Corpay - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered revenue of $1.006B (+8% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $4.51 (+10% YoY), essentially in line with guidance; adjusted EBITDA was $555M (+8% YoY), with 9% organic revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin steady at 55.2%.
• Results were supported by strong Corporate Payments performance (+19% organic), resilient Cross-Border activity amid FX volatility, and improving fundamentals: same-store sales +1%, retention ~92% and sales/new bookings +35%.
• FY25 guidance was maintained at $4.38–$4.46B revenue and $20.80–$21.20 adjusted EPS, with updated macro assumptions (lower fuel, better SOFR/GBP/EUR) and incorporation of Gringo; Q2 2025 guide: $1.09–$1.11B revenue and $5.05–$5.15 adjusted EPS.
• Strategic catalysts: Mastercard’s $300M minority investment and exclusive cross-border referral partnership, and a $500M minority investment (33%) alongside TPG to take AvidXchange private with a call option to buy 100% later; management expects the Mastercard FI channel to add +2–3 pts to Cross-Border revenue growth starting 2026.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Corporate Payments led with 19% organic revenue growth; spend volumes rose to $50.7B and payables direct sales up strongly, indicating durable demand across AP automation and virtual card programs.
• Cross-Border pipeline and activity were robust; management cited April flash “way ahead” of plan and expects FI referral from Mastercard to materially expand distribution over time (“enormous opportunity…a marathon”).
• Fundamentals improved: same-store sales +1% vs -2% last year, retention ~92%, and sales/new bookings +35%; Ron Clarke: “despite everything going on, the business performed as planned here in Q1”.

What Went Wrong

• Macro headwinds (FX and fuel spreads) reduced reported revenue vs constant macro; CFO quantified ~$6M unfavorable fuel spread vs February expectations and noted FX headwinds as the biggest drag in the bridge.
• U.S. Vehicle Payments print revenue was down 3% organically, though management signaled a turn with better retention and expected mid-single-digit growth exiting 2H 2025.
• Lodging organic revenue declined 1% YoY, with softer airline volumes and yield compression from emergency work mix, though room nights rose 19% and underlying trends improved versus last year.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day. I'd like to welcome everyone to Corpay's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two on your telephone keypad. Today's call is being recorded. I will now like to turn the call over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jim Eglseder (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call to discuss the first quarter 2025 results. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO, and Alissa Vickery, our Interim CFO. Following the prepared comments, the operator will announce that the queue will open for the Q&A session. Today's documents, including our earnings release and supplement, can be found under the Investor Relations section of our website at corpay.com. Now, throughout this call, we will be covering several non-GAAP financial metrics, including revenues, net income, and net income per diluted share, all on a digested basis. We will also be covering organic revenue growth. This metric neutralizes the impact of year-over-year changes in FX rates, fuel prices, and fuel spreads. It also includes pro forma results for acquisitions and divestitures closed throughout the two years being compared.

None of these measures are calculated in accordance with GAAP, so may be different than that at other companies. Reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP to the most directly comparable GAAP information can be found in today's press release and on our website. It's important to understand that our comments may include forward-looking statements which reflect the information we have currently. All statements about our outlook, expected macro environment, new products, and expectations regarding business development and future acquisitions or synergies are based on that information. They are not guarantees of future performance, and you should not put under reliance upon them, and we undertake no obligation to update any of these statements. These expected results are also subject to numerous uncertainties and risks which could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect.

Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release and on Form 8K and in our annual report on Form 10K. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov. With that out of the way, I'll turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Okay, Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q1 2025 earnings call. Up front here, I'll plan to cover three subjects. First, provide my take on Q1 results along with the rest of your guidance. Second, cover our recent M&A activity. Lastly, I'll share a progress update on our 2025 top priorities. Okay, let me begin with our Q1 results. We reported Q1 2025 revenue of $1.6 billion. That's up 8%, and cash EPS of $4.51. That's up 10%. Cash EPS would be up 18% on constant macro. The results really are right in line with expectations along with the environment coming in mostly as expected. Organic revenue growth in the quarter, 9% overall. Our two biggest businesses doing quite well. Vehicle payments, 8% organic revenue growth, and corporate payments, 19% organic revenue growth. Operating trends in the quarter, quite good.

Same-store sales finished positive, plus 1%. Retention stayed steady at 92%, and sales or new bookings way up, up 35% versus Q1 last year. Again, that's on the back of up 36% of sales growth in Q4. Look, despite really everything going on, the business performed as planned here in Q1. All right, let me make the turn to our rest of year forecast. First off, macro, the factors that affect us really setting up to be effectively neutral to our rest of year forecast versus our prior guide. The forward curves for FX, fuel, and so far have moved just a bit, but essentially zero out in terms of their impact on our business. Obviously, with that said, we do acknowledge that the overall macro environment is quite uncertain, but we're just not seeing anything yet that causes us to revise our forecast.

