tax rate of 29%. Both the quarterly and yearly tax rates were above the Canadian statutory rate of 26.5%, mainly due to share-based payments that are non-deductible in most jurisdictions. Net income for the quarter was $9 million, or $0.06 per diluted share, and net income for the year was $62 million, or $0.39 per diluted share. As I mentioned earlier, the full-year results included an increase in non-cash share-based payments, which on their own represented approximately $0.59 per share. Adjusted net income was $68 million, or 47 cents per diluted share for the fourth quarter, and adjusted net income for the full year was $274 million, or $1.86 per diluted share. Turning to the balance sheet, at the end of the year, we had cash and cash equivalents of $752 million. We also had term debt of $498 million, resulting in a net cash position of $253 million. During 2022, as part of our capital allocation strategy, we deployed $167 million of excess cash for repurchasing approximately 5% of our public float, including the repurchase of 1.9 million shares in the fourth quarter. With the closing of the PIA acquisition on February 22nd, we used approximately $616 million of cash on hand and entered into a new $800 million credit facility. This resulted in a net leverage ratio at closing of less than three times. We intend to use excess cash to further reduce our leverage from these levels while still maintaining the flexibility to invest in our business, including future strategic acquisitions. We also intend to pursue a renewal of our normal course issuer bid so we can continue prioritizing our excess cash for share repurchases. I will now turn to our outlook and would refer you to our forward-looking information disclosure in our press release and MD&A. Our first quarter and full year 2023 outlook includes contribution from PIA as of the February 22nd closing date. For the first quarter, we expect total volume of between $39.5 and $41 billion, revenue of between $248 and $256 million, Revenue of constant currency of between $252 and $260 million. And adjusted EBITDA of between $92.5 and $96 million. For the full year 2023, we expect total volume of between $194 and $200 billion. Revenue of between $1.22 and $1.26 billion, which is expected to be approximately $2 million higher on a constant currency basis. and adjusted EBITDA between $455 and $477 million. As stated previously, we expect the contribution of PIA to be accretive to earnings in the current year. Our outlook at the midpoint reflects revenue growth of approximately 47% and organic growth of approximately 15% for the full year. It's also important to understand that our revenue growth profile this year will be a tale of two halves. During the first half of the year, we expect our growth to be impacted by challenging comparables in digital assets. Then, in the second half, we expect our growth rates to accelerate as we lap those headwinds. Including digital assets and cryptocurrencies, we expect our organic growth rate to be between 23% and 28%, which is comparable to the fourth quarter of 26% on the same basis. In order to be consistent with New Bay's revenue recognition policy, Our outlook also takes into consideration the downward adjustment of approximately $10 million in PIA revenue to present revenue on a net of interchange. Prior to the acquisition by Nuve, PIA recorded a portion of revenue on a gross basis, including interchange. Nuve records revenue on a net basis with interchange fees recorded as a reduction of revenue. Further harmonizing some reporting nuances between the two companies, I'll note that Paya presented revenue share amounts paid to reseller and referral partners within cost of services. In order to be consistent with Nuve's income statement presentation, we will present these revenue share amounts within commissions in SG&A expenses. Coming back to our outlook, we believe our outlook is appropriately balanced between the strong business momentum year-to-date and the global macro environment. We have also considered the potential for further fluctuations in foreign currency, which at some point could turn into a tailwind, although we have not anticipated this in our outlook. In terms of our adjusted EBITDA outlook, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to be impacted by the lower margin profile of PIA. However, we expect this impact to be mitigated by synergy realization as the year progresses, which represents a portion of the $21 million in cost synergies we expect to achieve within the 24 months from the closing of the acquisition. As a result, our outlook is for adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 37% to 38% for the full year. In addition, our outlook reflects our strategy to reinvest back in our business in key areas such as distribution, technology, and product. Our financial strength coupled with our long runway for growth affords us the ability to continue adding talent at a time when many other technology companies have been reducing the size of their teams. I will now discuss our medium and long-term targets, which are intended to provide insight into the execution of our strategy as it relates to growth, profitability, and cash generation. With the acquisition of Paya, we are updating our revenue growth target to be greater than 20% annually in the medium term. In addition, we are simplifying our outlook by removing total volume as a medium-term target and introducing a medium-term target pertaining to capital expenditures. We expect capital expenditures, defined as acquisition of property, equipment, and tangibles, to approximate 4% to 6% of revenue annually. We believe the addition of a capital expenditures target coupled with an adjusted EBITDA target provides better insight into the sustainable cash generation of our business. Furthermore, we are maintaining and reiterating our long-term target of adjusted EBITDA margins of greater than 50%. We're very pleased with the team's execution during the fourth quarter and full year 2022. We are excited about the momentum of the business thus far into 2023 and incremental opportunities resulting from the PI acquisition. I'll now turn the call back over to Phil for some closing remarks.
