Marqeta, Inc. (NASDAQ:MQ) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Marqeta, Inc. (NASDAQ:MQ) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 7, 2023

Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Marqeta Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the call over to Stacey Finerman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Stacey Finerman: Thanks, operator. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today’s call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding anticipated future financial and operating results, and future changes in or developments regarding accounting treatment among others. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including the risks that our accounting treatment may be subject to further changes or developments as well as those set forth in our filings with the SEC, which are available on our Investor Relations website, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2022, and our subsequent periodic filings with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements we make today.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the time of this call and the company does not assume any obligation or intent to update them, except as required by law. In addition, today’s call includes non-GAAP financial measures, these measures should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today’s earnings press release our earnings release supplemental materials, which are available on our Investor Relations website. A reconciliation of forward-looking non-GAAP guidance is not available without reasonable effort due to the challenges in practicality with estimating some of the items, such as share-based compensation expense, depreciation and amortization expense and payroll tax expense, the effect of which could be significant.

Hosting today’s call are Simon Khalaf, Marqeta’s CEO; and Mike Milotich, Marqeta’s, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Simon to begin.

Simon Khalaf: Thank you, Stacey, and thank you, everyone, for joining our third quarter 2023 earnings call. We had a strong quarter. Our third quarter net revenue, gross profit and operating expenses were all better than our expectations, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA of negative $2 million. Our results over the past few quarters have shown that we can scale the company, while maintaining expense discipline. We are continuing to innovate and expand our solutions with the recent launch of our credit platform as well as deepening our relationship with our customers and capturing new ones. This morning, we announced another expansion of our partnership with Block, and as we will discuss, we saw our business continue to build momentum, signing new embedded finance customers and expanding with our current customer base.

Let me start with our financial performance. Total processing volume, or TPV, was $57 billion, an increase of 33% compared to the same quarter of 2022. This was the third consecutive quarter where our TPV exceeded $50 billion. Our net revenue of $109 million in the quarter contracted 43% year-over-year including negative 60 percentage points from the accounting change related to Cash App, and our gross profit of $73 million contracted 9% versus Q3 2022 and primarily due to the Cash App renewal pricing. Mike will discuss this in more detail later on the call. Our non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses were $75 million, a 20% decrease versus Q3 2022 due to our restructuring and cost-cutting initiatives, resulting in a negative $2 million in adjusted EBITDA for the quarter.

As we’ve done in the last few quarters, we continue to grow our business and enhance our platform while increasing efficiency. At the Money 2020 Conference, we unveiled our new credit platform, which much like our debit and prepaid offerings offers a full stack solution with issuer processing and program management. We believe that this puts us in a highly advantageous position allowing us to offer a more modern credit product than legacy competitors and 1 with greater product breadth and scale than many modern competitors. There are multiple benefits to this site of end-to-end solutions. Launching a credit card has historically been a complicated and cumbersome process, and our new platform means that our customers have a one-stop shop from design to launch and scale and can work directly with us rather than several different providers.

This reduces complexity for our customers and speeds up the time to market significantly. Further, without offering, customers can own and customize the experience and embed the card within their brands. Our ability to offer configurable and flexible solutions enables our customers to build highly differentiated programs with truly personalized rewards and spend controls. Instead of offering the same cookie-cutter reward for every consumer, our customers can now personalize the words to reflect individual needs. This helps them build credit cards that we imagine customer loyalty and engagement. Best of all, because the offering is truly embedded, the cardholder only interacts with a card program rather than being sent to a bank experience, they’re simply not familiar with.

The initial interest in this product has been very promising, and we’re deeply engaged with several prospects. While many equate credit with consumer co-brand offerings, which is undoubtedly a large portion of credit, we also see strong demand for commercial use cases. Commercial use cases can drive loyalty, customer engagement and enable businesses to run more efficiently. Customers building commercial card programs can choose from flexible funding models for their cardholders such as net 30 charge cards, receivable purchase and revolving credit to allow them to take control of their business financial health and access capital more efficiently. Following our renewal news last quarter, we continued to deepen our relationship across Blocks ecosystem and are pleased to announce multiple updates to our long-standing relationship.

