WEX Inc. (NYSE:WEX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Melissa Smith: So Ascensus is largely using our platform right now. And so they’re distributing, using not just our tech but I would say, largely our tech. One is the — so we have the ability to continue to build upon the products that they have with our existing customer base over time. So I don’t think that that’s going to happen immediately. But they do have product offerings, particularly compliance product offerings, which will be incremental to what we’re offering in the marketplace and would provide incremental revenue. Ascensus also this year is growing within our long-term guidance range to just start with and so that 15% to 20%. So it should be helpful to us as we think about how we want to grow long term.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Dan Dolev with Mizuho.

Dan Dolev: Great results. I really only have one question. I was going to ask a question about the guide, but I think it’s kind of fully addressed. But just long-term strategic as we think about the value proposition of EV, like what are your clients, what are the needs for your clients and like how are those conversations? Because we’re getting a lot of pushback from our clients, our investors about sort of like assessing the value proposition of WEX and your competitor in the EV world. So I was wondering how those conversations are going.

Melissa Smith: It’s a really interesting question because a year ago, we would have said as we’re going through that we were hopeful now in the conversations that we’re having with our customers, it’s very clear that what they want is one integrated source of data and so they want to be able to have the convenience of understanding how much are they spending on their EV vehicles integrated with their gas-powered vehicles, which puts us in a really great position in order to build into the marketplace. And so we feel even more strongly now that this creates an opportunity for us, also with a limited amount of products that we have in the marketplace, which allows people now to charge en route, and we have prototypes in the marketplace that are allowing people to do at home charging.

That in itself is putting us and we said we would — we believe that we were going to be able to earn $5 to $20 per month per vehicle. We’re in that range now and that was a really limited offering. As we continue to build upon that, we see just more opportunity. And when you think about the complexity that gets created by introducing an EV vehicle, we think that we have an opportunity to continue to provide products into the marketplace. And so we are pretty bullish about not only the opportunities that this creates, but how we can help our customers through this transition. There’s a lot of unknowns as they’re starting their journeys. And they’re still — our customers are still having trouble getting access to vehicles even when there’s interest being able to actually get that interest fulfilled is taking quite a long time.

So we do think this is going to be a long conversion cycle.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Trevor Williams with Jefferies.

Trevor Williams: Jagtar, on the guide, if you could just put a finer point on the network incentive. I’m assuming it’s in travel that you’re now building in, I think, last year in Q4, you had about a $10 million benefit. So just looking for how much of the raise for the full year is coming from the incentive in particular and if all of that we should expect to come in the fourth quarter.

Jagtar Narula: Yes. So it’s in the Travel and Corporate Payments segment broadly. And it will be comparable, slightly larger than what we saw last year. Last year wasn’t quite $10 million, but we did see a Q4 benefit. And so we’re expecting that benefit as we hit our volumes this year and that will all come in Q4.