Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. We're good to go. So thanks for joining us today. My name is Dan Perlin. I head up the payments processing and IT services practice here at RBC. And I am delighted to have the team from Shift4 joining us. We have Jared Isaacman, who's the Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and we have Nancy Disman, who's the Chief Financial Officer, who I was just commenting on the last time I saw her, was actually here. So anyway, thank you both so much for being here. And to your point, Jared, fintech is still pretty sexy. It's just not -- we're not there yet. We're not there yet.

I think I was being sarcastic.

I know you were. I know you were. I wanted to just start though at a high level and we'll work ourselves down into kind of the good stuff in a second. But like, you just came off the third quarter, you called it, I think, in your lexicon, reasonably strong, which I think is fair. But what I wanted to just start with is just painting the picture and then, as I said, we're going to get into the good stuff in a second. But just the same-store sales perspective of this business and what it looks like today as we just look across the 3 verticals, meaning restaurant, hotel and retail.

Yes, Nancy, you want to take it?

Yes. Same-store sales overall, I would say, blended, thinking about the 3 together was relatively flat. We saw a little bit positive growth on the lodging side, a little bit slightly down on retail and then restaurants were really middle of the road, essentially flat. So pretty much what we've been seeing, I would say, exiting Q1 and really what we're anticipating for sure, for the rest of the year.

Right. And I think it's probably fair to say for anyone who's like new to the story, it's not like we're in -- it's not like we're in verticals that ever really depend on high same-store sales growth, restaurants, hotels. Our growth over the years has always been a factor of taking share. What we told people during the IPO and our verticals like -- which at that point was predominantly restaurants, were down 80% year-over-year is like we'll grow this year because we're going to take a lot of share away from the competition. We wound up growing double digits in 2020 with mostly restaurants as our customer. And as we look to the year ahead, it's not like we're counting on any tailwinds to drive our volume growth in 2024.

Yes, which was really my setup, which is that if you look at your numbers, 3Q in 2019 to where we are today, we've grown like 4x the rate of the -- let's just say, Visa/MasterCard volume. So we would use them as maybe a barometer, which may be fair, maybe not, but you're still 4x that number. And so it speaks to the point of this business model that you've created, which is high core growth is not predicated off of same-store sales growth. So I wanted to just dig in on that just a second, and then we'll get into some other stuff.

Yes. I think -- and I also tried to include in my letter this year, too, is like the convergence of software and payments is still very early days, right? I mean, some verticals, like what I'd call like super SMB generalists, like Square and Clover have done a fantastic job at that. But I mean, if you look at some of the verticals we're in, like take sports and entertainment, for example, like nobody was doing ordering a burger and a beer from their seat before the pandemic, like that's driving a lot of growth in that space. Theme park is another example, like pretty much all our customer, like now you're ordering ahead instead of waiting in line. In the hospitality vertical, especially like the bigger resorts that are using numerous different types of software applications, for example, bringing them together under a single experience is very new in the U.S. and non-existing in pretty much the rest of the world. So I'd say like -- just like our appreciation for that, which dates back to 2005, that's when we created like the Toast and Shift4, which we call Harbortouch, a bundling hardware, software SaaS plus payments as a single offering. That's like where we began our integrated payments journey like nearly 20 years ago. So having like a good appreciation for that, and that's still early days, picking our spots, where we choose to invest organically and inorganically to give us like more than like a right to win within a particular vertical to pull those things together is how you drive growth well in excess of the card brands over the last 4, 5 years. And frankly, it's our entire history for 24 years. I don't think we had a single year we didn't grow volume or revenue double digits.

All right. So let's get into the good stuff. You finally got Finaro across the goal line, right? Congratulations.

20 months later.

Took a long time, but you did it. And what you said recently, which I think is interesting, is during that window of time Finaro was one thing and then today, it's another thing, i.e. a much better business. So take us through like what it was and then why it's so much better today and then what you're going to be able to extract from that.

