George Gresham
Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead
Thank you, Dan, and good afternoon, everyone. In the fourth quarter, we delivered non-GAAP revenue of $321 million, up 17% year-over-year. As mentioned on our last call, based on our strong performance during the first three quarters of 2021, we made the prudent decision to elevate our investments in strategic areas during the fourth quarter, including our modern banking platform, customer service and GO2bank. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA of $34 million, which was relatively consistent with the prior year. Our non-GAAP EPS of $0.27 declined 13% versus the prior year due primarily to an increase in our non-GAAP effective tax rate. The increase in the rate is largely a timing matter as our full year non-GAAP effective tax rate in 2021 is up slightly from 2020. As it relates to our segment results and key trends. In our Consumer Services segment, we achieved revenue and profit growth despite headwinds to our key metrics. Revenue grew $6.5 million or 4% to $161 million, while segment profit grew $2 million to $54 million, also up 4%. The adoption of profitable features by our customers continues to contribute to an expansion in our revenue per average active allowing us to maintain our margin during the quarter while investing in our business. Our gross dollar volume and active both declined 17% due in part to the expiration of unemployment benefits. As a reminder, in Q4 2020, the federal government provided supplemental unemployment benefit of $600 per week. Those benefits were reduced to $300 per week during 2021 and expired in early September 2021. In our B2B Services segment, gross dollar volume, purchase volume and the number of active accounts grew year-over-year by 48%, 30% and 15%, respectively. The increase in these metrics were the result of continued growth in our BaaS programs, both existing and new, and growth in our employer programs. As a result of the strong growth in these metrics, our B2B segment revenue increased by $45 million or 58% to $122 million. As was the case during the first three quarters of 2021, our B2B margin declined versus the prior year due to BaaS partner arrangements that contained a fixed profit. Nonetheless, B2B Services segment profit increased about $6 million or 42% to $19 million as we expanded margins for our other BaaS programs and in the employer business. In our Money Movement segment, revenue declined year-over-year, primarily due to our decision not to renew a significant low-margin reload partner during Q4 2020, which we've discussed on our prior earnings calls. Overall, our Money Movement segment revenue declined $8 million or 17% and profit declined $1 million or 10%. For the year, we delivered GAAP revenue, net income and diluted EPS growth of 14%, 105% and 102%, respectively. Non-GAAP revenue growth of 16% to $1.4 billion, led by strong growth of 51% in our B2B segment revenue. Consumer Services segment revenue increased 12% during 2021. Stimulus payments and supplemental unemployment benefits were additive to our results during the first part of 2021. But as these programs expired, the benefits to our customers and Green Dot have diminished. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% to $217 million. Our adjusted EBITDA margin declined approximately 150 basis points versus the prior year. A few factors contributed to this. First, we are elevating investments in strategic areas to support Green Dot's long-term growth initiatives. Second, the stimulus programs of the first part of the year increased our customer service costs and transaction losses. Finally, BaaS partner arrangements that contained a fixed profit have contributed to the decline in our adjusted EBITDA margin. Finally, non-GAAP EPS increased 5% to $2.21. I mentioned the impacts various stimulus programs had on our business during 2021, but it might be helpful to keep in mind that we estimate our customers received approximately $7 billion in the form of stimulus, supplemental tax credits, enhanced unemployment benefits and other benefits related to the government's response to the pandemic. These income settlements represented gross dollar volume to us, of which about 60% was received in the first quarter and 15% in each of the second and third quarters with the balance received in the fourth quarter of 2021. We do not expect these amounts to recur in 2022. Turning to our financial position. Our business continues to produce strong cash flow, generating $163 million of operating cash flow during 2021. We ended the year with cash at the holding company of $80 million. Our cash balance, the strength of our cash flow, together with our $100 million revolver available to us, provides us sufficient liquidity to invest in our strategic priorities and selectively return cash to our shareholders as evidenced by our share buyback announcement today. I would like to now move to discuss our technology initiatives in more detail. Over the last several quarters, you have heard us talk about the technology transformation that we have been undertaking and will begin to implement as we move through 2022 and into 2023. This is not a trivial undertaking, and it involves an enterprise-wide effort across Green Dot to be successfully completed. These efforts include: one, the consolidation of processing activities into an in-house processing capability; two, the implementation of modern real-time enterprise risk management tools; three, the creation of a modular digital front-end frameworks; and four, a cloud-native stack conversion. Each of these