FleetCor Technologies, Inc. Aktie

Hello, and welcome, everyone joining today's Corpay Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

And it's now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call to discuss the third quarter 2026 results. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; and Peter Walker, our CFO.

Our earnings release and supplemental materials for the quarter are available on the Investor Relations section of corpay.com. Please refer to these materials for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call along with a reconciliation of those measures to the most applicable GAAP measures.

Our remarks today will include forward-looking statements about expected operating and financial results, strategic initiatives, acquisitions and divestitures, among other matters. Forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release and on Form 8-K and can also be found in our annual report on Form 10-K. These documents are all available on our website and at sec.gov.

So now I'll turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Okay. Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q3 2026 earnings call. Upfront here, I'll plan to cover three subjects: First, provide my take on our Q3 results, share our Q4 forecast and an early preview of 2027. Second, I'll cover our portfolio transformation and M&A progress. And then lastly, I'll share just a few exciting developments since we last spoke.

Okay. Let me begin with our Q3 results. We reported Q3 revenue of $1.38 billion, that's up 18% and cash EPS of $7.54. That's up 32%. These results better than expectations. We had a slightly better macro in the quarter, and our spend management business overperformed.

Overall, organic revenue growth in Q3, 11% that marked six consecutive quarters of double-digit organic revenue growth. Inside that, our Corporate Payments segment accelerated to 18% organic growth, actually 20%, excluding float. Vehicle Payments segment grew 8% right on expectations.

Trends in Q3 quite good. Sales or new bookings up 24% versus prior year, retention stable at 92.2% and improving same-store sales plus 2% for the quarter. We did continue to get meaningful earnings accretion from our 2 big deals, Alpha and Avid in the quarter. So look, in summary, another very good quarter, very clean and importantly, our corporate payments growth accelerating.

Okay. Let me make the turn to our Q4 outlook. We are raising Q4 revenue guidance at the midpoint to $1.37 billion and cash EPS at the midpoint to $7.65. That would be up 27%. We expect Q4 overall organic revenue growth of 10% at the midpoint, led by our corporate payments growth, which we expect to remain in the high teens, and that's consistent with what we've been delivering all year. We do have preliminary October results and have incorporated those into this overall guide.

Assuming we achieve today's Q4 guidance, our full year 2026 results will finish as follows: Full year revenue would finish up 18%. Cash EPS would be up over 30%, and cash EPS of $28 for the full year would be a full $2 higher than our initial $26 guide back in February. So look, a terrific year financially.

Okay. On to a 2027 preview. We are again out looking 9% to 11% organic revenue growth in 2027. Corporate Payments segment, again, we're expecting mid-teens growth or better there. Our corporate payments new sales this year here in 2026, expected to top $0.5 billion. So that provides really an embedded revenue ramp for growth into 2027. We'll also put roughly $2 billion of free cash flow to work next year either on spend management acquisitions or buybacks wherever we see the best return.

All right. Let me make the turn to our portfolio transformation and M&A. Again, we're progressing our portfolio transformation to fewer bigger businesses. The portfolio becoming simpler. Corporate payments becoming larger. We have divested two non-core businesses here in 2026, receiving proceeds of about $1.2 billion. We used those proceeds to buy back over 3 million CPA shares or roughly 5% of the company.

We have launched a couple of additional divestiture candidates that are in the market now. We're also continuing to pursue new and meaningful corporate payment acquisition targets that can further accelerate our mix shift to more spend management.

In terms of performance, our two most recent deals Alpha and Avid exceeding our 2026 accretion targets. We expect together, they'll contribute over $1.40 of cash EPS accretion this year versus our going-in $1 target. We have migrated Alpha's cross-border corporate payments line of business off its IT platform and on to ours, along with its back office compliance and ops functions.

Avid doing well. We expect Avid to double earnings here in 2026 and then materially increase them again in 2027. Maybe more importantly, Avid expects to execute this year with double-digit organic revenue growth, which would be the first in a long time. So these deals aren't just financially accretive, they're making our corporate segment bigger, more profitable and more important to us.

On the Brazil front, we did acquire two Brazil vehicle debt companies last year. Combined, these two deals will grow over 30% this year here in 2026. And those two deals will now represent about 20% of our overall Brazil consumer revenue, so becoming significant. So it makes this vehicle debt adjacency terrific add-on for us. It's really just another example of finding attractive adjacencies around businesses where we already have some kind of built-in advantage.

So look, the important point here is the portfolio rotation. It's working. We're simplifying the company. We're putting more capital behind corporate payments and the assets we bought, they're performing. And you should expect to see even further rotation again next year.

Okay. So last up today, I do want to share just a few exciting developments since we spoke last. So first, on the AI front, we've made some real progress. AI for us is now providing some tangible clients and productivity benefits. We've launched conversational virtual assistance across a number of our businesses being used to help automate our clients' work.

We are incorporating the new AI tools into our client-facing IT development work boosting IT productivity. And we've developed some really cool proprietary AI agents. I'll call out one, our super dealer clone in our cross-border business. It analyzes and recommends hedging solutions across our global client base and uncovers kind of new risk mitigation opportunities that our dealers might otherwise miss. So really exciting. Look, so for us, AI isn't just about productivity. It's also about helping identify opportunities to serve our clients better.

So corporate payments, you may recall that we entered the U.K. market earlier this year with our Corpay Complete spend management solution that leverages our U.S. tech platform and our pretty big presence in the U.K. So this year, with that platform, we've now grown the U.K. spend management volume to over 1 billion annualized exiting Q4 with a $15 million revenue run rate. So it proves our U.S. tech platform can travel internationally. We do have customers, distribution infrastructure around the world. So taking our corporate payments platform to new markets does create additional runway for us.

So last up, we dropped our new, what we call hidden gem video ad on the Corpay website today. It out CP's relative performance within the storied S&P 500 Index. So if you screen the S&P 500 for companies that grow revenue more than 9%, grow profits more than 15% and have margins above 50%, there are 18 companies. And Corpay is one of them joining other elite performers, the likes of Microsoft, Visa, Mastercard and NVIDIA. So look, Corpay combines a pretty rare combination of growth, margins and free cash flow.

So look, to wrap today in conclusion, again, obviously pleased with our Q3 performance. We put up some real growth versus last year and marked again, six straight quarters of double-digit organic growth. Our corporate payments segment, again, high teens growth in the quarter. We are raising our Q4 guidance based on the momentum along with our preliminary view of October. Excited about 2027. We're out looking another year of double-digit organic growth. And again, roughly $2 billion of free cash flow to put to work. And overall, we're building a simpler company with fewer bigger and faster-growing businesses. So lots of progress.

So with that, let me turn the call back over to Peter. He'll provide some additional details on the quarter and our outlook.

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered another excellent quarter with 18% revenue growth and 32% adjusted EPS growth year-over-year, both ahead of our expectations. Organic revenue growth was 11%, our sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit organic growth. The quarter demonstrates the durability of our model. We continue to benefit from strong execution across the business and a favorable macro environment.

Sales grew 24%, same-store sales increased 2% and retention remained healthy at 92.2%. Those results reflect the focus and discipline of our teams as we continue to invest behind the opportunities with the strongest long-term returns.

Now let's turn to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our organic revenue growth in the quarter. Corporate Payments delivered 18% organic growth in the quarter, accelerating from Q2. The performance was driven by continued strength in both cross-border and spend management. We're pleased with the momentum in these businesses driven by new sales growth and strong underlying customer activity with organic spend increasing 24% to $95 billion.

Cross-border continued to deliver strong sales performance with year-over-year sales growth over 25% on an organic basis. The Alpha corporate system migration is substantially complete and the global bank account integration on track for early 2027.

Our spend management business, formerly referred to as our payables business, performed exceptionally well, driven by sales and volume growth. We continue to be pleased with the strong performance of Avid, our minority investment, which is reflected as an equity investment in our financials. Avid continues to deliver sales growth, strength in volume and revenue and EBITDA doubled year-over-year to a record level.

Vehicle payments delivered 8% organic growth, consistent with Q2 and in line with our expectations. The business continues to execute well across the globe. We remain focused on allocating our investments to the highest return opportunities, including investing in vehicle payments to continue high single-digit growth. Lodging delivered 3% organic growth, improving sequentially for the third consecutive quarter. While there's still work to do, the direction of the business is encouraging and consistent with the progress we expected through the year.

In summary, our 11% organic growth was broad-based across the largest businesses. Corporate Payments and vehicle payments, which together represent over 80% of our revenue delivered a combined 13% organic growth rate. These results give us continued confidence in the consistency and compounding of our model.

Now looking further down the income statement. Operating costs increased 9%, excluding the impact of FX, M&A, stock compensation, amortization and a prior year other operating loss of $11 million. The 9% increase reflects growth investments and the cost of supporting higher volumes. Adjusted EBITDA grew 17% to almost $800 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.4%.

The strong margin reflects the high flow-through of revenue growth as well as continued operating discipline. Adjusted EPS grew 32%, driven by strong operating performance, accretive M&A almost 5 million less shares from buybacks and a lower adjusted effective tax rate of 23.4%. The year-over-year decrease in the tax rate was primarily driven by excess tax benefits in the period related to grandfathered stock options exercised.

Turning to the balance sheet. We generated approximately $500 million of free cash flow in the quarter. We ended the quarter at 2.72x leverage. Following the November 2 closing of the maintenance divestiture and application of the proceeds, pro forma leverage is approximately 2.47x and decrease sequentially. Post receipt of the maintenance divestiture proceeds, we had approximately $2.6 billion of total liquidity including $1.7 billion of undrawn capacity under our revolving credit facility.

During the quarter, we repurchased $750 million of stock or approximately 1.9 million shares. Also, the Board approved a $1 billion increase to our share repurchase authorization, bringing total remaining capacity to approximately $1.6 billion. This is another example of our disciplined capital allocation approach. -- maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in the business and returning excess capital to shareholders when it represents an attractive use of capital.

Now let me share some additional information on our updated 2026 full year and fourth quarter outlook. We are raising our full year revenue guidance to $5.35 billion at the midpoint, growing 18% year-over-year. We're also raising full year adjusted EPS guidance to $28 at the midpoint, growing 31% year-over-year.

As a housekeeping item, the $5.35 billion includes approximately $120 million from the two divestitures completed in 2026, which were neutral to adjusted EPS due to buybacks. This $120 million will not be included in our 2027 print revenue.

Our updated outlook reflects the flow-through of our third quarter outperformance, raises fourth quarter due to favorable macro conditions and continued underlying strength in the business and the updated closing date of the maintenance divestiture. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue of approximately $1.37 billion and adjusted EPS of $7.65 at the midpoint.

Before I close, I want to put our midterm opportunity in perspective. We are clear on the direction of the company, build a simpler portfolio of scaled advantaged businesses, expand our corporate payments platform to deploy capital where it can compound value most effectively. Our objective is to continue to be a top quartile S&P growth compounder.

The growth algorithm we outlined in our investor presentation can compound adjusted EPS at more than 20% annually from $28 this year to approximately $50 per share by 2029. That objective is supported by sustained 10% organic revenue growth, cash profit expansion and disciplined share repurchases and accretive corporate payments M&A.

Over time, a larger corporate payments mix and continued investor confidence in our growth model could support a re-rating of our valuation.

So operator, that concludes our prepared remarks. Please open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take a question from Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Another great quarter here. I want to ask about the sales growth of 24%. That's a great outcome. Just curious if you can give us any more color on where you're seeing the strength in the business.

Ramsey, it's Ron. Yes, another good sales number. I just want to point out a huge amount now in our Corporate Payments business. I quoted in the thing for the full year, we're looking at probably $500 million plus of new business. And I want to point out to people that creates because it gets booked, obviously, over the course of the year, right, some as late as November and December. That creates kind of a ramp of 7% or 8% revenue growth in 2027. So sometimes people don't appreciate the power of sales that we make in the prior year in terms of this benefited in the forward year. So -- also Brazil, super good in terms of sales blockbuster, including the vehicle debt thing that I mentioned. So those two would be best. And I'd say our international business maybe helped a little bit by fuel prices also super good. So those three all high performers in the quarter.

Awesome. One quick follow-up for me. Are you seeing any downstream impact from higher diesel prices on credit performance or any other aspects of the fleet side of the business I know the freight's got a role, and I know that freight prices don't necessarily correlate, but I was just curious if you're seeing any impact in the business from just a sustained higher kind of diesel price level.

Yes. I think it helps, Ramsey, a bit on sales, right, higher prices that creates more cost of control. I say a my bid a same-store sales soft is still probably a point or so when the prices being higher, people cutting back a little bit, but nothing significant. As I mentioned, our consolidated business was plus 2% in terms of same-store sales. So 2 of the 11 points come from the client base getting healthy. So fortunately, not much in terms of the impact from the price.

We'll move next to Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley.

Nice results here. Ron, you called out on your prepared remarks, the M&A focus within corporate payments being on spend management. Why is that relative to cross-border? Is that just a function of the portfolio being pretty well rounded out post alpha with the MCA product, and you sort of feel like incremental acquisition can sort of improve the value proper competitors in the core payables business? Just any color there would be great.

Yes. That's a super good question. I would say it's really more timing. So I don't want anyone to leave the call, thank buy more across border. Mostly, it's just trying to digest what we've got. We've done a lot there. We're still digesting Alpha, particularly on the banking side. And so -- we turned our energy starting in the spring over the spend management category both here and abroad. So it's really just that. We want to keep building both of those categories, but the 1 up right now is spend management.

Makes a lot of sense. And then just for a quick follow-up. I'm curious if there's any context you could share on the U.S. Canada corridor in corporate payments in the quarter. Was there any notable take rate pressure we should be aware of that maybe actually made the growth, which obviously incrementally accelerated potentially be a little bit more depressed than it otherwise would have been?

And then stepping back, like as you sort of think about higher levels of FX evolve being good for your hedging business? Like are there instances where customers, for whatever reason, are sort of choosing to wait for Val to reside a little bit before placing those hedging trades? I'm just trying to think about the puts and takes between those two.

Michael, it's Peter here. So on your Canada U.S. quarter question, I would say nothing unusual happening within that corridor. You did ask about kind of the uptick in corporate payments. And so I just wanted to share with you, there's about 100 basis points of, call it, onetime monetization happy within Q3 that we don't know is necessarily repeatable in Q4. So corporate payments normalized is probably more like [ 17 ]. And overall, organic is more like [ 10 ].

Michael, it's Ron. Just to follow up, it was a good question. So we've studied what you said of, hey, when we look at the volatility index around FX, how does it affect things. So we've looked at it over a longer period of time. I think for our business, given the mix it can have kind of up to a 10% help or hurt. But basically, what happens is the timing that you spoke of, it kind of cleans up over a quarter. to your point, if someone is kind of still for a month and the tariff on some of the contracts is running out the base tend to get the thing cleaned up. So I'd say over a quarter, and honestly, over the year, it doesn't have a big impact.

We'll move on now to Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

Very nice acceleration in Corporate Payments. I'm just curious, was there anything specific that drove that inside the business? And then do we think that, that type of growth is sustainable as we move into next year?

Sanjay, very good question, and it was kind of all things firing volume was up crazy good because of my comment earlier about we've been making a lot of sales the retention to get in that business is above the line average is closer to 95%. And I'd say some of the extra juice is we've gotten focused a bit more on the monetization front. So we've got a couple more dances in our repertoire. So said just virtual cards, we did launch earlier this year, debit cards as a way to monetize. And we've advanced what we call kind of paid or ACHs getting paid for ACH. So it would be a mix of those things. volume from, again, continued good retention, crazy amount of sales getting online and then a bit better monetization, particularly here in Q3.

Got it. And then maybe just to go back to the questions on expense management. I think it's the cross-border piece of your story is pretty well known now and appreciate it. I guess when we think about expense management and then you layer in Avid as well to some extent. Like what's the kind of growth rate that business can see over a sustained period, maybe over the intermediate term, like the next 3 years. I'm just curious if it's the same type of growth that the cross-border Corporate Payments business can deliver.

Yes. It's another good question. I mean, the TAM is obviously gigantic, right? Kind of all the domestic indirect spend of the business. And so it's really a function of sales investment there. I think the biggest difference in the two businesses is our cross-border business is super global. 75% of the revenue of that business is originated outside of the U.S.

So think Canada, U.K., Europe, Australia, et cetera. Whereas in the spend management business, even including Avid, it's predominantly a U.S. business today, which is why I called out our interest in Europe, not only doing it ourselves by moving our tech over, but also looking at acquisitions. And so I'd say that it certainly has the TAM to be a beast in terms of the size of the business and the focus that we're on is kind of opening up now additional markets where we can bring the product beyond the U.S.

We'll move on now to Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to ask on the quarter, of course. Just thinking here about the visibility into double-digit growth next year? How would you characterize that the visibility part maybe compared to last year or last couple of years?

Tien-Tsin, good to hear from -- is how I characterize it. And I was saying to people earlier that he talking about the growth of in the company, a [ 10, 13, 19 -- 10, 13, 19 ] and we don't spend enough time on the growth algorithm for revenue, hey, how do you get to 10%. And so I continue to say to you guys, hey, how are sales in the quarter, how is retention in the quarter, how we're saying sales. That is the growth. And so the way we get to 10% is pay the base grows 2%. We sell a bunch, we lose the 8%. And so the beauty particularly as we rotate in the corporate payments is my comment earlier that we sell more of it in the prior period.

So the example that I gave of if we sold, call it, $500 million of corporate payments last year, we already know how much revenue we're going to get from the ramp in 2027 that we didn't get in 2026. And we also have a good sense of how much we get in the current year, like what will we sell like we're up 24%. So we're how much of that print in 2027. So it gives us a pretty wide band, if you think about it, to build the plant the revenue exits and I keep 92% of it, the same-store sales inches up one point or two. I've already got the ramp in the bag and even myself the same amount as the prior year, I know what we print -- so the variables to get to a number, this is the business you can plan. I'll remind you of. So we like that, and I'd say it's even more so in the Corporate Payment space than in the vehicle.

I'm familiar to ADP in a lot of ways. I know you've said that to me before.

That's how I got your partners, a ante model, I chase. You got it.

That's been a durable one for three decades have tracked. Just maybe as my follow-up, I'm just curious because coming off of some of these conferences, digital assets and tokenized deposits, blockchain rails. Any change or surprise in activity there, movement there, Ron?

We just think, Tien-Tsin, we feel clear if the world has caught up to our view. But what I think we would say is we're pretty convinced that people should separate currencies, tokenize to from crypto or Sangos from the rail, from blockchain versus Swift or something else. So our view of the world is the winner will be tokenized yet because you've already -- everyone's already got it and it's what's worked. And that the blockchain is going to be a super interesting additional rail because it's programmable and it's 24/7. So it's the banks, as you see the announcements as they get ready to credit positions that come off of the blockchain 24/7, we see way increase in that rail being used. And so we're still kind of short on the stable going narrative and believe in the blockchain rail coming on as the banks start to move that crediting to real time. So that's what we're behind. We're investing a lot and we see it already. The mix of our business that move from Swiss started to move on to these private blockchain rails and stuff. And so we think the lift in that is going to be quite substantial next year.

We'll move on now to Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

You mentioned investing in the vehicles area to maintain high single-digit growth. Is this just a specific geo or further in sales and marketing or product development? Just help us understand a little bit more about where you're putting it towards and the outcome?

Yes. Darrin, so again, the vehicle business is global. It's here, it's in Europe and in Brazil. And I think we've said repeatedly, we kind of love our competitive positioning even more in Brazil and in Europe, super dominant. We've got leading products and stuff. So -- of the three geos, we tend to spend more kind of incremental money distribution money in those places and the margins are quite attractive and stuff. And so look, we're balancing. We said repeatedly, we're balancing, particularly the sales of tech investment in vehicle versus corporate payments the target trying to keep the vehicle business in all geographies in the high single digits and put most of the money behind, obviously, Corporate Payments. So really no change in approach there, and you should continue to see the best market, the best geography for sale, the second best year and the third, the U.S.

Okay. All right, Ron. Just a quick follow-up on the divestitures. Again, I appreciate the announcement on the -- of another investor this quarter. Just Help us understand how we should think about further divestitures. I mean, should we expect it to be in the vehicles business? Or -- and as you focus on a few large businesses, could we see something more strategic? Just any more color you can give us to update us would be great.

That's a good question, Darrin. So I did mention at the top that we've got a couple additional message of assets in the market now, I think, call it, $1.5 billion to $2 billion, war. And so yes, generally, the answer is you would find smaller niche year vehicle businesses or other kind of non-core, noncorporate payments businesses as the life of candidates. And basically, it's either size. It's small or b, it's TAM constrained. We don't think we can grow at a higher rate.

And so we kind of apply that screen. We study the tax leakage and stuff and pick candidates where we think we can keep simplifying the company, right, have fewer bigger businesses. So it's not so much just category -- the only category we're not divesting obviously is Corporate Payments we're acquiring. But you could see the lodging business and the vehicle business select pieces inside those businesses that don't make sense for us to hold long term that makes sense for someone else to own to be better owner than us. So that's what we're focused on.

And we're being smart, I think, in patient. We're not throw them out of the plane at any price. We're being thoughtful about the state of those businesses. And again, the tax leakage on and selling things like this maintenance 1 where effectively it's a push. -- we can exit the business and get enough proceeds to kind of wash the thing from an earnings perspective. So -- my message to everybody is we're going to keep doing it. We're not liking the super duper rush. We're going to keep you'll see more stuff sold in the next 14 months, and you'll see more stuff acquired in corporate payments. So when we're sitting here a year from today, in addition to the differential growth rates, you'll see the mix keep moving as we acquire corporate payments and divest everywhere else.

We'll move on now to Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer.

I just want to ask on lodging. So you had organic growth improved to 3%, but room nights remain down and revenue per room increased. So could you just talk about how much of the recovery is pricing versus mix? And if you think this recovery is sustainable and just the long-term plans for launching?

Yes, that's another good question. So yes, the rate and the volume is really just what you said, it's mix. So for example, we talked about this emergency kind of client or FEMA that has sporadic kind of uneven volumes and it is super duper cheap. So when that thing flexes up or down, hey, there's a lot of rooms that are achieved right, there's no rooms that are achieved that drives the average room rate up or down. So there's really nothing other than that going on. It's just it has a big swing because, again, it's so cheap.

On the more important question, the recovery question, it is clearly better. I mean let me point out something may be more important. So yes, hey, the lodging business is in positive territory. I think it's lot plus 3 for the quarter. In the size that the biggest business, which we continue to like a lot, we call workforce, which means we go to businesses that have kind of blue collar people that stay kind of blue-collar hotels, that workforce business is up double digit. And so the other smaller Darrin's question, nicer things like insurance or airlines are doing less well. And so it's averaging to that 3% that gives us do better, we think, again, in Q4 on a combined basis.

So the headline is the bigger business in lodging, the important -- the more important one is doing significantly better than a couple of years ago when it was a problem child. And yes, we do think we can make that. It used to be for the first 10 years, we own in a terrific business, and we think we can make get a good business again. It's already pretty good business here in Q3.

The other SA, the jury is still out on those of whether they're fixable or not.

We'll move on now to Ken Suchoski with Autonomous Research.

I wanted to ask about Corporate Payments and the outlook there. You're obviously growing high teens to 20% ex float year-to-date. 20% this quarter. Is there any reason the underlying business wouldn't keep growing at these levels next year, right? You have the 7- to 8-point ramp from new sales retention is great. So that was the first part of it.

And then the second part was just on the reported like corporate payments organic number because you've been absorbing this 200 basis point float headwind and as you lap that and it turns neutral or possibly a tailwind, just help us bridge from where we are today to that mid-teens or better type level. Is that just conservatism necessarily? Or are there other offsets like the onetime monetization this quarter, comps or take rate or anything like that?

Ken, that's another good question. I'd say first and foremost, it's just early days. It's the first of November of the year. We are eagerly working on the plans and try to get precision, right? We're trying to get whatever, $5 billion or $6 billion. So there's a lot of details to do. We're willing to help to your point, to the extent that the sulfur curves become true. I think the thing picks up kind of 25 basis points per quarter next year, kind of $75 million for the total. That will help. That may give us a point or so depending on our deposit balance.

But the main answer to the question of, hey, are we at 15, 17 or 20 is just sales. Like the retention number I keep saying it's like super stable. We have statistics, we have the clients, they like the product. That thing is like super duper solid. And so it's really this level of investment that we put in and the production that we get -- and so I'm making this up, if we sold $550 million instead of $500 million, you can do the math that would add another point or two right to the growth in the following year. So the positive thing is we roll into the next year kind of headway already getting there, right? We've sold enough and retaining enough that if we were yes, we still have a decent growth rate heading into 2027. So the crane the top of it is going to be just what level of sales production do we get.

A good one, a little bit better than this year or a great one lot. So that's why we always say, "Oh, is it 16, 17, 18, what is it? It's really a function of that level of sell-in production.

Yes, it seems like the corporate payment sales are becoming a bigger part of the mix. as well by our estimates. Just one on Avid because the results are really impressive there. I mean doubling earnings year-over-year, I think you talked about growing double-digit organically exiting this year. So just maybe give us some detail on what's driving that? Is it sales investment you put in? Is it product changes? Is it pricing? What's driving that? And how durable is that?

I think it's been great to them if you talk to the guys there getting out of the public things that could work on the business, I think, has helped that the management team there is focused and we, with our partner have been kind of super clear on, hey, these are the things and you're on and we've way stepped up the sales investment in the business. we pushed some of the monetization things that we think were laid down, and we cut the cost structure a bit or I should say, rightsize the cost structure to the thing.

And so -- and a lot of that happened throughout 2026. I can't remember, we closed the thing in the fall about a year. So by the time we get the plan in place and go when we were kind of into '26. So one of the reasons I say that the '27 numbers will be better, it's a lot of the things that Mike and Dan are putting in there going during this calendar year. And so some of that will just literally roll into 2027.

So it's just in a -- they always had a really good business, like happy clients, higher retention stuff. I think it hasn't been product. They've got a good product. It's really been on the economics that we bring a way aggressive pricing and cost and economic profit lends to a business. And so they've kind of taken that thing and they're getting way better numbers, and they're going to get better numbers. I think the 27 will be materially better. And we think even better after that, they signed some significant new partners this year and stuff. And so the business is really performing well.

We'll move on now to Dave Koning with Baird.

And I guess my question is on Brazil. You gave a nice disclosure about Brazil revenue dollars. And from looking at that, if I kind of back out currency, it looks like that accelerated a little bit in Q3, maybe the higher teens more mid-teens in the first half of the year. And I guess you have that phenomenon, but then transactions, total transactions decelerated just a bit. So maybe describe kind of what's happening maybe the Google ad search data, all the Brazil stuff.

It's doing well. And the Google thing is still not working well, although the government and Google have agreed that it will be back. They're just running through some papers. So we think certainly no later than January 1, that thing will be back. But the Brazil thing is doing well for a few reasons. One, it's a giant in the core business, and I think keeps coming along. But the two accelerants have been this vehicle debt thing that I named, which probably doesn't sound that clear, but we've got 7 million or 8 million people that have accounts and have total accounts and stuff. And so we literally go to them plus 80 million people that don't go on the toll road and we say, look, we're connected to every DMV, which is 36 in Brazil and can immediately reregister on your phone and let you know if you have a ticket and when it's due and pay it online and stuff. And so that add-on thing is just crazy growing. We've got like a 5% share of the business. It's compounding. It's got 5x the TAM because you can drive anywhere and still need a registration and stuff.

So I do want to point out that although it seemed like a bit of a side show when we entered, it's left the side show status, right? It reaches 20% of the business and compounding faster. The second one is we're just killing it on the B2B side. This thing called Valley which in English pause on the translation, but basically suppliers or shippers have to pay for drivers to go places. And so we came up with a Super Duper electronic product that if you're like a serial manufacturer or shipper and you got to pay like 100 truckers to go somewhere, the product literally defines exactly where they can go and when so that it's optimized. The shipper doesn't pay any more than they need with stuff. And so we are selling crazy amounts of that product like the sales growth is at 40%. So those two things are going at crazy levels of growth on top of a pretty sound, solid business to begin with.

We'll move next to Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America.

I wanted to start first with just Corporate Payments. I mean you obviously have very nice spend growth there. I think there's a little bit of a gap to the revenue growth, I think the spend was 24%, revenue was 18%. You did talk a little bit about better monetization. And I think you've talked in the past about citing bigger clients. But maybe just remind us what's driving the gap? And how should revenue continue to grow? Meaning should this gap increase as we get into '27 and '28.

It's just mix, like, if we -- I think we said we signed a giant elephant to it took a while to eat -- it's at a completely different kind of a rate. So you move a ton of volume through the system and you move less revenue through. So no, there's nothing structurally between the spend levels and the revenue we're obviously focused on revenue more than spend. But you do raise a good question, which is we have a lot of spend. I don't know what it is 80%, 85% of the spend that we move billions and billions that is not monetized. And so -- as I mentioned earlier, that is the assignment but we are on trying to widen the ways that we can pay merchants that's useful to them beyond virtual cards. And we're seeing a lot of success, as I mentioned, with debit cards. That's another way to pay. We've got a lot more people to take this kind of recon and fast instant kind of ACH product. And so we did get a lift, as I mentioned, in Q3 on that. So that would be the other thing. We keep selling a lot, like I mentioned earlier, in addition to what's already in the bag. And then basically try to push this monetization a bit higher with some of the merchants.

Got it. Maybe then just switching quickly to Avid. You mentioned -- you scope doing quite a bit of detail on it. And progress they've made. But given you have the option to buy the rest of it, I believe, in 2028, does the progress you're seeing now make that increasingly likely? Should we just think about that as a remaining use of capital in 2028? And is Avid part of the $50 EPS guide?

That's another good question. So I don't know, like we have an option, a couple of years out to buy it tomorrow, we could buy it up to whatever 2 years plus from now. So like what we want is what you said, which is to see more progress, I want to see more absolute profitability there so that when we send the capital, we're bringing more earnings into the company. And I do still want to see further acceleration in their revenue closer to our corporate payments book of business. And so we're kind of cheering and help directing from the sidelines to get the company's performance higher. But I would say yes, to your question is that the likelihood of us calling and buying the balance of that company is certainly higher than when we closed on it a year ago. But I'd still say not certain. We'll obviously look at everything else that we can buy with that capital in a couple of years and make the call as we get closer.

We'll move on now to Chris Zhang with UBS.

My first question is about your partnership or relationship with MasterCard and BVNK and specifically focusing on the maybe the cross-border business as MasterCard and BVNK recently launched a Global Money platform. And -- we've been getting some of the questions on whether this is any potential opportunities for you to partner, whether it is some of the competition to your multicurrency account business? And now in your multicurrency account probably approach those clients from a different perspective in the form of local bank account opening. But maybe can you just talk to maybe comparing contracts, some of the differences between the MasterCard and PV&K partnership and your opportunities with them specifically related to the Global Mining platform and multicurrency accounts and whether just in the market, whether you're seeing maybe some of the competition picking up because of some of the newer offerings out there.

Yes. Chris, this is Peter. Thanks for the question. So maybe folks on the MasterCard partnership for a ownership was focused on our cross-border business. MasterCard an investment in us as part of that. And that is a go-to-market to partner with Mastercard with FIs and really sell our cross-border products into FIs. And so what I'd say is that, that partnership has been going well in terms of full pipeline. We signed up quite a few clients. But what we are learning is that FIs are much longer to implement than our corporate clients. So I'd say it's going well, but it's going probably slower than we would ideally like it to be.

The BVNK was -- which is now owned by Mastercard, it's a different partnership where we partner with BVNK to enable our stable coin rails that we established earlier this year. So -- moving to tokenizes currency, we wanted to make sure that we had stablecoins available and we're doing that via B&K as a partner there. And then we've also partnered with JPM using their Conexus network for digital -- I'm sorry, for tokenized currency. So I'd say the Canexus network has really been where we've moved the majority of our volume. We're still not seeing a lot of volume on a stablecoin side.

And Chris, it's Ron. Just to add on to what Peter said about the competition. So like our my view is they're more of a platform kind of provider, and we're more a marketer. So for us, the competition or the opportunity is taking multicurrency accounts to the markets, to the accounts and prospects that we have. So obviously, without we've got a dominant position in the asset management group along with all those fund administrators. .

So as we widen that product to new geographies, we already have built in clients, right? I've got Bank Capital in Boston. I've got bank capital in U.K. I've got a bank Capital in Australia. And so -- and then second, we got a ton, I don't know, 30,000, 40,000 corporate clients, midsized clients that we're signing up thousands every year. The idea of taking these products to the clients that we have as an add-on. So don't mix kind of the supply of the products, if you will, from the marketing. So yes, there's probably more competition in making of the products, but our real advantage is in the marketing of selling of the products.

All right. And Peter, appreciate the color. My follow-up is on the organic growth in the Q4 guide, that's 10%. Do you can you talk to some of the moving parts between that and the 11% is delivered in Q3? And if you were to be more conservative in some of the areas, where would that be? And specifically, I guess, for lodging, do you expect some of the pickup, knowing it's like a smaller piece, but I think basically, it's trending a little lower than previously expected. And then for vehicle, what's kind of the outlook outside of Brazil, especially in North America and the rest of the world.

Yes. So Chris, at the start of the call, I talked a little bit about corporate payments in the third quarter and the fact that we had about 100 basis points of, call it, monetization initiatives that we're not sure repeatable in 4Q. So call that 100 basis points off of the '18 and off of the 11%. So it's really a 10 to 10. So you're seeing really eagle performance between the two quarters. So that's kind of the main takeaway that I would give you. Maybe the other point that I would add is vehicle payments is obviously a little bit of a tougher comp over Q4 of last year.

Yes. Chris, the other thing is just the history of Q3 and Q4. We've got years, 5, 10 years that you guys have. They tend to be super comparable in terms of revenue. In fact, if you look at our guide, probably plus or minus $10 million or so. We do have a lot of staff based on days in which businesses are stronger in Q4 and stuff. And so to Peter's point, it's kind of mostly a mirror image that the print you see in Q3 will look super similar to that in Q4, probably with the one call out Peter just made.

We'll move next to Madison Suhr with Raymond James.

You touched on it a few times just around early traction in the U.K. with Spend Management. Clearly, a huge TAM to go after across Europe. Ron, you touched on the geographic expansion opportunity. So the question is really just how aggressive do you plan to be on rolling out into other countries? And should we think about this as an early 2027 event?

Yes. Madison, it's a good question. I think we wanted to start with this market because it's our second biggest market and find out like can we make it work? Can the platform travel and be adaptive to there? And can we get people trained up and leverage the customers we have and all that kind of stuff. And so we kind of went at it a bit modestly, but that's $1 billion, like from kind of like from zero.

So it was like that's good. So now I'm staring we're staring at the plans for next year and sitting in their submission is to double again the selling investment in that thing. And so also, clearly, we're looking at the deals in those geographies. So I would say that you guys should expect to see more spend management revenue in more geographies that are outside of the U.S., both organically where we send our platform and stand up people, we have people in all these places and tons of salespeople in these places, but also that we may acquire -- customers or products in that region probably do both of those things.

Okay. That's helpful. And then just a real quick follow-up. Just on the Brazil competitive environment. Any meaningful changes to what you're seeing just around new entrants or pricing in that market specifically?

Not really other than I think the banks are getting tired. I think the great idea 5 years ago, Hey, I get something away free, it's going to be great. I think that they're getting a little wary of the thing. And it's got a place where now like 3 or 4 of the banks are literally taking our product and will -- Look, I think at some point, there'll be tired of that, and we'll look forward to that day. But -- our product is still so advantaged at such broader networks than just the toll tag, the free flows, the new thing, which we're on. So we're a high ads, if you will, on that product. And so we'd like the banks to like either charge or go away, but really nothing new right now.

We'll move on now to Dominick Gabriele with Loop Capital.

The business really has turned towards corporate payments. And so when we think about this mix shift over the long term, given it does feel like it could accelerate, I'm looking at your processing cost as a percentage of revenue, and they've ticked down over the last number of years. And I'm just wondering if there's a mix shift benefit across that line item, in particular, given the payments that folks may use or whatever it may be. If you could help us understand some of the mix shift benefits of moving towards more corporate revenue as a percentage of the total in the P&L, I'd really appreciate it.

Dominick, it's Ron. That's a very astute observation. The simple answer is your right to processing economics are better because there's fewer systems. So if you think about like our vehicle business, which is in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil, we probably run six platforms that are specialized, let's say, for the trucking business or the partner business or in Brazil or something, whereas in the corporate payments business like cross-border we run one processing system. And we just closed Alpha's corporate processing system, and it's been management, same thing. And so the operating leverage, if you will, of effectively have running one system with more volume on the flow-through margins to your point against the processing costs are better. So that is the main -- again, this other costs, obviously, we might spend more on selling because we want to try to grow faster and stuff. So I don't want to imply the total margins are better. In fact, it probably not because of the growth rate. But you're on the right thing. It's really scale against a number of processing systems.

Thank you. This does conclude our question-and-answer session as well as our call today. You may now disconnect your lines, and everyone, have a wonderful day.

All right. We have made it to the end of the Deutsche Bank Tech Conference. And of course, we save the best stock in my coverage, at least for last. So very happy to have Peter from Corpay here. Thank you very much for making it. We're excited to wrap things up with you.

Great to be here.

Thanks, Greg. So all right, it turned me off a little bit. But no, no, just going to start off talking about 2Q results, right. Really strong momentum across each of your businesses. Able to raise the guide above and beyond. Some of the macro tailwinds that you are seeing across the business. But maybe just taking a high level step back, tell us what you're seeing across the business that gives you confidence that this momentum is going to sustain into the back half of this year and then beyond that as well.

Yes, happy to. I mean the underlying drivers of the business are strong. We talked about them on the earnings call, right, in terms of sales, retention, same-store sales. We are pleased with Q2 results, but it's obviously our fourth quarter of beat and raise. So consistent strong performance and our fifth quarter of double-digit organic growth. So as we look in the back half of the year, it's about continued execution, and we have a lot of insight into that. So really feel strong about what we put forward in terms of 2026 and our midterm guide.

Great to hear. Before we jump into trends in each of the segments, anything you can share in terms of macro trends or what you're seeing across your businesses? Quarter-to-date, this could be areas like cross-border, FX, demand, Brazil, all of the fun stuff, but anything worth calling out that you would point investors to?

Yes, I would say things are tracking kind of exactly as we expected from the assumptions in our guidance. So nothing material that I would share. I'd say customer activity continues to be strong. Sales continue to be strong and retention. So again, feel good about the quarter and the rest of the year.

That's good to hear. No changes is a good thing. So diving into the segments, I think we should start with Corporate Payments given the importance of that segment of the overall business. Organic growth remains very, very solid, 16% in the most recent quarter. Can you just talk about the underlying drivers of growth across the various aspects of that business? So spend management, cross-border, AP, where are you seeing the most demand in recent quarters, where do you expect the most demand to come from in the near term over the medium term?

Yes, great question. So really pleased with Corporate Payments performance for the first 2 quarters of the year. We delivered 16% organic growth. And what we shared in the call is we expect to deliver similar in the back half, if not a little bit above that. And we're seeing strong performance across all 3 of the solutions you mentioned, right? So commercial card, spend management, commercial card, AP automation and cross-border. What we're really focused on, right, and I love being the CFO of this business because I'm the ultimate customer of our products, right? We're very focused on serving real-world problems for CFOs and their teams. So we're having a lot of success doing that.

The other thing that really excites us when we look at the 3 solutions going forward for the business is, this is a huge TAM, $600 billion TAM for us. And the main competitor that we're facing is the regional and local banks, right? That's who has a lot of this business today. So we believe that we really bring an advantaged product and at the end of the day, our goal is to help businesses save money and we're having great success with that.

Yes, you touched on what was going to be my next question, and you did this great cross-border teach-in a couple of months ago, which was super, super helpful. You talked about the primary competition being these regional banks, right? I guess I keep going back to a question I get all the time is what is preventing the Tier 1 banks, I will refrain from naming them, biggest players globally from entering this space? You guys are clearly growing super-fast, and it's a big TAM, growing rapidly. So why aren't the bigger banks getting into this? Why aren't other fintechs getting into this? What is kind of preventing additional competition from coming in and infringing on this great opportunity you have in front of you?

Yes. Great question. I think one of the key points of the cross-border teach-in that we did was really to explain the structural issue in terms of serving middle market clients that we're addressing with our cross-border offering. So if we look at the enterprise segment, they -- the enterprise customers are primarily served by the Tier 1 banks. And the Tier 1 banks are very happy to serve those customers. I'm an enterprise-level customer. I'm serviced by several Tier 1 banks, and I get great service.

When you move down to the middle market, middle market does most of their banking with regional or local banks. They're not typically with the Tier 1 banks. And so the Tier 1 banks they really lack the FX and global capabilities in order to service those customers. So that's really the opportunity for us. We don't see the Tier 1 banks coming down to compete with the Tier 2 banks and take these middle market customers because they've got such an opportunity in the customers that they serve today. So I think that's a really important distinction to make.

When you look at the overall kind of market of this, right, we believe in the middle market, it's about $160 billion revenue TAM for us. Whereas you look at the enterprise, it's about a $700 billion TAM. So the enterprise is the largest piece, and that's what they have today. We're really focused on the middle market.

The last specific question on Corporate Payments, it will come up again. But you did an acquisition last year, Alpha Group, and I think a big topic that you've talked about on earnings calls, investors ask about all the time is the integration efforts associated with Alpha driving some earnings accretion this year. So you've made substantial progress, maybe some things a little faster or larger than you had previously expected. But maybe you can give us an update on what you've been doing, what's to come with regards to Alpha integration? Is it work on the sales force side of things, expense side to realize these additional synergies just an update there?

Yes, happy to. So I think we shared at the beginning of the year, really the end of last year that in terms of integrating the sales force that, that went faster than we expected it to. And so we saw a benefit of that in the last back half of last year. And then just in general, as we go through the integration, it's been quite successful. I mean, we're not new to this game, right? This is our fourth cross-border acquisition that we've integrated. In terms of kind of recent milestones, we shared on the last call that 80% of the corporate business has now been migrated onto our one Global platform. So that's super important. There's about 20% to go. That's kind of always the tail. We expect that to happen in Q4, and then that will be fully integrated.

As a result of that, in the corporate business, that will allow us, obviously, to realize synergies as we're only supporting one system going forward for the overall corporate business. Then equally as exciting, I'd say, on the global bank account product. Obviously, we had our own product called the MCA product. Alpha had a global bank account product. We are bringing those products together and what we're calling kind of global bank account 2.0. We didn't mention this on the earnings call, and we expect that all to come together end of the year this year. And what we're really excited about with that is when we purchased Alpha, one of the deal hypotheses is we could take their product, their global bank account product, sell it to the same clients in the U.S. and in Asia where they were not licensed and we were. We are realizing some of that benefit today, but because we're not in one system, it's not fully realized. That should give us some additional tailwinds as we go into next year.

