Payfare Q3 2024 Earnings Report

Payfare EPS Results

• Actual EPS: C$0.13
• Consensus EPS: C$0.16
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -C$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: C$0.16

Payfare Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Payfare Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2024
• Date: 11/6/2024
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, November 6, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 6:30PM ET

Payfare (TSE:PAY) Inc is a global fintech company offering mobile banking, instant payment, and loyalty-reward solutions. Its financial technology platform is providing financial inclusion and empowerment to next-generation workers around the globe with a full-service mobile bank account and debit card with instant access to their earnings and relevant cash-back rewards. Some brands that use Payfare include Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash. Its geographical segments are Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Payfare Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Payfair announced that DoorDash will not renew the Dasher Direct contract, though the current agreement remains in effect until early 2025 and transition terms are under discussion.
• The Board has launched a strategic review to address concentration risk by exploring acquisitions, strategic investments, commercial partnerships and potential sales of business segments.
• Payfair’s business development pipeline includes two late-stage U.S. gig economy RFPs and a third early-stage RFP, with any combination of two expected to fully offset the lost GDV from DoorDash once ramped.
• In Q3, Payfair initiated a pilot for its Earned Wage Access product with ADP in Canada, targeting approximately 4 million employees, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks.
• For fiscal 2025, Payfair expects $50 – $60 million in revenue from existing programs excluding DoorDash, plans to right-size G&A to match revenue, and maintains a strong balance sheet with over CAD 100 million in cash and equivalents.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Payfare's 2024 Q3 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. With pre-qualified analysts on the call, instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star zero for the operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Cihan Tuncay, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

[Cihan Tuncay, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Payfare]

Thank you, Operator, and good evening, everyone. Joining me on the call today is Marco Margiotta, Payfare's CEO and founding partner, and Charles Park, Payfare's CFO. Payfare would like to note that the company's remarks and answers to your questions today may contain forward-looking statements that are based upon management's current expectations. All such statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of and are intended to be forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. When relying on forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to the company, you should carefully consider the risks set forth in the risk factors section in the annual MD&A for the year ended December 31st, 2023, which is available on www.sedar.com. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, the company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information.

[Cihan Tuncay, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development at Payfare]

We would also like to remind listeners that Payfare uses certain Non-GAAP and supplementary financial measures to arrive at adjusted results to assess its business and to measure overall performance. Payfare believes that these financial measures provide readers with a better understanding of how management views the company's overall performance. Throughout the call, we will also refer to a slide deck which is posted on our website, corp.payfare.com/investors. I will now turn the call over to Marco for an update on Payfare's business.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Thanks, Cihan. Good evening, everyone. First, I would like to address the DoorDash non-renewal. The outcome is, of course, disappointing for all Payfare stakeholders. I want everyone to know that we did absolutely everything we could to extend the contract. We offered all of the same product enhancements launched in our other programs, including credit, savings accounts, and other financial and wellness benefits. To be clear, the outcome was not a function of program economics. We would have considered and accommodated any such request. We also know that DasherDirect has been incredibly successful, with penetration levels approaching 60% of active Dashers and being consistently ranked top financial services app in America, according to UnitQ. The details of their new product have recently been announced publicly. Dashers have also made their opinions known on social media.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Based on what has been announced and taking into account user feedback, we continue to believe DasherDirect is a superior product. Ultimately, DoorDash wants to take the product in a completely different strategic direction. We thank DoorDash for its partnership over the past four years and wish them success in the future. Having said this, DoorDash and Payfare have not yet agreed to transition terms, and the existing agreement, expiring in early 2025, remains in effect. We will continue to pursue the best outcome for Payfare stakeholders. Given the sensitive nature of these discussions, we are not able to address any questions related to transition negotiations. Following the DoorDash non-renewal announcement and the impact of the share price, the Board of Directors agreed to launch a strategic review process that was the best course of action to chart the path forward for Payfare.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

