The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Devin McGranahan: So I would say no. The way we are looking at it is kind of a peer of efficacy and control. So at the very top of the pyramid, are the Western Union owned and managed locations. And in a given market, there’ll just be a handful. So if we got to a couple of hundred in a region like Europe, that’s going to be a lot. In LACA, we’re kind of between Argentina, and we’re at a couple of hundred and we’ll add maybe 50 or 100 more over time. The next is this notion of branded exclusive with an aging partner, which we call concept stores. We seek particularly in markets like Europe, where the market is much more independent. We have — as we highlighted some losses with our historic large exclusive agents, a desire to build out that model, I’ll call it the Melody model, that I highlighted and help those agents expand on a branded and exclusive basis.

Underneath that, we have our large strategic partners. I highlighted our Rite Aid renewal. We still have several very privileged post-office relationships around the world, which in general are branded and exclusive. And then under that, we have the large independent agent, many times nonexclusive networks. So we continue to want to make sure that we have access to Western Union products and services for every customer in every location and how we manage that pyramid depends on the nature of the customer base and the potential for us to control in those very high-volume very strategic locations and entirely owned in Western Union location. But I would not interpret that to be somehow we’re shifting the fundamental mix and nature of both our distribution model and/or the economics of our distribution model.

Ramsey El-Assal: One follow-up for me. Can you talk about the monetization strategy for the digital wallet and how your thinking there is kind of evolving I’m not sure if there’s a revenue and/or margin profile that is worthwhile talking about today. If there is, please enlighten us. But how do you think about that being a contributor over time in terms of monetization revenue profit?

Devin McGranahan: So the business case on the development and delivery of the wallet-based ecosystem entirely is based on increases in retention. Our ability to increase retention through a more interactive and account-based experience is the justification for the investment in the platform. And that’s just around our core economics of international money transfer from the digital platform. Incrementally, over time, we expect to see some benefit from the value of interchange that comes from issuing debit cards, the value of prepaid that comes from linking that to a digital wallet or digital experience. the value of accelerating our bill payment business from mostly a retail footprint today into the digital ecosystem and the ability to bring foreign exchange services and multicurrency aspects to the digital wallet for people who want to buy and hold different kinds of currency.

So we do see incremental revenue streams over time that will develop as we enroll a greater percentage of our digital customers in an account-based or wallet-based model.

Matthew Cagwin: The only thing I’d add, just a reminder, 1% improvement in our retention, which is the largest driver of this, is about $30 million to $40 million benefit to us.

Operator: Our next question comes to us from Rayna Kumar from UBS. Please ask your question.

Rayna Kumar: Congratulations, Matt, on the CFO role. Just a question on pricing. Are you seeing — are you expecting to have any other pricing actions to this year, either in your digital or your cash to cash business? And since you’ve implemented your promotional pricing strategy, have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape?