Euronet Worldwide Inc

NASDAQ:EEFT

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Greetings, and welcome to the Euronet Worldwide First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Scott Claassen, General Counsel for Euronet Worldwide. Thank you. Mr. Claassen, you may begin.

[Scott Claassen, General Counsel & Secretary]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Euronet's quarterly results conference call for the first quarter 2022. On this 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'll be making today. Statements made on this call that concern Euronet or its management's intentions, expectations or predictions of future performance are forward-looking statements. Euronet's actual results may vary materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors that are listed on the second slide of our presentation.

Except as may be required by law, Euronet does not intend to update these forward-looking statements and undertakes no duty to any person to provide any such update. In addition, the PowerPoint presentation includes a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures we'll be using during the call to their most comparable GAAP measures.

Now I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Mike Brown. Mike?

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Thank you, Scott, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'll begin my comments on Slide #5. Finally, I am pleased to be here today to talk to you about our strong growth rates in what is typically our seasonally lightest quarter, Q1. The strength of our balance sheet continues to afford us the opportunity to make investments that will allow us to continue to grow the business.

During the quarter, we were able to close the acquisition of Piraeus Bank's merchant acquiring business, we repurchased $70 million worth of shares, we added more than $100 million of cash to our ATMs to support increasing transaction trends that we are seeing and we made an investment in a company called Marker Trax, who previously announced will utilize our REN technology to further grow their business. All of these items are strategic decisions that position us to continue to deliver strong returns for our shareholders.

Our EFT results continue to improve, driven largely by a strong recovery of travel stemming from reduced COVID restrictions across the globe. In fact, we saw a constant currency revenue in EFT to exceed the first quarter of 2019 revenue albeit from a different mix of transactions, with our most profitable transactions still lagging 2019 levels by about 30% as we move into the second quarter.

Epay continued to see strong demand for digitally distributed products. The Money Transfer results were generally similar to the trends we saw in the fourth quarter, with double-digit growth in our direct-to-consumer digital transactions and our U.S. and Europe outbound transactions, partially offset by declines in Asia from the lingering effects of the COVID restrictions, together with continued declines in domestic transfers and investments in our network and our new product expansion.

And while I'm extremely pleased with the double-digit consolidated results, the quarter wasn't without its challenges. We commenced the first quarter under the presence of the Omicron variant. And as soon as we thought we are on the other side of that one, we saw the onset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which created uncertainty across the globe.

Additionally, we have started to see inflation creep into discussions across our business. And while the invasion of the Ukraine and inflation did not have a significant impact on our first quarter financial results, we would be remiss not to acknowledge the additional uncertainty caused by these events. We are pleased that the diversity of our products and markets has enabled our core business to remain strong, and we continue to be optimistic for 2022 in our outlook.

Let's go on to Slide #6, and I'd like to tell you a little bit more about our response to Ukraine. Slide 6. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has left the Ukrainian citizens, including our 26 Ukrainian colleagues, scrambling for safety and necessities. While we can't fathom what they are experiencing, we have undertaken many measures to help support our employees and more broadly, the Ukrainian refugees during this time. We have taken a significant number of steps across the business to ensure that the Ukrainian citizens that have left their country can access their cash. And while we have closed our 450 Ukrainian ATMs, we removed ATM fees from all Euronet ATMs for cross-border transactions made with Ukrainian cards in the bordering countries of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic.

We have added the Ukrainian language as an option across our ATM estate. We have opened our deposit network for cash deposits into the Polish humanitarian action account together with waiving fees on these deposits. We have instituted an indefinite fee waiver for domestic money transfers and money transfer sent into Ukraine that are initiated on the myRia app and on any Polish ATMs. We have also partnered with the United Nations, Santander and BLIK to offer cash assistance to people from Ukraine through the Polish offices of the High Commissioner for Refugees known as the UNCHR. The UNCHR wants to make monthly payments to eligible refugees from the Ukraine. These payments will then leverage our cardless transaction technology to be paid out on Euronet ATMs, of which we have over 8,000 in Poland using a code from BLIK. This provides a convenient way for all Ukrainian citizens to collect money that they may need.

And while all of these measures provide some level of relief for Ukrainian citizens, I am most proud of how our Euronet employees have come together to support our colleagues in the Ukraine. As our Ukrainian colleagues and their families face uncertainty and the need to find safety outside of Ukraine, without being asked our European employees from as close as Poland and as far west as Spain has stepped up to help. They have paid for flights and train tickets to get these families to safety. They have taken these families into their homes. They have provided cash donations for food, clothing and whatever other necessities are needed. I'm extremely grateful for the dedication of our teams every day, that these selfless actions highlight exactly why I am proud to be the CEO of Euronet.

To date, the war has had minimal impact on our financial statements. We are monitoring the impact to travel across Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, where we have seen a downturn in travel to Eastern Europe compared to that -- prior to the invasion. But that seems to have been made up by better-than-expected travel to Western Europe.