We like the gig economy space, and there are significant new opportunities in our pipeline, but there are only so many potential customers in that space. The concentration risk may continue to be an overhang on our business. The ultimate goal of the strategic review process is to diversify our revenue streams, all options being reviewed, including acquisitions, strategic investments, commercial partnerships, and a sale of the business. Following the announcement, we have had a significant amount of inbound and outbound interest. We are working through all possible options with our advisors, KBW, and will update the market accordingly if there is something to share. Given the confidentiality of these discussions at this stage, we are not able to take questions on the strategic review process. Looking ahead, our business development pipeline remains active. As previously discussed, there were two significant U.S.-based gig economy opportunities under review.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

These have progressed to technical, operational, and commercial due diligence. During the Q3, we were also invited to participate in a third new RFP process. We believe any combination of two of the three pipeline opportunities could offset the lost DasherDirect GDV on a full-run basis. On ADP, we have launched our pilot earned wage access product to offer EWA T4 employees in Canada. This is a significant opportunity with ADP processing payroll for approximately four million Canadians. We will provide more detail on the rollout of our EWA offering in the coming weeks. Our program with Lyft and Uber continues to achieve record activity levels. As a reminder, we announced long-term extensions for both these programs earlier this year, and the associated cash flows from these programs are expected for the years ahead.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

For Lyft, we also announced new value-added product enhancements to Lyft Direct, including Balance Protection, Lyft Direct Savings, and more. Active Lyft Direct users have increased more than 50% year to date, demonstrating the ongoing success of the programs. Users on Payfare's Uber Pro Card program have increased by more than five times compared to the legacy program that was replaced by Uber Pro earlier this year. I will now pass the call over to Charles for a financial outlook.

[Charles Park, CFO at Payfare]

Thanks, Marco, and good evening, everyone. With respect to our financial outlook for 2025, we have visibility to achieve CAD 50 to 60 million in revenue on our existing programs, excluding any contribution from DoorDash. As Marco mentioned, the discussions with DoorDash are still fluid, and we expect DasherDirect to continue contributing to revenue at a minimum through the end of the term of the existing contract, which expires in early 2025. With respect to cost savings, we are in a position to right-size our G&A expenses to match the revenue profile of our ongoing business. This is entirely within our control and dependent upon visibility of the pipeline opportunities that Marco discussed.

[Charles Park, CFO at Payfare]

In an extreme conservative scenario, if all of those pipeline opportunities are pushed out to future periods, we have leverage to pull on OPEX cost savings to operate the business at adjusted EBITDA per dividend and profitability growth, as penetration of Uber Pro and Lyft Direct expands in future periods. Our balance sheet remains as strong as ever to facilitate a transition period for our business. As of September 30th, 2024, Payfare has over CAD 100 million in cash, cash equivalents, and guaranteed investment certificates. We do not expect any significant changes to our liquidity position going forward, considering the ongoing contribution of DasherDirect through sometime in Q1 2025 and the timing of OPEX cost saving initiatives as we get visibility in our business development pipeline. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Your first question comes from the line of Adhir Kadve from Eight Capital. Your line is now open.

[Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital]

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I fully appreciate that you won't be taking any questions on DoorDash. So maybe I'll just ask on Marco's final comments there in his prepared remarks on the new RFP process and any combo of those two offsetting the loss of GDV from DoorDash. Can you give us a sense of timeline as to when those programs would be potentially announced, or kind of give us a little bit more granularity on where you are in the RFP process and ultimately, of course, when an announcement could potentially come out?

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Hey, Adhir. Thanks for the question. I would say, in terms of a definitive agreement, we're probably looking at late Q4, very early Q1, if that's the stage it gets to. We are very late stage. We're doing technical and other forms of diligence as part of that process. Those are later stage. Those have been around for quite some time. There's a third RFP that we mentioned that we're in the mix for. That one's much earlier stage, but could equally be in a definitive agreement stage, maybe mid-Q1.

[Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital]

Okay. Excellent. And then what would you have to, I guess, see from these three programs in order to give you a sense of the level of investment that you will have to make, or do you guys kind of already have a lot of good visibility on that? I guess what I'm wondering is, let's say, by the Q4 call in March, let's say, of 2025, will you have visibility on what you would be spending on for fiscal 2025 and beyond?