spk11: Before opening up to questions, I'd like to come back and leave you with the five key takeaways from today's call. First, we grew revenue on a constant currency basis, excluding digital assets and cryptocurrencies by 26% in the fourth quarter. This serves as a proxy for how we see the core business performing. Second, digital assets and cryptocurrencies is no longer material to Nuve. Third, we've diversified the business across high growth discretionary and non-discretionary verticals. Fourth, we're off to a great start of the year with strong momentum. And fifth, we expect to prioritize share buybacks with our excess free cash flow, especially at our current valuation. With that operator, we're ready to take questions.
spk12: Thank you. We will now be conducting our question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. We request participants to limit questions to one question and one follow-up. We take our first question from the line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hey, guys. Appreciate you taking the question. Look, there's one housekeeping item on the 2021 numbers. I really appreciate the guidance on growth rates over the course of the year, excluding crypto. I was wondering if you could help us out with what the numbers were in 2022, just so we can calibrate the modeling for first half versus second half comps.
spk07: Hey, Will. It's David. Good morning. If you take a look at the disclosures at the back of the press release, we break out You know, what was the constant currency impact? What was the impact from crypto in the fourth quarter? I think that'll give you a sense for kind of the split, at least for the quarter.
spk05: Got it. But nothing on like the first half of last year.
spk07: There's full disclosure on the full year on constant currency. But really, the fourth quarter is kind of where you should look in terms of on the digital asset side. That's more indicative of kind of what we'll see on a go-forward basis.
spk05: Got it. Okay, that makes sense. And then just on the Paya revenue synergies, you guys sound like you're kind of incrementally more excited about some of the opportunities that you guys are finding post-close. I'm wondering if you could just kind of expand on that. What are the kind of two or three things that you guys have found that you're kind of most excited about when you think about revenue synergies in this deal?
spk11: Thanks, Will. Great question. I mean, first of all, we're excited about Paya as a whole. Great team. Working with them has been an absolute pleasure. I think it's exactly as we've described in terms of expanding our role with Paya on the ISV side, expanding B2B relationships, our engagement with both customers on the B2B side and ISV side have been incremental. And then there's been use cases in terms of ACH versus open banking and opportunities around accounts payable that we're unpacking. So in general, extremely pleased with Paya, excellent team, We think this is truly a transformative opportunity for both companies, and we're excited on the execution.
spk12: Thank you. We'll take next question from the line of Timothy Chiodo with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
spk00: Great. Thank you for taking the question. I just want to see if you could recap sort of the weighted average math, if you will, to get to the 20%. So the underlying core nuve plus the assumed growth rate for the Paya that came to the roughly – 20% medium-term revenue growth target?
