Earnings Labs

Mastercard Incorporated (MA)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, May 1, 2014

$508.50

-2.95%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.59%

1 Week

+0.03%

1 Month

+2.87%

vs S&P

+0.50%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the MasterCard First Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Adrianna [ph] and I’ll be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Barbara Gasper. Ms. Gasper, you may begin.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Thank you, Adrianna [ph]. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for a discussion about our first quarter financial results. With me on the call today are Ajay Banga, our President and Chief Executive Officer as well as Martina Hund-Mejean, our Chief Financial Officer. Following comments from Ajay and Martina, the operator will announce your opportunity to get into the queue for the Q&A session. Up until then, no one is actually registered for the queue. This morning’s earnings release and the slide deck that will be referenced on this call can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at mastercard.com. These documents have also been attached to an 8-K that we filed with the SEC earlier this morning. A replay of this call will be posted on our website for one week through May 8. Finally, as set forth in more detail in today’s earnings release, I need to remind everyone that today’s call may include some forward-looking statements about MasterCard’s future performance. Actual performance could differ materially from what is suggested by our comments here today. Information about the factors that could affect future performance are summarized at the end of our press release as well as contained in our most recent SEC filing. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Ajay Banga. Ajay.

Ajay Banga

President

Thanks, Barbara and good morning everybody. For the first quarter, we are very pleased to deliver strong results with net revenue growth of 14%. That’s driven by a healthy growth in gross dollar volume, by process transactions and cross-border volume. And this, combined with our operating expense growth of 12%, is what’s helped us drive EPS growth of 18%. So as usual, let’s start by the global economic trend starting with the US. Our first quarter SpendingPulse data showed US retail sales ex auto growing at 2.8%, down from the 3.9% growth in the fourth quarter of last year. And I guess that reflects the harsh winter weather conditions that affected parts of the US as well as later Easter. But on a positive note, consumers continue to spend more. And so interesting sectors like airlines, lodging, restaurants, furniture and furnishings and that reflectively increased consumer confidence we saw in the quarter. And we’ve got to continue to watch these indicators in the coming months. The good news is that despite the headwinds on consumer spending, our US business in the first quarter saw process transactions and gross dollar volume growth higher than the fourth quarter of 2013. In Europe, the environment continues along a path of slow growth with positive PPE projection for the year, although those are slightly down from last quarter’s forecast. Across the region, consumer sentiment and business sentiment have continued to improve and our MasterCard’s total Europe in volume growth for the first quarter was in the mid-teens and process transaction growth in the low 20s, a bit higher than the fourth quarter, driven by growth in a number of countries including Russia, Sweden and Turkey as well as continued healthy growth in the UK. In Latin America, the overall consumer confidence is mixed across…

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ajay, and good morning everyone. Let me begin on Page 3 of our slide deck where you see the as-reported as well as the FX-adjusted growth rates. All of my comments pertain to the FX-adjusted figures which are essentially the same as the as-reported numbers due to the strength of the euro offsetting the weakness of the Brazilian real. As Ajay said, we are very pleased with our strong performance this quarter which we were able to deliver in spite of the mixed economic environment. Net revenue growth of 14% combined with operating expenses growth of 11% resulted in net income growth of 14%. EPS growth was 18% and share repurchases contributed $0.03 per share. During the first quarter, we repurchased just over 21.3 million shares at a cost of approximately $1.7 billion. Through April 24, we purchased a little more than 6.2 million shares at a cost of approximately $450 million and we now have $1.5 billion remaining under the current authorization. We will continue to look to repurchase shares on an opportunistic basis. Now turning to cash flow. Cash flow from operations was $568 million. Additionally, at the end of the quarter, we completed an inaugural debt offering of $1.5 billion and we ended up the quarter with cash, cash equivalent and other liquid investments of about $6.6 billion. So let me turn to Page 4. And here you can see the operational metrics for the first quarter. Our worldwide gross dollar volume or GDV was up 14% on a local currency basis. And that’s essentially the same as last quarter. US GDV grew 9% and our US debit growth was also 9%, again, same as last quarter. On the private side, after some difficult quarters in consumer credit, we are turning the corner with growth of…