It's good to hear. Maybe turning to Vehicle Payments next. Did see a little bit of a deceleration in growth to 8%, still really strong in the high single digits. I think you had pointed to high single-digit growth for the rest of the year on the most recent earnings call. I think a topic that comes up all the time, as you and Ron have talked about sort of reallocating some of the investment dollars away from Vehicle Payments and into other areas with higher returns, namely Corporate Payments. So can you just talk about that philosophy there? I know this sort of capital allocation decision is something you do as a normal course of operating. But maybe just color on why you're shifting dollars from one segment to the other. Why do you think that's the right decision both in the near term and the long term?

Yes, happy to. So we delivered 8% organic growth for Vehicle Payments in Q2, still in line with our expectation of, call it, high single digits. Our Brazil business continued to perform really well, so call it mid-teens growth there. Our Europe, Rest of the World business, call it, 9% to 10%, so call it around the line average. And it was really U.S. Vehicle Payments that we defocused on from an investment perspective. And really, the view there is that incremental spend within U.S. Vehicle Payments we can get a better return on it in Corporate Payments. So that was really the driver of it.

As you know, we've announced 2 divestitures this year. So we're really focused on kind of the future of the portfolio, right? And we're future focused on fewer, bigger, more advantaged business as we go forward. And I'd say the U.S. Vehicle Payments business doesn't fit squarely within that framework. So that's not going to be something that we're overly investing in.

A lot of threads there. I want to keep touching on, maybe just first one, just in terms of the outlook for the rest of the year in Vehicle Payments. You talked about the growth profiles in Brazil, Europe, U.S. in 2Q. Is that kind of the same ballpark that we should expect for contribution from each of these segments? Or is there anything to call out? Again, get asked about Brazil all the time. I think there was some issues with the search engine optimization. Just wondering if you could give an update if those issues are behind us.

Yes, it's interesting. I mean, we offer 10 lines of business in Brazil that was related to 1 line of business and somehow it was like, unfortunately, a runaway train in terms of, I think, a much bigger deal out of it was made. When you have go-to-market and how you go about sales, you always find a way to work around things. So I'd say the issues we identified earlier, we've worked around those issues, see Brazil continuing to have strong growth in the back half in terms of, call it, mid-teens organic growth. We expect the same performance that we have from Europe and Rest of World. And so kind of the 8% that we delivered in Q2, somewhere in that range, give or take, would be a reasonable assumption for the rest of the year.

Got it. Makes a ton of sense. You also mentioned the divestitures, right? You did PayByPhone earlier in the year. You just announced Epyx as well. So maybe you could talk about the characteristics of these divestitures that you were doing, what sort of makes these assets you think a benefit outside of the Corpay portfolio than within it. Obviously, I think you've been pretty clear on using the proceeds of those divestitures to buy back stock. Does that calculus change at any point with the price of the shares going up? So one, generally on divestiture philosophy and then two, how we should think about use of proceeds going forward?

Yes. So I think this is the most active we've been in divestitures with the 2 that we will have completed this year. We haven't completed the second one yet. And the philosophy here, right, is we're really focused on the Corporate Payments business. So assets that don't fit squarely within that, that I'd say are TAM-constrained assets in terms of kind of their earning at the max size that they could grow to or lower growth type businesses. It could be highly profitable, just lower growth that don't fit within Corporate Payments. Those are the things that we're interested in kind of pruning the portfolio for going forward.

I'll never kind of specifically comment on which assets we're in market with or not because it's a disadvantage for me, obviously, when I'm doing a potential transaction. But I would say, as we talked about on the call, you can probably expect over the next 18 months, there's probably 3 or 4 additional businesses that we'd be interested in divesting. And you're absolutely right that when we make those divestitures, we'll use the proceeds for share buybacks, and that's really because we're focused on minimizing the EPS dilution from the sale of these businesses.

This makes a ton of sense. And I guess, just to clarify, so I think PayByPhone was an asset that was growing pretty healthy clip, right? It's something you had talked about. So that seems like it fits more the TAM constrained bucket rather than the low growing asset. I guess just in terms of Epyx, would you say that's more TAM constrained, more low growth or somewhere in the middle between the two.

Yes, I'd say Epyx is more TAM constrained within the U.K. That being said, I think Epyx has opportunity to grow outside of the U.K. But the question is, if you look at the business, it's a really interesting cool business, right. I mean it's basically the software that sits between the garages that are servicing the vehicle and the lessors of the vehicle, right? So it's a great business, great margin business, but you've really got to take it to another country in order to grow that business. So the thought is, do you want Ron and I spending our time on growing $100 million business, or do you want us spending our time in cross-border growing a $1.5 billion business.

So I think that's how investors should think about it as we have limited resources, not in terms of capital necessarily, but in terms of our own time. And we really want to be focused on those businesses that can have the biggest impact on shareholder value and growth going forward.

Yes, I think it's a great point. We'd like to have you focus in on Corporate Payments, too. Maybe just one on lodging. I think that I'm stealing Ron's phrase here but it had been a problem child for some time, right? We have -- it seems like we started to turn the corner, got back to flat growth, a little positive growth in 2Q. I think you've been pretty consistent on the messaging for acceleration into the back half. So maybe you could walk us through some of the drivers that led to the return to growth in the first half of the year, whether those are going to sustain into the back half and then how we should think about your confidence visibility into sustaining growth in '27 and beyond within Lodging.

Yes. So Lodging is really coming in for the first half of the year and what we're seeing for the back half of the year, right in line with our expectations in terms of we expected it to go flat, flat and then improve in terms of the growth rate throughout the year, kind of ending, call it, mid-teen -- or sorry, mid-single digits in terms of growth rate. So what we saw in the first half of the year that was beneficial is, we didn't have the overhang of emergency volume from FEMA that was a tough comp in the prior year.

We also started to see some of the sales in the back half of last year come online, but that was more in Q2. As we look in the back half, we see more of those sales in the back half of the year in the front of this year come online, and that's what gives us confidence in the organic growth rate improving there.

The thing about the lodging business, right? That's like different, for example, than our spend management business is the time to implementation is longer, right? When somebody buys a spend management program from me or a cross-border program from me, right? Implementation can be very, very quick. I don't want to say immediate, but very, very quick. Where lodging is much more client specific in terms of what they're looking for and how we implement, so it just takes us time to ramp.

And on that implementation, is that more sort of like technology integration, beta testing, that sort of work? Are there macro factors where it's like, I don't want to say like, hey, there's a conflagration in the Middle East, oil prices are going up. I'm going to take time to decide on that? Or is it more just on the tech side of with regards that...

It's much more on the front end, right? So we're meeting the clients and their needs, right? So we're adjusting what the implementation is typically, they want to make sure that it's -- do it in a pilot phase, is it working? Okay, now we're ready to go live, right? So if you think about that business, for example, airline is a portion of that business where we serve distressed passenger and we serve crew. When you're making that changeover, the last thing a large brand-name airline that we all know would want to do is not make sure things are well tested and vetted when inside their specifications.

Yes. Makes sense. Before we talk about some of the long-term targets that you and Ron have laid out. Maybe we just wanted to ask on the M&A environment, right? So you've done some pretty sizable ones, Alpha being the most recent. So maybe given where leverage is, what's your current appetite for more acquisitions, particularly within Corporate Payments that we've been talking about. To the extent that you do deals, should we expect a focus on tuck-in acquisitions or anything more chunky? Just how should we be thinking about M&A going forward here?

Yes, great question. So I'd say we are size-agnostic return disciplined, right? So I would say we are open to tuck-in capability or larger, right? And we've got the capital in order to do that. We'll produce $1.8 billion of free cash flow this year, right? So every year, I get topped up and decide how am I going to use that? I think it really goes back to what is our capital allocation philosophy, right, and how we deploy that versus buybacks versus accretive M&A. But if we do M&A, you're going to see us solely doing it within Corporate Payments.

Got it. Maybe I could also use this opportunity to ask for an update on AvidXchange. I think it's a company a lot of investors know quite well from its time as a public company, now you have a stake. So any update you can give on sort of how that business is performing, how you're thinking about the connection with the rest of the Corpay ecosystem as we go forward.

Yes. So I think it's been a really successful partnership. We bought AvidXchange along with TPG. We obviously have the minority stake. They have the majority, so between ourselves, TPG and Avid management, really been focused on the next turnaround of the business, so to speak. We have been sharing in earnings calls, I've been -- Ron and I have both been sharing, right, kind of updates on the business because what we wanted investors to know is "Hey, so far, so good, right?" We're pleased with what we're seeing. We're seeing sales increase. We're seeing profitability increase, et cetera. One of the reasons we didn't -- 2 reasons we didn't buy Avid outright is their organic growth would have been dilutive to our Corporate Payments, so we wouldn't have wanted to do that. And their financial performance would have been dilutive to our adjusted EPS. So we needed time to work through improving the business overall, and I think that's going really well.

I would say also, we've learned a lot from Avid. I'd say they really have some really strong products out there and have done really well with products. So those 2 coming together is going well. What we were really focused on in the budget process was reducing focus on, call it, noncore projects and reallocating resources to sales. So we've significantly increased the investment in sales, and that's why we're seeing a return on sales. So I'd say kind of get to the end of the year, let's see what their exit organic growth rate is. And as we see that kind of lift to our line average it becomes much more attractive then we would pull the trigger on an acquisition of the rest of Avid. Now we could buy a portion of it to gain control or we could buy all of it. It will just be kind of a capital allocation decision and performance decision when we get there. But a long way of saying, we're encouraged by what we are seeing.

Yes. That's great to hear. Great to hear. And maybe we can lead that into some sort of the long-term targets that you've talked about on recent earnings calls. So maybe I'll ask about the 10% organic growth first, right? A question we get asked all the time is like, is there the ability or, I guess, maybe the desire for Corpay to lean into certain areas of the business, "Hey, we're really leaning into Corporate Payments. That's a faster grower 10% organically." Is there the potential for that to come up from 10% to a number that's higher than that? Or do you really want to manage the business to 10% organic growth because that's more sustainable, something you control more, something you have more visibility in. Obviously, there's always going to be external factors. But how do you think about the balance between a 10% is a steady number that we think we can hit consistently -- or what do we want to drive that higher?

Yes, great question. I would say today, we want investors to underwrite to 10% because it is repeatable and it is durable. We've delivered it 5 out of the last 6 years. We've delivered double-digit organic growth for the last 5 quarters in a row. So I'd say that's the number that we want everybody to underwrite to. When we think about potential upside from Corporate Payments, I think, you're absolutely right that as we rotate further into Corporate Payments, there's the ability to revisit that number. But until we get to that destination, we don't want to get over our skis, right? We want to repeat, we want people to really underwrite to what we know we can deliver.

I think it's important to kind of step back and maybe look at our overall algorithm that we've laid out, which we've got a lot of questions about. So 10% organic growth is super critical. We've got a lot of generalists coming into the stock lately and asking questions. Let me just be clear for everybody because I think it would be helpful since this is being webcast, is when we do organic growth, right, we're taking out the impact of fuel, we're taking out impact of FX, and we're taking out the impact of acquisitions. So as we look into it, there's actually very few companies in the S&P that report organic growth. And so the question would be, well, like, why do you guys? Because it's a true measure of the health of business without these external factors. So we did get some feedback, there's some confusion about organic growth. So just be clear about what the definition is. So hitting that 10% is a critical milestone in terms of achieving the overall algorithm.

The next piece of the algorithm is 13% growth of profit before tax. And that's really driven by scale of the business. And then the next piece of the algorithm is 20%-plus adjusted EPS growth, right? We're going to deliver 27%, 28% this year. And so we're able to do that not only through the business, but because of the yield of the business and our ability to create additional cash flow through yield and our ability to continue to borrow against the business but still maintain a 3x leverage ratio. So that formula is what really drives us to the $50 EPS target. That we've recently shared with everybody. So hopefully, that's helpful in terms of your...

It's helpful and you preempted my next question on the $50 EPS target. I think that was a really helpful sort of like framework on getting to the financial targets, and this is maybe a little bit of an aside, but I had referred to this cross-border teach-in that you had done a couple of months ago and your last answer you asked about -- or you mentioned that generalists were coming and asking for more clarity on certain aspects of the business. Is there a desire or willingness on your end to sort of recognize like, hey, there are a lot of moving pieces, a lot of different business lines within Corpay today, seems like this cross-border teach-in was well received. Do you think you're going to give incremental disclosure, incremental teach-ins to help maybe that generalist population that may be less familiar with all these moving pieces, more color in that to how the business is operating.

Yes, absolutely. I mean we made, I think, and hopefully, investors are seeing. We made a significant pivot in our Investor Relations within the last year, right? We've done the cross-border teach-in. We have a new investor deck out there, which really points to, hey, what is the future of the company? What's it going to look like as we rotate into Corporate Payments. We've had on the road, out talking to investors for several NDRs, which has been super helpful. It was super helpful, I think, actually as we continue to refine our story and think about how quickly we divest some business and rotate -- divest businesses and rotate into Corporate Payments, we discussed all of that with some large long-only investors who've been in stock for a long time and got their opinions on it, right? So that's been super helpful, I think, in kind of what you're seeing in our thinking today.

And then we did our first investor perception study that we've ever done in the history of the company. And one of the top things that came out of it, and it was great because its validation was "Hey, the company is just complex, right?" So Corporate Payments is where we're focused, but what happens is because there's complexity, we talk about things like Lodging, which one could debate. Is that a Corporate Payments business or not a Corporate Payments business, right? Or USVP, which is less of a focus for us, much more Corporate Payments.

So I'd say the complexity issue we're really focused on. And then the other thing that we've gotten feedback around, which I think is totally fair is "Hey, you need to give us better information in order to underwrite Corporate Payments, right?" So when we think about the 10% organic growth, what we think about is, hey, we're going to do 20% sales growth, and that would be 20% of sales off of the base of last year. Our retention rate is 93%. So we're going to lose about 7% of business, right?

Some of that is M&A, businesses going out of business or in some of the other businesses where credit risk, we're not willing to underwrite the business anymore. So now you get down to, call it, 13, your same-store sales, which is going to be plus or minus 1 and then a little cushion, and that gets you to 10, right? So I think what would be really helpful for investors is we provided more of that level of granularity, maybe at least on an annual basis came out. So what I would say is we're focused on that.

No, I think all of that would be really well received. And like I said, the cross-border teach-in, I think was super helpful from my perspective. I will ask 2 maybe more thematic questions given this is the tech conference and then I'll open it up in case anyone in the audience has anything. So I'm going to ask you an AI question and a stablecoin question. So...

Before you go there, just one thing I meant to kind of cover in the $50 of EPS question. And then you're kind of thought about, "Hey, should the organic growth rate be higher?" One thing that we've been talking about overall is hey, as Corporate Payments does become a bigger piece of the business, right, the business should become more valuable. So we're trading at 13x today. We do believe that that's going to lift as we further rotate into Corporate Payments. So the equal weighted S&P is at like 16. So internally, we've been talking about 15 and 50. So 15x $50 EPS is like a $750 stock price. So by no means are we giving guidance on the stock price. I'm just telling you internally as we look forward out the next couple of years, we're optimistic about the future and the valuation of the company.

$750, I think is a little higher than where we're trading now.

That's for sure, yes.

So yes, that's super helpful. I appreciate the detail there. Will ask on AI. I think every company that has been up here presenting has gotten the AI question. So maybe you could talk about your strategy, how you are using AI, both on the cost efficiency side of things, but maybe more importantly, in terms of product development, where you're seeing sort of progress in terms of rolling out new products, feature solutions to your clients across any of the particular segments and kind of how you see AI changing the structure of your business over the long term?

Yes, happy to. So maybe focusing on the product side, where we've been focused on AI is an AI agent that can replicate kind of some of the core functions that we're selling into. So think of it as an AI fleet manager. Think of it as an AI AP manager, right? So because we have the ability to see across the best and brightest of the people doing these roles, creating an AI agent that can do some of the function for them and really create value for them. So those are products that are in some level of completion or innovation that we expect to roll out. So we do think that there is value in the product.

The next question would be, "Okay, Peter, you rolled those out, how do they monetize, right?" And I think we've got to see what the reaction is to the product before we see monetization, but I think you know us well enough to know that we'll be super focused on creating monetization out of those products.

If I go over to the expense side, I'd say where we're most focused on it is with -- in our engineering teams and making those teams significantly more productive because of AI. And what we've chosen to do within the current year is reinvest that money back in the business. We're about to kick off the 2027 budget process. So whether we decide to reinvest that money back into technology or to divert the money in other places or take it to the bottom line, we'll revisit it. But that would be the place that I'd say we've been most successful in terms of expense reductions or productivity improvements.

Super interesting and I'm sure you'll get many more AI related questions going forward. I will ask about stablecoin. It's interesting I was going through with my team and going through our notes from the tech conference last year and every meeting with every company stablecoin came up a bunch. And I was going through my Corpay notes, and it was a ton of stablecoin questions. And I don't know how many stablecoin questions you've got today. I would imagine it's a lot less than you got last year. Jim is making the figure one at me. Nonetheless, you're going to get the second question here on stablecoins.

I guess the question is like I don't want you to sort of rehash what you're doing strategically within the cross-border payments business. Maybe I would recall a comment that Ron made, I think it was on the 1Q earnings call when he was asked about sort of demand and what you're hearing from your Corporate Payments clients, right? I think you used the word crickets, right, like it's just not there yet. I'm wondering if that's changed at all over the last 6 months? Is there -- are there any areas within your business where you're starting to see an uptick in demand? Or is it still kind of more just theoretical, something that could happen a few years down the line? Just -- has there been any change in the overall demand environment with regards to stable specifically?

Yes. I mean what I would do is I would change the narrative and I'd say it's not about stablecoins, it's about blockchain. And I think what got lost a year ago, right, with any new technology, somebody is really excited about it, right? And people heard the word stablecoin and they thought, "Oh, that's a solution for everything, right?" And stablecoin is just the tokenized actual currency, right? It's not even the blockchain. And the blockchain is what really creates the value, right? So what the blockchain allows you to do, really the 2 advantages of it is to move money 24/7 and to move money to potentially exotic countries, right? So what we firmly believed and now we've kind of seen it played out is there's no way that people -- the major banks are going to see all their deposits leave and go to stablecoin providers so that they can mint stablecoin and then destroy a stablecoin. So they can move it over the blockchain, but rather the banks are going to develop their own tokenized network.

So no surprise, earlier in the year, JPMorgan announced Kinexys, Citi announced a competitive product. And basically, what they're able to do, and we've elected to go with Kinexys is they say, "Hey, we can do a digitized token and we will settle it 24/7." So they're basically -- they are giving the things that stablecoins quote that they would bring to the market, the cost of the Kinexys network is similar to what we're paying today to move currency on the rails and in the cross-border teach-in, we provided the 4 rails. But the SWIFT, the cost to use SWIFT versus Kinexys is the same. The advantage of Kinexys is I can credit you on a Saturday for the money that I owe you. So I think it's really important to peel it back and say, what is the issue and how do we understand it.

So I don't see stablecoin as a threat to the business. I actually see the blockchain and tokenized deposit as an enabler of our business. Our thought is that we'll move a significant volume on to Kinexys by the end of the year. So whether our clients are asking for it or not, we're actually moving them in that direction within our cross-border business. And I think the other thing that's important to understand, I've kind of used this analogy in the past. If you were sitting here today and you called Cartier somewhere in L.A. and said, "Hey, I need you to deliver a diamond ring to me today because I have an important event tonight." When they show up with that diamond ring, you don't turn, I'm going to use a New York analogy, but you don't turn to the delivery person and say, did you take the train here? Did you take a cab, did you take an Uber? Did you drive? Right? That's the analogy to what the rails are. It's just the mechanism of delivering the value. It doesn't create any value, it doesn't exchange the currency.

Makes a ton of sense.

I'm not passionate about the topic.

Yes, clearly not. And hopefully, my wife is not in the audience and heard the Cartier comment.

Well, It could be her lucky night.

I will open it -- speaking of that, I will open it up for questions in case anyone in the audience has any.

Yes, I've got a quick one. Scott Barishaw from Deutsche Bank. I'm the financial and Fintech specialist. Nate did a great job walking through like a lot of the company and where we are, Peter. But I just -- you said you redid the slides a little bit, and I looked at them when preparing for today. And you've got that section of the solutions in there and spend management has such a massive TAM and you've got less than 1% of it now. Maybe talk a little bit about how and what you're going to do to take advantage of that opportunity and the competition out there because I'm sure the competition is diverse. There's other payments companies, there's banks. Talk about like what you're doing to win some of that opportunity.

Yes. Great question. So really large TAM within spend management, right? When we look at spend management, we define that as commercial card, AP automation, et cetera, right? So those are the products that we have within the spend management space. What I'd say is we've seen others like ourselves move into that space and be innovators and capture really high values in terms of transactions for doing it. We love that because what that says is, hey, there's validation, the space needs to be disrupted and that there's value to doing that. And the main owner of the space today is banks, right? Banks are primarily providing those services or in the case of commercial cards, American Express. So we believe on the commercial card side, that we've got an advantaged product because we're able to bring our proprietary networks, either in virtual card or within fuel card into that spend management space.

And then if we go over to the AP automation side, right, we're able to come in and provide a complete solution for a client, where typically the bank is able to provide a part of a solution like they may do the ACH for the client because the client can't do it on their own, but the client may use somebody else to print their checks. It's typically a mix of things there. So that's how I think about where we are today.

Something that Ron talked about on the last call was our thought process on moving left. And so what does that mean move left? The thought is that we're going to move left across the value chain and we believe really the big opportunity there for our middle market clients is to come out with a procurement offering that, again, focuses on saving them money and creates value from them. But really, we start further along in the process. So right now, we're primarily the payments piece, but we're going to go more to the beginning of the process and actually help them with their contracting. And I think when you think about procurement, the places where we think we can create value is things like benchmarking, things like negotiation, things like running RFPs. If you're a middle market client, you typically don't have a procurement department. You don't have access to these things. So with the advent of AI, there's the ability for us to provide this, I think, in a way that will be really helpful for the middle market.

And so just -- I mean, just a quick follow-up. I'm sure there's some other questions in the audience. But is there more that you need like in terms of like, is this a part of area where you'll look to acquire other businesses in here to have a more full offering?

Great question. So I think when we look in procurement, I think there's 2 options, right? It's always buy, buddy or build. So I think the question will be really what's the best option for us and what's the quickest way to market. Most likely, it's kind of a buy or buddy, I would think, just because there's a lot of great products that have been developing -- developed out there by companies that have no customers, right. So our advantage is we've got a massive customer base, let's partner with you and provide the solution.

[Zach Gund, Aberdeen Investments]. I wanted to ask first, I guess, I'll call it a trade war with Canada now. Like obviously, that's a pretty big deal just given your business and everything. So is there anything to call out there risk that you potentially see with that? And then also, I'll just -- I'll bring the stablecoin question up again, take it to 3 total for the conference, which is just looking at what the banks are doing and just kind of like open USD, what do you think that they're looking to do with the stablecoins and how could that potentially impact your business? Do you think that they'll also look to do kind of the cross-border side of things and just really focus on the enterprise? Or just where do you kind of see that fitting? And like what does it mean for Corpay?

Yes. So really good questions. Sorry, your first question was on because -- yes. So is this a taco or is it not a taco, right? I mean we see this stuff all the time, and the business weathers through it. So I would say we don't see a significant impact, right? If you go back to the cross-border teach-in. What we try to do within the teach-in is kind of provide you how broad the business is across the globe. We operate in 5 geographies, pretty distributed business, right? It's a very defensible business in terms of one geography has something going on, you're going to sustain within the rest of the globe. So that's how I think about kind of the current conflict. And who knows it may be all resolved tomorrow, right, and change and turnaround.

In terms of stablecoins, I mean, again, I would drop the word stablecoins. The banks are not offering stablecoins. The banks are offering tokenized deposits and it's money movement. And this is just an extension of what the banks do today, right? The banks move digital currency and they have been for 20 years. Instead of digital currency, now they're moving tokenized currency across the Internet and the advantage of it is a 24/7 settlement. So we see this as the banks the large Tier 1 banks really providing the capabilities of the modern day. We don't think it changes the view that they are focused on enterprise customers and they're not focused on the middle market customers. Just the cost of the acquisition for the banks in the middle market would be so different than what it would be for an enterprise. I just don't think the economics are there for them, and we don't see any sign of that. So it's mostly owned by regional banks today.

Any last questions out there? I don't see any hands. So I will wrap up with one maybe high-level one. When you are back at the conference, hopefully in 2 to 3 years' time...

As long as you stay in this location.

Yes, exactly, exactly. I think we will. And you've successfully executed on the strategy focusing on a bigger, more simplified business. What do you think will be the biggest differences between the company that investors are looking at today and what they'll be looking at 2 to 3 years from now. And I guess, really, it wraps down to like what is the last message you want people in the room, people tuning into the webcast to leave with today?

Yes. So I think there's really 3 things that investors should take away. I think one, it will be a simpler company that's easier to underwrite. Number two, I would say is, it will continue to have a proven track record of performance. So confidence in the algorithm of 10, 13, 20 plus that I spoke to, will continue to be proven, and that will give people more confidence. And then the investors will continue to see that we've got multiple ways to create shareholder value.

That's great. Peter, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming out. Everyone give me -- join me in a round of applause for Peter for joining us. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, guys.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's Corpay's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. We are standing by if you should need any assistance. And it's now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jim Eglseder. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call to discuss the second quarter 2026 results. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; and Peter Walker, our CFO. Our earnings release and supplemental materials for the quarter are available on the Investor Relations section of Corpay.com. Please refer to these materials for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call along with the reconciliation of those measures to the most applicable GAAP measures. Our remarks today will include forward-looking statements about expected operating and financial results, strategic initiatives, acquisitions and divestitures, among other matters. .

Forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release and on Form 8-K and can also be found in our annual report on Form 10-K. These documents are all available on our website and at sec.gov. So now I'll turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Okay, Jim. Thanks. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining today's call. Upfront here, I'll plan to cover 3 subjects: first, provide my take on Q2 results; second, share our updated guidance for 2026. And then lastly, I'll speak to our future and where we're headed. Okay. Let me begin with our Q2 results, which were very, very good. We reported revenue of $1.34 billion. That's up 21% coming in $45 million above our expectations. Q2 macro super favorable to us. It contributed about $30 million more than our expectations, meaning about $15 million of the beat was just underlying performance. .

We reported cash EPS of $7 on the button. That's up 36%, setting an all-time company earnings record. So feels good. Our 2 biggest corporate payments deals, the Alpha acquisition and the Avid investment contributed $0.39 of cash EPS accretion in the quarter spot on our target. Our Q2 fundamentals, very solid. Overall organic revenue growth, 10%. That was led by our Corporate Payments segment at 16% and our vehicle Payments segment at 8%. So taken together, our 2 biggest segments delivered 12% organic growth. Operating trends also very good in the quarter. Retention remaining steady at 93% year-over-year sales or new bookings terrific, growing 30% in same-store sales in the plus column, plus 1%.

So look, these trends are super helpful and bode well for continued performance here in the second half. So all in all, really an outstanding quarter, an outstanding first half really against both our expectations and maybe more importantly, against the prior year. All right. Let me make the turn to our 2026 outlook. We're raising full year revenue guidance to $5.310 billion at the midpoint. The bridge as follows: first, will flow through our Q2 $45 million revenue beat. Second, we'll increase our full year revenue guidance, another $15 million based on expected better macro and business fundamentals. We'll net out $40 million related to our expected Epyx divestiture and there, we're assuming a September 1 close. We will continue to outlook 10% organic revenue growth in the second half with our Corporate Payments segment expected to maintain a mid-teens plus organic growth and our lodging segment set to accelerate to mid-single digits.

On the earnings side, we're raising full year 2026 cash EPS to $27.35 at the midpoint. That's up away from our $26 initial guide at the start of the year. The rest of year EPS bridge goes like this will flow through our Q2 cash EPS beat of $0.45. And will raise the rest of year cash EPS another $0.20 and will hold the Epyx divestiture EPS impact neutral as we plan to use the deal proceeds to repurchase CPAY shares. Look, this higher full year 2026 guidance implies good things, 17% and full year revenue growth, 28% full year cash EPS growth. Cash EPS for $26 up about $6 from 2025. And cash EPS exit rate in Q4, exiting over $29, full year cash EBITDA approximately $3 billion and $1.8 billion of free full-year free cash flow, which is approximately a 7% yield.

The drivers really of this '26 performance or a combo of a few things. Obviously, a very favorable macro environment for us, particularly the first half. The 2 big accretive corporate payments deals and mostly just strong underlying fundamental operating performance. So look, taken together, we've got a lot of confidence in the outlook. Okay. So last up today, I do want to share our thoughts on the future, the road ahead for the company. We did post an updated investor presentation today to our website. It lays out our direction along with our growth algorithm.

And I do want to say we've really never felt clear about the way forward or even more excited about the prospects of the company. So we're really in a great spot. So let's set out with the portfolio. We have said repeatedly that our plan is to create a simpler company with fewer bigger businesses. You should expect to see us divest more subscale businesses like today's FX announcements and really double down in 3 primary areas. So first, spend management, which is our card and AP businesses, we'll do more there. We'll head towards the procurement space more, we'll expand wider geographically, we will make that a bigger business.

In vehicle, we'll stay invested in our largest and most advantaged fleet businesses. And we'll also embed fleet into our spend management platform so that our spend management platform can serve the unique needs of fleet intensive companies and their drivers. There's actually a slide, I think it's the last slide in our supplement that lays out our progress there where we're selling our spend platform to both fleet intensive businesses and traditional businesses. So take a look.

Last area to double down will be cross-border. Obviously, we plan to do more there. We're in the process of adding new real-time private blockchain rails, also investing to build out our global banking and deposit offering. Both of these things, we think, game changers for middle market companies. So the portfolio repositioning gives us a $600 billion revenue TAM for a $5 billion company today. So look, it certainly gives us the potential to at least 10x this company to say $50 billion over time. So the second direction for us is to go left, which means we plan to help our clients with their end direct expense decision-making before they approve payments.

So we'll help support decisions like the selection of vendors, the pricing of vendors, the terms they have with vendors, the renewal decisions they need to make with vendors, and we'll deliver a set of things to be helpful there. We'll provide some benchmarking data. We'll provide spend insights, we'll even guide clients on how to negotiate renewals to a better outcome. So look, we really do aspire to bring more value and go left better helping our clients with the expense management assignment.

So finally, let me turn to our midterm growth algorithm. It remains unchanged. As a reminder, we target 10% plus organic revenue growth, low teens PBT growth and over 20% cash EPS growth. The model works, first again, because there's a large opportunity for us to sell into. We do have proven retention and sales capabilities, and we generate a material amount of free cash flow yield. We do expect to have approximately $15 billion of available capital over the forecast period. That's the combo of our annual free cash flow plus higher debt capacity as our earnings grow.

So this capital is what creates EPS acceleration as we'll either buy back half of CPAY or alternatively, we'll buy the earnings of other corporate payment companies based on the relative returns there. So look, in conclusion, today, we are obviously delighted with the Q2 performance. We're confident in our raised second half guide. Again, expecting mid-20s year-over-year cash EPS growth. And we're really excited about the future of the road ahead and what Corpay can become. So with that, let me turn the call back over to Peter to provide some additional details on the quarter. Peter?

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. We delivered another outstanding quarter with 21% revenue growth and 36% adjusted EPS growth year-over-year, marking our fourth consecutive quarter of outperforming expectations. Our first half performance was exceptional, and we're proud of what the team accomplished. While we've certainly benefited from favorable macro conditions, the foundation of our performance continues to be consistent double-digit organic growth. That consistency is the engine behind our compounding model, and we've now delivered double-digit organic revenue growth for 5 consecutive quarters and 10% organic growth in 5 of the last 6 years.

Having been in the CFO seat for just over a year, I can tell you these outcomes don't simply happen. They are the result of constant focus, active management and thousands of decisions made across the organization every day to drive returns. I wouldn't underestimate just how important our operating discipline is to our long-term performance. Now let's turn to segment performance and the underlying drivers of our organic revenue growth in the quarter.

Corporate Payments delivered 16% organic growth for the quarter, including 180 basis point drag from float revenue compression driven by lower interest rates year-over-year. The organic revenue growth was in line with our expectations with strong performance in both cross-border and payables. Overall, corporate payments continue to be driven by strong underlying customer activity with organic spend increasing 43% to $95 billion. Cross-border continued to deliver strong sales and revenue performance in Q2.

Alpha's integration continues to progress exceptionally well with over 80% of Alpha's corporate volume now migrated to our global tech platform. The payables business continued to perform well, driven by sales and volume growth in Q2. We're also pleased with the strong performance of Avid, our minority investment, which is reflected as an equity investment in our financials. Avid continues to execute well under new ownership with sales growing more than 30%, continued strength in volume and revenue and EBITDA more than doubling year-over-year to a record level.

Vehicle payments organic growth was 8%, right in line with our high single-digit expectations. Brazil and Europe remained quite strong. In the U.S., growth remains consistent with our strategy of reallocating sales investment toward the higher return opportunities within corporate payments. Lodging was in line with our expectations, delivering sequential organic revenue growth improvement of 2% versus Q1 2026. We've now lapped the more episodic events last year that created tough comps, and we continue to expect organic growth to perform in the second half of the year.

In summary, we delivered 10% organic growth in Q2, driven by sales growth of 30% and retention rates of 93%, all quite robust. Our corporate payments and Vehicle Payments segment totaled 84% of our Q2 revenue and delivered a combined organic growth rate of 12%, consistent with Q1. Taken together, these results reinforce our confidence in the durability of our growth model and support our decision to increase full year guidance.

Now looking further down the income statement. Operating costs increased 9%, excluding the impact of FX, A, stock compensation, amortization and a settlement charge. The settlement charge of $100 million relates to the FTC matter and is subject to final commission approval. The 9% increase was primarily due to sales investments and modestly higher credit losses. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 57.3% was up approximately 100 basis points over the prior year, primarily due to operating leverage and flow-through of macro benefit. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.3%. The year-over-year decrease in the tax rate was driven by our improved mix of earnings.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter in a very strong financial position. Our leverage ratio finished at 2.55x, and we had approximately $1.6 billion of available capacity under our revolving credit facility. During the quarter, we repurchased $321 million worth of stock retiring approximately 1 million shares. As of quarter end, we still had roughly $1.4 billion remaining under our current share repurchase authorization. We also completed the refinancing of our revolving credit facility and Term Loan A, increasing the size of our revolver by approximately $1 billion to $3.7 billion while paying down our Term Loan B by $1 billion.

Over the past 9 months, we've successfully refinanced our entire debt stack, extending maturities, lowering borrowing costs and further strengthening our balance sheet. More importantly, from a capital allocation perspective, we've increased our financial flexibility and are well positioned to continue executing our balanced strategy of both meaningful share repurchases and disciplined accretive M&A. Finally, I'd like to touch on our interest rate profile. Following the Alpha acquisition, our restricted cash balance increased significantly, primarily reflecting the growth of the global bank account business.

Our cash now creates a meaningful natural hedge against our floating rate debt with approximately 85% of our exposure naturally offset during the second quarter. Including our interest rate swaps, we were effectively more than 120% hedged. Given the strength of that natural hedge, we don't expect to enter into additional interest rate swaps going forward. Now let me share some additional information on our updated 2026 full year and Q3 outlook. As Ron mentioned, we signed a definitive agreement to sell Epyx, a noncore vehicle payments asset. We expect the transaction to close this fall, likely between September and October. For planning purposes, we've assumed a September 1 closing.

The transaction is expected to reduce 2026 revenue by approximately $40 million or roughly $10 million per month but is not expected to have an impact on adjusted EPS because we intend to redeploy the proceeds into share repurchases. We're raising our 2026 revenue guidance to $5.31 billion at the midpoint growing 17% year-over-year. Importantly, this guidance continues to assume approximately 10% organic revenue growth for the year. Our updated revenue outlook flows through our Q2 beat of $45 million, raises the rest of the year by $15 million, driven by a combination of Matti and business momentum, partially offset by $40 million from the sale of Epyx.

We're raising our full year guidance for adjusted EPS to $27.35 per share at the midpoint, growing 28% year-over-year. This captures the $0.45 beat in Q2 and raises guidance by $0.20 from higher revenue and productivity improvements over the rest of the year. Our Q3 revenue guide is $1.355 billion at the midpoint, growing 16% year-over-year. We expect Q3 organic revenue growth in the range of 9% to 11%. We expect adjusted EPS of $7.15 at the midpoint, growing 26% year-over-year. Stepping back, our model is built to compound over time. We remain focused on consistently delivering double-digit organic growth, maintaining strong margins and deploying capital where we believe it generates the highest long-term returns for shareholders.

Additional details regarding our full year guidance raise and Q3 outlook can be found in our earnings release and earnings supplement. So operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Another great quarter. As freight prices remain healthy and fleet operators seem to be in a much better place than they were gotten a post-COVID, do you see an opportunity to open up the credit box a little bit more, maybe lean and harder to some slightly higher risk parts of the market to drive on the vehicle side of the business, obviously, to drive incremental growth.

Ram, thanks for the question. So we do experience when fuel prices going up and the demand that there's naturally a higher risk to credit losses. So we've taken a provision for that within the quarter, a slight provision for it. But what I would say is we're not going to weaken our underwriting standards to gain business here.

Okay. Fair enough. And then on a follow-up for me. You announced the Epyx divestiture, and you also talked about the intention to create a simpler company. Should we think about that as more trimming more of these very small kind of embedded business lines? Or is there an appetite or demand out there for a larger simplification of something like a lodging segment or larger chunks of the business.

Randy, it's Ron. It might be both. I'd say we're on the track to the first thing you said, we've ID another 2, 3, 4 businesses that are kind of subscale or not as related like the Epic thing. -- as I say on other things, we want better performance first, right? I want to have improved performance because then it gives us options. I say you should look for more of the epic like things over the next 6 to 12 months and the performance improves maybe something additional. .

And we'll take our next question from Tien-Tsin Huang from JPMorgan.

Is this better? away so that -- sorry to waste your time. It's always nice to talk to you guys. Just thinking maybe for you, Ron, just to as the bar changed at all for M&A and buybacks given pipeline valuations I know you're focused on these divestitures you announced manages just has the bar changed?

Yes. I don't think so, Tianjin. I think I said last time, if anything, we've seen some of the transactions, some of the deals on the acquisition side, get back into a realistic range. So I think it's -- that we're actually in a pretty good spot.

Okay. Glad to hear it. And then just on the bookings front, that was really strong, maybe just double-clicking on that. How broad-based was it? Where are you outperforming? Can you replenish the pipeline as we go into the second half?

Yes. It was pretty good. I'd say I'm looking at that report. It was pretty broad-based. We did kind of high teens year-over-year in the vehicle and crazy service to 40% sales growth in the Corporate Payments segment. So obviously selling a lot of that. Now again, report incremental investment into it. So there's more spend behind that, reflecting the increase. But no, it's -- it's good we target, I think, sales to grow 20% to kind of hit our algorithm. So this is a bit better than that. So I'd say our rest of the year is probably targeting about that 20% again. .

And we'll take our next question from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

Ron, like the Corporate Payments division obviously did really well with the organic revenue growth up 16%. As we look ahead, it seems like the comparisons get easier. I mean, can this growth rates sort of sustain itself if not accelerate from here?

Yes, I think it's a good question, Sanjay. I think it's a function, again, of investment. We're guiding basically the 60-plus here in the second half, which is obviously attractive. And we've got a super line sight and that business on both the retention and base like I'm staring at it's better than our line average or a line average is 93%. That business is closer to 96% or 97% retention in the base is positive to the plus column.

So whenever you have that set up, it's not complicated for that people that the whole growth rate is sales. right? It's just really the sales. I said the Tien-Tsin's question sold 40% more in the quarter. So that's the toggle. And again, unlike the start-ups, we always are trying to balance, make it a buck with growing. And so that's the balancing act. We put incremental money into it. We've taken a bit of money out of the vehicle thing. And so I'd say that's our plan for now. We're continuing to build spend on that, and we'll update if we decide to invest more as we look into next year. But we're honestly pleased with this growth rate.

Okay. And then second question is just on the divestitures. As we think about the divestitures you will make or that you've identified, do those accelerate the revenue growth rate? Or are they just sort of too small to have an impact? And then maybe you could also just comment on what you're seeing in the M&A market in terms of acquiring self .

Yes, I'd say the answer to the first part is, it depends. We have businesses. So I guess, we've announced you guys 2 divestitures this year. And the answer is those would actually be slightly growth dilutive to us. The parking business was a high flyer, right, grew at front of 20%, 25%. And this epic thing was kind of a perennial 10%, 11% grower. Some of the other things we're looking at Sanjay might be lower growth, as I said, hey, we have 3 or 4 things in the block. My commit be next. Some of the stuff might be a little bit slower growing.

But it's really what you said. We're just trying to clean house with kind of small things. We need to add billions of revenue to the company. And so growing $100 million business to $110 million is not getting us there. So that's the emphasis. And I said the same thing on the acquisition side. Obviously, we did a couple of pretty large transactions last year. We've got our gun site some other pretty significant things. And so as I said, attention, we're super clear on what we want to acquire what would be helpful.

We targeted -- we're in discussions obviously with those companies, and some of those transactions are meaningful. And because of the way we can run the things they're actionable. We can actually do them. So I'd say, like always, stay tuned on the acquisition front.

And we'll take our next question from Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America.

Thank you for question. I was wondering if you could give us an update on the Mastercard, the FI channel. I think previously you've called out 3 wins. But where does the pipeline stand and are you still expecting a couple of points of cross-border acceleration from that. Is that -- just trying to get an update on that Mastercard partnership and where things stand with the pipeline.

Yes. It's another good question. So I think we said the last time, if I had Mark, the guy that runs it or the Mastercard folks, at a high level, better than expected, again, I think the thesis that we had that Mastercard those bank folks, and we know cross-border and that's a good combo that that's truly to be true. The numbers are good. We're now at 10 FIs that have been closed. On the last report I saw, we've got 100 active additional FIs in the pipeline. .

So I would say it's positive. The offer is resonating. Mastercard's being super helpful and introductions. With FIs, the selling cycle is definitely longer by year than it is with corporates. But I would say we're still bullish on it. And I said to the Mastercard people when we did the deal, lease they'll make this a press release. and I got to applaud their effort and the energy so far. So I'd say so far, so good.

Great. And then -- if I could ask about the global -- just the Global Banking, I think, Ron, you've described it in your prepared remarks as a game changer. Just trying to think about the monetization time line there. I think Peter called out some of the benefits of the hedging. But just from a revenue standpoint, looks like is the monetization time frame? And like what kind of expectations should we have over the next year or 2?

Yes. I think we should see a big step up next year. We still, frankly, are building the product. Let me give the baby none here. So what we do is we open local foreign bank accounts. So if there's a company in Atlanta, they're trying to do business in Europe, boom in less than a week or a few days, we can open a foreign bank account for that, which would take months, years potentially through correspondent. The work that we're doing, my year other thing is effectively linking multiple local accounts.

