Okay, we're gonna get going. We've got Chairman and CEO Dusty Wunderlich from PSQ Holdings. Dusty, welcome.
Thank you.
Dusty, you went from CEO of Credova to acquisition to CSO, Chairman, CEO, all within two years. A lot of acronyms. Can you just kinda walk us through, you know, how the board arrived at this decision, and what specifically, about your prior experience do you think it kinda helped PSQ on the path going forward?
Yeah. Darren, thanks for having me today. I appreciate it. The evolution, we were acquired by PSQ Holdings in two years in March 2024, and the concept was we were buy now, pay later, really serving underserved markets, primarily firearms, outdoor industry. We saw a really good match with what PublicSquare was building with the marketplace, and at the time, a lot of buy now, pay laters were combining marketplaces with their credit and payments offerings. We thought it would be a natural transaction, so we did the acquisition. I moved into the Chief Strategy Officer role, also took a board seat where I got to know the board better through that process.
Over the two years, we really saw the market shift, and there was less of a focus on marketplaces and payments coming together. For example, like Klarna, they had a marketplace they ultimately shut down, and it started to look competitive with a lot of the merchants that they served. We were seeing similar feedback from the market as well and saw that just at the end of the day, merchants want us to push traffic to them, and they want us to be a payments provider. The board made the decision in August of last year to make a pivot fully into the fintech division, which is where we were seeing the most growth, the best margins.
that kinda started the evolution of changing really the executive management team more towards what was the Credova team, which had the fintech experience. board ultimately decided with my background in fintech that I would be the best to serve as CEO going forward.
Great. You guys increasingly have kinda described yourselves as, you know, payments and financial infrastructure rather than commerce platform. I think a lot of that is kind of been sunset at this point. Can you kinda just walk us through the repositioning, how that happened, and I guess how far along are we through the transition?
Yeah. Yeah, it follows that story very, very similarly in the sense that the thesis of that marketplace and payments together was just really not landing in the broader market and, you know, where we saw the bigger TAM, and I would say just the more capital efficient way to grow as well. I mean, as you know, Darren, the capital markets have changed quite a bit. When a lot of marketplaces were built during the ZIRP days, and there was huge amounts of cash to be able to grow these and have losses for continued years. We're just not in that environment anymore. Fintech's just a lot more efficient with capital. You can scale it and grow it, much smaller people, less capital, resources.
that was ultimately kind of where the market was leading us, and we ultimately embraced it.
Great. I guess when you step back and you look at the broader payments landscape, how do you see the industry evolving over the next half decade or so?
Yeah. I think we're going through a renaissance time with payments. The GENIUS Act, in my opinion, has fundamentally changed the payments market, ushering in stablecoins. I think it will fundamentally compress the payment stack that we're seeing. You know, over the years, we've had just a lot of legacy infrastructure and players built into the payment stack. There's a lot of layers. A lot of this code was written in the 1970s and 1980s. It's buggy, it's slow, it's inefficient. There's fees on top of fees. What we're seeing with stablecoins is really compressing that entire payment stack, and that's going to really push more dollars into the merchants' pockets, more into the consumers'.
It's gonna make transactions faster, more seamless, more in line with where we're seeing, like, a Gen Z shopping going, where we're gonna need to see fast micro-transactions, things like that. We're really excited about being a part of that and seeing that change in the payments stack, and we believe a lot of our consumers and merchants will be some of the first adopters into the stablecoin ecosystem.
I guess as a dovetail, what sort of role will PublicSquare play in that? How are you kind of uniquely positioned to capitalize on that opportunity?
Yeah. I mean, for us, we've really built, and this is Credova to the evolution of PublicSquare, we've really built trust with a lot of our merchants and consumers. We've worked in highly regulated markets that have a lot of times faced cancellation risk, you know. So, we deal in those markets that want to look at new payments technology or ways that they can transact that's safer, more cancel-proof. So we've already established a leadership role in that, and this is where we think we will be, you know, really a first adopter in this. We don't have the risk of the legacy payment rails as much as other payment providers to where you're in this prisoner's dilemma of, like, do I go with the future or I stay with the past?
