Green Dot Corporation

Good afternoon and welcome to the Green Dot Corp fourth quarter 2021 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 your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tim Willey, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. Today we are discussing Green Dot's fourth quarter 2021 financial and operating results. Following our remarks, we'll open up the call for questions. Our most recent earnings release that accompanies this call and webcast can be found at ir.greendot.com. As a reminder, our comments may include forward-looking statements and expectations regarding future results and performance. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Green Dot's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent form, 10-K and 10-Q, for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. During the call, we will make reference to our financial measures that do not conform with generally accepted accounting principles. For the sake of clarity, unless otherwise noted, all numbers we talk about today will be on a non-GAAP basis. Information may be calculated differently than similar non-GAAP data presented by other companies. Quantitative reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial information to the directly comparable GAAP financial information appears in today's press release. The content of this call is property of the Green Dot Corporation and is subject to copyright protection. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Dan.

Thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for joining us to discuss our fourth quarter 2021 results. We finished the year with solid performance with GAAP revenue growth of 14% and GAAP EPS that more than doubled to 85 cents. We saw this growth even as we invested in our platform navigated a variety of industry-wide challenges and saw the impacts from stimulus begin to recede. George will share more on our financial performance with you shortly. A lot has happened and changed since I joined in early 2020. Though I underestimated and could not have predicted many of the challenges we faced, I'm proud of how we adapted and of the progress we've made, and I'm also confident in our plan forward. As I look at 2021, we made substantial progress to strengthen our organization, which will serve us well in 2022 and beyond. We built out our management team to complement our efforts in 2020. Over the course of 2021, we added new executives to head up BAS, customer care, and compliance. We hired a new CTO and finished the year by bringing on George Gresham as our new CFO, COO. These positions are all critical to moving the company forward and providing experienced leadership for the organization and our employees. Having the entire team in place for 2022 will be something that we have not had since I joined the company. Under Georgia's leadership, we are strengthening our internal decision-making and prioritization processes, elevating them to a level that has not existed at Green Dot in the past. This will ensure that initiatives are being prioritized correctly and they are given the proper resources to ensure optimal outcomes. We also appointed a new chief product officer and effectively streamlined how we prioritize, design, build, and deliver new products both directly and through our partners. We began our technology transformation, which as George will highlight, will not only provide financial benefits and efficiencies, but will also dramatically strengthen our positioning and capabilities as a provider and partner. Finally, and most importantly, our culture and people. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a big believer that people are the heart of a successful company. We have fully embraced work from anywhere and are judiciously hiring quality employees nationwide. 400 talented and experienced folks from more than 40 states have joined Green Dot since my arrival almost two years ago. In that same period, we grew revenues by 29%, but kept total headcount virtually flat. This focus on increasing talent density will drive efficiency as we become a more engaged, accountable workforce and develop a culture built on trust and responsibility. As we step into 2022, I remain very bullish on the value of the unique and powerful set of assets we have at Green Dot. First, the collection of partners we work with, both in the physical and digital distribution of our products, is unmatched. Our engagement and alignment with these partners and their channels continues to deepen. Take Walmart, for example. Walmart has just begun offering a first-of-its-kind deposit and withdrawal service in their 4,700-plus stores nationwide. Powered by Green Dot, this new service enables customers to quickly and seamlessly access their bank or credit union account without having to visit a branch. This creates meaningful value and furthers financial inclusion for the more than 150 million customers who transact with Walmart each week. especially as more and more bank branches close. Amazon Flex recently announced enhanced rewards on its Amazon Flex card for a limited time in March to help drive spending volume and account growth. Turning to our partnership with Intuit, we've seen exciting growth from the QuickBooks checking product over the last two years, and their account base has quadrupled since January of 2021, with a third being businesses that have been in operation for less than a year. These are just a handful of examples of how Green Dot is working with partners to innovate and create products designed to drive growth by bringing seamless and affordable banking to all. And after we complete our tech transformation, we will be able to build and deliver more products, services, and feature functionality to our partners and distribution channels with greater efficiency and flexibility. Second, we're improving the way our leaders and teams collaborate internally, enabling us to pursue more growth opportunities across channels and partners. For example, our pay card business now works closely with our consumer segment to create pay card solutions for our retail partners. Third, we have an ecosystem that can be monetized and will be more valuable as it grows. Across our channels and partners, we touch millions of consumers as they go about their daily lives. Consider this scenario. An Uber driver shops at one of our retail partners and pays with a physical card or Apple Pay. That scenario touches our platform in three unique places and presents opportunity to create valuable experiences for the customer, the employer, and the retailer, all within our ecosystem. Now, trying to monetize that ecosystem across numerous platforms and antiquated technology would be cumbersome at best. When we have one technology platform that path to success and monetization will be much easier. Fourth, we maintain our belief that having our own bank is a valuable differentiator that is under-monetized, but that will change. Ownership of the bank is something that partners have routinely mentioned to me as being very valuable to them. As we implement the new technology and processing platform at the bank, we will have a truly integrated product development and operating infrastructure and our value to our partners will only increase. And finally, the Green Dot Network. This vast network of more than 90,000 locations has long provided a convenient cash-in, cash-out ecosystem, which many other digital banks and fintechs use to provide a valuable omnichannel experience to their customers. It's also an important extension of our brand marketing and customer engagement strategy as it places products like GoToBank front and center in the store's our customers shop in regularly. In closing, while the last two years presented challenges in situations more complicated than we estimated, it has also accelerated a seismic shift in consumer behaviors. The opportunity is much larger than I thought when I joined Green Dot. But most importantly, I'm confident that the moves we have made and our tech transformation will position Green Dot to deliver exceptional products and experiences for our customers and partners, and strong revenue and EPS growth for our shareholders. With that, I'll hand it over to George.