So let's say the client in Atlanta wants to open something in the U.K., on the continent and Australia, and we go over the 3 local foreign accounts in those jurisdictions that they could run on the pipes there. What we're finishing up is tying those together and then balancing them back to that account's primary bank account, let's say, back here in a lamp and so that kind of second part, going to call that the enhanced the better product than just the one-off sale of a local account, which is where Alpha kind of focus. So that is due to the out of the kitchen in Q4. And 2 things. One is, I think we'll sound a lot more of it because it's way more attractive, right, to go to an account and tell them, I can add these at different places, but then tie them all together for you.

And then second, we're going to sell the you know what out and back to the client base. When I think of how many middle market clients we have in cross-border, in payables, even in fleet here and internationally. And so that's the second part of the idea is to tell me all the existing clients we have, whether they're in cross-border or not, hey, we can be way helpful in this way. So I'd say it's going good Alpha selling a lot of the kind of the single local thing, but the hopes are that this kind of premium offer will be a big deal next year.

And we'll take our next question from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

I know you've talked -- Ron, you talked about the opportunity to cross-sell your fleet card -- your fleet management products into the spend management customer base. Maybe just talk us through how you're thinking about that cross-sell opportunity now and where it stands, where could it go more broadly across other products in AP and bill pay also and cross-border? Where the opportunities to further expand with your existing base that you have now?

It's a good question, Darrin. It has been a long articulation of that. We did stick in, you probably haven't seen it yet, but if you guys on the call would open at some point, the -- what do we call in earnings supplement. So the last page in there, there is an internal slide where we actually show what you're asking, which is -- so we have a -- we call it generally asset management platform, call it, cards plus software. And basically, on that same platform a client can buy different things. They could drive us to buy fleet stock, travelers could buy T&E stuff, procurement or purchasing people could buy purchasing stuff.

And so if you look at the -- the thing which is interesting is we take that same platform and we sell it to fleet intensive businesses. And if you see that slide, not shockingly, they buy a lot of fleet, a lot of fuel. And they do buy some other stuff. Like in the midsized ones, almost half their spend is nonfuel. And then we sell the same exact thing to kind of traditional companies, maybe can write call that don't have the same kind of drivers and they buy a little bit of fuel, but all the other spend categories.

So the message to everybody is we're just embedding it. In other words, we're taking the fleet networks that we built and the point-of-sale data capture and the mobile apps or people, and we're just sticking it in the same platform so that when our guys go to companies, they can actually ask them, hey, a lot of drivers of fuel or don't you? And so to your point, it's not a done idea now to go back to all the big size fleet guys and say, "hey, I about buying some other stuff on the same thing and go into the regular guys and asking, "Hey, do we miss the fact that you actually have some drivers.

And so I think it's going to be simpler, hopefully, for people outside. It's not just a bunch of clog proprietary fleet things. It's literally now core to the spend offering that we're going to take out of the market. And I think advantage there because other guys that make business cards or corporate cards don't have 20-year-old networks for fleet purchasing or even a virtual card network that we built. They had just vanilla Mastercard or Visa networks and so I think us attaching those networks to kind of our card program is going to be a pretty big advantage. We collect more data than they do. We have better economics at those merchants than they do and so we're quite -- if you take a peek at that thing, hopefully, the slide in there will be explanatory.

Just maybe a quick follow-up, if you can, on margins. Just we continue to see them ticking up sequentially. Should we expect for -- when we're thinking about further expansion from Mir, just how much more investment do you think is needed to sustain this type of 10%-plus organic profile? Clearly, it's not a small -- you're not in a low margin base for now. And so I'm curious where your thoughts are on that. .

Darrin, it's Peter. Thanks for the question. So what I would say is for the quarter, we obviously achieved a really strong 57% and EBITDA margin, a lot of that was helped by flow-through of favorable macro, right. For the back, we kind of expect to be slightly below where we are last year. And we feel like we're really invested at the right level to deliver on the organic growth targets. So we already achieved really strong margins. The thought is that we won't look to increase it significantly annualized .

And we'll take our next question from David Koning with Baird. .

Guys, great job. What One thing I was just wondering about, it looked like Brazil remains a little slower than normal, and you still had a great quarter. I guess I'm wondering how much better maybe it would have even been if Brazil was running normal and maybe am I right about that? How is the Google partnership or ad search stuff going? Maybe just reflect on all of that. .

Yes, it's Ron. So yes, I'd say setpoint, splitting hairs, it was a smidge for as we're still sitting in the same spot with the Google Search. But we have a couple of like always new ideas. So you'll see that thing kind of in our rest of year. We have that thing picking back up again, 1 point or 2 in Q3 and Q4. So despite -- and we haven't basically planned in that forecast to that Google issue to resolve. But we have some other kind of tricks up our sleeve there to keep that thing changed.

So -- the free flow thing is actually helping us to people on the call know what that is, but still 1/3 or 40% of all the total transactions in Brazil are not electronic. And I think like 7% of the market has now moved to free flow, which means there's no other way to pay. You have to pay electronically that you can't pay cash or credit card. So it's bringing incremental travelers into the mix. And so things like that on a lot of some of the sales things we're doing. So that thing will be, again, high-teens performance here in the section.

Great. And just 1 follow-up. The other revenue stream was up a lot sequentially in Q3. It was up about $20 million sequentially last year in Q3, does that create a tough comp at all? Or is that kind of normal seasonality going forward? .

Yes. So I appreciate the question. As you know, our gift business is in there. And the other, that's really the largest component, and there's quite a bit of volatility between the quarters and the gift business. And last year, they also had the changeover in terms of the new cars, which really drove that up. So I'd say it does create a tougher comp in other in the back half of the year.

And our next question comes from Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank.

Nice results, and Ron, I thought your commentary on to left was pretty interesting. So I was maybe hoping for a little more color on what your optionality there looks like in practice. I guess products and solutions do you plan to bring to market to health clients with vendor selection, pricing, et cetera, is just going to require a certain level of investment, either organic or inorganic? Or is it simply more kind of reorganizing your existing resources into something that will help clients? And then maybe lastly, how big do you think that opportunity could be and what could add to growth in the coming years? .

Yes, super good question. Big, Nate, would be my comments. So at a high level, it's the AI models, right? Those things are change in the game and lots of places and not shockingly, the change in the game and around corporate procurement and contract management and price comparisons and all that kind of stuff. And so this idea from talking with our clients and being a tons of clients and stuff is, hey, I've got, in our case, $800 million of indirect expense, and you guys are super helpful, helping us manage and control and pay all that, but like, should I have it? .

Do I have $750 million in expense and should I have these people I have. And so this idea is super adjacent made to what we do. It's left. It's earlier. It's before you approved the payment, you decide whether you should have, you should have the expense and stuff. And so we're getting a set of partners that have done some things here and looking at kind of integrating some of those capabilities. And what's interesting is we've got gazillions of clients already that were already -- they're telling us they improve the payment, we're making the payment with huge amounts of spend where we're not helping on the decision support very much, let alone telling new perspectives, clients, hey, we can be even more helpful to you.

So I think it's a big, big deal, both in terms of revenue acceleration in that spend is potentially sales at of getting people more interested because bosses want to spend less indirect expense, AP managers wanted to work well, the process to work better, right, and knock that fraud not to lose money and stuff. And so we're really trying to appeal to that C-suite a bit more with these add-ons, if you will.

Yes. Interesting stuff. And then I guess just for a follow-up. Sorry. Sorry a little bit of feedback. I don't know if that was on my end. But it was on the beat and raise, obviously, some help from macro, but also you called out underlying momentum, I guess, both in 2Q and for the rest of the year. So was hoping you could maybe put a finer point on that underlying momentum? Is there 1 or 2 segments you maybe call out as being better than expected in 2Q? And then, I guess, for the rest of the year relative to your prior expectations, I know high level the relative growth rates sound like they're all in the same ballpark. So I guess, just on the margin, what came in better than expected? And what do you expect to be better than expected for the rest of the year?

Appreciate the question. So maybe starting with the rest of your guide question that you put forward. our thought process here is it's a relatively immaterial raise at $15 million of revenue and $0.20 of EPS. But our message is our confidence in achieving our back half guidance. And just a reminder that we set a significant climb for ourselves in the back half of the year, so absolute revenue is growing, call it, $100 million Q1 to Q4 and absolute EPS is growing, call it, over $1.50 from Q1 to Q4. So quite impressive numbers by themselves in Q4. So again, just sharing with everybody our confidence in achieving those.

As rig with most of it, I want you to miss Hanon, hey, how's your guy versus last time to make sure your lenses on is 25% cash EPS growth in the second half over the prior year. So that's what we're focused on is delivering an absolute growth rate and amount exiting at $29 or something like that's our main message is don't miss that the numbers that were sticking out, they were significant prior versus prior period. .

And we'll take our next question from Madison Suhr with Raymond James.

You talked about some reallocation of investment from U.S. vehicle to corporate payments. Obviously, the U.S. business is much slower growth. But I guess maybe touch on your confidence level around sustaining high single-digit organic vehicle growth, especially as you reallocate some of those resources. It seems like it would be pretty high given your comments just now around high teens Brazil growth, but I would love to just hear your thoughts about the sustainability, especially in lieu of some of those allocations of resources. .

It's another good question. The first thing I'd say is they're really -- they're good businesses. Whether they're growing 8% or 10% there durable is held or hard to knock over they're super profitable. They have advantage stuff, networks, tech, people and sus, the first headline of people is don't discount just the quality of the businesses. The second point I'd make is the pivot -- the infamous pivot we made a couple of years ago has landed us now at literally line average retention, particularly in the U.S. and international markets. And so historically, because they were smaller, the vehicle businesses had a worse loss rate, lower retention rates.

And generally, they had work same-store sales. And so I'm happy to report today problems all because we changed the mix of business, it was always larger internationally. But because we've moved the mix here in the U.S. larger. We've now got the line average loss rate in same-store sales again around flat to plus 1. So it's really just a straight sales game now, it's my message. The growth right now that we have a stable base, which we didn't have and way improved retention because of the business mix. Now it's literally just selling. It's just investment level and productivity. And so that's what we're still coding it. We've only got so much money right, to try to make returns.

And so we're trying to trade that off between the vehicle business and other people value our corporate payments business higher. So I'd say we lead a little bit more that way. But I'd say it's high. If we keep spending money on sales and we keep making sales, I referenced high teens sales growth in Q2 over the prior year. So we're still selling the stuff. So I'd say that's the answer. It's stable. If we spend money and make sales, we can keep growing at high single digits .

Okay. That's helpful. And then just a follow-up on so some feedback. A follow-up on corporate payments here. Obviously, you guys mentioned that you expect to maintain this mid-teens plus organic growth in the second half. You gave some color on retention versus new sales. But I was hoping you could maybe also double-click on just what you're seeing on the cross-border versus payable side? And just any changes in expectation from the recent teach-in or are things kind of tracking with what you laid out there?

Yes, not much difference between those 2 kind of sub lines. I'd say they're both. It's not like 1 is 10, 1 is 23 or something. They're both kind of paired up in terms of the growth rate. they're both selling a lot and stuff. And as I said, I think a couple of exciting things there that could potentially make us do better is the bank thing that I mentioned earlier. If we deliver that version 2.0 and take it back to the pace.

And then second, it's getting the payables and spend management product over the pond, which we've done and grabbing that TAM, and we've got more sales and clients there. So those would be the 2 kind of upside of kind of offering something or going somewhere that's not kind of in the current numbers. So both of those things are in flight. So if they take hold and do better, both of those things could be helpful to next year.

[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley.

You've previously spoken about the 40% of your flows within cross-border that are still on Swift. I think you previously had mentioned trying to take that volume mix down closer to the mid-teens level by leveraging some of the private blockchain rails like Canexus. Ron, you obviously highlighted that in your prepared remarks, too. I just wanted to ask on Swift directly just given their announcement about some more real-time capabilities as well. Like how do you think about that volume mix shift and sort of the differentiation between that swift real-time rail relative to something like a Canexus and the decision tree there?

Michael, it's Ron, it's a good question. So for us, because it's a rail, it's just speed and cost. So to your point, whether it's the JPM thing or Citi announced or similar things. So to me, having the banks kind of rally consortium that wants to do this, the speedy blockchain thing great stable coin just tokenized real money, we love that. And I think we said it before, I think I think is a number I think we've done 40,000 transactions already over the JPM private blockchain. So it's not just on paper. It's real. We're actually moving money. .

The guy who run the thing tells me, hey, I think we could get to half by the time of leap of Christmas, I think we could get literally half of our wires from Swift on 1 of these things. So look, it Swift somehow match the speed and which they haven't telnet their cost, like between have we're kind of a different way, right? As long as the thing goes very fast and a low cost is super reliable and we can follow the bread clubs. We don't feel strongly. But the main message for me is we like the idea of tokenized fiat currency. We love the idea of helping clients move money in somatically to merchants, 24/7 and some of the banks, Michael, have said they literally credited outside of banking hours.

And so what do you need to get on and out of in and out of gasable point score, if you could just tokenize a euro and send it to somebody in thematically and it gets credited right away. So for us, I've said this repeatedly, the bank's announcements has moved, I think, way increase the chance of the outcome being what we said where we think falls in a bounce here.

Yes, makes a ton of sense. And then just a quick follow-up on Avid to the extent that you can share anything interesting in terms of underlying split there between software and payments revenue at this point and sort of the willingness of suppliers to pay that incremental software functionality over time with everything going on with AI .

Yes. I mean, the high level Avid is doing super good. I think we said their earnings last quarter, about 50% over the prior year. But more importantly, in me, I just had a review last week, their revenue growth is expected to pick up double digits as we get into the back half year. So the revenue growth has been the key indicator for us, which they're bullish on. And so the composition of that revenue to your point is there's been not much change. I'd say that the stock were revenue has been pretty stable. I think it's kind of low single digits growing.

So we've seen no attrition, no losses from clients in terms of paying the thing and they're doing a very good job in getting wider monetization. They've gone beyond virtual cars. They've added debit now is another way, electronics had a lot more volume on paid ACH, if you will, that goes a lot faster. So I'd say generally, the thing is going well, and we don't see a lot of risk on the software side. There are also way AI in their software. They're putting in a lot of cool things that they couldn't do before the clients like like -- I don't know if you like is, but call Fetchme,where, hey, no I'm a little person that sends out 100 invoices, I don't see Ron Clark invoice. The thing goes infectious and brings it back.

Like -- so I would say to you they're sexing up, they're making the software better for clients, which adds value. And so we're liking it. I'd say I'm more excited about that company. We didn't say it, but the colo of Avid and Alpha is going to come in above. I think I gave $1 and I gave $0.39, that is going to be pretty above the dollar, which is 1 of the reasons we're up about 35%. And so both of those big transactions might look performing for us.

[Operator Instructions] And it does not appear we have any further questions at this time. So we'd like to thank everybody for their participation in today's conference. This does bring us to the end of the meeting, and you may now disconnect.

All right.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We're at 1:45, we're going to get started. My name is Michael Infante. I cover fintech here at Morgan Stanley. I'm very pleased to be joined by Corpay's CFO, Peter Walker. Before we get started, I do just have a quick disclosure to read. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative.

So with that out of the way, thanks for joining us, Peter.

Yes. Great to be here.

So before we sort of get into some of the nitty gritty, the business over the last several years has evolved quite materially. You've obviously been historically concentrated in the Vehicle Payments segment, but have really aggressively mix shifted towards what is a faster growth and higher-margin segment in Corporate Payments. Just talk to us about that transition and how you think about the future trajectory of the company on a go-forward basis.

Yes, happy to. Corporate Payments was 40% of the revenue in the first quarter. So to your point, really well on our way on that transition. And to that point, we've created a new set of investor materials that are available on our IR website because what we wanted to paint for investors is what does Corpay look like 2 or 3 years from now, right? Like we've made a big rotation into corporate payments, but what does it actually look like as a pure corporate payments -- pure-play provider. So Ron and I have been on the road last month and this month meeting with investors really to kind of share that vision of the forward look of the company.

And what I would say is the reaction has been very positive. I think people are really excited about, one, the corporate payment space in terms of really large TAMs, faster-growing business, higher retention, better credit quality clients. And then I think even beyond that, the idea of really making this shift from our roots as call it, a fleet company focused on SMB clients globally to being a corporate payment company focused on the middle market has been resonating well. So it's been helpful to get that feedback. But maybe I'll just unpack it for you a little bit.

So what I would just say to everybody listening is definitely go to our website and check out the investor presentation we put out there in May, and I think it will help some of these concepts I'm talking about kind of come to life. So first, I would say we hold our strategic offsite every year in March that gives us an opportunity to walk away as a group and step out of the day, step out of the quarter, step out of the year and say, what's the midterm strategy of the company. So not only what is the strategic view of the company, but what's the financial view of the company. And that's where we all walked away as an executive team kind of going, yes, pure-play corporate payments, that's where we're headed. That's where we've been headed. So kind of more committed than ever to that's where we're going. So what this pure-play corporate payments means?

It means that we see ourselves really in 3 primary businesses as we go forward. So one of them is employee spend. Think commercial card is one of the largest products that would be employee spend for us. The next category is vendor spend. So think of AP automation, also think about us going left and moving more into procurement and offering procurement offerings. And then the third is our cross-border business, which we most recently held a teach-in on that business, which I know you attended in the recent couple of months. So that -- those materials are out there as well. So that kind of sets the stage of what do we think we look like, call it, 2 to 3 years from now. Now there's 2 things to think about when we go through that. One is, okay, Peter, how about the remaining pieces of the business that don't necessarily fit within that structure. And so I would say some of those businesses will continue to hold. They'll be a smaller part of the portfolio, but other parts -- other of those businesses will divest, right? So we've divested in the first quarter.

We used the proceeds from that divestiture to buy back shares. So we didn't have an EPS dilution from that. So what I would say is we continue to look to divest kind of noncore TAM-constrained businesses, that we will use the proceeds to buy back shares to minimize kind of any dilution. So we're in market with 2 other businesses, which we've been publicly talking about of about $1 billion in proceeds. And I'd say there's another handful of businesses that over the next year or 2, we'll look to divest of. We're never going to share the names of the businesses or the segments because that puts us in a disadvantaged position, not only from selling the business, but running the business and with employees. But we see a strong path into this pure-play corporate payments rotation and some divestitures along the way, probably the other piece I should comment on that is M&A. And our view today is we spent about $15 billion on M&A over the last, call it, 7-plus years, 7 to 8 years.

Our view is we have all the capabilities today that we need to compete in these 3 categories I mentioned of employee spend, vendor payments and cross-border. So when we think about M&A going forward, it really will be about new geographies, new customer segments we're not in today. So we're no longer on the capability hunt. So that gives us even more confidence in the ability to grow these 3 large businesses we're talking about.

Super helpful overview. If we just focus on the corporate payments piece in particular, and how you think about Corpay's value proposition and the durability of that over time. We obviously have countless crosscurrents from a thematic and sort of headline perspective as it relates to competition with new product innovation. But how do you think about Corpay's ability to continue to win over time?

Yes. I have high confidence in it. I would say in the 3 businesses that we talked about in the pure-play corporate payments, these are all 3 of these sectors that have $100 billion plus in revenue TAMs available today, so really large TAMs. The majority of those TAMs are owned by the banks today. And when you look at the Tier 1 banks servicing enterprise clients, they obviously do that extremely well. I'm not looking to compete with the Tier 1 banks enterprise clients. I'm looking to compete with the Tier 2 through 4 banks and really focus on that middle market underserved clients. And hey, the Tier 2 through 4 banks do things really well, right? I mean they handle deposits well. They lend these businesses money. It's important that they provide these middle market business services, but we think we've got a differentiated -- we know we have a differentiated product that we can sell and really take that market share from banks.

I would say specifically within employee spend, there's been some innovators out there in the space today, which we actually see great because that really points to people investing within the space because they know there's the opportunity to take share. So we think we're uniquely positioned in that space. We have a 4-in-1 card that is much different than kind of any of our competitors today. But hopefully, that's an overview when it relates to competition.

Yes. No, it helps. I think another sort of underappreciated aspect of the story is just the rate at which the business has been compounding over the last 4 to 5 years, maybe even longer, right, mid-plus teens of EPS generation sort of through the cycle on an organic basis. You laid out the target for $50 of cash EPS in the future. Just talk to us about the cadence, timing at which it would take to get there as you sort of think about the model from here.

Yes. So another thing that kind of came out of the offsite that we do. So when I first joined Corpay, several people in the office would say 10%, 13%, 19%. And I was like, what's happening? Is this like rain man? Why are they repeating 10%, 13%, 19%, right? And so obviously, a couple of weeks into it, I learned, okay, 10% organic growth. We're going to consistently deliver 10% organic growth. And by the way, we've delivered that 4 out of the last 5 years. So that's what we lead with in terms of organic growth. The 13% is EBITDA growth. So we can obviously grow EBITDA faster than we can grow top line because we have scale in the business. So we have a, call it, 80% plus incremental margins. That's how you get to 13%. And then how we got to 19% is because we've got strong yield in the business, right, we've got the ability to either buy back stock with our cash flow or we've got the ability to do M&A. So that got us to 19%.

When we went through our off-site and we reviewed that model, we said, wait a minute, it's not 19% anymore, it's 24%, right? So we've got another 5 points there in terms of EPS growth. So call it, for a midterm, call it, 10%, 13%, 20% plus. But the 24% that I'm talking to and really the expansion is driven by 2 things. One, the stock is undervalued today, right? So my ability to buy back more of that stock increases in the current environment. And then number two, what we hadn't factored in before is, well, hey, if we continue to maintain the leverage ratio of, call it, 2% to 3%, we'll continue to borrow more money over the midterm as EBITDA grows. So we'll kind of call it, have $15 billion of cash flow over the next 3.5 to 4 years. So our view to the market, to investors, and this has been received really well is, hey, we can't control how we're valued.

We think we're undervalued at, call it, 12 or 13x depending on the day. And as we continue to be undervalued, we're going to take that cash, and we're going to bet on ourselves and buy our own stock back. And that's how we're going to create value for you even though the market is not rewarding us. The thought process is that over time, right, as maybe we move out of this AI boom and there's a shift back to fundamentals and people really appreciating our business, our unique ability to be a top-tier performer that the stock does appreciate. And then maybe we probably move into more of a balance of using those proceeds, that additional cash against M&A and buybacks. But the idea of getting to $50 EPS, call it, in the next 4 years and really leaning into buybacks, we've socialized it with a lot of our investors, and they've been really enthusiastic about it again at these current valuations.

So durable 10% organic growth, 20% plus cash EPS growth from here?

That's it.

Understood.

So maybe just in terms of the growth algorithm that builds to those results, Ron, obviously, coming from more of a selling motion and obviously instilling that throughout the organization. You also have the target of delivering 20% sales growth across the organization. Just talk to us about what really drives the Corpay sales engine just because the magnitude of those dollars starts to get big when the base obviously expands.

Yes, great question. So I mean, I would say that sales is our secret sauce. To your point, I mean, Ron comes with a background around it. We have incredible discipline around it and analytics behind it. Our view is we're going to increase our sales investment every year by 20%. And we believe that's kind of at the efficient frontier. You get to a certain point where you could overinvest in sales and you're no longer productive. So if you look actually in the investor presentation materials I was referencing people before, we provide our sales growth kind of over the last 5 years and those are materials, and we've been at 20% or greater, right?

So if you look at the history, right, as a predictor of the future, we feel really confident that we can continue to grow sales by 20%. If you go over to the retention side of the business, we reported 93% -- a little better than that, 93.5% retention for the quarter. So call it, we're losing 6% to 7% of the business every year, right? So that's your algorithm that gets you, call it, at a 10% organic growth rate. Obviously, the more we move into corporate payments, the retention rate becomes stronger because we've got a middle market customer, and you've seen that improvement in our retention rate over the last couple of quarters.

Very helpful. Ron made a comment in the cross-border teach-in that the market is so large, right? You're delivering, call it, high teens organic corporate payments growth. He wants that to be north of 20% and sort of pushing the organization to deliver against that. What is the sort of practical bottleneck to growing faster within Corporate Payments as you think about the opportunity from here?

Yes. So it's a great question. So as we've shared in the teach-in, it's call it, $160 billion revenue opportunity in the Tier 2 to 4 space for us to go after. So if we're going to be about $1.5 billion this year in revenue and cross-border, we've got less than 1%. So the good news is a ton of market for us to capture. I'd say the opportunity for us is how do we do that efficiently, right? So how do we grow the sales team efficiently and responsibly to capture that market. So if you look at that business in 2017, when we went into it, right, it was a $100 million business, and now it's a $1.5 billion business. So I'd say it's continuing to do the things that we're doing. The market opportunity is there and then adding to the sales team responsibly in terms of getting a good growth rate from them, but realizing you can't overread because then it becomes unproductive.

Yes. And from a competitive perspective, obviously, the focus on the middle market customers, the sort of larger G-SIB sort of focusing on the enterprise cohort in terms of servicing those needs. How do you sort of think about what you've seen on the ground in terms of the Tier 2 to 4 banks in terms of their competitive response to the pace at which you guys are growing and where they're thinking about trying to mitigate some of that share loss in the future?

Yes, it's a great question. I mean this is kind of key to our partnership with Mastercard in the financial institution channel. So if you look at the cross-border business, call it, even a year ago, it was primarily a business that was selling into the corporate segments that's where we've built all of our business. So going after those customers directly that are being served by banks. With the purchase of Alpha, we moved in the private capital market space. We added another segment. And then we were in the financial institution segment already, but a relatively small business that we had there. What we're excited about Mastercard. Has Mastercard has relationships with these Tier 2 through 4 banks across the world, right? And they have the ability to open the door to these banks for us. And so as we announced in last year and then closed in the fourth quarter was the partnership with Mastercard. They obviously made an investment in us as part of that partnership, the value of the cross-border business at $13 billion, and we've been quite successful.

So the thought is if we're not going to take the business directly, let's go to the banks and offer them to sell our solutions. And whether they white label those or sell them as Corpay, we're really agnostic to it. We know that there's an underserved customer that has a need to be met, and we'll either do it directly or be a partner of the banks and help them be successful. I mean the concern for those Tier 2 through 4 banks is that the customer outgrows them if they can't get their cross-border needs met and they go to the Tier 1 bank. And they don't want to lose the lending relationship. So we think that we have a great value proposition to say, hey, we can complement your relationship, we can complement your lending with international payments, risk management services and global bank accounts.

Helpful. Maybe just to piggyback on Mastercard. Just a status update in terms of where you are with that relationship. I think you've historically said that you expected it to contribute, call it, 1 to 2 points of acceleration to the cross-border component of corporate payments. Does that still hold? And how do you think about the potential for incremental acceleration in '27 as some of these sort of slower converting sales cycles begin to close?

Yes, good question. So I'd say overall, the partnership is going really well. Mastercard has committed resources to the partnership that are kind of opening the doors, and then we're obviously bringing the SME to sell the product. So we've closed 3 clients to date. We've got a really strong pipeline. So I'd say that's progressing well. In terms of what's the percentage that it adds to the organic growth in cross-border, I think we shared that 1% to 2%. It was before my time, and it was when the cross-border business was quite a bit smaller before the Alpha acquisition. So it's probably a little bit lower because your base has gotten so much bigger, right? I mean last year, in '25, we were less than $1 billion. Now we're going to be $1.5 billion with Alpha. And what I would say is you are right, it is a slower sales cycle within financial institutions.

So I'd say I wouldn't get over my skis, but say we revisit '27 guidance, and we've had more time in terms of the sales cycle, we'll kind of revisit what we think the contribution is going to be. But overall, right, we do believe it's going to be meaningful.

That's great. Maybe just in terms of the cadence of wallet share expansion, in terms of the typical adoption behavior of a customer sort of initially starting with payments, expanding to things like risk management, your bank account product, et cetera. What evidence or data are you seeing in terms of just the multiproduct attach in the organization and sort of how that's either improving retention, driving yield, et cetera?

Yes. It's a really, really good question. So I would say in our Corporate segment, we see that about 2/3 of the revenue, the clients are using 2 products. And so if you think about it, a client comes to us and they typically first need help with executing the international payment, right? So the FX payment, that's what they come to us, right? And then when they come to us with that, the immediately thing that we bring to the table is, hey, there's volatility in currency and you really should be protecting yourself against this volatility. That naturally leads to the risk management services that we can provide. So those 2 products really, we say, go together like peanut butter and jelly. So I think it's important when you're thinking about kind of other players, emerging players in the space that if you're only offering the payment product, you're at a disadvantage because you can't offer a full solution. And then adding on the bank account product, the real benefit of this in the corporate space I'm speaking to, we call it the multicurrency account.

What it allows the client to do is to see all their bank accounts, right? They can connect it to their primary bank account. So they can see all their global bank accounts and then manage their money kind of across the globe. So -- but like I said, a high correlation between the first 2 products and then the global bank account adoption is also growing.

Makes sense. Maybe just spend a minute or 2 just in terms of how you think about the concept of netting in the organization. You obviously gave the statistic in terms of 60% of your cross-border trades being netted internally. Just talk to us about what that means in terms of sort of the lack of need to sort of externally source FX and how that impacts unit economics in the business.

Yes. So super powerful concept. So for those of you who are not in the weeds of cross-border, which I wasn't until about a year ago when I joined this business, right, the netting concept would be the idea of -- you're in the U.K. and you need dollars and I'm in the U.S. and I need pounds. And because we sit across 5 continents today and that we run 60% of our business on proprietary rails that I can net those 2 trades from a liquidity standpoint, so kind of self-fund that liquidity. So it's incredibly helpful not only in terms of executing the transaction for my customer, but also in terms of the efficiency that it allows me to achieve and the margins that it has allowed us to grow in the business. And like I said, run 60% of the business on our own rails.

Got it. I wanted to pivot to JPMorgan and our Kinexys product just in terms of what they're building there, what they have been building. Just talk to us about where Kinexys sort of fits into your payments orchestration stack and how you think about the sort of mix or flows on the Corpay network that are still on Swift and how the Canexus platform can help in the future to sort of drive that mix down over time?

Yes, happy to. So we think that blockchain is pretty exciting in terms of it offers the 24/7 settlement, right? So the kind of a banking hour settlement. We had in our mind that kind of, let's say, mid last year when I joined Corpay that it wasn't going to be very long until the banks entered into the blockchain space because the other providers of Stablecoin, et cetera, the banks are obviously going to be protective of keeping the deposits of all the corporates that they work with, right? So when JPMorgan came out with the Canexus product, what we were pretty interested about it is they've got 220 correspondent banks across the globe. So it's a very wide network to use. It's the same cost as SWIFT, but it gives a 24/7 settlement capability that Swift does not have.

So the reason why we made some comments about, hey, taking a significant amount of our volume off of SWIFT, right, 60% of it on our own rails, kind of that remaining 40% is up for grabs. We see a lot of that probably going to the Kinexsys partnership that we formed because we can, again, do it at the same price, and we can get it outside of bank done outside of banking hours. So we think it's a pretty great rail product that JPM has created. Citi has one that they're coming to market with as well, and I expect there'll be copycats across the top tier banks.

So it sounds like an incremental capability for you guys from a rail perspective. I'd say to sort of play the other side of the same argument, I think one of the common pushbacks we get from investors is on the corporate payments business, historically, the moat of Corpay has been sort of predicated on the breadth of your banking network, the ability to sort of FX -- source FX liquidity in various corridors. What sort of prevents either a start-up, an existing sort of remittance business that has some FX capabilities from partnering with someone like a Kinexsys leveraging their banking network and the sort of settlement layering on the FX and sort of reduces Corpay's value prop over time? How would you respond to that?

Yes. I mean maybe 2 questions. One, they could have done it with Swift for years, right? Certainly. The main difference between Swift and Kinexsys is a 24/7 settlement. So I don't know that, that's going to inspire somebody to invest a whole bunch of capital into a business to build something when they could have built a cross-border business on top of the Swift network that operates today. But one analogy that I've been using to try and help people understand kind of the rails part of our business and our middle market customers is, say you made a call this morning to Tiffany's and SoHo and you decided to buy an expensive piece of jewelry from somebody who was important to you, right?

My wife told me she wants...

All right. So here we go. All right. So this live example, right? So you called Tiffany's and you said, hey, I need it by 4:00. You spent $250,000 because you just got your bonus for the year and you wanted to reward your wife for supporting you, right? So you're sitting here kind of waiting for it to come at 4:00 because you've got dinner tonight and you want to have this in your pocket. When that delivery person shows up with that diamond that you bought, I don't think you turn to that delivery person and say, how did you get to the intercontinental? Did you take Uber? Did you take the subway? Did you take a taxi? Did you bike? You don't care, right? Is that fair to say? What do you care about?

Got the diamond.

You got the diamond. And when you look at it, it's the $250,000 diamond that you paid for, right? So if you take that analogy to my space, where we're serving the middle market customers, when the CFO or the treasury of a $300 million to $500 million company calls us and they need to have a payroll happen by Friday, so their employees in the U.K. get paid or they need to have a tax payment happen in Germany the very next morning because they're going to be late if they don't. They're not specifying for me cross-border -- hey, guys, I want you to use Kinexsys for this payment, right? It is a tiny, tiny part of the value of the transaction.

What they're looking for me to do is use the payment method, the rail that gets it to them based on their business needs, right? So in the purpose of the diamond we're speaking about, right, we would have picked the route that got it to you fastest, ensuring it got to you in full value and was fully protected. So that's the value that comes in cross-border, right? And that's tied to one technology platform that sits globally, the liquidity corridors that we talked about having 60% of our rails. The regulatory and compliance that we put in place and probably most important, the fact that we've got 800 professionals sitting across the world in our go-to-market team that knows how to sell this pretty unique product, right? You're selling it into organizations who actually really need help with treasury management as opposed to selling it into, call it, an enterprise organization that has a super sophisticated treasury management team.

Yes. Very helpful.

So hopefully, your wife is happy tonight.

Hope so. Hope so. Maybe pivoting to Alpha. You obviously spoke about the rationale for that acquisition, the incremental sort of capabilities that you gain as it relates to the private markets, the exposure to the asset management ecosystem, the deposit base, et cetera. What has sort of surprised you most since the acquisition and sort of contextualize for us where we are in terms of the synergy realization, both on the revenue and the expense side?

Yes. I'd say -- I mean, hey, we've done over 100 acquisitions in the last 25 years. So one thing you should know about Corp is when we buy something, we typically know everything we possibly can about it before we wire the funds to buy it. But I'd say maybe to the upside, what we've been surprised by is just the cultural match between Alpha and our current cross-border team, right? I mean they were a much smaller organization. We're an S&P 500 company. So we've really been able to blend those go-to-market teams even faster than we thought. And I think we even shared on the Q4 earnings call, right, we saw a little bit better performance out of Alpha than we expected in the last 2 months of last year just because we were able to kind of gel quickly there. And then I think your second part of the question was about the integration.

Yes, synergy realization.

Synergy realization, yes. So what I would say is there were some synergies that were kind of relatively day 1 synergies that we could execute on that were relatively light, but helpful, right? I mean we run a much larger business. So all of our banking contracts are at a much different scale than theirs are, right? So that's a good example of kind of some early synergies we were able to take in the business. The other 2 synergies we're focused on, which are more kind of back end, more back-end loaded, one is revenue synergies, and there's revenue synergies really in 2 places there.

One, Alpha was only licensed within the U.K. and the continent in Europe, and we are licensed in the U.S. and Australia. So we are already selling to private capital market clients in all of those geos. But today, we're not doing it on one system. So as we move to integrating the system, call it, July or August, we'll see even a bigger uptake in clients that were current clients of Alpha now in different geographies of cross-border. So that's going to be super helpful. And then the other piece is Alpha didn't typically provide the risk management services that we did in the past. So also, that's another revenue synergy, again, kind of back end -- more back-end loaded this year. And then in addition, when we move to one system, we're obviously going to get a lot of cost synergies out of that.

Yes. Makes a ton of sense. And just for those in the audience, the nature of the private markets customers, these are operation and private equity firms, the Bain Capitals of the world that have funds in various corridors and now have the licensing infrastructure to be able to move funds more efficiently.

Yes, that's exactly it. So Alpha really built a great niche business with their global bank account business. They've got about $3 billion in deposits as of the end of the year. And then once they -- and the value prop was, hey, Bain Capital used as an example, and they're an actual client. If they want to do a deal in Germany, they need an operating account in Germany. We can create that for them in, call it, 7 to 10 business days. And then once we create the global bank account, then there's the opportunity to sell them the FX payments and the RMS services. And you're absolutely right that the hypothesis here is Bain is going to use us for those services now in the U.S. and in Australia, and that is the plan that's being executed on.

On the tech platform migration, I think the rest of the migration is happening throughout the balance of the summer. What sort of changes post migration when it's complete? Does it sort of lead to some form of step function change in Alpha margins? What sort of changes either from a financial or a commercial perspective?

Yes. So it kind of goes back to the synergies I was speaking to. So one, it gets my global sales force all on one system and primarily, right, that's the corporate business of Alpha and the private capital market business of Alpha. So that's a synergy there that allows the private capital markets business at scale to sell within the 2 new regions that we spoke about. And then the other thing it does is it does improve the margins because I've got the ability to shut down a system and take out all the costs supporting that system.

Got it. In the few minutes four left, I just wanted to open up the floor to see if any clients have any questions.

Just a quick question on your move from SWIFT and pursuing 24/7. Are you moving all your volumes off of SWIFT, just to clarify or just for kind of those circumstances that are 24/7? And then how agnostic can you remain if and as Swift or other providers and rails provide 24/7 remittance capability?

Yes, great question. So we're not moving everything off Swift. I'd say it's really based on the clients' needs, and we believe the 24/7 part of Kinexsys or another type of blockchain offering like stablecoin is attractive, right? So that's where we see -- and it's the same price point. So that's why we believe a lot of volume will migrate there. We are establishing stablecoin rails. So we did introduce a relationship with BB&K as an infrastructure provider to help us do that. So we'll be able to process the blockchain either via Canexus or via stablecoin. Canexus is much better priced right now because there's just not enough volume on stablecoin today. But we'll always pick the rail that's the best for the client.

Any other questions?

SWIFT announced a blockchain product, I think it was about a year ago. I guess since you're moving away, is that making progress?

It's a great question. I don't have the answer to it. I've been in the seat for less than a year, and obviously, it's not hit our radar in terms of using it. So I would probably say that's probably the conclusion is that it's not providing us any advantage to using that.

Great. Well, 2 minutes left here. We spent a whole chunk of time on corporate payments. I did want to hit on vehicle. Talk to us about sort of the 3 components within vehicle. You have the U.S. business, you sort of have the international ex Brazil business and you have the Brazil business, each sort of with different same-store sales profiles, different growth rates, different business mixes. Just talk to us about them either in isolation or as a portfolio and sort of how that builds up to the organic 10% vehicle payments target.

Yes. So in totality, right, vehicle payments, we expect to perform, call it, 9% or 10%, right, kind of consistently at that 10% the last several quarters. If you unpack that by geography, Brazil is the fastest-growing business within the 3, call it, high teens, mid- to high teens. That's followed by our Europe and Rest of World business, which grows, call it, 9% to 10%. Both of those have grown at those rates very consistently for the last 4 to 5 years. And then U.S. vehicle payments is now the smallest business within vehicle payments, and that's growing, call it, mid-single digits. So hopefully, that's helpful.

No, that helps. 30 seconds here, lightning round in terms of buybacks. Ron was probably more -- what's the right word to describe this, more pounding the table on sort of the dislocation in the stock and the buyback opportunity from here really than I've ever heard him. How do you sort of think about what that signals and sort of what you guys are seeing in terms of either private or public valuations and how we should sort of think about the trade-off from here?

Yes. So I mean, I think it kind of goes back to where we started our conversation, right, that when we kind of step back and looked at our 4-year model and the ability for EPS to grow much faster because our yield has expanded, right? And the fact that we're so undervalued, our view was, hey, we can create value for shareholders even if the market -- while the market is not valuing us correctly, we believe, undervaluing us, we're going to create value by buybacks.

Now what I want to emphasize is, should our value go to more what we think it is, that's probably not the best use of our capital, and we'll shift it then to more M&A. But we just really -- he really wanted to make the point to investors is I can create significant value by just running a great business even if the market doesn't reward me for it.

Awesome. Well, we'll wrap there. Thank you, Peter, for joining us.

Great to be here. Appreciate it.

Thanks.

Thanks, everybody, for joining. My name is Tien-Tsin Huang, I follow the Payments and IT Services Sector at JPMorgan. Really excited to have Corpay back. Peter Walker, CFO. My first time having him at the conference. So super excited to have him here. Thank you for being here.

Great to be here with you.

So we'll do a fireside chat. I put together a bunch of questions. I think, if there are any questions in the portal or from the audience, we'll take those as well. But again, I appreciate the time.

I thought we'd just start, if that's okay, Peter, with the obligatory macro question and what you're seeing on the ground? How healthy are SMBs? What are you seeing in terms of activity? Maybe start with that, if that's okay.

Yes, happy to. So maybe talk about it in 2 ways. One, fundamentals in the business and then what we're seeing in the overall macro environment. So the fundamental business trends are strong. We reported 11% organic growth for the quarter. It's our fourth consecutive quarter of 11% organic growth. So really thrilled about that. We actually came out of the gate stronger than we expected, as we expected originally for a lower organic growth for the quarter.

Revenue retention is 93.5%, now including cross-border, so also really strong, and 24% sales growth year-over-year. So we are really set up well at the beginning of the year. And as you know from the call, we raised our revenue and adjusted EPS guidance for the full year.

From a macro environment, the world is on our side right now. So I would say that higher fuel prices in the U.S. are helpful to the business. While it's rather a small part of our business today, it's still helpful. The weaker U.S. dollar is obviously helpful for us, given we're such a global company and the FX rates related to that. And then just in general, I'd say, volatility in FX is helpful for our business in our cross-border business, which I know you joined our teach-in last week and learned a little bit more about that.

Yes. I'm sure we'll dig in on that. So just quickly, just get out of the way. I know people asked me to ask you just the sensitivity to higher fuel prices. I know diesel is all over the place relative to regular unleaded. So just quickly walk us through the sensitivity there.

Yes. So I'd say, just a reminder, right, in the U.S., our USVP business is about 10% of our total revenue of $5.3 billion. So I'd say higher fuel prices are helpful for the business, but it's not a needle-moving impact on the overall business. Higher fuel prices for a longer period of time are helpful for the profitability of the business because typically, prices remain higher longer, which means there's a spread component on the back end.

And beyond fuel, thinking about just the signals out there, watching the macro, anything else, Peter, that you pay attention to, especially with you joining the firm, what have you found to be helpful?