Additionally, our revenue flash for April looks to be spot on our forecast. As a result, we're pretty much maintaining our full year 2025 guidance at the midpoint as follows. $4.420 billion in revenue guide at the midpoint and sticking with $21 in cash EPS. The slightly increased full year guide reflects the Gringo acquisition in Brazil, and that's net of the $6 million unfavorable spread shortfall we saw in Q1. With this updated full year guide, we're still expecting full year organic revenue growth of 11% at the midpoint. Inside of that, corporate payments business expected to grow high teens to 20% for the full year. As it relates to tariffs, we're not a particularly sensitive tariff stock. That is, we won't directly pay tariffs. Our businesses are services, not goods. Our international businesses in the U.K. and Brazil operate intra-country, so not subject to tariffs.

The direct tariff exposure that we have is really limited to our cross-border business, where it does rely on our cross-border clients trading across borders. We have included a slide in our supplement that shows a bit less than 20% of our cross-border business will actually be affected by U.S. tariff policies. All this is to say that our business is not directly impacted much by U.S. tariff policy, but certainly we're not immune to our clients being negatively affected by tariffs, and that could ultimately soften their volumes with us. Okay, let me make the transition to our recent M&A activity. We have announced a couple of exciting deals here in the last week. Last week, we announced a strategic cross-border partnership with Mastercard.

In that case, Mastercard will invest $300 million for about a 3% share in our cross-border business that does value our cross-border unit in excess of $10 billion. Second, we signed a commercial agreement to be Mastercard's exclusive provider of cross-border services to their clients, to their FI clients. We think this financial institution partnership could add about 2%-3% incremental revenue growth to our cross-border business beginning next year. Secondly, just announced that we're making a $500 million minority investment into Avid. That's alongside their take private transaction with TPG. Many of you know EBITDA, a leader in B2B invoice automation and payments, and they do serve pretty distinct verticals from our payables business. We're outlooking the investment in EBITDA to be accretive to our earnings in 2026 and really throughout the forecast period.

Our agreement with TPG does provide us a call option to acquire the remaining equity of Avid down the road. So pretty exciting. So these two corporate payment acquisitions for sure strengthen our position in the space and do provide us the option to dramatically scale up our position over time. Lastly, we are looking a bit harder at divesting three of our non-core or less related businesses. Taken together, those three businesses could provide upwards of $2 billion of incremental liquidity if we are to transact. We'll obviously keep you posted. Okay, let me make the turn to our 2025 top priorities. In the February earnings call, we laid out four priorities for 2025, and here's a bit of the progress. First, the portfolio. We set our goal was to expand our corporate payments business mix. We're doing just that with the Mastercard and Avid transactions.

In addition, we are still looking at some additional corporate payments targets in our pipeline. The goal, again, fewer bigger businesses. Second priority, U.S.A. sales. We did have a good Q1 U.S.A. sales result. U.S.A. sales up 25% year-over-year. We have staffed a new cross-sell team that goes back to our client base and a new Zoom sales team. Both of those groups now live and in market. We have developed a new Corpay brand ad campaign that we expect to be in the market later this quarter to further support U.S.A. sales. Third, payables. On the payables front, we did just go live with the enterprise client I mentioned in February. So far, so good. We do expect this single mega client will process over $30 billion in annual spend with us, so a significant opportunity.

We do expect to launch our new payables product in the U.K. using our kind of next-gen tech this summer. Super excited to bring that product to our second biggest market. Lastly, on the cross-border front, we're making a major push into this new segment for us, this institutional client segment. Think PE firms, asset managers. We're doing that with our new multi-currency product. Progress, quite good. We've signed over 2,000 new clients already since launch, and we've aggregated $800 million of total deposits balances. Off to a good start. Pretty pleased with progress here against our four top priorities. Look, in conclusion today, again, Q1 financial results finishing really on plan, maintaining rest of year, full year 2025 financial guidance that's based on what we're seeing.

We are expanding our corporate payments segments with additional acquisition targets still in front of us. As you can tell, laser-focused on our 2025 top priorities and advancing them. With that, let me turn the call back over to Alissa to provide some additional details on the quarter. Alissa?

Alissa Vickery (Interim CFO)

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. Here are some additional details related to the quarter. The first quarter was a good start to the year with our businesses exhibiting strong organic revenue growth of 9% overall, right in line with our expectations. Our print revenue of $1.006 billion was up 8% over last year. Normalizing for macro, Q1 revenue would have been $1.013 billion, slightly ahead of the midpoint of our guide. Our revenues were impacted by approximately $6 million of unfavorable fuel spread revenue compared to our February expectation as there was little volatility in prices in the quarter, which led to the fuel spread revenue headwind. Adjusted EPS increased 10% over last year to $4.51 per share. As Ron mentioned, performance drivers during the quarter were strong and were paired with solid expense management, fewer shares outstanding, partially offset by a higher tax rate.

