Q3 2024 Global Payments Inc Earnings Call

Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Global Payments 3rd Quarter, 2024, earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen only mode. Later, we will open the line for questions and answers.

Speaker Change: If you should require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, today's call will be recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Senior Vice President Investor Relations, Winnie Smith. Please go ahead.

Winnie Smith: Good morning and welcome to Global Pima, third quarter 2024 Conference call.

Winnie Smith: are earning for lease and the slides of the company this call can be found on the investor-relations area of our website at www.doublepayment.com.

Winnie Smith: Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of the comments made by management during today's conference call, convening for looking statements about, among other things, expected operating and financial results.

Winnie Smith: B-Statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including the impact of economic conditions on our future operations.

Winnie Smith: that couldn't cause actual results to get her maturely from expectations. Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth and filing to the SEC, including our most recent 10K and subsequent filing. We caution you not to place under reliance on these statements.

Winnie Smith: For looking statements during this call, speak only as a candidate as this call, and we undertake no obligation to update them.

Winnie Smith: We will also be referring to several non-gap financial measures, which we believe are more or not as much as our ongoing performance.

Winnie Smith: For a full reconciliation of the non-gap financial measures discussed in this call to the most comparable gap measure. In accordance with FEP regulations, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our form 8K file this morning. And our supplemental materials available on the natural relations section of our website.

Winnie Smith: Joining me on the call is our CEO, Cameron Bready, and our CFO, Josh Whipple. Now I'll turn the call over to Cameron.

Cameron Bready: Thanks, Winnie, and good morning, everyone. We were delighted to host our first investor conference since 2021 last month in New York, where we shared a comprehensive update on our company and the meaningful opportunities we see ahead to create value for our customers, partners, and shareholders.

Cameron Bready: We appreciate those of you who took the time to attend in person, as well as everyone who participated virtually.

Cameron Bready: As we outlined at that time, we are a market leader operating at the intersection of software and payments, delivering innovative commerce solutions worldwide. We are winning today with an enviable portfolio of leading software and payments capabilities and have a strong track record of best-in-class service.

Cameron Bready: And we are moving aggressively to build on this foundation to position global payments for the next phase of its growth journey.

Cameron Bready: We are refocusing our strategy, streamlining and simplifying our business, and unifying our teams and capabilities, allowing us to play to our competitive strengths.

Cameron Bready: We have a rich portfolio of software and payments capabilities with significant untapped chance.

Cameron Bready: Our transformation is unleashing an already successful business to deliver all of our solutions through all of our channels in a more frictionless way and drive higher returns.

Cameron Bready: And we are committed to a shareholder-first capital allocation strategy.

Cameron Bready: As we position the business for the next decade of growth, we strongly believe we are poised to capture and unlock significant value. While we have an ambitious transformation agenda in front of us, we are already making progress with our announcement today that we reached a definitive agreement to sell our Advanced ND business to Francisco Partners.

Cameron Bready: This transaction exemplifies our commitment to simplify our business and accelerate our capital returns for shareholders. I'll discuss this more shortly.

Cameron Bready: Turning to our third quarter results, we delivered 6% adjusted net revenue growth, 40 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, and 12% adjusted earnings per share growth compared to the same period in 2023.

Cameron Bready: Our performance was solid as we continued to execute well against our refocused strategy and operational transformation, particularly in light of the uncertain macro environment.

Cameron Bready: Our Merchant Solutions business delivered 7% adjusted net revenue growth, largely driven by our POS and software, in integrated and embedded businesses.

Cameron Bready: Our feature-rich offering that delivers a world-class front-of-house experience, payments, reporting, and engagement solutions continues to resonate with customers.

Cameron Bready: And the breadth of our capabilities and configurations allows us to serve customers of all sizes and complexity, including many of the leading QSRs.

Cameron Bready: We are excited to have achieved a new kiosk and menu board agreement this quarter with Whataburger, expanding our long-standing relationship as its primary technology partner.

Cameron Bready: We're also seeing strong momentum in food service management with cooking growth tracking 25% higher this year compared to 2023.

Cameron Bready: Additionally, we are further expanding our POS offerings into markets outside of the U.S. and are pleased to have successfully launched in Germany this quarter.

Cameron Bready: We remain on track to bring our POS solutions to key international markets including Mexico, Ireland, Poland, Austria, and Romania in the near future.

Cameron Bready: We also saw strong performance in our education business this quarter. In higher education, we recently signed a significant expansion with Brown University, launched a new partnership with the University of British Columbia, and signed a new relationship with Swansea University in Wales.

Cameron Bready: Swansea marks our eighth university win in the UK and Ireland in the last 12 months and we continue to have a strong pipeline of new opportunities globally.

Cameron Bready: In the community verticals, our software solutions powered events with more than 1.3 million registrants and over 8,000 camp programs during the peak summer season.

Cameron Bready: We also signed a new partnership with Bainbridge Island Parks and Rec in Washington state, one of the largest in the country.

Cameron Bready: These achievements reinforce that we are winning in the market today with POS and software that provides our customers with the features and service they demand to run and grow their businesses.

Cameron Bready: As we discussed at our investor conference, we see significant opportunities to drive continued growth and share gains as we execute on our key transformation initiatives for this business.

Cameron Bready: First, we are consolidating our POS assets under the Genius brand and will extend them globally. By harmonizing our capabilities on a common platform, we will enhance our ability to grow, drive efficiency, and accelerate value delivery for our partners and clients, while improving our return on invested capital.

Cameron Bready: Second, we're concentrating our investments in the assets and verticals that'll be most impactful to driving growth.

Cameron Bready: and our ability to continue to win share in the market.

Cameron Bready: And third, we are better connecting our leading commerce enablement solutions into our point of sale and software environments and pushing our full suite of capabilities through all of our distribution channels globally.

Cameron Bready: Sifting to the integrated and embedded pillar of our strategy, we continue to see strong growth in new partners to our ecosystem, demonstrating we have the technology, solutions, and features that partners desire to monetize payments within their verticals.

Cameron Bready: Notable wins in North America this quarter include ClearDent in the dental space, AlignOps and MatrixCare, both in this serving the senior living vertical, and ArtCenter Canvas, a software solution serving the education vertical.

Cameron Bready: We also successfully signed over 40 international ISV partnerships in the quarter across the United Kingdom, Asia Pacific, Australia, and LATAM.

Cameron Bready: Through our transformation, we are executing on initiatives in this business to further extend our leadership position.

Cameron Bready: We are focused on offering flexible operating models that are not discrete but allow us to work with a partner along the continuum from peer referral to payments facilitation, both with payments and our commerce enablement products, to arrive at the dynamic solutions our partners are looking for over the long term.

Cameron Bready: We're also taking our successful commercialization playbook from the U.S. to international markets, further accelerating our approach to sourcing and securing new ISV partners in these more nascent integrated payment markets.

Cameron Bready: Further, we are simplifying and accelerating the onboarding process and enhancing the partner and customer experience, while accelerating speed to revenue across the full suite of our commerce enablement solutions.

Cameron Bready: This includes working with our partners to jointly leverage our embedded commerce capabilities, empowering them to provide more features and services to their end customers, driving additional value and revenue opportunities.

Cameron Bready: Moving to core payments, we also saw a strong growth in new partner signings this quarter, which will serve to further enhance our distribution in this channel. We also continue to see a significant improvement in the revenue opportunity with new partners as we bring more products and capabilities to these relationships.

Cameron Bready: Last quarter we highlighted the expansion of our direct distribution capabilities and demand generation solutions in the UK as the market continues to evolve beyond traditional bank-based referral channels.

Cameron Bready: And while it remains early days, we are already seeing strong progress adding new merchants as a result of this initiative.

Cameron Bready: Across Europe, we signed several marquee wins this quarter, including telecommunications leader Sky TV across multiple geographies and national highways in Poland.

Cameron Bready: Addition to the LATAM region, we continue to have good momentum in Mexico as we enhance our value proposition in these markets.

Cameron Bready: In addition to double-digit revenue growth, we also had several notable wins in this market, including Petco, Grand Bodega, and Seaglass.

Cameron Bready: In terms of our transformation, our core payments initiatives are focused on expanding wallet share and client engagement through a growing variety of commerce enablement solutions and business value propositions.

Cameron Bready: We are also pursuing targeted international growth opportunities, prioritizing investments in markets where we have or can attain leadership and scale in the short term.

Cameron Bready: We are leveraging our strong financial institution partnerships globally to support our expansion, while also continuing to diversify our distribution to ensure we are well-positioned for longer-term trends.

Cameron Bready: More broadly, our goal in the core payments channel is to form deeper relationships with commerce enablement and outstanding service. Providing premium experiences as we solve our clients' evolving and increasingly complex needs will drive higher lifetime customer value.

Cameron Bready: Ultimately, Core Payments also provides a feeder channel for our POS and integrated businesses, as these customers leverage additional solutions from us as they grow.

Cameron Bready: Finally, it's important to highlight that across all three of our merchant pillars, our transformation will allow us to better leverage our broad base of distribution, including one of the premier direct sales teams in the industry, as well as a broad base of strategic partners, joint ventures, wholesale, and indirect relationships.

Cameron Bready: As we highlighted at the investor conference, in connection with our strategic review, we identified certain assets, markets, and lines of businesses that lack alignment with our strategic focus and are looking to divest or exit them as appropriate.

Cameron Bready: As I noted earlier, as part of this work, we reached a definitive agreement to sell our Advanced MD business.

Cameron Bready: Under our ownership, Advanced MD has been a very successful business. However, as we focus on streamlining and simplifying our business, we made the determination that it was not the best strategic fit for several reasons.

Cameron Bready: First, healthcare is a bespoke market that requires significant investments in capabilities and compliance programs that are difficult to amplify across other businesses and geographies.

Cameron Bready: Second, there are extensive regulatory requirements in healthcare that add complexity and create limitations on our ability to integrate it fully into our new operating model.

Cameron Bready: Lastly, post the thesis merger, we have strong exposure to healthcare and are integrated in embedded business, increasing the potential for channel conflict with partners.

Cameron Bready: We want to thank our advanced MD team members for all their contributions to global payments, and we look forward to continuing to work together through our strategic partnership going forward. Turning to issuer solutions, we are pleased with our execution in the areas we can control. We successfully completed five implementations, including our first cloud conversion for a leading global financial institution in Asia Pacific.

Cameron Bready: We now have a few clients in our AWS cloud environment, with many others in the pipeline.

Cameron Bready: We also completed conversion of two new portfolios acquired by large existing FI partners, further supporting our strategy of aligning with market share winners.

Cameron Bready: Today, our implementation pipeline remains at over 65 million accounts after two recent LOIs successfully went to contract during the third quarter.

Cameron Bready: We're also having ongoing success in cross-selling commerce enablement solutions, having signed over 200 product and servicing agreements this year.

Cameron Bready: Lastly, we recently renewed two of our largest global clients.

Cameron Bready: It is worth noting that over the last few years, we have renewed 15 of our top 20 clients, reflecting the strength of our partnerships and providing us good visibility and stability going forward.

Cameron Bready: Despite our execution, our results this quarter were impacted by softer-than-expected volumes, largely driven by commercial card transactions, which decelerated further from what we experienced during the second quarter.

Cameron Bready: We also saw some product and project investment delays from FI partners as they take a more cautious approach to spending given ongoing macro uncertainty.

Cameron Bready: And we saw softer trends in our pay card business from incremental sequential weakness in employment trends.

Cameron Bready: We believe we are well positioned to manage these headwinds if they persist as we continue to execute on our transformation and modernization journey.

Cameron Bready: Our transformation efforts for Issuer are centered on completing our cloud modernization, which will further amplify our right to win and grow share across existing and new addressable markets.

Cameron Bready: enhancing the strong leadership position we command today.

Cameron Bready: We are focused on delivering cloud-native products and services across multiple market segments, use cases, and regions, and serving our clients with greater speed to market and agility in a secure and compliant manner.

Cameron Bready: This investment also extends our opportunity to differentiate through commerce enablement with tailored products and solutions that address the needs of a diverse range of clients.

Cameron Bready: And with API-enabled solutions, we're able to deliver our platform in individual components or in its entirety, allowing us to support issuers of all sizes, including the community, credit union, fintech, and neobank segments.

Cameron Bready: Our cloud-based solutions also allow us to further expand more easily and efficiently in new geographies.

Cameron Bready: We are pleased with the progress we are making on modernization and remain on track to complete the development of our client-facing applications this year.

Cameron Bready: We've initiated a number of customer pilots and continue to expect commercial launch in 2025.

Cameron Bready: Additionally, we will be exclusively selling cloud solutions next year, paving the way for widespread adoption over time.

Cameron Bready: Before I turn it over to Josh, I want to express my sincere consolences to all those impacted by the devastation and widespread damage resulting from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Cameron Bready: The financial impact from these events to our business pales in comparison to the hardship faced by the Southeast region, where we have a significant presence and operations.

Cameron Bready: Gold Pendant is supporting a number of organizations, providing critical relief to those affected. We will continue to do all we can to support our team members, customers, and partners on the road to recovery. Ahead. Josh?

Josh Whipple: Thanks Cameron, and good morning everyone.

Josh Whipple: We delivered a just net revenue of $2.36 billion for the third quarter, an increase of 6% from the prior year.

Josh Whipple: Adjusted operating margin increased 40 basis points to 46.1%.

Josh Whipple: and we reported adjusted earnings per share.

Josh Whipple: of $3.08, an increase of 12% compared to the same period in 2023.

Josh Whipple: Taking a closer look at our performance by segment, Merchant Solutions achieved adjusted net revenue of $1.84 billion for the third quarter, reflecting growth of 7%.

