Earnings Labs

The Western Union Company (WU)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 3, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2009 Western Union Company Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for todays call Mr. Mike Salop, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations.

Mike Salop

Management

Today’s call includes comments from Christina Gold, President and Chief Executive Officer, Hikmet Ersek, Chief Operating Officer, and Scott Scheirman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In addition to a review of 2009 fourth quarter and full year results, we will discuss our outlook for 2010 and key long term strategies and initiatives. After our comments we will have time for your questions. As we indicated in our press release we have prepared slides to accompany this call and webcast. These slides are available at www.WesternUnion.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call. I would like to remind you that today’s call is being recorded and that our comments include forward looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in our earnings release and in Western Union's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the 2008 Form 10-K for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements. During the call, we will discuss items that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures on our website www.WesternUnion.com under the Investor Relations section. All statements made by Western Union officers on this call are the property of The Western Union Company and subject to copyright protection. Other than the replay, Western Union has not authorized and disclaims responsibility for any recording, replay or distribution of any transcription of this call. I would now like to turn the call over to Christina Gold.

Christina Gold

President

Overall we were very pleased with our 2009 results. Although the global economic environment was challenging our business was stable and we were able to deliver on our financial outlook. We maintained strong margins and generated significant cash flow, demonstrating the strength of our business model. We also advanced key strategic initiatives that open up additional opportunities with new customer and market segments. Importantly, we posted another year of market share gains in our C2C business, increasing our cross border remittance market share from 17% in 2008 to an estimated 18% in 2009. We have increased our share by over 300 basis points since 2006 with significant gains each year. Our ‘Yes’ marketing campaign contributed to the share gains and drove uniformity of the Western Union brand image and marketing. The campaign was launched across 200 countries and territories in over 50 languages and drove strong brand awareness. We saw large jumps in key countries such as Germany which improved unaided awareness by eight percentage points and India where awareness increased to over 90%. The campaign also helped us gain efficiencies in our marketing spend. The strategic progress we made in 2009 will drive future growth with both existing customers and new customer segments. This is exemplified by the two strategic acquisitions we made last year; Custom House and the money transfer business of FEXCO. Custom House has allowed the company to establish the position in the large international business to business payments market which is a great growth opportunity. We added new banking distribution in the US and made solid end roads in electronic channels. We increased the number of bank agents internationally that offer our account to cash services. Internet transfer through www.WesternUnion.com was expanded to 18 countries and we implemented a learn from pilot programs in mobile…

Hikmet Ersek

Chief Executive Officer

I’m very pleased to join you in this new role. In my time at Western Union I have seen it grow from a geographically limited business with 80,000 agent locations to a global market leader with over 410,000 locations. In addition to the core money transfer, I also believe we have great opportunities in electronic channels and in the B2B business. We have a strong leadership team in place around the world and I’m very excited about the future. Let me now review the fourth quarter performance of our C2C business segment. In the fourth quarter C2C revenue increased 2% or declined 2% constant currency adjusted. Transactions grew 5% and increased from 3% growth seen in the prior two quarters. This improvement was primarily driven by US domestic money transfer business. Western Union cross border principal declined 3% for the year and was flat constant currency adjusted. For the industry overall the World Bank has forecasted a decline between 5% and 7% for cross border principally in 2009. Our Europe, Middle East, Africa and South Asia regions delivered revenue growth of 6%. Transactions increased 8% which was the same rate as the third quarter. Improvement in the region in certain markets was offset by a significant decline in growth related to the Gulf States. Western Europe achievement for the company accelerated transaction growth in the quarter. The UK and Germany were especially strong. Spain’s trends, although still negative did improve significantly from the prior quarters. We also saw improvement in Russia. The Gulf States experienced positive transaction growth in the fourth quarter, however, the rate of growth slowed significantly driven by employment declines in the region. Transaction growth in the quarter was only in the single digits following strong double digit rates in the first three quarters of the year.…

