Verra Mobility Corporation

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Vera Mobility's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is James Reyes, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over the conference to your speaker today, Mark Zindler, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Vero Mobility's second quarter 2025 earnings call. Today, we'll be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed along with our earnings presentation which is available on the investor relations section of our website at ir.veramobility.com with me on the call are david roberts vera mobility's chief executive officer and craig conti our chief financial officer david will begin with prepared remarks followed by craig and then we'll open up the call for q a management may make forward-looking statements during the call regarding future events, anticipated future trends, and the anticipated future performance of the company. We caution you that such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of risk factors. These factors are described in our SEC filings. Please refer to our earnings press release and investor presentation for VeriMobility's complete forward-looking statement disclosure. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs and assumptions today, and we do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Finally, during today's call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is included in our earnings release, quarterly earnings presentation, and investor presentation, all of which can be found on our website at ir.veramobility.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Mark, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. We delivered a strong second quarter with all key financial measures ahead of our internal expectations. Total revenue for the quarter increased 6% over the same period last year to $236 million. with all three business segments meeting or exceeding their respective internal plan. Adjusted EPS increased 10% over the prior year period, driven by our operating performance, recent share repurchases, and the reduction in our interest rate on our term loan debt. Moving on to segment-level financials, commercial services second quarter revenue and segment profit increased about 5% and 4%, respectively, over the prior year period. RAC tolling increased 4% over the prior year period, driven by increased product adoption and higher tolling activity compared to the second quarter of last year. The growth in RAC tolling was partially offset by a decline in FMC revenue of about 2% compared to the second quarter of 2024, primarily due to a combination of customer churn as well as a modest weakness related to enrolled vehicles and tolling activity in the early 2Q attributable to macroeconomic factors. We expect incremental weakness in the third quarter and to stabilize and grow from that new level. FMC continues to be a core focus area, and we remain very optimistic about solid growth prospects in this business area. Additionally, as we noted in our press release in early July, Stacey Moser has joined our executive leadership team and will lead commercial services. Stacy is a commercially focused executive, bringing strong experience in sales leadership, product development, and international expansion, and will be instrumental in leading commercial services into its next phase of growth. Next, moving on to the macro environment and the implications for our commercial services business. With consumer confidence levels improving amidst increasing clarity on the economic environment, travel demand is stabilizing. albeit at lower levels than our prior forecast. Second quarter TSA volume declined about 1% over the second quarter of last year, and year-to-date TSA volume is about the same as last year. As a result of these trends and the commentary from the major airlines on expected demand, we have further reduced our travel volume assumptions for the remainder of 2025 relative to the levels discussed in our first quarter call. This is subject to further change, and we are closely monitoring the airline industry. which has historically been a good indicator of trends that impact the commercial services business. Moving on to government solutions, service revenue increased 7% over the second quarter of 2024. Revenue from New York City, our largest government solutions customer, was essentially flat year over year as we await the finalization of the renewal contract. Service revenue increased 11% outside of New York City, driven by expansion from existing customers and new cities implementing photo enforcement programs. Total revenue, which includes international product sales, was up about 10% over the prior year quarter, fueled in part by a $3 million increase in product sales compared to the second quarter of 2024. And a note regarding New York City, we are earnestly working toward finalizing the renewal contract. Upon executing the contract, we will hold an update call to discuss the new contract, key economic terms, and the planned red light expansion program. Next, I'll discuss the demand for automated photo enforcement, the key driver for our government solutions business. We continue to see positive support for photo enforcement programs across the United States. During the second quarter, both Colorado and Nevada passed legislation authorizing school bus stop arm enforcement, adding about $40 million in total addressable market. In total, enabling legislation passed over the past two and a half years across the United States has added approximately $225 million of TAM, with the potential to expand to over $350 million as further enabling legislation allows in California. Our recent execution against this TAM has been strong. In the second quarter, we entered into contracted bookings of about $21 million of incremental annual recurring revenue at full run rate, bringing the trailing 12 months total to about $60 million. Notable second quarter bookings include the Chicago-Illinois Speed Camera Expansion and a five-year renewal, Cobb County-Georgia School Bus Stop Arm Expansion, Mesa-Arizona Speed Expansion Program, and several Florida School Zone Speed Awards. We believe automated enforcement continues to demonstrate its intended effects. We see proof points that drivers are improving their driving behaviors and traffic fatality rates are slowing decreasing. For example, for our own data, our own data reveal positive indicators when we compare 2024 to 2023 4th of July holiday travel. Key findings included a 26% decrease in total violations from 2023, 24% fewer speeding tickets, and 31% fewer red light violations. Most importantly, the data shows that pedestrian deaths were down 4.3% year over year, making the second consecutive annual decline. But with over 7,700 pedestrian fatalities last year, it's a stark reminder that more work needs to be done to improve road safety. Moving on to T2, our parking solutions business. Total revenue declined about 4% for the quarter, driven by a reduction in product sales as well as professional services revenue. This result was in line with our internal expectations. Moving on to our full-year outlook, we are maintaining our full-year 2025 financial guidance. While travel demand appears to be stabilizing, we remain cautious that a further modest decline in travel volume may cause us to trend toward the lower end of the financial ranges as previously provided. Additionally, note that our growth and margin expectations for government solutions and T2 remain unchanged as the market for photo enforcement is strong and our parking business turnaround is showing some early signs of success. We believe these businesses areas are largely unaffected by economic sensitivity. Moving on to capital allocation, during the second quarter, our Board of Directors authorized a $100 million stock repurchase program that is available through November 2026. As of the end of second quarter, no repurchases have been made under the new stock repurchase program. Finally, before I close, a reminder that with summer nearing its close, please drive safely as kids start going back to school this month. Craig, I'll turn it over to you to guide us through our financial results and additional details on our 2025 financial outlook.

