Corpay, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Fleet Corps Technologies, Inc. Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the conference over to Jim Egglesader, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today are Ron Clark, our chairman and CEO, and Alyssa Vickery, our interim CFO. Following the prepared comments, the operator will announce that the queue will open for the Q&A session. It is only then that you can get in line for questions. Please note, our earnings release and supplement can be found under the investor relations section of our website at FleetCorps.com. Now, throughout this call, we will be covering organic revenue growth. As a reminder, this metric neutralizes the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, fuel prices, and fuel spreads. It also includes pro forma results for acquisitions closed during the two years being compared. We will also be covering non-GAAP financial metrics, including revenues, net income, and net income per dilute share, all on an adjusted basis. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than that at other companies. Reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP to the most directly comparable GAAP information can be found in today's press release and on our website. I also need to remind everybody that part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the best information we have of today. All statements about our outlook, new products, and expectations regarding business development and future acquisitions are based on that information. They are not guarantees of future performance, and you should not put undue reliance upon them. We undertake no obligation to update any of these statements. These expected results are subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release on Form 8K and in our annual report on Form 10K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov. Now with that out of the way, I will turn the call over to Ron Clark, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q3 2022 earnings call. Up front here, I'll plan to cover four subjects. First, I'll provide my take on Q3 results. Second, I'll provide updated full-year 2022 guidance Third, provide just a brief preview of 2023, along with some of the factors that will affect our performance. And then lastly, I'll catch you up on a few recent developments. Okay, let me turn to our Q3 results, which were quite good and ahead of our expectations. We reported revenue of $893 million. That's up 18%. and cash EPS of 424, that's up 21%. Our EBITDA for the quarter exceeded 450 million. Organic revenue growth, quite good, coming in at 13%. That was led by our corporate payments business at 21%, and our lodging business at 28%. Trends in the quarter, quite good also. Same-store sales finished plus 2%, retention remaining steady at 92%, and overall sales performance just terrific, up 24% for the quarter. We onboarded almost 60,000 new clients during Q3. So the fundamentals of the business remain very solid, obviously selling a lot and retaining a lot. Look, additionally, I want to point out that we're continuing to strengthen the setup, the positioning of the company, which obviously improves our growth prospects going forward. Added some important EV assets and further refined our plan to go on offense. We added some pretty important AP automation software to front end. our corporate payments solution set that really rounds out for us that AP solution set. And we continue to expand our fuel footprint in Brazil, driving transaction growth there. I think we're expecting an exit rate of about 10 million annual add-on fueling transactions. So good progress. Okay, let me shift gears and turn to our updated full year 2022 guidance along with the assumptions behind it. So we're revising full year 2022 revenue guidance up to $3,410,000,000 at the midpoint. This includes absorbing about $8 million of macro headwind in the second half. versus our August guide. We're maintaining full year 2022 cash EPS guidance of 1595 at the midpoint, same number we gave in August. This does include a bit of a flip-flop. We pulled some revenue forward through gift orders into Q3 that we had out looked in Q4. We're also absorbing about four to five cents of dilution from the new plug surfing and accrualify acquisitions. We're also incurring about 30 million of incremental bad debts and interest expense way above our August guide. You know, as the Fed has accelerated their interest rate increases. So if we achieve this 3 billion, 410, and 1595 updated 22 guidance, That would represent 20% revenue growth and 21% earnings growth for the full year versus 2021. Okay, importantly, next up, I'm going to share a brief preview of our early look into 2023. So like most companies, we're expecting the 23 setup to be quite challenging. We do run the business, plan the business on a macro-neutral basis, really so that we can operate through any kind of cycle, good or bad. Then we do overlay our spending and capital allocation decisions based on the environment we're seeing. So for 23, we're expecting organic revenue growth overall of about 10%. which is our target. That's based on our preliminary 23 budget submissions. Inside of that, probably no surprise, global fleet, outlooking mid to high single digits, our lodging and Brazil businesses, mid-teens, and our corporate payment business for next year, high-teens. And by the way, closing in on almost a billion dollars of overall revenue next year, so getting quite significant. We'll bake in clearly less OPEX expense growth next year with a goal of delivering 200 to 300 basis points of margin improvement. We're hopeful we can reach a 23 cash EPS with a 17 handle. But that's ultimately going to turn on, one, the level of sales investment we make and then the corresponding bad debt that comes with that. Two, interest rates, where they peak and if and when they start down. Three, FX rates, particular eye on the pound, does it recover? And then lastly, recession, do we get one? And if we do, what would the depth duration be? So look, on the recession front in particular, we wouldn't describe Fleet Corps as recession-proof, but pretty recession-resilient. Some of the reasons that we should be pretty recession-resilient are, first, our solutions are essential, generally not discretionary. Demand for our services runs higher in inflationary or cost-conscious times. You know, think fuel prices. This year and the demand that we see and lastly our businesses are a really diverse geographically by client size from SMB to enterprise Lots of verticals we serve obviously lots of product or spending categories. We're by no means Immune to some client segments certain client segments, you know being impacted by recession for example construction And for sure, we'll reel in restrict credit in the event of a downturn, and that for sure pressures revenue. So, look, we plan to have a much clearer picture of 2023 when we speak again in 90 days, and we'll offer up our formal 23 guidance then. Okay, let me transition to my last subject, which is to catch you up on a few recent developments, and let me begin with the FTC case. So the court held a two-day hearing on the FTC matter. That was on October 20th and 21st. Importantly, the judge concluded that she would not enter the proposed FTC order. and rather encouraged the parties to mediate, to negotiate, so that we've agreed to engage with the FTC and see what we can work out. We do think that the face-to-face court hearing was really quite helpful. It gave us the chance to summarize the various disclosure and process enhancements that we have voluntarily made really over the last four or five years, all of them aimed at enhancing our customer experience. So some of the enhancements we called out were eliminating certain digital ad claims and the language around that. We ceased selling add-on features via negative option and instead packaged up various features into three packages and sell those affirmatively up front. We designed and implemented much bigger, bolder T's and C's, including a Schumer-like fee box that's front and center. And lastly, we collected express or what we call affirmative consent from 96% of our fuel car client base to the specific terms of their car programs. we've also proposed some new incremental enhancements going forward that would include crediting client payments on the day we receive them versus the day they're posted along with some other items that comply with the CSPB consumer payment standards obviously we're b2b but are willing to do this We talked about combining our invoicing and reporting materials into a single consolidated package to make it easier for clients to review. And we said repeatedly, I think, throughout this FTC case that we're trying to cooperate, trying to be transparent. We simply emphasized to the court that we need to know exactly what the practices are that we're being asked to implement, and if we can understand them, we'll implement, we'll comply with them. We're also saying again today that we don't believe that the disclosure enhancements that we've already made, which we can see, nor the additional ones that we're contemplating, will have a material impact on the company's go-forward financial performance. Okay, let me turn to our situation in Russia. We've made the decision to explore selling the Russia business. We've retained a local investment bank. We have formally launched the sales process. It is underway. The business does generate meaningful free cash flow, so that can potentially support acquisition financing. along with annual dividends, and we think that that should provide a reasonable floor on the valuation. Additionally, we've completed all of the isolation or separation steps necessary to carve the business away from Fleet Corps. This provides assurance that we can maintain compliance with the sanctions, and we do plan to move into this isolation or passive ownership phase beginning in early December. And obviously, we will keep you updated on the sale process. So lastly, on the acquisition and capital allocation front, we did complete three capability acquisitions since we spoke last. So a corporate payments add-on called the Coolify on August 1st, an important EV deal in Europe, Plug Surfing on September 1st, We closed literally yesterday an international workforce lodging deal called RoomX. And finally, we expect to complete the cross-border deal called Global Reach, which is a bolt-on around the end of the year. So as you can see, we focused really on capability acquisitions in this environment, choosing to strengthen, you know, again, the positioning – and setup of the company over the midterm. We do hope that M&A valuations reset a bit next year. You know, higher interest rates will obviously take hold and just maybe we can get back to larger accretive transactions. Additionally, we did repurchase 500 million of FLT in Q3 at what we think are quite attractive prices. So look, in closing today, again, very good Q3 results. Earnings grew 21%. Maintaining our full year 22 cash EPS guidance at 1595, you know, despite a bit weakening macro that we're absorbing. This would represent a 70 cent higher number than the initial EPS guidance that we provided in February. We do expect 23 to be a challenging year, but see our overall organic growth rate in and around 10% our target. And again, our earnings turning mostly on the interest rate and FX environment. The FTC case finally winding down. Again, we do not expect a material impact going forward. We have decided to explore the sale of our Russia business, again, underway, and delighted with these handful of capability acquisitions this quarter. Lastly, many thanks to Alyssa here for stepping in to the CFO role on an interim basis. So now over to you, Alyssa.