Scott Scheirman

Management

Revenue for the fourth quarter increased 2% on a reported basis or decreased 1% constant currency adjusted. Custom House added $23 million to revenue and $5 million of operating loss, primarily due to acquisition related expenses. Earnings per share in the quarter was $0.32 on both a reported and constant currency adjusted basis. This compares to $0.34 or $0.37 excluding restructuring expenses in the fourth quarter 2008. For the full year we reported revenue of $5.1 billion down 4% from 2008. In constant currency terms revenue was down 1% which we believe demonstrates the resiliency of our business in a difficult environment. Custom House added $31 million to revenue and $12 million of operating loss for the year. GAAP EPS was $1.21 or $1.29 excluding the Arizona and multi-state settlement accrual recorded in the third quarter. Constant currency EPS was a penny lower. In 2008 GAAP EPS was $1.24 or $1.31 excluding restructuring expenses. In my discussion this morning, all margin and cost comparisons will exclude the 2009 settlement accrual and the 2008 restructuring expenses. Please see the earnings release and slides for the GAAP measures and comparisons. Consolidated operating margin for the full year was 26.6% excluding the settlement accrual. Margins declined 60 basis points from 2008 as cost of services decreased 80 basis points and SG&A increased 140 basis points. The cost of services improvement was primarily driven by profit improvement actions including agent commission initiatives and savings from the 2008 restructuring. SG&A was negatively impacted by Custom House and FEXCO costs and other expenses. Operating margin was 24.2% in the fourth quarter and declined from both 2008 and the first nine months of 2009. As we indicated on our third quarter call, margins for the quarter were expected to be lower relative to the first three quarters…

Christina Gold

President

Although the environment is still challenging in 2010 we see strength in our core. Trends in the C2C business are improving and we believe our brand, network compliance and expertise and financial strength position us well for long term profitable growth. In 2009 we have evolved our strategies, our organization and our go to market initiatives. Our growth strategies can be characterized in three primary areas; the core C2C money transfer, electronic channels and business payments. In our core C2C we are aggressively pursuing opportunities in Europe with the new retail agent distribution available under the payment services directive. We are aiming to grow in these markets through strategic expansion of our network and targeted marketing. As a result of the PSD in Europe we expect to have an additional 10,000 retail agent locations operational by the end of 2010 and believe we will be able to significantly expand locations and revenues over the next several years. By 2011 we anticipate the added distribution in Europe will add one to two percentage points of revenue growth to our overall business. In Asia, where revenue and profitability are ramping up, we are also rapidly expanding our distribution network. Worldwide we expect to have over 450,000 agent locations by the end of the year. In the Americas we are targeting revenue growth in the domestic business by late 2010. We also plan to add more banks to our distribution network bringing new customers and the potential to provide account to cash offerings. Additionally, we see opportunity to increase our distribution into new classes of trade through the go cash in lain money transfer service which we will pilot later this year. Outside the US we are targeting our intra business in certain countries through focused marketing efforts. Excluding US domestic, intra is…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: With regards to the idea of continued market share gains, if I look at the World Bank data and I look at your own 2010 growth projections it does not look like you can sustain another year of market share gains at least in the near term. Maybe beyond 2010 but certainly for 2010 it looks like it may not happen. Is that an accurate characterization? Why are we in this spot?

Christina Gold

President

We feel very confident that we will continue to gain share in 2010. As we look at the projections from the World Bank obviously one of the issues has been a slowdown in the Middle East and the Gulf States. That actually occurred after Ramadan in December. Despite that we saw that we gained shares in that region as well. We feel very confident that our plans this year will allow us to continue to gain market share. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: You’re actually saying that the World Bank information would be adjusted down and so you can continue to gain share?

Christina Gold

President

I think we look at it that way. Also we look at that, we look at the growth we’re seeing in other markets and we’re looking at the principal that we’re moving around the world so we feel very confident that we will gain share again this year. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup: The initial evidence on whether the US domestic pricing promotions that you had in the fourth quarter, have they helped volumes and by how much?

