Q2 2023 Western Union Co Earnings Call
Good day and welcome to the Western Union second quarter 2023 results Conference call.
All participants will be in listen only mode.
After todays presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions.
Please note this event is being recorded.
I'd now like to turn the conference over to Tom Hadley head of Investor Relations.
Please go ahead.
Thank you.
On today's call, we will discuss the company's second quarter 2023 results and then we will take your questions.
The slides that accompany this call and webcast can be found at Western Union Dot com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call additional.
Operational statistics have been provided in supplemental tables with our press release.
Joining me on the call today is our CEO , Devin Mcgranahan, and our CFO , Matt Keigwin.
Today's call is being recorded in our comments include forward looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Western Union's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 2020 to Form 10-K for additional information.
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward looking statements.
During the call we will discuss some items that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release attached to a form 8-K as well as on our website Western Union Dot com.
Under the Investor Relations section.
I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Devin Mcgranahan.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Western Union second quarter 2023 financial results Conference call.
We are pleased with the results we reported today and the progress we are making against our evolved 2025 strategy.
The work, we have been doing to deliver sustainable positive revenue growth is beginning to take effect in the quarter. We continued to drive improvements in the underlying trajectory of our business with positive transaction trends across both our branded digital and our retail businesses.
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Recall two key pillars of our evolved 2025 strategy includes stabilizing our retail business and returning our digital business to low double digit growth rates.
Second quarter was continued evidence we are making good progress on both objectives.
Is that going quarter was the first time in eight quarters that we have achieved positive transaction growth across the company with total CTC transactions, excluding Iraq growing 2% year over year.
This is a significant improvement from the double digit negative transaction trends. We saw for most of 2022 I will provide more details on some of the initiatives. We are working on but first let me provide a quick summary of our financial results.
Our total revenue in the quarter reached $1 billion $170 million, reflecting a 9% increase on a constant currency basis, when excluding the contribution from business solutions compared to the same period last year.
This growth was driven by several factors, including improving fundamentals in our core business the increase in revenue from Iraq, and the benefit of Argentinean inflation.
Adjusted earnings per share came in strong in the quarter at 51.
Matt will further discuss our financial results in more detail and provide an update on our enhanced 2023 financial outlook.
Shifting to the macro.
Last month, the World Bank came out with its semiannual migration and development brief which is calling for low single digit remittance principal growth in both 2003 and 2020 for.
The World Bank noted headwinds to faster growth and remittance volumes, including a slowing global economy.
Just in high inflation increased interest rates and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine.
These are all macro themes that we have spoken about in recent quarters and factors, we are paying close attention to.
Nevertheless, we continue to see resilience in our own customer base.
With the average ppt, excluding the higher ppt from Iraq remaining relatively flat year over year.
We also continue to believe that there are significant opportunities within our own business that will allow us to execute our strategy successfully even in the face of potentially slowing remittance market.
One of those important opportunities is the acceleration of our branded digital business, which has been a key focus and the primary driver of the transaction improvements we've seen in recent quarters.
This business has continued to show momentum in the quarter with 12% growth in transactions globally, which is a significant acceleration of the transaction growth trend. We reported in the first quarter of 2023, which was up 7%.
Constant currency branded digital revenue also improved this quarter sequentially to minus 2% with transactions up 12%, which reflects improvement in the underlying health of the business compared to the second quarter of last year, where transactions were down three.
Percent and revenue was up 1%.
As I have stated we started out by focusing on growing our customer base again, which in turn would lead to growth in transactions and finally growth in revenue would follow I am pleased that we are on track and maybe even slightly ahead of the trajectory we laid out at our Investor day last.
Paul.
These improvements in our branded digital business are attributable to the successful execution of our updated go to market strategy, which is driving meaningfully more customers to our digital properties in the quarter, we saw global new customer acquisition up 20%.
Which underscores the effectiveness of our marketing and customer acquisition strategies as well as the improvements made to our customer onboarding funnel conversion and overall customer experience.
A central element of our updated go to market strategy is the constant focus on ongoing improvements in funnel optimization.
In the second quarter, we simplified our historical registration process by limiting the number of fields required to register.
And by moving our value proposition front and center to help drive customer conversion as a result, we have improved our web registration conversion rates by almost 500 basis points and our U S outbound business relative to the first quarter of 2023.
In addition to improving our registration conversion rates. We've also seen dramatic improvement in our first transaction approval rates in the second quarter. Our first transaction approval rates in our U S. Outbound business increased roughly 600 basis points year over year.
Are driven by several improvements we have made to our decisioning models.
For example, our new Omnichannel customers.
For our new Omnichannel customers, we now use a customer's previous retail transaction history, and our digital approval process, which predictably significantly enhances decision outcomes.
As previously discussed our updated go to market strategy is focused on optimizing LTV to CAC.
Leveraging data driven insights to improve audience targeting and funnel conversion, we continue to see a sustained improvement in our branded digital customer acquisition costs, which has strengthened our belief that the changing the changes we are making are indeed durable.
