Unity Software Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 4, 2023

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

You for standing by.

Speaker 1

My name is Brianna, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Shift4's First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad.

Speaker 1

Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Tom McCrowan. You may begin your conference.

Speaker 2

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to ShiftForce First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call today are Jared Isaacman, ShiftForce's Chief Executive Officer Taylor Lauber, our President and Chief Strategy Officer and Nancy Dissmann, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast on the Investor Relations section webinar website, which can be found at investors. Shiftforce.com. Our quarterly shareholder letter, quarterly financial results and other materials related to our quarterly results have all been posted to our IR website.

Speaker 2

Our call and earnings materials today include forward looking statements. Call. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and our actual results could differ materially as the result of certain risks, uncertainties and many important factors. Call. Additional information concerning those factors is available in our most recent reports on Forms 10 ks and 10 Q, call.

Speaker 2

The related GAAP measures and reconciliations are available in today's quarterly shareholder letter. With that, let me call turn the call over to Jared. Jared?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. So we are pleased to report a reasonably strong start to the year, including quarterly results that we believe will put us on pace To meet or exceed our previously provided guidance ranges, we set quarterly records for end to end volume, gross revenue less network fees and free cash flow. Our performance was driven by momentum within our high growth core, contribution from new verticals and ongoing success converting gateway volume to our end to end service. Our 2023 plan assumed a likely pullback in consumer spending.

Speaker 3

For the most part, we did not observe any concerning spending trends in the quarter. January February exhibited typical spending patterns, but we did see spending moderate towards the end of the quarter. Early March was in fact strong, quarter, including record weekends around St. Patrick's Day, but there was some softness in the last week of March. This does seem consistent with commentary provided by others.

Speaker 3

We are cautiously optimistic on April data, but the real test will be in May June, where we would typically expect to see seasonal strength. So while we have positively revised our guidance for the quarter, we are taking in account and watching closely this data. It is important to emphasize that today restaurants represent approximately 40% of our total N10 volume compared to around 55 percent of our volume back in early 2019. This percentage shift occurred despite growing restaurant volumes and is due to our rapid growth in hotels, new verticals and larger enterprise merchants to our mix. On that note, We currently have roughly 50 merchants processing more than $100,000,000 of annualized volumes on our N10 platform and an additional seventy that are in the addressable gateway only population.

Speaker 3

We expect this trend of adding large enterprise merchants either through us converting a gateway customer or simply winning a net new merchant to continue and only accelerate as we expand internationally. This diversification is what gives us the confidence to raise guidance even in the face of what is still an uncertain economic environment. So now on to our quarterly performance and results. For the Q1, we generated 66% year over year growth in our end to end payment volume, 36% year over year growth in gross revenues and 34% year over year growth in our gross revenue less network fees, which were all quarterly records. Our high growth core continued to be the primary driver of our growth with an increasing contribution derived from newer verticals such as sports and entertainment, sexy tech, Travel and Leisure and Gaming.

Speaker 3

We are very proud of our overall profitability, which is derived from the following four factors: A, continued momentum serving high growth enterprise accounts, which require less overhead growth in new and predominantly card not present verticals, which require less hardware Our Gateway Sunset initiative, where we are deleting unnecessary parts and properly monetizing the value of our gateway services D, consolidating legacy POS brands and a direct sales model in support of our Skytap POS program. All of these initiatives have either reduced or eliminated growth CapEx requirements relative to prior years and enhanced the overall unit economic model of our services. I'll focus the rest of my comments on 3 areas, our High Growth Core, new verticals and our global expansion initiatives. So with starting with High Growth Core, at Shift 4, our High Growth Core does continue to be the primary engine of growth. And as a reminder, our high growth core includes the entirety of our business at the time of the IPO and is our core integrated payments offering built on a library of over 500 mission critical software integrations and over $150,000,000,000 of gateway volume available for conversion as of March.

Speaker 3

With many years of success executing on the strategy, we are still clearly in the early innings of our gateway conversion, sunset and further monetization strategy. Our win rates between net new merchants and gateway conversions along with their associated take rates all remain consistent and stable. A component of our high growth core also includes our new restaurant POS system named Skytap. Like last quarter, we've added thousands of new systems with our quarter and our Q1 volume growing at over 300% on annualized growth rates. We are uniquely positioned in our ability to offer our Sky cab POS across multiple verticals we serve, including stadiums, theme parks and hotels.

Speaker 3

So for example, this past quarter, We successfully renewed and expanded agreements with 2 major hotel clients, which also includes them promoting Sky Cab in their restaurant locations throughout their franchise. Considering our strong presence in hotels and our close relationship with software companies that serve hotels, We believe this new business pipeline for Skytap is very promising. Additionally, Skytap POS capabilities are evolving quickly. We recently entered into partnership agreements with OpenTable and Restaurant 365, the 2 leading providers of online reservation and accounting software for the restaurant industry. As a reminder, the in sourcing of our restaurant distribution late last year was timed to coincide with the launch of our new cloud based Skytap POS products offering.

Speaker 3

This important initiative served 2 purposes. 1st, It substantially improved the margin cash flow and unit economic model of our POS offering by pivoting to a more direct sales model. So this initiative not only eliminated a recurring commission expense from existing accounts, but also from all new accounts going forward since we essentially hired 400 of our best partners as a component of the in sourcing initiative. So we basically acquired a costly variable expense and took on additional overhead in markets that we know we're going to have a lot of demand for Skytap. The results of which we believe are working out very, very well so far.

Speaker 3

2nd, it also allowed us to gradually sunset several of our legacy POS software brands. So So as a reminder that includes Future Paws, Pozitouch, Restaurant Manager and HarborTouch and basically unify and energize our development, engineering, sales and service efforts to a single product strategy, which is Skytap POS. So this represents a significant efficiency gain that we believe will play out over many, many years and enable us to continue to grow rapidly without having to add headcount. It also freed up resources and capacity to run the playbook of acquiring another legacy POS software company, cross sell their customers' payments and eventually migrate their customers to our modern Skytap software solution. This is very textbook Shift 4.

