Unknown Analyst  

I'm required to inform you that a complete list of research disclosures or potential conflicts of interest can be found on our website, williamblair.com.

So with that, pleasure to introduce Melissa Smith, Chairman and CEO of WEX; as well as Steve Elder, who runs the company's IR. And Melissa will walk us through a presentation. I expect we'll have time for little bit of Q&A in this room and then there'll be a breakout session afterwards.

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

That preamble, maybe I think it was going to be a longer intro. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us to be here at your 45th Annual Conference, and we appreciate being there. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Melissa Smith. I'm the CEO of WEX. I'm going to talk a little bit about WEX. And for those of you who don't know what we do, we're a global commerce platform that is -- we have vertical solutions that are in corporate payments, benefits and the mobility sectors. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what we do, how we make money and why we think we're well situated for long-term growth.

So I said our purpose is to simplify the business of running a business. The way that we think about the business is that we are really focused on how we can use our payment intelligence, so that is the core payments technology infrastructure that we have across the product sets, and our ability to optimize workflows to remove complexity from our customers. We're very focused on how we can use the data quality and data assets we have to help businesses grow and thrive and also to make sure that we are taking the work out of the workflows and helping our customers make smarter decisions in a very compliant way.

All of what we do sits on our underlying technology stack and our proprietary payments capability. It also runs through a bank that we own, WEX Bank. And so when you think about how we face our customers, which is a very diverse set of customers, it is focused on those principles. We have 6,500 employees, about $2.6 billion in revenue. We're operating across 16 different countries where employees are operated and the company has been around for 40 years. We've been public for about 20 of those.

So a little deeper if you look at our individual segments, we're highly focused around how we can create verticalized solutions across these segments. So for mobility, we have a closed-loop network that allows us to data capture, the products that people are buying in a way that allows our customers to make really simplified decisions off a lot of data set. We're making sure that they are purchasing things that customers should be purchasing and that they're controlling those buying behaviors in ways that are consistent with -- However, that customer wants them to be enabled. Some customers prefer very strong controls upfront to eliminate misuse. Other customers would like to see a bunch of data that points to where there has been unusual behavior and let them do it in more of a detective way in the back end of things.

We're also really well positioned as we migrate into the EV space over time. What we know from our customers is that -- they're very focused around getting a single source of data associated with each of their transactions if the energy source is an ICE vehicle or if it's an EV vehicle, they want all that information packaged together in a way that they can understand the total cost of ownership of that vehicle. And so our products work both in the EV world and in the more traditional gas-powered way.

If you go over into the benefit space, in that case, what we're looking at are transactions that are allowed by the IRS, I think of an HSA or an FSA transaction. What we're trying to do is make sure that when people are purchasing things, and these are largely consumers, who's a little over 20 million consumers that use our products that they are buying things that are allowed and that we're giving them the information that helps them make better decisions in their purchasing. We do that for partners. We do that directly for employers. And we also help manage kind of the lifestyle from an employee coming on board all the way to when they're exiting the company. So we will help with benefits administration all the way through COBRA payments along the way.

And then corporate payments, we are, in this case, removing the complexity of facilitating a payment. This is sitting on a technology stack that allows people to connect into our business through an API and facilitate payment, largely virtual card payments, but they can use other modalities as well in a way that's highly integrated into their overall workflow. So high volume of activity that goes through this part of our business, very frictionless in terms of execution. And we've branched into accounts payable management as well.

So if you look across each of these businesses, what we're focusing on is creating solutions that really help the bridge between software and payments across each of those verticals in a way that creates efficiency for the payment flow, control around the payment flow and does that in a very compliant way and at the same time, remove some of the changes that happens across the rest of the workflows that they have.

So the majority of the business is where we first originated, so a little bit over half the business is in our mobility business. About 28%, specifically is in our benefits business and 19% in corporate payments. If you look across that $2.6 billion in revenue, the 2 primary sources of revenue for us are interchange, so payment processing revenue that's coming from the volume of spend that's going across our rails. And the second thing for us are SaaS fees. So that's the majority of our revenue. So one based on the software and the other way based on the payment usage.

If you look over time, the company has grown 13% top line, 15% on EPS. They have a long history of growth. We're very focused around continuing that long history of growth. In the places when we are looking at the business where we've been thinking about is our strengths. In each of the segments in, we have moats that sit across each of those segments. Those moats are built upon the fact that we have strong products and very strong technology and a high level of integration across everything that we do. So if you think about anywhere from an over-the-road customer that's integrating into their HR system, to an embedded payments customer that is facilitating a payment that is embedded in their workflow. There's a high degree of integration within our technology.

