Corpay, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the Fleet Core Technologies, Inc. fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in 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 star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. I would now like to hand the call over to Jim Egglesetter, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 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. 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 on our website at fleetcore.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 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 productivity 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 also need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today 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. Now, 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 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 thanks for joining our Q4 2023 earnings call. Up front here, I'll plan to cover four subjects. First, provide my take on both Q4 and full year 2023 results. Second, I'll share our 2024 priorities and guidance. Third, give you a bit of an update on the status of our strategic review. And then lastly, highlight a few pretty exciting new products that we've recently launched. Okay, let me begin with our Q4 results, which frankly were a bit mixed. We reported revenue of $937 million, up 6%. Cash EPS of $444, up 10%. and EBITDA of approximately $500 million, up 11%. Q4 revenue did finish a bit weaker than we outlooked 90 days ago, but fortunately our earnings flow through was quite a bit better than expected. That was helped mainly by credit losses finishing at about half the level of last year. The revenue weakness in the quarter showed up in a few areas, First, gift cards. So we had some delays in gift card shipments that have been pushed here into Q1. In lodging, we had a pretty soft distressed passenger vertical in the quarter, mostly because airline cancellations were at a record low level. North America fleet late fees, pretty light. That, again, is a continuation of exiting a lot of micro accounts that we started about a year ago when we tightened credit terms. You know, again, fortunately, the late fee reduction was essentially washed away by the improvement in credit losses. And then the last year is our corporate payments or payables business with a channel partner business finishing even softer. than we had outlooked. Fortunately there, we think it's bottomed out. So these kind of weak spots, soft spots are either timing related, weather related, or have kind of reached the end, have kind of bottomed out as we head into our 2024 guide. So hopefully not surprising us again. The organic revenue growth in Q4, 7% overall, again, impacted by the soft spots I just called out. The vehicle payments organic revenue growth, 5% for the quarter. Corporate payments revenue growth, 15%, but 20% if you exclude the partner channel. Trends in Q4, also a bit mixed. Retention quite good, improved slightly to 92%. Sales grew 12% overall with a terrific performance in corporate payments. Sales there up over 40%. And what we call same-store sales finished 3% down. Again, we saw the weakness in the workforce lodging and the airline lodging business and a bit in the U.K., Okay, let me make the turn to our full year 2023 results, which reached record levels. 2023 revenue of $3.8 billion, up 10%. EBITDA of approximately $2 billion, up 13%. And cash EPS of $60.92, up 5%. Trends for full year 2023, quite good. Sales for the full year up 20% overall. And again, inside of that, corporate payment sales up about 50%. We did sell 100,000 new B2B clients in 2023. In terms of organic revenue growth, full year 10%. So that makes three consecutive years of 10% plus organic revenue growth. And again, retention stable at 92%. Additionally, we did advance a number of important strategic initiatives in the year. Progressed EV and our understanding of the relative economics of EV versus ICE. So promising results there. We did clean up our Russia and FTC issues. We did introduce this transformation idea for our fleet business, envisioning it really as a broader vehicle payments-related business. We did close a couple of important acquisitions, one in cross-border, which we fully have integrated, and one in parking, really to jumpstart our consumer vehicle payments initiative. So look, all in all, a pretty successful year. Okay, let me make the transition to our 2024 guidance and start out by outlining our major objectives for the year. So a few things. First, as always, to deliver financial performance that's consistent with our midterm objectives. Second, we hope to deepen our position in corporate payments through some new acquisitions in that space. Third, we hope to build out our vehicle a payments business with proof of successful cross-selling and accelerate revenue growth throughout the year. And then lastly, to succeed with some new product launches and confirm market acceptance for them. So on to our 2024 financial guide. So revenue at the midpoint of $4.8 billion. that's up 9% on a print basis or 11% excluding Russia. EBITDA of $2.2 billion, that's up 11% or 14% excluding Russia. And finally, cash EPS at the midpoint of 1940, up 15% print and up 18% excluding Russia. So let me just say that again, planning 24 profits, cash EPS growth of 18% this year, excluding Russia. We are expecting good earnings flow through to EPS. One, you know, revenue will grow faster throughout the year than expense, so that operating leverage will help. And we do expect fewer shares, better FX, and a slightly lower tax rate. In terms of revenue and organic growth, We're obviously helped by our Q4 exit rate and the sales from last year growing here into 2024. We are expecting higher sales levels here in 2024, which will add to revenue. And then we do have a number of cross-sell initiatives planned into our client base this year. So in the fleet business, selling business cards, EV, parking, breakdown services back into the fleet clients. And in Brazil, the toll business selling insurance, parking, fuel back into the toll base. Tom, in a bit, will provide some more specifics on the 2024 guide and how it rolls out across the year. We also plan to mark the next chapter of the company with the rebranding of Fleet Corps to Corpay, and that's scheduled for March. Okay, let me make the turn to our strategic review. So just as a reminder, we did initiate a formal strategic review of our portfolio last spring and initially focused on the question of whether separating our fleet business from our corporate payments business could unlock value for shareholders. We have run a pretty rigorous process over the last 11 months with a lot of help, particularly from Goldman Sachs. We fielded numerous inbounds, looked at lots of alternatives, and explored some combinations with Dan's partners. I got to say the review process was quite helpful for us in exploring really some new structures for the company and spotlighted the value creation potential of transitioning really our fleet business into a broader vehicle payments business that will serve both businesses and consumers. So that's a super high priority for us. So look, we're announcing really the conclusion today of the review process, at least for the time being. We've determined that keeping our fleet business and corporate payments together is the best way forward. Obviously, we remain open to reconsidering various options to unlock value down the road, but right now, squarely focused on repositioning the vehicle payments business. Okay, my last subject up front here is on new products. We've released four new products into the marketplace this year, each with really terrific potential. So first, what we call our Corp A1 business card, fuel card, and virtual card in one. That's targeted to fuel-based businesses where the solution includes a business card for the owner, fuel cards for the fuel drivers, and even replaces paper checks with virtual cards. That's all in one account and all in one UI, so pretty exciting. Second product we call the Comdata Connect Card. It's targeted to small trucking companies, so it connects the Comdata truck stop fuel discounts and reporting to the trucking company's existing business credit card. So trucking firms here would really get the best of both worlds. They continue to get the credit and rewards from their existing business card, but combine that with the fuel discounts and reporting of a truck stop card. Look, this also helps us in terms of the credit challenge with small trucking companies. So hopefully we can bring on lots of small trucking firms without the credit risk. Third up is a product that we call Corpay Complete. It's our newest corporate payments product targeted to mid-sized businesses. And again, this is really a platform build. So we've combined what we call walk-around solutions, business cards and fuel cards, really with a central kind of AP automation solution, again, packaged all in one platform, all in one mobile app. So really, we think kind of the modern way really for businesses to manage their all around business expenses and spend less. And lastly, in lodging, we have a new product called CLC Choice. So it's really a workforce lodging solution for employers who want really a more friendly and flexible employee travel solution. with the idea of being more choice for travelers. So in this case, travelers could choose virtually any hotel, any room type, and even keep rewards points from their favorite hotel brand. So we think the choice solution will complement, you know, really our current control solution and widen the market opportunity there. So look, we're super excited about these New products have been in the kitchen for quite a while and hopeful that this new set of products will accelerate revenue, you know, 1% to 2% over time. Okay, so look, in conclusion today, 2023, really a record year, record revenue, record earnings, organic revenue growth for the full year up 10%, sales super good up 20%, a stable retention at 92%, made some good moves to position the company better for the midterm, EV progress, and our new go-forward vehicle payment strategy. 2024, we're planning profits or cash EPS up 18%, excluding Russia, and that's on really an assumption of flat interest expense, launching a set of new products that we have high hopes for, and then beginning really the next chapter for the company as we move to rebrand the company to CorePay in March. 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 and the full year. Organic revenue growth was 7%, the same as the fourth quarter of last year. Revenue growth was slightly below our expectations due to pockets of softness, mostly in U.S. vehicle payments and lodging, while our corporate payments and international businesses continued to perform well. The revenue weakness was mostly offset by strong expense discipline, continued improvements in bad debt expense, and a lower tax rate, which delivered $4.44 per share in cash EPS. Within our guidance, an up 10% versus last year. Looking at the full year, organic revenue grew 10% and EBITDA increased 13%, which are both in line with our midterm targets. We also absorbed nearly $200 million of incremental interest expense during the year due to the rate hikes and still posted cash EPS growth of 5%. Normalizing for the higher interest expense, adjusted earnings would have grown 16% for the full year 2023. Now, turning to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our revenue growth, corporate payments revenue was up 15% during the quarter and increased 19% for the full year. For the quarter, our direct business grew 19% and was again led by growth in full AP. Our full suite of high quality payment solutions continues to sell extremely well, with sales up 27% this quarter as we sign up customers who are looking to modernize their AP operations. I'd note that the drag from lower partner channel volumes accelerated in the quarter, with channel revenue declining 31 percent. Excluding the partner channel, revenue grew 20 percent, and spend volumes increased 27 percent in the quarter, so quite strong on a core basis. We believe that partner channel volumes have bottomed, and volumes and revenue are expected to be flat in 2024. Cross-border revenue was up 21 percent, sales grew 51 percent, and recurring client transaction activity was robust. We've now fully lapped all the revenue synergies from the GRG acquisition in January 2023. More importantly, our best-in-class technology, service, and products allow us to have market-leading retention and client acquisition, which you can see in our results. We continue to make significant investments in this business through increased sales and marketing resources as well as new product capabilities. Over the last few years, we have transformed this business into becoming the largest non-bank provider of B2B FX payment solutions in the world. Turning to vehicle payments, recall this is the new segment that we introduced on our last earnings call. It reflects the combination of our fleet and Brazil businesses, along with our new consumer vehicle initiative. Consistent with our goal of creating a simpler company, We have now put all vehicle-related payment solutions in one segment that operates across North America, Brazil, and Europe, offering a full suite of vehicle-related solutions to both businesses and consumers. You'll note that we've defined the new segment's KPI as transactions, but given the different products that comprise the segment, we've provided transaction counts by product type, such as fleet, tags, and parking. We've also realigned our executive team to support this new segment with armando netto serving as the group president of north america and brazil and alan king as the group president over international fuel ev and parking vehicle payments organic revenue increased five percent during the quarter with particular strength in brazil and international fuel markets in the uk more than 30 percent of all new sales involve a non-fuel product namely ev or vehicle maintenance. Our EV strategy in the UK is clearly winning as our three-in-one product, fuel, on-road charging, and at-home charging, all in one app has more than doubled from a year ago. The results speak for themselves with both EV cards and EV revenue continuing to increase. In addition, we're having great success selling our at-home charging solution with a 30 percent attachment rate to all new sales. Our charging network also continues to expand, and we now offer charging at over 600,000 charge points in Europe. And by the end of March, we will have coverage of nearly 80% of the rapid chargers in the UK, including Tesla, which we signed in the fourth quarter. In Brazil, we ended the year with nearly 6,000 extended network locations, including 2,500 gas stations, 2,900 parking locations, 750 drive-thru restaurants, and 270 condos. Total tags were up 7% year-over-year to nearly $7 million, and approximately 37% of customer spend was from our BeyondToll network. Sales of insurance policies are up fourfold when we launched in Q4-22 to nearly $200,000 in Q4-23. So from $0 to $200,000 per quarter in five quarters and now total over 1 million policies. Our success in Brazil is a tangible proof point of our broader vehicle payments vision to leverage and anchor product used by a large customer base and to then add additional services via mobile app driving incremental revenue growth. We are leveraging our strong success in the UK to launch our consumer vehicles payment solution in the market. We have begun selling the parking network that we acquired in the third quarter via pay by phone to our business customers, and we're building the integrations to be able to offer to the over 2 million pay-by-phone consumer users in the U.K. access to our proprietary fuel, EV, insurance, toll, and maintenance networks. In the U.S., softness and small fleet and the impact from our shift away from micro clients continue to affect our sales and revenue results. Our digital and field sales efforts are improving as we continue to see growth in applications, approvals, and starts. As we mentioned last quarter, the shift to higher credit quality clients also impacted late fees, which were down 38% from Q4 2022. While the decline in late fees is a drag on our revenue growth, it has resulted in a similar decline in bad debt expense. So, essentially a wash. Lodging revenue was flat Q4 2022, and for the year, the business grew 12%. This quarter was affected by continued softness in our existing workforce customers, which appears to have now stabilized. Certain verticals within the business, like airline and insurance, can have quarterly revenue growth fluctuations driven by weather and natural disasters. Recall, in Q4 of last year, there were significant weather events and airline cancellations, which benefited the airline and the insurance verticals. By comparison, there were no major weather events in Q4 of this year. And in fact, according to the Department of Transportation, 2023 flight cancellations were the lowest in the decade. And in the fourth quarter, cancellations were down approximately 90% from Q4 22. We're experiencing similar results related to insurance claims, which were down approximately 20% in the quarter. Despite the recent soft quarters, we are confident that this business can return to low double digit growth over the coming quarters. We recently launched new product capabilities that will extend our customer experience and drive new sales. Additionally, we're excited to welcome Joff Romoff as the new group president of Lodging, replacing the retiring Ron Rogers. Joff has extensive hospitality and lodging experience that will be a strong asset to the business. In summary, we're proud of the performance we delivered in 2023. It clearly demonstrates the growth of our diversified business and the strength of our business model that generated over a billion and a quarter of free cash flow. Now, looking down the income statement. Q4 operating expenses of $513 million were flat versus Q4 of last year. Expenses from acquisitions, higher transaction and sales activities, and investments to drive future growth were offset by lower bad debt expense and the sale of our rush of business. Bad debt expense declined $19 million, or nearly 50 percent from last year to $22 million, or three basis points of spend. Most of the decline was in vehicle payments, which was down $17 million year-over-year, as we realized the benefit from our lower exposure to U.S. micro-clients. EBITDA margin in the quarter was 54.2 percent, a 220 basis point improvement from the fourth quarter of last 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 this quarter increased $18 million year over year, and the impact of higher interest rates resulted in an approximate 27-cent drag on Q4 adjusted EPS, partially offset by lower debt balances year over year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 23.3% versus 24.2% last year, the lower rate related to specific tax planning items. Now, turning to the balance sheet, we are entering 2024 with the balance sheet in excellent shape. We ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash, up $300 million from 90 days ago, and we had over $800 million available on our revolver. We have $5.4 billion outstanding on our credit facilities, and we had $1.4 billion borrowed under our securitization facility. As of year end, our leverage ratio was 2.4 times trailing 12-month EBITDA, which is at the lower end of our target range. In January, we upsized our Term Loan A and Revolver A credit facilities by $600 million, with no rate concessions and no change in the maturity. This added capital will provide incremental capacity and flexibility for both deals and share buybacks in 2024, which I'll elaborate on in a few minutes. Our capital allocation in 2023 was once again balanced as we deployed $1.6 billion. In the quarter, we repurchased roughly 600,000 shares at an average price of $254 per share, or $143 million. For the year, we repurchased 2.6 million shares for $690 million. We spent $545 million on acquisitions during the year, improving our position in EV, the consumer vehicle payment space, and cross-border. We used the remaining excess cash flows for debt amortization and reducing our revolver balance. As I previously mentioned, our 2024 capital allocation plan is supported by our significant cash and liquidity position. We have $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash and increased our capacity under our revolver by $600 million. and we expect to generate $1.4 billion in free cash flow during 2024. Our first priority remains M&A, and the M&A pipeline is robust. We'll look to acquire businesses that deepen our position in our three core operating segments. We are also allocating capital for share buybacks during 2024. In January, the Board increased our repurchase authorization by $1 billion. We now have over $1.6 billion authorized for share repurchases. We expect to repurchase $800 million of shares throughout the year. We plan to purchase these shares through the open market and will establish a 10b-5-1 plan later this month. Any residual cash flows from earnings will be used to reduce our revolver or build our cash position. Generating so much cash is a high-class problem, and we plan to leverage this strength to systematically support our EPS growth through M&A and buybacks in 2024. Now, let me share some thoughts on our 2024 full year and Q1 outlook. From an economic perspective, we are not assuming a recession nor meaningful economic improvement in overall business activity. Our forecast for the year is based on the consensus economic outlook in our markets, which generally calls for modest economic growth and lower interest rates in the second half of the year. We expect fuel prices to be a headwind in the first quarter, and for the full year, we're anticipating U.S. fuel prices to average $3.65 per gallon, which is a blend of diesel and unleaded. In 2024, we expect cash EPS to grow between 14 and 16%, which is inclusive of the planned buybacks I mentioned previously. Revenue growth is projected to be between 8 and 10%, and EBITDA is expected to increase 10 to 12%, with margin expanding to approximately 54%. Keep in mind, these growth rates are inclusive of our rush of business through mid-August of last year. Excluding Russia, cash EPS is growing 17 to 19 percent, revenue is up 10 to 12 percent, and EBITDA is increasing 13 to 15 percent, all slightly above our mid-term growth targets. We've provided these details in our earnings supplement on page 20. Net interest expense is projected to be between $340 and $370 million, which includes the replacement of a $500 million interest rate swap that matured in December. Roughly 80 percent of our credit facility is now fixed utilizing swaps, and the blended swap rate is 4.1 percent. Also recall that our securitization is a variable rate facility. And finally, our tax rate is expected to be between 25 and 26 percent. From a segment perspective, we expect the following organic revenue growth rates. Vehicle payments in the mid-single digits, corporate payments approximately 20 percent, lodging payments in the high single digits. Related to the quarters, we expect revenue growth in the first half of the year to be below our full-year average due to the continued pockets of softness, a tough comp that includes Russia, as well as a challenging operating environment, including lower fuel prices. We expect revenue growth to accelerate in the back half of the year as the economic outlook becomes clear, we lap the divestiture of Russia, and we realize the benefits of our growth initiatives and new sales. For the first quarter, we're expecting revenue to grow between 3% and 5%, and cash EPS to increase between 6 and 8 percent, which also reflects higher interest rates. Normalizing for Russia, revenue and cash EPS growth at the midpoint would be 7 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The rest of our assumptions can be found in our press release and supplement. Before completing my prepared remarks, I would like to extend our gratitude to our more than 10,000 employees around the world who helped us deliver such a great year and who will be the driving force to even greater heights throughout 2024. Thank you for your interest in our company. And now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, you may press star then 2. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Peter Christensen with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening. Two questions for you, Ron. Just curious, you know, you perform pretty well on the credit loss side. How are you thinking about, at least tactically, about extending credit in 2024 versus last year, particularly after improving the mix of your mid-market clients?

