Flywire Corporation (NASDAQ:FLYW) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Andrew Bauch: Hey. Thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to follow-up on some of the remarks you made around the education environment and the uncertainty around where the regulatory environment would go. And you characterized it as a re-phasing of policy. I am trying to understand what is kind of the barrier we need to clear as far as getting that visibility, is it just the U.S. election? And are there any other historical patterns that we could look to, to kind of get a sense of like how this – how and when this can kind of resolve itself?

Mike Massaro: Yes, it’s Mike. I would say, in general, we have seen changes of government policy for over a decade in different countries around the world. I would say Canada was somewhat unique because there was a government issued limitation on their study permits. And so that caused a lot – all the clients, all the universities out there to not know how many students they should be admitting, which was the impact to Q1. That clarity has come from the government up in Canada. And so again, that rolling recovery back. As we look across our business, it’s a geographically diverse business, right. It’s a sub-vertical diverse business. It’s an industry diverse business. We see that as a strength for us in navigating any climate.

I mean if you look at all types of geopolitical and macro events last year, we put up 43% growth and 540 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion, even in Q1 with two headwinds we talked about here, we put up pretty great growth numbers and expansion of EBITDA. So, again, we feel pretty good of operating in these environments. We see our business as something that is diverse, and that gives us a strength. And again, it’s not uncommon for us over the last 12-plus years of the company to see changes in government policies, changes in macro conditions. And so we are comfortable operating in that environment.

Rob Orgel: I mean the education business performed well in many areas, right. We talked about the UK over-performance. We talked – we haven’t talked very specifically, Australia grew really, really well. U.S. had growth. So, all of these are growing well despite sort of all of these climate questions that may be out there. China grew really well for us. So, when you look at sort of the macro environment, China is strong in terms of its contribution to the U.S. growth, strong in its contribution to India growth – sorry, to UK growth, my apologies. All of that is strong.

Andrew Bauch: Clearly, the stock has been weighed down by some of these concerns over the last couple of months here. Just wanted to revisit capital allocation, given the valuation of the stock in your M&A strategy, how are you thinking about revisiting that strategy going forward? And where would you potentially lead into?

Mike Massaro: Yes. I mean ultimately, obviously, you would imagine the Board has always had and we will continue to have conversations around capital structure. We have a track record to do an M&A. We have a strong cash position. EBITDA generation is also quite strong for the business. So, it gives us lots of optionality. So, nothing to report now, but I would say it’s a conversation that happens at the Board level and it continues to happen. And we – I would also say, have been comfortable with what we have been seeing in the growth of pipeline around potential deals. At the same time, as I have said before, we have got strategic pillars. We have kind of financial discipline around those deals, and we take that all into account as we make investment decisions.

Andrew Bauch: Appreciate the thoughts Mike.

Operator: Mr. Bauch, are you done with your question?

Andrew Bauch: I am. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Tyler DuPont: Hi. Good afternoon guys. This is Tyler DuPont on for Jason. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start by just following up on Jeff’s question. I know we talked about Canadian visa permits repeatedly on the call. So, I want to ask outside of Canada. There has been talk of similar legislation in some shape or form to limit the number of international students in other geographies, particularly UK, Australia. And given that the UK was a meaningful contribution to the outperformance in the quarter, and you mentioned just on the last question that Australia has also seen strength, which is good to see. How are you seeing education in those regions, how that might be impacted by potential legislation and just sort of how we should think about growth in those regions if legislation like that does get passed?

Rob Orgel: Yes. This is Rob. I can maybe expand a little bit on my comments from a moment ago about Australia. Look, Australia performed very well, showed very strong growth for us, grew well above the company growth rate. Australia has a large TAM, lots of students. We continue to grow both with existing clients and through the addition of new clients. One thing to call out there is that as is true in many places, our business skews towards sort of what I call sort of high-quality institutions. And if you look at what was – the focus of the regulatory discussion in Australia was mostly to address a different audience. So, we have seen very good growth across Australia in our business. And so, obviously, we understand that it could be even bigger if there were none of these effects, but we have taking into account all of that when we talk about our guidance.

If you look at the UK, the UK business has been super strong for us. It grew very nicely. And there have been some policy changes in the UK over the course of the last six months or more months. Our business continues to perform really well there, both in terms of adding to existing clients, our land-and-expand strategy in the UK as well as activating new clients.

Mike Massaro: The only thing I would add is just, I mean international students education, kind of the lifeblood of a lot of universities and colleges. I mean there are huge positive factor to the countries in which they are studying in. And I think you are going to see a shift. You are seeing different policies around the edges to tweak and adjust where those students are going and potentially areas of study and where those will be in different countries around the world, but it’s a very positive trend that students want to travel and they want to further education and places want them to come study there. And so I think you are going through some shifting of that. But again, shifting like this that we have seen over the last 10-plus years.