Corpay, Inc. (CPAY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'm Mihir Bhatia. I cover consumer finance and specialty payment companies here at Bank of America Research. Welcome to our conference. And next, we have FLEETCOR Technologies. FLEETCOR is a specialty payments company that helps businesses manage spending. So today, I'm delighted to be joined by Tom Panther, CFO of FLEETCOR. So Tom, thank you for joining our conference, and welcome.

Thanks. Good to be here.

So maybe to kick things off, you're in a unique position with your business. You get to see goods and services moving around the country, right? So talk to us about what you're seeing in the broader economy. What do you -- how is that -- what are you seeing on fleet volumes? Are you seeing people, things moving around, things getting better?

Yes. No, I think we're very neutral with respect to where the economy is. I think 2023 was the overhang of the impending recession that -- at least never came in 2023, and it's not being forecast to come in 2024. And so I think now you're kind of seeing some of those clouds that weren't putting a constraint on growth but were putting a constraint on outlook clear a little bit, and companies being a little more confident in terms of what's the environment that they're going to be operating in. Nobody wanted to be on a high-growth trajectory if they were on a mode where, well, interest rates may not -- may continue to hike, I need to keep some dry powder. Or what if interest rates and inflation causes consumer demand to fade, or worse, employment to get worse. So I think now that we're through, knock on wood, some of those concerns, I think that's allowed the macro economy to be on a bit more solid footing. Our expectation is more kind of that soft landing glide path. It's not something where we're expecting something to be overly robust in 2024. But I'd say the other thing in terms of what we see -- and you talk about spend management, the different corners of spend management that we touch, a lot of what we do is outside some of those discretionary areas where we can be, economically, what I think of as economically resilient. Every company has -- is impacted by elements of the economy. But I think the areas of spend management where we help companies really tends to be areas that are in the nondiscretionary space. That allows us to be somewhat agnostic as to whether or not GDP is up 2% or down 2%. I don't change how we think about the company based on kind of that bandwidth of economic growth or mild -- slight recession.

Got it. Maybe before we delve into the future, let's just spend a couple of minutes on the 4Q results, right? I think you did call out some revenue weakness in the quarter. Now I understand some of it was weather related. So can't really control for that. But the Corporate Payments business also saw a little bit of weakness there. Talk a little bit -- provide some context there. Where was the weakness with that [indiscernible] channel? What happened?

Yes. Yes. Broadly, I'd say, a lot of what we missed, call it, a $30 million miss, 3% of revenue for the quarter, it was episodic kinds of things that we called out. You asked about Corporate Payments. The biggest driver to that miss, that decel of 15% growth rate year-over-year on Corporate Payments, had to do with our channel business. Our channel business, call it, full year, a $50 million business, 5% of Corporate Payments. Corporate Payments is only, give or take, 25% of the company. So you can do the math. It's tiny relative to a $4 billion company. On the increment, when you're dealing with a $30 million miss, a $10 million, $7 million kind of miss here or there is hard to make up. So what do we see there is, our channel business, it's -- call it, 10 or 15 partners. And those partners use us generally for processing. It's high-margin business because there's not a lot of incremental variable cost that comes with it, but it is a business that can ebb and flow. It can ebb and flow based on volume that they switch on or switch off. And 2023 was a bit of a transition year in terms of some of those relationships. Some of it contractually related, some of it related to the businesses themselves and the issues that they were dealing with. And those transitions, net-net in the fourth quarter, kind of caught us to the downside. And then, I'd say, kind of linking the first question to the second question, you also many times have things that kind of can wipe that out. You have something, you always have, in a business our size and complexity and geographic footprint, that come up. I mean that's just what happens. But we did have something break our way. We had this transition thing with channel, but we didn't necessarily have anything break our way that offset it. What we are confident about looking forward is when you only have 10 or 15 types of channel partners that you're dealing with over the course of 2023, as different contracts were going through renewal and things like that. We were making sure that we were set up well for basically flattish in 2024. We're not anticipating that to rebound to pre-2022 levels. That's not a business, given that it's only 5% of Corporate Payments, that we're overly focused on. But it is a business that at least we have shored up with respect to the contracts, whether or not when they renew longer-term related, which ones have minimums, which ones are exclusive, all of those types of things. So that we just won't have that variability as we look out into 2024.

