Scott Scheirman
Analyst · Lake Street. Jaeson, please go ahead. Your line is now open
Thanks Mike and good morning everyone. During today's call, I will provide an overview of CPIs performance in 2021, give some thoughts on our strategy, future, and 2022 expectations. Amintore will review the quarterly and annual financial results in more detail. Then we will open up the call for questions. Overall, as we will look back at 2021, we deliver very strong performance for the year. Net sales increased 20% raising our compounded annual growth rate in sales to 14% over the last four years. The profitability has improved that even a greater rate than the top-line, moving from a net loss of $22 million in 2017 to 2021 net income of $16 million, and adjusted EBITDA exceeding $76 million, which translates to a compounded annual growth rate of 35% over the past four years. We believe our high quality and innovative products and solutions have propelled us to significant outpaced market growth over the past four years. In addition, we believe our team's ability to navigate the supply chain and labor environment has given us a competitive advantage. Some of the highlights from 2021 include strong sales from new customer additions as our comprehensive end-to-end solutions helped us gain the business from FinTechs customers as well as traditional financial services providers. We also continue to help facilitate the U.S. market's gradual transition to higher priced contactless cards. We believe approximately 40% of the estimated $2 billion financial payment cards outstanding in the U.S. at the end of 2021 were contactless with small-and mid-sized financial institutions well below that level. For CPI, almost 70% of the secure cards we sold in 2021 were the higher average selling price contactless cards, which was up more than 10 percentage points from the year and contributed to our operating margin growth. Secure cards include EMV contact and dual interface, which we refer to as contactless and account for the significant majority of our card revenue in the debit and credit segment. We expect the contactless sales percentage to grow further as our customer continue to confer to issuing these faster to use and more convenient cards. The card networks have noted that tap to pay increases card usage, which gives additional incentive to issuers to drive the transition in the U.S. We remain a leading market provider of equal focused payment card solutions in the U.S., selling more 20 million cards in 2021 to reach nearly 50 million cards sold since launch in late 2019. As these cards were predominantly contactless, they also helped drive higher average selling prices. Card@Once our market leading staff-based instant issuance solution grew faster than the Company overall in 2021, reaching nearly 10% of the Company's net sales and delivering strong profitability. Card@Once growth was aided by expanded distribution channels and success with our high-end spectrums solution and we now have nearly 13,000 installations across financial institutions in the U.S. Our personalization business brought us growth from new customers, including FinTechs, who are attracted to our end-to-end solution offerings including design production, packaging, and fulfillment capabilities. And our pre-paid business had a record year as we leveraged our innovative, tamper evident packaging solutions to enhance our leadership in the U.S. retail pre-paid card and packaging market. Net income for the year was down 1% due to prior year income tax benefits and debt refinancing costs in the first quarter of 2021 but adjusted EBITDA increased 33%, and the adjusted EBITDA margin increased 200 basis points to 20.4%. We also improved our balance sheet in 2021, reducing outstanding debt by more than $30 million during the year and driving our net leverage ratio down below 4x as of year-end. As we noted in our third quarter earnings release, we expected our fourth quarter results to be impacted by increased labor, materials, and certain other costs. Those impacts largely happened as anticipated bringing fourth quarter margins down from prior year and the first nine month levels. However, as we look forward, we believe the full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.4% is more indicative of the full year 2022 expected profitability level than the fourth quarter margin. This is a result of implementation of various business initiatives including price increases, operating leverage from higher expected sales, and expected reductions in the level of certain fourth quarter expense items. Turning to Slide 5, given the current market dynamics with labor and supply chain challenges and the related inflationary environments as well as from specific comparison items for our prepaid business, today, we are providing some high level expectations for 2022 performance. First, let me state that I'm very confident in our future. We continue to experience strong customer demand and we believe our innovative and differentiated payment solutions, longstanding customer relationships and participation in attractive growing market position as well for continued market share gain and long term growth. Over four years ago, we focused the Company on a vision of being the partner choice and payment solutions by providing market leading quality products and customer service, while operating a market competitive business model. We made deep customer focus and continuous innovation key strategic priorities, increasing our capabilities to offer tailor products and services and comprehensive end-to-end solutions. Since that time, we've established ourselves as a top payments card solution provider in the U.S. serving thousands of banks, credit unions and FinTechs. Today, we're leading provider of eco-focused payment card solutions in the U.S., which is a rapidly growing space. We are also a leader in personalization and software-as-a-service based instant solutions for small and medium sized U.S. financial institutions as well as for U.S. retail prepaid debit card solutions. Our markets are healthy and growing. Based on figures reported by Visa and MasterCard, U.S. credit, debit and prepaid cards and circulation have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 8% over the three-year period ending September 30, 2021. In addition, a recent report by credit data agency TransUnion noted that a record 196 million Americans held credit cards at the end of 2021 and U.S. lenders issued more payment cards than ever last year. According to the report, an all-time high of 20 million new payment cards were issued in the third quarter of 2021, the latest period for which detailed numbers were available. As a reminder, we estimate that historically 90% of annual card issuance has been for replacement cards. So, we believe increases in new card customers will have a positive ongoing, long-term effect. We expect U.S. market revenue growth will continue to be aided by further financial payment card issuance growth, as well as a gradual transition to higher price contactless cards including eco-focused cards. We believe we have gained significant overall market share over the last four years with our high quality products and services and the end-to-end solution and see strong opportunities for additional share gains going forward. For 2022, we do have some unique dynamics. Supply chain and labor shortage challenges continue to impact the industry affecting lead times, raw materials, availability and costs. We have navigated these challenges with proactive inventory management, hiring and retention incentives at our production facilities and other operational actions and expect to continue to be able to be nimble and adapt. Our current high level financial expectations for 2022 are delivered mid single digit net sales and adjusted EBITDA growth compared to last year, with an adjusted EBITDA margin similar to last year's full year level of 20.4%. We expect our debit and credit segment, which includes our secure card personalization and instant insurance solutions and represented 79% of 2021 net sales to provide strong growth as demand remains robust and we are in a good position to serve our customers and benefit from the contact with trends including with eco-focused card solutions. Based on current orders, we expect our eco-focused card sales to increase by more than 50% in 2022. Customer demand for our debit and credit segment is generally higher than our outlook, but we have factored certain capacity and material constraints into our forecast. We will attempt to alleviate some of these constraints through operational initiatives by partnering with our suppliers where we can throughout the year. We expect debit and credit segment growth to be partially offset by decline in sales and EBITDA in our prepaid debit segment. Prepaid had a record year in 2021 growing sales 25% in what is usually a slower growth market. Last year's prepaid sales were aided by a large new portfolio additions as well as retail inventory replenishment by our customers who reduced purchases in 2020 due to COVID-related concerns. Although, we expect a decline for prepaid in 2022 due to the comparisons with a record 2021, the business remains healthy and customer relationships are strong and we would expect prepaid sales to be between the 2020 and 2021 levels. Finally, before I turn the call over to Amintore, I would like to mention our announcement today that we have notified holders that we plan to redeem 20 million of our 8.625% senior secured notes due in 2026 at a redemption price of 103. We expect this retirement to help improve our leverage ratio by year end in providing ongoing interest expense savings. As we generate more cash flow, we will continue to review capital allocation alternatives to maximize value for our stockholders. Now, I will turn the call over to Amintore to review our fourth quarter and full year financial and operating results in more detail. Amintore?