Let's get started. First, I'd just like to thank Melissa Smith, CEO of WEX, for making it out here to Arizona for our conference. So thanks for making it out here, Melissa.
Beautiful place to be. Thanks for having me.
All right. Great. I guess it would be great to start with an update on recent trends in the business. I know that you guys saw some trends change in the mobility segment intra-quarter and Q3, so maybe we start there.
Yeah. If you look across the business, you talked about mobility. In the third quarter, we saw good growth in mobility. So we saw 6% growth adjusted for fuel prices, just organic growth, which had accelerated in the course of the year. And we saw some softness in same-store sales, you know, specifically in our North American fleet business. So it was down about 3%-5% year over year. And when we looked across the portfolio, it was, you know, pervasive across the portfolio.
So we cut the data many different ways, you know, type of portfolio, geography, fleet size. And so it was consistent across all. And when we gave the guide out for the fourth quarter, we assumed that trend would continue, that same trend we had seen.
I'd say so far in the fourth quarter, we're seeing pretty similar trends as what we had expected from a volume perspective, you know, across the business, but including the Mobility, you know, business. You know, one of the things we had done prior to our call was reach out to customers and talk to them about what they were seeing within their portfolios. They were seeing just a little bit less business, you know, again, 3%-5%. It's not like a huge number, but to them, a little bit less in the business. I'd say that's the primary trend.
The other part, the new sales that we're bringing in from a bookings perspective looks really good, as well as customer retention rates, you know, you know, continue to be strong.
Those are things when we think about the business. We think about these levers that we have. We have to bring in new customers, retain the customers we have. We're very good at that. We feel like if you look at our Mobility business, if anything, those two things combined are better than they were the year before, and then what happens to the Backbook will play out over time. We're seeing softness now, but as long as we retain the customers, we feel like that's something that will cure.
Got it. No, that makes sense. And good to hear that things are in line with expectations there. But yeah, maybe just kind of going back to the performance of the mobility segment, you know, it's been accelerating throughout the year and especially relative to some of your competitors looking very strong. So maybe we just touch on what's driving that relative strength. I know that you guys have been making incremental investments in sales, some new products. You got Payzr, which is just launched now, and I think some pricing as well. But yeah, maybe if we just kind of run through what's driving the strength.
Yeah. I'll start from the, you know, your back point forward. So Payzr itself, we said at the beginning of the year that we'd be about 2% of the segment growth for Mobility. And we reaffirmed that in our last call that it's coming in at about 2%. So that's, you know, performing as what we had provided in our guidance in the beginning of the year. If you look across the other pieces, again, like sales and marketing, those motions have gone well for us. We continue to bring in new customers. You can see that with vehicle growth continuing to go up. Customer retention rates have been really high.
And what we've seen also as a benefit in our Mobility segment this year is a number of pricing actions that we had been taking.
The majority of those are coming through with merchant renegotiations that we're having with our merchants. And so, you know, the lasting benefit is we bring volume to those merchants so that they're willing to pay more for that. And that has come in through, and we continue to expect that to be a benefit as you go into next year. You know, you talked about sales and marketing. We've been really focused on when we started the last couple of years. We spent a lot of time and effort around our AI credit tools. We feel like we've made some really, you know, upscale changes around something that we were, you know, was a core competency, but we have really built upon that. We took that same expertise and moved it into our marketing group.
We've been spending a lot more time around lifetime value of accounts and really perfecting where we're spending money to make sure that we're getting, we're optimizing the returns associated with that. And so in a level of detail that, you know, that team is really reaching into. And as a result, you know, it has had us increase the investments we're making in sales and marketing. You know, we talked about the fact we've had some big cost savings in the course of the year. We've been taking some of that money and putting it back into our marketing group. We expect we're going to do more of that as you go into 2025, is to add in additional marketing dollars as you go into the year because of the returns that we're seeing from our LTV model.
Got it. No, it'd be good to see those marketing dollars going into 2025 as well and just while on that topic, I mean, short of like, you know, providing any 2025 guidance, do you think that 2025 should be a year in the 4%-8% long-term range for mobility just from what you see today?
Without providing guidance for next year, you know, what I could say is, you know, again, when we build up our budget, we're in the process of doing right now, we think a lot about these levers that we have, how we're doing in bringing in new customers. We expect that to, you know, how we do expect that to look next year, customer retention rates. And if you look at those two things, you know, we expect those to look, you know, similar, if not better next year because, again, we're, we do intend to, you know, continue to increase our sales and marketing investments as long as that makes sense financially.
