Mastercard Incorporated (MA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the virtual Wolfe FinTech Forum fireside chat with Mastercard hosted by Wolfe's senior analyst covering payments, processors and IT services, Darrin Peller. [Operator Instructions] And now I hand the call over to Darrin.

All right. Thanks, Annalyn. And thank you again to everybody this afternoon for joining us on the -- our 10th Annual Wolfe FinTech Forum. We are now -- we're happy to have Mastercard's CFO, Sachin, with us today. I want to thank you as well, Sachin, for joining us. Guys, before I keep going, at the end of this, just if anyone wants to, feel free. You can write in questions on a text box on your system, and I'll take them at the end, assuming we have some time at the end. All right. But with that said, Sachin, are you -- can you hear me okay?

Yes, I can, Darrin.

Okay. Great. Well, again, I want to thank you guys for joining us. Crazy times we're in, but really appreciate you making it virtual with us and being flexible.

Sure.

Okay. All right. So why don't we just start off. I mean look, we're going to get into the core business in a moment, and obviously, there's a lot to discuss. But I think just the obvious question in the room right now is really the recent trends. Everyone is wondering what kind of impact coronavirus could have. We know you updated your numbers and your expectations for first quarter pretty recently, and it was actually relatively in line, I think, with what we expected at least on Q1. So maybe just touch a little more on what assumptions underscored that update. And if you could provide any further color around that, it would be helpful for people to contextualize what's in that and what it means. And then maybe as a follow-on, I'd love to talk about your thought process on managing expenses in an environment where it may or may not get worse. But let's assume for a minute, if it were to be more protracted, what is your thought process on that front as well?

Sure, Darrin. Again, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for having me, Darrin. So -- well, on your specific question on the coronavirus, first of all, I want to just tee this up by saying our top priority continues to be to ensure the health and safety of our employees and to support those who are in need. It's incredibly important. It's something we care deeply about, and we're very focused on that. On your specific question, as you mentioned, following our release on the 24th of February, we have not updated our thoughts for Q1 nor for the full year 2020. However, I do want to share what we've been seeing recently. The trends in February from a cross-border volume growth standpoint, switched volume growth standpoint as well as switched transactions came in broadly in line with what we were expecting. However, with the spread of the virus -- and I need to remind you here that when we came out on the 24th, the vast majority of what we were seeing was contained in the Asia Pacific region. But with the spread of the virus beyond Asia Pacific, we have recently seen a further slowdown in cross-border activity with volumes below our expectations. And a little bit of color and context for you all here. Cross-border travel has been impacted and, to a slightly lesser extent, cross-border e-commerce. We've also seen a slowdown in our switched volumes and switched transaction growth rates recently as well, albeit to a much lesser extent. So given how the situation is evolving, we don't think it's prudent for us to comment on where it's going yet, but rest assured that we're all over this. We're monitoring the situation closely. We're working our expenses prudently as you would expect us to while we are balancing our long-term objectives. And as we previously discussed, we have a number of levers we can pull on expenses, and we will exercise these levers as appropriate while making sure we're protecting the long-term interest of our business. And in a related development, what I thought I'd also share is that we have seen some significant shifts in foreign exchange rates and that we now anticipate that FX will be about a 2 ppt headwind to net revenue growth in Q1 if the current exchange rates persist through the remainder of the quarter. And this is up from our earlier estimate of 1 ppt headwind. Now just to bring all of this in context, I want to remind everybody that the fundamentals of our business continue to remain strong. We view the impact of the coronavirus as a transitory event and fully expect consumer spending globally to come back once this event has passed. Further, the pillars which we have typically talked about as being elements of our growth, those of secular shift to electronic forms of payment, driving market share growth and expansion of our services capabilities, still remain intact and still continue to remain strong. But I do think it's important that as we think about what we're going through right now, we not only think about what the immediate impacts are, but remember that the fundamentals of the business continue to remain strong and we view this as something which is more a transitory event as opposed to something which is changing the long-term story.

