NASDAQ:USIO Usio Q4 2024 Earnings Report $1.64 +0.05 (+3.14%) Closing price 04/25/2025 04:00 PM EasternExtended Trading$1.63 -0.01 (-0.55%) As of 04/25/2025 04:29 PM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Polygon.io. Learn more. Earnings HistoryForecast Usio EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.02Consensus EPS $0.01Beat/MissBeat by +$0.01One Year Ago EPSN/AUsio Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$20.56 millionExpected Revenue$21.10 millionBeat/MissMissed by -$536.00 thousandYoY Revenue GrowthN/AUsio Announcement DetailsQuarterQ4 2024Date3/26/2025TimeAfter Market ClosesConference Call DateWednesday, March 26, 2025Conference Call Time4:30PM ETUpcoming EarningsUsio's Q1 2025 earnings is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14, 2025, with a conference call scheduled at 4:30 PM ET. Check back for transcripts, audio, and key financial metrics as they become available.Q1 2025 Earnings ReportConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptPress Release (8-K)Annual Report (10-K)Earnings HistoryCompany ProfilePowered by Usio Q4 2024 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrMarch 26, 2025 ShareLink copied to clipboard.There are 5 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Hello, and welcome to the UCO's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year End twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's event is being recorded. Now, I'd like to turn the conference call over to your host, Paul Manley. Operator00:00:22Please go ahead, sir. Speaker 100:00:27Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. Welcome to UCO's fourth quarter and fiscal year end twenty twenty four conference call. The earnings release, which we issued today after the market close, is available on our website at uco.com under the Investor Relations tab. On this call with me today are Louis Hoch, our Chairman and CEO and Greg Carter, Executive Vice President of Payment Acceptance and our newly appointed Chief Revenue Officer. Michael White, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Gerry Uffner, Head of Card Issuing and our Chief Product Officer, Houston Frost, will be available during the question and answer session. Speaker 100:01:09Let me remind our listeners that certain statements made during the call today constitute forward looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities and Litigation Act of 1995 as amended and as more fully discussed in our press release and in our filings with the SEC. Let me start off the call today with some highlights from this afternoon's release. As expected, our fourth quarter performance was consistent with our third quarter. Excluding interest income inputted to each of our business units, total revenue was up 3% for the quarter with growth in each card, ACH and output solutions. Margins were up sequentially from the third quarter, primarily attributed to productivity and efficiency enhancements in both card and output solutions. Speaker 100:01:58Expenses were relatively flat and we reported GAAP net income of $600,000 or $0.02 per share, which included a $1,500,000 ERC benefit. This was our third consecutive quarter of positive GAAP net income. All of our electronic transaction processing businesses grew leading to another quarter of record total dollars processed, which exceeded $1,900,000,000 in the fourth quarter, a 36% increase from a year ago. And for the full year 2024, total dollars processed were up a very strong 33% to a record $7,100,000,000 We also continue to generate positive cash flow and in 2024 we generated $2,900,000 of operating cash flow including over $900,000 in the fourth quarter. We used some cash to repurchase stock during the year including nearly $500,000 in the fourth quarter alone. Speaker 100:03:00And in the year, we repurchased nearly $1,500,000 of stock. Even with these purchases and a modest year over year increase in capital expenditures, our cash position rose to over $8,000,000 at year end and we expect cash to increase again this year. Louis will talk more about this and what it means about our confidence in our strategy as well as the new share repurchase authorization the Board approved as we announced today. This was a solid conclusion to a year we aggressively pursued new stable and recurring revenue to replace nearly $12,100,000 in annualized revenue, which we lost from our large COVID incentive program, which expired earlier this year. We are also committed to improving profitability through better margins and operating leverage, as well as continuing to fund operations through positive cash flow. Speaker 100:03:59All of this progress puts us in a very solid position for 2025. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Louis Hoch. Speaker 200:04:09Thank you, Paul, and welcome, everyone. As I reflect on last quarter, I've come to realize that our real story is not only in the current financial results. The real story is in the increasing strength of our organization, the steady improvement in our financial condition, and most importantly, the unique capabilities we have both in terms of innovative technology behind our products and solutions, as well as an organization that is uniquely positioned with a portfolio of diversified electronic payment solutions. Consequently, it should come as no surprise today that I'm happy to announce a new initiative that leverages our competitive strengths to further unlock UCO's full potential and value. And we call it UCO ONE. Speaker 200:05:06UCO ONE will unite and integrate all of our products, services and resources under one brand. This will enable us to better leverage our innovative technology and extensive capabilities to gain an increasing share of our customers electronic payment spend. Instead of individually selling ACH card or prepaid, we will now be selling UCO as a comprehensive solutions provider that offers a multitude of products and services to meet a wide range of customers' needs. Our unified brand will make it easier for customers to understand our value proposition and will be supported by seamless sales support and onboarding process. One UCL brand with one unified IT team, one risk and compliance team, one sales team, one support team and one marketing team. Speaker 200:06:13Already, UCO1 initiative has developed a new client onboarding system that has a single universal application that can be used across all of our product platforms. This should improve cross selling success by making it easier for an existing client to add additional UCO products. For instance, although we have many card issuing clients that do funds disbursing, only four of them use UCO for ACH. Another UCO ONE initiative will shortly launch as a proprietary checkout page tool, which will enable merchants to upload and send invoices. There are other new initiatives underway to complement and capitalize on UCO1. Speaker 200:07:11For example, we have consolidated our risk and compliance teams and are adopting AI for processes like fraud protection, improving marketing and sales efficiency, as well as increasing our own efficiency and productivity. As example, we are using AI driven analysis as a means to improve merchant conversion rates. In addition, one of my personal goals is to test a biometrics AI driven application by the end of this year. As one of my first actions implementing this new initiative, I've named Greg Carter to newly created position of Chief Revenue Officer. All of our sales and marketing resources are now under Greg's direction and his job will be get us pointed in the same direction. Speaker 200:08:13I'm very excited to get this new initiative underway and I'm even more pleased to have Greg leading it. So now I will turn the call over to Greg. Speaker 300:08:25Thank you, Louis, and good afternoon, everyone. Card remains on its growth trajectory led by PayFac. Total card processing dollars were up 15% and transactions processed were up 34% in the quarter, leading to a record full year processing volume of over $1,500,000,000 an increase of 10% from fiscal twenty twenty three. Again, card remains focused on growing our PayFac business where dollars processed were up 44% in the quarter leading to another quarter of outstanding PayFac growth with revenue up 29%. For the full year, PayFac volume was up 28% so that you can see the acceleration in PayFac growth over the course of the year. Speaker 300:09:08As cards growth engine, PayFac now accounts for approximately 54% of total card activity. Our success continues to reflect our growing scale economies as the increase in new ISV programs naturally leads to more new implementations. We are enjoying success signing new ISV agreements and this has benefited from our new marketing initiatives, especially digital. The steady flow of new accounts has enabled us to greatly offset the variability in our performance previously resulting from the timing of implementations. Now, even if some ISVs delay implementation, there are sufficient deals in hands that we are always undertaking new implementations, a great path to rapid growth. Speaker 300:09:56So for instance, as of today, we have 15 new ISVs that are in various stages of implementation, which is consistent from this time a year ago. This year has been an all time high, so I can safely say CARD will grow nicely again in 2025. PracticeSuite, which I have mentioned before, as well as another ISV that caters to associations and is strong in the legal vertical are two clients where we have developed strong relationships that are helping power growth. These are prime examples of how UCO can land and expand as these ISVs are now adding our ACH capability as another payment option for their merchants. Our second growth engine, the boarding of the ISV merchants is also benefiting from increased scale. Speaker 300:10:46Before concluding my remarks, I want to thank Louis for his confidence in appointing me as UCO's Chief Revenue Officer. I just recently attended a conference where I met with some of our clients that were using one of our solutions. I was somewhat surprised to learn they were not familiar with our other capabilities. Now with UCO1, as we speak with a single collective voice and work as one cohesive unit, there is tremendous opportunity to better leverage our various capabilities both on the front and the back end. I think we can all also hold ourselves to a higher standard. Speaker 300:11:21As I've said many times, UCO is the industry's best kept secret. I'm excited to continue to build on this very solid foundation and to lead the UCO1 sales and business development efforts to accelerate growth. Now, I'd like to turn the call back to Louis. Speaker 200:11:38Thanks, Greg. Now that Paul and Greg have done