Yeah.
Moving now to our retail business, which is powered by our extensive agent network of over 400000 active locations, providing accessible financial services to those customers who prefer in person transactions as we have discussed and expected given the scale.
And dispersion of our retail business performance improvements will take more time.
Our retail business saw positive transaction trends in the quarter with 120 basis point improvement in the growth rate relative to the first quarter, excluding Iraq, Russia and Belarus.
Performance year to date supports our belief that the retail transaction trends can continue to improve over time, which is needed to stabilize our retail business as laid out in our evolve 2025 strategy last fall.
Nowhere has this evolution been truer than in Africa in the quarter, we saw a 6% revenue growth in our retail business in Africa. The management team that we have there is top notch and has been laser focused on driving improved retail performance across the region.
More broadly in Europe , we continued to make progress on our controlled distribution strategy, where we have now launched over 70, new concept stores since last year.
During the second quarter. We also opened two exclusive western Union branded corporate owned stores in Belgium.
This type of distribution allows us to control the customer experience increase the number of products and services. We offer promote the retail to digital escalator and allows us to have deeper engagement with our customers.
Our focus with the evolve 2025, our focus with evolve 2025, and retail has been to significantly improve our customer and agent experiences, including faster transactions better end to end customer and agent experiences and higher quality agents support.
As an example, I want to give you just a quick update on the quick <unk> function that we discussed on our last call.
They use a quick <unk>, where repeat transactions can be executed in a fraction of the time. It was historically required continues to increase aircrafts our U S agent base and is growing by over 10 times from March of this year.
In June over 30% of all transactions completed at our <unk> brand were done using this quick send functionality quick <unk> functionality.
These types of process improvements may sound small in isolation, but we believe they can add up and become meaningful a better customer and agent experience can ultimately improve retention and drive growth in the near term, but they are also driving efficiency throughout our organization.
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For example, roughly to 15% to 20% of all calls to our call centers were associated with a refund request.
As a result, we launched a process called one step refund, which created a self service tool for our agents to process refunds in one step and avoid the need to engage our support staff during.
During the month of June we saw a 20% reduction in refund support calls.
In more recent weeks the percentage of refunds processed by our agents without call center support surpassed 50% of all refunds process globally.
Meaningful meaningfully from the mid teens range that we were at early last year before we scaled this one step refund process.
The ones that refund process was designed primarily to improve agent and customer satisfaction. However by simplifying the refund process. We now have fewer calls coming into our call center and thus can reduce run rate costs, while focusing our customer service representatives.
On resolving more complex issues with better more personalized support.
Last year on the first quarter earnings call I talked about the process improvement opportunities I saw that could enable us to invest for growth, while maintaining our strong margins.
While transaction volumes have been increasing in recent months monthly call Center volume has decreased to the lowest level in at least eight years agents.
<unk> agents support calls have also dropped and collectively we have seen a 30% decrease in total call volume driving our contact rate down by over 20% year over year.
I look forward to sharing more on this topic with you in coming quarters.
We continue the build out of our broader and broader ecosystem strategy and are pleased to announce the launch of our new prepaid debit card in North America.
This month, we completed the first commercial transaction on our prepaid card and have begun a friends and family rollout in the U S.
This card will provide customers with a convenient and secure payment solution, allowing them to manage their finances with greater flexibility by reintroducing a prepaid card solution, we aim to expand our product offerings and provide additional value to our customers.
We are also now in the final phase of our friends and family testing in Brazil, and we expect our new digital wallet to go live in.
In the third quarter <unk>.
Brazil is one of the few markets, where our digital business is larger than our retail business on a transaction basis as such we are excited to be able to expand our digital offering in this important market.
Last month I had the opportunity to visit Europe and review the progress we are making with our digital wallet. There. We've continued to focus on the four markets. We have launched so far and have made improvements to the onboarding processes and to the customer migration experiences.
As noted on the last call current and former digital and retail Western Union customers continue to be our most valuable wallet customers improving the omni channel experience will be important to further expand with these segments.
Finally shifting to some new additions to our executive team and partnerships.
First I would like to announce the addition of Sam Jawad to our management team as the new head of ecosystem, Sam joins us from ACI, where he served as the executive Vice President and global head of banking.
Sam brings nearly 20 years of experience in digital banking and payments and has a strong track record of business building.
I would also like to announce the addition of Taryn Wayland as our new Chief people Officer, Karen joins Us from West Corporation, where she was the Chr O.
Sharon brings nearly 20 years of experience in human resources and has a high impact leader that will play an important role in supporting us with our ongoing evolve 2025 transformation.
Lastly.
We have partnered with UNICEF to provide a quick cash services as partnership linked closely with our purpose, which aims to help people Prosper. We're also publishing our annual ESG report in the coming weeks, which will highlight our ongoing progress with key ESG focus areas, including <unk>.
