FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FLT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:FLT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 7, 2024
FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $3.48 EPS, expectations were $4.47. FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the call over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Jim Eglseder: Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; and Tom Panther, our CFO. Following the prepared comments, the operator will announce that the queue will open for the Q&A session. It is only then you can get in line for questions. Please note, our earnings release and supplement can be found under the Investor Relations section on our Web site at fleetcor.com. Now throughout this call, we will be covering organic revenue growth. As a reminder, this metric neutralizes the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, fuel prices and fuel spreads. And it also includes pro forma results for acquisitions and divestitures or scope changes closed during the two years being compared.
We will also be covering non-GAAP financial metrics, including revenues, net income and net income per diluted share, all on an adjusted basis. These measures are not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than at other companies. Reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP to the most directly GAAP information can be found in today's press release and on our Web site. I also need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today may include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the best information we have as of today. All statements about our outlook, new products and expectations regarding business development and future acquisitions are based on that information. They are not guarantees of future performance and you should not put undue reliance upon them.
We undertake no obligation to update any of these statements. Now the expected results are subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release on Form 8-K and in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available on our Web site and at sec.gov. So with that out of the way, I will turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?
Ron Clarke: Okay, Jim. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for joining our Q4 2023 earnings call. Upfront here, I'll plan to cover four subjects; first, I'll provide my take on both Q4 and full year 2023 results; second, I'll share our 2024 priorities and guidance; third, give you a bit of an update on the status of our strategic review; and then lastly, highlight a few pretty exciting new products that we've recently launched. Let me begin with our Q4 results, which frankly were a bit mixed. We reported revenue of $937 million, up 6%; cash EPS of $444 million, up 10%; and EBITDA of approximately $500 million, up 11%. Q4 revenue did finish a bit weaker than we outlook 90 days ago, but fortunately, our earnings flow through was quite a bit better than expected.
That was helped mainly by credit losses finishing at about half the level of last year. The revenue weakness in the quarter showed up in a few areas. First, gift cards. So we had some delays in gift card shipments that have been pushed here into Q1. In lodging, we had a pretty soft distressed passenger vertical in the quarter, mostly because airline cancellations were at a record low level. North America fleet late fees pretty light, that again is a continuation of exiting a lot of micro accounts that we started about a year ago when we tightened credit terms. Again, fortunately the late fee reduction was essentially washed away by the improvement in credit losses. And then the last year as our corporate payments or payables business with the channel partner business finishing even softer than we had outlook, fortunately there, we think it's bottomed out.
So these kind of weak spots, soft spots are either timing related, weather related, we've kind of reached the end of kind of bottomed out as we head into our 2024 guide. So hopefully, not surprising us again. The organic revenue growth in Q4, 7% overall, again impacted by the soft spots I just called out. The vehicle payments organic revenue growth 5% for the quarter. Corporate payments revenue growth 15%, but 20% if you exclude the partner channel. Trends in Q4 also a bit mixed. Retention, quite good, improved slightly to 92%. Sales grew 12% overall with a terrific performance in corporate payments. Sales there up over 40%. And what we call same store sales finished 3% down. Again, we saw the weakness in the workforce lodging and the airline lodging business, and a bit in the UK.
Okay. Let me make the turn to our full year 2023 results, which reached record levels. 2023 revenue of $3.8 billion, up 10%; EBITDA of approximately $2 billion, up 13%; and cash EPS of [$16.92], up 5%. Trends for full year 2023 quite good. Sales for the full year, up 20% overall. And again, inside of that corporate payment, sales up about 50%. We did sell 100,000 new B2B clients in 2023. In terms of organic revenue growth, full year 10%. So that makes three consecutive years of 10% plus organic revenue growth. And again retention stable at 92%. Additionally, we did advance a number of important strategic initiatives in the year, progressed EV and our understanding of the relative economics of EV versus ICE, so promising results there. We did clean up our Russia and FTC issues.
