Euronet (EEFT) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Thursday, July 30, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Head of Investor Relations - Stephanie Taylor
• Chairman and Chief Executive Officer - Mike Brown
• Chief Financial Officer - Rick Weller

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $1.1 billion, reflecting growth in digital accelerators and merchant services that offset a 5% decline in the cross-border payments segment.
• Adjusted EPS -- $2.82, representing a 10% increase over the prior year and marking the company's fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth.
• Digital Accelerator Revenue -- Grew 31% in the quarter and 35% year-to-date, now representing 26% of total company revenue.
• Adjusted EBITDA -- $193 million, supported by higher-value digital content sales and merchant acquiring gains despite inflationary cost pressures.
• Cross-border Payments Operating Income -- Declined 35% to $41.9 million, driven by lower remittance volumes from the U.S. to Mexico and a difficult comparison to prior-year Pakistan fee rebates.
• Ria Digital Transactions -- Grew 33% year over year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of growth exceeding 30% with a 90% repeat customer rate.
• Merchant Acquiring -- Added 4,200 new merchants during the quarter through the launch of a new referral program and expanded distribution in Greece.
• epay Segment Revenue -- Grew 4% year over year, as growth in digital content and merchant services offset an 11% decline in transaction volume in Asia-Pac.
• Free Cash Flow -- Produced approximately $80 million in the quarter, which management utilized for digital infrastructure investments and share buybacks.
• Share Repurchases -- Approximately $50 million used to repurchase 705,000 shares, with an additional 400,000 to 500,000 share reduction expected in the share count through the remainder of the year.
• Full-year Adjusted EPS Guidance -- Reaffirmed at 10% to 15% growth, with earnings expected to be more evenly distributed across quarters than in historical periods.
• Interest Expense -- Increased $1.3 million following the settlement of EUR 700 million in bonds, with a projected $6 million increase for the remainder of the year based on current borrowing rates.
• Payments Infrastructure Results -- Operating income increased 2% (or 7% excluding $4.7 million in non-cash purchase price amortization), reflecting merchant acquiring expansion and interchange increases.
• ATM Network Cash -- $1 billion deployed in the network at quarter end to support seasonal peak demand, with an additional $1.2 billion held in unrestricted cash.
• Marketing Investment -- Increased by approximately $3 million for digital customer acquisition in the cross-border segment to counteract softer retail channel volume.
• Total Indebtedness -- $2.7 billion at the end of the quarter, reflecting seasonal funding requirements for ATM cash and capital return activities.
• CoreCard Revenue Run Rate -- Targeted at $16 million to $18 million per quarter, excluding one-time pass-through revenue from card plastic sales.
• Digital Accelerator Target -- Current year-to-date growth of 35% significantly exceeded the 23% long-term growth rate outlined at the company's recent Investor Day.

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RISKS

• Brown stated, "U.S. immigration enforcement continued to weigh on cross-border transaction volumes, primarily from the U.S. to Mexico," resulting in the first annual decline for the broader U.S. outbound remittance market in over a decade.
• Weller noted that segment results reflected "ongoing cost inflation across our global markets," which partially offset gains from merchant acquiring and CoreCard contributions.
• Brown indicated that "airline bookings from the U.S. to Europe are about 5%-8% below the peak 2025 booking window," contributing to softer ATM transaction volume than initially expected.

SUMMARY

Management reported that Euronet Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ:EEFT) is successfully transitioning its revenue mix toward digital accelerators, which now account for 26% of total revenue. The company stated that significant gains in merchant services and the integration of the CoreCard platform are helping to stabilize performance amid a global economic slowdown and shifting U.S. immigration policies that have pressured the remittance market. Executives noted that while ATM transaction growth was impacted by selective discretionary spending among European travelers and lower U.S.-to-Europe flight bookings, the underlying infrastructure remains highly cash-generative. The company indicated it will maintain its disciplined capital allocation strategy, prioritizing share repurchases and investments in digital payout networks to drive long-term earnings growth.

