The Western Union Company

Good day and welcome to the Western Union Company first quarter 2020 earnings release conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key then zero on your telephone keypad. 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 Brendan Metrano, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. On today's call, we will discuss the company's results for the first quarter of 2020, and then we will take your questions. The slides that accompany this call and webcast can be found at westernunion.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call. Additional operational statistics have been provided in supplemental tables with our press release. Western Union is still following a work-from-home policy, so on our remote call today is our CEO, Hikmit Ersec, our CFO, Raj Agrawal, and Head of Treasury and Investor Relations, Brad Winbigler. Today's call is being recorded, and our comments include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Western Union's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 2019 Form 10-K, for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. During the call, we will discuss some items that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures on our website. WesternUnion.com under the investor relations section. We will also discuss certain adjusted metrics. Although the expenses that have been excluded from adjusted metrics are specific to these initiatives, the types of expenses may be similar to types of expenses that the company has previously incurred and can reasonably be expected to incur in the future. All statements made by Western Union officers on this call are the property of the Western Union Company and are subject to copyright protection. Other than the replay noted in our press release, Western Union has not authorized and disclaims responsibility for any recording, replay, or distribution of any transcription of this call. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Hikmet Ersec.

Thank you, Brendan, and good afternoon, everyone. We hope you and your families are safe and well. Our thoughts are with all of those who have been affected by COVID-19. Western Union has been determined to do its part by living up to our responsibilities as one of the most trusted global brands delivering essential services to millions of customers worldwide during this unprecedented and challenging time. We are grateful to all of the frontline heroes and essential workers as well as our employees and partners who are working tirelessly to combat this global health and economic crisis. During our call today, our CFO Raja Grewal and I will share how Western Union is navigating the current environment and discuss our first quarter results. We will also share our views on the market environment impacted by COVID-19 and provide our perspective on economic and customer trends. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought social and business life to a grinding halt. Stock markets have been in turmoil, global GDP growth projections have been plummeted to near-hysteric lows and unemployment rates in many countries have surged. The effects of this pandemic are likely triggering one of the greatest economic shocks of the past century. Our industry is no exception and we are experiencing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides migration flows, economic indicators like GDP growth and employment levels are indicative of consumer behavior and business activity. However, I'm glad to say that the strategic decisions and investment we made at Western Union during the past years have laid the foundation for us to navigate to this unprecedented crisis from a position of strength. We have one of the most trusted global consumer brands. Our strong corporate balance sheet and healthy financial position are supported by very strong annual operating cash flow and investment grade credit rating and an undrawn revolving credit facility. Our operating model and WuWei Lien management tools give us the necessary financial flexibility to support our operations as well as our capital allocation priorities. Further, the backdrop of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of the new global strategy we laid out at our Investors Day in September of 2019. It has not only confirmed but accelerated the implementation of our strategic priorities for 2020 and beyond, including the expansion of our digital capabilities, the diversification of our global payments network, and the opening of our cross-border platform to new use cases and partners. These fundamentals, paired with the careful and diligent approach We have taken to navigate the first phase of COVID-19 will allow us to keep supporting our customers and clients as the world responds to COVID-19. While the timing for the recovery from the pandemic and rebound of the global economy is currently uncertain, we stay focused on best positioning our company for success both during and after the COVID-19 world. Let me now take you through the pillars of our COVID-19 response. As an organization, our top priority during the crisis is the safety and well-being of all our stakeholders. So here is what are we doing. For our employees, we are supporting the safety, health, and financial security of our global talent with measures like expanded employee assistance programs, a work from home policy, and the technology infrastructure that enables our teams to perform at the same high level while operating under business continuity plans. For our customers, we are accelerating the rollout of digital services and introducing new solutions to help customers transfer money and make payments around the world. For example, we recently launched WesternUnion.com in additional countries, enabling our customers to send funds digitally to the world now from more than 75 countries. We introduced a digital location service in 10 countries that helps customers complete digital transactions through assistant voice and video calls. Additionally, we are expanding our payout service by working with agents to provide home delivery of money transfer in select countries where curfews are restricting the movement of our receivers. We also fast-tracked the expansion of our real-time payout capabilities. For decades, we have been paying out transactions in minutes in approximately 130 currencies within our vast global retail network. Over the last years, we have diversified our payout network to include more than 4 billion accounts and wallets in over 100 countries. Recent enhancements to our payout network now enable customers to send funds into bank accounts and wallets in 50 countries in minutes. Further, we are working with our global agent partners to create a safe retail environment by implementing social distancing measures and safety procedures designed to protect frontline associates and customers. While the large majority of our agent locations remain open as essential services, we offer a global agent locator tool updated multiple times a day to keep our customers informed about availability of our agent network. For the communities, to support communities around the world, Western Union and the Western Union Foundation have pledged significant funds in the fight against COVID-19, which will support domestic hunger relief efforts and global healthcare systems. To show our appreciation to frontline euros, this week we will launch fee discounts on our digital channels for first responders and essential service workers across the world. Lastly, and importantly, We also continue to strive at being stewards of shareholder capital. We put an increased focus on cost discipline, efficiency, and prioritization of investments. The careful management of our financial position ensures that we are prepared to meet current challenges and succeed in long term. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Besides continuing to invest in our operations and in growth initiatives, we plan to continue to return cash through quarterly dividends to our shareholders. Let me now move into recap of our first quarter performance. Our first quarter started out solid and through mid-March, our business performed well and in line with our objectives. In the second half of March, our transactions dipped significantly due to impact of COVID-19 global spread. In light of the observed performance trends and the rising uncertainty caused by COVID-19, we withdrew our 2020 financial outlook on March 27. First quarter revenues declined 1% on an adjusted constant currency basis, including healthy digital revenue growth of 22%. Our adjusted operating margin expanded to 20.5% and adjusted EPS grew 7% year-over-year to 44 cents. As uncertainty regarding COVID-19 remains high and global economic implications are starting to unfold, we are not reinstating a 2020 outlook at this time. On a positive note, in recent days, We are encouraged to see some indications that customers and transactions trends are stabilizing, even turning positive in few outbound markets like Germany and Switzerland. We are also seeing positive developments in some key receive markets where lockdowns policies are loosening. I would now like to discuss some perspective on the global market environment we currently operate in and the customer trends we observe. Early on, a number of industries that rely on migrant workers were hit hard by the economic impact of COVID-19. As a consequence, some workers have less capacity to send support back to their home countries. At the end of April, the World Bank issued a forecast projecting a 20% decline for global remittances in 2020. While we think this forecast is too pessimistic, We are expecting remittance volumes to be done this year. As we triangulate projections from various institutions, it is of utmost importance to keep our focus on the needs and sentiment of our customers. Despite the future economic outlook and respective employment uncertainty, we know through panels and surveys that our consumers still have a strong desire to continue sending money. Our consumers are highly motivated to support families and loved ones back home and are typically resilient in their efforts to do so. We witnessed an example of this during the global financial crisis. COVID-19 has also accelerated a shift in consumer behavior and led to increased use of digital channels. Customers tell us that it is important to them to use a trusted brand when switching to digital send options. We think this is a factor that our digital transaction performing so well. A combination of channel shifts by some existing consumers and strong new customer acquisition. Turning to our payments business, our business solution segment was less affected by COVID-19 in the first quarter due to strong foreign exchange hedging revenue. and some key payments verticals like financial institutions performing well. While COVID-19 will also impact our payments business in near term, Western Union's strong franchise should be a benefit as the industry navigates through this economic downturn. Over the long term, we believe our business solutions operations will continue to prosper. To summarize, COVID-19 is having a significant impact on our business. However, we expect this impact to be temporary. Western Union as well as our consumers are proactively making adjustments to manage through this period of disruption. At the same time, we are getting ready to capitalize on opportunities emerging from when we expect to become a phase of accelerated industry transformation. Based on the very early signs we see from a few countries in the later part of April, We expect to be well positioned to capture these opportunities. Our vision to be a leader in cross-border cross-currency movement and payment has been underlined by a strong fundamentals, including a trusted global brand with over 90% brand recognition, a robust digital cross-border money movement platform and expanding unmatched global payments network consisting of 550,000 retail locations and billions of bank accounts and mobile wallets to serve a base of 150 million global consumers and thousands of global businesses. Our resilient business model delivering solid profitability has proven vital once more in times of growth and even more in times of crisis. When the world emerged from COVID-19 crisis, we believe West Union will remain well positioned to compete in the large and fragmented cross-border payments and remittance market. While we are one of the largest players in the remittance market, estimated at $700 billion of annual principal, our share is still small and we see lots of opportunities to grow. We also see opportunities to grow our share within the cross-border payments market. I would now like to provide you with a brief strategy update. We continue to execute well against the new global strategy we laid out at our Investors Day in September, enhancing our global network, driving our digital growth, opening our platform to new use cases, and optimizing our organization. Built on the strength of our vast global retail network, we increased our breadth of our bank account payout network in the quarter, which now includes over 100 countries. We see evidence of these actions starting to pay off. In the first quarter of account payout, network transactions grew over 90%. As part of our network optimization initiatives, we continued to generate commission savings through a combination of renegotiations and channel mix shifts. Also, our goal to optimize our organization and increase margins with our WuWei productivity program is progressing well. On the growth initiatives, our consumer digital business grew first quarter revenue 22% on a constant currency basis, and we are seeing accelerating transaction growth in recent months. In fact, for the month of April, approximately 30% of our total C2C transactions were generated by digital channels. We are very pleased with this growth and we are currently evaluating a number of initiatives to further enhance our digital business during this time when more consumers and partners are seeking reliable, high-quality digital services from trusted brands like Western Union. Business Solutions is also further advancing on its digital journey. We currently see about one-third of our business clients digital self-serve their needs to our online platform Edge. In the first quarter, we reached a significant milestone of 1 million transactions on Edge with over 90% repeat payment transactions rate. So overall, we are pleased with our long-term strategic initiatives. And before I pass over the Raj, to discuss the financial results in detail, let me once again recognize and thank the millions of our customers around the globe who place their trust in our services, many of whom are the frontline heroes. They are nurses, grocery store workers, or ambulance drivers. While they put their lives at risk and support millions of people that shelter in place around the globe, at the same time, They are supporting their loved ones, often far away from them by sending money home. I'm confident as a global community and strong company we will get through this challenging time together. I remain excited about long-term prospects and would like to thank all our shareholders for their trust and the Western Union team for their hard work and commitment. With that, I'll turn the call over to Raj.

