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spk05: Good morning. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Payoneer's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Following the speaker's remarks, we will open the lines for your questions. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Michelle Wang, Payoneer's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you, Operator. With me on today's call are Payoneer's Chief Executive Officer, John Kaplan, and Payoneer's Chief Financial Officer, Bea Ordonez. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's call may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. For more information, please refer to our filings with the SEC, which are available in the Investor Relations section of Payoneer.com. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements we make today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and the company does not assume any obligation or intent to update them except as required by law. In addition, today's call may include non-GAAP measures. These measures should be considered in addition to and not instead of GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure can be found in today's earnings press release, which is available on our website. Additionally, please note we have posted an earnings presentation supplement alongside our earnings press release on investor.payoneer.com. All comparisons made on today's call are on a year-over-year basis, unless noted otherwise. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to John to begin.
spk03: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. In September 2023, at our first Investor Day, we outlined our strategy to build the business-grade financial stack for global cross-border SMBs. We committed to long-term, durable revenue growth, expense discipline, and expanding profitability. I'm proud to say that our plan is working. We are pursuing a significant opportunity, and our record financial results for the first half of 2024 validate that we have both the right team and the right strategy to achieve our ambitious goals. In Q2, our strong execution drove momentum across our key business metrics. ICP growth accelerated to 10%, driven by higher take rate regions such as APEC, Samia, and Latin America, and double-digit growth in China. ARPU increased 27%, with a notable acceleration in ARPU growth, excluding interest income. Over the past four quarters, year-over-year ARPU growth X interest income climbed from 2% in Q3 2023 to 9% to 13% in Q1 of this year and now to 18% in Q2 of 2024. Volume growth accelerated for a sixth consecutive quarter to 22%. B2B volume growth accelerated for a fourth consecutive quarter to 40%. Total revenue grew 16%. Excluding interest income and normalizing for $7.5 million of non-volume fees earned in Q2 of 2023, our Q2 of 2024 revenue was up 21%, consistent with Q1 results. We generated record adjusted EBITDA of $73 million, delivering a 30% margin, fueled by strong revenue and sustained expense discipline. Payoneer is the steadfast ally to cross-border SMBs because we're local in the markets they operate in and deeply understand their challenges and their opportunities. Additional cross-border payments, particularly into and out of emerging developing markets, are complex, expensive, and time-consuming. Unlike Payoneer, emerging market local banking capabilities are not designed for modern global SMBs operating across multiple geographies. I'd like to share some insights from our recent SMB Ambition Survey on the businesses that our target customers own and operate. Approximately 50% of cross-border SMBs have customers in six or more countries and need to pay employees and vendors in six or more countries as well. Two-thirds of these SMBs have at least one non-local entity, and a third have two or more. And 60% don't have cross-border financial management capabilities, such as real-time currency conversion, the ability to accept payments on their website, payroll solutions for multiple countries, or multi-currency cards to pay for goods and services. The Payoneer Financial Stack is purpose-built to solve these challenges. We have the scaled payment, regulatory, and compliance infrastructure, and a localized experience built upon a strong and trusted brand. This enables us to be the global business-grade financial partner for SMBs and help them succeed and is what is powering our momentum. We are not done. We are continuously innovating to serve larger SMBs with more products and to serve smaller customers at scale in a cost-effective way. Within our ICPs today, we see twice the product adoption from ICPs who receive more than $250,000 per month in AR volume compared to those whose AR is more than $10,000 a month. Some recent examples of our product enhancements include launching integrations with accounting ERPs. This enables customers to track their spend on paying their cards directly within their preferred accounting solution. Improving our multi-entity and multi-user role management capabilities. This makes it easier for global SMBs to manage their business in one place. Advancing our FX capabilities. For example, we recently launched features so customers can automate their withdrawals at a specific exchange rate that they set. This makes it easier for them to manage currency fluctuations. Rolling out our Lite account for freelance customers who get paid via Marketplace. We anticipate most new customers from these marketplaces will be onboarded into our Lite account by the end of 2024. This will increase monetization, reduce