Good. Good. Today—I was here yesterday. I got in Monday, and most of my companies are today and tomorrow. I had one yesterday. I kind of eased into things. Today we're, you know, basically back- to- back- to- back. Walks happened there yesterday, this afternoon. I have to see what's going on there at some point. It's been, it's a busy week. Be happy when it's all said and done. Cool. I'm going. I met, yeah. See you later. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. For those who don't know me, my name is Chuck Navin. I cover the payments and fintech space at Stifel. Joining us today from Flywire is CFO, Cosmin Pitigoi, and Head of Investor Relations, Masha Kahn. Masha, Cosmin, I really appreciate you guys joining us again.
Flywire continues to stand out as a global leader in vertical-specific payments from education, healthcare, travel, and B2B. Look forward to telling the story in a little more detail. Go through Q&A for about 30-35 minutes and open it up to questions. Just as a starting point on a high level, Cosmin, Flywire's model brings together software payments, ERP integrations, and a global network. When you think about Flywire today versus the IPO, what has changed the most from a strategic direction?
Yeah, and thank you, Chuck, for having us here again. It's great to be here. I mean, if you think back to the IPO, you know, we've made a pretty huge leap in terms of we started out being mostly a, you know, cross-border and mostly an education kind- of- focused, business. Now we truly are more of a unified platform, for, you know, obviously software and payments together. And so, we've sort of completely kind of transformed who we are. The second thing I'd say, we're much more diversified. I think if you look back then, we are much more diverse. We have travel. Now it's gonna be about a quarter of the business. Both healthcare and B2B are now growing healthy, and they are actually contributing to growth. Those are, you know, verticals now that we've added.
And by the way, with M&A, the M&A playbook kind of playing out where we acquire a company with software, and we monetize the payment. So we've kind of proven that through those two. And then lastly, I'll say, obviously, you know, much more profitable and, at scale. So margins, margins reaching nearly 20%, going above that into next year. You know, more diversified, you know, more profitable, proving, proving ourselves at scale.
You touched on it a little bit, but the company has often talked about how software drives value in payments. Can you unpack how that philosophy shapes your Flywire, your competitive edge, and enhances the value proposition it brings to customers?
Yeah. Look, it was coming from 25 years in payments. It was one of the reasons why I actually even joined the company. It was a big component of knowing that the software for us does is truly the differentiating factor. Others look at sort of software as an add-on to payments.
Yep.
I, you know, we think of it as the foundation to that differentiation. And look, it does a few things. One, obviously it creates a deeper penetration, a deeper connection into the system of record, you know, for any of our clients in particular, longer-term relationships. Second, it provides a way to obviously monetize more than just the payments. And then third, it does—it does create, you know, it's embedded into the process for those clients. If you think of just changing software is one thing, but software that, you know, that is integrated into a system of record, we are actually fixing an operational complexity problem. As a CFO, and since we do sell to CFOs, that's what resonates. I think that's also an important differentiator. It's not just building the software.
You have to actually integrate it to the system of record so you can tie the money all the way down into the kind of reconcile, which is important. You actually build the process around it and you fix an operational complexity. I think, you know, as we talk today too, I think we'll keep touching on this theme of fixing operational complexity and reducing cost for our clients that you can see in each one of our verticals. We feel that software does that for us, and it's a very unique differentiator from that perspective.
Great. Building on that, where are you seeing the biggest operational leverage gains across the business?
Yeah. You know, I think you've seen us continue to beat margins year- over- year. The business naturally has scale. As you add a dollar of revenue, a dollar of margin, you don't need to add the same level of cost. There are two or three different areas. If you start with the go-to-market motion, as our clients and the ARR gets bigger, and as you've seen us go into enterprise-sized clients, and as our sort of overall marketing machine becomes more efficient, you don't need to add the same, you know, another salesperson and another support person on the ground to handle that. We become more efficient in our overall go-to-market perspective.
