Western Union Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Profitability remained under pressure: Q2 adjusted EPS fell to $0.31 from $0.42 year over year, while adjusted operating margin was 15%. The company cited weakness in Americas retail, higher agent commissions, and the shift toward lower-margin digital account and wallet payouts.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Revenue was approximately $1 billion, down 1% on an adjusted basis, while Consumer Money Transfer transactions grew 3%. Branded Digital transactions rose 25% and revenue increased 6%, but growth was concentrated in lower-yield Middle East partnerships and digital payout channels.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management launched the Beyond Efficiency program, targeting $50 million in run-rate operating-cost reductions by year-end 2026 and $200 million by the end of 2027. Measures include streamlining operations, reducing discretionary technology work, expanding AI automation, regionalizing functions, and lowering digital payout costs.
  • Negative Sentiment: Western Union reduced its 2026 outlook to adjusted revenue growth of 4%–6%, inclusive of Intermex, and adjusted EPS of $1.25–$1.35. The company also paused share repurchases to maintain targeted net leverage of 2.5 to 3 times, although management said the dividend remains sustainable.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company reported progress on its digital-asset strategy, including the launch of its USDPT stablecoin, Treasury Bridge, Digital Asset Network, and USDPT Stablecard. Management also expects potential benefits from new Canada Post and Deutsche Post relationships, while Intermex remains subject to final regulatory approval.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Western Union Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Western Union second quarter 2026 results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Hadley, Head of Investor Relations. Tom, please go ahead.

Tom Hadley
Tom Hadley
Head of Investor Relations at Western Union

Thank you. On today's call, we will discuss the company's second quarter results and our 2026 full-year outlook. Then we will take your questions. The slides that accompany this call and webcast can be found at westernunion.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call. Additional operational statistics have been provided in supplemental tables with our press release. Joining me on the call today is our CEO, Devin McGranahan, and our CFO, Matt Cagwin. Today's call is being recorded.

Tom Hadley
Tom Hadley
Head of Investor Relations at Western Union

Our comments include forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release and in Western Union's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the 2025 Form 10-K, for additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. During the call, we will discuss some items that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles.

Tom Hadley
Tom Hadley
Head of Investor Relations at Western Union

Where possible, we have reconciled those items to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release attached to our Form 8-K, as well as on our website, westernunion.com, under the Investor Relations section. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Devin McGranahan.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Good afternoon. Welcome to Western Union second quarter 2026 financial results conference call. In the second quarter, we continued to face significant margin pressures due to the ongoing slowdown in the retail business in the Americas, higher agent commissions, and the continued acceleration of our digital payout to account business. The quarter came in $0.06 better than Q1, having eliminated many of the one-time effects we saw in the first quarter. The accelerated shift from cash payout transactions with higher revenue per transaction, RPT, and higher contribution profit per transaction, CPPT, to pure digital transactions continues to weigh on profitability. On a more positive note, despite the strong macro headwinds, our strategy and our significant geographic diversification enabled us to report revenue of $1 billion. On an adjusted basis, this was a decline of only 1% year-over-year.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Consumer Money Transfer transactions grew at 3% in the quarter, which was a 300-basis-point improvement from Q1, a 600-basis-point improvement year-over-year, and the highest transaction growth rate since the second quarter of 2024. We continue to see quarter-over-quarter improvements as we lap the worst of last year. For example, U.S. to Mexico declined a little over 3% on a transaction basis in the quarter, a nearly 1,000-point improvement year-over-year. Overall, U.S. retail continued to be mid-teens negative on a transaction basis in the second quarter, well below our expectations. While overall global transaction growth has improved significantly, it is important to know that it comes from lower contribution profit per transaction, which is putting pressure on our margins. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.31 in the quarter, compared to $0.42 this quarter a year ago.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

This is below our expectations and is driven by lower profitability in our Americas retail business and lower profitability in our Middle East business, as volumes there continue to shift rapidly from our legacy partners in the region to newer digital-only partners at lower RPTs and profitability. Our Branded Digital business continued to perform well, with transactions increasing by 25% this quarter and adjusted revenue by 6%. Transaction growth continues to accelerate, the revenue growth is being muted by strong growth in lower RPT corridors and a significant increase in digital payout to account, which saw 55% growth in the quarter. As I mentioned in previous calls, our new customer acquisition economics remain challenged in the quarter, which impacted the overall revenue growth and profitability of our digital business.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We continue to roll out our Beyond Digital platform, which I believe will enable better customer experience, improve our ability to market at a corridor level, and potentially reduce the magnitude of needed new offer incentives. In Consumer Services, adjusted revenue was up 12% in the quarter, driven by growth in our Bill Pay business, as well as continued growth in Travel Money. Our financial results in this quarter came in below our expectations for the second quarter in a row. This is not acceptable, we are not satisfied with the current operating performance and will be implementing significant changes as a result. The external macro factors over the past 12 months have undoubtedly accelerated the underlying trends in the business, we recognize that in the near term, these trends are likely to continue at elevated levels.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We have been navigating this mix shift away from payout to cash over the past several years, as well as the move from retail to digital through cost savings initiatives and the reallocation of investments. The impact of ongoing changes in immigration in the Americas has accelerated those dynamics, we must now more aggressively change our cost base to reflect the reality of a future with continued pressure on CPPT. Over the past 12 months, we have seen the percentage of payout to account and payout to wallet transactions grow by 25%. This is an important trend that will likely continue to cause ongoing margin headwinds unless we vigilantly reduce our fixed cost base, lower our account payout costs, increase our ability to cost effectively drive digital growth.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We have spent much of the last eight weeks evaluating what is working across these three dimensions and what is not. That process has reinforced our belief that the long-term fundamentals of our business remain intact. Our brand, customer relationships, market position, scale, and digital capabilities continue to provide a strong foundation upon which to build. However, a strong foundation alone is no longer enough. We must accelerate the transformation of our operating model to enable us to maintain our ability to invest in our next generation digital initiatives while simultaneously, significantly lowering our ongoing operating costs. The program we have launched is called Beyond Efficiency. It has five key program elements, and we will be targeting a run rate operating cost reduction of $50 million by the end of the year.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

