Earnings Labs

Green Dot Corporation (GDOT)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, May 10, 2017

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Green Dot Corporation First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference. Please note that the contents of this call are being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dara Dierks. Please go ahead.

Dara Dierks - ICR LLC

Management

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. On today's call, we will discuss 2017 first quarter performance and thoughts about the remainder of the year. Following these remarks, we'll open the call for questions. For those of you who haven't yet accessed the earnings release that accompanies this call and webcast, it could be found at ir.greendot.com. As a reminder, our comments include forward-looking statements about, among other things, our expectations regarding future results and performance. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Green Dot's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. During the call, we will make reference to our financial measures that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. For the sake of clarity, unless otherwise noted, all numbers we talk about today, including revenue per active card will be on a non-GAAP basis. Information may be calculated differently than similar non-GAAP data presented by other companies. Quantitative reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial information to the most directly comparable GAAP financial information appears in today's press release. The content of this call is property of the Green Dot Corporation, and is subject to copyright protections. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Thank you, Dara and welcome everyone to our first quarter earnings call. Today, we'll review the Q1 performance, we'll share some perspectives on the business and Mark will provide our updated and raised guidance ranges for the full year. Q1 was a fabulous quarter for Green Dot. Fabulous, not just because of the outstanding and record-setting financial results, but fabulous because our hard-working vision to build Green Dot into one of the country's premier financial technology platforms is paying off. Today Green Dot is comprised of six diverse business divisions, each solving a particular customer problem with unique products and services, each with its own business strategy and growth plans, each synergistic to the other, and providing thrust to the consolidated top-line with each operating on top of our high scale enterprise level proprietary technology platform, which allows that top-line growth in the period to fall to the bottom-line at increasingly expensive margins. The proof is in the results. In Q1, total consolidated operating revenue came in at $253.2 million, representing an 11% year-over-year growth rate, as Mark will explain more fully, the quarter benefited from closing the UniRush transaction on February 28th, without UniRush in the quarter, revenue was $241 million, representing year-over-year organic growth of 5.6%. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, with a modest contribution from UniRush, was almost $90 million on a consolidated basis, representing year-over-year growth of 14.5%. Consolidated non-GAAP EPS for the quarter was $1, which equates to year-over-year growth of 28.2%, marking the third quarter in a row with year-over-year double-digit non-GAAP EPS growth. We feel like these are terrific results and there are several factors across the consolidated business that help drive the numbers. First, tax season was very strong for our Tax Processing division, Green Dot TPG. Despite the sluggish start to…

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Thanks, Steve. I'd like to start by providing some insight into our performance in the quarter followed by commentary on our two reporting segments, including how the February 28 closing of the UniRush acquisition impacted our Account Services segment. Then, I'll provide our Q2 consolidated directional guidance and an update to our full year 2017 financial guidance. First, I'm pleased to echo Steve's commentary that Q1 2017 was an outstanding quarter for Green Dot delivering $253 million in consolidated total operating revenue, representing a year-over-year growth rate in the quarter of 11%. Excluding UniRush, Green Dot delivered $241 million in total operating revenue, equating to year-over-year organic revenue growth of approximately 6%, I guess the tough comp from last year's strong Q1. Revenue growth in the first quarter came from both our reporting segments. First, let's discuss the Account Services segment, which includes the legacy Green Dot and Walmart prepaid card product lines and our Green Dot Direct division that sells our products through several direct-to-consumer digital and direct mail platforms. The Account Services segment revenue, inclusive of the $12 million generated by UniRush in the quarter, delivered revenue of $167.7 million, representing a year-over-year growth of approximately 16%. Excluding UniRush, segment revenue grew by 7.2% year-over-year despite the number of organic active cards declining by 8% to 4.36 million active cards. This is the third quarter in a row with our active card counts at the level, which may indicate that our active card count is stabilizing after several periods of decline following the discontinuation of the original MoneyPak in Q1 of 2015. Including UniRush, on a consolidated basis, active cards grew by 6% in the quarter to 5.05 million active cards. As Steve mentioned in his prepared remarks, step one of our Six-Step Plan is about improving active…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. And our first question comes from Ramsey El-Assal with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Hi, Ramsey. Ramsey, are you there? Well, operator, let's go to the next one and then we'll come back and revisit Ramsey.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Our next question is from Steven Kwok with KBW. Please go ahead. Steven Kwok - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one is just around TPG. You mentioned that it's performing better than expected. Can you give us a little bit more sense of what the revenues were this quarter, how much it was up year-over-year and what your outlook is for it? Thanks.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

