CPI Card Group Inc. (NASDAQ:PMTS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Parsa Kiai: Okay, great. Thank you. Congratulations on a good quarter, guys. Scott, just a couple of questions for you. I guess, I’ll start with kind of the investor awareness on the company. As you know, your primary publicly-traded competitor recently got picked up coverage by a firm called Compass Point. So, now they’re covered by J.P. Morgan, Compass Point, Needham, and BTIG. I’m curious how many of these analysts have you guys reached out to see if they would be interested in picking up coverage of your company?

Scott Scheirman: Yes. I’ll let — we’ve been working very hard on our Investor Relations program and it’s a critical priority for us. So, between reaching out to potential analysts, attending conferences, we’re working really hard at that. Mike Salop has done a terrific job. And Mike, I’ll let you give some color commentary of the things you’ve been working on too.

Mike Salop: Yeah. Parsa, I mean, as you’re aware, we’ve talked to many firms, with many analysts that we’ve been engaged in, so hoping to get additional coverage at some point in the future. Obviously, comparisons with other companies are challenging. Some analysts are interested in crypto. Some analysts may have done participate — their firms may have participated in transactions with those companies, but we’re talking to several analysts.

Parsa Kiai: All right. I actually think comparisons with this company are rather not as difficult given that they are roughly the same size and similar margins — excuse me, similar leverage, very similar product line, and the earnings contribution are almost entirely from card manufacturing. So, I think the comparison is rather apt. And I would suggest that you guys have done a great job getting the leverage where it needs to be providing conservative guidance, hitting your numbers, but your stock is very erratic. As you are obviously aware, you had that period last month where, I think, in two days, your stock fell maybe 26%, 27% on absolutely no news. I think it does your shareholders a disservice when your stock exists in a vacuum of this nature, whereas I think with these four analysts that we mentioned, in addition to Lake Street, you can have more — you can get more attention, you can get more focus on the company, and you can allow an orderly share price, so that if some investor wants to come in or to come out, they could do it at a more reasonable price.

Mike Salop: All right, Parsa, . Yeah, go ahead, Scott.

Scott Scheirman: Go ahead, Mike.

Mike Salop: Yes, Parsa, I think, we’re repeating the same thing. We don’t disagree with you. As I said, we’re engaged with many analysts. There’s a lot of things to go into analyst coverage as you know, but we’re attempting to get more coverage and more awareness of stock and we’ll continue working on that.

Parsa Kiai: Okay. Another question for Scott. Can you elaborate further what would it take for you to expand into the premium metals card? And just given the margins that your competitor in that space has, why this is not kind of something that at least should be attempted by the company?

Scott Scheirman: Yes. I would say a couple of things. First, we’ve been razor focused on four or five key market segments. And if you look over the last five years, I think, we’ve been incredibly successful with that with revenue growing at a 16% CAGR from ’17 to ’22. EBITDA growing at 33% CAGR during that same period. Our leverage, as you pointed to, has gone down from over 12x to 3x. So, I think the areas that we’ve really focused on, we continue to gain share and we’ve gained significant share over that period of time. With the metal card segment or heavy cards, we do partake in that. It’s not a major revenue source obviously for us, but we continue to have some product offerings. We generate some revenue from that. That is a different line of investment or significant investments that would need to be made, and just trying to balance investments with investing in other areas where we’ve been very successful, and also paying down our debt.

So, it’s just a balance that we have to move forward. And we think we’ve got the right strategies to move forward to continue to properly gain share.

Parsa Kiai: Okay. And then, lastly, what is the incremental capital expenditures being used for? Can you give us a little color as to when you look at $17 million of CapEx, what is the breakdown above what is kind of needed to operate the business?

Scott Scheirman: Yes, Amintore, I’ll let you go ahead and answer that.