At the end of the quarter, we had $150 million outstanding on the credit facility. This balance was paid off the next business day on April 1st, consistent with our prior practice of using the credit facility to fund short-term spikes in customer demand, especially over holidays or weekends. As we have been improving adjusted EBITDA, we have seen corresponding improvements in our cash flow performance when we adjust for the timing of customer fund flows. Turning to our stock compensation expense. In the quarter, our stock compensation expense of $34 million grew 17% on a year-over-year basis. This is a significant deceleration from prior quarter’s growth rates and reflects our focus on moderating our headcount growth rates. However, we expect stock compensation expense dollars to increase sequentially as a result of our annual performance reviews and RSU grand cycles.
On a full year basis, we expect stock compensation expenses to grow slower than revenue. We’re also focused on managing the number of shares issues and we have been taking various measures to reduce share dilution for increasing long-term returns to our shareholders. As a result of our strong performance in the first quarter, we are updating our outlook for 2024, as you can see on Slide 14. Specifically, we expect revenue to be between $1.225 billion and $1.25 billion, which reflects a year-over-year growth rate of 30% to 32% and is consistent with our prior outlook and reflects the strong performance in the first quarter and in line with our expectations. We remain confident in both the resilience and seasonal cadence of customer activity and the outlook for new customer acquisition in the rest of 2024.
As a result, we are reaffirming our full year revenue outlook. We also expect second half revenue growth rates to be improved versus the first half revenue growth rate, especially as we lap exceptionally strong growth rates in the first half of 2023. As a result, we expect the revenue growth rate in Q2 to be at the lower end of the annual guidance growth rate range of 30% to 32%. As a reminder, revenue growth rates in any given quarter can be impacted by volatility in foreign exchange rates, new customer acquisition timing, and seasonal customer activity, even if underlying customer behavior and spending patterns remain largely consistent to historical trends. While we expect to remain in a GAAP net loss position, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $85 million and $95 million, which is a $7.5 million increase at the midpoint from our prior outlook.
The increase in our adjusted EBITDA outlook is primarily driven by a strong performance in the first quarter, ahead of our expectations and our increased confidence on driving operational efficiencies for the rest of the year. Consistent with our commentary on our 2024 revenue outlook, we expected adjusted EBITDA year-over-year growth to be higher in the back half of the year when compared with the first half adjusted EBITDA growth. As a reminder, we delivered an exceptional second quarter last year and the year-over-year comparisons get improved as we enter the back half of this year. The outlook also allows us to take advantage of opportunities to acquire even more customers if the unit economics remain compelling and we continue to be highly targeted in deploying our marketing investments.
We’re planning for a macro and FX environment that remains consistent with what we’ve seen in the first quarter of 2024. Our continued global diversification, resilient customer base and increasing scale help us to mitigate localized macroeconomic or FX trends. Overall, we are pleased with the solid start to the year, and our business remains robust and resilient as we serve customers that have a recurring need to send money home. With that, Matt and I will open up the call for your questions. Operator?
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from the line of Andrew Schmidt with Citi Global. Please proceed.
Andrew Schmidt: Hey Matt, hey Hemanth. Thanks for taking my questions here. I want to dig into the first quarter performance a little bit. I understand that there’s normal seasonality there, but historically, you guys have done a great job of delivering upside expectations. So, I’m wondering if maybe you could elaborate if there was anything else as normal seasonality that surprised you? It sounds like customer behavior was pretty consistent, but would love to kind of peel back the layers here better understand if anything played out differently versus your initial expectations? Thanks a lot guys.
Hemanth Munipalli: Yes, awesome. Thanks, Andrew, for the question. Really excited. I think we’ve had a really strong start to the year. Q1 was well within our expectations. We expected obviously, seasonal patterns are known to us historically. So, nothing different in Q1 that we’ve seen in some of the other quarters as well. So, very consistent. And just to reinforce the customer behavior patterns have been as well as super consistent. We’ve seen increased engagement, transaction intensity, all these patterns that we track our activity rates and so on with our customers, very consistent. We had record new customer acquisition as well. So, we’ve seen a lot of consistent patterns in Q1, and we continue to be excited about the year.
Matt Oppenheimer: Yes, Andrew, the only thing I’d add is having built this business over the last 10-plus years, there is seasonality to the business and Q1 has less seasonal activity, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, just due to fewer holidays. But if you look at the overall performance of our cohorts, if you look at the overall fundamentals of our business, I think are looking very strong. And so excited about the rest of the year and excited about the fact that out of the gate, we grew 32% year-on-year for a business that now trailing 12 months is at over $1 billion in annual revenue. And that’s something that — those two metrics in combination, combined with the improvement on adjusted EBITDA, give us a great start to the year that we’re really proud of.
Andrew Schmidt: Absolutely. No, it’s a great growth rate. That’s fair. Maybe to dig into marketing expense just a little bit. So, I understand, again, the seasonality in the first quarter, but it’s a little bit lower versus our expectations. Has the strategy around performance marketing changed at all? Were you able to deploy as much marketing as you wanted to in the quarter given CAC levels? And then as we think about the full year and I understand that there’s some scale in the back half potentially with marketing expense, how should we expect at least what you’re thinking about right now marketing expense trend? Thanks a lot guys.