Thanks, Ron. I'm happy to be here on my first earnings call as CFO, albeit on an interim basis. I look forward to meeting many of you on the conference circuit in the fourth quarter, but now let's look at some more detail on the quarter. As Ron mentioned, we posted 18% growth in revenue, driven by 13% organic growth, or $96 million, which I'll delve into in a moment. The remaining growth was 4%, or $27 million, from macro tailwinds and 2%, or $14 million, from acquisitions made over the past year. Impacting our results were fuel prices of $4.46 per gallon for the quarter, higher than prior year of $3.15, which contributed $26 million of additional revenues versus prior year, and lower than our $4.64 guidance assumption from August. Fuel spread revenue was also quite positive by about $21 million compared to the prior year, as falling fuel prices during the quarter caused spreads to widen. Offsetting these tailwinds was a 21 million negative impact of lower foreign exchange rates, primarily resulting from unfavorable movements in the British pound. Now moving to organic growth. Corporate payments was up 21%, driven by continuing strong new sales across both direct and cross-border. Specifically, our direct corporate payments business, or non-partner business, grew 24% and continues to demonstrate very robust growth especially full AP, which grew 44%. Cross-border was up 30%, another very good quarter, as new sales remained strong and activity levels were again robust across nearly all geographies. Our channel partner business is just under 10% of the corporate payments category and declined 13% in the quarter, as our focus is on growing our direct businesses. Fuel grew organically 5%. as we did see some volume softness in our US SMB businesses. However, our new sales growth was 13% and we continue to see a normalized level of flat same store sales contributing to the performance. Overall transaction volumes remain positive and consistent with last quarter, although we continue to see slight moderation and new sales activity. Tolls was up 12% organically compared with last year. as the business continues to perform. New sales are solid, driven by our expanded product utility and differentiated value proposition. As a reminder, our toll solution can be used to pay for multiple spend categories, such as parking and drive-through retail, and we are now generating meaningful revenue from our beyond toll use cases. Lodging continued to show strength in Q3, up 28%. All three business lines, workforce, airlines, and insurance, each had double-digit organic growth, with airlines again leading the way at 55%. Growth was driven by a combination of higher year-over-year volume in workforce and airlines and a favorable rate environment across all three businesses. GIFT had another good quarter, up 9%, as customer card orders continue to be pulled forward from Q4. We estimate that approximately $6 million of revenue was pulled into Q3, due to early ordering in advance of the holiday season, in addition to the $10 to $12 million we estimated was pulled forward into the second quarter. Looking further down the income statement, operating expenses of $504 million represented a 21% increase over $417 million in Q3 of the prior year, due to increases tied to higher volumes across our businesses, incremental bad debt, stock compensation, and new sales generation activities. Increases were also driven by the inclusion of the ALE and plug surfing acquisitions, in addition to higher incentives and commissions as a result of strong new sales in certain of our businesses. Bad debt expense was $37 million, or eight basis points, which was about $10 million higher than last quarter and more in line with pre-pandemic bad debt levels. In the third quarter of 2021, bad debt was $11 million, or three basis points. This increase was driven primarily by higher loss severity as a result of higher fuel prices in the second quarter, as well as increases in application volume and application fraud. Bad debt levels remain elevated as a result of strong sales to new customers, who tend to have a higher loss rate than the existing book, higher fuel prices, and the changing macroeconomic landscape, which puts pressure on our smaller customers. Interest expense increased 56% year over year driven by higher rates on our floating rate debt with average LIBOR or SOFR in the current quarter of 2.2% compared to 0.09% in the same period prior year. As Ron noted, we'll provide guidance for 2023 in February when we report our full year earnings. I did want to make one comment on how to think about net interest expense all in for 2023. We currently estimate that our 2023 net interest expense is likely to be closer to double the 2022 level. This assumes that benchmark index rates peak next year between 4.5% and 5% and remain in that range for most of the year. While all of our debt instruments are floating rate, we do have $500 million of hedges that will be in place for almost all of 2023 at 2.56%. Also, we have over one billion in cash balances globally, on which we earn interest. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.8% versus 24.1% last year, which is more of a normalized tax rate for the business. Now turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with over 1.3 billion in unrestricted cash and approximately 600 million available on our revolver. There was 5.7 billion outstanding on our credit facilities, and we had $1.5 billion borrowed in our securitization facility. As of September 30th, our leverage ratio was 2.95 times trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, as calculated in accordance with our credit agreement. In the quarter, we upsized and extended our securitization facility by $100 million to $1.7 billion and extended the maturity by a year to August 2025. There were a number of minor changes to the agreement, which will be detailed in our 10-Q next week. We repurchased roughly 2.2 million shares at an average price of $224 per share for a total of $500 million during Q3. This includes the roughly 900,000 shares repurchased before our earnings call in August. Year-to-date, we have repurchased 5.6 million shares for $1.3 billion. The Board approved another $1 billion in repurchases under our program on October 25th and extended the program through February 2024. With this upsizing, we now have approximately $1.355 billion available for future repurchases. As Ron has covered our full-year guidance updates, let me now share some thoughts on our guidance assumptions. We are assuming fuel prices of $4.25 in Q4. market spreads favorable to the fourth quarter of 2021, total interest expense of 157 million to 167 million for 2022, which assumes average reference rates of 3.75% in Q4. The rest of our assumptions can be found in our press release and supplement. Thank you for your interest. And now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