Josh Whipple: This includes roughly a point of contribution from the acquisition of take payments, which was partially offset by the impact from unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates during the period.

Josh Whipple: As we discussed at our investor conference in September, we are working to unify our global merchant segment around three lines of business, point of sale and software, integrated and embedded, and in core payments.

Speaker Change: A POS and software business delivered low double-digit growth for the third quarter. We successfully added roughly 3,000 new POS locations during the quarter, as Cameron mentioned.

Speaker Change: and we have added nearly 10,000 PLOS locations year-to-date. Additionally, across our software businesses, we achieved 30% new bookings growth for both the third quarter and year-to-date periods.

Speaker Change: We also saw strong performance in our education businesses, which delivered double-digit adjusted net revenue growth.

Speaker Change: Our Integrated Embedded Payments business achieved high single-digit growth for the third quarter.

Speaker Change: We continue to win with our differentiated capabilities across our integrated software offerings and added 92 new software partners during the quarter, representing an increase of 60% over the prior year period.

Speaker Change: UISV partner signings also increased 60% on a year-to-date basis, highlighting our consistently strong business development results and further demonstrating the market receptivity to our offerings.

Speaker Change: Blue Rainy Quart Payments, we delivered mid-single-digit growth in this channel during the quarter.

Speaker Change: This was driven by solid growth in the U.S., which was partially offset by softer trends in Europe and Asia Pacific.

Speaker Change: Notably, we added 250 new core payments partners this quarter, a 60% increase over the prior year period. This is consistent with our efforts to amplify our distribution channels to sell our full suite of capabilities across markets to address customer needs.

Speaker Change: Shifting to merchant volumes, SMB volumes grew 5% for the third quarter, which was a slight moderation from the prior quarter due to lower same-store sales, consistent with the trends reported by the banks and our peers.

Speaker Change: I would highlight that in September, our volumes were also negatively impacted by the hurricanes in the Southeast region and weather-related events in Central and Eastern Europe.

Speaker Change: We deliver an adjusted operating margin of 50% in the merchant segment, an increase of 90 basis points, reflecting ongoing sequential improvements since completing the acquisition of EVO payments last year, and strong execution on our strategy.

Speaker Change: Issuer Solutions produced adjusted net revenue of $529 million, reflecting segment growth of 2%.

Speaker Change: or 3% excluding our pay card business.

Speaker Change: We processed nearly 10 billion transactions in the quarter, which is an increase of 3% compared to the prior year period.

Speaker Change: This marks roughly a point-and-a-half deceleration.

Speaker Change: and transaction growth sequentially. Consumer transaction volumes slowed, consistent with the trends highlighted by several of our large FI partners, while we also saw further slowing in commercial card volumes.

Speaker Change: Additionally, we have seen certain bank customers delaying product and service investments in the current environment, as Cameron mentioned.

Speaker Change: And while we're seeing broader incremental softness, these trends have been more acute with the regional and smaller partners, resulting in an unfavorable revenue mix dynamic.

Speaker Change: Despite the softer loop macro trends, we continue to deliver strong execution.

Speaker Change: We added a total of 30 million traditional accounts on file this quarter, largely driven by our five conversions.

Speaker Change: Year-to-date, we've completed 13 implementations and added approximately 55 million traditional accounts on file.

Speaker Change: The strong conversion activity, our near record implementation pipeline, and the completion of our renewal cycle with many of our large customers gives us confidence in the outlook we have for the business for both the fourth quarter and over the medium term.

Speaker Change: Moving to our B2B portfolio.

Speaker Change: The core mid-market segment for AP automation solutions continues to generate healthy bookings. Although similar to our commercial car business, we're also seeing AP customers take a more cautious approach, reducing the number of suppliers and their associated spend.

Speaker Change: Additionally, our paycard business negatively impacted growth this quarter by roughly a point as we saw incremental headwinds sequentially due to the softer employment trends in the segment of the market we serve.

Speaker Change: Issuer Solutions deliver an adjusted operating margin of 45.4%, a decrease of 210 basis points compared to the prior year.

Speaker Change: As you may recall, issuer margins saw a strong extension last year as we pivoted the business to more technology enablement and away from lower margin managed service offerings.

Speaker Change: We have now lapped those related margin benefits, while we are also seeing some pressure from the macro trends I just discussed, while continuing to invest in modernization.

Speaker Change: From a cash flow standpoint, we produce strong adjusted free cash flow for the quarter of approximately $722 million, representing roughly 92% conversion rate of adjusted net income to adjusted free cash flow.

Speaker Change: It's worth noting that Adjusted Free Cash Flow this quarter included an adjustment to remove the impact of $847 million of cash inflows from settlement timing.

Speaker Change: Since the third quarter ended on a weekday, while the prior year quarter ended on a weekend, we saw the reversal of the impact of settlement refunding as expected.

Speaker Change: We invested $166 million in capital expenditures during the quarter and continue to expect capital spending to be around $670 million, or roughly 7% of revenue in 2024.

Speaker Change: Our net leverage position decreased to 3.3 times at the end of the third quarter, nearly a quarter turn lower sequentially.

Speaker Change: We remain on track for our leverage level to be in the low threes by year-end, consistent with our long-term targets.

Speaker Change: Our balance sheet remains healthy, and we have $4.4 billion of available liquidity. Our total indebtedness is approximately 100% fixed, with a weighted average cost of debt of 3.3%.

Speaker Change: As Cameron mentioned, we reached a definitive agreement to sell Advanced MD for a total purchase price of $1.125 billion.

Speaker Change: We expect the transaction to close by the year end, subject to regulatory approval.

Speaker Change: In connection with this transaction, we expect to return up to $700 million to shareholders after addressing taxes and maintaining leverage neutrality.

Speaker Change: To that end, we have entered into an accelerated share repurchase plan for $600 million and anticipate returning the remainder through open market purchases this quarter.

Speaker Change: As we discussed at our investor conference, as part of our strategic review, we identified certain markets.

Speaker Change: assets and lines of business that lack alignment with our refreshed focus and that we intend to divest or exit. This transaction represents a good first step in that process while also serving to unlock value for shareholders.

Speaker Change: We're continuing to execute on additional opportunities including exiting certain smaller international geographies beginning this quarter

Speaker Change: It's also worth highlighting that our board of directors approved an increase in the company's share repurchase authorization capacity to $2.5 billion.

Speaker Change: As we highlighted at our investor conference, we're targeting returns of $7.5 billion to shareholders over the next three years before contemplating divestitures.

Speaker Change: To be clear, the $600 million ASR we announced today is incremental to this.

Speaker Change: We continue to see buying back our shares as a compelling opportunity given our confidence in our strategy and longer-term growth potential.

Speaker Change: According to the Outlook, our year-to-date performance highlights the durability of our model and the benefits of our sharpened focus as we execute on our strategic priorities. We continue to expect reported adjusted net revenue to range from $9.17 billion to $9.30 billion, reflecting growth of 6 to 7 percent over 2023, excluding the impact of the disposition of advanced MD.