We don't breakup the revenues for that division on a standalone basis, but I do want to say in our disclosures for the Processing and Settlement division, we did give a increased number mark (40:44)

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

...TPG, I forget. The number of tax prints (40:48) as part of our disclosures.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. They were up 5% year-over-year in number of RT processed. Steven Kwok - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. Is that a good way as a proxy around the revenue growth to think about at the 5% up year-over-year?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Say that again, Steven? I'm sorry, it's hard to hear. Steven Kwok - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Yeah. Is that 5% a good proxy for what the revenue growth would have been around the TPG?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Well, I guess, you can think about that. We get paid by RT. The problem is that it's not a perfect match, because we get paid different amounts depending on the channel, whether it's pro or whether it's online, in other words, do it yourself or assisted, but it's not a bad proxy. I don't know that it's exact, but it's not bad. And if you look at our disclosures, when the Q comes out, and then also in the press release, we have the measures for TPG independently where you can see the numbers of RTs processed, and there's probably some good math you can back out using those disclosures as well. Steven Kwok - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Got it. And the second question is just around your active new cards – active cards that you have. It seems like at some point that organic growth rate is going to turn the corner. Like how should we think about it for the rest of the year?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Well, so we expect to be – as Mark said in his prepared remarks, we've been at this negative 8% now for three quarters straight. And so we're not going lower than that, which is a good sign, and shows that we're on track or frankly even a little bit ahead of track to get to organic growth. So, for the rest of this year, I would say, we're going to continue to be down, but then we're looking to return to growth as we get into Q1 of next year, and that's pacing well. I don't want to give guidance beyond what we provided for Q2, but given that we've been flat at negative 8% now for three quarters straight, we wouldn't expect it to go beyond that. Steven Kwok - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

You bet. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey. Good afternoon. Just – I guess, just wanted to clarify that there would be – the over-performance was $3 million when all was set and done forgetting about timing and in early UniRush contribution, the $3 million, what would you attribute that specifically to? It sounds like just better revenue per performance, and then a little bit on (43:10).

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah, two things. By the way, Steven's – our accounting folks were looking at Steven Kwok's question. And the answer is, we said in the prepared remarks, we have 9% year-over-year for revenue at TPG, we did disclose that, then the number of RTs is up 5%, and that's in the disclosure. So, I want to make sure we answered Steven's question. Tien-Tsin, to answer your question, yeah, we had an expectation in the quarter of $238 million (43:32) all-in, and then we said, well, gosh, $8 million is going to be pushed into Q2 because we thought the tax season was incredibly slow, if you remember when we have the guidance call. And it turned out that that wasn't the case. So we were up $8 million plus $3 million, so we were up $12 million – $11 million more than we thought, but if we take that $8 million we thought would be in Q2 and pull it into Q1, that leave you with that $3 million relative to our expectation. So that's how we came up with the $3 million. And the reason for that increase was the increase in revenue per active card and the number of active cards being where they were. So that was what increased that amount.

Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. And then, as my single follow-up, (44:17) due to – but just...

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Tien-Tsin, you can do as many as you want because you're Tien-Tsin.

Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

No, come on. I don't want to waste everyone's time know, but thanks for that. The reinvestment in new programs have flexibility, is that for discretionary marketing of existing plans or is that potentially launching some new stuff and then did you say that roughly half of the card base is now new versus old? Thanks.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

The answer is, half is new versus old, number one. Number two, the money that we're looking to reinvest for the second half is not marketing, it's more technology build out and other kinds of work that would be reflected in maybe SG&A and some other costs. But it's a general look. We have a lot going on at the company. And as we have these overages, we want to make sure that we have enough leftovers so that we have some leeway to operate in the way we want.

Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Good. Thank you.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah, okay. You bet.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ramsey El-Assal with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Ramsey El-Assal - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Hi, guys. Forgive me if you already addressed this, I've been hopping from call to call. What kind of the growth profile can we expect now from TPG? I mean, it grew so nicely in the quarter, is this something that we should sort of re-evaluate with the longer-term? It sounds like should we evaluate the longer-term growth profile for the (45:33) explain that a little bit?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

I really, really like TPG. When we bought that division, it had been flat to up 1% or 2% for some time. And when announced the acquisition, this goes back to 2014. We said that it follows the tax macro ecosystem, which it does, which people die and then people come into the system and it stays relatively flat in the U.S. So anything you gained is by gaining share from other competitors in the space or pricing advantage or add-on products. And our theory was that between Green Dot cards and then using some other products from Green Dot Bank that existed with that, we could invent, that will drive more advantage and more revenue and that really happened in this quarter. Oh, gosh, I don't want to cause guidance to change or people to get overly optimistic, but I feel really good about that division because it's such a fertile ground of cross-selling our platform. Everything you need to make that platform sing is something that we have in the consolidated enterprise, whether it's the tax refund advantage loans that we do or small business loans that help these independent pro-channel tax preparers get by signage and they redo the carpet in their office and things that small business do to get ready for tax season. And then the prepaid cards that can be sold to customers who say, hey, I'll take it in cash, I'll come back and pick up a check and the tax preparers able to say, don't do that, we have this Green Dot card over here, and we can put it on this FDIC insured account. And it arrives faster and so forth and so on. And so all those synergies really kicked in. So, there's no way I could give you an accurate forecast of what the percentage of increase would be over year-to-year, but I can tell you generally we feel very good about that division. We have great leadership, a great team, and a pipeline of new products that we think are solid. So we feel really good about that acquisition and feel better year-over-year.

Ramsey El-Assal - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Follow-up for me is, again, forgive me if you've already addressed this, but reinvesting some of the profit outperformance in the quarter rather than letting it flow-through the full year guide, did you already give any color in terms of what might be motivating you to do that as our particular need for is it just generally being held and reserve opportunistically or can you elaborate a little bit there?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

A part of it held in reserve opportunistically. Tien-Tsin asked a similar question.

Ramsey El-Assal - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

There are a few programs we're working on that we want the leeway to invest in, if we need, and we didn't want to be capped, if you will, by accidentally guiding too aggressively. So, we thought it was a good safe guidance that gave us the leeway to invest as we might. And just the pipeline of the business, and you heard it in my prepared remarks, some of the excitement or energy around the business, we work really, really hard to put all these assets together that we think are fairly unique and compelling, especially when they're all combined and integrated. And that means that we've become a company that people want to work with and that we have offerings that make sense in a new economy and in the new America as it relates to banking. And we have a lot of things happening and a lot of activity in the development pipeline. So we wanted to make sure that we didn't overly aggressively guide and then intentionally limit our opportunity to invest in the second half.

Ramsey El-Assal - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Got it. Thanks so much.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ashish Sabadra with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sabadra - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Good results. I have a quick question on margins, like guidance for second quarter implies a 50 basis point of margin expansion. How should we think about margins going forward? Is there opportunity for further margin expansion, even with the incremental potential investments?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

No question about it. I mean, we've seen a lot of advantage in the market, and actually I shouldn't feel (49:16) think about it. You want to talk about it?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

You're on, go ahead.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Well, look, we've worked really, really hard to build this platform starting with GoBank that has rewritten all of our code and allowed us to be so much more efficient and so much more modern with the way we spend on technology and rollout new products and the way we look at our consolidated enterprise and think about staffing needs and facilities and all the things you do when you try to become more efficient as we re-imagine the machine, I think, was the phraseology I used in my prepared remarks. So, we think there is an opportunity for margin expansion, but these things take some time. So, yes, there's margin expansion if you look at it year-over-year. But we have the UniRush acquisition, which is a lower margin revenue and there is a decent amount of revenue. So we have to overcome that. And we will as that gets integrated, right. We've only owned it for a month-and-a-half or something, so that will take some time to get integrated. And then, we have other new products like secured card where the margins are very, very tiny or maybe even negative depending on the period, but the revenue is growing. And you can very clearly see when you're running that business how that will translate into margin going forward. So, we have sort of the lower margin of the new revenue, the expanding margin of the legacy revenue coming together for healthy margins that will get healthier as time goes by. So the answer is, we think there is continued opportunity for margin expansion. And it's one of the reasons why you're seeing such terrific EPS growth and adjusted EBITDA growth, and that's clearly a big strength for the company right now.