Christina Gold

President

We really saw an integrated plan as the team looked at repositioning the US. There was pricing, there was marketing, there was really a whole halo effect on this business. Recognizing that the pricing was only a band below $200 and that actually there was some price increases in bands over $200. As we came through the quarter you saw that our transactions came at 5% but we actually grew transactions to higher and higher rates of growth to a double digit position as we came out of the quarter. It’s also important to note that it wasn’t just let’s say the $50 band or the $200 or the next day product, we saw a halo effect so that all of the different price categories even over $200 where we were not pricing we saw growth and improvement in the transaction rates. We’re very confident that we’re going to see revenue growth in the back half of 2010. It’s very important for us because this is a big business and it’s also a very profitable business to the company.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bryan Keane – Credit Suisse Bryan Keane – Credit Suisse: I wanted to talk a little bit about the C2C business. It looks like constant currency revenue was -2% for the quarter and for the year and transaction growth was about 4.5% or close to 5%. When we go into 2010 do we immediately see improvement off those numbers in the first quarter or do we have to take a step function down due to the Gulf States?

Scott Scheirman

Management

As we think about 2010 overall on the C2C business those trends will be stronger than 2009 both in transaction and revenue growth. Asia/Pacific there’s still big opportunities there where we have 8% of our revenue but its 20% of the market opportunity. PSD as an example we’re going to add 10,000 locations, the ramp up of that will be from a revenue standpoint the latter part of 2010. For example, with PSD we believe that’s going to add 1% to 2% consolidated revenue growth in 2011. We do believe 2010 will be a building year. Margins will be stronger in the second half of the year than the first half of the year. Within the C2C business we expect to gain share and we expect to expand the margins in the C2C business in 2010. Bryan Keane – Credit Suisse: When you look at all the quarters is it almost all corridors increasing or accelerating except the Gulf States? What percentage of revenue does the Gulf States come out to be?

Christina Gold

President

I think what we’re seeing in the business is an overall improvement across the world except the challenge of the Gulf and the Gulf really had the biggest difficulty right at the end of the year so we built that into our plans. We see an improving world out there. We do not give the percentage of the Gulf but maybe Hikmet can talk a little bit about how important Saudi Arabia is and some of those countries.

Hikmet Ersek

Chief Executive Officer

I think we see the challenging economic environment but we are very well positioned in the countries. We have really great brand awareness; we have great dedicated locations in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar, Oman and Kuwait. I think the transactions will grow in quarter four. An employment decline did impact our transactions in Q4. We are well positioned if the economy comes back. If you look at our business we are in 200 countries and territories, we have thousands of corridors. The Gulf States is one of our regions from many regions. Bryan Keane – Credit Suisse: The global business payments margins are going to be down looks like pretty significantly this year. Can you talk about, does that rebound in 2011? I might have missed this but tax rate guidance for 2010.

Scott Scheirman

Management

Let me start with tax rate guidance, 24% to 25% on the tax rate for 2010. On global business payments broadly two things are impacting that business. First is the US bill payment business, we’ve got challenges with the credit environment in the US. Much of our bill payment in the US skewed towards mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards, those have been very challenging because of the macro environment in the US. That will put pressure on the margins. The second is Custom House in the business to business space. We see that as an enormous opportunity. In fact, historically we view it a game changer. We think that really could be. We’re going to continue to invest in that business in 2010, which will impact the margins. We think longer term that’s got the legs to be a billion dollar business. We know that the revenue market opportunity as big as the C2C revenue market opportunity. We’ll continue to invest and grow. It’s probably a little too early to talk about 2011 in specifics but with Custom House it’ll be slightly dilutive in 2010 but we don’t expect dilution beyond 2010 with Custom House.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Adam Frisch – Morgan Stanley Adam Frisch – Morgan Stanley: Ironic that we’re finally starting to see some encouraging signs in C2C growth but now it appears that B2B and C2B is struggling at this point. The operating margin guidance is also the thing that I think is really throwing people this morning and frustrating them, at least the shareholders. Maybe if we could take a step back and reposition or clarify some things. Can you delineate the challenges there between transition costs and ongoing operating headwinds and talk about the factors that are putting pressure on margins in 2010? I think most people out there were not expecting a 26 handle on margins. Talk about what’s going on in margins and why we should at all believe that they could go up in 2011 and 2012.

