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Text: On our call today is our CEO, Hikmet Ersek; our CFO, Raj Agrawal; and Head of Treasury and Investor Relations, Brad Windbigler.
During the call, we will discuss some items that do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
We have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures on our website, westernunion.com, under the Investor Relations section.
We will also discuss certain adjusted metrics.
The expenses that have been excluded from adjusted metrics are specific to certain initiatives, but maybe similar to types of expenses that the company has previously occurred and can reasonably expect to occur in the future.
We weathered COVID-19 better than many companies in 2020, owing to our resilient fundamentals and the foresight behind our leading digital business that had us ready for accelerated demand for digital services.
Before I give you an update about the encouraging first quarter results and share my thoughts about the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and mention that although we do see some modest economic improvement and there are signs of some COVID-19 recovery like in the US, parts of Europe and parts of Asia Pacific due to progress with vaccinations, at the same time, I am saddened by the hard breaking current situation in countries like India, Brazil and many others.
Our thoughts are with all of the people who are currently navigating this challenging situation.
The recent outbreaks in many countries show us that as a global community, we still have work to do in the fight against the virus.
However, at the same time, I am hopeful and I know that all my colleagues and all our partners in more than 200 countries, we will do their best to recover from the virus as soon as possible.
Back to our business.
The conditions were fairly stable in the first quarter.
I am pleased that trends for our business improved over the quarter and held up well in April, giving us confidence to push forward with an ambitious agenda and reaffirm 2021 financial targets on an adjusted basis.
Raj will discuss our outlook in more detail in a few minutes.
With that, let's review business highlights for the quarter.
Starting with the big picture, our cross-border consumer-to-consumer or C2C business grew principal 28%, which was the highest quarterly growth in years and the third consecutive quarter with growth over 20%.
This really shows the momentum we are seeing today, especially when compared to forecast from third parties projecting modest growth or even declines in principals for 2021.
Total company revenue grew 2% on a constant currency basis, around a 300 basis points increase from declines in the third and fourth quarter of last year.
C2C revenues and transactions grew 4% and 9%, respectively, and both digital and retail revenue trends improved sequentially.
Digital performed exceptionally well again.
Revenues were up from the fourth quarter and grew 45% year-over-year to over $240 million, putting us on target to exceed $1 billion in 2021.
Digital comprised 34% of transactions and 23% of revenues for the C2C segment and was a key source of new customers and incremental profit.
Wu.com delivered impressive results and shows the potential we see as a foundation for a consumer ecosystem.
This is the fourth consecutive quarter of transaction growth of 50% or more and average monthly active users growth of over 40%.
Wu.com led money transfer peers in mobile app downloads by a wide margin and grew principal 78% off of an already large base, which we believe is well ahead of the market.
Our customer engagement efforts also appear to be paying off with favorable trends in retention, transaction per customer and principal per customer.
Digital partnerships revenue more than doubled year-over-year, and it has exceeded our expectation over the past 18 months since we announced it in late 2019.
We continue to have more encouraging developments in the pipeline.
Retail trends improved sequentially from the fourth quarter to the first quarter, despite the effects of additional rates of COVID-19.
While the business is not back to pre-pandemic levels yet, it has demonstrated resilience and we expect continued improvement to the rest of the year, assuming the pandemic and global economy doesn't worsen.
Our business solution trends also improved.
We made progress on key initiatives, including launching our payment solutions in Spain and implementing technology upgrades that will allow us to add differentiated solutions and capabilities.
We are optimistic that the business will continue to rebound over the course of the year.
Shifting to an update on operating and strategic objectives during this quarter.
Starting with wu.com, we continue to invest in consumer acquisition and marketing, which drove 46% growth in average monthly active users for the first quarter.
On the branding side, we launched one of our highest-rated television campaigns in recent years, send more than money, which future wu.com.
We also made progress on a number of product initiatives to improve our customer experience, faster registration, better web page performance and enhanced visibility into transaction status.
We achieved an important platform milestone by completing a major phase of our multiyear settlement transformation project.
We also advanced a number of initiatives that will make us more nimble and efficient like cloud migration and adding artificial intelligence and machine learning into processes to reduce project run times and enhance analytics.
Moving on to our global network.
The team has done a great job optimizing commission costs while still enhancing the quality of our global payments distribution capabilities.
During the quarter, we renewed agreements with 34 existing agents and added 41 new agents with favorable terms.