spk07: Good morning, Tim. It's David. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily look at it that way. I mean, our medium-term target certainly takes into account the PI acquisition. You know, their growth profile was lower, but what, you know, the question I was just asked before I think is an important one, too, around revenue synergies. And so you think about our growth rate on a go-forward basis, it's going to be certainly a combination of the, you know, Nouveau pre-Paya and then Paya, but then think about the revenue synergies as well that we're bringing to the table. And, you know, the exit rate out of Q4 to exclude crypto and digital assets and constant currency was 26%. We provided for the full year of 23, you know, on a similar basis, a range of 23 to 28%. So that kind of gives you a sense and comfort level for kind of what that medium term guide is of 20% growth annually.
spk00: Okay, great. Thank you. You also mentioned some helpful comments around stock-based comp. If you could talk a little bit about how, I'm not asking you to give a 2025 stock-based comp guide by any means, but in terms of just directionally, after the expiration of some of the stock-based comp that came on with some of the acquisitions and some of the other grants, just directionally, how should we think about stock-based comp potentially coming off as a percentage of revenue in 2025 and beyond?
spk07: Yeah, there's certainly puts and takes. I think the key part here is to think about, you know, the investments we've made in the past from a people perspective. And so bring out some really strong people across the board. And those people will obviously drive revenue growth. And so those initial grants, you know, they cost you more in the early years. Plus the way that IFRS accounts for grants, it's a graded basis. You have kind of higher expense in early years. But over time, we would expect that as a percentage of revenue will come down. I guess the other thing to keep in mind, you know, Paya also, of course, had a share-based compensation. It was about $7 million last year in 2022 for Paya. They report on US GAAP basis. We report IFRS. We're still kind of working through that, but you can certainly expect that there'll be, you know, a bump just as a result of the acquisition.
spk12: Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Sanjay Sakrani with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you. Good morning. I know you're not managing this business to optimize the take rate, but rather revenues. But I'm just curious of that migration of the take rate going forward. You know, obviously the mix is evolving. So perhaps some comments there. I know we've seen roughly like a 10 or 11 basis point compression each year. And there's been a lot that's happened in between. So maybe you can just give us some direction there. Thanks.
spk11: Hey, Sanjay, it's Phil. Happy to. I think we're going to always reiterate what we've always said, right? Our platform is scalable and we want to help our customers connect with their customers and take rate will never drive our decision in terms of onboarding a customer. The other element to keep in mind, and you really see that as in my prepared remarks, I mentioned the contribution from digital assets, how we've grown approximately $35 million, which predominantly fell to the bottom line. So if you want to unpack it, we're always here to help our customers grow with our platform. At scale, every effective gross profit dollar falls to the bottom line. But I would also take into consideration that crypto had higher take rate, and those are certainly moving their way out of the system. And then last comment is fourth quarter has more seasonality towards fixed transaction pricing. So that will affect fourth quarter take rate. But in general, we are not managing the business to a take rate. We're here to win. We are winning. We are taking market share, and we are going to be competitive in every market that we operate in.
spk01: I appreciate that. I guess follow-up question on gaming revenue run rate. I know you had called out something like $25 million a little while ago with a target of $100 million annualized. Could you update us, Phil, maybe on sort of what the run rate is now as you're looking towards 2023? And then I'm just curious, that number that you put out there, the digital currencies being less than 5% of revenues, that's on the number you gave us for total revenues for 2023, just making sure I got that right. Thanks.
spk11: Certainly. You're cheating in another question there, Sanjay. But talking about gaming for a second, We're really pleased with our progress in the US. We firmly believe in the crawl, walk, run. We're executing extremely well. We have now signed up with all operators, all the top 10 operators in some form or fashion. We're assisting them in terms of their own revenue growth with our multiple products for the vertical. And we're well on the path in terms of hitting our target. We haven't disclosed the actual number, but we have done a nice point of inflection in very pleased with our engagement around Super Bowl, as well as the opportunities that we see in the pipeline. So U.S. gaming is going very well. But I would just flag for you, right, gaming is a global market, and there's really interesting things happening in gaming around the world, right? It's not just what's happening in the United States, which is very compelling, but you also have Brazil. You know, there's some comments around UAE as well. So we see this as a wonderful platform with lots of tailwinds for continued execution, and we're pretty excited about that. Your following question is, I'll just answer the last question. And yes, it was 5% roughly of go forward. We did a one-time disclosure, if you guys take a look at the press release, in terms of crypto-crypto revenue from fourth quarter year over year. And I'm so proud of this team of what we've done in terms of growth, not just from a revenue replacement perspective, but because we're at scale, those dollars predominantly fall to the bottom line. So our performance in maintaining our EBITDA margin and actually growing our EBITDA is exceptional. So very, very pleased with what we've done and the momentum of the business and honestly the growth factors that we see going forward.