Yes. So I'd say we track a bunch of KPIs across the different businesses. Obviously, having 50% of our revenues overseas, we're really attuned into what's happening on a macro basis. It's super helpful that our largest and most profitable business is cross-border, which is in the business of managing risk for other CFOs. So Mark is a great partner to Ron and I in terms of input and really tracking what's happening macro. And as I said, right now, we feel like we're set up really well for the rest of the year.

No, it sounds that way. It definitely came across from the call and even on the teach-in recently. But before we get into the business, just a couple more on the headline result. There was overperformance. You said the majority of it, 2/3 of it was not macro related. So what's coming in better than expected? What's driving the step-up in financial performance, if you were to summarize it?

Yes. So I mean, the great thing, which we all hope for, is we just got off to a faster start with a lot of our initiatives this year, which was super helpful. And if you look across the segments, we had overperformance in all 4 of the businesses, especially overperformance in Corporate Payments, which is obviously the crown jewel and what we're moving towards as a total enterprise, but really pleased with the trends. So 2/3 really came from business fundamentals. And then as we talked about, the world is just being helpful to us right now, so benefit from exchange rates and benefit from fuel prices.

Right. So pretty broad-based, but definitely a big help from Corporate Payments. So let's talk about that, that you're pivoting more into Corporate Payments. You've done a great job of remixing there. I think you're ahead of schedule and getting that to 40% of revenue, which is great. Why is mid-teens plus the right target for growth? That's the most common question I get from investors. So how do you benchmark that?

Yes. So we worked really hard in terms of doing our first teach-in last week on cross-border. And I think one of the themes in that cross-border teach-in and is holistic to Corporate Payments is our competition in this space is regional banks, so call it, Tier 2 through 4 regional banks in all of Corporate Payments. Our competition is not the other fintechs out there that are relatively small compared to us in these spaces, especially within cross-border. I would say not that there's -- not competition, but there is room for all of us because there's an underserved market by these banks that we can look to serve. So I'd say this is about gaining share, and we've just had incredible success in being able to do that.

Good. Good. So a lot of ways to follow up on that. The standout for me was that you've got very high retention, upper 90s, but you've had a pretty consistent track record of reproducing the 20% of new sales growth or bookings or whatever you want to call it, replenishing the backlog and the pipeline. How sustainable is that? Where are you driving or sourcing that new revenue?

Yes. So maybe we'll start with retention quickly, right? 97% retention. Wallet share gains is a large part of that retention. So important to think about in the cross-border business, when we think about international payments and then we think about risk management contracts, they're really peanut butter and jelly. So a client who's doing international payments is also very interested in a company that has those capabilities. So it allows us to compete in a different way than others. So that's really what's helping us grow the wallet share. And then in addition to that, right, we're really focused on growing our global bank account products. So overall, we feel really good about the retention side.

If you go to the new sales side, and the same thing runs true. When we're going into a new client, and those are purely new sales, so we're including in that, call it, 20% plus. What they're interested in is that we've got this fulsome suite of 3 products to offer and they all go together really, really well. And again, here, we've sized the TAM at about $160 billion in terms of what we can serve in that, call it, Tier 4 -- Tier 2 through Tier 4 bank market, and we have less than 1% of it. So the ability for us to grow is really about capturing additional share.

As you know, we've talked about our partnership with Mastercard, which we're excited about. What that partnership allows us to do is to take these capabilities and actually sell them into the Tier 2 through 4 banks and allow them to have the same capabilities. They can white label them if they want, but really resell that product where today, they're not very successful, right? So it's not only about going after the clients directly, but we also have the ability to sell into those banks, Tier 2 through 4, and have them resell the products.

So Peter, in lay terms, just tell us like your ideal client that's consuming everything that's got high wallet share. What does that look like? Can you give us a real-world example of what a customer might look like there?

Yes. So it's interesting within the cross-border space because I think all of us here in the U.S., we don't deal with foreign currency very often. So I think it does become a kind of, oh, what is this? So I would refer the audience to the teach-in that we put out last week because the goal there was to be super transparent.

And what we used as an example in there is we used a middle market company based in the U.K. who was then looking to open up offshore operations in different countries, right? So kind of the first use case that you start with that middle market company is they're going to have employees in a different country and they're going to have vendors in a different country. So the natural place that we really start with that type of a client is how do we help them create their FX program and get those vendors paid, what then they typically stand is, oh, there's risk in international payments. How do I manage that risk? Corpay, can you be helpful to us in terms of managing that risk? That's how the relationship starts, I'd say, with a lot of our corporate clients.

If we move over to our private capital market clients, which is really the base that we bought when we bought Alpha, think of this as [ Bain ] Capital, right, or a PE firm, we typically start with them when they're looking at a transaction and they're looking at a transaction in an international country and they need to open up a bank account. And by the way, with a Tier 2 through 4 bank, it takes 4 to 6 months to open up a bank account. I don't know if you've worked for private equity, I have. That's an eternity in private equity time, right?

So our ability to open that account within, call it, a week, satisfies their need. And then once we have them on, their thought is, oh, how do you protect the volatility of this payment that I'm going to transfer, right? So then that leads to growing wallet share. So I'd say both corporates and private markets, and then I talked about financial institutions, those are 3 of the 4 segments in cross-border. And in addition to that is digital currency. So hopefully, that gives a little bit of a view of how a client works.

And I think -- I do encourage folks to listen to it. I think it was very helpful to think about the plumbing. But I thought the important takeaway -- it's hard to fathom it, but the idea that the actual money movement part is not where the value is. That's not how you get monetized. And I think there's a lot of fear, right, with stablecoins and how that's going to lower the cost of money movement in the rail. I think that gets too much play relative to the other services around that. Can you just give a 30-second summary of that, if I'm articulating that way?

Yes, happy to. I mean innovation is always exciting, right? And so I think investors' role is to always be looking at innovation and saying, how is it going to change the market? What we really wanted to do in the teach-in was kind of help further educate. So I think, Tien-Tsin, the best point I can lean on is over 85% of our revenue is in G20 currencies. Those G20 currencies are super liquid, they're nearly instant, and there's a pretty thin spread there, right? These are sophisticated markets. So there's not disruption to be had in terms of the rail, so to speak, or really in terms of the margin. So that's kind of the first thing that I would lay out.

The second thing that I would lay out is running, what we believe, is the largest cross-border business outside the banking system, takes many more capabilities than the rail. The rails is just one component, but one, you've got to have a great customer acquisition engine. Two, you've got to have liquidity across the world. We're now in a place today that we can net over 60% of our trades, which is super important, and the technology that we have and the licensing framework. So we've been investing in this for, call it, 20-plus years. The idea of somebody catching up to us at the rate we're growing, I think that's going to be difficult.

And then lastly, I would just say, hey, blockchain and stablecoin, we think the really interesting use case here is the 24/7 settlement, right, the after banking hour settlement. And we're really leaning in. Ironically, JPM has built the Kinexys product. We're really enthusiastic about it because it is using the blockchain, it is a tokenized currency, but it's not a stablecoin, and it's easier for people to use because they don't have to go on chain and off chain. It's such a -- it's a less difficult process of doing that. And the idea of foreign currency exchange still exists in that product. So we actually think that the uptake of banks who've always been the leaders of top-tier banks in money movement in the blockchain and tokenized currency, that's going to be the real winner versus stablecoin.

And how does Alpha fit the acquisition?

You mean in totality?

Yes.

Yes. So Alpha, really, 2 pieces to the business, right? They had the private capital markets business and they had the corporates business. The private capital markets business brought with it about $3 billion in deposits in global bank accounts, really focused at asset managers and as I described, kind of Bain Capital example. So what we're super excited about there is Alpha was licensed in the U.K. and in Continental Europe. We have license in Australia and we have license in the U.S. So big picture in terms of synergies, that's a huge opportunity for us.

I'd say there's also a whole other list of taking a company the size of Alpha and adding it to the company our scale that we get benefits out of. So what I'd say in terms of synergies is back half of this year, as we have shown in our guidance, there's an uptick, and that's because we'll see those synergies come on board, and we expect even a bigger impact as we go into 2027.

Right. Just by exposing it and getting that geo expansion, I think, naturally creates those synergies.

That's correct. And the great thing is the global teams are already working together. So we got that figured out really quick, ended the year strong in cross-border out of it. And then as we shared on the call, we moved about 15% of their business to our one global platform within cross-border. And through mid-summer, we'll move the rest of it. So this is -- we're a serial acquirer here. So these are new things for us in terms of how do we get the synergies out as soon as possible.

No. So the deals have been good. So let's stay on that. I think you and Ron have said that the pipeline is really, really strong and active on the Corporate Payments stuff -- front. It feels like it's imminent. Can we assume that they have similar criteria or common features of what we've seen in past deals? Or could these be different?

Yes, I think you should assume they would look similar to past deals, right? I mean, Alpha was a very large deal for us, second in the company history. So I'm not sure we've got something that big in the near time -- near term. But hey, we are an acquirer of choice, right? So people reach out to us all the time with different ideas, whether that's large businesses or whether that's innovations we can buy and enhance our products, et cetera, and our open sign is on in terms of M&A and deals.

Okay. Yes. I think sometimes we underappreciate that, right, that Corpay is a destination of choice for a lot of targets to join. So no, we're definitely excited about it.

Anything else on Corporate Payments I didn't ask before we move on?

Well, also, we didn't talk about our payables business, which I would just say, again, a lot of white space there for us to compete within the payables business. There's really 2 products in there. One is our spend management product and the others are AP automation product. So those businesses continue to perform well, and the organic growth rate for Corporate Payments in totality from payables and cross-border was quite strong in Q1, as we talked about.

Yes. We've been seeing a lot of ads from people forwarding -- or texting me [indiscernible] spend management. So it sounds like Corpay's been pretty active on that front.

Okay. Before we open it up for questions, I just want to hit a few more, just on the Vehicle Payment side, if you don't mind, Peter. Just -- you're back to double-digit growth. You've got 3 major geos there. Any surprises, anything to consider as we move into the second quarter and the back half across the 3 geos?

No surprises. I'd say everything is performing as expected. Brazil, much higher growth, call it, mid- to high teens. If we move over to Europe and Rest of World, super consistent, delivering, call it, 9% to 10%. And then USVP delivered 5% in Q1. So everything really tracking our expectations there.

And then I know you've cleaned up the down market within the U.S., so not as much exposure to very small businesses, and the credit performance has generally been good. We get this question quite a bit. Is the credit performance, some of the delinquency signals out there, how do you see that?

Yes. So we manage it very tightly. To your point, we've really moved out of the micro SMB, which cuts it off at the heels, from that perspective. Typically, when the fuel business grows, which there is some impact of growth, obviously, from what's happening in the macro, we've watched credit even more carefully, right? Because this product becomes more popular in the macro. We could do with this macro because you all of a sudden have companies who are running a fleet of 20 that didn't think they needed a program, and they need a program now. So I'd say the good thing is it enhances revenue, but it ensures that we're running our credit processes so we don't upsize our credit risk.

Okay. And then on Brazil, you mentioned mid-teens plus on that. What's the growth algo there? I know non-toll has been an important driver for the company or at least an important strategy for the company. Where is that in the growth algorithm?

Yes. So I think what's really impressive there is over 40% of the revenue is coming from non-toll. And so what we built is really the best network in the country related an individual's vehicle. And through that network and the super app, as we call it, they're able to buy toll, parking, insurance, vehicle debt to really diversify the offering. So I'd say toll continues to perform well, but we're seeing a lot of growth around the additional products that we're offering. We did 2 vehicle debt deals in like the last 2 years. We're the -- really the primary owner business in Brazil, and it continues to perform really well for us.

How do you see that mix changing then, Peter, between toll and non-toll?

Yes, it's a good question. I would say that the non-toll will continue to be a bigger part of Brazil going forward.

Okay. I know that a divestiture has been talked about there for some time. I know fitness is always a question and I know there's a mix towards Corporate Payments, but what qualifications -- what qualifies the company to be potentially -- or a piece of the business to be potentially divested within Corporate? Specifically with the Vehicle Payments?

Yes. So I'd say -- Corpay has had a great long history in M&A, right? 125 acquisitions over the last 25 years. That was really focused on high-performing payments business with great growth rates and great profitability. There's obviously the transition, call it, a couple of years ago into Corporate Payments, where we realized some of those businesses like PayByPhone, we'll use as an example, that we recently sold, it's a great business, terrific growth rate, profitable company, but we felt that it was TAM constrained in order to be able to grow it.

So that's really what we're focused on is when we look at Vehicle Payments, which of the businesses and other businesses outside of Corporate Payments, which of the businesses are TAM constrained and which of them can we not scale, right? Because as now we're a $5 billion-plus revenue company, the strategy for who we want to be is just very different. And kind of where I started out, the TAMs are so attractive in Corporate Payments that if we can reinvest the capital, let's say, in buying back shares of Corpay and then we generate so much cash per year, almost $2 billion a year, my ability to do M&A Corporate Payments is quite high.

Yes. Okay. So let's open it up here in a second, but you mentioned it there. I think Ron, CEO, said that he'd be tempted to buy back half the company given how cheap the stock is today. But in the same breath, he's also talking about wanting to do deals, which has been a super power for the company. So as the CFO, Peter, how do you balance those 2 things?

Well, just going back to being CFO of a company where this year, we have $2 billion in free cash flow, I have a lot of optionality. So if you look at kind of -- and we published this chart in the earnings deck at the end of the year, if you look over the past 8 years and kind of the split between buybacks and M&A, it was about $15.5 billion we spent, and it was almost 50-50, a little bit more weighted towards buyback. So it's always a thought of what is the most opportunistic thing for the company, given we're still undervalued, buybacks are really attractive.

Where Ron was going talking about the future is we're just about -- and we'll announce it later this week. I just refinanced all of the debt of the company. And through the process of refinancing in November related to the Alpha acquisition and this financing process, we are just an incredibly attractive company to the credit market because of our free cash flow dynamics and our growth dynamics. So when you look at the free cash flow of the company and the ability for us to continue to take leverage, by the way, not above 3x, which is our stated guidance, it puts us in a place of saying, hey, if we continue to sit at what we believe is a very depressed stock price, we'll just continue to buy back shares. And that's how we'll create valuation for our shareholders, and at the same time, we'll be able to do M&A. So if you look kind of at the past, what we did with that $15.5 billion, what can we do with it in the future, that's what Ron was focused on.

Good questions. Happy to take questions from the portal of our folks in the room. Otherwise, I can keep going. Yes, we got a couple.

Just on deals. You've talked about doing 125 in the last 20-odd years. I'm just curious to know, going forward, how do you frame internal rate of return when you acquire something?

Did you hear that?

I think how do you frame IRR on deals? Is that right?

Yes.

Yes. So we've not specifically disclosed kind of what our framework is around that. But I'd say if we look at the history of our deals, the IRR has been extremely high. And so our expectations would be to continue to produce that.

I can't hear you without a microphone.

Would 20% be a ballpark figure? Or is that too low? A 20% IRR threshold, is that too low, too high?

I'd say it's -- that would be at the minimum.

Makes sense. Thanks for the question. Anyone else? Otherwise, I can keep going. Yes, [ Brennan ]?

Yes. I'll follow up on a little different deal question. Given all the noise that you all have had to address in -- as it relates to cross-border business with stablecoin, I know some of the assets like yourself in the public markets are trading lower. What can you share about target company expectations or rationality about valuations? How rational are sellers at the moment, given obviously the benchmark of Corpay stock is pretty attractive.

It's a pretty good question. I would say in the market, I mean, I often hear this, and it always makes me want to cry, but people always say to me, hey, you're a great house in a really bad neighborhood, whenever I ask about how we're trading and the stock price. But I think what that means is that deals are available at pretty attractive prices right now. People -- I don't think investors truly appreciate cross-border. We're hoping that we helped with that last week in the stablecoin risk. But I'd say there's a lot of things out there that are pretty attractive.

On the same hand, as we just talked about, we're also in the divestiture business right now. So that's always the debate on the divestiture side is we'd probably like to move a little quicker there. But again, those multiples are kind of pulled down by what it looks like across the overall market.

Anyone else?

So I wanted to ask about incremental margins, if that's all right, especially with the mix shift going on and you're moving more into Corporate Payments. I think Corpay has the third highest margins in our whole coverage behind Visa and Mastercard, which I think is underappreciated, but also creates a high bar around margins. So as you see this evolving net of divestitures, can we still see accretive incremental margins? Or is that too much?

So adjusted EBITDA margin runs about 55%. This year, we're slightly down from last year. That's mostly driven by Alpha, right, and bringing them on as is versus getting through the synergy process. So when we talk about '27, we should be able to talk about some margin expansion into '27.

But I think the important thing to think about here, Tien-Tsin, is we run a really attractive margin, but we also are a 10%-plus organic growth rate company. So I've got to fund the growth. So finding that mix is really important. So I'd say, if we're getting out kind of long term, like 3 to 5 years from now, and we've done that full rotation to Corporate Payments, yes, I would expect some incremental increase in EBITDA margins, but I also want to be thoughtful of making sure I'm feeding the business to deliver the growth that I've committed to investors.

No, for sure. I think that's the right answer, Double-digit growth is coveted. And if you can produce that, that's very, very powerful. So the obligatory AI question then, Peter, just to ask it, we went pretty far along without me asking you the -- is that a big initiative? Again, the margins are high, but do you see a lot of opportunity to unlock some productivity and maybe break this linearity between revenue growth and people?

Yes. So I'd say our focus right now on AI is on our products and how do we improve our products. So we've introduced AI agents across many of our products, right, to bring value to market. We recently announced that we are going to have purchasing cards that AI agents can actually use. So we've got the controls in place to be able to do that. So we think that's pretty exciting that AI agents will be able to support customers, to be able to make payments on customers' behalf. So that's been where we're leaning into. I think the next question there is probably, hey, can you charge for that? And I'd say too early on to tell you, but a really good question.

Also, I'd say on the efficiency side, we've been focused on it, I'd say, throughout the organization. I think there's a lot of thought if you think of the organization, unfortunately, as a hierarchy, it's a triangle, that the opportunity for AI is at the bottom in the middle, right? And so don't get me wrong. In call centers, there's opportunity. We're focused on it. In engineering and optimizing engineering and focusing their time, we're focused on it. But we also believe, at the thought leader level, the Peter Walker level, the Ron Clarke level, that AI can be a huge innovator.

So I'll give you a great example. The cross-border presentation that you saw last week that we presented, a lot of that is through proprietary data and public data that we've added into a database on the cross-border business and asked it a series of questions, and we were able to create, call it, an investor level intellectual document. So we think that if we can help the top 150, 200 leaders across the organization, cut half of their time on things that are not creating value like the initial pulling together of a presentation or refining of it and really focusing them more on driving the business, then there's benefit. So I'd say we have religion on AI and continue your updates from us on that.

Good. No, that's a good summary. I think you -- I think in the spring, you hosted an offsite, where you brought all the leaders of the companies -- of the company together and talked about strategy and the go-forward plan. It doesn't sound like AI is top, top of the list of things. But you tell me, where did you gauge the energy to be the highest in the company that you're willing to share with us here?

Yes. So it was my first time participating in the leadership offsite. This is my fifth CFO gig, so it's not my first time doing a leadership offsite. So you always go into those, sometimes with an, ugh, what is this going to be? Is it going to be interesting? I'd tell you, it's the best one I've ever been to because it was a true working session. Like we all came with sessions with prepared materials, but the whole group got the opportunity to absorb the materials and make decisions on it.

So I'd say where we started that offsite was the voice of the investor. I think you always know kind of the culture here is we want to hear from investors, the good, the bad and the ugly, right, all of it, right? And then because that helps us become better, right? So we really started the session with the voice of the investor, then what is our strategy? How are we placed today? We looked at a bunch of other companies in the market and kind of how we line up. We did a review of all of the lines of businesses that we own. And where we left the meeting was just a stronger conviction than ever, that Corporate Payments is the journey that we're on.

And I think if you probably picked up on our last earnings call, Ron kind of leaned into, hey, PayByPhone, we did the divestiture. We've got another one on [ tap ] of size. And we've got some other things we're contemplating for the rest of the year. So things like that were outputs of meeting where, as a leadership team, we got together and said, yes, the future is Corporate Payments. How do we continue to rotate into it faster?

Good. Any final question here? Yes. Maybe use mic, if you don't mind. It'd be easier for everybody.

Peter, if you could do a pre-mortem of, let's say, 2 of your biggest businesses, the transportation business and the cross-border business, what will be your biggest concerns?

Sorry, which 2 businesses?

Let's say, the transportation, the fuel business, and then the cross-border business. You know what I mean when I say pre-mortem?

Pardon me?

Do you know -- does the question about pre-mortem make sense?

You go ahead and define it for me.

Well, basically, like if you could imagine something going wrong with those businesses, what would it be? Or what are you most concerned about longer term?

Well, so if we look at the Vehicle business, right, there's 3 businesses within that business based on geographies, right? Think about it as Brazil, Europe and Rest of World and the U.S., and we kind of walk through the positioning of those businesses. And I'd say kind of USVP business is the lowest growing business in there. But I think we've managed that to a good state, and that was really the company's heritage starting in that business. And now it's a $500 million business today. So I'd say if there's anything in there, the progress we've made is a transition out of the micro SMB and really going upmarket. So I'd say I'm not overall concerned about the risk there. Brazil performing really well and Rest of World, really well.

Moving into the cross-border business, I think my biggest concern is like investors don't understand the business and really helping investors better understand the business. So something I've been super focused on. I've been in this role for about 10 months. And by the way, we've had 3 quarters of beat and raise over those 10 months. So I'm pretty proud of that in terms of the company performance and results. But something I've been super focused on is transparency and helping investors better understand the business so that they can come to their own conclusions about risk themselves. And in the cross-border business, I think the company has an overhang from stablecoin, and this happens, right, when there are new innovations. And I think it's because people really don't understand the cross-border business.

And by the way, I didn't understand the cross-border business until I came to this company, right? So it's no fault. When we sit in America and I go from Boston to New York to Miami to Atlanta, I don't have to change currencies. So I don't even think about, right? When I set up business partnerships across the U.S., I don't think about it. So the goal of the cross-border business was, hey, let's give transparency in the business. Let's give people investors enough detail without turning it into jargon. And let's also really give context to this blockchain innovation and how it will be helpful to the business. So that's probably been a big, big focus of mine. I do truly believe that we're super undervalued given the results that we produce. So our goal is the additional transparency will help investors see the business the same way we do.

Good. We got less than a minute left. I was thinking about a good closing question for you, Peter. But with you coming in from the outside, you've got a really interesting great background coming in from a different -- lot of different places, including on the private equity side, as you mentioned. We've always thought of Corpay as -- so from a value creation standpoint, Ron is a genius thinking about driving value and returns and things like that, but I don't work there. So with you going there, what's been validated in your mind in terms of the secret sauce of Corpay and maybe what we all don't appreciate coming -- looking at it from the outside?

Yes. I'd say we've got the benefit of being a large S&P 500 public company, but operating like a private equity company, right? So I've reported to 4 other CFOs -- or CEOs in my life. With Ron, it's a constant let's reimagine the business. Let's think about some things differently. Oh, I have an M&A idea, right? As opposed to other professionals, CEOs I've worked for have been, oh, we've got the Board meeting next week or oh, kind of the judgery and the bureaucracy, like don't get me wrong, you can't help that in a large company, but we try and minimize that as much as possible and really focus on the value creation, and that comes from the very top of the house.

And I don't want the company to think that Ron is the only one, right? I mean there is a leadership team which he has built and then a team underneath us, and all of those are indoctrinated in that culture of we show up every day to create value, not to just punch the clock and be an executive. And that's why I joined the company. I love it.

Good. No, culture comes from the top, and we always learn when we track the talent. So glad to have you here and part of the company and look forward to chatting more.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Peter.

Thanks.

Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Corpay Teach-in On Cross-border Business. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Corpay Cross-border Teach-in and discussion call. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; Peter Walker, our CFO; and Mark Frey, Group President of Cross-Border Solutions. .

Please note, the presentation associated with this call can be found under the Investor Relations section on our website at corpay.com. Our remarks today will include forward-looking statements about our outlook, new products and expectations regarding business development and future plans and are based on that information. This discussion and any forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.

Some of those risks are mentioned in the forward-looking statements in today's presentation and in our annual report on Form 10-K. These documents are all available on our website. So now with that out of the way, I will turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Jim, thanks. Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining today's cross-border call. We thought this call might be helpful for a couple of reasons. First size, the cross-border business becoming quite a large part of our overall company. Clocking in at about 30% of the overall revenue this year.

And second is risk. We want to address the rise of the stable coin and blockchain narrative and the implication to our business. So look, the goals today for the call are really threefold. So one, bank structure. We do want to lay out how the very bank structure itself, namely the idea of local and licensed footprints for banks that, that creates the opening really for nonbanks to fill a pretty big underserved middle market need, a global need.

Second, as I mentioned, risk, we do want to share our view today on how the advent of stable coin and blockchain will likely impact the B2B cross-border business. And then third, growth. We do want to lay out how we grow the business, how we grow in the high teens. And that's a combination of both sales and M&A.

Okay. Let me introduce Mark Frey. He's the executive in charge of our cross-border business. Has been with us from the very beginning when we first entered the cross-border space back in 2017. Mark's really entire career has been in the B2B cross-border industry. He's got incredible knowledge of the space, terrific relationships in the industry.

So with that, let me turn the call over to Mark here to run us through the presentation. Mark?

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. We've got a lot to cover, so I'll jump right in. Our discussion today is a focused deep dive into our cross-border business. This is our largest and fastest-growing business, and importantly, one where we see a very long runway ahead. You've all had the pre-read, I'm not going to walk through the slide deck slide by slide.

Instead, I'll focus on the parts of the story that really matter and go deeper where it's most useful. In terms of framing the session, I'll cover five key areas. First, how the market is structured and why that creates opportunity. Second, what we actually do and how we make money, Third, why we win and why it's hard to replicate.

Fourth, the key risks and opportunities presented by blockchain and stable coins; and finally, how the business compounds over time. In terms of the market opportunity, at the very top end of the cross-border B2B market, Tier 1 banks like JPMorgan, Citibank and HSBC do a very good job of servicing large multinational clients. They have global infrastructure, deep FX liquidity and broad relationship coverage.

As might be expected, they serve a very large revenue pool, about USD 735 billion annually, and that is where they focus. But they don't meaningfully try to serve the mid-market, in large part because their fixed cost base does not make it economically attractive to do so. It's also worth noting that while Tier 1 banks are dominant in the enterprise segment, many of these institutions still rely on Corpay to be a key provider in terms of FX liquidity and payment execution in key corridors, making them some of our largest clients in our [ FI ] segment.

At the same time, Tier 2 to Tier 4 banks, the regional and national champions own the middle market relationships. They're very strong domestically in lending, cash management and local banking, but they typically lack global reach, FX depth and modern technology, especially as it relates to cross-border.

So what you end up with is a clear structural gap, mid-market companies with complex global needs, but without global banking support. In practice, these mid-market companies are often operating across multiple currencies and jurisdictions with real complexity but without access to infrastructure or a service model that large multinationals get from Tier 1 banks.

And that's exactly where we target. We focus on companies with turnover between USD 20 million to $1 billion in revenue, businesses that are becoming global, but are underserved. The mid-market segment alone represents about $161 billion revenue opportunity. It's growing faster than global GDP. It's highly fragmented, and we have less than 1% market share today. So stepping back, this is not just a large market. It's a structurally advantaged entry point into a large market with significant runway to grow.

Now focusing on what we do. At a high level, we provide three core services, global payments, FX risk management and multicurrency accounts. But the more important point and the one that's often misunderstood is how we make money. We're not just moving money and making payments.

We're solving for the entire regulated cross-border workflow around the transaction. That includes onboarding and compliance, FX conversion, integration into client systems, reconciliation reporting and automation, payment orchestration, the delivery of remittance data, payment tracking and local delivery.

The payment rail itself is just one piece and a relatively small piece of the equation. Put differently, the majority of our economics come from FX conversion and the workflow around it, not the fees related to a settlement rail. It's also important to note that we don't take market risk. We are not proprietary traders.

We facilitate client flows and we lay off that exposure in the market in real time after netting across our portfolio. To that end, approximately 60% of our overall volume is offset by customers buying and selling in opposite sides of the same currency pair, which is a key benefit of our overall scale.

As the largest nonbank B2B cross-border payments firm in the world by revenue and trading volume, our size and scale affords us a very real advantage in this area. In terms of customers and platform, we serve more than 25,000 customers globally across four primary customer segments: corporates, private capital, financial institutions and increasingly digital asset platforms.

What ties them together is the need to operate across currencies, jurisdictions and banking systems. What enables us to serve that need is a single global platform one point of integration, one API and one operating system. Underneath that, we've built a global licensing footprint integrated customer-facing technology, local bank connectivity and access to multiple payment rails that allow us to meet a wide range of use cases, whether that's for time-sensitive payroll, global vendor payments or high-value treasury flows.

So whether a client is paying them in Germany or settling in the U.K., we can deliver those payments in a locally optimized way through a single platform. Now why we win? We win because we built a combination of capabilities that are very difficult to replicate. That includes a global commercial organization of more than 800 highly specialized people, a single integrated technology platform, licensing across multiple jurisdictions that can take years for a single license and deep local market infrastructure.

Individually, competitors can replicate pieces of this, but replicating the full operating model at global scale is extremely challenging and time consuming, and that's what creates the moat. We often describe it as a flywheel, broader capability improves win rates, more customers increase scale, more scale funds for their investment, and that strengthens the platform again.

That dynamic has been compounding for years. Next, the key risks and opportunities related to blockchain and stable coin. Now let me spend a few minutes on what is probably the most common investor question given the broader market environment, which is around stable coins and blockchain and both the risks and opportunities that this technology brings to the business. There are really two concerns embedded here.

First, will stable coins reduce the need for FX conversion and thus, overall cross-border payment volumes. And second, will they compress FX spreads by inviting more competition into the space. On FX volumes, even if settlement moves on to blockchain rails and the underlying conversion requirements don't change, companies are still required to invoice in local currency, pay employees in local currency, settled with taxes authorities in local currency and settle obligations into local bank accounts.

Treasury teams still manage FX exposure across entities and currencies. Stable coins can improve how money moves between systems, but they do not eliminate the need for local currency conversion. Compliance, liquidity or delivery. There's also a structural constraint here. Central banks and governments are not about to give up control of monetary policy in local currencies.

We're already seeing regulation evolve in ways that reinforce the need for local currency settlement and regulated intermediaries. Money may increasingly move by a blockchain in USD link stable coins, but the recipients of those funds will still need them in local currency to meet their local business needs.

That conversion has to happen somewhere, either at the source or the destination, and we have a platform that allows us to do either. So when you step back, the idea that stable coins eliminate FX conversion demand really doesn't hold up. On spreads, FX is already one of the most efficient markets in the world. Spreads are typically very tight and settlement rail costs are already very low.

But more importantly, spreads are not driven by the cost of moving money or the rail that has selected. Rather, they're driven by transaction size, currency pairs, workflow, compliance, tech integration and orchestration, the full solution around the transaction.

And that's where the majority of the value sits. And that's what customers are actually paying for. Blockchain or stable coins won't eliminate the current drivers of spread and won't remove compliance oversight.

They won't replace ERP integration. They won't solve local fee delivery into bank accounts. It's also worth noting that the limitation of all native stable coin providers in crypto exchanges is that they are very much reliant on fiat currency rails to facilitate the movement of funds on and off the blockchain through the process of on and off ramping.

Further, while the larger players in the space are now maturing their compliance frameworks in the digital virtual asset space, they do not generally possess the fee at currency money transmission or the capital markets licenses to support cross-border payments and risk management services, meaning that these firms are not set up to really compete and win in the FX centric cross-border space.

As evidence of this, we are increasingly seeing these native digital firms move to onboard with us as a client of our services. In this manner, we see our digital segment as a growth avenue in servicing these firms directly earning a share of their overall economics rather than them being a competitive threat.

So when we think about new rails, whether it's real-time payments or blockchain or even stable points for that matter, we see them as additive, not disruptive to our business. Our role is to select and orchestrate the best rail for each transaction based on cost, speed, reliability and traceability.

We're already doing this today, including integrating new capabilities into our payment network like BVNK for stablecoins and the JPMorgan Kinexys private blockchain platform. And in many cases, particularly on the institutional side, we're seeing private blockchain networks scale effectively because they integrate more seamlessly into existing financial systems.

They deliver the same value as stablecoins in terms of speed and lower costs, but with less operational friction while removing the need for on and off ramping. We're leaning into this area significantly with the expansion of our private blockchain networks aimed at increasing the always on 24/7 capability of our network.

In this respect, we think that private blockchain networks will actually win the volume wars over public blockchain solutions like stablecoin. So stepping back, we believe FX conversion demand will remain as governments protect national currencies and independent monetary policy. Spreads at the core level are already very competitive and based on factors related to transaction size and currency payer. Further, digitally native firms don't pose a competitive threat to our core business, but rather represent a significant growth opportunity as we become the primary counterparty for firms in the space who need access to our feed capability.

Our conclusion, therefore, is simple that stablecoins and blockchain rails will find a place in B2B cross-border payments but will not replace existing national currencies. Though they will augment existing bank-sponsored rails, a strategy that we are materially leaning into.

Now in terms of our growth model, our growth model is quite straightforward. We retain roughly 97% to 98% of our revenue annually, and we add over 20% new sales each year. That drives consistent high-teens organic revenue growth per annum that we can sustain with significant runway. On top of that, we layer in accretive M&A. We've completed multiple acquisitions, improved sales productivity significantly with each of those deals and consolidated everything onto our single-stack technology platform to optimize both the cost structure and the customer experience.

Deals often add new capabilities, new geographies, new distribution, but will always deliver scale. So the business grows FX volumes selling more than we lose while adding acquired companies to accelerate growth and bolster the flywheel. So to bring it all together in conclusion, we operate in a large, growing and underpenetrated market focused on a segment that is structurally underserved by the banks where our primary competitors.

The mid-market is USD 161 billion revenue opportunity where we just own 1% of the market share today. We built a global platform with meaningful and difficult-to-replicate competitive moat. That moat and our scale affords a significant competitive differentiation from both banks and digitally native firms as it relates to our mid-market target customers.

We have a proven and repeatable growth model that compounds over time. As rails evolve, our platform becomes more useful because our clients need one partner to orchestrate them. Put simply, this is a durable compounding growth business with a long runway ahead, and we believe we are still early in that journey.

So with that, operator, we'll now open the line to questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

I guess first question, if we could talk a little bit about the growth algorithm and how you guys arrived at that 20% in new sales. Specifically, I guess I'm just trying to think about if that assumes the take rates remain stable or they move around and then sort of can that take rate go higher or lower depending on new products and services you provide? And maybe how does it translate if you move to Stablecoins?

Sanjay, thanks for the question. So I think there's a few different ways I would look at this. If we go back and we look at the recent history in terms of that onboarding of new customers, that has been slightly accelerating from 18%, 19% 4 years ago to now over 20%. So it's been getting a little bit better. We've been selling a little bit more effectively as a percentage of the base each year for the last 4 or 5 years.

There is some rate expansion in that as well. So while we expand or grow the business, let's call it 18% per year, we're growing volume. 16% and we're getting some take rate expansion, 1 to 2 percentage points each year. Some of that is from mix shift of just higher value products, higher solutions in new segments but we see good stability and strength in the core business and the core geographies that we're operating in already.

So when we look forward, we're seeing that sales is actually accelerating as a percentage of growth against the base. Rates remain firm and are growing a little bit as well and just continue to acquire volume in the geographies and the segments that we're choosing to serve.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just one on the competitive dynamics? I understand sort of the bank side of this. But maybe you could just talk about, even on the fintech side, if you feel like there's anyone that kind of does what you guys do specifically?

Because I know there is a fintech that talks about having proprietary connections to the major fiat rails and specifically licenses to real-time networks around the world. Maybe you could just help us think about how your model compares to some of the other fintechs out there that might be doing kind of similar things.

Great question. So I'd say there are some fintechs that have chosen to focus on sort of the embedded side of the business or the mass payments at scale and that's a business that focuses on the rail connectivity and the geographies and really leaning into things like ERP integrations and API connectivity to produce mass payments at scale.

And that is primarily a partner-driven rather than a direct sales driven sort of growth model in terms of customer acquisition and volume acquisition. There are another -- I'd say the other side of the spectrum is there are fintech firms that are a little bit more traditional that are largely direct sales model. They are more geographic in terms of their concentration in less global.

I'd say part of what sets us apart is we play at both ends of that spectrum. So we have much broader geographic coverage in terms of the areas which were licensed in the geographies in which we onboard customers.

We certainly have the mass payment scale where we have embedded capability that we put into ERP systems into accounting packages that we do API connectivity to banks, to marketplaces and other financial technology firms. But then we also have the direct sales business as well, where we go out and hunt and find mid-market customers and geographies, and we provide FX cross-border payments, scale, solutions and that we sell into the bank account products as well.

And every one of these firms are targets in terms of M&A as well. So we look at the traditional sort of portfolio deals that bring customers, and geographies and licenses, we look at opportunities for M&A or scale players that bring new licenses and payment integrations and then we also now, I'd say, increasingly are looking at the digital space as well that's opened up a new category for us from an M&A perspective of those digital native firms that are leading into stablecoin infrastructure technology.

We will move next with Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair.

I'll extend my thanks and appreciation for this call, too. You mentioned, and I think it's a very comprehensive Cogent call. Mark, you talked about the benefits of stablecoins and where they don't solve problems necessarily. One of the things I didn't hear you talk about is programmability and I wonder if that factors into your thinking and if that influences your views on open stablecoin networks versus private stablecoin networks or closed loops like Kinexys, I wonder if you could just comment on the role you think programmability plays in these cross-border transactions given latency, time differences, smart contract integration, those sorts of considerations.

Andrew, good to chat with you and thanks for the question. It is a smart question. I think programmability is going to be a key thing from a treasury perspective in particular. So doing things like international cash, overnight suites and cash management consolidation.

We certainly see that stablecoins and the programmability of these digital solutions is super helpful in that treasury world today. I would say, much less so in terms of the mass payment scale where we are processing third-party payments to thousands of beneficiaries at a single time. But that programmability is, I think, particularly interesting in the stablecoin world rather than the private blockchain world. Yes

Yes. Got it. Okay. Yes, I think that's an important distinction. And then the other thing I'll ask about is, again, I think you're 100% right about the desirability or the requirement the need to settle in local currency. There's been some talk, if you look at some of the L1, purpose built L1 blockchains, plasma, I think, in particular, that speaks directly to the desire to hold or have U.S. dollar exposure.

Do you think open stablecoin sandwich is something that might become more pervasive? And how does that influence again your thoughts about sort of the revenue sources and competitive positioning of your offering?

Yes. It's an interesting question. I would say at this time, no, we don't see necessarily as that becomes something that's more prevalent in the space. And why I'd say that is because you already have firms that are moving U.S. dollars internationally in a fiat currency world. I think some of those firms will move or progress more to stablecoins rather than using traditional feed rails to move the U.S. dollars internationally and transacting business in U.S. dollar terms.

That's part of the business that we do today in terms of mass payment processing where there is an FX side to it, but we actually just process payment type scale. So I think we will see some of that business transition away from feed rail to a stablecoins.

I would say, honestly, work towards private blockchain just because of the inherent operational efficiencies of moving money by that particular modality. But I would say, yes, you will see some cannibalization volume from fiat into the blockchain worlds in that particular arena. But that's a part of international commerce today.

I'd say that the overall trends towards dollarization, if you will, has actually been decreasing over time. So that's not to say that the U.S. dollar is going to be replaced and the store value and unit of account for global commerce anytime soon. But certainly, the overall intensity of U.S. dollar payments is declining slightly by 1 to 2 percentage points each year as other global currencies take up a little bit more of that share.

So we see that dollarization is actually -- or the lack of de-dollarization is a positive trend for the business and just it's more FX.

We will move next with Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

That's helpful. This is probably going to be a bit of a basic question, but I think it will be helpful to us and others, hopefully. When you say that 2/3 of Corpay CBS revenues for appliances using basically 1 product, and then you land and expand. I think it'd be helpful if you give us an example -- a more specific tangible example of round up, you start with the customer, what's the one product they start with, what's next and where does it go?

And why are you winning in that ability to go to the next product -- maybe just -- if you don't mind walking us through a little more tangible example in a real-life example of some of your clients that would be really helpful just to start.

Yes. No, that's a great question. So I'd say the vast majority of our customers in the corporate space start using just our basic payments products. So they have third-party payments, and they have invoices in foreign currency that they need to pay and they're perhaps upset with the service or the technology and the friction of doing that with their bank and we're able to find those customers and convince them to do business with us and their trading effects and then instructing third-party payments that we process for them around the world.

And they might start out with sort of the nuisance payments if it's a large corporates of those geographies that are just difficult to do. Sometimes it's as G7 or if they are major currencies that they're trading in their business, and they just want better service and better overall operational processing.

But then once we get that payment flow, we begin to win more in the payment flow, we usually do because it's sort of a scale-based value proposition. The more payments that we process, the more efficient it becomes. So we tend to win more wallet share over time. And then as we get insight into that wallet share, we then begin to cross-sell risk management products.

So once we have a view of how much euros they're purchasing each month, then we'll begin to sell risk management products of technology that allows them to quantify the risk that they're actually experiencing with those euros that they have to purchase each month.

And then we cross-sell risk management products to those customers. And then it would be the bank account products that we would sell when they expand into geographies. So that's all sort of on the corporate side.

On the private market side, it's a little bit different. We actually start out typically by selling a bank account to a new manager that's launching a funds so you have a big fund manager that's launching Fund V, let's say, and they need a bank account, and we can spin that up for them in 24 to 48 hours, and that's our entry point.

And then once the fund is actually up and running in their capital calls, when we begin the payments for both operationally and potentially from an FX risk perspective. So it's a little bit different between the private market space and the corporate space, but we lead with, I'd say, simple products in some cases and then upsell them to integrated actions.

All right. That's really helpful, Mark, to get an order of operations there. I guess I just had one follow-up on the earnings call last week. You said future corporate payments M&A is more likely to be about new geographies and new verticals. Just given you already have quite a bit of product now in the death, I think you want after today's discussion, cross borders, you mentioned $161 billion mid-market TAM, where do you see the largest white space opportunities or is it by geography or vertical?

And within those opportunities, which products are customers really looking for, whether it's payments or risk management or accounts or some combination?

Yes. Good question. I'd say in the cross-border space, we really see three categories of M&A that are super attractive to us. So one is just sort of the traditional portfolio expansion of new geographies or adding more scale to our existing geographies, so there are lots of fintech players, let's say, that are concentrated in the U.K. or in the U.S. and that we want to add scale in those markets, those can be attractive.

Typically, what we do when we've acquired one of those firms is accelerate sales, improve operating margins and operational performance and then become super accretive, especially over time. I think the other thing that we're always looking to do as well is breaking into new geographies. So if there can be an acquisition that comes with new licenses and geographies that we're not operating at or in today in terms of originating markets, that's always attractive to us and that have more in-country rail connectivity in the emerging market world or in the secondary world, that's attractive.

