Hello, everyone. My name is Alexei Gogolev. I'm Head of Vertical SaaS and HealthTech team here at JP Morgan Research. And today I'm delighted to have the top management team of HealthEquity with us. First of all, we have Scott Cutler. He will give a presentation of the company's business. And then we also have Dr. Steve Neeleman, founder of the company, and also Jim Lucania, CFO. They will be here for Q&A. Scott, take it away.
Thanks, Alexei. Last year, this day came on day five of my CEO tenure. It's great to stand in front of you a year later with a team that's really focused on our execution. So today, I'd really like to start with to encourage you on what to underwrite, what I came to do, what we executed over the past year, and what we're building next. When I stepped in, HealthEquity leadership was already and platform was already at scale. My mandate was to modernize that platform into a true platform company. Over the past year, we've run a very focused and disciplined playbook, strengthening the foundation, driving engagement, and executing with discipline to create an enduring model. Let me ground you in why this is important to Americans today.
For those that are new to HealthEquity, HealthEquity operates the leading HSA platform in the US, serving over 17 million consumer-directed benefit accounts and over $34 billion in HSA assets. A core advantage of our model is large, independent, and deeply integrated partner network. We operate a platform with more than 200 integrated partners, creating a distribution advantage that's very hard to replicate. We focus on HSAs because they are the antidote to rising health care costs and affordability. Their tax-advantaged functionality for health care makes them personal, powerful, portable, and can save members and their families at every stage of life for one of the largest expense categories in a household's budget. Our objective is simple: empowering Americans to better Save, Spend, and Invest in health. That matters because HSAs are becoming more central to how health care is actually financed in this country.
To understand why that matters, let's take a step back and look at how the system is operating today. The U.S. health care system is moving in one direction: more financial responsibility shifting to individuals. As costs move to households, decision-making follows. That creates demand not just for tools that don't exist, but actually work at scale. In this environment, the best HSA experiences will shape behavior, drive engagement, and influence outcomes. That leads to the structural reality underneath everything that we do. Health care affordability is cyclical. It isn't cyclical. It's structural. Premiums and deductibles continue to outpace wages as costs shift to individuals. HSAs are the only scalable tax-advantaged instrument, purpose-built to help people manage health care dollars rationally and with more control.
Employers, policymakers, and households are all trying to solve the same problem, which is how to pay for care without sacrificing access or outcomes. And that is the macro reality HSAs were designed for and why their relevance continues to increase. In that context, the HSA moves from a benefit to critical financial infrastructure. So if HSAs are so important to American families and so critical to our health care infrastructure, how can we help improve access and market share? There are two structural levers. One is expanding access through better plan design and employer auto-enrollment and improving utilization through engagement. When access, contribution strategy, education, and digital experience are aligned, engagement materially advances. The value of the HSA is realized the first time a member uses it to navigate a health care expense.
We're beginning to see this dynamic emerge in the retail and Bronze market, where new eligibility is bringing participants into the HSA ecosystem. While early engagement patterns are encouraging and reinforce the importance of pairing access with the right platform, and that's where HealthEquity is uniquely positioned, helping plan holders not just open an account, but use it effectively. And that's why we're positioned to win. We're not just administering accounts. We've built the platform to empower members. Because when members engage differently, outcomes improve and the economics follow. At our scale, improving engagement isn't just a member story. It becomes a shareholder story. And when this happens system-wide, it creates a virtuous model where better member decisions drive better economics. And here's the operating system behind that value creation. Our business operates on a single reinforcing flywheel built around how people actually manage health care dollars.
It starts with saving. Members build pre-tax balances for current and future health care needs through payroll contributions, employer funding, and seeding, averaging about $1,800 a year. Members then spend on average about $1,300 a year on tax-free qualified medical care. This is a critical moment. The HSA isn't just a benefit to be realized years from now at retirement. It delivers immediate practical value at the moment health care decisions are made. Spending is where engagement begins. This is also where our marketplace comes into play, helping members make higher value choices at the point to spend. Over time, confidence grows, investing becomes part of the equation, and the account extends beyond a transaction into a long-term financial asset. This is one integrated system designed to compound. And importantly, the more a member spends, the more they tend to contribute, which accelerates the flywheel.