Thank you, David. And hello, everyone. We appreciate you joining us on the call today. Let's turn to slide four, which outlines the key financial measures for the consolidated business for the second quarter. Our Q2 performance, which included 5% service revenue growth and 6% total revenue growth year over year, exceeded our internal expectations. The service revenue growth, which consists primarily of recurring revenue, was driven by increased product adoption and higher tolling activities in the commercial services business, as well as service revenue growth outside of New York City in the government solutions business. At the segment level, commercial services revenue grew 5% year over year, government solution service revenue increased by 7% over the prior year, and T2 systems SaaS and services revenue was essentially flat compared to the second quarter of 2024. Total product revenue was a little over $12 million for the quarter. Government solutions contributed roughly $9 million and T2 delivered about $3 million in product sales overall for the quarter. Additionally, our consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $105 million, an increase of approximately 3% versus last year. We reported net income of $39 million for the quarter, including a tax provision of about $14 million, representing an effective tax rate of approximately 27%. GAAP diluted EPS was $0.24 per share for the second quarter of 2025 compared to $0.20 per share for the prior year period. Adjusted EPS, which excludes amortization, stock-based compensation, and other non-recurring items, was $0.34 per share for the second quarter this year, compared to $0.31 per share in the second quarter of 2024, representing a 10% year-over-year growth. The adjusted EPS growth was driven by the increase in adjusted EBITDA, a sustained reduction in interest expense driven by our prior year debt repricing efforts and our share repurchases in 2024. Cash flows provided by operating activities totaled $75 million, and we delivered $40 million of free cash flow for the quarter in line with our internal expectations. Turning to slide five, we generated $407 million of adjusted EBITDA on approximately $906 million of revenue for the trailing 12 months, representing a 45% adjusted EBITDA margin. Additionally, we generated $189 million of free cash flow or a 46% conversion of adjusted EBITDA over the trailing 12 months. Next, I'll walk through the second quarter performance in each of our three business segments, beginning with commercial services on slide six. CS year-over-year revenue growth was 5% in the second quarter. RAC tolling revenue increased 4%, or about $3 million over the same period last year, driven by increased product adoption and tolling activity, partially offset by a 1% decline in travel volume. Our FMC business declined 2%, or about $300,000 year over year, driven by customer churn and macroeconomic weakness related to enrolled vehicles and tolling activity in early Q2. As David mentioned, we anticipate that FMC revenue dollars will further decline in the third quarter, and then we expect to stabilize and grow from that level. Commercial services segment profit increased 4% over the prior year. The CS revenue growth was partially offset by non-recurring ERP implementation costs. Turning to slide seven, government solutions had solid service revenue growth in the quarter, driven by 11% growth outside of New York City. The growth was broad-based across all modalities, with particular strength in bus lane and school bus stop arm enforcement programs. Total revenue grew 10% over the prior year quarter, benefiting from about $9 million in product sales, which increased by $3 million over the same period last year. Government solution segment profit was $30 million for the quarter, representing margins of approximately 28%. The reduction in margins versus prior year was primarily due to the mixed impact of increased international camera sales, ERP conversion costs, and project implementation costs for newly awarded programs. Let's turn to slide 8 for a view of the results of T2 Systems. We generated revenue of $20 million and segment profit of approximately $3 million for the quarter. SAS and services sales were essentially flat compared to the prior year, while product revenue declined 18% or $700,000 compared to 2024. Breaking