Scott Scheirman

Management

Let me first broadly start with the consolidated margin of 26% and what is putting some pressure on that. First I’d say the C2C business which is 85% of our revenues we expect those margins to expand in 2010 and we believe that business model clearly is set to grow margins as revenue reaccelerates and the market improves. C2C margins will expand in 2010. On a consolidated basis what’s putting pressure on the margins I’d really put it in three buckets. First it’s the retail money order portfolio. We took that over from First Data on October 1st. In the fourth quarter that impacted our margins by about 50 basis points. We’ll have that for three quarters in 2010 so that’ll be approximately a 40 basis point impact on margins. Second I would point Custom House, we’ve got $13 million of intangible amortization related to the acquisition. The third area is investments we’re making in the business. We invested about $25 million in 2009; we’ll invest about $50 million. We think it’s really important that we make those investments. We see really good opportunities in the B2B space, we see good opportunities in electronic. Electronic channel today is only 2% of our revenues and it has the opportunity to be much bigger than that. We’d like to make those investments; we think that’s prudent to do. We do believe, as the market improves, as revenue reaccelerates, we’ve got a business model that can drive margin expansion on a go forward basis. Adam Frisch – Morgan Stanley: This is a little bit different than I think the way the press release reads and the way the stock is reacting pre-market because the margin pressure in 2010 the initial view of 26% looks really bad and will draw a lot of pressure on this management team in terms what are you guys doing in terms of executing. If you’re telling me that the pressure is coming from a portfolio that’s coming in from the outside, the Custom House intangibles and investments which are another 50 basis points, overall the business looks more stable in 2010 than it did before, with the potential for revenue growth to be better given the current trends we’re seeing in the fourth quarter.

Christina Gold

President

You’re right. The C2C we expect margin expansion in 2010 in the core business. Adam Frisch – Morgan Stanley: The business itself looks a lot more stable than the press release is suggesting. I just want you to know the perception in terms of what’s going on out there and the explanation you just gave are two very different things. On the increased investment in payments initiatives, we think it’s necessary; we’d love to see that the increases happening there. Why only $50 million? The up tick is $25 million, where is that money being spent and why isn’t it a bigger number?

Christina Gold

President

We look at it in terms of what we think is a realistic target and where we really want to focus. If we look at our dot com expansion we’re really going after new markets and opening that up. I think we feel we have adequate funds to do what we need. We also look at some of the funds that we already have within our marketing and investment budgets and we reallocated it as well. We feel very good about what we’re investing. As you look at PSD because we were looking to see really strong revenue coming out of that later in the year and into 2011. I think we are in good shape there. The pre-paid is also going to accelerate as we go through the year. We will look at is as well dependent upon what happens in the marketplace if we see initiatives that we really start to ramp up very quickly we would reconsider putting more funds behind it if we see the return coming fast enough.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Christopher Mammone – Deutsche Bank Christopher Mammone – Deutsche Bank: In past calls we heard a lot about your various successes in renegotiating agent commissions lower and the benefits of that had on the margin. Could you quantify what the benefits of those initiatives were in 2009 and maybe where you are in the progress? It wasn’t a part of your prepared remarks so I wonder how much more do you have to do there, can you do there, and how will that help stem the tide of some of these other margin pressures in 2010?

Christina Gold

President

I think the important thing is this is an ongoing process; it’s not a one year type of program. As we renegotiate contracts we really work at getting a better financial result in terms of how we renegotiate those contracts. Also a lot of new contracts that come to us we start at a different point in terms of commissions.

Hikmet Ersek

Chief Executive Officer

We sign agreements with better conditions with lower commission rates, long term agreements which benefit, also using new customers using that agent benefits our cost structure. Also with PSD, we are now PSD licensed in Europe. With the PSD license we are kind of the super agent ourselves and we have direct access to the locations with better commission rates, that’s helps also to drive our cost structure. Christopher Mammone – Deutsche Bank: On Custom House, you mentioned what the intended amortization was in 2009 was it $4 million.