Thank you, Hikmet, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I will start off with a review of our first quarter results and then offer some insights into our plans for managing through the COVID-19 crisis. To improve comparability with prior year results and to better reflect ongoing operations, our adjusted results exclude the impact of the SpeedPay and PayMap divestitures from revenue and costs associated with the restructuring initiative and mergers and acquisitions. Before I get into our first quarter results, I would like to provide some context around the impact of COVID-19 during the quarter. Through mid-March, COVID-19's impact on our business was primarily limited to China and to some extent Italy. Overall, our business was performing in line with the expectations underlying our original 2020 financial outlook. In the latter part of March, as the spread of COVID-19 accelerated, and stay-at-home orders were implemented, we began to experience significant declines in consumer-to-consumer transactions. In the final days of March, rates of decline were around 30%. Given the extent and uncertain duration of this disruption, it became clear that we could not reasonably project the impact of COVID-19 on our 2020 financial results. So, on March 27th, we withdrew our 2020 financial outlook. Since then, trends for the month of April improved for March, with C2C transactions declining 21%. I will provide some thoughts on how COVID-19 may affect our business during 2020 in a few minutes. Moving on to our first quarter results, first quarter revenue of $1.2 billion declined 11% compared to the prior year period, primarily due to the divestitures, while adjusted constant currency revenue, which excludes our divested businesses, in the prior year period declined 1%. Currency translation net of the impact from hedges reduced first quarter revenue by approximately $47 million compared to the prior year, primarily due to the depreciation of the Argentine peso. The decline in the peso negatively impacted reported revenue by 3%, while the effect of inflation on our Argentina businesses is estimated to have positively impacted both reported and constant currency revenue by approximately 1%. In the consumer to consumer segment, reported revenue declined 4% or 3% on a constant currency basis. Transactions declined 3% primarily due to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on outbound markets. We generally expect that demand for money transfers will remain strong for our inbound markets. But in the near term, the economic impact from the crisis will reduce senders' ability to meet that inbound demand. Total C2C cross-border principal was flat or increased 2% on a constant currency basis. Principal per transaction increased 2% or 4% constant currency. The spread between C2C transaction and revenue growth in the quarter was 1%, with a negative 1% impact on currency. Pricing was higher in the first quarter compared to the prior year period, but was offset by the negative impact of NICs. Turning to the regional results, my commentary today will focus on developments that reflect broader trends we're seeing in our business. North America revenue declined 2% on both a reported and constant currency basis, while transactions declined 5%. Pre-COVID-19 performance was on track with internal expectations. We saw strong growth in the U.S. to Mexico corridor, benefiting from the weaker peso, while domestic money transfer transactions continued to decline. In North America, digital cross-border transaction growth remained strong, likely benefiting from some channel shifts from retail. Similarly, we saw an increase in account payout during the quarter. Revenue in the Europe and CIS region decreased 5% on both a reported and constant currency basis. Transactions grew 1% as growth in Russia benefiting from the spare bank partnership was offset by declines in Italy, the UK, and France. Both reported and constant currency revenue growth were negatively impacted by softening trends in retail due to COVID-19. However, our digital business continued to gain momentum, especially in March, with strong revenue and transaction growth. A notable positive trend to highlight is that in recent days, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands are now back to pre-COVID-19 growth trajectories. Revenue in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region increased 3% on both a reported and constant currency basis. On transaction growth of 1%. Our Saudi telecom partnership continued to be a key growth driver in the quarter. Spends to India, notably from the Gulf region, negatively impacted growth. Revenue in the Latin America and Caribbean region decreased 11% on a reported basis for 3% constant currency on transaction declines of 5%. The civil unrest that impacted the fourth quarter of 2019 quieted but gave way to the impact of COVID-19. Argentina was the biggest source of pressure as COVID-19 policy responses resulted in significant location closures. Similar to other markets experiencing lockdowns, We saw an increase in digital money transfer transactions and also adoption of digital wallet payouts. Revenue in the APAC region declined 10% on a reported basis for 9% constant currency. Transactions declined 14% in the region, driven primarily by the Philippines domestic business, which has limited impact on revenue. For our overall digital money transfer business, revenues increased 21% or 22% constant currency in the quarter. including WesternUnion.com and our third-party white label and co-branded digital partnerships. Digital money transfer revenues accounted for 16% of total C2C revenue in the quarter. WesternUnion.com revenue grew 13% or 14% constant currency. Cross-border WesternUnion.com revenue increased approximately 23% which was partially offset by declines in domestic money transfers. For the month of April, WesternUnion.com transactions Grills accelerated. Business Solutions revenue increased 3% on a reported basis for 5% constant currency and represented 8% of company revenues in the quarter. Strong foreign exchange hedging revenue in Europe was a key contributor to constant currency growth. Other revenues, which consists primarily of our retail bill payments businesses in the US and Argentina, decreased 59% in the quarter, which primarily reflects the impact of the 2019 divestitures. Agafasil walk-in business in Argentina posted