WEX Inc. (WEX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
March 9, 2022
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Darrin Peller
analyst[ To come in ] after this session and then much more tomorrow throughout all day. So thanks for joining us. As I said earlier, we've had -- we have 100-plus companies participating in panels and chats and over 800 investors listening to these as well as replays and meetings. So I really appreciate everyone's participation. And with that, obviously, really happy to have Melissa, CEO of WEX; and Steve with us as well from Investor Relations. Thank you, guys, both for joining us.
Melissa Smith
executiveThanks, Darrin. It's good to be here.
Darrin Peller
analystThere's really quite so much going on at WEX. I don't even know where to start, but we have -- we'll try to organize this as best as we can in the limited time we have. I think when we think about the business transformation over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of noise in the market around -- obviously, the pandemic, now geopolitical things going on. But nonetheless, I mean when we look at all the vast opportunities around B2B and around even the fleet and the fuel side of the business, not to mention health care, there just seems to be so many areas you can invest in, Melissa. So if you could start off with, as a CEO, where you're taking your time, where you're spending most of your time and where you want to spend most of your investment dollars now among all the vast opportunities.
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. Yes, actually, when I think back, you talked about volatility, even during this period of time where you had a global pandemic, over the last 5 years, we've grown reported revenue 13%. So we still have been within our long-term growth targets even in a particularly challenging time. And I'm excited about all the work that we've got behind us and transferring the technologies you talked about as well as really building on our customer-focused innovation. And as a result, we have so much more optionality in this moment, which is super exciting. And so there's 4 areas that we're focusing on within the company. One is just continue our great track record of organic growth. So we want to continue to expand the relationships that we have globally, and that is in one of our core competencies, sales and marketing, bringing in customers across the different segments that we have. And we are off to a great start of the year in doing so. We also want to make sure that we extend the ecosystem of products that we have. Part of why we changed the organizational structure at the end of last year was to really look at ways that we can maximize the assets that we have, both the existing customer relationships we have and the products that we have across the company and making sure that we're really maximizing -- offering those products to our existing customers and also thinking about new ways of opening up our distribution channels and our products into the marketplace. And so that, for us, is a place that we're increasing the focus this year. We're also really focusing on continuing to transform the experiences and our mantra in purpose is to simplify the business of doing business as we want to make sure that as we are reaching out into the marketplace and as we're connecting with customers, we continue to do that in a highly integrated way and that we're simplifying that for them. And then the last part for us just to continue to cultivate the culture. And it's an important part of why we win and, more importantly, why we retain customers. And so it's a place we just continue to feed on, particularly in this market right now, where there's just a heightened awareness of the employee experience. It's a place that we've been focusing. So we're investing across all of those different -- 4 pillars.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. That's very helpful. Look, before we get into the business in more detail, I wanted to just quickly touch base on some of the geopolitical noise that we have as we come out of Omicron. Now we have, unfortunately, a war. So I know this was not in sort of the prepared questions, but I do want to understand from your perspective, implications, what your thoughts are? I don't think there's a ton of material implications on the business directly, but just your thoughts on what's happening. And then maybe any update on what you're seeing -- it's a high level, I know, on trends on any type of recent trends you're seeing around whether Europe or here?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. 90% of our business is in the United States. And the other 10% sits largely in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand and a little bit throughout Asia. And so the impact to us from a business perspective is relatively small, I think basis points in terms of revenue. So it's really small. We don't have employees that are sitting in Ukraine or any of the other affected countries. And so for us, it's more indirect exposure. So as you're seeing, sadly, we've got this increase in fuel prices. And a piece of our business, we earn a percentage of revenue based on how much people spend at fuel locations. And so we have a pickup in terms of what's happening in fuel prices, offset at least a little bit by -- you'll see some contraction in spreads in Europe, which is the pricing model in the European market. We're doing a lot with our customer base to work on actively increasing credit lines to make sure that our customers are prepared, exposing our products to our customers that help them locate the lowest price of fuel and also, if it gets to an extreme, making sure that they can actually find and source fuel. And so we're getting prepared on that front just like we would if there was another natural disaster. These are tools people use frequently when we have hurricanes or things like that. And so we're really just preparing the business. But overall, that's the biggest impact to us.
Darrin Peller
analystThat's so interesting that I think sometimes we are investing -- on the investing side, maybe forget about the assets you have that can actually help in these situations in identifying some of the better alternative prices and just options to find what they need. Just real quickly, are we seeing any demand change or demand destruction, whether it's on the fleet side or small business or even on the consumer in terms of gallons? Any idea? Is it too early or...