Scott Scheirman

Management

$4 million, you’re right. Christopher Mammone – Deutsche Bank: You had that, what would you characterize as other acquisition related costs? If you exclude all that was Custom House actually profitable after the time that you brought it on board?

Scott Scheirman

Management

Within Custom House we had clearly deal costs to pay bankers and attorneys. We’re embarking on integration costs as we move forward. As we think about 2010 it will be slightly dilutive but as we leave 2010 we don’t expect it to have any impact or not be dilutive to our earnings in 2011.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital

Analyst

On the pricing pressure associated with the US marketing changes you made, can you quantify how much of that you expect to play into; I think you said three points of pressure from pricing during 2010?

Scott Scheirman

Management

On the pricing for 2010 we’re running at that 3% within that historical 1% to 3%. The DMT pricing probably moved us from a 2% range to a 3% range in 2010 because of the repositioning but well within our historical average and what we think makes a good investment in the business.

Darrin Peller - Barclays Capital

Analyst

To deconstruct the guidance you have for revenue, you’re calling for a range that I think is a little below some of the expectations. Just wondering how much conservatism is built into that. If we think about $75 million is probably the year over year comp that you’re going to have from Custom House maybe that’s a percent and a half of growth. Excluding that, you have pricing pressure, you pointed to about three points. Given where transaction trends are, seems to be somewhat favorable in most of your corridors this quarter versus the prior quarter. Can you talk about what’s going to drive the, what are the other components of the guidance for revenue besides those two?

Christina Gold

President

As we look around the world what we do as we develop that guidance we do a bottoms up from all of our countries and our 15,000 corridors so we do a deep dive to have a good understanding of where the puts and takes are on the forecast. I think we also see some softness coming from the US to Mexico business that is not rebounding. As we talked about today we do see improvements in Europe and other parts of the world. There are two areas where we’re focused, one is the Gulf States and the other is the Mexico piece. Those are our two biggest challenges. Obviously as we develop with the PSD and some of our electronic channels we’ll see some pick up in revenue and we’ll also see that pick up later in the year on the domestic side. We try to be as, I would not say conservative, but as balanced as possible because if we remember last year when we talked about revenue we always cautioned that the Gulf was always something that we were concerned about. It didn’t materialize until later in the year but it did happen. I think we feel that we’ve been very realistic in terms of how we put this together and a lot will depend, particularly let’s say in our US business in terms of the unemployment rates and how that goes over the next six to 12 months.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Julio Quinteros – Goldman Sachs Julio Quinteros – Goldman Sachs: To follow up on the assumptions for growth, the three percentage points of pressure from pricing looks like, based on the numbers we have, we have about 1.5% of benefit from acquisitions. Can you fill the gap then in terms of what the underlying transaction volume assumption is I might have missed that?

Scott Scheirman

Management

For the C2C business both from a transaction standpoint and a revenue standpoint using 2009 as a benchmark we believe the C2C transactions in revenue will be north of that number for 2010. As you think about your guidance or your outlook as you’re pulling your model together. We’re seeing improvements in the US outbound business, we saw some strength in the fourth quarter, and we saw Western Europe pull through, Russia, the UK, and Germany. Areas where we’re probably going to see some headwinds in 2010 would be the domestic money transfer repositioning, it’s the right investment to make but we won’t see positive revenue growth until the fourth quarter there as we exit the year. The other area is probably just some headwinds in the US C2B business that’ll provide some headwinds. Overall for C2C we expect to expand the margins and grow transactions and revenue north of where we grew them in 2009. Julio Quinteros – Goldman Sachs: Backing up a little bit, having gone through this cycle and obviously never having seen one quite like this for you guys. Is the sense now that as you look at 2010 is this model just going to end up being more of a lagging model, a lag recovery relative to what we’re seeing on the broader macro trends? Can you address that because it feels to me at least what seems to be changing on the margin for me is a sense that this is not a leading recovery story but more of a lagging recovery? Is there some way to think about that or help us think about how that dynamic plays out in your model in 2010.