We did introduce this transformation idea for our fleet business, envisioning it really as a broader vehicle payments related business. We did close a couple of important acquisitions, one in cross-border, which we fully have integrated and one in parking really to jump start our consumer vehicle payments initiative. So look all-in-all, a pretty successful year. Okay. Let me make the transition to our 2024 guidance, and start out by outlining our major objectives for the year. So a few things. First, is always to deliver financial performance that's consistent with our midterm objectives. Second, we hope to deepen our position in corporate payments through some new acquisitions in that space. Third, we hope to build out our vehicle payments business with proof of successful cross selling and accelerate revenue growth throughout the year.
And then lastly, to succeed with some new product launches and confirm market acceptance for them. So on to our 2024 financial guide. So revenue at the midpoint of $4.080 billion, that's up 9% on a print basis or 11% excluding Russia. EBITDA of $2.2 billion, that's up 11% or 14% excluding Russia. And finally, cash EPS at the midpoint of $19.40, up 15% print and up 18% excluding Russia. So let me just say that again, planning ‘24 profits, cash EPS growth of 18% this year excluding Russia. We are expecting good earnings flow through to EPS. One, revenue will grow faster throughout the year than expense, so that operating leverage will help. And we do expect to have fewer shares, better FX and a slightly lower tax rate. In terms of revenue and organic growth, we're obviously helped by our Q4 exit rate and the sales from last year growing here into 2024.
We are expecting higher sales levels here in 2024, which will add to revenue. And then we do have a number of cross sell initiatives planned into our client base this year. So in the fleet business, selling business cards, EV, parking, breakdown services back into the fleet clients. And in Brazil, the toll business, selling insurance, parking, fuel back into the toll base. Tom, in a bit will provide some more specifics on the 2024 guide and how it rolls out across the year. We also plan to mark the next chapter of the company with the rebranding of FLEETCOR to Corpay and that's scheduled for March. Okay. Let me make the turn to our strategic review. So just as a reminder, we did initiate a formal strategic review of our portfolio last spring, and initially focused on the question of whether separating our fleet business from our corporate payments business could unlock value for shareholders.
We have run a pretty rigorous process over the last 11 months with a lot of help, particularly from Goldman Sachs. We fielded numerous inbounds, looked at lots of alternatives and explored some combinations with dance partners. I got to say the review process was quite helpful for us in exploring some really some new structures for the company, and spotlighted the value creation potential of transitioning really our fleet business into a broader vehicle payments business that will serve both businesses and consumers. So that's a super high priority for us. So look, we're announcing really the conclusion today of the review process at least for the time being we've determined that keeping our fleet business and corporate payments together is the best way forward.
Obviously, we remain open to reconsidering various options to unlock value down the road. But right now, squarely focused on repositioning the vehicle payments business. My last subject upfront here is new products. We've released four new products into the marketplace this year, each with really terrific potential. So first, what we call our Corpay One business card, fuel card and virtual card in one, that's targeted to fuel based businesses where the solution includes a business card for the owner, fuel cards for the field drivers and even replaces paper checks with virtual cards. That's all in one account and all in one UI, so pretty exciting. Second product we call the Comdata Connect Card. It's targeted to small trucking companies. So it connects the Comdata truck stop fuel discounts and reporting to the companies, the trucking companies’ existing business credit card.
So trucking firms here would really get the best of both worlds. They continue to get the credits and rewards from their existing business card, but combine that with the fuel discounts and reporting of a truck stop card. Look, this also helps us in terms of the credit challenge with small trucking companies. So hopefully, we can bring on lots of small trucking firms without the credit risk. Third up is a product that we call Corpay Complete. It's our newest corporate payments product targeted to midsize businesses. And again, this is really a platform build. So we've combined what we call walk around solutions, business cards and fuel cards, really with a central kind of AP automation solution, again, packaged all in one platform, all in one mobile app.
