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Text: Following the prepared comments, the operator will announce that queue will open for the Q&A session.
This information is not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than non-GAAP information at other companies.
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So up-front here, I'd like to run through four subjects: first, I'll give you my take on our Q3 results along with the rest of your outlook; second, take you into a bit deeper dive into our sales results; third, give you an update on the three acquisitions that we've completed year-to-date; and then lastly, an early preview of 2022 and beyond.
So let me make the turn to our Q3 results.
We reported Q3 revenue of $755 million, up 29% and cash earnings per share of $3.52, up 25%, so both of those all-time record highs for the company.
Also, the Q3 results annualized, finally above $3 billion, so past the $3 billion mark in revenue and $14 in cash EPS.
Organic revenue for the quarter, up 17%.
And inside of that, Corporate Payments business grew 22% organically.
The trends in Q3 are quite good.
Sales finishing at record levels, up over 50% versus Q3 last year and over 30% against the baseline of Q3 '19.
Retention, steady as she goes at 93% for the quarter.
And again, our global fuel card business inside of that also coming at 93%.
Same-store sales strengthened plus 5% for the quarter, which further adds to the same-store sales rebound we saw in Q2.
Credit losses low again at three basis points, continuing to run below historic levels.
You may notice our tax rate kind of four points higher than last year.
That did shave about $0.20 off the $3.52 that we reported for the quarter.
So look, overall, kind of pretty pleased with the quarter.
So in terms of rest of the year, we're raising guidance today.
So revenue guidance at the midpoint now, $2.795 billion, that's up $30 million from August.
Cash earnings per share at the midpoint to $13.05, that's up $0.15 from August.
This raise versus last time reflects, obviously, these Q3 results are beat the ALE acquisition, which closed September one and a bit more favorable fuel prices, all of those offset just a bit by slower-than-planned COVID recovery.
If you look at the Q4 on its own, it anticipates revenue and profit growth up about 20% versus Q4 last year and about 10% against Q4 2019.
Let me make the transition into a bit deeper dive into our sales results.
So as I mentioned, new sales or bookings reached record levels in the quarter and are up sequentially, significantly and up dramatically over the prior periods.
So as I'm sure you're aware, sales reflect the market demand for our solutions but are also really the best leading indicator of future prospects.
And so crazy record this quarter.
We signed up almost 50,000 new business clients globally in Q3.
So 50,000 new accounts joined the fold, so a record.
Over 50% of all of our global fuel card sales now come to us through our digital channels.
So great because it's very low cost.
We continue to increase our digital advertising spend, and we're enjoying record levels of prospects visiting our websites.
Interest in EV solutions increasing, so a number of large accounts signing on to our EV solution.
So that included Hertz, Volkswagen USA, Union Pacific, LeasePlan Europe and Siemens.
Brazil toll sales rocked in the quarter.
Our urban sales or kind of the city dwellers that are lower frequency toll users represented 23% of all new sales in the quarter.
So programs, whatever, two or three years old now, almost a quarter.
And the active tags for the quarter reached a new milestone, six million, so six million active paying tags now in Brazil.
We are planning to launch our new bank JV this month with the largest bank in Brazil, who will be helping to promote our products.
We don't talk about it much, but our customer acquisition cost is really quite attractive, runs about 65% of the sales new revenue, so really super important for profitable growth.
So let me shift gears and talk a little bit about the three acquisitions that we've closed year-to-date and how they're doing.
So Roger, first up.
We've now rebranded Roger to be Corpay One, which is our entry into the Corporate Payments SMB space.
So we're underway now adding new SMB bill pay clients through digital channels and accounting channels, and have some early returns on cross-selling bill pay into our fuel card base.
So super early, but it looks like about 10% of our fuel card clients that pay their bills with our new Corpay One platform are choosing to pay a second non-fleet Cor bill with us, so effectively becoming bill pay customers.