good increases in transactions and local currency revenue growth. Other revenues represented 7% of total company revenues in the quarter. Turning to margins and profitability, we will focus on consolidated margins as segment margins are not comparable with the prior year period due to the divestitures and other cost allocation changes in the first quarter of 2020 and COVID-19 impacts on the segments. We are also providing adjusted metrics to exclude restructuring expenses, M&A, and related tax effects. The consolidated GAAP operating margin was 19.6% in the quarter compared to 18.8% in the prior year period. The increase was primarily driven by savings from our productivity program and lower compensation expense, partially offset by the divestitures and changes in FX. We incurred $11 million of restructuring expense in the first quarter related to productivity initiatives. We continue to expect total restructuring expenses of $150 million related to our productivity program, and to date we have incurred $126 million. Adjusted operating margin in the first quarter was 20.5% compared to 19.3% in the prior year period, with the increase driven by the same factors stated above and adjusted for the restructuring and M&A costs. Speed pay contributed about 40 basis points to last year's first quarter margin while foreign exchange hedges provided a benefit of $10 million in the current quarter and a benefit of $5 million in the prior year period. The GAAP effected tax rate was 12.5% in the quarter compared to 19.9% in the prior year period while adjusted tax rate was 12.5% compared to 20% in the prior year period. The decrease in the GAAP and adjusted tax rates was primarily due to project tax liabilities from the divestitures in the prior year period and greater discrete tax benefits in the current period. GAAP earnings per share in the quarter was 42 cents compared to 39 cents in the prior year period and adjusted earnings per share in the quarter was 44 cents compared to 41 cents in the prior year period. The year-over-year increase in both GAAP and adjusted EPS was primarily due to productivity savings, lower compensation expense, a lower effective tax rate and fewer shares outstanding partially offset by the divestitures. Turning to our cash flow and balance sheet, gap cash flow from operating activities was $112 million for the quarter. Year-over-year decline in operating cash flow was primarily due to the timing of payables and liabilities. We expect continued strong free cash flow conversion in 2020. Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $36 million. At the end of the quarter, we had cash of $1.1 billion and debt of $3.1 billion. We returned nearly $310 million to shareholders in the first quarter, including $92 million in dividends and $217 million of share repurchases, which represented approximately 8.5 million shares. The outstanding share count at quarter end was 411 million shares, and we had $783 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization, which expires in December 2021. As Hikmet highlighted earlier, our company was in a strong position when the COVID-19 crisis hit. So we believe we can withstand this period of disruption better than many and come out of it with good momentum to execute our strategy and realize new potential opportunities. As previously noted, we are not reinstating formal financial targets for 2020 due to the high levels of uncertainty. So I'll discuss some factors we consider in our planning efforts. Our business is tied to global economic activity with higher exposure to developed markets. Current forecasts for 2020 global remittances vary anywhere from declines of 3.5% to 20%, and there's no single factor that predicts it accurately. So for the purpose of our discussion, we'll focus on the potential path of global economic activity over the course of 2020. Prevailing view from a number of forecasts appears to be that global economic activity should bottom out during the second quarter of 2020, and with easing of restrictive policies improved progressively through the second half of 2020 and into 2021. At this time, we think this is a reasonable trajectory to consider for our business. Under this type of scenario, we believe that we can deliver solid margins, although there is likely to be significant quarterly variation along with revenues. Our cost structure is approximately 60% variable and 40% fixed, which provides some inherent margin buffer In addition, there are other fixed cost adjustments we can make to align with revenue trends. For example, we have delayed new hiring for all non-essential travel and are prioritizing investments. The level of additional short-term expense reductions we realize also depends in part on the length and severity of declines. We continue to target $150 million of annual cost savings through 2022 related to the productivity program we started last year and are on track to realize one-third of those savings in 2020. Given our cash flow generation and solid balance sheet, our financial position remains strong. This is reflected by our investment grade credit rating, which remains a high priority for the company. We have an undrawn $1.5 billion revolving credit facility and are financing short-term working capital needs through the commercial paper market, which was less than $100 million at the end of the first quarter. We have no significant debt maturities until 2022. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Our top priorities remain investing to support our existing operations and growth initiatives and returning cash to shareholders through the quarterly dividend. We continue to evaluate opportunities for M&A and then to the extent we have excess cash, we return it to shareholders through share repurchases. At this time, share repurchases have been temporarily paused. as we feel it is prudent to conserve capital until there is better visibility into how the disruption from COVID-19 plays out. To recap, despite the current economic disruption, we believe we are well positioned for future success. We operate in a large and historically stable market. We have an operating model that provides flexibility with 60% of our costs variable. We're executing on our strategic objectives to drive growth and we operate from a position of financial strength. Thank you for joining our call today and operator, we are now ready to take questions.