• The company signed a multi-year agreement with Unibanca in Peru to modernize credit issuing using the Ren and CoreCard platforms, displacing an incumbent processor.
• CEO Brown confirmed that Rockstar Games opened pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI in late June for a Nov. 19 release, stating the company "immediately saw a positive response in sales of PlayStation and Xbox gaming credits."
• Management announced a new digital partnership with Uber in the U.K., allowing drivers to send money via Ria Money Transfer directly within the Uber driver app.
• The Dandelion network expanded through a new partnership with Mastercard Move, which management expects will go live in the fourth quarter with a phased transaction rollout.
• Euronet signed a direct distribution agreement with Capcom to distribute content across Europe, following the publisher's sale of 59 million units in the prior year.
• CEO Brown noted that CoreCard has signed five to six deals since its acquisition, stating the platform "changed the narrative of the sales process" by offering both consumer and commercial credit capabilities at scale.
• Weller reported that although total transactions in the epay segment fell 11%, the decline was isolated to low-value transactions in Asia-Pac that had minimal impact on revenue or profit.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• Ren: Euronet's cloud-native payments processing platform that enables banks and fintechs to modernize their issuing and acquiring infrastructure.
• CoreCard: A card management and processing software platform acquired by Euronet to support complex credit and prepaid card programs.
• Dandelion: A cross-border payments platform providing real-time payout capabilities to bank accounts, mobile wallets, and cash pick-up locations globally.
• Ria Digital: The online and mobile application channel for Euronet’s cross-border money transfer business.
• epay: A Euronet business segment focused on the digital distribution of prepaid mobile airtime, gift cards, and other electronic payment solutions.
• IAD: Independent ATM Deployer, referring to ATM networks operated by non-bank entities.
• SaaS: Software as a Service, a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Operator: Day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Euronet Worldwide's second quarter 2026 earnings call conference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Stephanie Taylor, Head of Investor Relations for Euronet Worldwide. Thank you. Ms. Taylor, you may now begin.

Stephanie Taylor: Thank you, Tyler. Good morning, and welcome to Euronet's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. On the call, we have Mike Brown, our Chairman and CEO, and Rick Weller, our CFO. Before we begin, I need to call your attention to the forward-looking statements disclaimer on the second slide of the PowerPoint presentation we will be making today. Statements made on this call that confirm Euronet or its management's intentions, expectations or predictions of further performance are forward-looking statements. Euronet's actual results may vary materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors that are listed on the second slide of our presentation.

In addition, the PowerPoint presentation includes a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures we will be using during the call to their most comparable GAAP measures. I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mike Brown.

Mike Brown: Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin my comments on slide number four. During the second quarter, our results demonstrated the resilience of Euronet's diversified business model and our ability to execute against our long-term growth strategy. Second quarter adjusted EPS increased 10%, marking our fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth. Our digital accelerators once again represented our primary growth driver during the quarter, with revenue growing 31% year-over-year for the second quarter and 35% year to date. While we experienced some softness in certain parts of the business and made some additional investments into digital, the continued momentum in our accelerators highlights the benefits of our diversified model and digital initiatives.

We also continued to see a very positive response to the CoreCard platform, highlighted by the signing of a credit card processing agreement with Unibanca, one of Peru's leading bank processors. Finally, we continued to return capital to shareholders, repurchasing about $50 million worth of Euronet shares during the quarter. Overall, we are pleased with our ability to navigate an evolving macro environment and remain focused on executing our strategy, managing capital prudently and delivering long-term value for the shareholders. We'll move on to slide number five. On slide five, you'll find an update to the digital accelerator framework we introduced at our Investor Day in May. This framework helps illustrate the drivers behind Euronet's long-term growth strategy.

Digital accelerators represented 26% of total company revenue year to date, reflecting the continued shift in our business towards higher growth digitally enabled payment channels. As I mentioned, revenue from these products in this quarter grew 31% in the quarter and 35% year-to-date, well above the 23% growth rate outlined at Investor Day. This performance was driven by strong results across several businesses, led by Ria Digital, Issuing, and Merchant Services. Growth in our non-accelerator businesses was somewhat softer than anticipated, primarily due to the impact of U.S. immigration policies and the related pressure on remittance send volumes globally. Moreover, our ATM transactions were a bit softer than we expected earlier in the travel season.

Our experience appears to be generally consistent with market sources that indicate that airline bookings from the U.S. to Europe are about 5%-8% below the peak 2025 booking window and European travelers becoming more selective with discretionary spending. Despite these near-term headwinds, these businesses remain highly profitable, cash generative and strategically important, providing the foundation that enables us to invest in higher growth opportunities. Looking ahead, our long-term thesis remains unchanged. Leverage Euronet's world-class payment network to provide seamless digital solutions for our customers. We expect the accelerators to remain our fastest-growing revenue category and a key driver of earnings growth and shareholder value creation over the coming years.