And I think the newest category that we've been looking at is the digitally native space. So those firms that are operating in the stablecoin world ultimately and trying to build businesses there where we can really leverage our inherent capabilities to accelerate the growth of those businesses because of what we can do from a feed rail perspective.

We will move next with Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

I wanted to ask about AI and how it impacts this segment versus the rest of the business. Is there anything to call out here in terms of the way you're looking at things that could be on the front end from an agent commerce perspective on the back end? Do you think AI will have an impact here?

Yes. Great question. It's definitely something that we've spent a lot of time on, I'd say, over the last 12 months or so and have looked at with intensity. I'd say we sort of break it into 3 different categories. So building AI into our workflow processing solutions. So getting better scale, better operational efficiency and reducing operating expense by embedding AI capability directly into the products themselves.

Certainly, on sort of our back-end processing, which is an important part of the business. We are using AI today that we're building into things like transaction monitoring from a compliance perspective, customer screening from a KYC perspective and really just using it to drive efficiency of the headcount ultimately across the business.

And then I think looking at our analytics have become very AI-driven ultimately as well. So we are a business that competes on analytics and competes on our ability to do math. We're trying to drive intelligence from our own data and from data that we have access to in the marketplace to better target our market efforts for our direct sales business. It's certainly something that we're leaning into and then also looking at it in terms of how we price and how we serve our customers as well.

Okay. A quick follow-up for me. You guys mentioned, I think you net 60% of volume internally across pairs. Customer pairs. Does that netting ratio improve as the book continues to scale? And is that a significant margin driver of the business? In other words, will margins improve as that ratio improves?

Yes. That ratio has definitely gone up significantly over the last 5 or 6 years. So I think it's in a very meaningful fashion. I think in part, we've tried to create a balance within the overall portfolio because of the operational efficiency and the gains that we get through pricing.

So this was part of the reason why we've expanded significantly in European continent over the last number of years to better balance our portfolio of euro-based buyers versus euro-based sellers. And there are numerous examples of where we've done that across our business.

So we do expect that ratio to continue to improve. It definitely gives us an advantage in terms of how we price and how many times we cross the bid offer spread and how much rate we get to keep versus have to pay away to the market in terms of transaction costs.

And certainly, it gives us -- our scale and size gives us an advantage over the fintechs because of this.

We will move next with Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank.

I had a couple of questions related to the slides. So I guess on Slide 19, where you talk about the cost of the blockchain rails, I guess it's interesting to see that the public blockchains actually look a lot more expensive today relative to where Swift or ACH or other legacy rails are. So I guess 2 questions here. First, is your expectation that these blockchain costs trend down over time and get to levels that some of the legacy rails are? Or are there regulatory or intermediary costs that may keep those elevated going forward? And then the second question, when you talk about costs, is Corpay relatively agnostic as to which rail the client wants to choose as it relates margins.

I would guess that those costs are basically passed on to the client. So maybe the more expensive ones are accretive to revenue, but just wondering if there's any different margin impacts across the rails, especially with the focus on stablecoins.

Nate, that's a great question. So I would say on the public blockchain side with respect to stablecoins that yes, we've seen that those costs have come in. I think the cost of on-ramping and off-ramping has significantly reduced over the past couple of years. And I think there's probably still more efficiency that will come from the market as adoption increases.

I think gas fees are already relatively efficient. It's more of the off-ramp from a stablecoin sandwich that is I think the particularly intensive from a cost perspective, that will come down. I would say, today, private blockchain rails are very price competitive versus Swift. I'd say, much less price competitive versus in-country ACH equivalent rails in each geography ultimately.

So I think that there will be some improvement there, but it's still, yes, to your point, public blockchain and stablecoins today versus what we're seeing in the marketplace is a relatively expensive way to move money, especially when you start with it and with it in terms of on and on-pram. And then in terms of payment modality overall, I'd say it's quite rare that a customer comes to us and says, I would like to specify how you send the payments.

They don't say that they want to go by a script or in-country or real time necessarily. They sort of describe the business challenge that they're aiming to achieve, and then we pick the right modality to solve their business problem. So if it's a payroll payment ultimately, and we're processing at a day in advance, it needs to guarantee full value transfer and be perfectly on time and a relatively small transaction. So transaction cost per manager is important.

We'll use an in-country rail with ACH equivalent rail in a particular market. If speed is super important, we'll lean towards either real time or we'll lean towards a private blockchain rail that will run that payment in 20 minutes or less ultimately from the time it's processed. We're relatively agnostic in terms of -- it doesn't make a big difference to our economics, which rail they choose. It's really about finding the best solution for their particular need and then making sure that we can deliver that at scale.

Nate, it's Ron. The point we're trying to make is we don't care, whether it's [indiscernible] that we spend $600 million or $700 million in this business per year, and we spend $20 million or something on rails. So the message we're really trying to make is super,duper, cheaper free rails is the [indiscernible].

Helpful. That's really interesting color. The follow-up question I had was on Slide 18, where you talk about your 55 basis point spread on average. So the largest bucket of that spend coming from transaction-specific and value-added regulated workflows, just hoping for a little more color on those components. I know the transaction-specific stuff probably varies pretty widely transaction by transaction, customer by customer. So I guess I'm maybe more interested on the value-add and regulated workflow side of things. Just how have those yields trended over time in terms of their contribution to total spread? And do you see additional opportunity to continue to grow that portion of the spread calculation going forward?

Yes. Great question. So yes, we do see an opportunity to expand rates in that category over time. So this comes from the value-added services of being able to direct debit funds from the customer's account as an example as opposed to them pushing a payment to us. It's about providing a reconciliation file and not just the file that we push back to them, but we can actually push the reconciliation file into their ERP or accounting package that completes their key account entries ultimately and automates the accounting for -- it is delivering the remittance information to the beneficiary.

It's doing the prescreen and the validation of the beneficiary payment instructions to ensure that the payment is going to flow through straight through, and there aren't going to be any difficulties of landing that payment. So it's all these incremental things that we do to make it a more efficient workflow for the processor or for the customer, so it ties up less time. What we simply say to our customers is when you're processing payments with us, we want you to focus on your business of selling widgets.

We'll take care of all the process behind the scenes, and we'll do it in an automated fashion to make this a seamless part of your business so that you can focus on running your core enterprise as opposed to trying to run a treasury operation that's very subscale for a mid-market corporate customer. And that's a value proposition that resonates with these clients because they want to deploy their operational resources towards selling more clients. They don't want to build out finance departments and back office reconciliation teams. They want to focus on their own front office and sell more to their clients.

We will move next with Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

I wanted to ask on the distribution moat and your ability to replenish new sales to get to that 20%. I know that's a super power of Corpay in general. But just -- I know in the slides, this is $1.5 million in new revenue per direct seller. Is it as simple as just adding more headcount there? Tell us a little bit more about how easy or hard it is to regenerate that 20%.

Tien-Tsin, it's Ron. Let me take a step. The first thing is I told Jim to send out a bar chart to everybody that we've done the same thing in the last 5 years. So although we showed a bridge, I think it was what, '24 to '25. The first thing one reported that growth model would look literally almost the same the last 5 years where we sold 20% plus and lost 3. So the answer to the thing is it's a giant [indiscernible] planet, right? In the middle market is $160 billion. We have $1 billion business. So think of the -- we originate market really in 5 continents, right? Tien-Tsin is in the U.S. business. We get people in the U.K., the continent, Australia, everything else. Think of just the coverage like spots we can go, right, in terms of putting more origination power not only in terms of like corporates, which was the whole business when I bought it, now like 20% of the business is these other segments, right, like serving FIs or the asset managers like Bain or even the new guys.

And so the playing field to go originate business is it's pretty massive. I think I asked Chad or something, it's the largest single flow. I think the flows are like $9 trillion a day of FX money being moved. And so yes, so the short answer is there's plenty of segments and geographies for us to have more coverage. And then the second one, which is why we bought this company is the product getting into the deposit side of the business, not just the disbursement side is a huge deal for us.

So going back to all these people that we send disbursements for and helping them stand up new deposit accounts as they expand is the other way to get more juice, right? We don't need any more coverage there, right? We just added this product. So look, there's plenty of opportunity. We've done it. It's mostly just more people in these different segments. And then I'm hoping that this deposit thing will -- this bank account thing will add a ton of revenue, too. So look, it may not always be 20, but it is going to be a whopper number because, one, the thing is big; and two, the incumbents are not great. And I almost laugh to try to say this to you guys are like a disruptor, where people going into the legacy banks that are crummy at this thing with a new way of doing it versus, "Oh my God, who's going to disrupt us." So I would say of all the areas we sell in the company, this one, we've got a lot of confidence. And we got a lot of really good people. Markets recruited like the best and brightest. We pay people a lot that come out of banks like yours and stuff. And so we really do have a lot of super quality people.

Yes. No, it sounds that way. And you're right, it's good to hunt and rather be the hunted. But maybe is a good question in general there. Just thinking about the customer retention, it is high, 97% -- and Ron, you appreciate this thing about ADP, right? And retention is so important for that company. What explains the high retention in your mind? And is it sustainable? Is it as simple as that there isn't a lot of competition that's developing? Or is it really the -- I don't know, the technical integrations with ERPs like you talked about, the pricing, the service, the tech? Or is it just as simple as limited competition?

Yes, I think it's a little bit that, Tien-Tsin. I think the thing that's unique in this business is the account managers. Lots of -- whether it was in payroll or other businesses, you have account people that kind of keep track of important accounts, keep them happy and all that stuff. In this business, the account managers like no stuff. And they actually help the client like figure out stuff like, "Oh my God, currencies are moving, right, and you're not hedged properly in this area."

They say smart things all the time. So I think the nature of the ongoing advisory relationship between smart guys and the client keep us in there. And we get a lot of wallet share gains. We might only have 20% of the business with the client. And then because the guy is smart and helping the guy, that thing grows over the year, which adds to that 97%, we might lose 10% of the clients, but grow wallet share in another 20% of the client. So it's set up pretty well, I'd say, to keep the retention high for those reasons.

I'd say the thing that I would add, too, is we've always had very good retention. But as we've added products and we cross-sell more products into the same accounts, that certainly makes them stickier. And we see the math that retention rates improve when we cross-sell multiple products into the customer. But I think the big driver in addition to the relationship management that Ron mentioned is the tech integration. Once a customer is integrated with us from a technology perspective, so we're integrated into their ERP or into their accounting package or we're connected to their front-end website that they sell products on, it's very, very difficult to dislodge us from that relationship once they make that investment.

And so as we've improved the tech footprint of the business and a focus on integrating our capability across all 3 of our products, making that available on one platform and then integrating with the client, it makes them super sticky and hard for them to use.

We will move next with Michael Infante Morgan Stanley.

I was just curious on the relative pricing versus the Tier 2 to Tier 4 banks that serve the middle market. Can you just expand on that in particular. And also why you view the fixed cost base of the Tier 1 banks being relatively prohibitive for them to mix shift towards the middle market?

Yes, it's a good question. So I would say the overall pricing in the marketplace is relatively efficient. So we don't aim to win based on price. We need to be price competitive. We win on the value-added service. We win on the technology. We win on the customer centricity and our ability to act fast. So we don't necessarily need to price better. We price to a market to a certain extent versus the regional banks in the Tier 2 to Tier 4 category.

I think the biggest driver of why we don't necessarily see the Tier 1s come down into the market is it's the fixed cost base, yes, but it's just the size of the TAM that's available in the enterprise space. So if you say overall that it's a $900 billion market ultimately in the cross-border arena from a revenue perspective, $750 billion of that or $735 billion of that is in the enterprise space. They can spend all their time there, and it's a very target-rich environment, and they trade share with the other 2 banks.

It's not as fertile hunting ground for them to come down into the down market space. I would say the other part of it, though, too, is you really need specialization in order to win in the space. So a corporate banker that is selling, selling financing and selling overall corporate banking solutions, M&A liquidity to a customer is not really going to have the FX expertise to come down market and to really compete with us when it comes to a business that has the needs that are intensive in terms of cross-border payments or FX expense.

So it's the specialization, I think, rather than the generalist approach of the big banks that allows us to win. I say the other thing is it's really, really hard. Even if the Tier 1s come down to the mid-market space and they've got good technology, they're just not very customer-centric and they're pretty slow in terms of the way they do things. And I'll give you a specific example. If you're a mid-market customer and you want to open up a bank account, so you're operating in the United States and you want to open up a bank account for your new division in Europe, it might take you anywhere from 2 to 6 months to get that bank account, if you're banking with a JPMorgan or a city. That's a very real and normal experience versus with us, we'll have that account open in 24 to 48 hours, if not faster. And so that customer centricity, the ability to be agile and the technology to just simply work in the mid-market space, it's really how we compete and win even when we do come across the cities and the new base.

Michael, it's Ron, a different view to me is just that's where the game is for the big guys. There wouldn't be Tier 2 and Tier 3 and Tier 4 banks, right, if the big guys could serve the whole world, like this is just one product, right? They're really in the game of lending and their game is the giant companies that they hold all these deposits and do all the lending. So be a little weird, oh, I'm going to take one of my products and go run into a different market and hey, work on that or whatever. So I think it's more like they have 3 or 4 big products, mostly lending.

And so they focus their stuff where the rest of their business is and leave kind of the acorning stuff to regional and local banks with a lot of relationship people. So I think it's pretty normal, right, that it's that way. In fact, they even look to people like us and other people to try to resell right, to be more arms and legs for them. And so it's a pretty natural structure of the things. So the great thing for us is we compete with people who are good at local deposits and lending, but don't have a footprint anywhere else. So obviously, they don't have people that know much. So I tell Mark all the time, I expect you to do better. The guy to serve as a mid-market company is just not super good at the product that we offer.

No pressure, Mark. As you guys sort of look at the innovation in the space, mainly with respect to some of the on-chain FX providers, how do you sort of assess the solutions being built within that ecosystem and the probability or lack thereof of expansion between -- or beyond the crypto and digital asset natives to traditional corporates in the middle market, for instance?

Yes. It's a good question. So I would say we're a consumer of payment rails as well. So we're always looking for new technologies, new payment rails, new methodologies to move money, whether that's in-country connections or real-time rails, private blockchain, public blockchain. So we're used to scanning the market looking for the best ways to move liquidity, the best ways to organize ourselves in terms of our bank accounts. So that's something that we've been doing for the entire time that I've been in this business is just constantly scanning for better ways to run back-end operations.

So it's sort of a natural pivot for us to be able to look at this digitally native space now, public and private blockchains and to continually scan for new technologies that we can use. But the other part of it is because this is a focused segment for us, we have specialist people that all they do is look at blockchain universe. And they're looking at opportunities in the stablecoin space. They're looking at opportunities with digitally native firms, whether they be crypto exchanges or stablecoin providers or firms that are offering in adjacencies to tokenized deposits or tokenized lending, whatever the case might be. So this is a big area of focus for us and has been for a few years. And thankfully, now it's a segment that's beginning to take off because we've been doing that strong work now over the last 2 or 3 years.

[Operator Instructions] We will move next with Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America.

Very helpful presentation and quite informative. I guess one question I did have though was just how does spreads vary by customer segment or by product? So as your customer segments are shifting maybe towards a little bit more waiting for digital asset platforms, does that affect where the spreads, that 55 bps spread that you had, would that change? And similarly, with like just the product between spot versus hedging, does the spread vary greatly?

Let me take the first part, and then I'll turn it to Mark. On the payment side, which is this blockchain stablecoin thing right now running risk management contracts. The answer is it's incredibly efficient. Don't think about an average. We probably have a single transaction at 55 basis points, right? We have a massive distribution at 55. And think about the IRIS² that's completely related to transaction size.

So think about some small little payment, $300, right, is the payment. Hey, we're going to charge $20 or something or $10. It's 300 or 600 basis points, but it's no money. It's the spend is timing, the revenue per train is tiny. Now go to a real transaction, $5 million or $50 million. We get 8 or 10 basis points, but we get thousands of dollars for the transaction. So the main thing that I want people to get here is there is no such thing as an average. There's a curve that's incredibly efficient when we look at the IRIS².

And so I don't want people hang the phone of, oh, someone's going to go and just pick off these stupid guys at these banks. They don't know what they're doing. So a lot of people working in this space for a long, long time to Mark's point, are pretty smart at it. And so -- and as I mentioned before, the rails are beating us. They're nothing with the cost structure. They're all free forever and have no impact on anybody. The game here guys is acquiring client spend and transactions. The who does that wins. And if you acquire a lot of big transactions to move like $50 million or $100 million like from the asset guy, you make lots of revenue because you're providing like a lot of liquidity, like a giant amount of liquidity for the guy to make the trade.

And so I just hope everyone hangs this thing up with it's pretty efficient. It's on a curve that makes sense, and we're pretty good at it and innovation in rails is not the key. The innovation is going to be in selling guys. The key here is to Tien-tsin's point, do you get more customers and more big pieces of payment spend will be the one that grows revenue.

Yes. I think that's exactly right. And then I would offer just a couple of other things is that the average spread between the payments business at scale and the risk management business is very, very similar. There's not a lot of delta between those 2. But what we do see is the more that we sell technology and integration into the customer, the stickier it is over time and the more rate we get over time as well. So this is a big part of our focus and has been for a number of years is really selling the ERP integration, the technology adoption across the business. We do see slightly higher rates, the more integration that we have, the more embedded we are with the customer. So that's really a key part of the focus after we acquired the customer.

[Operator Instructions] We will move next with Ken Suchoski with Autonomous Research.

You guys provided some really helpful detail on the 18% organic, I think 16% volume, 2% yield. Just on that 16% volume growth, I mean, how much of that is, say, new logos versus just wallet share gains with retained accounts versus corridor expansion? And maybe related to that, just when you work with the client, is there a typical percentage of their cross-border flows that you ultimately capture?

Yes. Great question. So I'll sort of tackle the last part first. So I would say overwhelmingly, we become the customer's primary provider. And so our is it sort of a wallet share gain? Yes, there is always an incumbent bank that we're trying to dislodge. And once we land the customer certainly is trying to expand and grow as much wallet share as we possibly can. I'd say in that first year, we almost always establish ourselves as the primary liquidity provider with the bank sort of being the redundant provider of the fallback.

And then in terms of the overall churn rate, so when we say we retain about 97% to 98% of our revenue, there's certainly some structural loss just like any business, we have customers that go to business, customers that are acquired from an M&A perspective, whatever the case might be. And then we make up for that with some wallet share expansion in particular customers. So that's how we get to the 97% or 98% because of that little bit of portfolio churn.

In terms of the growth that we get of 16%, it's predominantly new logos. It is signing up new accounts and then volume. And I would say, over the first 12 to 18 months, really begin to scale that volume. So we start off with maybe 20% wallet share and hope to get to 80% or 90% wallet share within the first 12 to 18 months.

It's Ron. Just to be clear, it's 100% because that's how we define it. So for us, when we give you that bridge and we say whatever the page said, hey, it's 21%. We literally say if you had to be a new logo here in calendar 2026, then we count the revenue just from those new logos. The wallet share thing is in the retention number in the 97%. So I want to be clear, we define it to be 100%.

Right. Okay. That makes sense. It's a net number on the 97 net of all the moving pieces.

Yes. Now we think of that as the base clients. We have the client, but we have more or less. You just look across some we have more, some we have less. But when we get all done, we keep 97% of the revenue from all the base clients that we had is the way we think about it.

Okay. That's really helpful. And then, Ron, I know -- I mean, lodging has been one of the problem children in recent years, but I recall you saying that you like that business because there's negative working capital. Could you guys just talk about the working capital needs to run this cross-border business? I heard the 60% netting. But just outside of that, what does that look like? And how do stablecoins change that, if at all?

Yes, that's a super good question. So the great news is on the payment side. It looks a lot like our full AP business where really there isn't any working capital. We mostly work with good funds. So you're a company, you want to make a EUR 10,000 payment, I can grab USD 13,000 from your business, I convert it and I send it. So payments, I'd say that it's kind of balance sheet light. On the risk management products, think of like forwards and options, there is some kind of be ready, right, if currencies move to have some balance sheet to make our counterparties whole while we're waiting to kind of call money, if you will, from clients. But the great news and one of the dirty little secrets of why we bought Alpha in the fall was the deposits -- and so what I'd say to you is we expect in the next year or 2 for this thing to be a total positive working capital business where we're getting deposits from clients or holding deposits from clients while we're also using capital sometimes short term to pay our counterparties. And so that would be the hope that this would be kind of close to a 0 working capital business going forward.

And then the other area where we do use blockchain payments ourselves, both stables and private blockchain is to move liquidity from one jurisdiction to the other after hours ultimately. So trying to reduce the trapped cash that sits in Asia and our sort of follow the sun capital market and our follow the sun operational market where our cash starts up today in Asia, then it travels to Europe and then it comes to North America.

We don't have any liquidity materially speaking, that gets left behind in accounts at the end of the day anymore after the wire cuts because we can use private blockchain to move that money after cut. So that allows us to be quite a bit more capital efficient today than what we've historically been.

This is Jim. We don't have any more questions on the phone, but I did have a few e-mailed in that I'm going to tee up to the guys here at the table. So the first is what stops digital payment providers from adding the FX capabilities that they currently need Corpay.

Yes. I think what we're seeing is a trend in the marketplace is those digital firms are partnering with firms like us to be able to deliver that capability because it takes a lot of time to get the money transmission licenses to set up liquidity with banking partners to build the infrastructure that is FX-centric, rail connectivity in the fiat currency world. The competitive moat that we have is really just difficult to swim across ultimately. And I think what we're seeing very actively in the marketplace is these digital firms are partnering with companies like us to become their fiat rail providers, and they're leveraging our strength and capability to do the onramp.

We're providing treasury liquidity for FX at scale for them rather than them building themselves. You'd asked this, Darrin, I don't know if you're still on, but it was a pretty good question about the couple of products and stuff. Hey, you tend to start with payments and then get risk management. So when we bought the business, we're a payments company and like, oh, we have payments and I need Mark's company like this risk contracts and this stuff is stuff we need this. And so the question that someone asked earlier is the other reason the native blockchain stablecoin guys are dead on the thing, like they can't just go to a company and do payments.

We've learned that once you get in there and you figure out what the payment flows are, there's risk that service around the currencies and the client wants to basically protect against that. And so they're going to have to go get 800 of our people to know how to do this. So you're back to, again, it's another moat that clients want both payment capability and risk management contracts.

So not only do they need licenses and liquidity and stuff, they need people that know stuff to be able to write these contracts and advise clients. So like anything, it is a way hard thing to be in and have all the things you need to win in the space. So not easy.

Great. Next question is, what are potential reasons why your clients are not using blockchain versus -- versus some providers, other newer public providers putting large and increasing blockchain transaction volumes that appear to be taking share from the incumbent players.

So we are seeing, I'd say, pretty spectacular growth in our private blockchain rail placement. So if we look at our overall business today, I'd say, at the beginning of 2026, we said about 40% of our payments via Swift ultimately. By the exit of 2026, we expect that, that will probably be reduced to less than 15% of our payments, and that will be largely cannibalized by private blockchain. So we are seeing significant growth in those private blockchain rails because of the inherent advantages that they're always on 24/7, they're programmable, they're traceable, and they're near real time in terms of delivery and more cost effective than ultimately stables.

But the other part of why they're doing is it's just a little bit more operationally efficient as well. There's less friction. There's less -- there isn't a need to do on-ramp and off-ramp. And so when we think of it in terms of our own payment processing, we are definitely shifting towards the private blockchain rails, and that is winning in our own minds because of those efficiencies. And I think we're seeing that in the broader marketplace as well. And you're going to see the big network providers that provide these private blockchains are going to begin to disintermediate that rather materially. And I think you're going to see transaction counts grow way faster on private blockchain than you will on public blockchain rails.

It's Ron. I only add other thing is whatever Chad says, it's $9 trillion a day, like I don't want people to miss like the existing rail is pretty good. They get most of the money there the same day. As you saw on the page, they're cheap and that cheaper than blockchain. So I don't want people to miss it like the same works pretty good. With that said, there's clearly a role for timing that gets outside of the banking hours, right, the 24/7 nature.

So that, I think, is our view that it's not necessarily faster, it's all kinds of instant FedNow, other kinds of ways in different countries to move things instantly, and you saw the page to move it cheap. And so our sense is when the world gets clear on this, there will be some percentage of payments, particularly ones that need to move outside of the banking hours and system that would go into this "new category, but that lots of it would still stay on rails that have been working pretty well. So I don't think it's a complete flip flop would be the message to you guys. So look, I think we've taken the time today. And again, we hope the goal here was to try to provide a bit more briefing on the business. I do want to take away that we like it. I like the thing. I don't know if you like these numbers.

And again, our view is the thing is pretty durable. This is a giant playing field to go after lots of places and lots of segments. We've got tons of capabilities. We're going to embrace these new things to the extent that they're useful and stuff. And so the message we want to give people is also no cherry here to go crush the economics. It's super efficient, follows a super smart curve in terms of size and stuff. So the message to everybody is we're marching on with a plan to double this thing again over the forecast period. So I think it ran out, thank you to all you guys for making time and asking the questions today.

All right. Thank you. I think we're finishing up. So thank you, everybody.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Corpay First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. We are standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call to discuss first quarter 2026 results. With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; and Peter Walker, our CFO.

Our earnings release and supplemental materials for the quarter are available on the Investor Relations section of corpay.com. Please refer to these materials for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call along with a reconciliation of those measures to the nearest applicable GAAP measures. Our remarks today will include forward-looking statements about expected operating and financial results, strategic initiatives, acquisitions and synergies and divestitures, among other matters.

Forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release on Form 8-K and can also be found on our annual report on Form 10-K. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov.

So now I'll turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Okay, Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining today's call.

Upfront here, I'll plan to cover 4 subjects. First, provide my take on Q1 results. Second, I'll share our revised guidance for full year 2026. Third, I'll review progress against our top priorities. And then lastly, I'll share our thoughts on the midterm direction for the company and where we're headed.

Okay. Let me begin with our Q1 results, which were really outstanding. We reported revenue of $1.26 billion, up 25% and cash EPS of $5.80, up 29%. And Importantly, about 2/3 of our $50 million Q1 revenue beat versus guidance was really just better performance across the board, not macro related. So for us, this Q1 was really a blowout quarter.

Q1 overall organic revenue growth, 11%. That makes 4 consecutive quarters of 11%. Inside of that, Corporate Payments grew 16%, that's 18%, excluding flow compression, and did reach 40% of our overall revenues in the quarter. Vehicle Payments grew 10%. All 3 geographies contributing the U.S., Europe and Brazil. And lodging improved meaningfully sequentially, landing flat for the quarter, so a big improvement there.

The Q1 operating trends also quite good. Overall retention finished at 93.5%. I do want to note that this metric now includes our cross-border business. New sales or bookings up 24%. Happy with that. And same-store sales finishing flat for the quarter. So look, we are clearly off to a terrific start here.

All right. Let me transition to our 2026 guidance. Given our Q1 performance and the current trends, the raise to full year guidance is really pretty straightforward. So we're raising full year 2026 revenue guidance today to $5.290 billion at the midpoint. And that's driven really by a few things. First, we'll flow through the $50 million Q1 revenue beat. Second, will increase rest of your revenue guidance, another $50 million as a result of higher fuel price expectations and ongoing or continued better fundamental performance. We'll also net out $75 million from rest of year revenue to reflect the divestiture of PaybyPhone on March 31. We do continue to expect 10% organic revenue growth for the year, which again is our most important measure of durability.

On the earnings side, we are raising full year 2026 cash EPS guidance to $26.70 at the midpoint. So that's a result of flowing through our Q1 EPS beat of $0.35. It's adding a rest of year cash EPS raise of $0.35 also that's coming from the expected $50 million in rest of your higher revenue. We do expect to have a lower share count from year-to-date share buybacks, which will basically offset the expected higher interest expense in our rest of the year. You can see this bridge guidance math on Page 11 of the earnings supplement. This higher full year 2026 guidance implies for the full year, 17% revenue growth and 25% cash EPS growth for the full year.

So look, all the ingredients for a very good 2026 financial performance are holding. First off, you have the terrific [ star ] Q1 print. We've got very good sales and retention trends. We're continuing to enjoy a favorable macro environment and our 2 big acquisitions and investments, Alpha and Avid, both performing well. So we're in a good spot.

Okay. Let me make the turn out of our top 5 priorities laid out in February, which really are unchanged. So they are, one, our portfolio, again, rotating our portfolio to Corporate Payments, with the hope of having fewer bigger businesses, to USA sales, so increasing sales production in the middle market versus in the micro market. Payables widening monetization there beyond virtual cards and launching a [ spin ] management business in Europe. Fourth, cross-border priority is to further develop our multicurrency account banking business, integrate the Alpha acquisition and now add real-time blockchain rails to our global settlement network. And then lastly, AI, like others, we are incorporating AI into most of our products. And secondly, working internally to redesign processes and get expense savings.

So what I'll do here is I'll just touch on progress just in a couple of areas, our portfolio and cross-border initiatives. So on the portfolio front, we really are making good progress. Our newest acquisitions and investments there are working. So Alpha grew organic revenue 17% in Q1, that's excluding the flow compression. And Avid grew EBITDA 50% in the quarter. So really an outstanding performance and improvement there. So both off to a really good start.

We're in the late innings with the noncore Vehicle Payments divestiture and actually teeing up a couple more businesses potentially for sale. And on the other side, we're digging into a couple new Corporate Payment acquisition opportunities to do look quite interesting to us. So look, these actions are evidence that we're committed to further rotating the portfolio to Corporate Payments.

On the cross-border front, a lots happening there. We are extending the gap of our multicurrency accounts and seeing some real momentum from that. On the Alpha front, we've converted about 15% of Alpha clients to our tech platform, a lot more to follow in June. We just signed JPMorgan and BVNK agreements to speed the addition of blockchain rails to our global settlement network. And look, while working on all these initiatives, the core cross-border business rocking continuing to perform exceptionally well. So just wanted everyone to know we are laser focused on these top 5 priorities.

Okay. So last up today, I do want to share our thoughts on our midterm direction and where we're heading with the company. We did just return from our annual off-site strategy session, where each year, we get away. We debate the purpose of the company, our portfolio, the objectives to decide if it makes sense to change course. And we always come back clearer than when we go into these sessions.

So here are this year's conclusions. So purpose. So on the purpose front, we are staying put. We'll continue to have a single purpose here at Corpay, which is to help businesses better manage and control expenses. The tagline, Corpay for every way your business moves money. You will see our new Corpay brand campaign, [ Hammerhome ], this simple theme, and in fact, I think one of our newest introductory ads is now on our website.

On the portfolio front, again, we'll continue to rotate [ to ] Corporate Payments into fewer bigger businesses. You will see us divest more noncore TAM constrained businesses, and you will see us acquire more Corporate Payment assets. So we're heading towards building really 3 global businesses over time. So the first wrap really is employee payments. So we've got a set of spend management solutions that control really all distributed employee spend, whether fuel or T&E or just one-off discretionary purchases. So those programs all about preventing the misuse of company monies.

We'll have a big B2B payments business, AP and supplier solutions that automate the workflow really through the entire centralized procurement invoice and payment chain. The goal there is to derisk B2B money movement. And then third big business, cross-border payments, we'll have FX payments, risk management solutions and foreign bank accounts really for middle market companies all over the world, goal there is to make global commerce easier.

So post this midterm period portfolio remix, we really end up in these 3 main global business categories, each of which have like massive TAMs. And again, all centered around the same common purpose of helping businesses better manage and control their spending. On the objective front, really, our midterm objectives really remain intact. Most important is to grow revenue organically 10%. And remain a top quartile grower. Our business model and operating leverage do enable us to grow earnings much faster, I think, 15% plus, and our goal is to double cash EPS to $50 a share during the forecast period. We do expect to generate about $15 billion in cash during the forecast period.

That's from a combo of annual free cash flow and increased borrowing capacity as our earnings grow. So we may buy back more than half the company at this current valuation. So look, net-net, we are very clear and super excited about the way forward and where the company is headed. We'll build a simpler more attractive, more consistent, high-growth company that we believe will outperform most.

So look, in conclusion, we're delighted with the start to the year. we are raising full year '26 revenue and earnings guidance, high confidence in that. We're working the same 5 priorities very hard and we've reaffirmed the midterm purpose portfolio and objectives for the company, really leading us to a super exciting place.

So with that, let me turn the call back over to Peter to provide some additional detail on the quarter and '26 outlook. Peter?

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. The headline for the quarter is significant overperformance with 25% top line and 29% bottom line growth and our fourth consecutive quarter of 11% organic revenue growth.

Let's turn to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our organic revenue growth. Corporate Payments delivered 16% organic growth for the quarter despite a 200 basis point drag from float revenue compression driven by lower interest rates. The organic revenue growth exceeded our expectations driven by strong performance in cross-border and payables. Overall, Corporate Payments performance was driven by growth in spend volumes, which increased organically 43% to $82 billion. Cross-border continued to deliver strong sales and revenue performance in Q1. Overall, currency volatility conditions were a helpful backdrop as it created the opportunity for our sales team to highlight the value of our offerings.

Additionally, Alpha integration efforts are progressing well. Approximately 15% of Alpha corporate volume has already been migrated to our global tech platform with the next wave of migration plan for Q2. The payables business continued to perform well, driven by volume growth and especially strong sales performance in Q1. This sets us up well for the rest of the year. We're also pleased with the progress of Avid, our minority investment, which is reflected as an equity investment in our financials. Sales are up over 20% versus Q1 2025. Volumes and revenue are also up and EBITDA grew 50% over Q1 2025.

Vehicle Payments organic growth was 10%, driven by solid results across all 3 geographies. Higher fuel prices benefited this segment, driving a portion of the macro beat a quarter. Additionally, we closed the sale of PaybyPhone and have taken $75 million out of our rest of year guide as a result. As a reminder, the sale has no material impact on our adjusted EPS as we bought back shares with sale proceeds.

Lodging came in better than we expected, with sequential organic revenue growth improvement of 7% versus Q4 2025. We saw better performance in all areas of the business, raising our confidence in the 2026 Lodging growth acceleration plan for the second half of the year.

In summary, we delivered 11% organic growth in Q1, a 200 basis point beat to what we expected and at the high end of our midterm range. Our Corporate Payments and Vehicle Payment segments totaled 85% of our Q1 2026 revenue and delivered a combined organic growth rate of 12%. Sales growth of 24% and retention rates over 93% in Q1 remain impressive. As such, we are encouraged by our strong Q1 and it strengthens our conviction on achieving our increased full year guidance.

Now looking further down the income statement. Operating costs, excluding the impact of FX, M&A and stock compensation, increased 10%. The increase was primarily due to higher transaction volumes and higher bad debt. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 54.6% was slightly down over the prior year primarily due to acquisitions. Our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 26.8%, the year-over-year increase in the rate was due to the favorable impact of employee stock options on the tax rate last year.

On to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter in excellent shape with a leverage ratio of 2.7x and $1.4 billion of available borrowing capacity on our revolver. In the quarter, we spent $786 million repurchasing 2.4 million shares. This includes the use of $450 million of PaybyPhone sale proceeds as we essentially prepurchase Corpay shares in advance of receiving the proceeds. As of Q1, we have $1.8 billion authorized for share repurchases as the Board approved another $1 billion in the most recent Board meeting.

We have just received commitments to refinance our revolver and Term Loan A. The commitments will upsize our credit facility by over $1 billion versus existing levels. This refinancing will extend the maturity of the facility for 5 years and will reduce the interest rate by 10 basis points. We plan to use $1 billion of proceeds from the new facility to pay down a portion of our Term Loan B expiring in April 2028. This will result in overall lower interest expense going forward. We have not reflected this in our guidance as the deal is expected to close and fund later this month. As always, we will continue to pursue M&A opportunities and to buy back shares, particularly at this valuation while maintaining leverage within our target range.

Next, let's cover our segment geography changes. We've made minor reporting segment geography changes to better align our reporting with how we run the business. You can find the adjusted historical information in the earnings supplement to help you update your models.

Now let me share some additional information on our updated 2026 full year and Q2 outlook. Our updated 2026 revenue guidance is $5.29 billion at the midpoint growing 17% year-over-year. This assumes 10% organic revenue growth at the midpoint. Our updated outlook flows through our Q1 beat of $50 million increases the remaining year's revenue by $50 million, driven by a combination of macro favorability of business fundamentals and is offset by $75 million from the sale of PaybyPhone. Our updated rest of year guidance for adjusted EPS is $26.70 per share at the midpoint, growing 25% year-over-year.

Our Q2 revenue guidance is $1.25 billion at the midpoint, growing 18% year-over-year. We expect Q2 organic revenue growth in the range of 9% to 11%. We expect adjusted EPS of $6.55 at the midpoint, growing 28% year-over-year. The complete details regarding our revised full year and Q2 outlook can be found in our press release and earnings supplement.

So operator, please open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from the line of Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

Really strong quarter here. I guess my first question is it seems like the underlying trends are really strong, and then you've got so the macro help as well. And when we sort of impute everything, it would seem like the underlying trends would suggest even more upside as we move through the year unless there's a give back. Maybe, Peter, you could just talk a little bit about sort of the puts and takes factored in for the remainder of the year?

Sanjay, thanks for the question. So when we look at Q1, we really got out of blocks stronger than we expected and obviously delivering the 11% organic growth, and we were growing over 9%, so a relatively easy comp. When we look out at the rest of the year, growing over 11% comp for all 3 quarters. So that's what lands us at the full year 10% and gets us comfortable with that. In terms of the raise for the back half of the year, that is a combination of continued business performance and macro. And when we think about how that splits out, call it, $25 million is in Q2 with the remaining $25 million in the back half.

And Sanjay, it's Ron. I just want to add to Pete's. Remember, in our business, we take the absolute revenue up about $100 million from Q1 to Q4. So the decline already built into the guide to start.

Got it. Got it. All right. Very helpful. And then, Ron, just a question for you. You talked about more divestiture opportunities and then also acquisition opportunities. So maybe you could parse apart sort of sizing, timing and sort of the core businesses going forward, it seems like lodging and gift weren't necessarily part of it. Are there opportunities there? Maybe you could just elaborate on that.

Yes. So I don't want to provide too many details and tip off too many people. I will say, one, that we're super late innings on a pretty meaningful transaction of divestiture. And so that will either happen or not applied signed or not in this quarter. We're sitting in, that's number one. Number two, we have 2 or 3 additional kind of noncore things that [ were ] teasing out trying to get a sense of whether to take them fully out to the market or not. And then on the other side, like always, we're digging into a couple of new Corporate Payment assets. So the message is more will happen, exactly when and stuff, TBD. But by the time we get to Christmas, we will have likely sold additional assets beyond the [ 1 here ] in Q2 and likely be looking at buying some additional things. So we are hard at work on this rotation.

Thank you SP1 And we'll take our next question from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

Great results. Maybe ask similar to what Sanjay asked without you giving away the trade secrets here, Ron, just as you're rotating to corporate payments, and it's obviously doing really, really well. Can you just instead of the details, what capabilities or TAM characteristics are you looking to acquire. I'm guessing you're probably not alone in looking at these assets. So are valuations reasonable when you compare it to buying back your own stock, which you say yourself, you buy back more than half the company of this valuation. So just trying to understand the balancing act there.

Yes, Tien-Tsin. Good to hear from you. So I don't think we need much in terms of capabilities. We have gone on a bit of a buying spree, including that foreign bank account capability, right, we got from Alpha. So I'd say it's mostly some geographic things. There's an asset in the geography that we'd like to heavy up on. There's another asset that we like some of the verticals. So it's in a completely similar business, but has positioned in some different verticals. And so we have mostly what we need. I'd say it's more now bulking up. And as you know, the closer these acquisitions are to what we do, the bigger the synergies. So we always look, as you know, a year accretion. And so if the thing is super and close to what we do, we can make the numbers work. So I would say that you should look for us to buy additional assets this year.

In that way. Okay. Yes. So topping up on geos and verticals as an example. Okay. No, that's great to hear. We trust you on that. So on the -- my follow-up, maybe staying with cross-border. You said demand there is really good. You gave us the update on the Alpha migrations. You signed JPM and BVNK on the blockchain rail side. So what's next, I suppose? What should we be asking you? Or what are you trying to track to gauge success as you're putting those agreements to work again on JPM and the BVNK side? And also on Alpha, is it more just migrations that -- are those some milestones we should be watching for?

Well, first thing I'd say, "Hey, tune into the cross-border deep dive," I think as Jim is next. Next Wednesday, Tien-Tsin. So we're going to try to spend an hour on the business and kind of peel it back and tell people why it's a pretty good thing. But I think the biggest headline for everybody is, yes, we have these new things, these new initiatives, right, get Alpha across which we're doing, get this bank account, things lifted up, get blockchains, super functional and stuff.

The key message I want people to take is the thing is f**king rocking. The base business sales, I think, were 40% or something up in Q1. And so -- it is just -- when I say way ahead of expectations, the thing like in every way for us is just working, right, the number, I don't think it's a $1.5 billion ballpark for that business in 2026 as additional assets, obviously, that we know of that we're looking at clearly in the space. And so I think it's really just getting those things done right. It's getting the bank account to accelerate, it's getting Alpha and shuttering their platform. It's teasing out whether our clients really want to use blockchain.

I mean, I think you guys, the JPM guys personally are on the right thing. The Ron Clarke bet is moving, tokenizing fiat currencies and moving it over blockchain outside the banking hours. And so there's no off-boarding of the things. I personally think that is a winner that our clients are going to really love that rail as an added rail versus the more difficult, hey, depositing money with no interest getting stable coins, running it down the block chain and reconverting it again. So the approach that your particular bank is taking, we think, for B2B is a super good fit. So we're really -- I'm personally really excited about the idea.

And we'll go next to Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Another terrific quarter. I wanted to ask about the U.S.A. sales and focusing on the middle market. I was just curious, is that where you see the most opportunity right now? Is that the more beneficial market segment? And I guess, why is that the best place to hunt right now?

Ramsey, it's Ron. It's a good question. So I think the first answer to that is we just like the micro market, right? I don't want to go back to that saga but that was a super unpleasant pivot, right? A couple of years ago, we saw credit losses, we saw client losses and stuff. We saw very short lives of some of the new accounts that came in. And so the conclusion was way investing in digital and bulking up in micro is not the best way to create a durable business. So we point at the middle market, which is juicy, you don't have to give as much money away, the accounts are bigger, they're more stable. They last longer.

But the other thing, which is important to us is it suddenly takes the fleet business and makes it more part of our Corporate Payments business. And what I mean by that is when we serve a little company, take like a 10-person plumbing company, all they need is a fleet car. They have no other spend. They really don't do anything else except 10 to 15 or 10 guys out and about. When you go to a middle market company, let's say, [ $30 million to $200 ] million in revenue, and it's got 50 fleet people, it's got other stuff. It's got a supply chain that might have manufacturing. It's got white collar people. So all of a sudden, the products that we have that combine our fleet controls with our kind of commercial card spend management stuff, it's the same.