Our first question will come from Darren Peller with Wolf Research.

You may now go ahead.

Hey, thanks, guys. You know, even looking on like a two-year basis, the fleet segment looks like it's high single digits or about 9%, 10% growth when just stacking it. It definitely looks like it's trending back to a normal rate or even better than a normal rate versus what I think you guys would have expected. So can you touch on that for a minute in terms of where we are in your view versus any type of recovery? And then obviously, again, going into a more uncertain macro environment, you know, the resilience of that business because it does look like it's gotten to a point where it's doing the right thing from a growth rate standpoint. And then just quickly, you know, the add-ons, the follow-ons and the cross-sells that you've been really able to implement. How's that been going, Ron? And if you could just touch on that too.

Thanks. Hey, Darren, thanks. So on the first one, I think we're still kind of in the, you know, 5% to 8% kind of target range based on what we, you know, elect to invest. Some of the overperformance recently is literally, you know, the COVID recovery kind of clawing back from the depths there in 2020. So I think we're probably mostly unchanged, you know, because we've got a lot of other businesses to feed and investments to make that we're kind of happy in that, you know, mid to high single digit. So that's our target. On the add-ons, I'd still say still early days. We're still struggling with, where in the base, right, we've got a couple hundred thousand clients we should target. So I think I mentioned initially we were thinking, hey, we'll go to where the bulk is down market and then realize most of the spend, you know, is in the larger accounts there, which we get after a different distribution. So I'd say we're still testing. some different ways to do that, but have the, you know, the goal of the company to turn the fuel card business, as I said, into a corporate payments business. So work in process.

Yeah, no, that's helpful. And just one quick follow-up, if you don't mind, is on the, you know, your preliminary outlook for next year. When you talked about the different assumptions that I guess, first of all, the revenue growth target you talked, I think you said 10% organic. That's organic, I'm assuming. Is that reported or constant currency? And then also, when we think of the $17, just the assumptions on fuel and macro that go into that, again, it seems like the underlying core assumptions are sustainable and seem like they've really gotten to a point that's been strong.

Yeah, so on the first one, I'd say we're kind of halfway through, Darren, the 23 budget cycle, so we've worked the revenue obviously harder than the expense and the profit side. So as I said, it's a mix of the different business lines, fuel, lodging, and Brazil and corporate payments have different growth rates but kind of weight themselves to 10. That is an organic number, although the print at this point looks... because we have some pro forma revenue kind of rolling forward right from 22 into 23, offset by what we think could be some macro headwinds, you know, particularly FX. So at this point sitting here today, not a big difference between organic and print. And then on the bottom, again, I think the thing we can control is really the operating margin. So we're doing a lot of work on metering the OpEx so that we can grow kind of EVDA margins, you know, two or three hundred pips next year, so call it, I don't know, we're coming out, I think, around 52-ish this year that we try to get that up, you know, a couple of points. And then the wild card is really the below the line, you know, after Today's Fed call, I'm not sure how encouraged or not any of us should be, but wherever that number flies to and then descends and then obviously the FX, particularly the pound. So that's really the wait and see. So we're just trying to give a rough, super early days view. Obviously, hopefully all of us will know a bunch more in 90 days.

Our next question will come from Ramsey, LSL, with Barclays.

You may now go ahead.

Hi, thanks so much for taking my question tonight. I wanted to first ask about Russia, and maybe if you wouldn't mind updating us on the size of that business so we can kind of contemplate what it might mean to take it out of numbers, and also just I'm pretty sure the answer here is it's not contemplated in that preliminary read of next year, but the idea would be if you came to a an agreement there to sell the business that we would then need to sort of, you know, get that out of our models next year?

Yeah. Hey, Ramsey. So, yeah, both good questions. So on the first one, it obviously depends on the FX, but kind of ballpark, it's $100 million-ish, a little bit more in revenue, a kind of a 75% EBITDA margin, again, kind of where the FX is today. And, yes, we haven't done anything in terms of taking it out, although, of course, we've looked at models where, you know, we sell it for X and we use that cash to buy back, which really manages, obviously, the dilution as we look into next year. So we'll certainly keep you guys, you know, apprised. We're kind of live out, you know, shopping the thing now. So we'll keep you posted.

Okay.

And I'll just add, this is Alyssa. You know, the specifics around Russia have been included in our 10Q disclosures previously as well in terms of sizing.

Okay. Great, great. Thanks for that. One quick follow-up from me. On the FTC matter, I guess first, is there any sense of timing here? in terms of when this might be resolved? Is this the type of thing now where there's a relatively protracted negotiation, or will it be, you know, resolved sort of in short order to the degree that you can tell? And then, Rhonda, you seem pretty confident there's no P&L impact here. Is there any best or worst case type of outcomes, or is it really like no matter how the cookie crumbles here, you guys are going to come out of it, you know, okay?

Yeah, on the first one, you know, we're clearly on some kind of glide path, right, the things in dissent. So, you know, a guess would be, you know, a couple of months, two, three months, depending on, you know, how the chit-chat goes and, you know, when the court gets back involved if they do. So that would be my guess. On the impact, yeah, there's nothing either in their order, which the judge said no to, or really anything we're contemplating because it's disclosure-based, again, Ramsey, right? It's not, hey, we can't charge something or we can't sign up a customer or whatever. And so the good news is, We've done a bunch of things and had a chance to see, and obviously we're reporting those changes are embedded, right, in the results we're putting out. So, again, there's nothing we can see that would have any material go-forward impact. So probably like you and others on the call, we mostly just want to get on the other side. You know, we've repeatedly said just be specific, tell us, what it is that makes everyone happy, and we're happy to do it. And so we've done a lot of that, and, again, it's had little to no impact. I mean, when you can sign up 96% of a couple hundred thousand customers to say they want to continue affirmatively with your program and you've given them the biggest T's and C's and boxes that you have, it makes me feel pretty confident that we've been straight ahead with people.

