Paymentus Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PAY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Sanjay Kalra: Yes, Dave, I would say there are two pieces to it. One is that the new billers we have launched in the quarter, which had a good seasonal impact, they were signed up at better ARPU or set differently, a better revenue per transaction which kept the revenue per transaction also flat. Otherwise generally you see that becomes softens as well given we are signing large transactions. So that was one contributor and the other two, as you correctly pointed out, the network fees was a little low as well. That came a little soft. And given all the activities we have done in the last one year to manage that better. So overall I think both these factors are contributing, which are helping getting the net contribution profit per transaction better year-over-year.

Dave Koning: Gotcha. Okay, thank you for that. And then one other thing. I just noticed for several quarters you’ve had a very low tax rate and it looked like this quarter it was about 33% or so. Is that kind of the number to think through now that you’re really profitable, or is there some other rough tax rate we should be using? I suggest for modeling purposes, please use our 25% of non-GAAP net income as the tax rate going forward

Operator: Our next question comes from Darrin Peller with the company Wolfe Research. Darren, your line is now open

Darrin Peller: Hey guys, thanks. Can we touch a bit, even qualitatively, on the customer mix and how it’s looking today versus this time last year? Just given the growth in new verticals and both the SMBs and across SMBs and enterprises, then maybe just a little more on how implementations with large banks are going. What’s your pulse on the desire for adoption? I know you touched obviously on the APN, but maybe some larger partners like JPMorgan and others. Thanks guys.

Dushyant Sharma: Sure. Hey Darrin, great question from the customer makes itself. Actually, before I go there, let me just, I was alluding to earlier that we are seeing great momentum in our demand for our platform and the ecosystem. And across the board. And across the board, even in terms of the industries, the size of the customers, utilities remains a very important vertical for us, and a key vertical. But we are making progress and great progress in many, many other verticals, whether it’s insurance, government services, consumer finance, banking and so on. And the customer mix itself. Actually the actual customer size is also increasing. The type of customers we are able to attract now to the platform would be those many a times they never thought that they would be outsourcing just because they couldn’t find a platform as sophisticated and frankly as capable as our platform as they review the alternatives.

So we are seeing some of the larger companies as well. In addition to that, I would say, as we shared in the prepared remarks in this quarter, not only we were excited about the bookings we did in terms of the average or the total contract value, or the annual contract value, we also saw the number of clients being pretty robust as well. Just because the variety of clients who are signing with our services, for our services, and in terms of our large bank partnerships, they’re going really well. And we are very proud of the partnership. We have a JP Morgan and the JP Morgan Chase, and in terms of the ITN itself, it continues to remain strong and the demand continues to remain strong and especially in the mid tier bank and the credit union markets.

Darrin Peller: All right, that’s helpful. Thanks. Dushyant, real quickly, quick follow up on the merchant settlement, the MdL. Just regarding interchange, I mean, any flow through or impact on you guys, we should just keep in mind, we didn’t think it was as much, but if there was any to call it, it’s worth asking?

Dushyant Sharma: I think your assessment is correct. First of all, let me just say this, that we have great relationship with all card networks, whether it’s visa, whether it’s Mastercard, American Express, or Discover, and frankly, other partners like PayPal. So we are very fortunate to have those kind of relationships. In terms of this specific settlement itself, I think the only thing I would say is anything that actually helps, even slightly, to improve our interchange rates is beneficial to us, but we haven’t quantified anything in that regard.

Operator: Our next question comes from Will Nance with the company Goldman Sachs. Will, your line is now open.

Will Nance: Hey, guys, appreciate you taking the question. Nice quarter this afternoon. I just wanted to ask about your thoughts on capital allocation going forward. And, you know, I asked for the last two quarters you guys have had pretty strong performance. You’re running well ahead of the Rule of 40. And you’ve made several comments today about the strength in pipeline. So just, I know this is a fragmented industry. And what are your thoughts on the opportunities for M&A longer term more broadly? And I guess more specifically, you’ve done a little bit of bolt-ons in the past. And if you were to go down that route, would they be more focused on sort of complimentary type M&A, like pay various back in the day, or is there an opportunity for more scale driven rollout?

Sanjay Kalra: Yes, well, I’ll start. And maybe Dushyant to chime in later on, capital allocation priorities for us remain unchanged since what we’ve communicated in the past. Very similar. We have a very good pipeline ahead of us. We operate in a very strong tam business. We believe that our business growth is in investing in our own business, that is getting organic growth. So we want to invest our extra cash or capital allocation in our own business. So we are spending money in hiring, sales and marketing, and even working with resellers. So direct or indirect sales as far as that improves, that’s where we think is the right place to spend money and get growth on. So that is our first priority. Second point I’d like to make on this is we do not currently have any technological gap, so we are not seeking any specific M&A initiative right now.