Matt Roswell, I'm part of the Fintech research team here at RBC. Thank you all for coming in. Joining me is Jim Eglseder. I know I mispronounced that big time.
It's all fine.
Eglseder.
I answer to anything.
He's Senior Vice President, Investor Relations of Corpay. Used to be known as FLEETCOR. And that's actually my first question. Why the name change?
Good place to start.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I think, a big part of it is fleet or fuel-related businesses are only about a third of the revenue today. When we went public in 2010 as the global fleet card company, fuel card revenues were 90% plus of the revenue, so it was very representative of what the company did. Over the years, over the decade, you know, call it decade plus, you know, the mix of businesses due to acquisitions and just growth rates of the underlying businesses are such that, you know, corporate payments, with the inclusion of the Paymerang deal that we announced, last month, you know, corporate payments is now gonna be almost a third, you know, 30% of the business. And fuel itself is gonna be just over a third.
You know, so when you include the businesses that we're in today, we're in vehicle payments, we're in lodging payments, we're in corporate payments, we thought that Corpay, the corporate payments company, was much more representative of the suite of products and services that we offer today. Secondarily, you know, we've been working on this for a couple of years. If you followed the company for any meaningful part of time, I think three years ago, we consolidated the branding in the corporate payments business as Corpay. You know, we had five separate brands there that we had bought over the years, and it made it a challenge from a go-to-market perspective when you were talking to customers, "Hey, why don't you talk to my friend who works for a different name company?" Why would I talk to them?
You know, but we did see, you know, a meaningful uplift in just name recognition, return on marketing investment, you know, with the consolidated brand, and we thought that now is the right time to change the whole company, as a little bit of skating where the puck is going-
Yep.
To use the hockey reference, versus, you know, where we've been historically.
Okay. And moving the toll, the Brazilian toll business into vehicle payments?
We think, I mean, it is a vehicle payments business. You know, while Brazil is geographically disparate, we think that what we've done in Brazil, where we've basically developed a vehicle payments, a vehicle-centric payments ecosystem, I can never get it right, around a toll tag or now more the app, is really, you know, where we think the rest of the businesses can go. Right? You know, so when you think about what Brazil was back in... We bought in 2016, we've been talking about. I've been here since 2018. They were talking about beyond toll and what that could be since before I got here.
Well, today, what we would consider beyond toll is now 30% of the revenue of that business, monetizing an extended network of over 6,000 different locations where you can use that tag or app to buy other things.
Mm-hmm.
Whether it's, just the toll, it's, buying fuel, it's paying for parking, it's purchasing insurance, it's using the car wash, going to McDonald's. You know, so it is a, a vehicle-centric ecosystem that centers really around the app, right? 'Cause we have, of these 7 million tags down there, we have, over 3 million monthly active users that are on our app, the Sem Parar app down there, which is, you know, one of the most downloaded mobility brands in the entire country, behind only Uber, Lyft, and one other company.
Mm-hmm.
So it's top 5 downloaded app for managing your vehicle. So we looked at that and said, "Hey," frankly, McDonald's came to us, the insurance company came to us and said, "Hey, we'd like access to your 7 million clients." And over time, we recognized what that is, and we looked at, you know, what we had in the UK today. Again, big networks of EV acceptance, the largest universal fueling network across 9,000 gas stations. We bought a company last fall called PayByPhone, with 2 million-plus active users in the business. And by the way, we have coverage over almost all of the vehicle maintenance garages in the country with advantage of economics.
Mm-hmm.
So we said, "Wow, we have really great assets in this country, so what if we expose them to a bigger set of eyeballs like we have in Brazil?" The thing I didn't mention about Brazil is, of these 7 million tags, 5.5-6 million of them are consumers.
Okay.
Right?
Yes.
Because it's not all businesses. It really was a B2B, B2C part of the business that we'd never really talked about.
Mm-hmm.
But we built and collected all these assets in the UK and including the EV network. Well, how do we monetize those assets in a different way? A, to provide better leverage to the assets we have today, and B, well, we bought all these EV assets, but we don't have any customers with EVs on the B2B side. You know, so how do we bridge that transition? And, and it was-
Mm-hmm.