Barbara Gasper

Management

Thank you, Martina. We’re now ready to begin the question-and-answer period. In order to get to as many people as possible, we ask that you limit yourself to a single question and then queue back in for additional questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions) And our first question comes from Dave Koning from Baird. Go right ahead. Dave Koning – Baird: Yeah. Good morning. And great job. I guess my question is just cross-border you mentioned the price increase that lapsed. Should we expect now if we have high-teens cross-border growth to generate high single digit revenue growth, so about a 10% a disconnect between the two for the rest of the year?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I mean, I’ve said that the pricing that we have put in last April in 2013 is pretty much lapping – almost all of it is lapping at this point in time. So you should expect that what’s happening between the cross-border volume fees as well as the cross-border volume growth itself should be much closer in range. The impact – it has continued to be impacted, of course, by two things – one, the mix of the intra-European travel; and two, by local currency as we’re still seeing and beaconing in foreign exchange rates versus the euro and the US dollar. Dave Koning – Baird: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Dan Perlin from RBC Capital Markets. Go right ahead, sir. Daniel Perlin – RBC Capital Markets, LLC: Thanks. So the question I have I guess is, the success you guys are starting to have in the current pace of kind of the co-branded card portfolios in the United States for credit, I’m just wondering, how is it that you’re differentiating yourself here in that environment? I know that your competitor recently announced that they’re going to drop I think 50% of their operating rules, and I’m just wondering, are you guys like cumbersome in that respect, are you closer to these retailers? And just generally, what is – I guess what is allowing you to differentiate yourself right now? Thanks.

Ajay Banga

President

So I guess – I’m not quite sure what the competitors are doing in that space. We have already worked our operating rules down actually quite some time ago – a couple of months back, three, four months back, towards the end of last year. I’m actually not aware of exactly what the others are planning to do, so I’m not going to comment on a comparison. But I’m pretty confident that we aren’t winning our business based on operating rules only. We win our business based on analytics and capabilities around those. We’ve built our – we build our business based on what we do in terms of acceptance. We build our business based on the kind of marketing and co-programs we do. We build it based on relationships. We – but of course, we build it based on pricing and that’s always the thing that everybody looks at. So it’s a mix of all those things. And to me, the last few periods of months when this entre issue with Target happened actually has opened a whole new set of discussions around EMV and chips and signature and PIN and tokenization, and we think that we represent a good thought process in that space. And so all these things put together I think are helping us win business. Now, we don’t win every deal we bid for, don’t get me wrong. We – and these are still going to be singles and doubles. But – and I said that a year or two ago but we’re doing them consistently and steadily and we’ll win some, we won’t win the others, but that’s one of the ways for us to rebuild our position in the consumer credit business in the US in addition to what we’re doing with our bank partners where we are little by little winning deals in that growth area of that credit book too. So it’s kind of a mixed bag of what we are doing. I wouldn’t put it all down on any one silver bullet. I wish life were that simple but it isn’t. Daniel Perlin – RBC Capital Markets, LLC: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Tien-tsin Huang from J.P. Morgan. Go right ahead, sir. Tien-tsin Huang – J.P. Morgan: Okay, great. Thanks. Just a follow up to that last question. On the Target front, I’m curious, was – did your EMV solution cause you to win that or are there other factors behind it? And then, as a follow on or a bigger picture question, do you think this EMV push could actually drive some brand flips? Thanks.

Ajay Banga

President

Tien-tsin, I – you will have to ask Target why they gave us all the business. But at the end of the day, again, I believe it is a mix of things. And I wouldn’t rely openly on any one thing because I don’t think any merchant or any bank goes based on any one item. It’s the mix of things we bring to the party that allows us to win and in other times, they will lose because you don’t bring the right mix to that party. So I’ve kind of got my feet firmly on the ground about this issue. I – we’ve got two of the largest retailers in the US between Wal-Mart and Sam’s on the one end and Target now, but it’s kind of – it’s a win one by one at a time. So I wouldn’t conclude too much either one way or the other unless you ask Target and they give you a different answer. We’re just very excited to be their partner because I see in them having gone through what they’ve gone through, the desire to really make a big difference. And that’s useful for somebody like us who also is trying to grow in that space. So that’s kind of what’s going on in these wins. Will you get a chance to get more flips? I don’t know yet. I honestly don’t know. I’m still focused on the singles and doubles and just keeping my head down and trying to win deals.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Next question please, operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from Chris Donat from Sandler O’Neill. Go right ahead, sir. Christopher Donat – Sandler O’Neill: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask a follow up on the Target and the chip and PIN enablement. Is that something that – in the United States, chip and PIN isn’t – entering PINs is not something I think US consumers are comfortable doing. So is this more giving Target the optionality that if consumers do want that level of security they have it or is it a blanket for everything? Can you just help us understand where that fits in?