Fantastic. Thanks for your answers. Appreciate it. You got it.

Our next question will come from with KBW.

You may now go ahead.

Thanks. I guess question for you, Ron, just on the valuations for M&A. I mean, it just seems like there's been a pretty marked decline in FinTech valuations. I'm just curious if you're seeing anything pop into your wheelhouse, how we should balance that relative to share or purchases.

Yeah, Sanjay, I think to your point, there has been a bit of a reset in the last few months. And you can see by what we've announced in this quarter that when we started the process, we focused on these capability things because no matter what the price is, they're about capabilities and they're not large amounts of absolute money. We do have a couple of what I'll call more traditional kind of fleet core in the wheelhouse deals that that seem to be in ranges that we like, that we can transact at. And then second, I think, let's see how the thing plays out. As you know, people move their valuation aspirations with time, and so to the extent that people wait and stuff doesn't trade, we think there could be even a further reset next year. Because some people are getting squeezed these days. we're optimistic that things will get better and we can go back to, you know, targeting some larger deals.

Okay. Just to follow up, you know, Alyssa, you mentioned the fuel price softness, sorry, the fuel softness, volume softness. And I'm just curious, if we just dig underneath that, is there something going on there? Do you think it's macro driven or what's driving that? And then just a clarification on the interest expense. So we should target around $300 million of net interest expense. Just want to make sure I got that number right. Thanks.

Yeah, Sanjay, it's wrong. Why don't I take the first one and then let Alyssa take the second one? So, no, I'd say the, you know, the fuel kind of volume in transactions, I think we reported, I think, 4% volume growth, transaction growth for the quarter. I would say it's... There's a couple of spots like SMB Trucking that are a bit softer than normal, although most of that's offset by Enterprise, the big trucking firms. I think the biggest thing, Sanjay, is in some of the research we did with local SMB accounts The higher price, you know, had a smidge of elasticity, kind of moved them back a little bit, like, hey, we'll shrink the radius of where we do a plumbing call. You know, we won't go 30 miles out of the city now. We'll only go 10 and stuff. And so I do think when the prices were at those peaks, you know, whatever, three, four, five months ago, that that also dialed it back a bit. But I'd say we're in the smidgen level. It's really nothing significant, and it's really nothing across the board. Do you want to take any interest?

So, hey, Sanjay. It's Alyssa. So on the interest side, I think you're asking about going into 23. So as everybody in the world seems to know, you know, the FedFunds target rates have just skyrocketed. We'll close out the year somewhere around 3.75%. As a reminder, we all started around zero. And going into 2023, targeting somewhere around 4.5% to 5% for the year. And so we're really outlooking that interest expense probably around $300 million plus. So maybe I would take our number and multiply it by two, and you're probably in the ballpark.

Yeah, that's a net number too, Sanjay, right? This kind of gross... interest expense, and then we've got a bunch of cash at high rates. So to Liz's point, the gross numbers significantly larger probably comes down 20% or 25% with the cash that we have offsetting it. But look, it is a total swaggeroo. We're sitting here like you guys Trying to guess what the next 14 months are going to be. And we don't know. So we've just said, Hey, we'll take what we're hearing. We'll kind of run the math that way. And we'll be a lot smarter when we talk again.

No, I appreciate it.

Thank you. You got it.

Our next question will come from Andrew Jeffrey with true securities. You may now go ahead.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question this afternoon. Ron, some pretty encouraging commentary on margin next year. Can you talk a little bit about how much of that is being driven by cloud migration and digital sales initiatives versus maybe being a little bit more selective in terms of the customers who sign up in the current macro environment? And then if we get a recovery, you know, would we expect, say in 24, would we expect the margin to sort of come back down a little bit as you lean in to new customer growth a bit more?

Yeah, that's a really good question, Andrew. So I'd say that the target that we like to see in the company is 55%. Again, I think we're penciling out around 52%. this year, but that thing moves around based on things we buy, right, that run lower margins or weirdo stuff like COVID that crushes, you know, revenue quickly and stuff. But I'd say our running internal target's closer to 55. In terms of next year, I think the two things you picked up, one is we knew this was going to be a happy year. I mean, we're going to, I think, be about 70 cents higher than we told in February. I don't know if anyone's applauding, but I consider that you know, good news to do better than we said. And so because we saw that, we kind of opened the spigots. We let people work, to your point, on some additional projects. We tested some additional things. We staffed up an area. So we spent, I'd say, you know, money that we could afford to kind of make the targets that we run the company on. So when I see the world tightening, the answer is we'll be a little bit more frugal, a little bit more selective, to use your word. And I think the big thing is really around our view of the economy and the credit environment, particularly around the digital side, like you said, because that's where the sales growth, if you will, versus the credit risk are super correlated. So my guess is we'll kind of enter the thing a bit cautious, you know, kind of cut a little bit of the tail at the bottom. I would initially maybe not try to grow that thing in the low to mid-20%, but maybe, you know, three to five points lower and see how it goes. So it would be just a little bit of a diet on kind of overall OpEx and a little bit of caution around the micro-selling and related credit risk.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. And In lodging, this is a business that you've been adamant is awesome, and you've definitely been right in terms of the growth. What do you think that looks like as we lap some tougher compares? What's the normalized growth rate, do you think, for that lodging business?

I think it's high teens to 20. To your point, we have some favorable comps. We've got a segment in there for airlines, which are obviously in the ditch, so some of it's that.

But we're just

All parts of that business are kind of going great. We're selling a lot in all three of them. We bought a new software front end for that airline business, and airlines are looking to get out of in-house work and stuff. So, you know, we have the best networks, the best rates to offer the different clients that we have. And so between the scale and the selling machine that we have there and the profit, you know, they're pretty – specialized offerings. So there's not lots of other players that can offer really what we do, both the convenience and the pricing. So I'd say it's in the high teens to 20% on a normalized basis.

Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Sharique Sumar with Evercore ISI. You may now go ahead.

Hey, thanks a lot for taking my question. I have a question on the cross-selling opportunities. I mean, it's been a quarter, it's been like a few quarters where you have talked about going a bit slow on that front just to not to upset the customers and the process, but what's the update on that process or on the cross-selling opportunities and is there potential for you to ramp up the cross-selling efforts going into 2023?