All right. That's really helpful. I guess when we think about, Sachin, the potential or ability for you guys to really see what's happening in the U.S. day to day, I mean, just -- it sounds like you have definitely incorporated your thinking about at least incremental trends impacting you from a cross-border standpoint and more so through -- beyond just Asia. But are you seeing anything in the U.S. so far that you can even comment on? Or are we too early to know?

Yes. Look, I mean, I think what I shared with you just now as it relates to what we've seen and the nature of recent trends takes into consideration some of the proliferation which is taking place beyond Asia Pacific, particularly as it relates to Europe and some impact in the U.S. To be completely candid, Darrin, it is -- we just don't think it's prudent for us to comment on where it's going yet just because this is a day-to-day kind of situation. And we've just got to kind of stay on top of it, which we are.

Okay. That makes sense. When we think about your willingness and ability to manage expenses, I know you talked about levers before. But just help us understand what kind of -- like how long would it have to be going on for before you decide that it makes sense to start pulling those levers?

We remain disciplined. We've always been disciplined from an expense standpoint. I mean I'd like to believe that in my job as the CFO, it's my job to be disciplined from an expense standpoint regardless. As it relates to pulling levers, we will pull levers without trying to impact the long-term prospects of the business. We remain very focused on ensuring that what we've laid out from a strategy standpoint stays intact. There are things we can do in the short term from an expense standpoint. And we look at those actively, and we pull those levers as appropriate. Now recognize we are sitting in the month of March as it relates to where we are from a first quarter standpoint. But that being said, we're on this and we look at this on an active basis in the company. Some of the things which we will naturally see that will happen is as people are traveling less, for example, in our business, there's lower expenses which come through from T&E, so on and so forth. Those are expenses which will naturally flow through, but we're on it from an expense standpoint.

Okay. All right. That makes a lot of sense. A quick follow-up and it's a little bit different than coronavirus. But just in the recent days, we've seen some pretty big volatility on oil prices also. I'm getting a lot of questions on that. So I mean historically, we would think about gas or at the pump impacting the business to some degree just because you have, I don't know, anywhere -- we've always thought around 5% to 10% of your volume from -- correlated to the pump or to retail gas stations. Maybe that's too high. I'm not sure, to be honest. But in terms of the way you think about that, can you comment on that for a little bit, if we were to keep seeing oil at this depressed level translate through to the gas price at the pump, how that translates for Mastercard?

Yes. So look, I mean, I think we kind of touched upon a little bit, which is with the decline in gas -- first, the decline in crude prices and the amount of time it takes for that to manifest itself at the pump typically has some level of lag. So -- and I'm sure you factored that stuff in there, right? But what we've also seen is with oil prices going down, if gas prices were to go down, the natural impact is there'll be some level of impact on our volume metrics. That has certain countervailing pieces which one has got to keep in mind, such as what happens in terms of people's willingness to drive, to fill up the tanks, what's the frequency with which they fill up the tanks, because our model, as you know, is -- certainly, we make revenue off of volumes, we make revenue off of switched transactions. And to the extent transaction counts pick up as part of that, you'll start to see the offsetting benefits come through. I will say it's very hard to really predict what the impact is going to be in terms of the declining oil prices and the related offset from an increase in demand standpoint. It's super hard to do that. But all in all, the overall exposure is a manageable exposure to gas price.

Makes sense. All right. Why don't we take it a step away now from the sort of short term and think about the bigger picture. I mean you guys obviously have some leadership changes going on. And I'll make sure to use the name Michael, not Mike, when addressing the CEO change. Look, he's not new to the company. He's been there for a while. So I'd be surprised if there's a ton of strategy change, but maybe if you could help us understand what really might change or any impact of those changes on the strategy of the company going forward?