Ashish Sabadra - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

That's correct. Thanks for the color. And my second follow-up question was around MoneyPak. You mentioned MoneyPak a little out as definitely helping in increased traction there. I was wondering if you can provide some more color on how much of the traction is coming from new locations being rolled out versus even improved awareness at the existing store, the same-store, if I can call it that growing...

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yes.

Ashish Sabadra - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

...so if you can parse out those details? Thanks.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure. I'll give you a high-level, because we don't have the actual numbers in front of me. But just from my memory as I go to through the business divisions, it's both, it's new locations, but most of the growth has been primarily been from same-store sales increasing as word gets around the product is out there. And a lot of the users of the new product have never used it before. In other words, we can look at cell phone numbers and social security numbers and some other data, and look at are these just old MoneyPak customers coming back to rebuy it, now that it's back on the shelf or are these customers who have never used the product before, and a large number of people have just never used the product before. So we think it's been a really good product, and frankly, maybe selling a little bit better than I thought it would, to be honest with you. Helena Mao, who runs that division, she is a GM told me so, I guess. But I'm pleased with the way that's going. And if we can be successful in rolling out this new use case that her team has been working on, then it could sell even better. But so far so good. It's been a nice comeback with a very little of any fraud and the nefarious activity we were worried about is a thing of the distant past. Our new controls are working very, very well. So, I'm pleased with that product, and really satisfied with our team's performance.

Ashish Sabadra - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Good results.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Oscar Turner with SunTrust. Please go ahead.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Hi, Oscar.

Oscar Turner - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

You bet.

Oscar Turner - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

You talked about direct deposit being one of the big drivers of the (52:35) card growth, I guess, over the last few quarters. So, can you provide any color on what the direct deposit penetration in your card base is now? And then, how do you think about the upside there?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

So, I'll answer is to the upside, while Jess Unruh, our Chief Accounting Officer, leads through paper to find out what we disclose and what we don't. So I'll let him worry about that. I know we get percentages of increases, but I don't know if we give absolute numbers, so he'll help to get that part out. And then, in terms where we can go, the answer is, I think, it will get much better. We've been aided by two things happening at once; one is, the macro of direct deposit users has been increasing because of the employment rate in the service sector which helps right that people don't have jobs, they can get into direct deposit. Number two is that companies more and more offer direct deposit. It used to be where you could only take advantage of direct deposit if you work for a large company. But now with so many automated payroll services and electronic payroll services, even small businesses sign up for cloud-based offerings and SaaS offerings. They almost all offer direct deposit as an automatic tool that your employees can enroll into. So direct deposit has just become bigger as a macro, and so that's helped us, employments become bigger. We've made direct deposit a lot easier to sign-up for. If you're a Green Dot customer, it wasn't always particularly easy frankly, and now we have your direct deposit enrollment information everywhere online. We text it to you, we email it to you, it's on our mobile app, so we've done a lot of things here to make that better and easier as well. And the more millennials we have, better the employment picture in the country. We see that macro increase. So, we think we have a lot of up room (54:11) to go, but we've also come a long way.

Oscar Turner - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. You bet. Thank you.

Oscar Turner - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

And then, just on active card growth, you guys sounded pretty confident about active card growth. It's accelerating as we get to layer this year or next year. I guess, what type of visibility do you have into active card growth actually growing next year? And then also, do you expect low return or more new adds to drive most of that growth?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

So, it's both. The way we forecasted is, Terry Lee, who is our genius FP&A guy who runs all this stuff and works for Paul Farina and Kevin Manion here at our -in the room with me here. Put together all this data and look at it, and we look at unit sales, and we look at retention of existing cards, and certain usage trends and you can fairly accurately predict where we're going to be. And we got it wrong in 2015, because with MoneyPak going away, all of our models went to hell in a handbasket. We just didn't have a sense of where we were with it and communicated that, that was probably an inelegant way to say it, but that's what it was. But as you stabilize now, you can have a new sort of a look at it and we've been hitting it pretty much on target, (55:26) has done a really good job with it. So, we do have visibility, because you know what your new unit sales are, you know what those unit sales contribute in terms of re-loading and retention. And then you can see what your existing portfolio is behaving as and we can be fairly accurate. So we do have good confidence that Q1 of next year will start to see our active cards growing the absolute. Now, I've said this in other calls, if things go wrong, then they go wrong and that would change it. In other words, if the numbers of cards we're selling, new accounts we're issuing certainly fell off of cliff. Or if retention suddenly reversed trend, well that would change that date, but it's been fairly consistent and we've gotten it right pretty much every quarter, so I feel fairly confident in it.