It was kind of a bit of an aha moment. We looked at Brazil and said, "Wow, I think we can do the same thing in the UK. We just need more eyeballs." So that was really the idea behind the PayByPhone, is to create another, you know, vehicle-centric payments ecosystem there, where we can monetize the assets over a bigger collection of customers-
Mm-hmm.
And just go from there. And at some point, do we think we can do it in the U.S.? Sure. The EV transition in the U.S. is very far behind-
Mm-hmm.
Where it is in the U.K. You can't even see it in the U.S., so we've got some time, but we think the idea works. We have to prove that, that we can do it in the U.K. We're working really hard on that. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we have some breadcrumbs or proof points to demonstrate that it is working, and gives us, you know, another growth leg in that vehicle. So...
Okay. So in the U.K. right now, that's commercial?
Um-
Client base?
It's completely business client base.
Okay.
But we looked at PayByPhone and was, "Hey, guess what? Our, all of our B2B clients need to pay for parking in London or wherever they are, right?" So it, it makes sense, just on a standalone basis, to offer the incremental, service, if you will. But at the same time, excuse me, if we can, make it a twofer, it's, you know, it's all the better.
Yep. You mentioned electric vehicles. I was gonna get into it later, but might as well, might as well jump on now.
It's a hot topic. Obviously, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of time and energy talking about it over the last, you know, call it three or four years. I think the EV hysteria has largely died down over the last 12 or 18 months. The market's moved towards us. We've spent a tremendous amount of time and effort demonstrating what that solution looks like, primarily in the UK, because that's where the transition is furthest along.
You know, in the UK, I think we go to market now as Chargepass, the Allstar Chargepass product, which is a three-in-one product, where you can use the same app to manage your charging of your company vehicle at home, EV on the road, or use that same app to get your vehicle discounts and management if you're driving a gas or diesel vehicle tomorrow, all in one place, right? The three-in-one solution is the winning solution in the marketplace. We're actually finding that we can win just pure internal combustion fleets in the UK that we couldn't touch before because they were happy to stay with the major oils.
Mm-hmm.
Because they don't have EVs today, but they know they will tomorrow, and we can handle all of that. You know, so those solution works, and I think the real differentiator in the U.K. is with our add-on charging solution. And we bought a company a few years ago whereby that integrates directly with the electric utilities. You know, we put a piece of software on the charger in your garage. You authenticate the vehicle when you plug it in. It measures it. It knows exactly what it costs, and it pays the utility directly, and we bill our customer, which is your employer. So you, as the employee, never come out of pocket. And there's a tremendous amount of value in that-
Mm.
Just because, hey, what are you gonna do? Turn in your gas and electric bill and, you know, circle and say, "I estimate that I spent 27% on my gas and electric bill charging the work truck?" That's terrible. That's the whole point of a fuel card in the first place, is to eliminate the pay and reclaim process, right? So the ability to manage that on behalf of our customers, they've told us, is of significant value to them. And frankly, as we look at it, if you look at what we do in the vehicle business, what we, at its most fundamental level, we minimize the administrative burden of a fleet manager managing their fleet.
Mm-hmm.
You know, just in internal combustion world, you got 50 trucks, you get 50 cards, you set the control, you set the reporting, and it's kind of autopilot.
Mm.
You know, the fleet manager doesn't have to work that hard. In a mixed fleet or an EV world, that is a whole different ballgame. You know, so the value of what we deliver in that go-forward environment is actually higher than what we deliver in just a pure internal combustion environment, you know? So we feel very good about what we've bought, what we've built, what we've demonstrated, and what we've rolled out into the customer base today. And you can see the, on the economic standpoint, we get a lot of questions on relative economics.
Mm-hmm.
You know, EV,
Next question.
Fuel card company in the EV world, well, certainly your economics should be disadvantaged, and it's actually not the case. Because believe it or not, we've discovered over the last few years that electricity is not free, right? And even on the road, there's a markup there. We can charge a subscription fee to manage the at-home charging on your, on your behalf. Then in every quarter, we give you the relative economics that-
Mm.
you know, in a mixed fleet world, we're actually better off than just in a pure internal combustion world. So we feel very good about where we are competitively, economically, and the outlook for the business we've always believed was bright and that it was an opportunity, not a risk. And we think we've demonstrated, you know, the fact that it is an opportunity and we can take advantage of that versus the risk that, I think a person who hasn't spent as much time looking at or studying it might fear.
