Louis Hoch
Analyst · Barrington Research
Thank you, Joe and welcome everyone. 2019 was another record year for Usio, our third consecutive year of record revenues and transaction processing volumes. Our continued success reflects our strategy to capitalize on the growing demand for a comprehensive electronics payment solution that provides access to issuing, acquiring, and ACH enablement technologies, all from Usio. And we continue to invest in our strategy, a technology company that facilitates payments. It was also historic year for Usio in other ways. In July, we celebrate the introduction of our new corporate name of Usio by ringing the NASDAQ closing bell in Times Square in New York. This year, we also opened a new office in Austin, Texas to capitalize on the region's rich pool of technology talent. Some of that talent, as well as other experienced and accomplished individuals in San Antonio and Nashville from another number of other fields have joined Usio to give us the depth and the breadth of resources needed to accelerate our growth. We feel really good about what we accomplished in 2019. We grew our total processing dollar volume by 5% to a record $3.54 billion and in our two largest businesses; ACH volume was up 8% and credit card dollar volume was up 12%. Prepaid load volume increased by 74% and transaction volume increased by 91%, both off a somewhat lower base. This drove a 13% increase in total revenue for the year, which is top -- at the top end of our 12% to 13% range we forecasted last quarter. And we ended the year on a very strong note. Revenue growth accelerated to 15% in the fourth quarter as compared to the same quarter in 2018, the fastest orderly growth rate of the year on the strength of significant increase at PayFac transaction processing volumes. Vaden will take you through this in more detail, but in the fourth quarter PayFac volume increased 134% compared to -- compared sequentially to the third quarter. I'm very pleased to see that our continued support and nurturing of our PayFac businesses now being rewarded with outstanding growth and unlimited potential. ACH continues to grow with strong margins and cash flow providing the resources we're investing in our growth initiatives. We are seeing nice growth with our Remote Check Capture Service that we introduced to our existing ACH clients. And more recently, we became a Tier 1 processor by now having direct access to the Federal Reserve via our own federal -- our own Fed Terminal and associated bank routing number. Both of these tools provide a competitive advantage in our ACH business and these competitive advantages have led us to board over 20 new accounts for ACH and ACH-related services in just the last two weeks. We're expected to see steady continued growth of our ACH business, a market that is already growing at healthy single -- mid-single-digit clip. Our goal is to gain share and exceed the industry growth rate and generate attractive margins and cash flow. As with our Remote Check Capture and the Fed Terminal, our success is driven by our ability to develop new innovative technology that meets the increasing complex needs of the growing market. In our Prepaid business, after more than doubling in the third quarter, card load and transaction volumes had another strong performance in the fourth quarter, so that for the year, Prepaid was up 75%. New programs such as our corporate expense solution and new features such as constantly improving functionality, illustrate our ability to offer an integrated card, ACH prepaid issuing solutions that meet all of our clients' electronic transaction processing needs. This focus on technology has enabled us to continue to add to our prestigious list of prepaid customers, which already includes the University Fancards, Pfizer, Medtronic, Eli Lilly, OpenTable, and a list of -- a long list of others. In addition to the organic growth, we feel we're well-positioned to opportunistically capitalize on the consolidation transpiring at all levels of our industry. Acquisitions would have -- have to have -- provides incremental growth in cash flow as well as complimentary resources, such as people or technology. In summary, the fourth quarter was a solid to a great year providing strong momentum heading into 2020 as we continue to develop innovative and proprietary technology that is hitting the bull's eye with our target market. We anticipate revenues to continue to grow in the first quarter as compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 and we expect this to be another growth year. We are committed to our strategy to continue to invest in our growth initiatives with the expectation that incremental growth from our PayFac and Prepaid businesses will begin to reach a point that makes them self-sustaining. Of course, our expectations are tempered by the COVID-19 coronavirus, which has become a threat to our economic growth. Our first concern, of course, is for the safety of our employees as well as our customers. Fortunately, we have a very limited retail exposure or face-to-face businesses that are believed to be at greatest risk. And because of our positioning, we're hopeful that any decrease in our card processing volume participated by COVID-19 team can be mitigated by the expected increase in ACH and other non-face-to-face processing volumes that COVID-19 might create. But we remain uncertain. All of our offices have been closed for some time and we've been operating with no issues. We believe we can continue to operate remotely as needed and are thrilled that we continue to be very active in closing and implementing customers during these times. With that said, I'd like to conclude my opening remarks and turn the call over Tom Jewell, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer to discuss our financial results in more detail. Tom?