We also operate across each of those segments at scale. They're all parts in the marketplace that have great growth potential. If you look across our mobility business, this kind of migration into EV. Whether you're in the corporate payments space, we were seeing this transition into more digital payments. We said -- or within our benefits business, where you've got this move to more remote work, younger generational workers that is creating an opportunity as account types continue to evolve, and that has created an opportunity for us as well.

We're also in each of those parts of the business, we operate at very high margins and generate a significant amount of cash flow, which allows us to continue to reinvest in those products and create further product differentiation.

So our road map for growth is something that we've been very thoughtful -- increasing the amount of spend that we have in 2025 for sales and marketing. They're very early in this process, we're seeing really great returns for those investments. In our Corporate Payments business, we've been really focused around extending the TAM of what we're doing in that space from online travel companies into other parts in the marketplace. We have built products. We've released those products in the marketplace. We're seeing really good traction in that part of the space, which is leading to pipeline development and sales.

In our mobility business, we've been very focused around increasing marketing -- customers in that space. We've seen an 18% improval year-over-year in application volume within our Mobility segment. And the benefits we just went through a great open enrollment season, we're lining up now for the next one. So if you look across each of those businesses where we actually have been placing our bets, we're seeing really good signs of progress.

We're also really focused around continuing to increase the speed of product innovation velocity. And that's sitting on the backbone of our technology house. As a result, you're starting to see more products getting released in the marketplace, so another place for us to monetize it over time. We've been really thoughtful around capital allocation. When I think about kind of first priority for us is growth. And so we've been really focused on the things that can accelerate growth within the company. And also, we've been buying back stock as a way to distribute money back to shareholders. So from a capital allocation, this is going to continue to be a place that we are very thoughtful of where we want to spend our money that gets generated from the significant scale and profitability that we have in the business.

Unknown Analyst  

Okay. It's a great overview. Thank you. I'm happy to open up the floor to questions or start the conversation myself, either way. Please.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes. I'd say flat, but if you looked a year ago our price was like $220, $230, like so there's been a lot of volatility in the price. A lot of the conversation, a lot of the narrative that I have is around our Corporate Payments business. And the fact that there's more volatility in that space and has been since the pandemic. So a lot of -- we've been very focused around how that we can create more growth outside of travel in Corporate Payments and leverage the assets we have to actually bring on more business. That does two things for us. It increases the growth profile of that segment, which has been a huge focus and also dilutes some of the volatility that you see within the travel part of the marketplace. And I'm really pleased with what we're seeing for early success of the products that we've been rolling into the marketplace. But I'd say that's been a really big part of the conversation.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

I would say a lot of the conversation ever since we announced the fact that one of the customers in that portfolio is in-sourcing piece of the business, that has it caused a lot of conversation across what does that mean to the rest of the portfolio. We can look at that and say that, that individual customer, first of all, is much bigger than what sits in the rest of the portfolio, but also has a bigger than other customers in the portal in terms of just -- yes.

Yes, major customer and they have a unique set of assets, that is unlike what you see in the rest of the business and scale. So we know that, that customer has got a unique set of circumstances that allows them to in-source, which is unique to the rest of the business. And so as we go through, that migration should start to anniversary in the third quarter, and will be fully anniversaried in the fourth quarter of this year. So we feel like you're going to be able to see a -- in Q3, you start to see a more normal comp. In Q4, you actually be able to see the benefit of everything that we're doing coming through.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

So we've talked about our long-term growth rates of 5% to 10%, top line growth organically. And as you go through each of the segments, each of them have different drivers that sit behind that, but that's -- our objective function is to be in that range.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

$750 million of net cash, do you want to talk about that?

Steven Elder   Senior VP of Global Investor Relations

One of the features that Melissa mentioned is we own a bank. And so we're taking in customer deposits and some of that's restricted, but some of that is just cash at our banking subsidiary, too, for cash flow, just day-to-day transactional kind of stuff. The way we look at it is we had -- I think, at the end of last quarter, we had about $150 million of what we call corporate cash kind of readily available and for whatever use we want to use it for. The rest, I'd say, is kind of in one way or another restricted and not kind of generally available for the company to use.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Steven Elder   Senior VP of Global Investor Relations

Sure. There is, yes.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Steven Elder   Senior VP of Global Investor Relations

On a net basis, we have about 3.5x leverage.

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Okay.

Unknown Analyst  

You're not the only one who -- it was very financials. And if you look at valuation on most public whether it's Bloomberg or FactSet often the multiple is wrong because it takes into account that -- all of that cash as opposed to available corporate cash.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

2.5% to 3.5% is our target? Yes. Yes. So we just did a pretty significant share buyback, which is what pushed us to the 3.5x, and we're focused on delevering right now.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes.