Let's go on to Slide #7, and we'll discuss the travel trends in more detail. On Slide #7, you'll see an updated view of the graph we have provided the last couple of quarters. This graph shows actual projected European flight data for this year versus '19, overlaid with our international cash withdrawals for the same period as well as our transaction recovery from non-EU cardholders, Ukrainians who left their country, resulted in a substantial increase in their international transactions, which we do not expect to continue long-term nor do they reflect what the travel recovery trends really look like.

Accordingly, we have presented this graph, excluding these transactions to provide a more accurate picture of what we see in the tourism transaction recovery. As you can see, about halfway through the first quarter, we began to move past the impacts of the Omicron variant, and the actual flight data regained its improvement trajectory, as depicted with the green line on the graph. Eurocontrol has provided 3 scenarios on travel improvement through the year, with the blue line representing the most optimistic case scenario, the extension of the green line representing their base case and the yellow line representing their low case scenario.

In all 3 scenarios, travel trends improve throughout the remainder of this year. Although even in the best case scenario, we don't get back to 2019 travel levels in 2022. In comparison, you can see that our international transaction recovery, represented by the tan line, recovering just about in lockstep with that -- with the actual flight data trends for February and March. However, our most profitable non-EU transactions continue to lag the travel recovery, though we are pleased to see such a sharp recovery in these transactions as COVID restrictions were lifted following the Omicron variant.

Everything we see in the news points to a strong travel recovery this summer. Yesterday, in fact, United Airlines announced that they plan to fly 25% more flights across the Atlantic this peak travel season compared to 2019. Moreover, many sources have noted that travel will only be muted because there's not been enough -- there's not been a full recovery in supply for travelers. Airlines, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions are still struggling with labor and supply shortages. It is quite pleasing to see that it appears we are on the other side of the pandemic, and people are once again comfortable and willing enough to travel.

Now let's move on to Slide #8. Our EFT teams continue to deliver new agreements that will grow this business. During the quarter, we launched JCB card acceptance on our ATM network in Ireland, opening our network to a new population of users. We signed a network participation agreement with Mediolanum Bank, a digital bank in Italy. Now the bank's customers will have convenient access to their money by using any of Euronet's ATMs in the country.

We expanded our deposit network in Poland through an ADT outsourcing agreement with BNP Paribas. And in the U.S., Dolphin signed 16 new ATM outsourcing agreement with Credit Unions across the country. We continue to add more ATMs in our existing markets. During the quarter, we added another 400 deployed ATMs, 415 outsourcing ATMs, and we reactivated 738 ATMs in anticipation of the upcoming travel season that had previously been closed due to COVID or the off season.

While we have seen some compression from supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine, we continue to believe that we will add somewhere in the range of 4,000 to 4,500 ATMs for the full year.

Now we can go on to Slide #9 and discuss the most substantial EFT highlight of the quarter, the completion of our acquisition of Piraeus Bank Merchant Acquiring business. Slide 9. As you likely read in our press release, we have now closed this acquisition of Piraeus Bank's Merchant Acquiring business. And with this purchase, our acquisition gives us a 20% share of Greek's physical in-store acquiring volume and more strategically, a 40% share of the great digital acquiring volume. Piraeus will provide distribution and shared services as part of an exclusive long-term agreement.

The purchase closed on March 15. All of the mergers and operations have been successfully transitioned to Euronet. And Euronet and Piraeus also extended their long-term processing agreement for 5.5 million Piraeus-issued debit and credit cards for another 10 years. Through the acquisition, we will leverage our proprietary technology and expand our omnichannel payment strategy. The Piraeus merchant acquiring business is expected to complement our history of double-digit growth rates. We are pleased to see that this business has continued its growth trajectory since we announced the acquisition in early 2021, and it supports our view that we will end the year with consolidated earnings results similar to those of 2019.

As we always have, we continue to look for ways to continue to deliver value for our shareholders, and we expect this acquisition to contribute nicely over the coming years. As I close my comments on EFT, I think it's worth repeating that we are very pleased with the current travel trends that we are seeing in Europe, particularly in Western Europe. We expect to have a strong travel season this year. And as others in the travel sector, anticipate a full recovery in 2023.

Now let's move on to Slide 10, and we can talk a little bit about epay. Slide 10. The epay team continues to expand its leading content portfolio and distribution channel. As you can see in the epay segment numbers, the first quarter was essentially flat. I'll spare weaving through some of the puts and takes and reiterate that we continue to expect that the epay team will deliver low double-digit earnings growth for the full year this year.

However, as we mentioned in the fourth quarter, as we add more products to epay's portfolio, particularly more promotional campaigns at Cadooz, our B2B unit of epay, the epay results are going to be a bit more uneven through the quarters. That was true in the first quarter where we did not have the same promotional activity as the first quarter of the prior year. However, based on our discussions with customers, we anticipate strong growth in our B2B business and expect more promotional activity in the third and fourth quarters than we have ever had.