the T2 and SAS services revenue down a bit further, recurring SAS revenue was flat compared to the prior year quarter and offset by a decline in installation and other professional services due to the reduction in product sales over prior quarters. On a year-to-date basis, Recurring SAS revenue has increased low single digits over the same period in 2024. Okay, let's turn to slide nine for a view of the balance sheet net leverage. We ended the quarter with a net debt balance of $893 million, which reflects the strong free cash flow we generated in the first half of the year. Net leverage landed at 2.2 times, and we've maintained significant liquidity with our newly expanded $125 million undrawn credit revolver. Our gross debt balance at year end stands at about a billion dollars, of which approximately 690 million is floating rate debt. Okay, let's now turn to slide 10 and have a look at full year 2025 guidance. Based on our first half results and our outlook for the remainder of the year, we are reaffirming all guidance measures. As David discussed, our primary consideration in this economic environment is the potential impact to travel demand. While we are reaffirming guidance, we would like to highlight that there is a risk of moving to the lower end of the ranges if travel demand worsens from current levels. In the event that the U.S. economy weakens and we see a material move downward in TSA volume, we will reassess and update the market accordingly. As a reminder, the full year 2025 guidance ranges provided on our fourth quarter 2024 earnings call were as follows. We expect total revenue in the range of 925 to 935 million, representing approximately 6% growth at the midpoint of guidance over 2024. We expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of 410 to 420 million, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint over 2024. We anticipate an adjusted EPS range of $1.30 to $1.35 per share, and free cash flow is expected to be in the range of $175 to $185 million, representing a conversion rate in the low to mid 40th percentile of adjusted EBITDA. Moving on to the segment level. Government Solutions is expected to generate high single-digit total revenue growth driven by the expansion of camera installations with existing customers and new customers awarded in fiscal year 2024. Recall that this growth forecast includes an expectation of flat service revenue from New York City in 2025 under the legacy contract while we work through negotiations for the renewal contract. We also expect increased product revenue in 2025. Taken together, both New York City service and global product sales comprise nearly 40% of total government solutions total revenue. The remaining 60% of government solutions revenue is expected to grow low double digits overall in 2025. We continue to anticipate that parking solutions revenue will be about flat with 2024 levels. We expect SAS revenue to grow low to mid single digits offset by a decline in the installation and professional service revenue on roughly flat product sales based on an assumption that travel will be flattish in 2025 compared with two 24 compared with 2024. We anticipate commercial services growing at the high end of mid single digits. We anticipate CS revenue, adjusted segment profit and margins will improve sequentially in the third quarter, followed by modest declines in the fourth quarter, consistent with historical norms based on travel trends. Other key assumptions supporting our adjusted EPS and free cash flow outlook can be found on slide 11. Before we close out, I'd like to give you an update on our ongoing ERP implementation. I am pleased to report that the project is on schedule and on budget. We have several smaller processes to transition over the next several quarters, but the most complex portion of the project is largely complete. In closing, we're very pleased with our first half performance. We exhibited solid execution across the board, and we're delivering strong free cash flow and earnings. As we head into the final months of 2025, there's a lot to be excited about. stabilizing travel trends, finalizing the contract with New York City Department of Transportation, and strong demand for automated enforcement. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you very much for joining us on the call today.