Ajay Banga

President

Sure. Sure. Sure. The whole EMV migration is going to depend a little bit on the manner in which this rolls out. The chip cards will definitely be coming in. I mean, look, a number of issuers are already issuing chip cards for their overseas travel. And I have – my number may be wrong in the head. It’s a month or two old, but I do recollect somewhere between 6 million and 8 million cards but I might be a little off the number – already issued that are chip enabled for banks – by banks to individuals who travel. I personally use those as well. Our entire corporate card portfolio in MasterCard for our employees is chip-enabled. In some cases, it’s chip and PIN like our corporate card. And in others like my personal card, its chip and signature. The – you will find that different models of this will emerge or appear over time, depending on the adoption of PIN terminals or the point of sale, depending on the banks’ concerns about different kinds of losses in their loss book and the advantages and disadvantages of those. And then finally and most importantly, it’ll depend on consumer behavior. And so it’s a mix of those three. And in all these cases, while we are going to enable chip and PIN, as you know, we’ve even incented for people to have chip and PIN. But at the end of the day, we will work with what works in that environment. And that’s what we’re trying to do.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Next question, operator.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Jason Kupferberg from Jefferies. Go right ahead. Jason Kupferberg – Jefferies LLC: Thank you, guys. Ajay, just hoping you could just drill a little bit more into the Russia legislative process to the extent you guys have some insight into some of the milestones or next steps, I think you said it’ll probably be a multi-month process until it fully plays out. So if you can help us understand that a little bit. And in conjunction with that, just how are you guys sort of probability weighting some of these I guess worst case scenarios if some of these more onerous provisions actually become law? I mean, does it feel more like that’s just kind of some saber-rattling or is it felt to be a very serious threat of passage into law?

Ajay Banga

President

Jason, I think that the whole Russia situation is all very serious. I – both at a geopolitical level and in our own small way. I don’t think this is a saber-rattling situation any longer. I just – I think this is going to be tough to work for almost everybody, governments and companies, over the next few months or periods of time. It might last longer than that in one way or the other. That’s just me and my personal opinion. As far as we’re concerned as a company, what we’ve seen in the recent legislation that got approved by the Duma and then by the Upper House but haven’t, at least until this morning, received the signature of the President, but I’m assuming that’s a matter of time. And somewhere over the next few days, that’ll probably happen. After all, I know it could be happening now. And therefore, I assume that that legislation will get enacted. Two of its provisions that are really interesting and complicated are the ones that I picked on and speaking and Martina picked on a little bit too. One of those has to do with the on-soil requirement. And the definition of on-soil obviously will depend – the devil is in the details of what constitutes on-soil versus what constitutes not being there. Is it just a question of data moving, is it a question of clearing, is it a question of authorizing, is it a question of settlement, is it clearing, authorizing and settlement? There’s a gazillion different – and gazillion’s a technical term – but there’s a heck of a lot of these different permutations and combinations that we are working our way through. I actually don’t have clarity on that yet because a lot will depend on the dialog…

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

As well as at least that – when you look at the domestic value, that has been going down from a growth rate point of view, from very high growth rates last year [indiscernible] trending down given what is going on from an economic, from a pure economic point of view in Russia. And on cross-border volume, we really haven’t seen a lot of change – a little bit of trending down but not a lot of change, certainly not in the first quarter. Only very recently over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a little bit less as I said in my remarks for the April 28th numbers, we’ve seen a little bit more of the growth coming down from a cross-border perspective.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Smittipon Srethapromote from Morgan Stanley. Go right ahead, sir. Smittipon Srethapromote – Morgan Stanley: Thank you. My question is on there but your competitor recently spoke about weakness and debit payment volumes while your numbers seem quite robust. Do you think you’re gaining share or are there any notable differences in debit exposure to call out that drove that divergence in trends?