So while the comps for the quarterly period are a bit difficult, we continue to expect a nice year of earnings from epay. During the quarter, epay continued to expand digital-branded payments sales through digital distribution methods. We added Apple's app store code service on Paytm, a large mobile wallet in India. We launched Google Play at Cdiscount, the second largest online retailer in France. In Turkey, we added our digital branded payment portfolio to 3 new online retailers. And we continue to expand our digital distribution of mobile content by launching mobile recharge service on Tata Neu, a leading digital platform led by the Tata Group in India.

Our physical distribution also continued to expand. In Spain and Portugal, we launched our digital branded payments portfolio in large retailers including Carrefour, Worten and Eroski. We launched a Nintendo distribution in Harvey Norman and The Good Guys in Australia, and we launched Microsoft Xbox All Access distribution with Ingram Micro in Mexico. And as you can see on this slide, we continue to sign new agreements for more products distributed through all of our channels.

With our continued product development, distribution expansion and technological advantage, we remain optimistic epay will achieve nice annual operating income growth. However, as we mentioned last quarter, and we have seen in the first quarter results, as we introduce more product to epay's portfolio, the epay business results will become more uneven through the quarters, ending the year with an annual growth rate, as I mentioned earlier, that we expect to be in the low double-digit range.

With that, I'll move on to Slide #11, and we'll talk about Money Transfer for a bit. We continue to expand our industry-leading payments and remittance network, which now reaches 495,000 physical locations across 164 countries as well as 3.6 billion bank accounts and 443 million wallet account. While our Money Transfer network physical locations grew at 4% rate over the prior year, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the segment suspended its service to Russia, Belarus and Tajikistan, which resulted in a decline from the year-end count by approximately 20,000 locations.

Our country count was relatively stable as we added 2 new countries to our distribution network. During the quarter, we extended our Walmart agreement, now taking our partnership through 2026. In addition to the renewal of our Walmart2Walmart and international outbound services, we expanded our Walmart2Walmart partnership to Walmart, Mexico. Walmart continues to be a great partner and we are pleased to extend our relationship through April 2026.

We expanded our XE business, reach and product. Customers in Malaysia can now enjoy XE's world-class service, and XE clients in Europe and the Americas can now enjoy the convenience of cash payout across Ria's network. Finally, we continue to expand our real-time payments availability to Kenya and Costa Rica. Our Money Transfer business continues to deliver strong revenue rate -- growth rates, and we expect that the operating margins will improve in the second half of this year as we lap some of the investments we made in technology last year.

Now let's move on to Slide #12, and I'll provide you an update on our technology platforms, beginning with Dandelion. Slide 12. If for some reason it is not registered with you yet, Dandelion is the world's largest international real-time payments network. Since we announced the launch of Dandelion in November, we have continued to improve its reach and functionality. And even more importantly, grow with existing customers, add new customers and develop our sales pipeline. Moreover, as we have continued to review with prospects the breadth and the capability of the network, we are consistently confirming through those prospects that Dandelion is the world's largest and most advanced ubiquitous network available.

As for expansion, Dandelion now has account deposit service to 132 countries, a number we expect to grow to about 150 by the end of this quarter -- second quarter. We accomplished a key milestone this quarter by joining the single euro payments area. You might know this as SEPA Instant Transfer scheme, as a direct participant which will allow Dandelion to offer instant money transfers and payments originated and terminated across the 36 SEPA region countries and the financial institutions participating in the scheme. We're excited to be part of SEPA and we anticipate that this will allow us to expand our product offering to customers across Europe.

We're also making good progress on the sales pipeline. Dandelion is already trusted and used by the likes of Microsoft, Sage, Intact, Zoom and Remitly and we also added Revtel, a Nordic-based telco start-up that offers international calling and financial services to over 1 million users. Our pipeline continues to grow. We have added an impressive list of both established financial institutions and an ever-growing list of fintech, both established and emerging ones.

A consistent theme we continue to hear is the global payment utility Dandelion has to offer folks, has done a great job at attracting customers, essentially enabling fintech customers to more efficiently and effectively get value from their accounts. So stay tuned as we build more and more momentum with Dandelion.

Now we'll move on to Slide #13, and we'll talk about REN. As shared with you previously, fintechs and the emergence of digital banks, coupled with the emergence of real-time payment schemes for consumer and merchant payments are at the forefront of innovation in the digital payments ecosystem. The consumer and merchant or supplier demand for real-time payments and all of the underlying data and settlement requirements provide a great opportunity for Euronet where our modern REN technology is best suited to deliver innovative solutions on the back of these macro trends.