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 the question has been addressed, and you would like to withdraw your question, please press stars and two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Jensen Wang of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much. Hi, I hope you guys are well and safe and sound. Yeah, I think how you laid out the The outcomes on revenues make sense and the withdrawal guidance makes sense. But Raj, on the expense side, did I hear correctly? It sounds like we should assume that your expenses from here or the fixed side of it should be relatively flat and then we should assume the $50 million in savings coming through. Is that sort of the base case? Is there an opportunity to maybe bring forward some of the extra $100 million into this year if need be?

Yeah, I think the way to think about it is that we're still targeting the $150 million of run rate savings in three years from the programs we launched last year. But we probably do have some additional opportunity this year with fixed cost savings. And it largely depends on how revenue plays out too. So we've already stopped hiring any significant new roles we've already and also travel is limited obviously in this environment we're also reprioritizing some of the key investments we want to make so there's certainly more opportunity for cost savings beyond the 50 million on a short-term basis I would say Tingen.

Okay got it and then just my quick follow-up on the thinking about second order effects of the of the pandemic and the digital versus traditional mix shift. The assumption is what? Are we seeing the traditional customers converting to digital faster or are the new digital customers still primarily new to Western Union? Trying to understand that interplay and then also maybe just an update on your profit or margins on the digital side versus traditional. Thank you.

Yeah, let me take the first part saying that, you know, most of the customers are new to digital. As you know, we have two digitals. One is with digital partners, one is with westunion.com, and especially in westunion.com, we see new customers, continue to be new customers, but we do also see some conversions. As people are locked down, you know, they are subject to lockdown orders through regulators in many countries. They just can't... go out to the street and make transactions. Many people do choose Western Union.com. They are very loyal to our brand and they do use Western Union.com, but many, many customers are joining us as new customers, especially on the digital side, on the digital partner side, sorry. All are new, right? As you know, as we rolled out with the digital partners, new customer segments, they are new to our network. Raj, you want to talk about the profitability there?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, Tim, just this environment really reinforces why our digital strategy is so good and why it's going to continue to be very beneficial to us. Our digital business overall is very profitable, both the branded and non-branded offerings. We look at largely as incremental business, incremental customers. If you break it down a little bit, westernunion.com has a relatively high RPT, or revenue per transaction, it's a little bit lower than retail but relatively close and then the gross margins on that business on a percentage basis are not too dissimilar from retail so it's a very profitable business and then on the partnership side we are more of a processor of transactions as we've talked before and we don't have a lot of cost in that process so we have a lower starting point in terms of revenue per transaction but the margins are very high in the white label side and it's still early stages. We don't have a lot of those partnerships yet and so we're still learning but it certainly has driven a lot of good growth in the global business.

Yeah, and I would think their real-time account payout network building out quickly has got to help a little bit. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, it does.

Thank you. Great, thanks guys.

Thanks. The next question comes from Jason Kupferberg of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, Jason.

Hey, good afternoon. I just wanted to start with a question picking up on some of the comments about April. I think you said down 21% for the month in terms of the C2C transactions versus the 30% exiting March, so obviously some improvement there. Can you just talk about how you kind of exited April, whether that's the last few days, week, whatever you think the right way to Talk about it is because it sounded like you had a couple of outbound corridors that got back to pre-COVID level. So I just wanted to see where we actually exited April.

Yeah, Jason, we entered April at about the same rate of decline, so about minus 30 or so. And it did improve sequentially throughout the month. So we exited the month better. I would just say we're really focused on the total month performance at minus 21, but certainly we saw some positive signs as we moved through the course of the month. And certain markets began to open up later in the month, like Germany and Switzerland, Netherlands, and that did have a positive impact. And for that reason, we think that second quarter is likely to be the lowest quarter for us from a revenue and a profit margin standpoint. and it should improve based on what the forecast that exists externally after we get to the second quarter. So it was positive the month of April, relatively speaking.

I think if you look at the digital growth in April was impressive, right? Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, our digital strategies are working. We were coming with a higher 20% now in April is even 32% growth on on transactions on digital overall April within that environment. And don't forget, we are one of the largest in digital. We have about $600 million revenue last year, right? In 2019, we had 600. Growing from that basis is really great. We are now in 75 countries with our dot-com business. And then we have many, many digital partners, like wide-level digital partners globally. I am proud what we have done, the team has done your thing in the right time putting the digital, especially during this crisis, it's really great to see.

Just to pick up on that, do you have a view at this point how much of the uptake of digital will end up manifesting itself in terms of permanent consumer behavior change? There's a lot of talk about that more broadly in other parts of the payments. and curious how you're thinking about it within the remittance market, even once we're on the other side of the virus.

Yeah, I think, you know, as you know, we have a wonderful, you know, a network of digital and retail. Obviously, globally, we have about 550,000 locations and about 4 billion accounts. The current customers are new, Jason. Most of them are new to our network and they are sticky. We know that they are loyal and we do have loyalty programs to keep them in our network. and they stay within the network. I think that once you start with the, especially during the crisis, with the trusted environment, I think you stay and we do have worldwide about 150 million customers as I outlined in the last meeting at our Investors Day meeting. We are going more on our ecosystem, around the consumer ecosystem. We are building that, keeping the loyalty, adding additional products and making them more loyal to our brand. So the good news is that The digital customer segment is a new customer segment. As you know, you need to fund on a credit card or bank account. On the retail, it continues to be funded. The fund has to be collected via cash. And so it's the balance on that. And we probably have the best service on that to serve in both kinds of customer segments.

