Corpay, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fleet Core Technologies Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, and I would now like to turn the conference over To Jim Egglesetter, Investor Relations, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2023 earnings call. With me today are Ron Clark, our Chairman and CEO, and Tom Panther, our CFO. Following the prepared comments, the operator will announce that the queue will open for the Q&A session. Please note, our earnings release and supplement can be found under the Investor Relations section on our website at fleecore.com. Throughout this call, we will be covering organic revenue growth. Now, 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 and divestitures or scope changes closed during the two years being compared. We will also be covering non-GAAP financial metrics, including revenues, net income, and net income per diluted share, all on an adjusted basis. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than 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 need to remind everyone that part of today's discussion may include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the best information we have as 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. The 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. 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. Appreciate you joining us today. Up front here, I'll plan to cover three subjects. First, our financials, our Q3 results, our Q4 guidance, and a brief 2024 preview. Second, I'll provide an update on our strategic review and where we're coming out. And then lastly, I'll introduce our fleet transformation plan, which is aimed at accelerating the revenue growth of that business. Okay, let me begin with our Q3 results, which were generally in line with our expectations. We reported revenue of $971 million, up 9%, and cash EPS of $449, up 6% versus last year. Profit would have been up 16% at constant interest rates. Q3 macro weaker than our August outlook. Our fuel spreads contracted about 25% in the quarter, and that was the result of a 50-cent fuel price point-to-point increase from the Q2 exit to the Q3 exit, which compresses fuel spreads. Look, despite this weaker macro, our Q3 earnings powered through. We actually finished a few cents ahead of our August guide if you exclude just the Russia and pay-by-phone transactions. Overall organic revenue growth for Q3 up 10%. Inside of that, our corporate payments business maintained its 20% growth rate, so super pleased there. Our pivot, which we started last year in North America fuel, away from new super small micro accounts, clearly paid dividends this quarter. Our North America fuel credit losses went in half from about $24 million last year to $12 million this year. Trends in the quarter generally quite good. Continued strong demand for our products. Our new sales up 17% versus prior years, so very good. Retention remaining stable across the enterprise at 91%. Our same-store sales did soften a bit from flat last quarter to kind of minus one this quarter. We did notice pretty noticeable softening in our managed services subsegment and lodging, which we're digging into. Q3 EBITDA reached $529 million. $529 million, an all-time low. record high for the company, held by EBITDA margins, which expanded to 54.5%. That's up about 200 basis points versus last year. So all in all, I'd say a pretty good Q3 performance. Okay, let me make the turn to our updated Q4 guidance, which reflects A couple changes in scope. So the rusher divestiture, which we mentioned last time, and the recent pay-by-phone acquisition. We've also refreshed the Q4 macro, which is outlooking a bit weaker FX than we saw in August. So look, despite these adjustments and these pressures, the fundamentals are quite good. such that our underlying Q4 profit guide is actually a bit stronger than our view 90 days ago. You can see on page 14 in our earnings supplement that refreshed bridge. So we're updating Q4 guidance today to $968 million in revenue at the midpoint and $449 in cash EPS at the midpoint. So really right on top of our Q3 print, where again, historically Q3 and Q4 results have been very similar. This updated Q4 guide implies a 10% organic revenue growth in the quarter and a 14% EBITDA growth. So again, the forecast really spot on to our 10, 13, 19 compounding models. Okay, let me transition to our preliminary view of 2024, which I characterize the setup as quite encouraging. So we're all looking at the 2024 macro environment to be neutral to maybe slightly positive, and that's simply looking at the various macro factors as they exit this year and the next year. Revenue, we're outlooking, again, although early, organic revenue growth in the same 9% to 11% range. That's consistent with prior years. And then lastly, kind of the key profit drivers of the business, generally setting up favorably. So we're expecting lower bad debt, flat to lower interest expense, and a stable tax rate and share count. So generally a good setup. So look, although it's early days in our 24 planning, I'd say we generally like what we see. All right, let me shift gears and provide an update on our strategic review. As a reminder, the goal of our strategic review or portfolio review is really twofold. So first, to make a simpler company, And then second, to evaluate separation options to increase shareholder value. On the simplification front, we've done a few things. We've sold Russia. We decided to keep our prepaid business, although we are working a couple of other non-core asset sales. And we're moving to three primary reporting segments. All of these things to make a simpler company. On the separation front, we've concluded not to pursue a pure spin, and that's mainly looking at RemainCo derating risk. We've also decided not to pursue a strategic sale, primarily there due to tax leakage and our estimate of disenergies. But we are continuing to evaluate a couple separation alternatives with dance partners that we think are potentially pretty attractive. So we do expect to conclude those discussions with the counterparties over the next 90 days, and we'll certainly report back then. Okay, my last subject up is to introduce our fleet transformation plan. which we believe is the single most important thing, effort, to unlock shareholder value and re-rate our stock. So the objective of the transformation plan is to accelerate our global fleet business growth into double digits so that we have three big primary businesses that can all target double-digit revenue growth. We have prepared a few slides in our lengthy earnings supplement beginning on page 22 to help walk you through how we intend to accelerate fleet growth. The plan really centers around three big ideas. So first, BAU. On the BAU front, we plan to get at performance improvement through new fleet products. which we're releasing into the market now. And these products join up with our corporate payment products to really create a differentiated offering in the marketplace. As you may recall, we're also pivoting that business from kind of small micro prospects to a bit larger seam prospects, both from repointing our digital marketing machine and adding additional field and Zoom reps targeted this slightly larger market segment. The emphasis will be on two primary verticals. Those are field services and construction, both of which are big, significant opportunities. Second underpinning for the plan is EV. We believe we can capitalize on the EV transition. We're getting much more confident that our three-in-one commercial fleet EV ICE solution really is a winner and that we can maintain or maybe even increase our fleet revenues throughout the transition. So early experience in the UK over the last 11 quarters bears this out. Revenue per EV vehicle running higher than revenue per ICE vehicle. So again, pretty positive. Then lastly is this idea of a consumer vehicle payments business versus just a B2B vehicle payments business. And so the idea is to further expand on that front. and really just leverage the networks, the payment networks, the merchant relationships we have that we built on the B2B side over the last 20 years. So the idea would be we start with anchor apps. So think toll tags in Brazil or digital parking in the UK that have millions of active mobile users and then offer additional vehicle payment related solutions that utilize our payment networks. So for example, utilize our EV network or utilize our service repair network. We demonstrated success in this approach in Brazil. Over 60% of our active consumer toll users now use a second or even third payment solution like parking or insurance. So we think pretty exciting. Additionally, this consumer vehicle payments push does open up additional interesting acquisition targets, for example, pay by phone and literally other ones as well. So look, we believe that we have the potential to incrementally drive um, the overall fleet slash vehicle business in the double digit territory, uh, via these three ideas. So again, kind of new fleet products, um, combined with corporate payment products targeted to a couple of big verticals success in the EV transition and the build out of a big, you know, billion dollar consumer vehicle payments business, um, Clearly well underway in Brazil and we hope to accelerate with this pay by phone acquisition, you can actually see our forecast math the bill to a billion on page 29 of the supplement. This anticipates that this expanded consumer vehicle leg, you know, growing fast. can pull a low single-digit core fleet card business into double-digit growth territory. So literally maybe 12%. So look, in conclusion today, we're forecasting 2023 pretty much where we started out in February of this year, in and around $17 of cash EPS. That's despite selling Russia and having a bit unfavorable macro. 24 outlook early, but I'd say encouraging. Still busy on some active separation discussions with some counterparties. We expect to conclude that in 90 days. And then lastly, this fleet transformation plan, we think quite exciting. We believe it has the potential to re-accelerate the fleet business and really potentially lift the entire enterprise to faster growth. So with that, let me turn the call back over to Tom to provide some additional detail on the quarter. Tom?