The five key program pillars include the first pillar, accelerate the dual track strategy by reducing redundancy and streamlining processes that do not align with the Beyond strategy. As a 175-year-old company, we have a lot in the garage. Organizations build up over time, and what were once new ideas or areas investment are now ongoing operating costs with limited or no contribution to the Beyond strategy. For example, as we move to the Beyond digital framework, we have made the decision to close down our existing digital wallets in Europe, saving the company a run rate of $6 million to $8 million. We anticipate launching our Beyond digital platform to replace those in Europe by the end of the year. The second pillar is to reduce discretionary operations and technology work by 20% that is not directly tied to growing digital.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We are targeting a 20% reduction in discretionary operations and technology capacity by the end of the year, forcing a prioritization that will cause only the most impactful initiatives to get work done. The third pillar is to rapidly adopt AI to drive automation and reduce manual work, given our legacy system limitations. We have ramped up our adoption of AI and other automation platforms significantly over the past six months, and we see meaningful opportunity to eliminate manual work and reduce the friction that results from our large geographically dispersed and highly regulated business. The fourth pillar is to move to a more aligned operating model. As part of our Beyond Efficiency program, we are looking to align people in work closer to the region they support. This will require us to localize what today are distributed global functions.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

For example, we have been moving agent onboarding for the Asia-Pacific region from Lithuania and Costa Rica to our operating center in Manila. This will improve time zone and geographical alignment and reduce unit labor costs. We anticipate this will improve on all three dimensions of cost, quality, and speed. The fifth pillar is to reduce the operating costs of moving money. In a world that is rapidly going to digital payouts, we must reduce the cost of capital that we have floating around the system, lower payout costs, improve FX rate competitiveness, and accelerate real-time settlement through our own digital currency, USDPT. These initiatives are focused on creating a leaner organization while maintaining our ability to invest in the areas that matter most strategically. Importantly, this is not a short-term exercise designed solely to reduce near-term costs.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Rather, it is a structural effort to improve how we operate and to position the company for stronger, more sustainable profitability in the years ahead. We understand that our investors expect tangible evidence that these actions are producing results. While meaningful transformation takes time, our expectation is that the combination of improving growth and enhanced cost discipline will strengthen margins, improve profitability, and increase returns over time. Our objective remains straightforward. Generate consistent growth, improve operating profitability, strengthen free cash flow generation, and create long-term shareholder value. I look forward to updating you on the progress of this program in the coming quarters. Now, switching briefly to the macro. As you know, remittances in the Americas have faced meaningful pressure that began in late 2024, driven by the changes in immigration policy.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

While growth rates have improved meaningfully from the summer of 2025 lows and continue to improve with U.S. to Mexico, for example, revenue growth rates improving 500 basis points sequentially compared to the first quarter, retail continues to underperform relative to digital, and that dynamic continues to weigh on the profitability of our Americas businesses. As we have discussed, the growth in retail business is almost always dependent on new migration. When immigrants come to a new country, most frequently they transact in retail out of necessity, given cultural and language issues, lack of access to digital funding, and often heavy cash remuneration.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

When migration goes negative, like we have seen in the U.S. and around parts of the Latin American region, it becomes difficult to replace customers that migrate to digital channels, find alternative options, or leave the country to return home.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

This doesn't mean the retail business can't improve like we have seen over the last several quarters. It just means it will be difficult to get the business back to true growth without a meaningful change in immigration policy or much more aggressive gains in our market share. We do believe we can take market share, and we should start to see the benefits as Canada Post and Deutsche Post ramp up, which will provide a tailwind starting in Q3 and continuing in 2027. We also recently launched an industry-first partnership with Total Wireless, a Verizon value brand that combines wireless connectivity and cross-border money movement. The partnership expands our reach into the telecom channel, providing access to millions of subscribers through thousands of retail locations and extending our distribution footprint across both digital and retail channels.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Recognizing that consumer behavior continues to evolve and digital engagement is becoming increasingly important across every aspect of the customer journey, we believe our digital-first strategy and our digital platforms represent the most attractive growth opportunities over the long term. Over the last couple of quarters, we have seen substantial gains in the Middle East, while our digital business in other parts of the world has plateaued. We spoke on the last couple of calls about needing to better manage promotional offers in places like the United States and Europe, and as such, we have begun to pull back.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

While the benefits of this more disciplined approach are not immediately obvious in this quarter's results, in the last few months, new customer growth rates have improved and have done so at higher RPTs, which should bode well for better revenue and profitability in future quarters.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

That said, pulling back on new customer incentives is just one element of our revised approach. Since our investor day, we have been executing our digital acceleration program along three axes. The first is the restructuring of our digital go-to-market model and team. We have now completed the restructuring of our go-to-market team, moving digital team members into the regional operating units that they support. This now brings decision-making and local market knowledge together in one team. We have also been adding new senior digital talent with sector expertise across the regions.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