Steven Elder   Senior VP of Global Investor Relations

12%.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes. It is a very active conversation from a Board perspective, as you might imagine. We feel really confident in the future of the business. And we felt like the stock was undervalued. And we feel really confident at our cash flow that we've levered up before, done it historically for M&A transactions. We levered up to a point we felt like was still reasonable, bought back staff with the idea that we would then pay it down. That was really just a confidence.

Unknown Analyst  

[indiscernible]

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Well, at the point in time that we bought back stock, we felt like really good about the fact that we were buying something that was undervalued, and I would say, like even more so today, right? Like when we did the transaction, we did the Dutch auction, it was right before the tariff announcement. And so it was just -- yes. Literally, I think, 2 days before.

Unknown Analyst  

Melissa, maybe a couple of high-level questions, just to try to frame up the opportunity in each of the 3 businesses. Can you kind of walk us through the TAM and how you do a TAM assessment in all 3? I think benefits might be the easiest to see, at least from an account standpoint, but folks in the room may be less sort of familiar with the mobility segment. So if you could talk about how many vehicles you have and how big you think the addressable market is? And then also maybe touch on some of the EV solutions that WEX has brought to bear in the last couple of years?

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes, sure. So if you go across the markets that we're in, it's about a $25 billion TAM in total. And if you go across each of them, we believe we have about a 20% market share in mobility. And if you look across the mobility segments, we continue to see lots of open ground, particularly with the smaller market. And if you look at it overall, our average sized vehicles of 15 vehicle fleet, so it's part of the market we're actually quite accustomed to, but it's a place that we've been adding in incremental investments because we see continued open market. With the enterprise accounts or the larger accounts, it is much more penetrated, but with a place we continue to add sales and see momentum in the marketplace, both in the over-the-road and our North American fleet business. And so our ability to grow, we think it comes from a combination of and continuing to add price across the portfolio and continue to add new customers and penetrate the market more fully. It's been an unusual period of time because if you look at the cash index, it has shrunk, right, the last couple of years. So...

Steven Elder   Senior VP of Global Investor Relations

Yes. The trade market has been really tough.

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

It's been really tough, right? So it's been -- there's been a little bit of looking like you're running in place. We're adding new accounts, but you're seeing like more shrinkage, particularly in over-the-road space than you have historically. And that seems to have stabilized if the spot rates are more stable. And so we think that you've kind of hit this point where it's not great. Although same-store sales for us in that part of the marketplace was actually positive in the fourth quarter. We think some of that came from a pull forward in spend volume. And so we're still seeing some positivity, but it's more muted.

And then in North America, you didn't ask this, but just to kind of like complete the follow-up. The North American fleet marketplace, we said it was negative 3.9% same-store sales growth in the first quarter. We've seen that trend pretty much continue, just what we had expected. And so it's been a great year in terms of sales and retention and there's a little bit of muting that's happening overall in the -- like just the economic environment, not horrible. It's not accelerated, but there's a little bit of negative that's coming through in that part.

And then the rest of the business, we have about 5% market share in the benefit space, a lot of open market there. I'm sure you're aware that kind of the big beautiful bill has the potential of expanding HSA, which would create even more market share for us. Their estimates are that, that would increase HSA, 20 million accounts. On a base of right now, there's about 165 million people that are eligible for HSA accounts. So that would be a great tailwind if that comes through in the bill once this actually gets finally reconciled. But right now, we continue to see opportunity. As we've added into sales across that portfolio, it's got really strong LTV to CAC measures. And so we continue to think that we have a lot of market. The overall growth of HSAs have slowed, but we still have a lot of market to continue to penetrate.

And then corporate payments, we continue to add TAM to that. So we are -- we have more penetration in the travel space and a lot more open market when you get outside of travel. So they get into a huge TAM potentially. And so when we see an ability to have outsized growth is outside of travel. So we think that our travel portfolio will grow along in line with travel over time. And that outside of travel, we have very small market share and have an ability to have a lot of success there, which is why we've been investing now.

Unknown Analyst  

So just to sort of frame that up, the non travel part of corporate is about 40% of that segment. Is that...

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

50% of revenue, about 40% of spend.

Unknown Analyst  

40% of spend and half the revenue. And as you mentioned, that is a big opportunity. What are the specific things you're doing to drive more card-based B2B payments? And can you talk maybe a little bit about -- because there are two kind of components of the B2B piece in non-travel piece. One would be AP, AR workflow automation and digitization and then the other would actually be the payments. Can you elaborate a little bit on your current capabilities where you'd like to take those capabilities? And then maybe specifically, what the investments are aimed at driving that business? Because just again, for those in the room who may not be familiar, Visa, for example, puts cross-border commerce, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 trillion. It's just -- it's an enormous market that's mostly cash and ACH. So the opportunity is huge, and I think a lot of investors are trying to understand how companies like WEX and others for that matter, are going to monetize in this space?

