Good morning, and welcome to International Money Express, Inc. Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alex Sadowski, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Welcome to our quarterly earnings call. I would like to remind everyone that today's call includes forward-looking statements, including our Q2 and full year 2023 guidance, and actual results may differ materially from expectations. For additional information on International Money Express, which we refer to as Intermex or the company, please see our SEC filings, including the risk factors described therein. All forward-looking statements on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of today. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. Please refer to slide two of our presentation for a description of certain forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update such information except as required by applicable law. On this conference call, we discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Information required by Regulation G under the Securities and Exchange Act for such non-GAAP financial measures is included in the presentation slide, our earnings press release, and our annual report on Form 10-K, including reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures to the appropriate GAAP measure. These can be obtained in the Investors section of our website at intermexonline.com. Presenting on today's call is our Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, Rob Lisy, and Chief Financial Officer, Andras Bende. Also on the call today are Chris Hunt, Chief Operating Officer, Joseph Aguilar, President, Latin America, Randall Nilsen, Chief Revenue Officer, and Marcelo Theodoro, Chief Digital Officer. Let me now turn the call over to Rob.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As always, we appreciate your interest in Intermex. We had another strong quarter building upon the company's sustained track record of healthy growth. On slide three, Intermex grew revenue and EBITDA in double digits once again. The key fundamentals that drive our superior operating performance quarter after quarter are trending in the right direction. Our CFO, Andras Bende, will review the numbers in greater detail during his portion of our prepared remarks. Without question, our core business is strong, and we are on track to meet our full-year expectations. As the public company's fastest-growing omni-channel remittance company, Intermex is positioned to excel well into the foreseeable future. As you know, the business we have built in the U.S. provides a differentiated value proposition to the Latin American corridor that is unparalleled in the industry.
Because of our unique value-added model, an increasing number of consumers from Latin American community turn to Intermex to send money home. Powered by our state-of-the-art proprietary technology, we deliver value-added service to our consumers and thousands of highly productive retail agents who partner with us nationwide. Our customer-focused omni-channel business is powered by superior technology that is difficult to replicate. The rock-solid foundation the company has been built upon drives our sustained growth and creates uncommon value for our shareholders. With all the elements of the La Nacional acquisition now closed, the integration of LAN's U.S. business is well underway, and we're well into the process of assessing the significant opportunity that exists for our business in Europe. While we acquired La Nacional primarily for its geographical complement and superior brand to the Dominican Republic, La Nacional's European i-transfer business presents an attractive growth opportunity for Intermex.
The i-transfer division is currently profitable. We see an opportunity to grow revenues and income many times over. Where our digital business in the U.S. is demonstrating strong growth, the digital opportunity is likely larger and a nearer-term target for us in Europe. The i-transfer business represents a significant digital opportunity with minimal risk of channel conflict. The consumer base of senders is more likely to be banked in Europe. This will present the perfect landscape for us to thoughtfully execute our omni-channel strategy. Across Europe, we can selectively focus on retail and/or digital when and where it makes the most sense, an advantage that few retail providers and no digital players have today. Currently, i-transfer operates in Spain, Italy, and one company-owned location in Germany, representing a tremendous outbound remittance opportunity. We think i-transfer's current presence, bolstered with Intermex's strategy and capital, creates a powerful combination.
We're excited about the growth ahead. As we have stated previously, there are a number of components of the La Nacional investment that will become much more efficient over time, driving higher margins. Simultaneously to seizing the opportunity in Europe, which is underway, we have made great progress ramping up the full-scale integration and rightsizing of La Nacional's U.S.-based business. The upside potential for La Nacional in the U.S. is more about rightsizing the retail network and maximizing efficiencies and margins. Growth opportunities will exist, but they will be driven by careful profitable growth. We are also instituting our disciplined operating rigor and efficiency to the U.S. operations. By that, I mean our focus will be enhancing margins by capturing synergies and eliminating waste wherever possible. La Nacional's U.S. footprint actively has been reduced by some 500 unprofitable retail agents under our management, with some additional reductions planned.