Yeah, I think I kind of covered, Sharif, this comment a bit before, but I'd say it's still a work in process, I think is my summary, that we went headlong into the thing targeting the smaller clients that we have because we have so many of them. And as we get into the thing – got clear that corporate payments turns on spend, not on client count, and that about 5,000 of our clients have about half of all the spend, all the purchasing. So we've gone back and targeted those. We have some of our blue-suited salespeople going into our biggest fuel card accounts now and selling corporate payments. But we're still trying to figure out, is there a scene, is there a different place inside of our fuel car client base where we can bring corporate payments offerings. So I think a lot of this is like anything that's new. We're learning. We're trying to figure out what the sweet spot is among this super big base and what the product is that fits that sweet spot. So we haven't given up. It's still a work in process.

Thank you so much.

Our next question will come from Pete Christensen with Citi.

You may now go ahead.

Thanks. Good evening. Nice updates there, Ron. I had two questions. One, I wanted to go back to the 12% organic growth that you're seeing in the tolls business. I was wondering if you could tease that out a little bit, you know, the base tolls business versus some of the beyond tolls initiatives that you put forth, including the tag fueling stuff. Wondering if you can give us a sense of, you know, how is that contributing to segment growth at this point? And then I have a follow-up.

Yeah, Pete, it's good to hear from you. So, yeah, that one I think, you know, per Sharique's question a minute ago, is one that's working. I think we're at about 20% now of the revenue there in what we call beyond toll, you know, parking fuel. We've also gotten some super early traction on insurance, We're this vehicle mobility company with millions of customers, and so offering insurance that centers around the vehicle and stuff has been a pretty good uptake. It's going well. The fuel number, which I said is excellent, we think around $10 million annualized, exactly as we thought, is kind of correlated to the number of sites So as we add additional sites that basically can read the tag, you know, conveniently, lo and behold, you know, trends grow because more people use the thing. So we built a plan to continue that, take it up by another 25 or 30% next year. So, look, the goal would be kind of over the next two or three years that that stuff is in the, you know, 40% kind of range, you know, on top of the core business. And, you know, we continue to add – I mean, it reminds me of Coke here in the U.S. If there was another way to sell a toll tag in Brazil, we know it. Like, we sell it, you know, in stores. We sell it with hangs, things in stores. We sell it at toll booths. We sell it through car makers. We sell it through insurance guys. We sell literally every way that you can get – you know, a total tag to market. We're doing, you know, selling, you know, way over a million new ones per year. And so it's a business that despite the competitive setup changing a lot, it's still, you know, performing great for us. Super happy with it.

Yeah, that certainly sounds exciting. I'd like to pivot to fuel card sales a little bit here. I I mean, obviously when we had fuel prices starting to peak up earlier in the year, I'm sure that was helpful in driving new sales, maybe giving you a good degree of inbound activity. Now gas prices come down, diesel is still holding up pretty strong. What's your sense for how fuel prices today are still driving fuel card sales? Is the tailwind still there? Thank you.

Yeah, another really good question. They're super related to your point if you think about, particularly on the digital side, just raw demand, Google counting how many people key in fuel cars. you hit it on the head back in the spring or early summer at the peak, that thing was up, you know, a lot, right, that inbound demand. But remember, we still sell, I don't know, 40%, 45% of the business, you know, non-digitally, and some amounts, a decent amount of our digital is us targeting, you know, accounts. So I'd say it's, It's down some from the peak, although the peak was higher than we'd seen before. And it ain't cheap now. The only thing I'd say back is, you know, even at today's current price over the last, call it whatever, five or seven years, this is still at a super high level. So I'd say, yes, down a bit from the peak, but still pretty robust.

Great.

Thanks for the update. Our next question will come from Jeff Cantwell with Wells Fargo Securities.

You may now go ahead.

Thanks very much. I just wanted to follow up on some of the questions that are coming your way. One of them was, you know, can you talk to us a little bit about some of the early underlying assumptions for fuel in 2023? And the way I wanted to frame the question is, you know, if we're all looking at Exhibit 2, in your press release, which is, you know, fuel transactions, fuel revenue per transaction. Do you have any sense of what the growth rates there, you know, will look like for next year in order to get you to mid-to-high single-digit revenue growth in fuel? And then along the same lines, you know, this is obviously a very dynamic macro environment, Fed interest rate environment. The goalposts are clearly moving all the time. So my second question is, you know, Can you talk about what you think is, you know, a range, right, you know, your confidence and whether there's a wider range in that potential outlook for next year, you know, versus prior years? And, like, do you kind of feel that the upside-down side to the mid-high single-digit is the same as in past years and maybe it's wider this year? I'd just love to hear your thoughts there. Thanks very much.

All right. Hey, Jeff. It's Alyssa. So in terms of fuel price assumptions going into next year, we basically left next year consistent with the current period. So we've assumed fuel prices in the range of $4.37 or so, with a little bit of downside on the spread. In terms of your question on rev per tran, I think our intent is generally to always have a nice balance between volume and rate to the extent that there's incremental products being offered. I would say that we would continue to expect that to be a balanced approach.

Ron, let me just jump on what Alyssa said. Obviously, mix continues to help us. We've over-rotated to SMB, so we get sequential rate happy just from the mix because we get more rate on smaller accounts than big. But on the macro question, I'd say, who knows? I'd say it seems you guys are sitting on the planet with me. It's crazy kind of volatile, not only the things for us like dual prices, but clearly, you know, FX volatility is super high this year. You know, I don't even want to mention interest rate volatility. And so the question is, you know, in 90 days when we get to kind of locking down, finalizing our plan, Will the forward view be any clearer? Will there be messaging that that thing is going to stabilize some? And so that's my answer to you. To the extent that the big macro things seem like the volatility is slowing, we'll probably use kind of some traditional ranges. And to the extent that those macro things you know, have a bigger beta on them, then yes, we probably would have something wider to let you know, you know, how those things affect us. But I've said it a million times. Like, we run the company here forever, and we're going to run the company to generate growing revenue and growing, you know, certainly even day profits faster. And the below-the-line stuff will come and go. No one's clapping that I can hear that the macro is at our back and we have $0.70 more, $100 million more, $150 million more in revenue. No one's clapping, oh, now you're sad the other way. So our game is we just power through it. And, look, it can't go up forever. If interest rates go up, the cost goes up to $300 million. Next year, what's it going to, $500 million in 2024? Maybe they're going to add a $250. And so as long as we can keep compounding, the top and the EPA line, 10 and 13, we're going to deliver, you know, mid- to high-teens EPS over the forecast period. So I say we just don't see any of these variables continuing to rise sequentially year over year.