Hemanth Munipalli: Yes. Thanks Andrew. Yes, great question. And I think when we look at marketing, again, the whole quarter was very much in line with our expectations, same applies to marketing. To your point, we did sequentially reduced marketing expense as we can expect it and in plan, and we’re able to acquire record new customers in the quarter as well. So, we look at unit economics very closely, and I think that’s one of our competencies that we’ve built over the years. When we look at lifetime values of our customers, we look at cost of acquisition to look at those ratios, very consistent across the board. We’ve seen, again, on the LTV front, consistent behavior from our customers. So, it gives us continued conviction that the investments we’re making in marketing makes a lot of sense for us when we think about payback and these investments have less than 12 months payback as we called out in the prepared remarks as well.
In terms of trends, and similar to what we called out last quarter, we do think that as we get to the back half of the year, some of the growth rates in marketing will decelerate in the back half of the year, which is also reflected in our guide for the year. So, no change in our strategies around marketing investment, excited about the customers we’re acquiring and the paybacks that we’re seeing.
Andrew Schmidt: Got it. Thank you very much Hemanth. I appreciate the comments.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it comes from Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays. Please proceed.
Allison Gelman: Hi, this is Allison on for Ramsey. Thank you so much for taking our question. So, it seems like customer acquisition is a key focus here, and you have some really interesting marketing initiatives in the works. Do you think you could give some updated thoughts on where you’re seeing new users come from? And maybe how that was apparent as shown in today’s results? So, just where are you taking share from when you’re acquiring a customer? Is it a customer who’s brand new to remittances? Are they coming from a digital channel or brick-and-mortar? Just some updated thoughts here on what your general view is would be really helpful.
Matt Oppenheimer: Yes. Thanks Allison. If you look at where our customers are coming from, it’s a wide range of competitors. It’s a very fragmented market of which, as we’ve mentioned, we’re only 2% of the overall market. Most customers — it really depends on the market, but most customers have — are not necessarily new migrants, given that there are 250-plus million immigrants that live and work outside the country they are born. And so lots of room to grow within that customer base. And lots of marketing opportunities that ties a little bit to Andrew’s question, but we have no shortage of opportunities of high-return marketing channels to invest in. And we’re seeing some of the channels that I talked about in the opening remarks in terms of being able to focus in certain geographies like L.A. seeing good returns from marketing channels like that.
And our product continues to get better and better every day in terms of the reliability and speed. And so that also creates a word-of-mouth effect that we’re really excited about. So, while you do see the — the net adds being lower in Q1 because of seasonality of the retention, the number of new customers coming in at record numbers is really exciting for what it holds for the rest of the year.
Allison Gelman: Thanks so much. Very helpful.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And it’s from the line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.
Will Nance: Hey guys. Appreciate taking the question. I wanted to ask about maybe some of the interplay between the revenue yield on volume and the transaction costs that you mentioned. Just knowing you guys have very dynamic pricing, and it seems like there’s been a lot of mix shift just in terms of the rates of digital versus in-person disbursement. I’m just wondering if there’s anything to be aware of as we think about kind of the continued reduction in transaction costs and sort of your reaction function to gross revenue when you see these shifts to either lower cost payment methods or you gain scale, I guess, said a different way, like are you guys passing on any of the benefits of transaction costs to the customers? And if we see benefits to transaction costs, should we also expect all the people to see the gross take rate come down?
Hemanth Munipalli: Yes. Thanks, Will, for the question. There’s a lot in there to unpack. But maybe just beginning with underpinning it around LTV. We really focus on making sure that we’re improving, growing the LTV with our customers, and that’s where the real value is. And we look at obviously, customer behavior trends, which we talked about. And I think you called out the digital trend there as well. And we’ve seen improved mix towards digital transactions, which, again, the 500 basis points this quarter, similar to last quarter as well. So, as a digital-first player and now at significant scale globally, we’re excited about that trend. And that certainly has a degree of impact in terms of the mix shifts that we’re seeing.
But I would say broadly on when you asked about take rate, there’s a lot — there’s other mix factors in there. We’re obviously in multiple geos, et cetera. And when we see our overall take rate with an average of an average, we continue to remain in a band that we’re comfortable with. It’s in the 2% to 2.5% range, it was very close to what we had sequentially last quarter as well. So, no real changes. There is obviously some underpinning mix shifts that we called out, particularly the digital trend there. On the transaction cost side, yes, we continue to improve. We think that having more direct connects, reducing friction with — friction in the entire process are all things that will help us reduce transaction costs and Matt talked about that in his prepared remarks as well.
So, I would kind of disconnect a little bit around kind of the take rate percentage and the transaction margin percentages. I think they’re somewhat not completely directly related. But we’re seeing great value we’re providing to our customers reflected in what you’re seeing in terms of revenue growth and activities and an improvement on the transaction expense side as well. Anything further to add Matt?