costs and risks, and better align our service model to our diverse customer segments. We are improving our activation speed. For our ICPs, we've reduced the time from account approval to transaction from seven days a year ago to two days now. Our ecosystem is a strength. We are now integrated with QuickBooks, Zoho, and Xero, some of the largest global accounting platforms for SMBs. Our integrations enable a seamless reconciliation process for our customers' multi-currency transactions. We see opportunities to deliver the one-stop solution for our customers. We are extending the capabilities of our financial stack. Managing global AP is a primary challenge for cross-border SMBs. Within AP, nothing is more important than workforce and payroll management. The process of paying people must be timely, accurate, and comply with local regulations. When we surveyed our B2B customers, nearly 25% wanted cross-border payroll capabilities, with many existing customers already configuring our platform to address this need. This morning, we announced the acquisition of Squad, a mission-driven company that helps SMBs automate their hiring, onboarding, taxes, and payments for international employees and contractors. We intend to cross out Squad's capabilities into our existing customer base. We believe it will increase ARPU and enable us to better serve SMBs as they manage their talent across borders. The Squad acquisition, our accelerating momentum, and record adjusted EBITDA margin are the direct result of our well-planned steps to deliver the sustained revenue growth and profitability targets we have communicated. In doing so, we believe we will unlock significant long-term value for our shareholders. We're proud of our global team for their tireless efforts and dedication to our customers. They are the core driver of our accelerating momentum. We are at the beginning of capturing the opportunity ahead of us, and this team is disciplined and long-term oriented. I'll now hand it over to Bea to discuss financial results and our increased guidance going forward.
spk00: Thank you, John, and thank you to everyone for joining us. We continued our strong momentum in Q2 and delivered record financial results. We grew volume by 22%, which drove normalized revenue growth, excluding interest income of 21%. Our ongoing expense discipline delivered a record 30% adjusted EBITDA margin. And we continued to return cash to shareholders, repurchasing $47 million worth of shares during the quarter. Record quarterly revenue of $240 million was up 16%. Growth was driven by a 10% increase in our ICPs, faster growth in higher take rate services and regions, the continued benefit of our pricing initiatives, and higher interest income earned on customer funds held in Payoneer accounts. Volume growth of 22% reflected broad-based strengths across the platform. Our B2B business delivered 40% volume growth in Q2, accelerating from 33% growth in Q1. Our strong momentum in B2B is the result of our strategic focus and disciplined execution over the past 18 months. The customer cohorts we added since the beginning of 2023 are delivering significant growth, and we continue to see strong acquisition of B2B customers. Robust acquisition of large customers in China and continued strength from large e-commerce platforms drove a 15% increase in volume from SMBs that sell on marketplaces. We are also seeing strong volume growth from emerging marketplaces with our existing China and U.S.-based e-com sellers who are accessing demand on these newer platforms and consolidating the volume from these sales channels into their Payoneer accounts. While this makes up a small portion of our overall volume from SMBs that sell on marketplaces today, it's an area that is growing quickly, and we are exploring deeper strategic partnerships with these marketplaces. We also generated nearly 200% volume growth in merchant services and 31% volume growth in enterprise payouts. Our Q2 take rate of 128 basis points decreased seven basis points due to non-volume fees earned last year and continued growth in our enterprise payouts business. Our SMB customer take rate continues to expand, increasing by one basis point, driven by significantly faster growth in our higher take rate B2B business and the benefit of ongoing pricing initiatives. Customer funds held by Payoneer increased 9% to $6 billion. Our ability to steadily grow customer funds drove a 19% increase in our interest income to $66 million for Q2, while average interest rates were up by just 5% and contributed modestly. We continue to prudently extend the duration on our portfolio, and as of June 30, we have invested nearly $1 billion of customer funds into U.S. Treasuries and term-based deposits. We are still ramping this program and intend to invest up to 30% of the portfolio in the coming months. We believe this will reduce our interest rate sensitivity and drive greater interest income consistency as rates begin to decline. Total operating expenses of 193 million were up 11%, driven primarily by higher transaction costs, as well as higher depreciation and amortization, IT-related costs, and increased marketing spend. Transaction costs of 37 million increased 30%. primarily due to strong volume growth, continued mix shift into our fast-growing B2B and merchant services businesses, sustained growth in our card product, and an increase in chargebacks and operational losses. This was partially offset by improved commercial terms with banking providers, internal platform optimizations, and cost structure benefits from increased scale. Transaction