spk12: Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Joseph Wafi with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hey, guys. Good morning. Nice outlook for the year. I thought we'd maybe talk about sales and marketing spend. You know, a lot of fintechs are cost rationalizing a little bit. I think, you know, with your margin profile, you're in a different position. How you look at that, especially relative to integrating Paya and some of the other moving parts. And then we'll have a follow up.
spk11: Thanks, Joe. I think here's where the strength of our platform really shines. We've never been a growth at all cost organization, Joe. So we've always been thoughtful, you know, investing in the different regions based on very significant targets. And we're executing on those targets and we will continue investing in the business. We have built out an extremely successful and direct sales team. We have more to do and we're excited about monetizing the new market that we launch. As I've mentioned, we have about five markets that we plan on launching this year. And in addition, we intend on expanding Paya sales team. I think the job Paya has done with the resources they had was exceptional, but we believe we could turbocharge Paya. And that is exactly what we will do in terms of building out our B2B and integrated payments business on a global basis. But all of that, we're not blind to the macro. So we are very prudent with how we invest. We do it step by step with good methodology. And we'll certainly do that while we maintain our EBITDA margins like we always have.
spk02: Great. And then maybe I guess my follow-up will be, you know, just to, you know, is there any of those that you call out, Phil, right now as being where we should look for more progress on SG&A or sales spend or growth relative to those investments in 2023? Thanks a lot.
spk11: Yeah, Joe, I would refer you back to building blocks, right? Because in our business, you invest to build customer relationships. They materialize throughout the year. And then at the end of that year, you've built a cohort, and that cohort pivots to the following year. Those investments are really compelling from an allocated dollar to revenue that it drives forward as we continue scaling our platform. And we're going to continue on that exact methodology. We're building our brand awareness. We're being included in more RFPs. Our pipeline... has several transformational opportunities. So we really like where we sit. And ultimately, that's reflective in two things. One is our volume growth. The second right behind that is our market share win. And I think all that is powered by our right to win, which we're executing on.
spk12: Thank you. We take a next question from the line of Bob Napoli with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk09: Good morning, Phil, David, and everyone. Chris, welcome to the team there. Good to talk to you again. Just on, congratulations on the solid numbers. One thing that really jumped out at me, Phil, was the e-comm direct growth, you know, 65%, you know, super strong. Just any color you can give on, you know, I mean, I guess as your largest, one of your largest channels, you know, why are you, what is driving that, you know, that growth and what is your outlook for that? part of your business?
spk11: Yeah, I mean, if you go back to Capital Markets Day, Bob, you realize that our entire business has been focused on growing our direct sales force on our e-commerce business because our products are complex and they're better suited to a salaried sales force versus indirect and channels. So we have been making investments globally. The call out in my prepared remarks was about the momentum in the U.S. as we plugged in. First execution naturally was normalizing our technology for us experience and we've been winning um quite across all of our verticals in north america and that is driving first of all the growth in the channel in north america but more importantly that the channel being our largest channel now north america with a lot more momentum certainly that will pivot as we continue making investments in pi as well and we absolutely think the differentiation factor here is going to continue with us enabling our global platform worldwide. So I highlighted clearing and settlement and back-end processing. But that's a really big deal, Bob, and we think that is going to transform how we consume data to our customers, how we authorize transactions, how we can step up into debit networks, how we can get better interchange, and how we can really normalize our experiences. We're really, really excited about what that does for the channel and for the USA.