activities are critical for the success of Green Dot. Once completed, there are not only substantial near-term cost benefits to be realized, but there are important strategic benefits as well. 2021 saw us invest substantial time and effort in preparing for the upcoming transformation and conversions. We are now in the testing phase and expect to begin the heavy lifting in the second quarter. While we look to make substantial progress in 2022 and look forward to providing you with tangible updates on these calls, the reality is that this is a process where pragmatism and discipline are required to ensure orderly smooth conversions and will result in substantial completion of this exercise by mid-2023. We would expect to wrap up the migration of the largest of the third-party platforms, the implementation of the risk management tools and to have completed the build-out of the front-end framework by the end of 2022 or very early 2023. The cloud migration will continue into 2023 and additional third-party platforms will be consolidated on an orderly basis into 2024. Our focus on ensuring a top-tier outcome will result in us being patient when it comes to shutting down platforms. This is the correct and responsible thing to do, and therefore, we expect the financial benefits realized in 2022 will be modest and will materialize as we move through the latter part of the year. That said, we're not providing guidance for 2023, we would expect a more meaningful impact on our financials in 2023 with a substantial portion of these investments being realized in 2024. Based on our current project time lines, our expectation is that the minimum cost savings resulting from this investment will be approximately $35 million on an annualized basis. Let me take a moment to be clear about what I mean. These savings are compared to our cost structure as we exit 2021 using that year as a baseline and include directly traceable processing costs that we are currently incurring related to two processes, which we will avoid in the future, net of incremental costs associated with the licensing of our in-house platform. Additionally, we expect to obtain savings related to the technology costs we are currently incurring to maintain our integration with the external processes while the transition is underway of about $14 million annualized. These savings will be largely reflected as reductions in capital expenditures. As such, the reductions will benefit cash flow but not be reflected in adjusted EBITDA. This estimate does not include potential savings related to the consolidation of additional processing platforms that will be converted in the future, general operating efficiencies we expect to achieve across the organization resulting from a simplified operating environment or revenue enhancement opportunities we additionally expect to achieve. These additional savings and opportunities are more difficult to measure at this stage of the project, although we expect to have more insight into these opportunities by our Q3 earnings call. We expect that a majority of these savings will be achieved in 2023 with each subsequent year capturing additional savings as platforms continue to be converted. We consider this estimate to represent the floor of the returns to be achieved from this investment. While cost savings are important. The more important driver for this investment is what it will do for Green Dot as we compete in the markets in which we serve. We will become a more streamlined and agile company. We will have significantly more efficient and effective product development, modular product offerings tailored to any partner's needs, speed to market, enhanced risk and consumer care functions all while being able to deploy new accounts at very low marginal cost. This will enable us to grow our partner and customer base, more effectively monetize that base with value-added products and services and retain them via improved experiences, elevated service levels and higher levels of trust in our products. While much has been done, there is still much to do, but we are confident that upon completion, this will be a much stronger competitive and valuable company for our customers and our shareholders when we look forward to giving you updates on our efforts as we move through the year. Before handing it back to Dan for his closing comments, based on the trends we are observing as government stimulus receives from the macro environment, we currently expect full year 2022 non-GAAP revenue to be in a range of $1.39 billion to $1.43 billion, adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $225 million to $235 million and adjusted fully diluted earnings per share in a range of $2.22 to $2.35 per share. Given the timing of the stimulus payments in the prior year, we currently expect the first quarter of 2022 to reflect flat to modest single-digit revenue, adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP EPS growth compared to the equivalent prior year quarter, understanding that the timing of tax disbursements is the single most important driver of first quarter results. Given our 2022 expectations, our enthusiasm for our prospects and our currently expected cash balances, we are pleased to announce that our Board has authorized a $100 million share repurchase, which will be executed through 2022. Additionally, we are pleased to announce that we intend to hold an Investor Day in November this year, where we will be sharing our strategy and expectations for the years ahead based on the investments we have made to make Green Dot a great company. Let me now hand it back to Dan.