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. Well, we wouldn't see on the consumer side. We'd see on the B2B side. Historically, there really hasn't been much of a correlation. The norm that we've seen in the past is that people will fill up more frequently in part because you're in this period of rapidly accelerating prices, people want to take advantage of the lower prices. And so there -- so the activity looks a little different. But the net result, people in our portfolio are buying fuel because they need to make a service delivery or they have to haul goods and those activities are continuing. So as long as the business continues, then you actually see a continued pretty consistent pattern of overall volume. We're also in an unusual period of time, and so we will continue to track that, but we haven't seen any -- what I would describe as any significant change in behavior.
Darrin Peller
analystGot it. Melissa, maybe we can take it a step back. When we look at the business overall relative to 2019 levels, maybe we could just start with the OTR versus fleet recovery we're seeing. You noted strong demand across OTR segment. Has the local fleet been picking up more recently, just as we kind of come out of the other side of Omicron now, knock on wood?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. It does feel like that doesn't it? Well, overall revenue is up 7% from 2019. And so as you talked about, over-the-road is one of the places where we have seen what feels like a trend change where [ our ] customer receiving goods in a much more convenient way. And so we've seen volume increases across that portfolio. And I'd say that they've done that, our customers have despite the fact that they have had labor shortages and supply chain issues. And so even despite that, you've seen this great increase in demand. Some of that's been fed by just really great sales. And so we've seen strong revenue growth in part because you're seeing the tailwind and some of the implementations that we've had that we've announced over the course of the last couple of years. On the North American fleet business, what we saw is the smaller-sized companies were more active throughout the pandemic, which when you think about that makes sense, they were more likely to not shut down their business. Where the long tail has been, think of like a pharmaceutical sales fleet or people that are driving automobiles in larger companies where they just haven't returned back into work in the same way that they have historically. So the business, we've seen continued pickup from a volume perspective quarter after quarter. Again, a lot of that has to do with just new sales that we have that's running through the business. And so there's a little bit left of where you just haven't seen the full return for some of the behavior patterns that we saw pre-pandemic. And when we give out our guidance, we assume that you will continue to see this slow ratable improvement over time.
Darrin Peller
analystGot it. That's helpful. I guess while we're on that topic, I mean, the travel side specifically, moving from the OTR and local fleets. That's the other area that I want to just hit on in terms of what that can be on the other side of this pandemic. Especially now with eNett and Optal, you have a bigger piece of that business that's probably even more international and cross-border. And so can we just touch on that?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. Sure, yes. What we saw in 2021 was a reopening specifically of the volume in the U.S. So that returned to some semblance of normal. Western Europe was starting to open back up. We saw some nice rebound there. We really hadn't and still haven't seen much of a return in volume in Asia, and so it became really regionalized. And during the height of the pandemic, I could say it was a lot about -- when you get into individual countries, with vaccination levels within the country where the country mandates allowing people in and out. And so there are a lot of very specific factors that affect the trends. When we gave guidance here, again, we've assumed that you're going to continue to see increases gradually and return in travel, spend volume levels. And again, like we'll see how -- what's happening in Ukraine will affect that. But so far, we've continued to see that nice, steady return to spend patterns in our travel business.