Ajay Banga

President

I guess the macro side [ph] we are gaining share but I don’t know what’s causing the issue for the others in truth. I know that our in debit volumes continue to remain, as I’ve said, above that 400 million transactions a month which is up from the hundreds that we used to have pre-Durbin. It goes up and down by 10 million, 20 million transactions depending on where we are on the routing table of the larger retailers. We have a very sophisticated way of comprehending where they want to pass that transaction. But that’s kind of where we are.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Next question, please.

Operator

Operator

We have our next question comes from Craig Maurer from CLSA. Go right ahead, sir. Craig Maurer – CLSA Limited: Hey, good morning. Thanks. Regarding how we’re progressing towards a mobile payments infrastructure in the US, I was wondering how discussion with banks are proceeding in terms of MasterCard, perhaps filling the role of a central token provider that can aggregate all the banks into a single token source and make it easier for a mobile rollout from someone, say, like Apple.

Ajay Banga

President

So as you know, Craig, we put out this whole announcement not just with MasterCard, by the way, but as an industry – Visa, AmEx [indiscernible] in their announcement about providing tokenization as a way to help protect the increasing percentage of transactions that are digital because that’s where this impacts the most. While at the same time allowing the right amount of information about which card is being used, which category, which type, which institution, who issued the card to flow back and forth between the merchant and the issuer. That’s the whole purpose of what we’re trying to do with tokenization the way that Visa, AmEx and us are trying to do it. It’s really not suspect to us only. The discussions are proceeding. We’re talking to every institution, we’re talking to merchants, we’re talking to banks. We’ve had discussions with legislators who want to understand tokenization although that’s in very early stages. As you know, there’s always interest in the legislative community around the whole mobile payment space more as a way of getting aware of what’s going on in the space than any other comprehension. So that’s going on even as we speak. So the dialog is usual. We’re making progress in being ready to do all of these things. We are – our technological development is continuing apace and in fact, it’s going to keep adding to our CapEx. That’s one of the things we’ve got to do. We’ve got to invest money in tokenization and MasterPass and we’re doing it. So that’s what’s going on. But at the same time, as I’ve said in my remarks, we’re also working on different ways in which the mobile payments industry will develop. It could be through secure elements, it could be through postcard innovation. And there…

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from David Hochstim from Buckingham Research. Go right ahead, sir. David Hochstim – The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated: Yes. So I wonder if you can just clarify two things in the 2% of revenues from Russia, does that include cross-border volume and then could you give us –

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. David Hochstim – The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated: Okay. And so that could be a high percentage of that that might not disappear?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

And you said –

Ajay Banga

President

Actually, it’s not. It’s not a high percentage.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

It’s not. It’s actually a relatively low percentage. And first of all, we said a little bit more than 2% of our revenues but it does include all of cross-border and it’s not a very significant – it’s some portion but it’s not the majority. It’s much less than that. David Hochstim – The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated: Okay. And could you just clarify what the –

Ajay Banga

President

Dave, let me give you a hint. An overwhelming majority of the Russian revenue is domestic. How’s that? David Hochstim – The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated: Thank you. That’s helpful, thank you. And could you just remind us what the revenue could be once the base portfolio [ph] is slowly deconverted?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

No. So David, we are doing it – all of my remarks that I have done for 2014 as well as for the longer period, 2013 to ‘15, obviously takes them – takes the conversion. But we are not calling out a specific number to a specific customer. David Hochstim – The Buckingham Research Group Incorporated: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh from Macquarie. Go right ahead, sir. Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie Research: Great, thank you. Just given what seemed like a little bit of higher level rebate incentives in Q1 and obviously Q4, should we expect that to tell off the balance of the year or just pretty consistent with historical trends as well? Should we see a bit of a step down given the investments in Q1 and Q4 or still at relatively historical levels?

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

So Kevin, let me just set this a little bit correctly. What happened in Q4 was basically a catch-up from the prior quarters. When you look at our Q2 and Q3, in 2013 rebate [indiscernible] the numbers were relatively low and then you had a catch-up in Q4 for that. What you’re now seeing in Q1 of 2014 is very similar to what you have seen in prior years. So you can actually say that 2013 was an anomaly from a quarter-over-quarter performance, not from a whole year. And now in 2014, you’re going to see something very similar to 2012 – in 2014 to 2012. Kevin McVeigh – Macquarie Research: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani from KBW. Go right ahead, sir. Sanjay Sakhrani – KBW: Thank you. I guess the accelerating GDV and process transaction growth in the United States is pretty encouraging given the backdrop. Could you just talk about what’s driving that? Is it your customer engagement or is it consumer spending more? And maybe you could just talk about kind of a broader lead across to the economy. Thank you.