Shortly after closing, we also rightsized the sales organization to match the reduced service area footprint. Our formalized restructuring plan is in place, and we will be at a run rate of 9%-11% EBITDA margin by late 2023 or early 2024. La Nacional is proving to be a great asset for Intermex, and we're just getting started. On slide four, including La Nacional, prompts us to rethink how we discuss market share in the U.S. and Latin America. Adding La Nacional's substantial presence in the Dominican Republic changes the equation. Instead of tracking our share versus the market at four largest countries in Latin America, it now makes sense for us to expand that to the top five countries of which the Dominican Republic is part. These countries amount to 82% of the money sent from the U.S. to Latin America and the Caribbean.
We estimate our 2022 market share in these five key Latin American receiving countries was just over 20% when adding La Nacional. It further solidifies our position as one of the leading remittance providers in that market. If you look at slide five showing the top eight countries which represent 92% of the money transferred from the U.S. to the region, you see that Intermex has steadily grown our market share to almost 20% for 2022. Our priority continues to be expanding our footprint in the most important zip codes for our sending consumers with a differentiated value proposition for both our consumers and our agent partners. The majority of transaction growth is coming from new agents. When we recruit a new agent retailer, it provides incremental transactions in year one, but that same retailer will grow by larger percentages in years two and three.
A continued pipeline of quality new agents is critical to new store performance but even more important to same-store growth over time. Based on Intermex's superior service for both the consumer and the agent retailer, our share of the remittances within the store will grow as we become the preferred provider over time. To accelerate our 2023 growth, we have added more than 12 regional sales executives whose job is strategically add high-performance new retail locations, especially in the West, where the unfilled market opportunity is greatest for us. The potential for growth in the region is significant, and we're confident that our investment will prove to have an excellent return in terms of building our business in the Western states. In summary, it has been another strong quarter for Intermex. Our best-in-class retail core business continues to perform at a high level.
The addition of La Nacional's U.S. business and the i-transfer business in Europe has provided significant growth opportunities. We're excited about the top and bottom-line potential contributions of these two business units as they are rightsized and instilled with the Intermex approach to the market. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andras, who will drill down into the numbers and offer his perspective on our Q1 operating performance. Andras?
Thanks, Rob. Intermex had another strong quarter thanks to our competitive advantage in the marketplace and the highly efficient management of our growing lines of business. The intelligent, thoughtful investments we make in people, innovative new products, scalable technologies and new markets continue to drive the company's double-digit growth. We're executing a differentiated omni-channel business strategy. We're expanding our ecosystem of productive and profitable retail agents with a laser focus on efficiency, engaging in only the right partnerships in the right geographies. We're also rapidly growing a best-in-class digital offering and differentiating that growth with a focus on profitability as opposed to growth at any cost. On slide six, the strength of our underlying business along with the addition of La Nacional has driven up the number of unique active customers by 37% during the Q1 to 3.6 million.
These customers generated a record $12.9 million remittance transactions, 29% more than a year ago. On slide seven, within the growth of the overall transactions was a 68% increase in digitally originated transactions as strong customer acceptance of our mobile app continues. 30% of our transactions are either sent or received digitally, up almost 5% from a year ago. These numbers reflect double-digit growth in our core business and the contribution of La Nacional's U.S. based business. The international entities of the La Nacional transaction didn't close until April fifth, following final approval from the Bank of Spain, which we received on March twenty-second. The international entities did not impact the Q1, but will be consolidated for the majority of Q2 in line with our expectations and our previous guidance.
Adding to Rob's comments, we think adding La Nacional to our portfolio is an excellent use of capital, and we're excited about what we've achieved to date and what lies ahead for us. We're confident in our ability to capitalize on material opportunities the business presents to us in both the U.S. and Europe. That the business is entirely under our management, we're excited about enhancing profitability in the U.S. and providing capital and strategy to fuel growth for i-transfer in Europe. On Slide eight, total principal transferred grew 22% to $5.3 billion, driven by the strength of our core business, coupled with the addition of La Nacional. The average remittance amount was down 5% for the quarter year-over-year at $415 per transaction.
The decline is primarily due to lower average transaction amounts to the Dominican Republic, which are now a larger share of our business since the acquisition of La Nacional. Our core remittance trend continues to be down only slightly, about 0.8%. For comparison purposes, the core Intermex average send was $433 during the quarter, compared with $301 for La Nacional. As Rob mentioned earlier, with La Nacional fully consolidated, it now makes sense to look at the five largest markets in Latin America and the Caribbean where we compete. Our market share is up 150 basis points from the Q1 of last year to over 21%.