Furthering economic prosperity and promoting the integrity of the global money movement system.
Looking ahead, we remain optimistic about our strategic direction and the positive progress we are making.
The global payments landscape continues to evolve rapidly driven by increasing digitization changing customer preferences, and our customers' aspirations for more western Union is well positioned to capitalize on these trends our digital services.
With our extensive retail network position us as a trusted provider of flexible and reliable financial solutions to the aspiring populations in the world.
In conclusion, we are pleased with the improved trajectory of our business <unk>.
Driven by improving transaction trends across both our digital and retail businesses our investments in digital acceleration in customer centric initiatives are driving the company forward. We are excited about the launch of our new prepaid card solution in North America and the opportunities it presents.
Part of our ecosystem offering.
We remain committed to delivering value for our customers our shareholders and other stakeholders, while adapting to the rapidly evolving market dynamic. Thank you for joining the call today I would now like to turn the call over to Matt to discuss our financial results in more detail.
Thank you Devin and good afternoon, everyone.
I'm delighted to be here today to discuss our financial performance over the past quarter and highlight some of our key achievements.
I will also outline our outlook for the remainder of the year.
Let's start by discussing our financial results.
In the second quarter Western Union delivered adjusted revenue of $1 billion $170 million representing.
Representing a 9% increase year over year.
We exceeded our internal expectation due.
Due to the revenue increase from Iraq, as well as a 3% benefit from Argentinian inflation.
As you May recall, we shared last quarter that a monetary policy change in Iraq drove a 2% benefit to adjusted revenue as we were able to quickly adapt to serve our customers.
That benefit continued in Q2, providing a 10% benefit to adjusted revenue.
While this meaningful benefit.
In the quarter.
We expect Iraq volumes to be significantly lower going forward I will discuss our forward looking assumptions when we get to the financial outlook in a few moments.
We also continue to make progress with our evolve 2025 strategy.
Growing CTC transactions for the first time since 2021.
Led by the continued momentum of our branded digital business, which grew 12% in the quarter.
As Devin highlighted earlier, we are optimizing our branded digital go to market strategy and saw sequential improvement in overall funnel conversion during the quarter.
Our retail business also saw improving transaction true trends, even excluding Iraq.
Adjusted operating margin was 21, 8% compared to 23, 3% last year near.
Nearly half the decrease was driven by currency impacts, including those related to our hedging program.
The remainder of the decrease was due to higher variable costs and investments related to evolve 2025 strategy, partially offset by lower marketing spend and net savings related to our expense redeployment program.
As you May remember last October we launched a five year $150 million expense redeployment program.
I'm excited about our progress since.
Since launching we have taken actions that will allow us to free up more than $45 million in 2023 with over $30 million of total savings recognized year to date.
This has positively impacted our adjusted adjusted operating margins is our ability to save continues to outpace our ability to invest.
Adjusted EPS was <unk> 51, and.
It was flat year over year with the current period benefiting from lower share count lower adjusted tax rate, partially offset by lower profit.
Now turning to the <unk> segment revenue grew 5% on a constant currency basis led by Iraq with transaction growth of 4%.
All regions, except for lack of drove sequential transaction improvements and lack of historically strong growth stayed flat quarter over quarter.
For our branded digital business revenue was down 2% on a constant currency basis on transaction growth of 12%.
New customer growth of 20% driven by our updated go to market strategy launched last August .
We expect to see positive global revenue growth in the fourth quarter of this year.
Now moving to the regional results in the second quarter, North American adjusted revenue decreased 7%, while transactions accelerated and grew 4% led by our branded digital business.
Each had 15% growth in the quarter.
Transaction trends also improved 100 basis points sequentially.
In our retail business.
And in North America, we continue to expect revenue growth in our North America branded digital business in the third quarter.
Revenue in Europe , and CIS was down 10% on a constant currency basis, while transactions declined just 1%.
As we've discussed previously the region has faced a tough macro backdrop, along with continued competitive pressures driven by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine stubbornly high inflation and the loss of a significant agent in Q4 of last year.
During the quarter, we began to pilot a new go to market strategy, which is a combination of leveraging our controlled distribution through owned and concept stores as Devin discussed earlier.
New agent Onboarding and.
And enhancing our value proposition in the marketplace.
We're very encouraged by early results of this program, which led to a 300 basis point sequential improvement in retail transactions, excluding Russia and Belarus.
Revenue in the Middle East Africa, and South Asia region accelerated meaningfully growing 67% on a constant currency basis on transaction growth of 8%.
Iraq led the region with higher principal per transaction driving the revenue growth is.
As Devin mentioned, we are also seeing solid improvement in our African retail business with revenue up 6% on 500 basis points of sequential improvement in transactions. This is driven by enhanced on the ground execution of marketing.
Several new wallet partnerships and.
And good adoption of some of our new retailer enhancements such as one step refund.
Constant currency revenue and transactions in Latin America, and the Caribbean were up 8%.
