The Western Union Company (WU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

I'd love to start by inviting Matt from Western Union on stage.

Good morning.

Good morning, Matt. Matt, thanks again for being here. So as many of you guys know, Matt is the CFO of Western Union.

Maybe just starting high level, if you can. I mean, the final year of your Evolve 2025 outlook, what played out according to plan? What's maybe developed differently than you expected, if you take it a step back and look at where we are now in your goals?

Well, Darrin, thank you very much for having me. Really appreciate being here today. Before I jump into your exact question, I want to go a step back and look at the results we had. Just looking back at '24, we were able to deliver about 1% growth for the fourth quarter, 1.5% positive for the full year. That's a massive improvement from where we were when we had our Investor Day. So just kind of give a little context of when we went into that, we were shrinking high single digit. So we've gone a long way. Just a reminder of where our Evolve strategy was, and I'll touch on each point of it as I go through this. We had a 4-pillar strategy we laid out in October 2022. The 4 pillars was we needed to stabilize our Retail business. We had to accelerate our digital business back to market level growth rates. We had to expand our financial services to the aspiring population of the world. And then finally, we wanted to have -- improve on our overall quality. When you think about those different topics, the first one, on the retail side, we've been able to improve our transaction flow by about 500 basis points between 2022 and where we were last year. So very good improvement, still more room to go. During the last couple of years, we've done a couple of different things. We've launched Quick Resend, Remember Me, One Step Refund and we're in the process right now of rolling out our new WUPOS 2.1. You may say, why does that matter? Who cares? The old solutions we had, you had to go do point-of-sale system by point-of-sale system by each location. We've now moved into the cloud. And once it's full rolled out, we'll be able to push out future advancements much quicker than we were able to do before which you've heard us for years talk about 400,000 to 600,000 locations. We got to go roll this out. It's going to take time. That conversation will not take us long going forward now once we get that out. On the digital side, we've now had 7 quarters of double-digit transaction growth. We were able to grow high single digit, all 4 quarters last year. How we got there, and you probably remember this, but we launched a new go-to-market strategy in late 2022. That go-to-market strategy had a couple of different pillars. One is we revamped our marketing campaign. We implemented first time transaction fee free. We improved the subsequent transaction pricing to market-level growth rates. And all that has allowed the results I just talked about before, which is a tremendous improvement from where we were in '22, where we grew revenue 1% where we were actually shrinking transactions. So we've come a long way in that. On the accessible financial services, we've been able to grow for the third consecutive year our Consumer Services revenue double digit. We actually grew last year 15%. Over the last 3 years, we've launched a couple of different products. We've launched prepaid, it has now been in the U.S. market for about 12 to 18 months. We've launched a new media network business. We've continued to accelerate our retail money order business. So we're making -- and our last one would be our ForEx business within Europe, we've expanded. So making great progress there. We feel very bullish about the future for our Consumer Service business. And then the final aspect of our strategy was to redeploy $150 million over 5 years. We talked about this on our call most recently that we've been able to redeploy about $110 million, and we announced that we're going to be on track to actually complete that program this year. So we feel very good, all the pillars are moving, how you got there is slightly different but super excited about the path we're on.

So if we go into the transaction trends for a moment, I mean, first of all, like you just said, you've had some very good trends, digital up 13%, 14% for several quarters in a row now, actually. And you've -- as you rightly pointed out, the retail side, the non-digital side has actually improved quite a bit -- maybe just barely low single-digit decline now versus what it was high single digits. And so maybe start us off as a reminder, where are we -- what are you seeing right now in the -- just in the backdrop of the macro we're in, we're getting a lot of questions of obviously, implications of policy. So maybe a quick update on anything you can just high level and then we'll go into a little bit more on what you see as a driving force for transactions?