To demonstrate the growing interest and acceptance of our REN technology, we signed an agreement with EastWest Bank in the Philippines. REN will allow the bank to connect to InstaPay, the real-time payments infrastructure in the Philippines. Under this agreement, Euronet will provide an end-to-end service to the bank, including an ISO 20022 connection to InstaPay, facilitating peer-to-peer, peer to biller, peer to merchant transactions and all of the overlays, including request to pay as per merchant payments and more. This is another example of where we are providing this bank with a full complement of the most advanced fintech services currently available in the world.

We also signed a REN self-service and POS merchant management agreement for Banking Network Suriname, known as BNETS. BNETS will be migrating to REN to deliver on the Central Bank's objective to become a national switch for the country and to enhance financial inclusion with the underbanked population of Suriname. In Botswana, we signed an agreement with Spachee, a fintech that works with financial institutions, corporates and retailers. Spachee we will implement REN to provide an integrated payments gateway offering consumers and businesses the easy movement of funds and purchases.

In the United States, we made an equity investment in Marker Trax, a Las Vegas-based fintech company that is disrupting the multibillion-dollar gaming industry with a digital casino marker system. You may remember, last year, we signed an agreement with Marker Trax, which licensed our REN payments technology where REN is powering the Marker Trax solution, including patron identity verification, underwriting, payments processing, settlement and more. While not a requirement for the selection of our REN technology, this equity investment will accelerate Marker Trax' growth, allowing them to capture a larger share of the casino marker market.

Finally, we launched a cross-border QR code processing capability for member banks of PT Jalin in Indonesia with the central bank infrastructures of Thailand and Malaysia. This is an important project. Through this project, consumers from all 3 countries will be able to make and accept instant cross-border payments for goods and services using a mobile app. This is another example of how RTP systems are disrupting the archaic legacy cross-border schemes.

As you can see, we continue to develop the capabilities of REN. We are starting to see an uptick in our sales pipeline as banks and fintechs recognize the significant benefits of this technology. As I close my comments, I'd like to reiterate that it was a good first quarter, particularly from where it started with that Omicron variant. We continue to see improving travel trends. And each day, more and more stories come out supporting strong travel demand. Our technology platforms are making really strong advancements and our epay and Money Transfer teams continue to build networks, products and distribution channels to continue strong contributions to our consolidated results.

With that, I'll turn it over to Rick.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Good morning, and I too welcome you for joining us today. I'll begin my comments with the balance sheet on Slide #15. As Mike mentioned, we are extremely pleased to deliver our third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth on consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA. The strength of our balance sheet allowed us to make investments during the first quarter that we expect will provide for continued value improvements for our shareholders in the coming years.

As you can see on this slide, we ended the first quarter with $986 million in cash and approximately $1.8 billion in debt. The decrease in cash and the increase in debt is the result of the closing of the Piraeus Bank Merchant Acquiring business, the repurchase of approximately $70 million in our shares, cash used to fill the ATMs in anticipation of the travel season and an equity investment in Marker Trax. We generated approximately $20 million in free cash from operations, which partially offset the uses of cash.

On Slide 16, you can see that for the first quarter, we produced revenue of $718 million, operating income of $36.7 million and adjusted EBITDA of $79.5 million. We delivered adjusted EPS of $0.69, a 200% increase from the $0.23 from the first quarter of 2021.

Next slide, please. Here on Slide 17, we present our 3-year transaction trends by segment. EFT transactions grew 44% as a result of improving domestic and international cash withdrawals, together with a continued benefit from a significant increase in low-value point-of-sale transactions in Europe, and low value payment processing transactions in the Asia Pacific market. Epay transactions grew 30%, driven by continued strength in mobile top-up and digital media content distributed through digital channels.

Money Transfer transactions had a net increase of 7%, including 10% growth in the U.S. outbound transactions, 15% growth in international originated money transactions, excluding the Middle East and Asia and a 38% growth in direct-to-consumer digital transactions. This growth was partially offset by declines in the domestic business and a 9% decline in money transfers originated in Asia Pac and Middle East where COVID restrictions continued to weigh on transactions during the quarter.

Slide 18 now, please. We present our results on an as-reported basis. We have started seeing greater impact of FX volatility on our earnings brought about by uncertainty in global events, especially towards the latter half of the quarter, with continued slippage following quarter end. Year-over-year, most of the currencies in the major markets where we operate declined in the mid- to upper single-digit range. To normalize the impact of these currency fluctuations, we have presented our results on a constant currency basis on the next slide.

I'm on Slide 19 now. The strong improvements in EFT revenue, operating loss and adjusted EBITDA were the result of increased domestic and international cash withdrawal transactions driven by improving travel trends as more and more countries lift their COVID restrictions. We also continue to add more ATMs in anticipation of a strong travel recovery this year and a nearly full travel recovery in '23 as predicted by Eurocontrol.

On a year-over-year basis, revenue and gross profit per transaction expanded as a result of improving international transactions, which generate more revenue per transaction than do domestic transactions. Epay revenue grew 3%, while operating income and adjusted EBITDA declined 3% and 4%, respectively. Revenue growth was driven by continued expansion in mobile and digital-branded payments together with the continued growth of the digital distribution channel.