Speaker Change: However, given the softer trends we're seeing in our issuer business due to the macroeconomic environment, we now expect to be at the lower end of that range.

Speaker Change: and we still expect annual adjusted operating margin to expand up to 50 basis points for 2024.

Speaker Change: To provide color at the segment level, we continue to expect our merchant business to report adjusting net revenue growth of 9 plus percent for the full year. This remains consistent with our prior outlook and excludes the impact of dispositions.

Speaker Change: We now have stacked up to 40 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion for the merchant business in 2024.

Speaker Change: Moving to issuer solutions, we anticipate adjusted net revenue growth in the 4% range for the full year compared to 2023.

Speaker Change: This is slightly lower than our prior outlook, given the unfavorable macro trend I highlighted earlier. We now anticipate adjusted operating margin for the issuer business to expand up to 30 basis points.

Speaker Change: Moving to a couple of non-operating items, we still expect net interest expense to be approximately $500 million this year, and for our adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 19%, consistent with our prior outlook.

Speaker Change: Putting it all together, we continue to expect adjusted earnings per share for the full year to be in the range of $11.54 to $11.70, reflecting growth of 11% to 12% over 2023, albeit likely at the lower end due to the aforementioned macro weakness.

Speaker Change: And with that, I'll now turn the call back over to Cameron.

Cameron Bready: Thanks Josh

Cameron Bready: We've accomplished a great deal over the last six months. We've recut our strategy, sharpening our focus to emphasize the markets where we are best positioned to compete and win. We completed a comprehensive review of our organizational structure and internal processes across the company.

Cameron Bready: We successfully reoriented our business under a single, unified operating model globally, addressing our complexity, enhancing our agility, and positioning our organization to execute against a clear and well-articulated strategy.

Cameron Bready: And we have begun transforming how we operate to unleash our full potential, fuel our growth, elevate our client experiences, and provide market-leading solutions.

Cameron Bready: that make everyday commerce better. We are doing all the right things to unify and streamline our business, reimagine our distribution, and consolidate our platforms to position our business for sustainable growth and success.

Cameron Bready: We will execute and complete much of our transformation agenda in 2025, which will allow us to realize additional benefits in 2026 and beyond.

Cameron Bready: This is what we reflected in our median term outlook provided at our investor conference last month, and we have a great deal of conviction in our ability to accelerate growth and deliver on our financial targets over the next few years.

Cameron Bready: We're excited about the opportunities we see ahead to create significant value for our customers, partners, and shareholders.

Winnie Smith: Thanks, Cameron. Before we begin our question and answer session, I'd like to ask everyone to limit their questions to one with one follow-up to accommodate everyone in the queue. Thank you. Operator, we will now go to questions.

Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue.

Speaker Change: For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Again, that's star 1 to register a question at this time.

Speaker Change: The first question is coming from Will Nance of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker Change: Josh, we should expect the deceleration next year to play out. Thanks.

Speaker Change: Yeah, well, it's Cameron. I'll kick it off and I'll ask Josh maybe to comment on the latter part of your question. So look, I would say at a macro level, we've got a lot of confidence in the medium-term guide that we shared last month. I think as we look at how we're positioning the business for 25 and perhaps as importantly 26 and 27, you know, the key initiatives that we have in our transformation pipeline, I think are poised to clearly position us to drive accelerated growth as we work through the 25 into the 26 and 27 timeframe. And I think the way we position 25 is a good balanced approach. I think we have enough cushion, I think, in terms of a revenue expectation perspective, I think, to allow us the flexibility to do the things we need to do to position the business for long-term sustainable growth.

Speaker Change: Well, at the same time, we're returning a significant amount of capital, $2 billion next year to shareholders, and delivering double-digit growth in earnings per share. So while we're still working through the transformation,

Speaker Change: I think the return of capital to shareholders and obviously the compounded growth and earnings per share we expect to be able to deliver I think is a good, you know, responsible approach to again doing what we need to do to position the business while at the same time kind of rewarding our shareholders as we progress through the journey. So short answer is yes, I think we have plenty of flexibility as we think about the 2025 medium-term outlook. We've got a lot of confidence in what we shared last month.

Speaker Change: And I think we're already starting to see, at least internally, the benefits of a lot of the work we're doing that will start to materialize more fully in our results as we progress through time, certainly as we get into the back half of 2025 and head into 2026, when we are calling for more revenue acceleration in the business.

Speaker Change: And then as it relates to some of the restructuring charges, you know, as we talked about on investor day, we plan to deliver more than $500 million of incremental run rate operating income benefit by the first half of 2027. You saw some of those restructuring charges.

Speaker Change: here in Q3. You know, as we talked about, we expect a one-time cost range and approximately, you know, two-thirds of the benefit that we expect to achieve, and we'll see those, you know, over the next, you know, it's a, you know, six to seven quarters, some of those restructuring charges start to go ahead and flow through.

Speaker Change: Got it. Appreciate that color. And just if I may, a quick follow-up on the sales. So congrats on getting this announced. Advanced MD, I think we had pegged at roughly 20% of the owned software portfolio. So I was wondering if you could just confirm roughly $200 to $250 million of revenues thereabouts, and any commentary on the margin profile and the strategic agreement, just how we should think about sort of the payments revenues that may sit with you guys post the sale. Thanks.

Speaker Change: Yeah, good question. So, as an aggregate sort of revenue matter, AMD is about, it's a little north of that 20% number. So, for 2024, I would forecast it around the $250 to $260 range.

Speaker Change: You know, there is some revenue that will stay with us, obviously by virtue of the commercial relationship that we had. Most of that revenue sits in the payments business today outside of Advanced MDs, so the revenue going with Advanced MDs is in that range.

Speaker Change: And on a cash EBITDA multiple basis, we sort of secured kind of a high teens multiple, which I think is, you know, a good premium value for this asset in the marketplace.

Speaker Change: Cash EBITDA multiples for the business are, you know, around 30%, you know, the EBITDA multiple for us, or the EBITDA for us is a little bit higher than that, but it's around that kind of roughly $70 million range on a cash EBITDA basis.

Speaker Change: Awesome. Appreciate the details. Thanks, guys.

Speaker Change: Thanks, Will.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Bergin of TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Brian Bergin: Hey guys, good morning. Thank you. I wanted to ask on the sales realignment and the point-of-sale brand consolidation Just just early feedback and execution there and just any friction weighing on the third quarter results Any related client turn from point-of-sale consolidation thus far. Just give us a sense on how those early initiatives are progressing

Speaker Change: No, I would say it's a great question. I appreciate you asking it. So, certainly on the brand side, there's a lot of positive receptivity to the Genius brand.

Speaker Change: And there's a lot of internal excitement, I think, about finally aligning all of our POS capabilities under a common platform and a common brand and unifying our go-to-market approach, I think, with a full suite of capabilities that we can deliver.