On Slide nine, looking at the top line, agent and customer growth contributed to the 27% year-over-year increase in revenue, reaching $145.4 million during the three-month period. As for the contribution to revenue from our digital business, we continue to thoughtfully pace spending around our app and online offerings to match or stay ahead of consumer acceptance. We're successfully growing the digital business efficiently and profitably with the revenue contribution of digitally originated transactions up 79% year-on-year in the Q1. We keep a tight pulse on consumer behavior, which positions us to intelligently invest in digital, always ensuring the unit economics are there to support it. It was a very good quarter and growth in the business was strong. It's worth mentioning, however, that net income growth, while in line with our expectations, was areas.
Seasonality in Q1 in the La Nacional business, higher interest and depreciation expense, and a higher effective tax rate did keep growth in check. Net income was up just under 1% at $11.8 million. GAAP EPS growth was better at about 3%, driven by our opportunistic stock buyback activity. Looking at Slide 10, Adjusted EBITDA increased more than 16% to $24.1 million, benefiting from strong revenue growth, partially offset by that same seasonality exhibited by La Nacional and an exceptionally strong February 2022, which made for a challenging comp within the quarter. Adjusted net income was up 6% during the 1st quarter to $14.2 million, impacted by the same underlying drivers as GAAP net income. Excludes items like share-based compensation, transaction-related expenses, amortization of certain intangibles, and the tax impacts related to those items.
Turning to the balance sheet on Slide 11, Intermex continues to be an efficient operator and strong generator of cash. The company ended the quarter on a Friday with a cash balance of $85.5 million. It's worth it to mention that Friday is the operational low point weekly for cash balance for the business. Net Free Cash Generated is our internal measure, which excludes working capital cyclicality, and it remained strong during the quarter at almost $14 million, an increase of more than 37% from the Q1 of last year. From a buyback perspective, we continue to be active in the market during the three-month period, purchasing 316,000 shares for just under $7.6 million at an average price of $23.95 per share.
Additionally, we previously disclosed it in our Q4 call, but it's worth mentioning again, the board recently authorized an additional $100 million for share repurchases. The opportunistic buyback program is another excellent use of capital, and we anticipate remaining active. The company has repurchased over 3.1 million shares for about $66.9 million. This includes the original $40 million authorization in 2021 and amounts repurchased directly from a significant shareholder in the Q3 of last year. Also worth mentioning is the recent April upsize of the revolving line without our credit facility, which now has a capacity of $220 million, up from $150 million. This additional capacity gives us more flexibility to grow organically and through M&A while also creating additional room for opportunistic buybacks.
On slide number 12, we're holding firm on our guidance for the full year based on our positive Q1 results. We'll go through it once again today. For the year, we expect the following: revenue to be in the $667 million-$688.5 million range, an increase of 22%-26%. Net income of $66.5 million-$69 million, an increase of 16%-20%. Adjusted EBITDA in the $120 million-$124.5 million range, an increase of 14%-18%. For the Q2, we expect the following: revenue to be in the $168.6 million-$174.1 million range, an increase of 23%-27%. Net income of $16.8 million-$17.1 million, an increase of 5%-7%.
Adjusted EBITDA in the $30.7 million-$31.4 million range, an increase of 11%-14%. This guidance considers the full impact of La Nacional, the U.S. business that closed in the Q4 , and the international business we just closed at the start of Q2. We also want to highlight that starting with our Q2 earnings release, we'll start to communicate guidance in the following three metrics: revenue, EPS, and Adjusted EBITDA. In summary, we continue to execute and feel well-positioned to deliver another strong year for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for questions.
Thank you very much. If you'd like to register a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. You will hear a three-tone prompt to acknowledge your request.
If your question has been answered, to draw your registration as the one or by the three. Once again, on the phone, any questions or comments you may have, it is the one four on your telephone keypad. One moment please for our first question. We'll proceed with our first question on the line from Mayank Tandon with Needham. Please go right ahead with your question.
Thank you. Good morning. Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to first start, Rob, with the investments that you need to make in Europe to be able to capture the opportunity. To that effect, could you talk about what other markets you would be targeting on the send side, and who are the recipient countries in this case when you start to expand into Europe beyond the current countries that you mentioned?