On top of that, we, when we think about pricing, a lot of the work that we've done so far, we'll continue to see a benefit in that into next year.
And so we think we'll get some lift associated with that. And it's really the biggest unknown at this point in time, is what happens with the backbook, that kind of same-store sales number. You know, if based on today, I would continue the trend that we're seeing right now and assume that that's going to have an effect into next year. But, when we give out guidance in February, we'll, you know, be much better informed at that point in time what's happening.
Got it. No, all that makes sense. Before moving on to the other segments, I just wanted to touch on Payzr because it's been a year now, and I know that there was, you know, some interesting cross-sell potential there just given the overlap in your base. So maybe we could just get a brief update there.
Yeah. We've learned a lot in the year. So again, it has done what we said it would do at the beginning of the year. And so, you know, that growth has come largely from the existing mechanism that was in place, so largely through distributor sales. Their cross-selling, I would say we've had some success on cross-selling, but not enough that we'd say, "Okay, we want to do a lot." You know, we want to double down on this model at this point in time. I think we're still learning a lot. If I look across the enterprise, we've been very good at selling in our over-the-road business additional products and offerings in our benefits business. We've been very effective at that in corporate payments.
And then, you know, across the place that we have continued to be working on is our North American fleet business. And I feel like those customers, they come on, largely digitally, and we don't have as many touch points with those customers. And so what we're finding with the Payzr cross-sell is that there isn't that familiarity where you can say, "Okay, I'm going to sell another product," particularly a product that is more of an operating system and see a huge uptick on that. So I would say, again, the model we had said that if we grow the model, then that's good. If we can actually then prove the cross-sell model into our North American fleet business, that's a home run. So we have not hit the home run, but we're learning a lot as we go.
And in the meantime, you know, we have delivered on what we said we would do at the beginning of the year.
Got it. Yeah. No, great to hear that that's coming in line, and definitely an interesting acquisition for you guys. But okay, I guess just pivoting to the benefits segment, you know, this has been a very high-growth segment for WEX over the last few years. I think you grew over 20% and 30% in 2022 and 2023. And now 2024 is, I guess, maybe a little bit of a transition year, just like lapping, going through a large customer loss. But, maybe just kind of walk us through what you're seeing in that business today and kind of walk us through the building blocks of the longer-term growth algorithm that you see.
Yeah. Our benefits segment is great. It's a great, you know, it's a great model. And kind of step back what we're doing with that customer segment is, similarly, we're making sure that people are spending money on what they should spend money on. So these are tax-deferred accounts, HSA accounts, FSA accounts, covered accounts. And we're doing the record-keeping associated with that, but also making sure that they're meeting the IRS regulations, what they can spend money on. If you look at the market of that, when we first got into this market, HSA accounts were growing in the teens.
I'd say now, you know, the last revenue report, I think, had it growing at 5%, somewhere between 5% and 7%. So there definitely, if you look at kind of the account base, we are outgrowing the marketplace.
We feel like we're doing well competitively in this space, and that's, you know, that's our main objective, but the growth profile, you know, in that part of the business has shifted over time. Where we're focused on is making sure that we bring in accounts, and you know, we're in the open enrollment with season right now, so that's, you know, it's an important time of year for us to bring on accounts, retain accounts, and then selling these additional products that we've had, and we've talked about the fact we've done a good job selling our COBRA product across the business. We still have opportunity to sell benefit administration. We have opportunity to sell our compliance products across the portfolio, so we think that's an incremental, you know, revenue lift for us, and then on top of that, we became a custodian a few years ago.
And so, you know, there's a benefit in the fact that we get the full economics with those accounts as they come on board. And so, again, we feel like this is a wonderful part of the business. Our goal is to outgrow the marketplace. And you will see us lapse the Medicare Advantage account that we've lost, which was about 5% of the accounts. You know, it was a much smaller part of revenue, but it had more of an optics issue from an account perspective.
Okay. Got it. No, that makes sense there, and I mean, if we're in Open Enrollment season now, I know you guys had some positive early reads there on the last earnings call. Is it too early to give any updates there on how Open Enrollment's going or?
We are right in the middle of it. So we feel good about the findings that we've had, you know, going into the marketplace. And so now it's just going through the implementation process. But so far, so good.
Got it. And just while in this segment, I mean, you guys have been doing a phenomenal job of outgrowing the market. So maybe you just touch on for the audience who are less familiar with this business, just what WEX's competitive advantages are relative to the field.
