Earnings Labs

WEX Inc. (WEX)

Q1 2008 Earnings Call· Mon, May 26, 2008

$154.11

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.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Wright Express Corporation first quarter 2008 conference call. (Operator Instructions) At this time for opening remarks and introductions, I’d like to turn the call over to Steve Elder, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Steve Elder

President

With me today is our CEO, Mike Dubyak, and our CFO, Melissa Smith. The financial results press release we issued early this morning is now posted in the “Investor Relations” section of our website, at wrightexpress.com. A copy of the release has also been submitted as an exhibit to an 8-K we filed with the SEC. We’ll be discussing a non-GAAP metric, specifically adjusted net income, during our call. Please see “Exhibit 1,” included in the press release, for an explanation and reconciliation of adjusted net income to GAAP net income. I’d also like to remind you that certain information contained in this call constitutes forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including those discussed in today’s press release, our Form 10-K, which was filed on February 28, 2008, and our other SEC filings. While the company may choose to update forward-looking statements in the future, we specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, even if our estimates change. You should not rely on these forward-looking statements as representing our views after today. With that, I’ll turn the call over to our CEO, Mike Dubyak.

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

The economy was challenging this quarter, but our business model continued to generate growth and profitability. Revenue and adjusted net income for the first quarter were in line with our guidance. Transaction growth in the existing fleet customer base has been gradually slowing along with the economy for more than a year, with the slowdown becoming more pronounced beginning in the second half of ‘07. The trend we’ve been seeing is that fewer vehicles are being added to existing fleets, and in some cases fleets are losing vehicles, which translates into fewer transactions. Volume growth from our existing customer base was negative in the first quarter. Driving overall transaction growth at a time when the existing customer base is actually shrinking means doing an excellent job on the front-end and in customer retention. The good news is that we are, in fact, performing well in marketing and sales, and customer attrition has remained low. So despite the economy, we continue to generate total volume growth in the mid single-digit range, and we believe we’ll be well positioned for increased growth after the economy picks up. For the first quarter, total fuel transactions increased 8% from Q1 of ‘07 to $64.8 million. This includes 2.2 million transactions in the Pacific Pride business. We continue to have a solid new business pipeline in both our direct and co-brand channels, and the team is doing a great job in converting the pipeline into new fleet accounts and active cards. The total number of vehicles we serviced grew 3.6% from Q1 last year to 4.5 million. In the mid-sized and large fleet markets, average vehicles increased 5% year-on-year. We have the potential to accelerate our growth in this segment, later this year, because of a major business win with the Department of Defense through…

Melissa D. Smith

Management

We are pleased that Wright Express came through yet another quarter of economic uncertainty, reporting financial results within our guidance range. Credit losses were elevated by seasonality and continued to be further influenced by bankruptcies and a softer collection environment. However, our loss rate in the quarter of 28 basis points was consistent with our internal projections. I’ll get into detail in credit loss shortly. While transaction growth was slightly more suppressed than anticipated in our existing customer base, this was offset by an increase in fuel prices beyond what we anticipated. As Mike said, our business model continues to demonstrate predictability in an increasingly challenging environment. It’s continued to generate growth in total transactions and a consistently high level of customer retention. We will also start to see an enhanced benefit from recent interest rate cuts in the second quarter and through the rest of the year. Current rates on CDs have dropped from approximately 4.8% at year-end to a current rate of 3.6%. We believe this benefit should largely offset the elevated credit losses we anticipate for the year. Looking at our results in detail, total revenue for the first quarter of 2008 increased 29% to $93 million from $71.8 million for the first quarter of 2007. Net income to common shareholders on a GAAP basis was $14.5 million, or $0.36 per diluted share. This compares with $8 million, or $0.20 per diluted share, for Q1 last year. The company’s adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2008 increased 18% from last year to $17.4 million, or $0.44 per diluted share. This non-GAAP figure excludes an unrealized mark-to-market loss on our derivative instruments as well as the amortization of purchased intangibles. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of last year was $14.8 million, or $0.36 per…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Abhi Gami - Bank of America.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

The DoD win was very interesting. Was this a competitive take-away? And was this one off of the original GSA RFP or is it something you’re chipping away at? Was it a separate deal? I thought a competitor or US Bank had won the original GSA contract.

