speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Element Fleet Management's first quarter 2026 financial and operating results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and you are reminded that this call is being recorded. Following the prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions. To join the question queue, press star, then the digit one on your telephone keypad. In the event you should need assistance during the call today, you may signal for an operator by pressing star and then zero. Element wishes to caution listeners that today's information contains forward-looking statements. The assumptions on which they're based and the material risks and uncertainties that could cause them to differ are outlined in the company's year-end and most recent MD&A and AIF. Although management believes that the expectations expressed in the statements are reasonable, actual results could differ materially. The company also reminds listeners that today's call references certain non-GAAP and supplemental financial measures. Management measures performance on reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in providing readers with a better understanding of how it assesses results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to IFRS measures can be found in the company's most recent MD&A. I would now like to turn the call over to Laura DeTore Atanasio, Chief Executive Officer. Welcome. The floor is yours.

speaker
Laura DeTore Atanasio
Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to report Element delivered a strong start to 2026, building on the record performance we achieved in 2025. In the first quarter, we generated record net revenue of $324 million, up 17% year-over-year, and we delivered record adjusted earnings per share and free cash flow per share. our return on equity reached 20.3%, the highest level we have ever achieved. These results reflect consistent execution across our business and the strength of our client relationships. They also reflect the ongoing investments we continue to make to advance our key focus areas, including digitization, mobility, and efficiency. Commercial momentum remains strong in the quarter. we added 44 new clients with about one-third of those wins coming from self-managed conversions. We also continued to expand within our existing base through 173 additional service enrollments. Our client revenue retention was 98%, underscoring the quality of our relationships, and our strategic advisory services team identified roughly $354 million in savings opportunities for our clients with about half of those actions during the quarter. Now, digital transformation continues to be a key differentiator for Element and a central pillar of our long-term strategy. In vehicle acquisition, we made great progress with our new vehicle ordering system, including the introduction of our existing AI-powered agent, Nova. Nova is designed to provide greater transparency and support more informed decision-making, as our clients identify the right vehicles for their needs. Select clients are already testing our platform, and we plan to roll it out to all clients in the coming months. And then we have element one for drivers, our driver app that we released in 2025. That continues to see growing adoption, supporting a more streamlined experience for drivers and day-to-day fleet interactions. This quarter, we implemented an AI support agent within the platform to help resolve support requests. And it can now resolve 53% of client chats, driving improved response times and service consistency. And in parallel, we're quickly advancing our Element One client portal, which we expect to launch later this year. It will serve as a more comprehensive digital front door, or a single pane of glass, for our clients to control their entire fleets from one platform. As you know, last year we acquired CarIQ to add embedded vehicle-initiated payment capabilities, and we closed that transaction on December 31. I'm happy to report that the integration is progressing well. Early client feedback has been positive, and we're seeing demand that exceeds our expectations. Early use cases for fuel, are delivering measurable cost savings for our clients. And over time, we expect vehicle-initiated payments to be an important addition to the element offering and a meaningful driver of future revenue growth through enhanced monetization. And while it's still early days for these important initiatives, they are already helping simplify the client experience and are expected to drive efficiency across our operations over time. We continue to build a business focused on growth and long-term value, and we're pleased with how the year has started as we continue to execute against our strategic priorities of delivering consistent growth, advancing our digital agenda, and maintaining a disciplined approach in all that we do. And with that, I'll turn it over to Heath to take you through the financials.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Laura, and good morning, everyone. We delivered record financial results across several key metrics in the first quarter, including net revenue of $324 million, adjusted operating income of $182 million, adjusted earnings per share of $0.35, and adjusted free cash flow per share of $0.45. Overall, our performance reflects the stability of the business and the continued momentum across key drivers. I will now begin by reviewing our first quarter results on an adjusted basis. Starting with net revenue, we generated $324 million in Q1, up 17% year-over-year with growth across all revenue components. Services revenue was $162 million in the quarter, up 6% year-over-year, driven by continued growth in vehicles under management, which increased 3%. Turning to net financing revenue, we generated $138 million in the quarter. This reflects growth in net earning assets, continued benefits from our leasing initiatives, and higher gain on sale, partly offset by increased provision for credit losses related to a specific client item. More broadly, net financing revenue remains a key driver of growth, supported by a core NFR yield of 4.98%, representing 40 basis points of expansion compared to Q1 2025. Syndication volume was $867 million in the quarter and generated $24 million in revenue, up from $12 million a year ago. This resulted in a syndication yield of 2.8% and increase of 70 basis points year-over-year. with revenue growth underpinned by the combination of higher volumes, the reinstatement of bonus depreciation, a favourable client mix and strong investor demand across our syndication channels. In the quarter, originations were $1.5 billion, down 4% year over year and primarily reflecting the expected reduction in volume from an originate to syndicate client. Excluding this impact, Q1 underlying demand in our origination volume remained solid and was supported by a robust 26% lift in Mexico and our continued conversion of strong order volumes in Q4. Operating expenses in the first quarter were $142 million, up 13% year-over-year. This increase was primarily driven by incremental headcount associated with the CarIQ acquisition as well as inflation, player depreciation and our continued investment in new initiatives. However, we remain disciplined to managing expense growth and continue to focus on driving efficiencies as the business scales, which supported positive operating leverage at 3.9% in the quarter. From an operating margin perspective, we delivered 56.2% in the first quarter, up from 54.7% in the prior year. This performance helped to drive a record return on equity of 20.3%, up 360 basis points year over year, reflecting both our strong earnings growth and continued balance sheet efficiency. Free cash flow remains a key strength of Element and continues to support both business reinvestment and capital returns to shareholders. In the first quarter, we generated 45 cents of free cash flow per share, up 25% year over year. Consistent with our capital allocation priorities, we returned approximately $94 million to shareholders during the quarter, including $57 million used to repurchase 2.3 million common shares. Turning to the balance sheet, our debt-to-capital ratio ended March at 76.4% within our targeted range of 73% to 77%, reflecting continued discipline in how we fund our growth. Overall, we are pleased with the strong start to the year. Our performance in the quarter reflects the resilience of our business model throughout market conditions and positions as well to deliver consistent execution and growth through the balance of 2026. Thank you. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