spk09: Thank you. I mean, it's hard to keep the two questions here because you have so much going on. But in staying with that, just taking the processing in-house, what is the timing of that? And what is, I guess, the cost saves? And what does that do to your go-to-market, I guess, or your pace of innovation?
spk11: Yeah, we believe the project will be done in 18 months. There are absolutely cost saves, but that's not the driver for us, Bob. For us, it's more the experience of normalizing our global operations in every market in terms of how we reconcile, how we service our customers, how we qualify interchange, how we consume data, how we report back data. We think those are much more interesting, and most certainly you remove third-party costs. And then the flip side to processing in-house is our own roadmap where we're able to do things on our own basis, keep in mind, right? We authorize clear, settle, reconcile, manage payouts, and net settle customers worldwide in all forms of payment in all different currencies, whereas using legacy processors in the U.S., that becomes very difficult. So we actually think this project is monumental for Nuve. We'll be one of the few, and I'm assuming that's a few, that are able to do this on a global basis, and we're pretty excited about what that does for the customer experience.
spk12: Thank you. We take a next question from the line of Darren Peller with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, guys. Thanks. When we look at the volume trends, just starting with last quarter, they came in better than guidance and anything we expected. And maybe just if you can go a little bit more into detail on what was the driving forces of our performance on the quarter on volume specifically, putting aside the yields and revenue. And then Maybe just further thoughts on what's embedded in the outlook for the organic growth rate that let's call it mid 20% in terms of either macro assumptions or maybe vertical specific color on a go forward basis would be great.
spk11: Yeah, thank you, Darren. I mean, honestly, from us, the volume is a direct reflection of us in terms of our win rate and market share expansion. And this is also a direct reflection of us winning in new verticals that we're accelerating in. So we're taking a really good position online retail We're absolutely taking a great position in travel amongst many of the other verticals. So those were typically trended to higher wallet share expansion that we've seen in Q4. It's also exposing us, interestingly, to different seasonality segments. So we're pretty excited about that. And then I think finally, it's just a testament to wallet share expansion opportunities that we have with our customers all around. We've been seeing consistent trends at peaks of over 500 transactions per second. Our architecture allows us to absorb that and grow from there. And that's a multiple of last year. And we've also seen a transaction count almost double ultimately from during peak periods as well. So very good trend really across the board. It allows us to accept and support our customers. And I think what's really interesting here is the way we do it. And that is probably the underlying factor here is that we are prepared. So we'd be prepared for Cyber Monday or Black Friday or Super Bowl or other, we create teams that are available and drive the response times that our customers need to make sure that they engage with customers. And the output here is wallet share expansion. In terms of thoughts on what we've driven and how we build next year, I think we've done... quite a bit of double clicking, but ultimately the performance of the business this year on the exit rate of Q4, 26% constant currency organic growth, really good building blocks in new business. So what you end up having is you have only a portion of that new business this year that's going to annualize next year. Quite excited about that. Really good new business in the pipeline as well, which we think will again take a step up. And then naturally being conservative in terms of the macro. And that's always very hard to predict, Darren, right? So we've tried to take a constant macro, looking at verticals of volatility like crypto and keeping that flat. We've seen that in bottom. But ultimately, if that does change or not, it's no longer material to us. So we feel pretty confident of what we put out there.
spk06: Okay. And then just thanks for that. Phil, just to follow up, I was on the crypto side for a moment. I mean, it was great to hear the disclosure on the 5% expectation. But when we think about what that means from an investment prioritization standpoint going forward for you, obviously it's an area that you have differentiated in the past. And so does that open up investment capital and maybe just prioritize where you're putting your incremental dollars of investment this year and next now relative to what you would have put towards crypto?