As enrollment and adoption deepens, three clear economic outcomes emerge. First, retention strengthens, not just in duration, but in relevance, as accounts become embedded in day-to-day budgeting decisions and health care planning. Second, activity and spending increase, deepening the economics as members use the platform with greater frequency and confidence. Third, asset retention improves, driving higher lifetime value as balances remain on the platform longer and transition toward a long-term investing behavior. Directionally, our most engaged members generate materially higher lifetime value than less engaged members. Policy and rates can be supportive tailwinds for our business, as we recently saw with regulations that expanded the flexibility and practicality of HSAs, but they are not a prerequisite to our model. What matters is how those changes show up for members. As eligibility expands and expenses become clearer, people use their accounts confidently, spend more intentionally, and contribute more consistently.
Importantly, we don't run our business assuming certain policy outcomes. We plan for variability, not dependency. At the same time, as the leading voice in consumer-directed benefits, we remain actively engaged in the policy conversation because expanding access to HSAs for all aligns with long-term health care affordability, and regardless of the policy environment, one thing doesn't change. If you're going to hold and move health care dollars at scale, trust has to be the foundation. At HealthEquity, trust is not an initiative. It is table stakes, and we've enhanced the HSA platform this year with advanced market-leading fraud detection, strong authentication, and end-to-end protection. That foundation matters because engagement at scale only happens when trust is embedded in the experience. With security in place, the experience itself becomes the growth lever. Digital transformation of HealthEquity is about empowering health care consumers.
Gen Z and Millennials, which today are a majority of the U.S. workforce, expect a mobile-first digital experience. This is a digital-native generation that understands HSAs and is actively trying to do the right things financially, but they're navigating real uncertainty. At our scale, meeting members where they are isn't optional. It's how engagement and contribution growth happens. Digital at scale isn't about convenience. It's about confidence. It's how we translate trust into action and action into compounding value. And the intelligence that makes this experience scalable is AI. At HealthEquity, AI is being incorporated into every functional area of our business. We've deployed AI in targeted high-impact areas like expedited claims, where AI drives triage and automation, are improving resolution times for members while lowering costs to serve. Operationally, AI is helping shift interactions towards digital self-service, improving responsiveness, reducing costs, and expanding margins.
This is a multi-year strategy, and we're still in the early innings. But we're still already seeing measurable progress both in member experience as well as cost to serve. As we extend it across the platform, AI adds momentum to this flywheel. It allows the model to scale without linear increases in cost while improving both member experience and operating efficiency. So when we talk about a flywheel that compounds, this is really about what's behind it. Now let's translate that model into other areas of monetization. As members move through the flywheel, each stage generates distinct complementary revenue streams. Assets in this system drive custodial revenue. Spending through the platform generates both interchange and marketplace revenue as members are connected to solutions. Long-term engagement and investing drives service revenue. As engagement deepens, revenue quality improves, more diversified, more predictable, more durable over time. And these aren't just long-lasting relationships.
These are measured in decades and not quarters. This is really how our business continues to compound. We're already seeing this flywheel in the data. Engagement is translating into durable platform momentum. First, let me talk about distribution strength. Two out of three new HSAs come through existing client relationships, evidence of partner trust and platform resonance. Second, digital adoption. We've surpassed three million member app downloads, accelerating this shift to a mobile-first experience, and we can deliver guidance the moment that decisions are made. Third, spend and everyday usage. Members are spending roughly $15 billion annually on our platform. And importantly, they're replenishing more than they're spending. That matters because it is the clearest signal that the HSA is being used today and not just being held for later. You'll see that in balances and in mix.
