The Western Union Company (NYSE:WU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And so I think we’re still in the learning phase. We’re making real progress, and we’re seeing results that align with how we believe we can execute and continue to drive the digital new customer growth and ultimately transaction growth, which will lead to revenue growth throughout 2023, globally, in our branded digital business.

Operator: Our next question comes to us from Ken Suchoski from Autonomous. Please ask your question.

Ken Suchoski: I just want follow up on that last discussion. Could you talk about what you’re seeing in terms of repeat usage and transactions around your promotional programs? I think the goal is to attract customers with that discount on the first transaction and then get back to more normal pricing on that second and third transaction. So what are you seeing in terms of that price sensitivity from customers on those later transactions? And any comments about their willingness to do that second, third or even fourth transaction or retention rates would be great.

Devin McGranahan: Ken, thanks for joining the call. It’s always great to have you. As I highlighted, we are very, very indexed on repeat transaction performance from the new customer offers, right? And in many cases, the new customer offer is first transaction free. And so we are quite cautious to make sure that we are not offering a first transaction free for a customer that doesn’t return. So we are highly focused on what we consider to be second and third transaction, which then create a pattern of repeat usage, which allows us to then measure ongoing retention. In the previously discussed remarks, I highlighted the September cohort, which is the most aged since we launched this program. And the first time we talked about it publicly, where we had mid-20% new customer growth.

That September cohort on 90-day retention, which would then include in most cases, a second if not a third transaction, has the highest retention of any 90-day cohort that we have in history. So we are seeing improved performance on second and third transaction from those new customer offers, and we are seeing improved retention of that cohort at least through the first 90 days, which gives us confidence that we’re not acquiring junk customers.

Ken Suchoski: And is that retention then, is that — I know I saw the slide that has, I think that cost 46 basis points and improved retention in 2022. Is it — are we talking kind of levels of magnitude above that 46 basis points? Any context there would be helpful.

Devin McGranahan: So to clarify, the 46 basis points is retail retention, not digital retention. And as you know, on very large bases of customers, retention is measured in basis points. So when we talk about improvements, we’re talking 50 basis points to 150 basis points of improvement whenever we see it with a goal of obviously getting to 200 points across the footprint in retail and similar expectations about what we might do in digital. So we’re not talking 1,000 basis point retention improvements.

Ken Suchoski: If I could just squeeze one more in, just so I understand the impact of the roll-off of the agents I just want to make sure I have it right. I think the agent, the on roll off had a 2 percentage point impact in the quarter. Did that 2 percentage point headwind kind of roll through the next 3 quarters? And then, I guess, what’s the expected size of the headwind from the next agent just so we can model it correctly? And then any offsetting factors on P&L, like does this help agent commission costs or anything like that would be helpful.

Matthew Cagwin: Ken, this is Matt. So basically, we talked about this at Investor Day, each agent is about 1% of revenue. So the first one exited here at the beginning of Q4. So we’ll lap that at the. The other agent we expect to part here in the middle of the quarter