Speaker 3

So we are back at it again. We completed an acquisition that has interested us for more than 5 years. So this quarter, we acquired a POS software company called Focus Paws, which supports over 10,000 restaurants Representing up to a $15,000,000,000 payment opportunity that are not on Shift4. FocusPOS does not have a direct payment processing capability and instead relies on several other vendors, including an existing software integration with Shift4, which allows us to work very, very quickly. By acquiring FocusPOS, we've added a major talent in the form of MyCAM and together we are executing on a playbook that we know very, very well, Which is by owning the software, we plan to bundle payment processing capabilities and over time convert the installed base of 10,000 plus Focuspa's merchants To use Shift4 payments and eventually migrate to Skytap.

Speaker 3

Like we've shown in the past, we believe this approach represents a very low cost way to acquire established high quality integrated payment restaurant customers. And as Taylor will talk about in a minute, we believe that Focuspa's acquisition will ultimately prove to be an organic revenue and volume contributor in 2024 as we wind down the existing revenue model of the business. So moving away from their historic hardware and software license sales model and instead we will pivot them towards a payments and SaaS strategy consistent with the comparable deals we've done in the past. So in short, we expect minimal revenue and volume contribution in 2023 And our guidance raise can be attributed entirely to Q1 outperformance and a slightly more optimistic view of the 2023 macro picture. So moving on to hotels.

Speaker 3

We signed numerous signature resorts during the quarter, including the brand new 60 Acre Resort property named VAI, which is now Arizona's largest resort. Additionally, we signed 2 large Las Vegas properties, one being an especially new and notable entertainment center. We also signed Woodlox Spa Retreat located in Pennsylvania, the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. These signature wins represent a nice balance between gateway conversions and simply net new wins leveraging the power of our 500 plus unique software integrations. So moving on to new verticals, Our end to end volumes continue to benefit from incremental contributions from merchants within our new verticals, which overall Still have a long runway before reaching steady state levels.

Speaker 3

We define new verticals as consisting of all the new end markets we entered into post our IPO, Including sports and entertainment, sexy tech, travel, nonprofits and gaming as well as volume contributions from international expansion, APMs, which is our alternative payment methods and crypto donations. It's worth reiterating that as we continue to expand internationally and partner with international gateways In APMs, like PayPal, we may not be directly settling funds for those payment transactions. The impact of which is that our gross revenue And gross revenue less network fees will essentially be the same. Bringing this to your attention so you can take that into consideration when modeling future gross revenue in the context of international and APM volumes becoming an increasing portion of our mix. The overall ramp in new verticals witnessed late last year Continued into this quarter with a nice uptick in volumes from our stadium and entertainment vertical, including incremental ticketing volumes, travel, gaming and of course, our strategic enterprise relationships.

Speaker 3

Our recently announced partnership with PayPal also began to ramp throughout the quarter. In Sports and Entertainment, we will process all food and beverage volume for the Washington Commanders of FedEx Field as well as the Chicago White Sox, where we will process not just concessions at Guaranty Field, but all their parking and retail too. In College Sports, we signed an agreement to process food and beverage with the University Arkansas and Oregon State University. Outside of sports, we also signed all the 6 Flag locations in the U. S.

Speaker 3

For their food and beverage operations along with a ticketing and payment processing agreement with popular water park in Denver called Waterworld An all food and beverage processing for Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. In ticketing, we are live with Paculin, We are processing all ticketing for the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, including advanced sales for non sport performances, athletics as well, which includes advanced season ticket sales. In gaming, we went live last week in 7 additional states throughout our partnership with BetMGM and 2 online operators currently in integration are adding OCT for their go live, which is anticipated later this quarter. Shift4 signed agreement with Light and Wonder, the leading cross platform global games company in the digital and brick and mortar casino verticals. Specifically, Shift4 will provide processing for Light and Wonder's ATOM product, which is a cashless gaming solution for table games.

Speaker 3

Atom enables players to access funds via debit card transaction without leaving the table. Initial support will be in the U. S, but we are also adding Canada. Moving on to nonprofits. We entered 2023 following a year of remarkable growth in the number of nonprofits joining the Giving Block marketplace despite an otherwise really challenging year for crypto in general.

Speaker 3

We added over 1,000 non profit clients last year, bring our current roster of nonprofits connected to our donation platform to over 2,000. The pipeline to cross sell card processing to this space has grown considerably, especially when you consider over 150 nonprofits currently on our platform process more than $100,000,000 of annual donation volume. As a result, The initial $45,000,000,000 plus cross sell opportunity we sized for you when we initially announced the Giving block a year ago is now well over $50,000,000,000 of cross sell. The $50,000,000,000 represents just the donation volume associated with our existing non profit customers. The total charitable giving opportunity we're pursuing is over $450,000,000,000 We are still investing in capabilities, including smart donation forms, recurring billing, ACH and integrations to important third party donor management software.

Speaker 3

We've recently added key enhancements to our products such as stock donations, peer to peer fundraising and donor accounts, all of which we believe will increase our right to win the traditional card sell card cross sell, Which is why we pursued the Giving Block in the 1st place. I'd highly recommend you to check out the Giving Block's 2023 Annual Report on Charitable Giving, which can be found at thegivingblock.com for more key stats on the industry. Moving on to global expansion. As I've mentioned many times over the last 18 months, we're on a payments 3.0 journey. We're expanding organically and inorganically all over the world, following a signature strategic merchant relationship and then bringing all the products, services and integrations that made us successful in the U.

Speaker 3

S. Into those new markets. To that end, international expansion remains our number one capital allocation priority, both in terms of our M and A pipeline and organic investment initiatives. We are still awaiting regulatory approval from bank regulators in Europe regarding our acquisition of Finaro, which remains the final obstacle to get this deal closed. We recently met with the Finaro team in Europe as well as the regulators and believe the deal will close in approximately 90 days or less.