a good job in reviewing many of the high level results for the quarter, let me just add a few additional thoughts. ACH and complementary services are now in full growth mode and has quickly returned to being one of our best performing products. For the three months ending 12/31/2024, ACH electronic transactions volumes were up 34%. Its fifth consecutive quarter of growth, while return checks transactions processed was up 27% and electronic check dollars process was up 44%. Speaker 200:12:31And for the year, electronic check transaction volume was up 18%, while return check transaction processed was up 17%, and the electronic check dollars processed was up 42%. Clearly, you can see how growth accelerated in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned last quarter, ACH has been one of the first beneficiaries of our integrated sales and marketing approach with increased transactions volumes from cross selling adding to our growth rate in the quarter. Our goal is to achieve the same kind of synergy across the entire organization from the implementation of the UCO1. Output Solutions followed up its rebound in the third quarter with even stronger growth. Speaker 200:13:33The electronic documents processed were up 86%, while total pieces mailed exceeded $5,400,000 electronic only documents delivered exceeded $20,000,000 in the quarter. Consequently, output had a record year with electronic documents processed and delivered more than doubling, while electronic only documents processed and delivered exceeded $80,000,000 This increasing proportion of electronic documents processing and delivery is an important driver as electronic documents are more profitable than print and mail. So not only does Output continue to add more of its bread and butter utility, financial institutions and governmental entities clients to its roster, adding to its growing base of recurring revenues, they're also simultaneously increasing the amount of electronic document delivery clients. At the same time, last year, investing in new equipment has enabled output to grow revenues while concurrently reducing costs. This combination of higher margin revenue and reduced costs is showing up in significant profit improvement. Speaker 200:15:06Card issuing made tremendous progress in 2024, backfilling much of the roughly $12,100,000 1 time revenue recognized in 2023 from the expired COVID incentive programs. Card Issuing added nearly 70 new client partner agreements with a focus on longer duration clients, so that there is now more volume arising from reoccurring revenue. Many of our larger client partners are implementing general purpose reloadable gift, healthcare and funds distribution programs. In addition, we implemented over 75 new card programs in 2024. Consequently, for the sixth consecutive quarter, prepaid dollars loaded in the quarter were over $100,000,000 with transactions processed up 36% and purchase volume up 7%. Speaker 200:16:17With a strong finish prepaid card load volume was up 35% for the year and transaction volume was up 45% and purchase volume was up 26%. Both total dollars loaded and purchase volume were all time yearly records. And through a number of new initiatives, card issuings margins continue to improve. Before concluding today's remarks, I'm pleased to announce that the Board of Directors of UCO has approved a new share repurchase program, adding another $4,000,000 to the original authorization and allowing the company to purchase shares in the open market, private transactions and through other avenues. We made significant progress in 2024 and we believe it will lead to further growth in 2025 with organic revenue expected to increase 14% to 16% with steady improvement in our bottom line and financial position. Speaker 200:17:30I'm particularly excited about our new UCO1 initiative and the Board shares our confidence authorizing an increase in the extension of our share repurchase agreement. We appreciate your support as we continue to build value for our shareholders. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back to the operator to conduct our question and answer session. Operator00:18:22Our first question today comes from Scott Buck from H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead with your question. Speaker 400:18:27Hi, good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking my call questions. I guess, Louis, the first question I have is on the guide. Curious what your visibility looks like through 2025 and how should we think about revenue cadence through the year? Do we build to a stronger second half or is the strength kind of spread throughout the year? Speaker 200:18:49It's definitely unloaded as these implementations start to come live. And our visibility for 2025 has changed a little bit, but we're still expecting great growth. Speaker 400:19:07Great. And are we relying on a single or maybe two large customers to meet that 14% to 16% growth or is it more widespread? Speaker 200:19:19Widespread. Speaker 400:19:20Perfect. Thank you. And then second one, just on the repurchase authorization, how are you prioritizing repurchases versus reinvestment in the business or even potentially imminent? Speaker 200:19:36Yes. Well, repurchases, we're authorized to do up to $4,000,000 The Board has given us that. And we will be making purchases in the market if the market conditions allow for