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Abhi, this has been a couple of year process with the GSA under their new master contract. They awarded master contracts to different people that can satisfy T&E purchasing cards and fleet cards. You have to be able to do all three to get a master contract. As I mentioned, our relationship with Citi is a different relationship with Citi in this particular area versus the private label where we are one of their options to supply the fleet card solution as they supply purchasing and T&E. So once they got the master contract, then the individual departments can go out and start doing their RFPs, if you will, to see whom they want to bring in for purchasing, T&E and fleet. So the DoD was really one of the first large departments to do an RFP on the fleet card side. There will be others coming during this year, because by the end of this year, most of these larger departments have to be converting over to whoever wins, either the incumbent or someone like Wright Express who wins the bid for this new contract. So DoD was one of the first, we won that bid as part of this whole process and that will start, actually, in December of this year because cards probably won’t be cut until November. But in December is when we see transactions with DoD.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

Do you work with Citi exclusively on future procurements or are you free to team with other major banks?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

No. We’ve teamed with Citi and that’s our only partner on this. Let me just mention that we do fund the receivables and do everything on our own. Citi just happened to be the master contract holder and they supply all three card products. But we are their partner and supplier of total services on the fleet card program.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

And is that exclusive, then, for future procurements as well between you and Citi, will they always use you as the fleet component?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

It’s not exclusive. They have other options if they want to use those so it’s not an exclusive arrangement with us. But we’re only partnering with them on it, though.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

Also on DoD, are you building in or do you need to build in additional costs or expense assumptions to ramp this up or is this pretty much standard business for you?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Well, the basic products and services are our standard. The on boarding, there’s some complexity because within these departments they have different sub-departments and whatever. So the on boarding, which is like taking on a major fleet, is the most work that we have to do. So we’ll be doing a lot of work late summer, early fall to get ready for that implementation.

Melissa D. Smith

Management

It’s not a significant cost, though, Abhi.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

Any planned update on the timing of the on ramping of the Citi contracts; I think the Shell and Sonoco deals?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Yes. All we can say, as I said in the prepared notes, we’re working with their teams and other teams to get ready for this. There’s a chance we start part of the program later this year but when we talk about the conversions, those will probably be in the first half of next year.

Abhi Gami - Bank of America

Analyst · America

Melissa, can you give us any more insights into the exact cost of the ramp-up?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

I wouldn’t say anything more than we did in the last call. It’s about 100 people and we’re still anticipating limiting it to a couple month’s GAAP prior to the conversion. And other than that, this year is mostly capital costs that we’ve baked into the guidance that we gave you in the capital number.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: How do the other agencies compare in terms of size to that of the DoD fleet portfolio and how do you expect some of those RFPs to rollout?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Yes, they’re going to be competitive, Tien-Tsin. You’ve got everything from thousand vehicle sized departments up to one very large one that’s around 200,000 vehicles and everything in between. So we’ll be competing for most of these and but they’re all going to have their own unique requirements but we think we can be very competitive but it’ll be a very competitive process. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Would you expect those awards to rollout throughout this year or could some of it get pushed out until next year?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

No. I believe that they have to have the awards and the cards converted by December 1. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: On the funding cost side, I heard that one-third of the CD’s are going to mature in 2Q. How about, as we go through the balance of the year, how should that roll into the P&L, maybe is there a way to give the average duration of the CDs?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Yes, the average duration is eight months. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: And that will as we get more rate reduction used or changes in rates, obviously that will have some impact as that rolls forward.