Yes. So I'd like to point out, like, I think people believe we're always very like trigger happy from like an M&A perspective. And we're really not. I mean, we didn't do our first acquisition until 2014, which was 15 years into the history of the business. I think we're very selective. We'll come back and look at a deal many times over. We've never won a banker process, like that's a fact. And I'll tell you, like in the case of Finaro, like we looked at that deal multiple times, just initially trying to underwrite it on the belief that we should follow our hotel and restaurant customers into Europe, couldn't get there. I mean, it was a card-not-present platform. And then in November of 2021, we set our midterm outlook. We announced a very, very important customer of ours that is a very global e-commerce customer and we want to follow them all over the world. It was like, okay, well, that's -- those are more revenue synergies we can now underwrite in that deal. Let's go back. Price went up, of course. And now we have like high conviction that between like restaurants, hotels, one big e-commerce customer, we can underwrite the revenue synergies of this business because we're not going to underwrite their growth profile, especially during an unusual time in the market, right? And then we kind of were lucky that the deal didn't close quickly because that would have been like somewhat of like a band aid ripping off event versus 20 months you can kind of boil the frog slowly, if you will, like, hey, we're going to start looking more at card-present versus card-not -present. We're going to start looking at lower risk verticals. You can invest in like a card issuing business, if you want, but it's not going to be here when we close. So you decide if you want to put energy towards that. And as a result, like we're able to kind of move them in the right direction. And I think the best proof point of it all, aside from like the results this quarter and the expectations set for Q4, the deal itself had a heavy earn-out component, all 3 of which paid out simultaneous with closing. And if you look at the documents on those, those aren't test --that had to be live transactions for specific customers in specific verticals. And I think like the Finaro management team did a great job over the last 20 months directing resources towards achieving an earn-out, which is good structure and good M&A to get the right alignment out of people. So, yes, so the business is totally transformed over the last 20 months. And we're pretty pumped because our conviction about going after restaurants and hotels, which haven't evolved in the same way they have in the U.S. from an integrated payments perspective has only increased.

Yes. So can you just contextualize and maybe this is a question for you, Nancy? You talked about 1/3 of the net revenue is coming from your existing clients in many ways. And then you put out a kind of a $7 million revenue synergy number within the last quarter. So how do you kind of reconcile those 2 statements together?

Yes. I think the goal of giving you all that data was really to talk about the organic lift of the business, like Q3 is a really great jump-off point to kind of stack on these acquisitions and really appreciate what the benefit of all those 20 months are going to contribute directly to the business. So that was really why we gave those numbers. I mean, not that we don't think 24% of revenue growth is already at least reasonably strong, as Jared would say. But I think had we been able to execute and get -- I think if we would have realized this was a 20-month process sooner, we would have structured this as a rev share, and that would have been accruing to our business. So we thought it was important to really say, hey, like had we close on Finaro sooner that 24% would have looked more like 28%, and that was why we did the bridge. So I think that's going to be immediate. There isn't any kind of guesswork in that. Those are our customers processing today.

Yes. No, it was great. It was great to see it. So let's take a second and talk about the European payments landscape. Let's take a step back and reflect on where it is today relative to maybe where the United States is because many people in the room, not all, are increasingly will be becoming more European-centric, I think with other names that have blown up and then topped again. But I think we got to get a lot -- we got to get a little smarter on what's really happening in Europe. And so you're going after it attacking it. What does it look like? And how do you plan on your go-to-market motion being successful there?

Yes. So when we talk about integrated payments, what we're really talking about is bringing payments and software together to give like a broader commerce experience than just an approval or a decline. I think you see that with like solutions like Shopify or Square, Stripe, adding, like they're doing a lot more than approvals and declines. And you had some early movers in the U.S. I mean, we were one of them. Mercury Payments is a famous one, like they're often considered like the grandfather of integrated payments. And what I'd say is that hasn't taken place in Europe. So if you've been there at all recently and you go out to a restaurant, like they might -- there's a chance they have an old like Windows POS system, but when they get your receipt, they're just reentering that dollar amount into a handheld device. And some people might even falsely think that, that's like an indicator of like true pay a table, order a table, like we would have or Toast would have. It's not. All it is literally a wireless dumb terminal. And the reason they had to do that earlier than us was because of chip and pin with EMV. So like the point is the payments and software are not talking to each other like in the vast majority of Europe. And that's applicable in restaurants and hotels, which happens to be our sweet spot. So, I mean, having 20 months now of regulatory approvals and Finaro spending a lot of time in Europe are kind of conviction within those verticals has only grown. And then how do you get there? And it's like, oh, it's like, this is very similar to the playbook that we ran in 2017 that helped make us the company we are today which is part of the reason why we put in our letter, like, we're not going to apologize for M&A anymore. We'll try and give you all the building blocks of why, like, we're very good at this and why we synergize deals down to like a ridiculously low like deleveraging profile very quickly. But like, that's the path to bring on a lot of restaurants and hotels very quickly versus surprising you and saying like, "Hey, we're going to spend $100 million hiring 1,000 people in digital marketing expenses in Europe, which would be insane, like we have a better proven path to get there very quickly, and you should expect us to execute on that in the year ahead. Like again, we've only have increased conviction on that as we spend more time in Europe.