And to our audience joining today over the phones at this time, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star followed by the digit one on your telephone keypad. Pressing star and one will place your line into a queue, and I will open your lines in turn, and you will be invited to pose your question. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star and one. We will hear first from John Aiken at Jefferies. Please go ahead.

speaker
John Aiken
Analyst, Jefferies

Good morning, Laura. Post the meltdown in February with the market being concerned about AI destruction, I've had a lot of discussions with clients about your business operations specifically. Can you talk about what the potential threat for this innovation from AI or fintech startups are to your operations and how you plan to defend against that?

speaker
Laura DeTore Atanasio
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, John. Absolutely. I guess to that, before I just go into the AI piece, which I do see as a clear opportunity for Element, probably worth talking a bit about, if I could say, the great moat that we have that we seem to be forgetting about, that is our leasing capabilities. So those are, as you know, almost half of our business. And so if you take that combined with our scale, our large network of suppliers, including the operational expertise that we have, we have a very solid moat. And as you know, we've been making all of the investments that are required, including the acquisition of CarIQ, and that was to allow us to digitize, to automate, and to create the ecosystem that we have that has been I'd say somewhat traditional and then putting it all into a digital environment with element one that I talked about in my prepared remarks. So I think we're moving at a really good pace and we're well positioned to thrive in the AI environment. I did in my prepared remarks share some of the things that we're doing from an AI perspective. As you know, what we do is built around managing a whole lot of complexity and at scale and And so I believe that this is just going to help make our ecosystem even better. It's going to help us, and we're seeing that already with one of the examples I provided. As we roll this out, it's going to help us respond faster to our clients. It's going to allow us to predict issues earlier. We're furthering the automation of what I'd say routine work that we've been doing manually, improving decision-making. Again, the whole bit, creating a better experience for our clients So I do see it as a positive. I don't believe it's going to replace the need for a scaled fleet manager. In fact, I'd go as far as to say I think it's going to increase the value of a partner like us that has the data, the relationships, and that workflow integration and the operational scale so that we can apply it practically. And I know we're going to talk about expenses and people feel they're high and everyone wants us to have higher operating margins, which we do too. And we are working towards, but as I did mention, I'm going to say in my prepared remarks, like we still have, there is a lot of complexity at how you bring your AI agents and you build them out, you bring them together and you have to do that in a very thoughtful way to make sure it's done right. And so we do have important initiatives underway and they will drive efficiency across our operations, but that will take time. It doesn't happen in a quarter. And I think it's important to remember that, again, when I think of AI, I just think there's always going to be things that we're seeing in the market. And the differentiator is really not, you know, who can demonstrate, ooh, look at me, I got the first agent first or technology. It's really going to be for us who can deploy it into enterprise fleet operations, so at scale, and then deliver those measurable outcomes. And I think we're really well positioned based on not just the investments we made, but the work that we're doing. I'd just say it's going to take a little more time than I think everyone would like because we want to make sure when we do it, we do it right and our clients get a better experience and no bumpiness between implementation and delivery of our new tools.