Great. That's great. I'll give 2 parts to that for just Q1, what we're seeing for trends. Just a reminder, we talked about this on our last earnings call, Q1 will be a little bit lighter of a quarter. We have a couple of things going on for folks that we knew about when we modeled our assumptions, so it doesn't change our full year outlook, but we had a leap year benefit last year which we won't have again. We actually have relaunched our loyalty program here in the U.S., which will widen the spread between transactions and revenue in the first part of this year as we lap our way through that and start getting acceleration in our growth. And then Consumer Service I talked about in our year-end call, we had very strong Q4 consumer services revenue, won't be as strong in Q1. There's a seasonality in marketing at the end of the year. The political campaigns and all that also helped us a fair bit. Back to your core question, though, what are we seeing in the trends? It's actually pretty consistent from what we saw in Q4. We're still seeing great strength within our European business. They grew high single digit in Q4. We're continuing to see good strength there in our retail business. Overall, digital, we're still seeing strong double-digit growth in transactions and comparable revenue. It's really the comparability issues that I just talked about a minute ago that make Q1 slightly different, the first half sightly different, but full year, we feel very good about our guidance we gave.

That's great. When we talk about the trajectory for your transaction growth rates, again, I mean, you've talked about wanting your digital business to move from even low teens to high teens over time, right? And obviously, your retail side to stay relatively steady and more or less flat. What's in your control around that from here? I mean, you've done so, you've made some changes really ever since you and Devin have taken over. But help us understand what's worked and then more importantly, what you can do going forward that's in your control beyond macro to improve that even further?

Yes. So I think we feel like we can control our value proposition, the way we serve our customers, the way we serve our agents, and we're doing a lot of technology improvements to go drive all that. We can control our overall may prop to our customers, what is the right price, what's your customer level support, those things we can control every day. As you've heard Devin talk about many times in calls, we've been able to reduce our calls into our call centers from about 30 million when he arrived to last year, we were less than 15 million. And that's just by taking out the friction. We've done a lot of things around. We used to make it very challenging to get a refund. We've now gone to One Step Refund to make easier. So all those things are in our control. What we can control is really the macros, what's happening in politics today. We saw a little bit of anxiety in the marketplace post election, we've had a number of our agents see lighter business in the later part of January, early February. I was actually with an agent last week, and they're starting to see that loosen up, one agent, one week but we can't control those macros.

When we think about the spread now between what we see on the revenue side and the transaction side, you've stated, I believe that digital marketing is growing, again, revenues mid-teens percent. Yet the company is still trending in the high single-digit range in terms of the revenue growth rate on the digital side, despite what you want to see is that gap really narrow, right? And I think that's kind of cross to the heart of the issue and the questions we get on the story. I mean, it's -- you've shown a lot of improvements. The multiple is still pretty low relative to what the growth could be or what like it even as now. And I think it's questions of competition and whether you can really show pricing is stable, right? So help us understand your view, why would you see that gap narrow now from what's been about, what, 7 or so points? Where do you see that going between digital growth rates that are in the low teens, could go to high teens and revenue growth that are in the high single digits, but could potentially move into the double digits?

Yes. So we do believe it will narrow over time. We don't manage it that way. It's more of an outcome. We want to get as many transactions as possible at the market level pricing. And if it widens because of that, that -- so be it. We've talked about that for a number of quarters now. But what we'll bring it back together is when we launched our new go-to-market program at late '22, that came in with first-time free, well, that had a one-year effect, and we're past that. What it also brought in is subsequent pricing and we have our legacy customers that are trading off a slowing rate because the book is smaller now that have a higher market price than the ones we're bringing in new today. That is causing a divergence in the transactions and the revenue per transaction. The other item that's going to naturally continue to have a spread for us is our APN or account-to-account transactions, it's growing as a percent of our book. We've been talking about this now for probably 3 to 4 quarters, that whether it be retail to account or whether it be digital to account, we're seeing that growing in the 30-plus percent range. Those generally come at a lower RPT than you see in a traditional cash payout transaction because we have higher costs to pay off the commission expense. So that's going to widen it, but doesn't have a massive impact on your profit. So we still love those transactions. And that's going to keep a wider range than parity until you get to some of our competitors who are more 70% or 80% account.

