Michael J. Brown
Analyst · Avondale Partners
Thank you, Rick, and thanks, everyone, who has joined us today. This third quarter was a really a repeat of the second. We had a great second quarter earnings, and the third quarter was even better with each segment producing high-quality growth and high-quality earnings. This earnings growth resulted in a new quarterly cash EPS record of $0.56 for the quarter, a 33% increase over the same quarter last year. Overall, we're very pleased with our business performance in the quarter. So let's go on now to Slide 12, and we'll talk about the first of our segments, EFT. On Slide 12, you can see this was an exceptional quarter for our EFT segment. Over the last couple of years, we have seen a seasonal lift in our EFT earnings in the third quarter, which has been in addition to our traditionally strong fourth quarter. When I talked to you last, I explained that by executing our strategy of adding new ATMs in high-quality locations and pushing our value-added products to these ATMs, we would see an even greater earnings lift in the third quarter this year. Our teams executed flawlessly, resulting in earnings, which exceeded our expectations. This 69% constant currency adjusted op income growth is particularly impressive since, as you may remember, this is on top of the 80% constant currency earnings growth in the same quarter last year. These results established the third quarter as EFT's strongest quarter, which combined with the strength from the other 2 segments make third and fourth quarter about equal earnings wise. Now if we could only find a way to get that first quarter to a similar seasonal high level, we'll be even more excited, but I think that's going to be a stretch to do. But let's move on to Slide #13, and we'll talk more on the details. We continue to expand our -- on Slide 13, we continue to expand our reach in Poland. This quarter, we signed and launched outsourcing agreements with BPH Bank and BOS Bank to provide cash forecasting, cash fill and machine maintenance on their ATM portfolios. Also in Poland, we signed an agreement with Getin Bank to provide cardless payout services to getting customers. For the past several quarters, we have been highlighting similar agreements for the service, which utilizes our Ria payout technology. As banks seek new and innovative ways to engage their customers, we are seeing increased demand for cardless payouts. So I thought I would walk you through how this works. Customers can login online to their mobile banking app and stage a withdrawal before they reach the ATM. The banking app on the mobile phone will generate a PIN the customer can use for the transaction. When the customer arrives at the ATM, they choose the cardless transaction option on the screen, enter the PIN, and the ATM will dispense the amount requested in the previously staged transaction. This is just another way that banks in Poland can serve their customers who continue to use cash for 85% of their purchases. During the quarter, we extended our agreements with Raiffeisen Bank in several countries. These agreements will allow us to continue to provide ATM and POS driving, manage services and Visa and MasterCard gateways agreement in Croatia, ATM acquiring services in Serbia and ATM outsourcing in Slovakia. Raiffeisen is an important customer, and we are pleased to continue our partnership with them. Finally, we signed an agreement with Citibank in Hungary to install automated deposit terminals, ADTs, in their branch location. The rollout of these machines will begin later this year. Now let's jump on to Slide #14. We've continued to add additional value-added products to our ATMs. In the quarter, we launched e-commerce acquiring and 3D secure issuing for AIK Bank in Serbia. This agreement will allow AIK merchants to provide secure online transactions to their customers. We also expanded our relation with Hipotekarna Bank in Montenegro to provide Paypass issuing and acquiring Visa EMV migration and POS bill payment. In Poland, we signed an agreement with Orlen, one of Poland's largest fuel retailers, to launch our first dynamic barcode printing on a receipt campaign. This functionality provides advertisers with an option to assign a value to a barcode, which is printed on the receipt at the time of their ATM transaction. Customers can then redeem the barcode at physical locations or for online goods, services or loyalty rewards. In the quarter, we deployed 553 ATMs, bringing our total ATM count to 17,795. In the end, Poland contributed to the largest of those increases. We continue to be pleased with the performance of our brown label portfolio in India, and we'll deploy additional ATMs as we find high-quality sites. Our EFT team remains focused on executing their strategy to expand our network and deliver additional products on our ATMs. Their success is highlighted in this quarter's seasonally high earnings results. It's worth saying again that this was a darn great quarter for EFT. Let's move onto Slide #16, and we'll talk about epay. Epay continued to grow in the quarter, delivering solid earnings. While at first look epay transactions decline may be concerning, this decrease was the result of the decrease in high-volume, very low margin transaction as Rick mentioned before. Excluding these transactions, epay would have been approximately a 4% growth, more closely aligned with the revenue. Continued focus on expanding our mobile operator solutions and non-mobile content resulted in earnings expansions again this quarter. Let's move to Slide #17, and we'll discuss the results in more detail. On Slide #17, you can see that we continued to expand our relationship with Sprint to include additional value-added products. The value-added products we provide to our mobile operators provide them with enhanced visibility to their retail doors. In the quarter, we introduced an additional product that allows Sprint to streamline their payment processes with their retailers. We will continue to focus on developing new value-added ways to work with our mobile operators. During the quarter, our team in the U.K. launched a bundled mobile top-up and sim card product for Lyca Mobile in Carphone Warehouse. By bundling these products, mobile