Offsetting revenue growth were 3 items: the previous fourth quarter announced loss of a key German B2B customer; the India government's halting of certain digital games for data privacy concerns, and; lighter year-over-year promotional activity. For perspective, had these 3 items not been in play this quarter, on a pro forma basis epay gross profit and EBITDA would have each grown approximately 9% year-over-year. As Mike said, we do expect to have a much more robust level of promotion campaigns this year. So while some unevenness and again, as Mike said, we'd still expect the full year results to be in the low double-digit range.

Finally, for epay, setting aside mix shift driven by the large increase in the low-value transactions in India and the loss of the Cadooz B2B customer, revenue and gross profit per transaction expanded during the quarter.

Money Transfer revenue grew 8% as a result of 10% growth in the U.S. outbound transactions, 15% growth in international initiated outbound transactions excluding again the Middle East and Asia, and 38% growth in direct-to-consumer digital transactions. This growth was partially offset by weakness in the domestic business and the decline in transactions in the Middle East and Asia of 9%. While Asia has recovered from the COVID restrictions more slowly than Europe, we are pleased to see an improvement in the rate of decline this quarter. And in the first quarter, most of the COVID restrictions in Asia and the Middle East were finally lifted and countries began accepting migrant workers again.

As these migrant workers start to return to work, we would expect the momentum of our Asia Pac and Middle East business transactions to accelerate throughout the balance of the year. These factors, together with continued investments in our network, new products, technology and advertising, resulted in both operating income and EBITDA growth of 2%. Revenue and gross profit per transaction remained relatively stable on a year-over-year basis.

Next slide. Before I close my comments, I'd like to take a minute to update you on our adoption of the new accounting standard related to our convertible bonds. For all the accountants in you out there, this is likely a real treat. For all others, this is likely as dry and as boring as it gets. But since the new standard has an impact on a few lines in our financials, we thought that it would be good to provide you a map of what changed. I don't intend to review all these numbers, but I'll try to, as briefly as I can, to describe the most meaningful impact, that is the calculation of earnings per share.

In the old standard, a portion of the convertible bond had to be assigned to deferred interest and was charged through the income statement as noncash interest expense, about $16 million a year. And the fully diluted shares outstanding included potentially issuable shares determined using the treasury method only, only if our share price was trading above the conversion price of about $189. The new standard eliminates the assignment of the deferred interest as well as the treasury method to calculate the diluted earnings per share.

Essentially, the new standard treats the bonds as if all shares possibly issuable, upon conversion, are outstanding in the diluted share count, whether or not our current share price is greater than the conversion price. While we are obviously obligated to follow GAAP, we have elected to be consistent in the way we present our adjusted EPS, which means that we would not include the dilutive shares in our share count unless our share price exceeds the convertible price.

For those of you that are experienced as I am, meaning older, this is about the fourth time the FASB has changed the accounting for the convertible bonds. Some of you might agree with me that it's going to take a fifth time for them to get it right.

As I close, I'd like to reiterate Mike's comments, that the early travel season trends together with the positive news stories coming from the media and various travel research agencies underscore our optimism that we will see a very good travel season this year. With these improving travel trends, together with the investments we have made to grow the business and our new product developments, we would expect second quarter 2022 adjusted EBITDA to be in the $150 million to $160 million range. This nice sequential increase reflects the more traditional seasonality patterns we see in the business where the first quarter is the lightest, followed by the fourth, second and third quarters.

And finally, this second quarter outlook and the momentum we see in the tourism recovery we continue to be confident the full year 2022 earnings will be similar to those of 2019 despite recent FX pressures.

With that, I'll hand it back to Mike to wrap up the quarter.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Thanks, Rick. As I close, I'd just like to reiterate the confidence that I have in all areas of the business. We are seeing all the right travel -- all the right trends as travel returns, and we are positioning our EFT segment to capture those transactions.

We closed Piraeus Bank merchants acquiring acquisition, which we expect will contribute nicely to our earnings growth in the coming years, epay continues to grow its digital branded payments content and expand its distribution channels. Our Money Transfer team continues to deliver double-digit transaction growth in the U.S. outbound, direct-to-consumer digital and our international outbound transactions, excluding Asia Pac.

We are beginning to see migrant workers come back to Asia, and therefore, we would expect good growth momentum in that region in the quarters to follow. And our tech platforms continue to grow, with REN signing 3 more agreements, bringing the total revenue we expect to more than $90 million over the next 6 years, and Dandelion is focused on enhancing its features and building its pipeline.

To sum it up, after 2 years of crushing travel restrictions due to COVID, I am finally in a good mood. With that, I will close my comments, and we'll be happy to take questions. Operator, will you please assist.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from Peter Heckmann of Davidson.

[Peter Heckmann, D.A. Davidson & Co.]

