PagSeguro Digital Ltd. (NYSE:PAGS) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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I don’t think that we’re going to see a change in the trajectory there could be a quarter that we could gain more share, a quarter, they’re going to gain like 10 bps, as you mentioned. But I guess the trajectory that we’ve been having so far is a very consistent transaction of gaining share quarter-after-quarter. And to be honest, market share is a consequence of what we’ve been doing here. We also — we don’t see that we need to grow market share at any price. We don’t go to be clients decreasing prices to gain market share and to hurt our profitability. So the market share is consequence what we’ve been doing at this point, getting new clients, profitable clients and growing EPS.

Tito Labarta: That’s helpful. And sorry, just a follow-up on the margins. I mean I understand the target is to grow EPS. I think that will just help us understand how much your EPS can grow. So would potential margin expansion come mostly from lower interest rates, also just trying to think how the mix impacts the margins? Just to think how much earnings can grow sort of kind of longer term from here?

Eric Oliveira: Tito, this is Eric. I think company’s profitability, we think here does not rely only in lower interest rates moving forward. We have some tailwinds here that we expect to unlock moving forward already in 2023. The first one is revenues growth on PagBank. And revenues grow, remember, as the duration of the new credit products that we have been underwriting are 4 times longer in comparison to the working capital loans, naturally, the NII 2023 onwards tends to be stronger as we underwrite more, but with a longer duration products. And the market share gains in payments naturally should lead revenues growth in combination with PagBank ran. So revenues grow is the first tailwind. The second one is when you look the operating expenses as a percentage of revenues, this decreased from 20% last year in Q2 and Q3 to 15% in Q2 and Q3 2022.

So necessarily, we are getting operating leverage and investors should expect this level or even a lower level of our operational expenses as a percentage of revenue. So this would be the second tailwind that we have here. Third, it’s important to mention that there are no cash effects mainly related to depreciation and amortization that impacts profitability but there’s no impact in cash flow generation. For example, when we look at Q3 cash flow, operating cash flow minus investing cash flow or capital expenditures, we had more than BRL0.5 billion in cash flow generation, but depreciation and amortization should be higher in 2023 on the back of previous capital expenditures that we had. But having said that, these are the main tailwinds that we see.

And naturally, we are working to see EPS growing in 2023 in comparison to 2022.

Tito Labarta: That’s great. That’s great color, Eric. Just one quick follow-up on that. Would the SMB segment — should that be a headwind or a tailwind just I mean as the HUBs become maybe more profitable, can that also be a tailwind just to think about how the mix impacts it as well.

Eric Oliveira: We expect it to be a tailwind and the tailwind is captured by revenue growth and operating expense savings as a percentage of revenues.

Tito Labarta: Great. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Oliveira: Thank you, Tito.

Operator: The next question comes from Jeff Cantwell with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

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