And then on the Lodging business, weather was -- I guess, weather was a good guy for the country, but bad guy for you all in 4Q. Obviously, we've seen January be -- lots of weather events in January. Is that flowing through like benefits for you all? Or is that -- are the airline operations. Now you've talked about airline operators have improved a lot which...

Yes. Yes. Clearly, Q4 did kind of -- it was -- you could almost set your watch to Q4, where, both on our insurance business, where we're matching up insurers and homeowners who are displaced from their homes, for various ice storms, pipes breaking, the residuals of hurricanes, those things just did not materialize. So claims were down 20%, claims volume down 20%. And on the flight cancellation side, that's, call it, 10%, 15% of our airline business. And they do particularly well when flights take mechanicals or flights take weather cancellations, and those didn't materialize to the same degree. In fact, I think they were down, I think I quoted something like 90% quarter-over-quarter, Q4-to-Q4. So yes, I think it's not like we're rooting for bad weather out there, but it is something that we did see some things hit in January that caused flight cancellations and things like that. But overall, I think it was something that I think was -- we think unique to the quarter and something where that component of our business will get back to kind of its normal, ratable-type trajectory.

Great. Before we start digging into individual businesses, I did want to touch on the strategic review. You just finished it. Talk about some of the key learnings from that process. Anything in that process surprise you? How is that impacting? How did that whole strategic review going through that process? How is that impacting the strategy as we think about '24, '25, '26?

Yes. Yes. It was a positive experience for our company. No question about it, full stop. We are a better company and know ourselves better and have a clear line of sight into the future than, say, 12 months ago. And I wouldn't say 12 months ago, it was foggy. It's just when you go through that introspection as deeply as we did it, you could just come out the other side better. So I'd say the #1 takeaway in terms of what the Board and the executive team learned is the importance of taking Vehicle Payments, the segment that we formed starting in the fourth quarter, and transforming that into where it can be a high single, low double-digit grower. You're talking about a business -- a segment today that's over 50% of the company, $2 billion in revenue, extremely attractive margins. If the North Star of the strategic review and, frankly, the North Star of the company is around value creation, the best way for us to create value is to be able to take that business and make sure that people recognize its durability, what we've done with respect to kind of EV assets that we brought into the portfolio and our new products that we're introducing, and then our expansion and deployment of some capital in -- with respect to the addressable market associated with consumers. So we think the best way to get the multiple up is to be able to demonstrate that, that 50-plus percent of the business isn't something that's going to be impacted from an EV overhang or just a tired fuel card. It's something that is innovative, does bring new products, has cross-sellability, all of those types of things. So we're excited about that. It will take us some time. It's a big business. You don't turn a barge on a dime, but it is something that we're excited about. So that was the biggest learning. But then there are also some other nice takeaways that we gathered -- that we gained. One, we got to talk to a lot of companies. Obviously, when this is going on, it's public knowledge. And so it gives a platform for a lot of discussion that may not have been natural discussion before. And so that was very helpful. And I think we'll leverage that in terms of relationships that we're able to create. Secondly, I'd say, is just greater thought process around business combination structures. We were able to work with our tax advisers. We were able to work with our bankers and think about things in ways that may have been outside of our normal playbook of buy, integrate and grow. And nothing wrong with that strategy. We're excited to get back to that. But now we have a few more tools in our tool belt to be able to think about maybe some other structures that do work at a different day and a different time. So I think it was a good process. We got lots of attention, which, I love attention, some positive, some negative, but attention is good. And so I think we're a better company for it and look forward to going back to kind of running the company and taking the things that we learned and applying them at a kind of surgical level.