In particular, I would like to welcome Shishir Singhania, who joined us last quarter as our new Chief Digital Officer, leading the global digital product team and the North American go-to-market team. Shishir brings deep knowledge and experience to us and has already begun to make material impacts. Second, we are accelerating our Beyond Digital platform.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Having now seen early returns, we are accelerating the rollout across our major markets with planned launches in Australia, Europe, and the U.S. before the end of this year. We are expecting the Beyond Digital platform to enable us to improve new customer onboarding success rates and thus improve the return on new customer acquisition in these important markets. We continue to target rolling out the Beyond Digital platform to all of our major markets by the end of 2027. Third, we are focusing on investments by corridor. Our analytics and insights have improved, and we've begun to differentiate our level of new customer investment in both marketing and new customer incentives at the corridor level.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

This higher level of fidelity and targeting, we believe, will enable us to earn better returns on the same overall investment pool, even if it means slowing down in some larger corridors where competitive dynamics inhibit strong returns. Before I turn the call over to Matt, I would like to discuss further a few minutes to provide an update on our digital asset strategy and the progress we are making. At the center of this strategy is USDPT, our U.S. dollar stablecoin. USDPT is designed to maintain a one-to-one value with the U.S. dollar and is backed by reserves, including cash and U.S. Treasury instruments. First, we successfully launched USDPT in May of this year, which established the foundation for a regulated digital dollar that can support payments, treasury operations, and customer use cases across our global network.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

USDPT is now live and available through an expanding ecosystem of exchanges, financial institutions, and partners. With the first four exchanges now live and actively trading USDPT. Second, we have introduced our Treasury Bridge solution, which utilizes USDPT to support more efficient movement of liquidity and capital across our global network. This initiative has the potential to enhance funding flexibility, improve settlement speed, and reduce reliance on the traditional correspondent banking infrastructure. We are testing with multiple counterparties to use USDPT as a form of settling our cross-border money transfer transactions. Third, we launched the Digital Asset Network, or DAN, which extends Western Union's unique global distribution capabilities to the digital asset ecosystem.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Through DAN, digital assets, exchanges, and other partners can connect to Western Union's payout infrastructure, enabling customers to convert digital assets into local currency and access funds throughout our global network.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

This creates a bridge between the rapidly growing digital asset economy and the real-world economy that customers can use every day. We have successfully launched our first partner, we expect the launch of several more in the coming weeks, with the goal of having tens of millions of consumer digital wallets connected to our Digital Asset Network by the end of the year. Lastly, we continue to advance our consumer proposition with the development of our USDPT-powered wallet and card capabilities. Our vision is to provide customers with the ability to redirect remittances, hold the USDPT digital dollars, and spend them through a payment card, seamlessly transitioning between digital assets and traditional financial services. We are launching the USDPT Stablecard today. We view the digital assets as an opportunity to expand our TAM and to free up capital.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Our objective is not simply to participate in the digital asset system. Our objective is to leverage Western Union's trusted brand, regulatory expertise, global reach, and distribution network to become a critical infrastructure provider within that ecosystem. What differentiates Western Union is that we are focused on real-world utility. We are not building speculative products. We are building solutions that address practical agent and customer needs, faster settlement, lower friction, improved accessibility, and broader financial inclusion. While we remain in the early stages of this journey, we are encouraged by the momentum we are seeing. We have moved beyond strategy and are now into execution. 2026 will be a foundational year for our digital asset initiatives. We have successfully launched the core building blocks of this ecosystem, our focus now shifts towards execution, adoption, and scaling.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We remain confident that digital assets, stablecoins, and blockchain-enabled payments can become meaningful contributors to Western Union's future growth and reinforce our mission of making financial services accessible to people everywhere. Before I conclude, I would like to give a quick update on Intermex. We remain actively engaged in discussions with regulators on the final approval. I remain optimistic that we will be able to obtain the outstanding approval needed. This would enable us to close the transaction upon receipt of this approval, as well as satisfaction of other outstanding and customary closing conditions. In closing, while we are disappointed with our current results, we remain confident in our ability to improve performance and unlock the value that exists within this business. The path forward is clear.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We are focused on driving growth through our digital initiatives, improving efficiency throughout the organization, allocating capital with discipline, and executing against a well-defined strategic plan. We recognize that rebuilding momentum requires patience and execution. However, we believe the actions that we are taking today will position the company for a stronger future. We appreciate the continued support of our shareholders and the dedication of our employees, who remain committed to serving our agents and customers every day. While there is significant work ahead, we are focused on delivering the results that our stakeholders expect and deserve. Thank you. I now turn it over to Matt to review our financial results in more detail.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Thank you, Devin, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to walk you through our 2026 second quarter results in more detail and our 2026 financial outlook. In the second quarter, GAAP revenue was $1 billion, which on an adjusted basis was down 1%, a meaningful improvement from down 5% last year. The decrease was driven by continued slowing of our Americas retail business, while our Consumer Services and Branded Digital businesses grew 12% and 6% respectively. Adjusted operating margin was 15% in the quarter, which was impacted by lower revenue from our retail business mix, higher agent signing bonuses, and higher operating expenses. As Devin said, we are clearly not satisfied with our performance of our business this quarter, and we remain committed to driving higher operating profitability.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