that. And we're always looking at M and A deals and we're just very picky on who we acquire. So we continue to generate cash and we could put that cash to work in many different ways and M and A is one of them. Speaker 400:20:09Great. And then last question for me. Just curious if you guys are seeing any change in your kind of sales conversations with maybe local or state governments, just given the change in the administration at the federal level? Speaker 300:20:26From a PayFac side, not really not affected, but from the potential in the disbursement space, I think that might open some doors. But nothing I mean, nothing that we can really comment on now. Speaker 400:20:41Okay. I appreciate that. Thanks for the added color guys. Speaker 300:20:46Thanks Scott. Thanks Speaker 400:20:48Scott. Thank you very much. Operator00:20:50And ladies and gentlemen, ensuring no additional questions, we'll be ending today's question and answer session as well as today's presentation. We do thank everyone for joining. Please have a pleasant day. You may now disconnect your lines.Read morePowered by Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallUsio Q4 202400:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2x Earnings DocumentsPress Release(8-K)Annual report(10-K) Usio Earnings HeadlinesUsio to Host First Quarter 2025 Conference Call to Discuss Results and Provide Company Update on May 14, 2025April 23 at 9:03 AM | globenewswire.comUsio (USIO) Gets a Hold from BarringtonApril 2, 2025 | markets.businessinsider.comSilicon Valley Gold RushA new technology has sparked a modern-day gold rush in Silicon Valley. OpenAI’s Sam Altman invested $375M. Bill Gates has backed four companies in this space. The World Economic Forum calls it “the most exciting human discovery since fire.” Whitney Tilson believes this trend could mint a new class of wealthy investors—and he’s sharing one stock to watch now, for free.April 26, 2025 | Stansberry Research (Ad)Usio Full Year 2024 Earnings: EPS Beats ExpectationsMarch 28, 2025 | finance.yahoo.comI Like Usio's Direction, But Not Enough To Buy Right NowMarch 28, 2025 | seekingalpha.comUsio, Inc.: Usio Increases and Extends Share Repurchase ProgramMarch 27, 2025 | finanznachrichten.deSee More Usio Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like Usio? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on Usio and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About UsioUsio (NASDAQ:USIO), together with its subsidiaries, provides integrated electronic payment processing services to merchants and businesses in the United States. The company offers various types of automated clearing house (ACH) processing; and credit, prepaid card, and debit card-based processing services. Its ACH transaction processing services include Represented Check and Check Conversion for electronic payment facilitation. In addition, the company offers merchant account services for the processing of card-based transactions through the VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB networks, including online terminal services accessed through a website or retail services accessed through a physical terminal. Further, it provides a proprietary web-based customer service application that allows companies to process one-time and recurring payments through e-checks or credit cards; and an interactive voice response telephone system to companies, which accept payments directly from consumers over the telephone using e-checks or credit cards. Additionally, the company offers prepaid and incentive card issuance services; and operates a prepaid core processing platform, as well as provides additional services, such as electronic bill presentment, document composition, document decomposition, and printing and mailing services for various industry verticals, including utilities and financial institutions. It markets and sells ACH products and services primarily through resellers; and prepaid card program directly to government entities, corporations, and to consumers through the internet. The company was formerly known as Payment Data Systems, Inc. and changed its name to Usio, Inc. in June 2019. Usio, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.View Usio ProfileRead more More Earnings Resources from MarketBeat Earnings Tools Today's Earnings Tomorrow's Earnings Next Week's Earnings Upcoming Earnings Calls Earnings Newsletter Earnings Call Transcripts Earnings Beats & Misses Corporate Guidance Earnings Screener Earnings By Country U.S. Earnings Reports Canadian Earnings Reports U.K. Earnings Reports Latest Articles Market Anticipation Builds: Joby Stock Climbs Ahead of EarningsIs Intuitive Surgical a Buy After Volatile Reaction to Earnings?Seismic Shift at Intel: Massive Layoffs Precede Crucial EarningsRocket Lab Lands New Contract, Builds Momentum Ahead of EarningsAmazon's Earnings Could Fuel a Rapid Breakout Tesla Earnings Miss, But Musk Refocuses and Bulls ReactQualcomm’s Range Narrows Ahead of Earnings as Bulls Step In Upcoming Earnings Cadence Design Systems (4/28/2025)Welltower (4/28/2025)Waste Management (4/28/2025)AstraZeneca (4/29/2025)Mondelez International (4/29/2025)PayPal (4/29/2025)Starbucks (4/29/2025)DoorDash (4/29/2025)Honeywell International (4/29/2025)Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (4/29/2025) Get 30 Days of MarketBeat All Access for Free Sign up for MarketBeat All Access to gain access to MarketBeat's full suite of research tools. 