Joaquin Castrillo
Analyst · Susquehanna. Please go ahead
Thank you, Mac, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to slide nine. I think it's important to briefly explain how EVERTEC is impacted by fluctuations in foreign currency, given that as Mac mentioned we have a $7.8 million non-cash remeasurement loss impacting our results this quarter. What are the effects is foreign currency translation? Which involves the process of bringing the financial information of our subsidiaries outside of Puerto Rico from foreign currencies to the reporting currency, which for us is the U.S. dollar. Translation is very common and most companies we [indiscernible] are subject to this process, which doesn't result in gains or losses on results, but can have an impact on year-over-year growth because of currency fluctuations. Translation is impacting our year-over-year growth negatively this quarter by about $900,000 or approximately 3% of growth for our LatAm segment. The second type of impact, it's foreign currency remeasurement and this is a result of EVERTEC's French subsidiaries having U.S. dollar balances which need to be converted to the local currencies. This process does result in non-cash gains or losses that impacted our results. In our case, remeasurement is driven primarily by our Costa Rica entity where most of our customer contracts, our cash balances, and intercompany transactions are in U.S. dollars. This quarter the Costa Rica currency had a drastic shift, which led to the $7.8 million non-cash remeasurement loss that is impacting our results, even though we still have the same cash and receivable balance in U.S. dollars. With this brief overview in mind, I will now turn to slide 10, where you will see the consolidated third-quarter results for EVERTEC. Total revenue for the third quarter was $145.8 million, relatively flat when compared with $145.9 million in the prior year and generally in line with our expectations. This quarter includes the impact of significant transactions that closed during that period, such as the Popular transaction in Puerto Rico and the BBR acquisition in LatAm. More specifically, our third quarter results in Puerto Rico reflect an increased payment transaction volumes, continued growth of ATH mobile business, and revenue contribution from the small acquisition completed last quarter. This was partially offset by expected declines in the Business Solutions segment, primarily driven by the Popular transaction, which included the $6.9 million one-time credit granted to Popular and the impact to revenue from the assets sold. An additional offset was the impact from Hurricane Fiona in the last few weeks of September mainly in our Merchant Acquiring segment. Results in Latin America remain quite strong reflecting double-digit organic growth on the contribution from the BBR acquisition. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $52.4 million, a decrease of 25% from $69.8 million in the prior year and excludes the $135.6 million gain from the Popular transaction. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 35.9%, a 12% point decrease compared to the prior year. The decline in adjusted EBITDA margin includes the expected impact from the Popular transaction I just mentioned, as well as the impact from the non-cash foreign currency remeasurement loss of approximately $7.8 million. The Popular transaction effects include the impact of the one-time credit granted to them. The effect on the EBITDA margin from assets sold, which were at higher margin and the impact from the revenue-sharing agreement. The remeasurement loss, as previously discussed, is due to assets or liabilities held in U.S. dollars in some of our foreign subsidiaries. And in this case, mainly driven by Costa Rica. Normalizing for these one-time effects, specifically, the one-time credit to Popular and the franc currency remeasurement loss, our adjusted EBITDA would have been approximately $67 million, a 4% decrease versus the prior-year quarter on a margin would have been approximately 44%, and approximately 400 basis point decrease versus the prior year and in line with our expectations. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $27.1 million, a decrease of 40% as compared to the prior year, primarily reflecting the lower adjusted EBITDA on a higher adjusted tax rate. Our adjusted effective tax rate in the quarter was 24.8% higher than expected and also negatively impacted by the foreign currency remeasurement loss, if we were to normalize for the remeasurement loss, our adjusted effective tax rate would have been approximately 18%. Adjusted EPS was $0.40 for the quarter, a decrease of 35% compared to the prior year. Normalizing for the foreign currency remeasurement impact, EPS for the quarter would have been approximately $0.53 for the quarter. Moving on to slide 11, I will now cover our segment results, starting with Merchant Acquiring. In the third quarter, Merchant Acquiring net revenue decreased 2% year-over-year to approximately $36.9 million as the prior year presents a tough comparable period, given the benefits from COVID-related federal stimulus and the normalization of spending patterns this year toward pre-pandemic levels in terms of our mix of sales, domestic versus international transactions, and average ticket. As Mac noted, Hurricane Fiona caused a disruption to spending patterns over the final two weeks of the quarter and we estimate this represented a $1 million impact to MAB revenues. Additionally, our overall spread was down year-over-year due to a decrease in the average ticket which continues to slowly normalize. We also saw a shift in the mix of volume towards lower margin verticals such as gas stations, supermarkets, and utilities from higher margin verticals like retail. This was expected given the stimulus funding in the prior year, the effects of inflation, higher gas prices, and the effect of hurricane Fiona in the last weeks of September. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was $13.9 million, down 28%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.6%, down approximately 14% points as compared to last year. Most of this decline was expected given the revenue-sharing agreement with Popular that commenced with the closing of the transaction, as well as higher processing costs aligned with the lower average ticket. Our margin was also negatively impacted by the effect of hurricane Fiona in the last couple of weeks of the quarter. On slide 12, you will see the results for Payment Services Puerto Rico and the Caribbean segment. Revenue for the segment in the third quarter was $44.6 million, up approximately 15% driven by increased transaction volumes for POS processing of 4% year-over-year, continued growth of digital payments mainly ATH mobile business, and continued benefit from increases in transaction processing and monitoring revenue from services provided to the LatAm segment. We also benefited from a small acquisition completed in the second quarter. Partially offsetting some of these positive drivers was the impact of the aforementioned one-time credit granted to Popular as well as a small impact from Hurricane Fiona on processing volumes. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment was $25 million, up slightly as compared to last year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 56.1%, a 13 basis point decrease as compared to last year. Normalizing for the impact of the one-time credit to Popular, margin for the quarter would have been 56.6%. On slide 13, you will see the results for our Payment Services LatAm segment. Revenue for the segment in the third quarter was $33.7 million, up approximately 26% as compared to last year. Organic growth with existing customers continued to be quite strong with double-digit growth for the region overall, even with a foreign currency headwind of approximately $900,000. The BBR acquisition, which closed on July 1st also contributed to the year-over-year growth this quarter. Normalizing for the effects of foreign currency translation, our year-over-year growth would have been approximately 29% in constant currency. Adjusted EBITDA for this segment was $3.2 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 9.5%. The year-over-year decrease was mainly driven by the $7.8 million non-cash foreign currency remeasurement loss previously discussed, which represented approximately 23% points of margin decline as well as the recognition of a low margin hardware sales in the quarter. Normalizing for the effect of the non-cash remeasurement loss, our LatAm margin for the quarter would have been approximately 33% and aligned to our expectations. On slide 14, you will find the results for the Business Solutions segment. Business Solutions revenue for the third quarter was down approximately 15% to $49.3 million. Most of the decline was related to the effects of the Popular transaction. As Mac mentioned, we sold assets with an estimated $30 million annual run rate. And as part of the new MSA with Popular, we provided a one-time credit amounting to $6.3 million in the Business Solutions segment. There were several positive offsets to those headwinds as we completed several projects tied to the closing of the transaction. And some services that are part of the new MSA and we also benefited from some smaller one-time hardware and software sales. For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $16.3 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 33%, down approximately 12% points as compared to last year. As noted, with the other segments, this decline was expected given the main driver is a $6.3 million credit which flowed directly to EBITDA. Additionally, the assets sold were higher margin contributions and this also impacted the margin in the quarter. Normalizing for the one-time credit, margin for the quarter would have been approximately 41% and aligned to our expectations. Moving on to slide 15. You will see a summary of Corporate and Other. Our third-quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately negative $6 million, a decrease of 18% compared to prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of total revenue was 4.1% which is below prior year and slightly better than our expectations for 2022 of 5%. Moving on to our cash flow overview on slide 16. Our beginning cash balance was approximately $286 million including restricted cash of approximately $20 million. Net cash provided by operating activities year-to-date was approximately $159 million, capital expenditures for the 9-month period were approximately $45 million and we continue to anticipate approximately $60 million of CapEx for the full 2023-year. As noted on previous calls, in the second quarter, we acquired a company in Puerto Rico and recognized the customer relationship of approximately $10.6 million in connection with the acquisition. On