Yeah. Thanks for all the callers. Appreciate it. And congrats on the results.

Thank you.

Our next question will come from Mahir Bhatia with Bank of America.

You may now go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. Also, I want to second the thanks for the updates on the FTC, Russia, and also the early look on 2023, very helpful. And maybe I did want to start on interest expense just for 2023. I apologize to go back to this, but just want to make sure we have it right. The 300 to 320-ish million that you talked about, does that include Russia? I think that, if I recall correctly, there's a fairly high interest rate there, which you're getting, and high cash balance, which helps that. So since it's a net number, does that include the Russia benefit, I guess?

Hey there, it's Alyssa. So yes, it would include any benefit that we're getting off of deposits that are in Russia, certainly on the income side. We don't really have any expense in that region. So it's really the long-term benefit.

It's penis, my hearing is. It's a rounding error.

Okay. Oh, okay.

Yep. Got it. We do see rates going down in Russia, so hopefully it's not too big of a loss.

Right. And then the other question I wanted to ask was just in terms of lodging. Just wanted to understand a little bit more about the RoomX acquisition in terms of just expanding your workforce lodging business into Europe. How much of the business was in Europe anyway, and is this like more of a beachhead where you grow from here? Just trying to understand a little bit more about that. Thank you.

That's a good question. Thanks for that. So the RoomX business, first of all, is really a copycat business. of our US, what we call workforce, if you think about a lot of the blue collar people that travel for work, that's kind of what that Rumex thing is. So we were delighted to identify someone that does kind of the same thing. So it's really a UK business today. It's got a little bit, I can't remember, 5% maybe of its business in Germany. So the majority of it is in the UK, which is our second largest market, which was interesting to us. Yeah, the idea there is, hey, they've got assets that sit in the UK. They've got a launching network that's attractive. They have sales. They have ops. They have tech that runs there. And we have a ton of clients, as you can imagine, like tons of clients and actually a fair number of kind of midsize and enterprise clients there. So the idea is, hey, we know this business super well. It's in a market that we've got a good position there. so we can accelerate it. It's a good business on its own. It's got a good group of people. It's really just like our fuel card business or other businesses. We're a global player. If we have a business that looks exactly like a business we have and it's in another country that we can understand, then we go there. We like the price. Back to someone's question earlier about you know, M&A valuations. I think it was a reasonable price for both sides, which is why the trade worked. So, yeah, it'll certainly accelerate and it kind of sets us up to make a business, you know, with bigger TAM that we can understand.

Thank you.

Our next question will come from Bob Napoli with William Blair. You may now go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Nice job on quarter. Appreciate the outlook for next year. Just I was hoping to get maybe a little bit more color on, you know, appreciate the segment margins that you've started giving us. But just with margin expansion next year, where are you most confident in margin expansion next year and then maybe over the long term?

Yeah, hey, Bob. It's good to hear your voice and that you're up in Adam here, so good to hear from you. We don't really plan, you know, the margin expansion really by lines of business, you know, the discretionary monies that are big in our company are sales and IT. And so that's how we think about it. For us to goose EVDA margins, you know, 200 basis points, we'll just kind of, you know, flatten out a little bit, not grow as fast some of the sales investment and IT. And people may say, oh, how's that going to work? Well, when you make a pretty big investment incrementally like we did this year, you pick up the productivity really in the forward years, right? Because you've hired new people or you've got new leads in the pipeline. And so some of the investments incremental investments we made in 22 will kind of roll in, will pour into 23. So we've got a decent game plan of op-ex that will service the business we have and meet the growth targets. And again, because we spent a bit more this year, that's kind of helpful to us for next year.

Great. Thanks. And just like a big picture question, which part of your business are you most excited about over the next three to five years? It's going to become a much bigger piece your business, if you would.

Yeah, like you, I know it's your favorite. I mean, it's hard not to like what we call our corporate payments business just because of the enormity, you know, of the market. You may get a kick out of the story, but I moved a guy that ran, you know, still runs our international fleet business to run our old business. So he's here, and I'm talking to him the other night. And we get on to corporate payments. He says, Jesus, he says, hey, I never understood, like, what a mess the U.S. is, you know, with its paper and trying to pay stuff. And so, like, I think because we live here, we don't even think about it. It's just the opportunity there to make that, you know, just a gigantic business. In our poems, it's closing in on a billion dollars, you know, next year, and we spent No one knows this better than you. A couple of years getting all the puzzle pieces together so that we've got kind of a, you know, a full suite of stuff. And so I just think that the, you know, the potential is so big and the competition, even though you and others keep talking about frigging FinTechs, I tell you the whole market is banks and Amex and we're winning. That's where 90% of our business comes from. And so we, We just like the chances to bring what we have at great sales again in Q3, record sales, and so that's the business that will be dramatically bigger in the next few years. Great. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate it. Be well, too, Ron. Thanks. You, too.

Our next question will come from Ken Sochowski with Autonomous Research. You may now go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for all the detail and for taking the questions. I just had a clarification question on Russia. Does the $17 EPS figure include the EPS contribution from Russia? And can you talk a little bit about how you're able to actually access the proceeds from a sale of that Russia business? Just want to make sure that we have that right.

Hey, Ken, it's Ron. Yes, on the first one, we haven't sold the business, so it's still part of our planning. Although, again, the idea that we have would be to take the cash from the sale and obviously the retained earnings that we have sitting there. And if our stock stays at this price, obviously buy a lot of it, which will compress the dilution. In terms of the proceeds, it's how we're going to set it up with the buyer. The buyer's going to have to basically be able to pay us outside of there, so it's one of the conditions of the buyers that we're looking at. We do have a way basically, depending on who the buyer is, for them to be able to pay us.

Okay, great. That's really helpful, Ron. I appreciate all the continued disclosure on profitability by segment. I just had a a follow-up question to Bob's question. It looks like the corporate payments business has a 43% EBITDA margin. Is there an opportunity to bring that segment margin up closer to the corporate average over the long term, or do you have to continue investing in that business to drive that high-teens revenue growth?

