Matt Cagwin: Yes. So James, as we’ve thought about 2024, we’ll come out in February and give more precise guidance. But sitting here today, we feel pretty strong about our customer base. They’ve been resilient. As Devin’s talked about, most important factor really is unemployment rates. There’s also important about migration patterns, which we’re watching, which have been very strong for us as well. So we feel good about where we are, but things can change every day and we monitor it on a daily basis.
Devin McGranahan: And I think Matt’s comments on the second part where we monitor both employment levels but also migration and after COVID induced a relatively low level of cross border migration since 2021. We’ve seen that rebounding and we see it whether it’s in markets that have historically been more closed, like Japan to places in Europe like Italy and Spain, where you see again, inbound migration, driving the lower end of the employment spectrum as economic opportunities continue for our customers. So we remain with the viewpoint that stability, at least as far as we can see into the future, is the right planning assumption.
James Fawcett: Yep, that makes a lot of sense. And then to follow up, Matt, you mentioned it, you and Devin kind of balance each other out as you’re making investment decisions. How are you thinking about what makes sense and what kind of hurdle rates or other metrics you can share about how you think about pushing through potential upside to incremental investments versus, hey, maybe it’s better if we kind of push this to the bottom-line, or at least be a little more patient, even when we’re seeing that. Just trying to get a sense of your current thought processes around investment opportunities.
Matt Cagwin: Yes, so unfortunately, it’s not a simple answer because we are always monitoring and balancing our public commitments we’ve made, which is the point Devin was making a few moments ago. But in periods like we are right now going into Q4, we’re focused on maintaining our LTV to CAC and driving marketing spend where it’s very going to provide a really good return. As we’ve talked about on the call today, we’ve brought down our CAC by about 20%. So we feel really good about the progress we’ve made there and feel good about spending some more money in that space and driving customer acquisition for going into 2024. On the technology side, we’re always balancing the low double-digit return on investment. It’s hard to measure some of these things when you’re driving agent experience or customer experience when it’s one little output, but we’re talking to our customers, understand what’s important, talking to our agents and driving technology improvements that can make their lives and experience with us better.
Devin McGranahan: And while I’m the idea guy and Matt’s the money guy, there is a pretty strong and robust process within the company, as evidenced by the fact that we’ve managed the investment envelope within our public commitments and our 19% to 21% operating. So given there are more opportunities and ideas running around this place, given the strength of our footprint, our brand, what we view as the market opportunity, those that get funded are the ones that have the ability to rise to the top of that heap on a revenue and return commitment projection. So there is internal competition. Given the constraints we’re living in that I’ve highlighted, we aren’t about to relax for making sure the things that we are funding have the highest potential both for future revenue and return.
Operator: Our final question comes to us from Cris Kennedy from William Blair. Please ask your question.
Cristopher Kennedy: Great, thanks for fitting me in here. I just wanted to follow-up on retail retention rate for your retail customers. I think you said it was flat with 2022 levels. I think your goal was like 200 basis points of improvement per year. Can you just talk about the roadmap to that 200 basis point improvement goal? Thank you.
Devin McGranahan: Thanks for the question. As I indicated, we are seeing a tale of two worlds. Three of our five major regions are seeing improvements in retail retention and two of our major regions are headed in the wrong direction. Now, some of that’s a impact, as Matt has talked about the loss of a couple of large important agents and then some macro factors in the other region. The things that we’re working on and will continue to work on are improved transactional experiences for returning customers in both our retail and our digital environment. We will be launching a new loyalty program, hopefully in the first quarter of 2024, which we also think will help. The last thing that we’ve done is to improve our ongoing communications and marketing efforts to customers on an ongoing basis and monitoring traditional transaction patterns, which we call the heartbeat.
And when someone falls off of their traditional transaction pattern, reaching out to them with either a marketing message or an offer to bring them back. So we are working hard to drive retention across the entire franchise, obviously with a particular focus on retail, given our goal of achieving stability. And as you can see in the performance of North America, when we are able to get improvements in retention that significantly helps drive the overall transaction. And as we highlighted, North America retail is now performing at a level that we would be happy with on an ongoing basis.
Matt Cagwin: Hey, Cris. The only thing I’d add to Devin’s point is the metrics we gave at our Investor Day a year ago, those were all targets aspirations over the three year horizon. It was not meant to be viewed as a commitment going into 2023 or 2024. We wanted to have a true north to galvanize our employees as well as our shareholders, knowing we’re trying to target. The first one we got to was the double-digit new customers in digital. We had talked about our Investor Day. Most of the other ones were a little harder and took effort to get there. So we’re still working hard as Devin has talked about to get to them.
Cristopher Kennedy: Great. Thanks for taking the question.
Operator: Thank you for joining the Western Union third quarter 2023 results conference call. We hope you have a great day.
