Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 3 of 10

I would say the outlook in the back half around merchant organic will remain in that 9% to 10% range. We are not changing our outlook, and I have a lot of confidence in our ability to deliver on that 9% to 10%. We were north of 9% this quarter – to be very specific, we were around 9.25%. I think we have a few initiatives, kind of in the back half of the year, that give me confidence that certainly 9% is the low end of what our expectation would be around the merchant business, and there may be some potential for it to drift up closer to the 10%, but we’re sticking with the 9% to 10% for the time being.

Jason Kupferberg: Okay, understood. I know you spent some time on B2B as well, and just as we think about further de-levering here and the opportunity to re-engage with M&A again moving into 2024, do you expect B2B to be on that high priority list as it relates to potential M&A activity? I mean, it seems like you’ve been seeing good success with MineralTree – I think you said there were record bookings there in the quarter, so would just love to hear your forward-looking thoughts on that topic.

Cameron Bready: Yes, thanks Jason. I would say absolutely B2B is in the mix as it relates to how we think about M&A in the future. Generally, just philosophically, obviously I want to use M&A as a lever to support all the pillars of our strategy. I think our primary focus is finding opportunities that we think really augment what it is we’re trying to accomplish across the different pillars of the strategy, and of course B2B is an important element of that. I do feel like sitting here today, we’re getting ourselves in a position where we have a more refined, more clear cut approach to how we want to pursue the B2B opportunities. I provided some commentary today in my prepared remarks about how we segment the B2B market, where we expect to play in B2B, and where we want to focus our efforts and attention in what is a large, diverse and, quite frankly, B2B means different things to different people, so.

I thought it’s important to segment the market to provide clarity as to where we’re going to place our bets from a B2B perspective, and certainly I think M&A can help build out our tool kit to make us successful and position us for success, to be able to win across those three segments of what we think of as a broader B2B opportunity. But also, obviously I think M&A is a lever that we can utilize as we continue to pursue our software strategy in our merchant business, continue to find exposure to faster growth markets which creates, as I mentioned in my comments, some good secular tailwinds for the business, and obviously it’s a scale business, so continuing to look at opportunities to help augment scale and what it is we’re trying to accomplish is compelling as well.

As we get to the back half of the year and we get leverage back to our targeted ratio, certainly M&A comes back into focus for us, and it’s something that we expect to pursue in a disciplined fashion going forward. But I’ll just comment to close to say obviously that’s all got to be weighed against what the alternative uses of our capital is, and we need to make sure that the investments we’re making from an M&A standpoint are attractive from a return perspective relative to what else we could do with that capital.

Jason Kupferberg: Good stuff. Thanks Cameron.

Cameron Bready: Thanks Jason.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is coming from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Page 3 of 10