Sure. So, when you think about this part of the business, one of the things that makes us unique is that we're going into the marketplace and using our technology both directly as we bring on new customers, but also as a private label platform. So a number of financial institutions that are interested in the deposits use our underlying technology. TPAs use our technology. Insurance companies use our technology. And then, again, we go in directly. So there are different benefits across. I'd say that the biggest benefit is that you have multi-account types that sit within the same technology stack.
So if you're an employer like we are, I know at WEX, we offer high-deductible plans and traditional PPO plans. So we have both HSA and FSA accounts in our mix.
As we provide an offering out into the marketplace, we have the ability to do that multi-account type, which makes it a simplified experience for an employer. We also have the benefit of bringing in, you know, a huge amount of data associated with that. You know, if you look across all our products, it's one of the places where we differentiate is taking that data and presenting it in a way that helps people make more informed choices. In this case, it's helping a consumer decide how, you know, what type of an account they want to set up, how much money they should be putting in. If you're an employer, helping them decide how much you want to contribute to someone's HSA accounts. We can provide a lot of information that helps make it a more informed decision.
You know, over time, as we continue to build upon that, we think that that data, you know, across everything we do, but certainly in the benefits business, is an important part of the product. So, that's a differentiation point. When we're with a partner, the amount of you know, oversight you get when you're doing business with an FI, is really important. So from a compliance and a regulatory perspective, all of the things we do across the company put us in a very good spot from being able to meet their needs, which are typically even a higher level of making sure that their regulators are happy with the performance at the end of the day.
Right. And just on the data that you're collecting, I know that you guys recently launched some AI tools for the segment for the end employers. Maybe we could just touch on those because recently we rebranded this to an AI conference as well.
Well, you sit next to someone who's a big advocate of AI. It's like, if you look at our cost savings, a lot of that has come from AI. And, on the product side, we're starting to roll out products that have AI capability associated with it. The Benefit Assist is one. What we know from talking to the people that are using our benefit programs is that employees want to actually enroll in benefits outside of normal work hours. They actually don't want to ask their HR people questions. They want to have a lot of autonomy. And so the Benefit Assist product that enables people to do is to ask those questions at their leisure, whenever they want to, and be much more informed about their enrollment process as a result.
Got it. That makes sense. I can relate to that, but okay, just wrapping it up here on the benefits business. I mean, you guys have a pretty strong pipeline here, so how do we think about the trajectory of this business heading into 2025? I know that you guys had really tough comps the last kind of two years, really compounding on each other, but you know, we've kind of been in the mid-high single-digit range on an organic basis this year. Do we kind of see that, you know, trajectory moving upwards from here to kind of lap Medicare Advantage?
Yeah. So the big things that will affect our growth rates are new accounts coming in. And you know, I think the latest estimates of account growth are in the single digits. And so again, our goal is to outpace what you see from market growth. And then mix matters actually quite a bit for us now that we're custodians. So you know, depending on what channel that comes in, that has an impact from a revenue perspective. We do expect that you'll see you know, potentially some headwinds in rates, depending on what happens with interest rates.
But remember, it doesn't affect us from a profitability perspective. So you might see a negative from a revenue perspective, but we're brought from a profitability perspective. And then again, this kind of cross-selling motion.
So we're going in feeling like we're going to have a good open enrollment season. We need to, then, you know, sell additional products into that customer base and make sure that, we're benefiting from being a custodian.
Got it. Well, that makes sense. Okay. So shifting to the travel component of the Corporate Payments segment, there's been a lot going on here with another large customer and making some changes here. And, you know, some noise from some discount European airlines. But just to start out, you know, if we look at the business, excluding some of the larger OTAs, kind of what have you guys been seeing from a volume growth perspective? We just pull that out of the Q3.
Yeah, so in Q3, and I'd say, again, in this part of the business, volume is looking so far in the quarter the way that we had expected it to. In Q3, what we saw, well, if you go back, in Q2, what we saw was this kind of drastic kind of check in growth in travel. Still growing. So it's like, you know, but I think that the normalization from the pandemic happened much more abruptly than we had expected it to in the second quarter. And so, again, that's another high single-digit grower, from a growth typically, you know, from a volume growth perspective. And from that point on, it has looked much more predictable, you know, as we've gone through the end of the year.
