Flywire Corporation (NASDAQ:FLYW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Ellis: Jeff, this is Mike. I’ll start. So obviously, if you look at this year and include where we have guided to, you have seen us work up from 300 basis point EBITDA margin expansion closer to that lower end of the range we provided, up to over 420, 430 point increase year-on-year based on where we guided the year to. Again, as we look at 2024, we will look continually at that 300 to 600 range. But I think this year has been a good example of us putting a stake in the ground and then working hard to keep increasing that number as we see the year perform and I think that’s the behavior you can expect from us. We’ve talk a lot about just the investments and seeing opportunity everywhere, we want the ability to keep investing in the business. We think that’s the right thing to do, but feel very comfortable with that range we put out there before and you can expect similar motion as we get into talking about ’24.

Jeff Cantwell : And then, Mike, you’ve been very targeted with your M&A. And clearly, what you’re discussing with StudyLink follows the path of the PM and Cohort Go. I wanted to ask you if you could explain more about how you’re thinking about synergies at this point. And part of it is if we go back a couple of quarters with Australia, I seem to remember you started with education there and then you were seeing some cross-sell opportunity. I think it was within health care, if I’m not mistaken on that. But again, I just want to kind of come into this with a fresh set of eyes and think about how you are or how you would describe these synergy opportunities that could occur with StudyLink?

Michael Massaro: Sure. So I’ll talk a little bit about the synergies we see with StudyLink. I mean, first, we referenced the volume, right? So similar to the WPM deal we about, there’s unmonetized volume sitting near the software as it relates to that initial kind of deposit and application payment as well as that kind of first year tuition payment that touches that application in Australia. So that obviously is something that’s a clear synergy for us. Folks should understand that based on the prior deals we’ve done. That’s a great opportunity for us and we feel very confident about getting to that synergy. If you look at the second one I would put in there is really around just the agent ecosystem. They have over 20,000 agents that they touch.

And these educational agents, as we’ve talked about in our Investor Day, are critical to the international student enrollment process and they actually influence a lot as it comes to that international student and family journey. And so, between the Cohort acquisition, our own capabilities and StudyLink’s capabilities, we feel really well positioned to provide more value to that agent ecosystem, which we think will help with growth. And then the third bucket is really around global expansion. As I mentioned, the StudyLink product is really deployed in Australia for Australian universities. And Flywire sits with meaningful share across the other three major markets, for international students and universities that they study at. And so you can imagine having the local the expertise that we talk about with our team, the vertical expertise and what we think is best-in-class software and best-in-class payment network.

And so being able to globally expand that opportunity over the coming years is really that third synergy. So we feel really great about all those three. Appreciate the comment that it fits right in the wheelhouse of what we’ve proven and what we’ve done. We feel really excited about it and, excited to get the news out there.

Operator: Next question comes from the line of Andrew Jeffrey with Truist Securities.

Andrew Jeffrey: I wonder if I could dig in on Darrin’s question just a little bit more around India just from my own edification so I can understand it. When you talk about FX volumes perhaps being a little bit light, can you separate that out from student visa volume or matriculation results and just maybe the ability and the visibility into both of those items on a go forward basis as you model the business?

Michael Ellis: So, obviously, India is a major source for international students for sure. In the quarter, we saw volumes grow, revenue grow both FX and what we call domestic revenue out of India. We called out India just because we did see a different payment mix in that volume than what we expected and that had some impact on revenue. Again, there’s good growth coming out of India. The only reason why we called out India was because relative to the expectation that we had in our model, there was even more growth built into that number. So when we look at India, for us, it’s a market where we have invested a considerable amount of energy and attention that’s part of what’s driven our very successful growth in the Indian market across all of this.