I think it positions us really well to adopt that, this new payment stack with stablecoins into our customer and merchant base.
I guess maybe double-clicking on that, on stablecoins, is that something that you support today, will support in the future? What's the legwork to get you there? Just maybe kinda walk us through that a little bit.
Yeah. It's not supported as of today. We're really looking at the lay of the land of the players right now, which I would say there's probably four or five that have built really good technology around stablecoin settlement. For us, we see the first play right now is just locking in distribution. You know, going to our merchants in our ecosystem, getting feedback, really locking down the exclusivity for stablecoin payments, and then really finding which technology is going to be the best for our consumers that we can plug into that. And because a lot of the payments infrastructure layer has the distribution problem, so we see ourselves kind of fitting in, being the distribution to whatever stablecoin technology really wins out in the market.
Got it. You've described some of your key priorities as improving unit economics, slowing cash burn, simplifying the message. A lot of that was talked about on your earnings conference call a couple weeks back. I mean, I guess, what does simplified look like operationally as a start? I guess, are there business lines or products still on the table for discontinuation beyond brands and I guess marketplaces would have been sunset at this point?
Yeah. Yeah, part of that's just focus. Going from before we had a marketplace division, we had fintech, we had brands, and that had our executive leadership team just very fragmented. Really focusing on the core business of payments and credit is part of that process. Naturally, going back to marketplace, D2C brands, these are very you know, capital intensive, human capital, both you know, from that perspective. For us going forward, you can grow fintech with a much smaller core of people. Another area that we're really leveraging in order to drive those economics on capital efficiency is AI. I know that's a big buzzword across the industry right now, but it's something we adopted very early. We were using AI in underwriting back in 2021.
We've continued to adopt it throughout the organization. One thing that you and I have talked about recently is that I think revenue per employee is gonna drastically change now with the adoption of AI. This is one area with focus, with AI, with operational efficiency. We drive more revenue per employee into higher margin products. That's ultimately gonna fall to less cash burn and better EBIT of business long term.
Here's a pun, but is that revenue per employee gonna go up because there's gonna be less employees as AI is gonna replace them? Or has it become the employees are you know more efficient? You don't need to answer that question. Anyways, can we maybe get an update on the sale process with EveryLife?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We made the decision in the third quarter of last year to divest of EveryLife. We hired a banker. We've run a fulsome process. Part of me being in my seat is I've been working on a lot of the same operational efficiencies with that business as we take it to market. We have a number of interested buyers that are deep into the due diligence process right now, and we expect the divestiture process to naturally happen over the next couple quarters. That cash will go onto the balance sheet to be reallocated to the fintech business.
Your Black Friday, Cyber Monday, PSQ Payments GMV was up, I think, fivefold year-over-year. That's a large number. Obviously, you have a small base. I guess, what does the merchant pipeline look like, you know, heading into the rest of the year, and how much of the revenue is kind of dependent on new merchant wins versus, you know, existing relationships or land versus expand?
Yeah. No, great question. Yeah, a lot of that growth was. I kind of break it between payments and credit. In the payments side of the business, traditional payment processing was a new business that launched November the year before. So we had, you know, to your point, a very nascent base, and that's grown considerably. We expect to continue to see that with payments as we expand that. The credit side's definitely more of a mature business, but we are seeing definitely shifts within that that's showing organic expansion within our current merchant base and credit. We're also leaning heavier into repeat customers in the credit business as well, which we've been growing that, which will have kind of organic growth within our current merchant base.
We see definitely, you know, more organic within credit, more kind of new merchant acquisition within payments. With that said, one enterprise merchant in credit can have a substantial material difference on a year-on-year growth. We still have some material enterprise clients in our pipeline on the credit side as well.
I guess as a dovetail to that, just going off script a bit, if you do start to support stablecoins effectively enable cross-border transactions.
Mm-hmm
In a much more fluid manner.
Yeah.
Does that open up a new opportunity for you guys? Because you're mostly a domestic-
Right
business today.