July 1st, we closed the BBR acquisition for approximately $51 million, including approximately $7.1 million in certificates of deposits. We've made approximately $10 million in long-term debt payments, approximately $6 million in withholding taxes on share-based compensation, and approximately $1 million of other debt pay downs which resulted in a total net debt decrease of approximately $16 million. We paid cash dividends of approximately $11 million year-to-date. And during the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.2 million shares of common stock for a total of approximately $37 million, including $25 million from the secondary offering and we have approximately $102 million remaining in the company's share repurchase program. We have repurchased approximately $73 million in shares through September 30th. Additionally, on July 1st, we also received approximately $4.6 million EVERTEC shares from Popular in connection with the transaction closed. Our ending cash balance as of September 30th was $244 million and this included approximately $19 million of restricted cash. Moving on to slide 17, you will find a summary of our debt as of September 30th, 2022. Our quarter-ending net debt position was approximately $233 million comprised of approximately $225 million of unrestricted cash and $458 million of total short-term borrowings and long-term debt. Our weighted average interest rate was approximately 5.9%, our net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA was approximately 1.4 times. As of September 30th, total liquidity was approximately $344 million, this balance excludes restricted cash and includes the available borrowing capacity under our revolver. Moving on to slide 18, I will now provide you with an update on our 2022 outlook as well as some initial comments to help you think about 2023. We are pleased with the continued strong growth in both Puerto Rico and Latin America and the impact to revenue from the Popular transaction has been consistent with our expectations. We did see some impact from Hurricane Fiona at the end of the quarter, but we saw transaction volumes return to normal by mid-October. So we do not expect additional headwinds from the storm in Q4. It's worth noting that the new MSA does provide for a CPI adjustment for the fourth quarter capped up 1.5% for most MSA services and 5% for short-term payment services. Given those factors, we continue to expect revenue to be in a range of $607 million to $615 million, representing growth of 3% to 4%. Excluding the impact from foreign currency remeasurement and the modest impacts from Fiona, EBITDA margin for the third quarter was largely in line with our expectations including the anticipated impacts from the Popular transaction. As discussed, the currency adjustment was significant in the quarter, providing an approximately 500 basis point headwind to the third quarter alone. We are not assuming any additional impact from currency remeasurement in the fourth quarter, but when we flow through the impact from the third quarter, this reduces our EBITDA margin expectation for the full year closer to 44%, down from our prior expectation of between 45% to 46%. Given the tax impact noted earlier, we are now expecting our tax rate to be in a range of 17% to 18%, up from our prior expectation of between 14% to 15%, and our interest expense assumptions continues to move higher given the rising rate environment. We are also including in the third quarter foreign currency remeasurement in our updated adjusted EPS guidance for the year, which results in unexpected adjusted EPS outlook of $2.36 to $2.47 per share. This represents a year-over-year decline of 14% to 10% as compared to the adjusted earnings per share in 2021 of $2.74. This guidance also includes the benefits of the share repurchases of $73 million and the approximately $4.6 million reduction in share account that occurred on July 1st related to the Popular transaction. Turning to 2023, I will highlight some key configurations. First, while we are pleased with the completion of the Popular transaction, this will create important headwinds in the first half of next year. The MAB segment EBITDA margin will be impacted by the revenue share with Popular unexpected to reset closer to low 40s margin. And the Business Solutions segment revenue will be impacted by the sale of assets, which as a reminder, we have stated is approximately $30 million in revenue on an annualized basis. EBITDA margin for the Business Solutions segment are also expected to reset in the low to mid-40s as the assets sold were of higher margin contribution. Offsetting some of these headwinds is the CPI escalator which under the renewed agreement has a 1.5% cap for most services under the MSA and 5% for some of our Payment Services with Popular. Additionally, we will anniversary the acquisition completed in Puerto Rico during the second quarter and will also anniversary the BBR acquisition in Latin America during the third quarter. Lastly, as we mentioned, the rising rate environment will have an impact on our interest expense and we expect this will be the case into 2023. In summary, we are pleased with our results through the first nine months of 2022 on our positioning for the future following the Popular transaction. We look forward to hopefully seeing you in person at our conferences later in the coming months. Operator, please go ahead and open the line for questions.