Hey, good question. I'd say looser. So the model that we've used has gotten a bit better over the last 12 months. And I think I called out, you know, credit loss is coming in literally about half of the prior year. So I'd say we're going to kind of open the spigot, you know, carefully. And then second, again, that we're pointing, you know, to larger prospects, which generally have better credit. So my guess is we have the full-year plan just a smidge lower than full-year 23, but it should help on the revenue side of it.

That's helpful. And then, Ron, I guess now exiting the strategic review, how should we think about at least your acquisition M&A priorities going forward? Any particular areas, horizontal, vertical? Just want to get your fresh sense on fleet core, soon-to-be core pays, M&A priorities going forward.

Yep, another good question. Glad to be back at kind of the basic – you know, buying companies. So the primary focus is on corporate payments. So we've got a pipeline of a couple interesting things in that space. And then the one other area that we're kind of on is this consumer capability, this idea, again, of getting a big block of consumers that we can market, you know, all of our networks to. So I would say those would be the two short-term things to look for.

Great. Thank you, Ron. Very helpful.

Yeah, always good to talk to you.

The next question comes from Ramsey El-Asal from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, Ron and Tom. Thank you for taking my question this evening. I wanted to ask about some of the Q4 headwinds that you called out and just maybe ask you to give us a little more color on what was going on and the degree to which you're confident that they'll represent sort of Transient headwinds rather than more permanent sort of impacts.

I know you implied that as we get deeper into 24 that you could see some improvement But I'm just curious if you give us a little more color on what sort of happened in the quarter Yeah, I mean in a nutshell Ramsey I call it the story of the quarter same store sales So I call them, you know, it's minus 3% and if you went back to our prior transcripts q4 22 would have been plus 2 and So in that 12-month period, it basically went from plus two to minus three. So obviously, that's five points of organic growth. So that's the whole story. Retention was good. Sales were good. Expense controls, credit below the line. Everything effectively in Q4 through my lenses was kind of in line sans that one call-out. I tried to kind of go through it. They obviously were surprising to me since I looked through the guide pretty carefully. Really, it's just two or three pockets that are not new. If you go back and look at what we communicated in 23, we would have talked about, you know, lodging having some softness, you know, in the base, the partner channel and payables, you know, having some softness, the pivot from micro accounts, you know, which shed a bunch of late fees, you know, unfortunately credit losses. And so basically I'd say those three things that I called out were just heavier, you know, weightier on the downside. Say we're looking at kind of one to 2% minus same store and it came in at three. And so that's really the story of the quarter. And so the good news, if there is any, is in all three of those cases, It feels like in the data showing, even through January, it looks like we've hit the bottom. So the thought process that we have is that we climb out of the same store sales, almost the reverse pattern. So minus three, minus two, basically getting that thing back to positive because that book of business basically flatlines into 24. So that's basically the perspective on it. So it's really no new things. It's things that we have seen that basically were a bit heavier in the quarter than we all looked.

Okay. A follow-up from me. I was wondering if you could kind of comment on the closure of the strategic alternatives process and just kind of revisit what, you know, kind of a postmortem in a sense. Why was it so difficult to find the strategic alternatives to execute on? Was it lack of attractive partners? Was it evaluation? you know, hang up, was it rates, was, you know, where was the friction in the process that kind of prevented you guys from, you know, executing on that sort of monetization strategy?