costs represented 15.4 percent of revenue, a 160 basis point increase from the prior year period. Sales and marketing expense increased 2 million, or 5 percent, driven by higher marketing spend related to card incentive programs. Our initiatives have driven four consecutive quarters of more than 30 percent year-over-year growth in card usage, including 33 percent growth in Q2 of 2024. We continue to drive greater efficiency within our sales organization and have kept labor-related costs flat year-over-year, even as we have accelerated our ICP volume and revenue growth. G&A expense increased $4 million, primarily due to higher M&A-related expenses, which we excluded from adjusted EBITDA. Other operating expense was up $1 million or 2%. Higher IT-related costs were partially offset by lower labor and consulting expense. R&D expense was roughly flat, with higher labor costs offset by higher capitalization. We have increased our average R&D headcount by 12% year-over-year and intend to continue strengthening our product and engineering teams to support our long-term strategy. Record adjusted EBITDA of 73 million was up 17 million or 30%. This represents a record 30% adjusted EBITDA margin in the current quarter. Net income was 32 million compared to 46 million in the second quarter of last year, which benefited from 18 million of non-operating gains, primarily related to the revaluation of our public warrants. Due to basic and diluted earnings per share was 9 cents. We continue to actively return capital to shareholders, and we purchased $47 million worth of shares in the second quarter. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $576 million, and note that our acquisition of SQuAD will represent a use of cash for the third quarter. Moving to our 2024 guidance, we are raising our guidance for revenue by $25 million and guidance for adjusted EBITDA by $25 million to reflect our strong results and continued momentum heading into the third quarter. Our guidance includes the partial year impact of SQUAD, which we closed on August 5th, and which we do not expect to be material to our 2024 financial results. For the full year, we expect revenues to be between $920 and $930 million. Our increased guidance is driven entirely by higher revenue excluding interest income of $680 to $690 million, while we continue to expect $240 million of interest income for the year. We now expect 2024 revenue growth excluding interest income and normalizing for $15 million of non-volume fees earned in the first half of 2023 to be approximately 17%. That is nearly double the growth rate of 2023 and in excess of the mid-teens target we set at our investor day. We are raising our expectations for revenue excluding interest income by $25 million to reflect our strong performance in the second quarter and increased expectations for the third quarter. We now expect third quarter revenues excluding interest to be up low to mid-teens year over year versus our previous expectation of high single-digit growth. We have made no changes to our expectations for the fourth quarter relative to our expectations in February. We continue to expect the fourth quarter revenue ex-interest income to grow mid-teens. We are holding our interest income revenue expectations at $240 million for the year. This reflects our expectations for balanced growth, latest market views on interest rates, and the in-year impact of our program to extend the duration of our customer fund. We expect transaction costs as a percentage of revenue to be approximately 16.5% versus our prior expectation of 17.5%. We expect this percentage to ramp in the second half of 2024 as we continue to mix shift towards higher take rates but also higher transaction cost business lines and products like B2B, merchant services, and card. We are increasing our adjusted EBITDA guidance by 25 million to be between 225 to 235 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 25% at the midpoint for the full year. Our guidance for cash OPEX less anticipated transaction costs remains unchanged at approximately 540 million. Cash OPEX represents our guidance for revenue, less adjusted EBITDA. Our second quarter results demonstrate that our strategy and focus on growing and retaining ICPs, increasing adoption of our financial stack, optimizing ARPU, and delivering improving operating leverage is working. We remain dedicated to driving innovation and delivering value for customers, employees and shareholders over the long term. We are now happy to answer any questions you may have. Operator, please open up the line.
spk05: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please do so now by pressing start followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to be removed from the queue, you can do so by pressing start and then two. Our first question today comes from the line of Darren Peller with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, guys. Nice job on the quarter. Maybe just start off with your overview of what you're seeing in terms of traction around different types of pricing initiatives in the business. Obviously, you're coming in better than we had expected on revenues and you're raising numbers. And I'd just be curious to hear how much of that is coming from performance on the volume side versus what you're able to have control over on the yield, especially on whether it's in-network volume, monetizing intra-network volume, or it's just monetizing more users in a way that makes sense and is sticky. So if you can just give us more color on how that's been trending, that'd be great.