Yeah. You nailed it because that's where you're seeing stablecoins go first, is they're going cross-border transactions, which tend to be the highest cost, the most complex, the most regulated, you know. So absolutely, we we'll definitely look at that as an opportunity. I would say second to that is these industries that have traditionally been underserved or canceled by payments. But you nailed it. Those are the two areas, kind of cross-border and, you know, high-risk industries are kind of the first adopters in our opinion.
A lot of financial institutions have pulled back from serving the aforementioned regulated or politically sensitive industries. I guess, how big is that opportunity? That's kinda where you built Credova originally before you sold. In terms of just the financial infrastructure for those segments. I guess why is PublicSquare gonna be the leader there?
It's a great question. Yeah. When you look at the data, one in four Americans trust the banking system. That's come down from 50% in the early 2000s. We have a massive trust issue with the banking and financial system right now, and it's definitely been earned as we've seen 2 choke points happen over the last 10 years, and we've seen businesses cut off from their economic lifeline, you know, via payments. We've been able to withstand that in even publicly, you know, in the industries we support, and that has come through media attacks. It's come from congressional inquiries, and we stand by the fact that our merchants need to have trust in what we build.
We think we've proven to the market and to our merchants and others out there that we have the staying power. We're already organically seeing this now, Darren. Like, we just had a nonprofit last week reach out to us that got canceled by Stripe, for no reasons other than it's what seems to be kind of political reasons. They didn't like what the business was doing from a nonprofit perspective. We're already seeing that organic traffic kinda come into us as people get canceled, and that's why we think we're uniquely positioned because we have the reputation and staying power that we've proven to the market, which is fairly unusual in the payment space.
You guys put out Q4 sales guidance. You handily beat that. I guess, has the business hit an inflection point in terms of scale or not?
I wouldn't say specifically an inflection point. I would say we finally found our focus and when we proved in the fourth quarter, as we made those changes in the third quarter to focus the business on fintech. This is what happens when we have focus. You know, based on the TAM and what we think is in front of us, there's a ton of blue sky there that we still can grow into before we hit an inflection point. I think this is more of an example of what focus and operational discipline does.
Are there any kinda key short or long-term kinda fundamental trends that are positively impacting your business?
Yeah. I mean, I think it starts again from that revenue per employee, right? I mean, can we continue to take the base that we have with efficiency in how we run the business and leveraging artificial intelligence, can we go and continue to grow that over the next couple years without having to add any of that extra overhead? If we do that effectively, we're gonna see operating cash burn come down. We're gonna see Adjusted EBITDA come up. That's kind of our North Star right now as we grow, which will work throughout the rest of the organization if we maintain margins where they're at, which we think we can with the product mix we have.
How do you think about customer acquisition, CAC, with a lot of other kinda commerce payment platforms in the market? I guess, how do you get them to switch, is the first question, and then I guess what does PSQ offer that those others don't b esides maybe cancel culture?
Yeah. No, it's a great question. I think those that face cancellation risk, that's the easiest because it's such existential threat to business that you know, not to say that pricing becomes inelastic, but they also are looking for stability versus necessarily I'm shopping on price. Now, I think the fundamental issue that the payment space and even the bigger players made in regards to how they approach the market is neither on the credit side nor on the payment side did they combine those products. You know? You have Stripe, which is primarily payment processing. They partner with Affirm, for example, on the credit side and vice versa. A big part of our concept with bundling these was being able to have one set of pricing. You have one integration.
You know, it simplifies the process, and our highest margin is on the credit side. We can, you know, really look at payments as a loss leader to be able to lock in that credit. We look at that as a way to be able to effectively drive customer acquisition even more when we're competing with some of the big guys like Stripe, Klarna, and Affirm.
Can you talk maybe for folks that are newer to the story, kinda what your current product offering is, as well as kinda how you plan to kinda grow that over time?
Yeah. Absolutely. Right now, our current product offering is we do consumer credit, traditionally known a lot as Buy Now, Pay Later. This is all in the e-commerce environment right now. We do some brick-and-mortar, but we focus mostly on digitally native, you know, really e-commerce platforms. We're touching across the credit spectrum, in many different products within that, credit offering. We do traditional payment processing, which is your traditional, card networks, Visa, Mastercard, credit, debit, and also ACH as well. Where we're heading in the future is an expansion of both of those. On the credit side, we see, B2B lending as a natural evolution within our credit offering as we have these merchants, we have their payments, we understand what's flowing through that business.