Why do you think EV is kind of being delayed here in the U.S.?
I think it's a big country.
Mm-hmm.
Consumers in America, I spend a lot of time thinking about the car business in general.
Mm-hmm.
I think folks want the flexibility and the freedom to go wherever they want, whenever they want. And it's a big country. So the made-up example I always use is, hey, your plumber has an electric truck. You know, he drives a Model X. I've never seen it, but let's assume your plumber drives a Model X, and you're the 4:00 P.M. call on a Tuesday afternoon 'cause your toilet's clogged. "Hey, yeah, I can't make it there tonight. Can I come first thing in the morning? 'Cause my car ran out of charge." You're never using the plumber again, right? "No, I need you here today. It's already 4:00 P.M. It's too late.
Mm-hmm.
Right? So just the, the uncertainty around that, you know, there's a lot of value in knowing when you guys are... They already give you a 2- or 4-hour window, which is ridiculous in the first place, right? But if they don't show and it's the next day, then you've just been massively inconvenienced. So I do think that, A, there's no commercially viable electric vehicle that's scaled today. In general, you get some vans, you know, the Mercedes Sprinter van or whatnot. B, the businesses manage everything by a total cost of ownership over the entire life of the vehicle. Electric vehicle is much more expensive than internal, internal combustion vehicles today, and while the ongoing maintenance can be lower, if there is a problem, it's much more expensive.
And at the end of that vehicle's life, when you have to turn it back in to the leasing company, if that battery has not been optimized over the life of the vehicle, now you got a big cost coming your way. So I think it's the complexity, it's just the, you know, how it's mattered, how it's managed, the availability of vehicles today. And if you think about it, a decent chunk of our business, you know, a third of our—30% of our business is over the road, Class 7, Class 8 trucks. I don't know if they're ever going electric, you know, 'cause the batteries that are notwithstanding the Tesla, you know, semi-truck, would be massively heavy. You know, those trucks are only used to move things from the port, you know, inland. You know, they're not used for anything else.
Or a cement truck or, our CEO calls them weirdo trucks, the cherry pickers.
Mm.
You know, the big trucks with the boxes on the sides that are out, you know, doing heavy machinery work and things like that. It's not near term, you know, and the Rivian's not making, you know, something like that. There's really no manufacturer that's chasing that piece of the pie today. They're all chasing the consumer. You know, the Rivians, the Teslas, the you name it, the, you know, the F-150 Lightnings or whatnot. The consumer is transitioning first, and that's where everybody's trying to make a go by the economic model and work on their cost infrastructure. So I think it's just gonna take a lot of time.
Mm-hmm.
Like I said, it's a big country. You know, I drive a Tesla. They say you can get 300+ miles out of it. No, you can't. You know, I get 200 miles, you know, road tripping up, and I have to stop every 2 hours to charge. As a consumer, I knew that going in.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I'm willing to deal with that. It took 10 hours to go pick up my daughter at school instead of 8. I forgot how long it took to go pick her up. But it was super annoying. You know, my wife was gonna go on vacation last week. It was a 4-hour drive. She wasn't gonna take the Tesla. She was worried about charging. You know what I'm saying? There's just enough... The Tesla infrastructure is fantastic, but there's enough uncertainty there.
Mm.
Like, well, if I don't have to worry about it, why would I?
Yeah.
Since we're talking about the U.S. business-
Mm-hmm.
The U.S. combustion business, can you talk about the pivot at SMB?
Yeah.
What you're seeing at the enterprise level.
Yep. I've spent a little bit of time talking about both of those.
Yep. There you go.
We'll take the enterprise level first. And frankly, that enterprise, that large fleet side of the business is fine. You know, you hear a lot of anxiety or folks talk about, "Hey, there's a freight recession. You know, what happens if freight, you know, doesn't inflect? You know, what kind of impact does that have on you?" And like I said earlier, it's about 30% of the business, and it's not really overly dependent on volumes and/or prices, right? It tends to be fairly stable. That business is working fine today. We did see a bit of a negative mix shift a couple of years ago, when the small independent driver went back to work for one of the big contract carriers.