Well, look, it's a super complicated question, right, which is why we spent 11 months on it, so I don't want to be too quick with an answer here. But, look, the main thing against just a straight spin co, I think we said, was uncertainty of the trading range of remain co. It wasn't so much, hey, we've got a great corporate payments business. It was really, you know, what's the multiple on Remainco? So I think, you know, that caused us to pivot into this dance partner. If we were going to separate things, to do something that would have scale and synergies. And so the short answer to that is we engaged, you know, with three or four different partners, and it's a combination of either the synergies didn't pan out to be, you know, as good as we thought, or we couldn't agree, you know, relative valuation, or in one case maybe social issues around it. So these kinds of combinations, as you guys know, are always, you know, quite difficult. But I did say it seriously. We've learned a lot. We've looked at a lot of structures. You know, we've met a bunch of people. And so we will continue to look. The focus now is back on buying things in our lane and obviously rebuilding this vehicle business some. but we are open, you know, a different day to re-looking at it again. So kind of closed for now, but not forever.

Got it. Thank you so much.

The next question comes from Tenjin Wong with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much. Good afternoon. I was just thinking on the new product side that you're going, that you laid out here to enhance growth. I think you mentioned around one to two points over time. How quickly do you think that can convert into in your sales? Do you have the, you know, the sales engine humming already? Just curious where you are with that.

Yeah. Hey, good to hear your voice. So, I mean, the headline of why I call this out is, um, you know, over the last two or three years, we've done a fair amount of what I term capability acquisitions and, and really behind the scenes, those have been some tech capability acquisitions, right? The core pay one, We bought an AP platform, a software platform called a Cruelify at the front end. We bought a European workforce business with a brand-new platform. And so the tech that we got allowed us to spin up kind of some, what I call them internally, kind of next-gen products that I described at the top. And so we're outselling them now. We've got a pretty robust sales plan for them. So I would say the convert would be next year – The key thing for us to report this year to you is sales of those products. And then obviously next year as those roll into, you know, in-year revenue, basically we'd expect the acceleration. So the key is, you know, what's the reception? You know, does the market like these three or four things that we're putting in front of them?

Got it. Got it. And then just my follow-up maybe for you again, Ron, just thinking about visibility into revenue growth. in 24 versus prior years. It feels like there's a little bit more reliance on new products and initiatives. I know cross-sale is something you've always done. Macro is always what it is, but how would you consider the visibility this year versus recent years?

Yeah, that's not a super good question.

I'd say some, like most things, some things stay the same and some things are different. So the most important thing for us, as you know, is sales, which is why I call out The growth rate, and I think I called out for the full year last year, 20. That's our target again for 2024, obviously off of a bigger base. So the first thing is we've had success selling and expect the same here in 24. Two is the retention is getting a bit better. And as we flush those micro accounts last year, structurally that should help retention. So you take those two things, those underpin, as you know, the basic, right, New business versus losses is the key to a recurring business. So the wild card, the bet here has been the softness thing, which again, entered the year in the plus column and then ended the year in the minus column. So that thing turning or getting tension back to flat I think is the most important in the acceleration. But then on top of that, we've got some super new pricing ideas around the technology. That's a new dynamic pricing, for example, where we could price rooms and lodging different for someone walking into a hotel than someone who pre-books three weeks ago instead of a platform that didn't let us differentiate. We've got a few new partners that we've signed that we haven't announced that will come on. And then to your point, we've got a big plan around cross-sell, adding a Bucs you know, for vehicle insurance every time people park if they want it to basically, you know, allay the fear of something happening to their car when they park. So it's a pretty balanced. I'd say it's not super different than the past, but I would say that the new products and some of the cross-sells should be a little more supportive than, you know, historically.

Got it. No, that's helpful. And I think getting a strategic view out of the way also might help with the focus, too, I would think. But I appreciate the update, Ron.

The next question comes from Darren Peller with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks. Ron, maybe just go back to – it's a bit of a follow-up to Tingen's question just now, but when we think of the vehicle segment and the, you know, aspirations for being mid-single – I'm sorry, double-digit, low double-digit growth from what we're now guiding to a mid-single-digit year – maybe just talk a little bit about the initiatives that you feel are going to really drive that strength. And it does look like you're having a lot of success, obviously, now with whether it's EV or obviously in Brazil. So I'm assuming it's a combination of all those factors, but any more color on that? And just a quick follow-up would also be fourth quarter. I know you had some headwinds on certain variables, like you mentioned on the call, you know, credit and it just seems like you would have a better growth in 24 than fourth quarter, just as some of those abate, but yet you're guiding a similar rate of growth for vehicles. So just a little more color on that.

So say the last part, Dan, before you go, I'm guiding to one in 24?

Yeah, for vehicle segment, mid-single-digit growth, I would have thought it'd be a little bit better comparing it to a fourth quarter, which I know has some headwinds in it.

Yeah. So let me take that last part and then my way back to the beginning of your question. So yes, if you looked inside our quarterly role, that thing would go from kind of low, mid-single digit up to 10%. So the internal plan we have is exactly what you said for the vehicle organic load rate to accelerate. So the two drivers of that, beyond the normal things of retention, which should get better, again, structurally because we've kicked out the micro accounts, and obviously sales being good, is the new products that I just talked about, right, some extensions in both the core fuel car business and in the trucking business. In your point, the EV thing working. But the second one is this consumer, you know, it's just all incremental. So to the extent that we can take, you know, 2 million people in the UK and another couple million people, which we'll talk about soon, in Brazil, and add on three or four services that we already have, it's just every dollar there is incremental and pretty profitable. So those are really the two drivers. The base, you know, same store sales, retention, and new sales, which we have a good handle on, and then a couple of new things are the new products and the consumers. So, look, we're bullish on it. Obviously, we've had a pivot in this vehicle thing and been, you know, a bit distracted, you know, working on this restructuring. But I think, you know, where we're headed now is super clear.

And, Darren, one thing I'd add before I run to your other question about longer-term vehicles, keep in mind the first half of last year had the elevated late fees from the S&B micro... clients that we still have on the platform. So we don't start laughing that until you get into late Q2.

So that creates a little bit of a grow over challenge when you look at it on an annual basis. And it's one of the reasons, Darren, when someone sent me some text of, hey, the revenue looks a little light. And we've effectively taken $20 million, $30 million of late fee revenue out and $20 million, $30 million of credit losses out. It's been basically kind of a one-for-one swap, which people out there may not like, but I like. I like the rateability of having lower credit losses. And so to Tom's point, that portfolio shift kind of moved both revenue and expense.

That's really helpful. I don't know if there's time for a quick follow-up. Just very quickly on core pay, I just want to understand a little bit more on the channel business bottoming out here. Maybe you can explain a little more of what the dynamic is and the underlying drivers, if it's around one of the partners, if that's finished, or it's virtual card adoption or anything else, guys. Thanks again.

Let me take that one. Another good question. If you think about what we call a channel business, it's some third party who has customers where we provide, you know, virtual card processing. And the basic trend, which started two years ago, is those partners effectively moving from an exclusive relationship with us to non-exclusive. So I, Ron, I used to use you for 100% of my processing. Someone told me it was a good idea to have two providers, so over time I'm going to kind of give you half the business or I'm going to try to haircut your rate. So effectively over the last two years, Darren, we've gone from having, you know, call it 15 really important partners that we were exclusive with to having 15 partners we're not exclusive with. So the good news on this one is we have the contracts now that for 24 that have us flat with 23. So our print for that business, which, you know, moved its way down during the course of 23, we're outlooking effectively flat revenue in that business across into 24. So instead of every quarter saying, oh, the corporate payments business was great, but, hey, the channel business was crummy, hopefully you won't hear me say that at 24. The answer will be it'll be flat.

Okay. All right. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from Nate Sensen with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. So Darren's actually leads right into what I wanted to ask on corporate payments. First off, very nice to hear about the outlook for 20% growth in 2024. I wanted to ask, because in the past you've talked about sort of a stickiness and resilience that you see with regards to suppliers continuing to accept virtual card payments, you know, despite the challenging macro. So maybe can you give us an update on how that sort of resilience has trended since we last spoke three months ago. Anything changing with the decision process with your suppliers or any update there would be great.

Hey, it's Ron. I'd say not much change. So I think we said it before that acceptance or non-acceptance of a virtual card turns really more on the profile of merchants. You know, merchants that have obviously higher margins, for example, are more accepting or merchants more in need of cash flow because they're paid sooner. So I'd say there's really nothing super new. Kind of the opt-out rate, if you will, has been pretty steady. And, again, who takes the cards really function to kind of who the merchant is. So nothing new. And we've actually seen card penetration levels tick up a little bit.

So at the end of the day, it kind of comes down to the amount of spend that's on a card. And that's moved up as you look at it over a quarterly trend.

That's great to hear about the penetration levels. And so I know there's been a lot of talk about new products throughout the call. One I kind of wanted to dig deeper on was the new Corpay Complete product. So I know there was a press release that came out at the end of January. So maybe you can talk about the go-to-market motion there where you're seeing the sort of synergy potentials between the full AP offering, cross-border, et cetera, within that core pay complete. Thanks.

Yeah, that's another good question.

I mean, simplistically, Nate, we used to do knock-knock on a mid-sized company, high CFO, and, hey, we've got some great expense management products here. And mostly the pitch was kind of menu-based or a la carte. You know, hey, looks like you've got some drivers. We've got fuel cards. Looks like you need a better control business card given some of the expenses that are coming in or one that's got automated expense reimbursement. So historically, that's how we presented things. the idea was to be able to have kind of a wrap or rebate or look at the spend of the whole company. So knock high CFO, you've got walk-around spend, you've got AP spend. I could combine all of that and give you 100 basis points back, half a million a month back, and make your life easier. How does that sound? So we finally have a platform where all those things, the walk-around stuff, and the AP automation stuff is literally brought together, you know, call it in terms of one report, one credit underwriting system and stuff. And so that's the idea that we could present now to a company effectively a package deal, if you will, instead of an a la carte deal. So we've just literally been underway, call it just what you said, call it a month or so with the first set of leads in it. But clearly it's going to be the future, my hope is, Even if we sell someone a la carte the first day that they're on the railroad, you know, it's easier to go back. They've learned how to use the UI. They know us. We have an account. We credit, you know, underwritten them and stuff. And so we think it certainly lends to, you know, better add-on sales over time.

Great to hear, and we'll definitely be tracking progress there. Thanks.

The next question comes from Sanjay Sakrani with KBW. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good evening. Sorry, I hopped on a little bit late. I apologize if you've answered these questions, but just on the macro assumptions that you guys are using for the year, what kind of macro are you guys assuming sort of the beginning and ending of the year?