We completed the acquisition of Gringo in March, which had an immaterial impact on revenue and adjusted EPS. In summary, the quarter generated strong top and bottom line growth on a constant macro basis while maintaining strong margins and included significantly higher sales that should fuel growth over the balance of the year. Turning to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of revenue growth, corporate payments revenue was up 19% organically during the quarter, driven by solid spend volumes, which also increased 19% organically in the quarter. Our corporate payment solutions continue to sell extremely well, with payables revenue up 19% organically, including direct sales up 30% year over year. Within sales, we signed two new channel partners in the quarter. Cross-border sales grew 51% for the quarter compared to the prior year, and revenue increased 18% organically.

We did see heightened activity throughout the quarter driven by FX rate volatility from tariff policy changes, but much of that early benefit was given back in March as uncertainty caused U.S. goods-based volume to soften somewhat. Activity and volumes did rebound in April post-announcement of the 90-day tariff pause. We've already migrated most of our GPS customers from the 2024 acquisition onto our Corpay platforms, with remaining migration planned to be completed by the end of the third quarter. This positions us well to cross-sell our sophisticated risk management solutions to GPS's customers. Clearly, U.S. trade policy and tariffs are challenges for our customers as they operate today and look forward. Cross-border is a global business for us, where we help customers pay for both services and goods. Services have been largely excluded from the tariff policy changes to date.

For the remainder of 2025, we expect tariff impacts to be relatively modest, unfavorably impacting our cross-border revenue by approximately $10 miliion-$15 million, based on our assumptions. We have provided additional details on slide 20 in our earnings supplement. Turning to vehicle payments, our revenue grew 8% organically during the quarter, consistent with the fourth quarter of 2024. In Brazil, toll tags increased 8% year-over-year, with more than a third of our customers' spending coming from our extended network. Active insurance policies increased more than 50%, and car debt users were up 40%. We closed the Gringo acquisition in March, and we continue to be excited about the significant opportunity in the car debt space. Our app-based strategy, growth of offerings, as well as consistent sales execution powered Brazil organic revenue growth of 22% for the quarter.

In international vehicle payments, revenue grew 8% organically for the quarter. Consistent strong sales, array of products and channels, notably EV offerings throughout the U.K. and Europe, and continued geographic diversification are the drivers of these results. I am delighted to say we have re-signed our existing reseller agreement with Shell for another five years to manage Shell fuel and EV cards in multiple markets across Europe. In U.S. vehicle payments, revenue growth was down 3% organically, but we continue to see improvement in new customer application approvals, growth in sales to our lower to mid-market customers, and better retention. In the revamped U.S. sales organization, we are focused on standardizing performance criteria to manage sales with incremental investment and brand awareness to drive mid-market growth and leads.

Lodging organic revenue growth for the quarter was down 1% compared to down 9% in the first quarter of 2024, so a big improvement over last year. Room nights increased 19%, led by the workforce business, which was particularly active as a result of last fall's hurricanes and wildfires, as well as improved new sales. Airline revenues were lower due to tough prior year comps and volume softness. To accelerate U.S. sales growth, we are focused on building a single, unified Corpay go-to-market strategy by combining people, processes, and measurement across U.S. vehicle payments, workforce lodging, and most of our payables products, led by our Chief Revenue Officer. We are building scalable infrastructure and are seeing early returns with double-digit growth in bookings across each of these lines of business.

We continue to gain traction in leveraging our product portfolio across our client base, propelled by our unified brand with meaningful growth in website traffic and a strong sales pipeline, while also having sales representatives focused on cross-selling and upselling to our existing customers. In summary, we are pleased with the performance of our business to start the year. Now, looking further down the income statement, first quarter operating expenses of $579 million increased 8% versus the first quarter of last year. As a reminder, we acquired three businesses in 2024: Zapay in March, Paymerang in July, and GPS in December, and disposed of our merchant solutions business in December. The net impact of these transactions resulted in incremental operating expenses of approximately $40 million in the first quarter of 2025 over the prior year.

Excluding the M&A activity and normalizing for lower FX rates, operating expenses increased approximately 5% versus Q1 of last year. The increase in operating expense was driven by higher transaction volumes and sales activities to drive future growth. Add debt expense as a percentage of spend was five basis points, consistent with Q1 of last year. To better understand our operating performance, we evaluate EBITDA with and without the impact of add-backs, consistent with those adjustments in our cash net income definition to the extent they are operating expenses. We refer to this metric as adjusted EBITDA, or cash EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 55.2%, consistent with Q1 of prior year. Interest expense this quarter increased 7% year-over-year due to higher balances related to capital deployment, partially offset by lower interest rates and higher interest income due to higher deposit balances.

Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.5%, compared with 24.7% in Q1 of last year, with the change driven primarily by the mix of earnings. Now, turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with the balance sheet in excellent shape, with a leverage ratio at 2.69 times, which is down six basis points from year-end. As we mentioned on the last call, we raised $750 million of additional term loan B debt and used the proceeds to pay down the revolver in the first quarter. We have over $2.5 billion of cash and revolver availability at the end of the quarter, which gives us ample capacity to pursue acquisitions. As Ron mentioned, we announced an expansion of our partnership with Mastercard to deliver an enhanced suite of corporate cross-border payment solutions, which includes Mastercard investing $300 million for an approximate 3% stake in our cross-border business unit.

We expect this transaction to close in the second half of 2025. Our capital allocation in the quarter was limited, as we spent $59 million on share buybacks associated with employee stock option exercises and $164 million for Gringo. Given the sell-off of our stock this year, we are buyers of our stock, but our first priority remains M&A. Meaningful M&A cycles are few and far between, so we want to take advantage of them when they present, and the pipeline is very active. Now, let me share some additional information on our updated 2025 full year and Q2 outlook. While the forward FX and fuel price curves have changed since our February call, the net effect of the macro factors on the rest of the year financial outlook is a wash. Here are the puts and takes. Fuel prices are now expected to be $2.96, approximately 9% lower.

The U.S. dollar is now weaker against most currencies other than the Brazil real. Interest rates are slightly better, and tariffs have a slightly unfavorable impact to our cross-border unit. Consequently, we're maintaining our 2025 guidance and now adding Gringo, which adds to revenue but is neutral to cash EPS. Based on the current environment, we are maintaining our expectation of 10%-12% organic revenue growth and $21 of cash EPS at the midpoint. There is currently a lot of noise about if and how the demand environment will change in response to tariff uncertainty and sentiment deterioration. Through April, we're not seeing any meaningful change in customer behavior, so it's difficult to handicap what might happen.

What we do know is that the majority of our products are B2B and intra-country focused, generally not discretionary and provide a more efficient way to pay for what our customers are buying. There has been a lot of volatility with FX rates and the global economic outlook, but today we're not seeing any meaningful impact to our business. If economic activity and the outlook change, we'll be nimble in adjusting our spending as warranted, but today we are maintaining our full year financial estimates. For the second quarter, we expect print revenue growth of 12%-14% and print cash EPS to grow 11%-13%. On a constant year-over-year macro basis, we expect organic revenue growth of 12% and cash EPS to increase 18% at the midpoint compared to the second quarter of last year.

We've provided additional details regarding our rest of year and second quarter outlook in our press release and earnings supplement. Now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star one on your telephone keypad. If you need to remove yourself from the queue, please press star two. Again, that is star one for a question. We'll take our first question from Tenzhen Hong with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot, Ron. You've been real busy, I know. I want to ask on the two deals, maybe first on Mastercard. Just give us a little bit more on your confidence level in getting this two to three points of incremental revenue growth out of the agreement.

We've seen these kinds of partnerships before, and of course, Mastercard's got a ton of reach with banks, but ultimately, the banks still have to promote it. What kind of line of sight do you have into that, the energy that's going to get put into that to drive that two to three points?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Hey, Tenzhen, good to hear your voice. I think the opportunity is just so big. I think if Mastercard dedicated people get us introduced, this thing will go. I say that again because the clients of these tier two banks pay half of these payments in U.S. dollars. I think when our people show up and can provide that kind of benefit, I think it's going to be big. I do think the question is how long. Remember, in this space, there's a handful of us independents like us.

All the rest of cross-border dollars are done with banks. The size of the flow sitting there are just massive. This is for sure a marathon thing, but I think lining up with them creates just enormous opportunity over the cycle.

Yeah. No, it seems aligned with what the banks want to do in terms of monetization of their front end. Yeah, just curious on that. That's good to hear. Just on the Avid one, interesting deal. Maybe the simple high-level question I'll let you opine on is just, is this a financial investment or a strategic one? I mean, I guess it could be both. You have a call option, but to see you do the minority deal in somewhat of a mid-market, I'm just curious how passive or active you'll be as an investor in Avid.

Yeah. It's a good question.

Strategic, for sure, right? We have said repeatedly we want to be bigger in corporate payments, and particularly in the payables portion of that. This is a terrific asset and stuff. For us, it is just seeing progress really on profit acceleration, which we have got a bit of a line of sight into. We are super hopeful that the company will progress that and we will be in a spot to acquire that company in a few years. That is the primary basis that we are going into this.

Understood. In terms with Prager. Thank you, Ron.

Thanks, Pal.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next, we will go to Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Andrew Jeffrey (Research Analyst of Financial Service and Technology)

Hi. I appreciate you taking the question. Yeah, a lot of good stuff going on here.