Yes. Do you think one of the other verticals, either restaurant or hotel are going to catch on more quickly? I mean, restaurants are easier to convert, I suspect relative, but I just don't know how you're thinking about...

I think there's going to be super high demand for both, and we have more than just seeds planted. I mean, all the same ISVs like Oracle, Agilisys, Springer-Miller, Stayntouch, all the software property management system players that feed our hotel business in the U.S. they're the same ones in Europe. They're not different players. So like the only reason we didn't have them before is we had no means to process those type of payments in Europe before. So that's a kind of an easy, hey, join the waitlist, we're ready to go restaurants that there is more hand-to-hand combat there. I think demand will be very high, but how we go about building up the distribution strategy there is going to be -- like I said, it's going to be very 2017-ish like. But I think by the end of the year, your results will probably be very comparable to what a year is like in the U.S. or signing up restaurants and hotels.

You say distribution like '17, back then you were less direct distribution, and today, you're more direct. So are you referring to that? Or you mean like SkyTab is going across the border, but you recognize that there's a lot of relationships that need to be distributed.

I mean, 2017 we did 5 transactions one gateway and 3 ISVs essentially that were all overlooking end-to-end payments. I mean, even gateways were making $0.02, $0.03 a transaction while doing all the hard work and outputting end-to-end volume to legacy acquirers that we've been just feasting on for the last 6-plus years. And then ISVs that we're afraid to make the pivot away from selling one-time hardware and software to SaaS and payments because they didn't want to ruin partnerships or figure out how to pay their salespeople. And you hear all the same things when you look at companies that are very similar to that in Europe right now. And all of this has absolutely nothing to do with like a Worldline or Adyen Dynamic, like not even remotely in the same lanes at all. Right now, all that's going on in Europe from an integrated payments perspective in a card-present environment is very similar to Square, where you have companies like SumUp or iZettle, things like that. Those aren't the kind of solutions that are going to power like nice hotels and restaurants.

Yes. So, you mentioned something earlier about card present versus card not present a little bit. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, 13% or so of the volume at Finaro is like -- is card present, relative to maybe low single digit 3% or something like that. So can you just remind us the importance of that pivot and where that maybe heads?

Yes, because it's hard. So like I've said nothing but great things about Adyen over the years. They are I think the -- they are the greatest global payments company hands down, but they did approach it through the lens of card-not-present processing, which is easier. I mean it is so much harder when you get into card present because every country has like their own debit network. Nobody has agreed on their own PCI and EMV standards by market. There's all sorts of APMs. And then how it talks to the software is different because countries have various fiscal requirements like in Canada, you report back like transaction volume. So it's much harder to do. So the fact that Finaro kind of under our watch for the last 21 months went from 3%, which, by the way, was using like a third party. They weren't driving those transactions directly to 13%, where now we've got EMV certificates that are direct into Finaro. We've got SkyTab certified. We tested Oracle app for MICROS. That's a huge development. It is way, way harder to do card-present payments all over the world than it is to do card not present.

So you mentioned -- I don't know if you're not even mentioning them anymore, but I'll mention them. So space like Starlink, right? They were one of the big kind of, I think you called it sexy tech in the original shareholder letter.

Yes.

And that is starting to see more and more numbers come out in the journal about where they're growing and those kinds of things, which looked pretty promising. So where do they sit, I think, in terms of your focus in capturing opportunities?