Speaker 3

Unfortunately, European Banking Regulators have had some high profile and high priority matters that have captured their attention in the last few months. We have made great use of this time though between signing and closing. So over the last year, we've completed technical integrations between Shift 4 and the Finoro platform. We have begun processing live card not present transactions and now card present transactions. We have collaborated on commercial opportunities, international expansion priorities, marketing and go to market strategy and the consolidated organization and operating plan.

Speaker 3

Quarter. As a reminder, our 2023 guidance does not include any contribution from Finaro, Which we will update accordingly following the deal closing. We are currently processing international volume in connection with the PSP we acquired last quarter And also benefiting from their Stripe like offering, which is focused on developers and online card acceptance tools for our enterprise customers. We currently offer these online capabilities now in over 40 countries. Our organic expansion into Canada, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe is on track to be completed this year, and we are exploring a number of M and A opportunities that will expand our reach into LatAm, Africa and APAC.

Speaker 3

Before handing the call over to Taylor, I wanted to provide some additional comments on how we are currently thinking about 2023, our capital allocation priorities and our general attitudes towards success. We have been consistently forthcoming in expressing our concerns about the operating environment, including highlighting our concerns as early as March of 2022. As a result, our guidance and entire budgeting process has been informed by our view that current market conditions will test the sustainability of consumers' willingness to spend. Our upwardly revised guidance assumes consumer spending remains reasonably stable with the low end assuming a mild recession. Given this uncertain climate, we've been laser focused on controlling expenses and continue to plan for our headcount to remain as flat as possible for the year.

Speaker 3

Our preference is to take advantage of the recent tech layoffs, including at several companies we admire to upgrade talent where appropriate. I believe that is the responsible way to navigate the year ahead. Consistent with prior quarters, our top capital allocation delivering on our Payments 3.0 global expansion requirements. We have a strong pipeline of opportunities ranging from completely transformational to strategically significant and smaller tactical tactically beneficial transactions. We are generating a lot of cash, ending the quarter with an adjusted net leverage ratio of 2.5 times.

Speaker 3

Considering our stronger cash position, We have elected to make some small investments in facility upgrades, while at the same time closing and consolidating a number of our operating locations. We also began making investments in internal system replacements to include a new sales force CRM, which we believe will improve the efficiency and productivity of our workforce. Considering our strong balance sheet and our present EV to EBITDA valuation being below prior buyback levels, Our Board has authorized up to $250,000,000 in share buybacks. While we are prepared to be opportunistic with this authorization, We are admittedly excited about a variety of other avenues available to create shareholder value. As a public company, it's Pretty typical to spend earnings calls patting ourselves on the back and celebrating successes.

Speaker 3

I do want you to know this isn't the real Shift4 attitude though. I can assure you, as a management team, we pretty much only talk about the things we don't do well at all. To that end, We are constantly improving our products, customer experience and internal processes to ensure we are always in a position to win, no matter how challenging the operating environment. We believe that even small incremental improvements can have a powerful compounding effect over time and we'll get there by following the Shift 4 way, which is all about embracing radical ownership, staying flat, taking out all the parts, being procedurally driven and executing with urgency. This is the way.

Speaker 3

With that, I'll turn the call over to our President and Chief Strategy Officer, Taylor Lauber. Taylor? Thanks, Jared,

Speaker 4

and good morning, everyone. I'd like to provide some context around Jared's remarks regarding the operating environment, an update on Finero and then our capital allocation priorities for the remainder of the year. As a reminder, we have multiple avenues for growth that are unique to Shift4. Dollars 150,000,000,000 of gateway volume, tens of thousands of software customers who are technically integrated to us but using others for payment processing, an emerging franchise in several new verticals and very little presence internationally. In pursuit of all of these, we tend to grow in roughly equal proportions with 50% coming from gateway conversions and 50% being net new customers.

Speaker 4

And unlike other payments companies, virtually all of our volume growth comes from customer additions as opposed to industry growth. Although our growing presence in e commerce and international payments should be a nice tailwind for us. To give you just another way of thinking about the embedded opportunity, if half of our incremental volume growth this year were to come from gateway conversions, We would only need to convert roughly a third of that to exceed our medium term guidance and still have nearly $100,000,000,000 remaining on the Gateway. This is without adding a single new customer. For the quarter, our volumes came in better than our internal expectations despite the modest softening Jared mentioned in late March.

Speaker 4

A notable contributor in the quarter was from our first transactions in, which we've been discussing with you all for several quarters now. We are still getting familiar with the volume cadence from our new verticals, including the timing for such things as season ticket sales For the total time an enterprise merchant takes to fully ramp their volumes after integrating to our platform. Fortunately, we have several enterprise level merchants that we quarter. Now I know are still in the ramp stage of their full volume potential. Our blended spreads are a reflection of a growing contribution from new verticals and enterprise accounts.

Speaker 4

International expansion and alternative payment methods will help balance this spread moderation as we pursue our payments 3.0 strategy. But you should expect lumpiness as large merchants activate and ramp. Based on our updated guidance, we would anticipate our blended spreads to average around 65 basis points for the full year. It is important to note that several factors may influence our spreads from quarter to quarter. I pointed out one example in large merchants, but quarter.

Speaker 4

Evolving seasonality, international business and APMs all have an impact on the blended spread within a quarter. To the extent volume exceeds our guidance, it is likely that benefits from increased travel this quarter from spring break through the Easter holiday and had an easier comp in January in light of Omicron's impact a year ago. Spreads across our various cohorts in the hydro core remain very stable.

Speaker 2

In In regards to Panera,

Speaker 4

our team is fresh off a European trip and meeting with the bank regulators. This is a final step in closing. The final step in closing is for our regulators to notify us that our application is complete, which triggers a 30 to 60 day clock for final approval. To date, we have yet to be notified that our application is complete and our plans are to notify investors either via press release or 8 ks upon hearing about this status. Our advisors believe we are still on track to close Fenero by the end of June despite some unanticipated delays.

