Corpay, Inc.
Q1 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 7 May 2019

[Operator:]

Greetings, and welcome to the FLEETCOR Technologies First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to our host, Mr. Jim Eglseder, Head of Investor Relations for FLEETCOR Technologies. Thank you. You may begin.

[James Eglseder:]

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. By now, you should have access to our first quarter press release and supplement, which can be found under the Investor Relations section on our website at fleetcor.com.

[Throughout this conference call, we will be presenting non-GAAP financial information, including adjusted revenues, adjusted net income and adjusted net income per diluted share. This information is not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than non-GAAP information at other companies.:]

[Quantitative reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial information to the most directly comparable GAAP information appears in today's press release and on our website as previously described. Also, we are providing updated 2019 guidance on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis with reconciliations.:]

[Finally, before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that part of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements. This includes forward-looking statements about our guidance and outlook, new products and fee initiatives, and expectations regarding business development and acquisitions. They are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not put undue reliance upon them.:]

[These results are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Some of those risks are mentioned in today's press release on Form 8-K and on our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available on our website and at sec.gov.:]

[With that out of the way, I would like to turn the call over to Ron Clarke, our Chairman and CEO. Ron?:]

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Okay, Jim. Thanks. We appreciate everyone taking the time to join us this afternoon. Up front here, I'll plan to cover 3 subjects. First, I'll provide my perspective on Q1 results. Second, I'll preview our outlook for rest of year. And third, I'll provide a bit of an update on our major growth initiatives.

[Okay. So on to the quarter. We reported Q1 revenue of $622 million, up 6%, and $2.67 in cash EPS, up 7%. On a constant macro or like-for-like basis, revenue was up 11% and cash EPS up 13%. Both revenue and profitability in the quarter topped our internal expectations, revenue about $10 million better than planned, and cash EPS $0.07 higher than the midpoint of our guidance range.:]

[Organic growth, overall, 11% for Q1 with all 4 lines of business performing well. Fuel card revenue growth finished at 10%; toll growth, 15%; corporate pay revenue growth, 18%; and lodging revenue growth, 6%, although 18% if you exclude the FEMA impact from Q1 last year. So look, good performance from each of our business lines.:]

[Our trends also quite good in the quarter. Customer retention of 92%; our same-store sales, flat, down 1 point from the last 2 quarters; and new sales or new bookings up 12% versus last year with particular strength in our corporate pay and Brazil business. So look, all in all, a good start to the year, revenue and profits out ahead of expectations, 11% overall organic growth and solid trends. So out of the blocks quite nicely.:]

[Okay. Let me transition to our rest-of-year outlook. So first off, the macro. We expect they're pretty consistent with our initial '19 guidance. There are a few puts and takes from 90 days ago, clearly, better fuel prices and lower interest rates but significantly worse FX rates. So when you put it all together, basically comes out where we thought at the beginning of the year. In terms of revenue, our organic revenue growth expectation remains 9% to 11% range rest of the year, and our fuel card organic growth in the same 9% to 11% range.:]

[On the earnings front, we're raising full year 2019 cash EPS guidance to $11.62 at the midpoint. That reflects our $0.07 guidance beat in Q1. To note here, included in our $11.62 full year cash EPS guidance is $0.13 of new headwind, really coming from 2 areas:]

first, an unexpected higher share count rest of year, about 1 million to 1.5 million additional shares more than planned. That's because of our higher stock price along with a few cents of dilution related to our invoice pay acquisition. So effectively, we baked a bit better performance into our rest-of-year outlook to absorb this $0.13 unplanned headwind. So net-net, we're outlooking 2019 to come in incrementally better than our expectations starting out the year.

[Okay. Lastly, let me transition over to an update, a progress with our 4 major growth initiatives. So initiative 1, beyond fuel, where we open up fuel cards in a controlled manner to allow our cardholders to make additional business purchases, obviously, ones that are authorized by their employer. So now in the U.S., we have 5,000 of our active fuel card clients actually making beyond fuel purchases. This is resulting in about a 40% lift in per-client revenue. And so as '19 rolls on, we'll plan to make this beyond fuel offer to more than 100,000 additional U.S. fuel card clients also to some of our new sales prospects. So we'll keep you posted on our take rate and expected impact on revenue growth.:]

[Second up is our beyond toll initiative in Brazil. So here, we're trying to do 2 things:]

first, encourage our 5 million active toll users to use their account with us to also make additional fueling, parking and fast-food purchases; and then second, we're trying to attract nontoll users or what we call urban users to join our fuel, parking and fast-food program.