We are in the process of accelerating our operational efficiency program Beyond Efficiency, with the goal of taking out $50 million between now and the end of the year and $200 million of run rate by the end of 2027. The drivers of our Beyond Efficiency program will be the five elements that Devin discussed earlier, which includes the additional scale that we will get from our Intermex acquisition. Adjusted EPS was $0.31 in the current quarter. Adjusted EPS in the current period was driven by lower operating margin for the reasons I stated previously, offset by lower tax rate in the quarter. Our adjusted effective tax rate in the quarter was 14% compared to 16% in the prior year. The decrease in adjusted effective tax rate was primarily due to discrete expenses in the prior year period.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Turning to Consumer Services business, which contributed 15% of total revenue in the quarter compared to 6% in 2022. Second quarter's adjusted revenue increased 12%, driven by the growth of our Consumer Bill Pay business, Travel Money business, as well as the addition of check cashing. As a reminder, the current quarter marks the anniversary of our eurochange acquisition, which was acquired on April 1st of last year.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

The Consumer Services segment's profitability was lower in the quarter, driven by lower operating profits in our Travel Money business, lower float income in our Retail Money Order business, as well as the delayed reduction in overhead due to the acquisition we made of a check cashing partner that we had planned to integrate with Intermex. Transitioning to our Consumer Money Transfer or CMT business. CMT transactions grew 3% in the quarter relative to a year ago.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

This was driven by continued strength of our Branded Digital business, which delivered 25% transaction growth in the current quarter. While retail trends in the Americas remained under pressure, the ongoing shift of digital continues to support the overall transaction growth and customer engagement. CMT adjusted revenue declined 3% year-over-year, reflecting the continued pressures in the Americas retail business, driven by uncertainty in the U.S. immigration policy. This was a 300 basis point improvement relative to the first quarter of this year. The CMT segment's profitability was lower in the quarter due to revenue mix, including declines in cash payout transactions, offset by lower profitability from digital payout transactions, which increased. Higher commission costs associated with new partners and renewals, and higher operating expenses. In the second quarter, our Branded Digital business grew adjusted revenue by 6% and transactions by 25%.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

This marks the 11th straight quarter of solid revenue growth. Consistent with the recent trends, growth was increasingly driven by our Middle East partnerships. While these channels continue to expand our reach and support volume growth, their economics differ from those of our traditional licensed business, resulting in a more pronounced gap between transactions and revenue. We continue to view this as a strategic trade-off that supports the long-term expansion of our digital platform. As a reminder, we began to ramp the Middle East partnerships in late Q3 of last year, so we expect transaction growth rates to moderate as we anniversary these partnerships. Account payout transactions also continued with a strong momentum, growing at 50% in the quarter, which is the strongest quarterly growth rate in several years.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Turning to our retail business, overall, the performance of our retail business was in line with previous quarters on a transaction basis and a few hundred basis points better on a revenue basis. The business remains challenged in the Americas as U.S. immigration policy continues to weigh on our operating results. New migration is the lifeline of our retail business. With borders closed, it is difficult to offset natural attrition that comes from digital migration, industry competition, and reverse migration as consumers return home to their native countries. Looking ahead, we remain focused on strengthening our retail franchise with new agent relationships, a vastly improved platform, and better consumer experience. Now turning to our cash flow and balance sheet. We generated $214 million in operating cash flow year-to-date, up 45% versus last year, driven by lower cash taxes.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Year-to-date, capital expenditures were $88 million, or 65% higher than the prior year due to signing bonuses associated with recent agent wins and renewals. As discussed in February, we expect CapEx to be roughly $200 million this year due to new strategic partnerships, as well as a higher renewal cycle. Moving to our balance sheet. At the end of the quarter, we had cash and cash equivalents of $920 million in debt of $2.7 billion. Our leverage ratios were at three times and two times on a gross and net basis.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

As we announced a few weeks back, we extended our delayed draw bank facility until November. This preserves the financial flexibility while ensuring that we have the committed funds in place to support the Intermex transaction. As a result, post-closing, we expect our debt to EBITDA ratios to be elevated above historical levels.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

In the quarter, we returned over $80 million to our owners via dividends and stock repurchases. We have decided to pause our share buyback program in order to maintain our debt-EBITDA ratios of two and a half times to three times. Now moving to 2026 outlook, which assumes no major macroeconomic changes. Based on our performance year to date and our view on the remainder of the year, we are updating our 2026 guidance. We now believe adjusted revenue will be in the range of 4%-6% revenue growth, inclusive of the Intermex acquisition. Our outlook assumes a September 1st close.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

From a modeling standpoint, we expect retail CMT to continue to improve throughout the back half of this year, digital CMT to be in a similar ballpark of recent quarters, and Consumer Services to grow low single-digit as we lap the eurochange acquisition, as well as the ramp of a large Travel Money partner, as well as rightsizing our underperforming products that Devin talked about earlier. Our adjusted EPS for the full-year, we believe, will be between $1.25 and $1.35. We expect the second half EPS to be better than the first, driven by new agent wins, back half seasonality, better revenue mix, and the accelerated pace of our Beyond Efficiency program. Thank you for joining the call today. Operator will take questions now.

Operator

We will pause momentarily to compile the Q&A roster. As a reminder, each person is allowed one question with one follow-up question. All participants will be in listen-only mode. During today's Q&A session, please use the raise hand option in Zoom or press star 9 on your keypad. Our first question comes to us from Tien-Tsin Huang at JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst at JPMorgan

Thanks. I think I'm on mute. Can you hear me?