Second, if you look at our product and engineering, as you can imagine, not just with AI, but just in general, we see opportunities to, as the platform goes to scale, you do not have to continue building more on top. You obviously have that benefit of the scale that you have built, and you can add more and more clients on top and volume. You know, going through peak just now in Q3, you know, as we said, like that was massive volume that we are able to handle on the platform. Lastly, in the G&A space, you have seen our G&A's has come down quite a bit for us.
There's a lot of operational improvement there, and we're making investments on running sort of our digital transformation effort across the company to build that data architecture and capabilities at scale that then enable us to be even more efficient with customer service. Again, AI helps there, but, you know, we've done machine learning kind of capabilities there for a while. So lots of levers to get us to continue. I feel that we're, you know, we should be able to continue to grow those margins over time.
Good. Just digging into the segments, or, or verticals rather, education remains Flywire's largest, but the mix has shifted, with the U.K. now overtaking the U.S. as your largest market. You're also expanding into continental Europe as well as Asia. Could you unpack the revenue contribution from each of the big four and how we should think about growth in each of those key markets?
Yeah. And we've tried to give a bit more disclosures this year, certainly with the macro dynamics. Felt it was helpful for folks to, and as part of my sort of approach to transparency around the numbers. Let me just break down kind of the top four or so. If you start with the U.K., the largest, we now disclose that they're about, U.K. is about a quarter of our revenue.
Mm-hmm.
This year, and it's growing kind of above the company average. Generally, you know, very large market, obviously we've got a good penetration there, very unique capability. You know, U.K. feel very good about the business. U.S., it's about 23% of the business last year.
Mm-hmm.
With, again, majority of that still being from international, but increasingly the domestic piece is growing much faster, offsetting that. U.S. this year, we guided to low single digits. As you can imagine, underneath that, there's a lot of growth on the domestic side that's helping offset some of the cross-border pressure, but also still gaining clients.
Mm-hmm.
Canada and Australia, we've said they made up about 15% of the business last year. Now Canada's been, you know, when we guided to this year being negative 10% across those two, that's mostly driven by Canada still.
Mm-hmm.
and, you know, Australia actually has, has done better than expected overall. and then lastly, to just wrap up the whole education component, the non-big four make up about low, you know, low to mid-teens revenue, and that's growing faster than the company average, again, as, as we continue diversifying outside the big four.
Yeah. I was gonna touch on that, and that's a good segue. Could we double-click on some of the markets where you're seeing the most opportunity, as well as what's driving that opportunity? Is it recapture from students looking to go into Canada or U.S., but concerned about some of the uncertainty?
Yeah. What we've heard from our, so we talked to our agents, which is another unique part about us, is that we talk to clients as the universities, but also talk to agents.
Yep.
Our agents have been telling us what you were hearing in the headlines too, that students are applying to more schools outside of just, outside of more countries, outside of just the big four. Right now we're seeing both in Europe, continental Europe, and Asia. Some examples: you got Spain, France, Germany, you know, in Europe, and, you know, in APAC, you have Singapore, Japan, and parts of Southeast Asia, all, you know, doing, doing pretty well. Look, the difference there, I'll say, is a few things and the drivers of it. One, as you said, we are seeing students looking to apply to more, more of these schools. Now, tuition is also lower in these, you know, other markets. Obviously, it's gonna, you know, and some are much lower than some of the big four.
The margins are still pretty attractive there. A few things. One, the competition, as you can imagine, in those markets is a bit more fragmented.
Yep.
It's more, you know, you're up against wires and manual things. The second dynamic is as these schools now suddenly get a rush of new international students, they're realizing, okay, wait, I can't reconcile these wires manually anymore. I need to move to a system. That system, the vendor consolidation approach that we've seen, is starting to play out also. You know, those are all kind of helpful in terms of driving that demand for our software, you know, in those markets.
Great. And just continuing with the education vertical, I wanted to touch on the macro narrative 'cause it's been a, it's been a very significant focal point. You know, from visa caps to policy uncertainty in the U.S., you've managed through these cycles while still growing double digits. How do you think about, how should investors think about the medium-term impact of these headwinds on student flows and revenue? And finally, are we past the worst of it, or do you think— do you expect —lingering volatility into 2026?
That's a good question. Yeah. One that comes up all the time, and we're, it's an interesting time to be forecasting in this environment.
Yep.
We do our best. Maybe talk through last year, this year, and then, as we're talking through next year, a little bit. Last year, Canada was still the biggest negative impact. You know, that was surprising for many, the demand destruction there. Although keep in mind that even last year U.S. was down also about 10% in visas.
Sure.
We were already kind of dealing with a bit of the U.S. being down there. This year what we have is we've estimated about a mid-single digit headwind. It still is, I would say a good portion of that is still Canada.
Yeah.
There's a bit of Australia and U.S. now increasingly in there, less U.K. U.K. seems to be pretty stable this year, not necessarily growing massively, but still pretty, pretty stable. Growing, you know, mid-teens, you know, this year, even with that mid-single- digit kind of pressure. As we look into next year, you know, again, we're not guiding yet, but wanted to just give some, you know, initial penciling, which is, you know, assume a roughly similar mid-single digit. Again, the last two years have been pretty much that. This time, and I think to your question, we've seen Canada now sort of hit the low in Q2.
Mm-hmm.
It's, you know, that was, you know, highly negative in Q2, and then it's been building from there. Hopefully less of a headwind. Australia, again, you know, we've continued to beat our expectations. That's, you know, as guidance for this year, as I said, very prudent, transparent, and data dependent. Trying to take a different approach to where, you know, we're trying to capture a lot of the headlines out there.
Yep.
To take some of that uncertainty out. Australia has played out better than expected, even though we started out thinking that it would be as bad.
Mm-hmm.
And so, it hasn't been that bad. Now, as we look into next year, obviously we've assumed a mid-single digit, which is a pretty large, kind of macro headwind. A lot of that, we would assume, could come from the U.S. Again, we'll have to see how it plays out. Obviously, the India channel is a bit softer, but a few things though that we're doing to offset that. One is you've heard us talk about, even in the U.S., we're seeing high retention. And so we're continuing to build that second, third year retention.
Yep.
Some of that comes through selling SFS, which then we get the full domestic kind of build, and then you get that in. Also, just continuing to cross-sell and build that capability. Second, look, if looking long term, I think to your longer-term question, we believe in, I mean, in speaking as, you know, myself too, we believe in, you know, somebody who's moved around the world. We believe in global mobility of talent.
Mm-hmm.
I think the best and the brightest are gonna go where the opportunities are.
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, that in a sense affirms or addresses some of the concerns around the U.S. that have come up through the year, which is around potential demand destruction in the U.S. I think the headwinds are what they are, but what stands true is, is it's still an attractive market for, for potential students.
Yeah. 'Cause they wanna come work here. To see to the extent that they're, you know, obviously a lot of the employment opportunities are here, that's still obviously a good, good market.
Great. I know the international business gets a lot of attention, but could you talk about the domestic business within the U.S.?
Yeah. So the domestic business in the U.S. is roughly, you know, $30 million last year. So it's a smaller portion, but growing quite fast.
Yeah.
As you can imagine, driving a lot of the growth. We have been very excited about it because it opens up a white space that just was not there, you know, for us before. Now that we have this platform, we have about 100 clients in the U.S. on SFS out of the 1,000 or so cross-border.
Mm-hmm.
We have multiple ways to get there, but this opens up, as you saw, a few things for us. First, you know, it's, it is a, you know, as us, you know, sort of processing all of the payments. We are no longer just the cross-border provider, but we are deeply embedded in kind of, you know, the end-to-end process for the university. These are longer- cycle kind of sales, but they're deeply embedded into the process, the system of record, and so forth. I'd say the other thing that is driving schools to this is modernization. Our platform is mobile-first, cloud-based, and it's just a, you know, a good user experience. Look, everyone's trying to figure out a way to save costs.