speaker
John Aiken
Analyst, Jefferies

Thanks, Laura. I'm glad I didn't misrepresent your position. I'll read you. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

We'll hear next from Stephen Boland at Raymond James.

speaker
Stephen Boland
Analyst, Raymond James

It seems, you know, I guess you're prepared to mark saying there's like one client origination to syndication that kind of cut off, but it seems, you know, materially, you know, Are the originations really dependent on that one client for the decline? I'm just trying to get an idea. It seems very dependent on one client. But what about the rest of your clients and their activity? Are you seeing originations maybe just delayed for a quarter? Maybe just talk about that, please.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, good morning, Steve. You actually cut out a little bit at the start there, but I believe your question was around the origination, so happy to give a bit of colour in terms of what we're seeing. So for Q1, we did see a strong sequential pick-up in origination, so $1.5 billion up 8% quarter over quarter, and actually one of the better sequential increases were delivered to start a new year. And that really follows the record order volume of $2 billion in Q4 of 2025. And I would say that a portion of these orders are still converting, so we've got approximately 40% of those orders still to be activated in coming quarters. From a year-over-year perspective, originations were down 4%, and that was primarily related to the reduction of an originate-to-syndicate client, Having said that though, we are seeing some timing shifts in client ordering just given the current macro environment with certain clients opting to push orders later into the year. That's sort of different from this time last year where we actually saw some pulled forward of activity as clients sought to get ahead of potential tariff-related price increases. So that dynamic, along with the reduction of the originators in the paid client, will likely carry into Q2. So this is an area we're focused on. We're focused on driving orders, accelerating originations throughout the balance of the year. Importantly, we don't expect the timing of orders to have a material impact on our ability to deliver revenue and adjusted operating income growth. And that's reflected in Q1 where we delivered record results across both metrics.

speaker
Stephen Boland
Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. And my second question is definitely on the service revenue. When I look at that waterfall, you know, quarter, the sequential from Q4 to Q1, you know, it's flat. But the one metric in there is the utilization decline. I'm just curious about that. because of clients that are gone or, you know, have left the company, or is it something that, like, clients have basically pulled back on services?

speaker
John Aiken
Analyst, Jefferies

I'm just trying to understand the metric there.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so from a service revenue perspective, we were down $1 million quarter-on-quarter. That's standard. We do see some seasonality with Q4 always being the higher quarter of service revenue. There's some higher utilization in that quarter where clients change over winter tires and those sorts of things. So that decrease of $1 million and lower utilisation is seasonality. From a year-over-year perspective, service revenue was up 6%, so we were pleased with the re-acceleration of service revenue growth, and that was really on the back of the resumption of BUM growth that we saw in the back part of last year. So we're not seeing... we're not seeing clients reducing services or anything like that and that was seasonality from a quarter over quarter perspective. So the growth really comes from continued farm growth, increasing product penetration across our existing client base and then the expansion of our service offering with things like a car IQ that we're bringing into the platform. So looking ahead, we expect there will be a convergence in growth rates across the different revenue lines, and that's really a function of the different profiles. So we saw strong financing income and syndication income in Q1, really driven by factors that began in the back half of last year. And then on the services side, growth does tend to lag VUM onboarding. If you bring in VUM late in the quarter, the impact of the revenue is low. And then you generally drive the product penetration into those VUM over time as well. So we expect that the services will grow over time.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Okay. Thanks very much. Our next question will come from Bart Jarski at RBC Capital Markets.

speaker
Bart Jarski
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Great, thanks, and good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask around the higher PCL you called out related to a client item. Could you just give us a bit more details on what drove that and maybe more importantly how comfortable you are at the current provisioning levels?