I'd now like to open the call for questions. Thank you.

At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again.

Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Faiza Alwi from Deutsche Bank.

Your line is now open.

Great. Thank you very much. So I wanted to just flesh out some of your commentary around commercial services and sounds like there's a few moving parts. First, just on travel, just want to put a finer point on, are you essentially run rating sort of where Q2 travel trends were or sort of, you know, maybe where you exited to Q? So just give us a better sense of what you're assuming for travel in the back half. And then secondly, you mentioned, okay, I'll let you answer that, then I'll follow up.

Yeah, thanks. We'll do the first part first. First of all, we had a little technical issue at the beginning of the call. Can you hear me okay? It's Greg.

Yes.

Excellent. Okay, so if we back up to the end of the first quarter, I'll get to your question, but I want to start with a little context, right? So last time we were on the call, we talked about the guide for the company would still stand if TSA volumes stayed at around flat for last year to down a handful of points, okay? Now, bringing that forward three months, we're still in the exact same place. What we saw in the second quarter, the TSA throughput was about 99%. that stepped up and got a little better in July at just north of 100%. And if you look at it, as David said in his script, on a year-to-date basis, we're right at about 100%. So that's the state of play. I think the other thing that's different is the backdrop or the sentiment on travel is stronger than it was 90 days ago. I think we all heard that from the airlines and the hotels. So now to your question. What we've done for demand go forward is we've taken in essentially the 2Q exit rate, which is somewhere between 99% and 100%, and left that as the throughput rate for the back half of the year, which still puts us within the range of guidance that we set at the beginning of the year. And that's what it looks like the consensus is for travel in the near term. in the market today.

All right. Understood. Makes sense. And then just some of the other moving parts, right? Like you mentioned, fleet management, you know, some maybe macroeconomic factors and churn. So just give us a sense of, I mean, it seems pretty small given the revenue amount that you gave us, but Like, is it going to get worse in 3Q? And just give us a bit more color on sort of how, you know, what needs to happen for things to stabilize in 4Q.

Yeah, sure. I think you said it well, Liza. So, yes, we saw a small decrease in our 2Q results. It was only $300,000 or about 2%, and that was the result of some macroeconomic headwinds and some churns. Now, that is going to accelerate as we get into the third quarter. So we expect that to be fully baked into our run rate by the third quarter. So we'll be down again here in the third quarter. And then I think from a total demand standpoint, that will be the base from which we will then again grow.

All right, great. And then just my second question was really around, you know, it sounds like you raised the guide for government solutions. Just give us some color on what got better. Is it just better or earlier execution or conversion of some of the ARR to revenue, or is it something else?

I'm sorry, Faiza. Are you asking about the commercial activity?

No, I was asking about the government solutions and the slight guidance raised there. And if you were seeing... you know, faster conversion from ARR to revenue or if it was, you know, something else that was driving the increase.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, as I think about it, there's really broad-based strength. it's across both so product is is going to be um higher than we anticipated at the beginning of the year and that's a bit of a a positive and negative right so that's positive on the revenue line if i look at the mix of of that business that's going to be a little bit dilutive on the margin line you can see that the results in the second quarter not materially 100 basis points in the quarter but still you'll see it And as we go forward and look at the demand for photo enforcement, that honestly has done nothing but accelerate throughout the year. So when we started the year, we said high single digits is pretty much what we thought the non-New York City service revenue would grow. We feel comfortable today saying that's going to be in the low double digits. So the short answer is it's both of those things. And I think the final piece to that is if we think about the commercial activity, we talk about it in terms of loosely defined as backlog or what is that ARR that we've built up in the last 12 months, that number is sitting at $61 million. The TTM basis of that six months ago is in the 40s or 50s. So we continue to see this bow wave of the move to photo enforcement continue to move in the company's favor, and we've been capitalizing.

Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Moore from CJS Securities.

Daniel, your line is now open.

Thank you. Thanks, David. Thanks, Greg. And congrats on another solid quarter. I wanted to pull on the string of margins and government solutions a little bit. You just gave good color regarding the mixed pressure in the quarter. How much setup costs are in that and are sort of in the guide as we think about some of these new opportunities? You generally have to invest a little bit ahead of revenue. I'm getting at is sort of as we think about full-year margins, whether that's a new baseline from which, you know, we'll be flat to up or expand from as we think about, you know, kind of fiscal 26 and beyond in the government solutions piece of the business.

Yeah. Thanks, Dan. Craig again. Let me answer with a very detailed answer for the quarter and then give you an idea how I think this looks, okay? So, If I just look at year over year, we're down 250 basis points. So if you look at that on the face of it, that's a rough number. But let me break it down. About 100 basis points of that is simply mixed. That is, we are up 46% in product sales to international customers year over year. I love that. It's just lower margin. It's just lower margin to hit, of course. So we kind of take that away from the 250. Another 100 basis points, now we've built up 200 of the 250, is from the ERP cost that we incurred in the second quarter. That's going to hit both CS and GS. That was the thrust of the activity. So now we've got 50 basis points left, which is exactly what you asked. That is the incremental, if you will, setup cost. Now, I hesitate to go out to 2026 simply because we are not yet through contracting with New York City. Once we're done contracting with New York City, I think we can lay all of that out. But what I will tell you to hopefully help you a little bit farther down the path is if we kind of set New York City to the side for a second, the way we think about this is If the business continues to grow outside of New York City at low double digits, that will probably be slightly margin dilutive until we get most of the way through 2026. And what I mean by that is if we go back to the last 12 to 18 months, we talked about the platform consolidation that's going on in GS. That's still going on. We're still investing in that. Not a material year-over-year amount of money, but it's not live yet. So the confluence of that against the low double-digit growth will help us be able to accrete and grow on revenue and maintain margin. Until that point, I can't get there. That's the temporary answer. Obviously, we'll reset the whole mark once we have a view of where New York City's going to be.

Perfect. Really helpful. I'm sure the answer is no comment, but any update just in terms of timing around the New York City renewal or that finalization?

Hey, Dan, it's David. And no comment seems a bit rude given our longstanding relationship. But what I would say is that, you know, we honor the state of the contract that is with our customer. And so we're working toward a resolution. So Obviously, sooner than is better, but as soon as it is done, we will announce it and give all the relevant information to the market. Look forward to the call.

Lastly, obviously, the balance sheet continues to improve, leverage ticking down toward two times. Maybe just touch on M&A pipeline and borrowing positions will be more likely to pick up the pace of share buybacks.

know rather than let leverage continue to take lower you know below the kind of low end of your target range thanks again yeah thanks dan i don't think anything's changed in our strategy that we've laid out which is we still think that three times is the level of flight plan for the company we've got an open share repurchase we're going to be opportunistic with that but the i would just say that mna activity has really started to pick up and so we we continue to look at really interesting businesses across multiple segments, and so we'll continue to play our strategy, but we're only going to do a deal when it makes sense for our shareholders. So if not, we'll always go back to investing in the business or potentially buying back shares. So we're going to kind of keep doing exactly what we've been doing.

Very good. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Keith Howsam from North Coast Research. Keith, your line is now open.

Thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Hey, David, I think this might be the first quarter I recall European operations being called out in CES. And then, of course, you guys had a press release announcing an agreement with Sixth during the quarter, I believe it was with Italy. Perhaps maybe you can dimensionalize about some of the success you're having with Europe. I understand it's still early stages, but perhaps the contribution and how you think about that over the next year or so.

Yeah, thanks, Keith. I actually just got back from there a couple weeks ago and was meeting with customers. And what I would say is, as you've been with us for a while, you know, we talked about the ice thawing. And I would say that there's water on the side of the glass is maybe the best way I might describe it, is that we are definitely, we are starting to roll out in Italy with some of the customers like Davis Budgets The value proposition is compelling to our customers, and so I think it's starting to move up. Again, it's not going to be material. I think next year we'll probably be able to dimensionalize that in terms of total contribution, but we are starting to see multiple deployments in multiple countries, and so it's actually getting pretty exciting. And the greatest part of that, obviously, Keith, is the customers are telling us that they really like it.

Yeah. Well, congratulations. I know it's been a long haul and you guys have been working hard on that. So good to see. Outside of Italy, is there any other countries that are getting close to doing it as well or as far as long as Italy?

Yes. So we have, I believe it's seven countries total. Italy is one, you really want Italy, one of the bigger ones because it was, it's moving to cashless. And because of our Pagatelia app that we're able to do transponders in Italy as well as others. So that's part of it. France is the other big one. But we also work in Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, Italy. So those are the ones we're working in today.

Okay. And I've got to ask this question more just to make sure we're covering our bases here. But as you guys are adding new cameras to the portfolio here, there's no tariff issues or obligations that we have to worry about impacting costs going forward, do we?

Would you drill that in a little bit more, Keith, in terms of what kind of costs you're talking about?

Yeah, I'm sorry. In terms of purchasing cameras for the Florida Enforcement Program, as you've been adding new agencies here, are there any tariffs that perhaps will reduce your profit on the cameras?

No, I don't think so. I mean, you know, if anything, I like where we're heading on the volumes, and I think the other piece is when we talk about platform consolidation, it's a multi-year project that's going to bear some fruit for us here in the back half of next year, which is going to work really well with the generation of cameras that we've been buying. I think, you know, I'll say what I said a little bit earlier, Keith, because I think it bears repeating is, you know, if the business continues to grow in the low double digits, which let me be crystal clear, I have every intention that it will. I certainly hope it does. We are going to continue to see those installation costs, small incremental installation costs, come ahead of revenue, especially in the greenfield area. So we talked about David mentioned Colorado and Nevada, I believe, earlier. But outside of that, I don't see anything structural coming down the pipe.

Great, thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Louie DePalma from William Blair. Louie, your line is now open.

David, Craig, Anne, and Mark, good afternoon. Louie, good afternoon, Louie. You have discussed over the past several years, and everybody has witnessed the TAM for the photo enforcement market expanding. And I was wondering, could you provide some commentary on the pipeline in that you announced very strong bookings this quarter and strong bookings over the past trailing 12 months. But in terms of your bids outstanding and some of the newer markets, how is the RFP process? And do you have more bids outstanding today than you did a year ago? And how is everything translating in terms of bookings converting into actual revenue?

Yeah, so I think Craig said that we had 60 million of our run rate that we've added. So I think the big picture, Louie, is it's going very well. I think California is sort of our great sign of we laid out a playbook. We talked about opening legislation. We were able to support the state in enabling that legislation at a pace that was higher than we would have anticipated. We've been able to work with great cities, including San Francisco and Oakland and some of the others. And so I would say that all those are starting to translate. They are moving toward revenue recognition reasonably well. But that also speaks to the issue that Craig was talking about just a moment ago where, you know, when they say go, we start working as fast as we can, but the revenue doesn't start until the camera's turned on. So that's part of that. So we're seeing very, very strong pipeline movement, very strong conversion in our win rate, and all that's going to flow down to revenue. The $60 million is sort of an indication of that.