[Charles Park, CFO at Payfare]

Yeah. Adhir, it's Charles. I can answer that. If you're talking about the ramp-up costs for the programs, we have a pretty good history in terms of ramping large programs. So we would have a general visibility into that, just knowing what the parameters are of the programs that Marco mentioned or kind of highlighted. If you're referring to kind of more on the OPEX side and right-sizing, that will have clear visibility into as well, depending on the timing of the different programs or at what stage we're on in that pipeline. So I don't know if I've answered your question, but if I haven't, you can just maybe clarify, and I'll try to be more specific to it as well.

[Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital]

No, I think that was good, Charles. I guess maybe then I'll ask the question a different way. Was there a level of investment that you intended on making for the DoorDash program next year that you can potentially see falling off? Just using your Q2 numbers, you had approximately a run rate of called $40 million in OPEX. What portion of that, I guess, were you intending on spending towards the DoorDash program? Because I guess that's the one thing that we can kind of talk about that may not be continuing next year that you know could definitively drop off at this point right now.

[Charles Park, CFO at Payfare]

Yeah. So for that specific question, Adhir, I would say that we spend roughly $5 to 6 million a year kind of in capital and tangible assets and capitalized labor. Most of the work, if any, would have come in the form of capitalized labor that's capitalizing our intangible assets and kind of amortized over a two-year time period. So it would have kind of been in that kind of ballpark high level, but that would have been combined with some of the other programs that we were looking to onboard. I believe if we were to have extended the agreement with DoorDash, though, there probably would have been changed to kind of more the OPEX economics. That would have just flowed through on a quarterly basis as opposed to kind of a lump sum amount.

[Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital]

Okay. Got it. And then last question, and I'll pass the line, guys, is just, I guess, on the ADP ramp, do you guys still kind of continue to see the program ramping here in Q4 and through fiscal 2025, or is there any update to that timeline?

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

I could take that. So I would say the path is still what we had highlighted earlier, which was Q4, nothing meaningful. It's still going to be much more of a trial period, if you will, with much more activity coming Q1 and Q2 and forward from there. But I wouldn't expect anything material to transpire in Q4 from the ADP side of things.

[Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital]

Great. Thanks, guys. I'll pass the line.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Vafi from Canaccord. Your line is now open.

[Joseph Vafi, Managing Director of Equity Research at Canaccord]

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. And once again, sorry about the DoorDash contract. I know you guys worked really hard on it. On these new logos, just maybe just one other follow-up from the previous questions. Are there existing providers in there right now, or are these kind of, and are they gig, or are they kind of more T4, W-2 opportunities? Just trying to frame where they may be coming from in terms of what they already have in place. And then I have a quick follow-up.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Hey, Joe. Marco, thanks for the question. The two that are late stage are in the gig space, like we had mentioned. There is another one that just came in that's not gig. But for the two that are, a little bit different in each scenario, one of them has more of a program that's out in market, probably with not the success that they expect, just given all the numbers and metrics that we could produce and have produced since we've pioneered the space. And so that word is getting out there. We've had a ton of success.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

It's not only just a function of what we did for DoorDash, but even with the more recent success with what we have with our two other clients, the numbers we highlighted there, we think we'll get to those levels and beyond at some point in terms of penetration levels for those programs. But to stick to the question you had asked, the penetration rates that we would expect under our ecosystem and our offering would be substantially different than what these two gig players have in the market today.

[Joseph Vafi, Managing Director of Equity Research at Canaccord]

Got it. Thanks for that color, Marco. And I know you're undergoing a strategic review and obviously can't talk about that, but if you come out the other side and indeed you're still cranking away, are you? I know you had your Paid app, your kind of product into the broader market outside of the mega gig platforms. Wondering if you're looking at that as an opportunity to kind of recharge and move forward here in 2025. Thanks a lot, guys.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Thanks, Joe. Yeah. The way I'd sum it up for the Paid App, we built that with the purpose of having more of a neobank off-the-shelf or an offering off-the-shelf that we could provide both in Canada and the U.S. markets. In Canada, that'll come through the form of our EWA product, which will use the full technology we built for that and some, and we'll continue to layer on new products and services. On the U.S. side, that Paid App could become a neobank offering for gig workers specific to gig workers, taking everything we've learned under these white label scenarios and figuring out what the commonalities would be for a 1099 and something to that effect. So there's definitely a lot of thought around it.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

As the strategic review process kind of goes through its course, we're definitely seeing a lot of opportunities to use the Paid app in different facets. That's what's of interest to us. Most of it would be 1099, but there's very specific niches of groups of 1099 independent contractors that the Paid app would be useful for, whether it's Paid app on its own or taking that same platform and then creating a specific Paid app tailored towards those certain niche opportunities, much like we've done for the gig space itself on the rideshare and food delivery side. It's built and it's ready to be deployed on any distribution channels that take us outside of just the gig economy that we've been focused on and had a lot of success with. Hope that answers your questions.

