This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk08: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Evertech's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's conference call is being recorded. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Beatrice Brown-Signs of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you, and good afternoon. With me today are Max Schuessler, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Joaquin Castrillo, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements and should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and the company's most recent periodic SEC reports. During today's call, management will provide certain information that will constitute non-GAAP financial measures under SEC rules, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted earnings per common share. Reconciliations to GAAP measures and certain additional information are also included in today's earnings release and related supplemental slides, which are available in the investor relations section of our company website at www.erotechinc.com. I will now hand the call over to Max.
spk05: Thanks, Beatrice, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased to announce a good start to the fiscal year with strong revenue growth driven by a full quarter contribution from CINCIA and organic growth across all our segments. I will begin today's call with a summary of our first quarter 2024 financial results, followed by a discussion of the Puerto Rico environment and an update on Latin America. I will then turn the call over to Joaquin, who will provide some additional details on our Q1 results and an update on our 2024 outlook. Beginning on slide four, Let's start with some financial highlights from our first quarter. We reported $205 million in revenue, a 28% increase over the prior year quarter, and adjusted EBITDA was $78.2 million, up approximately 16% when compared with the prior year, driven by the revenue increase. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.1%, down from a year ago and aligned with our expectations, driven by a full quarter of CINCIA contribution at lower margins. Adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.72, up 4% year over year. Operating cash flow for the quarter was $36 million. On the capital allocation front, we returned approximately $3 million to shareholders through dividends and entered into a $70 million ASR as anticipated on our last call, which we expect to complete by the third quarter. Our liquidity remains strong at approximately $408 million as of March 31st. Turning to our Puerto Rico update on slide five. All our Puerto Rico segments performed well during the quarter, reflecting solid organic growth over prior year. Payments Puerto Rico revenue grew approximately 10% year-over-year, driven by higher POS transactions and continued strength in ATH mobile business. Merchant acquiring grew approximately 7% on a year-over-year basis, benefiting from sales volume growth and a higher spread. The business solutions segment returned to growth up approximately 4% year over year, reflecting growth across various lines of business. The Puerto Rico macro environment continues to be supportive for Evertech as we move through 2024. The unemployment rate remained low at 5.7% in the first quarter, and the level of employment remained steady at 1.1 million, the highest number since 2009. Travel also remains robust, with airport arrivals up over 10% year over year in the first quarter. Turning to Latin America on slide six. LATAM revenue was up significantly year over year in the quarter, reflecting the contribution from the CINCIA acquisition that closed in the fourth quarter, as well as continued organic growth from our legacy business. On our last call, we discussed our area of focus with CINCIA for 2024, and we continue to make strides on all fronts. From a technology modernization perspective, we have laid out detailed roadmaps and have identified the key projects that we will prioritize throughout 2024 with a focus on those investments that will have the largest impact for our clients. We believe these enhancements will open the door for pricing initiatives with existing customers and better offerings to capture market share. As for our customer-centric initiatives, we have implemented regular visits to our top clients, and we are making a point of acting on the feedback they have given us. Our next step will be to leverage these relationships to cross-sell our products. The integration process continues to be a priority for the executive team, and to that end, we have promoted Claudio Prado, to Group Head of Brazil, replacing Bernardo Gomez, who, for personal reasons, has decided to take a step back and shift to a consultant role. Bernardo did a fantastic job building Syncia over the past years, and we thank him for his contributions during the integration process. Claudio has over 30 years of experience in the technology industry, including as CIO of Santander and Deutsche Bank, and over seven years contributing to Syncia. Claudio's entrepreneurship background provides a good perspective of the client-focused approach, best suiting him to handle the day-to-day leadership responsibilities at SyncU. We look forward to providing further updates on the integration process as we progress. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joaquin.
