Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Marc Lautenbach: I’ll give you the CES. I mean we expect those margins to kind of continue where they are through the long-term plan. So, we just had all the businesses update their long-term plan, and the margins that we’ve experienced for the last five years are kind of like the margins we expect the next five years.

Matt Swope: So, we see the same kind of trend where maybe there’s a little bit of pressure on the revenue side, but solid performance on the profitability side?

Ana Maria Chadwick: Correct.

Matt Swope: That’s great. And speaking of good profitability, the Presort numbers were exceedingly strong. Could you talk about sort of the same forward conversation about where revenue and where profitability goes in Presort?

Marc Lautenbach: Yes. Let me just make a connection. I think if you look at the Presort, they were absolutely terrific. To us, Presort in some ways is the poster child for Global Ecommerce. If you look at those 2 businesses and you substitute the word mail for parcels, they’re fairly analogous. And candidly, if you look at the history of Presort over the last 15 years and as they build scale and as they’ve got more operationally sufficient excellent, you can see those margins improve. In terms of Presort going forward, last time we gave guidance around Presort, it was margins 15-plus percent. I still think that’s the right basic ZIP code. We expect flat to slightly positive revenue growth there. So it’s a good business. And I would say there’s opportunities certainly on the revenue side to do better than that.

If there’s some interesting acquisitions that become available and more customers decide to outsource, which is also possible in Bound & Packet Mail and market now continue to be great opportunities. I would say the rate case that the Postal Service passed in July, and it’s terrific for the marketplace, and it’s reflective of the value that we provide, but that’s a really important boost to our economics and our customers’ economics going forward.

Matt Swope: That’s great. That’s really helpful Marc. Thank you.

Marc Lautenbach: Thank you.

Operator: And we can go to Peter Sakon with CreditSights. Please go ahead.

Peter Sakon: Hi. Good morning. Following, up on the Presort business, can you talk about the – in the press release, the growth in the higher-yielding mail classes? Can you elaborate on what that means?

Ana Maria Chadwick: Sure. So inside of Presort, we have first-class mail. We have marketing mail, marketing mail flats. There’s different classes. And first class mail is the vast majority of what we process, and that is what mainly declines in that mid-single-digit range. On the other hand, we’ve been going into marketing mail and bounded print matter, which are classes of mail that are growing. They represent a small portion of the total at the moment, but we anticipate that growth to continue and help offset some of the first-class mail decline.

Peter Sakon: That’s great. And can you talk about, you said that a lot of the investment has been done in automation. For CapEx in the quarter, what was it by division you haven’t had that?