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There are 5 speakers on the call. Operator00:00:00Hello, and welcome to the UCO's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year End twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today's event is being recorded. Now, I'd like to turn the conference call over to your host, Paul Manley. Operator00:00:22Please go ahead, sir. Speaker 100:00:27Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. Welcome to UCO's fourth quarter and fiscal year end twenty twenty four conference call. The earnings release, which we issued today after the market close, is available on our website at uco.com under the Investor Relations tab. On this call with me today are Louis Hoch, our Chairman and CEO and Greg Carter, Executive Vice President of Payment Acceptance and our newly appointed Chief Revenue Officer. Michael White, Senior Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer Gerry Uffner, Head of Card Issuing and our Chief Product Officer, Houston Frost, will be available during the question and answer session. Speaker 100:01:09Let me remind our listeners that certain statements made during the call today constitute forward looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities and Litigation Act of 1995 as amended and as more fully discussed in our press release and in our filings with the SEC. Let me start off the call today with some highlights from this afternoon's release. As expected, our fourth quarter performance was consistent with our third quarter. Excluding interest income inputted to each of our business units, total revenue was up 3% for the quarter with growth in each card, ACH and output solutions. Margins were up sequentially from the third quarter, primarily attributed to productivity and efficiency enhancements in both card and output solutions. Speaker 100:01:58Expenses were relatively flat and we reported GAAP net income of $600,000 or $0.02 per share, which included a $1,500,000 ERC benefit. This was our third consecutive quarter of positive GAAP net income. All of our electronic transaction processing businesses grew leading to another quarter of record total dollars processed, which exceeded $1,900,000,000 in the fourth quarter, a 36% increase from a year ago. And for the full year 2024, total dollars processed were up a very strong 33% to a record $7,100,000,000 We also continue to generate positive cash flow and in 2024 we generated $2,900,000 of operating cash flow including over $900,000 in the fourth quarter. We used some cash to repurchase stock during the year including nearly $500,000 in the fourth quarter alone. Speaker 100:03:00And in the year, we repurchased nearly $1,500,000 of stock. Even with these purchases and a modest year over year increase in capital expenditures, our cash position rose to over $8,000,000 at year end and we expect cash to increase again this year. Louis will talk more about this and what it means about our confidence in our strategy as well as the new share repurchase authorization the Board approved as we announced today. This was a solid conclusion to a year we aggressively pursued new stable and recurring revenue to replace nearly $12,100,000 in annualized revenue, which we lost from our large COVID incentive program, which expired earlier this year. We are also committed to improving profitability through better margins and operating leverage, as well as continuing to fund operations through positive cash flow. Speaker 100:03:59All of this progress puts us in a very solid position for 2025. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Louis Hoch. Speaker 200:04:09Thank you, Paul, and welcome, everyone. As I reflect on last quarter, I've come to realize that our real story is not only in the current financial results. The real story is in the increasing strength of our organization, the steady improvement in our financial condition, and most importantly, the unique capabilities we have both in terms of innovative technology behind our products and solutions, as well as an organization that is uniquely positioned with a portfolio of diversified electronic payment solutions. Consequently, it should come as no surprise today that I'm happy to announce a new initiative that leverages our competitive strengths to further unlock UCO's full potential and value. And we call it UCO ONE. Speaker 200:05:06UCO ONE will unite and integrate all of our products, services and resources under one brand. This will enable us to better leverage our innovative technology and extensive capabilities to gain an increasing share of our customers electronic payment spend. Instead of individually selling ACH card or prepaid, we will now be selling UCO as a comprehensive solutions provider that offers a multitude of products and services to meet a wide range of customers' needs. Our unified brand will make it easier for customers to understand our value proposition and will be supported by seamless sales support and onboarding process. One UCL brand with one unified IT team, one risk and compliance team, one sales team, one support team and one marketing team. Speaker 200:06:13Already, UCO1 initiative has developed a new client onboarding system that has a single universal application that can be used across all of our product platforms. This should