The last part of it was who are the countries that... Say that again.
Just to be clear, I was wondering if you are also looking to expand beyond the countries that you mentioned, that La Nacional already has a presence in Spain, Italy, and Germany?
Yes.
Also from a recipient country, what are the corridors that, we should be keeping an eye on?
Got it. That was the question I was wondering with the last part. Okay. Yes. There's a huge amount of opportunity as we've looked at it from first pass in Spain and in Italy. Right now we've just really just cracked the seal in Germany. We only have one company-owned store, and so there's a lot to work through in those three countries. But in addition to that, France would be certainly a country we would expand to in the longer run, possibly U.K. The first piece is, you know, there's room in those three countries to expand greatly. Actually, you know, we do more business today in Spain than in Italy. Italy is actually a bigger outbound market, and Spain's not exactly, you know, a huge market share at this time. It's a fledgling business.
The good thing about it is, though, is that business, as small as it is, has been able to grow with its own power so far, and it's growing profitably. For us, what it'll be is a couple of things. One will be the sort of the efficiencies that we bring, a really targeted approach to who are the immigrants, where are they, how do we tap into them, how do we provide the value-added quality approach to drive wires. The second one will be investment, but we won't just invest. You know, we recognize today our efforts are not 100% efficient. There's opportunities to re-guide ourselves to expanding out Europe the same we expanded out the U.S. and create high-performing retailers that are capturing wires. That's the first part about it. The second part is, yeah, there'll be some.
We already go to deliver from Europe to a different set of countries than we do necessarily out of the U.S. Some countries will still be important. There's still some decent amount of volume going to certain South American countries and some Caribbean countries. Obviously, Mexico won't play as big a role in it. For instance, in Germany, you wouldn't necessarily know, but one of the biggest partners, one of the biggest corridors would be Turkey. We'll work to get a better relationship to send money back to Turkey. A lot of money going to Sub-Saharan Africa, some money going over to Asia, money going over to Eastern Europe. We have some solid relationships in that area today right out of the chute, but one of the things we'll be doing is building better connectivity with payers in those countries.
It's very easy to get bank connectivity. There's, you know, big networks like Visa and Mastercard that can provide that for everybody. The key will be to layer on top of that payers that will differentiate us as have differentiated us in the U.S., and payers that can do over-the-counter cash and can do various ways of dispersing cash, so that again, we continue with that omni-channel model that we've brought to bear in the U.S., and we carry that over to Europe.
That's a great color. Thank you for that. Just as a quick follow-up question, I wanted to ask on margins. You already are running ahead of the medium-term margin goal that you set last year. Just wanted to get any thoughts. Is there any reason to expect a step back in margins or have the dynamics changed, so you know, the medium-term target might be, you know, rendered too conservative?
Yeah. I think you're referring back to the Investor Day in 2022. I think we have an opportunity to do a bit better than those margins would have guided to. You know, I think as we increase the amount of business that we're doing in digital, you'll see a little bit of downward pressure. Obviously, from bringing on La Nacional, which is a lower margin business by nature, they've gone down a bit. I think we have the opportunity to do better than that.
Great. I'll get back in queue. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We'll get to our next question on the line from the line of David Scharf with JMP Securities. Go right ahead.
Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Hey, Rob, just to start, you know, less a question on kind of the quarter. I wanted to get maybe your updated thoughts on, you know, the slides regarding market share, and how we ought to think about, you know, particularly for the, for those top five Latin American receive countries. You know, how we ought to think about ultimately the TAM, the opportunity for you. I mean, as you think about how big this can get, you know, do you look at it from a bottoms-up perspective?
Meaning, here's all the underserved zip codes in the U.S. that are sending to these countries that we're not in and we can be in. Do you look at it more top-down in the sense that, you know, here's based on your experience, your sense for kinda what a natural ceiling is for market share? Because at 21% it's already pretty formidable. I mean, which way should investors think about the business as they try to assess how big Intermex's U.S. to those five countries can get?