[Joseph Vafi, Managing Director of Equity Research at Canaccord]

Yeah, that was helpful, Marco. Thanks a lot, guys, and best of luck here through the end of the year.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Boland from Raymond James. Your line is now open.

[Stephen Boland, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at Raymond James]

I appreciate that you can't comment on a few things here, Marco. I'm just wondering if we could take a step back in terms of the progression with the DoorDash. Was that a public RFP, or was that exclusive negotiations, or did you find out later that there was somebody else in the tent? I'm just curious what the timing of that happened because I think even in the last call, you kind of talked about that maybe negotiations were ongoing. So maybe you could just give us a little bit of a timeline there.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Yeah. Thanks for the question. We have been pushing. We typically, in any contracts that we renewed, including the two that we just renewed, we try to get well ahead of it and have those negotiations ahead of time. So we kept going back with a number of different, like we said in the script, products, features, functions that we wanted to add, knowing that we've seen success in other areas where we think we can add more products, features, and functionality to take the penetration rates even north of where we have them, which is close to 60%. That was ongoing. That continues to be ongoing as a rule of thumb. That's just not for renewals. That's in any program we have. We're always kind of reinventing and kind of staying ahead with technology and what we could offer.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

So, that obviously amps up during a time we were getting close to renewal, and that's where we've been focused on trying to throw as much as we can. We had discussions around economics and willing to kind of listen and hear where that could go. In other renewals that we've been through, it necessarily wasn't about economics. It was more about product features and functions, and that's where we kind of stuck. But we did make it clear that we would be looking at economics if that was a pain point as well. It just became clear to us more recently that there was another player in the mix, and that the contemplation was there. And so knowing what we know now and what's in market and what they think they're going to go to market with, it's substantially different than what we would offer.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

I think they've taken a path that they want to be parlaying the success we've had and taking a much deeper look at how they want to offer this and the different products that they want to offer as part of it, and so we don't know the exact details of what that entails, but just looking at what they've announced to date, I would say it's substantially behind the current offering we have, so I would expect there's more to come.

[Stephen Boland, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at Raymond James]

Review, but I mean, you announced a strategic review, but you're also trying to get new customers on board. Is that not a barrier? Are the companies or these gig platforms not coming to you and saying, "I mean, strategic reviews can include a lot of things, including sale of the company, strategic partnerships, things of that sort"? Is that not a question or a barrier to landing some new material contracts?

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

No. I mean, at this point, it hasn't been. There will be questions at some point. If anything, the way we've addressed it is by highlighting that this will be a net benefit to all stakeholders, including potential new customers that are inbound, potentially.

[Stephen Boland, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at Raymond James]

How is it a net benefit?

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

Just for clarity on that, Steve, just to be very specific, because one thing I didn't appreciate before knowing a strategic review process the way I do now at this point, there's an automatic assumption that a strategic review involves selling the company. We have every option on the table, much like we've highlighted. Every option out there, it's not to trigger any sale. It's to trigger whatever extracts the most value. We've been trying to fight concentration risk for some time. Even if we landed these other customers, we're still going to face that same battle. And so long-term contracts with the ones we have, hopefully some new contracts with more long-term value to be added there. But we have to take the technology we have and kind of move away from this concentration risk.

[Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner at Payfare]

With that in mind, if anything, if you could chart a more long-term view of what the success for the company will be, even for potential new inbound clients, I think they'd get comfort more than fear from that.

Participants

Executives

• Cihan Tuncay, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development
• Charles Park, CFO
• Marco Margiotta, CEO and Funding Partner

Analysts

• Adhir Kadve, Principal of Equity Research and Technology at Eight Capital
• Stephen Boland, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at Raymond James
• Joseph Vafi, Managing Director of Equity Research at Canaccord