improve cross selling success by making it easier for an existing client to add additional UCO products. For instance, although we have many card issuing clients that do funds disbursing, only four of them use UCO for ACH. Another UCO ONE initiative will shortly launch as a proprietary checkout page tool, which will enable merchants to upload and send invoices. There are other new initiatives underway to complement and capitalize on UCO1. Speaker 200:07:11For example, we have consolidated our risk and compliance teams and are adopting AI for processes like fraud protection, improving marketing and sales efficiency, as well as increasing our own efficiency and productivity. As example, we are using AI driven analysis as a means to improve merchant conversion rates. In addition, one of my personal goals is to test a biometrics AI driven application by the end of this year. As one of my first actions implementing this new initiative, I've named Greg Carter to newly created position of Chief Revenue Officer. All of our sales and marketing resources are now under Greg's direction and his job will be get us pointed in the same direction. Speaker 200:08:13I'm very excited to get this new initiative underway and I'm even more pleased to have Greg leading it. So now I will turn the call over to Greg. Speaker 300:08:25Thank you, Louis, and good afternoon, everyone. Card remains on its growth trajectory led by PayFac. Total card processing dollars were up 15% and transactions processed were up 34% in the quarter, leading to a record full year processing volume of over $1,500,000,000 an increase of 10% from fiscal twenty twenty three. Again, card remains focused on growing our PayFac business where dollars processed were up 44% in the quarter leading to another quarter of outstanding PayFac growth with revenue up 29%. For the full year, PayFac volume was up 28% so that you can see the acceleration in PayFac growth over the course of the year. Speaker 300:09:08As cards growth engine, PayFac now accounts for approximately 54% of total card activity. Our success continues to reflect our growing scale economies as the increase in new ISV programs naturally leads to more new implementations. We are enjoying success signing new ISV agreements and this has benefited from our new marketing initiatives, especially digital. The steady flow of new accounts has enabled us to greatly offset the variability in our performance previously resulting from the timing of implementations. Now, even if some ISVs delay implementation, there are sufficient deals in hands that we are always undertaking new implementations, a great path to rapid growth. Speaker 300:09:56So for instance, as of today, we have 15 new ISVs that are in various stages of implementation, which is consistent from this time a year ago. This year has been an all time high, so I can safely say CARD will grow nicely again in 2025. PracticeSuite, which I have mentioned before, as well as another ISV that caters to associations and is strong in the legal vertical are two clients where we have developed strong relationships that are helping power growth. These are prime examples of how UCO can land and expand as these ISVs are now adding our ACH capability as another payment option for their merchants. Our second growth engine, the boarding of the ISV merchants is also benefiting from increased scale. Speaker 300:10:46Before concluding my remarks, I want to thank Louis for his confidence in appointing me as UCO's Chief Revenue Officer. I just recently attended a conference where I met with some of our clients that were using one of our solutions. I was somewhat surprised to learn they were not familiar with our other capabilities. Now with UCO1, as we speak with a single collective voice and work as one cohesive unit, there is tremendous opportunity to better leverage our various capabilities both on the front and the back end. I think we can all also hold ourselves to a higher standard. Speaker 300:11:21As I've said many times, UCO is the industry's best kept secret. I'm excited to continue to build on this very solid foundation and to lead the UCO1 sales and business development efforts to accelerate growth. Now, I'd like to turn the call back to Louis. Speaker 200:11:38Thanks, Greg. Now that Paul and Greg have done a good job in reviewing many of the high level results for the quarter, let me just add a few additional thoughts. ACH and complementary services are now in full growth mode and has quickly returned to being one of our best performing products. For the three months ending 12/31/2024, ACH electronic transactions volumes were up 34%. Its fifth consecutive quarter of growth, while return checks transactions processed was up 27% and electronic check dollars process was up 44%. Speaker 200:12:31And for the year, electronic check transaction volume was up 18%, while return check transaction processed was up 17%, and the electronic check dollars processed was up 42%. Clearly, you can see how growth accelerated in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned last quarter, ACH has been one of the first beneficiaries of our integrated sales and marketing approach with increased transactions volumes from cross selling adding to our growth rate in the quarter. Our goal is to achieve the same kind of synergy across the entire organization from the implementation of the