Paul Abbott: Yes. Look. We’re very excited about the launch with Amex that we announced yesterday. Neo1 is a product that we’ve launched in the UK and the U.S., and we’ve been very, very pleased with the acquisition results. But we have been working in parallel with payment integration with Amex because it’s a really important feature of the platform, and it brings a lot of the functionality to life. But just stepping back for those who aren’t aware of, Neo1, it’s an all in one spend management platform. So it enables businesses to manage their indirect procurement. It also enables them to book travel through our Neo travel platform, and it enables them to manage all of their expenses. And now we’ve added payment. So for companies that really don’t want to have multiple SaaS solutions to manage procurement and indirect spend and travel and expenses, you have it all in one place as a as a turnkey solution, and we know that that’s very attractive to SME customers.
But the integration of payment is really, really important because what customers can now do in Neo1 is they can simply add their eligible American Express business or corporate card account into the platform, and then they can use that to set budgets and to issue virtual payment cards to employees across the company, and then they can do that also, at the same time, setting controls and policy in the platform. So, it’s a very powerful solution for businesses that are really looking for that turnkey all-in-one spend management platform, and we are looking forward to working with American Express to increase our sales and marketing spend on Neo1 both through our own channels and, of course, through the Amex partner channels as well. And to your point on working capital, yes, it’s it also helps because, or the ability to essentially just implement customers immediately with authorized payment on card, it is our preferred payment method and definitely is one of the things that we’ve been doing across the business to improve our working capital performance.
So the more that we can scale Neo1 and the more that we scale our software solutions with payments inbuilt, the more it improves working capital.
Peter Christiansen: Thank you, Paul. I’d imagine it also helps client stickiness as well. I just had a quick follow-up back to vertical exposure. Just curious specifically as it relates to some of your technology clients. I know that that’s been an area that saw some of the deepest contraction during the pandemic. Just curious if you could talk about some of the underlying trends with that particular vertical and how you see that evolving over the next year?
Paul Abbott: Yes. We’re pleased to see the pickup in that. We’ve had double digit growth within the technology vertical, Q4 and into Q1. So I think that’s a positive sign, and I think it just reflects the higher level of confidence in that sector and with many of the large technology clients that we have. And we do see that trend continuing through the balance of ’24.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We now turn to Lee Horowitz with Deutsche Bank.
Lee Horowitz: Focusing on the full year guide a bit more. So, seems to suggest that there’s sort of no more recovery tailwinds left for business travel broadly, and you’re settling back into sort of the GDP perhaps GDP plus type growth algo. But Bio RMF transaction recovery relative to ’19 is probably sub-80%. So why do we expect the industry to not benefit from some ongoing recovery dynamics? And perhaps can you comment why the industry is now, let’s say, fully recovered at something below sort of 2019 levels?
Paul Abbott: Yes. Lee, I mean, I think I said this last quarter when we did earnings that the way that we’re looking at the industry going forward is that we will now see growth that is above GDP plus our new wins, Trying to frankly identify what relates to a recovery from events that are now 4 years old is just more of an art than a science, quite frankly. So what we’ve tried to do is be transparent around the level of growth that we think the industry will see, over in the next 12 months. Again, we’ve been pretty consistent in saying, I think what we will see is the industry will grow somewhere between 3 to 5 points, and then we’ll put 4 points of share gains on top of that. So that’s how we think about it. What I would also say is that I think one of the exciting things, frankly, about 2024 is that, it is a year of, I think, normalized growth, more stabilized growth.
And what that will do is highlight how successful our model is in that environment because even in an environment where we have higher inflation, where there is lower GDP growth, we’re able to deliver 18% to 32% adjusted EBITDA growth. And I think that we’re excited about 2024 because I think it will highlight the advantages of our model. We will deliver 18% to 32% adjusted EBITDA growth. Our forecast for underlying EBITDA is to grow around 69% with $90 million of adjustments coming from reducing restructuring, integration and interest expense. We’re going to more than double the free cash flow generation of the business, and we’re going to continue to expand margins by 150 to 350 basis points. So, I think we should look at 2024 as an opportunity to really demonstrate how our model can deliver above industry returns in a more stable growth environment.
Lee Horowitz: And then maybe there to remake both your cost base and perhaps customer facing products. Can you maybe talk to some of the early wins you’ve seen on either side of that coin that may be transforming your business and perhaps, the time line to which you expect to see meaningful returns in the next year or so, on either the customer experience or sort of taking meaningful cost out of your business, as you lean more aggressively into generative AI, technologies?