Sure. First, let me say you're exactly right, exciting announcement, excitable -- exciting times. Let me just share very quickly as to what the changes are and then let me give you my perspective on what the implications, if any, might be from a strategy standpoint. So as we announced, Michael Miebach who is currently our chief product -- or was our Chief Product Officer and is still our Chief Product Officer, also became the President of the company effective March 1, and he will become the CEO and a member of our Board starting January 1, 2021. Ajay will stay on as the CEO through the end of the year, at which time he will become the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. From my perspective as I sit back and I think about this, I put this into the bucket of a very well-planned succession with an extended transition time frame, with Ajay staying on as CEO through the end of the year but then as the Executive Chair thereafter. And as you mentioned, Michael is not an unknown quantity. He has been with the company for the better part of 10 years. He's got some tremendous experience not only inside the company, but broadly, in the broader, what I would call, digital, data, payments, banking environment. And all of those experiences come to bear in terms of what he's been able to do for the company over the last 10 years and what we have in the nature of our strategy going forward. His specific role as the President will cover our sales organization, our marketing organization, our operations and technology, services as well as the product organization. I do want to emphasize one point, and the point is that we have a very deep leadership bench. And with this leadership transition, Michael will be at the helm of this leadership team. So this is something which is well thought out, well orchestrated by the Board. I believe from a strategy standpoint, as Chief Product Officer, Michael has been integrally involved in the development of our strategy as well as execution of our strategy. So I do not expect any big changes to be there from a strategy standpoint because he's been very much part and parcel of development of that strategy and execution of the same.

Okay. All right. Let's shift to the just bigger picture, long-term growth opportunities, Sachin. I mean when we think about Mastercard, one of the questions we get often is the ability to sustain this type of mid-teens constant currency trend or growth profile on the top line for really the foreseeable future, given just your -- how much your focus has been on some of the higher-growth areas and not only secular trends but high-growth M&A also as well as cross-selling some prior deals in international. Can you just, I guess, touch on -- when people ask us how we should think about that being sustainable, I guess, first of all, is there an opportunity -- do you feel confident in that sustainability and -- just based on all the drivers you see in front of you? And then number two, might there even be an opportunity medium to long term to accelerate that over time? I mean we have seen -- just before I let you go, we've seen in the last year growth accelerated almost quarter to the next -- one quarter to the next, just showing value-added services health. Go ahead, sorry.

So it just -- Darrin, it just goes to speak to the fundamentals point I was making earlier about the fundamentals of the business being strong, right? We've got these building blocks which we're executing on. And it's everything we said at our Investor Day in the past where, for all the reasons you've just described, that we believe that the long term -- and this is what we mentioned at the Investor Day in September last year, that the long-term net revenue growth potential of low double digits to mid-teens is pretty sound. It all starts in my mind from what is the addressable market you're going after. And the addressable market we're going after comprises of PCE, which we size at roughly about $50 trillion. And then what we put into the buckets beyond PCE, such as B2B, G2B, B2C and so on and so forth, when you add all those up, it comes to another $185 trillion. So the addressable market is huge. So that's kind of the starting point. Then I say, all right, you might have the best addressable market in the world, do you have a strategy which is on point to tackle that addressable market? And I would argue the multi-rail strategy that we have set up, along with our services capabilities, puts us very well positioned to go after that addressable market. That doesn't mean we'll go after every dollar in that addressable market, but it positions us well. And so then I kind of say, okay, you've got the right addressable market, you've got the right strategy. Do you have the right assets? And you've seen, through a combination of organic build as well as M&A, we've built a suite of capabilities which might be in the nature of technology, talent, go-to-market and so on and so forth, which allows us to go after the pieces of the puzzle which are comprising that total addressable market. And then when I take that piece and I say, okay, we've got to do all of that, and at the same time, we've got a set of services capabilities which continue to grow at a healthy pace, at a faster pace than what our core capabilities are growing at, that's a key enabler. It's an enabler in and of itself in terms of revenue growth, but it also is an enabler in terms of powering the core because, as we've discussed previously, we use services to our advantage to be able to distinguish ourselves with our client base to adopt more of a solution-selling approach as opposed to just being a one-trick pony talking only about switching capabilities. It's really, really, really important. And that same set of services, while we've been successful on the card side of the business, is something we're looking to take and take into the non-card rails, the ACH rails. So there's a services piece. There's the things we can do from a mix standpoint, the things we can do from a growing market share growth standpoint. So I put these into the building blocks of things which will -- which give us confidence to talk about how the fundamentals of the business remain strong to get after what we shared with you in September of last year as to the long-term growth potential of the businesses.