spk03: Thank you, Mac, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to slide eight, I'll begin by reviewing the first quarter results for Evertech. Total revenue for the first quarter was $205.3 million, up approximately 28% compared to the prior year, reflecting strong growth in our Latin America segment that benefited from a full quarter contribution from Sinqia, as well as continued strong organic growth. The quarter also benefited from higher sales and transaction volumes, continued strength in ATH mobile business, and a return to growth in business solutions. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $78.2 million, an increase of approximately 16% from the prior year. An adjusted EBITDA margin was 38.1%, down approximately 390 basis points from the prior year, mostly as a result of the CINCIA acquisition, but aligned to our expectations. Adjusted net income was $48 million, an increase of approximately 5% year-over-year, mainly as a result of the higher adjusted EBITDA and a non-GAAP tax benefit compared with a non-GAAP tax expense in the prior quarter. The tax benefit will be partially offset in the remaining quarters, and we now expect our adjusted effective tax rate to be in a range of 6% to 7%. These positive variances were partially offset by higher operating depreciation and amortization resulting from the increased capex in prior years and higher cash interest expense given the incremental debt raised to acquire Syncia. Adjusted EBS was 72 cents, an increase of approximately 4% from the prior year, driven by the same reasons pointed out impacting adjusted net income partially offset by a higher share count due to the shares issued as part of the C&K acquisition. Moving to slide 9, I will now cover our first quarter results by segment, beginning with merchant acquiring. Net revenue increased by approximately 7% year-over-year to $43.1 million, driven by strong volumes and a higher spread. Sales volume was up 6%, driven by incremental volumes from existing merchants, effects of inflation on key verticals, and new merchants signed towards the end of last year. Our overall spread per transaction was also higher than prior year, in part driven by card mix and partially offset by a declining average ticket. Trends for the month of April are aligned to Q1 results with mid-single-digit sales volume growth. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was $16.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.6%, down approximately 110 basis points from the prior year. The margin decrease was primarily due to higher transaction processing expenses given the lower average ticket per transaction. On slide 10 are the results for the Payment Services Puerto Rico and Caribbean segments. Revenue in the quarter was $53 million, an increase of approximately 10% from the prior year. The revenue increase was driven by transaction growth of 7% year-over-year, as well as continued strength in ATH mobile business, which experienced a 27% year-over-year increase in transactions during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $30.4 million, up approximately 9% from the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.2%. On slide 11 are the results for Latin America Payments and Solutions. Revenue in the quarter was $74.2 million, up approximately 110% year-over-year, reflecting a full quarter of revenue contribution from CINCIA, contribution from the Paysmart acquisition completed in March of the prior year, and continued organic growth across the region as we continue to benefit from growth across key markets and from the GetNet relationships. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.3 million, up approximately 57% from the prior year, with adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 22%, down approximately 740 basis points, and mainly driven by the inclusion of Syncia, which contributes at lower margin compared to the segment average. Turning to slide 12, you will see the results for our business solution segment. Revenue was $58.1 million, an increase of approximately 4% from the prior year. There were a number of factors that contributed to the higher revenue this quarter, including the effect of the CPI increase that began in Q4 of approximately 1.5%, and growth across several business lines, driven by the impact of incremental volumes and specific consulting projects that impacted the quarter positively. Adjusted EBITDA, was $23 million, up approximately 3% from a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 39.6%, down approximately 50 basis points from the prior year. The margin decline is consistent with our expectations and due primarily to higher cost of sales and higher cloud expenses. Moving to slide 13, you will see a summary of our corporate and other expenses. Corporate and other expenses was $7.7 million in the quarter, or 3.8% of total revenue, down from 5.7% in the prior year quarter due to lower professional services and personnel costs as we continue to manage expenses. Moving on to our cash flow overview on slide 14, net cash from operating activities was approximately $36 million. Capital expenditures were $21.9 million for the quarter, We drew $80 million from a revolving facility, paid down $23.1 million in debt, paid