I have several, but I just wanted to start out -- you may not be able to comment in any real detail. But just curious how you're thinking about that expansion on the Walmart contract to include U.S. to Mexico transfers?

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

We're certainly happy about it. I mean, -- it's once -- I mean, we've been -- as you know, we kind of broke the mold by doing domestic transfers with Walmart almost a decade ago. And -- and this expansion to Mexico is just more transactions. So we're very happy about it.

[Peter Heckmann, D.A. Davidson & Co.]

Okay. That's fair. And then just in terms of the cost pressures and inflation, one of the bigger manufacturers that came out yesterday and talked about some of the impacts on their business. How are you thinking about cost pressures on your ATM hardware purchases as well as POS devices? And how does that play into some of your deployment plans?

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Well, Pete, we've certainly given thought and consideration to it. But in the grand scheme of things, the CapEx in our business for -- whether it's ATMs or POS devices, is relatively small. And -- so we'll deal with the costs as they come up. I mean we are seeing other cost pressures across our business, whether they're from the labor front to the -- to cash delivery and maintenance and things like that.

So -- and as we take a look at our business, I think it's fair to say we probably feel more bullish and optimistic about the tourism recovery now than we would have even at the end of the -- when we announced the fourth quarter results. But we've also now seen a couple of other things creep into the picture. As Mike said, we're seeing inflation hit us a bit more. We're seeing that some of that inflation is having a little bit of impact on some of our customer trends, not in a big way yet, but kind of maybe seeing some leading indicators, and as I mentioned, FX. But despite those, we continue to feel confident that we'll be at a similar 2019 earnings number.

So clearly, some of those moving parts are coming into the picture, but we've seen some robust numbers on the travel side, which give us confidence to be able to manage within that for the P&L for this year, Pete.

[Peter Heckmann, D.A. Davidson & Co.]

Okay. That's fair. And then just on the seasonality on PDMA, on that $100 million of revenue, would it roughly mirror EFT or just a little bit more weighting to the fourth quarter for holiday seasonality?

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

No, it's going to be -- okay. So it's kind of a weird hybrid. It will -- let's not forget that these are lots of POS terminals all across Greece. So the bulk of their customers, you think, would be the locals, they're 10 million Greeks. But let's not forget, there's going to be 33 million visitors on a busy year to Greece. So you get a bit of that travel tick, and then obviously, like everybody else around Christmas time.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Andrew Schmidt of Citi.

[Andrew Schmidt, Citigroup]

Mike and Rick, good to see the travel pick up here, long awaited. Nice to see [indiscernible] arrived. Question, it seems like you have a lot of momentum here, especially EFT going into the second quarter and the third quarter. And I appreciate that there's some headwinds that might be appearing.

But just that -- just reiterating that $7 number or the similar earnings to 2019, is that, in your view, kind of a beatable threshold based on where you sit? Or -- or are there -- are these other offsets, perhaps a slower start to the year, inflation, things like that relatively meaningful for the full year? Just trying to get a picture if you could, sort of size any potential impacts, how you'd characterize that full year EPS picture, that would be great.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Yes, Andrew, what I would say is that we're obviously optimistic about the travel there, but it still is a bit of a wildcard. I would tell you that what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, what's coming out every day in the press, I mean even some information early this morning, I read a headline where Google noted that one -- some of the most significant hits or searches were for travel-related things, I think more specifically, like islands and beaches and stuff like that.

So it's -- we're seeing stuff come out daily that just continue to increase our optimism for a really good travel. So I think that it would appear now there's a greater likelihood that we'll have a better travel season this year than a, let's call it, a lesser one. I even read something, a headline coming out from the U.S. CDC, where essentially now they've said, well, they've downgraded the virus to no longer being considered a pandemic in the United States.

So it would appear as if there's less of a likelihood that a concerning variant would pop up now. So I think right now, it looks like all the momentum is moving in our direction. And if I were to guess, and I think that's what you're asking me to do here, is to guess is what's the likelihood of being better than the $7, I think it's a reasonably decent likelihood. But again, it's a wildcard on just how robust the travel will be.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

And if there will be any of these kind of supply chain issues or labor shortages at airports or whatever that will kind of muck it up a little bit. But I think everything is pointing the same direction, the airlines haven't made money in a long time. They're all trying to staff up, and there aren't going to be any deals going to Europe this summer. Nothing is going to be on sale because demand is high.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Yes. But it's also encouraging, too, when you take a look -- I mean, on the plus side for us, when we look at the FX, the drifting down of the euro, well the euro is now at about [indiscernible] or something like that. It's nearly equal to the dollar, right? So it's a good value for a U.S. person to go to Europe right now.

So I think that given the fact that they've not been able to travel, that the euro is weaker against the dollar, we'll buy them a lot more over there. So those are, let's say, at least some positive factors as well.