spk00: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Darren, for the question. Look, I mean, everything we're seeing from a pricing perspective is very much in line with what we've talked about in prior calls, right? We started to define that segment-based approach. As John said in his prepared remarks, we launched our Lite account. That launch will continue throughout the year. That drives improved monetization for freelancers and gig workers. We're seeing nice uplift from our FX revenue pricing initiatives, and we're continuing what we've termed and is for us a multi-quarter journey to really augment and make more nuanced our pricing strategy. So we're working on what we've called our pro-offering into the services and goods verticals, which we think will drive Again, improved market monetization there could include usage and subscription fees, maybe perhaps a SaaS component, upgrade fees, and so on. So overall, we're performing exactly as we sort of highlighted, nothing to add to the $20 million number that we referenced last year in terms of expected uplift in our 2024 guide from those pricing initiatives. And we continue to feel really optimistic and good about the strategy and how we can continue to drive uplift in the out years. Specific to intranet workflows, as we said last time, we've continued to test. We think that that's a meaningful opportunity, again, as part of that broader pricing strategy.
spk04: That's great to hear. So it sounds like it's still relatively early days, but good traction so far. I guess... John, maybe just one quick follow up would be just the strategy of the business in terms of how much you've been investing in different categories to cross sell. And I guess there's a part of that question. So first of all, I guess, where's the progress been on the incremental products, not just pricing products? What are you excited about in terms of having just come to the market the last couple of quarters? And then we talked about a couple of last time and then if you really align the right staffing for those needs, just trying to figure out investments and expense on margin, assuming that you have that already embedded in your outlook.
spk03: yeah so the thanks for the question darren you know the team's done a great job through the first half of the year focused on the full financial stack and we shared in the supplement an increasing number of our customers are using two and three um ap products so our cross-sell focus is working and it's driven by our csm team we have a global team that focuses on serving our top icp customers both introducing them to new products and services that we have and cross-selling their capability. When you look at the growth in China, 19% growth in Apex, Samia, and Latin America, 28% growth in North America, 23% normalizing for non-volume fees. our focus on the high-value ICP, cross-selling card, introducing our B2B product. And now we're very excited about what we can do with payroll. We've talked to our customers, and what they say is the number one AP challenge they have cross-border is contractors and employees. By adding squad into our financial stack, not only will we grow payroll, our proof from those customers, extend the reach of our contractor solution, but we will increase the stickiness of the financial stack itself. So when we look at the accelerating product roadmap inside of the organization, our integrations into the ecosystem, as I referenced in my prepared remarks, and our multi-entity features, which make it easier for a S&B with entities in multiple geographies, with customers in multiple geographies, and with expenses from multiple geographies, increasing the pay in your account is their go-to hub for all of their international financial activity. Let me pass it over to B, if there's anything you'd like to add as well.
spk00: Yeah, I guess just on the margin question, Darren, look, I think we've demonstrated the ability to unlock leverage and improve margins over the last several quarters. I think it's noteworthy that for the first half of this year, our expenses are flat, even as we've mixed shifted our adjusted OPEX, even as we've mixed shifted into more complex business lines. At the same time, we see significant opportunities to unlock greater efficiency. That's really going to allow us to scale without meaningfully adding to labor costs, which are sort of the biggest slug of costs in the company. The area where we are adding, as we've called out, is in our R&D team. And that's really what's allowing us to unlock, to John's point, the velocity and features and rollout to help us continue to deliver that financial stack.
spk04: That's great. All right. Makes sense, P. Thanks, John. Thanks, guys.
spk05: Our next question comes from Mark Palmer with the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.
spk02: Yes, thank you and congrats on the strong performance this quarter. It would be great if you could comment on what you are seeing from a macro perspective across the various regions you serve. And in particular, we saw strength in China, Asia-Pac, LATAM during the quarter. You just attributed that in part to various initiatives that the company has undertaken. But what are you seeing in the macro and what are your expectations for the rest of the year in that regard? How is that reflected in the guidance?