Well, I think the more that they start talking publicly or the more leaks there are about their business, the more we can't speak about. Other than to say like, hands down our coolest customer. And obviously, I'm a huge fan, but our strategy is unchanged in that we will follow our strategic customers really all over the world. And when we get there, we'll go after restaurants and hotels. So I don't think anyone is under the illusion in Shift4 that we're going to win Netflix or Uber or any of those out there. We can profitably follow some awesome customers into new markets and when we get there we figure out how to take over restaurants, hotels and stadiums. I think the only kind of change to the story is there was probably a point in time a year ago where I would have said like, if there is a little bit of a race to acquire very scarce international payment rails to get to critical mass so you could compete for like the Netflix, the Ubers, I think now between North America and Europe, we've got the largest markets. I think if -- in terms of supporting other geographic regions for some of our customers, I think we can do it through partnership and organic expansion. I wouldn't expect us to announce like any big international rails or anything like that. That's just not a focus area anymore.

Okay. One last one for now, and then we'll move on. So they have a banking license, and I'm just wondering, what are some of the things that you, one, are excited about or some opportunities that that might create?

I'm excited to get rid of the banking license.

Okay.

I mean, we didn't pick it for that. We didn't buy the business for that. There's awesome people there. I'm not in any way suggesting especially they probably follow business, like we haven't -- the talent there is extraordinary. And as Nancy would attest on the banking side is incredible. It doesn't need to be a bank. And I could never -- I could never -- like I don't know what our future is as a public company, but I'm not going to put somebody else through a 20-month regulatory approval process. I can assure you that. So you can downgrade the license pretty easily, and that changes the regulatory framework pretty quickly. And does nothing from a -- to hamper any technical capabilities. So I think we're not getting into card issuing, we're not getting into lending. We want better card-present capabilities to take over Europe.

Awesome. All right. Nancy, maybe this is for you to give you a little opportunity here. So the volume bridge that you were kind enough to provide us, we appreciate that. When we think about getting to that $175 billion and obviously Finaro has got $15 billion of it in that number, there were several vertical buckets, we'll call them, that you picked up. How do we think about the visibility that each one of those, I guess, 4, really provide to the company as we think about achieving those $175 billion of volume?

Yes. First, I want to say the volume bridge was definitely meant to be a smell check of believability to kind of the last year of our midterm guide. There is lots of room there in different ways that we could kind of achieve the bridge to get there. In terms of -- it's almost as if they're in order, but that wasn't maybe purposeful. I think starting with the one that's kind of a slam dunk in the bag is annualization. And it's been something that we've talked about since I've been here at Shift4, right, this is business we've already won. It just started at some point in the year that wasn't January, right? And you all know we've got a ton of volume even backloaded into Q4 with some really nice large wins that we've been communicating all year. So just that annualization is kind of a check the box, really no risk. And as you think of kind of the other items that were in there and kind of our core and kind of our assumptions on 50-50 production, I would want to reiterate there's no macro improvement assumption in that guide at all. So we're kind of going in with no same store sales growth at all assumed in that bridge. Again, a bridge, but not a 24% guide. We'll be back to you soon with that. But high growth core is really off of what we've done historically, what you've seen us do a nice mix of capitalizing and converting the embedded volume that exists in the business today, plus just new wins and new production. S&E, I know we had a bridge just on S&E. There's so much real line of sight. Like the way we kind of enter that market, obviously, these are really chunky wins. We already know what those are. So obviously, with VenueNext and now with Appetize, we've got them client-by-client sports sector-by-sports sector. And what happens with those is it really depends when we got the win. We might have missed their season completely. We might not have ticketing yet, which we have a right to win within our contracts. So we know it might be this year that we're getting the ticketing, but we might not have had it this year. So that one also relatively low risk from a bridge perspective. And the one that I know Jared has spoken about, and I would kind of back up is probably going after 10,000 restaurants and hotels in Europe that's new. So we're going to play our playbook. But from a risk perspective, I would say that's probably the one that has the most risk to it.

Yes. Also the smallest, I think, of the 4.

Yes.

So that's good to hear. So let's talk about other new monetized assets to now owned and advertised. I don't know why there's kind of blanket on that one. But like this is one where your classic playbook, you bought this business. It gave you a huge opportunity into stadiums and venues in an area maybe you didn't have as much strength in like Major League Baseball, but you're breaking the business down to build it back up again. So maybe let's start with what you got, what you're going to do to it, and then how you kind of bridge yourself to this, call it, $15 million of run rate EBITDA by the end of next year.