Speaker 4

I'd also like to mention that we have been very impressed with the team at Fanaro and are excited to have this acquisition close. Once the deal closes, we anticipate providing an update call on the expected financial contribution from Finero for calendar year 'twenty three and updating our guidance accordingly. Turning to capital allocation. In early April, we acquired FocusPOS for $45,000,000 This is a restaurant software point of sale provider with an installed base of over 10,000 restaurants that are not using Shift4. The company is profitable, generating roughly $7,500,000 in revenue and $4,700,000 in EBITDA in 2022.

Speaker 4

However, the card payment volume associated with this installed base of restaurants running Focus Paws is roughly $15,000,000,000 We anticipate this we believe this acquisition was completed at reasonable valuations for a standalone business, distribution capabilities and provide downside protection due to the existing revenue and profitability. We do not place any weighting to the existing economics in our guidance because our plan will mean pivoting the existing revenue model towards payments as we convert customers. Over time, this population will have the opportunity to upgrade the Sky tab as well, Which is what Jared mentioned earlier. As we've been mentioning for a few quarters now, we continue to put distance between ourselves and the competition. We believe our disciplined growth strategy, massive opportunity to convert existing customers, balance sheet and strong cash flow generation puts us in rarefied air quarter.

Speaker 4

Despite the uncertain climate, this attracts both talented candidates and acquisition targets who see an opportunity to join Shift4 and win at an accelerated pace. We are investing a significant amount of resources towards M and A as a result. The environment for both tuck ins like FocusBaus and transformational deals is as ripe as we've seen in the decade. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, Nancy.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Taylor, and good morning, everyone. In the Q1, we delivered impressive results, quarter, including quarterly records for volume and gross revenue less network fees. We also delivered meaningful year over year improvement in our adjusted free cash flow consistent with trends witnessed over the past several quarters. For the quarter, total Q1 volume of $22,300,000,000 grew 66% compared to the same period last year. Q1 gross revenues were 547 percent from the same quarter last year and gross revenue less network fees were $200,000,000 an increase of 34% over last year.

Speaker 5

Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $89,300,000 and our adjusted EBITDA margins for the quarter were 45%. Our quarterly results were driven by the continued strength of our high growth core, momentum in our new verticals and improved economics earned from our gateway customers and higher unit economics resulting from our decision to in source a large portion of our go to market distribution in connection with the launch of Skytap. Call. As a reminder, this was a strategic decision to gradually sunset and consolidate legacy POS software brands and establish a direct sales team to promote Skytap POS in many major markets. As expected, we 76 basis points a year ago and 71.1 basis points last quarter.

Speaker 5

The sequential decline in spreads from Q4 to Q1 quarter was driven by the new strategic enterprise agreement signed last quarter with a major hospitality operator and a stronger mix toward lower take rate merchants in our new verticals against what is seasonally the slowest quarter for our higher take rate restaurant customers. We expect the ongoing mix shift towards larger price accounts to average down spreads. And as Taylor mentioned, we would anticipate our blended spreads to average around 65 basis points for the full year, quarter, though can vary quarter to quarter. Again, the spread compression is entirely a function of rapid volume growth from our strategic enterprise accounts and new verticals. Spreads in our high growth core remain stable.

Speaker 5

We continue to be pleased with our margin expansion. For the Q1, our nearly 45% adjusted EBITDA margins represented roughly 1500 basis points of expansion compared to Q1 of 2022 levels. We delivered this margin expansion despite ongoing growth related investments, including international expansion, new vertical expansion, The SkyTab product launch and ongoing talent upgrades across the organization. Additional opportunities to further improve margins are quarter. Still on the horizon, including the ability to in source processing for which we spend about $25,000,000 per year.

Speaker 5

Call. Our adjusted free cash flow in the quarter was $58,300,000 and our adjusted free cash flow conversion was 65%, well above our full year guidance of 52% plus. We are taking advantage of some of our free cash flow out performance, as Jared mentioned, to consolidate, upgrade and expand our facilities and to replace our legacy internal systems with more modern sales force based applications. Capital expenditures for the quarter included $3,500,000 toward these initiatives. We remain highly committed to a disciplined approach to cost management, while continuing to balance investments to support our growth.

Speaker 5

Net income was $20,400,000 for the Q1. Quarter. Net income per Class A and C share was $0.26 $0.24 per share on a basic and diluted basis, respectively. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $44,400,000 or $0.51 per AMC share on a diluted basis on 86,400,000 average fully diluted shares outstanding. We are exiting the quarter with just over $817,000,000 of cash, $1,800,000,000 of debt and $100,000,000 undrawn on our credit facility.

Speaker 5

Our net leverage at quarter end was 2.9 times and approximately 2.5 times when adjusted for the contribution of all recent initiatives based on the trailing 4 quarters of adjusted EBITDA. Our strong balance sheet and free cash flow profile will continue to allow us to invest in the business, pursue our strategic priorities and opportunistically repurchase shares as Jared mentioned earlier. Turning to full year 2023 guidance. We are increasing the low end of the range for our KPIs and the high end of the range as well for volumes, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Quarter.

Speaker 5

The increase in our guidance reflects the Q1 outperformance and is tempered by cautious optimism regarding the current operating environment. When we introduced our guidance in late February, we indicated our ranges accounted for a variety of business and economic scenarios, quarter, which proves appropriate in hindsight given the events of the Q1. Since introducing the guidance, we believe the macroeconomic climate has only become more uncertain and the low end of our guide continues to contemplate modest headwinds in consumer spending. The high end of our guidance implies a continuation of recent trends. Regardless of the operating environment, we remain confident in our ability to deliver best in class growth and profitability among our peer set.

Speaker 5

Call. As Taylor mentioned, Fornaro is not included and we'll be adjusting our guidance when the closing date becomes certain. Our updated guidance for 2023 includes total end to end volumes of $104,000,000,000 to 110,000,000,000 representing 45% to 54% year over year growth. Gross revenues of $2,550,000,000 to 2,700,000,000 representing 28% to 35% year over year growth. Gross revenue less network fees of $920,000,000 to $955,000,000 representing 26% to 31% year over year growth and adjusted EBITDA of $420,000,000 to $440,000,000 representing 45% to 52% year over year growth.