Sure. Hey, Sanjay. It's Tom. So I'm thinking big picture macro. Let's start there, and then we can talk a little bit in terms of the more detailed macro as it relates to specific to our company. But big picture macro, we're expecting an economic outlook to stay positive you know, relatively consistent, completely in line with the broad economic guide when you look at our three major markets of Brazil, US, and UK. We expect in all of those markets to see a relatively stable, maybe slightly improving economy as rate cuts in those various markets occur, but we're not expecting any kind of recession, and certainly we're not expecting, you know, a GDP kind of gangbuster type year. With respect to the more narrow macro that affects fleet core, kind of think about it in terms of a couple of categories. First, fuel. Fuel price, average fuel price, diesel and unleaded combined at 365. That's a little below where we are today. If you just kind of look at where we are through 2024, we're probably closer to a blended rate of around 340. So that's one of the call-outs that we had in terms of the Q1 growth challenge. We're not prognosticators of oil and the pull through to fuel. We just look at EIA and other providers of those things. That was the consensus view of how the year would play out. I think as demand increases from a seasonal perspective, you would see that increase. Spread is generally consistent with last year. That's really hard to predict. It's more based on volatility of fuel price, not just FX, a little bit of a tailwind. If the dollar and rate cuts continue, if the projection is correct and the dollar doesn't strengthen, obviously it had a little bit of strength in there in the last week or so, but longer term we expect the dollar to be a little weaker, and so that will help the FX side of our business. And so we think overall that will be a slight tailwind to us. Rates, generally kind of neutral to better. We have modeled out the rate curve based on the latest rate curve out there, so we think rates will be a little bit better. Certainly interest expense, lapping the headwind from this year in terms of the grow over from 22 will be a significant benefit to us. And then it's finally taxes we think will be generally consistent with the full year tax rate in 2023. So overall, we characterize the macro as kind of neutral from a macro perspective, big macro perspective, and kind of a slight benefit to us with respect to things that affect us directly.

Hey, Sanjay, it's Ron.

I got to jump in because I'm clearly the optimist here playing off of Tom. But I'd say it's all, it's sun's shiny days, right? Living through 2023 with a $200 million interest expense boat anchor and sitting here, you know, at the beginning of the year with happy FX and declining interest rates. It feels super great to get earnings print back to 15% or 18% that we can print instead of whatever we printed last year. So I would say that it's setting up at this moment to be super positive for us, super happy with it.

Yeah, I'll keep my fingers crossed. Just a follow-up. Ron, you mentioned sort of the cross-sell initiatives in your prepared remarks. How much of that can happen over 2024? Is there anything baked in? And then, you know, When can we actually get the contribution in a significant way?

Yeah, I mean, it's happening in different places. I think we've called out before it's probably 20% of the Brazil sales now in the company are taking add-on products there and selling them back to the core base. We're underway with that, as I said, with the parking app because we've got millions of consumers. We're back. reselling something back into the base of corporate payments, back into the fuel card base. So it's clearly in our sales plan. I'd say it's a probably relatively significant number as we get through the year in terms of what we're expecting there. So it's been a core part of the idea of we've got, as you know, 800,000 business clients, and some number of them are pretty big. And so having more things to offer them has always been part of the idea. So I think it's meaningful this year.

The next question comes from Sherit Kumar with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I was looking at slide 37, and I can see that the corporate payments take rate has increased in 2023. So I just wanted to get some context as to what's the pricing power over here, and can we expect the same trajectory? I think that's the function of the adjustments. that you have done by the segments. So just to get some insights on that.

Shree, do you want your page number again? You said 27?

Oh, 37.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, so a lot of that has to just do with the channel mix. So as Ron mentioned earlier in terms of the way the amount of take rate we have on channel versus the direct business, As we saw the channel volume fluctuate in the quarter, that's what's causing the fluctuation in the take rate related to corporate payments.

Got it. Thank you. And my follow-up is on the margins. We see that the margins have been grinding higher across all the segments, and especially within the vehicle payments and corporate payments. So just to get a sense as to, you know, what could be the biggest driver in margins in 2024, like which... segment do you expect to be a meaningful contributor?

Yeah, I don't think it's kind of disproportionate one way or another. Just to kind of round it out, just to summarize, for the year we were at 53%. We were exiting around 54%, and we've guided for the full year 2024 to be at 54%. I'm probably exiting a little bit higher than that, as you would expect. And so it's not really one, there's not a lot of change there. You're talking about, give or take, 100, 150 basis points. Secondly, I think it's more of the structure of the business that's driving the margin, not necessarily something that we're doing necessarily inside the business to modify the existing business model and the structure. Just as we grow at the levels at which each of the businesses are growing from a revenue and sales perspective and the amount of fixed cost, you're just going to get this natural operating leverage benefit from margin where you'll see that rotate up. At the same time, we also want to continue to invest. Credit, too. Yeah, fair point. Yeah, credit is coming down a little bit, 23 to 24. It would also help the margin. But the other thing just from the standpoint of just investment, we continue to make significant investments in the company, particularly around sales and marketing. And so we are mindful in terms of the amount of spend that we're putting back into the company to make sure that the sales engines can continue to generate the kind of growth levels that we've historically generated.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

The next question comes from Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Thanks for taking the question. I know you give the sample of the UK or unit economics of your EV business, but can you just talk broadly about that, how that's evolved over time and your confidence going forward in that?

Yeah. Hey, Chris, it's Ron. So look, I, I preface it with, you know, it's still early days. I guess we've been running this analysis for what, eight quarters or something and have three or 400, you know, accounts in it. And so, um, look, we know a fair amount. We have real customers that are paying real bills and paying us more. I'd say to you that conceptually the reason that I think we can get paid the same or more, just to me simplistically, is there's just more merchants. So in the fuel business, let's say in the U.K., there's 9,000 gas stations. Well, we have a million drivers there. So someday, when every guy or gal has an EV, there's going to be a million incremental charge points. There's way more than 9,000 public charging points. And so the ability, again, to to help a company make the transition from some old-fashioned gas stations to some public charging to the million at home, bring that all together and keep it simple, is useful. And the scope of what they pay for charging and fuel, our fees are peanuts. And so it feels to me like we know what we're doing. And more importantly, we have products that they like. I think it doubled, Tom, you know, year over year. And so I feel better about we've got the right solution, clients like it, and clients are paying for it. And the math shows you they're paying more now than the old-fashioned thing. So I'd say stop ringing the frigging fire alarm. It would be my comment to people. Hey, there's a lot of time in front of us, but I would not be super afraid, you know, sitting here today.

Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

The next question is from Trevor Williams with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks a lot. I want to ask on lodging, any more detail you can give on some of the different components within this segment? It sounds like most of the incremental weakness was on the airline side, but any more color on the other pieces, workforce, managed services, insurance, just how those did, especially relative to Q3, would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure, hey, Trevor, it's Tom. So the lodging business, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, it did experience a softness. Where our biggest surprise was for the quarter was really more on the airline and the insurance piece. We actually saw the workforce piece come in about where we had anticipated. And a lot of the expected growth that we had forecast in the fourth quarter was from what we've seen historically with the level of flight cancellations related to our distress product, where you typically would see a seasonal uptick. There's lots of people in the air with holidays and things like that, and that just didn't come to fruition. Similarly, on the insurance side, we saw the decline in overall insurance. So the decline quarter over quarter in lodging was really more directed towards those two businesses where those types of episodic type things that occur in the fourth quarter just didn't materialize. Workforce, you know, we continue to see, you know, a little bit of softness there, but as Ron had indicated, we feel like that has lost out and expect that to, you know, move forward based on new sales and the introduction of some of the new products.

Okay. No, that's helpful. Thanks. And then just to put a finer point on the the assumptions for the macro neutral or the organic guide. In terms of cadence, is the expectation that growth will accelerate progressively over the course of the year? So like you were saying with vehicle where Q1 low point, 4Q exit rate for 24 should be the high point of organic growth for the year or anything else to call out? Thanks.

Yeah, Trevor, let me take that and then Tom can add to it. So, I mean, conceptually, the main reason the same store sales so if you think about math right of how to get to get to ten percent right we lose business right eight percent and we make sales and then we have the same store sales. And so the bet that we have, which we're seeing in the trends, is that the same store that was plus two four quarters ago and was minus three this past quarter will head back to flat. And if that does, obviously in that example, it lifts the organic thing by three points. So that's A. B, we think the retention, again, will likely tick up because of this microflush. When you have more bigger accounts, you structurally just have better retention. And then third, our corporate payments business is growing faster, and it has higher retention rates than our fuel card business. So those two things, as we model it, will help the back half. And then hopefully the set of new products and the cross-sell stuff, which we're pouring out now, that will start to build. Those add-ons will start to build in the back half. So that's what makes up the curve as we run through the year.

Got it. Thank you.

The next question is from David Koning with Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Just a couple of things. I guess on the corporate line, you called out the yield mix improvement, but corporate volumes were down about 15% sequentially. It must have been low yielding volumes that fell off. But what is the mix or what was the fall off in volumes from?

Yeah, it's just that channel thing that I said before. I mean, That literally was the point of our same store sales reduction. We would have been two if that business was flat. So, again, it's just a big partner that gives us lots of volume and no money, goes, dates around, and goes non-exclusive. And so, hey, we lose a little bit of revenue and we lose, you know, a lot of volume.

But the take rate goes up because, obviously, that's a lot of low-margin business that we weren't getting into. We also noted that excluding channel, the spend level was north of 25%.

So it's really a channel story that's driving both the volume and the take rate noise that you may be seeing.

But again, just to, you said put a finer point on the thing. I want to make sure people have heard that We have the business now contracted, right, for 24, so that helps us relay to you guys that we hit the bottom there because when I look at what's effectively contracted inside of the minimums we have, we're kind of done with that dating around. There's no more dating. If you date one or two people, you can't have any more of that. That's where it is. So if there's any good news, that's the good news here.

They kind of belt and suspended it with also some minimums as well so that we also get some protection that while we're under contract,

a minimum perspective too gotcha thanks and just a quick follow-up bad debt expense you called it out i mean it's lowest 22 million dollars lowest in eight quarters or so is your 2024 guidance for that to remain low and if so is anything related to reversals like is it unsustainably low in 2024 or just normalized no i mean i'd say it's fairly normalized obviously it's going to fluctuate

from a dollar perspective, as the business grows, you know, we think of it more in terms of basis points of spend or percentage of revenue, because as the business grows, you'd expect the bad debt dollar amount to grow, but not necessarily that rate to necessarily grow. So I think we'll continue to see good performance in 2024. We have plus the micro client that's Ron said we've tuned some of our models. We've gotten to a point where I think we've learned a lot over the last, call it, six quarters, and I think we'll be in a position where we can be a bit more opportunistic in terms of how we manage credit.

Thanks, guys. Just to add to the point, it helps the flow through into earnings, although it looks like Revenue is light when you take those late fees out because you're taking out the credit loss expense. Basically, you have decent flow-through down to EPS. So that's one of the reasons that the profit flow-through remained pretty good.

Yep. Great. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. It's Michael Infante on for James. Thanks for taking our question. Just one quick one for me. On the buyback, anything that we should be mindful of just in terms of cadence there? Do you think it'll be fairly evenly distributed based on seasonal free cash flow generation, or will it be weighted to any particular quarter? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Michael. It's Tom. I think we're going to be mindful in terms of market conditions, and we like where the stock price is. As I mentioned, we're flush with liquidity both on the balance sheet and then When we upsize the revolver, we have another $600 million of liquidity. Obviously, we want to use some of that liquidity for M&A, but you add it all up, we have probably up to $2.5, $3 billion worth of cash that we want to put to work, and we want to put it to work as quickly as possible. I think the timing is just going to be predicated on the market, the amount of float in the stock, and those types of things, but I think we will be looking to be in the market over the course of this quarter and then we'll see how market conditions are as the year plays out.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session as well as the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line. I'm sorry.

you you you Thank you. Thank you.