We obviously make a lot more money on, you know, Matt's trucking company than I do on one of the contract carriers. So we did see that when spot rates cratered, but it really hasn't gotten any worse, so it's been okay. That business isn't a big growth business for us, because frankly, the economics of those large fleet customers isn't that great relative to Matt's towing company.
Mm-hmm.
When it comes down to it. So we'd much rather go sign up 50 Matt's towing companies versus, you know, one larger carrier, if you will, just 'cause the economics, penetration rates are better, economics are better. Before the pandemic, we had a very good field-based sales force, you know, traditional selling, knocking on doors, you know, banging phones, you know, trying to, you know, scare up new business, if you will. Into the pandemic, everybody was leaning digital, right? And we leaned digital after them, and coming out of the pandemic, nobody wanted to talk to anybody. You know, so we pressed the digital accelerator even harder, and that digital customer acquisition tool was largely pointed towards what we call a micro client.
Mm-hmm.
A customer with five trucks or less, you can imagine what that means from a customer perspective on what type of customer that is. Maybe running the business out of his basement, and they were perfectly happy to buy online or shop online, buy online, and service themselves online. But when times got tough, they were also perfectly happy not to pay. You know, so we saw a pretty meaningful uplift in bad debt, about this time last two years ago. And turns out, when we did the analysis, it was all... you know, 80% or 90% of the losses were with fleets with five cars or less. So we stopped out. You know, Ron, our CEO, was like, "Nope, turn it off.
I don't know what's going on here, but it's not good," and the return profile of that customer, given the loss content, is not very good, and that's not a very good place to spend any sales investment dollars. So we spent, you know, six months kind of chasing those folks around the, the barn, getting them out of the house, and making sure that we manage our loss content. Well, when you don't sell anything for a period of time, and you are a company that is all completely driven of growth from new sales, it hurts. You know, it's a bit of a reverse pig through the python as we look at it, and that's kind of what we're dealing with today. So it took time. We shut the sales channel down.
We repointed that digital customer acquisition tool. I kind of characterize it a digital customer attention-getting tool now, because we found out that a slightly larger customer, and that's not a large customer. I think fleets with 5, 10, 15 trucks, right? Not large, but, you know, bigger than under 5, were perfectly happy to shop online. They just didn't want to buy online, and we didn't have a sales force left to go talk to them and get them to buy. You know, so not only did we have to change, you know, the, what customer profile that acquisition tool or interest tool was pointed at, we had to rebuild the sales force, the sales managers, the salespeople, the process, everything. You know, so that's just taken longer than we thought. More recently, we're suffering from, you know, lower late fees.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Well, who pays all the late fees? It's the smallest customer. Well, when you chase them out, then you have to comp over those late fees. So all of that is coming together here in the back half of the year, where all these drags go away. You know, and you have later on all of the new sales that continue to work. I think I can't remember what new sales were in the first quarter for North American Fleet, but it was 12% or 16%, so sales are just fine. So once you get rid of the drags that are holding down performance, you get the comp benefit and you get the new sales benefit. You know, so we think...
You know, Ron, our CEO, said that that should be re-accelerating to high single digits as we exit the year and turning around in the second half. So, you know, that's what that's what we're looking forward to.
Is it a competitor that's picking up those micro guys, or is it going back to the worlds?
No, mostly what we compete against is just general-purpose credit cards.
Okay.
You know, every fleet has a way to buy fuel today. You know, in down market, a lot of them are still using, you know, the corporate card. "Hey, yep, here's the card, bring the receipt back and log it at the end of every day." You know, or, "Hey, I'm gonna give you your own card," and some other way to control, the fuel purchases. So I think that's mostly, what it was. And again, the fleets that we're chasing today, I kind of described, may not believe they're a fleet. "Well, why don't you use a fleet card?" "Well, 'cause I'm a flower delivery company. I have 10 vans. I'm not a fleet." But you can benefit from, you know, what we do with the control and the reporting aspects of it.
It's really causing those folks to think about themselves a little different, frankly. You know, having our sales motion is a little bit different to go after a different profile of clients.
Mm-hmm. Moving over to corporate payments. You mentioned earlier about how you had five brands in corporate payments, and you all came down to Corpay.