spk03: Yeah, so I'll start and then, B, why don't you grab. I just referenced the growth we've had in China, APAC, to me in Latin America, really strong B2B performance across the board, strong card growth, the impact of our pricing initiatives, 30% growth in India, Argentina, and Japan, 40% plus growth in Pakistan, the Philippines, Brazil, and South Korea. The organization is really executing very well at driving growth the growth. You know, I think the macro environment was stable in Q2 versus Q1 and broadly supportive of the strategy we've put in place. You know, when we look out into the future, I'll pass it to Bea to talk a little bit about how we view the guidance for the second half of the year and the trends in both marketplace and B2B.
spk00: Sure, and thank you, Mark. Look, specific to how we embed the macro view in our back half of the year assumptions and consistent with what we said after Q1, we're continuing to model in some macro softness in the back half of the year. We would expect to see that impact primarily in our marketplace business. So our guide implies a softening of growth there in those marketplace volumes to high single digits, which compares to the mid-teens growth that we saw in the front half of the year. In our B2B business, our guide implies at the midpoint roughly 25% year-over-year growth in our B2B business in the back half of the year. That continues to deliver outperformance versus our original four-year targets. So we're expecting 30% year-over-year growth versus 25% when we issued that guidance in February. So overall, that would imply a decel in that normalized revenue growth. Again, from the record we saw in H1 of 21%, and to roughly mid-teens in the back half of the year, and again, very much in line with those medium-term targets. So overall, look, the fundamentals are really strong, especially in our B2B biz. We model in some softness because we think that's prudent. There's certainly room to outperform if the macro remains as robust as it's been thus far. And I would call out that July was a really strong month.
spk02: John, you had previously talked about payroll as an area that you would potentially focus on with regard to bolt-on M&A. Now with the addition of SQuAD, What else remains on your wish list in terms of building out the product suite?
spk03: First of all, we are very excited about Squad and the payroll management and EOR capabilities, and the team, culturally mission-driven, aligns completely with the approach to serving SMBs who are doing business cross-border. You know, we've announced three acquisitions since I took over as CEO, Spot, an acquisition in China, which is yet to close, and Will, and Squad. When we look at our M&A philosophy, we're focused on product acquisitions and extensions where we can leverage our existing customer base and our reach to cross-sell financial stack solutions and drive our food growth. That's sort of the primary objective. Secondarily, deepen our regional footprint in the high-growth markets where we have a priority. You'll note that Squad is headquartered in Singapore with teams in Singapore and in India, as well as extending our license and licensing framework. There are lots of opportunities in the market, and we are a prudent and disciplined buyer and deep into the diligence of the opportunities, and we will continue to add to our capabilities through tuck-in M&A.
spk06: Thank you.
spk05: The next question comes from Trevor Williams with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk08: Great. Thanks. Good morning. Yeah, I wanted to ask on pricing. I don't know if you guys could give us an update on, I think last quarter you talked about being in a pilot program for some of the intra-network flows. If you could just give us an update on how that pilot program progressed. And then any update on timing, if you think this could be a potential second half impact, or if this is more maybe a 2025 broader rollout. Thanks.
spk00: Thanks, Trevor. Yeah, the rollout is in line with what we talked about at the end of Q1 and in line with sort of our plans in general and that segment-based pricing strategy and offering strategy that we've outlined. Look, we continue to work on defining those customer personas, aligning our product bundling and pricing to those personas, And really thinking in a very sort of holistic and broad way around how we drive more engagement, capture more share of wallet, improve monetization, and really crucially as well, reduce our complexity and cost to serve by aligning the product bundling to the needs of that customer. So this is a multi-quarter journey, as we've called out. We're very much in line with where we wanted to be. We still continue to expect roughly $20 million or more in uplift in 2024 in terms of revenue uplift from those initiatives. And we see a lot more opportunity to come there as we continue to launch and think through that strategy. Specific to the pilot, it's going well. We launched it. We're being really rigorous in understanding sort of the customer reaction and results. It's not a meaningful driver, and it's not meaningful to our guidance in 24. We think it can be somewhat more meaningful in 25, again, as part of a broader pricing strategy.