Hello and welcome to the Fleet Corps Technologies, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in 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 star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. I would now like to hand the call over to Jim Egglesetter, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 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. 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 on our website at fleacore.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 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 productivity 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 also need to remind everyone that part of our discussions today 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. Now, 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 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 thanks for joining our Q4 2023 earnings call. Up front here, I'll plan to cover four subjects. First, provide my take on both Q4 and full year 2023 results. Second, I'll share our 2024 priorities and guidance. Third, give you a bit of an update on the status of our strategic review. And then lastly, highlight a few pretty exciting new products that we've recently launched. Okay, let me begin with our Q4 results, which frankly were a bit mixed. We reported revenue of $937 million, up 6%. Cash EPS of $444, up 10%. and EBITDA of approximately $500 million, up 11%. Q4 revenue did finish a bit weaker than we outlooked 90 days ago, but fortunately our earnings flow through was quite a bit better than expected. That was helped mainly by credit losses finishing at about half the level of last year. The revenue weakness in the quarter showed up in a few areas, First, gift cards. So we had some delays in gift card shipments that have been pushed here into Q1. In lodging, we had a pretty soft, distressed passenger vertical in the quarter, mostly because airline cancellations were at a record low level. North America fleet late fees, pretty light. That, again, is a continuation of exiting a lot of micro accounts that we started about a year ago when we tightened credit terms. You know, again, fortunately, the late fee reduction was essentially washed away by the improvement in credit losses. And then the last year is our corporate payments or payables business with a channel partner business finishing even softer. than we had outlooked, fortunately there, we think it's bottomed out. So these kind of weak spots, soft spots are either timing related, weather related, or have kind of reached the end, have kind of bottomed out as we head into our 2024 guide. So hopefully not surprising us again. The organic revenue growth in Q4, 7% overall. again, impacted by these soft spots I just called out. The vehicle payments organic revenue growth, 5% for the quarter. Corporate payments revenue growth, 15%, but 20% if you exclude the partner channel. Trends in Q4, also a bit mixed. Retention, quite good, improved slightly to 92%. Sales grew 12% overall with a terrific performance in corporate payments. Sales there up over 40%. And what we call same-store sales finished 3% down. Again, we saw the weakness in the workforce lodging and the airline lodging business and a bit in the UK. Okay, let me make the turn... to our full year 2023 results, which reached record levels. 2023 revenue of $3.8 billion, up 10%. EBITDA of approximately $2 billion, up 13%. And cash EPS of $60.92, up 5%. Trends for full year 2023, quite good. Sales for the full year up 20% overall. And again, inside of that, corporate payment sales up about 50%. We did sell 100,000 new B2B clients in 2023. In terms of organic revenue growth, full year 10%. So that makes three consecutive years of 10% plus organic revenue growth. And again, retention stable at 92%. Additionally, we did advance a number of important strategic initiatives in the year. Progressed EV and our understanding of the relative economics of EV versus ICE. So promising results there. We did clean up our Russia and FTC issues. We did introduce this transformation idea for our fleet business, envisioning it really as a broader vehicle payments-related business. We did close a couple of important acquisitions, one in cross-border, which we fully have integrated, and one in parking, really to jumpstart our consumer vehicle payments initiative. So look, all in all, a pretty successful year. Okay, let me make the transition to our 2024 guidance and start out by outlining our major objectives for the year. So a few things. First, as always, to deliver financial performance that's consistent with our midterm objectives. Second, we hope to deepen our position in corporate payments through some new acquisitions in that space. Third, we hope to build out our vehicle a payments business with proof of successful cross-selling and accelerate revenue growth throughout the year. And then lastly, to succeed with some new product launches and confirm market acceptance for them. So on to our 2024 financial guide. So revenue at the midpoint of $4.8 billion. that's up 9% on a print basis or 11% excluding Russia. EBITDA of $2.2 billion, that's up 11% or 14% excluding Russia. And finally, cash EPS at the midpoint of 1940, up 15% print and up 18% excluding Russia. So let me just say that again, planning 24 profits, cash EPS growth of 18% this year, excluding Russia. We are expecting good earnings flow through to EPS. One, you know, revenue will grow faster throughout the year than expense, so that operating leverage will help. And we do expect fewer shares, better FX, and a slightly lower tax rate. In terms of revenue and organic growth, We're obviously helped by our Q4 exit rate and the sales from last year growing here into 2024. We are expecting higher sales levels here in 2024, which will add to revenue. And then we do have a number of cross-sell initiatives planned into our client base this year. So in the fleet business, selling business cards, EV, parking, breakdown services back into the fleet clients. And in Brazil, the toll business selling insurance, parking, fuel back into the toll base. Tom, in a bit, will provide some more specifics on the 2024 guide and how it rolls out across the year. We also plan to mark the next chapter of the company with the rebranding of Fleet Corps to Corpay, and that's scheduled for March. Okay, let me make the turn to our strategic review. So just as a reminder, we did initiate a formal strategic review of our portfolio last spring and initially focused on the question of whether separating our fleet business from our corporate payments business could unlock value for shareholders. We have run a pretty rigorous process over the last 11 months with a lot of help, particularly from Goldman Sachs. We fielded numerous inbounds, looked at lots of alternatives, and explored some combinations with Dan's partners. I got to say the review process was quite helpful for us in exploring really some new structures for the company and spotlighted the value creation potential of transitioning really our fleet business into a broader vehicle payments business that will serve both businesses and consumers. So that's a super high priority for us. So look, we're announcing really the conclusion today of the review process, at least for the time being, we've determined that keeping our fleet business and corporate payments together is the best way forward. Obviously, we remain open to reconsidering various options to unlock value down the road, but right now, squarely focused on repositioning the vehicle payments business. Okay, my last subject up front here is on new products. We've released four new products into the marketplace this year, each with really terrific potential. So first, what we call our Corp A1 business card, fuel card, and virtual card in one. That's targeted to fuel-based businesses where the solution includes a business card for the owner, fuel cards for the fuel drivers, and even replaces paper checks with virtual cards. That's all in one account and all in one UI, so pretty exciting. Second product we call the Comdata Connect Card. It's targeted to small trucking companies, so it connects the Comdata truck stop fuel discounts and reporting to the trucking company's existing business credit card. So trucking firms here would really get the best of both worlds. They'd continue to get the credit and rewards from their existing business card, but combine that with the fuel discounts and reporting of a truck stop card. Look, this also helps us in terms of the credit challenge with small trucking companies. So hopefully we can bring on lots of small trucking firms without the credit risk. Third up is a product that we call Corpay Complete. It's our newest corporate payments product targeted to mid-sized businesses. And again, this is really a platform build. So we've combined what we call walk-around solutions, business cards and fuel cards, really with a central kind of AP automation solution, again, packaged all in one platform, all in one mobile app. So really, we think kind of the modern way really for businesses to manage their all around business expenses and spend less. And lastly, in lodging, we have a new product called CLC Choice. So it's really a workforce lodging solution for employers who want really a more friendly and flexible employee travel solution. with the idea of being more choice for travelers. So in this case, travelers could choose virtually any hotel, any room type, and even keep rewards points from their favorite hotel brand. So we think the choice solution will complement, you know, really our current control solution and widen the market opportunity there. So look, we're super excited about these New products have been in the kitchen for quite a while and hopeful that this new set of products will accelerate revenue, you know, 1% to 2% over time. Okay, so look, in conclusion today, 2023, really a record year, record revenue, record earnings, organic revenue growth for the full year up 10%, sales super good up 20%, a stable retention at 92%, made some good moves to position the company better for the midterm, EV progress, and our new go-forward vehicle payment strategy. 2024, we're planning profits or cash EPS up 18%, excluding Russia, and that's on really an assumption of flat interest expense, launching a set of new products that we have high hopes for, and then beginning really the next chapter for the company as we move to rebrand the company to CorePay in March. 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 and the full year. Organic revenue growth was 7%, the same as the fourth quarter of last year. Revenue growth was slightly below our expectations due to pockets of softness, mostly in U.S. vehicle payments and lodging, while our corporate payments and international businesses continued to perform well. The revenue weakness was mostly offset by strong expense discipline, continued improvements in bad debt expense, and a lower tax rate, which delivered $4.44 per share in cash EPS. Within our guidance, an up 10% versus last year. Looking at the full year, organic revenue grew 10% and EBITDA increased 13%, which are both in line with our midterm targets. We also absorbed nearly $200 million of incremental interest expense during the year due to the rate hikes and still posted cash EPS growth of 5%. Normalizing for the higher interest expense, adjusted earnings would have grown 16% for the full year 2023. Now, turning to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our revenue growth, corporate payments revenue was up 15% during the quarter and increased 19% for the full year. For the quarter, our direct business grew 19% and was again led by growth in full AP. Our full suite of high quality payment solutions continues to sell extremely well, with sales up 27% this quarter as we sign up customers who are looking to modernize their AP operations. I'd note that the drag from lower partner channel volumes accelerated in the quarter, with channel revenue declining 31 percent. Excluding the partner channel, revenue grew 20 percent, and spend volumes increased 27 percent in the quarter, so quite strong on a core basis. We believe the partner channel volumes have bottomed, and volumes and revenue are expected to be flat in 2024. Cross-border revenue was up 21 percent, sales grew 51 percent, and recurring client transaction activity was robust. We've now fully lapped all the revenue synergies from the GRG acquisition in January 2023. More importantly, our best-in-class technology, service, and products allow us to have market-leading retention and client acquisition, which you can see in our results. We continue to make significant investments in this business through increased sales and marketing resources as well as new product capabilities. Over the last few years, we have transformed this business into becoming the largest non-bank provider of B2B FX payment solutions in the world. Turning to vehicle payments, recall this is the new segment that we introduced on our last earnings call. It reflects the combination of our fleet and Brazil businesses, along with our new consumer vehicle initiative. Consistent with our goal of creating a simpler company, we have now put all vehicle-related payment solutions in one segment that operates across North America, Brazil, and Europe, offering a full suite of vehicle-related solutions to both businesses and consumers. You'll note that we've defined the new segment's KPI as transactions, but given the different products that comprise the segment, we've provided transaction counts by product type, such as fleet, tags, and parking. We've also realigned our executive team to support this new segment, with Armando Netto serving as the group president of North America and Brazil, and Alan King as the group president over international fuel, EV, and parking. Vehicle payments organic revenue increased 5% during the quarter, with particular strength in Brazil and international fuel markets. In the UK, more than 30% of all new sales involve a non-fuel product, namely EV and or vehicle maintenance. Our EV strategy in the UK is clearly winning as our three-in-one product, fuel, on-road charging, and at-home charging, all in one app has more than doubled from a year ago. The results speak for themselves with both EV cards and EV revenue continuing to increase. In addition, we're having great success selling our at-home charging solution with a 30% attachment rate to all new sales. Our charging network also continues to expand, and we now offer charging at over 600,000 charge points in Europe. And by the end of March, we will have coverage of nearly 80% of the rapid chargers in the UK, including Tesla, which we signed in the fourth quarter. In Brazil, we ended the year with nearly 6,000 extended network locations, including 2,500 gas stations, 2,900 parking locations, 750 drive-thru restaurants, and 270 condos. Total tags were up 7% year-over-year to nearly $7 million, and approximately 37% of customer spend was from our BeyondToll network. Sales of insurance policies are up fourfold when we launched in Q4-22 to nearly $200,000 in Q4-23. So from $0 to $200,000 per quarter in five quarters, and now total over 1 million policies. Our success in Brazil is a tangible proof point of our broader vehicle payments vision to leverage and anchor product used by a large customer base and to then add additional services via mobile app driving incremental revenue growth. We are leveraging our strong success in the UK to launch our consumer vehicles payment solution in the market. We have begun selling the parking network that we acquired in the third quarter via pay by phone to our business customers, and we're building the integrations to be able to offer to the over 2 million pay-by-phone consumer users in the U.K. access to our proprietary fuel, EV, insurance, toll, and maintenance networks. In the U.S., softness and small fleet and the impact from our shift away from micro clients continue to affect our sales and revenue results. Our digital and field sales efforts are improving as we continue to see growth in applications, approvals, and starts. As we mentioned last quarter, the shift to higher credit quality clients also impacted late fees, which were down 38% from Q4 2022. While the decline in late fees is a drag on our revenue growth, it has resulted in a similar decline in bad debt expense. So, essentially a wash. Lodging revenue was flat Q4 2022, and for the year, the business grew 12%. This quarter was affected by continued softness in our existing workforce customers, which appears to have now stabilized. Certain verticals within the business, like airline and insurance, can have quarterly revenue growth fluctuations driven by weather and natural disasters. Recall, in Q4 of last year, there were significant weather events and airline cancellations, which benefited the airline and the insurance verticals. By comparison, there were no major weather events in Q4 of this year. And in fact, according to the Department of Transportation, 2023 flight cancellations were the lowest in the decade. And in the fourth quarter, cancellations were down approximately 90% from Q4 22. We're experiencing similar results related to insurance claims, which were down approximately 20% in the quarter. Despite the recent soft quarters, we are confident that this business can return to low double digit growth over the coming quarters. We recently launched new product capabilities that will extend our customer experience and drive new sales. Additionally, we're excited to welcome Joff Romoff as the new group president of Lodging, replacing the retiring Ron Rogers. Joff has extensive hospitality and lodging experience that will be a strong asset to the business. In summary, we're proud of the performance we delivered in 2023. It clearly demonstrates the growth of our diversified business and the strength of our business model that generated over a billion and a quarter of free cash flow. Now, looking down the income statement. Q4 operating expenses of $513 million were flat versus Q4 of last year. Expenses from acquisitions, higher transaction and sales activities, and investments to drive future growth were offset by lower bad debt expense and the sale of our rush of business. Bad debt expense declined $19 million, or nearly 50 percent from last year to $22 million, or three basis points of spend. Most of the decline was in vehicle payments, which was down $17 million year-over-year, as we realized the benefit from our lower exposure to U.S. micro-clients. EBITDA margin in the quarter was 54.2 percent, a 220 basis point improvement from the fourth quarter of last 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 this quarter increased $18 million year over year, and the impact of higher interest rates resulted in an approximate 27-cent drag on Q4 adjusted EPS, partially offset by lower debt balances year over year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 23.3% versus 24.2% last year, the lower rate related to specific tax planning items. Now, turning to the balance sheet, we are entering 2024 with the balance sheet in excellent shape. We ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash, up $300 million from 90 days ago, and we had over $800 million available on our revolver. We have $5.4 billion outstanding on our credit facilities, and we had $1.4 billion borrowed under our securitization facility. As of year end, our leverage ratio was 2.4 times trailing 12 months EBITDA, which is at the lower end of our target range. In January, we upsized our Term Loan A and Revolver A credit facilities by $600 million, with no rate concessions and no change in the maturity. This added capital will provide incremental capacity and flexibility for both deals and share buybacks in 2024, which I'll elaborate on in a few minutes. Our capital allocation in 2023 was once again balanced as we deployed $1.6 billion. In the quarter, we repurchased roughly 600,000 shares at an average price of $254 per share, or $143 million. For the year, we repurchased 2.6 million shares for $690 million. We spent $545 million on acquisitions during the year, improving our position in EV, the consumer vehicle payment space, and cross-border. We used the remaining excess cash flows for debt amortization and reducing our revolver balance. As I previously mentioned, our 2024 capital allocation plan is supported by our significant cash and liquidity position. We have $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash and increased our capacity under our revolver by $600 million, and we expect to generate $1.4 billion in free cash flow during 2024. Our first priority remains M&A, and the M&A pipeline is robust. We'll look to acquire businesses that deepen our position in our three core operating segments. We are also allocating capital for share buybacks during 2024. In January, the Board increased our repurchase authorization by $1 billion. We now have over $1.6 billion authorized for share repurchases. We expect to repurchase $800 million of shares throughout the year. We plan to purchase these shares through the open market and we'll establish a 10b-5-1 plan later this month. Any residual cash flows from earnings will be used to reduce our revolver or build our cash position. Generating so much cash is a high-class problem, and we plan to leverage this strength to systematically support our EPS growth through M&A and buybacks in 2024. Now, let me share some thoughts on our 2024 full year and Q1 outlook. From an economic perspective, we are not assuming a recession nor meaningful economic improvement in overall business activity. Our forecast for the year is based on the consensus economic outlook in our markets, which generally calls for modest economic growth and lower interest rates in the second half of the year. We expect fuel prices to be a headwind in the first quarter, and for the full year, we're anticipating U.S. fuel prices to average $3.65 per gallon. which is a blend of diesel and unleaded. In 2024, we expect cash EPS to grow between 14% and 16%, which is inclusive of the planned buybacks I mentioned previously. Revenue growth is projected to be between 8% and 10%, and EBITDA is expected to increase 10% to 12%, with margin expanding to approximately 54%. Keep in mind, these growth rates are inclusive of our Russia business through mid-August of last year. Excluding Russia, cash EPS is growing 17 to 19 percent, revenue is up 10 to 12 percent, and EBITDA is increasing 13 to 15 percent, all slightly above our mid-term growth targets. We've provided these details in our earnings supplement on page 20. Net interest expense is projected to be between $340 and $370 million, which includes the replacement of a $500 million interest rate swap that matured in December. Roughly 80 percent of our credit facility is now fixed utilizing swaps, and the blended swap rate is 4.1 percent. Also recall that our securitization is a variable rate facility. And finally, our tax rate is expected to be between 25 and 26 percent. From a segment perspective, we expect the following organic revenue growth rates. Vehicle payments in the mid-single digits, corporate payments approximately 20 percent, lodging payments in the high single digits. Related to the quarters, we expect revenue growth in the first half of the year to be below our full-year average due to the continued pockets of softness, a tough comp that includes Russia, as well as a challenging operating environment, including lower fuel prices. We expect revenue growth to accelerate in the back half of the year as the economic outlook becomes clearer, we lap the divestiture of Russia, and we realize the benefits of our growth initiatives and new sales. For the first quarter, we're expecting revenue to grow between 3% and 5%, and cash EPS to increase between 6 and 8 percent, which also reflects higher interest rates. Normalizing for Russia, revenue and cash EPS growth at the midpoint would be 7 percent and 13 percent, respectively. The rest of our assumptions can be found in our press release and supplement. Before completing my prepared remarks, I would like to extend our gratitude to our more than 10,000 employees around the world who helped us deliver such a great year and who will be the driving force to even greater heights throughout 2024. Thank you for your interest in our company. And now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, you may press star then 2. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Peter Christensen with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening. Two questions for you, Ron. Just curious, you know, you perform pretty well on the credit loss side. How are you thinking about, at least tactically, about extending credit in 2024 versus last year, particularly after improving the mix of your mid-market clients?