Ron, when you think about the Avid investment and the option seems to be a great way to go about it, can you talk specifically to their network as well as your own AP business just around monetization rates? I assume that strategic investment, as you term it of this nature, indicates a confidence ability to improve card attachment monetization. I know new sales are a big part of that too, but can you speak to the monetization piece and your confidence in being able to drive card acceptance and/or ACH pricing?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I think it's high. In some ways, Avid has done really even a better job than we have, right? Their revenue mix includes a fair amount of just standalone software fees. They've also advanced what they call kind of paid for or ACH plus getting paid for sending ACH.

I think that they've made great progress on that in so many ways. I think to your point, I think this is for us less about confidence in those networks because they're already both super scale. It's really on the buy side. The game is for both of us to sign up more spend, right, to run through that network, and then in their case to realize some scale effectively to have the incremental revenue flow through at way higher margins. Those are really the two things that we're key in on is really acceleration and buyer sales or spend, and then really flow through of the increment into earnings. If they do those two things, we'll be over the moon.

Andrew Jeffrey (Research Analyst of Financial Service and Technology)

Yeah. That makes sense. As a quick follow-up, you mentioned enterprise last quarter as a new thrust within the corporate payments business.

Can you give us an update there in terms of pipeline?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. It's live. I think what we said, first of all, was a slight bit accidental, right, that we kind of stumbled into this thing six months ago having been a middle market focus. We did contract this one mega account, and we have gone live, so that kind of is starting to ramp. I think I said in the last call that I tried to hold the horses a bit at the corral to make sure that this thing works, gets out of the blocks, works well for the client. We do have the, I think we mentioned there's some big consulting firms that facilitated the introduction that have already kind of run out to a handful of incremental prospects. I think what I said still holds.

To the extent that we get success in this initial account and call that account referenceable, I think you'll see us start to move forward with additional accounts. This is a big incremental opportunity in the payables space for us. Again, it's the size of it, right? Call it four or five of these accounts are literally the size of our entire business today.

Andrew Jeffrey (Research Analyst of Financial Service and Technology)

Terrific. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll go next to Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi.

Shrey Patel (High Grade Credit Trading Analyst)

This is Shrey on for Ramsey. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on the AvidXchange investment. In your press release, you mentioned that the take-private transaction structure gives Avid the flexibility to transform and accelerate profit growth.

Ron, I know you hit on it a little bit, and I know it's still very early on in the process, but I was just wondering what kinds of strategic initiatives this could entail.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. It's really just a scale question, right? The company is, whatever, 20 plus years old. They built the foundation with software. They've been in pay that we've helped them with for 20 years. I think they're getting to a scale now of $400 million-$500 million in revenue where we're looking for the increment called the next $200 million-$300 million of revenue to just flow through at just a much higher rate, which I think it will because the foundation, like the network of suppliers, the tech, the sales structure, a bunch of the foundational work has been in place. I think it's literally as simple as that.

If they can add more spend to the wheel here, we think the flow through will be significantly better and margins will accrete. That is, again, what we are looking for. Got it. Thank you.

Shrey Patel (High Grade Credit Trading Analyst)

As a quick follow-up, earlier in the call, you called out that outside of your cross-border business, any tariff impact would be indirect in nature. I was wondering if you could help us think through what this indirect impact might look like in vehicle payments specifically. Would it be isolated to your OTR business or in particular geographies? Could you potentially deploy pricing as an offset?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I mean, I think, Ron, like everyone on the call, who knows, right, when something is indirect, right? We are not going to pay tariffs directly. We have all flavors of clients.

I think your comment's a good one, that clients of ours that have goods as their business instead of services. Think an 18-wheeler who moves products around could be more impacted than local businesses that do plumbing, right, or HVAC. Certainly our mix would affect a little bit what happens. Like everyone on this call, we don't really have any kind of view at all of how much any of these accounts will be affected. We just know that as a company that has a stock, we're kind of not in the gun sights of this. We won't pay tariffs. Again, we're mostly a services business. Really the only business with any kind of smidge of direct exposure is cross-border. As we put aside the supplement, only about 20% of those flows are on goods and to or from the U.S.

Even there, the impact is limited. Really, it is just a function of what happens to the planet and to all the businesses out there. If they are hurt a little bit by it, we will be hurt a little bit. If they are hurt a lot by it, we will be hurt a lot by it. We are not going to be hurt directly by it is our message.

Shrey Patel (High Grade Credit Trading Analyst)

Very helpful. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next, we are going to go to Andrew Schmidt with Citi. Please go ahead.

Andrew Schmidt (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, Ron. Hey, Alissa. Congrats on all the progress here. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask about the U.S. business within vehicle payments. It sounds like you are pretty optimistic around the sales trends there. Maybe just comment around the confidence and sort of driving improvement in revenue there as the year progresses.