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. Here are some additional details related to the quarter. Let me start by acknowledging that it was an active corridor with the sale of the Russia business, the acquisition of pay by phone, and significant movements in fuel prices and FX rates. I'll address the impact from each of these factors to better compare our actual results to our previous guidance. First, our prior guidance included a full year of revenue and earnings from the Russia fuel business. Based on the August 15th closing date and final cash proceeds, The disposition of Russia resulted in $12 million of lower revenue and six cents of lower cash EPS. Secondly, the acquisition of pay by phone on September 15th added $2 million of revenue and was one cent dilutive to adjusted earnings. Turning to the macro headwinds in the quarter compared to the assumptions used for our guidance in August, the total negative impact was $17 million. Average fuel prices of $3.88 were 7% higher during the quarter, resulting in a $4 million benefit. However, it's important to note the point-to-point increase in fuel price from July 1st to September 30th was around 50 cents. The majority of this 15% increase occurred in August and plateaued for the remainder of the quarter. Underlying that rapid increase in the retail fuel price was an even greater increase in wholesale fuel costs, which compressed fuel spreads approximately 25% compared to our forecast, adversely affecting revenue by $13 million. So the net impact from changes in fuel prices on revenue was a $9 million headwind. It's typical when fuel prices rapidly increase for spreads to compress due to wholesale fuel prices increasing faster than retail prices. which can overwhelm the fuel price increase benefit. We get asked regularly if there's a way to track the price and spread impact. We found that OPUS, or the Oil Price Information Service, which is a subscription-based provider, does a good job depicting retail and wholesale fuel prices and the resulting spread. Now, turning to FX rates. The significant strengthening of the dollar beginning in August when the Fed's tone became more hawkish caused the dollar to strengthen relative to our foreign currencies, resulting in an $8 million drag on revenue. In summary, if we knew in early August what we know now about these factors I just discussed, our guide would have been revenue of $963 million and cash EPS of $4.33 per share. compared to our reported results of $971 million and $4.49 per share. The majority of the $8 million revenue beat came from our international businesses. Our earnings outperformance is particularly impressive because the flow through of our revenue results combined with our strong expense management and lower bad debt expense enabled us to power through the macro headwind and still exceed our pro forma August cash EPS guidance when adjusting only for the impact from Russia and pay by phone. We've included slide seven in our earnings supplement that walks you through these moving parts. Now, on to more details regarding our results for the quarter, focusing on year over year revenue growth. Organic revenue growth was 10%, reflecting the diversification of our business and the realization of the strong sales that we've produced throughout the year. Year over year, lower fuel prices resulted in a $12 million reduction in revenue, and lower fuel price spreads reduced revenue by $23 million. FX rates were favorable relative to last year, translating into a $15 million benefit. So net-net, a $20 million macro headwind versus last year. Putting aside the macro noise and comparisons to our prior guidance, gap revenue increased 9%. which reflects the business's ability to consistently deliver solid revenue growth. Corporate payments revenue was up 20%, driven by 20% growth in spend. Strength in our direct business, which grew over 30%, was again led by outstanding growth in full AP. Our comprehensive menu of high-quality payment solutions continues to sell extremely well, up 28%, as we sign up new customers who are looking to modernize their AP operations. We also continue to expand our proprietary merchant network and increase the amount of cardable spend. Cross-border revenue was up 19%, as sales also grew 28%, and recurring client transaction activity was robust. We are the largest non-bank FX provider in the world, and the name recognition we now have is a real advantage when we compete for a client's business. More importantly, our best-in-class capabilities, service, and products allow us to have market-leading retention and client acquisition, which you can see in our results. Turning to our fleet business, organic revenue increased 4%. We experienced strength in our international markets. And in the UK, we are pleased with the continued strong sales performance of our 3-in-1 product offering, which customers find very attractive as they add EVs to their fleet. In the US, some softness in small fleet in addition to the impact from our shift away from micro clients, are affecting our sales and overall results. Our shift to higher credit quality clients also impacted late fees, which were down 21% from Q3 2022. While the decline in late fees results in a drag on our revenue growth, it has been more than offset by a decline in bad debt expense, which I'll comment on later. But it's important to point out that our decision to pivot up markets has been EBITDA positive. Lastly, as Ron mentioned, we continue to refine our go-to-market strategy to acquire larger customers, and we're excited about the rollout of additional products that we expect will drive a significant uplift in sales heading into next year and going forward. Before I move on, Ron addressed the pay-by-phone acquisition and how it fits into our fleet transformation strategy. To give you some deal specifics, Pay by Phone is the world's second largest global parking payments platform with over 6 million monthly active users on its mobile app. Their network covers approximately 4 million parking spaces, primarily in North America, the UK, and Europe, and they process over 200 million transactions annually, totaling $900 million in spend. We paid approximately $300 million for the company and expect to realize about $50 million in revenue next year. Now to Brazil, where revenue grew 16% compared to last year, driven by 7% tag growth. Our tag growth enables us to further increase the proportion of revenue from our expanded network of products, where we earn incremental revenue. In the quarter, approximately 35% of customer spend was from our expanded network Fuel is a great example of how we're