Darrin Peller
analystThat's good, and that's pretty consistent with what we've heard from -- we had the CEOs of Visa and Mastercard with us yesterday, who said pretty similar, at least so far, again, mostly how it would shake out. It seems like the track -- the war and the results of it are still fairly localized in terms of travel at least so far. Maybe we could shift gears and just start going into detail a little more on the fleet segment first. When we look at -- one of the big topics of conversation, obviously, and just we'll get it out of the way now is obviously EV. You guys actually have had some interesting partnerships that I want to talk about, ChargePoint, Bestpass. Can you just expand on what's really -- what those are really about and how you see them helping WEX over time?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. I think -- and actually, I put them in 2 different categories. The overarching one is around mobility. We want to make sure that our customers can do the things that they need in order to move goods, provide services, whatever their end goal is that we're there to help them through that in the simplest, most integrated way possible. So that's the overarching piece, and I'm going to split that in 2 places. One, the first for us is thinking about ways that we can extend the product and product capability that we have. Some of that is extending it in Bestpass where you have the ability to pay for tolls. Some of that is opening up the card so that we're adding on the capability to use Mastercard network, along with our embedded proprietary network is a product that we've been working on. I know Mastercard talked about in their earnings call. And so with that, we feel like it's really taking the customer and expanding the customer experience with controls around it to allow them to purchase more and to use that really readily. The other side of that, when I think about EV, we are in this pole position where we're in a unique place with their customers where they're looking to us to say, all right, they're going to transform over time. My vehicle's into this electrification world. I'm going to have a period of time where we're going to have both. When you have gas-powered cars and I'm going to have electric vehicles, and that increases my level of complexity exponentially. And so in the short term, what I really want is the ability to be able to integrate all of these different components into my system seamlessly. So I understand the total cost of ownership of the vehicles that I have, and I can reduce fraud misuse, simplify the processes they have. So a lot of what we were doing before but really just adding on to that, whole layers of complexity where we can really help our customers. They want to be able to do that, depot charging. They want to be able to do it on the fly and they want to be able to do that on location. And so think of that as including at-home charging. So this idea that across the whole -- the process of however I'm charging that vehicle, I want all that information to be able to be collected and integrated. The relationship with -- after ChargePoint was something we've had for a number of years. We're just building upon that and saying we're going to lean into the acceptance and the processes that they have in place. We're going to build around that and create even more product capability into the marketplace. And part of what's really exciting for us is really 2 things: the idea that we could actually change the way that we earn revenue. We talked earlier about the exposure that we have right now as people purchase fuel. We have an exposure related to that. This moves us more into a subscription-based model, which is more of the prevalent pricing. It also gives us the ability to build future products. So we've got in our sights and are developing what we want to have in the marketplace right now. But also we see a lot of other product opportunity following that. And so we think this is a whole other new growth avenue for us. And I think as we've gotten over -- again, for the last 6 months, and really done a lot more work on this front, we've gotten really excited about what the possibilities are here. So framing starts with mobility, but then it goes into different use cases to how we can help our customers.
Darrin Peller
analystAre you -- I mean, are you seeing -- what kind of traction are you seeing among your customers around EV and the adoption of some of those technologies?
Melissa Smith
executiveVery low. And it gets really -- it gets fragmented. So this is a lot of segmentation. The over-the-road customers, they're really far off on this. They're thinking about this as much more long term. The North American fleet customers or their European fleet customers, it starts with larger companies that are driving cars. This is kind of the initial wave of interest sits there and then government related then to these people who have some association with -- if you're a public company and you have ESG components. So you can start to see it coming from a -- mostly from a social responsibility level of pressure, but dedicated mostly with vehicles and cars. Think of [ cars ]. We do think it will -- it's going to migrate through the portfolio. We think it's going to take some time. But to a certain extent, we just want to make sure we're prepared. Whether that takes 5 years or 20 years, we want to make sure that we have the product in place that we can meet the needs and that we're leading in the marketplace here.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. I guess before we move on from this segment, just to be clear, we've talked about this business being maybe mid- to high single-digit growth longer term, right? Steve, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was what, 5% to 7% or 5% to 8% in that ballpark. Melissa, I mean is that the -- in your mind, is that still the case? Like anything about the industry changing that would change that profile?
Melissa Smith
executiveWe feel really good about the long-term growth profile at the business that is -- again, it starts with making sure that we're bringing in new customers, but then we have this ability to continue to extend product capability. And so we feel good about the same long-term numbers.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. And just as a reminder for anyone on here that may have forgotten, the percentage of your exposure, specifically to fuel spreads or fuel prices, I should say, I think it was around 20%, if I remember correctly. But Steve or anyone -- I don't know if want to chime in on that, just to make sure I'm not speaking out of tool.