Speaker 5

We anticipate adjusted EBITDA margins to expand approximately 600 basis points at the midpoint of our guidance ranges, up from our prior assumption of approximately 500 basis points and adjusted free cash flow to be at least 225,000,000 versus $200,000,000 previously. As a reminder, this guidance does not include Fennaro or any other contemplated M and A in 2023. With that, let me now turn the call back to Jared.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Nancy. And operator, we are ready to take questions. Operator?

Speaker 1

Call. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question with one follow-up question. Thank you. Your first question comes from Rayna Kumar with UBS.

Speaker 1

Your line is now open.

Operator

Good morning, Jared and team. Congrats on the new sports and entertainment wins. I noticed some of these wins include food and beverage concessions, while others just include ticketing. What are some of the factors that enable you to gain the ticketing processing as well. And do you see this as an opportunity for some of your existing sports and entertainment customers that you do not currently do processing of ticketing for.

Speaker 3

Hey, sure. Rayna, thanks for the question. And Yes, I think this really just comes down to timing of existing agreements these sports teams or leagues have with existing providers. So, it's actually contemplated in our agreements with many of the sports and entertainment venues that we previously announced As well as the ones going forward to get all of the processing. So as we mentioned this quarter, I mean, we have examples where we picked up parking and retail merchandise sales.

Speaker 3

Of course, ticketing is the prize. So the idea is as going forward, we'll try and capture ticketing upfront, which should be a lot easier now that we add integrations to pretty much everyone but Ticketmaster. But as well as our existing customers that we previously announced over the last couple of years, When their agreements roll off with their current providers, it should be an easy switch to flip. So I mean, I can already think of one other major NFL stadium That we announced probably 18 months ago that since that time, their ticketing agreement has expired and is moving over to Shift 4. So That should be the pace going forward.

Speaker 3

It's really just contractual timing.

Operator

Got it. Very helpful. And then you have 24 end to end customers over 100,000,000 in volume that were gateway conversions. Can you provide what that number was a year ago? And and what you think the timeline will be to convert the remaining 70 plus on to the gateway on the gateway.

Speaker 3

Sure. Sure,

Speaker 4

Raina. I'll hit that. This is Taylor. We don't have a specific count that we've disclosed from a year ago, although I will say that the Gateway Sunset efforts that we endeavored Last year did deliver a significant portion of that 24. So we've been saying for a while publicly now that We've had increased success with enterprise customers.

Speaker 4

So I'd be comfortable saying more than half of that 24 has joined at some point over the last And I want to be too specific, but since around March of last year. And That obviously gives us increased optimism about the remaining 70, but it will remain to be seen.

Speaker 3

Yes. I think, Rana, just to point out, one stat that's also interesting is of the approximately 50 end to end customers that we have today that process in excess of $100,000,000 in volume. It's like virtually half, like right on the mark is net new wins. So we've been rather consistent about this since Our time as a public company that every month, I mean, it just seems very close to about 50% of our production comes from net new wins and 50% Come from conversions from our gateway. So while there's still a massive population, 70 plus on our gateway of 100,000,000 plus customers to move over, the addressable market is still quite large And that represents the half of our production every month.

Operator

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Timothy Chiodo with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. You mentioned a comment on the restaurant end to end mix now at roughly 40%. You've also made some directional comments around hotels in the past and the shareholder letter has a graphic that can kind of get us to a sense of new verticals.

Speaker 6

I was hoping you could just round it out and just put a little bit of a finer point on the updated end to end mix by vertical, maybe Going in hotel, retail, other and putting a finer point on new verticals. And then I have a brief follow-up on the guidance.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, Tim, I can take first crack at that and then invite Taylor, Tom and for Nancy to weigh in further. We don't have that data in front of us. It wasn't our intention to provide a full breakout by even subvertical within high growth core. I think the point is going back to March of 2022, I mean really a year ago, I was on earnings call saying, look, I don't know how long the $100 Cakes are going to last, right?

Speaker 3

I mean, the exuberance that was in, especially the restaurant vertical has been something we've been expressing concern about for over a year now. I mean, going into the year ahead, with reflecting on our guidance, we raised volume a lot. We're more cautious on gross revenue less network fees, specifically because restaurants are the highest take rate contributor to the business. So the point being is Like we are watching that very, very closely. We're certainly cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, but we wanted to share with our investors that the mix inside the business is rather significant that at a time of our IPO when we were almost all restaurants in the beginning of a pandemic That has shifted a lot.

Speaker 3

Now the first part of that shift in the story was we started taking on a lot of hotels. Now the answer is We have a lot of hotels. We have a lot of specialty retail. We have a lot of stadiums. We have a lot of strategic accounts and sexy tech accounts.

Speaker 3

So The point being, the business is far more diversified that if for whatever reason the restaurant industry starts to have a pullback, Shift4 is far, far better weathered prepared to weather that now than we were at the time of the IPO.

Speaker 4

Yes. And I can just layer in a little bit to kind of stack rank it for you, Tim, the 2nd largest vertical in the quarter was lodging, followed by the new verticals and expansion opportunity we've talked about. Retail and other has been a very stable contributor. So we've got a handful of large enterprise customers. We grow modestly with them.

Speaker 4

We win some on occasion, but it's a pretty stable contributor vis a vis all the other components that have been growing over the last few years.

Speaker 6

Great. That's really helpful context across the board. Thank you both, Jared and Taylor. The brief follow-up is, I know you mentioned this earlier, I just want to make sure we got it right. The Focus acquisition, the revenue streams there currently would be SaaS and then I'm assuming they receive rev share from some of their other partners, The SaaS plus a rev share, but you're including nothing in the current fiscal year 2023 guide or you are including a small kind of token contribution associated with that acquisition.