expanding our product network with the number of TAG-enabled gas stations growing 25% and transactions up over 40%. Our extensive network enabled us to generate 20% sales growth in the quarter over the prior year with almost 30% of the sales coming from non-TAG products. Our success in Brazil is a tangible proof point of our broader vehicle payment strategy where we leverage an anchor product used by a large customer base to deliver additional products and services, driving incremental revenue growth. Lastly, we've received some questions over the last several quarters about the potential impact of the Brazilian government deploying free flow tolling, where the toll station reads the license plate and the individual pays the toll after the fact by going to a website. Now that these free flow stations have been in place for a few years, our experience is that we actually sell more tags when these toll stations are installed because the tag user receives a small discount and is able to pay the toll automatically via their tag. This frictionless customer experience drives incremental demand for our product. Lodging revenue increased 10% against a tough prior year Q3 comp where the business had grown 28%. It's not unusual for the business to have quarterly revenue growth fluctuations driven by weather and natural disaster variability. Year-to-date, the business is up 16%. This quarter's performance was highlighted by sales success across our industry verticals. In addition to revenue per night, which increased 20%, driven primarily from channel and product mix, namely from our distressed passenger product, and higher hotel commission revenue, offsetting that to some degree with softness in our construction and transportation verticals as the weaker macroeconomic environment is impacting these sectors. We expect this softness to rebound as the economic outlook becomes clearer. Before leaving the segments, I want to briefly comment on our expectation to move to three primary business segments. We're making this change in how we operate the company in the fourth quarter and reflect the new segments in our 10K. Now, looking further down the income statement, operating expenses of $526 million represent a 4% increase versus Q3 of last year, driven by acquisitions, increases tied to higher transaction and sales activities, and investments to drive future growth. partially offset by lower FX rates and the sale of our Russia business. Bad debt expense declined 22% from last year to $29 million, or six basis points of spend. Within that, fleet bad debt expense was down $15 million year over year, as we realized the benefit from lower exposure to micro clients, as previously discussed. EBITDA margin in the quarter was 54.5%, a 225 basis point improvement from the third quarter of last year. After normalizing for the Russia sale, we still expect our full year EBITDA margin to exit this year 200 to 250 basis points better than the prior year. This positive operating leverage is driven by solid revenue growth, lower bad debt expense, disciplined expense management, and synergies realized from recent acquisitions. Interest expense increased $43 million year over year, driven by the increase in SOFR on our debt stack and higher debt balances driven by acquisitions. The impact of higher interest rates resulted in an approximate 44 cent drag on Q3 adjusted EPS. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.6% versus 26.8% last year. Now, turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $1.1 billion in unrestricted cash, and we had $660 million available on our revolver. We have $5.6 billion outstanding on our credit facilities, and we had $1.4 billion borrowed under our securitization facility. As of September 30th, our leverage ratio was 2.66 times trailing 12-month EBITDA as calculated in accordance with our credit agreement. We repurchased 2 million shares in the corridor for $530 million, including the ASR we announced in conjunction with the Russia sale. And we have over $700 million authorized for share repurchases. We have ample liquidity to pursue near-term M&A opportunities and will continue to buy back shares when it makes sense. Now, turning to our guidance. Let me start by bridging the implied Q4 guidance we provided in August to reflect the acquisition and divestiture activity during the quarter and current macro environment. The sale of the Russia business would reduce revenue by $30 million and the acquisition of pay by phone would increase revenue by $10 million. We're now expecting a $20 million macro headwind versus what we thought back in August driven primarily by worse FX rates, partially offset by higher fuel prices of $3.96. Making these pro forma adjustments to our prior Q4 guide lowers revenue to $968 million and adjusted earnings per share to $4.34 per share at the midpoint. We've included slide 14 in the earnings presentation that lays out these factors. With that pro forma reference point established, let me comment on our Q4 outlook that includes the factors I just mentioned. We're expecting revenue to be between $953 million and $983 million, representing 10% growth versus last year at the midpoint. And we expect adjusted net income per share to be between $4.34 and $4.64 per share which at the midpoint is up 11% over what we reported in Q4 2022. So, similar to the third quarter, we expect to generate solid year-over-year revenue and earnings growth despite some softening economic conditions in our markets. Based on this Q4 guidance, for the full year, we now expect GAAP revenues between $3.774 billion and $3.804 billion. Adjusted net income between $1.252 billion and $1.276 billion. Adjusted net income per diluted share between $16.82 and $17.12 per share. An EBITDA growth of 14%, an EBITDA margin of 53%. Thank you for your interest in Fleet Corps. And now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star 421 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging a request. Questions will be taken in the order received. We advise participants to please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. And should you wish to cancel your request, please press the star followed by the 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please leave your handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Sanjay Sakrani from KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good results in a tough backdrop here. Ron, could you give us a little bit more color on these strategic actions you're considering in the spin or merge scenario with these dance partners? Maybe you could just speak to what certain permutations might be.