Steven Elder
executiveYes. Yes. It's in the low 20s, Darrin, from a total revenue perspective. It was directly affected by basically the retail price of fuel. We have a little bit of spread, not much, but they tend to move in opposite direction. The spread really for us is limited to just Europe, which as Melissa said before, maybe, call it, a high single-digit percentage of the fleet segment. So the benefit we'll get in the U.S. from higher prices, certainly it weighs up.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. Let's shift gears to the corporate and travel side because I mean that's an area that I know has years of growth potential. When we think about what you're doing, Melissa, first, let's start with corporate before we go back to travel. But on the corporate side, the set of assets you have, and I know I've asked you this on earnings calls, there's a lot of focus on the virtual card side of the business on the issuer side, and you've been able to really create more of a network also on the supplier side. Can you just touch on that and what you guys have that's truly differentiated and the value add for the industry?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. So I think of the product that we offer in travel and corporate payments in 2 categories. One is an AP product. So think of that as AP direct. The second is an embedded payment. And let me walk through different use cases because the AP direct product is where we're taking someone's AP and actually fulfilling that for them. And we're doing that largely on a direct basis where we've got either a relationship with an existing customer on the fleet side, where we're cross-selling this capability into that or going into the marketplace and adding new customers. The way that we differentiate there has a lot to do with the merchant network and the capability that we have of just making sure that, that is done in a very seamless way. We also offer the technology, in this case to other financial institutions, and companies like American Express, who take the technology we have and sell it into the marketplace. And so we can either be just the tech that sits behind the scenes or we could actually be doing all of the work on behalf of the customers. It's high revenue stream, a nice margin profile. And then the second product that we have is an embedded payment product, where we embed within a process, a payment, highly integrated into the workflow of our customer. And then if you kind of take it a step further and you look at what we're doing in the travel marketplace, we've added in a bunch of other functionality that are really important to that customer set. So we can settle in over 20 different currencies. We have a compliance and issuing structure that's set up on a global basis that allows us to have the ability to move nimbly across all of these different countries where they actually need to have issuing capability and really strong charge-back capabilities. So some things that are very specific to that particular vertical we've added on top, but highly integrated into the customers, into their processes. Really important that has high stability. Really important that it just works on a regular basis. And so execution stability are really important to that customer base. Part of how we win in that part of the marketplace is the fact that we sit in this nice position where we have a bank, but we're not a bank. So we have the ability to actually offer a lot of the product sets within our bank, but you can move at the pace of a fintech player. And so when people come in and they look at our technology, they're able to walk away, feel good about the underlying technology and speed by which we can partner. The level of integration, all of those, we actually score very highly on. And then this idea that we're going to continue to build upon the products that we have that we have. We have the development drops, and we have the capability to do so is also really important. And those are all directly attributable to our winning customers like Avid who are in the middle of implementing right now on that product. And so those are really the way I think about it. The embedded payments products because it's built off the underlying tech stack that we have in place is highly scalable. So there's not a lot of incremental costs associated with that. So you see less revenue that comes through on a volume basis associated with that customer set, but also really nice margins. And so one of the things that I think has been confusing as you've gone through the course of the year is depending on which type of customer we're mixing towards, you see some swings in the net rate of those 2, but one of the things we keep pointing out is also look at the operating margin. If you look at our overall operating margin in that segment, you can see great sequential improvement as volume has increased, that really has dropped through from a profitability perspective.
Darrin Peller
analystRight. I know the mix was a little -- had an impact on the yield itself, but that was just mix, right?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes.
Darrin Peller
analystThinking about the corporate side in terms of the assets you have and what you really can do now as well as thinking about the virtual card side versus the accounts payable software element of the business and the industry we're seeing, back to that question again on whether or not you feel like you have every piece of the puzzle you need to succeed in this industry going forward and what you're seeing the most traction with.
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. I mean I think that's a fair question. I think in this part of our business, we actually continue to build the capability that we have. And so we have moved this business. Anything new that we've done here, we've done cloud-based, which is great, which allows us to move actually pretty quickly from a development perspective. And so we just continue to build capability here. We have looked into the marketplace, and I think you're hinting a little bit on the M&A front, and we will continue to do so. What we've found is we've looked at assets here is you don't get a lot for quite a bit of money in terms of both customer and capabilities. We've had, let's say, over the last probably 18 months, we've had much more of an emphasis on building -- the other thing that we've been doing is more rapid innovation where we're testing things in the marketplace. We have a beta test out right now. We're taking functionality that we're offering to our existing customers, largely on the fleet side of the business, and extending that capability into corporate payments and doing that in a digital way. And so if you think of that customer base, these are customers that have -- we've led largely into the digital world with our products, and we have now this trusted relationship. And so we're looking at ways that we can extend our offering and solve some of the problems that they have on their corporate payment side. And so you're going to see us do more of that. Every time we're really experimenting on the product side, bringing things into the marketplace, learning and then scaling.
Darrin Peller
analystRight. That's really helpful. When we think about the -- I guess, we'll shift gears in interest of time to the travel side for a moment. When we think about that piece of the business, obviously, with eNett and Optal it's notably larger, much more -- you cover a lot more of the market also. And so when we think about what that could look like upon reopening, first of all, just as a reminder of domestic versus the international or cross-border piece, I think you've disclosed that, right, Steve, in terms of what contributes to the travel side?