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Absolutely. Good morning, Bob. So in Q1, we did record a credit loss provision of $4.6 million, which brings our total allowance to $15.3 million, which is about 20 basis points of financing receivables. The increase is a single client item, so it's not a broad-based change in credit performance across the portfolio. And as we've scaled and standardised our leasing operations, we've certainly maintained a disciplined approach to underwriting and monitoring. and there's been no change in our risk appetite or underwriting discipline. So it was one client, and it's the same client exposure that we identified and provisioned for in Q4. And as such, over the past two quarters, we've taken a conservative approach and provided for the bulk of this position. So while there's a small remaining portion, and we'll continue to assess that through the coming quarters, we do view our overall credit performance as stable. with no change to our overall outlook for credit quality. So importantly, our NFR yield of 4.98% this quarter includes that provision and would have been 15 basis points higher. So we're confident in our portfolio and it remains strong.

speaker
Bart Jarski
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay, got it. Thanks for that, Heath. Super helpful. Just a follow-up on the origination question. So, you know, last quarter you talked about $2 billion of orders and then a modest extension in the order to delivery cycle time. So could you just walk us through the timeline now of what that order to delivery cycle time looked like, what the order level was for Q1-26, and maybe tie that all into how you're feeling about the origination guidance for 2026 of $6.5 to $6.9 billion.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, no problem.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

So in terms of the order to delivery cycle time, there's been no sort of material change for that in the quarter, and we generally see it depends on whether the vehicles have upfit or not upfit, but it's anywhere sort of from 130 days to 250 days, and that's why we do have 40% of those originations to... In terms of the orders for Q1, they were approximately $1.5 billion for Q1 and as I said, we did see some delays with certain clients pushing orders into the later part of the year. In terms of guidance though, we were pleased with the start of the year overall. We delivered strong results and it does show the earnings power of our business. That said, it's early in the year, so we wouldn't be changing guidance at this point. We continue to focus on execution, especially around originations and services, and we would update our guidance later in the year if we thought we needed to.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Great. Thanks for that. Super helpful. Our next question will come from Jay McGloin at National Bank Capital Markets.

speaker
Jay McGloin
Analyst, National Bank Capital Markets

Yeah, good morning. Question on new funding structures. It looks like there's been some one-time costs over the last couple of quarters totaling about $6 million related to the development of these new funding structures. Can you give us maybe a little bit of a preview of what's to come given, you know, that's given these charges and what can we expect here in the near term?

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, absolutely. Morning, Jamie. So as part of our continued focus on our Padpool Lite business strategy, funding flexibility is a key component of that model. And we do have already a well-diversified, cost-efficient funding platform. However, as part of that strategy, we're always looking to advance our off-balance sheet funding and that's not to replace but rather to supplement our existing tools, whether it's syndication or other off-balance sheet approaches. So the objective really here is to increase our flexibility to support growth and supporting return without materially increasing our leverage. So we have been working and investing in this area and taking some costs in the last few quarters We've made strong progress and we've moved into an advanced stage. So our intent is to provide an update once we've finalized the structure and completed the transaction.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Okay. Thank you very much. We will hear next from Paul Holden at CIC.

speaker
Paul Holden
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Thank you. Good morning. Good to be back on the call this morning. I have a few questions for you. Maybe first one, just to follow up on the discussion around originations. So first part of the question would be, was that roll-off of the Originate to Syndicate revenue incorporated into the 2026 guidance when you provided it? And two, Just want to go back. I think, Keith, you sort of inferred that maybe that roll-off, that client and some delayed activations could also impact Q2 origination. So just want to clarify that. And then I guess that suggests sort of we should be expecting better year-over-year growth in sort of Q3 and Q4.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Yeah, absolutely. So...

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

As part of the evolution of our leasing strategy, we've been optimising the composition of our portfolio. Without getting into client-specific details, the originate to syndicate client is a single product relationship, so no services. Origination volumes were elevated in prior periods and they're now normalising as the program matures and we were expecting that as part of our originations guidance for 2026. What we did see in the quarter was, as I said, some shift in client ordering just given the macroeconomic environment with certain clients pushing orders later into the year. So that may impact our originations number for Q2 and we're really focused on driving orders to converting to originations for the back half of the year.

speaker
Paul Holden
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Okay, I got it. And then question on the service revenue. Obviously, you made it clear that you want that to grow at somewhat a higher rate. That's one of the things we haven't discussed on it because we don't see it is the margin embedded in that revenue. I know it's a net number. Is there anything that's changed in terms of the margins or costs that are incorporated into that line or Is this really more of a, just as the top line has slowed and you expect that to resume, or is there any kind of margin story here?