First, we renewed our agreement for the Square debit card for 5 years to run through June 2028. Second, in parallel, we extended our deal with Cash App so that, that deal also extends through June 2028. Finally, we agreed with Block that Marqeta will be the default provider of issuing processing and related services in current or future markets outside of the U.S. where Block may decide to enter and Marqeta is able to provide issuing and processing services. We believe this extension demonstrates the value the block sees in our platform, especially our ability to support dynamic cases, but both consumer and commercial card programs globally. In addition to these meaningful announcements, we continue to execute day in and day out, supporting new and existing customers with our ability to offer payment expertise, flexibility, control and scale, which creates a meaningful differentiation between ourselves and others in the space.

Last quarter, we highlighted how we were converting prospective customers that we’re starting to reach scale with other providers. In many instances, these were customers where we initially bid for their business, but they opted to work with another provider. This strength continued into the third quarter, one which we are excited about is an expense management platform focused on the marketing industry that initially looked at us 2 years ago before choosing another modern platform. They started to see product market fit and strong traction and as a result, needed more service, which they were promised but have yet to materialize. They also felt the spend controls and analytics were pretty recent, which did not work for a company whose business is dependent on providing their end customers with actionable analytics and insights.

As a result, they reengaged with Marqeta. In addition, to access to better analytics and customer service, they found our solutions easier to utilize. As we will discuss during our Investor Day at the end of this week the breadth and depth of our platform resonates with customers who are looking to provide multiple solutions but rather than just point products. This is especially true when it comes to our program management offering. During the quarter, we signed a deal with a marketplace offering financial management tools. The customer approach Marqeta about launching a demand deposit account ties to their debit card for their user base, offering cash back to help repay student debt. Marqeta was the provider of choice, given our money movement offering, our experience in modern card issuing, our superior service and the quality of our APIs. While the customer who was initially interested in a powered by market at construct, they realize the benefits of using a managed by Marqeta solution to ensure a successful program launch.

As a result, the customer ultimately decided to use our program management capabilities and signed on for additional services such as dispute management and interactive voice response. Another topic we will discuss at length during our Investor Day is the embedded finance opportunity and how the platform is uniquely positioned to benefit. Two examples of embedded finance deals we signed in the quarter our companies looking to use embedded finance to create a better customer experience and keep funds within the ecosystem. One example is the logistics company that will have the ability to offer a Marqeta virtual card with instant refund disbursement to encourage respending at the e-commerce partner’s website when items are returned. Another e-commerce example is a company that provides software for contractors to manage supply, offering the vendors to be paid via a virtual card so that the payment comes in faster than checks or ACH.

In addition to these new exciting customers with differentiated use cases, we continue to innovate with our existing customer base. Marqeta’s early innovations and solutions such as instant issuance allowed us to be an early beneficiary in Buy Now, Pay Later as our solution enables significant merchant acceptance growth in this space. However, as offerings proliferated, major BNPL providers added new products to keep up with the changing needs of consumers and merchants alike. While our initial BNPL solution required a virtual card at the point of sale, providers wanted to extend their relationship with their end customers across all purchasing behaviors. As a result, many BNPL providers introduce Pay Anywhere solutions for use across multiple merchants, giving consumers the option of paying in installment rather than an evolving balance.

This new use case has shown tremendous growth and the multiple programs we have that use this contract accounted for approximately 10% of our Buy Now, Pay Later volume. This is particularly marketable as many of these programs have only been live for just a few quarters. Not only are these programs growing in popularity but they also have better take rates than commercial virtual cards. This shift comes at a critical time from a competitive basis for Marqeta, with instant issuance commoditizing as competitors are catching up to the technology we offered years ago. However, the shift to these new BNPL programs require the ability to offer a consumer card, which Marqeta is uniquely positioned to do as consumer offerings are increasingly more complex than commercial.

As a result, we have maintained an advantage or moat in BNPL given the breadth of our platform. In summary, the addition of credit and our long-term relationship with Block positions us well as we reset the company in 2023 and look to build from a new, strong baseline. In addition to these considerable accomplishments, we continue executing for our existing and new customers. Combined, we expect these efforts will enable Marqeta to reignite steady growth in 2024 after we have lapped the Cash App renewal. I will pause there as we plan to discuss the opportunity ahead in great detail in just a few days at our Investor Day. With that, I’ll turn it over to Mike for his prepared remarks.