Over 50% of our global account payout transaction volume was delivered real time.
Our launch with Walmart is off to a good start, and we look forward to getting all 4,700 US locations up and running in the second quarter.
To wrap up the first quarter discussion, despite ongoing challenges from the pandemic, we are off to an encouraging start with financial and operating performance on course with our expectations for 2021.
Given the strong customer trends, we have seen over the last year in our C2C business, including almost 9 million wu.com annual active users in 2020, the agenda for the rest of 2021 is largely centered around enhancing the customer experience.
Convenience, reliability and speed are fundamental for a good customer experience in payments, which makes a high-quality network important.
On the digital side, we can reach billions of accounts today, but we are expanding access to even more accounts with new partnerships.
Speed is increasingly valued by customers, and we already have one of the broadest real-time cross-border payment networks in the industry.
So the focus this year is making it more robust by adding additional direct third-party relationships and multiple partners in markets.
Our retail distribution will continue to benefit from ongoing agent optimization, upgrading the caliber of agents and filling in gaps in distribution.
Platform initiatives for 2021 include upgrading and modernizing technology, incorporating cutting-edge solutions and bolstering our executive talent.
This will enhance customer experience in a number of ways, such as better processing speed and enabling more innovation.
Ultimately, we are working toward building a best-in-class tax stack that can support the range of cross-border use cases, including C2C, C2B, B2C and B2B and serve as a foundation for ecosystems.
I'm really excited about the slate of product initiatives this year that can be impactful for customer experience.
A few examples include improving the functionality of our mobile app advancing dynamic pricing, revamping our customer loyalty program and the pilot in Europe with our Western Union International Bank later this year, extending our offerings to a wider set of financial services.
Given the customer-centric agenda we have for 2021, I think it makes sense to discuss why we are so optimistic about the long-term prospects of serving our core customer segment, the global migrant community.
Let me start by saying, we are extremely proud and privileged to serve the global migrant community and we are honored that they trust Western Union with one of the most important financial aspects of their lives, supporting loved ones in home countries.
As highlighted in our ESG reports for 2018, 2019 and our 2020 report coming in June, we are proud of the contribution our business mix around the world by promoting economic growth and prosperity for the people we serve.
Our purpose underpins our market position and strategy, and we believe our business offers strong potential value creation for all stakeholders.
First, the migrant and their loved ones is a large customer segment for Western Union.
According to the United Nations, there are more than 270 million migrant residents globally and many of them send remittances.
Factoring in remittance, recipients in home country, who also use our services and desire more options for financial services could more than double the potential customer base to over 0.5 billion people.
Second, migrants are a growing, hardworking and upwardly mobile group.
They are expected to drive a significant share of future population growth in higher-income countries and have above-average labor participation rates, higher rates of entrepreneurship and contribute significantly to innovation.
The third and final point, migrants have significant spending power.
According to our 2019 new American economy study, migrants represented $1.3 trillion of spending power in the US alone.
And obviously, globally, this amount is even higher.
To summarize, we believe migrants and their families and loved ones are special group of people that have an important role in societies and economies around the world.
Serving our customers' needs is a good business that offers Western Union organic growth and opportunity to expand into new services.
On top of this, in cross-border expertise and capabilities we gain through serving our core customer segments enables us to offer our cross-border platform for financial institutions and other third parties, extending our market opportunity beyond our own Western Union consumer services.
In closing, I'm pleased with the direction of our business.
Based on what we see internally and in the market, we are confident in the strategy and plan for the year, and we are off to a good start.
Moving to first quarter results.
Revenue of $1.2 billion increased 2% on both a reported and constant currency basis.
Currency translation net of the impact from hedges had a limited impact on first quarter revenues.
In the C2C segment, revenue increased 4% on a reported basis or 2% constant currency with transaction growth partially offset by mix.
B2C transactions grew 9% for the quarter, led by 77% transaction growth in digital money transfer.
Retail money transfer transactions were down in the quarter, but the business continued to move in the right direction with trends improving sequentially from the fourth quarter.
The mix impact from the high growth of digital white label partnerships and account-to-account digital transactions both lower revenue per transaction or RPT, continued to contribute to a spread between C2C transaction and revenue growth in the quarter.
We do expect this gap to moderate over the next three quarters.
Total C2C cross-border principal increased 28% on a reported basis or 26% constant currency, driven by growth in digital money transfer and retail.