operators will achieve higher sim card activation rates. Finally, in Italy, we have signed another large retailer, Basko Spa, a hypermarket chain. In addition to selling our suite of mobile top-up products, we added prepaid TV, which is a popular choice among Italian users, particularly during the soccer season. Now let's move onto Slide #18, and we'll talk about the non-mobile product expansions in the quarter. Last quarter, we announced the launch of Google Play in Germany. Since the launch, we have been able to expand this content to our existing retailers within the country. We have seen nice traction from Google Play sales in the quarter, and going forward, we believe this content will contribute nicely to earnings expansion. With the addition of Google play, we now distribute 2 of the most powerful brands, Google and Apple, serving the strong majority of the world's smartphones and tablets. We added our existing gaming and software content into new retailers across Europe. Contents such as Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Office and Adobe are starting to take hold, and we're beginning to see increased sales of these products. In Brazil, we launched a gift card model with Vivo, a large mobile operator. By partnering with epay, Vivo will be able to innovate their store offering and increase sales in their retail locations. We also signed an agreement with Steam to provide prepaid top-up of Steam accounts across most of Europe. Steam is the world's largest gaming platform, allowing users to choose from more than 2,000 games. With Steam credits, users can purchase virtual products such as lives, shields and other power ups within their game. As you can see, we have been effective in our strategy to expand our content. This successful execution, combined with our value-added mobile operator solutions, resulted in solid growth for the third consecutive quarter. Overall, a nice quarter from our epay team. Now let's move on to Slide #20, and we'll talk about money transfer. Over the last couple of years, Ria has delivered consistently strong earnings growth. In the third quarter, the U.S. maintained its growth trajectory, and we continue to experience expansion in important European markets like Spain and Italy. These results highlight the great efforts our teams around the world have made to expand our network and improve brand awareness. Let's move onto Slide #21 so that we can discuss the details. Slide #21 shows the growth in our Ria network in the quarter. Our network now includes 207,000 locations, a 22% increase over the same quarter last year. We are excited to announce the launch of bank deposit service to India through our partnership with Kotak bank. I would like to take a minute and explain why this is such an important agreement for Ria. World Bank estimates that remittances to India will reach $71 billion in 2013, making it the world's largest remittance corridor. This agreement with Kotak represents our first reliable service to India and allows it to deposits funds into any bank account in the country. Additionally, different than our traditional cash-preferred customer, many Indian immigrants prefer to use technology to send funds home. This agreement, combined with the recent investment in launch of RiaMoneyTransfer.com, provides an added component to our service beyond what we have historically provided. After the addition of Bank Rakyat earlier this year, we have seen strong demand from our Indonesian customers. During the quarter, we partnered with Bank Negara to add cash pick-up service to 4,600 locations, as well as cash deposits to accounts within the bank. The new agreement will strengthen our footprint in this important corridor that receives more than $7 billion in annual remittances. We also continue to capitalize on synergies between our segments. This quarter, we are able to use Euronet's bank relationships to add more than 700 cash pick-up locations in Poland. We also continue to add money transfer payout to our ATMs and now have several thousand machines offering the service. In addition to these launches, we signed 16 correspondences in 12 countries during the quarter with the most notable locations in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. Next slide please. On Slide #22, you can see a breakdown of Ria's transaction growth in the third quarter. Rick highlighted money transfer growth in his comments, so I won't repeat that here. However, I would like to expand on a couple of items. Our money transfer growth of 17% to 7 million transactions was a new quarterly record for Ria and also represents the 10th consecutive quarter we have delivered double-digit money transfer growth. Non-money transfers also continue to perform well. The decline of 4% represents the discontinuation of a high-volume, low-margin product that we were distributing in Spain. Adjusting for the removal of these transactions, non-money transfers grew 40% over the same period last year. The bulk of this growth was driven by a 42% increase in check cashing transactions in the U.S. and strong growth of our prepaid top-ups in the U.S. and Italy. Our Ria PIN-less product contributed to 2/3 of the growth of top-ups in the U.S. for Ria for example. Overall, this was another strong quarter for our money transfer segment. Now let's move onto Slide #23 to wrap up the quarter. On Slide #23, you can see that we have delivered cash EPS of $0.56, a 33% increase over the same quarter last year, and we exceeded our guidance by $0.02. This record cash EPS was made possible by contributions from all 3 segments. EFT benefited from seasonally higher sales of value-added products, brown label ATMs in India and continued network expansion. Epay continued to grow through sales of non-mobile content and prepaid sales in the U.S. Money transfer earnings grew from network expansions and transaction growth in all send markets. Our balance sheet remains strong with good cash flow generation. And finally, our fourth quarter adjusted cash EPS per share, assuming constant foreign exchange rates, is expected to be $0.57, getting us within tick of $2 for the full year. With that, I conclude my comments, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Operator, will you please assist?