And so we can take the same product that we bring to kind of nonfleet-intensive businesses to the fleet intensive businesses. And so no longer do we have kind of like specialized fleet products. They're just the spend category and our bigger platform. And so we really -- I really like that. The idea of fleet just becoming a portion really of the overall commercial card business that we're in because we moved up market basically from the super small accounts.

So the million-dollar question is the new selling approach and partner approach we're taking going to add enough business that we're working on. We've increased the investment there. We've got a lot of stuff in the pipeline. So reporting out to you guys the progress of do business in that segment is the key to growth going forward.

Super interesting. A quick follow-up. On Lodging, obviously, you saw some pretty great reacceleration in that business this quarter. Maybe just talk about the underlying drivers there, the underlying business momentum if you're feeling like that trend is now headed in the right direction.

It is, and I'm going to get off characterizing it as a problem child because not only did it race ahead of what we thought or I thought it could do in Q1. I think in the second half, the thing will be the right side of 5%, somewhere in the in the mid- to high single-digit growth. And the reason, I guess, is pretty simple, again, a couple of year ago kind of melt down from the IT thing that took a big part of our base away and blasts over 6 to 12 months was a huge, Ramsey, pothole to fill with business. Well, that thing now is way stabilized. In fact, I'm looking at our Q1 same-store sales report, and it was plus 6% for lodging, plus 6%. That number was like negative time in front of me, like negative 18%, [ 8 ] quarters ago.

So that's the first giant thing is that the base is positive so that anything we add obviously creates the growth rate of the business. So I would say that given there's a little bit of lead time to install business, implement business there, there's been enough in the pipeline, we're pretty confident you'll see that thing on the positive side in the second half. So hallelujah to Lodging. And that will help our overall growth rate, obviously, for those who could do math from consolidating minus 6% to, let's say, consolidating in the second half, plus 6% or 7%.

And we'll go next to Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

Okay. Sorry about that guys, I was muted. Maybe you could just touch on the a, the rate of growth of the U.S. fleet business for a moment. And then is there anything that we -- like what would we have to see for the fleet market to actually see same-store sales break out of the 0% to 1% type range we've been seeing. I'm not sure if there's any macro driven you'd expect, but I'm just kind of curious on same-store sales.

Darrin, it's Ron. So a little positive news to the U.S. fleet business was plus 1% in terms of same-store sales in the base, which is obviously -- it was minus 2% in Q1 of '25. So kind of that's a 3-point swing helping it. But I kind of answered the question earlier. The growth of that business now is just all turning on this new sales model, the middle market. If we sell a lot there, it will grow, if we don't, it won't.

I mean frankly, with you as Mr. Corporate Payments advocate, the thing is 10% now of our company, ballpark in terms of revenue. And so our focus, as you know, been super clear on this, that we have moved -- have moved a bunch of sales and marketing money into the Corporate Payments space to try to still deliver what we delivered 29% earnings growth in Q1. So we don't have unlimited money there to make profits. And so we have poured obviously way more incremental money, particularly into the cross-border business. And so if we see this middle market they take, we'll put more dough into it and grow it more. And it's not -- it's kind of a bit of beyond now to 10%. It's not going to make the thing go what you've been saying for 3 years, everybody needs to see how the Corporate Payment thing is going because that's going to be 50% of the company -- that's...

All right. I guess on that note, maybe you could just explain a little more on the rate of growth we saw this past quarter between the AP spend management side and the cross-border side of the Corporate Payments side. Obviously, the 18% ex float was solid.

That's a really good [ fall ]. It's about the same, which is really positive. So both businesses are growing in the quarter of the hygienes and again, both are working. So we like that. I would like the balance of the 2 different solutions. So -- and also the geographies, I think you know this, but maybe others don't. We finally have taking the payables business, which up until maybe 6 months ago, was 100% USA business. And now we've got a spend management business running in Europe about $15 million in revenues is the current run rate of that. So obviously up from 0.

And then in the cross-border business, about 75% of that business gets originated in other geographies, Canada, the U.K., Continental Europe, Singapore, Australia, et cetera. And so that's what's so cool is that the businesses now are truly global, that payables thing has [ TAM ] now sitting certainly cross-border, but even now in the spend management thing we've got those products there and working in other right geographies beyond the U.S. So the opportunity is way up to of that.

And we'll go next to Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley.

Rob, I'd love to hear how the Mastercard partnership is progressing, how are both organizations sort of devoting resources here? And is that 1 to 2 points of contribution across border is still the right place for '26?

A good ask. I think we're both pleased. I don't Mastercard report, I didn't hear what they commented. But I would say from RC, we're really pleased with saying we're pleased with Mastercard's engagement with us. We're pleased we've made, I think, 3 or 4 sales contracts, $5 million-ish run rate on the contracts. The last reports are 50 accounts in some form of a pipeline working. The fascinating thing is we have a better fixed now on which FIs, which kinds of banks like this thing and what they like fascinating, the most interesting product they're interested in is our foreign bank account or our multicurrency bank account product, even more so than our payment capabilities.

So look, it's a slower sales cycle, right, versus going to an end business. But I'd say the premise of Mastercard introducing us to their client base and our people explaining the expertise we have, the formula is working. And so ask we get into the summer and the fall, what that thing will be, but I'd say we're still pretty bullish on it.

That's helpful. And then maybe, Peter, just in terms of some of the tariff comp dynamics, you obviously had some pull forward some uncertainty [ and ] North America also obviously grew robustly last year. Anything we should just be mindful of in terms of the Q2 cross-border comp?

I'd say nothing specific in the Q2 cross-border comp. I mean, obviously, in my prepared remarks, I shared that the volatility across the world, right, allow us the opportunity to display our capabilities and continue to gain business. I think what will be really exciting for you guys to hear is to tune in the cross-border [indiscernible] next week, and we're going to really describe you $160 trillion market, which we have 1% of. So I'd just say our opportunity here is really big.

Next to Dave Koning with Baird.

Nice job. And I guess my question, as we look forward, the corporate volumes, which have been huge because of Alpha, et cetera. What should that what should that start to grow at? And then similarly, what should the yield be? Like does the yield around the 62 basis points. I would imagine if flow rates go up, that goes up a little bit, maybe pricing, but just the balance between how you're seeing volume and yield over the next couple of years?

Yes. Dave, it's Ron. That's also a good question. So I'd say, generally, both our payables business and our cross-border business are volume grower businesses. They're not they're not really rate rating kinds of businesses and mostly again because the clients are generally sizable. They're mid-market plus kind of clients. I'd say the only deviation from that is our cross-border business, and by the way, our payables business, have had a little bit of success with some kind of crazy enterprise opportunities.

So I think I did mention we had a payables enterprise account gigantic that we onboarded last spring that's kind of fully in now that set a quarter of kind of the line average, but it's a gigantic, I think I mentioned that we have or more of the size of the Paymerang business. And then the same in cross border, we now are targeting some giant accounts where we might be doing some risk management work, but they have big trades. And so we'll take those trades at very low sub-10 basis points because they're massive transaction sizes. So it skews a little bit these averages.

So what we do internally, which I'd be happy, Jim, for us to sit around is, we look at the thing, Dave, and pull those out. So we run the distribution, we look for like the 10 giant trades in the period and then look at the non kind of rest of business without those. And not shockingly, it's kind of right spot on the yield we've been running at. So it's a long way of saying sands, some big enterprise things, we don't see much movement in that yield.

Yes. And then just on the vehicle business. It looked like -- I just looked at the Brazil revenue number. And on a constant currency basis, if I kind of put it into the model, it looks like Brazil may be slow just to touch but you'd obviously know better, but that just looks like, but maybe comment on that in the Europe business a little bit.

Yes. I mean, to make the 3, be it 10%, obviously, some set of people need to be double digits. So I don't have it in front of me, but the Brazil business is still rocking. We've had a little weird thing with Google, some keywords in our vehicle debt business kind of nicked us for maybe a point or something, I think, in Q1. But the forecast, which I'm staring at has that business in the high teens, rest of the year, Q2 went on. So we're pretty confident. And the Europe vehicle business, I'd say steady as she goes, that thing has been right around the 10% mark. I don't know, probably 8, 10 quarters now running and same thing, that thing is out looking kind of steady as she goes. So when you put the 3 geographies together, you get back to kind of 9% or 10%, and that's what we think rest of the year will be.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, it does look like we have no further questions. So we'd like to thank everybody for participating in today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

To get the ball rolling. Thank you again for being here. Again, I'm Darrin Peller, covering payments at Wolfe Research. Really happy to have Corpay with us, also known as previously FLEETCOR when I brought it public many years ago, but look, really happy to have you guys with us. We have Peter Walker, who's the CFO of the company. And I think maybe just a quick backdrop. I mean, I remember when I -- when we did the IPO several years ago, it was really a mobility and a fleet card business. It's changed a lot.

For sure.

So Peter, if you could just start off before we even get into your learnings since you've been here. Just a quick reminder of the business overview, the 3 segments and the percentage makeup of each and we'll go from there.

Yes. Yes, happy to. So yes, our foundation of the business when we went public, which is what, over 15 years ago today is in the fleet card business. That's now actually a small percentage of our business today, call it, the U.S. fleet is around 10% of what we believe will be $5.3 billion in revenue this year. We've made a big rotation into corporate payments. And so the focus of corporate payments kind of high level, the way I think about it is businesses spend money in 2 categories, payroll and non-payroll. So when you move over to that nonpayroll side of business payments, that's where we're focused. And we're focused on helping businesses control those payments, and we're also focused on helping the businesses make those payments on a global basis. And so this year, our Corporate Payments segment will be 41% of our revenue. So really a big rotation of the company into corporate payments. Vehicle Payments is our other large segment. So those 2 together make up over 80% of the business. And then kind of the tail there would be our lodging business, and then we have another business, which is mostly made up of gift.

Gift card. Yes. Thanks for that. So you've been here 8 months. Help us understand what you've really learned in the last 8 months you've been here so far. And what are your priorities for '26 now just for the remainder of the year?

Yes. So I'm an incredibly commercially focused CFO. So what I've been leaning into is our businesses, where we're performing, enhancing performance. And probably most importantly is the M&A activity we've been up to. So in 2025, we spent over $3 billion in deals. When we think about those deals, kind of the 2 big ones to think about is the Alpha acquisition in the U.K. in our cross-border business and an investment in AvidXchange. That was a take-private deal that we partnered with TPG on and brought about 1/3 of that business. So really been focused on both of those businesses as they roll into our Corporate Payments segment, as we've been talking about. And we see that Corporate Payments segment as our high grower segment growing in the mid-teens this year kind of net of float headwind.

The Alpha business has been really fun to dive into. I'd say the biggest opportunity that we see there beyond just normal cross-border business is the global bank account business that they built. We in our cross-border business have been building a multicurrency account product. We sell that into corporates. Alpha sells their product, their global bank account product into private capital markets. So I'd say one of the most exciting learnings I've had, right, is just a lot more about these 2 bank account products that we offer today. It's about $4 billion in deposits, about 10,000 accounts and what we think the growth can be off of this business when we look forward.

Right. Let's go back to the fourth quarter. Just remind us how you -- the financial exit growth rate of the business? And maybe just give us some overview on '26 and the outlook. Both on a company-wide basis, remind everyone of the growth profile and then segment-level detail would be helpful as well.

Yes, happy to. So if we look at how we ended the year, we delivered 10% organic growth for 2025. That was 4 out of the last 5 years that we've delivered 10% organic growth or better. So when we look at our midterm guidance, pretty pleased by that. We also exited at 11% organic growth rate in 2025. So that sets us up well as we go into 2026.

Think about '26 guidance, kind of 3 things that are setting up well for us. Number one, business fundamentals are strong. So sales were 30% year-over-year in 2025, setting us up well for 2026. Retention, 92%. Same-store sales kind of positive, 1%. So fundamentals are standing up really well. Next, macro setting up really well. The world is being helpful to us. About 50% of our revenue come from outside the U.S. So when we look at a weak dollar, that's actually helpful for our business. And we look at interest rates moderating, that's helpful in terms of interest expense.

And then lastly, as I mentioned, when we kind of opened up the [ ascension ], we spent about $3 billion last year in acquisitions. So as we see those acquisitions come online this year and gain synergies, we expect about $1 synergies out of those acquisitions. So sets us up overall for what we think it's going to be a really good 2026.

Just the targets are -- just remind us the top line and the earnings growth targets.

Yes. So organic growth, 10% full year. The revenue growth, 16% and adjusted EPS growth of 26%. So the thought is we're going to produce -- sorry, 22%, we're going to produce $26 of adjusted EPS.

Right. And that included the accretion you just talked about for M&A?

Correct.

Any recent trends you're seeing so far in first quarter giving you confidence around near-term outlook or just conviction in those targets you just went through that would drive either, first of all, in line or better or anything that worries you that could take you to the lower end or below?

Yes. Based on what I've seen, we're right line with our expectations. So fully closed January met our expectations. I've seen a flash of February revenue kind of right where we'd expect to be.

Okay. All right, let's go to the segments now. When you look at Corporate Payments, again, you've built out a pretty dramatic percentage of your business coming from cross-border, right? But I mean the account payables business is also nicely growing and obviously, seeing acquisition benefit as well, whether it's AvidXchange or more. And so if we take it a step back, again, the mix of your Corporate Payments business, again, remind us between cross-border and accounts payables. And then we're going to go into the subsegments of it.

Yes. So we've typically spoken about the Corporate Payments business as payables and cross-border. I'd say the mix is, call it, 1/3 payables, 2/3 cross-border. How we're evolving that because we think it's better market disclosure, we'll come out with more information on it this year is really there are 4 businesses within Corporate Payments. That would be the commercial card business, the AP Automation business, the cross-border business and the global bank account business. As we move into '26, you should expect us to give more granular level view into the business and really trying to lean in to help people forecast the business better going forward.

Okay. If we go now into the subsegments, again, the growth profile of Corporate Payments first and then the subsegments of cross-border versus accounts payable, what are you expecting for each?

Yes. So I'd say the cross-border, and this has been the case for the last couple of years, is growing slightly higher than the payables business. So kind of a continued trend of that. Both of these businesses in the back half of last year and in the first part of this year are going to be -- organic growth rate is going to be hampered by float revenue headwinds. So the guidance that we gave for the year for Corporate Payments was, call it, mid-teens net float headwind.

Okay. All right. Let's go into the differentiation. So what is it about Corporate Payments that you guys are doing so well that's allowing you to grow mid-teens, especially on the cross-border side. I mean it's a competitive market. obviously, competing with banks and others. But maybe in your own words, what do you see as the key go-to-market differentiation?

Yes. So we've been in the cross-border business. We started it in 2016 with an acquisition and then have continued to grow the business significantly. To your point, banks are our main competitors, right? So banks typically don't serve well our clients, which is, call it, corporations of, call it, $500 million, right? Those are typically focus areas for kind of Tier 2 and Tier 3 banks, which don't have the capabilities that we have in terms of international payments and risk management services. So that's where we've been able to win. I think it's really important to note that from day 1, we focused on the technology within cross-border and building a system that enables us to win. So it's really that powerful combination of having a platform combined with a very high-performing sales team.

All right. Let's talk about the acquisitions now. I mean, Alpha being one of them, obviously, more recently. It not only brings a new customer cohort, but also new product capabilities, global multicurrency accounts. Just talk about a little more about how the company can cross-sell the solution into existing client base. And I'd love to hear a little more update on timing. Is it a '26? Or is it more of a '27 opportunity?

Yes. So really excited about the Alpha acquisition. About 1/3 of the business was in the corporate space, which we're in today and about 2/3 of the business is in the private capital market space. The Alpha business was exclusively either in the U.K. or on the continent. They were not licensed to be in any other jurisdiction. So in the private capital markets business, which is new for us, we were not in that customer segment before. We can automatically -- I shouldn't say automatically. It's going to take us kind of first half of the year to get things flowing, but we can use the licenses of our current cross-border business in the U.S. and in Asia to begin to sell into the private capital markets within both of those markets.

So we think that there's quite a bit of opportunity there, significant opportunity as part of our diligence. We called those private capital markets clients who've done business with us in Europe and said, hey, if we were in the U.S., would you do business with us, et cetera. And got really strong voice of the customer feedback. So we think that, that's one of the vectors in terms of synergies and growth for Alpha that's pretty exciting.

Okay. That's helpful. Maybe we talk now about the Mastercard investment. I think you guys talked about it contributing potentially 1 to 2 points of growth for the segment, right? Help us understand what is it actually doing for you? And how is it helping to boost your growth rate?

Yes. So just to be clear, the thought was 1 to 2 points of organic growth for cross-border, not for the segment in totality. So what I would say is a pretty exciting partnership. I mean the reason why we partnered with Mastercard here is we thought that our capabilities could be really helpful to the Tier 2 and Tier 3 banks globally. Mastercard has the ability to open the door to those customers for us. So it's a combined go-to-market approach with Mastercard. Happy to share at this conference a new data point, right? We've signed 3 clients now rather than just 2, which we shared on the earnings call a couple of weeks ago. And we've got a really healthy pipeline of clients. So we're seeing kind of initial clients coming online in LatAm. There's nothing special about LatAm other than it was one of the first target markets we were focused on. So LatAm, Europe and U.S. were the 3 kind of we're going at, and we just happen to get kind of 2 clients, 2 banks based in Mexico first.

What's been pretty interesting about the process, right, is we're going in and saying, hey, this is our suite of cross-border solutions for the bank to sell on our behalf, whether they sell it as a Corpay product or they white label it. And the product that's been resonating most with them has been either a multicurrency account offering or a global bank account offering because that is really the place that they do not have an offering today other than a correspondent offering, which would take 6 months to open a bank account globally versus we can do it in 7 days. So it all of a sudden gives them a competitive advantage, something to offer their client. And what those banks are really focused on is maintaining those client deposits and those client loans and not losing the client to a Tier 1 bank.

Yes, it makes sense. One of the other questions we get about the cross-border business is obviously stablecoins and just whether or not that's a real risk for your model being the most applicable use we hear about for stablecoins is cross-border, high friction areas where there's maybe long settlement times. What do you think about that? I mean, is your business at risk of disintermediation from it? It's been a little while now since it's been a topic. You've hopefully had more time to digest it. What are you seeing?

Yes. So we see stablecoins as a real opportunity. I mean if you think about the cross-border business, there's really 3 pieces to revenue. The pieces to revenue first is the risk management piece of it, which is, call it, 45% to 50% of the revenue base. The second piece is international payments, which is call it 45% to 50%. And then there's the rail. There's actually how do we move the money across the globe. That's where stablecoin plays a role.

So today, in terms of rails, how do we move money globally today? About 60% of the money is moved on our own proprietary networks, which we can actually settle 24/7 in some countries, et cetera, and about 40% is on SWIFT. So what stablecoin introduces is a third rail into that. Again, that's about 5% of the revenue. Stablecoin does not solve the problem of how do I convert the currency into the local currency and how do I do the risk management contract.

So we think in that rail, which, again, is about 5% of the overall cross-border business. It's a nice option to bring on. And so today, where we think we've got really the first opportunity to do this is within Alpha, within the private capital market space. Those PE firms, et cetera, who are looking to buy companies in foreign currencies are sometimes looking to close those deals outside of a normal banking hours. So if we don't have 24/7 settlement on our own rails, that's where stablecoin may play a part. So I'd say we're out there with our clients talking about it. None of our clients yet are kind of signing up to adopt using it. But for a rail case, we think there's good optionality.

Right. But as far as risk goes to your model, I mean, I suppose, again, you have pretty small percentage of your business that's in these more esoteric currencies and markets.

So 90% plus of what we do is in G20 currencies. That's from a volume perspective and a revenue perspective. So yes, I would say the use case of kind of exotic currencies and that is where stablecoin is a benefit, it's not a place that impacts our business.

And just one last one on it, given it was such a hot topic at least last year, right? Has there been much progress and momentum in the last 6 to 9 months around any in terms of your customer adoption or anywhere you're seeing any disintermediation or risks popping up?

So we're building the capabilities. So we're building digital wallets not only in the private capital markets business in those global bank accounts, but for some of our largest merchants. What we're not seeing is the people opting in to actually using stablecoin. So we believe there's value in having the optionality there and first-mover advantage. But I think an important thing here, Darrin, is like just step back and think about the landscape. Like if we think about corporate payments in the U.S. and AP payments, 50% of those payments are done by check today. So like job #1 for me is to digitize the space, right? Once I digitize the space, then stablecoin might become something of interest. But today, if I can't get you to stop sending a check and move to a digital currency to do it, making the leap that stablecoin is going to be the solution tomorrow is probably not where we'd go, but we are adopting stablecoin because maybe in 5 years, that's where people...

Okay. Let's shift gears to the account payable side, the payable side of the business. I mean, again, I think it's growing pretty much in line with your overall segment, right? I mean is there anything you're seeing that's change that? And maybe for the audience, just help explain what the differentiation is there and how you're going to market.

Yes. So really, it's the AP automation space. So the thought is that we work with -- we have a client who's got a $0.5 million company, and we go to them and make the offering of outsourcing their AP. The benefit of them outsourcing their AP is, number one, we protect them against all fraud. There's been a bunch of fraud, obviously, of people going into AP departments. The other thing that we introduced to them is that we can pay their merchants through our network. We have over 1 million merchants in our network, the largest network, and we're able to monetize those payments. So basically, my value proposition to -- by the way, the CFO, so it's my value proposition to myself is, hey, you can stop doing AP, you can reduce the expense, you'll have no fraud and I'll give you a cut of the rebate. How does that sound? I actually pay you to do your AP for you. And that value proposition has resonated well in the marketplace and is why the business is performing the way it is.

All right. That's helpful. Let's shift gears to vehicles, which is obviously what you were almost built on from years ago. It showed in the -- at least the U.S. fleet business showed 5% growth, which for what it's worth, I mean, you're in a market that's basically flat, right, in terms of underlying transaction growth. So was it new sales that you've added that's really revamping that growth to 500 basis points or 400 basis points of outperformance?

It is. It's investments in the sales engine. It's the sales tactics, how we're going about our sales process, et cetera, that have proven out quite successful for us in that business and kind of landing it in that mid-single-digit space.

I mean is that sustainable from your perspective? Or is there any even potential to accelerate that?

We believe it's sustainable. I think the question that we're asking ourselves today is for that sales dollar, am I best using that sales dollar in USVP, which is, call it, 10% of our revenue? Or do I move that sales dollar into global -- into Corporate Payments, which is 40%. So I would say current guide is that, that USVP is going to deliver mid-singles, but we may revisit our allocation of sales dollars into higher performing and higher multiple businesses.

Okay. And then the other part of vehicles on Brazil. I mean, an area that I still think is pretty underappreciated. It's just not as well understood perhaps. But it's been a really strong growth business for you guys for a while, and it's expanded now with Gringo and Zapay. Just help us understand the competitive differentiation versus local peers in that market. What it even does for anyone in the room that wants to understand it a little bit more? And then how do you think about the growth algorithm for it?

Yes. So for those of you who have not been to Brazil, I think you need to go to Brazil to really get it, at least that's what I needed to do. So it was the first trip I made when I took the role, I went early September. And what resonated with me very quickly is in Brazil, owning a car is like owning a home in the United States, right? This is considered freedom. You can't lease a car in Brazil, right? So the only way you can get a car is to actually own a car. Once you own that asset, protecting it is incredibly important. So the business was born in the toll space in terms of creating an RFID reader that allowed you to go through the toll and get charged with the toll without stopping.

Then what we did is we built a super app around that, which really we're offering, call it, 30-plus products that allow the customer to protect their largest investment. So you can get in your car today the Sem Parar app as it's branded locally in Brazil, and you can pick up food at McDonald's and pay for it. You can go to a gas station, you can go to a toll, you can park. Oh, you can buy insurance because you're going to take a 2-hour trip. And in countries like Brazil, you have to buy micro insurance as opposed to have what we would consider comprehensive insurance.

So what I would say is it's really a wraparound product offering around the mobility in Brazil. And we've been so successful there because we've been continuing to find additional products that we can bring to that customer. And so as you know, the investments we made in the last couple of years is we bought both the debt protection businesses, what we call them in Brazil, but it's basically when you go to register car every year in Brazil, if you get tickets throughout the year, you have no idea it's happening. And so you show up to get your registration and you're going to spend BRL 100 and they want BRL 300 because the tickets escalate if you don't pay them. Well, what we have is the only digital solution where a customer can track did I get a ticket or not? Do I need to pay the ticket? Oh, and I can pay my registration. So I'd say the differentiator that we have from the bank competitors is the super app that we've created with Sem Parar and then also the digital experience we've created around registration and vehicle debts.

Okay. And the algorithm for it, how to think about growth? It seems like it's got years ahead of us of strong growth.

Significantly, especially with adding in vehicle debts because the TAM is so much larger. But that business has consistently delivered, call it, mid-double digits to high double digits growth. So a very successful business.

It's been great. Let's shift to the last of the main segments, which is lodging for a minute. I mean it's - I think it's been a little more disappointing as of late versus some of the other outperforming areas. And it's now guiding for -- you're guiding for an inflection to low single-digit growth in '26. So maybe just discuss some of the product enhancements that's driving your conviction on the turnaround of the business.

Yes, good question. So I think if you look at '25 and you look at the first half of 2026, it's really flat over the prior period. The reason for that is the emergency volumes in the prior period were quite high, and we just haven't had those emergencies. So for example, in Q1 of last year, with the California wildfires and event of that size is not happening. So really flat. Flat is not exciting nor where we want to be from a business perspective when we're growing at 10% in totality on an organic basis. So the view would be we kind of get past these grow-over issues in the first half. In the second half, we already have signed deals and implementations coming online that gets us into that, call it, single-digit growth category. We are focused on turning around the business. I think if eventually, we find ourselves that we can't get this to be a 10% growth business.

Is that the parameters? You want to see it all the way up to the corporate average?

That would be it. I mean, when I came in and I saw how the business was performing. My first question was like, why are we in this business, right? So I turned to Jim. And I said, pull me, the data from the past. I was like, wow, okay, 3 years ago, it's growing 22% organically. Like this business had a real competitive differentiation to it. So there is a path to get back to that. The question is how quickly can we do that? And right now, we're committed to doing that this year. And again, the results will kind of tell us.

So based on the deals you've already locked in, you feel good about the growth algorithm you gave, the mid-single digit or low to mid-single-digit type algorithm, I think, for second half getting back to mid...

We do.

Starting off a little slower, but ramping it up.

We do.

Okay. All right. Good to hear. On that note, I mean, if this -- you brought up whether the business fits, you've talked about divestitures as a company, right? And so maybe just an update on incremental divestitures as you noted on the last earnings call. Should we assume these are both noncore vehicle assets? Or are there other areas you think are in consideration for divestiture?

Yes. So we've been talking about 3 divestitures in particular. One, we've already signed and shared publicly what that is. It's a PayByPhone sale. PayByPhone is a great example of this is a great business, right, growing north of 20% organically, high EBITDA margin business. It was making no money when we bought it a couple of years ago. But when we looked at the business, the original kind of deal hypothesis is that we could take this business, Europe was a place we were going to start and turn it into a business similar to what we have in Brazil. And what we found is that wasn't where the puck was going for this business in that geo. So I think that, combined with the fact of it's not in the core of what we do was why we thought it was a perfect candidate for disposition.

So the other 2 potential divestitures that we're in market with right now are similar. They're good businesses. They just don't kind of fit the core. And as we kind of kicked off, our goal is really this significant rotation into corporate payments as we continue to do that. So the divestitures are helpful for that.

Ron has always been a good portfolio manager of different assets. And so again, are we on schedule for those divestitures from your perspective? Do you think they'll be this later this year? I mean a little more on timing?

Yes. I mean that's always tough to call it because it's always about price. And these are really good businesses. So I don't want to sell them on the cheap. I do like the idea of divesting them, buying back CPAY stock considering what we're trading at and then using my dry powder to continue to build within the corporate payment space. So I do think we've seen the shift that we'd like to in terms of corporate payments with the acquisition we did with Alpha. And the next natural acquisition for us to do would be to buy the 2/3 of Avid that we don't own today, and that would double our AP automation business.

So we're working really hard with TPG in terms of the financial performance of that business to get that in line with our financial performance. What's interesting about that business, right? They compete in different verticals than we do. So like they've got a big stronghold in the real estate vertical. So very complementary in terms of the portfolio business to our current portfolio of business.

Yes. I mean speaking of M&A, last year, you guys had a pretty big M&A. It was about 80% of your capital deployment. Usually, you're more of an equal split, right? Somewhere around -- I think looking back, it was 46% M&A, 54% buybacks more typically. What are your thoughts going forward now in terms of that mix? I mean, obviously, Avid is something you still want to eventually buyout in total. But beyond that, I mean, what are your thoughts in terms of breakdown of capital allocation?

Yes, it's a good question. I mean from the guide perspective, the view is, hey, we're going to use all the money to delever because it's really hard to predict M&A and buybacks, right? We always want to give ourselves optionality to do M&A. Also add to that, the stock is just incredibly cheap right now. So we shared with you as we do divestitures, we're going to buyback CPAY. So I'd say you're going to see a combination of that as we go throughout the year.

Okay. Great. Guys, why don't we take a couple of questions from the audience? We have about 6, 7 minutes left. So anyone have anything they'd like to ask? Yes, there's one in the back. Maybe just wait for the mic real quick. Thanks.

I know it's not part of the core business, but what's the guidance on the performance of your gift card, that business, the closed loop business and where do you see that going? Is that a part of your divestiture strategy?

Yes. To be fair, it's a really small business. You're talking about like a $250 million business on a $5.3 billion business. So a little bit of the tail wagging the dog. But what I would say in general in the gift business is it's really improved over the last several years. I mean 2 things that are happening, right, is we've improved our own capabilities. In addition to doing the gift card processing, we've actually also launched a bunch of initiatives that help retailers bring customers into stores. So that's resonated really well, and we're generating high-margin revenue off of that. we've also been able to move ourselves into much more of a stronger perspective from a competition standpoint. So we're winning a lot of new business.

So I'd say the business is performing well. Last year, it overperformed because we had this change in gift card regulation. The only thing that I don't love about the business is its very volatile quarter-to-quarter. So even at that small amount of revenue, introducing that volatility quarterly into our model isn't terrific.

Any other questions? One for me that I know the audience is always wondering and then we'll wrap it up is just on AI. You guys actually have been almost looking at it as a net safety stock, I guess, you'd call it relative to a lot of other names around AI. But I'm just curious how you see it impacting your business in terms of either opportunity to leverage it or if there are any risks around someone leveling the playing field for versus what you guys offer?

Yes, let's talk about AI, and let's also talk about software because I think they are 2 important things that are really hot in the marketplace right now. So when we think about AI today, right, we really see it as an amplifier of our current products and our current advantages. So what we are focused on today is building AI agents within our businesses that make the products better. In terms of cost savings perspective, where we've been -- or should I say, a cost optimization perspective is where we've been focused on is in our engineering team. And so deploying AI in engineering. What we're tracking there is how much of the code is being produced by AI versus engineers. With that additional capacity that we're freeing up, we've been reinvesting in the business to create the AI product enhancements that we'll plan to roll out later this year. So pretty excited about that side of the business.

On software, and I made this point at RJ last week, so to just share with this group, we are not a software company. We are not a software company. We are a payments company. Networks is what our critical advantages here, right? Our key advantages is our moat. So we've got over 30 proprietary networks across the globe. That's what makes our business so sticky and so difficult to get into. And just to put a finer tone on it because people are always cautious when I make statements like that, 1% of our revenue in 2026 will come from software. So just as a proof point, 99% of the revenue is coming from being a payments business with networks.

That's a pretty strong point. All right, guys, anything else? I think we'll stop it there then, Peter. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks, Darrin.

Appreciate you being with us.

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. My name is Madison Suhr. I'm the payments and fintech analyst here at Raymond James. I'm happy to be joined by Peter Walker, the CFO of Corpay. Today's format will be that Peter is going to run through a presentation.

And with that, I'll kick it over to him.

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. So excited to be here with you this afternoon. It was 2 years ago today at the Raymond James Conference that we announced that we were changing the name of the company from FLEETCOR to Corpay. So I thought it would only be fitting to kick off our presentation with a view of a brand awareness campaign on Corpay that we're kicking off this year. So give you guys a quick little video and get your reaction to it. If I can get it to work.

[Presentation]

So how do you guys like us now? Is that good? Hopefully, just gives you a view of kind of a quick snippet into the company's history and into the company's future.

So let's just take a look back in terms of the evolution of Corpay. So company started around 2000 really and the fleet card space, really a niche provider within fleet card. Company went public in 2010 with the IPO. And then the company did its largest acquisition in 2014. And in that acquisition, is when we acquired a nascent corporate payments business and really started to grow out the corporate payments business. And then from 2014 to today, we've really continued to organically grow the business and inorganically grow the business to become the corporate payments provider that we are today.

Think a really stand out statistic on this slide is that we are in a market a TAM of about $150 trillion. This is a very large market that we operate in today. Banks dominate the majority of this market space. So our overall belief is a lot of room for the company to grow given the size of the TAM and the products we offer.

We've spoken a lot in earnings calls about our rotation in the corporate payments, about rotation into deeper, not wider, meaning deeper businesses. So I thought this was a great visual. If you look at the top part of the columns here, on corporate payments. You can see corporate payments in '21 represented about 21% of our revenue, growing to 36% of our revenue in 2025. Projected to be 40% of our revenue in 2026.

So again, just continued growth in corporate payments large TAM, higher multiple business for us to be in. So pleased with what we've been able to achieve there. This represents a 30% CAGR over the 5-year period in terms of corporate payments growth from '21 to '25.

I think the other thing that's really important to note here is there's some other KPIs on the bottom of the slide that we've been able to achieve this growth while still delivering a margin -- EBITDA margin, call it, in the mid-50s, still maintaining a CapEx-light business. CapEx is about 4% of revenue and still having a really high free cash flow conversion, so call that about 90% free cash flow conversion.

This kind of a setup on how we're performing. So why don't we jump now to what do we actually provide to businesses in a little bit more detail? So when you think about a business income statement, everybody in the room can relate to that. There's really 2 types of expenses that are running through it. There's people expenses and there's non-people expenses. Our focus is on that non-people expense side of the income statement and really helping businesses put in the effective controls around purchases and the global payments related to that side of their business. I'd say the additional value that we provide is the majority of our products actually result in revenue that we can return and is a profit-sharing model with our clients.

So the solution is, let me help you spend less money, let me help you control your expenses, oh, and by the way, you're going to get hard dollars back from the programs that I put in place. What gives me the most passion about this business is the CFO or the office of the CFO. We are the purchasers of all of Corpay's products. So it's great to work in a business where I can really sit back and say, would I buy this product or not? What can we do to improve this product, et cetera.

So hopefully, that sets a good context of kind of what we're up to, where we focus. If we double-click on this a little bit further, it's really focused on 2 sides of controlling and managing expenses. First is enabling controls around what is purchased, right? So all of you are probably sitting here with a corporate card in your pocket. Most likely, you guys have pretty good authorization. You can use that corporate card at most places.

As you move down an organization, you can set up all kinds of controls to limit the amount of expenses. You can't use it in a restaurant grocery store, et cetera, or you can use it depending on your type of business. So those are the type of controls that we can put in place in the expense management space. In terms of products, we really have 4 offerings here, business cards, fleet cards, offering in tolls in Brazil and then offering and lodging.

If you go to the other side of the business, this is really about controlling what is actual paid. So what are the vendor payments that are being made. And where we do that is in the U.S., we do that in spend management and AP automation. And then within our cross-border business, we do this with international payments, and we do this with global and multicurrency bank accounts. So really a comprehensive offering for the office of the CFO in terms of controlling and managing expenses.

So this is our scorecard where we sit in terms of size, scale and capabilities, I think, pretty impressive and really critical to the growth of the business. So if we look at 2025 as a snapshot, $4.5 billion in revenue, we delivered 10% organic revenue growth for the year. That number is projected to be $5.3 billion for 2026. Also growing at 10% organic revenue. So high organic revenue growth from the business.

Next, we move to adjusted net income. We delivered about $1.5 billion of adjusted net income in 2025. Adjusted net income is a proxy for free cash flow for us. This number is expected to grow to $1.8 billion in 2026. So think of that, think of the arsenal we have. We wake up every year and say, oh, I've got a fresh $1.8 billion to spend in cash flow this year. How am I going to deploy that? Am I going to lower my debt? Am I going to do more M&A? Am I going to do buybacks? We'll get further into capital allocation in the presentation. But I think what I want you to walk away from is, this is a high free cash flow generation business that gives us a lot of optionality, and we look at our revenue midterm guidance algorithm, you'll kind of see the power of that come through.

So what delivers these results. We're in 150 countries today, 51% of our revenue is international. You'll see our concentrations of the U.S., Brazil and U.K. So highly diversified global company. We have over 800,000 business clients, and we have 4 million -- over 4 million merchants and vendors. The other thing is really critical to point out is that we have over 30 proprietary networks. This is not a software business.

Let me just say it one more time. This is not a software business. We make very little of our revenue based on software. We make our revenue based on moving payments and our key advantage there is a proprietary network and our ability to move those funds at lower cost and our clients being able to take advantage of the fact that we're doing that.

Next, I thought it would be helpful to just take a pause and say, hey, what are you guys working on in the near term? What's exciting in terms of product innovation? What are you doing to drive this company forward. Really 4 key areas that we're focused on right now. One is bank accounts. So this is a relatively new area for us within the cross-border business. We offer 2 types of bank accounts today. We just closed on an acquisition called Alpha, which is cross-border business based in London, on the London Exchange. And with Alpha, we bought what was called a global bank account alternative, this has about $3 billion in deposits, so by no means a small business. What's very interesting about this business is it is a targeted bank account product. It is a companion bank account pitched at asset managers and private equity firms who are looking to do a deal in a currency where they don't typically have a bank account today.

So they're looking to us to open up that bank account for them so that they can transact in the asset and typically hold out those funds for about 5 years. The key advantage here is that we can open up the bank account and call it 20 days versus if they were to work through a typical regional bank that could take up to 5 months. So really exciting area of growth for us. The next areas are multicurrency accounts. This is sold to our corporate clients within cross-border. The multicurrency account is also a companion account, and what this allows, for example, is a U.S. business who begins to transact in Europe and in the continent. They can open up account where they can have euros and they can have pounds in that account along with U.S. dollars. This also allows us in both of these accounts to provide international payment services and provide risk management services really important growth initiative for us going forward.

The next place I thought it goes AP monetization. We've been with investors most of the morning. I think we've got a lot of questions in terms of hey, there was a lot of enthusiasm, call it, 2020, '21 around AP monetization, virtual cards, kind of what's the next step in this journey of AP monetization. And so what we're focused on here is ending paper checks. Believe it or not, almost 50% of AP today is still done by paper checks.

This is definitely a generational thing in terms of who is running AP department. So what we're focused on is digitizing this process and introducing new monetizable products being at a debit card, instant payment or e-checks as different alternatives. But the main goal here is really to reduce fraud, get people off of checks.

Next area, which we get asked a lot about is stable coin. Kind of what do you guys think about stable coin? How are you adopting it in your business? I'd say overall, we're excited about stable coin. We're making some investments here, and I'll walk you guys through kind of what the use cases are. So first and foremost, was in the digital currency space. Today, we're supporting major crypto providers as they look to convert off of their stable coin into a fiat currency. So we're actually providing that FX conversion for those large institutions.

The other thing that we're doing is as a first mover advantage, we're adding digital wallets into our private capital markets accounts. So when I go back to the global bank account alternative that we bought with Alpha, where we're providing that to private equity and alternative asset managers, we're introducing stable coin companion digital wallet account. What's exciting here, these guys are in the business of doing deals. And one of their biggest things obstacles in doing a deal is doing things outside of banking hours. So the use case of stable coins, it's pretty interesting here, is that they close a deal 24/7 via stable coin versus waiting to be in banking hours.

We've had initial conversations with clients. They're interested in that this nobody's calling us today and saying, where is my stable coin. But our goal is to be a first mover here, set up these digital wallets and stable coin and create this capability.

We also believe this going to exist within our cross-border business payments and our merchant network in the U.S. and international. So it is another place with our large vendors that we're setting up digital wallets. Again, we're not seeing the volume yet today. Nobody is calling us up and asking us. There has been movement obviously into stable coins recently. A lot of that seems to be kind of a haven -- a safe haven for crypto versus true corporate payments moving into stable coin. So I think my message to this audience is we're excited about stable coin and when the volumes come, we're ready.

What would the presentation be if we didn't talk about AI, right? So huge disruptor. Obviously, there was an article in the last week about 2028 in the Dooms Day that we all could wake up to. Hopefully, that's not the case. What I would tell you is we see AI as an advantaged amplifier for this business. We don't see this replacing the business, but we see AI as a way that we can enhance the current products that we offer today. So we have AI instances installed in the U.K., EU and Brazil and where we think the best opportunity is with AI first is in product innovation directly with our clients.

We are also using AI to reduce our expenses. We've not taken expense reductions. We're more getting productivity gains and engineering out of AI. So we see a benefit not only a top line of our business, but also reinvesting in our business. So hopefully, that's helpful in terms of kind of hot topics that we get asked about around innovation in the business.

All right. Next, let's take a look at the actual businesses themselves. So I'm going to focus on corporate payments and vehicle payments as that makes up over 80% of our revenue today and is really our key focus. So when we go to corporate payments, a lot of people kind of say, okay, what do you mean corporate payments pretty broad category. So corporate payments today really think of this as 4 businesses that sit in corporate payments. First business is spend management or commercial cards. So we kind of talked about that business. You guys are all probably sitting with cards in your pocket that would fit into this part of our spend in our Corporate Payments business.

The next piece is AP automation. So this is where we're working with clients, and we actually take over their AP process, and we automate that process for them. The next piece of corporate payments is cross-border. This could be international payments and risk management services that we're providing to our clients. And then lastly, the bank account business that I spoke about.

So hopefully, that's a way to kind of demystify what sits in this large business that we see really is the future growth of Corpay. Corporate Payments makes up about 36% of our revenue in '25. That's going to grow to over 40% in 2026. You can see there's over $250 billion of annual spend processed in this business and we are the largest nonbank FX provider.

Our customers here in terms of the industries that we work in has stayed pretty consistent over the years, construction, transportation, logistics and business services also financial services and manufacturing. And then lastly, just some kind of key interesting things to point out. largest virtual card acceptance with over 1 million vendors, we are the largest Mastercard B2B issuer, and we settle FX in over 200 countries.

I think the other thing that's really important to point out about our cross-border business is over 90% of our volumes in cross-border are in G20 currencies. So when we go back to stable coin use cases, today, a lot of the stable coin use cases in cross-border is in exotic currencies, which is not in places we're in today. Our business within cross-border operates very efficiently under the current rails that we have. We have proprietary rails in the cross-border business, and we run them in about 60 countries. Taking a double-click on cross-border.