Oscar Turner - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Wasserstrom with Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Eric Wasserstrom - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks very much. Just a couple of follow-ups on the – I think, Steve, you mentioned in your prepared comments, or maybe Mark, it was you, about the bank dividend ending up (56:32) from the bank, can you just maybe give us some framework about what the appropriate capitalization is of the bank and over what timeframe you can dividend up that excess capital? And then, my follow up is about the intended use of that capital once it's returned to the parent company?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure. So, our capital ratios of the bank, and you can tell this by looking at our call reports and some other public disclosures, is at around 10%. And I don't imagine would go much below that. So, for example, if your average assets in the bank in a given quarter, let's pretend, were $700 million. That means you want to have $70 million in the bank against that. And you can see where our deposits are, they vary by quarter-by-quarter. In our case, because we don't do significant lending, our deposits or our assets. In a more traditional bank, your assets would be loans and things of that nature. So with dividend so far at $50 million, we're going to do another, I don't know what the number is, maybe $20 million or something like that as our goal. To bring this down to that 10% threshold, we were as high as 17% at one point. And so, once we're done, we're done, and then maybe that if we have a big program launch where our balances increase, where we actually have to take some money downstream from a holding company back to the bank, if we go deposits faster, but that's a good problem to have. In terms of what we've done with the money once it comes back to the holding company, it goes into our general unencumbered funds and that can be used for buying companies in the case of the cash component of the RushCard of the UniRush acquisition. It can be used for share buybacks like we just bought back into the $50 million in March as part of our ASR, and so it just becomes part of our general funds. There is no specific use earmarked for that money so much as the discussions around capital allocation that happens in board meetings and around board meetings, and that just becomes part of our general treasury.

Eric Wasserstrom - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

And just in terms of your thought process around share repurchase, what is your philosophy about this going forward in terms of sustainable versus opportunistic return?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Look, I have my own views, but we have a very diverse board and just because I believe something doesn't mean they will. But, look, I like share buybacks as a regular ongoing programmatic way to reinvest in our asset. Because in theory, the stock should always be going up if we're doing our jobs properly. And if we're communicating our vision and story well, then multiple (58:58) should increase and EPS should increase and then the math takes care of itself. So, I don't think there is a ever bad time to buy Green Dot stock, and I like programmatic buying rather as we continue on to share buybacks. And that's what we've done that for the past couple of years. There may be others who feel on the board, as a fair component that – look, let's not do that, you can buy a company, become more accretive with that, and there are certainly times we do that as well. In the case of this last acquisition, we did both. We bought UniRush and then immediately did a $50 million share buyback. So we have all these different competitions for the best use of capital, and generally if an acquisition has more accretion and is a better deal, I always like to go for the acquisition. Because that's a long-term standing benefit to your company, whereas a share buyback is somewhat of a point in time, but I like them both, and I don't think they have to be exclusive to one another. I think, if we manage our money well and given the kind of cash we generate, we can do both and it would be my preference to continue to do both, depending on the particular opportunities in any given quarter. You don't always have great companies to buy, but I think our stock is always a good time to buy it, always. So that's where we are.

Eric Wasserstrom - Guggenheim Securities LLC

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. You bet. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

I apologize. Our next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Hi, Steve and Mark. Good quarter here.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Thank you.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