Ajay Banga

President

Hi, Sanjay. So yes, as I said, spending falls short at 2 point something – 2.8% or 2.9% growth in the first quarter ex auto. As you know, it was down from the growth rate of the fourth quarter over the same quarter of the prior year. All these numbers, by the way, are not sequential quarter. They are quarter-over-quarter, same quarter prior year. The – and that is down – by the way, the fourth quarter was down over the third quarter. So in a sense, it feels like the growth rate of consumer spending ex auto in the US felt like it was slowing over these three quarters. But interestingly, when you unpeel the first quarter, I should see two things that make me feel that we shouldn’t jump to that conclusion too quickly. And the first one has to do with the regional spending trends in the United States in the consumer spending trend. Aside from the Northeast which actually in our SpendingPulse data, declined for the total consumer spending ex auto in the Northeast. And actually, the growth rate was minus. So a little decline in the first quarter of 2014 over the first quarter of 2013. And similarly, in the mid-West where there was very bad weather, we had a small decline. Now, a larger proportion of the US consumer spending comes from the Northeast than the mid-West. On the other hand, the Western part of the country from Seattle down to California grew very, very handsomely, almost in the double digits. And the Southwest of the country, Texas through Florida, did something similar. So when you put the whole of the United States together, the weather truly, truly did seem to have some kind of an impact because it just matches too closely to this pattern. The second thing that was interest – and I don’t yet know how to calculate the impact of it – is Easter. Easter is coming at a different time and therefore, April’s numbers by and large look a little better for most of us and for the consumer spending early data that I’m seeing. I haven’t yet seen our new SpendingPulse data. It will come out within a few days of the 1st of May which is now, so in a few days it will emerge. That’s kind of what I know so far. So overall, I’d say that the US even though the numbers at a bold [ph] level look like the growth rate is reducing, I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion too quickly.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from James Friedman from Susquehanna. Go right ahead, sir. James Friedman – Susquehanna Financial Group: Hi. And Ajay, I wanted to follow up on the Svenska Handelsbanken win. Congratulations, I know that’s a very prestigious issue. I think you had in your comments suggested it was your largest conversion in Europe since Swedbank. So I don’t have to spend $10,000 for the Nielsen Report, could you give us some context on Svenska, how big are they relative to Sweden – to Swedbank? That would be helpful. Thank you.

Ajay Banga

President

I think you spend the 10 grand and you’ve got to pay for all this people too. I’ll send you my copy. How’s that? I’ll tell you this. I don’t want to talk about a particular institution. It’s not what I would do in terms of their size. But I will give you this idea. In the Nordics, there are three of four very large institutions and you’re counting – the two names you mentioned are among those three or four right on the top. The Handelsbanken is actually the second largest retail bank in Sweden. It’s presence outside of Sweden in the rest of the Nordics is lower than its presence in Sweden, so it may not be – in fact, I don’t think it is the second largest for the whole of the Nordics. But it is very – one of the large three or four big ones there. But it’s pretty significant for us because we’ve been trying to build our share in the Nordics now for a little while partly because that’s one of the markets where cash is truly not king, where electronic payments are king. And so much so that I think the estimate of cash in terms of percentage of transactions in Nordics is between 5% and 10% or even lower in some cases which makes it quite the opposite of the world which is 85% cash and checks. And so we’ve been doing well there. We were not in a great position four, five years ago. We’ve actually grown ourselves nicely and that’s the flavor I was trying to provide you in terms of becoming among the largest players in the Baltics and now the largest debit card in Sweden and we’ve grown our share in credit and commercial and installment cards and co-brand cards and I feel generally good about where we are there. James Friedman – Susquehanna Financial Group: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Bryan Keane from Deutsche Bank. Go right ahead, sir. Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank AG: Yes, hi guys, good morning. Just more details that have come out on the European regulation front, so I just want to get an update from you guys on any details on the potential challenges the MasterCard – I know you guys mentioned that is something you’re highlight. So what are the kind of things that you guys are looking at that could be a challenge?