Right.
Can you help kinda unpack what's in there?
Sure.
'Cause sitting from the outside, it seems a bit like a black box.
Understood, but it's really pretty straightforward and simple. You know, when you look at corporate payments overall, it's about, you know, two-thirds cross-border.
Okay.
You know, we're the largest non-bank cross-border provider in the world. And the other, call it, third of the business is gonna be domestic payables, right? Domestic payables can take on a variety of different flavors, whether it's, you know, corporate card or pure virtual card or full stack AP, depending on how you look at it. Most folks will think about it as the full stack AP, which is a business we bought back in 2018 and have added to it over time. But when we look at it, you know, the cross-border business is mostly FX spread for international payments, right? 60% of that cross-border business is spot payments.
Hey, I've got a warehouse in Brazil I have to make a rent payment on every month, but I'm a U.S.-based company," or, "I have 200 international salespeople that want to get paid in local currency every two weeks." We can do that for you instead of using your bank. You know, the other 40% is gonna be structured risk management or hedging... Right? Hey, I'm gonna buy a business in Brazil six months down the road. I wanna lock in my currency today to make sure that I don't find myself overpaying for it relative to what I thought I was gonna pay six months down the road. You know, we can structure that for you, and there'll be a, you know, a risk premium, a time premium, and a currency vol premium that goes along with that.
You know, so relatively, as straightforward as cross-border gets, you know, it's not pure plain vanilla. We do have very good capabilities that can go up against, you know, most of the large banks. 'Cause most of the regional banks that we really compete against don't have any capabilities when it comes to, you know, cross-border. If you can find somebody that can talk cross-border, you know, if they don't have the depth of expertise that that middle-market customer wants, you know, it's hard for them. You know, and I think that's the other big thing in corporate payments is our customer there is a middle-market customer. You know, think revenues with $50 million-$500 million on average, $200 million-$300 million, so they're real companies with real needs that are underserved by the largest banks.
'Cause the largest banks want companies like Corpay, not companies like, you know, there's $200 million import-export company. Mm-hmm. Right? And so that's where we compete very well. You know, better people, better service, better products, better UIs-
Mm-hmm.
You know, down there. And the network that we built, you know, we deliver payments in 180 countries around the world, and we have in-country banking relationships in over 60 of them. So we can move a lot of the payment volumes in an on-us transaction. We don't have to ride, you know, the SWIFT rails, if you will. On the domestic side, we've got the largest merchant network in the business. We have over 1 million merchants that have agreed to take our virtual card for payment, you know, and that's where the interchange payment is driven from.
Mm-hmm.
Now, whether it be in a full AP environment, where I'm paying, you know, some percentage of your merchants with a virtual card or just in a direct virtual card environment, where I'm only paying some of your invoices, I don't see them all, down to a corporate card. We've got you all covered. But it is an interchange-driven model. So I do think that most of what folks think about when they hear your payables or accounts payable is the full-stack AP.
Mm-hmm.
You know, that business, you know, has been growing for us, you know, north of, you know, 40% since we bought it in 2019. Continues to grow very well. Frankly, that's what we go to market as. "Hey, I want your entire AP file, 'cause then I can see who you're paying. I can see who's in my network. I can see who you stopped paying this month, that I need to go try to sign up for my network next month.
Mm-hmm.
It's just a better value. In exchange for doing that, I can help you save up to 70% of the cost of running your AP department. Right? 'Cause you don't need other people. I do all the work. You know, we don't cut checks, we don't make ACH payments, we partner for those.
Mm-hmm.
But ultimately, in a very automated fashion, we can digitize your AP file and give you an automated reconciliation on the back end. You know, so that's ultimately what we do. So we help businesses pay bills domestically, and we help businesses pay bills internationally. That's simple.
What about on the other side? Anything on the accounts receivable side?
Yeah, I think we're much more interested in the accounts payable side. I mean, we have network advantages there. We have a merchant network, we've got a lot of advantages on that side. You know, receivables is not really on the drawing board today 'cause there's so much opportunity on the payable side.
Okay. You know, I have to bring it up, the lodging business.
The lodging business.
Struggled a couple of quarters.
It has.
What's going on?