spk08: Okay. That's great. And then just a follow-up on just what's implied for the second half. I think for Q3, you're saying now up low to mid-teens. Before, that had been high single digits. If we compare that to where you were this quarter on kind of the core X interest income up in the low 20 percentage, there's still a pretty good deceleration that's embedded in Q3. Maybe if you could just kind of parse out the moving pieces within that, how much of that is just embedded conservatism around the macro. And if you could give us a sense for how July trended relative to that 21% growth in Q2. Thanks.
spk00: Yeah, happy to do that. Look, you've got it right in terms of how we're seeing Q3. So we raised $25 million in total, as we called out. That captures the outperformance in Q2. And we've increased our expectations for Q3 versus prior year guidance. to, as you noted, low to mid-teens growth from high single digits. We haven't changed Q4, so all of that sort of gets us to a 17% growth year over year at the midpoint. To your question, that does imply some softening in growth as we go into Q3 and Q4 from that record 21% ex-interest income growth that we saw in the front half of the year. And we've been very consistent, right? We're modeling in some macro softness into those expectations. How does that break out as between the sort of various components of our business? Again, it's mostly in that marketplace business where we would expect to see that if indeed the macro softens, right? So where we initially guided to high single digit growth in volumes from marketplaces in Q1 and Q2, we actually saw high teens. We are continuing to expect high single digits in the back half of the year, perhaps moderating growth in B2B, simply because we're not going to run right out the really robust outperformance in the front half of the year. So that is the implied deceleration. Again, as I said, there's room to outperform if the macro remains stable. We're still very, very confident in the fundamentals of the business, especially B2B, given the strong ICP acquisition. But we're modeling in some softness, as I say. July, to your question, was a strong month and looks a lot like the front half of the year so far. So we're, again, feeling good, but you're seeing the same indicators in the macro that we are, and we think it's prudent to model in some softness into our expectations.
spk08: That's great. Okay. Thanks again.
spk05: The next question comes from Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, guys. Good morning. Nice results this morning. I wanted to ask on the really strong performance on the marketplace volume side. You know, for most of the time I've been following you, like the volumes have tracked pretty closely with kind of broader e-commerce trends across kind of like a lot of the marketplaces, which most of them are publicly traded. And, you know, this quarter it seemed to really kind of gap out. And I'm just wondering if you could kind of comment on where you're seeing that outperformance. There were some comments about new customer acquisition in China. I'd love to hear more about that and the opportunity in marketplaces in the emerging markets. Thanks.
spk03: You bet, Will. Thanks for the question. You know, we're proud of the results the team that focuses on the marketplace relationships have done. And as you and I've talked in the past, that team is global, right? So we have folks on the ground in the U.S. and folks on the ground in China and around the world. So it's a strategy that involves both acquiring ICPs on the ground that are exporters, S&Bs that sell on marketplaces, so work that happens locally. inside of China and other regions around the world. And we saw really strong performance and the e-commerce results benefit from the consumer spend and the strong performance by the Payoneer team. You know, we are I think at the beginning of our opportunity to extend our relationship with the innovative new marketplaces that are entering the consumer landscape, the TikTok, Shein, Teimus, and others, and we continue to work to develop those relationships to extend our franchise in the marketplace arena, which I think over the next several quarters will continue to be as strong as it can be. You know, we are...
spk07: at the beginning of that journey which is interesting to think about we're excited about it and pursuing it aggressively great sounds exciting and then uh maybe just a follow-up for b just how are you thinking about incremental margins over the next year uh you know largely i guess stripping out the interest income uh part of the equation obviously rate expectations have been a bit volatile recently but if we think about just incremental margins and the core business excluding sort of the macro impacts on the float. How would you position that, and how would you maybe characterize some of the levers you have to manage the incremental margins over the next year or so, maybe including some of the potential headwinds we might see from float? Thanks.