Total C2C principal per transaction or PPT was up 15% or 12% constant currency led by retail and wu.com.
Evolving business mix, coupled with changes in consumer behavior, more widely contributed to a higher PPT.
Digital money transfer revenues, which include wu.com and digital partnerships, increased 45% on a reported basis or 44% constant currency.
Similar to the broader C2C business, the mix impact from digital white label partnerships and account-to-account digital transactions contributed to a spread between transactions and revenue growth.
And from our vantage point, the pricing environment in the digital market remains constructive.
As Hikmet mentioned, wu.com had another very strong quarter.
Revenue grew 38% or 37% constant currency on transaction growth of 55%.
Cross-border revenue was up 49% in the quarter.
PPT trends were impressive, and we saw continued double-digit growth.
Digital partnerships, transactions and revenues more than doubled in the quarter.
As you may recall, the business experienced a step-up in transactions in the second quarter of 2020 with the initial global wave of COVID-19, and then another step-up for the second half of 2020.
This strong prior year growth is expected to cause a moderation in growth over the rest of 2021.
Moving to the regional results.
North America revenue was flat on a reported basis or increased 1% constant currency on transaction growth of 1%.
The increase in constant currency revenue and transaction growth was driven by US outbound, partially offset by declines in US domestic money transfer and Cuba where current US regulations limit our ability to operate.
Revenue in the Europe and CIS region increased 8% on a reported basis or 4% constant currency on transaction growth of 28%.
Constant currency revenue growth was led by France and Russia.
Growth in Russia was driven by the incremental digital white label business, which continued to contribute to a spread between transaction in constant currency growth.
Revenue in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region increased 1% on a reported basis or was flat constant currency while transactions grew 13%.
Qatar had solid constant currency revenue growth in the quarter, while the United Arab Emirates continued to experience soft trends.
Incremental digital white label business in Saudi Arabia was the primary driver of the spread between transaction growth and constant currency revenue growth.
Revenue growth in the Latin America and Caribbean region continued to improve sequentially and was up 3% or 8% constant currency on transaction declines of 8%.
The constant currency revenue growth was driven by a broad increase in principal across the region with higher PPT driving the spread between constant currency revenue growth and transaction growth in the quarter.
Revenue in the APAC region increased 9% on a reported basis or 3% constant currency, led by strength in Australia.
Transactions declined 2%, primarily driven by the Philippines domestic business, which has limited impact on revenue.
Business Solutions revenue decreased 2% on a reported basis or 8% constant currency as COVID-19 continue to impact certain verticals and hedging activity.
However, revenue trends continue to improve sequentially, and we expect will remain on an improving trajectory for the remainder of the year with a broader recovery in cross-border trade.
The segment represented 8% of company revenues in the quarter.
Other revenues represented 5% of total company revenues and declined 18% in the quarter.
Other revenues primarily consist of retail bill payments in the US and Argentina and retail money orders.
The revenue decline was due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19 and the depreciation of the Argentine peso.
Turning to margins and profitability.
Consolidated operating margin in the quarter was 19.2% compared to the prior year period margin of 19.6% on a GAAP basis and 20.5% on an adjusted basis, which excluded costs related to our restructuring program.
The decrease in the operating margin primarily reflects how COVID-19 impacted the level and timing of certain expenses and investments in 2021 compared to 2020, including investments in strategic initiatives and marketing and compensation-related expenses, partially offset by changes in FX.
Foreign exchange hedges had a negative impact of $4 million on operating profit in the quarter and a benefit of $10 million in the prior year period.
Moving to segment margins.
Note that segment margins exclude last year's restructuring charges.
B2C operating margin was 19.6% compared to 20.7% in the prior year period.
Given that our C2C segment comprises almost 90% of total company operating income, the decrease in operating margin was driven by the same factors that impacted total company margin.
Business Solutions operating margin was 13.1% in the quarter compared to 14.1% in the prior year period.
The decline in operating margin was primarily due to an increase in compensation-related expenses.
Other operating margin was 22.6% compared to 26.1% in the prior year period, with the decline primarily due to lower revenue.
The effective tax rate in the quarter was 10.4% compared to a 12.5% effective tax rate on both a GAAP and adjusted basis in the prior year period.
The decrease in the company's effective tax rate was due to changes in composition between higher tax and lower tax foreign earnings and an increase in discrete tax benefits.