So really we think kind of the modern way really for businesses to manage their all around and business expenses and spend less. And lastly, in lodging, we have a new product called CLC Choice. So it's really a workforce lodging solution for employers who want really a more friendly and flexible employee travel solution with the idea of being more choice for travelers. So in this case, travelers could choose virtually any hotel, any room type and even keep rewards points from their favorite hotel brand. So we think the Choice solution will complement really our current control solution and widen the market opportunity there. So look, we're super excited about these new products have been in the kitchen for quite a while and hopeful that this new set of products will accelerate revenue 1% to 2% over time.
Okay. So look, in conclusion today, 2023 really a record year, record revenue, record earnings; organic revenue growth for the full year up 10%; sales super good, up 20%; stable retention at 92%; made some good moves to position the company better for the midterm; EV progress and our new go forward vehicle payment strategy. 2024, our planning profits or cash EPS up 18% excluding Russia and that's on really an assumption of flat interest expense; launching a set of new products that we have high hopes for; and then beginning really the next chapter for the company as we move to rebrand the company to Corpay in March. So with that, let me turn the call back over to Tom to provide some additional detail on the quarter. Tom?
Tom Panther: Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. Here are some additional details related to the quarter and the full year. Organic revenue growth was 7%, the same as the fourth quarter of last year. Revenue growth was slightly below our expectations due to pockets of softness, mostly in US vehicle payments and lodging, while our corporate payments and international businesses continued to perform well. The revenue weakness was mostly offset by strong expense discipline, continued improvements in bad debt expense and a lower tax rate, which delivered $4.44 per share in cash EPS within our guidance and up 10% versus last year. Looking at the full year, organic revenue grew 10% and EBITDA increased 13%, which are both in line with our midterm targets.
We also absorbed nearly $200 million of incremental interest expense during the year due to the rate hikes and still posted cash EPS growth of 5%. Normalizing for the higher interest expense, adjusted earnings would have grown 16% for the full year 2023. Now turning to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our revenue growth. Corporate payments revenue was up 15% during the quarter and increased 19% for the full year. For the quarter, our direct business grew 19% and was again led by growth in full AP. Our full suite of high quality payment solutions continues to sell extremely well with sales up 27% this quarter as we signed up customers who are looking to modernize their AP operations. I'd note that the drag from lower partner channel volumes accelerated in the quarter with channel revenue declining 31%.
Excluding the partner channel, revenue grew 20% and spend volumes increased 27% in the quarter, so quite strong on a core basis. We believe the partner channel volumes have bottomed and volumes and revenue are expected to be flat in 2024. Cross border revenue was up 21%, sales grew 51% and recurring client transaction activity was robust. We've now fully lapped all the revenue synergies from the GRG acquisition in January 2023. More importantly, our best in class technology, service and products allow us to have market leading retention and client acquisition, which you can see in our results. We continue to make significant investments in this business through increased sales and marketing resources as well as new product capabilities. Over the last few years, we have transformed this business into becoming the largest non-bank provider of B2B FX payment solutions in the world.
Turning to vehicle payments. Recall, this is the new segment that we introduced on our last earnings call. It reflects the combination of our fleet and Brazil businesses, along with our new consumer vehicle initiative. Consistent with our goal of creating a simpler company, we have now put all of vehicle related payment solutions in one segment that operates across North America, Brazil and Europe, offering a full suite of vehicle related solutions to both businesses and consumers. You'll note that we've defined the new segment's KPI as transactions. But given the different products that comprise the segment, we've provided transaction counts by product type such as fleet, tags and parking. We've also realigned our executive team to support this new segment with Armando Netto, serving as the Group President of North America and Brazil and Alan King, as the Group President over International Fuel, EV and Parking.
Vehicle payments organic revenue increased 5% during the quarter with particular strength in Brazil and international fuel markets. In the UK, more than 30% of all new sales involve a non-fuel product, namely EV or vehicle maintenance. Our EV strategy in the UK is clearly winning as our 3-in-1 product, fuel, on road charging and at home charging, all-in-one app has more than doubled from a year ago. The results speak for themselves with both EV cards and EV revenue continuing to increase. In addition, we're having great success selling our at home charging solution with a 30% attachment rate to all new sales. Our charging network also continues to expand and we now offer charging at over 600,000 charge points in Europe. And by the end of March, we will have coverage of nearly 80% of the rapid chargers in the UK, including Tesla, which we signed in the fourth quarter.
In Brazil, we ended the year with nearly 6,000 extended network locations, including 2,500 gas stations, 2,900 parking locations, 750 drive thru restaurants and 270 condos. Total tags were up 7% year-over-year to nearly $7 million, and approximately 37% of customer spend was from our Beyond Toll network. Sales of insurance policies are up fourfold when we launched in Q4 '22 to nearly $200,000 in Q4 '23. So from zero to $200,000 per quarter in five quarters and now total over 1 million policies. Our success in Brazil is a tangible proof point of our broader vehicle payments vision to leverage and anchor product used by a large customer base and to then add additional services via mobile app, driving incremental revenue growth. We are leveraging our strong success in the UK to launch our consumer vehicles payment solution in the market.
We have begun selling the parking network that we acquired in the third quarter via PayByPhone to our business customers, and are building the integrations to be able to offer to the over 2 million PayByPhone consumer users in the UK access to our proprietary fuel, EV, insurance, toll and maintenance networks. In the US, softness in small fleet and the impact from our shift away from micro clients continue to affect our sales and revenue results. Our digital and field sales efforts are improving as we continue to see growth in applications, approvals and starts. As we mentioned last quarter, the shift to higher credit quality clients also impacted late fees, which were down 38% from Q4 '22. While the decline in late fees is a drag on our revenue growth, it has resulted in a similar decline in bad debt expense, so essentially a wash.
Lodging revenue was flat Q4 2022 and for the year, the business grew to 12%. This quarter was affected by continued softness in our existing workforce customers, which appears to have now stabilized. Certain verticals within the business like airline and insurance can have quarterly revenue growth fluctuations, driven by weather and natural disasters. Recall, in Q4 of last year, there were significant weather events and airline cancellations, which benefited the airline and the insurance verticals. By comparison, there were no major weather events in Q4 of this year. And in fact, according to the Department of Transportation, 2023 flight cancellations were the lowest in a decade. And in the fourth quarter, cancellations were down approximately 90% from Q4 '22.
We're experiencing similar results related to insurance claims, which were down approximately 20% in the quarter. Despite the recent soft quarters, we are confident that this business can return to low double digit growth over the coming quarters. We recently launched new product capabilities that will extend our customer experience and drive new sales. Additionally, we're excited to welcome [Joff Romoff] as the new Group President of Lodging, replacing the retiring Ron Rogers. [Joff] has extensive hospitality and lodging experience that will be a strong asset to the business. In summary, we're proud of the performance we delivered in 2023. It clearly demonstrates the growth of our diversified business and the strength of our business model that generated over $1.25 billion of free cash flow.
Now looking down the income statement. Q4 operating expenses of $513 million were flat versus Q4 of last year. Expenses from acquisitions, higher transaction and sales activities and investments to drive future growth were offset by lower bad debt expense and the sale of our Russia business. Bad debt expense declined $19 million or nearly 50% from last year to $22 million or 3 basis points of spend. Most of the decline was in vehicle payments, which was down $17 million year-over-year as we realize the benefit from our lower exposure to US micro clients. EBITDA margin in the quarter was 54.2%, a 220 basis point improvement from the fourth quarter of last year. This positive operating leverage is driven by solid revenue growth, lower bad debt expense, disciplined expense management and synergies realized from recent acquisitions.
Interest expense this quarter increased $18 million year-over-year. And the impact of higher interest rates resulted in an approximate $0.27 drag on Q4 adjusted EPS, partially offset by lower debt balances year-over-year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 23.3% versus 24.2% last year, the lower rate related to specific tax planning items. Now turning to the balance sheet. We are entering 2024 with a balance sheet in excellent shape. We ended the quarter with $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash, up $300 million from 90 days ago, and we had over $800 million available on our revolver. We have $5.4 billion outstanding on our credit facilities and we had $1.4 billion borrowed under our securitization facility. As of year end, our leverage ratio was 2.4 times trailing 12 months EBITDA, which is at the lower end of our target range.