Mike Milotich: Thanks so much, Simon and good afternoon everybody. As expected, third quarter net revenue and gross profit growth contracted due to the Cash App renewal that was signed last quarter. However, our Q3 results were better than expected, particularly our adjusted EBITDA as a result of the continued execution on efficiency initiatives and timing of some expenses that will shift into Q4. The revenue contraction was lower than anticipated, mostly due to business mix differences that impacted the change in Cash App revenue presentation as part of the new contract. I will get into more detail in a few minutes. . Q3 TPV was $57 billion, growing 33% year-over-year and exceeding $50 billion for the third quarter in a row of a diverse portfolio of use cases putting us on track to deliver over $200 billion in TPV for the full year.

The financial services vertical, which is a little over half of our TPV continues to perform well, but did slow a few points from Q2 as the vertical faced tougher comps from the acceleration last year in Q3. Partially offsetting those tough comps was the rapid ramp of accelerated wage access, which delivered 2x the volume versus Q2, and there was little volume last year as this is a newer use case for Marqeta. Lending, including Buy Now, Pay Later growth accelerated more than 20 points from Q2 and is now growing faster than the total company growth primarily for 2 reasons. First, we lapped the partial loss of one Klarna program this quarter. Second, the rapid consumer adoption of several of our BNPL customers pay newer solutions, which deliver their BNPL value proposition on a card that can be used at any card-accepting merchants.

On-demand delivery growth accelerated this quarter due to consumer adoption of new services and merchant segments. Expense management growth decelerated this quarter due to increasingly tougher comps as this vertical matures. Q3 net revenue was $109 million, a contraction of 43% year-over-year, including a 70 percentage point decline due to the Cash App renewal. The bulk of that Cash App renewal impact is the 60 percentage point growth headwind driven by the revenue presentation change related to the costs associated with Cash App’s primary payment network volume. This revenue presentation impact on growth was several points lower than we expected due to nuances within Cash App TPV, particularly a greater mix of volume on non-primary networks.

We attribute this mix shift to changes in Reg II that went into effect in July. Because this non-primary network volume still adheres to the prior revenue recognition, it led to higher revenues that do not necessarily translate into higher gross profit, a circumstance that we have discussed in the past. As expected, the Cash App renewal pricing drove an additional 10 point impact to net revenue growth in the quarter. Excluding the Cash App renewal, net revenue growth was strong, driven by strength across the business, particularly on-demand delivery and powered by Marqeta. Block net revenue concentration was 50% in Q3, decreasing 28 points from Q2 as a result of the Cash App contract renewal. Our net revenue take rate was 19 basis points. Excluding Cash App, the net revenue take rate was consistent with the prior quarter and several bits higher than our total company take rate.

Q3 gross profit was $73 million, contracting 9%, a little better than we expected. The gross profit contraction is primarily a result of three factors: first, the Cash App renewal lowered growth by mid-20s percentage points. Remember, the change in Cash App revenue presentation has no impact on gross profit. Therefore, this impact is solely driven by the renewal pricing. Second, we renewed approximately 50% of our non-Block TPV between Q2 ‘22 and Q1 ‘23. Although the effects are starting to dissipate and we will fully lap this in Q2 ‘24, these renewals did lower growth by low to mid-single digits this quarter. Lastly, we lost four lease incentives on two of our customers at the start of 2023, lowering growth by low to mid-single digits.

This impact is a little lower than previous quarters due to the volume fluctuations in those customers last year, and we expect to fully lap this impact in Q1 ‘24. We believe each one of these gross profit impacts were discrete situations that impacted us all at once. We do not expect to see impacts of this magnitude in the future due to changes in how we approach customer deals and contractual language, starting late last year. Our gross profit take rate was 13 basis points. The gross profit take rate outside of Cash App increased 1 point from last quarter and is several bps higher than our total company gross profit take rate. Gross profit margin was 67% lower than anticipated because of the smaller impact of the cash out net revenue presentation change, which caused net revenue to be higher but did not flow through to gross profit.