Turning to the next slide, payments infrastructure, formerly known as EFT, we made meaningful progress advancing several of our digital accelerator initiatives during the quarter. In merchant services, we expanded on the previously announced acquisition of CrediaBank's merchant services business in Greece. During the second quarter, we launched a merchant acquiring referral program that expands our distribution channels and creates additional opportunities to reach merchants through partner relationships. This partnership further strengthened our existing sales initiatives, which resulted in the addition of 4,200 new merchants during the quarter. These additions reflect continued demand for our merchant acquiring solutions and reinforce our strong position in growth. In payment processing, we also continued to see strong momentum for our CoreCard platform.

During the quarter, we signed a credit card processing agreement with Upgrade, a U.S.-based digital banking platform. We also signed a multi-year Ren agreement with Unibanca, one of Peru's leading financial processors, to modernize credit issuing in Peru through Ren's expanded credit architecture powered by CoreCard. Unibanca currently provides processing services to nine banks in the country, making this an important competitive win and further demonstrating the flexibility, scalability, and competitiveness of our technology. Importantly, CoreCard was the difference-maker in winning this business. Prior to the acquisition, we had an issuing platform, but it was not our leading product in our portfolio. We previously participated in the Unibanca RFP, but we were not selected.

After we announced the acquisition of CoreCard, it changed the narrative of the sales process. We reengaged with Unibanca as CoreCard's solution not only handles consumer credit at proven scale but also has a robust commercial credit capability, among others. The CoreCard SaaS solution, together with the breadth of Euronet's broader Ren payment product offering, provided Unibanca with a single strategic modernization partner. This ultimately resulted in Unibanca selecting our product, which will displace the incumbent processor. This win really speaks to the combined power of CoreCard and Ren. Also related to our accelerators, we signed an online merchant acquiring agreement with NTT Data, a leading merchant acquirer in the Asia Pac region.

This relationship highlights the strength of our platform and supports our strategy of partnering with established payment providers in attractive growth markets. Finally, we have signed a new sponsorship agreement with a bank in Costa Rica, which will help us grow our IAD network in this cash-rich country. Overall, these wins reflect continued execution against our strategy of expanding our customer footprint, deepening client relationships, and delivering scalable infrastructure solutions that help our customers grow. As digital payments adoption continues to increase globally, we believe our digital capabilities position us to deliver greater value to customers and capitalize on this long-term trend. Now let's go to slide number seven.

Turning to epay, we continue to expand digital distribution and payment capabilities across our global network. This quarter, we expanded our merchant services business by completing the integration of Visa and Mastercard acquiring across all dm stores. dm is one of the largest health and beauty retailers in Europe, operating more than 4,000 stores in 14 countries across the continent. epay is now the exclusive provider of retail POS processing for Visa and Mastercard across all dm stores in Europe, building on our long-term relationship where we were already providing acquiring to them for Alipay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and girocard. During our investor day, we highlighted a new opportunity relating to building direct-to-publisher relationships.

As digital channels continue to evolve, game publishers are seeking greater control over how their products are marketed, sold, and distributed. This is creating new capabilities for epay to leverage its global distribution network, issuer capabilities, and publisher relationships. Through our direct-to-publisher strategy, we are working directly with game publishers to distribute their content across our expansive network of digital and physical channels, while also supporting publishers that choose to introduce their own branded store value products. As app store billing frameworks continue to evolve, particularly in mobile gaming, we believe demand for these services will increase over time.

This quarter, we furthered our direct-to-publisher strategy by signing a distribution agreement with Capcom, a tier-1 Japanese game publisher with iconic franchises such as Street Fighter and Resident Evil. Capcom sold 59 million units last year, and this agreement allows us to directly distribute Capcom content across Europe with attractive economics. This digital distribution agreement demonstrates our ability to establish direct publisher relationships, and we expect this to continue across both PC and mobile gaming. In Japan, we signed an agreement with Yahoo and Rakuten to distribute Roblox and Riot products. We launched Google Play, Xbox, Riot, and PlayStation products on Stanverse, an Indian gaming platform.

These initiatives further strengthen our branded payments and merchant services businesses while expanding the reach of our digital distribution platform. Additionally, after years of anticipation, and I've talked to you about this multiple times, and several delays, Rockstar has officially opened Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders in late June and confirmed a November 19th release date. We immediately saw a positive response in sales of PlayStation and Xbox gaming credits used to fund those purchases. GTA VI is widely expected to be one of the largest entertainment launches ever, we believe the opportunity extends well beyond the initial game into months of ongoing digital spending.