That makes it much easier to underwrite them, give them liquidity from a B2B lending perspective. On the payment side, it'll be going into the new alternative rails, which is i.e., stablecoin.
In the current iteration, do you guys get any benefit from, on an economic basis, from bundling?
Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. We see that as a huge advantage. One of the things too of the credit product becomes an incredible customer acquisition funnel, because we will bring a lot of people through the application process. We get 300+ data points. That becomes a database that we can also use for marketing and going back to those consumers to drive them back to our merchants as well. That's another component where we can create a flywheel for our merchant base of marketing those customers to them as well and driving traffic.
Before the acquisition, your focus was exclusively firearms and outdoor. You've kind of hinted at it, but where there are opportunities for you to kinda diversify into new verticals and what's kind of the low-hanging fruit there?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think anything, to your point, that has had cancellation risk is an area where we are gonna naturally play. One of the big areas we've focused on recently is building out payments technology and platform for the nonprofit and political fundraising space. Another area that's seen kind of politically radioactive in some ways and high to cancellation risk. Consumer data is very sensitive. That's another area where our product really leans into, is we use encrypted vaults for all of our payments data, and those merchants own the keys to that. In the political space, that's really important. That's really important in the firearms space. I think that's a low-hanging fruit.
Areas that are seeing high risk, maybe not from a political perspective, but maybe just from an underwriting compliance perspective, chargebacks like the travel industry is an area we've started to go into as well, an area that has been not necessarily treated well by the payment space. Adjacent industries to outdoor rec and firearms is natural that we're starting to lean heavier into as well.
PSQ Impact's a new service. How big is that TAM? How meaningful of a revenue driver? I guess when does that kind of start for you guys in terms of P&L impact?
Yeah, absolutely. We've got PSQ Impact on the political fundraising side live in the market. It's early. It's nascent at this point. There's one major competitor in that space on the Republican fundraising side called WinRed. During a presidential election, their last presidential election cycle, they did about $2 billion in that 2020 cycle. Excuse me, the 2024 cycle, and that's just federal. We believe the TAM in the political fundraising is probably in that $2-$4 billion range in there. Nonprofits, this is globally about a half a trillion dollar TAM from nonprofits broadly.
We think for the area where we really focus that's complementary to the areas our values are aligned to is probably anywhere from a $5 billion-$10 billion opportunity over the next few years that we think we can play into.
Got it. Wanna hit on crypto treasury and digital assets capabilities. You've talked about that in the past as a company for merchants. I guess, do you view this simply as kind of a treasury feature, part of a broader shift towards alternative financial rails, for merchants operating in regulated or, you know, underserved industries? I guess, what's the opportunity in kinda the cancel-proof, value line sort of merchant area?
Yeah. No, it's a great question. We talked in our major investor meeting call we did about you know, digital assets treasury service. To me, the biggest way to make the system cancel-proof is merchants and consumers have to be their own bank. This is effectively what stables and crypto are doing. First and foremost, I think, is getting merchants and consumers to adopt and transact in stable or crypto, and that's kind of our primary focus. From there, once they hold it's how do we make money for you on that crypto and stable so they get incentivized to actually hold that, keep it out of the banking system from there.
This is that step closer to how we start to correct what I think is a lot of the issues that creates cancel risk for most merchants in the financial system. It's gonna be an evolution. It's gonna take time, but that's how we see it, is adopting payments first, and then secondarily, how do we teach merchants and consumers to be their own bank and responsibly hold and make money on those those digital assets.
Got it. Last one from me. If we have this conversation in 12 months, I guess, what are the key KPIs and metrics investors should be kind of focused on and grade you on and kinda to know the business is sustainably headed in the right direction?
I probably sound like a broken record here, but yeah, it really is. It's at revenue per employee. We wanna be driving revenue growth with less people, which is with good margins, and that's gonna take our operating cash burn down. It's gonna grow our EBITDA. That's the focus.
Short and simple.
Yeah.
Dusty, pleasure as always. Thanks.
Thank you, Darren. Appreciate it.