This solid performance in the quarter was led by strength in Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela.
The sequential revenue growth was down due to mix, including yield impacts from higher exchange rates, which have put pressure on higher ticket transactions in certain countries.
And finally revenue in APAC was down 4% on constant current on a constant currency basis with transactions up 1% led by our branded digital business APAC has it has driven a significant improvement in transaction trends.
First the double digit declines that we experienced last year. This has been led by growth in Australia, Japan and Korea.
Okay.
Now moving to our other segment, which primarily consists of retail bill payment in Argentina, and the United States and.
In retail money order in the U S.
Other represents 7% of total company revenue and grew 10% year over year on a reported basis benefiting from higher interest rates in our retail money order business as well as solid transaction growth.
We are also excited to announce the completion of the final phase of business solutions business solution disposition, which occurred on July one.
Now turning to our cash flow and balance sheet.
Year to date, we have generated $264 million of operating cash flow, which includes a transition tax payment of $119 million in the second quarter.
As a reminder, these tax payments will continue to step up over the next two years and will end in 2025.
Capital expenditures were $33 million in the quarter and $90 million year to date as mentioned last quarter, we expect lower agent signing bonuses and.
In the first quarter include a large payment that was committed to during the second half of 2021.
We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with cash and cash equivalents of $1 6 billion.
And debt of $2 8 billion.
Our leverage ratios, we're at two seven times and one two times on a gross and net basis.
Which is up given the timing of payments around the holiday.
These leverage ratios continue to provide us with flexibility for potential M&A, while maintaining an investment grade credit rating.
Now moving to our outlook today, we raised our 2023 adjusted revenue and EPS outlook due to higher revenues in Iraq.
As mentioned earlier, we expect these volumes.
From Iraq to be significantly lower going forward. This is due to recent U S government actions, which shut down a number of our agents in Iraq potential regulatory changes in Iraq or the U S.
<unk> policy changes made by ourselves and the region.
As a result due to the high degree of uncertainty we have only included the elevated remittance volume from Iraq, and our outlook through the end of July .
Our outlook also assumes no material changes in macroeconomic conditions.
We now expect adjusted revenue to be in the range of down 1% to up 1%. This is an improvement from our previous range by 300 basis points.
We continue to expect to have adjusted operating margins to be in the range of 19% to 21%.
And lastly, adjusted EPS is now expected to be in the range of $1 65 to $1 75, which is a 10% increase from our previous range.
Looking ahead, we remain optimistic about our prospects for the remainder of the year. We will continue to invest in key growth areas related to evolve 2025 strategy, including prioritizing customer and agent satisfaction.
Thank you for joining the call and operator, we're now ready to take questions. We will pause momentarily to compile the Q&A roster. As a reminder, each person is allowed one question with one follow up question.
All participants will be in listen only mode.
Our first question comes to Us from will Nance from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question.
You mentioned, you think you might be trending ahead of expectations will be of ultimate 25 strategy.
Okay.
A lot of it.
Strategy, you mentioned, a few things that youre doing.
Innovation range up acquisition digital transaction growth.
In particular.
It is where you would quite well.
Is that kind of drove that.
And then I guess secondarily, you've kind of had this sort of one off windfall from Iraq.
You mentioned in solid accelerating some investments in the quarter that they can offset.
In the quarter on the bottom 25 strategy. So yes, if we put it all together Youre ahead of plan and you've got more investment resources, where do you think is the best place to incrementally accelerate investments in our strategy.
Well thanks for joining the call. We are excited about the progress that we're making with evolve 2025, and I think as demonstrated today in the sequential improvement in transaction trends in both digital and retail were at or slightly better than <unk>.
What we expected as we had talked about first growing customers being growing transactions, which will then turn into revenue.
Our ongoing investments fall into two or three categories. One is around continuing to update our product experience and our customer service and agent experience and you heard today some of the places where we've been investing in our platform and our products and our ability to deliver those seamlessly to our customers.
And through our agents as we find opportunities and have the capacity, we will continue to accelerate in those kinds of investments that can indeed improve either our onboarding experiences our funnel output or our agents support experiences many times that requires investing in technology.
<unk> as we talked about and involve 2025, driving both our customers and our agents towards better self service and more automated experiences not only reduces operating costs, but it improves our ability to serve and grow those customer basis.
Quest place, where we really look as to our go to market and you heard on the call today, both continuing to invest in our our audience targeting and our marketing as well as in our retail footprint and our go to market strategy. So as again as we have capacity and ability will continue to make investments in those the third place.
<unk> is in our human resources and in our team and our talent you heard about two additions today to our senior team that is trickling through our entire organization as we bring new capabilities and new team members onboard to help drive the strategy I'll turn it over to Matt for the second part of your question.
Hey will it's just to your second part.
Also as you think about this the vast majority of the uplift we got from Iraq, we have flowed through.
Our revised guidance, we've only taken a modest amount into our investments Devin just walked through.