Speaker Change: in all the key geographies around the globe in which we want to be able to deliver them. So we're still in early days, as you can imagine. We probably have a dozen different go-to-market brands around POS today. There's a lot of work to do to align those brands over a period of time, but certainly a good deal of enthusiasm around where we see our business going from a point-of-sale perspective and the impact point-of-sale and growth in point-of-sale is gonna have.

Speaker Change: on our business over a longer period of time. So nothing in the quarter I would call out specifically as it relates to POS. It's actually still a good bookings quarter for our POS business.

Speaker Change: We will, over the course of time, demise probably some legacy point-of-sale platforms as we look to consolidate our offerings onto a single, unified platform going forward.

Speaker Change: But none of that's really reflected in any sort of Q3 performance. That'll be more in the kind of 25 range timeframe as we work through the POS consolidation efforts internally.

Speaker Change: And as I said before, look to align all of our offerings around a common platform that we can bring to market under the Genius brand. But we're certainly very excited about what we're doing from a point-of-sale perspective. Obviously, in restaurant, it's an important market for us today. I would say, on balance, we're probably even more excited about the white space we see in retail.

Speaker Change: You know, we think there's a huge opportunity for us to further differentiate in retail and some of the sub segments in retail, you know, that may be less intensely competitive today than what we see in the restaurant channel. So, I think the overall outlook around POS is very exciting and there's a lot of enthusiasm for the work we're doing here. And I think when we bring our offerings together under the genius brand, we're going to see a great deal of success and our ability to really scale that business much more rapidly.

Speaker Change: Okay, I appreciate that. And just on issuer, understanding some of these factors are not under your control, commercial volumes and some of the delayed investment here, can you just dig in further on some of the underlying performance drivers for issuer growth? And do you have a line of sight to some of these factors improving?

Speaker Change: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, obviously, I think from an execution standpoint, we remain pleased with the work our team's doing.

Speaker Change: We have a good pipeline of commercial opportunities north of 65 million accounts.

Speaker Change: We obviously converted a fair amount in Q3 that will slightly positively impact Q4, as Josh highlighted in his comments.

Speaker Change: which I think positioned us better, kind of heading into 2025. The macro environment, you know, to some degree is what it is. We don't have a lot of control over commercial spend. We are probably on balance more exposed to commercial, just given the lion's share of the commercial market that we process for today from an issuer perspective.

Speaker Change: But I think it relates to the things we can control. We have a good pipeline of opportunities in our portfolio. We have a good pipeline of conversion accounts that we'll bring on to our platforms over the next 12 to 18 months. We've renegotiated 15 of our 20 top

Speaker Change: our top 20 customers over the course of the last few years, which gives us good line of sight.

Speaker Change: into what revenue will be for those important partners over the next few years as well. So, I think as we look at the 2025-2026 kind of time frame, you know, we've got good visibility into what the expectations should be for the business. Assuming the macro kind of remains where it is, we obviously see, you know, 2025 being in the midterm guidance that we provided last month for the issuer business. And as we continue to work through our modernization journey, we expect to be able to accelerate from there as we move forward into 2027 and beyond.

Speaker Change: All right, thank you.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Brian Keene of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Brian Keene: Hi, good morning. Just on AdvanceMD, how fast was the revenue growing in that business? And then, is there other assets inside of software that could be up for sale as well? Or is this more likely to be geography-specific in different areas of the merchant business?

Speaker Change: Yeah, Brian, good question. So, Advanced MD was kind of growing in that high single-digit range. Good, healthy growth business. Doesn't really impact the growth outlook for our business going forward. You know, obviously, our midterm guide is our midterm guide, and it contemplated, obviously, our friends around Advanced MD.

Speaker Change: It's a good healthy growing business and obviously we're delighted to be able to partner with Francisco Partners kind of going forward to continue to help drive growth in their business through payments and commerce enablement solutions.

Speaker Change: I think as it relates to what else may be, you know, in the mix, as we called out at our investor conference last month, you know, we are planning to divest somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 600 million dollars of revenue.

Speaker Change: You know, as we move forward, these are assets and businesses that we've called out already that we don't think strategically align with our refresh strategy and where we want to drive the business over a long period of time.

Speaker Change: So obviously, Advanced MD was a first step in that process, but you know, as you can imagine, given the guidance we provided, we have more things that we're working on and

Speaker Change: to preserve the integrity of the processes we're trying to execute. I don't want to go any further than that, but obviously, just given what we shared last month, there's still things that we're working on that we think have the potential to be value-enhancing, and we would look to execute them much the same way we did with Advanced MD, with proceeds being returned to shareholders in a very efficient manner.

Speaker Change: Got it. And just as my follow-up, core payments, you know, still hanging in there despite the economic kind of weakness.

Speaker Change: that we're seeing out there at mid-single digits. I think for next year, given the guidance, it was probably the core that was gonna maybe fall to low single digits. Can you just talk about what would be embedded to see core change to low single digits from the mid-single digit where it is today?

Speaker Change: Yeah, I think there's a there's a few things that I think are kind of worth calling out as relates to that One is just the general macro environment. I think your point is fair where that's where some of the more macro oriented risk

Speaker Change: and Softness may hit our portfolio, and that's some of what we saw in Q3, you know, without a doubt, certainly as it relates to the sequential performance relative to Q2. But I would say that's also the part of the business where we have the most activities that we're probably going to stop doing as a business.

Speaker Change: and where we're exiting certain, you know, activities and lines of businesses, you know, that may not be large divestitures like Advanced MD, that may be sort of wind-downs or just exits of activities that we're involved with today. So that's a little bit of what drives...

Speaker Change: I think some of, you know, the outlook for core payments as we look to 2025.

Speaker Change: I think other things to note is as we're working to kind of realign distribution activities, that's going to have an impact a little bit on our core payments.

Speaker Change: I'll give you one very specific example. In the fourth quarter, we're reorienting our compensation program for our FI partner channel.

Speaker Change: which sits in that core payments. Obviously, that might create a little bit of just softness in new production as we work to orient those sales professionals to a new compensation program that we think better aligns incentives with the outcomes we're trying to drive for our business.

Speaker Change: We're obviously still creating a good opportunity for our sales professionals to continue to earn good revenue for themselves, but obviously that's work that we feel like we need to do around that channel, and we're doing that this quarter. So those are the kind of things that we're working on.

Speaker Change: as it relates to our transformation that may have an impact on our core payments business. And part of the reason as we look to 25, you know, that's the area that we would expect perhaps to touch a slowdown, you know, that gets us to that mid-single-digit growth range as we look to reaccelerate in 26 and 27.

Speaker Change: Okay, very helpful. Thanks for taking the questions.

Speaker Change: Thanks, Brian.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Dan Perlin of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Dan Perlin: Thanks. Hey, I just have a question, really kind of a point of follow-up here, but...