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so in terms of the service revenue and products that we offer, there's been no change in the margins that are embedded in that number, and so there's no change in the margins. The You recall in the first half of 2025, with the tariffs and the trade, we did have a slow start to the year from a VUM growth. That now resumed. We saw service revenue re-accelerating in Q1, up 6% following the previous 1%. So really, it's just about driving the VUM growth, driving the product penetration. and then implementing the new products such as a CarIQ that we've acquired.

speaker
Paul Holden
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Okay, understood. Thank you. And then last question, I guess there was an update from Amazon, I can't remember if it was earlier this week or last week, I think earlier this week. And so there's been a number of client questions around that and if there's potential disruption for Element or not. So it would be great to get your thoughts on that.

speaker
Laura DeTore Atanasio
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks for that question, Paul. We do see that announcement as a net positive for Elements. So for them, it's primarily about improving utilization of their existing logistics network, so not replacing the last mile delivery structure. So if the initiative that they have underway actually works, The expectation is that's going to drive more volume through the last mile network. So that would mean more utilization, more capacity needs, and essentially more demand for the fleet management services that we provide. So that's why we see this as a net positive for Element. And I go a little further now that I have the mic to say as a validation as well of our mobility operations solutions. So we do excel in last-mile delivery, what we call our mobility operations solutions now, and so we believe this places us quite well.

speaker
Paul Holden
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

That's helpful. Thanks for that. And then last one for me is just on expense growth through rate, Laura. We're going to talk about expenses because it is a little bit higher for the year. So can you talk to us, like, is this a similar growth rate we should expect through the rest of the year? And then I also note specifically employee compensation is up 20% year-over-year. It looks like almost all of the year-over-year growth is from that line. So why is employee comp up as much as it is? Maybe talk to us about sort of the growth in FTE versus wage inflation and where that growth in FTE is coming from beyond car IQ.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. Yeah, no problem. I'll take that one.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

And really, so in terms of the expenses for the quarter, it was up 13%, $142 million. The increase was driven by incremental headcount and costs associated with the car IQ acquisition, as well as inflation and higher depreciation. However, we do continue to reinvest a portion of our growth into key initiatives, so digitisation, automation, new products, These initiatives are intended to drive future revenue and also improve efficiency over time. I think as Laura alluded to earlier, while these programs carry upfront investments before the scale benefits are realised, we are being disciplined in our implementation. We're making sure these new capabilities are fully integrated and operated. as intended before we pursue more aggressive cost actions. And that's really in the lens of client experience. It's important for us to make sure we're delivering strong client experience. So that's what's driving the expense growth for Q1. What I would say is even with that investment, we delivered positive operating leverage of 3.9%. Our margin is up 56.2%, up from 54.7% a year ago. In terms of your question about expense growth rate going forward, looking forward, we do expect the expense growth rate to moderate relative to Q1 levels, and we remain focused on growing our revenue faster than the expenses. And you have seen that in previous years. So 2023, 2024, expense growth was double-digit. It then moderated to 7% in 2025. and we expect the growth rates over the coming quarters to decline relative to Q1.

speaker
Paul Holden
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Okay.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

That's good. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Our next question will come from Thomas McKinnon at BMO Capital.

speaker
Thomas McKinnon
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Yeah, thanks. Morning. Just a question on what we should be looking at in terms of there's a lot of discussion on originations, but if I look in the way you've put your slides together, you actually have vehicles under management before originations in your slideshow. So vehicles under management are up, but originations were down. What do you guys deem as being the more important metric here?

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Yeah, good morning. So both important metrics.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

VUM is a metric that shows growth. So originations can be impacted by timing. So if your bum's up, you're either bringing in new clients or your existing clients are increasing the size of their fleets. So that's why bum growth, we're pleased with the bum growth. Originations can be timing of replacement cycles of clients' fleets. And so if a client returns a vehicle and gets a new vehicle out, that doesn't drive growth, but it does drive origination. So both important metrics for us, but I would view VOM as a core driver of growth.

speaker
Thomas McKinnon
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Then why didn't you give guidance on VOM as opposed to originations? If it's origination stuff, it's harder to pinpoint.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so originations is still a key metric that then flows into your net earning assets and net earning assets combined with the yield will drive the financing revenue as well as what's available to syndicate. So we still see originations as a really key metric and from a VUM perspective, we've always targeted to 2% to 4% VUM growth.

speaker
Thomas McKinnon
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Okay. And then one final one, if I look at the services per BUM, it's been kind of sitting around 3.7 for some time right now. How do you see that trending? What can you do to increase that? Some thoughts around that.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Yeah.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

It's absolutely a key focus for us. In terms of that metric, what often happens and what you've seen in the last couple of quarters is often you'll bring in a new client and they'll have a lower service revenue number to begin with. And you have seen that in the last couple of quarters, which dilutes the average per se. And then as you build that relationship with the client over time, you then drive more services into the portfolio. So really for us, our focus is the execution side of things, making sure we've got strong client experience, strong client relationships, and driving further product penetration. And then additionally, it's making sure that we have really good best-in-market products such as our payments business through CarIQ, which will ideally have strong uptake from our client base to continue to drive that number higher.

speaker
Thomas McKinnon
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

And is the CarIQ into this services per BUM? Is that included in there? Probably not now since it's just new.