My first question is with regards to the conversion over from the adhesives (01:00:37) platform to MasterCard platform. This has dragged out for some time now, and I know the revised agreement with TSYS, there's no ongoing negative impact to Green Dot. But at one point, there was supposed to be a positive impact from something working over. So I'm kind of wondering where we stand with regard to that and will there be fundamental issue here that's taking so long?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Well, so the first one is the economics. Had TSYS not been willing to work with us and help us revisit the economics of the old TSYS agreement, it would not have been feasible to do what we did or we would have done it, but lost money or spend more money than we had planned. But with the new agreement, we're able to have the advantage of the pricing, still get that platform savings that we hope to get, but we're just getting it despite being on both of those processes. So, from an economic point of view, it's going to cost us a little more than if we had had everything on the PTS platform, but it won't be punishing or penalizing in the way it was for the first half of the year. And we really appreciate TSYS being great partners and very helpful in helping us stabilize that situation. So that's been great. In terms of why it's taken so long is a couple of things. Look, Processing is a tricky business. And our partners at MasterCard are good people, who have done a good job, and we're a large portfolio. Green Dot is a large bank when it comes to the issuance of debit cards. We're not a small company anymore and it's one of the largest debit card portfolio's in the entire country, certainly we're a top – oh, it's got to be at this point at top 15 portfolio out of 17,000 banks and credit union. So it's a large portfolio. And as we've done the transitions, it's gone generally well, but as you know, we had those hiccups in May of last year, almost exactly a year ago when we had 30,000 or 40,000 customers who had issues with their accounts. And…

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Okay. That's very useful, thanks. My second question is actually less related to the quarter and more to forward potential at Green Dot if you will. I can't remember, I may be mistaken, but I can't remember when you had more initiatives in progress both from a product and efficiency perspective you're trying to do so many things. And so the question really is with regards to management bandwidth and if you could rank order where your focus is because there's a lot of things that obviously go into making the sausage here, compliance, risk management product design, support, distribution.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Can you talk about management bandwidth in bank, where your focus is, the top three to five items?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure. So the way we're pulling it off and you're right to notice that. We have never been more prolific. I feel like we're Elton John in the 1970s. We're just writing hit after hit, and it's been a lot of fun. Look I've been at the company for a few years, and never worked longer days and I'm kind of known for that anyhow, and I've just had a blast. It's been so much fun. And the reason is, is because we have a structure now with these six largely independent revenue divisions, all of us get along socially, but every revenue leader whether you're Helena Mao, who runs Money Processing or Dave Petrini Green Dot Direct, or Mike Casella (01:05:33) in Consumer Accounts, or Brian Schmidt at TPG, Mary Dent at the bank and now Chris Ruppel runs corporate disbursements and payroll cards. You have your own agenda, so they all have a mandate, and the mandate is you need to grow organically and what are your initiatives to do so, and they all report up to our Chief Revenue Officer, Brett Narlinger, who is new to us, came in – what four or five months ago maybe something like that. And Brett is a power house and very aggressive and very much of a type A kind of a guy, which I tend to like and he's done a very good job with that. But they have to come in and show us their plans, some plans we like frankly, some we don't, but that's part of the discussion. And they have an organic list of hey, here's how we're going to grow our division and how we're going to make it work and then they can also buy company. So, Brian Schmidt can come in and…

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Thank you for that. Elton John in 1970s was pretty darn good, good news (01:08:18) if we got better so.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Thank you. Yes, it's been a fun time. We appreciate your comments.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Yes.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Okay. Great. Next we have Vasu, right?

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Vasu Govil with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, ma'am. Vasu Govil - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks for squeezing me in here. Just two quick questions. I guess starting with UniRush, they contributed about $12 million this month, sort of in the month of March, but guidance for the remaining three quarters suggests about $8 million to $9 million a month, is that mostly tax-related seasonality or anything else that we should be mindful of?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah, hey. It's Mark. No, that's a right question. The month of March is generally you now the best month of the year, particularly the way the season played out for tax this year. So you had an extraordinarily high result, I think for the rest of the year, you're looking just like you would at Green Dot in terms of the cadence of revenue over the course of the year and seeing how it plays out from you know non-tax season. So we're still – we're still - Vasu Govil - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Understood.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

We're still happy with the – with the guidance we initially suggested for Rush. Vasu Govil - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: That's helpful. And just quickly and apologies if I missed this before and you already talked about it. But did you mention the accretion from share buybacks for this year?