Dan Perlin: The midpoint of the range, the 5% revenue growth that you're talking about for 2025, just to be clear, are you like rebasing 2024 and pulling out the $250 to $260 million from advance in D and then growing off of that base? Or are you keeping the existing base and then telling us 5% growth?

Speaker Change: Yeah, Dan, I think the easiest way to think about it is the 5% is organic.

Speaker Change: As we call that at the investor conference, we're looking to exit somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 million of revenue.

Speaker Change: Obviously, Advanced MD was the first step in that process. So, as we think about organic growth...

Speaker Change: As we head into 2025, we're targeting that mid-single-digit range as we highlighted at our investor conference last month. So that's the easiest way to think about it as a revenue matter.

Speaker Change: Earnings are earnings. We're going to deliver double-digit growth in earnings next year. You know, obviously, that assumes use of proceeds from any asset, divestitures, etc. But as a revenue matter, just think about that as an organic number.

Speaker Change: It will be impacted overall. Aggregate revenue will be impacted by whatever divestitures we're successful with, obviously advanced MD being one we have clear line of sight to. So, you know, the numbers that we're providing for our medium term guide, they were all sort of organic numbers.

Speaker Change: I hope that's helpful. And then, just to follow up here,

Speaker Change: on kind of the fourth quarter exit rate implied. I mean, it does seem to imply kind of it's holding steady relative to third quarter.

Speaker Change: to get you to that 9%. And I just, I don't know, I feel like that's a hard sell given the Salesforce pivot, you know, the rebranding, it's got to have some attrition potentially in it. As you say, there's some macro headwinds that are.

Speaker Change: You know, kind of falling heavy on core. So it's just anything else you could say about why you have such confidence that that exit rate can actually hold similar to what you're seeing, despite the fact that you're doing all these things to the business, obviously for the better longer term, but it would just seem like there should be more disruption into the fourth quarter exit things.

Speaker Change: Yeah, I don't I don't know that I would say there's gonna be sort of incrementally more disruption in the fourth quarter. A couple things that I would note in particular one is we've seen October by and large and obviously October looks a little better than September. I think that's largely due to some of the weather impacts that we saw at the end of September, whether it's hurricanes.

Speaker Change: Helene and Milton and the impact that had in the southeast of the U.S. Or Storm Boris, which probably most of you have never heard of.

Speaker Change: It certainly had a pretty detrimental impact in Central Europe, which is an important market for us also in the September time frame. So, we're seeing a little bit of, you know, just the lack of kind of weather disruption, obviously in October, that's given us a little better trend relative to what we saw in September. And I think we have a good line of sight to, you know, merchant-looking, by and large, fairly consistent with what we saw.

Speaker Change: in Q3, perhaps a little bit better. Some of that driven by, again, a lack of storms. Some of it driven by a lack of FX headwinds.

Speaker Change: But by and large, as we look to the fourth quarter expectations for the business, we've got good confidence in our ability to kind of exit, you know, around the same level, maybe slightly better than, you know, what we saw for Q3. For issuer, it's largely the same macro trends.

Speaker Change: But obviously, we are expecting a little bit of a bump up from the late sort of Q3 conversion cycle that we were able to execute successfully. No improvement really in the macro, but just given that, we expect a little better performance on issuer for Q4, kind of exiting the year heading into 2025.

Speaker Change: Okay, thank you very much.

Dan Perlin: Thanks, Dan.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Darren Peller of Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Darren Peller: Thanks, guys. Just to follow up on that for a minute, so if we, I mean, that was very helpful for fourth quarter. Cameron, if we exit the year, which sounds like maybe a half a point or a point better than third quarter in terms of total revenue growth.

Darren Peller: And then I guess organically we're running somewhere closer to six versus the five organic, this quarter, I just thinking about that set up for 2025, which I know you were trying to incorporate, you know, a little macro conservatism along with the maybe a pointer, so disruption to the business given the transformation. And then we're going to have a conversation.

Darren Peller: If you're exiting the year at that six range, maybe just...

Speaker Change: Remind us the building blocks that are positives and negatives in 25. The negatives we know could be the transformation, maybe macro, but starting off at roughly six, I guess, are there positives that offset those negatives to give us the conviction? It's just sort of revisiting a question from earlier on.

Speaker Change: on the 25 confidence on mid-single-digit 5%.

Speaker Change: Yeah, it's a fair question Darren. I would say a few things. One is we're already working on our transformation initiative. So as we think about the things we're executing today.

Speaker Change: Some of those we expect to start to have positive impacts for our business as we head into 2025, certainly as we get to the back half of 2025.

Speaker Change: As we continue to execute initiatives in our pipeline, we expect to see the benefits of those starting to flow through performance. So that gives us some confidence, obviously, that as we head into the year we're executing on initiatives are going to be positive to the performance.

Speaker Change: even while we continue to work on other things, to your point, which may have a little bit of disruption.

Speaker Change: you know, to the business as we continue to work through transformation and position ourselves for kind of a re-acceleration in 26 and 27.

Speaker Change: As I look at it, it's largely, you know, there are probably 600 initiatives that we're working on in this business today as part of our transformation program, and many of those have short-term kind of life cycles to execute, many of them have longer-term life cycles to execute, but as you look at the balance of activities,

Speaker Change: that we have planned for our transformation initiatives, you know, many of them are going to start to materialize in the 2025 time frame and start to provide value for the business as we, you know, get certainly to the back half of 2025 and start to head into 2026.

Speaker Change: So I think we've given ourselves just going back to my response to the earlier question. I think we've given ourselves flexibility. There's enough

Speaker Change: sort of cushion in terms of how we're positioning 2025.

Speaker Change: to be able to execute on the transformation, deliver on the performance I described, return $2 billion of capital to shareholders, and deliver double-digit growth and kind of earnings per share, again, while still positioning the business in the right way to kind of reaccelerate in 26 and 27.

Speaker Change: Okay. Actually, on the topic of capital return, I mean, your free cash conversion was clearly better this quarter.

Speaker Change: And it's good to see the conversion still continuing as what you're expecting for fourth quarter so when we think about the free cash that you have and

Speaker Change: If you could just remind us of the timing of, you know, what you're going to be utilizing that for from a buyback standpoint, when, you know, the accelerated share buyback's helpful, but just maybe even into next year's $2 billion buyback, and then just revisiting the leverage targets. You're still planning on being one at three turns by the end of the year?

Josh Whipple: Yeah, so Darren, this is Josh. Yeah, so look, for the balance of the year, we obviously have the $600 million accelerated share repurchase, which we announced this morning. And then we have some additional capacity, which will be buying shares in the open market. We expect our leverage point to get...

Josh Whipple: back down to below, you know, three times leverage point by the end of the year. And then as we go into next year, next year we'll be buying back, you know, approximately, you know, 2 billion, you know, worth of shares next year and continuing to go ahead and maintain that leverage point right around the three times.