Sure, Sanjay. So it's really mostly in and around our corporate payments business. And so we have a couple of interesting counterparties where we might separate something and actually have a pure play that has more scale and synergies and stuff. And so we're kind of in the final mile of working through those conversations and seeing whether there's something there.

Okay. Understood. And then, you know, sort of appreciate the preliminary organic revenue outlook for next year. I guess when we think about the different variables from a macro standpoint, whether it be the economy and then obviously FX and such, could you just give us a sense of sort of where we're at with that? Like what are you guys taking into that organic growth in terms of the backdrop, the macro backdrop?

Yeah, I think generally the comment I gave is calm. So if you look at the various macro factors and the way we're exiting, you know, both fuel price, spreads, FX, you know, et cetera, I'd say that sitting here today, it feels like kind of a neutral-ish to maybe a smidge positive. And so, you know, obviously our organic stuff, you know, puts that to the side, right? That's the difference between print and organic. But I'd say I did want to just provide a bit of a preview that unlike this year, Sanjay, with you know, interest rates up, whatever, 400 basis points, that the, you know, the grow over basically across some of our key, you know, profit levers looks quite good. So the setup looks way more normalized than it has in the last couple of years.

Okay. Great. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Chen, Chen Wang from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. I know you guys covered a lot here. I wanted to ask on the, maybe for you, Ron, just on the consumer vehicle payments, the billion dollars that you're targeting by 27, do you have the assets you need today to get to that billion dollars? And do you expect the margin profile at that time to be different since this is a consumer or CDB business, as you called out?

Yeah, it's a great question. Good to talk to you. We don't want you to miss the debate. It's injured tonight. So, Yeah, we've got a couple, I'd say, of additional transactions that we're looking at to fill out a couple of the product lines. But this is, I don't know how clear I was, but mostly an organic play where we use basically these big consumer active blocks of accounts and just match it up with what we already have, which is the payment network and the merchants. You know, the million-dollar question there, Tingen, is just that velocity. So when we show, you know, 2 million people some additional related things, you know, what's the take rate going to be? So I'd say that most of the thinking, both, you know, studying what we've done in Brazil and obviously studying this deal, the view is that it's organic. And the key, as you heard me talk a million times, is cost of sales. That's the key to growth and profitability. And so the good news is our view is we're not going to do tons of marketing, hey, let's go out and spend gazillions of dollars, but rather try to light up big bases. So I'd say we like the EVDA profile, basically, of getting the thing to go. So a couple more deals and mostly organic.

That's the game plan. Yeah, and Tenjin, we wouldn't expect it to be margin dilutive. Again, look at Brazil as our bellwether. it has attractive margins across the rest of our portfolio. So we think that's a good indicator of what the overall business can be as it expands.

Yeah, add-ons tension, as you know, are always lower cost, right, than do-new accounts.

Sure. No, I like it. I mean, it's exciting. I think getting into the consumer side and getting the synergies there would make a lot of sense just Just curious on the cost side, as you called out, but I'm sure you're thoughtful about that and glad to hear that it's in your margin zone. Just on my follow-up then, just the three business lines and the cleaning up the reporting segments, I know we're going to get more, but is the general idea that it's going to be core pay, vehicle payments, and I suppose lodging? Can you give us an idea on the margin differences there? Between the three, because I think as we're thinking about our own sum of the parts, I know there are a lot of different views on the profitability across those three, but is there any high-level thoughts that you can share on that?

Let me start just on the segments, yeah. So segment one will be vehicle, which will be our global fleet business, our Brazil business, and then obviously really this consumer, which is a big part of the Brazil thing today. So the pay by phone and the other things would be in that. Second business, obviously corporate payments, and then third business, lodging.

So those would be the three lines. Yeah, and for your modeling, we're really just combining fleet and Brazil today. And so based on how we report operating income and how you may model the business at a more detailed level, it would just be a simple summation It's just bringing those two together into the vehicle payment segment.

Okay. Very good. Thank you for the update. Glad to like it.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Darren Teller from Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Guys, thanks. I mean, sticking to just the current, you know, the segment themselves from this past quarter, they were strong in the core pay side. And it's definitely... to hear that's an important part of the strategic thinking going forward, but Ron, I'd love to just hear what you see going well there. Um, there's obviously a lot of competitive chatter going on around, you know, macro headwinds, some debating structural changes. So, you know, just talk to us a little more about your strategic plans on that segment, you know, before any, any real mergers or anything else, just standalone, what's going well, what do you anticipate to it to look like over the next year?

Good question, Darren. Mostly everything is going well to post. I don't know how many quarters, not 20%, but quite a few. I think the sales inside of the 17% were in the mid to high 20s for that line of business. That tells us that we're selling a lot, that there's a lot of demand. In terms of what's working well and not well, I'd say everything's working well with the exception of that channel business, which we've spoken of. So, again, that thing continues to decline but become, as you know, a much smaller part of the total, which implies, again, that the direct business has grown closer to 25, you know, to 30%. So, look, as I said before, we spent one of the last couple of years assembling the Stuff, right? Software, getting scale, getting more scale and cross-border. And now the game is really marketing and sales. We put the brand out a while ago. We've added headcount. You can see the sales growth rate. So that's the game now. It's really just to drive new sales faster and get those implemented. And unlike some other people that have reported, to your point, because we're middle market, the book is pretty stable. Our same store sales look stable, look stable exiting the quarter. So we're not seeing any of that.

We haven't seen erosion on the supplier level either. We continue to see good network expansion. Cardable spend continues to gradually move up. And the interest level from the merchant side and the supplier side continues to be favorable.