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

No, it's not. So that services per thumb number is our top nine products in the USA and Canada.

speaker
Thomas McKinnon
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Okay. And then one final one is the buybacks picked up. I think you're running almost twice the rate in the first quarter than you were just in terms of number of shares than you were in the fourth quarter or significantly higher and certainly higher than the third. You've got a lot of room in this NCIB. What can you say about share buybacks? especially where your stock is now?

speaker
Heath
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I'd say nothing has changed in terms of our overarching focus from a finance perspective. We've always targeted growing revenue over the longer term at 6%, 8%. Obviously, we're going to deliver stronger than that in 2026. We look to drive revenue faster than expenses. And then we look to buy back anywhere from 1% to 2% of our stock. And given that there has been some volatility in the markets, we do like to step in when that happens.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Okay, thanks.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

And a reminder to our phone audience today, if you'd like to ask a question or have a follow-up, that is star and 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll go to Graham Riding at TD Securities.

speaker
Graham Riding
Analyst, TD Securities

Hi, good morning. Maybe a question for Laura, just element mobility. It's sort of been an area that you've been investing in and deliberately trying to build out. Is there anything you can point to to date as evidence that, you know, this investment is starting to translate into revenue growth? Or is the benefit to date more about customer retention and operating efficiencies?

speaker
Laura DeTore Atanasio
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Graham. I'd say all of the above. I know that's a bit of a broad answer. But all of the above in terms of the things we've talked about with our ability to transform how we're doing business. And we've talked about this in the past that the fleet industry is undergoing some really rapid transformation. And so when I think of, you know, historically how things were focused more on, I want to say, vehicle financing, traditional services, we do see that the model is evolving fast. We're seeing it even more so today. We were talking about AI just a little bit earlier. And so that was why we went out. We acquired Autofleet to help us really evolve our strategy and our ability to execute. So that element mobility division, if you will, that we talk about was really meant to drive that innovation across everything that we do. And you have seen some of it already. And, again, I know everyone expects ourselves as well, and we're working towards that to take expenses down further as we roll these things out in scale. But it will allow not just for us to continue with solid client retention, but it should also provide some new revenue unlocks, and I think just help us continue to drive value creation. So as a reminder, under that mobility umbrella, You know, we have things like auto fleets, still relatively new. We acquired them back in October of 2024, and so not that long ago, and we've made phenomenal progress from my perspective. Car IQ, another one, very timely acquisition when you think of how that could decrease fuel spend for our clients by call it about 10% on average, pretty timely. but that also gives us some great ability from a payment capability, not just for our clients, but for ourselves. So all of that along with our innovation lab, and as we talked about, that's sort of focused on the technologies, so autonomous vehicles, robotics, AI, and we've already rolled some out, and Autofleet came with Nova, which already had AI embedded in it. So all of that I really do believe is going to transform technology how we manage our business and how we can deliver better service to our clients. Now, again, some of which you're seeing, and I think as time goes on, you're going to see more of that over time, and it's going to represent, and sorry, I don't have numbers to give you, but it should represent in more revenue and in decreased costs over time.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Great, that's it for me. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

And we have no further signals from our audience members today. I'm happy to turn the floor back over to our President and CEO, Ms. Dottori Adonazio, for any additional or closing remarks.

speaker
Laura DeTore Atanasio
Chief Executive Officer

All right. Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us today. As we shared, we remain confident in the trajectory of our business. We remain confident in our ability to deliver for our clients and for our shareholders. We do continue to see strong engagement from our clients and our team members. We want to thank for all of their hard work in making this all happen and to share with you that we remain very focused on advancing our strategic initiatives in 2026. With that, we look forward to speaking with you again in August for our second quarter earnings call. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude Element's Q1 earnings call, and we thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines, and we hope that you enjoy the rest of your day.

Disclaimer

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