It would be bottom up. To me, a top-down is a bit of a fantasy. It's a bit of an arbitrary number. We look at bottom up, and I think that my support for that would be that a consumer that's sitting in Salinas, California, doesn't care that we have a huge share in Atlanta, Georgia. We still have the same opportunity to gain share and get more wires from that consumer there. We look at what our performance looks like zip code by zip code. Frankly, some of these zip codes have more challenges than others, and we've talked about that for years. We're not as early of an entrant. There's some irrational exuberance of competitors that over-discount to gain what they think is share on unprofitable wires.
At the same time that we look at that, we see a huge opportunity of, you know, when we talk about our growth and the growth opportunity, we're not talking about attaining in the western states or in California anything close to the kind of margins, we've never projected that to the market, that we attain in certain states southeast or even the same market share that we have. We do recognize there's a huge amount of headroom and a huge amount of open field for us to compete in, and that is, that I think could still drive market share. Now there's two ways to think about that. One is, you know, Mexico and Guatemala, where we are clearly a market leader. Guatemala, we're the number one brand, we believe, in the world sending money to Guatemala of any kind, digital or retail.
Mexico, we're amongst the probably the two largest brands sending money to. There's also countries that are coming on with tremendous growth that have a huge upward opportunity. We've seen a lot of growth in countries like Nicaragua and Ecuador and Colombia. These don't have the same margins as Mexico, but there's a huge amount of growth there. We have those core countries that still have a lot of open territory, a lot of, you know, zip codes that are either not fully built out or not built out at all. You have these other countries in Latin America that we purposefully built that way because we started with the foundation of Mexico and Guatemala for a number of reasons, largest markets, most profitable per transaction, and this is just all part of that plan.
We believe there's still an opportunity to move our overall share to those big five. Then the next group, which includes countries like Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia, the eighth, which is like 90 % of the market. We think there's a tremendous opportunity still to gain share in those markets. By the way, those markets are also growing. There's gonna be growth by holding service, and then there's a growth that we think will grow faster than the market.
Got it. Understood. Good. Thank you for the color. Hey, a couple just quick follow-ups for Andras. Any input on the tax rate for the quarter?
Yeah.
We ought to about the year?
Yeah, no, that was a good one to note and talk about. With the acquisition of La Nacional, that is a lot of revenue driven to the New York-New Jersey area, so higher state tax jurisdictions. It's just apportionment. It's attracting more of our bottom line and overall tax rate. It's really additional La Nacional and the spillover from that concentration of business.
Okay. Should we think about the full year effective rate then? Is it...
Yeah, I think closer to 29 versus the 27 that you would have seen in the past is probably a better way to look at it.
Got it. Got it. Hey, recognize on the cash side, obviously ending on a Friday, I think as much as, like, half of your, you know, cash can get eaten up by pre-funding for the weekend. More broadly, can you update us on how we ought to think about sort of a conversion rate of EBITDA to free cash flow, what you're running at, you know, as we think about how much is ultimately left for.
About 60. It's about 60%-65%.
60-65. Got it. Then lastly, somewhat related, as we think about buybacks, can you also remind me, are there any covenant restrictions? I mean, I know some companies, you know, might have an aggressive authorization, they're limited by, you know, loan covenants. For example, you know, repurchasing only 50% of net income on a trailing basis. Is there anything restricting the level of buybacks in that area?
Yeah. We're unrestricted up to two and a quarter, two and a quarter times leverage. Then beyond that, we do get a percentage allocation of trailing twelve every year, even if we're beyond that two and a quarter. If you look, we would, it would be detailed in our past releases.
Got it. Got it. Perfect. All right. Thank you.
By the way, our covenant calculation isn't the straight up where you end on the quarter because we have that revolving factor, right? You're taking about a 14-day average, which, you know, would suggest that on average, our leverage is pretty low from a covenant perspective.
All right. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We'll get to our next question on the line. Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities, go right ahead.
Hey guys, good morning. Could you guys break out revenue from La Nacional in 1Q and what's embedded in Q2, just so we can understand the core revenue growth rate?
Yeah, no problem. Happy to do that. This is Andras. Q1 La Nacional revenue was $17.5 million. Then for the year, and that's all U.S., right? Then for the year, La Nacional U.S. is probably gonna be around $75 million, and then three quarters of i-transfer is gonna be around $12 million-$13 million.
Got it. Got it. That, that's helpful. We can back into that 1 Q core growth then.
1Q core growth is about 11.5% in terms of transaction revenue.