Fantastic. Thanks. And for the commercial business, you discussed the slowdown in travel. And I was wondering, as it relates to the overall – algorithm with all things being equal can investors assume a general five percent alpha out performance of your revenue growth above travel volumes um as craig and david and mark you previously discussed how in addition to travel volumes there's other variables such as the ship the cashless more toll roads total inflation and the bundled pricing. But has there been any other slowing for those other secular trends in terms of the shift to cashless or increased toll roads? Or are those other secular trends healthy?

You know, Louis, they are. So let me try to answer your question that you started with as succinctly as I possibly can. I love the way you phrase it. Can I put a 5% alpha on travel demand and say, you know, run macro and that's going to go forecast, you know, commercial services. What I would tell you is for this year, that's going to hold. It might not next year. It might be bigger. It might be smaller. So I would say that's the state of affairs where it is today. And let me equate that back to what we talked about two quarters ago and last quarter, right? We talked about growth in this business as a third, a third, a third. A third of that growth to get to high single digits, right? A third of that growth was GDP as travel growth. If we have 99% to 100% in the back half of the year, we did 99% in the second quarter, a little over 100% in the first quarter. You average that out, it looks a lot like 100%. So I don't have that 2.5% this year. So I see how you're getting there. I would say that in all of those secular tailwinds that we've talked about in the past, they are absolutely still occurring. Absolutely the trend is unmistakable. However, sometimes there's fits and starts. Sometimes it grows a little faster. Sometimes it grows a little slower. So that growth will be there, whether it will be a 5% alpha in 2028. I can't sit here and defendably tell you that.

That makes sense. Excellent. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. Thanks, Louie. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Koning from Baird.

David, your line is now open.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Good job. And I guess, first of all, I wanted to just look at CapEx. It was like clockwork, kind of $10 to $15 million a quarter for many quarters, kind of through 2020. really 2022 through 2024 mostly. And then by late 2024 and into this year, it's, it's, I'd say over doubled. And I know that's in preparation for demand, but it's not like revenues doubled yet. And just, I'm wondering like, what's the, what's the relationship there? Like if it's double, why shouldn't revenue be double? Or is it just a shorter term kind of build? And then six months from now we'll see better growth. Like how, how should we think of that relationship?

No, I get it, Dave. Thanks for the question. So, a couple things, right? Is that CapEx tends to, when a depreciable life of that CapEx is five to seven years, the useful life of that CapEx can be 10 plus. So I think just from linear mathematics, we're going to have a disconnect on that piece. The second thing I would say is when you're right, right, that grew like $15 to $18 million like clockwork. You nailed it. At the time, the growth rate of business was in the mid-single digits, especially outside of New York City. It might have been closer to the low single digits. That today is growing at 12%. That 12% is compounded on double-digit growth last year. So the vast majority, so that's the buildup. Now let me go and kind of tear it down from the top down. If you think about a roughly $100 million capital expenditure for the business, you take out the ERP, the platform consolidation, you're going to end up with, we're going to spend somewhere between $60 to $80 million. I know that's a big range, but business is really moving quick right now. $60 to $80 million worth of CapEx into the government solutions business, which is roughly two and a half times what it was in the past, and the business could be that size with this kind of growth five to seven years from today. That's how I look at it.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. And certainly leading to better to good growth, better growth. It's great. And then my follow up big kind of nerdy question. DNA has been running twenty eight, twenty nine million a quarter the last couple of quarters. Full year guide, I think, is one hundred and ten million. That implies lower back half DNA unless I'm looking at something wrong.

I don't think you're looking at something wrong. What you're starting to see, that's not on the D side, it's on the A side, right? So what we're starting to see is, look, this is something else we talked about earlier in the call, right? We've come to this and done a deal in three years plus here. So some of the amortization from the deals that we did in the late teens and even into 2020, that the customer list amortization non-cash expenses are starting to run off. And if you take a look at, I know you do, if you look at our Q and our K, you can see the useful lives of those are starting to get down to low single digits where a couple years ago they were, you know, five, six, seven years.

Gotcha. Totally makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

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