There's a few things. One, I never thought I'd talk about weather, but I do like to talk about weather. We had some pretty tough weather-driven comps from, you know, the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. You can see that in the organic growth of, lodging at 26% in 1Q 2023. There were some decent weather-driven events in there, and why that matters is 25% of lodging is the airline business, and 25% of that is distressed passengers. So when your flight gets canceled on your way home tonight and the airline has to put you up overnight, you know, they might use our room if they're a customer.
Just the revenue from those incremental rooms is much higher than the room what I get for a pilot in flight attendant, you know, 4-5x type of thing. So all of those rooms come on at a pretty high contribution rate. In 2023, there was a lot of flight cancellations, and they used a lot of rooms. In 2024, there were not. In fact, there were some, but it, you know, it's just the amount of flight cancellations was super low. So there was, you know, a big drag from not having those high-rate rooms coming in.
Mm-hmm.
So that was one. Two, we've seen some softness, macro-driven softness, we think, in a segment of our customer base. We call it the managed business, starting back in 2Q of last year, call it a year ago from now. Right? Customers were just using less rooms. And we called the customers: "Why are you using less rooms?" They're like: "Well, we just have less business. Or we're being smarter. Instead of putting folks in the field five days a week, we're bringing them back on Wednesday night, just to try to, you know, tighten our belts a little bit. Inflation's high, cost of employees is high, debt cost is high. You know, it's just, it's just time to, you know, to tighten our belts a little bit." So we've been dealing with that. Hasn't gotten any worse since Q3, it's stabilized.
Mm-hmm.
But then, towards the end of last year, we were working on some behind-the-scenes IT changes, some database management tools, if you will.
Mm-hmm.
to write some better rules to show you all of the rooms that we have in our handful of networks that we have, versus just some of the rooms.
Mm-hmm.
Right? The customer was never supposed to see it. But when we flipped the switch to turn that on, it took so long to get through the algorithm, that it was slowing down the user experience on the front end. So you'd open the app, try to get a hotel for wherever you're staying, and we just spent, you know, for 15, 30, sometimes seconds longer, right? And you're like: "That doesn't work. You know, I'm tired. I just finished cutting trees and chasing tornadoes through everywhere, and I gotta get up and do it again tomorrow. I gotta sleep someplace." So they walk in and buy the hotel directly. So that's all fixed. We're behind that, or that's behind us. And now we just have to go get those customers to bring that volume back that they were using directly. The customers haven't left.
Mm-hmm.
They're just using, you know, less rooms than they were before, and we have an active campaign to go back and say: "Yep, we had some issues. We apologize for that. It's fixed. It's even better than it was before. And by the way, we actually have a new offering for you, you know, CLC Choice, that our CEO talked about back on the May call.
Mm-hmm.
which is a bit of a kinder, gentler, you know, more employee-focused option, if you think that would be more interesting to your employees and if you wanted to do that." So the product suite's better, the functionality of it's all better. We just need to, you know, firm up that softness that we saw, you know, in the back half of last year.
If airlines are 25%, what's the other kind of major verticals?
Workforce is going to be about half, going back to lodging. Workforce, well, I guess we're still in lodging. Workforce is about half, maybe a little bit more, call it 55, and then insurance is going to be the other 20, right? And then the insurance, we have medium, long-term stay properties that we put displaced homeowners in.
Mm-hmm.
You know, so when in Atlanta, when it gets really cold for 48 straight hours, it's not supposed to be below freezing there, and all the pipes in the apartment building flood, and they have to put you up someplace else. You don't want to stay in a hotel for 60 or 90 days while they fix your apartment, or your house. You know, we'll put you up in, you know, kind of a condo or something else. So we have a network of properties that does that as well.
Final question on the lodging side for me. Do you have a risk with the rooms, meaning you could end up with expense?
We do not. We actually don't buy the room until it's demanded of us, so we carry no inventory.
Okay.
So I think, if you look at some of the OTAs or some of the other players tangentially in the space, they'll buy a big chunk of rooms, then turn around and try to sell them, so they are at risk. Where that's not the business that we're in. You know, we're, we're a network business. We're not an inventory management or a resale business.
The pressure is all revenue solely?
Correct. That's right.