Vendor consolidation resonates, our collections capability, the payment plans, but the payment plans work help both the payers and the schools in terms of, you know, not, you know, being able to split that large tuition, you know, payment, how, you know, bill and however you want, but also helps the school manage that with the students. Those are all kind of helpful drivers for, you know, we're seeing this shift, and for us it's a big opportunity. Look, we've given the stat of we see a 2-3x gross profit multiplier.
Mm-hmm.
When we go from just the cross-border.
Yep.
To the full stack. That's, you know, what we look at. It's a bigger multiplier from a revenue perspective, as you can imagine, but even from a gross profit perspective, still very healthy multiplier.
It's a good segue. I wanted to double-click on the Student Financial Services, or SFS, platform, which is pretty big opportunity and brings a unique value proposition, which you've touched on a little bit. Can you talk about what's resonating most with the universities with that platform and how SFS expansion changes the economics and customer stickiness?
Yeah. I think a little bit like I touched on it, but, you know, the ability for the school to consolidate vendors, so not having one cross-border and one domestic, is a key, especially now that universities are under budget pressures.
Sure.
The same as, you know, all, you know, all of us as CFOs are looking for ways to cut costs. This is, this is one way. It reduces a lot of the manual work in the back office, and it helps us just, you know, overall end-to-end, again, reconciling to the system of record and that difference that we talked about. The software makes a difference in terms of being able to track that payment all the way in. It's not just getting the payment in but then reconciling into the system of record.
Right.
Collections and accounts receivable capabilities obviously then help. I'd say from a, again, from an economic standpoint, that two to three X, and so actually in the supplement in this last quarter.
Mm-hmm.
We did unpack a bit of the SFS both for U.K. and U.S.
Yeah.
I encourage you to look, you know, everyone to look at that. It's our, you know, our effort to try to continue on, you know, helping unpack that. The two to three X, the gross profit split— think of it as three different components. One is obviously now we, you know, we get more of the payment, kind of, the tuition payments.
Sure.
Which can be ACH or credit card. That usually would have a lower gross margin, still positive, but lower kind of technically, margin. The second piece is payment plans and the software itself, which, as you launch this software, you know, into the school, you start to, you know, people adopt payment plans, they realize, "Oh, I, you know, it's very flexible, it's easy for me to manage". We do obviously get some software fees tied into it. The third piece, which is interesting, is the cross-border piece, which actually we see cross-border increase.
Mm-hmm.
Whenever we sell one of these SFS, the economics make a ton of sense for the school. It hits, you know, by the way, the schools are the ones that sort of pulled us into this and they said, "Hey, look, I'm not getting the, you know, I want to consolidate vendors. I need all these capabilities. You guys are doing such a good job on cross-border; bring us in." The client demand, I would say, stepping back all the way, it's the client is pulling us in.
Yep.
in the U.S., in the U.K., increasingly in other markets.
Yeah. I would certainly refer investors to the disclosures, but I did want to touch on the U.K. a little bit because you're in the early stages of penetration. It's been a positive piece of the education vertical through the year, but there's obviously some concerns around the potential for moderating growth. Within the U.K., you're integrating across major systems like Tribal and Unit4 to move all the money, both domestic and internationally. How does this broaden Flywire's TAM and higher ed within that market and, I guess, extend the runway for growth?
Yeah. In the U.K., I'll start also with, you know, the competitive environment is quite different. We don't have the sort of three incumbents in the U.S.
Yep.
It is a bit more, you know, open space. However, in the U.K., and again, to your point, the supplement, it tries to outline some of this for the U.K. is there are different types of integrations in the market, and each are quite different. We are one of, you know, if not the only player who actually has worked to integrate with each one of them. And to your point, Unit4, Aggresso, and Tribal— those combined are the biggest ones.
Sure.