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Tien-Tsin.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst at JPMorgan

Hey, thanks. Always good to catch up with you. Yeah, you went through a lot of detail here. Thinking about the revenue, which is pretty much in line with that, but obviously the profits will be very come down. I'm just trying to advise factor on the cost front. Is it really the pass-through mix with the digital? I think there's a lot of factors, but I'm just trying to summarize it a little bit easier. Can you give us a little bit more there?

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Absolutely, Tien-Tsin. You broke up a little bit there, but I believe your question was can you give a little more on the cost side and what is going on there? Is that correct?

Tien-Tsin Huang
Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst at JPMorgan

Yes, sir.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Happy to drain that a little more. Just a reminder, I know you know this, but our Q2 margins and adjusted EPS were 200 basis points and $0.06 better than Q1, but it is still a far cry from what we expected. Also, as I am sure as you know, last year, we were able to reduce our cost of sales expenses by 3% and SG&A by 14%, which helped us fully offset the revenue decline last year and help us grow operating income. As you dig into this, there is really two major drivers that really stick out that we should talk about.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

One is the pace of our cost reduction. This has slowed from the reason why I want to give you context of last year. It slowed from where we were last year. We were able to rightsize many different departments, exit some programs.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

The first half of the year, that has gotten a little harder. We do have a very good, strong pipeline, as Devin outlined, the Beyond Efficiency program, which gives us confidence that over the rest of this year and going into next year, we can exit with a run rate savings of $50 and $200 million. The other part of it is revenue mix. We have seen a shifting to lower contribution profit per transaction. Just giving you a couple examples. We are seeing the acceleration of our cash payout to digital in both U.S. and the Middle East, both accelerating.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

We see higher profit dollars per transaction from cash payout versus account payout. We are also seeing different results between quarters. As you know, this business is made up of tens of thousands or thousands of corridors, and the economics vary massively from each one.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

As you heard Devin talk about, we've seen quarter-over-quarter improvements for U.S. to Mexico, which has also been talked about by the Banco de México. We've also seen improvements in U.S. to U.S. and U.S. to Canada. We've seen a deterioration quarter-over-quarter of U.S. really to the rest of the world. There's a few spots where it's shining. As you know, the yields vary between the different corridors. The improvements we've seen in U.S. and Mexico come in a corridor where there's lots of competition and the yields are much lower. Relative to the rest of the world, we have a much higher yield, and that's putting pressure on us.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

The other thing that's helped us grow and have some improvements in U.S. and Mexico is we've had some regional agent wins over the last couple quarters that have ramped as the quarters have gone on. These have come at higher commissions per transaction to win them, but they are still very profitable deals and things we're excited to have. We talked about one of them earlier in the year with Velarda, which is principally focused on customers that are Latin America-based with a very heavy concentration of Mexicans.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst at JPMorgan

Okay. Thanks for going through that, Matt. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, the cadence of the $50 million then. You're going to attack the cost structure here. How quickly would that be realized, and how much do you need this Intermex deal to close on time for it to fully factor?

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

It will ramp throughout the rest of the year. I'll use the example Devin gave in his discussion earlier. We made the decision to turn off the European wallets because the more modern platform's better and will help us free up costs immediately. That benefit will start helping us in Q4. There's a migration time for the customers who are in the platform, turning off the tech costs and all that. The actions we're taking will ramp as the year progresses, and that's why we're trying to get to a year exit rate of $50 million, and then next year being the $200 million.

Operator

Our next question comes to us from Will Nance at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Will Nance
Will Nance
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Question. I just wanted to maybe circle back to the mix shift in the transactions that you're seeing in the quarter. If I'm hearing correctly, it sounds like from a revenue perspective, the kind of the improvement in some of the larger corridors have offset decelerations in some of the other corridors. Then when you look at the contribution margin per transaction, the accelerating corridors are just lower than the decelerating corridors. I guess I just want to make sure we understand that dynamic, but maybe more importantly, it seems rather sudden, the acceleration in some of that mix shift that's happened.

Will Nance
Will Nance
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

I'm just wondering if you can point to anything specific that's driven that acceleration, because it does seem to be happening at a really accelerated pace, per your comments and I guess, per some of the numbers that we're seeing in terms of gross margin this quarter.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Yeah, Will. It's really a combination of a couple of things, just pulling the thread on what you just asked for. Retail is very profitable, particularly cash payout. We've now been going on six, eight quarters of pressure on that in the U.S. side. We've been having double-digit declines there for going on about six quarters. That compounding effect is having some pressure. On top of that, we have been able to make progress on it from a transaction revenue standpoint with some of the wins we've had.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Those wins have been in the ballpark of our other strategic partners or the example I just gave to Tien-Tsin, on the regionals, but they're at the upper bounds of what we have for partners. It's putting pressure on commission cost per transaction, but still helping us to grow revenue and prop up the profit.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Will, I'll give you another example, which to your point, has even surprised us. Most of the world, principally from the U.S. and Spain, but most of the world to Colombia, the shift that has happened from what was traditionally a very significant payout to cash business for us to pay out to account, in Colombia, but more importantly, payout to a wallet there called the Nequi wallet, and this shift to the use of their real-time payment system, Bre-B, has truly been amazing at how quickly this has happened. We were fortunate that we were enabled into the Nequi wallet, and then we enabled Bre-B, Matt will remember, probably in the fourth quarter of last year, first quarter of this year.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We've been able to capture some of that, but the volume has been shifting, and that shift has been significant economically because the economics of paying out to a digital wallet over a real-time payment switch is far different than the payout to cash economics in the same country, in the same corridor.