That's really helpful, Collar. Ron, just a quick follow-up to the prepaid business decision. Maybe just take a step back on why you decided to keep that now. Are there any other non-core assets that do make sense to sell potentially?

Yeah, good follow-up. I think ultimately, Darren, we just like the business more than some of the people that looked at it. So when you look at the tax leakage, you know, and dilution from that, I'd say that, you know, we spent a lot of time making that a better business than when we shopped it three years ago. And so the premium that we were looking for above what it's worth today, right, to pay the tax, I think people didn't get close enough to where we, where I wanted to see the thing. So we feel good enough to hold it. With that said, you know, as part of this review, we went through all the other kind of small non-core things. So we do have two kind of non-core things that we're kind of actively talking to buyers about. So there's a couple of, you know, hanging chats left there. But both that and the broader counterparty thing, we will have mopped up when we come back in 90 days. Okay.

Makes sense, guys. Thanks very much. You got it.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Ramsey from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have a quick follow-up on the consumer, the new consumer business. How should we think about that from kind of a geographic perspective? Is it a plan that you kind of are going to execute sort of all over the place, depending on whether, you know, helpful assets become available in key geographies? Or are you focused just on the the U.S. or Europe, or how are you looking at that?

Yeah, great question, Ramsey. So if you step back, you know, our current business is really in three markets, three countries, call it 90% of the company, right here, Brazil and the U.K. So that would be the answer. So we're, of the billion target, we're, I don't know, 350 or 450. consumer payment business in Brazil today and close to zero, right, in the UK and the US. And so part of this pay by phone idea was to get a big customer base, you know, in the UK and in the US where we already have these networks again was the idea. So there's no plan for us to go far, young man, to faraway places and to try to build a business where we don't have networks and management and stuff. So Brazil, UK, U.S., and that'll work is how we're thinking about it.

All right. Makes a ton of sense. And one follow-up. On the lodging segment, you called out the tough year-over-year comparison this quarter, also mentioned some softening in a sub-vertical. I think it was managed services. I'm just trying to think through how to model that out next quarter. The comp gets easier, but do the headwinds you're seeing in that managed services sort of subvertical stick around, or should we expect more of a bounce back on the easier comp next quarter?

Yeah, good question and unclear, I'd say. We thought – I think I called this out because we started to see it in Q2 – So again, let me go to the top and maybe this will be helpful. So inside of our lodging business, we sort of call it four or five different customer sub-segments. So we do things like airlines, insurance, railroads, construction, things like that. So one of those segments is kind of this project-based segment. So think like consulting firms, retail, merchandising people, environmental companies. It's only, I don't know, Ramsey, 300 or 400 clients in it, but they field pretty big teams of people that go to places and stay for a while. So maybe 10 people go to a city and stay there for, you know, two or three weeks. So that's the nature of the business. So literally starting in Q2 and more in Q3, say, 50 out of those 300 clients just start to go like super soft. So when we call them, they would say things like, oh, hey, Walmart, who's the big client for merchandising, move that in-house so they're not using our third-party company to go there and do merchandising in their stores. Or, hey, a couple of our construction clients flipped over to using some local contractors instead of their own people. So I'd say we're just not really sure. The good news is the other segments, we don't see it. It's mostly resident kind of in this one place. So I think we've traded, what, top 10% organic. So that thing actually went backwards, that managed thing a bit, while obviously the rest of the businesses went forward. So we're kind of outlooking, Ramsey, the thing to kind of stay softish here in Q4. And then obviously we hope to have a better idea, you know, when we make the turn in the next year.

That's great, Ron. Clears it up. Thank you.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Peter Christensen from CTE. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening. Thanks for the question. Ron, I'm just curious, now that you're through a good portion of the strategic review and it seems like you certainly have a scheme set up for the next couple of quarters, just curious on your thoughts on the use of a share repurchase leverage levels, and then secondary to that, how are you generally thinking about the tradeoff between margin and growth here? Do you see an opportunity to invest, maybe perhaps accelerate growth a bit more, get more behind sales? Just curious on your thoughts on those relationships. Thank you.

Yeah, good question, Pete. So I'd say it's been a pretty busy and active, whatever it's been, six or nine months. strategic review. So look, the good news in it is when you put out an ad like that, it does generate, you know, incremental activity. So we do have, as I said, not only some separation discussions still going, but we've surfaced, you know, some additional M&A targets that are kind of interesting, you know, in and around the same space as people look at the phone. So, look, I think our priorities around capital and leverage are kind of the same. Our target's three. I think we're running, I don't know, 2.5 or 2.6. We're buyers of our stock, obviously, at this price. You know, if we grow 9% to 11% next year, grow the bottom faster, that's a 10 times E to DA multiple for company compounding, you know, in the teens. So we're buyers of our stock. So let's say three times leverage, we'll go higher. For a deal, we do have, again, a few interesting things in this consumer space that have surfaced and a couple in our core corporate payment space that we're chasing. So, like always, I'd say those will be the two main uses. I think we'll generate, I don't know, low billions, a billion and three-ish, I think, is in our early look at next year. Plus, we've got leverage, you know, still right where we're sitting today. And the EV&D will grow next year, so... A handful of deals and buy our stock back would be the order.

And then longer-term growth versus margin, are you coming out any differently, you know, post the review or as you go into the progress?

Good question. So if you look at our, you know, print for three quarters and even into our guide, I think – We've stepped up sequentially, as we said, right, EBITDA margins. I think I quoted, you know, between 54 and 55 this quarter, and I think Dom and I are looking at kind of the same number for Q4. We've kind of looked at our plan, Pete, for next year similarly, which gives us a little more money because, you know, we've kind of gone past some of these capability acquisitions. So I'd say we'll ramp up the sales and marketing investment a bit, but look initially at least to try to keep the exit of our margin kind of between 54 and 55 as kind of a target for next year.