Hey, good question. I'd say looser. So the model that we've used has gotten a bit better over the last 12 months. And I think I called out, you know, credit loss is coming in literally about half of the prior year. So I'd say we're going to kind of open this picket, you know, carefully. And then second, again, that we're pointing, you know, to larger prospects, which generally have better credit. So my guess is we have the full year plan just a smidge lower than full year 23, but it should help on the revenue side of it.

That's helpful. And then, Ron, I guess now exiting the strategic review, how should we think about at least your acquisition M&A priorities going forward? Any particular areas, horizontal, vertical? Just want to get your fresh sense on fleet core, soon-to-be core pays, M&A priorities going forward.

Yep, another good question. Glad to be back at kind of the basic – you know, buying companies. So the primary focus beat is on corporate payments. So we've got a pipeline of a couple interesting things in that space. And then the one other area that we're kind of on is this consumer capability, this idea, again, of getting a big block of consumers that we can market, you know, all of our networks to. So I would say those would be the two short-term things to look for.

Great. Thank you, Ron. Very helpful.

Yeah, always good to talk to you.

The next question comes from Ramsey El-Asal from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, Ron and Tom. Thank you for taking my question this evening. I wanted to ask about some of the Q4 headwinds that you called out and just maybe ask you to give us a little more color on what was going on and the degree to which you're confident that they'll represent sort of Transient headwinds rather than more permanent sort of impacts.

I know you implied that as we get deeper into 24 that you could see some improvement But I'm just curious if you give us a little more color on what sort of happened in the quarter Yeah, I mean in a nutshell Ramsey I call it the story of the quarter same store sales So I call them, you know, it was minus 3% and if you went back to our prior transcripts q4 22 would have been plus 2 and So in that 12-month period, it basically went from plus two to minus three. So obviously, that's five points of organic growth. So that's the whole story. Retention was good. Sales were good. Expense controls, credit below the line. Everything effectively in Q4 through my lenses was kind of in line sans that one call-out. I tried to kind of go through it. They obviously were surprising to me since I looked through the guide pretty carefully. Really, it's just two or three pockets that are not new. If you go back and look at what we communicated in 23, we would have talked about, you know, lodging having some softness, you know, in the base, the partner channel and payables, you know, having some softness, the pivot from micro accounts, you know, which shed a bunch of late fees, you know, unfortunately credit losses. And so basically I'd say those three things that I called out were just heavier, you know, weightier on the downside. Say we're looking at kind of one to 2% minus same store and it came in at three. And so that's really the story of the quarter. And so the good news, if there is any, is in all three of those cases, It feels like in the data showing, even through January, it looks like we've hit the bottom. So the thought process that we have is that we climb out of the same store sales, almost the reverse pattern. So minus three, minus two, basically getting that thing back to positive because that book of business basically flatlines into 24. So that's basically the perspective on it. So it's really no new things. It's things that we have seen that basically were a bit heavier in the core than we all looked.

Okay. A follow-up from me. I was wondering if you could kind of comment on the closure of the strategic alternatives process and just kind of revisit what, you know, kind of a postmortem in a sense. Why was it so difficult to find the strategic alternatives to execute on? Was it lack of attractive partners? Was it evaluation issues? you know, hang up, was it rates, was, you know, where was the friction in the process that kind of prevented you guys from, you know, executing on that sort of monetization strategy?