Obviously, macro side, but we'd love to get some details based on the sales trends and the initiatives you have there. Thanks so much.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Hey, Andrew, it's Ron. It's a super good question. I'd say it's a two-part answer. The first part is really retention. We went on the nausea with you guys about the great pivot of the U.S. vehicle business a couple of years ago and getting out of micro accounts and buying all that kind of stuff. I can report that that is now distant in our rearview mirror. What's come out of that, let me just quote this to you, that the retention rates for that entire U.S. business in Q1 of 2025 are improved more than 200 basis points from Q1 of 2024.

The loss rate in that business used to be of a nine handle on the call, low nine to nine and a half, and now it has a seven handle. That is the first message, obviously getting two to 250 points back prospectively, and we think that will even get a smidge better, is the first point. On the second point, yes, the sales relative to the base is up. The forecast that we have sitting here says that we think the first half is, call it flat, and the second half is literally mid-single digits or better. We are sitting here on this call telling you that we think there is a big pivot in organic revenue growth coming in that business here in whatever in 60 days.

If we get that, all of a sudden, our organic growth rate steps way up because that's a pretty big business. I'd say our confidence is high because we're good at math, and we've kind of captured the retention number already as we thought we would when we made that change. We're finally, after this time, going to start to see some benefits from that decision.

Andrew Schmidt (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you, Ron. Retention's a big lever. That's good to hear. Every time we see macro fluctuations, we always get the question on sort of supplier acceptance trends within the AP business. It doesn't sound like there's been much variation based on the commentary, but maybe just talk about what you hear from suppliers in terms of payment choice, things like that, whether there's been any change on that front. Thanks so much. Yeah.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

It's a good follow-up. No is the answer. That number's basically flat. It's kind of remaining flat. I think it's just what you'd expect, which is payment certainty. Suppliers want to get paid, right, and not default, and payment speed are of high importance. Any supplier that runs good margins, like service businesses, as an example, that run 50%-70% marginal cost, basically, they love card products because they're certain and they're fast. I think the answer is we're not seeing really all that much different. Back to the comment, the same thing that I said about EBITDA, that our payables business goes as spend goes. If we can keep rolling the buyer side and increasing spend, we think, if anything, we'll take up the monetization as we add more ACH plus ourselves into the network.

We're not seeing really any downtick there yet.

That's great to hear. Thank you, Ron.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, do ask that you limit yourself to one question to allow everyone to be able to ask their question. We'll next go to Sanjay Sagrawali with KBW. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Sakhrani (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good afternoon. Congrats on this Avid minority ownership. Ron, could I just follow up a little bit on the acceleration of the sales at Avid? How exactly will you guys be involved in that? Will you actually sell the product, have your sales guy? I'm just trying to think about that part of it. Just on expenses, obviously, there might be some redundancies between what you guys do and they do. Is there any plans to sort of get involved on the expense rationalization there? Just one final one.

Just what are the terms of the call option in 2027? Thanks.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

That was kind of a three-part of there, Sanjay, if I was listening. Let me see if I can go back and remember part one. On, hey, our involvement in Avid sales. You got a good guy, in my opinion, running the place, and you have some good leaders there with Mike. I think our role is that we have been a part of the idea side of, okay, maybe being helpful in terms of priority and where to point and sharing some practices that we think and some investments that we think may help them perform better. We would not have made this investment if we did not have some confidence that they could do it. In terms of synergies in this early hold period, Avid is going to run kind of as Avid.

Clearly, we've thought about and sized what I call our second bite, which would be if, in fact, we get a few years out and we like the profit growth, the profit acceleration there, there's a pretty whopper incremental synergy, right, through combination, to your point, whether it's the merchant networks or the textile or other things. We would really plan to two-step that. It'll run mostly kind of as it is. We'll be helpful where we can. If that day comes that we try to buy the rest, we'll get the second bite. On the terms front, we're basically going to kick the can and provide that detailed disclosure in our queue, which will be probably later this week or Monday. We'll lay out more of the details of the thing.

Yeah, at the high level, what you said is right, which is we take a minority position along with TPG and management and basically have the option a couple of years out to buy the rest of the equity. We will fill in the details a different day.

Sanjay Sakhrani (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next, we will go to Andrew Bosch with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. It is Lamar on the phone. Thanks for taking the question. It is good to see the progress that you are making on the payables front in terms of moving up market to the enterprise segment and that one client win that you called out and the intention to, I guess, expand into the U.K. this summer.

I guess with the noise around tariffs and the incremental macro uncertainty, maybe just give us an update if there's been any kind of revised thoughts around kind of the scale of that expansion over the coming months. Thank you.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Can you repeat the last part of that? You kind of broke up.

No, I was just asking if with the incremental macro uncertainty and kind of the comments that you made around the tariff implications and cross-border, if there are any revised thoughts as it relates to the scale of that expansion, whether it be moving up market to enterprise or the U.K.