dividends of $3 million, and entered into the $70 million ASR. Our ending cash balance in March was $317.3 million, a decrease of approximately $1.4 million from year-end 2023. On slide 15, our net debt position at quarter end was approximately $793 million, comprised of approximately $1.1 billion in total long- and short-term debt, offset by approximately $294 million of unrestricted cash. Our net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA was approximately 2.51 times, up from 0.9 times a year ago, but still within our target range of two to three times. As of December 31st, our total liquidity, which excludes restricted cash and includes our borrowing capacity, was $407.6 million, up from $367.6 million from a year ago. Now turning to slide 16, I'll provide an update on our outlook for the remainder of the year. We are raising the lower end of our revenue outlook and maintaining the high end of our revenue range for the year, resulting in a range of $846 million to $854 million, representing growth over the prior year of approximately 22% to 23%. Regarding overall margin, we continue to anticipate that our adjusted EBITDA margin will be between 38.5% to 39.5%. And on adjusted EPS, we are also raising the lower end of our outlook and maintaining the higher end, resulting in a range of $2.85 to $2.94, representing growth of approximately 1% to 4% when compared with $2.82 reported for the prior year. Our operating depreciation came in above our earlier forecast, and we now expect a higher overall operating depreciation for the full year with a partial offset to this impact coming from taxes, where we now expect a lower effective tax rate in the 6% to 7% range for the full year. In terms of segments, and given our Q1 results, we now expect merchant acquiring to grow closer to mid-single digits We continue to expect our payment processing Puerto Rico segment to grow in the mid-single digits. For Latam payments and solutions segment, we expect growth in the low 70s. And for business solutions, we still expect revenue growth in the low single digits for the year. In summary, we are pleased with our first quarter results. We continue to work on integrating CINCIA while also delivering strong results from our payment businesses in Puerto Rico and the rest of Latin America. We believe Evertech is well positioned for growth for the remainder of 2024 and beyond. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the coming year and hope to see some of you at conferences over the next few months. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
spk08: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Again, it is star then one to ask a question. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk06: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Can you give your updated thoughts on the accretion opportunities for Syncia?
spk03: Hey, Chris. This is Joaquin. So, as we said in our last call, we continue to expect Syncia to be more on the neutral side of the range. We had originally commented when we closed on the deal that we're going to be in the neutral to slightly accretive range. And as we discussed a little bit in the last quarter, given a little bit of their slowdown coming off of towards the end of the year last year, we now expect it to be in the closer to the neutral side of that range.
spk05: And let me add a little color. So, I mean, we're still incredibly excited about CINCA. I mean, what we're very focused on right now is discipline around execution. So we're focused on now that we've had the leadership change and now Claudio is running the company, he has sales focused, reporting directly to him. So we're very focused on selling more and converting the sales through implementations into revenue faster. We've also now built a plan on, you know, in the past they were very focused on buying other companies and trying to absorb those. Now we're focused on investing in those platforms so that we can continue to sell more features, more customizations, that type of thing. And then finally we are looking, you know, long-term at how do we make this a faster-growing, more creative deal is by also looking at pricing. How do we price better? Because they've accumulated all these companies, but now they have the opportunity to go back and look at how do they price each of the contracts better. So that's what we're really focused on is, Chris, is how do they execute better? Because the past two years, they've been focused on absorbing companies, going through the sales process. We now have a CEO in place who is focused on the company and not personal issues, and is focused on executing the companies that he's bought. So we're still very bullish.
spk06: Great. Thank you for that. And then just one follow-up. Can you give the organic growth of the Caribbean business or the non-Puerto Rico business? Thank you.
spk03: I mean, we're not breaking out our Latin America segment, right, in terms of the different pieces here. As we said, we continue to expect that segment to grow in the double digits. Obviously, this year is very different because we have the Sinqia impact on our year-over-year basis, but that continues to be expectation for the segment overall.
spk06: Thanks for taking the questions.