That's another super good question. Kind of a two-part question. question. The first one is really scale, trying to make that business and some of the pieces in it dramatically bigger. Like all of our businesses, it's got a lot of fixed costs. Call it 40% to 50% of the cost structure of that business is fixed. Clearly, the incremental margins are better. Then it's really just the trade for growth. It's not hard math for you guys. If you want to grow something at 20% versus 10% or 80%, You have to spend more money, right, to grow it faster. And so that's really the second part of it is given the TAM, given the size of the opportunity, we'll probably continue to overinvest and run that EVTA margin a smidge lower than the line average. But again, it's because we're setting it up to grow faster. But there's no reason, just there's nothing structurally. In other words, if you said to me that thing gets to $1.5 billion or $2 billion and I want to take the growth rate down to the line average, there's nothing structurally that would stop us from having that business look an awful lot like the rest of our line average businesses.

Great. Thanks, Ron. You got it.

Our next question will come from John Davis with Raymond James.

You may now go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Ron, I just want to talk a little bit about bad debt expense. Have you tightened the credit box at all? I know we've just kind of normalized, but given what most feel is some sort of macro soft that's coming at some point, have you contemplated that, especially when you talk about kind of mid-to-high single-digit fuel growth next year?

Yeah, good question, John. Yes is the short answer. So I think we – I hope we've reported this, but I think we have it to call it 25-25 – 35 35 is kind of a guesstimate at the at the full year a credit loss number And so when we saw the thing the forwards the roll rates getting a bit worse We we we did tighten the new account Selling so we have two kinds of credit one is hey who we going to take in? We used to take in ten people ten companies now We're going to take an eight so we're going to cut the tail off and then the second one is really credit lines and right, for customers that we have, right? If we're willing to give you more credit to buy more things, we can get more revenue. So that's the one that we're looking at pulling back selectively kind of in certain areas. So we've done it on new. We haven't done it yet on existing, and partly because we have much better information, right? The underwriting is much better. on our existing customers because we have all that payment history on them. So that's the key thing for us to watch is really the trade. Remember, probably about half of all of our credit losses, whatever, 25, 25, 35, 35 adds up to whatever, 120, 130 million, half of that, John, is basically tied to new business, right, which, you know, this is a way high number versus the base. So That's the place that we always start.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just to follow up on the margin kind of commentary going into next year, you know, as I think about fuel prices probably being flat to down a little bit higher, at least for the full year, bad debt expense, you know, I'm penciling out that kind of OpEx is going to be kind of flat to down year over year to get to kind of 200 to 300 basis points of, Margin expansion, I know you said you spent a lot given the outperformance this year on the better COVID recovery, but I just want to make sure that that pencils and that you can hold the line on OpEx in order to get back to what you called normalized profitability in the mid-50s on EBITDA margin business.

Yeah, again, I want to make sure people are clear. It's super early days. We're doing what we call the envelope work of framing what an envelope is, so we're far from done. But I think the biggest difference to what you said is that the sales investment and the nature of the sales investment has a huge impact on the bad debt on a forward basis. So the easiest way for us to improve profitability in 2023 would slow or cut the tail, certainly in the digital micro accounts, and keep all that bad debt out of our P&L. So that's the most logical place. But, yeah, it's not far off what you're saying, that the exit rate of our OpEx – will obviously grow probably low single digits. And then what you said, it depends, obviously, where fuel price is. But remember, that also ties, it's correlated to bad debt, right? So one of the reasons our bad debt is higher, again, is our fuel price was higher here in 2022. If the fuel price is lower, by definition, the bad debt will be lower. So look, lots of these variables move together, and my messaging is just to tell everybody that we're going to run the business, you know, kind of macro constant, and then open our eyes to what the macro is and make, you know, op-ex and capital allocation, you know, pivots based on what we see. And what we're seeing now is we're probably going to slow the op-ex.

Okay. Appreciate all the color. Thanks, guys.

You got it.

Our next question will come from Trevor Williams with Jefferies. You may now go ahead.

Great. Thanks. I was hoping you guys could unpack the 4Q guidance a bit and some of the moving pieces because it implies revenues down more than $20 million Q3 to Q4. Typical seasonality for you guys is up $20 million plus in normal years at least. Again, fuel prices are lower sequentially. You've got the pull forward in gift, some of the softness in U.S., SMB, and fleet, but Anything else moving pieces-wise you'd call out organically for why you aren't seeing the same normal Q3 to Q4 step-up? Thanks.

Yeah, I'll jump on that and get to Alyssa. I think you named kind of most of them. I'm sure it's, you know, whatever you're saying, kind of plus or minus $10 million on whatever, $900 million, so it's not a material kind of number, but But those are it. It's kind of a flip-flopping this year versus last. In fact, last year there was some huge late gift orders because retailers were out of stock from being careful. And so that number was a pretty big whopper number, if I remember, in Q4 last year. And this year they said, hey, we're getting ready sooner, and so put tons of orders in. you know, earlier. And then what you said, we're running at, I don't know, $430 or something fuel price, which has ticked down, obviously, from Q2 to Q3 and then into Q4, which takes them off the top. But then again, health expenses, you know, as I said earlier, both borrowings and bad debt. So the biggest thing is just the normal seasonality. What you said, if we look at the last whatever years and you cleaned up pro forma acquisitions or stuff, two or three of our businesses soften a fair amount. There's just less work days in the fourth quarter, both here and abroad. And so it's really just that, that Q4 and Q1 are just less work days or softer, and Q2 and Q3 are higher. And so there's really nothing like super duper going on. Like as we model the thing to embed the guidance here, I would say there's nothing else that sticks out.

I'll just add on to that a little bit. We talked about it earlier in the call, but interest expense really is significantly worse. I think we all projected even from the Fed's perspective back in July when we were giving our previous guidance. That is a big headwind going into the fourth quarter.

Just for you guys, I don't know if you see this, but hey, we're kind of staying put in the second half. The revenue for the second half is a bit higher than we said 90 days ago, and I guess the profit target is the same. I said before, our macro was off by $8 million the wrong way, and interest expenses were over $20 million higher. So underneath the hood, we've been able to do some things to make the thing work. So the trends and the performance, again, separate from the macro, my message would be you're pretty good, kind of as good or better than we thought 90 days ago. So we're not seeing any kind of you know, blinking red lights yet. And like all the questions on this call, the profitability a lot will turn on where those macro things, you know, land and glide path next year. But I just do want to remind people that like to own stock for more than a week that, you know, what comes up does come down and things don't keep going up for multiple years in a row. And so don't forget the frigging thing went up this year, right? In 2022. Fuel prices went up. You know, interest rates, you know, are going to be, you know, started obviously lower. And so these things will move again. I just don't think we've ever seen volatility like this, honestly. The amount of movement in some of these factors, you know, in the timeframe that they've moved, that's what seems strange to us.