More specifically, large-scale releases tend to create an extended engagement cycle that begins with pre-orders, accelerates through the launch, continues through with downloadable content, online gameplay, subscriptions, and in-game purchases. While we're not forecasting results tied to a single title, the early demand we are seeing reinforces our confidence in gaming as one of our most attractive growth categories. Finally, as an update to our real money gaming strategy, Marker Trax and Koin continue to make meaningful progress. Marker Trax's omni-channel solution, built on Euronet's Ren platform, is now certified with most U.S. casino management systems. We expect them to achieve certification across all major U.S. slot machine systems as well as their first table management system by year-end.

At the same time, one of the world's largest gaming and entertainment technology companies has selected Coin Direct as its white label solution, enabling players to fund slot machines, play directly from their bank accounts using their mobile phones. Together, these milestones reinforce the momentum they are building across both platforms going into next year and beyond. As we discussed on our investor day, epay benefits from a highly scalable global network that connects brands, retailers, and consumers across both physical and digital channels. The opportunities we are pursuing today leverage that same infrastructure, creating additional avenues for growth and increasing the value of the platform over time.

Now let's move on to slide eight and we'll talk about cross-border payments business formerly known as money transfer. Slide eight. The second quarter cross-border payments results were softer than we expected, driven by two primary factors. First, U.S. immigration enforcement continued to weigh on cross-border transaction volumes, primarily from the U.S. to Mexico. This was a market-wide dynamic as the broader U.S. outbound remittance market experienced its first annual decline in more than a decade.

Supporting that trend, the Brookings Institution reported that net migration was likely close to zero or negative across the calendar year 2025 for the first time in at least a half a century, reducing the pool of new workers and consumers that historically drive outbound remittance growth. Market reports also show encouraging signs, though, of stabilization, with growth in remittance volume to Mexico over the last four months. We are executing several initiatives to reinvigorate growth in the retail channel where we felt the pain. While overall volumes have softened, our geo and channel diversification is enabling us to weather the storm, highlighted by the very strong growth in our digital channel.

The second-largest driver of the softness was a difficult comp to the prior year's second quarter, where we saw unusually high margins from a non-recurring fee rebate in Pakistan and certain one-time FX opportunities. Those two items, together with incremental investment in our cross-border payment accelerators, are the key drivers of the softer segment's operating income. I remain confident that the underlying business remains healthy and the long-term growth trajectory remains intact. As I turn to the highlights, Ria Digital continues to lead our growth, with digital transactions increasing 33%, our fourth consecutive quarter of growth exceeding 30%. The business continues to demonstrate its durability, with more than 90% of the transaction volume coming from repeat customers.

During the quarter, we continued investing for future growth, increasing digital marketing spend by approximately $3 million to support customer acquisition and long-term expansion. We also made meaningful progress with Dandelion, signing Mastercard Move as a new partner during the quarter. This partnership enables Mastercard Move, one of the world's largest payment ecosystems, to expand its global payout capabilities through the Dandelion network. We expect the service to go live in the fourth quarter, with transaction volumes ramping gradually through a phased rollout. In addition to Mastercard, we signed five new Dandelion partners, further expanding this key strategic accelerator. In the U.K., we launched an agreement with Uber to integrate Ria Money Transfer into Uber's driver app.

This digital partnership will allow Uber drivers to send funds to their beneficiary directly from the app where they receive their earnings, giving them a competitive money transfer offering while saving time and reducing friction. Initiatives like this will continue to expand our reach and create new opportunities to serve both consumers and enterprise customers. In addition, we further enhanced our product offering through the launch of BriQ, enabling instant payments in Colombia. Finally, we expanded our wallet payout capabilities in Nigeria through the addition of four new banking partners. In summary, while the quarter's top-line print was softer than we wanted to report, the fundamentals of the business are still intact.

Our strategic initiatives are contributing to a strong transaction in customer growth. We remain encouraged by the continued momentum in our digital business, the expansion of our global payment networks, and the opportunities we see to drive long-term profitable growth across the cross-border payment segment. With that, I will hand it over to Rick.

Rick Weller: Thanks, Mike. Good morning, everyone. I will begin my comments on slide 10. For the quarter, we delivered revenue of $1.1 billion, operating income of $137 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $193 million. Our adjusted EPS was $2.82, a 10% increase over the prior year. It is worth noting that our operating income includes $4.7 million of additional non-cash purchase price amortization related to the GAAP purchase accounting for the CoreCard acquisition and an additional $1.9 million for non-cash share-based compensation. Excluding these two non-cash items, our operating income would have declined by 9%, which is largely attributable to the lighter cross-border payments volume. Further, we continued to generate strong free cash flows, producing approximately $80 million in the quarter.