spk08: The next question comes from Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. I wanted to touch on EBITDA margins quickly. So maybe a touch lower than where the street was before the print, and I guess, you know, 38.1% is below the low end of your guide for the full year. So I know you said that margins were in line with your expectations, but maybe you can talk about some of the puts and takes with margins in 1Q beyond the impact of synchia. And then I guess maybe in light of, you know, maybe higher expenses in one queue, anything we should keep in mind when modeling margins out to the remainder of the year.
spk03: No, so yeah, given the guidance, we're a tad below the line of the guidance for the quarter, but as we reiterated in the outlook, we continue to be comfortable with 38.5 to 39.5 over the full year. As we move into the second half of the year, we believe that we'll be able to drive slightly better margins than what we had in the first quarter. And as we've always done, we're continuously focusing on where can we find efficiencies to drive better margins given the scalability of our business, so that's That's something that's at the top of our mind continuously, and we'll continue to work on that towards the end of the year.
spk07: Got it. I appreciate the color there. And then I guess, so I appreciate the segment guide that you gave. So I think the two changes versus last time were acquiring, which you moved up a little bit to mid-single digit, and then LATAM, I think, moved down a little bit to low 70s. Maybe you can give a little color on what changed within those two segments specifically where acquiring moved up kind of to the higher end of the range and LATAM kind of to the lower end of the range.
spk03: Sure. So I think that in the merchant acquiring business, we had a good first quarter. Obviously, when we look at the first quarter, there are a few specific items that we think are driving this when we look at the rest of the year. For example, Easter moved up this year in comparison to the last year, and we had a leap year as well. And when we look at April trends, they continue to be on a more normalized basis still in that mid-single-digit range from a sales volume perspective, which is a key driver for us. So we felt more comfortable bringing that to the higher side of the range for the rest of the year. And in the case of Latin America, as we said, I mean, we're continuously obviously looking at how the different pieces are moving. Synchia still will require us to – some time for us to bring it back to the – growth that we want to extract from that business. And so as we look at the rest of the year, we thought it was prudent to bring that down a little bit.
spk07: Got it, Mixon. And just to clarify, so I guess on LATAM, it's that, you know, you're spending this time investing on tech, client-centric stuff in Syncia, and so that kind of brought it towards the lower end more than anything else.
spk03: That's right. That's correct.
spk07: Got it. I appreciate it, Joaquin. No problem.
spk08: The next question comes from John Davis with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hey, good afternoon, guys. Mac, appreciate the comments so far on Syncio. I think last quarter you noted that revenue growth had decelerated a little bit. Sounds like that hasn't probably changed given kind of the tone on investing and kind of working on execution integration. But how do you think about this business longer term? Do you think you can reaccelerate it back into kind of that low double-digit growth on an organic basis or just any other color there on kind of how you think the longer-term trajectory of that business looks?
spk05: Sure. So, I mean, I think I said it on the last call, and even since then, I've spent a lot of time with clients. And the thing that's exciting about Syncia is local software companies that abide by the local regulations, that provide the capabilities they need to compete. We're one of the largest providers and the most dependable providers. So the demand from customers and the desire to do business with Syncia is obvious when I spend time with them. What has happened over time is they've acquired these companies, they've tried to understand it themselves, absorb them, figure out how to operate them together, and then they moved into an M&A process with us. So in my viewpoint, they were a bit distracted with, again, trying to absorb these companies, figure out what the structure should look like, and then selling the company to Avertek. Today, it's a very different culture and environment because Bernardo had to step aside for personal reasons. I will tell you, we anticipated that he would probably leave in a year or two. That got accelerated, given some things he needed to focus on. And then we put Claudio in his place now, who has clear objectives for each of the team members to ensure that the salespeople are spending more time with clients, make sure that we're tracking the pipeline, that we're resolving operational issues so they'll want to buy more from us. So we're much, much closer to the client, starting with me, but actually the organization at Sync is better organized. and better managed from a client perspective. Also, once a deal is sold, is making sure the implementation teams can convert that to revenue. Get the new system in, get the new customization so that they can actually book the revenue. So the discipline around executing and operating the organization, there's a much