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

I don't think we specifically called that out in the prepared remarks, it's sort of we're getting some benefit, I think you'd probably want to think a $0.01, as you're thinking about the impact for the year.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

It depends on the share price too, right? Vasu Govil - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Understood.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. There are couple – as Steve says, there are a couple components to it. One in fact is, look we're still in the middle of executing it and so, depending on where our stock goes for the remainder of the year, you get that $0.01 or you get more or less. So you know, we'll wait and see how it plays out for the rest of the year, but we're hopeful it's at least a $0.01.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

It's a better number to provide in arrears, and we'll do that. But I can tell you the first two buy backs we did, worked out remarkably well. We said in the prepared remarks that the average cost basis of that was like $22 a share and we're in the mid-30s as of before the call and that's pretty good, you know it doesn't always work out that well, but it worked out very well. Vasu Govil - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Absolutely. Thanks a lot for the color.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

You bet.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Bob Napoli with William Blair. Please go ahead. Robert Paul Napoli - William Blair & Co. LLC: Thank you very much. Just on the M&A front, the – how do you look at your dry powder today, and then what else is out there, we've made – I mean you've consolidated a lot of the players in the U.S. industry, you've entered some different areas, you have a number of different segments. What is out there from an M&A perspective, what do you view as your dry powder today to execute on that? And would you look outside of the areas you're in currently, other related payment areas you're interested in?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Well. So, Mark can talk about the dry powder thing which becomes a challenge at some point, because we're a good size company, but everyone has their limits in their appetite for what they can eat, but luckily we do generate a lot of cash, and as long we're in our various covenants with the regulators and there are Tier I ratios, we can absorb acquisitions and Mark can speak to that in a second. In terms of, Bob, how we think about what to buy. As I mentioned in one of the previous questions, we have these six division leaders, and all of them have a fairly unique list of companies that they may find interested in buying. And then ones that I may have not always heard off, frankly when I get to hear about them. And but that's okay, I never heard of TPG before we bought them. So you get to learn from each expert who runs their own division, and so they can be in the areas of money processing or tax refund processing, it can be in the areas of other consumer account companies or portfolio's while there may not be actual companies to buy that are in the prepaid portfolio business, there are other prepaid portfolios that there could be out there to buy that companies are trying to shed or for whatever reason are looking to sell, and so we're still looking at those, and there maybe some that come up. And every division has their thing, the bank could even look at other credit portfolios, secured portfolios, all kinds of things. So, it's really enjoyable to sit down with our division leaders as they come in, and point out things that we may be able to buy, and if the price is right or we can bring a unique benefit to that acquisition that makes it unusually accretive or there's something about our platform that makes it worth far more than it is on its own, well then it peaks our curiosity and we look at it. But to your point we can't buy a mammoth organization, unless we did a big equity deal, which is something that I'm not likely to want to do anytime soon. But you're right, there's always a limit of what you can absorb, and Mark can share a little bit about that.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

I think you've covered most of it, the question would be, right now, we still have dry powder at a certain point we'd have to think about changing our capital structure and moving from bank financing to alternative forms of financing as we think about alternative transactions. We have steady cash flow that is very, very helpful, and as a company, I think we're somewhat under-levered. So there's still, there is still room to grow through acquisitions.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. Robert Paul Napoli - William Blair & Co. LLC: And then I just to – I mean the increase in revenue per card is one of the more interesting things I've seen over the years, that's an amazing improvement that you've made. And if you think about the business, the model that you have today, Steve, versus the model that you had several years ago, going back to 2011, 2012, so we need to – how is the profitability of the adjustments you made, as this all flows through compared to what we saw in the past, how has it changed the model.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yeah. Robert Paul Napoli - William Blair & Co. LLC: And the model that you had years ago?

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

So couple of things have really benefited us, clearly the new products worked out well, and look, I've designed a lot of consumer products in my days, more than I can remember, in this industry and in other industry that I was in before starting Green Dot. And you don't always know what's going work. You think you know, you do research, you have a gut feel for it. But I've had some products I'm sure would be huge and they turn not to be dogs and I've have some products that they were stupid, that turned out to be huge. MoneyPak is one of them, but I thought it was a really stupid product and it just happen to sell really well. So you never know, in consumer products anyone to gets it right all that time is a liar. But in this case we did get it right and they've done very-very well because the people who buy them recognize that they're real bank accounts that do real things and we got rid of the element that was using it for sort of nonsense and then throwing the card away, and now we're dealing with the better set of serious customers. So that worked out well, and that's one advantage because we're able to have a higher fee base of more serious customer. So that worked out. But at the same time, we really have worked incredibly hard to completely reengineer the infrastructure of Green Dot. There's a joke at Green Dot, but it's true that you can leave the company, but the company never leaves you, meaning that we have a lot of returning employees, who go to leave and then they six months later they say I can't believe left, can I please come back and…

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Yep, you bet, Bob. Thank you. And we have one more call and then Joe, since you've hung on for so long, let's entertain your question as well. Thank you for waiting.