spk00: Sure, thanks for the question, Will. Look, as we called out, we feel really good about the ability to continue to drive core revenue growth, and we've been able to constrain our adjusted OPEX or cash OPEX spending accordingly, certainly in the front half of the year. And where we're seeing a tick up in spend in the back half of the year, it's from proactive and intentional investment in the platform, in our data capabilities and extending our financial stack. From a pure margin perspective, look, we've proactively called out a step up in transaction costs in the back half of the year. We've actually outperformed our expectations there. We lowered our guidance for transaction costs as a percentage of revenue from 17 and a half to 16 and a half. So while we expect a step up, we're seeing strong performance really from driving scale in our business, from optimizing our platform and capabilities from a routing perspective, and from pricing initiatives, particularly in our MRS business more broadly. So again, we see the opportunity to continue to drive sustainable growth in revenues, less transaction costs. And as I noted, I think that there is continued opportunity to drive additional leverage from an adjusted EBITDA margin perspective, and we're demonstrating our ability to do that already with our results Great.
spk07: Appreciate you taking the questions, guys. Nice results.
spk05: The next question comes from Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk06: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I know you talked about it, but can you give a little bit more details on extending the duration of customer deposits and how we should think about the sensitivity to interest rates going forward?
spk00: Yeah, thanks for the question, Chris. Yeah, as we've called out, we've been extending the duration. We started that program this year. We anticipate extending somewhere in the region of 30%, perhaps a little more. We're obviously balancing versus liquidity, but perhaps 30% or more of that portfolio over the course of the next several months. As at the end of July, we had already extended roughly 1.2 billion. We've called out, and we've done that through Treasury bills, so again, highly liquid instruments, and through term deposits. The weighted average duration of that portfolio right now is give or take two years. The weighted average yield is just under 5%. So look, to your point, the ability to do that obviously prudently will reduce our interest rate sensitivity as we begin to sort of come down the other side of this tightening cycle, so to speak, and deliver greater earnings consistency. We're also looking at derivatives that can provide interest rate floors and similar instruments that can provide additional benefits. Always, of course, prioritizing safety, not looking to time the market perfectly, and just continuing to hedge to reduce that overall sensitivity as much as we can. So we feel good about it. We think we're handling it sort of the right way and properly balancing that, and that we can continue to drive really sustainable float income in the coming years.
spk06: Great. Thanks for that. And then as a follow-up, you've made a lot of investment in your tech stack and your platform. Can you just talk about kind of where you are in that journey?
spk03: yeah i'll start and then be maybe you'll add some color you know what we have done in the tech organization is material increase the velocity of our product releases we've added and upgraded the the talent in that organization and we focus. on the high value ICPs and the tools and services that they need in order to better operate their businesses. The results that the platform organization have delivered have been terrific and we're proud of what they're doing and are focused on accelerating their impact as we serve more and more global ICPs who need the support of the organization.
spk00: Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that, John, is, you know, we continue on a roadmap that's very consistent with what we've outlined. So roughly a third of our platform investment goes to growth driving initiatives. So the kind of things that we talk about on this call, right, improving the UX, improving online engagement, elements of our B2B product roadmap, pricing and offering strategy and capabilities and so on. roughly a third is going to enablement and other platform capabilities. So data is super important, as you would imagine, really driving improved customer insights, AI-based tools to allow us to utilize that data, you know, really a focus on the data that's going to allow us to improve retention in our portfolio. So areas that improve sort of the customer experience from payment friction to self-serve, And then the final element is what I'll call platform modernization, which is a needed part of the investment in any sort of company that's operating a diverse and complex financial stack the way we are. So that's really kind of the roadmap we've laid out and how we think about the various investment pillars, if you like.
spk06: Great. Thanks for taking the questions.
spk05: We have no further questions, and so I'll turn the call back to John Kaplan for closing remarks.
spk03: Thank you, everybody. Thank you for your questions and your participation this morning. Thank you to the Global Pioneer Organization for your incredible hard work and dedication to our customers. We're all excited about the initiatives underway and our momentum and traction, and we appreciate the continued support of our shareholders. We look forward to our next discussion at the end of next quarter. Speak to you soon. Thank you.
spk05: Thank you everyone for joining us today. This concludes our call and you may now disconnect your lines.
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