Tom Warsop
Analyst · Canaccord Genuity
Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining our second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'll start this morning with some brief comments on the quarter and then hand it over to Scott to discuss the detailed financial results and our increased expectations for the remainder of 2024. As always, we'll then open the line for your questions. Second quarter results were ahead of expectations and of the guidance we provided earlier with total revenue up 16% year-over-year. This outperformance came from higher volumes in our Biller segment as well as increased deal activity within the Bank segment. So let me give you a little more color on each of those segments. In Biller, gross revenue was up by a record 13% and EBITDA increased 20% from Q2 of last year. Our Biller team was able to onboard new customer transaction volumes ahead of expectations, in particular, with an additional phase of one of our largest new customers in the utility space. We also benefited from very strong tax-related volumes in our government vertical. And as you know, many state and federal tax payments are made during the second quarter. So this is one of the seasonal areas of our business. And while we're very happy with this outperformance, both of those drivers were largely a second quarter phenomenon, we don't expect that level of outperformance to continue in Q3 or Q4 of this year. Overall, the Biller segment is performing very well and our high retention rates and growing qualified new bookings pipeline keep our optimism high. In the Bank segment, revenue was up 22% and EBITDA was up 53% compared to second quarter of last year. We signed important renewal contracts and some very strategic expansion including a top bank in Malaysia, partnering with ACI to do a multiyear full card modernization and real-time transformation program. In total, our issuing and acquiring solutions grew 38% and that's a testament to the continuing value and importance of our proven mission-critical solutions. As we mentioned to you at Analyst Day, the team had a very targeted program to sign second half renewal contracts earlier in the year. As you know, we generally cannot recognize the revenue from renewals until the contract start date. But getting them completed early helps derisk our full year forecast and allows the team more time to focus on new deals in the second half. To this end, we had a very productive first half, signing more than $100 million in renewal contracts that will be recognized in Q3 and Q4 of this year. This included the very strategic and expanded Worldpay partnership we announced last week. I move to our next-generation payments hub program. Investments are continuing, development is on track, and we're extremely focused. By year-end, we'll have a solution which customers can begin to evaluate. We're having great conversation already as we actively meet with customers to discuss our respective technology road maps. I would characterize interest level as high. Our customers are sharing their excitement about the functionality and AI capabilities as well as the flexibility of the cloud native architecture itself, which will allow customers to migrate volumes onto the platform at their own pace. This will give customers a twofold advantage, to consume new services as they become available and to move current services off of existing platforms and onto the new in a measured way as opposed to a high-risk big bank transition. I'm especially excited about the potential for new logos as many of the discussions I'm having are with noncustomers. And many of those are not fully satisfied with a current competitive solution, a solution from one of our competitors. Let me give you a quick overview of one such conversation I personally had with a top Asia Pacific financial institution recently. The bank has a solution from one of our competitors, which is moving out of support in the next 18 months or so. The Chief Information Officer was very clear that the bank has no interest in getting themselves into a position where they have to change platforms again in a few years, but he definitely wants a path to newer technology. When I described the payments hub strategy, which allows the bank to install our proven, scalable, highly reliable solution today and to move to the newer cloud-native payments hub solutions when they're ready, he literally jumped out of his seat and said, that's exactly what I need. Of course, this is a prospect. We have to get it closed over the coming months. but it was one of the most positive reactions I have ever had to a sales discussion. Please keep your fingers crossed for us. I have a very good feeling about this. Moving on to our Merchant segment. Revenue grew 4% and EBITDA grew 55% compared to second quarter last year. Obviously, the segment's revenue is not running as fast as we would like. But we're excited about the sales pipeline, and we continue to see the segment improving sequentially throughout this year and into 2025, as we have previously discussed. I'm very pleased with the continuing profitability improvement the team is delivering. Overall, we are focused. We're executing well. We're delivering on our promises in the investment community. I'm happy to report that our outperformance year-to-date allows us to again raise our guidance range for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. I remain confident in the team and our plans to create significant shareholder value. I'll turn it over to Scott to discuss the details of our results and our guidance. Scott?