Steven Elder
executiveYes, we're going to be much more levered to that cross-border stuff. I mean the reality is we don't really -- like if we know Melissa booked a hotel room, we know like where Melissa is, but we don't know where Melissa came from. So we don't really know for sure that it's a cross-border transaction. But in talking to our customers, that's what we excel at and that's the type of business that they'll give us. So we know we're going to be more levered to that.
Darrin Peller
analystOn that note, I mean, when we think about the differentiation and what you have now, similar to the first question, Melissa, I mean, is that where we need to be in terms of assets? eNett and Optal was obviously kind of a home run when you think about the valuation. You ended up getting for it long term. I know that didn't feel like it as it was happening because of the dynamic with COVID. But I think long term, we can say that, now with hindsight, it looks like a pretty good price. So just touch on if you have the right pieces to that puzzle, I guess.
Melissa Smith
executiveYes, and actually, I'm going to hit on the last part, what you said first. So the -- when we bought eNett and Optal, it came in hot and as you might imagine. And so there was a lot of work that we had to do from a synergy realization standpoint pretty quickly. And you can see that also when you look quarter-to-quarter-to-quarter in terms of what was happening from a margin perspective. So you have 2 things, volume increasing, but synergy helping. And the last part about that for us is when we consolidate the platforms together, which is going to create another -- the last piece of the synergy realization. What we liked about the eNett and Optal systems is it gave us really kind of across all of our categories. It gave us product extension. A lot of the product was built around the prefunding capability, which is really important, particularly when you get into some of the Asian markets. And we still view that as a great asset that we're going to continue to build upon from a global perspective. We also liked this extension relationships. A lot of the relationships they had were with OTAs that are moving more into a merchant model, allowing us to pick up just more spend volume as they make that migration over. That was attractive to us and then geographic expansion. So instead of just focusing, we were largely embedded within the online travel agencies that were U.S.-based. We're really -- our volume became spread across the world, which, from a diversification perspective, it just adds more diversification in terms of where the travel volume is happening. And so from a product perspective, we increased scale. We increased product capability. The currency capability that we both have, it was very strong to start with. And the compliance structure that we had was also very strong to start with. So those were things that were -- as part of -- as we thought about synergies that we're pulling apart. And so overall, as you said, I think this, for us, has become a really great asset. It's something we want to continue to build upon. Our strength is in the cross-border capability. It is really a very complicated product that we put together because of the compliance requirements that you have globally, because of the nuances you have from a spend perspective and just the global nature of the product. And so we feel good about how we can just continue to build upon that strength.
Darrin Peller
analystWhen we think about the spend plans you had to invest in the business, you made your plans under a different set of assumptions of whether it's macro or growth on top line. But at the end of the day, if we keep having a recovery post Omicron, whether it's on travel or it's -- and certainly, even on the gas price side, I know it's not the ideal world we want to see. But if gas prices are higher, it's going to -- it's going to give you some incremental revenues. And so can we expect incremental margins on the pass-through to the bottom line? Or do you find that there's going to need to be -- you have other areas you just want to plow money back into from an investment standpoint?
Melissa Smith
executiveYes, that's a good question. When we manage the business, we think about it as FX and fuel price neutral. And so largely both ways, that's largely going up and down. I do feel like we've been investing in the business over the last many years and a lot of the work we've done on the technical transformation was to make sure that we were prepared for the moment we're in. And so I don't feel like we have this pivot that we have to make or this catch-up that we have to make -- that being said, we're always evaluating. Do we want to put more money down on something that we're seeing that's going well? And we're not shy about doing that. So if we were to have one of these beta products take off, and we really felt like there's a benefit of doubling down. Would we make some incremental investments? Yes. But I would say, largely, we manage the business as if we're fuel price neutral year-to-year.
Darrin Peller
analystGot it. Okay. And then, look, we're almost out of time, but I want to just hit on the health care side, given it's still expected to be your fastest growth segment, medium and long term. And so when we think about that, I mean, first, just when we think of a 15% to 20% long-term growth rate supported by, I think, 75% recurring SaaS revenues, 25% from payments and interchange, it's just -- it's a pretty outstanding segment that it's probably under-discussed or -- by the market. So just touch on for a minute, what gives you confidence in this high growth rate? Is it really driven primarily from customer and account adds? Or is it payments volume? And then we'll probably wrap it up and take a couple of questions from the audience.