Got it. Interesting. Let's talk about the fuel business. It is the allowed. Although Vehicle Payments segment as a whole, right, fuel is now in that. It is still your largest business. You had a sharp pivot in strategy, maybe in the sales strategy a few quarters ago where you focus on larger accounts. So how has that impacted the financials, the growth? And what needs -- would you ever go back to the smaller account focus if the macro improves? Or is that kind of like a corporate-level decision? They're not going to do that.

Good question a lot in there. And so one, just to kind of confine it. It really was the U.S., what we call kind of small fleet business that this pivot in strategy applied to. The over-the-road was really untouched. Obviously, all the international stuff was untouched. So it was a corner of the overall fleet and now vehicle business that we had the shift. And really kind of a little bit of history might be helpful in that, we were coming out of the pandemic. Everything had kind of gone to digital. And so we doubled down on kind of a go-to-market strategy that was an emphasis on digital. And frankly, it just set us up for a lot more fraudsters and a lot more people who didn't have the credit quality that they represented. And so with that came initially some revenue and some late fees that you're like, "Okay, well, we'll take that. But it's only good if they pay it." And we saw bad debt start to escalate in the second half of 2022. And so we put a stop to that. We were about profits, and we were finding that in that micro space, the profits weren't there. They were not only not paying their fees, but they were sticking us with their fuel bills and so we were taking meaningful write-offs. And so we put a halt to that. We demonstrated to ourselves that we could stop that from occurring. So a bit of a shock to the system where we wanted to put the brakes on that. And so 2023 was a lot. It was a great learning experience, not just the human beings in the company, learning and exercising judgment and evaluating information, but also the machines, the models, the credit models, learning. And so I think we are -- now have demonstrated our ability to kind of get back to the baseline level of bad debt that we're comfortable with, where we kind of feel like we're at that efficient level. And now I think we can look at ways in which we mitigate credit exposure, but also optimize sales. And so there's a variety of things that we are doing, not even looking at, but doing that will drive, I think, the ability for that corner of the fleet business is sales to accelerate into 2024 in a risk-adjusted way that we and investors would find attractive.

Give us a couple of examples, like of things you are doing to accelerate...

Yes. Well, one, I don't want to give away all my secrets. But I think, for one, from a credit perspective, there are things that we're doing where we reduce the credit risk, where we will -- maybe a customer comes to us and we decline them from a credit perspective. But we're like, "If you give us a credit card or ACH connectivity, we'll give you the opportunity to have the benefits of our networks and our control and our spend programs, the things that you can add. And from a control perspective, but we're not the issuer in that situation, we're not the one taking the credit risk. And if over time, you demonstrate credit behavior and repayment patterns, then we'll extend credit. But right now, we're not extending credit, but we are extending you a product that allows you all of the other benefits to what our products bring.

Interesting. In terms of -- sticking with Vehicle Payments, you've talked about growing in the consumer side. that's not a segment -- I think in Brazil, you have a consumer business, but outside Brazil, you really don't have one. So talk about what that process is going to look like for the company, how fast are you going to grow that? I mean you've talked about $500 million, $1 billion, that can become a big business. So what's the time line? What's the waypoint we should be thinking about?

For one, I think the Brazil business gives us a playbook to follow. And I know the Brazil business and the economy there, people could say, "Well, that's not the same as the U.S. or the U.K.," which would be our other 2 major markets, and point well taken. But at least we have seen what the pattern and business strategy needs to be in order to, I think, be successful, which is to have an anchor product connected through an app with lots of customers, millions of customers, that you introduce them to proprietary networks that you're able to build. And that really is our competitive differentiator. Those are our wide moats in that it's the customer bases that we have and the proprietary networks that we have. And we will take that strategy, what we had to -- again, somewhat of going through the strategic review. We'll take that strategy and recognize a lot of the networks that we have. We can introduce those networks to consumers just as much as we can introduce businesses to them. But we don't want to start from scratch. And that was an example of the PayByPhone acquisition that we did in September, where they had over 6 million customers, a network of parking, off-street, on-street parking locations all over the globe, we can take those 6 million customers. It gives us a sizable customer base and be able to introduce those customers to some of our networks. Take U.K. as an example, where we have a network of garages that will service your car. We have a network of EV charging stations, best EV network in the U.K. Obviously, Fleet, we -- were associated with 98% of the fueling stations, insurance. Through an app -- and we're all kind of glued to our phones, rightly or wrongly, we're all kind of glued to our phones these days. And through an app, we can then introduce these customers who are using these -- the app every day, to these other networks to try to draw business to them, which is the playbook that worked in Brazil. It started with a toll tag. We introduced them to an app, and through that app, now over 35% of our sales are non-tag related. So we just -- we're excited to get going on this. We think it is something that can be big. You're right. If you look at our consumer businesses today between Brazil and PayByPhone, you're dealing with probably close to 15 million consumers. It's about, give or take, a $600 million business, but we do think that an incremental $400 million to $500 million of revenue over the next, call it, 3 to 4 years is what we penciled out, we can create that would be just incremental growth opportunity for the company. But again, taking these consumers and taking whether they're business or consumer related, but taking these customers and bouncing them up against our networks.