Our members have $16.9 billion in HSA cash and $17.5 billion in invested assets, with invested assets growing 29% year- over- year, evidence that as engagement deepens, members expand from saving and spending into longer-term investing behavior. These aren't just vanity metrics. They're operating signals that the model is working and the platform is earning the right to grow. So we're extending the HSA from a passive account into an active financial platform that sits at the center of how people manage their health care dollars. Why? Because modern health care consumerism is expanding outside the traditional system. People are choosing and paying directly for solutions like wearables, like the Oura Ring, diagnostics, first care, prescription therapies like GLP-1s and hormone replacement therapy, and that behavior is shifting a growing share of health care spend outside of traditional coverage, and it's exactly why our marketplace matters.
It puts HealthEquity in the flow of both the decision and the spend, connecting members to the right solutions at the moment decisions are made and creating new durable revenue streams aligned with member value. The objective is not complexity. It's simplicity. It's engagement. And it's delivering value at the point of interaction. And that's why we feel confident about where we're headed. So health care affordability is not a temporary program. It's a long-term reality. As responsibility continues to shift to individuals, the system requires a rational way for people to manage health care dollars. HSAs are the only tool that's designed for that role. HealthEquity already operates at scale. We've invested in the platform. We're executing. The market is still early in terms of adoption and engagement. And over the past year, we've been building on our foundation of technology, engagement, trust, security on the basis of execution.
The next phase is scaling that foundation so the model compounds. We believe we're uniquely positioned to expand through cycles, through policy shifts, through changes in consumer behavior, through the decades to come in health care affordability. So thank you, and we'd be happy to take your questions.
Great. Thank you very much, Scott. And we're happy to take any questions in the room. I can kick us off. And one of the big announcements, Scott and Jim, yesterday was the guidance for 2027. So can you elaborate on the decision to consolidate some of the updates that you provide and then simultaneously provide the sales metrics that you look to provide later in the quarter? Any comments on how you feel investors should what they should take from this? What's the feel in the quarter on some of those metrics?
Yeah, we're really excited about the momentum in the business. As everybody knows, this is a marketplace that has been growing in the mid-single digits, 5%-6% on an account basis. We believe that we can continue to grow faster than that based on the flywheels that we outlined in this discussion. Our guidance reflects what we believe is a plan that we can execute confidently. As we look at other areas of opportunity, particularly as you look at the EBITDA line, what we've been able to show in execution, you can see that over multiple years is our ability to grow the top line as well as to efficiently lower costs relative to that revenue growth, which is evidenced by the EBITDA expansion that we've been executing on over the last couple of years.
As it relates to guidance on the sales side, we communicated this last year at the conference. We will be giving our sales outlook right in a few weeks after we close out our year in mid-February. So we would expect to do that shortly. As we think about this market over the course of this year, there are two things that have been happening. Number one, it's obviously a macro tough job market, 600,000 jobs created in the U.S. this year, very low. But on the other side, given the trends that we're seeing in the challenge of health care affordability, what we're going to see is enterprises driving greater adoption of high-deductible health plans, driving their employees towards HSAs because it reduces their costs that have been escalating much faster than wage growth.
And so, again, that's going to be reflected in our sales numbers that we will announce, that, again, we're seeing good momentum around. And that would sort of reflect what we guided to yesterday.
Perfect. And looking at this slide, so your guidance implies about 7% revenue growth at the midpoint. What are the components of this growth, and how should we think about longer-term revenue trajectory on an organic basis? Jim, do you need any M&A to sustain this growth at this point of market penetration?
Yeah. Yeah, I think at the midpoint, obviously, you guys have a consensus a little over 1.3 for this year. So I agree that's where the guidance range is and how do we grow. The vectors are adding accounts. Vectors are growing contributions to those accounts, seeing investment balances grow, seeing greater spend through the platform. So that trajectory can continue. And I think the new growth vector that Scott talked about is the marketplace. So that's the way that we can drive a different growth vector into the service revenue line of our business. But obviously, we don't provide a long-term outlook, but you don't need to tell an interest rate story to continue that growth rate.
