Global Payments Inc. (NYSE:GPN) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jeff Sloan: James, just to add some color to the math that Josh went through. We’re looking at current volumes and transactions in April. So that already reflects, to your point, and I think Josh said this in his prepared remarks, what you’ve heard from Visa and Mastercard and some of the other folks. So, I think that incorporates the current environment. Yet despite that, we’ve been able to raise our outlook a little bit better than the beat internally, as Josh described. So, we’re very comfortable with where we are. And as I mentioned a minute ago, too, in my prepared remarks, particularly in the issuer business, we’re the beneficiaries of the tailwinds coming from some of the consolidation from regional banks into the money center and SIFIs. JPM announcement today with First Republic, I would just say that our issuer business, in particular, hasn’t seen any discernable moderation.

Obviously, we pointed to acceleration today in our outlook, and that very much reflects events. As I mentioned a minute ago, our trends through April sitting here today from a KPI point of are very strong, right? And that’s before some of the more recent consolidation. So, it may not be great for the broader macroeconomic environment, but certainly, the trend toward larger FIs globally is nothing but good news for our issuer business.

James Faucette: That’s great. Thanks for all the detail.

Jeff Sloan: Thanks, James.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Jason Kupferberg from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Jason Kupferberg: Good morning. Congrats to everybody. And just wanted to ask about kind of quarterly revenue and margin cadence for the last three quarters of the year. I know last quarter you laid out a pretty detailed outlook by quarter. And just wanted to see if there’s any little tweaks there so that we get the quarterly modeling right. For example, I think in merchant, we had talked about organic, kind of being in that 9% to 10% range pretty consistent each quarter, but if you can just go through some of those quarterly pieces, that would be helpful? Thank you.

Josh Whipple: Yes, absolutely. Look, what I would say is, February, we gave you very specific quarterly growth rates on revenue and earnings per share. And I would say, Q2 through Q4, nothing has really changed. So, if you go back to the earnings presentation that we put out there, we said adjusted net revenue reported 5% to 6% Q2, 8% to 9% in Q3. And four, we did obviously raise – we did raise the overall outlook to 7% to 8% based on the performance that we saw in Q1 and which I just outlined. And then from a margin perspective, look, we saw a really good margin expansion in Q1 of 200 basis points, exactly what we said we would do. And from Q2 through Q4, we expect 100 basis points margin expansion, which we laid out on the February call.

And then from an EPS perspective, again, we’re right in that 9% to 10% range for Q2 through Q4, which we outlined in February. So again, nothing has changed as it relates to Q2 through Q4 relative to what we discussed on the February call.

Jason Kupferberg: Good to hear. Okay. And just as a follow-up. In merchant, I think in the past, you guys have talked about the portfolio, at least on the acquiring side, putting software on the side, roughly half discretionary, half more non-discretionary spending. Is that still the right breakdown post EVO closing? And if you can just talk about what you’re seeing in terms of relative growth rates between the discretionary and the non-discretionary spending volumes in merchant?

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