In addition to investments in our digital initiatives, this free cash flow also allowed us to repurchase approximately 705,000 shares for $50 million. These repurchases occurred later in the quarter and therefore had minimal impact on our quarterly adjusted EPS, but will benefit adjusted EPS in future quarters. Slide 11 shows our second quarter year-over-year results on an as-reported basis. Most of the major currencies where we operate in strengthened compared to the US dollar. To normalize the impact of the currency fluctuations, we have presented our results adjusted for currency on the next slide. On slide 12.

The payments infrastructure segment delivered good results for the quarter, with revenue growth driven by continued expansion in merchant acquiring, interchange increases in certain markets, and the addition of CoreCard, which we acquired in the fourth quarter of 2025. Operating income and adjusted EBITDA increased 2% and 6% respectively, reflecting incremental earnings from these growth drivers, partially offset by ongoing cost inflation across our global markets. Operating income includes a $4.7 million increase in non-cash purchase accounting amortization I previously commented on, related to the CoreCard acquisition. Excluding that impact, operating income would have increased 7%. In epay, revenue grew 4%, and operating income and adjusted EBITDA each grew approximately 5%.

These results reflect continued growth in higher-value digital content and merchant acquiring. Transactions were down about 11% due to shifting in low-value transactions in Asia-Pac. These transactions had nominal impacts on both revenue and profits. The cross-border payments segment results reflect the challenging operating environment Mike just outlined. Revenue declined 5%, reflecting lower U.S. to Mexico remittance volumes as U.S. immigration policies continued to weigh on activity in this quarter. This is partially offset by strong transaction growth at Ria Digital. The second quarter results were also compared to a favorable second quarter 2025, where we benefited from a non-recurring fee rebate in Pakistan and certain favorable foreign exchange-related opportunities that carried high margins and did not repeat this year.

Operating income and adjusted EBITDA declined 35% and 32% respectively. About 60% of these declines are related to decline in revenue and related gross profit, and approximately 25% is related to incremental investment in sales and marketing to benefit our long-term digital accelerator growth drivers. We believe these investments were beneficial as they contributed to 35% growth in digital revenue. At the consolidated level, we delivered double-digit adjusted EPS growth despite the challenges in cross-border payments. Solid performance in payments infrastructure and epay, combined with continued momentum across our digital channels, helped offset pressures in cross-border payments. Despite near-term headwinds, we are confident in the underlying fundamentals and long-term thesis of our cross-border business. Looking ahead, our outlook remains unchanged.

As we discussed during our first quarter call and the Investor Day, our digital accelerators continue to perform well and are becoming a larger part of our business mix. We continue to expect full-year adjusted EPS growth in the 10%-15% range, with quarterly earnings becoming more evenly distributed throughout the year as our digital growth strategy helps balance the quarter mix of our business. As we previously shared, the second and third quarters are expected to represent a smaller share of annual earnings than they have in historical quarters. Now let's turn to slide 13 for a few comments on the balance sheet.

We ended the quarter with $1.2 billion in unrestricted cash and nearly $1 billion in cash deployed in our ATM network. Total debt was $2.7 at the end of the quarter. Changes in both cash and debt primarily reflect the seasonal funding required to support peak ATM cash demand, together with share repurchases, partially offset by approximately $80 million in cash generated from operations. Towards the end of May, we settled our EUR 700 million bonds. This resulted in increased interest expense of about $1.3 million in the second quarter compared to the prior year.

As we look forward, we expect this will increase interest expense by approximately $6 million for the remainder of the year versus the prior year, based on current EUR borrowing rates. As we discussed in May, share repurchases remain a key component of our capital allocation strategy and are funded primarily through our recurring operating free cash flows. We continue to view buybacks as an attractive use of capital and a reflection of our view regarding the value of our shares relative to long-term opportunities for the business. Going forward, we will remain disciplined in capital allocation. With that, I'll turn it back to Mike for his closing remarks.