Steve, maybe switching to you, sort of expanding on what you have been seeing overall in the selling season. This enrollment that you'll probably see is going to be quite unique. You've got millions of ACA Bronze plans members now eligible for HSA. So can you talk about your strategy for capturing this new segment?
Sure. Yeah, so there's a lot of countercurrents this year. Obviously, we know what the employment's going on, but we've continued to, we think, perform well in the commercial markets. And then this is that crazy time of year where we have enrollments coming in all day, every day. So it'll be interesting to see how it all wraps up. Now, I will say that the other countercurrent beyond just what's happening in the employer market is this Bronze initiative, right? And so on July 4th, Independence Day, when the president signed the big, beautiful bill, we immediately, we'd been tracking this for a long time. Obviously, we spent a lot of time in DC, and we were there when they put the 10 provisions to expand HSAs in, and we were there when they took them out.
In fact, we had breakfast the morning that they were going to take them out with some of the legislators, and they said, "Yeah, they're probably coming out," and then we kind of really activated a lot of not only our own members and teammates, but really industry partners to go back and say, "Look, you got to get some HSA provisions back in," so they got them back in, the three, which number one is anyone in a Bronze or a Catastrophic plan is immediately HSA qualified, so their deductibles don't qualify them or disqualify them for that matter, and then the second one was that anyone that wants to have either free or very low-cost telemedicine with an HSA does not disqualify them.
And the other one is one that I think will take a little while to roll out, but it's pretty interesting, which is direct primary care. So you could have a direct primary care arrangement where you can see a doctor for anything from a sore throat to your preventative care. It used to be that would disqualify you from having an HSA. Now you're qualified. And so I think that's a really opportunity for synergy between kind of DPC-type companies and then HSA companies like ours. And so we're looking at all these different opportunities. But the one that was kind of the most immediate was the Bronze. And we knew at that point by July 4th that all of the exchanges had pretty much closed down any innovation, any changes.
The ideal situation, which we will see over time, is that when somebody picks a Bronze or a Catastrophic plan, which is immediately qualified for an HSA, that they click one button, and that sends the file over to us and we create the account. You all know we have the biggest network of health plans in the country, about 130 health plans last time we kept track. And so these are all vertically integrated plans or Blue's plans, and we're in a very good position when it comes to that. But because it happened on July 4th, we've had to approach it in a little bit different way, Alexei.
We've had to say, "Look, as you're enrolling tens of thousands each plan into these Bronze plans, we need you to begin to communicate these members." And so what we've done is, in many cases, we've worked with the plans to set up unique enrollment links. And so if somebody receives a Bronze plan, let's say from one of our Blue's plan partners, then they will get an email. They'll get sometimes snail mail. They'll log into the partner's site, click on a link, and then we'll enroll them in the retail account. We've worked really hard to try and work out kinks and bugs. I mean, Scott talked a lot about the security. Obviously, we got a bunch of retail folks out there, and you're not getting a file from an employer. It does raise the specter for potential fraud. We've also gone to market.
Scott had it, I think, on your slide, but we're giving people a little bonus. If they put in $25, we'll match it. And so as soon as you see that kind of thing out in the market, you do have fraudsters, and we have proven to fight all those fraudsters. And so even though people have tried to do that, we've been able to do it. So look, it's starting to come now. The exchanges, there were a couple of closing dates, and we're starting to see this flow from our partners. And our fingers are crossed, just like everyone else, to see how many accounts we can get open by the end of the year or by the end of our fiscal year, excuse me. But I can tell you that we are seeing flow in that.
And then the other thing we've done is we've tracked are these people actually putting money in the account, which is important. It's not just opening the account, but are they putting money in the account? Early signs are that yes, they're funding these accounts because the most efficient way to pay for your health care if you're in a Bronze plan when you have a significant out-of-pocket is to roll it through an HSA. And so it gets back to our Save, Spend, and Invest kind of platform. So anyway, I know that's a longer answer than you may have asked for, but I wanted to give you a little bit of look. We're going to then one last thing I'll say is it's not over because guess what?