Yes. I mean, this is kind of classic our playbook. This was a deal that everybody should have been excited about like the moment we announced it. You took out a major competitor within sports entertainment that was going to continue to dump share to us. And we pulled forward probably 5 years of growth into a year, 18 months. We were the best -- I mean, look, we were the best buyer to profitably buy the business, right, because we already had a software that did everything so we could take a business that is hemorrhage cash since its -- start of its existence, realized all the cost synergies, essentially day 1. We didn't take any devs or engineers at all, like we burned the ships so no one could ever make an argument why that software has to stay in the field or why we ever have to sell it to a new customer. This is important on high conviction deal pieces, right? So you get it to breakeven immediately by making those cost changes. You retain sales, customer relations, people that can help with the migration and then help support the vertical for years into the future. And then as they move over to VenueNext, there's no option not to have payments, whereas that option was existed for its entire existence prior to now and completely overlooked the power of that monetization opportunity. So that's how you get -- I mean, you get from negative 15 to 0 to positive 15 inside of 12 months from getting rid of the old product, moving maybe half the customers over in year 1 to payments, getting some percentage of that 1/2 on ticketing. You'll get the other 1/2 of the customers to move over in 2025. And then that product is done for good. And then you've got a couple of more years thereafter of just realizing the ticketing opportunity. So like $15 million isn't the ceiling. That's just, hey, year 1 expectation that goes here with it. But that's how we do this, right? I mean, and I've said it before, no M&A, our first 14 years in business. The rest of the M&A was done when we were 6x levered with Searchlight because they love dividend recaps and who can blame them. And that meant we had to be really disciplined on our M&A thesis to get the cost synergies very quickly, realize the revenue synergies and delever fast so you could do it all over again because why would you want to overlook these opportunities that exist because of the convergence of software and payments? This is just one -- another good example of it.

So SkyTab POS, I won't talk about that specifically, but I also want to talk about the decision to pivot really much more towards direct distribution relative to indirect. So like, obviously, what was the aha moment like that made you go, we're going to spend the money, we're going to redevelop this thing and we're going to push it directly into the market?

Honestly, it was not like a new moment. It was part of the -- in 2017, when we acquired Future POS and Restaurant Manager, SkyTab was already in development. So the game plan day 1, I mean, these were small organizations, like Focus POS had 9 employees, Restaurant Manager had 12 employees. So I don't think people -- I think people overestimated the amount of "baggage" you get along with these deals. The idea was always, move everyone over to payments as quickly as you can and then move them into a cloud-based solution with SkyTab. Your first couple of years of those deals, you were realizing all that payment opportunity. And then when you probably would have started the SkyTab push, it was a pandemic, you can't expect to get people on site and change things up. So we started talking about SkyTab, I want to say like probably end of 2021 as a public company, maybe in the first quarter of 2022 is like this beta is coming. Now, why in-source distribution -- like why not in-source distribution at that point in time? Like you're going to have channel conflict if you don't. I mean, these guys were all differentiating based on product, brand and software up until that point. Once you make that go away and everyone is selling SkyTab, how do you prevent the Future POS ERM, Harbortouch partner that's covering New York City from conflicting with the same product? So better look at the data. Who are all the best people that we have by market? Which markets are you confident to underwrite future growth of SkyTab in? Buy them out, hire them, super attractive returns. Not only was it like a massive margin enhancement for the base business. Every new customer you get now is at better economic term. I mean, it was a huge unit economic model enhancement. And then in parts of the country where you're less confident to underwrite, keep your partner coverage there. Let them do their thing. So it was all around like what was inevitable was to converge everyone around a single product, single brand and that gave me the opportunity, created enough of an uneasy environment to be able to pull off like that many tuck-in deals in a short period of time and super strategic for the business.

Yes. And this is one of the areas we've talked about your ability to have a much lower cost of ownership. And that's been part of the strategy from day 1 that you've communicated. But in this case, I think you called out like a 1/3. That's pretty significant. So like, what's the difference between what you're bringing to market there and then what's in the market?