The biggest change that happened in Q2 was that air travel really kind of went back to much more of a normal level than it had been historically, and so I think you had this kind of huge, huge swing up, and, and then there's kind of this sudden normalization that happened. What we saw in the third quarter also was that most of the growth, and we had about 7%, I think, volume growth in the segment. Most of the growth came from pricing. The transactions were actually relatively flat year over year, and most of the benefit that came through in additional spend was from price, and so you continued to see, you know, some pretty big pricing increases in that part of the portfolio, so going forward, just two things are happening. We do think right now we're planning for a normal growth rate environment.
And we have the insourcing of a piece of our relationship with one of our accounts that we should think will play out for the next couple of quarters of the year. I think, you know, being, you know, as transparent about that as, you know, and so far it's operating, you know, largely as how we expected it to. And then, post that, you know, the two of us are very focused on what additional sources of spend can we actually move through the platform.
Got it. No, that makes sense. And we got a handful of questions on just some of the discount European airlines, you know, maybe like having some pushback on virtual card. Maybe you could kind of just contextualize, you know, what you've seen there from virtual card pushback. It's kind of like normal course that pops up a little bit and goes away or.
Yes. Yeah. I think we've had more questions around acceptance. And I think, you know, if I kind of pull back and think about acceptance over many years, we've had like fringe issues with acceptance, you know, over the years. I'd say it's very much on the fringe this year with some of the discount airline carriers in Europe. And my understanding is that they have now largely negotiated the between the OTAs. They're still working through the, you know, the payment, you know, component of it. But I think we're moving our way through this.
I'd say generally speaking, when we've had this issue, it tends to be more about finding a rate that works for both parties. And you see that's much more prevalent across the consumer side of the portfolio.
You see it, a little bit in the B2B side. But, again, I would describe that as it happens, you know, on the fringe as opposed to something that's happening mainstream.
Got it, and just following up on that, is there potential? I know that, you know, there are some other players in this space that, you know, offer custom interchange rates on virtual cards to help kind of meet buyers and sellers in the middle. Is that something that could kind of help here or?
I think that that's eventually what Mastercard and Visa tend to do is then create new product codes. And when they create new product codes, it's with the intention of finding something that actually works, and again, like if you look at our technology stack, we feel really good about our embedded payments technology stack. One of our competitive strengths is the ability to process a huge number of product codes. And I think that will only become more complicated over time.
Right. And just all like the data attached, like the value's still there over the other payment rails?
Yes.
And that hasn't changed?
Yes. Now, so a virtual card itself, you know, part of what makes it so magical is that A, it's, it's seamless, and B, it, the data that gets attached allows reconciliation to happen much more seamlessly, and so, you know, part of the value proposition to someone like an online travel agency is the fact that you've got a huge amount of volume that's happening, and a lot of complexity that sits behind it because they're making payments to, you know, franchises, and there's a lot of chargeback activity that's happening, and so the tools that we have create a one-for-one relationship between that original consumer and the payment that gets made that allows the data to move back and forth so that when they go to close their books, reconciliation is so much easier.
Absolutely. Just taking a step back here on the travel portion of the business, I know you guys, you know, acquired eNett a few years back, and I know they had more Europe and Asia-Pacific, but if you just take a step back, like remind us what the geographic composition is of the business today and which geographies or segments of the market where you see most opportunity.
Yeah. It's about 25%-30% in the U.S. and the rest outside the U.S., largely in Europe. And so when I think about, you know, the business, part of what was attractive about the eNett acquisition was the, which has been a phenomenal acquisition, actually, is then when you combine those two businesses together, they we had different geographies. We also had different product types. They had a product that enabled cash flow to move very seamlessly across their portfolio because they were doing business with a lot of smaller online travel agencies.
We had a technology tool that, you know, has this ability to have lots of different product codes that sits amongst them. And so over time, what we've been able to do is create the best of both.
So the geographic diversity, which is helpful because you typically don't see spend patterns that all evolve in different ways across the world, and we have the best of both products.
Got it. Thanks for the recap on eNett. Okay. So switching to the non-travel part of the corporate payments business, can you just start out by providing an overview of the strategy on the direct and channel partner side of the business and just, you know, what the relative sizes are of each today?
Yeah. So when I think about the business, we think of it in two products. We have an AP Direct product where we have a direct sales force, and then we go-to markets with, again, a bunch of FIs that are using our technology in that space as well. The direct product, we have added salespeople, which are really strong return associated with that. The FIs that are using our product is much slower growth, in a model that I would say, you know, in that case, they're distributing the sales. And it's been like a, you know, low grower where our AP Direct, where we're doing it ourselves, is actually some really strong growth.