Will Nance
Will Nance
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Got it. That's helpful. I appreciate that. Maybe just following on that last bit, is there any way to decompose the extent to which these payout-to-account transactions are less profitable than your retail business? How much of that do you attribute to just the structural differences in profitability in the transactions versus maybe things that are more under your control and your ability to improve the margin structure, build scale in some of these digital payout channels? I guess I'm trying to say, how much can you close that gap between your digital payout and your cash payout channels? Thank you.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Absolutely.

Will Nance
Will Nance
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Appreciate you taking the questions.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Hey, Will, thank you for the question. As you know, the yields and the pricing and the profitability vary massively from quarter to quarter. We can give some generalities, but the real pressure here is we're seeing vast majority of our Branded Digital growth coming from our Middle Eastern partners, which come at very, very low revenue per transaction, thus very low profit. That's causing part of this. As Devin talked about in the prepared remarks, we've strengthened the team through multiple elements of new people, some of the things we're putting in place, the go to market they're taking from to market to our customers. As those things take hold, which we're starting to see early glimmers of this with revamping our core Branded Digital customer growth, that will help us grow more profitable Branded Digital in lots of countries.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Really, it's being driven by the fact we have this Middle Eastern partners that are very low RPTs and profit per transaction. Beyond that, you also have just the mix, which varies because we have some corridors where digital payout might be a little higher. It's hard to give any other than just generalities. The key for us is we got to get the overall growth humming and then see and drive improvements in the Americas from a retail standpoint.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

To what I would add, Will, if you remember, and it's generally, again, Matt's right, it's corridor to corridor, but in general, as a percentage, digital transactions are roughly margin-wise similar to retail transactions. Total dollars, and as I was talking about contribution profit per transaction is reasonably different. When you start substituting the retail transactions for the digital payout transactions, like I was talking about in Colombia, that's where you start to see some of the margin pressures that we're seeing. We do have two levers that we're working on.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Matt highlighted one, which was growing higher revenue and higher contribution per transaction, particularly in our digital business. The second the team is working on quite aggressively is lowering digital payout costs. Many of our digital payout partners and networks were negotiated two, three, four, five years ago in some cases.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Some were part of our retail network, and we used them as payment switches to reach other banks or other wallets. We're on a pretty active campaign, and if you remember, we talked about at Investor Day, our goal of lowering those payout costs, this has brought that more to the forefront, and we will share in upcoming calls the progress that we're making. In that Colombia example, the team recently lowered the payout cost from over $2 to less than $0.50. Right. The contribution per profit on those Nequi wallet is going to go up dramatically. Previously, we saw a lot of volume shift, and we were paying similar payout costs as we did to other options in Colombia, even though they had lower revenue per transaction because they were digital.

Operator

Our next question comes to us from Rayna Kumar at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Rayna Kumar
Rayna Kumar
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Just given the current profitability pressures and broader business headwinds, how are you thinking about the sustainability of the current dividend over the medium term?

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

I will start, then I will let Matt follow up with the math. We believe, the board of directors believe, that the dividend is a strong return to our shareholders, and that we believe we have sufficient financial capacity to continue and maintain that dividend. At the present moment, we believe the strategy of continuing to return capital to our shareholders via the dividend is a good strategy.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Just to build on that a little more for you, Rayna. As you know, we've got over $900 million of cash on our books. We talked earlier about the benefit we expect to be able to get out of USDPT, is we're able to go get the Treasury Bridge ramped up. We're working very fast on one of the largest three markets in the world, which we hope to have a large partner board by the end of this year, and then ramping over $1 billion of float in the first quarter next year.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

That will start to free up capital from both the correspondent banking process as well as what we've pre-funded to some of our partners around the world. We feel like we have line of sight to improve cash flow, and as Devin talked about, our board's committed to the dividend.

Rayna Kumar
Rayna Kumar
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thank you. That's really helpful. Sense of follow-up. After one month into the third quarter, what are you seeing in terms of this U.S. immigration policy? Have things gotten worse? Are they staying? Are you starting to see anything ease? Thank you.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

What I would call it is a continuation of the policies and the effects of the policies that we've seen for a year. As we've seen both in our financial results and in certain places, the effects of that have stabilized at a certain level. We continue to see the negative effects of it, but it is no longer worsening, and in some cases and in some places, it is abating a bit. That is happening, however, slower than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. We believe that by the time we lap the effects, as you know, the real impacts on the policy started at the end of the first quarter of 2025. We felt them ramp in the second quarter of 2025, and really peaked in the third quarter of 2025.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We felt by this time of the year, we would be seeing the effects of lapping those things and more stability than we have. As noted earlier on the call, we also see varying effects by corridors. When you have a policy change with regard to Haitians, or you have an event in Venezuela, those are important corridors for us that will be impacted while we're seeing more stability in corridors like U.S. to Mexico. Again, this comes back to a corridor-by-corridor basis, what policies are affecting what groups, and how does that impact our customers and the mix of our customers in those corridors. The overall effect is improving from the lows of last year, but not improving as significantly as we might have anticipated.

Operator

Our next question is from Darrin Peller at Wolfe Research. Please ask your question.

Darrin Peller
Darrin Peller
Analyst at Wolfe Research

All right. Hey, thanks, guys. Look, you've obviously done well with growth in your Branded Digital users, as have many of your competitors also. Are customer acquisition costs for Branded Digital now higher to the degree that it's impacting incremental profitability? I guess I'm just trying to figure out also, beyond managing expenses, can we just revisit the opportunities to expand ARPU beyond just trying to create more customer growth itself? Beyond digital, where are you in that, and what do you expect to see in terms of revenue per user expansion over the coming year or two?