more significant focus on that from an organizational perspective and from a goal perspective. The other thing is clients want us to keep investing in these platforms. We can't keep buying just new platforms. We actually have to make sure the ones we bought, that were great when we bought them, that we're keeping those current, that we're keeping those updated so they can push more volume through it, that they'll continue to add features. So we've come up with a plan that gives our clients comfort that we're going to invest in this platform. And we prioritize those where we think we can get the most return in the shortest period of time. But we're coming up with a multi-year plan to make sure we invest in these great companies that we've bought. And then the other piece that I've talked about is pricing. Like, we are going through all of the contracts, seeing who's not, you know, as profitable as others, and how do we better manage the pricing initiatives to get the margin where we want it to be. So what I would say, John, is that we're trying to take the operational sort of excellence that we believe we have at Evertech and apply that now at Syncia. If you look at our historical deals, this is what we did with PayGroup, right? So we bought PayGroup because we need a platform in technology, and that is now the platform that we've rolled throughout the region. We brought up some of the biggest names in the region, but it took EverTech working with PayGroup to accomplish that because we used our expertise at a processing business and applied it to their licensing business and rolled it out across Latin America. Same thing we did with Place2Pay, right? Place2Pay was a small gateway operating in two countries. Now it operates in over nine, and some of our biggest customers are running on it. So that's what we see at Syncia is, you know, when you do a deal, you always have surprises, right? The great surprise is it's a very important franchise in Brazil, and people want to do more business because they rely. And they even look now that it's part of Evertech. The strength we have around information security, the strength we have around compliance because we operate for big banks in the U.S., it's making the value proposition even stronger in Brazil to do business with us. But the operational excellence, making sure you're staying close to customers, making sure you have stable operations, making sure you're continuing investing in products, that discipline is what we're now applying to the business. And I feel very confident that Claudia is the right person to lead us through that. And, I mean, the team will tell you, I'm spending a lot of time there myself to help accomplish that as well.
spk04: Okay, no, appreciate that, Color Mac. Joaquin, just a bigger picture question on margins. You know, obviously you had, you know, very high margins and still have relatively high margins, but they've been coming down, you know, consistently, even if you were to kind of exclude some of the M&A transactions for a while. You know, do you feel like with synchia accretion and kind of synergies that we're at a good kind of baseline margin this year? And that, you know, again, I'm not asking for 25 guidance, but any reason why you shouldn't start to see some operating leverage, you know, payments businesses typically have pretty high incremental margins just, As we think about longer term, should margins improve from here, I guess, is the key question.
spk03: What I would say, John, is if you look at our slides from last quarter, with Synca specifically, we actually had a little box that said margin optimization. We are certainly focused on maximizing margin. from our current baseline. What I would say historically is that the reasons why margin has come down has been very specific to actions that we have taken. One, with the popular deal, we sold off some assets and we took on a revenue share on our merchant acquiring business that we knew was going to bring margin or put pressure on the margin as we exceeded that deal, but that gave us extended relationships with the bank, a renewed relationship with the bank. It got us out of the bank holding company act that allowed us to do more M&A. We did Sinqia now, which is, as we knew, coming in at a slower contribution margin because it doesn't have, obviously, the same scale that we necessarily have in Puerto Rico. And as we said, as we become more and more successful in Latin America, that will continue to put pressure on the margins. So I think that when we look at historically how we've gotten to where we are today, it hasn't been really operationally driven. It's been very specific and purposeful actions that we have taken. And now we're focused on margin optimization and efficiencies across the board, as Matt just mentioned. So our goal would be to certainly focus on margin going forward. Let me just add to that, John.
spk05: As Joaquin said, the margin declines you've seen in the overall company have been strategic decisions, right? The Popular deal and the Syncia deal. If you look at, so it hasn't been a lack of operational focus and leverage. It's been strategic decisions to continue to change and evolve the company. If you look at when we have bought other companies, like the pay groups, like the place to pay, and we tuck those into LATAM, over time we do increase the margin as we operate it. But the margins, as Joaquin said, the step-downs we've taken have been a strategy to continue to grow the company.