[So the report here is good. We are -- we're gaining some traction. At McDonald's, we now have 200 stores live and have gone from 0 transactions to 65,000 in the month of March alone so lots of excitement from McDonald's. We've also sold 4,000 new nontoll user accounts. That's at 30 gas stations in the quarter. So just starting the marketing and sales rollout there. So from our perspective, an encouraging start, and it supports the view that there is real demand for this expanded beyond-toll network.:]

[Third up is lodging. The growth idea there is simple:]

to increase the number of accepting hotels in our network from approximately 15,000 to 25,000 and thus capture some additional room nights from our existing customer base. So pleased to report that extended network is now live. Website is now live, and we've actually begun to book new room nights in that extended network. So again, expectation is that this increased site acceptance will generate incremental lodging revenue per client.

[So last up is our initiative or growth plan for our corporate payments business. So simply put, we want to make 2 offers to the marketplace. So offer 1, which is what we do today, is to provide card payments for general AP that reduce paper and provide client rebates and savings. And offer #2 is to automate and simplify 100% of the client AP file so a client can literally pay 100% of all their invoices electronically.:]

[So our first offer, which is our card payments approach, it's obviously working well. We reported that it's growing mid-teens in the quarter, so clear that the market likes that offer.:]

[And to accelerate the implementation of our second offer or full AP outsourcing offer, we acquired Nvoicepay in Q1. So Nvoicepay is a leader in cloud-based AP software that lets companies pay, again, 100% of their invoices electronically. They pay all the clients, merchants, whether that's via card, ACH or even paper.:]

[So for us, the Nvoicepay deal, it's quite additive. It increases our TAM. Given its appeal to the SMB market, it increases our merchant network now to over 1 million supplier relationships, and it gives us, really, just an incredibly comprehensive offer to take to the market. So note that we are clearly committed to building a big B2B payables payments business.:]

[So look, in closing, back to the top, we're delighted with our Q1 results and start to the year. Again, revenues and profits ahead of plan, double-digit organic revenue growth and steady trends. We're confirming our rest-of-year outlook, confirming a 9% to 11% organic revenue growth, raising our full year cash EPS expectations. And we've also reported, we think, some real progress with our 4 major mid-term growth initiatives, all 4 now live in market, all 4 getting good reaction, all 4 increasing our revenue per client. So look, as the take rate and pace of adoption pick up throughout the year, we'll be in a better position to forecast the potential revenue acceleration.:]

[So with that, let me turn the call back over to Eric to provide some additional details on the quarter. Eric?:]

[Eric R. Dey:]

Thank you, Ron. For the first quarter of 2019, we reported revenue of $621.8 million, up 6% compared to $585.5 million in the first quarter of 2018. GAAP net income decreased 2% to $172.1 million from $174.9 million. And GAAP net income per diluted share increased 3% to $1.93 from $1.88 in the first quarter of 2018.

[Included in the first quarter results was the impact of a $15.7 million or $0.17 per diluted share impact of an impairment charge related to our investment in the telematics business. Excluding the impact of the impairment charge, net income increased 7% to $187.8 million, and net income per diluted share increased 12% to $2.10 in the first quarter of 2019.:]

[Non-GAAP financial metrics that we'll be discussing are adjusted net income and adjusted net income per diluted share. And the reconciliation to GAAP numbers is provided in exhibit 1 of our press release.:]

[Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2019 increased 2% to $238.4 million compared to $233.5 million in the same period last year. And adjusted net income per diluted share increased 7% to $2.67 compared to $2.50 in adjusted net income per diluted share in the first quarter of 2018.:]

[First quarter results reflect the negative year-over-year impact from the macroeconomic environment of approximately $23 million in revenue, in line with our guidance. The negative macro was driven mostly by lower foreign exchange rates, specifically the Brazilian real and U.K. pound, when compared with the first quarter of 2018. We believe FX negatively impacted revenue by approximately $28 million.:]

[Fuel prices were basically flat year-over-year in the first quarter. And although we cannot precisely calculate the impact of these changes, we believe it was neutral to the quarter. And finally, fuel spreads had about a $5 million favorable impact in the quarter.:]