As soon as we get through open enrollment in January 31, we're then going back to all of these exchanges, whether it's the Healthcare.gov exchanges or the 16 states or whatever that have their own state exchanges. We're working with our health plan partners to make it super simple for people to do it. We'll have a few months this time before we go into close-down season. And so I think next year, we'll even see a bigger bump. And we're going to learn how to get these people to fund the accounts because there's going to be all different types of initiatives. And then we're going to continue to pound on this direct primary care and the other opportunities. And so I think the thing that encourages us the most is there's huge opportunity out there, but we just have to kind of get the message out to people.
Any questions in the room? So Scott, I wanted to come back to some of the points you've made about the backdrop that we're seeing with unemployment levels. But as that relates to HSA accounts and asset growth, what are you seeing in terms of member engagement and overall demand for HealthEquity solutions?
Yeah, I mean, this is the big focus of this year, which is as we've gone to what we call a member-first secure mobile experience. We're building a product experience that's designed to be engaging. First, we need to make sure that it was secure. Second, all interactions, when you want to interact, come check your balance, fund your balance, connect with us. You have to download the app. You're going to do that securely through Passkey, and then we're going to get you into an engaging experience. The engagement is so important for a couple of things. Number one, obviously, awareness and education of the value of the account is really important. Across the industry, only 4% of members contribute at the maximum that's allowed.
So huge opportunity of growth for people to use these accounts as well as how is it that we can move them along the spectrum of realizing there's tax-advantaged spending available to you, which is well-advertised across marketplace and products and consumer products, that HSA FSA eligibility badge on a product, whether it be Amazon or Walmart or CVS or Walgreens or Peloton, as well as then moving those members to become investors. And why moving along that spectrum is really important is that if you are spending on that account, and again, as I highlighted here, $15 billion spent across the HealthEquity platform on qualified medical expenditures, that amount is refilled, replenished. And so it is a flywheel to contributions. So if you're spending, you're contributing more. And if you're an investor, you're doing both more. And so it's virtuous. It's not pulling out of the revenue stream.
It's adding to it, and that only is unlocked with engagement. Now, if we can get you into the vehicle of the future, which is the digital app experience, and we can get you to actively engaged on a very frequent basis, then we start to have a traffic funnel that then we can use for conversion in the marketplace. And so the marketplace is simply looking at products, programs, and services that our members are spending in other places, and they would be using their HealthEquity card or spending your own dollars to do that and saying, "What of those things can we bring into the platform and monetize that experience?" so GLP-1s, HRT, Oura Rings, just the beginning. We're a couple of months into this. We've seen thousands of members sign up for those programs.
And now we have a revenue stream associated with connecting those members to the programs, the products, the services that they're buying in addition to the interchange. And so again, and what we see in the data of that, which is, again, if you're buying that product or program on the HealthEquity platform, you're coming back and you're refilling your account. And so you're not just spending it down. You're actually refilling it, which again, is really important to the understanding of how this flywheel works.
And on that point, as you expand your marketplace offerings, what criteria do you use to select new partners and programs? How do you evaluate economic contributions of these partnerships relative to your core HSA business activity?
Yeah, so you have products that qualify for reimbursement, such as a bottle of aspirin as an example. You have programs that are available through telehealth that could wind up in a subscription and a prescription, which you need to actually go through a physician to get access to. And there are products that are available in marketplaces that would normally not qualify for reimbursement or HSA eligibility, but for a letter of medical necessity. So all of those things can be opened up and brought into our marketplace. As we're thinking about it, we're starting with programs where we think we've got a unique value proposition, which is, can we provide a streamlined access through a telehealth partner? Our telehealth partner is Agile Telehealth.