Yep, understood. And then just as a follow-up on corporate payments, Just thinking about the macro sensitivity there, if we go back to 2020, it was a perfect storm of stuff that worked against you, but I think some of the cyclical exposure there had been a bit of a surprise. Now, today, you've got Apex. Global Reach is going to close shortly, so you'll have more FX hedging and cross-border exposure than you did two years ago. I know you're saying high-teens is a target for next year, but kind of with that pro forma revenue mix, any view just on how that segment should hold up in a recession, kind of where you'd be most vulnerable, the pieces of revenue you think should be most durable. Any help there would be great. Thanks.

Another good question. I'd say it'll hold up well. And the reason is, you know, COVID was a bizarre event. macro thing, right, keeping people at home, and so it picked off hard, you know, companies, cruise ships, companies that made a living working, so we had some punishing set of clients. The great news about the corporate payments business is the majority of the payments are locked. You know, think rent, think IT services. Companies mostly can't get out of, you know, the AP that's in front of them, even if their own situation is you know, soften some. And then B, you know, you heard it again today, there's inflation, which rolls into, you know, obviously companies spend. And so I'd say of all the businesses, you know, that one ought to hold up well because the spend is pretty fixed and will likely go up. And then on the cross-border side, I think you hit it, you know, FX volatility, a little bit like high fuel prices, creates greater interest in, you know, FX management. And so to the extent that different countries have differential, you know, plans on interest rates, which triggers, you know, FX volatility, that should be helpful, you know, to that business, which we're seeing now. So all in all, I'd say we like the chances for the business next year.

Great. Thanks. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Andrew Polkovitz with JP Morgan. You may now go ahead.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Just one, getting back to the M&A side, I know you mentioned that you feel increasingly good about your positioning of the company broadly and obviously global reach further around the FX business, Rumex, LaVardy, and the lodging side. I was curious which areas are most interesting for you guys right now looking for incremental M&A next year?

Yeah, Andrew, hey, it's Ron. That's a good question. I'd say that we've done, you know, a lot of the positioning work literally last year and this year. If you look at the beyond strategies of building out what segments we can play in, like our, you know, Corp A1, business for SMB and corporate payments or the lodging thing being international or the front end of our mid-market corporate payments business with a process, you know, AP automation tools. So I think we've really assembled like a lot of product, you know, and a lot of capability so that those TAMs are bigger and thus the sales and revenue we can chase are bigger. I think we're kind of ready to pivot back to more of the wheelhouse, you know, scale-based, let's buy stuff we can run better sets of businesses. I'm not saying that we won't do more. There's probably some more stuff around EV that we're sniffing that's still in that kind of capability thing. We want to be super, you know, good there, ready there. But that would be the thing. Any one of the two or three main businesses, you know, corporate pay and lodging for sure, where we could get, you know, wheelhouse deals that are larger and accretive would be the number one preference.

Got it. That's helpful. And one quick follow-up. You actually just mentioned the EV. I was going to ask, so you mentioned all your methods of toll distribution before and reaching consumers. So I wanted to ask if you could draw some parallels to your consumer side ambitions in the EV space and what you could share with us there. I know it's early still.

It's a good follow-up. It's one of the... you know, things, one of the models that we know well that caused us, allowed us, allowed me to pull the trigger on an EV business that was consumer-centric and what we realized is no credit risk. It's really a network play, building a super-duper EV network that's advantaged. It sounded a lot like the toll. So I think the biggest translation is partners can help. So if you think about You know, the consumer business in Brazil, yes, there's a lot of direct capability, having hundreds of people stand at toll booths or in, you know, in malls, at kiosks and stuff. But the partner model that our Brazil guys have built, you know, every, you know, Nissan car with a toll tag when you come in, and two of the largest banks, you know, reselling our stuff that have 40 million accounts. That model of OEMs that make EV cars, there aren't going to be any EV cars unless the existing or new EV manufacturers make them. And same with CPOs. There's not going to be any cars that people can't recharge them. And so those two partners, the light went on for us of, oh, my gosh, we can build a consumer business kind of B2B2C. by, you know, working through these partners, and they're going to embrace us. So that's kind of the thinking, and that's the feedback we've had from talking to those various groups. So it allows us to basically, you know, get in our gun sites and do extension for our company without doing some weird, you know, Super Bowl ad, right, to try to get to consumers. So that's the thing that we like about it.

Got it. Thank you. I know Tingen's anti-Super Bowl ad, so I'll leave it there and congrats on the result.

Tell him he pays for it. I'm all for it. All right.

Will do. Thank you.

All right. So long.

Our next question will come from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. You may now go ahead.

Hey, everybody. Thanks a lot for all the color and perspective. Just a couple of quick follow-up questions for me. You guys have been really active in buying back your own shares, obviously. But at the same time, you've started to pick up the acquisition activity as valuations have come down. How should we be thinking about capital allocation priorities and where you're seeing opportunities? And should we expect kind of a... continuation of the current mix or what are your expectations there right now?

Yeah, James, hey, it's Ron. The answer is, you know, it depends, right? Our capital allocation priorities, I think, are unchanged. We start with deals because they position the company and most of the ones we do create accretion. So that's been all, you know, obviously number one. But it depends really on our stock price. Obviously, if the stock price were buyers with the better company to buy than people shopping the companies for higher multiples. And so, you know, if our price is at these levels, I think we're probably leading to buying more stock back mostly because of what I said that we've gotten so many. deals, if you will, kind of behind us. We kind of have the sets of things we need to run the company. So at today's stock price, I'd say we're probably more buyers of our stock than something else. At higher stock prices, we probably, you know, the pendulum swings back, you know, a bit the other way.

I appreciate that. And then, you know, just a quick follow-up on kind of the the fraud and debt issues how much of that is just purely function of fuel prices and as those come down that self resolves or are you seeing anything different in the current cycles than you have previously that could indicate it could be kind of an ongoing issue even if fuel prices do come down next year yeah that's a super good point it's most of it right so higher

Fuel prices, right, create more total spend. So the loss event is higher, right, 100 gallons at $5 instead of 100 gallons at $3. And then second, it attracts more fraud, right? You get targeted more by criminals, again, when the price is higher. So really the question is if that normalizes, those two things should improve. And then it really swings over to just the economic health. right of clients and prospects for us. Do they remain healthy and able to repay and stuff? That's the open question, I think. We're not seeing a lot of that. If we look at our distributions, the higher quality accounts are repaying. The roll rate problems, like always, are in the more credit challenge group. it should reset if fuel prices stay at this level or a smidge down, both fraud and overall loss levels will decline.

Got it. Thanks, everyone. This concludes our question and answer session as well as the conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.