Well, look, it's a super complicated question, right, which is why we spent 11 months on it, so I don't want to be too quick with an answer here. But, look, the main thing against just a straight spin co, I think we said, was uncertainty of the trading range of remain co. It wasn't so much, hey, we've got a great corporate payments business. It was really, you know, what's the multiple on RemainCo? So I think, you know, that caused us to pivot into this dance partner. If we were going to separate things, to do something that would have scale and synergies. And so the short answer to that is we engaged, you know, with three or four different partners, and it's a combination of either the synergies didn't pan out to be, you know, as good as we thought, or we couldn't agree, you know, relative valuation, or in one case maybe social issues around it. So these kinds of combinations, as you guys know, are always, you know, quite difficult. But I did say it seriously. We've learned a lot. We've looked at a lot of structures. You know, we've met a bunch of people. And so we will continue to look. The focus now is back on buying things in our lane and obviously rebuilding this vehicle business some. but we are open, you know, a different day to re-looking at it again. So kind of closed for now, but not forever.

Got it. Thank you so much.

The next question comes from Tenjin Wong with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks so much. Good afternoon. I was just thinking on the new product side that you're going, that you laid out here to enhance growth. I think you mentioned around one to two points over time. How quickly do you think that can convert into in your sales? Do you have the, you know, the sales engine humming already? Just curious where you are with that.

Yeah. Hey, good to hear your voice. So, I mean, the headline of why I call this out is, um, you know, over the last two or three years, we've done a fair amount of what I term capability acquisitions and, and really behind the scenes, those have been some tech capability acquisitions, right? The core pay one, We bought an AP platform, a software platform called a Cruelify at the front end. We bought a European workforce business with a brand-new platform. And so the tech that we got allowed us to spin up kind of some, what I call them internally, kind of next-gen products that I described at the top. And so we're outselling them now. We've got a pretty robust sales plan for them. So I would say the convert would be next year – The key thing for us to report this year to you is sales of those products. And then obviously next year as those roll into, you know, in-year revenue, basically we'd expect the acceleration. So the key is, you know, what's the reception? You know, does the market like these three or four things that we're putting in front of them?

Got it. Got it. And just my follow-up maybe for you again, Ron, just thinking about visibility into revenue growth. in 24 versus prior years. It feels like there's a little bit more reliance on new products and initiatives. I know cross-sale is something you've always done. Macro is always what it is, but how would you consider the visibility this year versus recent years?

Yeah, that's not a super good question.

I'd say some, like most things, some things stay the same and some things are different. So the most important thing for us, as you know, is sales, which is why I call out The growth rate, and I think I called out for the full year last year, 20. That's our target again for 2024, obviously off of a bigger base. The first thing is we've had success selling and expect the same here in 24. Two is the retention is getting a bit better. And as we flush those micro accounts last year, structurally that should help retention. So you take those two things, those underpin, as you know, the basic, right, New business versus losses is the key to a recurring business. So the wild card, the bet here, has been the softness thing, which, again, you know, entered the year in the plus column and then ended the year in the minus column. So that thing turning or getting tension back to flat, I think, is the most important in the acceleration. But then on top of that, we've got some super new pricing ideas around the technology. That's a new dynamic pricing, for example, where we could price – rooms and lodging different for someone walking into a hotel than someone who pre-books three weeks ago, instead of a platform that didn't let us, you know, differentiate. We've got a few new partners that we've signed that we haven't announced that will come on. And then to your point, we've got a big plan around cross-sell, you know, adding a buck you know, for vehicle insurance every time people park if they want it to basically, you know, allay the fear of something happening to their car when they park. So it's a pretty balanced. I'd say it's not super different than the past, but I would say that the new products and some of the cross-sells should be a little more supportive than, you know, historically.

Got it. No, that's helpful. And I think getting a strategic view out of the way also might help with the focus, too, I would think. But I appreciate the update, Ron.

Get back to the basics, Tingen, thanks.

The next question comes from Darren Peller with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks. Ron, maybe just go back to – it's a bit of a follow-up to Tingen's question just now, but when we think of the vehicle segment and the aspirations for being mid-single – I'm sorry, double-digit, low double-digit growth from what we're now guiding to a mid-single-digit year – Maybe just talk a little bit about the initiatives that you feel are going to really drive that strength. And it does look like you're having a lot of success, obviously, now with whether it's EV or obviously in Brazil. So I'm assuming it's a combination of all those factors, but any more color on that? And just a quick follow-up would also be fourth quarter. I know you had some headwinds on certain variables, like you mentioned on the call, you know, credit and It just seems like you would have a better growth in 24 than fourth quarter, just as some of those abate, but yet you're guiding a similar rate of growth for vehicles. So just a little more color on that.

So say the last part, Dan, before you go, I'm guiding to one in 24?

Yeah, for vehicle segment, mid-single-digit growth, I would have thought it'd be a little bit better comparing it to a fourth quarter, which I know has some headwinds in it.

Yeah. So let me take that last part, and then my way back to the beginning of your question. So yes, if you looked... inside our quarterly role, that thing would go from kind of low, mid-single digit up to 10%. So the internal plan we have is exactly what you said for the vehicle organic load rate to accelerate. So the two drivers of that, beyond the normal things of retention, which should get better, again, structurally because we've kicked out the micro accounts, and obviously sales being good, is the new products that I just talked about, right? Some extensions in both the core fuel car business and in the trucking business. In your point, the EV thing working. But the second one is this consumer, you know, it's just all incremental. So to the extent that we can take, you know, 2 million people in the U.K. and another couple million people, which we'll talk about soon, in Brazil, and add on three or four services that we already have, it's just every dollar there is incremental and pretty profitable. So those are really the two drivers. The base, you know, same store sales, retention, and new sales, which we have a good handle on, and then a couple of new things are the new products and the consumers. So, look, we're bullish on it. Obviously, we've had a pivot in this vehicle thing and been, you know, a bit distracted, you know, working on this restructuring. But I think, you know, where we're headed now is super clear.

And, Darren, one thing I'd add before I run to your other question about longer-term vehicles, keep in mind the first half of last year had the elevated late fees from the S&B micro... clients that we still have on the platform. So we don't start laughing that until you get into late Q2.

So that creates a lot of a grow over challenge when you look at it on an annual basis. And it's one of the reasons, Darren, when someone sent me some text of, hey, the revenue looks a little light. And we've effectively taken $20 million, $30 million of late fee revenue out and $20 million, $30 million of credit losses out. It's been basically kind of a one-for-one swap, which people out there may not like, but I like. I like the rateability of having lower credit losses. And so to Tom's point, that portfolio shift kind of moved both revenue and expense.

That's really helpful. I don't know if there's time for a quick follow-up. Just very quickly on CorPay, I just want to understand a little bit more on the channel business bottoming out here. Maybe you can explain a little more of what the dynamic is and the underlying drivers, if it's around one of the partners, if that's finished, or it's virtual card adoption or anything else, guys. Thanks again.

Let me take that one. Another good question. If you think about what we call a channel business, it's some third party who has customers where we provide, you know, virtual card processing. And the basic trend, which started two years ago, is those partners effectively moving from an exclusive relationship with us to non-exclusive. So I, Ron, I used to use you for 100% of my processing. Someone told me it was a good idea to have two providers, so over time I'm going to kind of give you, you know, half the business, or I'm going to try to haircut, you know, your rate. So effectively over the last two years, Darren, we've gone from having, you know, call it 15 really important partners that we were exclusive with to having 15 partners we're not exclusive with. So the good news on this one is we have the contracts now that for 24 that have us flat with 23. So our print for that business, which, you know, moved its way down during the course of 23, we're outlooking effectively flat revenue in that business across into 24. So instead of every quarter saying, oh, the corporate payments business was great, but, hey, the channel business was crummy, hopefully you won't hear me say that at 24. The answer will be it'll be flat.

Okay. All right. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from Nate Sensen with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. So Darren's actually leads right into what I wanted to ask on corporate payments. First off, very nice to hear about the outlook for 20% growth in 2024. I wanted to ask, because in the past you've talked about sort of a stickiness and resilience that you see with regards to suppliers continuing to accept virtual card payments, you know, despite the challenging macro. So maybe can you give us an update on how that sort of resilience has trended since we last spoke three months ago. Anything changing with the decision process with your suppliers or any update there would be great.

Hey, it's Ron. I'd say not much change. So I think we said it before that acceptance or non-acceptance of a virtual card turns really more on the profile of merchants. You know, merchants that have obviously higher margins, for example, are more accepting or merchants more in need of cash flow because they're paid sooner. So I'd say there's really nothing super new. Kind of the opt-out rate, if you will, has been pretty steady. And, again, who takes the cards is really a function of kind of who the merchant is. So nothing new. And we've actually seen card penetration levels tick up a little bit.

So at the end of the day, it kind of comes down to the amount of spend that's on a card. And that's moved up as you look at it over a quarterly trend.

That's great to hear about the penetration levels. And so I know there's been a lot of talk about new products throughout the call. One I kind of wanted to dig deeper on was the new Corpay Complete products. I know there was a press release that came out at the end of January. So maybe you can talk about the go-to-market motion there, where you're seeing the sort of synergy potentials between the full AP offering, cross-border, et cetera, within that core pay complete? Thanks.

Yeah, that's another good question.

I mean, simplistically, Nate, we used to do knock-knock on a mid-sized company, high CFO, and, hey, we've got some great expense management products here. And mostly the pitch was kind of, menu-based or a la carte. You know, hey, looks like you've got some drivers. We've got fuel cards. Looks like you need a better control business card given some of the expenses that are coming in or one that's got automated expense reimbursement. So historically, that's how we presented things. And so... the idea was to be able to have kind of a wrap or rebate or look at the spend of the whole company. So knock, knock, ICFO, you've got walk-around spend, you've got AP spend. I can combine all of that and give you, you know, 100 basis points back, half a million a month back, and make your life easier. How does that sound? So we finally have a platform where all those things, the walk-around stuff, and the AP automation stuff is literally brought together, you know, call it in terms of one report, one credit underwriting system and stuff. And so that's the idea that we could present now to a company effectively a package deal, if you will, instead of an a la carte deal. So we've just literally been underway, call it just what you said, call it a month or so with the first set of leads in it. But Clearly, it's going to be the future. My hope is even if we sell someone a la carte the first day that they're on the railroad, it's easier to go back. They've learned how to use the UI. They know us. We have an account. We've underwritten them and stuff. And so we think it certainly lends to better add-on sales over time.

Great to hear, and we'll definitely be tracking progress there. Thanks.

The next question comes from Sanjay Sakrani with KBW. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good evening. Sorry, I hopped on a little bit late. I apologize if you've answered these questions. But just on the macro assumptions that you guys are using for the year, what kind of macro are you guys assuming sort of the beginning and ending of the year?