Just last quick one for me for Raj. I mean, I know your adjusted operating margins were up 120 basis points here in the first quarter. You're going to obviously feel a good amount of revenue pressure in the second quarter. But on a full year basis, do you feel like your adjusted operating margins can increase year over year?

Yeah, I don't really have an outlook to give you for that, Jason. A lot of it is going to depend on the level of revenue trajectory that we get. So if we had a better feel for the exact revenue outcome, we'd be able to give you that. I do think we're going to drive strong operating margins. We're doing a lot of things, obviously, to drive the original savings programs that we launched last year, and those are going very well for us. And then we're also looking at incremental cost savings this year. So we can mitigate the impact of some revenue decline, obviously not all of it and I do expect the second quarter is going to be the lowest from a revenue and profit standpoint but hopefully we'll improve from there. You can look at the first quarter, it's not necessarily indicative of the entire year but we were down in revenue but we actually were able to increase our margins year over year and that's positive. So we're going to do everything we can to maximize the Hey guys, can you hear me okay? Yeah, yeah.

all right great glad everyone's uh doing okay you know when we look through um 2020 and into 21 you know the competitive dynamics in the landscape is probably going to shift a lot and so you hopefully will be doing a lot more digital and that's good for growth you know we'll see how it plays out on on revenue yields and margins but positions you well I think there's also potentially maybe more competition on digital than retail, but there may be some very large retail competitors who may not exist or could be challenged in this given liquidity positions that they have versus you guys. Can you touch on your positioning to maybe take share through this from a competitive standpoint versus especially on the retail side?

Sure, let me take that, Raj. As you know, we are both in home offices, so we have to... coordinate that answer. Hi, Darren, how are you? Look, Darren, I think that, first of all, on the digital success, that's going to continue to happen, I believe, especially the combination of our digital network globally and the efforts we put behind that and our payout network and also in real-time payout, that's huge. And we believe we are gaining market share here. I think even though we have a huge base here, we are gaining market share compared with competitors. I think some of the competition on the retail money transfer, we are always looking at the environment. As you know, our market, our capital allocation has not changed. We're going to continue to invest in our business. We also look at for if there are any synergies or bigger Acquisition opportunities, we will definitely look if it fits with our strategy and if it has a good return. The environment is definitely something we continue to look at that. But most important thing also that we're going to return cash back to our shareholders via dividends. So this will continue to happen. And if there is an opportunity, if that fits in with our strategy, is it a digital site or any retail site, we will look at it definitely.

The other thing on the digital side is that the thing that other competitors don't have as much as we do is a great retail network, which when you combine that with our digital capabilities, it really is a unique offering. And even in this environment, the retail payout capability is highly sought after. But then we're also expanding into the other digital account payouts. So it's different from the rest of the competition.

Okay. Thanks. Raj, just the follow-up is now for you on the liquidity position and the dividend. Again, it's great to see your liquidity position and commitment there now. I guess if April trends, which were down around 20%, continue, if the world doesn't get that much easier given unemployment levels, and we look through and unemployment stays high and has an impact along with maybe migration, I just want to understand from your perspective where we can get to so that you can still pay the dividend without having to worry about There are a lot of ifs in what you asked.

It's hard to predict exactly how things are going to play out. We don't believe that the dividend is at risk.

We feel very good about where we are.

We had a strong position coming in. We continue to generate strong cash flows.

I think we would have to be in a very different world than we're in today.

from where we're in today for us to think that way. And I think the dividend is very important to the board of Western Union and the dividend payout. And we understand that it's very important to shareholders as well. So that's something that we're very committed to.

Okay. That's great, guys. Thank you.

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

Great. Thank you very much. First question I wanted to ask was, You've given some pretty good color in terms of where you've seen improvement and improving flows. I'm wondering if you can dive in a little bit there and provide some more nuanced commentary on where you are seeing improvement. Can you tie it back to whether how much may be related to or what the lag was to beginning of reopening of economic activity versus perhaps consumer stimulus funds that were being distributed Just looking for some color of how you're thinking about like what's driving the improvement and then how that could be extrapolated out.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, if you look at the, let me start where we see first decline where it started. It had always to do with lockdowns. It's, you know, subject to lockdown orders by government and especially on our dedicated locations. There were, you know, shelter in place orders. Obviously, people couldn't go on retailer to make a transaction. That impacted. But we believe that also the financial pressure is probably the main one which has a factor to our decline. And that combined with that, so we saw in late March, you know, the significant decline in our transactions. So if you look at then, you know, the time over time as the lockdown gets and the stimulus packages get in, you know, in the US, but mainly Germany, Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, we see improvements there. And as the people could get their stimulus package and they get economical more advanced, they start to send money. and at the same time also some Mexico Peso weakness versus US. We saw also stronger growth there and coming back on the Mexico Peso weakness helped us to send money to Mexico from the US, the corridor. In fact, Bank of the Mexico Raj, I believe yesterday they gave the and we can see that we are gaining market share there also in Mexico. Our numbers have been improving pretty well there. So it is hard to give a general answer. It is really very much dependent but economic pressure, financial pressure on our customers is definitely I would say the main reason but at the same time the lockdowns which were first on us, first on the locations did impact our business.

That's really useful. And then my follow-up question is just on the matter of pricing, if you can talk a little bit about what you've been seeing in the pricing environment, variations or changes, and where any changes may be coming from and how you're factoring in potential pricing pressure or competition. into at least your general outlook for the rest of the year. Do you expect more pricing competition than historical, less? Just trying to get a gauge of how you're factoring that in.

Yeah, I would say that the pricing environment has continued to be relatively stable when you look at it on a global macro basis, so no big changes there. We are continuing to look at all of our thousands of corridors where it's productive to change pricing and we're always moving pricing up and down as we said before James but I think the primary goal we have is to ensure that we get the best lifetime value of our customer set so we may do promotional pricing we may do other things that attract the customer and that's really what we're going after you know we're doing a variety of different things in all of our quarters and by different channels too wherever it makes sense so I don't think pricing in this environment is really going to be a factor versus what it's been historically or at least in recent periods. So we don't see that changing dramatically.

Great. Thank you so much and thanks for all the hard work keeping critical lifelines for a lot of people open. Thanks. We appreciate it.

Thanks so much. The next question comes from Ramsey Ellis. Please go ahead.

Hi guys and thank you for taking my question tonight. I want to follow up on Jason's question from earlier. Speaking about the April trends and the end of April trends, has government stimulus had any impact on outbound volumes for many places where there is stimulus, obviously like in the U.S.? In other words, is that something that benefits your user base? I also wanted to ask about the improvement you were seeing in April. Did you see improvements across the business in terms of walk-ins? versus digital, or was it really more digitally focused, which I wouldn't be surprised to hear, but wanted to ask.

Yeah, Ramsey, good questions. I would say that the pressure on the business initially in late March and early April was really driven by people having to stay at home and not being able to get out, and that really continued on even in the month of April. We did see some uptick when stimulus checks and other and many more. a more broad-based improvement. Certainly we saw acceleration in our digital business, but we also saw improvements in retail as things opened up. You know, Germany is a great example where people were back doing the things that they were doing before. And not only did digital accelerate, but we also saw improvements in the retail business, which is positive for us.

Okay. That's really interesting. And then a quick follow-up. I was wondering if you could speak to the tax rate expectations for the year. The number came in a little lower than our models and just trying to figure out how to model that out for the rest of the year. And then just lastly, home delivery, is that something you could scale up? Could that be a new model that, you know, accrues a little more importance for Western Union over time or is that more of a, you know, the cost structure may not support it?

Yeah, let me address the tax question and then I'll give it to Hickman on the home delivery The tax rate was 12.5% in the first quarter. It's in line with roughly what we expect getting to the mid-teens or so for the full year. Obviously, a number of different scenarios could play out this year, and we don't know exactly which revenue scenario plays out, but we've modeled a number of different potential outcomes, and they all seem to spit out something in the mid-teens range for a tax rate, and that's not really the biggest driver, obviously, this year. So that's what I would think about. And we had some discreet benefits that helped us in the first quarter, but I would see it being in the mid-teens range for the full year. And maybe I'll give it to you, Hikmet, for the home delivery question.

That's a good question. Well, we did start the home delivery in several countries, especially in developing countries, in partnership with our agents. Some of our agents already have home delivery express services. And, you know, we did do home delivery like Columbia or Philippines. and the usage is quite good. You know, due to lockdown, some of our customers, also some people with elder people or people who can't go to the locations and the only way to pay out is the cash, we do deliver that home and, you know, it could be a service especially for developing countries and it's really a partnership with our agents and agents to go to the rural areas and deliver to our customers the transactions.

Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Andrew Jeffrey of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, good afternoon. I appreciate you taking the question. I'm wondering about, as I think about all the emphasis on expansion of digital globally, which makes a ton of sense, what are some of the gating factors? And I'm thinking along two lines. One would be The four plus billion accounts, I guess, what are going to be the key factors Western Union can influence in terms of driving payout to those accounts? I assume a lot of it's changing the sender behavior. And two would be just, you know, we've heard the company talk about accelerating digital expansion. I guess I'm wondering, you know, is that opportunistic? What are the factors that gain the ability to more rapidly expand into digital markets globally?

Well, Andrew, good question. And I think, you know, the investments over the years we paid, we invested is paying back, obviously. Remember, as we started, it was only a few years ago, 2% to 3% of our general revenue was paid. or Digital Transactions. Now in April, we even had 30% of our transactions coming from digital generated transactions. I think this growth will continue to grow as more and more customer segments are joining our network and we do offer them not only payout on the receive side, not only payout in retail, but at the same time also on accounts and on mobile wallets. This is big and we do have real-time payouts in 50 countries Billions of accounts where you can pay a real time and that's good. So on the how can that really on the receive side, you know, it depends on the customer segmentation. If the customers want to have money on an account, they get money paid out in an account. If they want to have it on a cash paid out, really on a cash payout. Depends also on the economical ecosystem of the environment. If it's in the rural area of India in the Bihar. Most of the customers want to pay out in cash, or is it in Mumbai? Many customers want to pay out on an account. We really, as Western Union, we can do that both in real time, pay out in real time in a retail location or in an account. And this is huge, and it's going to continue to happen. It's really the combination on the send side and receive side.

