Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRTH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And you can see this in the trends of our merchant boards, right? We’re consistently at or above 5,000 new merchant boards a month. It’s because we have a lot of new boarding partners. Because what they’re realizing is, hey, my merchants are just — my merchant portfolio is worth more at Priority. They have better tools. They have more software-based tools that are specific to the verticals that I’m serving, whether that’s health care, real estate, hospitality, salons, retail trade. We have very tailored vertical software for these business lines, so merchants stick around longer. And now you start adding the ability to inject ways for them to enrich their portfolio value with fees from banking services. Their merchant portfolio is just worth more at Priority; so they see that and we drive more reseller partners.

Brian Kinstlinger: Okay.

Tom Priore: I mean that is what’s happening right now, Brian.

Brian Kinstlinger: Right. Two numbers questions. You highlighted salary and benefits up 41%, obviously, faster than revenue growth. Do I assume from the adjusted EBITDA guidance that, that trend will change and your salary and benefits expenses will grow slower than revenue growth? And then unrelated with the rising interest rates, can you help us with kind of what you expect interest expense to be for 2023?

Tim O’Leary: Sure. Yes. So Brian, on the salary and benefit side. So as I mentioned on the call, we’re going to continue to monitor and really manage the investments we’ve already made to date, right? So no different than the sequential growth you saw from Q4 over Q3, right? That was pretty modest, only about $500,000 of an increase. We’re going to continue to really keep those salary and benefit levels where they finished out the year. So I think you’ll see growth there at a much lower rate than the top line as we want more and more of that growth to slow down to the bottom line. So I think your view is accurate. Obviously, we didn’t provide detailed projections on that as part of the guidance but you can see the margin expansion that’s happening between EBITDA growth.

Brian Kinstlinger: On the interest expense?

Tim O’Leary: Yes. So on the interest expense, obviously, our debt today is all floating rates. So we’ve got the natural hedge as I mentioned. But from an interest expense on the debt itself, depending on where the Fed tops out this year and where LIBOR or SOFR finishes off. I think we’re estimating somewhere in the low to mid-$60 million of interest expense for the year. Obviously, some of that is offset in large part by the deposit balance, right? So with the rising rates, we’ve gotten the benefit of interest income off of the float, right? We’ve got roughly $530 million or so of deposits that sit out there at the end of the year. That number has grown since then. But that offsets a lot of that interest expense from a hedge standpoint and if you think about each 0.25 point of increase in rates, that’s about $350,000 per quarter of additional interest income, right?

So obviously, we saw a big bump late in the year last year and given where rates are today, we should see a meaningful increase year-over-year in interest income.

Operator: The next question comes from Matthew Howlett with B. Riley.

Matthew Howlett: Just what the margin guidance, I mean, did you say it contemplates the Enterprise Payment was in the fourth quarter, about 90%. If so, I mean, what — I know I’m not trying to get ’24 guidance out of you. But why wouldn’t that margin as that kicks in, continue to just accelerate. It’s just sort of what — company-wise, something where you can give us sort of what’s — is ’23 sort of a transitional year. Are you holding back some upside with some rollout. Just get in to more of that margin guidance and the enterprise part of the segment.