spk04: Okay, no. Helpful callers. Thanks, guys.
spk08: The next question comes from Vasu Govil with KBW. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Max, two quick ones for you and Sinkia first. I got your comments about the debt modernization and investment in the platform. Just wanted to understand if you think that's going to be a prerequisite for you to be able to take the pricing changes that you're hoping in that business, or could the pricing changes happen? So we're just trying to get a sense for whether pricing can be an upside driver relative to expectations for this year, or it's more of a longer-term upside driver. And then a quick follow-up on that is just the tech spending and demand environment in Brazil from a macro perspective, if you could give us some color on that.
spk05: But that's an incredibly insightful question. So we are deliberately going through all of the repricing, and we're looking at all of the contracts. I would say it's a combination. We have some immediate opportunities to reprice contracts, and some of the repricing could be predicated on some improvements that we need to make in investments. But some of those investments we can make very, very quickly, and they're already in the plan for 2024. I mean, what we're going to do that's in the guide today is it impacts this year, but it will be both. This is something we can do immediately. Some will require investment, and some may require longer-term investment. So it's going to be a blend. But there is definitely an opportunity to increase the margins of the business and to do more with our customers as we make these investments. Technology spend in Brazil, I think, was your second question. I mean, look, this is one of the most dynamic markets in the world as it relates to technology. I had met with the president of the... The justice system, they're actually using artificial intelligence now to make judicial decisions. I mean, to make case decisions, but with judicial oversight. Then you've got PICS and OpenAI and what's going on in banking. So there's so much change going on in financial services and such a need for financial institutions to keep up. And with those changes, the technology providers like Sync here are incredibly important to the market. And I feel that and I hear that from my customers. They want us to be able to help keep up with them as the market changes and as they're putting new products in the market. So I think it's a great opportunity for Evertech and Syngia.
spk02: Great. Thank you for the color. And then a quick one for you, Joaquin. I got the number 27% transaction increase in ATH mobile. Any color on what drove that strength? And anything one time in that? Or do you expect that type of strength to continue?
spk03: No, I mean, look, it's mostly ATH mobile business. What I would say is that that actually has been consistent. I think what for us continues to be very positive is that that's coming off of strong growth historically, right? So this is on top of very good growth last year. Again, we did have... some seasonality in the first quarter because of the leap year and Easter kind of getting pushed into the first quarter, but the business continues to perform well and it continues to drive some growth through the payment Puerto Rico segment.
spk02: Great, thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from Jamie Freedman with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hi. Congratulations on the results. Mac, I wanted to go back to some of your prepared comments about the macro environment, which is so helpful in Puerto Rico in particular. You referenced here that the unemployment's at a very low 5.7. The employment rate's the highest since 2009 and travels up. I'm just wondering I know it's hard to tell, but what's your confidence level that we wind up staying here, and is that macro tailwind embedded in the guidance?
spk05: So, look, given your specific guidance, Joaquin, I'll let you kind of talk about how you blended that in. Hey, Jamie.
spk03: Yeah, I mean, look, we actually – this is consistent is what I would say to – what we expected, and I think we're reiterating the fact that the macroeconomic environment in Puerto Rico is supportive of what we're trying to accomplish from our growth perspective. If you look at the details that we actually provided last quarter, where we even went further and put some incremental stats and graphs, I think that was the baseline, and we're really reiterating that we believe that we have a good background to deliver on the numbers that we have just guided to.
spk05: I mean, the other thing I would add is that you know, there's a lot of ambiguity about what's going on with the economy today anyway, right? If you look at the current labor numbers in the U.S., what are people going to do with interest rates? It's hard to predict what next year is going to look like at the next year, depending on who you talk to. Keep in mind, Puerto Rico is a little bit different. So a big part of our economy are still federal subsidies for people, you know, that are on welfare. We still have money to come in from the hurricane. So we do have an underlying sort of economic stimulus that's a little bit more shelter than you might find in the U.S. But it is, look, I mean, we can't predict the Puerto Rico economy into 25 and 26 any more than people can in the U.S., but you do have some stimulus here that is unique and helpful.