As we also highlighted we've been able to say much faster and investment levels.
Got it.
I appreciate that and then maybe just a clarification.
Location.
Living cases, I mean, you mentioned in the press release Alexander discussion with policymakers obviously.
I guess on the other side of this event do you.
Iraq revenues be like the same or is it going to be at a lower level of post sanction event and then on the expense side are there any.
<unk>.
Investments.
That will result from that.
Yes, well thanks for the question.
So since the new guidance coming out from the U S fed which was put out about a week ago.
We've seen a decline in our run rate from the first part of July by about 70% reduction.
Turned off a number of our agents in that marketplace to your question about investments for compliance and other things as you know we've got a very robust compliance programs. One of the reason why we're able to take.
The ability to service these clients when the opportunity came arise but.
But we have also put a little bit more money into that market, where the incremental revenue and profit. We got my rock has gone back into the compliance space over the last few months.
Our next question comes to Us from David <unk> from Evercore. Please ask your question.
Thank you good afternoon just.
Just to clarify how much of the <unk> increase in the EPS guidance range for this year comes from Iraq.
David This is Matt virtually all of it or all of it to be honest all of it our core business is operating as we expected.
We had a as we've talked about for our guidance last year.
We put out a range and we're well on our way for that was and then Iraq driving the <unk> uplift.
And then maybe just staying on this point how much of the change in Iraq, you think is structural where there could actually be some benefit to western Union beyond 2023.
It's too early to know David Thats, one of the reason why we put it out there as it being uncertain. It's been a very evolving situation. We have regular calls with the regulators in both markets.
We're trying to help them understand what's going on they are trying to balance overall.
Macros around the world. So it is uncertain, where they're going to do.
The only thing I would add David is evidenced by the last call. It four or five months, we are well positioned in the market relative to other alternatives as Matt highlighted we have very strong risk and compliance and so as the situation evolves.
We are at the ready and prepared to evolve with it and take advantage of anything.
It might be advantageous for western Union and our customers in Iraq.
Understood. Thank you.
Thanks, David Our next question comes to Us from Darrin Peller from Wolfe Research. Please ask your question.
Thanks.
I mean very quickly just a follow up again on Iraq, but I do want to ask another more fundamental question, but the magnitude of contribution from Iraq, I guess 10 points over $100 million.
I guess is a bit surprising when you generally don't see more than a few percent concentration in any one given market. So how is it that material.
Have you guys given what Youre, describing is a 10 point lift to revenue growth.
Maybe just help us understand the dynamics. So some of that may be sustainable some part of that seems pretty high.
And then.
More constructively and fundamentally I would say the digital transaction acceleration to be followed by revenue growth across the business is definitely what we want them to see.
And so Kevin maybe just revisit that again I mean, the timeline on transaction acceleration in U S. Maybe Europe next how that translates to revenue growth Reacceleration on the digital side and then a quick comment on retail because it looks like that did get a little better just looking at the math between the digital growth in the total transaction growth in what's going on the retail side.
Thanks, guys, Hey, Darrin, thanks for joining the call with regard to Iraq remember back in February early March timeframe. There was a change in the central Bank policy for the entire country.
Western Union was uniquely positioned given the strength of our agent distribution relationship, particularly the relationship with local Iraqi banks to take advantage of that change in policy and enable the ongoing outflow of remittances and remittance values, which as you can see from this were.
Again.
In essence, what was a shutdown of the banking system's ability in Iraq to do outbound remittances.
We would not have any expectation that it would continue as Matt has at this level, Matt has highlighted both the regulators in Iraq and in.
The U S as well as the central banks are working to find a new policy and a new procedure for the.
The regulated banks in the country to go back into the <unk> export of remittances.
That said as I said earlier, we continue to be well positioned and as the market evolves. One of the things that we have noted is there has been an adoption of more digitally oriented.
Services of which again, we've had strong partnerships with the digital players in the digital wallets in the country, which may induce consumers to stay within that experience and not go back to.
Two the more bank oriented experience that prevailed in the marketplace before this change so it's a rapidly evolving situation. We continue to have strong presence on the ground. We continue to work across the regulators and the central banks and we look forward to keeping you guys updated as it goes along outside of.
Of Iraq, we are pleased with the trajectory both on digital and retail for digital we continue to lay out a plan that brings us to positive revenue growth in the third quarter for the U S, which is where we launched the program in.
August of 2022, but really didn't start ramping it until September .
As we originally laid out.
On our Investor Day, we had talked about a 12 to 18 months.
Timeframe in order to lap the investments that we're making in order to drive new customer acquisition I anticipate we will do that within the 12 month period, which goes to my comments that we're potentially slightly out of where we originally laid out.
We expect the entire business and as you recall after we started seeing success in North America, We began rolling it out two important countries in Europe and then in the first quarter, we started expanding that to important countries and the rest of the world, including places like Australia, and so have you see in our results.
<unk> the growing transaction trends not just in North America, but as our new go to market program.