Ajay Banga

President

Well, there’s multiple things in that legislation the way it is currently worded, although it has changed also from the original wordings and in some ways the current wording is less onerous and in others, it is more onerous. The one that came through the last round added commercial card interchange to be controlled and dictated just as consumer interchange in the current space is going to be controlled and dictated. I actually don’t like that because it – remember we are inside this legislation. The aspect of other full party [ph] schemes as well as schemes that look like full party [ph] but may not be called full party [ph] are also included. But at the end of the day, I think what really happened here and this is information gleamed more from hearsay than reality, is that my sense is that the recent work was a confused one. The legislators actually did not believe that commercial cards should be dictated in the same way as consumer credit cards but in a mix up in the wording pattern, it got worded the wrong way. I don’t know whether that will get corrected over this coming process but that’s kind of what we’re discussing openly and transparently with the legislative community and the regulatory community in Europe. I would like that to not be in the rules really. But beyond that, there’s a bunch of other rules that had started. Remember the one about separation of management between scheme and processing. And there was this whole thing of what’s constituted in separation and what’s not. We’re getting a little more clarity it feels like the way it looks today, but management would have to be separated, you would have to have some legal entities separated. But the holding company could…

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

First half of 2015, correct –

Ajay Banga

President

2015, sorry, not ‘14. Error. 2014 is what we’re in. 2015. As you can see, I’m losing track of time just like advancing age.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Looking ahead. Bryan Keane – Deutsche Bank AG: Okay, thanks for the call.

Barbara Gasper

Management

Operator, next question.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Bob Napoli from William Blair. Go right ahead. Bob Napoli – William Blair & Company L.L.C.: Thank you. Ajay, I wouldn’t send that Nielsen Report because I don’t think Nielsen likes that. There’s a very sharp word in the – so I was just wondering if you could give – with the Russia noise, if you can give an update on China and have you seen any movements there for opening up local processing in country and if you feel you’re in a position if they’re – if you think that other countries are going to follow what Russia is doing and when you see the effects that sanctions can have on a payments industry and on the banking industry. So if you could talk a little bit about Russia, if you’re seeing any movement there. And then at what point do you just – I mean on Russia, I think one of the terms that I saw on one of the – I’m not sure what exactly what they passed but they wanted Visa and MasterCard to put up $4 billion, $3.8 billion, two days processing or something like that is – at what point do you just throw in the towel on Russia?

Ajay Banga

President

So I mean there are two different kind of parts there. The one about the level of collateral and as I mentioned, that’s one of the issues. I actually don’t think the number is what you just said. I think it’s a lower number than that. But having said that, it’s not a number I’m interested in. So to be clear, either which way, I’m not a happy boy on that one. But, I don’t know, we’ll see. We’re going to have the discussions with the Central Bank. We are very transparently in conversation with them. It’s kind of interesting on the ground in Russia, banks and their clients and merchants are still doing a lot of new things with us. And it’s almost like that’s continuing. We’ve actually launched new things in the last three weeks with them. And then on the other hand and having a very open, by the way, transparent discussion with the Central Bank which, as you would expect with a good regulator, you would expect that transparency of discussion. Clearly, there is a political circumstance in Russia that is driving in a different direction. This whole thing of having domestic payment schemes is not new to us. But we’re dealing with it in Europe for a long time before SEPA which of course changed it. And as you know, that’s opened the doors for us there. Recently in Mexico which has always been dominated domestically by two domestic payment switches that were owned by the bank, the Mexican government has just literally – and I think it’s three, four weeks ago has put out a new regulation that actually opens that space for people like us and our competitors to attempt to begin to process domestic transactions. Now it’ll be a long road. Nothing…

Barbara Gasper

Management

Sir, I think we have time for one last question.

Operator

Operator

Of course. And our last question will be from Darrin Peller from Barclays. Go right ahead. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: Thanks, guys. Listen, I saw your comments on the European regulations [indiscernible] the Russian invocations chase [ph], all three of those not impacting your guidance I guess long term is helpful. I just want to be clear. First of all, that is long term, right? That’s the 11% to 14% CAGR you’re talking about? And then, Martina, just as a follow up around the dilution, I guess you mentioned earlier I think from acquisitions during the year being $0.06 to $0.07 now versus $0.01 to $0.02 earlier in the year. Can you just give a little more color on what’s different now than in January? Maybe you can just brand [ph] the size – the relative size of the deals?