UCO1. Output Solutions followed up its rebound in the third quarter with even stronger growth. Speaker 200:13:33The electronic documents processed were up 86%, while total pieces mailed exceeded $5,400,000 electronic only documents delivered exceeded $20,000,000 in the quarter. Consequently, output had a record year with electronic documents processed and delivered more than doubling, while electronic only documents processed and delivered exceeded $80,000,000 This increasing proportion of electronic documents processing and delivery is an important driver as electronic documents are more profitable than print and mail. So not only does Output continue to add more of its bread and butter utility, financial institutions and governmental entities clients to its roster, adding to its growing base of recurring revenues, they're also simultaneously increasing the amount of electronic document delivery clients. At the same time, last year, investing in new equipment has enabled output to grow revenues while concurrently reducing costs. This combination of higher margin revenue and reduced costs is showing up in significant profit improvement. Speaker 200:15:06Card issuing made tremendous progress in 2024, backfilling much of the roughly $12,100,000 1 time revenue recognized in 2023 from the expired COVID incentive programs. Card Issuing added nearly 70 new client partner agreements with a focus on longer duration clients, so that there is now more volume arising from reoccurring revenue. Many of our larger client partners are implementing general purpose reloadable gift, healthcare and funds distribution programs. In addition, we implemented over 75 new card programs in 2024. Consequently, for the sixth consecutive quarter, prepaid dollars loaded in the quarter were over $100,000,000 with transactions processed up 36% and purchase volume up 7%. Speaker 200:16:17With a strong finish prepaid card load volume was up 35% for the year and transaction volume was up 45% and purchase volume was up 26%. Both total dollars loaded and purchase volume were all time yearly records. And through a number of new initiatives, card issuings margins continue to improve. Before concluding today's remarks, I'm pleased to announce that the Board of Directors of UCO has approved a new share repurchase program, adding another $4,000,000 to the original authorization and allowing the company to purchase shares in the open market, private transactions and through other avenues. We made significant progress in 2024 and we believe it will lead to further growth in 2025 with organic revenue expected to increase 14% to 16% with steady improvement in our bottom line and financial position. Speaker 200:17:30I'm particularly excited about our new UCO1 initiative and the Board shares our confidence authorizing an increase in the extension of our share repurchase agreement. We appreciate your support as we continue to build value for our shareholders. And with that, I'd like to turn the call back to the operator to conduct our question and answer session. Operator00:18:22Our first question today comes from Scott Buck from H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead with your question. Speaker 400:18:27Hi, good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking my call questions. I guess, Louis, the first question I have is on the guide. Curious what your visibility looks like through 2025 and how should we think about revenue cadence through the year? Do we build to a stronger second half or is the strength kind of spread throughout the year? Speaker 200:18:49It's definitely unloaded as these implementations start to come live. And our visibility for 2025 has changed a little bit, but we're still expecting great growth. Speaker 400:19:07Great. And are we relying on a single or maybe two large customers to meet that 14% to 16% growth or is it more widespread? Speaker 200:19:19Widespread. Speaker 400:19:20Perfect. Thank you. And then second one, just on the repurchase authorization, how are you prioritizing repurchases versus reinvestment in the business or even potentially imminent? Speaker 200:19:36Yes. Well, repurchases, we're authorized to do up to $4,000,000 The Board has given us that. And we will be making purchases in the market if the market conditions allow for that. And we're always looking at M and A deals and we're just very picky on who we acquire. So we continue to generate cash and we could put that cash to work in many different ways and M and A is one of them. Speaker 400:20:09Great. And then last question for me. Just curious if you guys are seeing any change in your kind of sales conversations with maybe local or state governments, just given the change in the administration at the federal level? Speaker 300:20:26From a PayFac side, not really not affected, but from the potential in the disbursement space, I think that might open some doors. But nothing I mean, nothing that we can really comment on now. Speaker 400:20:41Okay. I appreciate that. Thanks for the added color guys. Speaker 300:20:46Thanks Scott. Thanks Speaker 400:20:48Scott. Thank you very much. Operator00:20:50And ladies and gentlemen, ensuring no additional questions, we'll be ending today's question and answer session as well as today's presentation. We do thank everyone for joining. Please have a pleasant day. You may now disconnect your lines.Read morePowered by