[Organic revenue growth, after adjusting out the impact of the macroeconomic environment and the Chevron deconversion, was approximately 11% for the first quarter of 2019. All of our major product categories performed well during the quarter. Organic growth in our fuel card business was 10%, excluding Chevron, driven by solid growth in most of our fuel card businesses.:]

[The corporate payments category continues to perform well and was up 18% organically during the quarter. The growth in corporate payments was driven by both Cambridge, which grew in excess of 20% in the quarter, and Comdata, which grew in the mid-teens.:]

[Our toll business was up 15% organically, and our lodging business was up 6%. Our lodging business would have been up 18% if you adjust out the $4 million in emergency-related revenue from the first quarter of 2018. So all in all, another very good quarter for our nonfuel businesses.:]

[Now moving down the income statement. Total operating expenses were up 4% for the first quarter of 2019 to $337.6 million compared with $325.4 million in the first quarter of 2018. The increase was primarily due to normal growth in our operations. As a percentage of total revenues, operating expenses were approximately 54.3% compared to 55.6% in the first quarter of 2018. The decrease in operating expense as a percentage of revenue was primarily due to a decrease in stock-based compensation of approximately $2 million, the impact of foreign exchange rates on expenses and a decrease in amortization expense.:]

[Included in operating expenses are credit losses of $22.2 million for the first quarter or 8 basis points compared to $12 million or 5 basis points in the first quarter of 2018. As we told you in December, we expect credit losses to remain higher than normal in 2019 due primarily to higher fraud losses in our fuel card business in the U.S. We intend to decrease fraud losses in the short run by implementing more controls to limit fraud. Fuel card fraud should reduce significantly as U.S. fuel stations begin transitioning to chip and pin technology in 2020.:]

[Depreciation and amortization expense decreased 6% to $67.4 million in the first quarter of 2019 from $71.5 million in the first quarter of 2018. The decrease was primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rates on expenses and some acquisition-related intangible assets that have become fully amortized.:]

[Investment loss was $15.7 million for the first quarter of 2019. The company regularly evaluates securing value of its investments and, during the first quarter of 2019, determined that the fair value of its telematics investment was impaired and recording impairment of the investment.:]

[Interest expense increased 26% to $39.1 million compared to $31.1 million in the first quarter of 2018. The increase in interest expense was due primarily to the impact of additional borrowing or share buybacks throughout 2018 and increases in LIBOR. Our effective tax rate for the first quarter of 2019 was 23.3%, excluding the impact of the impairment charge, compared to 23.7% for the first quarter of 2018, in line with our expectations.:]

[Now turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $1.373 billion in total cash. Approximately $315 million is restricted and consists primarily of customer deposits. As of March 31,2019, we had $3.554 billion outstanding on our term loans and revolver and approximately $569 million of undrawn availability. We also had $942 million borrowed in our securitization facility at the end of the quarter.:]

[We purchased a minimal amount of shares in the quarter, and those purchased were associated with employee sales to cover taxes. We have approximately $548 million in repurchase capacity remaining under our current authorization.:]

[As of March 31, 2019, our leverage ratio was 2.10x EBITDA, which is well below our covenant level of 4x EBITDA as calculated under our credit agreement. We intend to use our future excess cash flow to temporarily pay down the balance in our revolving credit facility and securitization facility and maintain liquidity for acquisitions and other corporate purposes. Finally, we spent approximately $15 million on CapEx during the first quarter of 2019.:]

[Now on to the update for our outlook for 2019. First, we are raising our full year revenue guidance $30 million at the midpoint to reflect our first quarter beat and the acquisitions closed on April 1. We're also raising our adjusted net income per diluted share guidance $0.07 to $11.62 at the midpoint to reflect our first quarter results compared to our expectations.:]

[Also, we expect a few moving parts in our balance of the year guidance. We expect the macro impact for the balance of the year to be in line with our prior guidance as the impact of favorable fuel prices will be offset by unfavorable foreign exchange rates. We also expect a higher share count due primarily to an increase in our share price, which impacts the calculation of fully diluted shares.:]

[We also expect a slightly dilutive impact from the Nvoicepay acquisition over the balance of the year but do expect the acquisition to become accretive in 2020. We expect our businesses to continue to overperform for the balance of the year to help offset the impact of the higher share count and slightly dilutive transaction. Please refer to our first quarter earnings call supplement for additional information regarding our guidance.:]

[So with that out of the way, our guidance is as follows:]

total revenues to be between $2.600 billion and $2.660 billion; net income to be between $800 million and $830 million; net income per diluted share to be between $8.85 and $9.15; adjusted net income to be between $1.030 billion and $1.060 billion; and adjusted net income per diluted share to be between $11.47 and $11.77.