Melissa D. Smith

Management

It will. And as I said earlier, we aren’t seeing quite the drop in the CD rates as you’re seeing in other benchmark rates but it’s definitely lower than what we have in the composite now. So as those balances roll off, they’re getting replaced by significantly lower rates. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: The change in your guidance and the outlook, I think it was $0.04 at the high end. Is there a way you can help us break down what drove the change, it sounds like it has something to do with the higher rebates as well as maybe a little bit on the loss side as well?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Yes. There are a couple of factors that drove it. Primarily, as I said, we’re getting a little bit less business on the existing customer base than we had projected and so that’s factoring into our guidance. And the second thing is what’s happening from a credit loss perspective. We had expected increased bankruptcies throughout the course of this year. But we’re seeing more softness and late stage collections and a little bit of a shift on that 1% of our balance that isn’t current into later stages. And so we’ve increased that expectation a little bit of what the loss rates are going to be for the full year. Tien-Tsin Huang – JP Morgan: Which is why you said, it sounds like we’re not going to get the normal sequential down tick in losses in 2Q? It will look more flat?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Correct.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Anurag Rana - KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Anurag Rana - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

The Citi conversion, should we start modeling additional transactions going out in the first quarter of next year or should we look at it more of a second quarter thing?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Yes, I would say the bulk of what we’re talking about on conversions will be in the first half but we’re still working through all those details with all of our parties. So it’s hard for me to give you that until we get through some of these phases of high level design to low level design and all of the requirements to really understand what it takes and how we’ll phase this or roll this out. And a lot of that is still in progress. So we know there’s very little impact to this year. As we know more about next year, we’ll provide that.

Anurag Rana - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

And the DoD conversion, it seems that’s going to hit more the payment processing line. Could you give any ideas as to how many transactions those are?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

There’s 47,000 cards associated with that and typically the government has slightly less transactions per vehicle than the rest of the average, and as Mike said, there’s only going to be about a month of activity.

Anurag Rana - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

Are you looking at any specific SIC Codes in terms of economic weakness? Because I also saw that your fuel consumption or gallons per payment fell down to 20.1 gallons. It’s some of the lowest I’ve seen in the last, I think, five, six quarters.

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Yes. We saw an increase in the number of less than 10 gallon transactions this last quarter. We believe that that has something to do with elevated price of fuel, is that people are filling up more frequently similar to what we saw after the hurricane period a couple years ago. So that’s one thing. And then to answer your question on SIC Codes, in general we’re seeing just a more enhanced deterioration just recently on the residential sections of the contractor line of business and that’s pretty recent. Little bit more over the road, I should say, heavy truck SIC Code, which is a small part of our business right now. But those are two areas that we’re focusing on probably more than others.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Mike, when you were talking in your opening remarks about certain vehicles’ weakness, some fleets losing vehicles, a few vehicles being added, are you seeing any pockets of strength with any particular industry segments that are offsetting that?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

No. I don’t think we have good statistics. We’re probably seeing it more the losses on the small end. We’re seeing it probably in the construction area, in transportation area, and some geographic in the southeast part of the country. But I can’t say, we can say that in particular, there are areas that are growing. There are pockets but I can’t give you specific SIC Codes. And we’d probably see that more in the mid to larger part of the marketplace.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

When you mention in your press release about slower fuel purchasing activity, is there a specific metric that you’re looking at because transactions were up, I know average gallons per transaction was down, but is there any one metric that you’re particularly pointing to when you mention that there’s lower fuel purchasing activities?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Well, I think we’re talking particularly about the existing customer base? So we, in the past prior to 2007, we would see the existing customer base grow pretty much with GDP, 3%, 4%, 5%. Last year that slowed and there was no growth. And then what we saw in the first quarter, we actually saw it go negative where existing customers, their growth of vehicles actually went down, which means their transactions would coincide with that because we look at three key things. What are we doing on the front-end? How is our existing customer base performing? And what are we doing on attrition? So the front-end and the attrition, as we announced, we were very strong. We feel good about that. But the economy is affecting the existing customer base and I think that’s where we saw the slowdown.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

Melissa on the payment-processing rate, should we expect it to continue at current run rates of 1.87 or continue down with pressure on payment processing rates going forward?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

We’re expecting continued downward pressure year-over-year. Similar to what you saw in the first quarter for the full year.

Tom McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott

Analyst

And did you disclose the charge-offs? An absolute dollar amount of charge-offs this quarter? The implied charge-offs looked like they actually went down sequentially.

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Net charge-offs are around $5.6 million, so it’s up a little from the last quarter, Q4, on a net basis.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Pat Burton - Citi.