So what's the cadence? I mean, what's the timing on some of those anniversaries, some of those lapping effects that we've already added, whether it's at lower take rates or lower yields or price? But -- because, again, that's probably a big driver of the -- at least the narrative of the story if you can see that revenue accelerate on the overall CMT business?

Yes. So you're going to continue to see a narrow over time. You're going to see it widen this quarter, to be honest. We launched our loyalty program, which you have to accrue for the cost of that loyalty program when you do it. But you'll still get the transactions that are generating it. But that will be a couple of quarter or 2 quarter impact and now we'll start getting the flywheel going on that. But it will continue to narrow as we get through in the latter part of this year going to next year. We're not -- I mentioned a bit more. We're not trying to get it down to 3 to 4 basis points. We think that's where it's going to land on a long-term basis, but it's going to organically get there as you set off.

Got it. And the number of digital users now, you guys have updated, it was what, around $10 million, if I remember correctly?

A little bit over that.

And so your market position and how you feel about yourselves competitively in digital versus some other competitors out there, I mean, anything in terms of innovation you feel like you need to do that moves it to the next level from here? Or are we in a good place?

We're always innovating. We talked about it on our last call that we now have launched our new digital app in 10 countries. We also announced that we're going to put it on to 10 additional ones this year. We're always constantly looking to plug into more accounts of bank partners throughout the world. A lot of companies, including ourselves, have used aggregators to do that. We think there's a benefit of being directly plugged into as many bank partners you can because it will get you real-time feeds both ways. So always going to be innovation. But we feel good about where we are. We feel like it's going to continue to drive the growth we had last year, and we think there's plenty of room to keep accelerating.

So if we continue to see this mid -- let's call it, low teens, but accelerating to mid- to high teens transaction growth on digital. Help us understand the implications on the margin of the business. I mean, I think historically, you've talked about somewhere around I think RPT being 20% to 30% below retail. But the margins, if I remember correctly, are similar. So just remind us what your path is?

You're spot on. And there's a lot of variability depending on which quarter you're talking about. But when you just boil it up to the highest level, retail is generally about 20%, 30% higher than a digital transaction from an RPT standpoint. When you go through working your way down to contribution margins, so taking out all your variable costs, the digital business has a little bit higher profitability, but it's slightly. And then when you work your way all the way down to operating income, they're close to each other. You do have some higher marketing costs when you get to the digital side versus what we would have on the retail side. So it makes it -- pulls down the contribution margin, getting pretty close to the same point on a margin basis. There is also variability depending on your pay-in, payout method. The lowest yields we have will be an account-to-account transaction, but we love those transactions because they're usually the stickiest and have the longest retention time frame.

Okay. And so when it comes down to it, I mean, this mix obviously a little bit on the RPT side but from a margin standpoint, you feel pretty good about stability in it?

On the margin side, we feel very good about it, but the other part to keep in mind for digital as a whole, the retention rate for digital customers is much stronger than a retail customer. And then when you get an account payout or account pay-in customers even more stronger.

Okay. That's really helpful. Shifting to the retail side now. If you could just give us an update on the physical footprint, the agent locations? Just -- I think it's so important for the brand more globally at least, but where are you in terms of location optimization also? And just where do you want to be?

Yes. So we've got about 400,000 active agent locations. It's been to that number for a number of years.

It was, I remember 500,000 years ago.

It was -- when I first joined the company, it was 600,000, but that wasn't active, right? So we pulled out all the inactives. Some of them are still there today. We just don't count them because we want to focus on productive locations. We don't want to reward ourselves or our employees just for signing up locations that do nothing. So it's been a stable base for a number of years. But you got to think about it from a pyramid standpoint. The way we manage it is, you've got your company-owned stores as your small number. We have about 1,000 of them, but we want to have controlled distribution where we can test and learn and do different things, high-density cities where you have good throughput. Then we have something called Concept stores. Concept stores are where it's Western Union branded, they're exclusive. They operate very similar to a company store, and then you work your way down to exclusive Western Union branded, you have noninclusive and you have strategics. So our pyramid, we work in all parts of it. We think there's ways to improve each part of that with our technology plus our relationships.