<unk> into the rest of the world the same outcomes and performances are being repeated.
That said, we expect as Matt indicated to get to global positive revenue growth by the end of this year in the fourth quarter and so we are on pace with the plan, we laid out at our Investor day slightly ahead.
As we ultimately expect customers drive transactions transactions drive revenue and transaction and revenue growth will normalize as we continue to grow over the investments that we made over the course of the last year on the retail side, we're quite excited about and one of the reasons I spent a bunch of time highlighting the progress.
We are making in changing our agent experience changing the productivity of our agent base and in better serving our retail customers, which is now starting to articulate into the results that youre seeing on a quarter over quarter basis.
Even in the most troubled places like in Europe , where we have struggled with our agent network.
The macro forces there you saw that we're now approaching nearly flat transaction growth period over period.
That's great. Thanks, Tony.
Our next question comes to Us from Bryan Keane from Deutsche Bank. Please ask your question.
Hi, guys.
Kevin I wanted to follow up on that on Europe , and CIS that improvement.
It's been significantly negative growth rates double digit growth rates for several quarters just to understand the turn there it's almost flat now and what's the outlook going forward can that can that go positive going forward in Europe and CIS region.
Look we have Europe is.
The place, where we have been working quite hard, particularly on the retail side and there are multiple factors in Europe both across the.
The macro of the region, but also across our own history in the region and so what you see is we are seeing pockets of growth, where we've made investments where our ingoing position with our agents and our customers was better those include Spain, the UK and Italy in larger markets where.
Like France, and Germany, where we have a a weaker starting point from when we launched the program.
Those are still mid to high single digit negative transaction growth. So we believe as we bring the larger countries.
And we add more agents and we add more distribution.
Closer in line with some of the other places where we're seeing net transaction positive growth. We can get the whole region. As we have stated in our strategy last fall to low single digit transaction growth.
Got it.
I don't know, Matt If you guys gave this number but in the middle East and Africa region that had the big pop in revenue growth.
Primarily due to Iraq.
What would have been the normalized transaction growth rate I guess ex Iraq in that region.
We did not provide that number.
<unk>.
It would have still been a.
Sequential improvement like many of the regions around the world approaching zero.
Got it okay. Thanks for the help guys.
Our next question comes to Us from Tien Tsin Huang from Jpmorgan. Please ask your question.
Great. Thank you good afternoon, just on the acceleration to the 12% growth, it's nice to see for the digital branded piece of that seven changed your thinking on broadening your promotions.
And Geo expansion I'm curious on that and is it related to some of the comments you made on improved.
Transaction approval rates and things like that I wasn't sure if those things were.
And then I guess.
If you don't mind, if I just add.
My follow up just with the improved approval rates.
Any changes from a productivity or surprises there.
Thanks, Tien tsin, great to have you on the call.
<unk>.
Our ongoing investments and you can see it in the numbers, we've talked a lot about being very disciplined with our LTV to CAC and so one of the things we've been working hard with this program issue improve the efficacy of those marketing dollars and to convert more people.
From our top of funnel to bottom of funnel, which is what I was talking about in terms of our conversion rates both on registration.
On first time.
Risk acceptance.
And we're working more broadly across the funnel in every case to ensure that the changes, we're making are sustainable and durable over time and so as you know we've talked a lot on the call about ensuring that our promotional pricing activities.
In fact turn into customers and those customers turn into transactions right.
So.
I think we have growing confidence that the overall program aside from the promotional pricing is in fact, driving real benefits and real outcomes, which is now you are seeing in the 12% transaction growth globally in the 15% in North America.
So to answer your question I don't anticipate a lot more rolling out of any promotional pricing activities. There are a few places in the world we might.
Explore but in most of the big important places, we are well on our way and we aren't requiring or needing any more promotional pricing.
Got it.
Just on the fraud piece I know that in the past you've always asked about that as you open up the funnel.
And more fraud any interesting observations.
That's all I had thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for the question early observations are no as we've opened it up.
We've not seen any meaningful change in our fraud losses is something we're monitoring very closely and we will adapt our main focus we've talked about with the team that runs. This is we're looking for profitable transactions not just transactions and revenue. So it's one of those things, we're going to monitor and adapt as we find that sweet spot.
Tien Tsin I, Matt would have the specifics, but one of the things is we again are working on funnel optimization.
<unk> saw our fraud results improve.
Significantly, which then gave us the ability to say how could we.
Use that capability to grow our customer so year over year period over period, our fraud results have improved not worsened.
Our next question comes to Us from <unk> Kumar from UBS. Please ask your question.
Hi, Good evening. Thanks for taking my question just wondering on the second quarter operating margin now, let's say expect it to be below the full year outlook I think was your initial guide.
It ended up being near the high end of the range. So just curious what came in better than expected there.
Hey, Ron this is Matt.
The principal driver of that is Iraq, having the extra revenue there that was not anticipated when we put out our guidance that represents a large portion of the over delivery.