Pat Burton - Citi

Analyst

My question goes back to the discount rate. Could you go into a little bit more detail there? Is it tiered pricing with the merchants so the more dollar volume that goes through, you effectively get a lower discount rate? Is that how that’s structured?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

There are a couple of things that have impacted the quarter. One is that we have some hybrid contracts in place where it’s a fixed transaction fee and then a smaller percentage fee. So it’s the price of gasoline that made the percentage decline. So that was one component. And the second thing that impacted it was an increased rebate stacked to fleet customers and some of our partners within the first quarter.

Pat Burton - Citi

Analyst

And the increased rebate was just because there were greater dollar volumes at the point of sale because of the rise in price?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Not on the fleet side of the business, they were more about just contract renegotiations on the MasterCard side of the business that is true. So you’d see the MasterCard payment processing rate went down as well and that was because those customers were hitting higher rebate levels.

Pat Burton - Citi

Analyst

In terms of the rate of growth on the MasterCard side which was, again, very impressive, how would you anticipate that for the rest of the year?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

We think it will be down a little over the course of the year from what you saw in the first quarter but it’s still a significant growth rate.

Pat Burton - Citi

Analyst

So north of 20% for the remaining three quarters of the year, are you comfortable with that?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

At this point, yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Robert Dodd - Morgan Keegan.

Robert Dodd - Morgan Keegan

Analyst

Back to MasterCard, you highlighted online travel as being a source of strength in the quarter. Are you seeing any signs early or otherwise, of anything there? You just mentioned that you expect the growth rate to slow somewhat. Is it tied to travel or any other particular areas where you’re seeing some softness in that?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Related to the online travel, we’ve also seen growth as we’ve continued to add additional pieces of spend within some of those companies. So I’m not sure that we would necessarily see what you’re talking about if there was a decline in the travel side because we’re continuing to add components of business.

Operator

Operator

Your last question comes from Greg Smith - Merrill Lynch.

Greg Smith - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

The pricing changes and the increased rebates, were there any renegotiations that have occurred recently in light of the higher fuel prices?

Melissa D. Smith

Management

The renegotiations, if you’re talking about the fleet rates, were with specific fleet customers so we are renegotiating on a regular basis with some of our larger customers as we have continued to re-up or at higher rebate levels. And that is consistent with what you have seen in the past. The part that Mike said that was forward looking that we are factoring into our guidance in the future was to anticipate that we’re going to see some more pressure from the actual merchant, itself, as we renewed those contracts.

Greg Smith - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Would you consider this normal course of business or is this because fuel prices are higher and for whatever reason there’s more pressure on them and then that leads to the question, does this make you think about changing your hedging strategy in any way to match up with some of this?

Michael E. Dubyak

Management

Well, I think that there is more pressure on them because of this accelerated increase in the price of gas. So we say that we always have a normal amount of merchant relationships that are being renegotiated every year. I would say there was an increase in the numbers that we’re talking to today so I think that is what we’re talking about and we see options like looking on a selected basis to use more of our hybrid pricing which has, I think, somewhat of a win-win. It helps to give them this hybrid variable and fixed transaction. It takes us away from pure variability on the price of gas. And that does have some impact, and then if you talk about our hedging strategy, the variable component of that we still look at being hedged. But it reduces the total amount that needs to be hedged because of the transaction fees. So it builds in a little bit of a transaction-processing piece to our merchant rate and it reduces the amount that we have to look to hedge, to keep that at least protected.

Greg Smith - Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Melissa, can you just remind me of your total funding sources? Generally, how much is CDs, how much is money market deposits and whatever else is in the mix, just rough percentages how you’re actually funding everything.

Melissa D. Smith

Management

Well, we had a little over $500 million in deposits at the end of December, about $100 million in borrowed Fed funds, which was the inter bank funding. And we have lines at about $165 million. So we had about $100 out at the end of March. And then the rest is being funded through accounts payable back to the merchant on the operating side and then we had $247 million worth of financing debt outstanding.

Operator

Operator

Mr. Elder, it appears there are no further questions.

Steve Elder

President

Thanks to everyone for listening to this quarter. We look forward to talking to you again next quarter. This concludes our call.