Ajay Banga

President

I’m from the first part and let’s not do the acquisition part as well. Let me give a little clarity of what I – I want to make sure that you hear where I’m coming from. The guidance we’re referring to is up 2013 through 2015. That’s the guidance we have given, that’s what’s called our long term guidance. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: Right.

Ajay Banga

President

I believe that what’s going on between Russia and the European regulation, Russia actually could be even more complicated given the level of detail we’re having here as a conversation. Europe could be – some early impact, this could be negative but that could be where if we are innovative, if we are creative and if we are competitive on the ground, I continue to believe that Europe is an enormous opportunity, given that so much of Europe’s expenditure outside of the Nordics is still in cash. And I think we bring a lot of assets to the table for the European government and the European consumer and the European merchant and the European banks and the European M&Os who are now good partners of ours. So that’s where we’re coming from and that – we think that there’s a lot of negative in this but there’s a lot of positives too in a business like ours – conversion of secular trends, the market share we’re winning, the deals we are doing and somewhere in there is our attempt to balance and get to the guidance that we’re giving you. It won’t be easy but it’s what we are committed to doing. We have in the past found our way through somewhat complicated situations. And I have some confidence that’s what we’re doing here too.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

Yes. So as you can appreciate, we had to do a number of scenarios that gives us the comfort that we can go to the 11% to 14% for the 2013 to the 2015 period. And that we feel comfortable that we can do that. Now you asked your second question on the acquisitions. What’s changed is what acquisitions we have made. So first of all, we had only two acquisitions, Provus and HomeSend, this is the processing play as well as the remittance play that we talked about on the first quarter – on the fourth quarter earnings call in Chile. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: Sure.

Martina Hund-Mejean

Chief Financial Officer

And those were relatively small properties. The other two that we have announced, one we have now closed, was C-SAM that already Ajay quoted in terms of the mobile platform capabilities that C-SAM brings to us. That is relatively larger property as well as Pinpoint which is the loyalty play in Australia that will allow us to actually expand our loyalty capabilities all over Asia Pacific. So both – that hasn’t closed, by the way. Both of those are a little larger and that leads to the $0.06 to $0.08. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: Okay, got it.

Ajay Banga

President

So I got to add. Pinpoint’s also factor into Martina’s thinking even though it’s not closed. That’s the real clarity that we want to make sure you get. And by the way, back to the earlier question to make sure you feel comfortable where we’re coming from. Honestly, what made me comfortable is the fact that there’s a range there. And I don’t know yet. I’m no crystal ball to tell you I’ll end up where in that range. And I know I’m going to have ups and downs. But that’s what you guys invest in us for which is to stay committed to trying to get to the right market share and revenue growth. And that’s what we’re going to do. Darrin Peller – Barclays Capital: All right, very helpful, guys. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And Barbara, do you have any final remarks?

Barbara Gasper

Management

I’m going to turn the call over to Ajay for just a second.

Ajay Banga

President

Thanks, Adrianna [ph]. So everybody, thank you for your questions and I’m going to leave you with a couple of closing parts. So we’re off to a very good start in 2014. We feel good about them despite the mixed economic conditions. And I think we all believe those mixed economic conditions will probably be around for the near term. We do have some challenges with Russia and the European payments industry regulation with the new wrinkle [ph] of commercial cards potentially being included that I just talked about. But you know what, there are opportunities too around the world which we believe give us some balance. And that’s what the answer was just now in the last question about our guidance. As Martina said, we’re staying with our long term guidance. We’ve continued to make good progress in winning deals around the world, including our singles and doubles in US consumer credit. We’re also investing in new technology and other services. We’re doing it organically. You heard about that through MasterPass and tokenization. We’re also doing it through acquisitions – C-SAM which will help us scale MasterPass and other things in that space, the loyalty acquisition, Provus and processing and so on. All of these help increase our share. They’re creating new opportunities for our business. And most importantly, they’re driving the conversion of our set target, our 85% cash that exists in the world. So all in all, our business continues with strong momentum. We’re focused on delivering another good year. And I want to thank you all for your continued support and your consideration of what we’re doing. And thank you for joining today’s call.