The other part of that's driving it is the fact that we are still running our ability to invest with our cost savings program.
Understood and then as a follow up I know last year, you guided to mid single digit EPS growth beyond 2003, So is it a safe assumption to say there.
They are still on track for that mid single digit growth in 'twenty four excluding that benefit from Iraq.
I am looking.
Looking forward to talking about 2004 in February but you probably are directionally does some good assumptions.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Our next question comes to Us from Tim Chiodo from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.
Our next question comes to us from Ken Schakowsky from autonomous.
Please ask your questions.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions.
I like the chart on slide eight of the slide deck that shows the transaction growth and the constant FX revenue growth for the branded digital business and it looks like the gap between those two lines has widened a bit in Q2 versus Q2, our tissue versus once you I'm just curious how you expect that spread to.
Trend over the next few quarters. Thanks.
Hey, Ken Thanks for joining the call.
As we talked about last quarter, we expected this quarter to be the wireless part of that expansion I think we've talked about that in the Q1 call and we would expect it to narrow.
The remainder of this year and as Devin talked about a few moments ago.
We would.
<unk> constantly give out our new customer growth.
We're expecting the all three numbers will converge over the future quarters.
And can the gap is probably a little bit wider than we anticipated in.
And thats driven by.
Success on ongoing customer transaction trends that are slightly better than we anticipated as well and so what youre seeing is slight.
Slightly better retention of the new customer bases transacting slightly higher than we expected, which is causing the transaction trends to outpace little bit of what we thought.
Okay, Great and then maybe just as my follow up I wanted to ask about the composition of the digital business. Because obviously this is a business that's accelerating looks like North America growth is strong what's the geographic composition of that business and maybe you could provide some detail on the growth rates.
Across those regions I'm, just curious if youre seeing an improvement in Europe and other parts of the world.
Hey, Ken we have historically not given that information out, but we've typically told everybody is you can look at the mix of our overall CDC by region and that'll give you a sense for the overall dispersion around the world.
Pretty closely match the size of each region around the world. So as Devin talked about we launched in North America first followed by Europe . Those are the two largest represent the vast majority of our business.
So therefore, you can assume that also represent the vast majority of our digital branded digital business.
Our next question comes to Us from Jason Kupferberg from Bank of America. Please ask your question.
Thank you.
Question just related to the outlook for the balance of the year I'm just looking at adjusted revenue growth through the first half of the year I think that's up 4% at the midpoint of the full year guide is zero. So I guess, we're looking at negative four in the second half I know that Iraq helped you by 10 points in the second quarter.
So you would have been minus one instead of plus nine so I guess I'm just looking at that kind of minus one Iraq adjusted number in Q2.
Trying to see what the pieces are between the minus one in Q2, and then what looks like kind of minus four in the second half and just wanted to make sure. We have all those piece parts in the model. Thank you.
Jason I'm not sure I completely followed but I'll try to play it back in if I get it wrong, we can take it offline with Tom and team but.
What we have done this quarters, we've taken up our guide based on the revenue expectation from Iraq for the three month period of April through July .
And flowed that through.
And the outlook for the back half of the year is largely similar to what we had originally when we gave our guide.
So I hope that answers your question.
We can take it offline and go little deeper if you want.
Okay.
We'll do that I guess my follow up just on the CDC transaction growth, if we exclude Iraq and Russia, Belarus, obviously, the plus 2% in the quarter.
What are you assuming for that metric in the in the second half and then if you deconstruct it into digital versus retail as well.
<unk>.
Yes.
We're not really providing that level of outlook, there's a lot of moving parts in our business and we're flexing from quarter to quarter, making decisions that may move around.
Thank you.
Our next question comes to Us from Andrew Schmidt from Citi. Please ask your question.
Hey, Kevin Hey, Matt.
Thanks for taking my questions I appreciate all the commentary here.
On the digital business I'm wondering if now that we're further along in the new strategy. There any comments in terms of what youre seeing in terms of.
LTV to CAC or payback period levels, and then correspondingly as you get more comfortable with the unit economics of the digital business post the new promotional strategy.
There is an opportunity to get more aggressive with marketing budgets and customer acquisition costs.
Any help there would be helpful. Thanks, a lot Andy.
Andrew Thank you.
You can see in the results. We are in fact being disciplined on LTV to CAC, which is one of the reasons marketing spend is down period over period, one of the important parts of our program.
And that is part of why I was talking about those conversion rates in those acceptance rates.
Is to be able to scale marketing investment profitably in order to continue the growth trajectory that we aspire to.
So we would and will as we can deploy more marketing dollars to drive more growth, but we are going to ensure that we are doing so at a responsible.
<unk>.
And Andrew just a reminder, you probably heard this last quarter, but our Tac came down last quarter about 20%. We didn't update that this call here, but we'll continue as Devin just talked about to be very mindful, where we spend it and making sure we have that REIT conversion ratio.