So just as I take a step back and remind us the mix. Your retail is -- just for the audiences, the percentage of retail versus digital now...

So for CMT, it's about 75%, 25%. For the whole company, it's closer to 70%, 25.5%.

Right. So your goal is to take that 75%, probably reduces as a percentage of the mix. But at the end of the day, you still want it to be relatively flat?

Yes. Our goal -- our belief is we can stabilize our retail business and then we're going to, over time, diversify the company away from retail by continuing to grow our digital business and our consumer services high single digit, double digit.

So we have overall digital that, again, can grow in the teens and retail relatively stable, you should lead to CMT business and overall money transfer business that should be up somewhere in the low single digits, right?

Correct.

So the big question is now just getting retail from that slight decline, negative low single digits to something in neutral territory. I mean, what -- just help us understand again, the blocking and tackling and the dynamic of getting there?

Yes. So it's a combination of -- I'll give you an example. So for us, our European business, when we -- over the last 2 years, we've lost 2 agents. That caused us to reinvest in our sales force. We put a lot of our pilots in there related to our concept stores. With some of the extra money we had from Iraq, we were able to improve our pricing get back to market level pricing. And you saw high single-digit transaction growth and revenue growth in the fourth quarter. So that's what we think is possible when you have the right proposition of mix of agents, right systems, right distribution and the right price.

So where are we on that? I mean what percentage of your agent locations actually have an updated POS infrastructure, Quick Resend, Remember Me, debit paying capabilities and other features?

Yes. So it varies based on solution. I give you the blanket that does it all and then I'll take a step back for you. So our new WUPOS 2.1 is now in about 30%, 35% of our locations around the world. It varies by region, but that's about the average for the world. But the actual components, we started rolling out many of those things before 2.1. So it's something like One Step Refund largely around the world now. Quick Resend is in the vast majority of our locations. So really, the last push here we're pushing out is the 2.1 that we can roll out future improvements. Another thing we've been working on is debited acceptance in Europe, that's probably in about 30%, 40% of the locations we want to have it and we still have much more room there. U.S. is much more nascent. So we're in a way through that here too. So tons of improved -- there's tons of opportunity to go forward.

Okay. Okay. And so again, when we think about the competitive landscape, obviously, we've seen a lot more competition on the digital side. What about the retail side? I mean, have you seen much change in terms of the incumbents that you were competing with going back a couple of years till today?

It's -- many of the same competitors we've had for a number of years and the way of competing is similar. Agents are looking for how you can speed them up. Labor cost is very high. It's why we put a lot of time to our point-of-sale solution. They are wanting us to treat our customers right, and we're improving with our call centers and ability for people to do things digitally with us. So the landscape is very similar to what it's been over the last couple of years.

Okay. And I guess, I know Devin would talk a lot about when he first came in, the convergence between the digital and the retail user. He was really looking at it as one customer. I mean, have you seen that actually play out where as you grow, you see more loyalty on both sides?

So we continue to see people who -- what we call, omni customers that are working on both sides. We continue to see the retention rate to be meaningfully higher for an omni customer. We see them transacting 5 to 7 transactions more per year. So we continue to see that population having a much better demographic or benefit to us as a company. But as far as the overall size of it, it's not meaningfully different. We disclosed it, I think maybe 2 years ago, where it was up to 5%, 10%. What we've learned is a lot of customers go from retail to digital, so more of the retail-digital escalator and they're only in there for a year and they become a digital customer. There's not millions and millions of customers that bounce back and forth every year.