Great. Thank you, Ron. That was helpful. Got it.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Mihir Basha from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. The first question I had, I just wanted to go back to the fleet product transformation, the fleet segment transformation strategy. And, you know, on point one where you talk about the fuel plus business card, I wanted to ask a little bit more, if you could talk a little bit more about that. How is that different than the beyond fuel strategy that I think you all had a couple of years ago? And just trying to understand what kind of growth, et cetera, you expect that strategy to drive.

Yeah, it's a good question. So, Let me start by saying that most of the competition for the prospects that we're trying to get are on business cards. So in the older days, there was cash and house accounts and other things. And now we look at the customers that we want to have that we don't have. Many are on business cards. And some of those are on our competitors' fuel cards as well. And so the idea is really to go to new accounts. with a combined effectively a business card and a fuel card in one. And target that against verticals that use fuel cards, that have people in the field. Think of like field services like HVAC or construction, things like that. And so that's the basic idea that we've now wrapped. I don't know if you guys remember, we bought a company about two years ago called Roger that we rebranded as Corp A1. So we've wrapped all that technology now around the business card so that it's, you know, mobile-centric, kind of automated expense capture and stuff around the business card and then connected that to our proprietary fuel card capabilities and networks. And so what you've got is a business card that's a little more high-tech than some of the bank cards combined to a fuel car that has controls and advanced economics, and it's bundled into kind of one package and one account. And so the testing on it has been, you know, super-duper good, and we're literally in the market selling the products now. So the biggest difference, I'd say, is the focus. It's new accounts versus old. back to the base. It's in a couple of verticals, and the product has been revamped or rewrapped with kind of some modern technology.

Got it. Thank you. And then just, I want to maybe just switching back to the corporate payment segment for a second. And it's a little bit of a repeat of the earlier question, you know, about just what is driving that strength that you were seeing? Like, I appreciate that, you know, you are a little bit more mid-market, but, you know, some of the Factors like just macro slowdown or large suppliers choosing to push back or not accept virtual card payments seem like that shouldn't be as big of an issue, whether you're small or medium, whether your customers are small or medium. And I was just wondering, are there particular areas of strength in that corporate payment segment that you would call out? And just trying to understand a little bit about what's really driving so much strength for you guys. Has it just been a lot of new sales? What's driving that?

Yeah, I mean, I think you can see it a bit in the KPIs that it's volume. I mean, it's really not rate. So in the two big businesses there, the payables business and the FX business, it's volume, and it's what you said. I think I just quoted it that in Q3, again, I think the sales of those businesses were up 28% year over year prior, and we had a blockbuster first half. So you've got this huge implementation backlog effectively of new volume, new business that's coming on the books, which helps give us the predictability. A lot of the sales we're making in this quarter or next quarter will obviously be implemented in the spring and the summer next year. So it's not really complicated. We finally are off humpty-dumpty work of putting – you know, a competitive set of offerings together and have made the turn really into marketing and selling them. And they're doing a great job at it. So I think it's pretty straightforward. And then B, we're getting leverage in that business, you know, on the profit side. I think, Tom, it's looking about a billion ballpark. Call it a billion by year in revenue. And so the scale of the business now and compounding at 20%, the incremental revenue, you know, the flow-through margins are 75% to 80% on that stuff. So it's obviously increasing the EVTA margin. So it's just in a good spot. It's a giant dam. And so the game is to just keep chasing hard after it because we finally have what we need there.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Nick Bramall from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, congrats on the strong quarter, guys, and thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about how the sales pipeline has been trending in the fleet business with the pivot to larger customers and how that informs the 2024 outlook for the fleet business when paired with the new products that you plan to roll out.

Hey, Nick, it's Ron. So, I say a little slower than we'd like, but happening. So, again, I guess we're about a year into the pivot. I can't remember how clear I said it, but it's worked, right? In Q3, the credit losses in that business went in half from 24 to 12, and our outlook for this quarter, Q4, is 25 going to 10. So down 15. You know, we have traded a bit of late fee revenue, right, because we don't have those small accounts that are going late or obviously going bad. So I'd say that, you know, it's in process. It's been pretty complicated to turn that digital engine to bigger accounts and make sure, you know, that they're credit worthy and that the algorithm is working. But we're seeing, I think as I mentioned, sequentially an increase in what we call above five card market there. And then second, we've started building the field and Zoom staff that will contact, that will be outbound, if you will, on that a bit larger seam than the micro. So I'd say that we're moving some investment dollars along with pivoting the digital engine. So the plan is for it to pick up a lot. I don't have it in front of me, but I think our sales plan for that line of business here in the U.S. is up 25%. Next year, on the back of that, of one, the digital pivot, and two, the incremental field sellers.

Yeah, and I wouldn't also lose sight of the international business. It continues to sell quite well. Year-to-date, 10-plus percent levels of sales growth. So that also helps generate the overall fleet performance that you're seeing.

Thanks. It's very helpful, Kohler, and great to see the credit losses down substantially. For my follow-up question, I just wanted to touch on pay-by-phone. I'm sorry if this was already addressed, but what's the margin profile and revenue growth profile of that business on a standalone basis, and how much opportunity do you see on the expense side to optimize there?

Yeah, there is no margin profile in that business, right? That's been a go-go growth business compounding, I don't know, 20% to 25%. The last three years of their preliminary plan standalone into next year, into 24, is another 25%. You know, it's circa, call it 50 million next year, call it 40 this year, you know, pro forma going to 50, kind of earning virtually nothing. So, again, the big idea is what we can do with it, right, which are two things. One, we've got a ton of businesses that are already – the employees are already using their app here in the United States and in the U.K. So we're obviously going to go to our business clients and hopefully dramatically increase the amount of B2B parkings. that the company has instead of, quote, you know, consumer parking, where, FYI, the rate is substantially better, you know, if you're working for a business. And then the second one I think we said is we have networks they don't have, right, beyond parking. We have EV. We have service. We have, you know, registrations and fines and compliance kinds of things. And so the idea is obviously to try to light up their customers who are in the app making payments where, remember, we've got the information. It's Ron Clark. He's on his iPhone. His license plate is XYZ. He's on his MasterCard. The data that we need to add, you know, an EV recharge is kind of in the account when we show up. So we expect, you know, the synergy, if you will, to take that thing into positive territory, right, as we head into 2024. Great.