[Some of the assumptions we have made in preparing the guidance includes the following:]

weighted fuel prices equal to $2.90 per gallon average in the U.S. for the balance of the year for those businesses sensitive to the movement in the retail price of fuel; market spreads slightly below the 2018 average; foreign exchange rates equal to the 7-day average as of April 28, 2019; interest expense of $160 million; and fully diluted shares outstanding of approximately 90.1 million shares; a tax rate of 23% to 24%; and as always, no impact related to acquisitions or material new partnership agreements not already disclosed.

[For the second quarter of 2019, we are expecting adjusted net income per diluted share to be in the range of $2.74 to $2.84. The second quarter guidance includes a dilutive impact of the Nvoicepay acquisition and higher share count. Additionally, volumes should build throughout the year, and our new growth initiatives should gain momentum throughout the year, resulting in higher revenue and earnings per share in the third and fourth quarters.:]

[With that said, operator, we'll open it up for questions.:]

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays.

[The next question comes from Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs.:]

[James Schneider:]

I was wondering if you can maybe kind of talk about the outlook you see in corporate payments for the rest of the year. You talked about mid-teens rate. You did a little bit better than that in this quarter. Can you maybe talk about some of the factors that are -- kind of drive potential upside there, and broadly, what you think you would need to see in terms of -- is that going to be -- sorry, the acceleration potential? Is that possible? And is that going to be driven more by sales trends or any other factors you can kind of talk about driving upside or downside over the course of the year?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes, Jim. It's Ron. So I'd say we'd stick with the mid-teens number. As you know, in that business, it's mostly in-year function of implementation, not sales. So virtually all the revenue that we get, we sold already. So if we overperform in sales next year, you'd see that improvement, that acceleration in 2020.

[The thing that could cause it to kind of float up or down is really if the clients we have that healthier or we grab more of their total spend, more of their file. So I'd say that's the lever, basically, that's in-year is the health of the client, the growth of the client base and then the share that we might get of their overall payables.:]

[James Schneider:]

That's helpful. And then maybe a bit of an update on your strategy on terms of B2B software. Clearly, at this point, you have both partnerships as well as now an acquisition -- or second acquisition in Nvoicepay. Can you maybe talk about your desire to kind of own more of the software for the AP side of things or the AR side of things versus partnerships? And then maybe any kind of the way you're trying to manage any potential channel conflicts across the business there.

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. That's a good question. So clearly, on the partnership side, our role is really as card processor, right, for our major partners. And so this Nvoicepay and the cloud software is really for us fronting our clients, and so it's different. We got the software so that we'd have our own full AP automation software that we owned, and it doesn't really affect our ability to process for the partners that we got. And I'd say we're probably -- don't need any more short term. We've got international cross-border software capability. We've got obviously card-processing capability. And now we've got full automation and disbursement capability. So I think we've got the capabilities we now -- that we need to have a very comprehensive package, and so the game now is to take it to market.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW.

[Sanjay Sakhrani:]

A quick question on the acceleration expected in the back half of this year. Could you just talk about how much that's -- of that's incorporated into the guidance and sort of what the key factors are that will either lead you to outperform or underperform?

[Eric R. Dey:]

Yes. Sanjay, this is Eric. I mean our volumes really build throughout the year as our sales capabilities start to kick in. So a lot of the escalation we see typically in the back of the year, which is very consistent with how we performed over many, many years, is basically just some seasonality and some of the benefit from all the sales that we've made in the first half of the year in a lot of our different product lines. So we're really expecting pretty normal step-up in growth kind of quarter-to-quarter.

[Sanjay Sakhrani:]

Okay. And then I've got a question on the fuel segment. I'm just looking at sort of the transaction growth versus the revenue growth. And obviously, there's some noise with gas prices and the like. But how should we expect the transaction revenue -- I'm sorry, the transaction volume growth to trend over time and its relationship with revenue growth?