Mike Brown: Thank you. As we wrap up, my key takeaway is this: momentum in our digital accelerators continues to strengthen and is increasingly shaping the future of Euronet, with revenue from this category up 35% year-to-date, well ahead of our long-term framework that we communicated to you at Investor Day. In the cross-border payments section, Ria Digital delivered another strong quarter, with revenue and transactions up 35% and 33% respectively, while Dandelion expanded through Mastercard Move and five new partners. In payments infrastructure, we saw continued strength in merchant acquiring and growing demand for CoreCard, highlighted by our new agreement with Unibanca.

In epay, we are growing our digital content and gaming revenue through new direct publisher relationships, expanded distribution, and progress in real money gaming. Importantly, these accelerators are becoming a larger and much more durable part of our revenue mix. While parts of the business face near-term macroeconomic headwinds this quarter, our core strategy remains intact, our platforms are scaling, and our outlook is unchanged. We remain confident in delivering our long-term growth objectives and creating value for the shareholders. With that, I'd be happy to take questions. Operator, will you please assist?

Operator: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Pete Heckmann from D.A. Davidson. Pete, the line is now yours.

Pete Heckmann: Thank you very much. A lot of detail. I wanted to follow up on your comments on the digital accelerators. Revenue related to those businesses is up 35% in the first half, but your 2026 guidance is up 23%. Is that because of the lapping the CoreCard acquisition, or is there another difficult comparison that we should be thinking about, or is the full year guidance maybe just a little bit conservative?

Mike Brown: I would say the lapping is the biggest thing. Plus, at the Investor Day, we were trying to be thoughtfully conservative. I'll tell you right now, it's grown even faster than we thought it would. We're pretty happy with those growth accelerators.

Pete Heckmann: Great. Just to follow up on CoreCard. I didn't hear you mention it, CoreCard definitely outperformed on the revenue line in the first quarter. In the second quarter, would you say that it was generally in line with the revenue run rate that we're using on a quarterly basis, something in the $16 million-$18 million of acquired revenue for the quarter?

Rick Weller: Yes, sir, Pete. As we pointed out in the first quarter, we had some one-time revenue that didn't do much in terms of profit because it was basically just pass-through cost that we have to account for under GAAP. Your analysis is right on.

Mike Brown: Yeah. You remember that a lot of times when people get ready to issue a bunch of cards, they have to buy the plastic in advance. We provide that to them with little to no markup. That was, I can't remember, $10 million or something like that. It was a lot of money.

Pete Heckmann: Yeah.

Mike Brown: Yeah.

Pete Heckmann: Okay. That's great. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Grondahl from Northland. Mike, the line is now yours.

Mike Grondahl: Hey, guys. Thanks. On the money transfer area, any plans for increased marketing or promotion? I guess I'm trying to understand what you guys are doing to kind of return to growth there.

Mike Brown: Well, first of all, we got a bad kind of macro.

Mike Grondahl: Sure

Mike Brown: We've found that our investments in digital are paying off very handsomely. We mentioned that we spent about an extra $3 million this last quarter in various marketing, mostly digital. Yes, we are doing that, and we will continue. Now, the problem is, if we're spending $3 million this quarter, you really don't see that revenue come in for another quarter or so. We look forward maybe to the fruits of those labors coming in Q3 and Q4. Yes, we are going to do it. The reality is, the market is weak. We need to be careful not to put too much money kind of barking up the wrong tree kind of thing.

With digital, we're doing exceedingly well, and we will continue to accelerate that.

Mike Grondahl: Got it. Just secondly, the European ATM footprint. I think I heard you say, Mike, that travel started a little bit soft and European spend was a little bit soft, too.

Mike Brown: Those are the numbers we get from research, is that U.S. to Mexico is a little weaker, within Europe, it's a little bit weaker, too. They're much more careful. The reality is we are in a global economic slowdown, that just means when people go on vacation, they spend less money.

Mike Grondahl: Got it. Hey, do you see that continuing through the whole year, or what's kind of your outlook there?

Rick Weller: Well, yeah, Mike, we saw a little bit of softness in the second quarter. I don't want to be too bullish on stuff, but we saw a little bit of improvement as we go into the third quarter. We've read some other market stats that would indicate that there's maybe a little better expectation as the travel season kind of comes to a head in August. I would say my perspective, it would be certainly consistent to improving. I wouldn't say that improving is rocket improving, but it's a positive.

Mike Grondahl: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Kennedy from William Blair. Chris, the line is now open.

Chris Kennedy: Yeah. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions and appreciate all the detail. XE and small business payments is a massive opportunity. Can you just talk about some of the initiatives that you have to capture that market?