And that's just against the existing networks, that's not including like maybe go out and buy something?

Yes. I think what you'll see from an M&A strategy is the thing that we're interested in is buying things that have customers, whether they're business or consumer, or buying things that have interesting networks, or in the case of like PayByPhone, both. So I don't think there's anything where we'd say, hey, there's a massive hole in our network repertoire where you'd say, "Oh, you got to fill that network." But if there are things that are interesting that just make it even more attractive, I think we would be open to that. But we don't view the execution of the consumer strategy and the achievement of those numbers to be an M&A-dependent strategy. It would be an M&A opportunistic strategy that I would say we would explore.

Is that something different about toll tags and the way toll payments work in Brazil versus, say, the U.S. So one of the things we hear a lot from investors is they could really replicate what they -- what you did do in Brazil by buying one of these toll operators.

Yes. Yes, it is. It's different. The toll market in Brazil, very much kind of the concessionaires own and operate the tolls down there. it's a different environment. The U.S. market is much more fractured in terms of its ownership, its administration. So we don't view -- it's -- the anchor product will vary by market. The anchor product in Brazil was a toll tag. The anchor product in the U.S. is not a toll tag. It's something off of our existing customer base, namely the customers that are all fuel related. Or in the case of PayByPhone, we got a bunch of parking customers. So the anchor product will vary, but the strategy is around using that tech to be able to introduce those customers to networks.

Let's switch to Corporate Payments. Nice. It's a very big growth business. It's a business that a lot of investors are interested in. As you think about that business, you all do a lot of different things in there. What are the 2 or 3 businesses in there that really matter? Talk about...

Yes. Well, clearly, when we think about the broader Corporate Payments business, 27% of the company, $1 billion in revenue, 20% grower. That's kind of its baseball card. I think at its highest level, it's made up of a cross-border business and an AP payables business. Those are obviously the businesses that really matter. Yes, there are products within cross-border, whether it's just payments facilitation or hedging, there's different products within payables, whether it's walk around business expense versus virtual card versus full AP, but all of those matter in terms -- and all of them have relatively equal weight within the overall businesses that cause us to invest in all of them, both people and product and technology. So we think all of those have a place. We like to think about taking our customers on a bit of a product journey, up a bit of a sophistication scale. And I think that's how we pitch to the buyers within the -- and the decision makers within a company, the products that we have, is bringing them up that product journey based on the level of sophistication they're ready to consume.

Great. In the Corporate Payments business, what's unique or differentiated about FLEETCOR's offerings, right? Is there something you can do, whether it's from a capabilities standpoint, others can't? Like is there a lot of technology integration? How hard would it be for someone to switch?