Thanks for all the color.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line above, Napoli, from William there. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. A lot there, a lot there tonight to go through. Just, Ron, the separation alternatives, merging with someone else, is that, I mean, essentially, would that, you know, given the size of your business, is that essentially going to be fleet core corporate payments acquiring somebody and then merging into a public company? Or, I mean... Just any thoughts around how that could work, what you're thinking about there.

Hey, Bob, good to hear your voice. So obviously there's a few different flavors that we're working on depending on who the counterparty is. There's actually a pretty fascinating structure that we're looking at where We could spin out an asset of ours effectively into a private entity and have someone else combine their assets into the same private entity. We would obviously control and own some fair amount of that company, so we'd consolidate it. you know, work on the synergies and then basically, you know, IPO that a different day. We're looking at another scenario where we would literally put, you know, our asset, you know, into another company. So there's a few different combinations and it really is just a function of, you know, how accretive, what kind of premium, you we think we could get by separating something and combining it, which, again, makes a lot more sense to us than the, you know, the, quote, pure sprint has been, where we're kind of guessing at pro forma multiple. So, you know, we've been in conversations with a few people for quite a while, and we're trying to figure out whether, you know, the thing makes sense or not.

Thank you. Interesting. Just to follow up on corporate payments, the 20% organic growth is really impressive data. given the size. Is that something that is sustainable into next year? And is it the AP side or the cross-border effects? You've made a number of acquisitions there. What is outperforming more, maybe relative size of the key pieces of corporate payments?

Another good question. They're kind of 60-40 in terms of revenue, but they're both kind of compounding, bob around the same level, and I'd say early days without Ron pushing too hard, I'd say next year is, you know, high deans to 20 again, more to do to give you that final number, but I think, yeah, I think we believe given the sales again that we've got in the queue and the backlog that come online next year, and then we've got a couple of monetization ideas to get more card, if you will, with some of the accounts. So I think it's, even though it's big, I think we feel good about the thing. Just keep giddy up and going again next year.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Nate Swenson from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to double click on organic growth within the fleet period a little bit. So if you take Russia out from all periods, it looks like organic growth was relatively flat at 3% this quarter. So can you give a little geographic detail on what drove that 3% growth? I know last quarter you called out Mexico and Australia. So just wondering what happened this quarter, what GEOs grew well, which may have grown a little softer. Within that, how did the monthly trends progress as we move through the third quarter? And then moving into the fourth quarter, should we expect that organic growth ex-Russia to stay roughly flat at around 3%?

Hey, Nate, I'll take that. Again, I'd say the international markets continue to perform quite well. Both Mexico and Australia, Europe, UK, all of them performed very well. Even within our U.S. business, we saw our enterprise segment do quite well. Even some of the over-the-road trucking was able to do some level of positive growth relative to the overall blended growth rate. So while the international markets carried most of the weight of the positive growth, we did see some pockets within the U.S. business that was also accretive to the overall growth. As we said, some of the small fleet businesses just struggling a little bit in terms of filling the bucket back up with the sales activity as we pivoted up market.

Got it. Appreciate that. And so I know there's been a few questions on the shift into consumer vehicle payments, but I find that pretty intriguing. So I'll ask another one here. Obviously, you've seen great success kind of building out this strategy in Brazil and But it seems to me like there's a lot of idiosyncrasies about that market that make it fairly unique compared to the UK or the US that you called out earlier. So maybe can you talk about some of the hurdles that you might see on your path to implementing the consumer vehicle ecosystem in the US and the UK and how you're planning to get over those hurdles as you roll it out and what learnings you can take from the Brazil experience? Thanks again.

Yeah, it's another good question. I think the whole thing turns on, you know, the existing active customer file. So the big learning, I think, in Brazil, just to walk back in time, is if you recall there, the original consumer business was mostly tags initially. So hey, you go to the toll booth, you go to a store, you go online, and hey, I want an automatic toll tag, and I get one and I stick it on my windshield and there it is. And so the big idea a couple years ago there was to get people onto the phone, to get those same people that are tagged to be on the phone. And so what we learned there is once they were on the phone and checking things like their account or, hey, we put content on, like what the value of their car is because we know the car and stuff, we found that there were 3 million of the 5 million people every month on the app, on the phone, doing stuff. And so that's what enabled... the sales of additional things, for example, insurance, providing insurance. And so that's the hurdle. That's the million-dollar question is, can you take a couple million active users that are on a phone every month in the UK and point them at three or four other things related to their vehicle, like EV, for example, like servicing their car, will that take like it has in Brazil? Because we have the rest of it. We have the networks. We obviously have tech that connects to these networks and hosts computers and the like and all kinds of G&A to sit over the top of all this stuff. So that's the focus. The game is that conversation, that marketing, that app with the consumer and their willingness to basically take things. And the secret idea I keep telling you is, There's no more data to input. So rather than having three or four separate apps where I type in, I'm Ron Clark, I have a Range Rover, here's the license plate, here's my credit card, here's my phone number, and so on, it's kind of one and done. The vehicle and you and your card stuff is already in place to make the parking app go, and so it's kind of in place for the add-on apps. So I would point you to therein lies the big question to how fast we can grow this thing.

And in Brazil, that's over 60% of the customer base is using multiple products. So it's a number where we feel like we can get some really good penetration over time as a significant number of people would do just as Ron described, that use case of wanting to use one app to service the multiple types of activities and ultimately payment transactions surrounding their vehicle.

Yeah, well, let me just give you one thing, which I found fascinating. If you like this or not, but to me it's a bit of peanut butter and jelly. Hey, you've got a phone in your hand and you're doing parking. Hey, I'm going to park here. You know, I'm going to be here for an hour or whatever. And then you carry it away and you go on the app and you extend your time another hour. So I know exactly when you parked, you know, when you're leaving and stuff. Hey, what about, you know, contents insurance for that two hours? How about while you're parked at the stadium, you know, watching a game or something with no deductible, we covered during that two-hour period, you know, theft from your vehicle? So I give that one as an example of we can nest, we think, some things like super-duper close We have your registration and stuff. We could provide notifications and reminders of when that thing is up or scan for fines that you have. So the power of it is really in it being super close to what the existing application is.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate all the color.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Trevor Williams from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks a lot. I want to go back to the thinking on organic growth in 2024. And I know it's early days, so it's a rough sketch. But the 9 to 11, that's in line with kind of what historically you've shared for organic targets. But Ron, how are you thinking about what the right growth rate is for fleet specifically now, especially with Russia out? So at least in the near term, how you're thinking about fleet within Russia? 9 to 11, I think historically it had been assumed to grow 7 to 9, if you think you can get there in 2024 ex-Russia. Thanks.

Yes, Trevor, good question. I'd say probably too early a set of days to give you a super good answer. I'd say that we've done more work because we started sooner on the corporate payments. And because that stuff sells and then installs later. There's wave visibility into the forward year, right? I kind of know what the backlog is as we head home for Christmas. So I think the big question of where we come out is how much, you know, juice from the new, new stuff. So obviously the baseline global fleet business has been kind of low single digits the last few quarters. We obviously have two kind of big upsides around this new product line and new channel, and then obviously this consumer piece, for example, like selling businesses parking. So I'd say it turns on that. To me, the question is how far out and how much are we going to invest basically in trying to goose some of these incremental things to try to move that number up faster. And remember, with the vehicle combo with Brazil, you're probably already at, you know, between international, Brazil, and the U.S., you're probably at seven to eight, so-called, high single digits before you take a breath. And so the real push is going to be how much new-new do we layer on top of that. But as you can tell from my conversation, that's what we're on, and that's what we're going to really try to push. It's the number one, two, and three assignments of this company is to take that big business and re-choose it and get it back to being fun and exciting and going somewhere so that we have three businesses that people like instead of two. So I want you to hear loud and clear that that's what we're on.

Understood. Thanks. And then, Tom, just a quick one for you. The corporate payment margins, it looks like we're up a little more than 400 basis points today. I think you alluded to potentially some synergies coming through in your prepared remarks. Anything specific to call out there? I don't know if there were some global reach expense synergies that came through, but that'd be helpful. Thank you.

Trevor, that's certainly a contributing factor in terms of the synergies that we're able to realize with global reach. We did a lot of heavy lifting over the spring and early summer to move onto one platform. We were able to eliminate some of the back office costs, technology costs. That was a significant contributor. And then just the positive operating leverage within the business. You just look at the structural dynamics of that business and how the 20% revenue growth against a relatively stable fixed cost base are just going to generate positive operating leverage and drive margins higher. So combination of synergies and structural components would be the things that contributed to that.

Thank you.

Thank you. And your last question comes from the line of Ken Soshocki from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening. Thanks for taking the question here. Ron, maybe one for you. I wanted to ask about the SPIN merge opportunity with a strategic partner. You've been CEO at FleetCorp for two-plus decades and built the business out over time. So how do you think about your day-to-day responsibilities in the scenario where there is a spin slash merger? And I guess where would your responsibilities fall under that new structure, which would be two separate entities? And then separately, are there specific assets within B2B that you would look to combine with, either by product, segment of the market, or geography? Or is the play really to find overlap with another business and take out the cost?

Yes, so I'd say, first off, we're not sure. We've been working at this, and we have a couple of attractive combinations, but I don't want to leave this call where people think, hey, it's a beta-completed bronze resting or something. So that would be point one. I'd say they're possible, but I don't want to handicap it beyond that. That's number one. Number two is it depends on the structures, again. So one of the structures that's kind of interesting is this idea of us spinning assets into a private entity and someone else. And in that case, it would almost look to me like a fleet core company where we have a minority investor, which we've had that world before. So I'm as busy thinking about that thing as I am today. If it went the other way and we were to basically RMT it into something else that was public, I'd probably sit on the board and have a plan in advance of doing that that we were clear kind of where the thing was going. So to your point, to take something that's super valuable, we and I have to be super convinced that it's going to go on a path that makes sense and it's going to get results that will warrant, you know, a premium. So we are... you know, spending a lot of time on those social issues and talking about how that would go. But my comment to you is I think I and others would be super involved certainly early on in whatever combination we went forward with. We're not going to just spin it and blow it off.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Ron. And then I guess just as my follow-up, some of your payment peers have called out headwinds in their cross-border businesses. Specifically, they're seeing more cross-border transactions being done in U.S. dollars rather than those payments being converted to local currencies. I guess, are you guys seeing any of those trends? And I guess, how much of a risk is that for the cross-border payments business within corporate payments?

Yeah, that's a good follow-up. I'd say not much. I mean, there's a little bit of it when, you know, FX volatility kind of, right, softens and kind of where the dollar was, whatever, a few weeks ago. But I'd say it's really on the margin. If you look at, again, what we're printing there, it's just the sheer volume growth. We're just adding just more clients and more spend. And I'd say we're generally pretty stable. You know, there may be a smidge, you know, softness to your point here and there. And then remember, for us, the diversity of that business, right? So we originate, I guess, about 80% of all the business and all the revenue outside of the United States, right? Think Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia. And so the geographic diversity and kind of the originating currencies also have a big impact. So it's a little bit of a hedge, right? One place is a little bit weaker, but then, you know, the counterpart is a little bit stronger. So I don't think we're immune, but I'd say we're not seeing much in the way it's slowed down.

Okay. Excellent. Thanks, Ron.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may all disconnect.