[Eric R. Dey:]

Yes. Sanjay, this is Eric again. Normally, transactions growth in the fuel sector run around 2% to 4%. We expect that business to grow in the 9% organic growth range, and it's going to be comprised of basically 3 things. One is growing transactions again in that kind of 2% to 4% range, which generally translates into a little more revenue because of mix. If you think about it, we've got different product lines all over the world. Each one of our product lines has a different revenue per transaction dynamic. So we're obviously investing in those products that deliver higher revenue per transaction. So there's a mix favorability that comes into play as well.

[And then in addition to that, we're going to up-sell other products and services. Think of things like beyond fuel, I think Ron mentioned on the call, which contributed 1 point or 2 of organic growth. And then the remainder, generally speaking, will be a little bit of rate on the fringes to different products kind of around the world.:]

[Our Q1 transaction growth was a little bit impacted by a couple of things. One, we had some -- there's 1 less business day in the first quarter versus where there was a year ago, which impacted volumes a little bit. We also had a little bit of a weather impact, particularly on the West Coast in our card lock business, which impacted some transaction volumes there as well. So a little bit of that going on in Q1, but I would say, generally speaking, think about it as kind of 2% to 4%.:]

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays.

[Ramsey El-Assal:]

You can hear me, right?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

We can.

[Ramsey El-Assal:]

Okay. Fantastic. The -- thanks for the color on the beyond tolls business. I wanted to get your sense -- maybe a little deeper sense of the penetration in the different product category there. It feels like the QSR food drive-through toll tag usage seems to be kind of inflecting in a more substantial way than fuel or private garages. First, is that a fair characterization? And then second, is there a pipeline you can speak to on the food side? If you have McDonald's, can you sign the proverbial Burger King?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes, Ramsey. It's Ron. I would say that we don't know. So if you take the 3 beyond toll expansions, you take parking, fuel and then fast food, so the company's been in parking the longest, quite a long time. And so the step-up there is really coming from the expansion. We're basically doubling the number of parking locations. So that one, I think, will mirror the market that -- as those doubling of locations get implemented, we'll see that parking lift probably 1 for 1.

[On fuel, it's earlier days. It's a couple years. The company seesawed around with credit and how we would do it. So I'd say that one is still early, and we're trying to figure out really how to push that and, as importantly, sell new people onto it.:]

[And then fast food is super duper new. I think our first thing went live sometime in the fourth quarter. I don't know if you picked up the call-out, but at half the locations that we're going to, 200 locations, we had 65,000 transactions in 1 month, and I heard verbally that it was quite a bit higher actually in April.:]

[So to your point, I don't think we know yet of the $5 million active users we have between fuel and fast food, whether one of those is going to be more light, if you will, than the others. So we're going to keep expanding and keep promoting and keep watching the uptick and reporting back.:]

[But I think the headline for today is it's working. It's super early, and we're just starting to promote this expanded network to the clients that we got, and the usage is already starting to build. So I think the feedback that we're trying to provide everybody here is we think we're heading in the right direction.:]

[Ramsey El-Assal:]

Okay. That makes perfect sense. I wanted to ask kind of a higher-elevation question about the general kind of market penetration levels in the U.S. fleet business. This is something that you'll revisit periodically in terms of the overall market penetration. Understanding that it's a large market, it's pretty penetrated in the small market, so it's a lot less penetrated. Where do we stand now? And then also, can you just speak to your kind of growth algorithm and how it's evolved? How much of your growth is signing up net new customers versus flowing more volume into those same customers' wallets? If you could just speak to those 2 things, I'd appreciate it.

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. Both good questions. So on the first one, our estimates are circa $8 billion revenue opportunity based on the market size and the way we price. So we've got circa 10%, call it, of our $1.2 billion in revenue globally in fuel cards, call it, $700 million, $800 million of that here in the U.S. So we've got about 10% market share of the U.S. TAM. And so we think the other quality fuel cards, if you will, that are universal like ours are circa in that similar kind of range. So that means the other 80% are on either a lesser fuel card, call it, private label fuel card, again, cash or general-purpose credit card, what we would call not as good a method to buy. So we think that, that 80% is still right to convert to our kind of card. And obviously, that opening, if you will, is even larger as you move down market, right? It's probably closer to 90%. So the issue is not, again, runway or TAM.