That makes sense. Let's shift to the political environment a bit. Obviously, there's been a lot of rhetoric and discussion over immigration and obviously, a lot of questions on the whole remittance industry as to whether or not migration limitations will impact your business, right? Just help us frame, number one, I mean, what do you see as the percentage of users in your model that actually are new migrants because there's obviously some question of risk around that and then we can go a little bit more into the implications on even the U.S. and Latin America, there's been some more protectionist regime. So can you give us a sense of what you're seeing out there and what the potential implications from a political standpoint can be?

Yes. It's still early days. It's 6 weeks in. You can look back to the last Trump administration and deportations was not that dissimilar to a lot of other administrations. As far as limiting inbound immigrants, I think we talked about this on our last call, when you look at our transactions that are related to customers that have been new to us in the last year, we don't necessarily know when they cross the border to come in, but we can tell whether they're new to us, they might have been somewhere else, but it gives you kind of a max exposure. Someone new to us about 5% of our transactions in the U.S., a little under that. So that would be -- if something happened where you were to slow that inbound, is it going to happen? Time will tell. If you can predict that, that would be awesome to now. We're monitoring it very closely. But as I mentioned before, we're starting to see the retail environment starting to loosen up 6 weeks into it is some of the information we're starting to get back. So we're optimistic about tomorrow.

And then in terms of the different geographic dynamics going on, I know Latin America came up. Just remind us and explain to us, if you don't mind, what that was -- what was really going on there and the implication of it?

Yes. So we saw in the latter part of the third quarter going into the fourth quarter slowdown in our Latin America business. There were dozens of elections in Latin America. There were some controls down the Darién Gap, there were some controls around the Mexican border. We make a fair bit of money as people migrate up through Central America, and we saw 2 things. One is limitations on people being able to migrate, but also people wanting to stay home to help to vote and spend time in the political system.

Okay. So net-net, put it all together, I mean, from a political standpoint, it sounds like right now, you're not seeing that much of an implication yet on -- from the migration policies or it's still so early, I guess. But -- and I think you've called out low single to maybe mid-single-digit percentage of your total transactions that are new -- potentially new users that could be new migrant?

Yes, sub-5%. We're not seeing a massive -- or any meaningfully different pattern today than we would have over the last couple of quarters and still feel very good about our guidance for the year.

Okay. Let's shift to the Consumer Services segment. I mean, it's a low double-digit percentage of your business, right? But it's been extremely strong from a growth rate standpoint. Maybe if you could just take a step back and remind us what's in that segment? What is it -- what are you guys investing in around it now? And just break it down for us first, and then we'll go into what the opportunities are?

Certainly, Darrin. So our Consumer Services business is to over $400 million, to your point about 10%. The largest 2 components of it is our bill-pay business, which is in the U.S. and Latin America, principally Argentina. Our money order business in the U.S. And then we've added a bunch of new things to it over the last couple of years. We've added to it our prepaid business. We had a very small nascent ForEx business, which we've been expanding in Europe. We've launched a new media network and then we've got our wallet solutions in 7 countries around the world now.

And in terms of what you think because it's been growing double digits, right, I mean what that can be as a percentage of the overall business going forward? What are your aspirations on it?

Yes. So our aspirations are for our Branded Digital business plus our Consumer Services business to be greater than 50% of our overall revenue stream in the near future. Both those should be able to grow high single digit, double-digit range. And today, they're 35% of the company. So you can just imagine how that goes if you stabilize the retail business, it takes you a couple of years to get there. So that's our aspirations and beliefs we can get to.

What is the TAM now? I mean, if you think about retail, money order, bill payment, FX exchange, are those markets actually growing well? I mean, just help us understand the backdrop of these segments?