Christina Gold

President

It’s very much focused also in terms of what regions of the world are having a difficulty. If we look at Europe we see the rebound and its come pretty quickly. We look at Russia, its coming back, even Spain is returning. We are leading there. Where we see the lag is more in the US and also in the Gulf, which was the question we had before. In the US we went in earlier and we seem to be having a longer timeframe to come out, particularly to Mexico. That’s really coming back to the whole issue to unemployment. We see the same issue in the Gulf. In other parts of the world we see very nice rebounds, we feel confident in our ability to drive our business there its just balancing the portfolio this year in terms of as different markets are in different stages of recovery and that’s been a bit of a challenge in why we have the guidance that we have in terms of our revenue numbers. Julio Quinteros – Goldman Sachs: To put some perspective on that, the mix of agents or the corridors, if you take US, Middle East and Mexico, what percentage of your agent base is that versus the other parts of the world and relative to revenue as well?

Christina Gold

President

We don’t really give that number. As you know, Mexico is about 5% to 6% of our revenue so that you can take it that’s a big chunk of that there. No other market is quite that large. Outside of the US that’s one of our biggest markets. Julio Quinteros – Goldman Sachs: When you look at the new channels obviously you guys are doing a lot in the mobile and the bank channels and everything that’s out there. Give us a sense on what you’re seeing there in terms of principals per transaction because it seems like that’s another area where the volume, at least the principal leverage that you’re seeing is probably lower than expected. Do you have any sense on how the new channels are comparing to what would be your traditional business in terms of the overall principal per transaction?

Christina Gold

President

It depends on the customers because some of our newer customers we see large principals but certain channels you would see less principal only because there’s more controls as it relates to managing compliance and also fraud when you’re dealing on the electronics side. On the mobile side we definitely see a smaller level of principal that’s just been what we’ve seen in the traditional of it so far. We see a lot of opportunity in the account to cash, as we develop that with the different banks because they know their customer that we can start expending the principal bands in that particular category.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Did you provide a target for principal growth expected in 2010 or even principal per transaction?

Scott Scheirman

Management

We did not. Our overall thinking just broadly as we think that that could abate somewhat from what we’ve seen in 2009 but didn’t give any specifics on that. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Still a premium to whatever the World Bank ends up coming out with?

Scott Scheirman

Management

We believe we’re going to gain market share in 2010. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: The investment spending, glad to hear you’re picking that up. You gave us some targets foreseen on some of the metrics there; I tried to write some of that down. How should we measure the success in terms of revenue? It sounds like electronic channel is about 2% now, where should we expect that for 2010 and similarly for Custom House, what should we expect there? What should we be watching for in 2010?

Christina Gold

President

If you look at the electronic channels most of them are growing at double digit rates in the electronic channels, Custom House we said we’re looking at double digit growth. We’re looking at very strong growth rates and they become more meaningful to our business. We will report on those numbers that I talked about today, we’ll report on them every quarter so you can track. Also later this year, we want to have an investor conference with all of you so we can also give you more information in terms of how some of these numbers all connect. We’ll talk a little bit about different metrics as we look at electronic and where we really want to take the business over time so that we expand our portfolio and our customer base. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: The Gulf Coast, it did sounds like it’s slowed commensurate with some of the Dubai news. Just to be clear, are you looking for transactions to still be positive in 2010? How did they look in November, December and even January if you could share that just to give us an idea?

Christina Gold

President

Overall for the Gulf we’re in really good shape in terms of our locations and our agents. We anticipate growth in 2010 but not at the double digit rate that we were seeing in 2009. Where we did see the slowdown it was really at the very end of the quarter after Ramadan we didn’t see the up tick come back and that’s really been the challenge. We factored that into our forecast for the year. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Still positive. First Data money order portfolio you gave the margin dilution that’s consistent with what you said in the past. What’s the positive impact on the tax rate in the fourth quarter and maybe for 2010? Can we tie those two together, lower margins but also lower tax rate?