U.K.? The payments expansion in the U.K. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm struggling to hear the question, but I think you're asking hey, in the payables group, we're happy about the adjacent enterprise space and the prospects there.

Going to the U.K., I think it's yes and yes. Like we said, we've gone live with the first account. This partner's introduced us to the next set of people. This is really just walk before you run. We want to make sure the thing's working and we're doing well. The size of the step that we could get, if it's successful, is large. The U.K. thing, again, is an intra-market thing, right? We're taking a product that's here, and it's going to help clients in the U.K. There won't be really specific any tariff impacts to that. It's really a product that will be used by U.K. businesses for purchases there.

To the extent that they have cross-border payments there, which again, two-thirds or three-quarters of those will be into the continent of Europe or to Asia or other places. Yeah, we do not think that is going to have really any bearing on the launch. We are just excited to stand up a super important business in a second market that adds TAM and leverages all the assets, all the clients, all the people and stuff that we have there. That is really what we are trying to tell people: we are going to make this a way bigger business.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Next, we will go to James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks a lot for the question and all the details today. Wanted to turn to another topic really quickly, Ron.

Curious to hear about the performance of the hedging business in Q1 and anything you can give us on how it has performed since then during the month of April and early May. I'm just wondering if it's fair to think about that business as a beneficiary of sustained height market volatility. Can you give us kind of the puts and takes on that dynamic and any other impacts on tariffs on that segment specifically?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

That's a good question, James. On our cross-border business Q1, good. I think we reported it, high teens revenue growth against the prior year and the sales. I think we're 50% in the quarter over Q1 the prior year. We're selling the stuff like crazy.

In terms of April, we did look at the flash gangbusters, maybe the adjective I used, the April flash or cross-border is way, way ahead of our budget and our forecast and significantly ahead of the prior year. Yes, there is no question that certainly in April that it has been a beneficiary of the uncertainty of what the heck is going on. To your point, what the sustainability of that is, is less clear. Yeah, through four months, the business is truly rocking. With that said, I do not know how clear we were, but we did, Alissa and I did hack $10 million or $15 million out of the second half full-year guide to just be a bit conservative if the post-pause tariff world is not super attractive. We wanted to make sure we went into the second half a bit conservative, but frankly, we do not know.

I just wanted to put it on the table that we decided to trim a bit the second half in the event that tariffs are mean-looking to us.

Great. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next, we'll go to Trevor Williams with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Trevor Williams (Managing Director of Payments and FinTech Equity Research)

Great. Thanks very much. If we can go back to the organic guide, Ron, you've given some kernels on this over the course of Q&A, but we're at 9% organic in Q1. You're keeping the 11% for the year.

It sounds like a lot of that acceleration is coming from US vehicle, but if there's anything else that you could point us to, and I hear you on kind of April running in line, but just with everything on the macro, how would you frame kind of the level of confidence in the full year and the specific drivers you guys have baked in today versus three months ago? Thanks.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Trevor, good question. High would be the answer. Kind of interesting. We expect Q2 that we're sitting in. Again, we've had a look at April already. I'd say we think probably closer to 12% at the midpoint. I know it's a big step. Hey, we just printed nine, although I think we printed what did we print in Q4? Wasn't it 12 in Q4? So 12, nine, I'm going to say, Trevor, 12 here in Q2.

Surprisingly, the US vehicle one is not the big contributor, the big step. The strangest thing is that the gift business, which was super soft in Q1 versus the prior year, is going to be super strong here in Q2 against the prior year. When you go into the second half, what you said is right. The lift is we think the US vehicle business will step into mid-single digits or plus, and that is what will have the back half still double digits, 11%-13% in Q3 and Q4. Gifts get you there in Q2, and then US vehicle gets you there the second half, and corporate payment stays steady as you go, high teens to 20%. Again, who knows if, again, some recession. We are just calling them as we see them today, the data that we can read out.

Obviously, all of this is a function of the world not melting down, but given what we could see, confidence is high.

Trevor Williams (Managing Director of Payments and FinTech Equity Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next, we'll go to Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Rayna Kumar (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Are you seeing any differing trends across SMBs versus your larger fleet clients? Can you talk about seeing store sales trends for both segments?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I'd say not much. I mean, I think historically, our middle market enterprise clients have been steadier, but I think we did such a cleaning, such a remixing starting a couple of years ago that our truly kind of micro, super small accounts are just way fewer in our portfolio. I think that first headline is we're just way less exposed to it would be the first point.

On the base, again, plus one, which is, I think, the same thing we quoted for Q4. The good news is that's up three from Q1 of a prior year. If I remember right, Q1 of 2024, we were minus two. Q1 of 2025, we're plus one. We moved that plus three over the period of time. The base report that I look at is pretty steady as she goes. There's not a ton of movement. Each of the areas is similar to what it was in Q4, where it was plus one. We do not see much that's patchy in it. It's pretty solid right now.