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Let's tackle those in two parts. First, on the customer acquisition. We started talking about this probably two, three quarters ago. As the retail business began to see significant declines, competitive intensity in the digital business increased. The competitive intensity, which was historically driven more by marketing spend and by kind of brand recognition, also started to envelop new customer offers. In some cases, relatively significant new customer offers. There are offers in the market where customers can get free transactions for a month, or they can get three, four, five free transactions as a new customer. These kinds of offers have a significant negative effect on near-term revenue as you onboard those customers.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We participated in some of that for a while, then, as I noted in the public commentary, have begun to back off on some of that simply because we did not see the longer-term returns, given the impact on near-term revenue that that has required in order to compete on that. The second question in terms of ARPU, we continue, and one of the things I talked about in the corridor is focusing on basically our CAC to LTV. In particular, LTV is driven by customer behaviors in terms of longevity, transactions for customer and principal per customer. Us and others in the industry are very focused on where are the most valuable customers, the higher senders, the more frequent senders, so that you can really optimize that revenue per transaction.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

More importantly, you can optimize the LTV, also the revenue and profit over the life cycle of the customer, to focus those acquisition dollars in places where we are getting higher returns on a life cycle basis than in any individual transaction economics that we might acquire the first or second transaction.

Darrin Peller
Darrin Peller
Analyst at Wolfe Research

All right, Devin. Thank you. Quick follow-up just on Intermex. I know it's delayed, obviously, versus your prior expectation, but sorry about that. Do you still expect the same financial synergy targets, just in a delayed timeframe as you previously expected?

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Hey, Darrin. Yeah. Ultimately, as we get close, we do expect to have actually higher synergy targets. As you probably remember from when we kicked this off a year ago, we had anticipated $30 million in synergies. We talked last quarter that we were seeing more opportunity and expected to be up a little bit. That continues to be the case. It will ramp post-closing. The year has gotten narrower. As I've mentioned before, we've got in our model now the September 1 close. I can't tell you we're going to close on September 1. It's up to regulatory approval. Just wanted to make sure you all knew what day we've modeled in our numbers. There'll be some synergies this year, but what we had expected originally was $0.10 in the first full-year, is what we talked about in August of last year.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

We would still expect that plus some.

Operator

Our next question comes to us from Nate Svensson at Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Nate Svensson
Nate Svensson
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Thanks for the question. Another one on margin. Understand the points on kind of OpEx and the mix shift in transactions, a couple of other factors that have come up on the call I wanted to touch on. On the higher agent bonuses, I know you mentioned the agents in Mexico, wondering if that same dynamic is playing out in any other regions. Is there any reason to think that the cost that you're having to pay out to these agents is structurally higher now than it has been historically? The other thing that came up in the prepared remarks was Travel Money operating profit being lower. I wanted to hear some color on what was driving profitability and Travel Money lower specifically.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Yep. I'll work my way backwards. On the Travel Money side, as we talked about last quarter, the first quarter of every year, they actually lose money because their fixed costs are higher than the revenue because it's a lower seasonal travel business. Typically, all the profit comes in the second, third quarter. They're slightly positive in Q4. What we've seen this year is that travel is down in Europe. In particular, if you go look at Heathrow travel patterns, you're seeing it be negative for the first time since COVID. We're seeing less consumers coming in, which has put some pressure on the profitability of that business. It still grew. As you can see, it was a contributor to our 12% growth rate this quarter, it wasn't where we expected to be. It was light a bit.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

On your first part of your question about what are we seeing for signing bonuses or overall agent economics, it varies from partner to partner. As I've mentioned a couple of times now, and we had talked about with the $200 million of CapEx this year, it's a heavy agent renewal cycle. We've talked about winning two new big partners, plus a couple more moderate ones. We've signed up the Deutsche Post in Europe, which is ramping right now. We've won, and this is a competitive takeaway, we've won the Canada Post, which will be ramping here in the latter part of Q3. Both of those have some upfront costs to ramp and help build them out. They are slightly higher end of our typical strategic partners. They're not above the range, they're the higher end because of competitive takeaways.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

We have the more smaller ones like a Velarda and some of the other ones like that were also competitive takeaways that are at the higher end.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

I would add that, Matt and I have talked about this, that we went through a renewal cycle, particularly here in North America, with the majority of our strategic partners. One of the crown jewels of the Western Union franchise is the majority of major retailers, and we are proud of these relationships, whether it be Kroger, Walmart, Albertsons, Walgreens, Publix, H-E-B, Giant Eagle. We have the majority of what we consider to be the strategic distribution in the U.S. As you can imagine, we faced an unusual number of renewals over the past 12 months that we successfully have gotten through and I am pleased to have renewed all of those contracts. In the face of a down market and in the face of my commentary around one of the ways you deal with a down market is you work to steal share.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We had some increased competition looking to unlodge us from some of those long-term relationships. I think the team did an excellent job of navigating, getting the renewals, continuing to secure those relationships, and doing it at economics that weren't too different from the ones that we had previously.