We've made several investments or partnerships in cross-border this year. So I thought it would be important to kind of slow down a little bit and tell you guys where we're at on our cross-border journey. So today, as we sit, we've got 4 segments that we sell into and cross border. We've got the corporates, which we've been in for several years since we began in the business. Financial institutions. This came to us mostly through the Mastercard partnership. We had a little bit of business there already, but we think the Mastercard partnership is a huge enabler of growing this business.

Next, investment funds or private equity funds. This is the Alpha business that we purchased, so the ability to sell to this segment. And then the last is digital currency. And I mentioned earlier when we were talking about stable coins, we're active in terms of having partners in the crypto space and providing the on-ramp off-ramp of foreign currency conversion for them. What we're super excited about as we went into this year really as corporates as our main business within cross-border. We've now expanded substantially into these 3 other segments, and we think this positions us really well as we go forward with the business and think about continued 10% organic growth for the overall organization.

Next, vehicle payments. Another really large part of our business. It's actually interesting if you kind of reflect back, right? We say we're a corporate payments company. We've just talked about the Corporate Payments segment. The vehicle payments is really just another flavor of corporate payments, right? It's a very specialty form in terms of very much focused on companies with large fleets, right? But it is another form of vehicle payment -- our corporate payments.

When you think about the vehicle payments business in 2025, we operated in 3 geographies, about a $2.1 billion business, the 3 geographies we operated in were the U.S. Europe and the rest of the world and Brazil. Each of those were about similar size in 2025. So this is a very global business. The growth rate on this business, what we shared is that it will grow about 9%, high single digits in 2026. So still really encouraged about the overall performance of this business. And don't want to leave off kind of like some key advantages that we have here. So proprietary fuel networks, over 80,000 sites. EV charging stations, 1 million charge points. Really important to note that while EV has fallen out of favor in the U.S. EV is still, very much in favor on the continent and in the U.K. And so when we go to market, why that Europe and Rest of the World business continues to deliver a 9% to 10% organic growth rate is that we pitch not only a fuel solution but an EV solution, which is really powerful for the markets that are interested in it.

And then lastly, in Sem Parar -- sorry, in Brazil, Sem Parar is our go-to-market brand in Brazil. This is really a super app that we built in a B2C business all around the car ownership experience of the customer. This has continued to be a really strong performing business for us delivering kind of mid-teens to high-teens organic growth consistently.

So hopefully, a nice overview of the 2 businesses that we're in without going into too much detail. kind of stepping back of, okay, well, what does this mean in terms of your growth algorithm, et cetera? And what I would say to you is really strong growth algorithm in the business, the headline would be 10% organic growth every year, and we expect cash EPS to grow faster, I call it, 15% plus. So let's maybe pull each of those apart and talk a little bit about what that means. So if we look at the performance drivers on organic growth, as we've said, a large TAM, we've got a very efficient selling system revenue retention, 92% was the latest statistics, a high revenue retention and call it, flat to slightly up same-store sales. What that results in is a 10% organic growth rate.

Next, we move to EBITDA. We expect that revenue growth to flow through and have operating leverage. So we expect EBITDA to grow, call it, low double digits year-over-year. In terms of capital deployment, as I shared with you, we have a significant amount of free cash flow, about $1.5 billion. and we can use that to deploy against accretive M&A, buybacks or to pay down debt.

So I've got a lot of things in my arsenal in order to make sure that I deliver that 15% cash EPS. And that's what kind of leaves us here with 15% cash EPS, and we've had a 10-year-plus history of delivering that. One important stat to take away is these growth rates put us in the top 10% of companies in the S&P 500. So really an elite space to be in terms of the returns we would love to be in an elite space in terms of the multiple for this business. Unfortunately, obviously, what's been happening in overall payments and disruption and worries in the marketplace. Don't have as high as we'd like to be, but just make sure investors know that we'd like to see that multiple pick up given the results of the business.

So just a quick snapshot at organic revenue growth. You can see for 4 out of the last 5 years, we've delivered 10% or greater organic revenue growth. And in 2026, we're planning on delivering 10% as well. So that would be 5 out of 6 of the last year. So a consistent track record here. We're really proud of our track record in terms of compounding revenue and compounding cash EPS. So we did these charts from the time of the IPO.

On the revenue side, you can see we're about $400 million in revenue, predicted to be $5.3 billion in revenue for this year 2026. So that's compounding at 13%. Similar on cash EPS, $1.66 is now $26 compounding at 14%. I don't know how many other companies could put up this kind of a track record. So message to audiences, we've had a great track record. We can believe we can continue to deliver on this going forward.

It wouldn't be an investor conference if we didn't hit our capital allocation really quickly. So let's take a look at our capital allocation philosophy. I'd say, in general, our leverage ratio 3x is the highest that we want to take our leverage ratio. We have communicated for a unicorn. And as you know, they don't come around very often. We would pierce 3x with a plan to march it back down pretty quickly because you see the cash flow generation of the business. The 3x is where we plan to stay are lower. So how do we think about capital allocation. First and foremost, we're a growth business. We've got to feed back growth. So feeding the organic growth at the efficient frontier, meaning we need to deliver 55% margins in that range. So that being the balance of feeding the organic revenue growth.

Next, we've done over 120 accretive deals since the company was started in 2020. So accretive M&A is very attractive to us. I'll show you a slide coming up where you can see we've really been excellent allocators of our capital and been able to drive the growth of the business through it. And then lastly, share repurchase is always an attractive tool for us when there's not interesting M&A to do and when the shares are still undervalued.

So for example, in the fourth quarter, right, there was a pullback in the stock. We issued a leverage ratio for a full year. When I went on investor meetings in the fourth quarter, I asked investors, hey, if I go up to 3x for the quarter, you guys are okay with that if I buy back shares and like I got high fives from everybody in the room. So when we're in those positions of really being depressed in the stock, we're definitely going to buy back because we believe in ourselves more than we would necessarily believe in an M&A transaction.

So this is the slide I was talking to you about in terms of capital allocations. Maybe the first thing that I'll draw your attention to is let's go all the way over to the right and look at the leverage ratio at the end of the year. You can see it's varied between 2.4% and 2.8%, but we've always stayed at that 3x or below level. And then if we go over to the left, what you'll be able to see is we said, okay, this is our adjusted income -- net income for the year, let's go to the bottom, so call it $10 million -- $10 billion, sorry. And then how did we deploy this, right?

So $15 billion, we deployed $7 million in M&A and 8.5% in share repurchase. So just a track record over the last 9 years of how we been able to deploy this capital. I think what should be really exciting to investors in the room is if you look at the amount we've deployed in M&A in 2025, 3.2 billion, obviously, a lot of money. What we're excited in that is we acquired Alpha, and we also made the investment in Avid. We own 1/3 of AvidXchange. And we bought a business in Brazil to continue to grow the Brazil business. So message here is we've been excellent at allocating capital and managing M&A in buybacks.

So lastly, I've got 2 minutes left, so pretty good timing there, I think, is business opportunity we really see our ability to create value for our clients is very high in terms of controlling their payments and controlling our expenses, making their payments. Very large TAM called $150 trillion in TAM. We do have market-leading products, and we specialize in sales, and we have the proprietary networks that I spoke to.

And what does this result in? This results in the medium-term guidance that I shared with you, organic growth of 10%, relatively fixed cost basis. So the ability to scale against that cost basis for 2025, $1.5 billion of free cash flow and strong overall operating metrics.

So hopefully, that was helpful. We're going to have a breakout session following this. We've got about a minute left. If we've got any questions in the room. Otherwise, we'll cover in the breakout session.

All right, guys. Appreciate your time.

Hello, and welcome, everyone joining today's Corpay Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Jim Eglseder, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call to discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2025 results.

With me today are Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO; and Peter Walker, our CFO.

Our earnings release and supplemental materials for the quarter are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Please refer to these materials for an explanation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call along with the reconciliation of those measures to the nearest applicable GAAP measures. Our remarks today will also include forward-looking statements about expected operating and financial results, strategic initiatives, acquisitions and synergies and divestitures, among other matters.

Forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release and on Form 8-K and can also be found in our annual report on Form 10-K. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov.

So now I'll turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?

Okay, Jim, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining today's call. Up front here, I'll plan to cover 3 subjects. First, I'll provide my take on Q4, along with highlights for 2025. Second, I'll share our 2026 guidance. And then lastly, I'll outline our major priorities for 2026.

Okay. Let me begin with our Q4 results. We reported revenue of $1.248 billion, up 21%, and cash EPS of $6.04, up 13%. That would be up 20% at a constant tax rate. The results better than our expectations, mostly driven by cross-border and Alpha overperformance. We did call the macro spot on, so neutral impact versus our guide. In the quarter, overall revenue growth, 11%, that's 3 consecutive quarters. Inside of that, our vehicle segment continued growth at 10% and our Corporate Payments segment grew 16%. So our 2 biggest businesses doing quite well against pretty difficult comps.

Importantly, our trends in the quarter also quite positive. New sales or bookings up 29% versus prior year. So super robust sales. Same store sales inched into the positive territory, up 1% and overall revenue retention stable at 92%. Cash EBITDA in Q4 surpassed $700 million in the quarter. So look, all of this produced a record cash EPS print of over $6 a share. So really a terrific quarter for us.

Let me make the turn to highlights for full year 2025. So first, our financial performance for the year, quite good. Full year revenue of $4.5 billion, that's up 14%. Cash EPS of $21.38, up 12%, or again, up 17% at a constant tax rate. Organic revenue growth for the full year, 10%. So that makes 4 of the last 5 years, 10% organic revenue growth or higher. Full year sales growth also 29%, with improving productivity. So we're continuing to sell a lot.

Additionally, in the year, we made a number of moves to better position the company for the midterm. We acquired Alpha, the second largest acquisition in the company's history, giving us access to an international bank account product as well as the asset management market segment. Mastercard invested $300 million in our cross-border business at a $13 billion valuation, hopefully, to unlock and serve the FI channel. We invested in Avid that deepens our position in the middle market AP automation and payment space. And lastly, we acquired a second vehicle debts company in Brazil that will further help accelerate Brazil's non-toll revenue growth.

So look, financial performance ahead of our initial 2025 guide, along with a further rotation of our portfolio towards Corporate Payments. So I'm quite pleased.

Okay. Let me transition to our 2026 guidance. We are quite excited about it. So we're providing full year 2026 guidance at the midpoint of print revenue, $5.265 billion. That's up over $700 million versus last year or up 16%. And we're providing cash EPS at the midpoint of $26 on the button. That's up 22%. Look, the drivers behind this 2026 guide, a few things. So first, fundamentals, look, the business is working. We had a record Q4 finish and the corresponding exit rate, super good trends, positive sales, healthy client-based same-store sales, stable retention trends, big sales year again in 2025. We get a lot of that benefit as it rolls into 2026, and we are expecting continued 10% organic revenue growth this year.

A second driver are accretive acquisitions. So our Alpha acquisition expected to contribute about $300 million of incremental revenue, and Alpha paired with Avid together should contribute approximately $1 of cash EPS to our 2026 outlook. That's based on kind of our final plans now.

And then third, macro, we are expecting the macro to be our friend, to be helpful here in 2026. Favorable FX rates, particularly so in the first half. Lower SOFR rates and finally, a constant year-over-year tax rate expected. So look, lots of reasons for confidence in our 2026 guide. The guide, just for clarity, does not include the impact of expected divestitures, including the PayByPhone nor the impact of any material capital allocation actions beyond simply de-levering.

Okay. Let me turn to our top 5 priorities for 2026, which really are pretty consistent with last year's priorities. So first up is our portfolio. The goal, again, to further simplify the company, resulting in fewer bigger businesses and accelerate our rotation to Corporate Payments. We've announced one vehicle payment divestiture. We have 2 additional divestitures that we're working, and as always, we're continuing to work the acquisition pipeline for new Corporate Payments acquisition opportunities.

Second priority on U.S.A. sales. We're continuing to work to improve U.S.A. sales, particularly of our Vehicle Payments and Lodging solutions. We've done a few things. We've hired a new CMO who recently started. We've developed some new Corpay Brand creative ads to raise awareness of the company. We're growing our Zoom sales teams here in 2026. Concurrently, we're also really rethinking entirely new ways to sell our U.S. vehicle payment solutions as we deemphasize digital sales.

A third priority in payables, a number of things. One, we're trying to add new enterprise accounts there, particularly after our success with our first elephant last year. We are selling payables now in the U.K. seeing some initial traction. We are doubling down on the sales force in the U.K. And lastly, lots of energy exploring new monetization options with our merchant base or our vendor base. Those things include instant payment options, debit card payments and even e-checks to help accelerate revenue growth in the AP segment.

Our fourth priority is our cross-border. Super focused on our multicurrency account and our international bank account capabilities, particularly given the Alpha deal. We're furthering our stablecoin capabilities and obviously working hard to implement synergies related to the Alpha acquisition. We are progressing the FI channel opportunity with Mastercard. We have logged our first joint sale. So kudos there and building really a pretty meaningful pipeline. So excited about that.

So fifth and last, AI. Yes, we have gotten religion around AI. We're currently in pilot with conversational AI being added to a number of our client UIs. We're using AI agents to reduce live agent expense, particularly in our lodging business. And we're even using AI to speed our merchant matching process against our internal merchant database to help drive new payable sales with prospects.

So look, 5 key priorities here in 2026. Each is well defined, each is being worked, the portfolio, U.S.A. sales, payables expansion, cross-border capabilities and AI implementation. So a busy year for sure.

So look, in conclusion, today, a strong finish record earnings in Q4 on the high side of our guide, again, encouraging organic revenue, new sales, same-store sales and retention trends. Our full year 2025 financial performance, again, finishing ahead of our initial guide. We logged another 10% full year organic revenue growth year. That makes again 4 of the last 5. 2025, again, repositioning, active repositioning year. Further simplification of the company and the addition of more Corporate Payment assets.

In terms of '26, again, outlooking really a super strong 2026. EPS expected to be up over 20%, driven by the favorable fundamentals, the accretive acquisitions and even a favorable macro. And lastly, we have laid out a clear set of priorities to better position the company to continue to compound over the midterm.

So with that, let me turn the call back over to Peter to provide some additional detail on the quarter, the year and our '26 outlook. Peter?

Thanks, Ron, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's start with highlights of the quarter and the year. Q4 revenue was $1.248 billion, overperforming the midpoint of our guidance driven by strong Corporate Payments performance. GAAP revenue grew 21% year-over-year, driven by 11% organic revenue growth. Q4 adjusted EPS of $6.04 per share overperformed the midpoint of our guidance and grew 13% year-over-year due to strong top-line performance and solid expense management.

The headline for the quarter is overperformance, with over 20% top line and low teens bottom-line growth driven by our third consecutive quarter of delivering 11% organic revenue growth. We grew Q4 new sales 29% year-over-year and delivered a 92.3% retention rate, fueling our business for 2026.

Full year revenue was $4.528 billion, delivering organic revenue growth of 10% for the full year and for 4 out of the last 5 years. Full year adjusted EPS was $21.38, growing 12% but growing 17% at a constant tax rate. These strong year-over-year results are further reinforced by the healthy, consistent sequential quarterly growth in revenue, EBITDA and adjusted EPS throughout 2025, which positions us well for 2026. We are exiting 2025 as an even stronger company than we entered the year.

Now turning to our segment performance and the underlying drivers of our organic revenue growth. Corporate Payments delivered 16% organic growth for the quarter despite a 200 basis points drag from float revenue compression due to lower interest rates. This exceeded our expectations by 100 basis points, partially driven by Alpha revenue over performance, setting us up well for 2026. Overall, Corporate Payments performance was driven by growth in spend volumes, which increased 44% on a pro forma basis to over $81 billion in spend.

Cross-border continued to deliver strong sales and revenue performance in Q4. This business is quite resilient with significant demand even in the face of trade-related uncertainty throughout the year. Additionally, the Alpha Group integration efforts are progressing well. The payables business continues to perform with especially strong sales performance in Q4. We are optimistic about the future of the business as we are in the early innings of market penetration and closed our strategic investment in AvidXchange during the fourth quarter. We see tremendous upside over a very long period of time for this business.

Vehicle Payments organic revenue growth was 10% again this quarter. As a reminder, we operate 3 approximately equal sized Vehicle Payments businesses across the globe in the U.S., Europe and Brazil. We saw continued strong results in all 3 geographies, which drove the performance. Improving U.S. Vehicle Payments performance throughout the year is particularly encouraging.

Lodging, representing less than 10% of our total revenue, decreased 7% year-over-year or was roughly flat for the quarter when adjusting for a 600 basis point drag from lower FEMA emergency revenue year-over-year. While clearly not recovering, progress continues, and we are assuming low single-digit growth in our 2026 outlook with headwinds in the first half of the year and returning to positive organic growth in the back half of the year as new sales and implementations come online.

In summary, we delivered 11% organic growth in Q4, at the high end of our target range, driven by continued strong corporate payments organic growth and double-digit vehicle payments organic growth.

Now looking further down the income statement. Operating expenses of $684 million increased 25%, primarily driven by a lower net gain on business dispositions year-over-year, acquisitions, divestitures and related expenses and FX, partially offset by a non-cash impairment charge in Q4 of last year. Excluding these impacts, operating expenses increased 8%, driven by investments in sales and processing expenses related to higher transaction volumes. As we exited the quarter, we're starting to see benefit from expense rationalization initiatives recently executed that will deliver additional savings in 2026. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.1%, and our adjusted effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.8%. The increase in the rate was due to the favorable impact of employee stock options on the tax rate last year.

On to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter in excellent shape with a leverage ratio of 2.8x, spot on our guidance. We repurchased 1.7 million shares in the quarter for $500 million, and a total of 2.6 million shares for the year. This leaves us with approximately $1.5 billion authorized for share repurchases inclusive of the $1 billion of additional authorization approved by the Board at the December meeting. We will continue to pursue M&A opportunities and we'll continue to buy back shares at this valuation while maintaining leverage within our target range.

Now let me share some additional information on our 2026 full year and Q1 outlook. As Ron mentioned, as part of our continued rotation into corporate payments, we signed a definitive agreement to sell PayByPhone, a non-core Vehicle Payments asset. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026. The impact of this sale is not included in our guidance as we are sharing today as our policy is to update guidance for closed deals. PayByPhone is expected to produce 2026 annual revenues of approximately $100 million, and the transaction is not expected to have a material impact to adjusted EPS as we plan to use the proceeds to buy back shares. We'll provide more information when the deal is closed.

Our 2026 revenue guidance is $5.265 billion at the midpoint of our range, growing 16% year-over-year. This assumes 10% organic revenue growth, also at the midpoint of our range. 2026 organic revenue growth is lower than our 2025 exit rate of 11% due to additional float headwinds, more heavily weighted in the first half of 2026 in our Corporate Payments business.

Our 2026 guidance for adjusted EPS is $26 per share at the midpoint, growing 22% year-over-year. Our confidence in our guidance is high given most of the building blocks for this performance are already in place. This includes our strong organic growth exit rate and annualized Q4 trends, our expense rationalization initiatives which are already producing savings and our Q4 share buybacks. The $1 of accretion from the Avid and Alpha deals is achievable given our strong track record of M&A integration. The macro environment provides additional tailwinds, including a flat tax rate year-over-year.

As a reminder, our revenue and adjusted EPS build throughout the year. You can see on Page 19 of the supplement the percentage of full year revenue and adjusted EPS our lowest in Q1 and highest in Q4. This pattern is driven by our clients' highest business volumes occurring in Q2 and Q3, along with acquisition synergy realization increasing through the year, all over a relatively fixed cost basis. The consistent historical pattern gives us confidence in our ability to deliver our 2026 guidance.

Below EBITDA, we're expecting net interest expense to be between $370 million and $400 million, the adjusted tax rate to be between 25% and 27%, and weighted average shares to be flat with the period end shares 4Q '25. Related to capital allocation, our forecast assumes free cash flow is used to pay down debt, which provides some potential upside opportunity should we deploy capital for buybacks or M&A. Our guidance does not include any share buybacks.

From a segment perspective, we expect the following organic revenue growth rates. Corporate Payments, mid-teens, inclusive of the drag on float revenue from lower interest rates. Vehicle Payments, high single digits. Lodging, low single digit.

Our Q1 revenue guidance is $1.21 billion at the midpoint, growing 20% year-over-year. We expect Q1 organic revenue growth of 9% at the midpoint, lower than the full year 10% organic growth guide driven by the float headwind I mentioned earlier. We're expecting adjusted EPS of $5.45 at the midpoint, growing 21% year-over-year. We're planning organic revenue growth to increase in the remaining quarters as we digest the float headwinds.

We provided additional detail regarding our full year and Q1 outlook in our press release and earnings supplement.

Before I turn it over to the operator for Q&A, I'm delighted to share that we've remediated the outstanding material weakness related to user access, and you'll see this formally in our 10-K. I want to thank the team that made this happen.

So operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Andrew Jeffrey with William Blair.

Great to see the business momentum. Ron, I wanted to ask a little bit about the commentary around payables monetization. I know this is an area that, historically, has been a little bit stubborn when it's come to noncheck-based payments. I know you mentioned e-check. But could you maybe dimensionalize that for us? Is it -- is that an initiative that could add to already impressive segment organic revenue growth? Or what's the time line do you think for driving better yield from those initiatives?

Andrew, it's a great question. I think we've been a one-trick pony to the industry in terms of using virtual cards for monetization. And so this set of options now and basically kind of eliminating paper checks is the game. The idea of getting that thing sunset and using e-checks, debit at lower interchange, ACH+, instant payments, the whole plethora of things that we can do. The research suggests that merchants like that choice and some set of merchants will accept these new methods of payment where they won't accept virtual card. And so we're in the middle of it. We're laying that stuff out. We're doing the research. We're testing. And so I would say sometime Q2, Q3, we should see some impact on that. I think it just creates more legs for the business, right, long term.

Yes, I agree. And then just a quick follow-up for Peter, if I may. Could you sort of parse out domestic vehicle payment organic revenue growth versus Brazil? I assume that U.S. and Europe look pretty similar. Just trying to get a sense of what positive same-store sales might mean for that business.

Yes. So U.S. CP business, approximately 5% organic growth for the quarter. And Europe and the rest of the world and Brazil, tracked right on where they were for earlier in the year. So consistent results across all 3 for the 10% overall organic growth rate for Vehicle Payments.

We'll now move on to Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

Nice job. I just wanted to start off with one more of a strategic question and then a sustainability question on the growth rate on vehicles. And then, I'll have a follow-up on the modeling side. But just when I look at the double-digit growth rate, obviously, it's good to see it holding up in these ranges, even against what you're getting into harder comps towards the end of '24. So maybe just touch on sustainability, especially of the U.S. fleet acceleration and what's needed to maybe even push same-store sales meaningfully higher, in your view?

Darrin, it's Ron. It's -- sales is the answer, right? So, just to follow-up on Peter's thing. If you think of the 3 horsemen that create 10% is kind of low single digit, like right on 10%, high double-digit, average those things, you get to 10%. And so the good news, if there is any, is this work we've done on the U.S. piece of vehicle has finally landed, right? We've got stable retention that's now kind of in line with the rest of the businesses. I'm literally looking at a piece of paper, and the same-store sales of the U.S. business, vehicle business went positive, the first time in 6 quarters. I'm looking at a piece of paper now.

Approval rates are up, credit is good. So, literally, the business has gotten to a good kind of reset spot. And now, like I said, the entire assignment of the sales. So, if we could make a lot more sales there, we could inch the aggregated vehicle growth rate up. And if not, we'll stay with kind of low, mid, high for that business. The real question for me is, do we keep allocating -- what level of investment for growth do we keep making in that business vis-a-vis the other ones, is one of the internal questions.

Right. All right. That's good to hear. I guess just one follow-up would be on more of a modeling a couple of questions, which, number one, would be just if you could provide a little more color on the cadence of the accretion contribution given it's a pretty notable -- a fair amount of the beat versus some of the Street numbers was the magnitude of accretion, just so it's ramping through the year. Help us understand that. And then, I know we're getting some questions on interest expense. I think you're assuming a lower interest expense rate dollar amount. Just help us understand that notion, just given you're adding debt at a pretty healthy rate as well.

So Darrin, it's Ron. Let me take the first part, and Peter can take the second. So we're kind of done with the plans. So when we talked, I guess, 90 days ago and we're literally just onboarding Alpha. We finished the work. And so in the opening comments, I gave the dollar -- so between those 2 deals, the Avid investment, the Alpha acquisition, we're pretty comfortable we can get the dollar. And so we're literally already underway on a bunch of the things, certainly on the cost takeout side on some of the revenue synergies that are super easy like that coming across to our contracts and things.

And so the biggest thing that will unlock a bunch in the second half is the IT. We're kind of sunset their kind of their corporate IT system in favor of ours, which opens up all kinds of savings around not only IT but compliance and ops and stuff like that. So I would say this is our third, fourth, fifth rodeo, right, of doing these things. So our confidence in what to do and what number is high.

And then the last point I'll make, because you're good at math is -- it's not one and done. It's one and more. So the way we think about it is whatever EBITDA we're getting in those businesses has to grow over, right, the interest expense to finance those. So as we create the synergies and those businesses grow, they're growing obviously over fixed interest expense. And so in our multiyear plan, that creates even acceleration in EPS as you walk into next year. So the setup for those 2 things is quite good.

So Darrin, picking up on your question on interest expense. So we ended the year at about $7.7 billion in debt. As you know, we produce really high cash flows, so call it, $1.8 billion of cash flows we've produced throughout the year. So that will reduce throughout the year. Also, the forward curve is looking pretty positive for us on SOFR. So you put those 2 together, and that's what's leading to our lower interest expense.

We'll now move on to Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

Peter and Jim, great results. I wanted to ask on Corporate Payments, if that's okay. Just mid-teens growth expected this year. Do you have the backlog to support this growth? Or is there more business to go get? I'm just curious what the visibility looks like there? And could there be some room for upside, and if so, where?

Tien-Tsin, thanks for the data, boy. So I'd say on the '26 number, it's really 2 different things. In the payables, the full payables business, I'd say, we have the sales because the implementation cycle is longer there. And so basically, we have a bunch of deals that we implement that drive that revenue. In the cross-border, it's a much shorter, right sales to implementation cycle. So we have to make sales there. Although if there was one bet to place on our company, I would not bet against the cross-border sales. We had a just rocking finish between our core cross-border business and even the new Alpha business and stuff. And so that thing is firing.

So I would say our confidence in the thing is super high. And again, the reason for the thing not being a bit more robust is just the compression obviously is the float rates, right, particularly as we absorb Alpha, which has a way bigger bank account deposit-based business than we do, it's a bit more acute, right? The compression there, particularly early on. So when we get -- it's transitory obviously. So when we get to the other side of that, I think the outlook will be even better for the business. And if we get the monetization, say, right, that Andrew asked, if we get that cranking, that would be another upside basically to the business.

Got it. No, you sound quite pleased with Alpha. That's great to hear. So mid-teens would be a win for that segment. I did want to ask just on margins, if that's okay, as my follow-up with the expense rationalization. Is there a way to think about that impact to '26 and just some broader comments on incremental margins in '26? Any surprises or puts and takes to consider?

Yes. Maybe I'll start, Tien-Tsin, and let Peter pick up. So we're targeting about $75 million of expense out. We've executed kind of $50 million of it. We're still working on the other $25 million, which we've identified but still working.

If you look at our internal plan, not shockingly, margins climb like crazy sequentially, pretty fixed cost base once we make the sales investment, which we do early and then revenue snowballs, right? So revenue increases, call it, $100 million plus as you get into the second half or quarter. And so that's -- I think it's probably 3 points. If you look at it 300 basis points from Q1 to Q4. The reason that the overall margins for the full year wouldn't look a ton different is really -- it's the acquisition expense, right? We're bringing across in these couple of deals a fair amount of cost at lower margins, basically. And then second, we made the call given the profitability to put more in the sales and marketing and even into our brand. So we're trying to hold the margins pretty constant, improve them sequentially and spend on some things that will help the growth going into the next year.

Our next question comes from Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America.

Nice results here. But Ron, maybe just wanted to ask you about PayByPhone. I think you bought that asset maybe a couple of years ago. Just any lessons from that process from owning that just what worked, what didn't, as you think about go forward.

Yes. That's a good question. So lessons, I'd say maybe 2 lessons on that. One is we had a thesis for buying that, that their 5 million, 6 million, 7 million active users and a lot of them in Europe could be kind of a launching pad for us to put those people into the network and create some incremental business. And basically, we couldn't do very well with that. So, a new idea, and it didn't work as great as it has in Brazil. But the second learning is we're good. Like we take a business, we buy it, we triple the profits, we're selling it for 50% more than we bought it for. And so it's a great reminder that even when the thesis isn't perfect that we can still make a return on the thing. And so we're pleased. I'm also pleased with the people that are running the thing, that built it, that where they'll go, they'll be happy and stuff. So I'm hoping for only good things for the buyer and the management team.

Got it. And I think kudos to you all for trying and pulling the plug when you all realized it wouldn't work. I wanted to maybe switch gears a little bit to just going back to the Corporate Payments business and just some of the questions there. Maybe like I think you kind of answered it a little bit. But just trying to understand, you laid out a lot of priorities in that business, right, whether it's building the U.K. payables, adding enterprise accounts, new monetization options, growing sales in the FI channel multi -- so, just trying to understand the time lines there, like the lift that it will take to implement some of those changes. Like what's going to be a meaningful contributor there in 2026 versus initiatives that are maybe longer term, but just you're laying the building blocks today?

Yes. That is a really good question. I think the main thing we're trying to do with that priority is just make sure people are clear on the opportunities that when you stare at payables, beyond just chopping the wood we have that there's some kind of vectors out from the middle market core there where, hey, we can get more monetization against the spend. We can add enterprise, right to the mix. We can go to geographies that widen the TAM. I'm mostly trying to make sure people are clear that there's way vectors to make the business go.

I'd say on that one is clearly the monetization is the short term, is the 2026 thing because we have the clients, we have the merchants, we have the money moving. And so we're simply trying to give more choice and stuff. So I'd say for sure, in that one. And then the same kind of on, I think, on the cross-border side. I think longer term, because the sales cycle will be like the Mastercard opportunity there or even, frankly, the international bank account opportunity. I think those are longer term, whereas the synergies of combining the Alpha corporate business would be at 2026. So I'd say those are the 2 get the money in 2026 things, monetization and payables and Alpha consolidation and synergies would be the things for this year.

Our next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

Ron, you talked about a couple of more divestitures in the pipeline and obviously, this one that you did today or announced today, could you just give us a sense of what kind of liquidity you're looking at in terms of raising from that? I know you put out that $1.5 billion number last quarter. But if we just think about today's announcement, plus the other 2, does that get you to a higher number or equal number? Just trying to think through the liquidity you could raise and use of proceeds.

Yes. It's a good question, Sanjay. So yes, there's 2 other vehicle businesses that are out in process now, pretty late stage too. If we end up transacting on both of those, it will be over $1 billion. I think I call it $1 billion to $1.3 billion, somewhere in there. And the use of proceeds is to buy CPAY at this price that we're at. So we'll have an answer. My guess is the next probably 30 days of those things.

Got it. And then just maybe if you could elaborate on lodging. I know it remained weak, and you guys are assuming sort of low single digits. But anything specific happening there in terms of turning that ship around and how we should think on a go-forward basis?

Yes. The print is, obviously, Sanjay, not too good. I feel a little bit similar for the U.S. vehicle business. I think I characterize those two businesses as problem children not behaving well a couple of years ago with lots of things wrong. I feel kind of the same that both businesses, particularly Lodging, have stabilized. We fixed the IT, we fixed the product thing, we fixed the customers that kind of scooted away, the volume that scooted away. And so if you look at like the same store, as I quoted, that's actually positive now in U.S. vehicle and I think mostly flat in Lodging.

And so the good news is the management teams have made progress doing things that have stabilized the revenue. I'm still super disappointed in the new sales. And so that's the ticket. Really, the ticket for both of them is can they produce new sales now that the losses have stabilized and they're both super great margin businesses. They're both above the line average, I don't have it in front of me, but they're in the 60s in terms of EBITDA margin. So they're super great cash generators. The question is just can we productively make sales there vis-a-vis the other options we have for investing sales in the company. And so we're giving it a run here in 2026. And if we see sales improvement and accelerate throughout the year, we'll be happy. And if we don't, we'll be probably thinking about doing something else.

We'll go next to Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank.

I want to follow up on some of the cross-border priorities that you were talking about in the prepared remarks, Ron. So you mentioned outperformance at Alpha a few times, and you obviously bumped up the Alpha plus Avid accretion to $1.00 Just maybe hoping for a little more color on what's going better than expected at Alpha? What on the revenue synergy are you realizing? Is it better organic growth? Anything beyond that? And then you also called out the first joint sale with Mastercard. I fully get from your earlier answer, that's kind of a longer-term opportunity. But we'd just love to hear more about that first win. So any specific details or learning from that partnership as you look to go out and win more sales in the pipeline that you have?

Yes, Nate, 2 good questions there. I think the overperformance in Alpha is the integration, the people thing has gone better than I thought. So when you meet a new groups like that and bring the organizations together, sometimes there's a pause, people aren't firing and stuff. And I just feel like our management team and their team did a great job, great kumbaya or whatever, where their guys just came roaring out of the blocks, pitching, hey, we're a bigger, meaner company. We have better credit. Obviously, we have better products. We have better payment products versus just risk management products. And so to me, what was so great is the people, particularly the salespeople, have embraced some of the stuff that we bring to them and just went running out and got a bunch of business closed. So that thing not only performed better in the finish, I've looked at January, and those businesses are ahead again this month.

So I think it's cultural. It's something, but just everybody's at it. People aren't moping around and stuff, they're excited to be part of the gang with us and stuff. So this is way before the other synergies of contract advantages, rate advantages, cost, IT, we got all the stuff in front of us. Bank account license, we got 9 other things that are going to create money. But to me, that's like super important.

On the Mastercard thing, I got to say like it is way exceeded mine, I don't know if it has the Mastercard folks expectations, but we now have a second sale. I think I said in one of the scripts already, we've actually closed out 2 deals. But more importantly, it's a crazy pipeline particularly in Europe, where Mastercard has done their part of getting the dedicated people to call on accounts that they know and love and our guys go in and know a lot. And literally, I don't know if it's 50 to 70 in-process opportunities. And so that thing which tends to have a very long sales cycle has stood up quite well.

And I think back to the thesis question that was before is I think the thesis is proving out the good relationships and credibility that Mastercard has, coupled with our products and expertise is a good combo.

So it will take time to build, but it is a way help to make that segment meaningful, right, for cross-border. I mean I don't know if everyone is getting it, but that business was mostly a one-trick pony. We went out to midsized businesses around the world and sold services. And now we're talking about basically getting banks, getting FIs around the world to use our services and becoming an international bank account deposit company as well. So the extension of those 2 additional kind of product and market segments is way significant. I don't know if people are picking it up, but it completely changes, I think, the long-term prospects of that business.

So we spent lots of time in this company doing an iceberg-type work kind of getting ready, getting things positioned. I think people discount it because everyone just wants to know what the numbers are, but I'm telling you that is going to make a big difference for durability.

Super exciting stuff. I guess for the follow-up, also on the cross-border business. We get some questions from time to time on a potential Supreme Court ruling on IEEPA and maybe some impact that could have to CPAY in the event that tariffs are rolled back. So I'm not asking you to speculate on any potential outcome. But I guess in the event that there is some level of rollback of tariffs. Any idea on how that could play out across either your Corporate Payments business or maybe the Vehicle Payments business as well. Is there still any pent-up demand you think might be released? Could this alleviate some of the pressure on the shipping and freight industry in the U.S. or any other factors to keep in mind there?

Yes, that's a super good follow-up. I would say, tariff certainty is our friend, like whatever it is, just be what it is. So it had a super jolt during Trump's liberation thing. I think our numbers in April were crazy as people try to anticipate things and then kind of our U.S., our North America business did really bad. The rest of the year because of the uncertainty and the other geographies picked it up. So anything that would either roll back limit or even just fix tariffs would be a plus to the cross-border business. Remember, like half the dollars that they were service-based, not goods-based and then again, we have -- we do risk management contracts and stuff. So the exposure isn't across that entire business and really most of the exposure is in North America, which is probably 1/3 of the business. So it's not like a massive amount, but it still would be, to your point, a plus for us if that thing got clarified.

We'll go next to Ramsey El-Assal with Cantor Fitzgerald.

I wanted to ask about the strong sales growth, which is obviously super impressive. Can you give us your thoughts on whether the conversion of that sales to revenue, the timing of that conversion of bookings to revenue has changed as your business has changed? In other words, as now you have more Corporate Payments, are you seeing a situation where you convert that revenue faster -- or cover those bookings rather faster or slower to revenue? Or is it sort of the same as it was when you were primarily a fleet card business years and years ago.

Well, Ramsey, welcome to your new spot. I want to say congrats to you on that and appreciate you continuing to keep an eye on us. So it's a really good question. So at the high level, the answer is -- it varies by business. As I mentioned, I think Tien-Tsin asked, our payables business has a slower contract signings or bookings to implementation of ramping. And I mentioned the cross-border business is much faster. So as you run through the businesses we have, that vary. Some are superfast, like in the fleet card business, it's almost instamatic. We don't even book until we start. We actually call it a go live. But the total is for the company is about 1/3 in year.

So for example, let me make up a number, let's say we recorded $300 million in bookings in calendar year 2025, we would print about $100 million of print revenue inside of the 2025 goal post. And then we would ramp some amount of that $200 million that we didn't capture into the forward year. So the way we think about like building our revenue plans is we already have in that example, $200 million coming our way here in 2026 that we didn't have, right, we hit our revenue numbers last year, and we'll grab 1/3 of what our bookings plan is here in 2026. So that's kind of the model, kind of 1/3 in the current year and then the 2/3 ramp depending on what the attrition is. So we've relative statistics at all this. So it's really easy for us to model it.

Got it. That's super helpful. And one follow-up for me. Stablecoin is a big thematic topic. Can you just give us an update on what you're seeing in the marketplace in terms of demand, if any? And also just give us a quick overview of the capabilities that you guys are building out to accommodate stablecoins?

Yes. That's super. I'm laughing a bit, Ramsey, because this morning when I get up knowing we had this earnings call tonight, I went out to 3 of our guys. I went to the guy that has thousands and thousands of U.S. merchants that we pay, our cross-border head, that obviously moves tons of money to beneficiaries around the world and our Alpha guy who does the bank accounts, the 7,000 bank accounts that hold deposits. And I asked all 3 of them, hey, talk to me about the demand, how many of the merchants or the deposit holders or beneficiaries are asking for a companion stablecoin wallet so that they can receive funds in stablecoins. And the basic answer was crickets. There's been really no -- basically kind of no noise kind of no demand.

Despite that, we are -- I think we said before, doing 3 things anyway. One is we're trying to serve crypto clients that actually have crypto, have Bitcoin, have stablecoins as clients. So we're doing that. We have 4 or 5 signed up. Two is we are working on the rails and piloting that like in our own treasury, for example, to make sure we can actually move funds via blockchain. And then third, which is my favorite is despite the demand comment, we are building stablecoin digital wallet so that anyone that has a bank account, if you will, they'll have a companion stablecoin account.

So if someone wants to send their money outside of the banking hours, it could be captured and then we could toggle it into the fiat account that we have for them. So we are pushing ahead to have that and just see if there's more uptake on this. But it's -- what's the line, it's all quiet on the Western front as of now.

Our next question comes from Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer.

Could you talk about just some of the drivers that will get Lodging back up to low single-digit growth this year? And separately, could you talk about your outlook for EBITDA margin this year and any puts and takes we should be aware of?

Peter, do you want to take this?

Yes, Rayna, it's Peter. So on the Lodging side, the thought process is full year, we're expecting, call it, low single digits there, but it's really a tale of 2 stories. So the first half of the year will continue to be negative organic growth with the pickup in the back half of the year. And so I think the good news to share there is we have quite a bit of luck on the sales side and certainly those implementations are coming online in the back half of the year. So that kind of what gets you to the full year outlook on Lodging.

Then if we look at EBITDA margins, they are increasing substantially quarter-over-quarter across 2026. Even margins will be slightly down year-over-year, mostly driven by the acquisitions. But as we start to implement -- as the business volume grows and we implement the synergies, that's where you see the margins start to expand quarter-on-quarter.

Our next question comes from Trevor Williams with Jefferies.

Peter, I want to go back to the organic guide. So the 9% growth in Q1 relative to the 11% in Q4 and the 10% you're assuming for the full year. It sounds like that's mostly just due to a bigger float headwind for Corporate Payments in the first half and then the Lodging improvement that you just walked through, but any other puts and takes, cadence wise for us to be mindful of? And then specific to the first quarter, just what you're baking in for Corporate Payments growth both with and without float would be helpful.

Yes. So Trevor, I do think you have it right. When we look at Q1 '26, it is the float headwinds, mostly really as we pick up the Alpha business, right, you see a pretty sharp drop in the rate for the pound and the rate for the euro. So that's a big driver there. Whereas the drop in SOFR is more kind of even throughout the year. And then you're exactly right on lodging being a drag on organic growth for Q1 at the 9%, but then we see ourselves returning to 10% for Q2 and the rest of the year. In terms of the guidance for Corporate Payments, I'd say the guidance for the quarter is similar to what I shared for the year. We expect it to be mid-teens with float drag against that.

Trevor, it's Ron. Just to add to what Peter said. So when we look out at the curves and our weighted average of what we earn, the Q1 versus Q1 last year is just the compression is just way more acute in this quarter we're sitting in. It's about 70 or 75 basis points. When we run it out to the end of the year, that thing shrinks to like 25 to 30 basis points. And so that's enough given we have Alpha in the mix now for us to run the quarter at 9% instead of 10%. The other one, just by the way, which is the tad is really gift. We have -- that thing has been running super hot with this secure packaging thing, I don't have it in front of me, but mid- to high teens for the last 3 or 4 quarters, that's come back to earth positive, but back to earth here in Q1. So those 2 things together is what have us running the quarter at 9%.

Okay. That's helpful. And good color on gift. And then just as a follow-up on Brazil with how much you guys are outpacing the underlying TAC growth that's all coming from the contribution from extended network. Ron, how do you think about the sustainability of that and if you're able to keep that, if we think like high teens to 20% growth in Brazil, if you can keep that without layering in more acquisitions like Gringo, Zapay. I know there was the other vehicle debt company that you bought last year. Just how to think about the durability of that growth?

Great question. Yes, we're planning, Trevor, another crazy high teens, as you know, half of it you get because it had a crazy good year last year. So that just rolls in. But look, the story of Brazil is the free banks didn't beat us. We said we were going to create a bunch of non-fuel revenue. We've got millions and millions of customers and businesses as well. And so we're like, okay, if we give them some of these other vehicle things, will they come? And I want to be super clear. Yes. they will. They buy fuel. They buy parking. They buy insurance. They buy vehicle debts. They're now going crazy with 10% of our new sales. We're selling the Sem Parar credit card. The Sem Parar credit card now for 10% of our new sales. And so to say it's working, I think, is an understatement.

