WEX Inc. (NYSE:WEX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Bob Napoli: Great. I mean your health care business has grown a lot over the years from nothing when you first got into it. You have a pretty good comp in the public markets that has a pretty healthy valuation. Are there any thoughts to that health care segment and finding other ways to get value for shareholders in that business? Does spinning off a part, or I don’t know, you certainly highlighted? But just any thoughts around that health care business and maybe getting more attention for it with investors. One way to do that is the spin off a piece or rather just any thoughts around health care monetization?

Melissa Smith: Yes. If you look across the business, the way that we think about what we’ve developed is the platform — entertainment platform that sits — integrated across the different segments that we do business in and we’re creating services that are very specialized to many different industries. Health care is one of them. So the connection point to the rest of the business is the underlying technology and increasingly the service levers that we have as part of the synergies that we’re talking about. So we like the business and how it actually balances the rest of the portfolio and we think it’s an important part of the growth of the company.

Operator: Next we’ll Dave Koning with Baird. Your line is now open.

David Koning: Great job. And maybe just to ask about travel and corporate a little bit. We often think of corporate being 15%, 20%, sometimes better growth. And then travel being in — we would think of it still in ’23 being in a recovery year with some of the Asia recovery. But you’re only guiding to 7% to 11%. And I would have just kind of thought maybe 20% growth. Maybe what’s the disconnect? Is there something or yield some part of the business, maybe not growing quite as fast as we would expect?

Jagtar Narula: Dave, this is Jagtar. So I would say there’s a couple of impacts on the travel and corporate payments business. So we do continue to expect good pent-up demand in travel. So things continue to go well in that business. But like I said in my prepared remarks, we are factoring economic slowness throughout the portfolio there. We also had some true-ups in 2022 related to MasterCard incentives that we’re not currently forecast to fully repeat in 2023. So when we combine those two items, that’s led to our 7% to 11% growth for 2023.

David Koning: Got you. And that would show up — would that open the yield in travel or in the yield in — that was probably corporate, right?

Jagtar Narula: It’s a little bit more skewed to corporate, but it shows up a little bit in both.

David Koning: Okay. And then just as a follow-up. Segment growth, you gave full year growth, but maybe Q1 growth by segment, kind of what you’re expecting?

Jagtar Narula: Q1 growth by segment, roughly I would expect, give me a second here, ex-PPG, I’m expecting fleet 10% to 15%. Travel, I’d expect — the Travel and Corporate Solutions, I’d expect healthy double-digit growth. And health and employee benefits also I think healthy double-digit growth as well.

Operator: Next, we’ll go to Andrew Jeffrey with Truist Securities. Your line is open.