Nate Svensson
Nate Svensson
Analyst at Deutsche Bank

Thanks. That's super helpful. For a follow-up, I did want to ask on remittance taxes more broadly. Not on the federal side, but I know there are some other local or state proposals floating out there. I know Tennessee is one that comes to mind. On Tennessee specifically, wondering if you'd give your thoughts on that specific proposal, whether you think it gets implemented. I know there are some challenges out there on that one specifically. Any other state or local taxes that we should be tracking that could potentially be on the horizon.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Yeah, as you know, when they passed the U.S. remittance tax, which, in our previous commentary, we don't believe had a significant impact. It has driven up card acceptance. I will make this up. We're now at 20%+ card acceptance in the retail network in the U.S., up from a couple of percentage points before the remittance tax. We've seen a lot of move to people using bank products to not pay the tax as was written into the legislation. They left open the door for states to, in effect, pass a state-specific tax, of which several, Tennessee being probably the most notable and aggressive, have done so. There've been a couple of states that have limited those taxes to what they consider to be foreign adversaries or specific corridors that they saw or countries they saw as problematic. We track this stuff.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

If I could predict it, I probably wouldn't be in this job. We don't think that it'll have significant impact. Tennessee's an important state, but as you can imagine, it's nothing like a Florida, Texas, California, New York, in terms of the magnitude of the business that we have there. In many cases, customers will simply drive across the border and send money at a Western Union at a different state if the tax equation becomes significant between one state and another.

Operator

Our next question is from Timothy Chiodo at UBS. Please ask your question.

Timothy Chiodo
Timothy Chiodo
Analyst at UBS

Great. Thank you. I want to go back to really the opening comment from the prepared remarks, we've hit this in a few different ways, maybe we can try another way. Retail and digital, you were very clear that the contribution dollars or the contribution profit per transaction is lower for digital, and you kind of mentioned meaningfully so. The first part is I was hoping that you could maybe just talk a little bit about that directionally in terms of how much meaningfully are we talking about in terms of how much lower it is. Then from there, some of the items within the P&L of each that we should be considering that might be levers. On the retail side, obviously, there's the commissions that we mentioned.

Timothy Chiodo
Timothy Chiodo
Analyst at UBS

Then on the online side, I believe the two big ones are the marketing costs, then, of course, the payout costs. Maybe just dig into basically the real levers within the kind of product-specific P&L, if you will.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

I'll start, and then I'll let Matt. I think I understand the desire to have the specificity. That would certainly make life easier, and it would make my life easier as well. Matt highlighted particularly the growth in the nature of the business that we have in the Middle East. Because the Middle East is a place where it's quite difficult to get licenses, which we are working on, by the way, much of our business there is partner-driven. In a partner-driven model, the economics, because you got to pay the partner, are just fundamentally different than in the economics of our core business or our licensed businesses around the world. The shift in the growth of that particular business is a significantly different business than the more general shift from retail to payout to account.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

There is a difference in the retail to payout to account, and that was part of what I was talking about needing to lower payout costs so that difference is less and renegotiating some of those payout cost relationships. There are a bunch of other levers, though, that are important. In the digital space, payment acceptance costs, so how much we pay to be able to do funds in, which is really a strategy of shifting our customers from funding with credit cards and debit cards to funding with bank accounts and digital wallets can significantly lower one of our bigger expense items, which is funding costs.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

Managing card fraud and payment fraud is another significant expense for us, again, in the digital space. One, shifting to bank funding helps that, but also managing those costs in a more aggressive way also helps it.

Devin McGranahan
Devin McGranahan
CEO at Western Union

We continue to look at other efficiency options, particularly in that SG&A line, which you saw go up in the quarter as we continue to invest. As Matt highlighted, shutting down, and it was not an easy decision to decide to shut down the European wallets before we had the next platform in place. The opportunity to save run rate costs of $6 million to $8 million, as Matt highlighted, given the situation that we're facing, we made that decision. For us, lowering some of those operating costs associated with some of our legacy platforms is an important lever as well.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

I'm going to repeat a little bit, so I apologize. Just as you think about what's in cost of sales or cost of services, the biggest thing is commissions. Commissions represent almost two-thirds of the balance in there. Beyond that, there are, as Devin has highlighted, there are fraud losses, which we're working fast on and feverishly to get to leading loss rates and collection rates. There's payment fees, making sure that you get the best payment fees to your partners. We're actually running an RFP right now. There's the call center cost within there, which Devin's talked about now for the last three, four years of we've cut the calls by more than half. That has actually slowed.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Settlement platforms that we're working through, and as we go and move down to one platform, which in the last year, I'll talk about the settlement side, we were able to eliminate three in the last 18 months. As we're able to eliminate the last couple, that will allow us to continue to reduce the cost of sales side.

Operator

Our final question is from Vasu Govil at KBW. Please ask your question.

Vasu Govil
Vasu Govil
Analyst at KBW

Hi, thanks for squeezing me in here. I guess just first question, I'm wondering if there's a way to drill down and disaggregate how much of the change in EPS guide is coming from each of the various factors you guys outlined. I know mix shift to digital payout seems to be the biggest one, but also weaker retail. I see Travel Money weakness. I don't know if there was some contribution of Zoom from Intermex for the year. I don't know if you could help disaggregate, that would be super helpful.

Matt Cagwin
Matt Cagwin
CFO at Western Union

Vasu, as you probably have seen, our first half of the year-over-year Q1 was down $0.15. The second quarter was down $0.11. Our guide for the full-year is effectively down $0.50. We've talked about the drivers of the first half and what drove those. Q1 had a fair bit of pressure from FX loss, delayed money from a partner, things of that nature, as well as the mix item we've talked about here today for both Q1 was roughly 50%-60% for the things we talked about today, and it's similar items for this quarter. I think if you take that, it'll give you a directional answer for that.

Operator

Thank you for joining the Western Union second quarter 2026 results conference call. We hope you have a great day.

Executives
Analysts