Our projections on gross profit and the gross profit take rate were accurate. Therefore, the margin difference is mostly driven by the denominator. Q3 adjusted operating expenses were $75 million, a decrease of 11% from last quarter and a 20% decrease year-over-year despite an approximately 1 point of inorganic growth driven by the inclusion of power. These declines are primarily driven by the realized savings from our restructuring in late May and efficiency initiatives targeting our technology and professional services expenses. These cost rationalizations have not impacted our platform uptime or performance despite our fast-growing volumes. Adjusted operating expenses were almost $10 million lower than we expected for three reasons, two of which are timing related.

We have diligently curtailed our technology and professional services expenses, achieving larger benefits than we initially anticipated. A few of our planned third-party expenditures such as support to execute volume migrations from other processors and program management enhancements were delayed in Q3. Therefore, we expect $2 million to $3 million of expense to shift to Q4. Finally, when we reduced our workforce by approximately 20% in May, we also intended to hire in a few priority areas. As a result, we plan to end the year with a net reduction of just over 15% of our pre-restructuring headcount plan. However, as we thought we consider these additions and work to set up an office in a lower cost jurisdiction, some of these hires are being delayed through the middle of next year.

Q3 adjusted EBITDA was negative $2 million, a margin of negative 2%. This result was better than we expected, driven mostly by cost management successes. Interest income was $15 million, driven by elevated interest rates. The Q3 GAAP net loss was $55 million, including a $16 million non-cash post-combination expense related to the Power acquisition. During Q2, we announced a stock buyback of $200 million. As of Q3 quarter end, we purchased 21.6 million shares for an average price of $5.19 or $112 million. We ended the quarter with $1.3 billion of cash and short-term investments. As we look ahead to Q4, setting all Block renewals aside, the underlying performance of the business has been performing well throughout the year. With the Square and Cash App business now secured through June of 2028 and with the potential for additional growth from new programs as a default provider, we have a solid foundation from which to build.

Although the Square renewal aligns the volumes and price tiering with the Cash App contract, which will reduce gross profit growth by approximately 3 percentage points in Q4, it does not come with the revenue accounting impact of the Cash App renewal. We expect the Cash App renewal impacts on revenue and gross profit in Q4 to be in-line with Q3, which is low 70s percentage points for revenue and mid-20 percentage points for gross profit. We also expect the business outside of Block to perform on a similar trajectory as Q3. Our expectations for Q4 are as follows: Net revenue is expected to contract between 45% and 47%, the few points of deceleration from Q3 is mostly due to the Square renewal. Gross profit is expected to contract between 8% and 10% in line with Q3.

The Square renewal growth headwind of approximately 3 percentage points is offset by less drag from non-Block renewals and additional incentives as we reach a new tier. Our gross margin should be in the high 60s. With the success of our efficiency efforts to date, we expect adjusted operating expense to decline by about 10% year-over-year including the timing shift from Q3 and higher technology costs that come with elevated volumes during the holiday season. Therefore, adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be negative 3% to 4% on an organic basis excluding the 1-point negative margin impact of the Power acquisition. The lower adjusted versus Q3 is consistent with the $2 million to $3 million expense timing shift into Q4. Therefore, our expectations for full year 2023 performance are consistent with what we shared last quarter, except for a better adjusted EBITDA margin, driven by our expense discipline.

Net revenue is expected to contract by low double-digit percentage with an approximately high 30s percentage point decline due to the Cash App renewal, mostly due to the change in accounting treatment. Gross profit growth is expected to be positive low single digits. Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be negative low single digits on an organic basis, including the 1-point negative margin impact of the Power acquisition. To wrap up, we delivered a strong Q3 and have now renewed over 75% of our TPV in the last six quarters, positioning the company for long-term success. This is our first quarter incorporating the Cash App renewal in our results, which established a new baseline that sets us up to drive sustained, long-term profitable growth as our sales bookings continue to show growth and momentum.

Despite the renewal headwinds on growth, we believe our efficiency initiatives will put us close to adjusted EBITDA breakeven as we exit 2023. Before we turn it over to Q&A, we understand the longer-term trajectory of the business is of great interest to everyone and our Investor Day materials will be available at 1:30 Pacific Time on Thursday, November 9 on our Investor Relations website. We think you will find the 110 minutes of content helpful. As such, we ask that questions today be limited to Q3 results and 2023 as a whole. Thank you. Now it’s time to take questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Hi, thanks. I appreciate all the detail. And I’ll ask maybe for you, Mike, just on the clarification for the gross margin coming in at 67% versus the low 70s guide. So that is that just to hand it correctly, that’s just the Reg II effect change in the gross revenue that you assumed? Is there anything else in there that’s surprised? And is that high 60s, the right figure, it sounds like now from a baselining standpoint? I think that is what you said for the fourth quarter? Sorry for the clarification.