And the second thing I'd say is I think it's helping sell the core toll product because it's so differentiated now from a guy, a bank who's buying some crappy toll thing, wholesale one product and offering it. So not only is it creating incremental revenue with profit leverage because it's added on, I think it's allowing us to keep selling mid- to high single-digit TAC growth as well. So it is good. And I do feel like the banks there are getting weary from some market feedback. So that could be the next domino to fall there as people think they could beat us by being free and they haven't. And so that will be the next thing I keep an eye on.

Our next question comes from Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley.

I'll just ask one for the sake of time. Commentary on the stablecoin demand was helpful, but I'd be curious just to get your high-level perspective on really the mechanism by which we'll actually start to see some medium-term compression of stablecoin off-ramp costs in the future if those costs themselves are effectively just dictated by liquidity in those corridors? And if the answer is we're not likely to see that cost compression, like how should we be thinking about the incremental tailwind for if you do actually start to see that demand from your customers show up?

Yes. Michael, it's Ron. I mean I'd start with, I guess your guess is as good as ours because we see nothing, right, at this point. And I think we reiterated that the rails are an insignificant piece of the cost structure and of the value chain. And so look, who knows, I mean people can price things crazy, right, for whatever reason they have. But like we don't see it, to your point, we see nothing. And we don't think it's likely, if we're getting 50 or 60 basis points on a trade and sometimes 200, depending on the customer in the quarter.

It's mostly because of the liquidity and the compliance and everything else. And so -- we're saying to them, we're watching it carefully and stuff, but we do not see that as a high risk. And then as I said, whether there is demand or not, we're going to be there with the stablecoin offerings. And so if our clients want it, we're going to make it available. But to remind you a little bit of EV, this whole thing, there's more being written and said about this than actually being used today is my takeaway.

We'll go next to Dave Koning with Baird.

Just one question. Minority interest, that line has become a lot more important now with Avid and a little bit of the Mastercard impact. It looks like on an adjusted basis, it was like $27 million in the quarter when you do the add back that was in your line. Is that -- I guess, why was that so high? It seems very high. And is that the right number on a quarterly basis going forward? Or what should we think about that line?

So Dave, let's take that question with you off-line in a modeling conversation just so we can go through it in more detail.

And our last question comes from Madison Suhr with Raymond James.

I'll just ask one as well here. Just circling back to the Mastercard partnership, early indications sound pretty positive there. So is the 200 to 300 basis point tailwind to cross-border still kind of the right way to think about the contribution from that partnership? Or do you think there could be potential upside given some of the early indications?

Yes, that's another good question. I'd say it's a timing call, right, because the sales cycle on FIs is longer than it is for corporates. But to your point, given the size of the pipeline and the fact that some of the things are actually converting, it's a whopper segment. I do want to remind you and others that virtually all of the cross-border business that we don't have, they have. So like all of it, right, is there. And so to the extent that we're successful getting this thing going and happening with Mastercard, all I can say is like it is just so crazy large, the flows that these banks have today that if we get in with a number of them, over some cycle, it could be a big, big contribution just because they have all the business today, right? The independents like us have such a fraction of the book today. So it's super exciting. Again, to me, it's just a question of what the time frame is.

At this time, there are no further questions in queue. I will now turn the meeting back to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Great. Thanks, everybody, for your interest, if you need anything else, you know where to find me. Have a good evening.

Thank you. This brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning. My name is John Davis. I lead the fintech equity research effort here at Ray J. We're excited to have CPay CFO, Peter Walker, with us this morning. We're just going to do a fireside chat. We'll leave some time for questions at the end. But first off, Peter, thanks for joining us.

Yes. Great to be here on a cold morning in New York City.

Yes. It is quite cold.

Maybe we'll just start quarter-to-date macro trends. Anything you've seen or observed post the call a month ago or so, I would love to get just any update quarter-to-date.

Yes, sure. So quarter-to-date is tracking exactly where we expect to be from the guidance we set early November. We are going to focus on '26 right now. And as it stands, '26 from a macro perspective is setting up pretty favorable. So obviously, expectations of interest rates coming down here in the U.S. and FX is favorable as we speak. So that's some good tailwinds going into '26.

Okay. And I wanted to dive in a little bit in vehicle payments and specifically North America fleet. Obviously, that's been challenged. The macro backdrop there has been bouncing along the bottom for a while now. You saw some nice acceleration in the third quarter to mid-single digits. I think you expect that to continue in the fourth quarter. Maybe touch on what drove that acceleration? And then any other macro comments on North America fleet specifically?

Yes, happy to. I mean one thing I always like to do is give some context because I think for a lot of people who followed the company for a long time, they're really tied into North America fleet. And while it's an important business for us, just the context of -- it's about a $700 million business and a $4.5 billion company, right? So while important, it's not the driver. I just see us often get compared to WEX and others and write-ups and it's just a portion of our business. That being said, we've really been focused on the turnaround in that business. And so we were pleased to see that mid-single-digit organic growth in Q3 as we expected is what we printed. We expect that to continue in Q4, and that's our expectation for 2026. So pleased with where that business turnaround has resulted.

Okay. And maybe shifting to Corporate Payments, which obviously has been a big focus, mid- to high teen grower, fantastic 2025. Maybe we'll start a little bit on the fourth quarter. I think you have a much tougher comp. You talked about incremental float headwind. Maybe talk a little bit about what the expectations for the fourth quarter, how you get to that kind of mid-teen plus growth rate despite a 900 basis point tougher comp because that's the #1 question I get from investors right now is fourth quarter everything seems fine. The corporate payments, the math and the spreadsheet looks tough, but Ron was very emphatic on the call that you felt really strongly about that. So maybe just talk a little bit about the tailwinds and what's driving that growth? .

Yes. I mean our cross-border business continues to perform really well. As you guys have seen in the past, typically delivering high teens growth, sometimes north of 20% growth. So cross-border business expected to perform well in Q4. The corporate payables business can deliver call it, mid-teens to high teens, also delivering strong in Q4. So when you put that together, the number -- and we're bringing Alpha on board. So we've got 2 months of Alpha in there. So what we shared is we expect 15% organic growth in Q4, and that includes a headwind of 300 basis points from float. So again, our expectation is that we were going to deliver a pretty strong Q4. I think there were some out there from investors because of the comp issues that you spoke about. Obviously, we've got more insight into it just because we're in the business.

Okay. And maybe let's take a second and zoom out on the corporate payments business given it's been such a focus from an M&A perspective, lots of moving pieces. You've got Avid,you've got Alpha. Just remind us what's cross-border, what's the payables business, the growth rates? And what does that look like as we sit here approaching 2026. I think corporate payments means a lot to a lot of different people. We have competitors that have very different corporate payments businesses. And so just would love to maybe zoom out for a second and just kind of talk about the pieces and maybe remind the audience how large that business is as a total of all of CPay?

Yes, yes, happy to. So as we talked about next year, we expect the business to be over $2 billion. Next year, we are going to reconfigure our reporting within corporate payments so that it's easier for investors and everybody to understand. Based on the disclosure that we have today, I think you should think about the cross-border business, really 3 primary products in cross-border. One is the multicurrency bank accounts that we have, the other is payment processes on an FX basis. And then the last is risk management contracts related to those FX or international payment. So that is the cross-border business.

So it's really helping clients with their payments cross-border. And then when we move into the corporate payables business, I think of it really 2 major pieces. One is our full AP business, which is think of it as AP outsourcing. And then the other business is our spend management business, which is virtual card business. and multi card business. So that's the way you should think about it today and as we've talked about, kind of business growing in the mid-teens.

So as we break down that mid-teens growth. If I recall last time, I think Ron talked about it, you're talking high teens to low 20s in the cross-border business. And then the payables business grows a little bit slower, you have the full AP growing faster than the indirect channel, which is, I think, now the de minimis. But is that the right way to think about just the relative growth rates of how we get to that mid- to high teen consolidated corporate payments growth, corporate -- the FX cross-border business and then the payables, any color there? .

That's right. And then maybe we jump next to the acquisitions or investments that you were talking about, right? So we purchased Alpha this year, which is a cross-border business based out of the U.K.. Similar cross-border business in terms of assisting clients with FX payments. But what Alpha has, it is much a larger business than ours and unique to ours is they have a private capital markets business, where they are providing global bank accounts to private capital market clients and they've got of $3 billion of funds, of cash funds related to those private market accounts. So we think that this is a really great growth opportunity for us.

We know we have the ability now with Alpha to open up global bank account in literally days. So it's a huge competitive advantage of we call it, regional and local players. And so that's a big reason that we bought Alpha. And then our multicurrency account, we'll look to manage those 2 things together, but the MCA account was really focused more on corporates. So that deal closed pretty excited about that deal and the growth rate on that business.

Then if we move to Avid, Avid , think of Avid as a full AP, very similar to our U.S. payables business. slightly bigger than our U.S. payables business. We actually did not buy the whole company. Instead, we partnered with TPG and we took 1/3 investment. We didn't buy it right away because we really need to improve the top line growth and the bottom line performance of the business before we'd be comfortable owning the asset.

Okay. And speaking of deals closing, Mastercard partnership closed yesterday. So it's $300 million or a 3% stake. But maybe talk a little bit about why that partnership is important. You've called out, I think, 200 to 300 basis point tailwind to the cross-border business in 2026. So maybe talk a little bit about that deal and what gives you confidence in that incremental growth tailwind next year. .

Yes. So when we look at the cross-border business kind of pre-Mastercard pre-Alpha, we were primarily into the corporate segment. So very interested in expanding that. Today, we're now in 4 segments. So we're in corporates. We're in financial institutions with the Mastercard partnership. We're in private capital markets with Alpha. And with our latest stablecoin announcement, we're in the digital market as well. So now we've got 4 customers to sell to within cross-border. And there's just a huge TAM here, right? So it's great that we're in those segments.

Excited to share with you this morning, Mastercard, we actually signed our first client with Mastercard under the partnership yesterday. So you guys are the first to hear it today. So Eastern European bank that we signed up. So obviously, we've been working with Mastercard to fill the pipeline and pleased to see first client coming on board. Obviously, I hope to share more of that with you over the next year. We did share, call it, 1 to 3 basis point uplift in cross-border, potentially in '26 from the partnership, and we'll get a little bit more insight to that when we share our guidance for next year.

Okay. Great. And then maybe last corporate payments topic. Everyone's favorite stablecoins. You guys recently announced a partnership with Circle. I think a lot of people really are struggling to kind of understand both the opportunity and the risk from stablecoin. So would just love to get your perspective on the cross-border business and how you guys think about Circle partnership and the broader stablecoin opportunity? .

Yes, absolutely. So in our last earnings call, if you go back to that earnings deck, there's actually a page on stablecoins. And what we laid out is what is our strategy in more context that people could follow us. So what I'd say is, we think we're uniquely positioned to take advantage of this new rail that's being introduced, right? We've got significant payment flows when you look at our AP business that we have today. We've got a large global bank account set of clients that we can leverage. And we're also the provider of choice to many of their crypto providers where they're looking for off-boarding from stablecoin into USD with their clients when they need conversion.

So what we shared is that we're pursuing 3 opportunities related to stable coin. So the first one is serving these large crypto clients and helping them with the conversion when they take the stablecoin into USD. The second one is in our domestic and cross-border business with our merchants. We're going to open up stablecoin wallets. We think the use case here is the 24/7 settlement, right? So if I'm a large merchant in the United States, I'm limited of when I can get paid by banking hours as we all know, what stablecoin would introduce us to 24/7 settlement. So we're going to add stable going wallet accounts to those merchants. We're going to start off with a pilot obviously, and see how much interest we get there, but we think that's kind of where the puck is going.

And then lastly, in our global bank account business, we're also going to add stablecoin wallets. What we think the use case is here, and obviously, we're going to test it. We're pretty excited about it. In the private capital market space, the biggest event that they have with us with the global bank account is when they actually purchased the asset, right? So think of a private equity firm purchasing an asset in Germany and needing to open up a bank accountant to do that. The kind of nail-biting part of the process for them with that is dealing with all the funds settlement when they're purchasing the asset and the limited banking hours. So we think this might have a real upside with those PCM clients where they can settle with stablecoin outside of banking hours and get the deal done. So I'd say we're pretty excited about what stablecoin could potentially do. Adoption right now is not high for us. That being said, we want to be there and be prepared, should adoption start to increase.

Okay. No, that's great. And then I did want to spend just 30 seconds on the lodging business. I think that's something that used to be a really nice grower, has been more challenged recently. I think Ron on the last call mentioned that if it wasn't going to turn around, he'd be opening to potentially selling that business. But maybe just talk a little bit about what the challenges have been and what you guys need to do to get that back on the right growth trajectory. .

Yes. Yes, great question. I mean, as you know, I've been in my role about 5 months. So I'm stepping into lodging, performing the way it is performing today. And as you'd expect as CFO, my first thing was like, "Oh, hey, pull me the performance for lodging for the last 5 or 6 years. And we take a look like, why are we in this business, right? And I think it's important to note just a couple of years ago, this was a high double-digit growing business. So this has been a really strong performer for us. There were a couple of missteps in terms of the business. We feel like we've gotten through, let's say, those major items and what we're really focused on now is sales. We need to produce more sales in the business. And so we're investing in that.

So that is our current focus, and we are optimistic that if we focus on the sales effort that we can return lodging back to the level of growth that we've seen in the past, at least double digit. Lodging is about a $500 million business for us. So put it in perspective, a $4.5 billion organization. I want to be careful when I say about selling the lodging business because my first investor event, somebody asked me this question and then the next day, one of the trade magazines picked up. Oh, Corpay is selling the lodging business. Peter said it at an IR conference. It's absolutely not what I said.

So I just want to be clear that we are committed to the business right now. We're investing in the business for growth. Should that not realize over a certain time period, of course, we're going to step back and say, "Hey, how do we think about this from a capital allocation perspective?"

Okay. And then just maybe rounding up from the segment perspective. Gifts had a nice year. You had a tailwind from a lot of retailers having to reprint or reissue cards. And maybe just talk about that in the context of the gift business broadly and kind of how we should think about that growth on a more normalized basis? .

Yes. Great question. So there's a relatively new leader in the gift business, been there for a couple of years. I think he's done some really nice things. That business actually performed pretty well in '24, performed well in '25. And as we're setting up '26, expected to perform well. What the kind of key strategic thing that he did in that business is he focused more on how could he help the retailer generate sales using the gift programs. There are several initiatives and products that he now sells.

One of those is working with a digital wallet, where if you have, say, a gift card at Dick's and you've registered in your digital wallet, we'll pop you a popular reminder, hey, you got $50 to go spend at Dick's on a Saturday, right? So we're bringing customers into store with these products and really kind of changing what the business is. So what I would say is, it feels like a nice turnaround, feel sustainable. What's always a struggle with this business is, on an annual basis, good performer. Quarter-to-quarter, it's volatile because we're all dependent on kind of when ships happen and when orders happen. So I don't know that we'll ever be able to get out of that piece of the business, but I would say the business is much more attractive than it was several years ago.

Okay. No, that's great. Maybe we'll turn to the preliminary '26 outlook that you guys laid out on the third quarter call, calling for roughly 10% top line growth. I think that's very encouraging given some of the trends like in lodging that continue to be a drag on the business. But maybe if we just zoom out, how should we think about the different pieces of that 10% growth? Anything to call out, whether by segment or otherwise that we should make sure and keep in mind as we think about that 10% for the full year?

Yes. So I think the way that I always think about it is over 80% of the business is in corporate payments and vehicle payments with obviously, corporate payments being a larger percentage. And as we look at those 2 businesses specifically, right, our view in corporate payments will continue to deliver high to mid-teens growth. In vehicle payments we'll deliver, call it, double-digit growth. So that's how I would think about the major drivers by segment.

Okay. And then I think you guys stop short of kind of a lot of EPS commentary. I think last year, Ron gave kind of an EPS run rate. You guys stayed away from that. But the one thing you did give was the $0.75 contribution from Alpha and Avid. But as we think about EPS, is there anything we need to keep in mind, whether obviously, lower rates are going to help on the interest income -- or sorry, the interest expense, but then you do have a float headwind in the corporate payments business. But just anything else we should keep in mind when we're thinking about earnings for 2026? .

No. I mean we were very thoughtful in terms of we didn't want to get out over our skis with EPS. Obviously, FX can giveth and FX can taketh away. And that kind of hit us last year. So we wanted to be thoughtful about giving the sell-side enough that you guys could put together their models where I look at kind of where we sit today, right, consensus is about $5.2 billion for next year, give or take, probably in the ballpark. And then when I look at adjusted EPS, it's like $24.90, right? So maybe a hair above where we want to be, but I think we're in the ballpark with both of those.

Okay. No, that's great. And then...

Subject to change. That's doing all of our full planning. So that is not a guide that is just an indication of where you guys are seeing today and where we are.

Okay. And maybe just turning to the balance sheet. You guys have been obviously pretty active with Mastercard and Avid and Alpha. Up 2.8x or so end of the year. How do you guys think about buybacks versus incremental M&A? Do you need time to digest the recent acquisitions? And then Ron also talked about a couple of deals or divestitures that could be out there, it could be as much as $1.5 billion. So just how should we think about capital allocation as we go into 2026? .

Yes. Yes. Great question. So post our Q3 earnings call, obviously had a bunch of meetings with investors. And something I wanted to make sure I was aligned with them is, hey, if we go to 3x at the end of the year because I'm going to lean in hard to buybacks because the stock is just incredibly undervalued right now, are you aligned with that? And I got almost high-fives from investors in terms of, hey, are you going to make investment in the company you know that you have full confidence in or are you going to use that money for M&A? So I would say the buybacks are very attractive in the current moment because we're so undervalued.

That being said, we're never going to lock ourselves out of M&A because we're -- as you guys -- you know in this market, there's always kind of interesting things coming to market. But I would say you should probably expect a heavier foot on buybacks in the back half of the year and going into next year, but we'll give a little bit more detail on '26 on the call.

Perfect. We've got just a couple of minutes here left. Any questions in the audience? All right. Well, as we wrap up Peter here, what is the one message you want investors to walk away from this presentation with?

Yes. So I'd say it's hard to give one...

Or a couple. That's fine.

But I think at the top, I would say, we're ending the year with a stronger business than we went into year. So the acquisition of Alpha setting ourselves up for over 40% of our revenue from corporate payments is really exciting. The Alpha business itself is giving us access to new products that we can take across the world. The Avid investment that we made also sets us up for potentially a much bigger corporate payables business in the U.S., so really excited about that.

And then the other thing that I would say is we just believe the stock is extremely undervalued. So it's a great time, I think, for investors to get into a high-performing company. If you look at our organic growth rate, we've delivered -- if we include this year. If we count that in the number, right, we will deliver greater than 10% organic growth for 4 out of 5 of the last 5 years. So I think that's a pretty healthy track record.

All right. We're going to leave it there. Thanks, Peter.

Thanks.

All right. Let's get started. We're super excited to have Jim Eglseder, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at Corpay with us here today. Welcome.

Thank you.

And good to have you. I guess to kick things off, can you maybe share a little bit about what's on top of the mind of the management team at Corpay for 2026?

Yes. Obviously, we're deep in the budgeting process right now. I kind of refer to it as the annual budget beat down season at the company. We're operators and just the organic growth of the company, setting a plan and setting the underpinnings of that to deliver the 9% to 11% organic growth that Ron outlined on the call last month.

That's what we're trying to achieve today. Obviously, the growth rates of the businesses can be a little bit different. Vehicle payments is roughly half the company, grows at double digits.

If you get core payments to grow in that mid- to high teens and get you in that target as it is. So that's where Ron and Peter in the businesses are today, crafting a plan that achieves that. So that's what we're focused on today.

All right. That's awesome. And I guess maybe looking more to the near term, looking at the fourth quarter, as of the last earnings call, trends were generally pretty consistent across the business segments with improvements.

And also, you provided a pretty encouraging preliminary 2026 guidance...

Not guidance.

On the back of favorable market setup. And then October trends you mentioned seem to be also supportive of the outlook.

Maybe can you just -- it's been a couple of weeks. So maybe can you provide an update on what you're seeing across the business now that we're kind of looking -- heading towards the end of the quarter?

Yes, there's no meaningful change sitting here on December 2 today. We don't have November in yet, but we haven't seen anything that would cause us to feel any different about our ability to deliver the outlook that we gave in 2024.

I think the feedback I've gotten across most of the companies that have been on the conference circuit, we've been out there as well as everything seems to be okay. In spite of the relative consternation, our customer underlying trends are good, aligned with what we had expected.

And the reason Ron brought up the October numbers as well, you got 1/3 of the quarter in already and everything is coming in as we would have expected to. So yes, no real change.

All right. Awesome. It's great to hear. And maybe just moving to the segments and I guess, corporate payments, the most important one to start with. So a lot of exciting developments in the segment across the board. It probably would be great to hit on a couple of key topics. First, on the underlying drivers of the strong mid-teens organic revenue growth in the segment year-to-date and line of sight to mid-teens organic growth to 2026.

Maybe can you just talk about some of the underlying drivers?

I think if you step back a little bit, a lot of it is driven by the model. Right? The revenue retention of the company is at 92%. Corporate payments, both domestically and internationally runs between 95% and 99%, generally speaking. So when you have that little attrition, it's "relatively" easier to create a mid- to high teens organic growth rate, but it's a customer acquisition game today.

Chris. I think folks, while we continue to impress upon our investors and prospective investors that we compete 90%, 99% with banks. Banks have all the share today. They have 90%, 95% plus of all domestic payment flows. They have 90%, 95% plus of all international payment flows today.

We have, call it, between 10,000 and 20,000 clients in each of the corporate payments businesses out of 200 to -- I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of prospective middle market clients that exist around the world.

So we don't have any share. So our entire objective is, go out, get the payment files domestically and internationally and just sign up more customers. Right? So if you retain, call it, between 95% and 99% of your revenue every year, you got a pretty good starting up place for next year. And as long as you invest appropriately in enough sales and marketing to drive that incremental growth to both offset the leakage and hit the growth rate that you want.

That's what the model is designed to do. And it is fairly formulaic. You know what your average salesperson produces by time and territory. You know what you want your growth rate to be. It's almost you sticking into a spreadsheet and outcome, it spits out, go hire x number of salespeople, invest x number of dollars in additional sales and marketing.

I think the other thing that we continue to get questions on, hey, you name competitor, X, Y and Z. Everybody is talking about going after the B2B opportunity. It's easy to say, it's hard to do, and everybody has a different definition of middle market companies.

Our definition of the middle market company, which is where we focus is think companies with revenues of $300 million to $500 million up to $1 billion in revenue. So call it middle market to larger middle market. Some of the peers that we get asked about are super small business or even lower middle market, right? But we're all just competing against banks and trying to chip share away from banks.

And our view over the longer term is that payments, both domestically and internationally, it's just the next thing that banks will have used to own a decade or 2 down the road, just like the networks, just like the acquirers.

I mean we work with a bank, we're at a bank conference, but it's just not what the banks are focused on today.

All right. That's very helpful color. And I think you often cite the market penetration by different segments. Can you maybe just recap for us the enterprise versus mid-market versus I guess, maybe even lower tier, what's the kind of penetration rate do you see it?

Yes. Usually, that's more of a vehicle payments question as opposed to a corporate payments question, right? If you look at the total vehicle payments category, it's about 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 today. It's 1/3 U.S., it's 1/3 Europe and 1/3 Brazil. Most of the payment statistics that we think about and talk about are kind of U.S.-centric.

And it's really pretty different by size of fleet. The largest fleets in the country, the big contract carriers that you see, the trucks on the road all the time, the delivery companies, they all have a fuel card program, a fuel card provider, and it's either us or our primary competitor, WEX, right?

It's not a surprise, but they're big enterprise customers, and they don't pay either of us very much for the service that we deliver. When you go down market, think fleets with 25, 50 trucks or less, we estimate there are only 40% -- most 50% penetrated with the fuel card as most of those businesses continue to use just a general purpose credit card, and they chase drivers around for receipts and try to make sure they're only buying what they're supposed to buy, right?

So that's where we spend most of our time selling is into that down market fleet. Why the penetration rate is lower and the economic profile of that client are just better.

And that's what we've done for 25 years, and that's what we continue to do. Obviously, we fell off the wagon a little bit over the last few years as we migrated away from the micro client segment.

And we delivered mid-single digits organic growth for the North America vehicle payments business in the third quarter, and we expect to do the same in the fourth quarter and then a pretty good jumping off point into next year since we're already there.

All right. Awesome. Before I go back to the vehicle payments, I think it's a very good segue, but there's a couple more corporate payments topics. I just want to follow up on. And also in the corporate payments that you're seeing, basically, you and a lot of competitors serving the middle market are still competing against the banks that's like the biggest competitor still.

Okay. And then I guess in terms of your customer mix, you've mentioned the decline in revenue per spend volume in this business as you mix shift towards new payables and cross-border enterprise clients. Maybe can you talk a little bit about how you think about the enterprise opportunity and maybe the trajectory of this metric in the coming years?

Yes. I think it's important to understand that the focus of the business continues to be 99% middle market companies, right, signing up more middle market companies and domestically, you're trying to ge t them to do something a little different than they're doing today. 40% of all B2B payments in the U.S. today are still done with paper check. Right?

Somebody is printing the checks, taking them down to the CFO's office, signing them, they get stuck in an envelope with a stamp and put in the post, right, to get them to outsource their AP is a little bit different.

So over the last decade or 2, we've been working, maybe not single-handedly close to it to educate companies about the benefits of outsourcing their AP to us, right on the cross-border side, most companies that have cross-border needs today are already doing that just with their bank.

And the largest global money center banks that actually have real capabilities don't really want to take the call of the average middle market company because there's not enough revenue for them, which is why we found very fertile ground to continue to sell into that middle market space.

So Ron talked, our CFO, our CEO, talked about signing up an enterprise client on the AP side earlier in the year. They were trying to solve a different problem. They had multiple AP centers around the U.S., and they were trying to drive efficiency across the organization to create a better outcome at the corporate level.

And we had a conversation with them, and they're largely ramping. I think we also talked about $1 billion a month in volume. Very little of that's carded today, but the opportunity is there. But for us, it's a client acquisition game. This is not a share of wallet game at this point.

This is not a take rate expansion game. It's a client acquisition game as we just continue to sign up more clients and put them on our platform. And it's a bit of a land grab, and I think that's where we're focused today.

So if we can pick up an enterprise customer along the way, that kind of demonstrates the value that, hey, we have a program and a product that works for the middle market, but we also have a program of product that works just as well for the largest enterprise customers in the world.

It's a pretty good per to be able to walk into somebody's CFO's office and say, hey, by the way, we can help both of you, and we've already proved it.

All right. That's awesome. And I think you've outlined this before, but I think it's pretty important from a longer-term strategic perspective, how do you see the corporate payments business growing from the expected $2 billion plus of revenue in 2026 to 5x the size longer term?

Yes. I think our CEO's comments on there was a little bit to help folks kind of look up from the trees and look at the forest and look at the opportunity. And we've grown that corporate payments business from 14%, 15% of the company in 2018 on its way to 40% plus of the company today.

And there's no shortage of TAM or opportunity out there, right? So it's easy to kind of focus in the day-to-day of the grindy details of, okay, well, hey, help us understand the confidence in your ability to create mid- to upper teens organic growth next year.

Well, the reality is that we should expect to continue to be able to do that for certainly over the medium term, maybe even longer because again, there's no shortage of opportunity.

And we kind of view this as shaping up over time a lot like the payroll space, right? 30, 40 years ago, all the companies did their own payroll. Today, nobody does their own payroll. Today, most companies pay their own bills. In 20 years, probably very few companies will pay their own bills.

And that's the opportunity we're after. So there's no shortage of TAM. There's no shortage of share to be taken from the banks. And we think there's no reason with both inorganic and organic investment that we can't have a much bigger business than we have today.

All right. Awesome. And I guess moving to the inorganic part of the growth algorithm in terms of the most recent acquisitions, maybe starting with the Alpha Group. Can you recap for us what makes this an attractive acquisition for Corpay in terms of expanding cross-border capabilities and where you'll see. And where we'll see the greatest synergies outside of the $200 million of expected revenue contribution?

Yes. I think if you look back since 2017, when we bought the original cross-border business. So since 2019, this is the fourth cross-border acquisition that we've done. And historically, it's been mostly about scale. It's more customers. It's the customer acquisition game. We can do it one by one organically or we can buy other subscale cross-border providers that have built something along the way and just add more scale in it.

We've also, along the way, picked up additional geographies, additional products and services. Alpha has a corporate business similar to what we offer today, but they also have a global bank account business that they've been able to grow from 0 to $3 billion in deposits over a few short years, right?

It sells quite well, and they were only able to sell that in Europe because that's the only place they were licensed. And they were able to build a pretty good business. It was pretty attractive for us. We already have the licenses necessary to sell that in the U.S. and Asia Pac. So now that we've closed the deal, we can go to market immediately to sell that going forward.

So the revenue synergy opportunities are probably bigger and more exciting with Alpha. They've been with just about any other acquisition.

But we also have just the core synergies as we migrate their corporate customers onto our platform and then rationalize the expenses on the back end in the second half of the year. So you look at it, you get scale, you get a little bit of incremental capabilities.

You got this brilliant new virtual bank account product that is selling quite well and quite attractive to not just corporate clients, select corporate clients, but the financial institutions as well. And with the right opportunity for us.

All right. And next one, not technically an acquisitions, it's more of an investment -- significant investment in AvidXchange, where you took 1/3 of the stake and then understand you may or may not in the future, to acquire the rest of it. What's your plan there?

And maybe can you remind us what you're looking to see from Avid that would encourage you to buy or not buy? And then how can your current AP business benefit from the added scale?

Yes. I mean again, it's not dissimilar to what we do on the cross-border side. It's scale, right? We can do it individually organically, mid-teens more slowly over time or we can use our significant free cash flow generation to buy incremental scale.

Now Avid does run a middle market and kind of a lower middle market business in slightly different verticals than we do today. We've looked at them over the years as a potential acquisition target.

But unfortunately, their profitability and their growth profile looks a little different than our profitability and growth profile of our Corporate Payments segment today and the overall company. So we partnered with TPG to take them private. That deal closed roughly 5 or 6 weeks ago now.

And ultimately, our intention in that partnership and that take private with TPG is we expect to own this business at some point down the road. We have the right to buy it at a fixed price anytime within the next 32 months, 33 months at the close.

And what we're really looking for is for the profitability of the company to meaningfully improve and the growth profile of the company to meaningfully improve. It doesn't have to get where we are today from a corporate average margins perspective, but it needs to show progress on its path to getting there.

And we expect to own this asset at some time. Otherwise, we wouldn't have done it. But it would have been diluted by both the organic growth rate of the segment and also the EPS of the company. And we didn't feel that that's what we would want, much less what investors would want at any given time.

And we also wrote roughly a $2.5 billion check for Alpha. It was the second largest deal in the company's history and write $2 billion-plus checks at the same time, it's a lot. So we can partner with TPG. They can go in and do the things necessary to improve profitability and the growth profile of the company. And over the next 32 months, if it starts to progress along the thresholds that we know and believe that should be able to, then we'll likely hit the bid button on that time.

But it's a pretty nice way to kind of sequence the transactions without impairing our ability from a leverage perspective or appetite perspective, otherwise.

All right. Awesome. And I guess lastly, can you talk about the Mastercard transaction take it the other way around? And then what's the expected financial impact in 2026?

Yes. So Mastercard, we announced over the summer that Mastercard was going to invest $300 million in our cross-border business. That deal closed this week. right? And so we now have the ability to -- we've already been going to market with Mastercard to talk to the banks and financial institutions, think regional banks and below about meaningfully improving their cross-border capability, right?

When you look at the cross-border landscape, there are a handful of global money center banks that have real broad cross-border capabilities other than just sending payments by Swift to the correspondent bank network.

Our pitch to these banks who Mastercard is facilitating the conversations to, they may not take our call because they view us as competitors. They're going to take Mastercard's call, and they're going to walk us in and facilitate a conversation on how we can meaningfully improve their cross-border capabilities.

We already have a handful of smaller banks as clients today. We work with some of the processors as a white label solution to provide that cross-border capability today. So we think it will be attractive to a number of banks that are on our target list. And now that it's closed, we would expect to close 1 or 2 of these here maybe towards the end of the fourth quarter, into the first quarter.

And we talked about, hey, maybe this could be a couple of points in incremental growth on the cross-border business over time. So you think about it, most banks spend most of their investment dollars on the consumer side of the bank.

But few dollars are left on the commercial side for investment probably isn't going into the cross-border side of things, and we can help those banks keep some of their best customers for longer or maybe even forever, who might otherwise get to the point where they outgrow what those regional and smaller banks can do for them.

And then they go across the street to one of the large money center banks so they fine, we'll help you, but you need to bring your entire relationship over here.

So our pitch is, hey, use us from a white label or referral partnership perspective, we can help you keep that customer for a lot longer, and it is oftentimes probably one of their best customers that they want to.

All right. That's awesome. Lots of things to look forward to in this segment alone.

Yes. So just before we move along, obviously, in cross-border before we just had corporates, which there's plenty of opportunities in corporates. And now we have corporates. We have financial institutions. We have asset managers and PE funds with the global bank account product and digital currencies, which I'm sure we'll get to.

There's no demand for it today from our corporates. We have the capabilities. This is not new to us, stable coins, if you will. We've been investing in this for 18 months now. So it's a bit of -- you need to build it because they will come.

Well, it's been built. We can work with our clients today. There's no real benefit in G20 currency corridors for a stablecoin versus what we can do on a proprietary transaction or a swift transaction today. It's not cheaper, it's not faster. It's not any more secure.

There are use cases for it that we've talked about, but we see it as an incremental opportunity for us as we continue to aggregate more of those flows and just use it as another rail to move liquidity around the world.

All right. Makes total sense. Moving to the next big segment, Vehicle Payments. The segment accelerated to 10% year-on-year organic growth in Q3, and it was supported by a return to mid-single-digit growth in the U.S. business.

Can you talk about the improvement in the results in the segment compared to the last couple of quarters? And maybe just recap your expectations for next year.

Well, we haven't given guidance for 2026 yet. But when you look at it, most of the conversations that we've had this year are, hey, Brazil continues to do quite well. And I said before, it's 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 North America, 1/3 Europe and 1/3 Brazil, right?

So Brazil continues to grow at high teens rates. international or Europe continues to grow at high single-digit rates, and that's what they've grown at for the last several years. But U.S. Vehicle had gone from being a consistent quality grower to being a problem child as we've talked about it, right?

We had made the conscious decision to move away from a micro-client segment that had been quite good for us because we saw bad debt spike, and we did that several years ago, and it's taken us longer than we would have expected to rebuild the sales function into a place where it can create enough absolute new revenue dollars to create the growth profile of that part of the segment that we would expect.

Through all year, I've answered questions, we'd answered questions, hey, what gives you confidence in your ability to get there? Well, it's math. We could see it. We talked about the couple of hundred basis points of retention improvement that we saw in the second quarter. We feel that's a durable improvement, right?

We just have a slightly larger, better, higher quality, more durable customer base today. And we're finally getting to the point where we have enough sales resources producing enough new sales to create the growth rate of the company.

We've talked about a couple of enterprise customers that we won as well. That's just an indication of the overall health of the business. It wasn't a meaningful driver of the improvement.

But it's really just signing up enough new clients, bringing in enough new volume at better retention rates that caused the business to inflect to mid-single digits.

We printed to 5% for that part of the segment in the third quarter. We expect mid-single digits in the fourth quarter. And as we kind of sketched out the 9% to 11% expectations for next year, all the business that we have today pretty much just need to keep doing what they're doing today.

And how do we do that? Well, you invest enough in additional sales and marketing to deliver the growth rate that you would expect. And that's as I started -- as I mentioned at the start of this, is the advantages of the model.

So as long as some of the inputs or the underlying factors don't change, which we wouldn't expect them to, you know what the investment needs to be to create the outcome. And that's what gives us our confidence in our ability to do that. We still have to execute. Right?

But you're not trying to fix something to get it back on to the trajectory that you need to be on. It's already on the trajectory now. You just have to keep it there. It's an easier place to start from.

All right. That's helpful. And then regarding some of the divestiture candidates in the segment, maybe can you just share some additional context in terms of the business profile, growth profile and what makes them potential divestiture candidates and what are you looking to get?

Yes. Earlier in the year, we talked about potentially divesting a couple of non core vehicle payments assets in the International segment, right? They're good quality assets.

I kind of describe it as, hey, you have core and super core inflation. Well, we have super core businesses like fuel cards, and then we have core businesses, which are still vehicle related, but they may not be the -- they're certainly not the core fuel card opportunity.

We've seen some other assets in and around these businesses that traded at some pretty good prices. like, if we can get that price, maybe it makes sense to kind of take some of those proceeds and remix it into more corporate payments. That was the thought earlier in the year.

We knew we were going to write a big check for Alpha, which we did. And as Peter, our CFO, said, we expect to end the year, call it, 2.8x leverage after you account for the incremental debt and the checks that we wrote there as well, right?

So originally, it was, hey, what happens if another acquisition opportunity came down the road that we want to do shortly after we did that deal, where would the liquidity come from?

So we looked at some of these assets and our books are in the market today. first round bids were due back last week, this week or something along those lines. And if we can get some decent prices for them, they grow at or slightly better than that part of the business average. The profitability of them is quite good.

But today, given where the stock trades, well, maybe it doesn't make more sense to go back and use that liquidity to look for other acquisition opportunities.

It might make more sense to buy back shares at the current valuation, right? So we're not liquidity constrained. We was never done or considered to need to be done to be able to buy Alpha.

It's really, okay, how do you create the most flexibility after that deal closes to make sure that you're in a position to be able to do what you think is right for shareholders and what you want to do.

All right. That makes sense. And so looking forward to the update. And I think from last call, I think you shared it's -- you're probably going to see some outcome within 90 days of the earnings call.

We'll know a lot more in 90 days when we talk in February, whether it's, hey, what the likelihood is of one or both of those things closing or the initial bids weren't what we expected them to be, and we're happy to keep those assets. But we'll know a lot more when we talk in February.

Right. And it's not contingent upon being able to sell both of them at the same time, right?

Two separate processes. One is larger, one is smaller. Obviously, the smaller ones are easier to -- the checks are smaller and easier to get done, but we'll see. We're not running a fire sale. These are still very good businesses that we're happy to continue to own.

But if there's an opportunity to remix faster towards more corporate payments and/or buy back more shares of a high-quality company at low valuations, that could make more sense.

All right. And I guess maybe quickly touching on lodging. What are some of the steps you're taking to maybe revert the sales back to the level it was in 2023?

Or maybe like if it turns out to be like a secular slower growth business, what will help you make the decision of whether to keep the business or divest it at some point?

Yes. I mean this is just a lack of sales. We just haven't been able to recreate or regenerate the sales effectiveness necessary to drive the growth we would expect in that business. So we've owned that business since the company went public in 2010.

Until the last couple of years, it's been a double digit, sometimes even a 20% grower over that time. Certainly, the last couple of years, that has not been the case. We think it's mostly an us problem. right, as we continue to work and reinvigorate the go-to-market activities, getting the right salespeople in place, getting the right sales motion in place. We believe we can get that back to double digits.

But to your point, as Ron mentioned, I think, on the May call in response to a question, we're not interested in owning a business that can't grow double digits. So if we run another year forward and we don't feel like we're on the trajectory to achieve that, we could make a different outcome. It's still a great business.

It runs at better than corporate average margins. It continues to be accretive to the overall results. But it's -- we need to do with it what we did with U.S. vehicle and get it back to a place where it's just consistently producing results that are in line with expectations. So we don't have to keep talking about, okay, what's the problem? And what are you going to do to fix it.

All right. That's awesome. And then maybe just picking back up to the corporate level in terms of capital allocation, I guess, between investing sales growth, other M&A opportunities and share repurchases, you certainly touched on some of this.

And I guess from just your recent conversations with the investors, what are some of their views on where you want your leverage to be, whether there's an appetite for that to go above 3x or maybe go lower?

Yes. As we kind of think about capital allocation, right? This year, we're going to generate in the order of something about $1.5 billion in free cash flow. And from a technical free cash flow definition, there is some volatility there. So we use adjusted net income as a proxy for free cash flow. Right? So I think $1.5 billion or so.

And from a capital allocation standpoint, we already invest organically at what we think is the efficient frontier. The idea is to deliver 9%, 11% organic growth to be able to do that consistently over time. That's what we're trying to build plans to do that today. Generally speaking, the next and highest best use of every incremental capital dollars in accretive M&A, right? We're good at it. We've done roughly 150 deals in the company's history. It's a competitive advantage for us. And we've been able to create a lot of value on that.

But as I kind of describe it, the last gating factor when Ron and the Board are deciding on whether or not to do a deal is how do we feel about paying you a relatively high multiple you're subscale asset versus buying back my own high-quality company, this is trading at relatively lower valuations.

Sitting here today, that bar is much higher for incremental deals. So I think you would expect us to be much more buyback heavy in this type of environment where the valuation -- relative valuations are where they are today. But we're not constrained. We have the ability to do both. Certainly, delevering is another option, and that's probably the least likely outcome, even though that's likely how we will give our outlook next year is assuming delevering, right?

And oftentimes, we would -- most of the time, we would only delever in anticipation of doing another deal where we need the incremental capital, right? So we get very high marks for our capital allocation history and diligence and creating significant value and being opportunistic and buying back shares when it makes most sense and buying companies that create incremental growth going forward when it makes the most sense. we can do both.

Right. Awesome. Jim, I'd like to open this up for any audience Q&A. If you have a question, feel free to raise your hand. If not I have a final follow-up for Jim. All right. I guess you've had -- we had a dinner so well attended last night and a lot of investor conversations. Anything you feel like still misunderstood you want to emphasize or?

Yes. I think for us, it's probably the biggest thing is if we deliver 10% organic growth this year like we would expect to do, well, if you look back over the last 5 years, we've done that for the last 5 years. Yet we continue to get tons of -- or not tons, but some questions on the durability of the organic growth model going forward. I think it is a bit misunderstood of just the durability of the economic model, the businesses, the highly recurring nature of the businesses today that generate a lot of cash that provides a lot of optionality.

So it's something we've done since the company went public in 2010 and since before that, we would expect to continue to be able to do that going forward. Ron, our CEO, has run the company for 25 years. He's not going anywhere. He is the glue, if you will. And for us, that 9% to 11% is kind of the benchmark.

The ability to deliver that with some operating leverage and significant free cash flow gives the ability to deliver EPS growth at mid-teens plus. That's what we're trying to achieve.

All right. Perfect. Thank you so much Jim.