You go through an experience flow, connect with a licensed physician, and then if that consultation results in a prescription to a program, then that member would be paying for that program through that platform, and then we would be receiving a monthly recurring administration fee for as long as that member is in the program. And so as we think of programs, we started with GLP. It's the largest market of consumer spend. We went into women's health with HRT. And as we look at the other opportunities around skin, hair, labs, sexual health, all these opportunities where consumers need to go through a physician to get access to those programs, those are probably the most likely areas of expansion for us.
Slightly switching gears, Scott. So you've made pretty significant investments in technology, including your mobile-first strategy that you talked about and the AI-driven service enhancements. Can you maybe quantify the cost savings you achieved from AI services automation to date?
Yeah, so the quantification of AI and the service line is effectively represented by a couple of things. One is just, are we able to grow service costs at a lower rate than revenue or account growth, which we were able to demonstrate last year. Secondly, when you look at the interactions that we have today to serve an account, which is, it could be a member, for example, calling to check a balance, replace a card, lost a card, doesn't remember their password. That typically involves a call to our service center, and for many of those journeys and many of those calls, if it's repeatable, if it can be powered by data, we can augment that interaction to self-service through an agent, an AI agent, at a lower cost.
And so that takes from a phone-based interaction to a person to an automated interaction that is actually a better service for that member. The other area we highlighted is claims automation, which we've highlighted for a little while. We've been one of the first to bring that to the market. We get millions of claims that can come in via a paper receipt. Traditionally, a person would look at that receipt, adjudicate those expenditures. It might take a few days to reimburse that. Today, snap a photo. AI agent will look through that, immediately adjudicate it, and that reimbursement can happen in real time. And we're moving to a higher and higher percentage of our claims that we can automate through AI.
So those are a couple of examples of the opportunities around AI, but also starting from a place where today, most of our interactions today are phone-based interactions, and most of the things that we interact with our members on today are things that can be automated.
And then, building on that, so the mobile app and marketplace, they've seen very strong adoption. What are the next steps for driving deeper member engagement, and how do you measure the impact these digital initiatives have on your member behavior?
So it starts with the mobile download. So we want you into the app. You're going to be required to use the app. We want you to, obviously, you're going to authenticate through a world-class security experience that's seamless. You never even have to remember your password. You look at your phone, and you're into the app experience. And so at the heart of that, it's just getting our members into the app experience. Then we want to actually look at, like you would if you're running any platform, what is the active usage or the number of visits that members are coming back to, and how can we engage in a better way? We want to be able to drive those, not just for the things associated with your account, but actually connect it with health behaviors. And so it's really interesting right now. I'm tracking my sleep.
I'm tracking my steps. I want that integrated into the experience. If we can integrate those activities into the experience, we can also go back to the employers and say, "Look at how we're engaging with our members in their health journeys to become healthier. They're spending on healthier programs." For you, to the employer, this is a lower-cost, less risky employee that maybe you can actually fund additional behavior and rewards or incentives through that. So again, as we look at this as a longer term, get them into the experience, get them engaged, get them engaged in health and wellness activities and actions, and then turn that back around to our incredible distribution with our employer partners and show the value proposition of what an engaged member can do relative to your healthcare costs as an employer. That's full circle, B2B, B2C, direct-to-consumer opportunities that we are unlocking.
Maybe slightly switching gears, and maybe it's a question for Steve. Talking about competitive landscape, are you seeing any changes in the level of intensity among competitors and maybe any new entrants or perhaps existing players building up on some of the success that you've had?
I think a few years ago, we did see some of these retirement firms kind of really kind of get aggressive. I think part of it was because we were out there teaching the market that that incremental dollar, after you've got your match and your 401(k) and whatever, that should go in the HSA. And we're like, "It's crazy to put that dollar in a 401(k). If you got to take it out later in your life, you're going to pay 40% tax on that sucker. Put it in the HSA and top off your HSA." And so I think at that point, plus just the growth of the market, some of the retirement firms started to step in. Personally, I'm involved with a lot of these opportunities, talking to them. And I think that it's been pretty steady-eddy when it comes to what they're doing.