[Andrew Schmidt, Citigroup]

Super helpful context, I appreciate that. And then just 2 questions just to wrap up. I guess within -- has your outlook changed from that, sort of, 70% high-value transaction recovery? And then separately, just to wrap up my questions, just curious where you're seeing the most demand from the REN side of things? 2 separate components there.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Okay. So with respect to the 70% we mentioned in the first quarter that we're down about 30% on non-EU transactions. So that seems consistent. That could get better as the season continues. I think the Americans are -- and, which are the second biggest group of non-EU people that would come to Europe. I think they're getting confident so that number could improve. We'll just have to wait and see.

With respect to REN, okay, so this is really interesting, our very first, you might call it, epicenter of lots of deals originated in the Asia Pac area. And primarily, that's because the banks over there feel extremely threatened by all these mobile wallets. And you can read about everybody from Alipay to Paytm, the X and Y and Z in India and all across Southeast Asia. These wallets are kind of scaring the bogies out of banks.

Banks are going to have to be more responsive, less conservative, better technology, et cetera, and REN is the perfect tech stack for that. We are not built for ISO 85, 83 transactions like everybody else in the world, like all these other back offices, which was a standard of delivered 40 years ago. We're built for ISO 20022, all these extra features and functionalities like we just mentioned with EastWest Bank in the Philippines.

So that's where it started. But now we're starting to get deals in South America as well. In Africa, we've got deals cooking. So I think just between us, guys, I bet you the U.S. will be one of the later areas to do this because the banks over here are kind of fat, done and happy right now. So they don't feel the impetus for change and for upgrading their technology.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Moreover, the Central Bank system hasn't moved as quickly either.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

I mean, if you look at all across the world, everybody's put in RTP system. And the Fed now is slow and delayed and won't allow international remittances or anything. Transfer is going into that for many more years. So the U.S. will be slow, but the rest of the world is a lot of the world.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from Vasu Govil of KBW.

[Vasundhara Govil, KBW]

Some really good trends in the numbers here, so that's good to see. I guess my first question, I know you guys referenced sort of some impacts on the business from inflation. Maybe you could help put a finer point there. on sort of what -- how you're seeing those impacts go through the business?

For instance, is rising fuel price and impact to sort of servicing your ATM business? And then also interest rates, how does that sort of impact the interest expense for cash usage in the ATM business?

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Yes. Well, I think in both of those, we're seeing some numbers go up here. If I'm going to take a look at what we've seen, let's call it, kind of a macro relative way, we've seen kind of in the ballpark of $5 million to $8 million potential impact on the cost of our cash going into the ATM. And we've seen probably that much or more in labor costs, in different precincts around the business.

So without going through every line item and as I said earlier, we're fortunate to see some robustness come through in the travel that gives us the ability to cover that. But that kind of gives you an idea of some of the increased costs that we've baked into the expectations for the year.

[Vasundhara Govil, KBW]

That's super helpful. And then I just had a higher-level question on Dandelion, which Mike, you talked about. And you just touched a little bit on sort of the selling efforts there. But maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit more, where are you seeing appetite coming from in the market? Is it mostly banks? Is it fintechs? And when could we start to see some contribution from that initiative? And then I guess the other side of it, is there a lot of upfront investment required as you bring clients onto that platform?

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

I'll answer the second question first. There is some investment. Certainly, we're hiring enough people to deal with the opportunities that we have there, more in the sales and implementation areas. But this isn't going to change our numbers marketedly.

You said who is the most interested? Well, fintechs are kind of like -- kind of fall off the boat obvious, because they want to give their customers as much utility as they can with their apps. And so -- and nobody's got what we have with respect to digital distribution of funds. I mean that's one thing we need to point out. There is no company on the planet that has access to the 4 billion freakin' bank accounts or wallet accounts.

And so that just gives us utility that nobody else has. Plus, of course, our roughly 500,000 cash locations, et cetera, et cetera. So that makes fintechs like us. Banks though, are starting to be the real serious interest players now. Where fintechs is an easy one, but banks, what they now have is they really only have Swift as their methodology for payment. Those payments, those -- that's just a messaging system. There's no compliance, there's no settlement. There's nothing with those guys.

You never know when -- when that payment will find its way to the destination. You have no way to track it along the way. So having a data line system is something that banks can then give to their customers to make them more competitive.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

And I think the other thing that we are seeing out there is that the banks will become more and more interested in this type of product because they're competing with the fintechs. The fintechs are coming in. They're agile. They've been our first customers in because they can quickly snap it in. They don't have to deal with old legacy technology. They're also probably a smaller, more nimble group.

And they're putting these kinds of features in the hands of customers. And when those customers see that they can make real-time payments, and they can see on their phone that their payment was just completed. And I mean those kinds of things, the consumers will consistently gravitate to quicker and simpler and better value.

And I think that as we see more and more fintechs deliver these very highly appreciated products to customers, the banks are playing catch up. And they will need products like this to be really competitive with the fintech. So we're encouraged by what we see out there on both the fintech front and the traditional banking institutions.