Josh Whipple: you know, time period. And then what I'd also say, you know, Darren, as you think about the seven and a half billion that we said that we were gonna go ahead and return to shareholders over the medium term outlook, obviously the proceeds from an advanced MDA is incremental, you know, to that as well. So again, that's kind of how we're thinking about capital allocation over the near term and longer term.

Speaker Change: And I would just add, Darren, to that. As we think about 2025, I mean, obviously we'll be at our targeted leverage ratio by the time we exit 2024, which I think is good news. We're on target to do that.

Speaker Change: As we highlighted this morning, we obviously reached out to the

Speaker Change: Reduced leverage, kind of Q2 to Q3, and are at 3.3, kind of for the end of Q3. So we're on the trajectory that we called out that we would be to get leverage to where we want it by the end of the year. Our base case for 2025 is that $2 billion in return will kind of be rateable, but we'll obviously take into consideration market conditions as we get into 2025 and think about the best and most efficient way to return, you know, capital to shareholders.

Speaker Change: As I step back and think about it, maybe from a more macro perspective, if you look at the seven and a half that we've committed to over the next three years plus,

Speaker Change: You know, obviously the 600 million ASR that we announced this morning, you know, we're somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of our market cap, 33% of our market cap over the next few years, kind of getting returned to shareholders through capital returns, which I think is a pretty attractive, you know, opportunity to create value for shareholders over that, over that timeframe.

Dan Perlin: Great. Thanks Cameron. Thanks guys.

Dan Perlin: Thanks for the question.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Tian Xin Huang of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker Change: Hey, good morning everyone. I just wanted to ask on the commercial spin, I'm just curious how broad-based some of the softness is. Is this all about...

Speaker Change: you know, cards in the forest, again, just trying to figure out what's going on with the cycle.

Speaker Change: Thank you

Speaker Change: Thank you.

Speaker Change: Yeah, look, I think it's just businesses being cautious in the macro environment we're in. I mean, it's kind of across the board from a commercial perspective, certainly T&E, which you see in our commercial card volumes and our issuer business, but also we called out a little bit even in our B2B.

Speaker Change: in the U.S. in our issuer business, and so we are kind of the bellwether for how that market is faring, and certainly what we're seeing is, you know, an overarching kind of slowdown, I would say, overall in business spending that's kind of materializing in our results. We haven't lost any customers in that space.

Speaker Change: We continue to have the same book of business we had previously, so there's no change, I would say, from our perspective. It's really just the volume of flows that we're seeing in the overall market. Got it. No, no, I figured that was the case, just trying to understand some of the…

Speaker Change: The macro factors here always trying to learn Cameron on the on the My quick follow-up just on the on the commercial agreement here with Francisco on advanced MD You'll still be the payment provider exclusively with advanced MD as payfac and is there still room to drive?

Speaker Change: Payments Penetration, given how long you've held it.

Speaker Change: Yeah, absolutely, I think there's going to be opportunities to drive more payment penetration in the business. We're not fully penetrated in the portfolio today, so we still have work to do to try to continue to penetrate the existing base of business.

Speaker Change: We did convert the model over time, you know, to more of an integrated, embedded sort of payback offering. And we've seen good traction around that in the last, call it, year or so.

Speaker Change: in terms of being able to cross sell on net new wins in the AMD business.

Speaker Change: and sort of go after the existing back book of business. And obviously, Francisco has its own growth aspirations for the business. So as they're adding new customers, we have to be able to.

Speaker Change: partner with them with an embedded payment offering that will be relatively seamless as a new sales perspective. So we still see a good runway for growth.

Speaker Change: I think Advanced MD, if you recall, was an integrated partner of ours prior to us acquiring it and will remain an integrated partner of ours sort of post the divestiture and we'll continue to look to grow and scale with them as they move forward and execute on their own initiatives.

Speaker Change: That's great. Thank you, Cameron.

Cameron Bready: Thanks, David.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Trevor Williams of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Trevor Williams: Great, thanks a lot. I wanted to go back to the merchant growth in the quarter. It looks like on an organic, constant currency basis, growth slowed by at least the point, and it sounds like weather was probably the biggest impact in there, but if you guys could put some more detail just around the moving pieces, second to third quarter, and then Cameron, based on what you're saying about October, if Q4 is a little bit better, I mean, anything more specific on order of magnitude there for merchant? Thanks.

Speaker Change: Yeah, it's a good question. So I think your math is roughly right. I think from Q2 to Q3, it's about a point. Yeah, weather was some of it, but I would say there was even before the weather impacts kind of in September, there was a little bit of macro softness Q2 to Q3 sequentially. And I think you've seen that sort of borne out in some of the other commentary by others who have reported.

Speaker Change: you know, this quarter already. So that's largely the driver is we look at, you know, kind of Q2 to Q3, and it's about in that ballpark. So think 6% kind of organic growth.

Speaker Change: in the quarter versus a little north of seven, you know, in Q3. As we look at Q4, we're expecting a little bit better, so I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't get I wouldn't get ahead of my skis too far here, but certainly as it relates to what we saw in Q...

Speaker Change: Three, we're expecting, you know, obviously not to see the same weather impacts that we saw in Q3 and Q4, and we expect a little bit less kind of FX headwind in Q4 relative to Q3. So we are expecting a little bit of sequential improvement there.

Speaker Change: but you know again it's it's not I wouldn't say it's going to be significant.

Speaker Change: Okay, got it. Thanks. And then Cameron, any updated view on CAP1 Discover, assuming that closes and ultimately how that could impact you guys if there's even a potential accounts on file tailwind for you there over time and then just curious within the medium term outlook.

Speaker Change: what you guys have assumed for that relationship. Thanks.

Cameron: Yeah, it's a great question. Obviously, Capital One is a long-standing partner of ours, and we just renewed our agreement with them just prior to them announcing their Discover transaction.

Cameron: Look, I can't get too far into that conversation, but all I can say is they've been a long standing partner of ours. We have a great relationship with those guys.

Cameron: We're clearly aware of what it is they're trying to accomplish, I think, through the merger with Discover.

Cameron: and ultimately, you know, expect that they'll be successful with that endeavor.

Cameron: And the last thing I would just say is they built their entire sort of ecosystem around our capabilities. So as we think about the future and the combined sort of Capital One Discover world, we think that's positive news for our business.

Cameron: It's a little premature for us to be sort of forecasting things into our outlook around that, just given that they are obviously still in the regulatory approval process, but longer term, to the extent we're successful, we think it will be a positive for our ongoing relationship with Capital One.

Speaker Change: Great, thank you.

Speaker Change: Thanks.

Speaker Change: Thank you. The next question is coming from Jason Kupferberg of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Jason Kupferberg: Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask on the merchant segment margins, looked like you were up 90 bips in the quarter, which I think was better than expected. And you ticked up the full year guide there by a hair. So curious just what drove some of the outperformance.