Tribal has kind of been the one that we've worked with for a while, and so it's, you know, driven a good amount of the growth so far. Unit4, we just, you know, launched four pilot. This is the way we kind of launch SFS was we launched with four pilots. We go live, they're live, through peak and we adjust the product and then go, you know, broader than that. We know there's huge demand. We have our conferences both in the U.K. and U.S. where we bring clients together, and when we show the capabilities, and again, we have it in the supplement, where it just shows even the simple student bill.
Yep.
Is going to leap forward with the capability that we're bringing. A lot of demand there, but we are one of the few that have integrations with all those different systems of record, which differentiates us again. B eing able to be, it becomes a stickier, longer relationship.
Mm-hmm.
Then you become embedded into the process of, you know, any kind of institution, which is quite different. Again, speaking as a CFO, it's one thing to just swap out a system. It is a whole other thing to actually change your entire process around it.
Yep. That's great. Moving on to some of the other verticals, you know, as Flywire's diversification story is taking shape, Travel now represents a quarter of revenue and is growing above the company average, which is crazy 'cause I think back to the investor day in 2022, and it was, I think, lumped in with some of the other segments and representing less than 5%.
Yes.
Pretty, pretty remarkable growth. Could you walk us through what's driven the outperformance both in the core travel segment and with Certify?
Yeah. That's a good way to think about it. There's the travel business for us, which was the legacy, if you will, luxury travel business.
Mm-hmm.
That's the, you know, working with, you know, travel operators, you know, destination management companies to plan. Think of, we talk about luxury travel, but it's really sort of multi-day bespoke- type travel.
Yep.
That the growth there, I would say, is mostly driven in a couple of quarters ago, we gave some disclosures about the components, the growth algorithm.
Mm-hmm.
The legacy travel that is driven by a lot of the sales motion.
Yep.
The sales team has been doing great. The pipeline, you know, is sort of building, but the product resonates. Once you get past a certain sort of tipping point, you have reference clients, you have bigger and bigger kind of clients, which are also growing themselves internationally. We are seeing kind of good growth. Also, from a marketing perspective, the marketing machine then identifies and is able to kind of drive a lot of good pipeline for us. That LTV to CAC.
Yep.
Is very high. Look, once we actually integrate and, you know, again, it's software that helps solve a lot of those complexities. It's not just for the client but also for the payer.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause it's, you know, obviously if you're, you know, traveling, you're able to know that, you know, your money made it or if you wanna split the payment, by the way, then you can do that. That's the same functionality we have elsewhere.
Yep.
That's been driving kind of the legacy growth. You saw it last year; it was up 50%. This year is growing above the company average. Certify, I'd say it's the, you know, it's the payments, Certify Pay, which has been they, you know, and when we obviously acquired Certify earlier this year, that part was, they had started on the path of monetization. That's helping. Just it's the whole sort of agreement to contracting to payment workflow is certainly resonating, and we're seeing that drive. As you can see, we've now exceeded the guidance on expectations for Certify every single quarter. A lot of that is sort of standalone as we build towards the synergies towards next year.
Yeah. You mentioned three layers of synergies; monetizing the $3 billion in payment flows, expanding internationally, and cross-selling. How are those synergies ramping so far?
We're, we're— let me just unpack each of them. I would expect all those to play out more into next year.
Yep.
This year is, you know, the business, the standalone business; is doing really well. The way we're validating what we're seeing is, on the payment side, as we look at, think of, you know, each different country, you know, they didn't, you know, the Certify team didn't have, obviously, the payments capability and the payment network we have.
Yep.
We are sort of lighting up each, you know, each of the main countries. And we are seeing that sort of value prop of combining the workflows and simplifying that into the payment working really well. That's good. On the international side, we are building the footprint for those teams to be able to cross-sell, you know, Certify in, you know, outside the US, where, as you know, Certify is pretty much all US.
Sure.
Our actual luxury, legacy business is pretty much all outside the U.S. Building that team— that's been going well. That's an area of investment for us. Third, certainly the product is resonating with these larger, you know, larger clients. You know, the entire kind of end-to-end process simplification is especially with the boutique luxury kind of hotels, we're seeing interest from them. Again, it's resonating with the larger names, but also with the smaller. We, again, that third synergy of being able to cross-sell in both directions.