Speaker 4

So we're including nothing, but let me be specific as to why. Our internal plan for this acquisition is actually that the revenue contribution is diminished in the year that we acquire it, and the profitability is diminished as well. So We want to point out that should the plan not go well, the business will contribute fine on a basis of what we paid for the remainder of the year, but that's not our plan, right? Our plan is that we target that customer base, We deliver them sort of a much more cohesive and bundled software plus payment solution. To the extent the plan works well, we'd expect that that Helps us exceed our guidance goals for the year, but we like to emphasize that in the short term, The financial contributions of the business will be less than what we outlined they were in 2022.

Speaker 3

Yes. Let me just reinforce on Some points here, Tim, because we've run this playbook 3 times before in 2017. Like the first thing that's going to happen, There's 10,000 accounts processing approximately $15,000,000,000 from our competitors. Is whatever rev shares that went into the 7 point 1,000,000 of revenue that Focuspa has had at the time of closing and $4,000,000 or so in EBITDA. Those competitors are going to cut off.

Speaker 3

So like instantly, the business will take some sort of a step backwards. And then over time, as Taylor mentioned, we're going to pivot them away from currently selling hardware and software, which also contributes to our current revenue model and move to SaaS and payments. So like Taylor like to point out, I mean, you're talking about better than 100% organic growth as we're call on this because like you pretty much annihilate their current net revenue model to put them in a path that we know works really well from running this 3 times previously. So yes, for sure, if we're successful converting $15,000,000,000 in payment volume, 10,000 accounts over the next handful of years, that will play out in our results. But it is not factored into our 2023 guide because we're actually going to take the business a little bit backwards to go forward.

Speaker 6

Perfect. Thank you both for both of those questions.

Speaker 1

Your next question is from Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to maybe piggyback on that last question. And maybe you could just talk about kind of the sequencing of executing on this FocusPOS acquisition.

Speaker 7

I mean, when you think about, 1, the financial benefits Of converting that end to end volume over versus the longer term strategic benefits of future proofing the business with The Skytap platform, what does that sequencing look like? Do you do that at the same time? Is it a 2 step process? And Longer term, how do you think about how aggressively to roll out Skytap to this platform and really to all of the kind of legacy ISV platforms that you have?

Speaker 4

So Will, I'll hit the first point and then Jared can walk through the playbook because as he mentioned, this is something we've done a ton. Part of sequencing a transaction like this is we're one half of the negotiation. So I want to point out, This is one and Jared mentioned this, we've been working on for many years in discussion with them. So, the fact that we were able to get it done in April is really exciting, but not necessarily a master strategic plan in that regard. It's just an asset we've been after for a while that we really liked.

Speaker 3

Yes. So in terms of jumping in on the playbook, I mean, in a span of 4 months, we acquired 3 legacy POS providers in 2017 and over a span of several years pivoted their model away from One time software, one time hardware sales towards SaaS and payments, incredibly successful. Now what's the drawback there to that is, while you're supporting lots of software, your support teams. So you're developing on lots of different software. Your merchant facing support teams now have to support lots of different software.

Speaker 3

I mean this was I think a criticism that occasionally Embarrass had over the last couple of years. Now what did we do basically 3 quarters ago? We sunsetted all those brands And really unified everyone around a single product offering, which is Skytap. So that what that did is it freed up our developers, our engineering teams, our service support, our training teams, our marketing teams, I mean, you get so many efficiencies. So now like what I would say is like 90 some odd percent of our efforts We're marching forward in a single direction towards Skytap POS.

Speaker 3

You have some portion of the team that's still supporting those legacy brands because we have and lots of customers on it and some of them are growing, so that's important. And what we've done is been able to free up some resources to take on FocuspaZ. So like On a deal that's in the $40 some odd million range, like this can't be a total focus for the executive team or even the senior leadership team. What it is, is a lot of people who are here in 2017 that know the playbook, know how to run it perfectly well in our middle management team are going to run with the ball on this one. And it's great because again, it plays out as expected over the next couple of years.

Speaker 3

You have 10,000 customers, dollars 15,000,000,000 in volume of merchants that have Already gone past their new business failure period, which is usually the 1st year in business and converting lots and lots of volume over. So this would fall into the camp of like nice tactical wins that you can pick up from time to time as part of our broader strategic plan.

Speaker 7

Got it. Appreciate that color, Jared. And just maybe a follow-up on that last point you mentioned around kind of management team priorities and capital allocation. You have got a lot of initiatives Going on distributors, FocusPOS, KiTab, International, Finaro, do you guys feel like you have capacity as a management team for additional acquisitions from here or should we think about this buyback as sort of a near term stand in as we digest some of the inorganic initiatives you've got going on?

Speaker 3

Yes, it's a really great question. So first of all, if you recall the Shift 4 way, right, the philosophy is that I mean, I largely rob from like a really incredible organization about 2 years ago and started to bring the Shift 4. One of the principles there is to take out the parts, right? Reduce the complexity because parts are costly and parts fail. We've literally been doing that for 2 years.

Speaker 3

The Gateway Sunset initiative, I mean, at one point, we probably had 60 different connections that we had to invest in and maintain to all of our various competitors. We had multiple different legacy point of sale brands that as I mentioned we had to develop on and provide service and support to. We've been spending the last 2 years continuing taking out parts that are costly and that add complexity to the business, Which brings a lot of efficiency without necessarily adding headcount to the organization. So what I'd say is we have far more capacity today than we did years ago. Also, This prolonged period from signing and closing on Finaro has largely allowed us at arm's length to the extent permissible by our advisors to

Speaker 6

work the integration plan. I mean

Speaker 3

so much so that as question. I mean so much so that as we Taylor mentioned in his prepared remarks that we can turn our attention to bigger, more transformational opportunities. So point is, I think we have a lot of capacity. And with respect to capital allocation, Look, the Finaro deal is going to close a quarter or 2 later than what we initially communicated a year ago. Free cash flow is way up.