Sure. Hey, Sanjay. It's Tom. So taking big picture macro, let's start there and then we can talk a little bit in terms of the more detailed macro as it relates to we're expecting an economic outlook to stay relatively consistent, completely in line with the broad economic guide when you look at our three major markets of Brazil, U.S., and U.K., We expect in all of those markets to see a relatively stable, maybe slightly improving economy as rate cuts in those various markets occur, but we're not expecting any kind of recession, and certainly we're not expecting a GDP gangbuster type year. With respect to the more narrow macro that affects fleet core, if I think about it in terms of a couple of categories, first, fuel. Fuel price, average fuel price, diesel and unleaded combined of $365. That's a little below where we are today. If you just kind of look at where we are through 2024, we're probably closer to a blended rate of around $340. So that's one of the call-outs that we had in terms of the Q1 growth challenge. But we're not... Prognosticators of oil and the pull through to fuel, we just look at EIA and other providers of those things. That was the consensus view of how the year would play out. I think as demand increases from a seasonal perspective, you would see that increase. Spread is generally consistent with last year. That's really hard to predict. It's more based on volatility of fuel price, not just FX, a little bit of a tailwind. If the dollar and rate cuts continue, if the projection is correct and the dollar doesn't strengthen, obviously it had a little bit of strength in there in the last week or so, but longer term we expect the dollar to be a little weaker, and so that will help the FX side of our business. And so we think overall that will be a slight tailwind to us. Rates, generally kind of neutral to better. We have modeled out the rate curve based on the latest rate curve out there, so we think rates will be a little bit better. Certainly interest expense, lapping the headwind from this year in terms of the grow over from 22 will be a significant benefit to us. And then I guess finally taxes, we think will be generally consistent with. your tax rate in 2023. So overall, we've characterized the macro as kind of neutral from a macro perspective, big macro perspective, and kind of a slight benefit to us with respect to things that affect us directly.

Hey, Sanjay, it's Ron.

I've got to jump in because I'm clearly the optimist here. playing off of Tom, but I'd say it's all, it's sun's shiny days, right? Living through 2023 with a $200 million interest expense boat anchor and sitting here, you know, at the beginning of the year with happy FX and declining interest rates. It feels super great to get earnings print back to 15 or 18% that we can print instead of whatever we printed last year. So I would say that it's setting up at this moment to be super positive for us, super happy with it.

Yeah, I'll keep my fingers crossed. Just to follow up, Ron, you mentioned sort of the cross-sell initiatives in your prepared remarks. How much of that can happen over 2024? Is there anything baked in? And then, you know, when can we actually get the contribution in a significant way?

Yeah, I mean, it's happening in different places. I think you, you know, we've called out before, it's probably 20% of the Brazil sales now in the company are taking add-on products there and selling them back to the core base. We're underway with that, as I said, with the parking app, because we've got millions of consumers. We're back something back into the base of corporate payments, back into the fuel card base. So it's clearly in our sales plan. I'd say it's a probably relatively significant number as we get through the year in terms of what we're expecting there. So it's been a core part of the idea of we've got, as you know, 800,000 business clients, and some number of them are pretty big. And so having more things to offer them has always been part of the idea. So I think it's meaningful this year.

The next question comes from Sherit Kumar with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I was looking at slide 37, and I can see that the corporate payments take rate has increased in 2023. So I just wanted to get some context as to, you know, what's the pricing power over here, and can we expect the same trajectory? I think that's the function of the adjustments. that you have done by the segments. So just to get some insights on that.

Shree, give me your page number again. You said 27?

Oh, 37.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, so a lot of that has to do with the channel mix. So as Ron mentioned earlier in terms of the way the amount of take rate we have on channel versus the direct business, As we saw the channel volume fluctuate in the quarter, that's what's causing the fluctuation in the take rate related to corporate payments.

Got it. Thank you. And my follow-up is on the margins. We see that the margins have been grinding higher across all the segments and especially within the vehicle payments and corporate payments. So just to get a sense as to, you know, what could be the biggest driver in margins in 2024, like which segment do you expect to be a meaningful contributor?

Yeah, I don't think it's kind of disproportionate one way or another. Just to kind of round it out, just to summarize, for the year we were at 53%. We were exiting around 54%, and we've guided for the full year 2024 to be at 54%. I'm probably exiting a little bit higher than that, as you would expect. And so it's not really one – one, there's not a lot of change there. You're talking about, give or take, 100, 150 basis points. And secondly, I think it's more of the structure of the business that's driving the margin, not necessarily something that we're doing necessarily inside the business to modify the existing structure. business model and the structure. So just as we grow at the level at which each of the businesses are growing from a revenue and sales perspective and the amount of fixed cost, you're just going to get this natural operating leverage benefit from margin where you'll see that rotate up. So at the same time, we also want to continue to invest. Credit, too. Yeah, fair point. Yeah, credit is coming down a little bit, 23 to 24. It would also help the margin. But the other thing just from the standpoint of just investment, we continue to make significant investments in the company, particularly around sales and marketing. And so we are mindful in terms of the amount of spend that we're putting back into the company to make sure that the sales engine can continue to generate the kind of growth levels that we've historically generated.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

The next question comes from Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Good evening. Thanks for taking the question. I know you give the sample of the UK for unit economics of your EV business, but can you just talk broadly about that, how that's evolved over time and your confidence going forward in that?

Yep. Hey, Chris, it's Ron. So, look, I preface it with, you know, it's still... Early days, I guess, we've been running this analysis for, what, eight quarters or something and have 300 or 400 accounts in it. So, look, we know a fair amount. We have real customers that are paying real bills and paying us more. I'd say to you that conceptually the reason that I think we can get paid the same or more, just to me simplistically, is there's just more – merchants. In the fuel business, let's say in the UK, there's 9,000 gas stations. We have a million drivers there. Someday, when every guy or gal has an EV, there's going to be a million incremental charge points. There's way more than 9,000 public charging points. The ability, again, to to help a company make the transition from some old-fashioned gas stations to some public charging to the million at home, bring that all together and keep it simple, is useful. And the scope of what they pay for charging and fuel, our fees are peanuts. And so it feels to me like we know what we're doing. And more importantly, we have products that they like. I think it doubled, Tom, you know, year over year. And so I feel better about we've got the right solution, clients like it, and clients are paying for it. And the math shows you they're paying more now than the old-fashioned thing. So I'd say stop ringing the frigging fire alarm. It would be my comment to people. Hey, there's a lot of time in front of us, but I would not be super afraid, you know, sitting here today.

Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.

The next question is from Trevor Williams with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks a lot. I wanted to ask on lodging, any more detail you can give on some of the different components within this segment? It sounds like most of the incremental weakness was on the airline side, but any more color on the other pieces, workforce, managed services, insurance, just how those did, especially relative to Q3, would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure. Hey, Trevor. It's Tom again. The lodging business, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, it did experience some of this. Where our biggest surprise was for the quarter was really more on the airline and the insurance piece. We actually saw the workforce piece come in about where we had anticipated. And a lot of the expected growth that we had forecast in the fourth quarter was from what we had seen historically with the level of Flight cancellations related our distressed product, where you typically would see a seasonal uptick. There's lots of people in the air with holidays and things like that, and that just didn't come to fruition. Similarly, on the insurance side, we saw the decline in overall insurance. So the decline quarter over quarter in lodging was really more directed towards those two businesses where those types of episodic type things that occur in the fourth quarter just didn't materialize. Workforce, you know, we continue to see, you know, a little bit of softness there, but as Ron had indicated, we feel like that has lost out and expect that to, you know, move forward based on new sales and the introduction of some of the new products.

Okay. No, that's helpful. Thanks. And then just to put a finer point on the the assumptions for the macro-neutral or the organic guide. In terms of cadence, is the expectation that growth will accelerate progressively over the course of the year? So like you were saying with vehicle where Q1 low point, 4Q exit rate for 24 should be the high point of organic growth for the year or anything else to call out? Thanks.

Yeah, Trevor, let me take that and then Tom can add to it. So, I mean, conceptually, the main reason the same store sales so if you think about math right of how to get to get to 10% right we lose business right 8% and we make sales and then we have the same store sales. And so the bet that we have, which we're seeing in the trends, is that the same store that was plus two four quarters ago and was minus three this past quarter will head back to flat. And if that does, obviously in that example, it lifts the organic thing by three points. So that's A. B, we think the retention, again, will likely tick up because of this microflush. When you have more bigger accounts, you structurally just have better retention. And then third, our corporate payments business is growing faster, and it has higher retention rates than our fuel card business. So those two things, as we model it, will help the back half. And then hopefully the set of new products and the cross-sell stuff, which we're pouring out now, that will start to build. Those add-ons will start to build in the back half. So that's what makes up the curve as we run through the year.

Got it. Thank you.

The next question is from David Koning with Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey guys. Just a couple of things. I guess on the corporate line, you called out the yield mix improvement, but corporate volumes were down about 15% sequentially. It must've been low yielding volumes that fell off, but what is the mix or what was the fall off in volumes from?

Yeah, it's just that channel thing that I said before. I mean, That literally was the point of our same store sales reduction. We would have been two if that business was flat. So, again, it's just a big partner that gives us lots of volume and no money goes, dates around and goes non-exclusive. And so, hey, we lose a little bit of revenue and we lose, you know, a lot of volume. But the take rate goes up because obviously that's a lot of low-margin business that we weren't getting into.

We also noted that excluding channel, the spend level was north of 25%.

So it's really a channel story that's driving both the volume and the take rate noise that you may be seeing.

But again, just to put a finer point on the thing, I want to make sure people have heard that We have the business now contracted, right, for 24. So that helps us relay to you guys that we hit the bottom there because when I look at what's effectively contracted inside of the minimums we have, we're kind of done with that dating around. There's no more dating. If you date one or two people, you can't have any more of that. That's where it is. So if there's any good news, that's the good news here.

It kind of belt and suspended it with also some minimums as well so that we also get some protection that while we're under contract, we also So that's some commitment from a minimum perspective, too.

Gotcha. Thanks. And just a quick follow-up. Bad debt expense, you called it out. I mean, it's lowest, $22 million, lowest in eight quarters or so. Is your 2024 guidance for that to remain low? And if so, is anything related to reversals? Like, is it unsustainably low in 2024 or just normalized?

No, I mean, I'd say it's fairly normalized. Obviously, it's going to fluctuate. from a dollar perspective, as the business grows, you know, we think of it more in terms of basis points of spend or percentage of revenue, because as the business grows, you'd expect the bad debt dollar amount to grow, but not necessarily that rate to necessarily grow. So I think we'll continue to see good performance in 2024. We have flushed the micro client that's Ron said we've tuned some of our models. We've gotten to a point where I think we've learned a lot over the last, call it, six quarters, and I think we'll be in a position where we can be a bit more opportunistic in terms of how we manage credit.

And again, just to add to the point, it helps the flow through into earnings, right, although it looks like Revenue is light when you take those late fees out because you're taking out the credit loss expense. Basically, you have decent flow-through down to EPS. So that's one of the reasons that the profit flow-through remained pretty good.

Yep. Great. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. It's Michael Infante on for James. Thanks for taking our question. Just one quick one for me. On the buyback, anything that we should be mindful of just in terms of cadence there? Do you think it'll be fairly evenly distributed based on seasonal free cash flow generation, or will it be weighted to any particular quarter? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Michael. It's Tom. I think we're going to be mindful in terms of market conditions, and we like where the stock price is. As I mentioned, we're flush with liquidity both on the balance sheet and then When we upsize the revolver, we have another $600 million of liquidity. Obviously, we want to use some of that liquidity for M&A, but you add it all up, we have probably up to $2.5 billion, $3 billion worth of cash that we want to put to work, and we want to put it to work as quickly as possible. I think the timing is just going to be predicated upon the market, the amount of float in the stock, and those types of things. I think we will be, you know, looking to be in the market over the course of this quarter and then we'll see how market conditions are as the year plays out.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question and answer session as well as the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.