spk09: And then for my follow-up, Mac, I'm just curious, now that you're six months in with Cinquia and you're spending so much time in Brazil and I realize Brazil is one of the most dynamic markets. You said it earlier. But at a very high level, how does it feel to be like instead of the big fish in a small pond, normal fish in a big ocean?
spk05: That's a great question. I would say... On a personal level, I mean, look, I ran Global Payments International business. I did business in China. I did business in Russia and India. So, I mean, that's a dynamic that on a personal level I've seen before and managed through. What I would tell you, though, and this is one of the reasons Syncia was so attractive, is it is one of the larger technology companies in Brazil. So Brazil is an incredibly exciting market. It's an incredibly evolving market. But the reason Syncia is such a great asset is because it is one of the larger technology companies. And that's why we had the confidence to move into Brazil with a specific purchase versus going in with a much smaller company that didn't have the credibility, that didn't have the leadership team, and that didn't have the track record and the industrial strength products already proven. So it is similar to me in Evertech in that people in Puerto Rico want to do business with Evertech because of the products we have, because of the presence we have, because of the commitment we have to the island. There's a similar affinity for Syncia as well in Brazil. It does remind me a little bit of Evertech in that we need to focus on operational excellence and delivery in Brazil with Syncia, but it is a very relevant player in the market. When I meet with executives and leaders in financial services, even CEOs of banks in other countries, they're aware of Syncia is, they know the legacy and the history, And, you know, they have an understanding of what we're capable of. So there are some similarities of the strength of Evertech in Puerto Rico with the strength of Syncia in Brazil.
spk09: Okay. Thank you.
spk08: The next question comes from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I'm asking a question on behalf of James Fawcett. I was wondering how you were looking at capital allocation for 2024, 2025, and specifically how you might be looking at timing or appetite for M&A now that the CINCIA deal has closed and you've started seeing those contributions coming in and kind of what that pipeline might look like? Hi.
spk03: Yeah, so look. Specifically now with Syncia, one thing to remember is Syncia being a highly acquisitive company, also had a very good M&A team locally. They are very close to the entrepreneurs, to up-and-coming companies that have technology that's either adjacent or complementary to Syncia. So we certainly want to continue to leverage that. That has been a key part of how Syncia has grown to be what it is today, and so we certainly continue to have a pipeline. In terms of general priorities for capital allocation, we continue to look for growth. I'd say that the scale or the size of the deals that we're probably looking at are now more like what we used to do before Syncia, so relatively smaller size that we can attach to Syncia or some of our other countries or entities across Latin America. But we're certainly continuing to focus on growth. And after that, as we announced on the call, we entered into an ASR, $70 million ASR, to make up for some of the shares that we issued as part of the Cynthia deal, but also to buy back some of our shares, as we usually do every year, to offset some of the dilution coming from some of the long-term incentive plans. So those are the priorities, and obviously now with interest rates, we're obviously always looking at where's our debt, where are our rates, and whether it makes sense for us to pay down some debt and save some interest expense cost.
spk05: Yeah, I would say that. I mean, the big thing is debt's more expensive, so that's now something you look at more than you would have looked at in the past, the potential to pay down. Like Joaquin said, we're still focused on M&A, more tuck-in deals like we used to do in the past, and we now have a bigger operation within which we can tuck those in. So we have a very healthy pipeline within Brazil and outside of Brazil, you know, and that's still a focus of the team.
spk01: Okay, thank you.
spk08: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Matt Schuessler for any closing remarks.
spk05: I want to thank everybody for joining the call. Joaquin, I look forward to seeing you over the coming quarter at different conferences and events. And thanks and have a good night.
spk08: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer