Corpay, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Fleet Core Technologies, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist 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 the star then one. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Egglesetter, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 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 fleecore.com. Now, throughout this call, we will be covering organic revenue growth. And 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 do need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the best information we have 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, both filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov. So now with that out of the way, I will turn the call over to Ron Clark, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Okay, Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and appreciate you joining our Q4 2022 earnings call. At the top here, I'll plan to cover four subjects. So first, I'll provide my take on our Q4 results. Second, I'll recap our full year 2022 performance. Third, I'll share our initial 2023 guidance. And then lastly, I'll update you on a few of the key priorities that we're working. Okay, let me make the turn to our Q4 results, which exceeded the top end of our guidance range, so better than we expected. We reported revenue of $884 million. That's up 10%. And cash EPS of $404. That's up 9%. Our cash EPS was helped. in the quarter by our Brazil Tax Happy, which did lower our Q4 overall tax rate. Organic revenue growth coming in at 7% overall. Inside of that, our corporate payments business, super good, growing 20% in the quarter. Against the prior year, our Q4 organic revenue growth was negatively impacted by by about 20 to 25 million of one-time revenues sitting in Q4 of 21. So that reduced organic revenue growth by about 2 to 3% in Q4. We do expect Q1 2023 organic growth to return to the 9 to 10% range. Cash EPS in the quarter pressured by both higher bad debts and significantly higher interest expense. And as a result of the rising delinquencies we're seeing in our U.S. fuel business, we did make the decision in Q4 to slow what we call our new micro digital sales, so our very smallest accounts. We also began tightening terms of our existing SMB accounts. Both of those things really a cautionary move to try to control bad debt expense here in 2023. Fortunately, our credit risk is really narrowly concentrated in what we call these very small micro accounts and also in our newest vintages, you know, think 12 to 24 months. So really impacts a pretty small portion of our overall business. Turning to the trends, fundamentals in the quarter, quite good. Same stores finished plus two for the quarter. Retention remaining steady at 92%. And sales grew 19% in the quarter despite our decision to, again, to slow the micro sales and fuel. So, look, all in all, you know, a bit better finish than we had expected. and continuing strong trends helping us here as we roll into 23. Okay, let me turn to our full year 2022 performance, along with the progress that we made to better position the company for the midterm. So for the full year 2022, we reported revenue of $3.4 billion. That's up 21%. and up almost $600 million over 2021. Cash EPS is $16.10. That's up 22% versus prior year, and a full $0.85 ahead of our initial 2022 guidance. Full-year organic revenue growth of 13%. Full-year sales or new bookings growth of 21%. And we closed five capability acquisitions if you include the GRG deal on January 1. So really good, really outstanding performance against the primary objectives that we set. So in addition to the financial goals, we really did advance pretty meaningfully our beyond strategy in 22. in which we extend either or both the product set of the business or the customer segment that we serve. This is helpful, obviously, because it grows the TAM and obviously better positions the business for long-term growth. So just a few of our beyond highlights for 2022. So in global fleet, Significant progress on our EV capabilities. We acquired a European public charging network. We've got mapping and payment applications. We've got at-home charging software, and we've integrated all that to our ICE fueling solution. So great progress there. In corporate payments, we added an AP automation software front end. to our full AP payment execution business, which is the company's fastest growing business, so super delighted with that. In lodging, we've gone beyond our workforce, core workforce business to two new verticals, the airline vertical and the insurance vertical, each of those reaching almost $100 million in revenue in 22. And then finally in Brazil, we keep expanding our TAG fueling solution. We've gone to even more accepting sites now and more users. And I think exiting Q4 reached about 10 million annualized transactions. So look, the combo in 22 of really good financial performance and what I'd call significant strategic progress. So we're quite pleased. All right, let me shift gears and make the turn to our 2023 outlook. We've worked hard to build a plan to meet our most important objectives in what is a challenging environment. So here is our 2023 guidance at the midpoint. So revenue of $3,825,000,000, that would be up 12% or approximately $400,000,000. EBITDA of $2.25 billion. That reflects up 15% or up about $260 million. And then cash EPS of $17 at the midpoint. That would reflect up 6%. We're certainly outlooking a pretty unfavorable macro environment this year with a smidge lower fuel price and significantly higher interest rate. So those two things are expected to reduce our 2023 cash EPS by about $1.75, implying we'd be giving a 1875 cash EPS guide in kind of an apples-to-apples environment. Our 2023 plan does set out a number of pretty important objectives to deliver organic growth 10% plus, to grow new sales 15% plus, and to diet or control our operating expenses with a plan to expand margins about 150 basis points for the full year and 200 basis points exiting 2023. Major assumptions underlying our 2023 guidance are first, that our 2022 acquisitions will add about 2% to 3% to our 2023 print revenue growth. This 23 guidance does include Russia and will until we have certainty of the divestiture. Guidance assumes that we can manage bad debt equal to the 2022 level, although we do think it will be more elevated in the first half than the second half. And then finally, we have not assumed a U.S. or global recession, but rather built our 23 plan in volumes really just based on what we can see and projected from there. Our confidence in this 23 planner outlook is bolstered by a few things. First, we've now seen our 22 finish good, better than we thought. We closed the global reach cross-border deal, so that's in our numbers. We've made expense cuts already, so those are behind us. we're seeing some recent improvement, slight, but improvement in both fuel price and FX trends. We just recently implemented two interest rate swaps that will lower our 2023 interest expense at obviously fixed rates. And then lastly, we've qualified for Brazil Tax Happy that will slightly lower our 2023 consolidated tax rate a bit better than our earlier expectations. Okay, let me transition to my last subject, which is an update on some of our important priorities. So Russia, let me start out with Russia. So making good progress on the sale of our Russia business. We've had lots of interest, a number of parties that have bid for the asset, and we've recently moved a select group of buyers potential buyers into the diligence phase. Timing is probably somewhere late Q2. And at this point, our plan would be to use the Russia sale proceeds to buy back FLT stock. If we did that with kind of a mid-year close, we're looking at about 30 to 35 cents of in-year cash EPS dilution. Okay, let me turn next to the FTC matter, appears to be finally in the home stretch. We're at a point now where we do expect the court to issue an order, likely here sometime in Q1, detailing incremental processes and disclosures that we'll need to implement. So obviously once clear, we'll move quickly to implement those things, although we will We will require some time. I mean, just as a reminder, the disclosure enhancements and process changes that we have voluntarily made over the last few years have not had a material impact on our financial performance, nor do we believe that this court order will have a material impact on our financial performance going forward. So last up, EV, again, you know, really good progress on that initiative. So in the UK, we're now in market with what we call our three-in-one EV solution for commercial fleet clients. So in this case, it includes a UK public EV charging network, at-home charging software, and of course, traditional ICE fueling, all of those integrated into one. And I think we've got about 1,000 of our UK commercial fleet clients using the solution. So doing well there. Additionally, we're in the market in continental Europe with an EV solution really for new customer segments, so beyond commercial fleet. So the new segments would include EV car manufacturers, charge point operators, you know, even EV drivers. And fortunately, we are seeing adoption by all three of those customer segments, which for us is clearly all incremental to our fleet payment business. So, look, the goal, again, is to be a big, a major player in this EV transition. And I do want to report, you know, we are officially out of the blocks. Okay, so in closing, again, we finished. 2022, pretty well. Again, positive sales and retention trends. That obviously helps the setup for this year. 22 full-year financial performance, you know, super good. 21% and 22% top and bottom line, you know, way ahead of the initial guide. Again, we've advanced last year a number of important beyond ideas. That supports the future growth of the company. Our outlook for 23, we think positive. Outlooking double-digit revenue expectations, you know, improving operating margins and EBITDA, although our absolute profits for sure will be weighed down by the interest rate spike. We do expect to clear our Russia and FTC overhang here in the first half. At the same time, we're going to continue to stake out our position in the new EV world. Again, big opportunity for us. And lastly, our midterm objectives remain intact. We want to grow cash EPS in the 15% to 20% range once we lap the 2023 interest expense headwinds. So with that, let me turn the call back over to Alyssa to provide a bit more detail on the quarter. Alyssa?