Speaker 3

I think we have other priorities that we'd rather deploy capital into. But as I mentioned in my remarks, on an EBITDA valuation basis. We're inside of where we were buying back previously. So we can be opportunistic a little bit with a little cash and we probably thought we'd have had a year ago and still have plenty of capacity for other inorganic and organic investments. I think that's fine.

Speaker 7

Got it. Makes sense. Appreciate you taking the question.

Speaker 1

Your next question is from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Hey, guys. Thanks. Nice quarter. I just I want to follow-up a little more on the international build out. I know that You guys have fortunately been able to do a lot of work to get ready for hopefully when the Finaro deal closes later to go to move pretty quickly.

Speaker 8

And so just maybe help us understand a little more of what that means in terms of what you've done so far, what kind of position you're going to be in when the deal closes, not only with one large customer we've talked about, but just generally, the expansion plans you hope to see internationally from leveraging some of the relationships you have In the U. S. And others. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes, sure. I'll let Jared head

Speaker 4

on the business development aspects of this, but I'll talk about The technical work that's been completed as partners, right? So, as it stands today, Shift4 and Finero are partners And we're technically integrated to each other, meaning that should a, a Funero customer want to process payment volume in the U. S. And settle that to a U. S.

Speaker 4

Entity. The transaction begins at Panero, it's routed to Shift4 and settled through Shift4 systems, all in a cohesive platform for the Panaro customer and vice versa for the ShiftForce customer internationally. So the technical ambitions of The project are largely complete and the most kind of exciting development is the card present transactions that we've been successfully executing against over the past kind of few months, right? So we now have all of the technical pieces in place. There's a lot call.

Speaker 4

On the business development front and there's kind of a 2 pronged set of priorities. There's executing against the big strategic international and e commerce customers that Jared mentioned. And then there's distributing our products that have made us so successful in the U. S. All over the world, think hotels throughout Europe, think restaurants throughout Europe, etcetera.

Speaker 4

So The underpinnings of all that technical work are largely complete. And now it's a question of kind of How we drive the business development priorities and what is effectively a new region.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, Darren, there's just there's so much to talk to on this, right? I mean, We've had so much time to work. I think we've had like 13 months or so since we announced it. So I mean, first of all, we have way more than just one strategic customer that's processing cross border between both platforms.

Speaker 3

So we have several now, like Somewhere in the dozen range and like not an insignificant amount of volume. We've been doing card present transactions in Europe. We've been leveraging our existing 500 integrations that make us special in the U. S. In Europe.

Speaker 3

I mean, for example, one very well known, like restaurant group operator, hospitality operator that I think people we've referenced many times in the U. S. Has locations opening in the U. K. We have people there Doing testing now so we can turn them live.

Speaker 3

That's going to be an awesome success story. So I think you've got organic international expansion into Eastern Europe that we're collaborating with Finarral on to support a very big customer. You've got strategy team work And product team working on how to leverage best integrations in Europe, how to solve distribution. I mean, Europe is going to want a cloud based restaurant POS offering. Quarter.

Speaker 3

How are you going to distribute it and support it in different locations with different language and fiscal requirements? So It's like all so much energy is going into the post marriage phase of an M and A deal that we're just lucky we're able to get ahead on because of such a prolonged signing the close process, not to mention the organic initiatives we're doing in North America like moving into Canada and the Caribbean.

Speaker 4

Darren, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that the Fanaro business has performed pretty well throughout this whole timeframe as a standalone business, right? So We're obviously focused on the grand vision, but part of our M and A strategy is to buy nicely growing profitable businesses Because at our core, we are risk averse.

Speaker 3

To the

Speaker 4

extent we get it wrong, we want a business that's really done it well in its own right before we execute against these first question. So, I do have to point out that business performed nicely over the year, which helps as well. And that shouldn't be a given, given the fact that they Our largely cross border e commerce. 2022 is a tough year for that. Right.

Speaker 8

That's really helpful, guys. Thanks. Nancy, can I just my follow-up would be around margins and free cash? You obviously are showing what you said you would with regard to the improvement in then some. Now that we've had some

Speaker 6

of the initiatives kind of it seems like

Speaker 8

they're in the run right now. I mean, I'm just curious how we should think about going forward. Are there more levers We should be able to see over the next year or 2 and is it just an operating leverage story now, albeit offsetting larger enterprise yields? Maybe a little more color on that would be great.

Speaker 5

Yes, I think it's all of those things. I think the opportunity ahead of us, obviously, I called out the biggest one in the script, which is around processing, right? The opportunity there to still bring that in house is certainly on our roadmap still. So that's the largest one. But I think generally that operating leverage And as we continue to go up market and I know we talked about this a lot last quarter, but the service model, right, just a much more efficient model as we're servicing larger customers, That is still playing out in the mix.

Speaker 5

So I think there's still room. We are making some investments as needed for in house. So some of the non recurring stuff, you'll see that we called that out as kind of one time. But I think as we look at CapEx run rate versus kind of ongoing kind of spread opportunity. We think there is still a little bit more room.

Speaker 5

So you see that in the guide improvement. And We always like to keep a little bit close to the vest, and I think that just comes from continuing to improve the operating internal leverage model and defending the spend. I think A little bit of a joke, right, that Jared keeps pushing for kind of keeping everything flat. And we're probably not quite there, but there's still room to improve where we're at.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thanks guys.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Your next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Thank you, and good morning folks. Good results here. Congratulations.

Speaker 6

Question.

Speaker 9

Hey, so within restaurants, can you speak to the sort of the breakout between say QSRs, maybe mom and pop diner type places, larger places, hotel and restaurant, resorts, things like that, whatever is appropriate. I guess the what I'm trying to get to is to sort of dissect the impact of a downturn across your portfolio. It's becoming a smaller part of Total, but it's still rather large. It's still your largest end market, so.

Speaker 4

Yes, sure. I'll start and say that we're largely in table service restaurants. So they can vary from a single location owner operated, you give a diner example, all the way up to large multinational. So There's pretty broad diversification around that. We've just of recent years, we've been winning more and more In the upmarket space, you mentioned kind of hospitality.