Scott Scheirman

Management

There is definitely some impact because of the interest income on the munis as tax exempt so it factors both into the 24% to 25% range that we have for a tax rate outlook for 2010. Then also it was one of the factors why the tax rate came down in 2009. Although for 2009 it was also the tax planning strategy we put in place in 2008 and then more of our profits are being generated internationally which are taxed at a lower rate. It’s a combination of all those things that helped drive the tax rate down.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jim Kissane – Bank of America Jim Kissane – Bank of America: Trying to drill down on Custom House, it seems like its coming up a little bit short relative to your expectations. I thought it was supposed to be accretive and generate around 20% margins. Maybe you can drill down a bit.

Christina Gold

President

What we’re really looking at is we see the opportunity for us as being similar to the C2C business. We have the capabilities and we have the team to expand it so as we speak I think they’re hiring an awful lot of people on the East coast and the West coast just in the United States. The US is certainly under penetrated and if you look at Canada being $30 million it’s usually 10:1 so you can imagine how big the US should be for us in that business. We’re rapidly going after that right now. We are on our business case but actually putting more investment in early on because we want to make sure that we grow to that billion dollar revenue stream. Jim Kissane – Bank of America: Can you give us a sense on what your target for revenue in 2010 is?

Christina Gold

President

It’ll be double digit growth and a lot is going to be dependant also on new customer acquisition because it’s really the expansion that we have to see and their ability. We saw in fourth quarter we did see their average principal on some of their customers had slowed a bit but their customer acquisition rate is well up in the 30% rate so that’s wonderful and they have a real skill set at doing that. Jim Kissane – Bank of America: Given the impact on transactions in the US will you consider more aggressive pricing actions outside the US?

Christina Gold

President

No we would not. I think we would just consider, the US has been an issue for a long period of time. That domestic business is a very big business and it was really the problem of having every city had a different price; we couldn’t get a uniform marketing position. It’s still a very profitable business. The profit of that business is above the Western Union average so it’s important to us. As you look at other parts of the world, when we go into the intra business its only 2% of our revenue or less than 2%. The impact on our overall company to move intra to different price points you just wouldn’t see that, we wouldn’t be doing that. We don’t have the same issue. This is a long established business that really needed a re-look and a re-think and we’re very delighted to see all the levels of our business in the US starting to move in the domestic side.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Robert Dodd – Morgan Keegan Robert Dodd – Morgan Keegan: If I can go back to the guidance again and look at your revenue growth guidance, the margin was in line for me. The mid-point of that range looks to essentially be flat. If we take out double digit growth in the B2B that implies for the C2C business you’re looking down a couple a percent at the mid-point. Is that correct? If it is, with 300 basis points of pricing compression, again it comes down to the issue that it looks like your implicit volume growth numbers are up about 1% and don’t include market share gains against the World Bank.

Christina Gold

President

I think that we see growth and growth potential. I think the other thing, as you look at the revenue growth; one thing you have to remember is the domestic pricing is having an impact on our growth rate. It’s probably at about 100 basis points on the year so that’s there too. It doesn’t really show but that’s what’s happening to us, we don’t see the growth from that business until the back end of the year. Robert Dodd – Morgan Keegan: That’s included in the 300 basis points price compression.

Christina Gold

President

It’s also included in your revenue growth rate. You’re working on both ends. Robert Dodd – Morgan Keegan: On the currency issue that you gave us some color in terms of the 5% Euro move and some revenue. That, given we’ve got a little bit of a tailwind so far at least would tend to say that’s a driver for margin compression in 2010 as well. Is that correct? If so, how much of your margin compression is a result of the current status of the FX rates?

Scott Scheirman

Management

You’re right. That does pose a headwind on the margin. In our outlook we believe constant currency revenue growth will be 1% lower so on a GAAP basis we’re picking up about roughly $50 million, 1% on a $5 billion business so about $50 million of revenue. Our EPS outlook had no impact from currency. In simple terms, we’re picking up $50 million of revenue, no bottom line impact so that really does put some negative pressure on the margin because of that. Probably if you do the math its probably 20 or 30 basis points.

Mike Salop

Management

We’ve run a little long but we want to thank everyone for joining the call. (Instructions)

Christina Gold

President

Thank you very much for being on the call. Again, we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

That concludes today’s presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.