I think that goes well -- like that started like day 1 of the company's history well before ever insourcing distribution. That's called like never having a series A, B, C, D or E or being mentored over the years that it's okay to burn as much cash as you want as long as you drive the top line. Like we grew out of our own cash flows. Like we never had any outside capital the first 15 years in business. So like being affordable when you're hiring people and disciplined and not going like crazy is what I think ultimately evolved the business to the point where we can win customers with an effective go-to-market strategy at a price point that restaurants and hotels and others find acceptable and still be profitable. I think if you're like in good touch with reality, like, look, there's no restaurant owner that's excited about 7 or 8 or 9 modules, like I can't wait for the next one to come out to increase my annual SaaS cost. Like that's just -- it's crazy to think about, like they want to be able to bring up their food at like an appropriate price point. And I think fortunately, they are more sensitive to kind of SaaS and hardware costs and less sensitive on payment rates, which is an area we've focused on as an involved payments company that we can better monetize through that path. And you can see like we have slightly higher take rates there, lower on SaaS and hardware costs, and it blends out to a lower effective cost of ownership.

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, Nancy, spreads with one of the like hot topics is always coming up. But like they do feel like they have stabilized a little bit as you ported some other larger enterprise clients, but now you've got this new opportunity in the international market. And as you've talked about, some of those sound like they're 100 basis points, some of them sound like they're 20 basis points. So like, how do we -- how should we be thinking and being prepared for the spread dynamic as you move into international quarters?

Yes. At this point, I'd say the stabilization word is certainly for the rest of the year, that's a fair statement, and that will be a jump-off point as we go into '22. But what you just described is obviously evident and it's been evident in our recent history, right? We are going to continue to plow up market and win some really nice large enterprise deals in our core verticals that will bring spreads down and international is going to create some great opportunity to bring spreads back up. And yes, unfortunately, there'll be some chunkiness to that, just like we've seen in the last few years with implementations. But we do have pretty good line of sight. I think even for the back half of this year, back half of last year, I think we really tried to kind of guide the Street right, to when we expected those moves to happen. I know we don't always kind of maybe -- it doesn't always get the way we want it to, but we knew Q4 this year was going to be a much over weighted quarter whereas last year, we saw more of that kind of in Q3. So I think that's the best we could do right now is to say, look, there's good stabilization here, kind of remind everybody that none of this is coming from rate compressions. Our high-growth core, it's amazing. Our spreads are very solid and consistent with what they've been in the last 2 years, like we haven't seen degradation. It's not a competitive factor. It's really just a mix factor. And I think -- I know we won't get you all to move off take rate, but I think our gross margin flow through and our EBITDA margin delivery, as well as our continued expansion there, as well as our free cash flow conversion is what we're hoping kind of really gives everybody the comfort that the blend makes sense, especially at the lower unit economics that Jared talked about.

Yes. I mean, just to layer on, I know we're running out of time and I think just for the sake of education because people like have gotten -- it's been schizophrenic or it's a commoditized industry or not. We go to Netflix tomorrow and be like, we'll process payments for free, won't win it. That goes for 95% of public payment companies like Netflix doesn't care enough about 5 basis points, right, to trust like the revenue model of the business someone is not capable of doing it. That's the story of integrated payments right now, right? Like Square couldn't go to a major hospitality operator and say, like, trust me with all your hotels, I'll do it for free and win. It just wouldn't work. Like bigger customers are priced at lower take rates, smaller customers are priced at higher take rates. You have to add value with a broader commerce experience. And when we go into different markets, like Canada, for example, half is interact, right, like take rates will be down. So you're going to have to play like, okay. SaaS rates will have to go up in these markets. Maybe Germany is 100 basis points, U.K. could be 40 basis points. You're going to have to play with where you're going to willing to go up on SaaS to ultimately make the economic model work.

All right. I know we're out of time, but since -- I'm going to ask you this question regardless of time. In the shareholder letter, you said strategic alternatives kind of on the table. Like, what does that mean? Here's the audience. What does that mean to you?

I think it's like it should be fair, like there's a lot of frustration. I get -- like it's been a little bit of a recovery in the last 2 weeks. I don't think like -- I mean -- I think it's like kind of quality of life, miserable factor has been very high for some period of time. Our Board meeting was the day of the Worldline disaster. We asked the Board to take this off our hands and see it through with formality that's underway.

Got it. Understood. Well, thank you so much for being here. We're hoping we can make it a little bit better for you in some way, shape or form.

Yes.

Thank you.