Yep.
That's also playing out quite well.
Yeah. I think a point that's worth emphasizing within the travel vertical for those that aren't as familiar with the story is the fact that it's, in some cases, luxury travel, but there's a relative durability to it from an economic standpoint as well.
Yes.
All right. Moving on to B2B, you've called it your innovation lab, and you've now integrated the Invoiced acquisition, which is showing strong ARR growth. How close is that business to being a scaled vertical for Flywire?
Yeah. I mean, it's still, it's still pretty small. It was, you know, it was about 3% of our business last year, growing at almost 70%. It's, it is starting to prove that invoice to cash, the accounts, reconciling, you know, the accounts receivable, and recon into the system of record process. We're seeing that especially with Invoiced. And again, actually in the latest supplement, we did a breakdown for B2B 'cause again, we wanna make sure that folks understand that that's that vertical too. It is, it is still, you know. I wouldn't say it's quite at scale yet, but we are getting, we're starting to resonate even with, sort of, more enterprise- size clients, because that automation of the invoice, which, again, if you use the software, if you've seen kind of the screenshots that we've put up, it helps you automate which invoice do you go after.
Yeah.
By the way, that's machine learning. That's AI behind it. That's why we still think of it as, you know, that great, you know, engine, and it's starting to become an engine of growth for us. That 70% growth last year, the Invoiced acquisition, actually the monetization of the payments, which is, as you know, it's our M & A playbook. You buy the software, monetize the payments.
Mm-hmm.
That is one of the drivers of growth. I kind of called that out in Q3, ramping into Q4. We would expect this year, for B2B, to be growing a bit faster, probably, than the almost 70% from last year. Still pretty meaningful growth for, again, small, but good to see that team executing.
Yeah. Good. In healthcare, you recently onboarded Cleveland Clinic, which is a big win. Can you talk about some of the drivers that led to that win? As we look out further, how does healthcare fit into your longer- term strategy and margin profile?
Yeah. The, our healthcare vertical, think of it as, you know, what we've built is quite unique, and for a few reasons. One, we're one of the few that actually does three things. One, we have the affordability piece, which is the payment plan. And again, it's very similar to the other parts of the software, is being able to split the payment. If you get that bill from the doctor and being able to figure out, can I pay the whole thing? Do I split it?
Mm-hmm.
That's one capability. The second capability is the financing. That integrated financing, which by the way, we do with the partner, it's not on my balance sheet. It's integrated into the experience, so it's seamless. That's the second piece. The third thing that, you know, now we've added with Cleveland Clinic is payment processing.
Yep.
A lot of, you know, obviously everyone, once payment processing is one of the things that should be able to do, so we've built that in. That is one of the reasons you've heard us talk in this, in the latest earnings call, about that being a, a larger, a large component as, as, you know, as we, as we ramp forward, that shows up in transaction revenue.
Yep.
Look, for Cleveland Clinic, it's the end-to-end it's the, it's the fact that, by the way, we integrate with Epic and Cerner, and we're in MyChart. So, all those integrations is always— that's kind of differentiating factor for us.
Yep.
It becomes a true end-to-end. As you look forward, look, Cleveland Clinic, we said, you know, it's a eight- figure deal. Very large, ramping now. Most of the growth comes next year. Then we've got sort of the Endeavor cross-sell, which hasn't, so Cleveland Clinic is live, ramping, Endeavor sort of gonna go live next year and start ramping. Then we've got others like Cook County and others that we'll kind of layer on. The reference client, and just the, you know, having someone like Cleveland Clinic is obviously a big one, and that will re-resonate with others in this space. Feel good that the low teens growth this year will start to, you know, accelerate and even adjusting for Cleveland Clinic.
This should no longer be a sort of what it was before, which was a bit of a drag on growth for us.