Melissa Smith
executiveOkay. Yes, it ends up being the last thing that we talk about. It's a great part of the business. It's grown tremendously. And the reason why we have confidence in the growth is you can just see account growth, first and foremost, which is coming from a combination of the market is growing, and we're a benefiter of that. And then we continue to add new partnerships. And so the account growth is an important piece. We also have brought on assets related to the deposits that our customers are making. We did that in part to create an even better integrated experience for the customers. But at the same time, it allowed us to have another financial lever where we moved almost $1 billion into investments relating to those customer deposits. That gives us another lever that we have from a financial perspective. And then we do provide services to our customers, and so think of that as kind of the last piece, but the largest of that is just sheer account growth.
Darrin Peller
analystRight. So the sustainability, I mean, you have conviction in that forecast as well?
Melissa Smith
executiveWe do. We do. And we are coming off a strong open enrollment season. So we have visibility intact. We're starting the year. We actually put our January stats out there, and I think that helps support how we feel about the business. And we talked about this. We think it will be a high-teens grower this year.
Darrin Peller
analystThat's really helpful. Melissa, why don't we take a couple? I mean you have an Investor Day coming up, so we have plenty of time to learn a lot about that, I'm sure. That's March 23, if I remember correctly. But for now, one question is, are the economics of an EV subscription lower, higher or the same as for fuel-based fleet?
Melissa Smith
executiveWe are going to talk about that in much more detail at Investor Day.
Darrin Peller
analystI'm sure.
Melissa Smith
executiveI'm looking forward to that because I actually think this is an opportunity to kind of reset in even richer -- even we would argue that our business is recurring revenue now, but I think it even makes it an even more secure source of revenue because you remove the fuel price volatility.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. All right. What percentage of the fleet business is exposed to over-the-road versus corporate automobile fleets? Any issues from the truck driver shortage limiting OTR growth?
Melissa Smith
executiveOkay. Steve, do you want to think about the first part of that? And I'll...
Steven Elder
executiveIt's like 35-ish percent of over-the-road trucks of the fleet segment revenue, maybe 40%, but in that ballpark.
Melissa Smith
executiveIn terms of -- yes, I mean it is, I would say, employment shortages overall in the over-the-road marketplace, but in any of our service-related customers is definitely something that we hear is a concern that impacts their business. And at the same time, we've continued to see some really great volume trends despite that.
Darrin Peller
analystOkay. I'll take a couple of more if you have one more minute. Have you seen any change in travel patterns by -- in Europeans? It could still be early, but it has to be pretty tenuous right now. Also, since it's a discretionary product given where inflation is.
Melissa Smith
executiveSo first part of that question, we actually see -- for us, revenue is when people stay at the hotel. So we're going to lag what you're going to hear from the OTAs themselves. And so, so far, we've not seen a change in behavior patterns. Certainly, it's something we're paying attention to right now. And in terms of concern about inflation, these are consumers largely that are traveling that are using online travel agencies to book their largely hotel stays, some of its airfare, but it's largely a hotel. And so I think that ties in just with what's happening overall with the economy. I will say on the other hand, there is this pent-up demand that we're certainly hearing from people who are eager to travel in a way that they haven't been able to for a few years. So I think you've kind of -- a couple of different factors that are happening right now, and we are watching both of them play out.
Darrin Peller
analystThe last one is really just whether or not you can take some of this extra potential for earnings from gas prices and put it back into buybacks or accelerated debt paydown. So maybe you could just touch on that briefly.
Melissa Smith
executiveYes. Yes, sure. So when we think about our capital structure, we have said, first, we're going to move the money internally to make sure that we're spending as much as we think we should, which is about 6% of revenue right now in CapEx. And then on top of that, we continue to look in the marketplace for things that are going to generate growth. So been very focused on continuing to look for transactions that meet our financial criteria, meet our strategic criteria and so I would say, in a very disciplined way, the way we have historically. And at the same time, we have $150 million share buyback authorization in place. And so to the extent that we have more earnings, we have an ability to deploy it through that strategy.
Darrin Peller
analystGreat Okay. Well, we're overtime now. So thank you very much for sticking with us.
Melissa Smith
executiveNo, thank you.
Darrin Peller
analystMelissa, great seeing you, as always. Steve, thank you for joining us, as always. And for everyone on, there's another panel coming up in 2 minutes discussing gateways and payments. But great to see you again, Melissa. Thanks.
Melissa Smith
executiveBye, Darrin. Thank you.
Steven Elder
executiveBye. Thanks.
This call discussed
For developers and AI pipelines
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