Mike Milotich: Yes. No. Thanks, Tien-Tsin. No, that’s correct. So our gross profit came in as expected, just a little bit better. And so our ability to predict the gross profit impact on the Cash App renewal was very accurate. What we didn’t quite get right when we talked to you 3 months ago was the revenue impact from the Cash App deal, and that’s because the new revenue treatment only applies to the volume on the primary network. And the old revenue accounting that we’ve talked about many times can lead to higher revenue but not necessarily translate to gross profit, still applies for all the volume on the – on different networks than the primary network. So what we didn’t quite project accurately is when the new Reg II changes went into effect in July, we saw more volume shift to other networks, which then lifted the revenue in a way that didn’t translate to gross profit.

And so it lowered the margin, but our – it’s really purely from the denominator. So yes, what we said for Q4 was that our margins should be in the high and not assuming the Reg II changes that we’ve started to see is sort of – is more of the steady state of what we should expect going forward, then that would be the margins that we anticipate.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Understood, thank you. A lot of early payment stuff there, but I think I got it. On the operating expenses, if you don’t mind me asking on that as a follow-up. So is there any change from a hiring perspective and needs on the developer side, given some of the wins and the changes on Block, everything else? Or it sounds like it was just a timing issue with the hirings being pushed through the middle of next year. I just want to make sure that that’s not that was. Thank you.

Mike Milotich: That’s right. So it doesn’t change the number of people we need. It’s really that we’re trying to be very thoughtful as we plan what our priorities are going to be, what types of skills and talents that we need to add. And so we’re just trying to be very thoughtful about that. And then we’re also in the process of setting up a low-cost jurisdiction office somewhere. So we also want to take the time to incorporate that into our hiring plan. So originally, when we executed the restructuring in May, we thought we would add those people by the end of this year. And it’s now clear that that’s not what’s going to happen, and it’s going to move into the next several quarters, and we should probably have all that headcount filled by the middle of next year.

So that’s one big factor. And then the other was some of the expenses that we have with third parties who are helping us with very specific initiatives such as we’ve contracted with someone to help us migrate volume from another processor to try to make that as seamless and painless for our new customer. That is something that just got delayed a little bit. And so we do expect $2 million to $3 million of expense that we originally expected to hit us in Q3 is now going to be a Q4 expense item.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Okay, thanks for going through that, again. Looking forward to next quarter.

Mike Milotich: Thanks, Tien-Tsin.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Chiodo with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Timothy Chiodo: Great. Thank you for taking the question. This one is somewhat related to the Cash App comments around Reg II, but more broadly across your portfolio. Would you be able to describe the rough percentage of volumes that might have shifted to the secondary or alternative debit networks? And roughly or directionally, what kind of an interchange impact does that have in terms of the revenue pool that you would be able to share in? In other words, how much lower on average, would you say the interchange is for some of those secondary debit networks? Thanks.

Mike Milotich: Yes. So thanks for your question, Tim. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the exact volume that shifted, so I think that that’s not necessarily our place to share with you. But it wasn’t a massive change. But keep in mind, if you think back to prior quarters, right, we’ve talked a lot about that in the Block business, our margin was in the sort of high 20s percentage points, which gives you a sense that the revenue take rates were about 4x what they were in gross profit. So it doesn’t take a huge shift of volume to make a material difference to the revenue given how different that take rate is compared to what’s happening on now the primary network where we essentially are just making the fees associated with the service that we provide to Cash App, and it’s not impacted by interchange at all.

So that’s really what the dynamic is. In terms of your question on what happens with interchange, it varies a lot, particularly on the ticket size. So Tim, which volume moves there is also quite impactful, just given how vary the interchange rates are. So it makes some impact, but that’s not as big of a factor as just the difference in the way our revenue works is what drove the impact to our P&L.