Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Trevor Williams: That’s great, thanks. And then, Josh, for the fourth quarter, could you help just put a finer point on margin expectations by segment, I think previously, you’ve been saying Merchant should be up slightly year-over-year on a reported basis. Issuer, you were above the high 46% range you guys had alluded to for the back half. So anything more specifically for how we should be thinking about margins at the segment level for Q4 would be helpful? Thanks.

Josh Whipple: Yes, let me start with Merchants. So if you go back in Q2, Merchant margins were down about 170 basis points. And then we saw some — we saw improvement, obviously, going into Q3 was down 90 basis points as we go ahead and continue to ramp in synergies. And for Q4, we expect it to be roughly flat margins for Merchant. And as we said before, we expect a modest decline for the full year in Merchant. Issuer, year-to-date, we’ve seen margins expand 170 basis points, really a great trajectory. If you go back to Q1, 80 basis points of expansion, 300 basis points of expansion in Q2 and then 110 basis points of expansion in Q3. And if you recall on the Q2 call, I said that issuer margins would be in the high 46% range, and we delivered margins of 47.5% in the issuer business.

And we expect those to be similar in Q4, and so I would say issuer margins will be more than 60 basis points for the overall full year. So that’s kind of where we’re thinking about the overall margin profile of the business. And as we — as I said in my prepared remarks, we reiterated total company margins of up to 120 basis points for the full year.

Trevor Williams: Got it, thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your questions.

Bryan Keane: Hi guys, good morning. I wanted to ask inside of Merchant, just thinking about retention, how’s retention trending? And then bookings, what the outlook is there, do you think there’s any — I’m trying to think if there’s any weakness potential if we get into more of an economic decline or bookings kind of a separate issue versus the economy?

Cameron Bready: Yes, Bryan, it’s Cameron. I’ll kind of kick it off. I would say maybe just to your latter point first, I do generally think about bookings as a little bit separate from the overall macro environment. Largely because we’re not focused on that small end of the market that’s going to be more impacted, I would say, by the overall macro as it relates to small business creation in new business development. We’re more focused on, I would say, the upper S in the mid-market opportunities, where those businesses, by and large, are going to be less impacted by the macro environment, so to speak, as — from a formation standpoint. So I think as it relates to the overall booking trends we’re seeing kind of across the business, we remain very pleased with the level of performance.

We called out a couple of highlights on the call this morning around the Zego booking trends that we’ve seen. Obviously, our POS bookings remain very strong as well. So overall, across the Merchant business, bookings are in the double digits, which gives us good visibility around new business that’s going to be coming into, obviously, our environments over the course of the coming months as we install those merchants or install those software customers into the business. So I think the outlook, as it relates to, obviously, new business remains very strong as we sit here today. And retention levels remain very consistent. We’ve seen very stable trends around retention kind of through the course of 2023. Even as I think businesses have become more attuned to the cost side of their business with inflationary pressures and whatnot, we’ve been able to sustain consistent levels of retention in the business, which obviously sets up for why we’ve been able to see such a consistent level of revenue performance over the course of the year as well.

Bryan Keane: Got it. That’s helpful. And maybe for Josh, just trying to get the EVO revenue contribution for the quarter and maybe for the full year. I know there’s some FX there, but thinking about that 490 million number we were thinking about, does that change due to some of the FX? And thanks and congrats.

Josh Whipple: Yeah, so Bryan for the quarter, EVO was approximately $165 million. There’s obviously — seasonally, that’s a higher quarter for EVO and we’re still trending right around that $490 million of adjusted net revenue for the Merchant business that we talked about on the prior call.

Cameron Bready: And just to put a little finer point on that. It’s $475 million for Q2 through Q4. Obviously, we had $15 million we called out in Q1 that we had from revenue from EVO from closing just slightly before the quarter end and Q1 of this year. So for Q2 to Q4 it’s still $475 million. We’ve been able to offset some of the FX headwinds, obviously, in EVO’s business with a little bit better business performance. So we’re still forecasting overall contribution this year of $490 million.

Bryan Keane: That’s great. Thanks so much.

Cameron Bready: Thanks Bryan.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.

William Nance: Hey guys, appreciate you taking the questions. I wanted to ask about some of the new clients you mentioned for the Profac pipeline. I wonder if you can make some kind of high-level statements about the profile of the customers that you’re seeing. I guess what types of ISVs have been attracted to the product, and are they currently monetizing payments in any way and maybe you could talk about their motivations for thinking about making a switch? Thanks.

Cameron Bready: Yes, Will, it’s Cameron. It’s a very good question. And I think much of this sort of reflects back on the comments that I made in our Q2 call as to what attracts ISVs to this particular model. And as I described at that time, it’s all the benefits really a payment facilitation without level the pain, I would say, being a payments company. And I think the types of ISVs and partners that we see attracted to this particular model, and this is spanning a number of different vertical markets, most ISVs today have monetized payments in some form or fashion, some better than others, of course. But I think it’s, again, typically ISVs that have some specific boarding requirements and need more control over the boarding experience itself, and have some specific funding requirements as well to kind of support the customer base that they target in the marketplace.

And so these are ISVs that otherwise might be good candidates for payment facilitation, but in many cases kind of lack the scale, lack the payments expertise to be able to become a true registered payment facilitation entity. So as we talked about at the time, we think this Profac model kind of hits a sweet spot in the market around, obviously, demand for payment facilitation capabilities and tools. But obviously, there’s only a subset of ISVs that I think really have the scale and capability to become registered payment facilitation entities over a period of time and to do that very successfully and monetize payments at a very high level. So as we called out on the prepared remarks, obviously, six wins in the quarter for that new solution.