Speaker 4

I think it's worth noting that a handful of our large hospitality wins over the last year involved the opportunity, to market Skytap into their restaurant location. So I think we've got unique pockets to win in hospitality specifically for the food and beverage vertical, but you want to start with table service and then expect that it's pretty diversified across that table service Given the number of brands that we've operated historically in the space.

Speaker 9

Understood. Understood. And Skytap, as it continues to increase penetration, what if you could break out the sort of the relative benefits that you get from say maybe concentration of the sales effort versus winding down other brands. The relative benefits of the various pieces and roughly speaking, how do you expect that from a cadence perspective to kind of continue to hit your numbers? I know it's a multiyear benefit, but would help to understand the cadence of the various pieces.

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, I'm just going to throw out like a general approximation. So And Nancy or Taylor, Tom, jump in to correct me. But if I had to like just give a relatively educated guess, I would think nearly 50% of our workforce supports restaurants. I've said it many times before, like your most labor intense customer is a small restaurant.

Speaker 3

It's also the most costly customer for us to acquire. Lots of hardware. In the past, there were commissions 3rd party distribution. We've largely in sourced that. But I mean, you get all sorts of phone calls every month, new tax codes, various counties, changing the price of menu items, managers quit, you got to retrain new managers, so very labor intense.

Speaker 3

Now imagine that Across 4 or 5 different legacy POS brands. So now you have to know 4 or 5 different software solutions really well. You have develop on them, make them support online ordering, handheld devices, new encryption standards, like it's not super efficient at all. So When I've been pounding the table for the last couple of quarters, we can go into this year staying flat on headcount, upgrading talent and still do more. It's because of all the parts that we're able to take out of the business, which are a lot of those legacy based systems.

Speaker 3

So the idea is we should be able to add lots and lots of new customers And you're going to be able to leverage the capacity already in the organization because you're not having to support so many different software applications anymore. So that's like 1. 2, the actual cost of the hardware to support someone on Skytap is considerably less. Windows based POS systems are very bloated, very expensive SkyTab hybrid cloud solution. It's Android based.

Speaker 3

The hardware is better. It's sexier looking and costs us less to deploy. It also fails less. Not to mention, like the supportability of the product since it's cloud based, we don't need to use like 3rd party remote access tools to go in and see what's going on. We can just kind of log into our own cloud based tools and make updates.

Speaker 3

So like everything is amazing as you migrate to a cloud based solution. Question. And these are benefits that are just going to carry us every single quarter going forward. In addition to the fact that the addressable market, the customers we don't even have yet, call. All want to use a cloud based solution.

Speaker 3

It's just more again, it's more labor intense, more maintenance intense to use Windows based solution. There are 2 cloud based solutions with lots of contribution and good feature set on the market right now, and it's us and Toast. And both are going to have a lot of success because the addressable market is monster.

Speaker 2

Operator, we'll take one more question.

Speaker 1

In the interest of time, your final question comes from Andrew Jeffrey with Truist Securities. Your line is now open. Hey,

Speaker 3

Andrew. Jared, I love the description Of Skytap POS and the advantages that you just discussed. Can you talk a little bit about how you see the evolution path for Skytap. And I'm thinking about potentially being able to go after some of these bigger enterprise customers with SkyTab as a means of further vertically integrating your solutions against What are mostly legacy installed point of sale systems? Yes.

Speaker 3

There's so much to talk about there. So let's just let's start with just like what is our game plan for just winning net like net new customers that are out there knowing that The addressable market is pretty huge, right? So I think there's really only 2 players in this hunt And both are going to do really just fine. And that's toast and us. And we certainly overlap a little bit in the middle of the market.

Speaker 3

Where we're going to differentiate a little bit more is just our access to hotel operators and teaming with hotel property management system providers and stadiums. So like a lot of our stadiums that we're doing all the mobile ordering, the merchandising, the ticketing, Their restaurants have Skytap in them, and we've announced those previously in the past. So that's also like a natural bundle cross sell for us. But the other is hotels. So I mentioned in my prepared remarks and I wish we could have disclosed who they are.

Speaker 3

2 major hotel operators that we have really strong relationships with, We renewed multi year agreements with them and then expanded the scope of those agreements to promote Skytap into all their hotel properties. That's like a huge advantage we have because we have the hotel property management system integrations already. It's already using our tokens and business intelligence product And they're probably using an older costly like they're assuredly using an older costly Windows based POS system. So that's a big advantage for us. The other is just simply we have lots of distribution coverage.

Speaker 3

We in sourced a lot of our best partners all over the country that are in markets we know based on the data we've had for years, we're going to be successful with Skytap on. So that's how we're going to kind of go out and conquer in the U. S. Both Toast and us are certainly going to take advantage of the opportunity to exist globally. We will definitely be distributing Skytap POS in Europe this year.

Speaker 3

I think they're already doing it as well. And then with respect to the existing installed base, so we can unlock lots and lots operational efficiencies by like deleting all those parts I mentioned in the previous question. That's going to be a journey, Right. I mean, we are being very mindful of free cash flow. You start deploying a lot of Skytap POS systems to your existing customers.

Speaker 3

You might get a little bit of a revenue lift from some SaaS revenue we didn't capture previously, but you're deploying hardware. So, like that's how you know by the way when we talk about the results quarter. We're having every quarter that Skytap is going well and that we're not just upgrading existing customers is where we're at with free cash flow. Because if you're trying to upgrade Tens of thousands of customers from their legacy solution to Skytap, like it's going to be costly. It's also something you can't ignore.

Speaker 3

You You're just going to want to be responsible about it over the next 2, 3 years, get everybody on a single product, unlock a ton of operational efficiencies within the organization. That's super helpful. Thanks. I'll

Speaker 2

let you get back to your day. I appreciate all the input.

Speaker 3

Thanks and appreciate everyone joining us on the call today. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Call. This concludes today's conference call. You may now

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Earnings Conference Call
Unity Software Q1 2023
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