Operator

Operator

Joseph, I have opened your line, you may go ahead with your question.

Joseph A. Vafi - Loop Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks. Joe Vafi from Loop Capital. Just one, one quick question on the active revenue per active card. Are you still seeing growth at this point in revenue per active cards from the legacy or is revenue per active card growth only coming from the new products now? Thanks.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

So the answer is – it's hard to say that, because part of it is a question of the mathematics. In our legacy portfolio, these are customers that in many cases, your five, six, seven years old, direct-to-positive customers to heavy cash re-loaders and they deliver a lot of revenue because just like your bank account, you use it for everything and this has become their bank account. So it is in that, they're necessarily growing organically, but as older accounts die off, the ones remaining by definition have a higher revenue per active, because your universe shrinks. Your denominator changes, if you will, but numerator stays the same. So, the answer is yes, it's improving, but not in the way you're asking, I don't think. The real action is on the newer cards that start off from day one, being better customers, paying a higher fee schedule, using more features, who are using the card more seriously from day one and that's where I think you're seeing the, the push if you will or the growth in the overall active cards. I think that's a question, you're asking.

Joseph A. Vafi - Loop Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Yeah, it is. Thank you. And that just brings up one little quick follow-up, which is the kind of pace of growth and what are the new proactive cards you're seeing with the new cards. What does it look like, what kind of color can you provide there, because obviously, because they've got more fee – checking fees (01:21:14), the revenue is kind of going to be higher than other cards were when they first came in, but do they have an ability to accelerate more in the revenue generation over time, versus some of the legacy ones? Thanks a lot.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

We think so, yeah. I mean listen, we are way ahead of our models for per card revenue per active growth. I don't think we originally forecast this and we first rolled up the new products by a mile. So that's been a pleasant upside to the model frankly. Can it go higher? We think it can. In our models, we don't really rely on that, because we're little bit chicken to do that, because we're in somewhat new territory there, but we do know that the longer a direct to deposit customer uses the card, the more that they deposit as time goes by, because they get more comfortable with the account, just like you would with new bank account you opened. And the so the older the customer as they season they get better, an old customer is our best customer. And so to the extent they hang on to their cards and use them more, well they'll continue to generate more revenue from usage and interchange in ATMs and all of the good things that happen when you use your card. But we're learning more with each cohort. And as you look at every 90-day quarter that we pile on, remember it's only been not even five quarters right, it's been like four quarters and a month or something and even that's for the Walmart side, the Green Dot products did rollout till April or May really.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Year half (01:22:35).

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

So with this now hitting a 12 month number, so I think we're still learning as we're going, it's one of the reasons why we try to be moderate with our guidance and our increases in guidance, because we don't have 10 years of data, right, this is when the new world order here and again the employment picture has been helping just as a macro in the country and the kinds of customers who buy our products has been helping. So we think there's upside but that's not guidance or forward-looking statement, it's the CEO's opinion and I wouldn't take it for more than that, we'll see as it happens.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Look, the other piece that I find as or more interesting, is the profitability of that revenue. I think if you look at revenue in 2014 and 2015, you saw pretty much flat EPS and then with modest growth in revenue in 2016 and again growth in 2017, you're seeing materially higher flow through of that revenue to EPS. If you look at our guidance on a full year basis at the midpoint, we're looking at sort of a 16% pickup in revenue year-over-year but a 31% pickup on EPS. So, I do like the revenue aspects but the flow through to profitability is what I get more excited about.

Joseph A. Vafi - Loop Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Thanks very much.

Steven W. Streit - Green Dot Corp.

Management

You bet. Thank you. Okay. I think we've – I know it's been a longer call we went over about 25 minutes, but we had so many questions we wanted to entertain them all. Thank you all for listening in. We know it's late on the East Coast, have a good night and hopefully we'll see you at a conference soon.

Mark L. Shifke - Green Dot Corp.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.