Rayna Kumar (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Appreciate the color.

Operator (participant)

Next, we'll go to Dave Koenig with Baird. Please go ahead. Yeah.

Hey, guys. Thank you.

I guess my question just with the Avid deal, do you guys immediately get access to their supplier network? Maybe could you talk through if today your accounts payable clients, maybe you have 20% of each of their payment files on average that can go into one of your suppliers. Now with Avid, does that 20% raise to 30%? I'm making up numbers, obviously, but do you have metrics like that? Am I thinking of that correctly?

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Dave, hey, that's a super good question. The good news is we have a bit of a head start on this subject you're on.

Call it, I don't know, six to 12 months ago, Mike and I met on this very subject and created a commercial agreement, kind of arm's length agreement between the two companies to do exactly what you just said, which is to have third parties look at the composition of our supplier networks and which parts of it were monetized and not, and then using that data to basically help each other monetize more. That thing has gotten lifted up already. Obviously, the deepening of the relationship now, I think, will improve that. We will clearly double down on that initiative. As I said, a different day, we would move to a complete combination of that. We would just effectively think of it as double the spend in the merchant network, which would be obviously super synergistic, right?

Would create enormous leverage for us to have double the spend running through that set of suppliers. That is obviously one of the attractive things for us in the second fight.

Yeah. Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next, we'll go to Rufus Hone with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Rufus Hone (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Oh, hey, guys. Thanks. Maybe just a quick one on you mentioned some potential non-core divestitures. The $2 billion number sort of implies it could be something pretty chunky. I guess just what businesses does that cover? Any details there would be great. Thank you.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Rufus, it's a good question. Not shockingly, the three units that we kind of teed up, two are from what we call our vehicle segment, and one is from our lodging segment. The concept here, again, is more in corporate payments, less in vehicle and lodging.

The different message, I think, for everybody this time is bigger. Historically, we've said, "Hey, we're going to look for things that are less related, non-core, and potentially divest those and kind of things on the margin." We pick two or three businesses that have more size, think call it $150 million-$170 million in EBITDA combined across these three businesses as a larger set of divestitures. A couple of them are really good businesses and should fetch a pretty good price. The idea really is just to simplify the company more, create more liquidity, in this case, $2 billion, and pour it back into the pipeline in front of us at corporate payments. The message, you guys, is just a more aggressive repositioning of our portfolio, I think, towards corporate payments.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to Ken Suchoski with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Ken Suchoski (Payments and FinTech Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe I'll ask one on lodging since it was not covered here, but the organic growth took a step back this quarter. I know there are leap year impacts in there, but is the expectation to accelerate to mid-single digit growth throughout the year and then ultimately get back to double digit growth? I am just curious, how do you guys think about driving that acceleration? Thank you.

Ron Clarke (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, that is another good question. The short answer for the Q1 is really all pocketed in airlines. We built a plan for Q1, and the smidgy part of lodging where we serve the airlines was just super soft.

Maybe the weather was good, I don't know, but the disruption, some segment of that was super light, as was just the maybe it's the Newark Airport store. I don't know. The airline volume was super light. All of the softness different from our plan with airlines. Going forward, I think we said it. We built the 2025 budget and the guide today really on that business staying kind of flattish. It was declining. The goal was to get it stood up back to where it's level again and that we would make sales here in 2025. That business is a good business again in 2026. There is nothing in our forecast that things are going to magically be much better. The super important headline is it's not declining. The base is stronger.

The retention levels are way better than they were a year to a year and a half ago. Now it is literally just refilling the top of the bucket so that that thing can grow. That is the update.

Thanks, Ron.

Perfect.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will go for our last question with Nick Cremo with UBS.

Nik Cremo (Executive Director of Payments and FinTech Equity Research)

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to come back to the US vehicle payments business. It has given a deceleration versus I think being up slightly last quarter with strong sales last quarter as well. Can you just provide more specific color as to what drove the deceleration in Q1 and just put a finer point as to the drivers for the acceleration in the backpath? Thank you.

Alissa Vickery (Interim CFO)

Sure. Hey, it is a good question. This is Alissa.

From what drove the current quarter, I think it's just a little bit of softness. As we continue to look towards the back half of the year, it really is the current trends in new sales that we're seeing right now continuing into the middle and the back half of the year, better retention, better same-store sales, which should drive the ultimate back half acceleration. Got it.

Nik Cremo (Executive Director of Payments and FinTech Equity Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Jim Eglseder with Investor Relations.

Jim Eglseder (Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Thanks, guys, for your flexibility today and staying on the call late. We know we were late getting to the wire, but I think y'all understand why. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out. We're happy to help wherever we can. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.