Then the other part is our embedded payments product, which includes travel. But we're also selling outside of travel. It's a place we're really bullish.
We feel like the technology is really strong, so we've been ramping up sales motions associated with that, in the marketplace because we feel, if you look at the underlying reliability of the product, the fact that we have an integrated offering, which includes the bank that we own, the technology itself has the nimbleness to add in, a tremendous amount of complexity, and we can do this at scale, so we have a lot to offer in that space, and so, it's a place that we're building sales capability beyond travel.
Got it. That makes sense. And just while on this, I mean, how would you characterize the competitive environment today on the, I guess, direct and indirect side? Just because there never seems to be a shortage of companies looking to kind of break into this market. But here at WEX is putting up, you guys have like mid-teens volume growth year to date. So a very impressive number.
Yeah. It is a competitive, you know, marketplace, and again, like I think our, when I think about our moats, first of all, just the sheer scale of the volume that we have going through our platform, and we've created a model because we own all of the technology ourselves and because we're doing it with our bank that every dollar, you know, has a very high drop-through rate, and so, you know, our objective function is to find more spend volume to push through that, and if you kind of zoom back out, you can see how much margin, you know, it creates when we actually add more business into that part of the business, so we again start with scale as we have an ability to play at a level that very few people can in this space.
We have a great technology stack, and so, you know, couple that with the reliability of the system and the breadth of the offering that we have in this space. It's a place that we're super excited.
You got the global scale, which is definitely hard to replicate.
Yeah.
Maybe just shifting to trends in this business. I know that, you know, volume quarter to quarter can be choppy sometimes. But, it did kind of shift back, I think, to like 7% last quarter. And I think you cited like a pullback in spend. So maybe just remind us kind of like what drove that and kind of how that's looking today.
Yeah. So the AP Direct products grew well. That's been in the team's growth. The revenue that we're getting through our partners was pretty flat. So that diluted the growth for sure within the quarter. And then we have customers largely that we've cross-sold to our Mobility space that are using their products for AP Direct. And so that we also saw softness in that. You know, similar to you know, the trends that we were seeing in the Mobility business with that customer segment, we saw some softness in there. So we saw kind of, I would say like it's not a very big segment, you know, part of when you start to take a segment and then take a slice of the segment, you see more volatility that sits within it.
But I would say we saw some of that same-store sales softness, which relates to the mobility customers coming through in the Corporate Payments segment too.
Okay. Got it. That makes sense. Looks like we got just like a few minutes left here. I mean, capital allocation is always an important question for WEX given you guys generate a lot of free cash flow. You guys recently expanded the share repurchase authorization, but you know, M&A is an important part of your growth algorithm, so maybe just, you know, looking ahead to 2025, you know, where, where are the capital allocation priorities today? Is the M&A environment maybe a little more rational today versus like a few years back?
Yeah. So our target leverage is two and a half to three and a half times. And what we've been doing is staying on kind of the low end of that and using our cash proceeds to buy back stock. And, you know, the idea behind that is that that gives us, you know, the continued ability to do M&A, but at the same time recognizing the fact that we think our stock is a tremendous buy right now. And so it's been the primary use of cash flow. And, you know, at the multiple that we're trading at, we'd be, you know, to be a primary use of capital. And at the same time, we continue to look in the marketplace and, you know, stay active.
But, let's say we've had much more of an orientation to buying back stock.
That makes sense. And I guess if you had to pick one of the three segments and just maybe, you know, checking versus like the M&A pipeline is kind of out there today, you know, where do you kind of see those M&A dollars going in the next one to two, three years?
It's three kids. It's like picking a favorite, you know. I think that there's something that's unique about each of them. And so some of that comes down to the strategic element to M&A, but also like what can you get in a price that makes sense. So if they go across the business, you know, the near adjacencies and mobility will continue to be interesting to us, but to the extent we can prove the fact that you have the ability to, you know, cross-sell, you know, specifically in that part of the business, but so I would keep that open for longer term. The Corporate Payments, you know, segment if you can find assets that make sense financially, you know, would be a place that we would continue to build upon.
We have not found a lot that have made sense, you know, at this point. But it's definitely a place of focus. And then benefits, we've been a pretty consistent acquirer in that space. And so I think that there's, you know, something beneficial about each of them. And so some of it tends really more on the asset and the price point by which we can actually negotiate.
Got it. That makes sense. Thanks so much for coming out to Arizona. Really appreciate it.
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Great.
Thanks everybody.