Earnings per share or earnings per share was $0.44 compared to the prior year period GAAP earnings per share of $0.42 and adjusted earnings per share of $0.44.
Year-over-year comparisons of earnings per share in the quarter reflects benefits of revenue growth, a lower effective tax rate and share repurchases, offset by increased investments in strategic initiatives and marketing and compensation-related expenses.
Turning to our cash flow and balance sheet.
Cash flow from operating activities in the first quarter was $176 million.
Capital expenditures in the quarter were approximately $97 million driven by agent signing bonuses and should be in a normal range for the full year.
At the end of the quarter, we had cash of $1.5 billion and debt of $3.2 billion.
During the quarter, we took advantage of historically low interest rates to issue new notes.
Proceeds were used to prepay a portion of the term loan in the first quarter, and we repaid our notes due in 2022 in early April.
We returned $172 million to shareholders in the first quarter consisting of $97 million of dividends and $75 million in share repurchases.
The outstanding share count at quarter end was 410 million shares.
And we had $708 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization, which expires in December of this year.
We are also on track to achieve our digital revenue target exceeding $1 billion.
The increase in GAAP earnings per share reflects the sale of an investment, partially offset by expenses related to the early retirement of the company's notes due in 2022.
Both of these items will be reflected in second quarter results.
Excluding the impact of these two items, the 2021 earnings per share outlook would be unchanged, which we have reflected with an adjusted earnings per share outlook.
Note that our outlook assumes no material worsening in current global macroeconomic conditions or the COVID-19 pandemic.
We expect full year 2021 revenues will grow mid to high single-digits on a GAAP basis or mid single-digits on a constant currency basis, which also excludes the impact of Argentina inflation.
Operating margin is expected to be approximately 21.5%, reflecting revenue growth and benefits from our three year productivity program that we expect to generate approximately $150 million of annual savings by the end of 2022, partially offset by higher operating expenses and investments in strategic initiatives.
We expect our effective tax rate will be in the mid-teens range on a GAAP and adjusted basis.
GAAP earnings per share for the year is now expected to be in a range of $2.06 to $2.16, including approximately a $0.06 net benefit in other income on an investment sale and debt retirement expenses that occurred early in the second quarter of 2021.
Adjusted EPS, which excludes those items, is expected to be in a range of $2 to $2.10.
Given the variability that COVID-19 caused on quarterly results, I will provide some context for how we think results may progress over the remainder of the year.
Note that our underlying assumptions include no material worsening in the effects of the pandemic and moderate improvement in global macro environment as the quarters progress.
Starting with revenue, we saw continued positive momentum in April.
And for the second quarter, we expect to see the strongest year-over-year growth rate as we cycle over the largest quarterly decline at the prior year.
For the third and fourth quarter of 2021, given the stability we had in the back half of last year, we expect general stability and trends and similar year-over-year growth rates.
Keep in mind that as a result of COVID-19, our digital business delivered exceptional growth from the second quarter onward in 2020.
So growth rates this year should moderate somewhat for the remainder of, 2021.
Although, we still expect to generate more than $1 billion in digital money transfer revenues this year.
Our retail business experienced a significant decline in the second quarter of 2020.
And while it began to come back quickly, we expect recovery will occur gradually.
As a result, we expect retail will generate growth in 2021.
The Business Solutions segment and other revenues were adversely impacted by COVID-19 in 2020.
So we expect that those businesses will continue to rebound this year.
Moving on to margin.
Based on our current view, we expect that second quarter margin will be below the full year margin outlook, while the back half of the year will be above the full year margin outlook.
To wrap up, we are off to a solid start to the year, optimistic that the macro environment will remain constructive, confident in our competitive position and underlying fundamentals.
And we are enthusiastic that our strategic agenda for the year will position us to realize the significant opportunities we see for our business over the next few years and beyond.
And operator, we are now ready to take questions.

user
western union q1 earnings per share $0.44.
q1 earnings per share $0.44.
q1 revenue rose 2 percent to $1.2 billion.
q4 adjusted earnings per share $0.44.
reaffirms 2021 financial outlook for revenue and margin; raises gaap earnings per share to $2.06 - $2.16.
qtrly consumer-to-consumer (c2c) transactions increased 9%, while revenues increased 4% on a reported basis, or 2% constant currency.
sees 2021 adjusted earnings per share in a range of $2.00 - $2.10.

assistant