About 11.5? Okay.
I think, Let's get you, 11.5, spot on in the core business.
Got it. Kind of for Rob, I think. You talked about hiring 12 regional directors, 12 salespeople. One, how recent did you hire those, and what triggered that? You know, you've always had this very large outsized opportunity out west. I'm kinda curious what triggered the hiring of those 12, especially if it was, you know, really recent. I hate to pile on one more, but obviously the goal is to drive some agent growth there. Can you talk about what new agent growth has been and sort of what your expectations are for it? I know you don't give us an exact number, but just how we should think about the growth rate for agents.
Yeah. I'd like to start by saying we're never trying to deliver agent growth. We're trying to deliver transaction and revenue growth. It's really easy to deliver agents. We could double our agent network tomorrow. We probably have the smallest network of any company doing the kind of volume business we have in the market today. This is about driving revenue. Agents are our vehicle, and they're our channel partner, and we really respect and value them, but it's not about adding, it's about adding quality agents. I wanna just reemphasize.
Sure.
the importance of how we target in the right places with pre-qualifying an agent that we know or believe will deliver a certain amount of transactions, not just putting up agents. The second part is, it's not necessarily we've always had, and they're called RSUs, they're regional sales executives, and they're people that float. What that means is they might not be in an exact just district. They might be in Southern California, and there might be four districts in Southern California, and they're selling in two or three of them, or they might be selling in one. Randy will deploy them as necessary based on the open opportunities. Those open opportunities have been there, that's correct. There's no doubt about it. We've been working against those. This year, we felt that we needed to put a little bit more generation in new retailers that would be driving wires that would start to build the pipeline a little bit faster, particularly in the western states. We're able to put them in the plan and still be able to, you know, be in line with consensus. The opportunity was to do invest a little bit more in those areas. We also think that the marketplace has gotten a little tougher in the west. There's aggressiveness, as we talked about, relative to particularly some of the private companies, but at least one or two of the public companies that have, you know, been discounting in a way that we need to be more assertive to continue to grow our market share in those states.
All of those things being considered, that's where the investment comes from.
Maybe just a follow-up. The 12 were all added in 2023, like really recently. Are most of them out west, or can you say sort of what percentage of them are out west?
No, they weren't all added in 2023, number 1. Some of them were with us in Q4. They're not all west. There's a disproportionate share. If you think about west as Texas and west, there's a bigger share, but we have some in some markets in the east as well, where we have opportunities to grow our market.
Got it. Got it. Well, good to hear about that growth and, thanks, guys.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Once again, on the phone, so if you'd like to ask any questions or have any comments, you may do so now by pressing the 14 on your telephone keypad. We'll get to our next question on the lines from Christopher Zhang with Credit Suisse. Go right ahead.
All right. Thanks for taking our question. I had one on the value-added services that you highlighted at your investor day. Those include a co-branded processing, the GPR card and additional incremental products, including in the international market. Maybe can you give us an update on the size of the value-added service in terms of what portion of contribution they have on your overall revenue and what's the growth rate there and also with the La Nacional acquisition, what are some of the opportunities on the value-added service side you're seeing?
Okay. Well, we wouldn't consider them value added. We consider them products onto their own. When we talk about value add, we talk about all the ingredients of our core product. If we talk about the GPR card or we talk about our payroll card, those are fledgling products that are in early stages. We think that over the course of the next several years, they can be significant contributors in revenue, but even more so in terms of EBITDA. They're really high margin products. We think we're well-positioned because no one is really delivering a card to the Latin American community the way that, some folks have done through, you know, the Walmart and the, you know, with the little, the little hooks, the L-hooks and stuff like that. No one's really done that in our community of consumers.
We think there's a huge opportunity there, but it's really early on, and you're not gonna see a significant impact from either card, that's our payroll card or our GPR card, in terms of our revenue or EBITDA growth for, you know, a couple of years. It's gonna be a non-material, but it will grow. We're very satisfied with how we've been able to grow the payroll card, but at this point, it's a small business.
All right. I appreciate all the color, Rob. Just to follow up on the quarter, in terms of the unique customers at the end of the quarter, just a very slight decline from 3.7 to 3.6. Understand there might be some right sizing with the La Nacional acquisition or maybe some seasonal factors.