We're looking at somewhere around 10,000 to 20,000 SMB bill pay clients coming online in 2022.
And also interesting, we plan to launch what we call our 2-in-1 solution before year-end that will combine our smart business cards with our bill pay platform into one interface.
So an SMB client could potentially pay all of their nonpayroll expenses with us on a single platform.
Second deal this year, AFEX, which is a cross-border provide, very similar to our Cambridge business.
Super performance in '21.
Pro forma revenue growing mid-teens.
EBITDA up almost 50% versus prior year.
Well along on integration, we've already combined the management teams into one group, and are about halfway through migrating the AFEX customers onto the Cambridge IT platform.
So I hope to retire most of the AFEX IT system by year-end.
Last deal up is ALE.
That's the lodging extension for the insurance vertical.
It helps homeowner insurance place policyholders into hotels and temporary housing.
So we closed at September one about 3.5 million incremental annual hotel rooms, will be added to our lodging business.
Underway with the synergy work.
And early view is about $0.20 accretive to 2022.
So, so far, so good really across all three transactions this year.
So lastly, let me share our view, early view of 2022, and speak a little bit to the beyond '22 prospects for the company.
So for next year, encouraged by a few things.
First, the run rate, we're exiting '21 with about $3 billion of annualized revenue and $14 of cash EPS.
So nose of the plane is up.
Sales again, running at record levels, which will drive incremental revenue into '22.
We also expect sales to grow again next year about 20%.
Macro is on our side, helping us.
Obviously, fuel prices are high.
FX is generally holding, so setting up well there.
And then I mentioned the acquisitions, particularly AFEX and ALE, together contributing probably about $0.50 of incremental accretion next year.
So look, taken together, the early 2022 set up is quite good.
If we look just a little farther out into the midterm, we're kind of also encouraged there for a couple of reasons.
So first, we've expanded, via our Beyond strategy, the market segments or the served market segments in each of our five major lines of business.
So that's laid out on, I think, page 14 of the earnings supplement.
So for example, in Corpay, our Corporate Payments business, we've added cloud-based AP solutions to our original virtual card business.
So we did that a couple of years ago in the middle market with Nvoicepay, and then obviously, this year, in the SMB market with Roger.
So look, much, much better positioned now to attack the Corporate Payments TAM.
And then again, if you look at our lodging business initially focused only on workforce or blue collar travelers going to economy hotels.
Since we've added two new segments, the airline crew business and now the insurance policyholder business of the fold, that really triples the opportunity in terms of room nights for the lodging business.
A second thing is we're on a path, as I mentioned, to combine our card business with our payables business into a single platform, which would do two things: first, give us differentiation in the marketplace, where we can help clients pay all their nonpayroll expenses with us, both walk-around purchases and supplier payables from a single account; and second, could help us turn our fuel card business into a Corporate Payments business by cross-selling our bill pay services to our hundreds of thousands of fuel card clients.
So as I mentioned, underway there.
So look, the combination of expanding our served market segments in our existing five businesses along with this idea of joining up our cards and bill pay onto a single platform is encouraging for us.
So look, in closing, just a few final wrap-up thoughts.
So again, a really good quarter, record revenue and profits for Q3, good trends, same-store sales up -- sales -- new sales up and retention steady, again, record sales and very attractive cost of acquisition of new accounts.
three acquisitions on track against our thesis, and our early '22 set up attractive.
So look, all-in-all, it feels like we're in a pretty good place.
I'm delighted to share with you some more color on a very solid clean quarter.
For Q3 of 2021, we reported revenue of $755 million, up 29%; GAAP net income of $234 million, up 24%; and GAAP net income per diluted share of $2.80, up 28%.
Adjusted net income for the quarter, or ANI, increased 22% to $294 million or roughly $1.2 billion annualized.
ANI per diluted share increased 25% to $3.52.
Organic revenue growth was 17%, driven by continued strong sales, solid retention levels and same-store sales recovery.