Okay, good. Just wanted to confirm that. Want to open up for any questions in the room, or I can keep going? Please.
Your thoughts on the market?
Busy. You know, we announced the Paymerang deal, background earnings. It's a full-stack AP company that we bought, that we expect to close the end of this month, beginning of next month. The deal—we think that, you know, we generate a tremendous amount of cash in any given year. Call it $1.4 billion at current levels in free cash, and we expect to put to work, preferably in accretive M&A, and if not that, buybacks. We've got a team of six, eight, 10 M&A guys. That's all they do is shake bushes and, you know, due diligence companies, and we're interested in everything until we're not. But ultimately, their plate is full. We think the market continues to move towards us, especially in the corporate payment space, where we're mostly focused today.
High valuations coming down, investments in portfolios are getting long in the tooth, and we got a lot of money to spend. You know, so we've got $ billions and billions to spend over the next, call it, three or four years over the medium term, and would love to be able to put that to work. So, ultimately, it's, it takes two to tango. So companies are sold, not necessarily bought. And we do think that time is our friend and on our side, and then we'll get more at-bats and more opportunities the longer this, you know, higher interest rate environment, you know, capital scarcity drags on, so.
So in the lead business, you've seen some issues with micro customers. Are there any patterns in the other segments that you see?
No, everything in the rest of the segments are just fine, right? That's... And again, it's very concentrated just in that microclient space, and unfortunately, those microclients tend to be pretty profitable. So like I said earlier, when you don't sell, you know, a lot of those clients, for a period of time, you know, it hurts for a longer period of time as you get through that. Sales are good, and the, the beauty of a recurring revenue environment is that, hey, when you sell a customer in the first quarter, you get all the revenue through the second, the third, and the fourth quarter. Then you sell a customer in the second quarter, you get all the revenue for the second, the third, and the fourth quarter.
It snowballs on itself throughout the year, and that's part of the driver of the inflection in the back half of the year. It's easier comps than just the snowball effect of the sales that we sell throughout the year.
Circling back to the strategic review you went through last year, what did you learn, and what was kind of the conclusion?
You know, it was actually very good for Ron and the board and the company to go through that. You know, Ron is probably the most strategic, one of the most strategic CEOs in the business today, and wakes up every day trying to figure out how to make the company and the stock go. But for us to, you know, spend that time looking internally, looking at every possible combination, sales, spin, permutation, scenario, it just frankly reinforced our belief that the businesses that we're in today are the businesses that we should be in today. What I think it did do is that historically, we might have looked for incremental growth verticals to add to the mix.
Mm-hmm.
I think you heard Ron say very clearly that we're very focused staying on the businesses that we're in today. It's lodging payments, it's vehicle payments, and it's corporate payments, with most of the incremental M&A appetite in the corporate payment space. So we've never, Ron and the board have never been more convinced that we're in the right businesses, that we're on the right things today, and we just need to go sell more and build bigger positions that we're in today. So I think it really was the ability to look around, look at every possible outcome and go, "No, we're in the, we're in the right place. You know, we just need to double down and work hard to build bigger businesses that we're in today.
How much overlap is there in terms of either clients or technology platforms between the three major businesses?
Not much in either. When you look at it, obviously, Brazil is geographically disparate, it's hard. Even the vehicle business is mostly either a very small business or a very large enterprise business. The corporate payments business is middle market, right? So they tend to focus on different things. When we actually did the work at the start of the strategic review, roughly 10% of the customers overlapped, used two or more products. They may not have known they did, 'cause we have, you know, three or four or five different brands, go-to-market brands.
Mm-hmm.
But when you looked at it, 60%-80% of the prospects overlapped.
Mm-hmm.
So there's tremendous amount of opportunity. There's a lot of relatedness of the businesses today, which is why we think they make sense together. It's just that we've largely gone to market independently, and there's some incremental upside to be had over time. But we still think, hey, we want to make sure that we continue to grow the individual businesses at the rates we think we can grow them at, you know, while we still figure out, okay, how do we capture some incremental, customer, revenue opportunity, you know, by introducing, you know, additional products and services that we have, so.
Okay. Well, thank you very much.
Of course. Thanks for having us. Appreciate the update.
Absolutely.
Great conference.