Mike Brown: You're right. It is exactly that. It's a huge opportunity because the value proposition that XE gives to both individuals and small businesses, especially, are the ability to make cross-border payments much more quickly and less expensively than their bank would. We've got a whole plan of investment into XE beginning in the second half of the year. Honestly, I think we're sitting on an asset that we have not done enough with. Because one of the reasons that's a little bit frustrating is we've got the best payout of any company of its ilk in the world.

We should be able to do more with this, and that's what we're going to focus on the last half of the year.

Chris Kennedy: Got it. Thank you for that. Then the CoreCard win in Peru was very encouraging. Are you seeing that type of setup in other markets where CoreCard is helping you get over the finish line?

Mike Brown: Well, let me tell you this. As I've said in prior calls, we really didn't expect to get a deal closed with CoreCard for 18 months after sale. It was in November or December of last year when we bought it. We have been exceedingly both surprised and happy with the deals that we're signing. We're five, six deals in, with a lot more in the hopper. I think CoreCard is going to be one of our very best acquisitions as it continues to build momentum and reference customers. There are really only two platforms kind of on the planet that are of scale, maybe three. We're the third one.

You've got to get references in the market, then once you get references, then it's a lot easier to do so. We really like this one at Unibanca because they're actually a processor for multiple banks. They'll be using CoreCard and each of the nine banks they have can set it up however they wish, and it gives us a good reference customer in LatAm. That's the key too, is you've got to be able to have a reference customer in the same language. We did those two deals in Ecuador last year for Ren.

Between that and the Peru deal, I think we see LatAm as an entire market that's tired of this 40-year-old technology that they've been kind of forced to buy from the U.S. up to this point.

Rick Weller: Yeah. Chris, I would add that one of the things that we have been very pleased with is to see, let's say the consumer reaction to the broader suite of capability that we offer. CoreCard is an outstanding product on its own, leading in the industry, makes for great discussions. When our prospects then hear more about what we have to offer, whether it's in the ATM outsourcing world, whether it's other kind of debit platforms, alternative payment platforms, connectivity to real-time payment, real-time processing, the opportunity to move payments around the world with our businesses like Dandelion, it really then leads to a much richer discussion.

I would say that was part of ultimately the winning of the deal in Peru. We had a fantastic product in CoreCard, what really then kind of cemented it was that broader capability that Ren platform brings. It's not just a licensable product. As you probably noticed in our comment, we're providing that on a SaaS basis, right? It really is becoming a very significant product as an anchor product within that Ren suite. Stay tuned, we've got more to come in the future.

Chris Kennedy: Great. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vasu Govil from KBW. Vasu, the line is yours.

Vasu Govil: Hi, thank you for taking my question. I guess, Mike, my question, first one, just around the revenue expectations for the year. I know at the Investor Day, you guys had outlined approximately 6% growth for the year. It seems like the non-digital accelerators are performing worse, but you're also seeing better trends in the digital accelerators. Net, how should we think about the growth rate and revenues for the year?

Mike Brown: I'll let Rick correct me, I think we're pretty much unchanged from where we were at the Investor Day.

Rick Weller: Yeah.

Vasu Govil: Got it. That's helpful. Just going back to the question on the weaker U.S. to Europe airline bookings, I was curious if you think some of the weaker bookings is the result of the FIFA World Cup, with more people traveling the reverse from Europe to U.S. instead of U.S. to Europe? If the comment you made that you are seeing some improvement in 3Q, could it be related to that? If that's the case, you could see more of a rebound in the back half? Just any thoughts around that.

Rick Weller: We did see some print out there that said that possibly people directed their vacations towards the U.S. for the World Cup. As you can anticipate, when you don't have someone show up at an ATM, you don't necessarily get a response from them that says, "I would have come to your ATM, but I went to the World Cup." It's kind of hard to sort out exactly what it is, but we have seen information that suggests that some European customers, other customers, came to the U.S. for the World Cup.

There was also some commentary in some of the articles that suggested that might be a part of the reason why a little better, more resilient second part of the tourism season they would see in Europe. Yeah. I think it's kind of mixed in there. There was probably some impact from World Cup. Now that it's over, people may be going more towards the European location rather than U.S.

Mike Brown: If you think about it, the airplanes coming from Europe to the U.S., that would be your return trip of a U.S. traveler if you decided to go over. Those airplane fares were through the roof during the World Cup. Now that's calmed down, we could see that it's possible that people might do their round trips and their vacations a little later in the season after World Cup is behind them. That's what we're kind of hoping for. The World Cup was inflationary, we'll just put it that way, if you were going to travel.