Yes. A different answer for payables versus cross-border. For cross-border, our networks, our ability to facilitate making payments across the globe in over 100 currencies and be able to facilitate that, it's something that's very hard for people to replicate, including, sometimes, banks like BofA. I mean sometimes banks come to us and say, "Hey, you've got licenses and capabilities that we don't have. Can you do some of this payment facilitation for our customers?" So the networks that we have in cross-border is something that others can't replicate. But also the people, the process, the service, that is a differentiator. And that's demonstrated through the share of wallet that we have, through the retention that we have, all of those things kind of bring a combination together that works very well. On the payables side, back to networks there, we're very proud of the merchant network that we've been able to create organically and inorganically over our time line. We think our merchant network is second to none. And based on the research we do, we've got the largest network out there. We know we're the largest B2B commercial payments, MasterCard-issuing provider out there. So our spend volume on the Mastercard rails is the largest that exists. And so all of that, I think, gives us confidence that we've got critical mass. And that critical mass is important because when we go to merchants and ask them to accept card versus ACH or check, we bring that customer base, that volume, that spend that garners attention. And I think that helps us tremendously in terms of a differentiator, both with our customers who are trying to modernize their AP, but also with merchants in terms of trying to decide their acceptance level of virtual card.

Talk about the -- like, look, that business grows very nicely. But what are the challenges to growth in that business? Is it acceptance by more and more merchants? Is it -- or is it more like just good competition and you're having to go out and sell that [indiscernible]. Well [indiscernible] is still mostly replacing checks and cash. So like I'm trying to understand why it's not going faster.

It's really inertia. It's not on the merchant side. Sure, there's a lot of work that goes on in terms of continuing to broaden that merchant portfolio. But I think that is something that we continue to see progress in. And obviously, we'd prefer it faster. But generally, we see that as something that isn't the inhibitor of success, particularly given the just raw size of our merchant portfolio today. It's more on the customer side and just the inertia, that product journey that I talked about, level of sophistication that they're willing to chew and getting them -- because they do it today. They're like, "Oh, well, I paid expenses today. So is this where I want to spend my time? I got a finite amount of time." It's really not a capital investment on the behalf of the customer, but is this where I want to spend my time. And so I think from that standpoint, it's just that sales cycle of getting inside those companies and getting them warmed up and ready to join us on that product journey.

Got it. In terms of virtual cards and the merchant network, which you mentioned as being an advantage that you all have. Talk about how that's different, right? I mean you're still doing MasterCard-issued virtual cards. Is there something inherent like -- inherently different where you -- even if a merchant accepts MasterCard, right, generally, MasterCard, like in their storefront or whatever, does that automatically mean they'll accept anyone? Because you have to go and sign up each time.

Yes. No, these tend to be bilateral arrangements. This isn't like on the consumer side, where I walk into a Starbucks and they accept my Citi card and they accept your BofA card. This is one-off decisions, each go with the merchant in terms of whether or not they'll accept our card. And I think one of the things that's -- one of the strengths about our corporate payments business is we truly do play in that middle market area. And people throwing around those terms all the time, what does that mean? Over 75% of our portfolio is in that $50 million to, call it, $1 billion range.

Cost of revenue?

Of revenue, yes. And so when we, on behalf of our customers, or our customers on behalf of their best interest, call a merchant, they know who they're talking to on the other end. They're like, "Okay, I get it. You're a significant customer of ours. You're asking us to take virtual card. You're saying it will help you with AP automation, control, spend management. Okay, we'll take your call." If I'm a $5 million customer, I don't even know who you -- the merchant doesn't know who you are. And so I think because we do have a client base that is of that stature, it gives us the ability to have some productive conversations.

I want to go back to corporate cross-border for a second. In cross-border, I've been calling what you guys have been doing almost like customer acquisition by -- a customer acquisition by M&A, right? Over the last 2, 3 years, you've had some nice acquisitions. You acquired smaller players, moved them to your platform and really had some nice margin improvement. What's the runway for that look like? Is this a nice growth and margin expansion?

Yes, it is. I mean, as we've mentioned, we're kind of the largest nonbank FX B2B provider on the planet. So we're proud about that. But there are other opportunities that we think would be out there that we will continue to look at that give us potential inorganic growth opportunities and run that playbook. I think you described it quite well. But we're also very focused on the organic piece as well. We have over 300 people selling across the globe every day, and they have networks and relationships that allow them to continue to grow the business organically as well. But we still think there's opportunity out there on an inorganic play as well.