No. Can you maybe unpack the-
Okay. Yeah, can you maybe un-unpack the cost of the slight decline and also understand that you're more focused on the transaction, the revenue growth, where you delivered pretty robust growth in the Q1. Just trying to understand the semantics.
I mean, when we talk about... I wanna make sure you're referring to the decline. Is that a year-over-year, or is that Q4 to Q1 you're referring to, the decline?
Q4. Q4 to Q1, so from the 3.7-
Yeah, I mean, we've cautioned-
At the end of Q4 to 3.6.
We've cautioned all the analysts, like a lot of times, I can do it again, that sequential quarters do not work in our industry. The weakest month of the year is January, the second weakest month is February. The strongest months of the year, two of those are in Q4, October and December. By design, you're gonna have a lot more new customers. I'm pleased that we would be that close, really, to be honest. It shows that our business is doing better in Q1 than in Q4 with holding the line that close with that less of a business relative to how things seasonally are slower in January and February.
Yeah. That's still fair. Yeah. I do see that seasonality in the Q1 of 22, although in the Q1 of 21, it's flattish. I just wanted to make sure that's more seasonal, and that totally answered my question. Thank you.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I will now proceed with our final question for today. It's from the line of Alex Markgraff with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Go right ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just a follow-up on the sales headcount commentary. I'm just curious after the, you know, 12 or so hires that you outlined, how you're thinking about it for the balance of the year. Is there more opportunity or desire to kind of continue to add at that pace? Just any comments there is the first question.
Right now, we are on hold in terms of additional hires. We wanna make sure that we maximize the efforts. We'll have, you know, a significant upgrade in the number of people out in the marketplace, and the key will be to make sure that we're efficient in driving, you know, increased transactions and gross margins from each of those people's book of business. We could add more later, but there's not a plan at this point. We'll first make sure that these additional headcounts are driving and basically getting to a point where they're paying for themselves within the time period that we expect that to happen, which is kind of within 6, 7 months, where they're bringing in enough business that they've exceeded their cost, and then they're starting to be contributors.
Very clear. Maybe, Rob, just for you, would love to just kinda revisit your perception of the competitive environment and some of the various send markets that you noted across Europe. Maybe kind of a, I don't know if you can provide a similar analysis as you did, just a few questions to go around, U.S. to LatAm. That'd be helpful though.
Yeah. The question is assessment of the competition U.S. to Latin America?
No. Sorry, just around the various send markets that you noted across Europe, that, you know, you're currently in and kind of are looking to get a larger footprint within.
Yeah. I don't know that we have all the data. I think some of the same players are there. you know, some of the public. You know, three public companies that you know over there. There's another strong competitor that has some decent size, by the way, in a small world. and there's some small regional guys. It's equally... I would say from my early acquaintance with it's a market that's not unlike the U.S. in its fragmentation of some smaller players or regional guys. Think of the countries there almost like states and regions here in the U.S. Some people are in Italy, some people are in Spain. there will be and there'll be the three public companies will be there, obviously, that you're familiar with.
The game will be a little bit different, but the process that we go under, which is really to how big is the market? Who owns it? How do we get in? What do we get if we get it? We're, I think, different than almost any company in the industry that we don't aimlessly go out after opportunities just because they're big. Can we get that business? What do we get if we get it? Is there a return on investment? We'll go through analyzing that market and finding the key opportunities as we have in the U.S. that are the ones that can drive the business forward the fastest. It's really easy to go ahead and us to expand into 30 or 40 or at least 10 countries in Europe quickly.
The business will be driven by Spain, Italy, France, Germany, maybe another one or two countries. Our focus will be similar that it's been to the U.S., from the U.S. We focus primarily on Mexico and Guatemala. We drove tremendous volumes, a high market share and high profitability in that foundation and then built from there. It'll... You know, for us, I don't wanna sound like we're not concerned about the competition, but it's about execution, market analysis and awareness of the opportunities and return on investment. The same basic core competencies that we brought to the business in the U.S. played out in a little different marketplace. That's the way we'll approach it.
Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Mr. Lisy, we have no further questions on the line. I'll now turn the call back to you for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you all for joining us. We appreciate your time, and we look forward to talking to you all soon. Have a great day.
Thank you. That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation as we disconnect your lines. Have a good day, everyone.