While we are driving <unk>, while we've been driving 20% new customer growth rate. So this is not a contract.
Good thing, yes, right yes.
Understood very clear and then just a quick follow up great to hear about the sequential improvement in the retail business I know, we get a lot of questions about that maybe in North America. If you could talk about just independent channel versus Big box I know Devin you talked about a lot of improvements you are making and those are going to hear but curious if theres any.
Any just qualitative commentary on the performance across those two channels. Thank you very much.
We believe Andrew that are branded.
Distribution, both big box and independent is a strategic advantage for us that's true in North America, but it's also as we've talked about true in Europe , where we're expanding what we call concept stores are branded exclusive distribution. So we've been actually putting a lot of emphasis on how do we grow.
That how do we create great experiences for those agents and how do we serve customers to those channels as you know the independent agent channel the customers exist and the agents basically compete on the basis of price and agent commissions and so over time, that's just a less attractive channel in which to drive growth we will compete.
In it and I think we're doing well as evidenced by.
Europe , which is predominantly independent agent channel at this point.
But over time, we will be emphasizing our branded exclusive both both strategic which is what you call Big box and independent which is our smaller mom and Pops.
Our next question comes to Us from Tim <unk> from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question.
Great. Thanks, a lot sorry about that earlier the slide nine seems to be one of the core slides in terms of the core underlying trend for retail it excludes some of the year over year impact from the Iraq impact then it shows.
Improving trend there I know Jason took a stab at that in terms of seeing where that could exit the year, but it does seem to be working its way back towards positive maybe you could just put a little bit more regional color on maybe some of the areas of strength in terms of the core retail business that is driving that line upward and then as a brief follow up this is kind of referenced.
Earlier, but this topic comes up from time to time, but rather than looking at it on a percentage of retail locations, but maybe you could just give a brief update on in terms of percentage of transactions. How many of those are coming from more exclusive retail partners versus not.
Hey, Tim Thanks for joining.
On your question about where is it coming from we're actually seeing strength in really all of our regions. The only place that's really been flat quarter over quarter I talked on the prepared remarks as locker, but they've obviously been the high watermark now for a number of quarters in a row.
Whereas other regions are starting to make improvement.
Also highlighted in my remarks about APAC, they have seen a really strong improvement in retail as well as our digital business Devin highlight and I added to it on Africa has seen a 500 basis points sequential improvement largely that's a retail market.
So you can really see this in a lot of places around the world.
It's not one place it's allowed the things that we're building on our platform around customer service and on our POS solutions is benefiting most of the regions if not all and the only thing I would add to that Tim rate than it was in the prepared remarks.
Getting Europe to know what is near flat negative 1% transaction growth given the sheer scale of European retail business and our global retail business is a big driver of the change from negative six to negative too just from a math basis.
Our final question comes to us from Vasu <unk> from <unk>. Please ask your question.
Thanks for taking my question.
I have two quick ones one on just the margin guide I know the margin guidance unchanged, but we're tracking ahead on a year to date basis. So should we expect to be at the high end of the range sort of any color that you can offer on Nikita margin expectation.
Hi, Vasu, thanks for joining the call.
We're not going to guide one way or the other in the range. We intentionally left it wide because we want to have flexibility, but we are committed to the EPS range. We provided so you can humor.
Model a couple of different sensitivities, there and think about where it may go within the range based on what happened to non op and taxes.
But our focus is to maintain some flexibility if the right opportunities for investments happen and then make sure we deliver the commitments we've made to you all and our shareholders.
Thank you for that one question for Xyrem.
I wanted to ask about particular bank initiative I know you rolled it out in a couple of Oems in Europe , now in Brazil, and the U S.
The whole thing for borrowers to help increase engagement and retention even as it didn't bring any around the newer one.
It's early days, but what have you seen a long time.
Any metrics you have seen that sort of help demonstrate the incredible.
Cleveland engagement that you might be seeing.
Thanks for asking.
The comments that we had in the second or the first quarter call now into the second quarter call remain consistent rate. We're live in four countries, we're anticipating going live here in Brazil, shortly and we're looking forward to a launch in the U S at least in friends and family before the end of the year.
Our experience has been pretty much validating which says.
Current and existing.
Retail and digital customers as well as surprisingly.
Lapsed retail and digital customers using the digital wallet product end up being more valuable customers to us in the digital wallet product both from an engagement standpoint, I E. The number of transactions per month is up significantly as well as on an economic value in terms of the valley.
<unk> revenue generated per customer on a monthly basis. So we've been working hard on improving the experience and the onboarding for those existing and former customers in terms of being able to grow that population of the of the customer base in the wallet versus what we call new to franchise or.
<unk>, who are not traditional remittance customers those look a lot more like other people's digital banking customers, which are less economically attractive then our customers using our digital wallet product and services.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you for joining the Western Union second quarter 2023 results Conference call. We hope you have a great day.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
[music].
Goodbye.