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes. Yes. So we think of it as two core products that we have in the marketplace, start with embedded payments because that's the place we've been heavily investing in product. So embedded payments would be -- I'm going to take our virtual card payment stack is world-class. We have tremendous volume and scale that goes through that, we have 165 different product types in a global compliance structure, which is what the online travel agencies are very interested in because we can do so many different configurations around the world, world class. So we've been looking at how do we increase sales of that type of capability outside of travel. The way that we've thought about this is we've added in flexible funding capability, which allows our customers to maximize their working capital. So if you're a business, you want the least amount that gets captured or stuck is part of that transaction, either a deposit or collateral or something like that. And from our perspective, we want the least amount of risk and exposure associated with that because there's a tremendous amount of volume that goes through. And so we've added functionality that allows people to maximize that. And we're onto the marketplace selling that capability outside of travel. And what we're finding is that really strong success. The products really new in the marketplace. We've got a pipeline that continues to develop. We're seeing really strong sales. And so that's been our first focus. We have said that's a core differentiated asset that we have a pure right to win in that space. And so -- and anything we do in embedded payments helps our travel customers but also helps our AP products as well. So that is a growth avenue for us.

On the AP side, we sit on the back end of the payment, so like facilitating the payment, you give me -- you're an AP file, I will facilitate that on your behalf. And we have continued to build the sales force and also have had success in selling that capability. Part of the sale for us, so the reason why we win is because we have operated at such large scale that we can maximize the financials that sit behind everything else we do and package that back to a customer in a way that we can in a very stable, reliable way to fill their payments, but also do it in a way that is economically advantaged to them. We are continuing to build on that capability we have. Our first focus was on embedded payments, but now it is -- they continue to build the capability we have in AP because we see that as another area to expand TAM. But even what we've already done has expanded what we're able to sell into as we add additional features that we'll continue to build upon that. And so we think that those is like we're just -- we're opening up more and more space.

Unknown Analyst  

So is it right to think about in that segment, as you anniversary this one particular revenue transition and maybe start to see some traction, I should say, in some of these other businesses. Can that be -- does that -- sort of how do I think about that in the 5% to 10% medium-term revenue growth or long-term revenue growth target. Does that have the capability on to itself to take you towards the high end of that target growth range?

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes, I think that for sure. And I think over time, our intention is to go beyond that. Like the thing for us right now is to be thoughtful that they're smaller parts of the segment. And the travel itself will probably grow it more like a travel growth rate. And so we have to -- and that's of the revenue. So it's going to take some time for these other pieces of the business to come through even when they're growing at an accelerated rate. But over time, we think that, that will not just -- we think that we have tremendous growth capability.

Unknown Analyst  

It would be interesting to get and hear about KPIs in that business as you make some progress.

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes.

Unknown Analyst  

And I did want to come back briefly in the last couple of minutes too. And it doesn't come up in investor conversations nearly as much as it used to, but the EV transition and the shift to hybrid fleets. You've talked about the economics of your EV solutions. Can you just talk a little bit about sort of how you're helping customers hybridize and what that means for the model over time, recognizing that a shift to a full EV sort of truck fleet is going to -- probably not going to happen while not...

Melissa Smith   Chairman of the Board, President & CEO

Yes. The fact that it's a mixed fleet actually works to our advantage because what people want is an integrated solution. And as people make this migration, what they're doing is migrating a piece of their fleet, and they want to understand their gas powered vehicle in their EV vehicles like together. So it actually puts us in a really good like pole position. What we're finding is that there's still a continued movement with government fleets, it slowed down but has continued. And so in that case, what we're doing is giving them a host of solutions. We have the ability to -- they can access the network of our products which is EV charging. They have an ability to do at home reimbursement if they want to, and they have the ability for depot charging, so they can access all of that. That customer segment continues to actually go through the sales pipeline, and we're seeing them go through implementation cycles slower than we originally would have thought, but it's still happening.

The other place that we're seeing a lot of interest within the enterprise accounts, and I was actually just at a dinner with a bunch of our customers. They're still trying to work through sustainability reporting requirements, and the assets we have, have the ability to help them that, so that as they go through the process of determining what their footprint looks like for reporting purposes, they still need that capability, and so we have that capability. And so there's a lot more consultative work that we do with the large end of the marketplace, and with the government, I would say it's -- in government, including states, it's actually seeing migration onto the platform.

What we know so far is that each of these products we have, have an ability to charge a subscription fee. So we like it and the fact that it creates a different source of revenue. It's higher on aggregate than an average ICE vehicle is, and it has less volatility with fuel prices. And so a lot of positives that should make this migration. And I think that we do hear last questions because the economics seem to have proven out not just for us but other people in the space. And it's just a question of now like what's the migration cycle look like.

Unknown Analyst  

Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. We've got a breakout.