Okay, I appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. The next question comes from Brian Kane of Latosha Bank. Please go ahead. Hi, Brian.

Hi, guys. How you doing? Just thinking about that move towards digital, can you just talk a little bit how the digital competition differs from retail competition for you guys?

Well, I'm doing... Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say that one of the key things that we said earlier is is that our digital business is unique in that the majority of the revenues that we earn today are still earned from a retail-oriented payout in our total digital business. And that's not really the area where other digital players are trying to make big inroads because that's where the brand really plays a bigger part in terms of the end-to-end transaction. and if you look at the other digital players, we have already a very large base that we're working from. We also believe that we can expand our capabilities all over the world faster than others might be able to do. We already have more than 75 CENT countries. We have account funding capabilities in many of those. We have mobile capabilities also in many of those CENT markets. and then we can send into an account, you know, into 100 markets as well as into real time, you know, into 50 countries. So just creating more of that network and infrastructure, we've been on an accelerated path there to get there, you know, over the next few years to really get omni-channel capabilities on both sending and receiving side of the equation, which is not really something others can match when you're thinking about both retail and digital combined.

In that 30% percentage of volume that's going to digital in April, does that have any retail in it, any retail in one side of the transaction, or that's 100% digital?

Initiated digital, 100% initiated digital on the send side, Brian, and payout could be a payout on a retail or on an account.

Yeah, and is there a mix of that between how much of that is digital on the payout versus retail?

Majority of that is retail, but the strong growth comes from account. As I mentioned earlier, the account payout was in April, I believe, 90% growth.

Got it, got it. And then the only other question I have is just thinking about migrant movement. What you guys are seeing there, did you see many migrants move back home during this time and then How do you think the impacts will be on any restrictions on immigration going forward from borders being put up by other countries? Thanks.

The last six, seven weeks, the COVID-19 really started even earlier in China and Italy. We did not see any big changes on the migrant movements, on migration patterns. The big question mark is that what the economic environment, financial environment of these people look like. The employment rate and GDP growth are definitely indicators. That's an unknown. That's one of the reasons the volatility, given the volatility, we are not giving a 2020 guidance. But we have not seen any changes on the migrant, you know, migrants moving back or, you know, less migrants or something like that.

Got it. Thanks and stay healthy. Thank you, you too. Thanks, Brian.

The next question comes from Tim Willie of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks, and good afternoon. Just one question on marketing. So given the shift in the business and I guess just the overall environment and then your comments around efficiency and cost sales, could you talk a bit about what you're doing with marketing and branding and sort of how much of that is moving digital forward? versus maybe traditional and just sort of how that plays into the sort of the digital growth, the productivity, the cost saves you're talking about. Just any way to think about how you're evolving that line item within the income statement.

Well, you know, obviously we are continuing to invest in marketing, right? Because, you know, you could see also during the crisis, the trust of our consumers is huge too. Our brand and our brand awareness and being for them here during the crisis and doing good times and bad times has been always for Western Union here and, you know, that's going to continue to happen. We are investing definitely from direct marketing activities on the digital side where we gain new customer segments. but at the same time our agents you know continue to promote our together with us our brand on the retail side because as we said earlier the combination between digital and retail payout is huge and the brand awareness on the received side drives also the transaction look if you are in a in a rural area in the Philippines and you want to have the money immediately, you call your relatives in Finland and say that, okay, send me money via Western Union because the next corner I can pick up the money in minutes. Or you have a bank account, you send a message to your relative on the same side in the UK, you can send me the money via Western Union to this account. And this brand awareness in the receiving countries is huge. we actually have within our consumer 90% brand awareness which is one of the probably the leading one and the marketing investment drives we know that is driving the revenue and transaction growth so during this during the pandemic as you know has been several you know the Mother's Day is coming there was Easter, Orthodox Easter and Ramadan and these are definitely promotions we are going to continue to do to attract customers to our brand and promote digital and also the safety and the trust continue to invest there.

At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Hikmet Ercik for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. It's a special call during this crisis, COVID-19. It's not easy for the world. It's not easy for the communities. I would like to thank, first of all, shareholders for their trust on the Western Union, obviously, but also I would like to thank especially the customers for their loyalty and fighting. Many of our customers I mentioned earlier are heroes, are really on the front lines. They're fighting and helping many people. Is it a nurse or is it an ambulance driver? Is it keeping a retail shop open? They're really frontline heroes. At the same time, they really think about their loved ones back home. It's not easy helping people and at the same time thinking about your family members far away from you. One of the things they do immediately is that they send back home money. And the trust we build over years, over decades, the trust we build with our customers obviously pays back and makes us stronger. And I would like to thank also our employees for their dedication and for their hard work during these times and puts Western Union as a special company. And we are continue to be very dedicated to serve the communities and our shareholders. and I would like to thank you for joining the call.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.