Yes. So we haven't really disclosed this yet. You're trying to steal my Investor Day coming up in a couple of months. But I'll walk through high level each one of them. So as you think about retail money order, that's a business that doesn't have a high-growth business, but it is a consolidation. And we think that we can be a winner as the business consolidates. It's been growing for us for the last 2, 3 years. When you think about the ForEx business, we can see a high variability in the ForEx business around the world. It ranges anywhere from low single digit to high single digit depending on which region you're talking about in the world. We had a very small business, we got an opportunity to expand that through some of our company-owned stores, and we think there's a way that we can make that to be a strong grower going forward. It is a multibillion-dollar business around the world. And the last one I'll touch on is Bill Pay because it's the other big one for us. Our Bill Pay business similar to the Retail Money Order, not a high-growth business, but it's one versus consolidation and we think our retail footprint can allow for us to continue to have -- to be a growth business.

And these businesses, I mean, is there a natural synergy between these and CMT? I mean, is it -- just help us understand the cross-sell?

Yes, there is. So they all leverage both a digital and a retail platform. So we're able to both -- we're able to leverage the eyeballs and our customers, 100-plus million customer we have today to sell these transactions into. The one place where it might be slightly different, but we're able to leverage our retail locations is on the ForEx side, it's less of the migrant customers and a little more affluent folks, but you still can leverage the same retail footprint.

Okay. There was also a couple of deals. I know you guys did 2 small tuck-in deals, both the Mexican Wallet for a license, I think in Dash, a wallet in Singapore. What's the latest on the integrations there? And just maybe if there's more to come on this front. Help us understand what the strategies were there as well?

Yes. Certainly. So both deals are still in regulatory review. Buying license is not an easy thing as you probably know. But taking a step back about why we bought them both. So Mexico is the #1 remittance corridor in the world, the U.S. to Mexico. We think a 2-sided network will be very beneficial for us to build this in from our U.S. wallet to a Mexican wallet. To do that, you need to have a license. So we bought a business that has a wallet solution plus a license and once we get though regulatory reviews in the next 3 to 9 months, we're looking forward to building that out and making that work. Dash is already an existing wallet solution. We've got a very strong retail footprint within Singapore. And we feel like the combination of that digital solution plus our retail footprint could provide a great synergy we can then take to other parts of Asia.

Just shifting to capital and allocation and given just following up from those 2 deals, in terms of internal investments, Matt, I mean, you had discussed reallocating and shifting existing expense to get about $150 million plus in OpEx in order to modernize the business -- again, we've talked about POS hardware being a little bit more modern, different offerings at the point of sales, especially on the CMT side. You've signaled trending ahead of the -- you're doing better, a little ahead of schedule here. Is there more wood to chop in terms of reallocating expenses first before we go into where you want to allocate capital?

Yes. So on the cost side, I grew up at First Data. There's always room for chopping more wood. We feel like we're still early in our journey there. Most of the last 2 years have been chopping wood to reinvest back in these product solutions. Most of them are now built, and we're getting beyond that, now it's rolling them out. We think there's still further room to -- much of that will fall to the bottom line. On your second part of your question there on capital allocation. We continue to be committed to our dividend. For everybody who wants to invest, you can get a nice beautiful 9% dividend yield, why you watch us continue to turn this company around. But we're also looking at other M&A opportunities. We did the 2 we talked about there. Last year, we probably looked at 35 to 40 things. We're very judicious about where we do that. We'll make sure it's a good return, and we balance the 2. Is it better to buy something or invest? What's going to help us accelerate relative to returning capital to our owners? And if we don't find something that makes sense, we're going to buy back some shares.

So again, from an M&A standpoint, it sounds like you're always looking. But is there anything specific that you're looking at right now? Is there anything live, is there -- without mentioning names, obviously?

There's always things in the pipeline with 35 to 40, you got several every month. The vast majority of things we're likely to do will fall in the consumer services space. We're always looking at the retail players, some have been on the market recently. We always look at the digital players. But they don't add a ton to us. You look to see is there some synergy you can get, but you would expect most of the stuff falls into Consumer Services.

