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

Melissa Smith: Yes. Let me answer that one first, and I’ll go back to the M&A question. Asia is only about 10% of the portfolio right now. It was 20% pre-pandemic. So there’s still some ability to continue to see rebound there. It did go up a little bit sequentially from quarter-to-quarter. So we did see a little bit of benefit in Q4 of that reopening. And related to M&A, it’s clearly something that’s important to the long-term growth framework of the company. And the focuses that we’ve had have been around scale plays around areas that increase product capability for us. We look at build versus buy capability. And then geographic expansion. And so, you have the eNett, we’d like but that is it hit really across all three of those categories, but we continue to be active in the marketplace in identifying assets, working those through the multiples have continued to be a little bit elevated.

And so we then deploy our capital opportunistically through share buyback, but we continue to be active in the marketplace and looking for the right assets for us, both strategically and financially.

Operator: And our final question comes from Jeffrey Cantwell with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Jeff Cantwell: Okay. Great. Thank you. I just wanted to ask you, if you don’t mind, giving us an update on Flume? Curious what is the latest there? And I’m realizing that next time we speak, it will be a little bit over a year since the launch. I was just curious if you can kind of walk us through what is happening there? And is there any chance you can give us a little bit of a framework on how to think about revenue and so forth, understanding that you’re over $2 billion annual revenue company run out China trying to think through what type of contribution we might have going forward? Thank you so much.

Melissa Smith: All right. I put Flume in the category of our 1% to 2% growth we have in our long-term framework. So we have — the idea that we want to make sure that we’re continuing to introduce new products into the marketplace and that they will be accretive from a revenue perspective. Part of what I’m excited about Flume is the product itself. It’s a digital wallet technology. I’m also going to do that the process that we used to create it, and I said this before, but we created a debentures board internally, where we’re moving ideas across the company into the marketplace. And Flume, we started with alpha beta and this full launch and said, when you’re talking about that, you’re going through the life cycle of the alpha, beta launch and then going into the marketplace.

It’s a chassis that allows us to deliver products and services. So we’re not just excited about that, but we’re excited about the potential of what it can do in that small business segment. But it’s still early and still small relative to the whole size. I think — when I think about this, it’s, in aggregate, the product offerings that we’re moving into the marketplace where we’re making investments, yielding that 1% to 2% growth that we have in our framework. And this is just going to be one piece of that.