[And then on the second question, I think the key learning so far is, of the 5,000 U.S. clients that we've got across, the revenues were up 40%. And so when I say to you that I think it's incredibly meaningful to the growth rate that, if we can get an attach rate of 25% or 30% against our client base and get increases of 40% to 50%, that's going to create a lot of lift over the mid-term. So I would say that we've been talking about this thing for 2 or 3 years. We've got traction now. Clients obviously like it. And so I would say it's going to form a pretty core part. As Eric mentioned, it was 2 points of our growth -- of our 10% growth in the quarter. I could see that thing getting to 4% probably over the next couple of years.:]

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Bob Napoli with William Blair.

[Robert Napoli:]

The -- I just -- I mean the 40% beyond fuel per customer just seems like a pretty dramatic number. Does that, Ron, change the business model at all? Is there any more credit risk or capital requirements that go with beyond fuel? And what do you think the attach -- I mean, how much have you marketed it? And what do you feel like you can get a penetration rate on that product up to?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. I mean the short answer is, obviously, we don't know, Bob, because it's super early days. Our internal target is to try to get that attach rate to, call it, 25% or 30%. And yes, to your point, it does come with additional capital because you're carrying incremental spend. But again, because we've already done the underwriting and seen the credit risk of the clients that we offer to, we've got a pretty good perspective, right, on the credit of those accounts. I think the one place where the opportunity is way bigger again is the circle of our clients' AP relative to the circle of our clients' fuel purchases. So we're coming out with, call it, half. We're getting half of the client's general AP versus his fuel purchase. Our guess is the general AP is 10 to 20x larger than the client's fuel purchase if you think about the expense structure of the companies.

[And so I tell you, I think we're just literally scratching the surface of the amount of AP that we can get. And again, we're trying to offer our products in a controlled manner and only pick off certain kinds of expenses of our clients, not turn ourselves into a general-purpose card. So what I'd say to you is that the opportunity between 40% and a much higher number is something we're going to continue to work. So we don't have all the answers yet, but what I tell you is it's working. We've got lots of clients now taking the offer. We're going out to another 100,000 this year. They like it. They're spending money on it. We're making money on it. And so it's going to be incremental. And as we get clear on just how incremental, we'll revert.:]

[Robert Napoli:]

And a follow-up question. Just your leverage is still pretty low. You guys generate a lot of cash, obviously. You don't -- I mean, back half of the year, do you expect -- I know you're always working on acquisitions. Where would you expect to acquire? What areas are you most interested in adding to? And if you don't do acquisitions, will you buy back stock in the back half?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. So on the second half of the question, we're working on 3 or 4 active transactions now. They actually are in 3 of our categories. They're in fuel, lodging and corporate pay. So Eric and I are obviously looking at the likelihood of those transacting, sitting at 2x. And so as those either clear or not, we'll look harder at the buyback. I guess if we have more days like today, we'll be looking particularly hard at the buyback.

[But clearly, we look at our liquidity position, Bob, relative to our deal flow and relative to our view of our stock price, our market price. And so if those things get out of line, like they did a year ago, we -- I think we showed we bought a lot of stock back, about $1 billion.:]

[So I think you should think that our capital allocation philosophy will stay that course, really, the rest of the year. If deals don't happen and our stock drops, we'll be buying back stock. And if we buy deals and our stock goes up on this kind of performance, we'll probably buy back less stock.:]

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Oscar Turner with SunTrust.

[Oscar Turner:]

So first question is just on corporate payments and the Nvoicepay deal. Can you talk about the degree of integration we should expect to see there between Nvoicepay and existing corporate payments businesses? For example, is there a different go-to-market to sales teams for those 3 products, so between Nvoicepay, Comdata and Cambridge?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. Oscar, it's Ron again. So I'd say we're still sorting that question. It's a very good question. So obviously, today, you've got the Nvoicepay sales and marketing group selling 100% of what I call offer #2, the full 100% AP outsourcing model. And you've got the core Comdata corporates payments business selling mostly 90% the offer #1, the virtual card that takes out some amount of the AP.