Now, look, these are strong competitors, and so we're always on our game. We've continued to double down on the point that, again, we get this network of health plan partners and things like that. We did see a few years ago people coming in kind of almost saying, "Look, we're going to do it yourself. We'll use our technology to compete against HealthEquity and maybe have the health plan offer." We've seen it go the opposite direction. We've now even recouped several health plans that did look at doing it themselves. And so, look, we never are going to let down our guard because this is a great market. You've seen our margins. They're public. We're the one company out there that's actually showing this much data. So there's always going to be entrants.
There's always going to be companies that come in that say, "Wow, I want a 44% EBITDA margin in my business." But I do think that we've kind of leaned in really hard with the things that Scott just talked about. We provide a different experience. Yes, we've got an increasingly world-class, and look, we're going to keep investing in it, investment experience. People can invest their dollars. It goes into some great offerings, and we're going to keep evolving that. We've done some things there to make it better. More people are signing up for not only our core investment offering, Jim, but also for our.
Registered Investment Advisor.
Registered Investment Advisor, auto invest feature, and things like that. But I still think at the end of the day, these are health savings accounts, HSAs. And so they're unique because people buy them to take care of their immediate healthcare needs and then a little bit longer-term healthcare needs. And so I think that's why you're going to keep seeing the big distribution partners in the space, whether it be large health plans, other distribution partners like that, or large employers that really want to take a sophisticated approach to transform the way that people consume healthcare, they're going to come to HealthEquity. And we're going to do a better job. We're going to do a better job every year. I mean, we've made great improvement in the fraud, big investment. We're going to be rolling out some great new stuff this year as well.
Thank you, Steve. And Jim, maybe one of the final questions for you. M&A seems to have been an area of very good return on that investment. But how are you thinking about capital allocation priorities for this year? What is your approach to share repurchases versus debt pay down reinvestments into the business?
Yeah, so nothing's really changed in our view there. I think we've got a slide in our deck on the web about sort of how we think about capital allocation. Number one thing is to fund our business. This is sort of in order of returns. Portfolio M&A, as you've said, has been an incredible source of extra return. We are the acquirer of choice in this space. We have been an acquirer for the entire history of the company. Most recent larger deal was BenefitWallet. Very, very efficient. Buyer and seller agreed on a price, and that deal we're able to lift and shift 600,000 accounts from the target's platform in three waves, place it on ours. We took on zero employees of the seller. We took on zero vendor contracts. We just acquired customer relationships.
And one day you were a BenefitWallet customer, and the next day you were a HealthEquity customer. So immediate synergy, and that's why it can deliver outsized returns. But we're also not going to force M&A transactions to the market by overpaying for it. And look, the long tail of "competitors" in air quotes in the HSA league table are a lot of banks, community banks, and credit unions. And at the end of the day, this is a deposit relationship that they have with those members. So I'm not sure there's a price that I can pay to drive out a deposit from a bank in this current market. So it's going to take some changes or just a realization that this is a non-core product that some of these banks and I'm either going to win those accounts organically or acquire them at a reasonable valuation.
So barring deals, pretty much all of our free cash flow has been deployed towards capital return. Over the past year plus, we have $600 million share purchase authorization. That was 300 and then re-upped another 300. We're an active buyer of the stock. And we've been chipping away, I would say, at the debt that we borrowed to do the BenefitWallet deal. We're obviously deleveraging by growing EBITDA as well, but we're also just chipping away at the headline debt amount on our line of credit. We have a $600 million bond that's just sitting. That doesn't mature for several years. But that line of credit is effectively our M&A swing line. So it makes sense to us to continue to chip away with it. But we think we're making very good purchases of the shares at current valuation, and we'll continue to do so.
Great. Scott, Jim, Steve, thank you very much for coming.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, everybody.