In January, we upsized our Term Loan A and Revolver A credit facilities by $600 million with no rate concessions and no change in the maturity. This added capital will provide incremental capacity and flexibility for both deals and share buybacks in 2024, which I'll elaborate on in a few minutes. Our capital allocation in 2023 was once again balanced as we deployed $1.6 billion. In the quarter, we repurchased roughly 600,000 shares at an average price of $2.54 per share or $143 million. For the year, we repurchased 2.6 million shares for $690 million. We spent $545 million on acquisitions during the year, improving our position in EV, the consumer vehicle payment space and cross border. We used the remaining excess cash flows for debt amortization and reducing our revolver balance.
As I previously mentioned, our 2024 capital allocation plan is supported by our significant cash and liquidity position. We have $1.4 billion in unrestricted cash and increased our capacity under our revolver by $600 million, and we expect to generate $1.4 billion in free cash flow during 2024. Our first priority remains M&A and the M&A pipeline is robust. We'll look to acquire businesses that deepen our position in our three core operating segments. We are also allocating capital for share buybacks during 2024. In January, the Board increased our repurchase authorization by $1 billion. We now have over $1.6 billion authorized for share repurchases. We expect to repurchase $800 million of shares throughout the year. We plan to purchase these shares through the open market and will establish a 10b5-1 plan later this month.
Any residual cash flows from earnings will be used to reduce our revolver or build our cash position. Generating so much cash is a high class problem and we plan to leverage this strength to systematically support our EPS growth through M&A and buybacks in 2024. Now let me share some thoughts on our 2024 full year and Q1 outlook. From an economic perspective, we are not assuming a recession nor meaningful economic improvement in overall business activity. Our forecast for the year is based on the consensus economic outlook in our markets, which generally calls for modest economic growth and lower interest rates in the second half of the year. We expect fuel prices to be a headwind in the first quarter. And for the full year, we're anticipating US fuel prices to average $3.65 per gallon, which is a blend of diesel and unleaded.
In 2024, we expect cash EPS to grow between 14% and 16%, which is inclusive of the planned buybacks I mentioned previously. Revenue growth is projected to be between 8% and 10% and EBITDA is expected to increase 10% to 12% with margin expanding to approximately 54%. Keep in mind that these growth rates are inclusive of our Russia business through mid August of last year. Excluding Russia, cash EPS is growing 17% to 19%, revenue is up 10% to 12% and EBITDA is increasing 13% to 15%, all slightly above our midterm growth targets. We've provided these details in our earnings supplement on Page 20. Net interest expense is projected to be between $340 million and $370 million, which includes the replacement of a $500 million interest rate swap that matured in December.
Roughly 80% of our credit facility is now fixed utilizing swaps, and the blended swap rate is 4.1%. Also recall that our securitization is a variable rate facility. And finally, our tax rate is expected to be between 25% and 26%. From a segment perspective, we expect the following organic revenue growth rates; vehicle payments in the mid single digits; corporate payments approximately 20%; lodging payments in the high single digits. Related to the quarters, we expect revenue growth in the first half of the year to be below our full year average due to the continued pockets of softness, a tough comp that includes Russia, as well as a challenging operating environment, including lower fuel prices. We expect revenue growth to accelerate in the back half of the year as the economic outlook becomes clear.
We lap the divestiture of Russia and we realize the benefits of our growth initiatives and new sales. For the first quarter, we're expecting revenue to grow between 3% and 5% and cash EPS to increase between 6% and 8%, which also reflects higher interest rates. Normalizing for Russia, revenue and cash EPS growth at the midpoint would be 7% and 13% respectively. The rest of our assumptions can be found in our press release and supplement. Before completing my prepared remarks, I would like to extend our gratitude to our more than 10,000 employees around the world who helped us deliver such a great year and who will be the driving force to even greater heights throughout 2024. Thank you for your interest in our company. And now, operator, we'd like to open the line for questions.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Today's first question comes from Peter Christiansen with Citi.
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