[I'd say it's more than likely we will integrate the sales and marketing and look at bringing both of those offers to a client, meeting a client and getting clear on what the client is looking for and potentially providing either offer 1 or offer 2. So if you said what's my guess, that would be the guess that Nvoicepay will be a second product and a second offer in the bag so that we could create more pressure with the 80 field people and 50 appointment-setting people so we can create more pressure against that full AP. That's likely where we'll go.:]

[Oscar Turner:]

Okay. That's helpful. And second question is on beyond tolls. It sounds like you're gaining traction there. Can you talk about the competitive advantages in nontolls? Do you see it as more of an early-mover advantage in what's a huge market? Or do you actually have exclusive contracts with some of the gas stations and QSR partners?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. Another really good question. I mean I think the answer is super simple here. It's our client base. So if you're a merchant, you're a parking operator or you're a guy that owns a few gas stations or you own a few McDonald's franchises, and we knock on the door and say, "Hey, we want to put our payment technology at your place, and we'll tell our 5 million customers about it," that's a generally more interesting proposition than Eric popping up and saying he'll put his technology there and talk to his 0 customers. And so the customer base, Oscar, and the fact that the technology is proven and we can run it in scale, I think, are the advantages, and I think it's shown that we've signed every big person. We've signed the biggest 2 or 3 parking operators in the country. We've signed the 2 or 3 biggest fuel brands. And we've signed obviously the biggest fast food brand. And so I think it's no surprise that we bring a pretty unique proposition to them.

[Operator:]

The next question comes from David Togut with Evercore ISI.

[David Togut:]

Congrats on the strong results. I'd like to ask about the MasterCard fuel card growth in the quarter. I didn't hear you call that out.

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

David, that's why I love you calling in. I forgot to say that we're delighted to report it was a mid-teens revenue grower in Q1.

[David Togut:]

Got it. And then I'm curious, as you look at the 2 big mergers that have been announced earlier this year, FIS Worldpay and Fiserv First Data, both have called out the B2B payments growth opportunity, I think, both through faster payments and possibly a virtual card-type solution. When you look at these 2 mergers, do you see either one potentially being helpful for you as you expand your TAM in B2B or potentially as a competitive threat?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

I'd say neither. I think that our view is that the acquiring world and focus is fundamentally at retailers and at merchants. And so our game is obviously at business employees and business AP. And so I think the core statement is that the marketplaces are just -- they're just dramatically different. Now we may share some of their merchants as acceptors, right, of our card programs, but I would say, other than seeing how investors react to the consolidation in this related fintech space, that has kind of not too much impact on us.

[David Togut:]

Got it. Just a quick final question. The 40% uplift you're seeing in revenue per client with beyond fuel, are there particular categories that are getting the most traction?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes. So we've got the list. So you'd think that some are employee-related adds, as we've said before. So in some verticals, we see the construction expense and the vehicle maintenance. And then we see more traditional kinds of AP, like business supplies, business services. So again, it looks like our clients are picking certain kinds of expense categories to use our card in, our offer in, which again is a little bit how we present it to them, that it's an incremental control card and that they can add a certain category but not others to it.

[So back to Bob's question earlier, David, our issue is that AP spend is massive relative to the fuel spend in a lot of our clients. So really, how much do we want to stretch that thing, right? And how much do we want to deepen the relationships? So we're going to wade into the thing slowly and try to get a bunch of clients to buy a little bit more and look at the retention rates that, that yields and report back.:]

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Peter Christiansen with Citibank.

[Peter Christiansen:]

I think in the past, you've talked about the bookings to revenue conversion on the corporate payments side being roughly, I don't know, 18 months or so. In the past, you've mentioned that. Now with the Nvoicepay and the full AP disbursement solution, do you think you have an opportunity to compress that period from bookings to revenue? And then my follow-up would be, I know this business. You could distribute to resellers. Can you give us a sense of is that going to expand? Or you're going to bring more in-house? How do you think the sales production will improve on the corporate payments front with that feature?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes, Peter. It's Ron again. On the question a, I'd say probably no. I think in some ways, the implementation of a full disbursement solution has actually a bit incremental complexity, right, because you're taking 100% of the upload and 100% of the file and doing a little bit of software training and stuff. And so although a lot of it's the same, running through the vendor list and the merchants that take cards and don't, I'd say that no, we're going to get better through process redesign more than we are from having Nvoicepay in this other product, which, by the way, we are working super hard on to your point. If we can compress that even 3 or 6 months, it'll create just what you're saying, mid-term revenue acceleration.