All right. So Sachin, we were talking about market share and just competitive dynamics. Maybe if you can go back into discussing that. Where do you see the competitive landscape today? And maybe what's your renewal pipeline looking like now in big issuers over the next year or 2?

Sure. So the landscape is always competitive. And I don't see any big change in terms of what the competitive environment right now is. It's been competitive, it continues to be competitive. We feel good about our ability to compete. We're pleased with the recent deal activity we've had. We've talked about how we've extended our global payment with Citi for an additional 5 years. Last quarter, we talked about the renewal and extension of our relationship with Capital One as well as the extension of our Direct Express business. So all in all, I would put you in the space of saying we continue to feel good about what we bring to our clients, and that's manifesting itself in the activities we've got from a renewal standpoint as well as winning new deals, including those with fintechs. We have a strong pipeline, and at least one major contract is up for renewal in each of the next few years. Really that's what I see from a competitive standpoint, Darrin.

Okay, okay. All right. And it seems like you guys have historically been able to space out deals. I mean there's not like we see 1 big year of incentives and rebates jumping. With some of your competitors, we've seen a big, big -- like sort of everything sort of front loaded over a year or 2. Is that intentional for you guys or it's just the way it worked out?

Look, I mean, I think there's deals up for renewal every year, and like I said, there's at least 1 big deal expected in each one of the years coming up. I will mention that it's not always that deals only renew at the time of their expiry. In some cases, we might work with our customers to do early renewals. But we kind of try and see what's the business rationale we are trying to achieve. And we'll do our renewals accordingly. So you might see lumpiness on occasion, but for the most part, it's -- what you've seen is kind of the trend we see going forward.

Okay. All right. Why don't we touch now on just the geographies. When I think about the opportunity for growth longer term, acceptance by geography and even wallets, I mean, if you could just touch on the geographies where you're seeing strongest acceptance growth, what you're doing to take share and sustain the growth going forward. And then are wallets and partnerships driving this mostly in undeveloped economies? Or where do you really see it being the most opportunities?