Looking at organic growth across product categories.
Corporate Payments was up 22% in the third quarter, highlighted by full AP, which grew over 50% again this quarter.
Corpay One, our small business-focused full AP offering, grew 78%.
So our full AP solutions continue to sell well in the market.
Cross-border revenue was up 19%, which showed some softness from the lockdowns down under in Australia.
We do believe much of this softness is recoverable, but the timing is hard to predict.
The AFEX integration is progressing quite well, and we've converted more than half of its customers onto our existing cross-border payment systems.
We expect to convert the remaining customers before year-end.
And within B2B, a lot of attention has been paid to new small entrants, several of which we enable with our partner program using our best-in-class virtual card.
The partners we enable own the customer relationship, do the marketing and take the credit risk, so they keep most of the economics.
We're more of a processor to them.
So our take rate is meaningfully lower than when we go direct to customers, which is really where we tend to focus most of our sales and marketing efforts.
So while these partners drive some volume growth, they still only represent about 13% of our Corporate Payments revenue.
Fuel was up organically 13% year-over-year, with strong retention trends and record digital sales continuing to drive the performance.
We're seeing some softness in same-store sales as Australia, New Zealand and parts of Continental Europe are still grappling with COVID-related lockdowns, and over-the-road trucking is facing the driver supply shortage that's been all over the news.
But despite these headwinds, our fuel businesses continued to grow in every geography as a result of our sales efforts and strong retention rates.
Tolls was up 14% compared with last year and showed impressive performance again this quarter, growing to above six million total tag holders, with five million consumer tags and one million business tags.
Now just for context, the business had approximately 4.5 million total tag holders when we acquired it back in 2016.
Economic and business activity has returned to relatively normal levels in Brazil, which has increased customer mobility and sales traffic through retail and toll locations, helping us to achieve record Q3 sales.
Lodging was particularly strong, up 40%, with airline lodging up 61% on the back of the recovery in domestic air travel.
We hope to see more recovery in international airline lodging as borders reopen.
Gift organic growth was 25% year-over-year, benefiting from continued retailer embrace of the online sales channel.
Now looking further down the income statement.
Operating expenses were up 30% to $417 million and were 55% of revenue, stable with last year.
The increase was primarily due to higher levels of business activity, the effect of currency translation impact on international expenses and acquisitions.
Interest expense decreased 7% to $29 million, primarily due to higher interest income earned on cash balances and lower LIBOR rates more than offsetting higher debt and securitization balances.
As Ron mentioned, our effective tax rate for the third quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 24.1%.
This was due to fewer stock option exercises during the quarter likely due to the low share price, which resulted in minimal excess tax benefits.
We currently expect our tax rate in Q4 to be back within our full year guidance range.
Now turning to the balance sheet.
We ended the quarter with $1.3 billion of unrestricted cash, and we also had approximately $650 million of undrawn availability on our revolver.
In total, we had $4.6 billion outstanding on our credit facilities and $1.1 billion borrowed on our securitization facility.
As of September 30, our leverage ratio was 2.76 times trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, as calculated in accordance with our credit agreement.
We used $406 million to repurchase approximately 1.6 million shares during the quarter at an average price of $260 per share.
We still have $1.18 billion of share buyback capacity in our program.
So far this year, we've bought back 3.1 million shares and we've closed three deals, putting $1.7 billion of capital to work.
On top of that, we still have low leverage and ample liquidity for additional deals and/or buybacks, clearly demonstrating the earnings power and attractiveness of our high-margin, high-cash flow business.
I would also like to mention that we expect to publish our latest ESG report to our Investor Relations website within the next few weeks, and we'd be happy to take your feedback on our ESG efforts after you've had a chance to review that report.

user
q3 adjusted earnings per share $3.52.
q3 revenue rose 29 percent to $755.5 million.
sees fy earnings per share $13.05.
q3 earnings per share $2.80.

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