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks Jason. So, well look, so what I would say is Q3 performance was slightly better than our initial expectations. You know, we benefited, you know, in the quarter from, you know, better revenue mix, you know, even though synergies were flowing in and then we saw some really, you know, some strong execution. We do expect, you know, margin expansion to be more consistent, you know, with the overall, you know, outlook in Q4. So, we do expect that to be in the 50 basis point range, but as you rightly pointed out, you know, we did go ahead and raise.

Speaker Change: our margin expectation for merchant up to 40 basis points for the full year. And the only other comment I would say, you know, Jason, if you think about if you go back to

Speaker Change: Q2 of 2023 where we saw a margin compression of 170 basis points over the last five or six quarters, we've done exactly what we said we were going to do, and we've seen continued, you know, sequential, you know, margin improvement quarter over quarter, if you go back, so we're really pleased with the margin performance in Q3, and as I said, you know, it gave us a lot of confidence in, you know, raising the guidance for the full year of up to 40.

Speaker Change: And the only thing I would add, Jason, is just obviously execution there remains strong. And where we're seeing growth in our business, or more sort of attractive growth in the business, are areas where we have room to sort of expand margins.

Speaker Change: further as well. So we think the margin tailwinds for Merchant, you know, particularly now that we've largely worked through kind of the Evo integration, you know, obviously we're pleased with the performance in Q3 and very much on track to deliver that slightly higher expectation kind of for the full year.

Speaker Change: Okay.

Speaker Change: And then just the point of sale and software bookings, I think I saw that was up 30%.

Speaker Change: in the quarter. I think the number you had given at Investor Day on an LTM basis was that it had been up about 10%. So I'm sure it can be lumpy in a given quarter, but based on the pipeline you're seeing, I mean, what's kind of a reasonable zip code going forward? Just, you know, obviously this is a key growth engine for the overall segment.

Speaker Change: Yeah, it's a fair question. We have a strong bookings quarter, obviously, and I think what that suggests, as much as anything else, is we have the right products and capabilities.

Speaker Change: and solutions to win in the marketplace across.

Speaker Change: are point of sale and vertical market software businesses. So we've got a lot of confidence in our capabilities, and we have a lot of belief, obviously, that we have the right solutions for the marketplace.

Speaker Change: To your very good point, they can be lumpy, you know, quarter over quarter, so I wouldn't read too much into one quarter performance or another, positively or negatively, for that matter, as it relates to bookings growth.

Speaker Change: The overall trend we're looking to see is obviously strong double-digit bookings growth across that portfolio of businesses on an LTM basis, it was 12, that's what we called out at the investor conference.

Speaker Change: We had a very strong Q3.

Speaker Change: Obviously that we reported this morning from a bookings perspective, but you know we want to see that well into the double digits And I think that reflects kind of good healthy

Speaker Change: commercial productivity, and that we have the right products and solutions to win in the marketplace. And if we keep delivering at that level, obviously that is what underscores kind of the outlook that we have, and particularly the acceleration in merchant as we get into 26 and 27 is going to be driven by our ongoing success in that channel.

Speaker Change: Thanks, Cameron.

Speaker Change: Thanks for the question.

Speaker Change: Thank you. Our last question today is coming from James Fawcett of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

James Fawcett: Hey, thanks very much. I just want to follow up on that last question around POS specifically and that re-platforming and that lumpiness.

James Fawcett: Just wondering if you can help sensitize us to, you know, the rollout of that.

James Fawcett: What we should think about it, at least anecdotally, what may happen with attrition, any disruption that's there, and then how we should be thinking about that lumpiness kind of normalizing over time, just so we have a good sense of what that sales motion looks like.

Speaker Change: Yeah, look, it's a fair question, and when I talk about lumpiness, I kind of talk about lumpiness of bookings, you know, that may sort of vary from one quarter to the next. I don't know that I would say the overall performance of the business I would expect to be lumpy.

Speaker Change: You know, there are conversion timeframes to bring new people on their implementation timeframe. So as we think about managing the portfolio within POS in particular, I would expect performance to be more consistent, even if bookings, you know, may vary a little bit from one quarter to the next.

Speaker Change: I would say as a re-platforming matter, obviously, you know, we're trying to strike the right balance here. We want to move to a consolidated platform. We want to be able to bring all the best capabilities we have.

Speaker Change: across the variety of point-of-sale environments that we're operating today into one common unified platform so we can deliver that in all the different markets around the globe we want to deliver it.

Speaker Change: But at the same time, we want to continue to grow the business and scale the business effectively. So, we're trying to strike that right balance as we move forward in time. We'll continue to go to market with the capabilities we have as we work to align brands and align platforms.

Speaker Change: At some point, obviously, we're going to demise kind of existing legacy platforms and solely focus on selling kind of our net new consolidated platforms as a go-to-market matter. But that's largely, again, what's implied in the 25, 26, and 27 outlook that we shared last month.

Speaker Change: Some of the impact in 25 is from doing the work that I just described

Speaker Change: So I don't know that we would see, you know, the same level of performance in 25 that we'd expect to see in 26 and 27 as we get the realignment done, the replatforming done, and we go to market with that more unified motion around a common platform of capabilities. I expect to see the benefits of that start to flow through in 26 and 27.

Speaker Change: Got it, appreciate that, that's great. And then, I wanted to ask, and sorry if I kind of missed this, but,

Speaker Change: You know on the SMB volume growth of 5%

Speaker Change: remind us what that was last quarter and then are you seeing a softening trend there that kind of maybe matches up with some of the commercial activity that you see and and you know just trying to get I guess more of a your view on the macro on both sides of of what could be happening

Speaker Change: Q2 performance. I think overall it's more the broader economy and then to a lesser degree as we talked about before some of the specific weather related impacts we kind of called out.

Speaker Change: in the September time frame. As I said already, October looks a little better than September, and I think that's largely the absence of the weather impacts.

Speaker Change: you know, kind of in the month in a fairly stable macro environment relative to what we saw, you know, in the broader sort of Q3 timeframe.

Speaker Change: I don't know that I would read too much into it, you know, as it relates to what we're seeing from a commercial activity and issuer versus, you know, what we're seeing in terms of trends and SMB. If you think about commercial for issuer, that's going to be largely skewed towards larger businesses that are running.

Speaker Change: Commercial card programs and spend programs. Yes, there is some SMB in there, but

Speaker Change: I think it's more reflective of just where businesses are today relative to their willingness to spend just given the overall macro uncertainty that we're operating in. I think the SMB volume that we're seeing, you know, largely just reflects kind of the broader trends we're seeing in the marketplace, both here in the U.S. and to some degree in markets outside the U.S. as well.

Speaker Change: That's awesome. Thanks, Cameron.

Cameron Bready: Appreciate the question.

Speaker Change: Well, on behalf of Global Payments, thank you very much for joining us this morning. I hope everyone has a great rest of your day.

Speaker Change: Everyone else has left the call.

Speaker Change: Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time or log off the webcast and enjoy the rest of your day.

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