We talked about -- yes, I brought up M&A right now, but maybe just talk generally about FLEETCOR. What you're thinking about on M&A? What are you looking to buy? Like what's the...

Yes. I think the things that are most attractive to us is, one, I'd say, deeper, not wider. I don't see us getting into another kind of completely different business. I've used payroll as an example in other situations, just because one has payroll history, we're not going to go buy a payroll company. But deeper not wider. Why? Because I think the businesses that we have, we think we have great competitive advantages between our customers and our networks. We think they're big businesses with large addressable markets. Our footprint is massive in terms of the markets that we're operating in. So it's go get market share. And where are we most focused? I think it's most focused on the Corporate Payments piece, whether it's cross-border, to the earlier conversation, or payables in terms of building out capabilities and product to their customers. And then it's also, on a selected basis, that consumer vehicles. If there was something on the consumer vehicle space back to customers and networks that we talked about before, like the PayByPhone transaction, where we would put a modest amount of capital to work to be able to just kind of accelerate that. But what I would say is we have never -- I'm hearing this from Ron, obviously, my duration with the company is going on a 1-year anniversary. But we've never been clear on the fact that we're working on the right things. It is less around studying at this point and more around execution. And I think we've never been more convicted in that point of view than we are now in terms of -- we know we're working on the right things, and it's now just going and working them really hard and really fast.

So I can't let this discussion and without talking about EVs. You actually offered me a very good transition. You're working on the right things. you spent something like $150 million over the last few years on the EV strategy. Talk about how you're just positioning the company to -- one of the big questions long-term investors would have is, "Hey, the world is moving towards EVs. Is FLEETCOR even going to be relevant in an EV world?"

Sure. Yes. Yes. The answer to that is yes. We have really devoted a fair amount of time and capital over the last number of years to be able to put assets to work that allow us to provide EV solutions to customers. Customers tend to evolve from ICE vehicles to EV. They don't move there overnight, particularly the customers that we're dealing with that are of some size and have some existing fleets. And what we've been able to do allows us to be essentially agnostic as to whether or not somebody wants to pump diesel or charge kilowatt hours. And that's predominantly through equipping our customers with products that work from an EV perspective, allows them to charge and get the charging and make the payment. But even more importantly, allows us to have networks that makes it very relevant for our customers to say, "I want your product because I now have a ubiquitous network that I can go to." In the U.K., where EV has taken on to the largest degree within our business, from a business perspective, by the end of next month, we'll have over 80% of the rapid chargers within the network, including Tesla. We'll have all of that equipped on an app where an employee who's driving an electric vehicle can look on an app and figure out where the EV charging stations are. Are they operational? Are they being used? Are they rapid? Or are they not rapid, all of those types of things. We've created the tech and the networks to be able to do that. And then we've also enabled them with a card that allows it to work at these charging stations. Some of these charging stations, the tech and the charging stations is the same as the Shell gas station. It's not an insert-type thing. It's a tap thing. So you need to make sure that the cards work when you go to a charging station versus the card working at a fueling station. And then we also think a movement will be particularly in a market like the U.K., but also eventually maybe in the U.S., is at-home charging. Employers don't want employees sitting idly waiting for their vehicle to charge for 45 minutes. And so they have a vehicle that they take home at night, whether it's a van or a car, and we equip them with software. If they have a home charger that they can download within a few clicks of an app, and we take care of the bill. We integrate, again, back to networks. We integrate to the utility companies within the U.K. that allows us to essentially bifurcate the utility costs associated with charging that vehicle, and we pay the bill on behalf of the employee, and the employer reimburses us. So for us, EV, it's been an interesting case study. There's been a lot of things going on out there that I think kind of caused the mega trend to not maybe be as mega in terms of the consumer demand and the adoption rates. But I think, overall, we like our positioning. And when and if the evolution comes, we're ready.

I think we'll -- we're getting up on time. So I think we'll end it there. Thank you so much for spending your time. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. Appreciate it. Yes, thank you.