Yes. Look, our acceptance network is obviously a really important asset for us, and we kind of think about acceptance across 3 different lines: the number of places that accept our products; the types of products and solutions that can be accepted at the point of sale, for example, EMV, contactless and so on and so forth; and the quality of that acceptance experience, in other words how friction-free can we make it for the cardholders. I will give you a little bit of color as to -- by geography what we kind of see from an acceptance standpoint. So globally, we have approximately 61 million acceptance locations. Roughly 11 million of these acceptance locations are in the U.S. And as it relates to the U.S., we continue to partner with merchants in various emerging verticals which are under-penetrated for electronic payments to help them understand that value of opening up acceptance. And this could be verticals like rent, insurance, utilities, so on and so forth. In the U.S., we're also working with aggregators, like Curb for the taxi space and several aggregators in the vending space, so also with companies like Zillow or YapStone and Yardi for the brand verticals. So lots of focus in terms of expanding acceptance, as also making sure that there's ubiquitous acceptance of EMV and contactless products while we're delivering all of this in a friction-free manner. Now as it relates to Europe, I would tell you that strong acceptance growth continues in Europe, where we've seen acceptance have increased by 10 percentage points year-on-year for the last 3 years. And we've made certain announcements in this space, Darrin. We talked about our agreement with SumUp where we have a partnership for incremental new-to-card SME locations in 27 EU countries. That's just one example of how we're trying to drive acceptance growth. And then in developing markets like India, our acceptance has grown significantly to more than 5 million acceptance locations. So again, lots of focus. We see this as being broad-based. We see this happening across the globe. One would think that in markets like the U.S., there remains limited room, but the reality is there still remains a lot of room there. Now when I've given you these numbers, what I've reflected is when you start to -- what I've not reflected is when you start to include connected devices, Internet of Things, gig workers, even people who accept electronic payments for professional services, that number expands to 48 million acceptance points in the U.S. and hundreds of millions of acceptance points all over the globe. To your specific question on digital and how digital plays upon, we've been working with many of the wallet providers here. For example, with Grab, which is a leading fintech platform which I know you're very familiar with. One of the outcomes of our broader partnership with Grab is that they've opened up GrabPay wallet for acceptance across the Mastercard merchant base. Another one is Blik in Poland. It's a mobile payment system provider. We've integrated our virtual tokenized Mastercard debit card into the Blik wallet and that can now be used for contactless payments anywhere where Mastercard contactless payments are accepted. And then, most recently, you've seen that we've enabled Mastercards issued outside of China to be accepted in digital wallets like Alipay and WeChat Pay for purchases within China. So big focus area, we continue to drive hard. This is important. It's a valuable asset, and we'll keep focused on this.

Okay. That's helpful. And just quickly on the local switching opportunities. Where are we on that process? And what kind of opportunities do you see in different countries right now for that?

Yes. So we switch approximately 56% of total transactions worldwide. Now keep in mind that the percentage of transactions we switch will vary by market. For example, in the U.S., we switch more; other countries, we switch less. And we continue to drive this because it's important. Now for perspective, against this 56% of total transactions, we used to switch approximately 49% in 2012. And for obvious reasons, being able to see the transaction, i.e., switch the transaction, is important. One, it enables us to apply a full range of value-added services to the transactions; and number two, it allows us to realize transaction processing fees, both important revenue-generating elements. And when we -- from a competitive environment, what we are typically competing with, Darrin, is local domestic switches. And the way we compete is we bring a set of solutions, including our preferred solutions into the local market, which very often domestic switches have a hard time mirroring and bringing to bear. Because we operate at scale, we're able to invest and we're able to leverage our global data and analytic capabilities to bring some of these solutions to bear.

All right. That makes a lot of sense. Just one last one on the incremental growth in investments. You talk a lot about how much cross-border really is important for your business. And I think there's a lot of data points out there that suggest you guys can make quite a bit of money off cross-border because it's so differentiated for what you can offer versus others. Just can you talk -- people always ask us about what types of investments you're making in that area. Beyond just letting the market do its own thing on B2B and e-comm on cross-border, what are you actually focusing on your own that enables that area to keep growing well?

So certainly, there's cross-border on the card side. We've done this and we've done this well for some time. And then going back to your prior question, as we keep building out acceptance, it further solidifies our cross-border proposition, for people to move outside of their countries and be able to use their cards in a friction-free, ubiquitous manner. So that's kind of one part of it. The second part of it is all the work we're doing on the account-to-account cross-border space. And by that I mean with the acquisition of Transfast last year as well as our existing capabilities from Mastercard Send, we're bringing a set of capabilities to address new use cases which are not typically addressed by cards, and we think that's really important. We think the opportunity is there. There's a set of pain points which the current clients in this space experience on account of things like speed of payments, transparency as to where the payment sits, the various elements which go along with that, which can be tackled by what we're doing with an asset such as Transfast, which provides us reach to more than 130 countries, which covers more than 90% of the world's population. So look, we can go into a lot of detail on this stuff. I think we're probably going to be short of time, but suffice it to say cross-border is an important area we've built. We've always had capabilities on the card side. We've built and/or acquired traditional capabilities to broaden that addressable market.

All right. We're almost out of time. But before I go, just if anyone in the audience does want to put any questions or type any questions in, now is your time. While we're waiting for that, Sachin, when we think about margins, I just -- we get this question a lot as well. I mean it seems like the company is much more focused on investment in real-time top line growth profile and, obviously, buying a lot of assets that really talk about investing for long term rather than investing your -- letting incremental drop to the bottom line. So just strategically, can you talk a little more about your thought process on margins? Is it really -- are you comfortable leaving them at a level they've been and just really focusing on top line? Or do you see an opportunity to expand that over time?

Yes. So look, I think I want to take you back to the point that everything starts and stops with strategy. We are looking to build out the strategy for this company to secure the long-term growth prospects of this company. And those growth prospects are across both the top line and the bottom line of this company. In order to do that, one has to recognize, as you grow your addressable market, you have to build a set of capabilities which will allow you to actually go after that. And that's where the investments we do come into play. The investments we do are on point with strategy. We continue to execute in a disciplined manner, both organically and inorganically. The reality is we have set ourselves a guidepost, which we've shared with you as part of our Investor Day, where we talked about how we will operate at a minimum operating margin of 50%. That's just to make sure everybody understands that we're not going to go crazy as it relates to the level of investments, but we certainly want to have flexibility to make investments to allow for the long-term growth, and that's what we'll do. The operating leverage in our business is a function of scale. As you start getting to these new spaces, which prevent -- sorry, which present large addressable markets, as you scale up there, it presents you greater opportunities from an operating leverage standpoint.

Okay. I mean there is one question I just got -- there's actually a couple of questions. One of them is just on the -- in the last recession, Mastercard was very resilient. Today, value-added services are a larger component of the business. Do you see your business as resilient today as the core business was in a downturn?

Yes. I kind of think with the diversification of our revenue streams to -- given all the services-related revenues we generate, I think the resiliency of the business is pretty sound. The reality is there are different parts of our business -- if I think about our fraud solutions or what we call our cyber intelligence capabilities, that is very much a revenue-generating model based on transactions. And as transactions keep coming through the system, you keep generating revenue, notwithstanding environments where volume might fall. So sometimes you might experience volumes come down in a recessionary environment. That doesn't necessarily always translate into an equivalent amount of reduction in transaction growth. So short answer is the fact that we have a diversified set of capabilities which generates revenue, including our services, provides us some comfort from a resilience standpoint.

Okay. And then I was e-mailed a question also just in the middle of this from a client asking, which is a question we had anyway, about M&A. You guys have been proactive over growth assets. We've seen the market pick up around some growth assets as well, especially around fintech. Can you just give us your updated thoughts on your strategy around M&A going forward?

Yes. So M&A, to me, is a means towards delivering on our strategy. It's not the only mean, it's one of the means. And if we have things we want to do from a strategy standpoint, we will always make an evaluation as to we are -- as to whether we are best off building, buying or partnering. If you're going to build, then, obviously, we do it organically. If we feel like buying and/or partnering, it is important because it gets us faster to market or gets us to obtain a unique set of capabilities and/or talent, we will go after that. We've done that. We've done that pretty successfully over the recent past. It's very much core to how we will look at the business on a going-forward basis to ensure that we execute in the most expeditious manner on this strategy we've laid out.

Okay. Guys, I want to thank you very much. Apologies again for the glitch earlier, but I think that was extremely informative. Everyone on the call, thank you again for joining. We had a really big turnout. And so the next fireside chat or panel is actually the B2B payments panel with AvidXchange and MineralTree at 3 p.m., so in just less than 10 minutes. Sachin and Warren, thank you guys so much. Good luck. Stay safe through all of this, and we'll talk soon again.

Thanks, Darrin. And thank you, everyone, for your interest. Appreciate it.

Thanks, all. Bye. Thanks.