[Vasundhara Govil, KBW]

That's super helpful. And then just one final modeling question from me. I guess what level of FX headwind are you now baking into that $7 EPS expectation for the year?

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

We -- in our numbers today include what I'll call is, is generally the rate that we see now like -- I'd say mathematically, it probably was like the last 3 -- or over the last week or so. But it's a more current rate that we have in there.

We take the current view of the rates, and then we assume that, that view is going to hold through the rest of the year. We don't try to outguess it. So it's basically current rate structures going forward.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Operator, I think we've got time for another question or so.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Darrin, are you with us? [Technical Difficulty]

[Darrin Peller, Wolfe Research]

That, from your perspective, are still underwater relative to what they should be, if we didn't have a pandemic. I know that there's been outperformance in Money Transfer.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

Darrin, would you mind repeating that from the beginning? You cut out the first half of the.

[Darrin Peller, Wolfe Research]

Okay. I was just trying to figure out, if you could just summarize the components of the business you think are still reeling underwater and by the magnitude from an EPS standpoint relative to what they should be, if we didn't have a pandemic. In other words, versus '19, but more importantly, even if we didn't have -- it would have grown for '19. So cross-border.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

No, I think that's a really good point. I mean you've got to remember that if we could hit our number that we hope for this year, which is 2019's number, that will be with a change in both epay and Money Transfer, adding they're probably going to be coming in $100 million in EBITDA more than they did in '19 this year.

So that's my kind of ace up my sleeve for next year. As we get full travel in 2023, you would think that we could bring in a big chunk of additional EFT revenue next year just to get to where we were for travel in '19. So that's what's kind of exciting as I've got business as usual growth in all the segments. I'm adding more ATMs, I'm going into more countries, et cetera. But when travel comes back all the way, next year, I've got a big bump there, too. So this is kind of a 1, 2 punch for the next 2 years.

[Darrin Peller, Wolfe Research]

Right. And then above and beyond that, specifically travel, which sounds like it could be an incremental couple of bucks of EPS when it's full force. I think there's other aspects, right? I mean you talked about the migrant workers moving now into market. So again, if we added it all up, I'm just curious what your thoughts are on where we should be if the pandemic never occurred in terms of EPS.

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Yes. Now we'll get into some real fine math here, Darrin. So let me -- I was going to say, let's pull up to at least the scud missile kind of range here. The -- Mike said that we benefited from our other 2 businesses growing nicely over this pandemic period. And he mentioned there that they'll contribute in the order of magnitude, $100 million.

Depending on how you model the splits between your -- the segments, what most of you will find is that you would see that there's probably somewhere in the magnitude of $75 million to $100 million in EBITDA difference on the EFT side of the business, okay? So again, real macro level.

So if I just use the low end of that number, and I think you threw out -- you said, could you add another $1 or $2 to your earnings per share, I think the short answer to that is yes. But just some real macro math, if I use the low end of that $75 million, and I take it times about a 25% tax rate for, again, macro math purposes -- so take that times 0.75 is $56 million, and we've got about 52 million shares.

So that would map out to being a little bit better than a dollar. Now again, we're working with some real macro kind of math here. So I think it clearly would support your thesis of maybe another dollar. Getting up to the $2 kind of range, I think, would be more dependent upon how well our additional owned ATMs would perform.

Since 2019, our ATM count has remained relatively the same, except we've changed out the mix a bit. We've added more of our own ATMs to replace outsourced ATMs that went out of the picture. And many of those outsourced were low-value ATMs. Now to the extent that those ATMs perform better than or at least equal to what we had seen previously, that -- and that was about a 15% shift, well, the -- and our EBITDA of -- and I should really use of op income, Darrin, instead of EBITDA, because that is where we have some dock, we had about $300 million of op income out of the EFT segment in 2019.

So if I take that $300 million times 0.15, $45 million times 0.75 would be $33 million divided by 52 would be $0.65 a share. Now again, I'm working with some real big numbers here, so don't etch any of this in stone. But I think just kind of mentally thinking through it would kind of support a thesis that you said, if we get back to our full travel recovery numbers, we see the benefit of these additional ATM mix change outs we had, we could add another $1 or maybe nearly $2 to our EPS number. So I think that macro math would kind of support your speculation.

[Darrin Peller, Wolfe Research]

One quick -- Rick, just 1 quick follow-up for you rates. Interest rates and what that could mean for the business as they increase, when you think about the cash and the float you have in the business?

[Rick Weller, EVP, CAO & CFO]

Yes. We're anticipating that there's going to be another several million dollars in the interest category here. I would say kind of in the $8 million to $10 million kind of range based upon what we've seen in the rates and what we anticipate what the rate structures could bump up to. But that's kind of what we've got baked in our anticipation.

[Michael Brown, Chairman, CEO & President]

All right. I think, operator, we're after the top of the hour. So with that, I'd like to thank everybody for joining today, and I look forward to talking to you after hopefully a really good Q2. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.