Paya Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Paya Holdings, Inc. fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star then zero on your telephone. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Matt Humphreys, Head of Investor Relations at Paya, you may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to the Paya fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements based on our current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs, including financial guidance, the growth of Paya's business, our objectives and business strategies, as well as other forward-looking statements. Please refer to the disclosure at the end of the company's earnings press release and form AK filed with the SEC today for information about forward-looking statements that will be made or discussed on this call. All statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statements to reflect the events that will occur after this call. You can learn more about the specific risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from today's discussion in the risk factor section of the company's 10-K, which we expect to file with the SEC in March 2022, and in additional periodic reports that the company files with the SEC. Also during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures of our performance. GAAP to non-GAAP financial reconciliations and supplemental financial information are provided in the earnings press release and the Form 8-K filed with the SEC. This call is also available via webcast. You can find all the information I have just described on the investor relations section of PIA's website, including a supplemental fourth quarter 2021 earnings presentation. Now joining us on the call today are PIA's Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Hack, and Chief Financial Officer, Glenn Renzulli. Following their remarks, we will open the call to your questions. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today as we review PIA's fourth quarter and full year 2021 financial results and expand upon some exciting recent announcements that accompany our strong financial results. At the conclusion of my remarks, Glenn will provide further details on PIA's financial performance as well as our 2022 financial guidance. PIA reported strong financial results in the fourth quarter, led by our integrated solutions and ACH businesses. The continued strong pace of the secular shift in buyer behavior to software-led commerce solutions, coupled with the ongoing digital transformation occurring across middle market businesses, provides an excellent environment for Paya to continue to capitalize on these opportunities via our existing products and solutions combined with our innovation roadmap. Specifically, in the fourth quarter, Paya's payment volume grew 27% to nearly $12 billion, driven by card volume growth of 16% and ACH volume growth of 46%. Total revenue grew 24% to a record 67 million, led by integrated solutions with continued strength in our ACH offerings. Gross profit grew 27% to 35 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew 18% to 17.3 million. Compared to the same period in 2019, total revenue growth was 31%, and adjusted EBITDA grew 38%. Our 2021 full-year results were equally strong, with volume growth of 29% to a record $43 billion, total revenue growth of 21% to $249 million, and adjusted EBITDA growth of 23%. These accomplishments reinforce our enthusiasm to continue to deliver superior financial results over time through the disciplined execution of our strategy and capital allocation decisions. Simply said, we continue to execute on a thoughtful combination of three strategic levers. First, internal investments in organic growth. Second, strategic partnerships. And third, acquisitions. Importantly, we pursue all three levers enthusiastically, and the relative weight of these three levers will continue to be dynamic based upon where we achieve the greatest impact. I will now cover recent progress on each of these growth levers. Our organic focus is on ensuring we have the right people and right solutions in place while continuing to deliver profitable growth. As such, we're accelerating our innovation roadmap through new tools, features, and functionality, especially within our B2B and government verticals. to meet the ever-growing needs of our partners and clients while extending our competitive positioning. The acceleration and expansion of our go-to-market strategy is also a priority, which enables us to drive further penetration while attracting new partners. The opportunity to further penetrate existing clients while also winning new ones has never looked more promising, and we will pursue this growth lever aggressively, ensuring our teams have all the resources they need to win. Importantly, the continued ability to attract exceptional talent to PIA further reinforces our confidence and enthusiasm. PIA's pipeline of actionable opportunities continues to grow, and we've seen some great new wins. Specifically, in the fourth quarter, in our government vertical, we signed one of the largest water infrastructure service providers in the country, where we will serve as the primary commerce engine to their 4 million customers spread across 19 states. Another example is a new ISV partnership with a leading software provider in the not-for-profit and government verticals. Our ability as a single solution provider offering omnichannel and payment agnostic solutions across multiple verticals were key to our success in finding this partner. Their needs closely paralleled our strategy of delivering vertically tailored, customer-centric, integrated payment solutions to partners across the middle market. And finally, in our ACH business, we continue to see success signing new partners who are looking for additional payment capabilities, particularly for larger ticket transactions, and in cross-selling into our existing base of customers. We're excited about the continued opportunities we see for our ACH business going forward, and we'll pursue these enthusiastically. As Paya grows organically, as well as through the integration of great businesses we have acquired, We continuously refine our overall brand positioning and strategy, our solution footprint, and of course, the customer experience. As such, we recently announced that in our government vertical, we have consolidated our existing government capabilities, our domain experts, and our first billing and payment group brands into a single unified experience called Pyagov. Through the end of 2021, Our government business served over 2,000 government agencies and municipalities across 24 states while processing over 8 million payments per year. As part of this strategic alignment, we are able to pursue the government opportunity with a much more targeted and efficient strategy, strengthening our capability to capture a strong share of the growth we see here. Paya focuses heavily on continuing to extend our value-added solutions in support of our existing partners and clients by understanding both current and future needs. As part of these efforts, we recently announced a new business partnership with Transcard, a global leader in payment technology solutions for financial institutions, fintechs, and businesses. This new partnership substantially expands our B2B commerce solution suite offering a fully integrated accounts payable module and supplier network delivered through a single API and a single portal to customers. Coupled with Paya's existing accounts receivable solutions, this new partnership allows Paya to become, in effect, a one-stop shop with a fully integrated AR and AP offering. This partnership serves to strengthen our value proposition while further enabling our customers to succeed and unlock their growth potential. And finally, on M&A, we're focused on a range of inorganic opportunities that complement PIA's organic growth. We remain optimistic on opportunities to layer in inorganic growth and want to remind you that we remain disciplined buyers, ensuring that acquisitions meet our strategic and financial criteria. Our recent acquisition of Velocity is an example of this, where we acquired a strategic capability which extended our competitive positioning. Specifically, Velocity provides fully integrated omni-channel payment solutions to accounting and ERP partners, including Acumetica and Sage. The acquisition brings market-leading and proprietary technology, exceptional talent, and strong integration experience and expertise, allowing us to further enrich the value proposition of our ERP offerings within the B2B market. Pi's ability to execute strategic M&A combined with the opportunities we see to invest organically and a very strong balance sheet and cash flow generation has underpinned our decision-making for 2022. Where appropriate, this means accelerating key product innovation and expanding our go-to-market strategy at a very attractive ROI with incremental capital instead of purchasing a capability for multiples of that. These growth initiatives, combined with the ability to partner with market leaders, gives us both the confidence and flexibility to advance our growth agenda while consistently delivering profitable growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Glenn to walk you through the financials in a bit more detail. Glenn?