[On the second one, I think we've reported before about 1/3 of our core corporate pay business is through channel partners, resellers and aggregators and the like. And I think we've said right now, we like that a lot because the TAM is in the trillions and we've got a much smaller business. So for certainly, for the mid-term, we like these partnerships that we have. It's a big, big market. People are attacking different size segments. They're attacking different verticals. And so our direct people rarely run into our channel partners. So I'd say you should expect that we'll stay the course, maybe add a few more and then see if the game's any different 3 or 4 years from now.:]

[Operator:]

The next question comes from Ashish Sabadra with Deutsche Bank.

[Ashish Sabadra:]

Let me add my congrats as well on this solid result. Maybe just like more higher strategic level, I just want to talk -- ask you about your digital initiatives. Can you just help explain how the digital initiative that you've implemented over the last year, how that has helped accelerate growth or improve customer service over the -- across all the different products? And then maybe just a follow-up to that would be you have access to so much data and with all the buzz around Big Data, AI and ML. Can you just help us understand how you plan to leverage the information data that you have regarding hundreds of thousands of small businesses?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

Yes, Ashish. It's Ron. So yes, I think we spoke to this point maybe one of the last times that we've talked. And so on the digital front, I'd say a few things. So one is the client UI, so we have made lots of investments both in the design and recently in the conversion of hundreds of thousands of our clients now here and abroad to this new, what we call, simple UI. And so that's made a massive difference in the way the client interacts with us.

[Two, we've done the same thing with new applications. We signed over 30,000 new accounts globally just in the first quarter, and so we put a lot of tech against what we call end-to-end application and implementation, so taking the client right through getting on a website and selling out an app to basically starting and compressing that time and making it all digital.:]

[Three, we've ramped up the digital investments in selling. We're now up to 40% or 45% of all new sales. All new accounts that we acquired in the United States are coming purely through digital. We've completely automated the customer call centers with new screens, where we used to have people in 3 or 4 legacy systems toggling back and forth to try to answer a customer's question, resolve his problem. Now we've got the stuff consolidated with one unified view or a customer service agent can see data from 3 or 4 systems at the same time. So I think we've done -- we don't talk about a lot. It's kind of plumbing stuff, but we've done a lot to make the selling and customer experience and even our servicepeople's lives easier because, obviously, the rest of the world was doing that.:]

[On your second question, I'd say we're kind of nowhere on the Big Data, which is, hey, how do we take this information and repackage it? And I think the early thought that we've got on this is around benchmarking, where we would take certain kinds of information for similar types of clients and maybe, in an anonymous way, serve that data up for benchmarking to help clients understand the pace. Do they approve invoices all automatically? What's the cycle time so that clients could get some feedback as to how they compare to other like companies? So it's not probably super-duper sexy, but that's our first thought of how to take all this information and create some value back to our clients.:]

[Ashish Sabadra:]

That's helpful. Maybe just on the data question, is that an opportunity based on like the insights that you generate from the data that you can help cross-sell different products into the same customer base? For example, now that you have a full stack of AP solution -- full AP solution, is that an opportunity for you to sell full AP solution into your fuel card customer base?

[Ronald F. Clarke:]

That's funny, interesting question. Just walking down to the call this afternoon, I bumped into the guy that runs the beyond fuel thing for our company and was asking him about that. I said, "Hey, of the 5,000 clients now that have used our card programs to buy AP, have we thought about introducing our full AP solution people?" And he said, "I beat you to it, Ron. We had the first call a month ago, served up clients that we want to have them call on to see if they want to continue the transition from fuel to kind of P-Card only, all the way to full AP." So I'd say there's that opportunity. There's looking at what people buy. So if we see our clients are buying a lot of lodging, for example, we can offer them our lodging products.

[So I think we're just starting, Ashish, to look at wiring together the various products. We've built the company in a pretty short period of time here and built it kind of product by product, and now we're stepping back and looking at how we can cross-sell the products to the same clients, like this -- you hear in every business, we use the word beyond fuel and beyond toll and more site acceptance in lodging and so on. Really, what we're doing is just widening the offer and the utility, if you will, to the clients that we've already got. So it's a relatively -- it may seem like a simple thought, but it's a relatively still new thought for the company that we're really just getting started.:]

[Operator:]

This concludes time allocated for the question-and-answer session and also concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your line. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.