spk11: Yeah, no, and that's a very good question. And that's actually what we have done. We have realigned our teams internally. You know, as supporting industries and supporting customers is our number one focus, right? Helping our customers relentlessly connect with theirs is our mantra. And we did have a lot of resources helping our customers specifically in digital assets, which, you know, we were big believers and supporters and certainly something that we're disappointed to see the outcome. And we're truly disappointed about the events of the last six months. That being said, it's too volatile for us to continue investing into, so we have reprioritized into other verticals that we think have better longevity and better opportunity for us to build stability and grow the business.
spk12: Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Todd Copeland with CIBC. Please go ahead.
spk10: Yes, good morning, everyone. I was wondering if you could give us a comment on the European region, obviously impacted the business last year from an FX perspective, what are you seeing in that market? And what are your assumptions for 2023?
spk11: Thank you, Todd. I just want one thing to flag for us is keep in mind, merchants can be born in Europe, and that is that is predominantly where we may have a lot of our gaming operators. but they may also operate in many other regions. So where we build them is where we group the region, but these merchants may be the conduit for many other regions. So in general, from our customers that are based in Europe, we've seen some very interesting trajectories, but ultimately naturally the bulk of our FX exposure was out of Europe. So roughly $12 million for the quarter and predominantly all of our crypto exposure was out of Europe, excluding those two factors, very good momentum in the region. across all of our verticals, both in-region for in-region processing, as well as in other regions and globally.
spk10: Okay. And then you commented that your 15% guide, organic guide, implies conservative macro. What would need to happen to throw you off
spk07: uh that that that conservative maybe on on the positive and negative from a macro perspective any color along those lines would be appreciated thanks a lot good morning todd it's david um as you know we've always taken an approach of um of you know being cautious and how we think about our outlook um what we're seeing you know we it was mentioned in the prepared remarks that we're seeing is really good momentum in January, February, and obviously early March. So we feel good about our guide for this year. And overall, that outlook we try to give both for the quarter and for the full year is balanced. It's balanced with what we're seeing now, but also balanced with the overarching macro environment and the sensitivity around that. The 23% to 28%, growth excluding digital assets, that's really kind of how we see the business on a normalized basis. And you see that same kind of similar number as we exited in the fourth quarter, 26%. So we're seeing very good momentum. The investments we've made from a distribution perspective, from a brand awareness perspective, are starting to really take hold. And we're seeing the benefits of it. So look, it's a balance overall, our outlook. It's a balance between overarching environment and the positive signs we're seeing internally at this point.
spk12: Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk08: Oh, thanks. Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple of questions on free cash flows. So first on uses of cash, one of your last five key takeaways was just on the prioritization of share buybacks. Is that, you know, it sounds like it's a higher priority than de-levering in acquisitions. Is that, at least in the near term, is that a fair statement?
spk11: I would say that, hi Paul, this is Phil. I would tell you that the beauty of our profile gives us the utmost flexibility, right? Our cash generation is extremely strong. We will certainly look at de-levering as a priority. But we are delivering very quickly, and that gives us flexibility for additional M&A and or continuing stock buyback, just predominantly because of the dislocation of the market.
spk08: Okay, that's helpful. And then just in terms of free cash flow conversion in 23, working capital was a bit of a headwind in 22. Do you see that reversing in 23? And how do we think about free cash flow conversion in 23 in general?
spk07: Good morning, Paul, David. I think you could look, you know, certainly quarter to quarter, there's fluctuations. I think if you look at our free cash flow conversion historically, I think that kind of gives you a good indication of what it could be on a go forward basis. I don't think there's anything structural that would change. And when you think about, and that's, you know, mid to high 80% kind of free cash flow conversion. That's kind of what we've had historically. So I think that's constant. And looking at Paya's business and bringing that into the fold, they have very low CapEx as well and a nice conversion as well. So I think on a combined basis, I still expect to see some pretty strong conversion from an EBITDA to cash perspective.
spk12: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that's all the time we have for questions this morning. This brings us to the conclusion of the teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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