Okay. Matt, before we take questions from the audience, I just -- I want to take a step back and look at the stock again because obviously, the market for some time now has been putting a multiple that's, call it, a mid- to high single-digit multiple on the stock that you guys have been showing progress. So first of all, what are your thoughts? I mean, in terms of what the investor sentiment is, what do you think is being missed by investors versus your strategy? Start with that, if you don't mind, and then we'll go into a couple of more specifics.

We've had a history of being a shared owner. We've had a history of shrinking. We then laid out a, not immediately levelable, 3-year plan at our Investor Day last October -- 2 Octobers ago. We've been delivering that. We've delivered now 3 quarters of positive revenue growth. We have maintained EPS while we've been investing in the business, and we're now getting on the back end of this. Our free cash flow has been challenged in the last 3 years, you know this, Darrin, that we had some deferred tax payments under the Tax Act that will make our last payment coming up in a few months. And then as we get into next year, we're going to have meaningfully more accessible capital to do things with. I think people are missing the journey we've been on and hitting those milestones in a landscape of fintech not being loved as much, but I feel like we're in a much better place today when we were 3 years ago, and we'll have a very good story in November when we talk.

Right. And then competitively, again, I mean, that's a topic that we always hear about from our investors and clients about money transfer in general and pricing and the spread between revenue and transactions. So from your perspective, I mean, again, do you see anything different whatsoever in terms of what you're doing on pricing now in order to maintain or grow market share or the market more broadly?

Yes. I'd go a different angle. I would go -- if you look at most of our competitors, they've been stable in pricing in the last 2 years. We have brought pricing down to above market and had convinced the world and ourselves probably that you could be meaningfully premium priced. I do believe our brand has recognition. We do have a very loyal customer base, a lot of trust. But there's a difference between when you have customers -- our customers don't make a lot of money. There's a big difference between charging 5% more, 10% more or 50% more, and we've largely fixed most of this pricing challenge over the last 2 years.

Okay. And then just last one from me before I take the audience questions. I mean, is there anything more from a technology, big picture disruptive standpoint that's maybe outside of the traditional money transfer companies that you guys think about and keep you up at night? Or are you investing in some areas as well like that, whether it's RTP or others?

Yes. So we're always working on AI, generative AI. We are doing things in our call centers. We're doing things in tech to speed it up. So all those blocking tacklings we're doing, but beyond that, nothing else major.

All right, guys. Well, we have a few minutes left. If anyone has any questions in the audience and when we think about the Investor Day coming up, what are your goals? What are your goals to want to make sure that the investor base walks away from, hopefully?

So we are in the process to design that right now and looking forward to sharing that in November.

All right, guys. Any questions?

Matt, could you talk a little bit about, you just mentioned it briefly... Thanks, Matt. You talked a little bit about the final tax payment. I believe that's coming up in 2Q. Could you size that and maybe how much that frees you up as a CFO to maybe reinvest or redeploy that in different ways that you couldn't do over the last 3 years?

Yes. So the way the Tax Act worked, we were able to defer $800 million of taxes. The first 4, 5 years of that is a very low number, I believe it was $45 million, but then it ratchets up at the end of it. This year's payment will be $220 million. Last year, it was about $200 million. So you can imagine that for us, that's about 25% to 30% of our free cash flow.

So again, with that incremental step-up in free cash, I mean, your view is more buybacks, more -- just to continue the dividend and look for opportunistic deals?

Correct. Correct.

Do you see any opportunity in Crypto at all. Obviously, it's hot and then it's not, but is there an opportunity there?

So we spent a fair bit of time monitoring whether there's ways to send money real-time cross-borders rather than using the traditional banking system. One of the challenges we always run into when we talk to different providers is the on and off-ramps. Ultimately, we need to have cash in Nigeria, and you need able to give out money at your agent location. So somehow, you have to get the money to your agents in Nigeria. We've yet to solve that riddle, but it's one that we -- we're hopeful there's an opportunity there at some point, but we've yet to find that.