Clear Secure, Inc. (NYSE:YOU) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Caryn Seidman-Becker: And in terms of automation let’s just start by saying our ambassadors are awesome and they are doing an unbelievable job every day. But they’re doing an unbelievable job at many different things enrollment and we see many more enrollment capabilities adding new products at the airport. And so we intend to drive automation around Lane of the Future. And we believe that our ambassadors can continue to serve higher and better uses for our members for our airline and airport partners. That could be post TDC where they help with divestment. That could be new services that we start where they’re helping members navigate airports more abruptly not just the CLEAR Lane. That could be enrollment. So, we see opportunities for our ambassadors to continue to serve members.

I think about some retailers who have gotten rid of the checkout lane and have their team members out on the floor really serving customers as experts. So, I think there’s opportunities for us to drive automation and there’s good margin from automation as well as have our ambassadors serving members and partners and I would say the highest and best use hospitality. Does that make sense?

Mark Kelley: Yes, that does. I appreciate the color. Thanks very much.

Operator: Your next question comes from David Unger with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

David Unger: Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. Ken, I know you’re not giving 2024 prelim guidance here, but I’m just curious internally, how we should think about normalized bookings growth rates as travel normalizes? Thanks.

Ken Cornick: Yeah. So you’re correct. We’re not giving 2024 guidance. I will say our Q4 guidance if you look at we always look at CAGR because obviously coming out of COVID, you had the ups and downs. And so our CAGR has been consistently at or above 30% and even Q4 top line CAGR is still maintaining that 30%. And that’s with very little TSA PreCheck contribution, if you will. So we feel good about our prospects. We’re not giving guidance to the growth rates, but we think we have a lot of opportunity to continue to drive CLEAR Plus penetration. We’re going to be rolling out TSA PreCheck. Enrollment provided by CLEAR and as well as continuing to gain traction on the Verified side.

Caryn Seidman-Becker: I would think of it as network product and partners, right when modeling. And there’s network growth opportunity there’s product growth opportunity, there’s partner growth opportunity and still our vintage if you will in many airports, I think when we went public…

Ken Cornick: One of our airports are actually under two years old…

Caryn Seidman-Becker: Right.

Ken Cornick: …right now.

Caryn Seidman-Becker: So penetration of cities differs from Denver which we’ve been in for 13 years to an L.A. to a much newer city. And that’s before PreCheck and before Clear Verified which is really gaining traction. So it’s exciting.

David Unger: Okay. That’s great. Thanks. And then obviously you’re in a position in terms of the balance sheet. The share buyback, I just wanted to kind of dig into that Ken, like, the potential for stepping it up in 4Q given, you’ve guided for year-over-year free cash flow growth in 4Q and it was meaningful last year. So any color you could give there on share buyback and free cash flow returned to shareholders? Thank you.

Ken Cornick: Yeah. So look, we’re going to continue to be opportunistic. That’s our capital allocation philosophy. You’ve seen us do special dividends. We’ve increased our quarterly dividend. We have repurchased shares. We repurchased some this quarter already to-date. And so we’re going to continue to drive opportunistic capital return to shareholders. And we obviously increased our — we still had some authorization $38 million. We increased it to now $138 million. So you will continue to see us deploy various methods to return capital to shareholders.