Yep. I wanna switch gears to financial, and then we'll open it up for questions. But, you know, this year you're targeting 350 basis points of margin expansion, 23%-25% FX- neutral revenue growth. What's driven some of the financial outperformance compared to your expectations earlier in the year? And, you know, as we near year- end, how much, you know, what gives you the level of confidence in either meeting or achieving or exceeding those targets for the full year?
Yeah. Let me start. With revenue, taking the approach we have with guidance.
Yep.
Prudent, transparent, data, data dependent. You know, obviously we've done better every quarter versus our assumed macro impact. You've seen that play out sort of three quarters in a row now. That has driven a part of the revenue, a good, a good healthy part of the revenue upside. Obviously, underneath that we're executing well. Keep adding clients, higher ARR. We're building, we're continuing to build the engine underneath. Execution is solid behind that. A lot of that upside from macro is to something like you saw in Q3, we're letting that flow through, 'cause we're not spending against it.
Yep.
On the OpEx side and margin side, if you look at this year, actually OpEx, you know, remember we acquired Certify. So a lot of the OpEx in sales and marketing and R&D is actually coming from Certify. If you are adjusting for that, our OpEx would be pretty flat across the board this year if you were to kind of adjust for the Certify OpEx. That in itself tells you that obviously there is lots of scale. Now we started the year, you know, cautious around spending and hiring.
Yep.
Very disciplined. And now we're, you know, lots of opportunities to grow and to continue gaining shares. We're gonna remain very focused, but targeted investments in these different areas to continue to grow. All those add up to obviously continuing to grow margins.
Got it. Finally, as Flywire crosses into consistent GAAP profitability, how should investors think about long-term earnings power and free cash flow conversion targets for the business?
Yeah. I mean, from a GAAP and earnings standpoint, you know, it's not just obviously we look at EBITDA, but, you know, I also started to talk more about the profitability side. We're now past the, on the stock-based comp, which is kind of the other big line item.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we've now passed the four-year, kind of IPO, anniversary. I expect, you know, coming off of this year, stock-based comp was around 12%. I expect that to continue coming down as a percent of revenue.
Yep.
As we grow that, you know, more in line with kind of overall kind of headcount and, and sort of OpEx growth. That should continue to see then, you know, our profitability continue to go up. That is something that we're looking at from a free cash flow perspective. This year, you know, we have a few one-off items. We have the restructuring, the M and A, and others that sort of add about a $15-$20 million of kind of one, one time. The restructuring itself was about $9 million or so. All those are kind of one-time, non-free cash flow impacts. Looking ahead, we expect pretty healthy free cash flow to EBITDA conversion. Normalized, you know, we would see our free cash flow conversion a bit above where we are this year.
Again, that's a metric that I'm, you know, very focused on and looking to continue to unpack for investors along with the gap profitability. But feel good about both of those kind of moving, moving in the right direction.
Good. Wanna open it up to any questions in the audience?
Cosmin, I'll throw in one more.
Okay.
Out of that pocket. Obligatory stablecoin question. You recently partnered with BVNK on stablecoin rails for cross-border transactions. Could you talk a little about that opportunity?
Yeah. Look, I see it as two different things. One, it enables us to open up new countries where, you know, inflation's high.
Yep.
People use stablecoin maybe to save, to save money. It enables us to actually open countries that we were not, you know, maybe participating in. I see it actually as incremental to us.
Yep.
Second, from an economics standpoint, it's not necessarily the cost is not very different to some of our lower cost, kind of funding vehicles. It shouldn't sort of change the economics for us meaningfully. For me, the main point is we are going to offer choice.
Yep.
When our clients or our payers start, you know, are interested in us, we're gonna be out there and the partnership with BVNK will enable the, you know, we'll go live and we'll talk about it more. I see it as another opportunity for us, but it's mostly, you know, I see it as an incremental opportunity overall. Again, very exciting area. You know, we're gonna be very sort of client-driven in our approach to innovation there.
Got it. Okay. Again, Cosmin, Masha, appreciate you guys joining us again this year. Thanks to everybody in the audience, listening in.
Thank you.
All right.
All right.