Vasu Govil: That's helpful, color. I guess a quick one, modeling one, Rick, for you. At the Investor Day, I know you guys had outlined the $125 million-$150 million of annual share buybacks. You guys have already reached that range for the year in the first half. Just how are you thinking about buybacks in the back half, and any incremental buybacks incorporated into the earnings outlook? Thank you.

Rick Weller: Yeah. We don't have any additional numbers incorporated in the outlook there, really. As we said, look, we continue to believe that it's a good use of capital. We'll continue to maintain a positive view toward how we use our capital to repurchase shares.

Vasu Govil: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gus Galá from MCH. Gus, your line is now open.

Gus Galá: Hi, Mike. Hi, Rick. Thank you for taking my question.

Rick Weller: Hi, Gus.

Gus Galá: I wanted to dig into money transfer a little bit, kind of get your state of the union on it. Clearly, there's a mix shift ongoing in the industry towards digital. Just thoughts on how that's accelerating, decelerating. The other interesting topic that we're interested in is, are you seeing areas of stress at the smaller scale operators? I think we saw some of that in late 2023 to 2024. Just any return on that, anything to note interesting on promotional pricing, promotional activity that you're seeing across the industry would be helpful. Thanks.

Mike Brown: Rick, you want to do that?

Rick Weller: Yeah. More to the latter one out there. Yeah, we certainly see some stress on some of the smaller scale operators. I think when you see things like this, it's not necessarily discriminatory among operators. At least as we look at it, and we believe that we benefit from it, is that we've got multiple ways of going to the cross-border market. We've got a well-accepted digital product that performed, again, very nicely this quarter. The Dandelion product, where we get to a broader share of the market of other people that are covering it, and as we talked there briefly on the XE market there.

I think having the digital product really gives us that extra help, especially if it's a customer that doesn't want to pay the 1% remittance tax, excise tax. They can then take advantage of that through the digital platform. We continue to roll out the digital product around the world, where we enjoy the benefit of being around the world rather than just in the U.S. We see the combination of having a digital product, and I'd really say three digital products available to go after the market. It's the direct to the customer, the Dandelion product on a wholesale basis, and the XE product to the small to medium-sized business.

We also kind of look at it and see that the biggest impacts started happening in the second quarter of last year. As we look forward, we also know that the stress declines on a year-over-year basis tapered off as we went throughout the year. That should make it a little bit, I don't know, let's say make the comps possibly a little bit easier. It kind of gets into a little bit more of a normalization, if you will. Once you kind of get, let's say, to some type of normalization, then we can get back to seeing the strength of the business and start moving more into the growth mode.

We're cautiously optimistic that we'll start to see it stabilize a bit more. As Mike said, we saw some signs of that as we went through the quarter. We'll continue to be very motivated to take advantage of our digital product. Yeah, hope that helps. Anything else, glad to help with it.

Gus Galá: Yeah. I guess I just wanted to basically, the thought process, whatever irrationality we've seen in pricing elsewhere in the market, kind of seeing that subside. That's helpful. That's all I have. Thank you.

Rick Weller: All right. Very good.

Operator: Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Josh Levin from Autonomous Research. Josh, the line is now yours.

Rick Weller: Morning, Josh.

Josh Levin: Thank you. Good morning. Two questions. You called out weakness in remittances due to U.S. immigration policies in the second quarter. If Mexican central bank data has actually shown growth in inbound remittances in recent months, maybe you could just talk a little more about U.S. to Mexico for you, and if U.S. to Mexico was down for you, how do we reconcile that with growth in the central bank data? Then just to clarify a previous question, can you get a little more granular what share count underpins the reiterated 10%-15% adjusted EPS guidance? Thank you.

Rick Weller: Well, as Mike said, we started seeing a little bit of improvement in the Mexico stuff here. I'd just have to look at your data, but I don't know that it's growth on a year-over-year basis because last year to Mexico, I think it was down something like 16%-17%. I think it's starting to change direction. It was down significantly and now starting to move in the other direction, which is encouraging. That's on top of 16% down from last year.

As it relates to our share count, when you look at the share count that's in our adjusted EPS reconciliation, we would expect that share count will be another, call it 400,000-500,000 shares less as we go into the rest of the year.

Josh Levin: Thank you very much.

Mike Brown: Okay, operator, if that's the last question, I want to thank everybody for taking their time. I look forward to talking to you in 90 days or so. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.

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