Ron Clarke
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors at FLEETCOR Technologies
Okay, Jim. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q2 earnings call. Upfront here, I'll plan to cover three subjects. First, I'll share my perspective on our Q2 results, along with rest of your outlook. Second, I'll provide an update on our two newest acquisitions. And then lastly, I'll talk about our fuel card business, including our latest view on EV, along with a couple of innovative developments underway in that business.
Okay. Let me turn to our Q2 results. So very pleased to report outstanding Q2 financial results meaningfully above our internal expectations. We reported Q2 revenue of $667 million that's up 27% and cash EPS of $3.15, up 38%. Both our Q2 2021 revenue and cash EPS exceeded our Q2 2019 results, so finally moving past our pre-pandemic baseline. Organic revenue growth came in at 23% for the quarter, our full AP outsourcing platform segment, up 53% versus Q2 last year. The trends in the quarter are really quite good. Our same-store sales metric improved to plus 18%, so hardness of 18%, many of the sectors in our client base recovering.
Retention, record level, we reached nearly 94%, an all-time high since we've been reporting the metric. And interestingly, our global fuel card business reached 92% retention, also an all-time high. Credit losses remain very good, running at historic levels and sales outstanding in the quarter finishing up almost two times last year's Q2 and up 6% against 2019. Okay, let me transition to our view of the rest of the year. So, today, we're raising guidance to $2.765 billion at the midpoint for full year revenue, raising cash EPS at the midpoint to $12.90. That's driven by our Q2 beat, the AFEX close, and really the momentum that we have running into the second half.
I do want to remind everyone we had previously guided to a pretty substantial second half sequential step-up already. As a reminder, cash EPS guidance up nearly $0.60 from the start of the year. So, we opened the year at $12.30; today, $12.90, so obviously, better than we outlooked. The second half guidance implies a few things. So, first, the revenue growth will run about 20% ahead of last year and high single-digits really above the second half 2019 baseline. So, we are expecting the business to reach all-time highs again in both revenues and profits. Our Q4 EPS profit guidance implies nearly a $14 annualized cash EPS exit rate.
Okay, let me transition now to an update on our recent acquisitions. So as a reminder, we closed AFEX, that's the add-on cross-border deal, on June 1st. And then last week, we signed definitive documents to acquire ALE, which is a lodging provider to the insurance vertical. So, let me start with ALE, really a highly complementary add-on to our existing lodging business and that company brings a whole set of specialized capabilities designed just to serve the insurance vertical. So, we've got a pretty interesting synergy plan for that business and expect accelerated revenue and profit growth next year.
We're also well underway on our AFEX integration. We've already exited about $10 million of run rate payroll expense. We've implemented one unified cross-border management organization and we've designed an IT consolidation plan to move to a single system. That will significantly reduce run rate IT and operations expense. So, look, both of these acquisitions, classic FLEET wheelhouse deals. We paid reasonable prices. There are extensions of our existing business, so we know them well, and both have very rich synergy opportunities.
We're expecting the businesses to grow about 20% on the top on a pro forma basis next year and together deliver incremental cash EPS in 2022 in the $0.50 to $0.70 range, so big upside. So, obviously, we are quite enthusiastic about the transactions. All right. Let me shift gears now and talk a bit about our fuel card business, which we continue to love and which we think has a bright future. So I'll talk a bit about EV, the latest and greatest, and then talk about innovation and specifically two new things that we're doing to improve the growth prospects of our fuel card business.
So starting out with EV. I mentioned last time, we're really embracing EV as an opportunity and in no way see it putting an end to our fuel card business. Employers are going to need to reimburse employees for recharging electric vehicles much like they reimburse employees for refueling combustion engines. And I think you may find that it costs more to operate EV than people think.
We also think there'll be some new economics and that we've got an opportunity to achieve, very similar economics from EV measuring and reimbursing as we do from combustion engines. We've included a couple of EV exhibits in our Q2 earnings supplement. You'll see some comparisons of spend where the cost of public charging is about 70% of fossil fuel charging. And then because there's more attractive MDR rates, we believe that we can achieve pretty interesting revenue there as well.
In a nutshell, we expect the at-home software subscription fees to be pretty significant and augment a number of the other fees that we get in the revenue mix. We are outlooking the commercial transition to EV to be slow, particularly here in the US, giving us ample time to build out our public charging network and implement recharging at home.
We expect mixed fleets to be how things start out. So our incumbent position should give us quite an advantage in consolidating activity and data for our clients. So look, in conclusion, we're outlooking EV to really just be a different way to serve commercial fleets but one in which we think can still be attractive. All right. Let me leave EV and cut over to the couple of innovations that we're working in the fuel card business.
So first is digital and particularly digital selling, which now in Q2 has reached about 60% of all our new fuel card sales globally coming to us digitally. So lots of improvements in our digital selling capabilities. We've got automated keyword bidding now. We've redesigned our maximize sales conversion, and we're beginning investments at the top of the funnel in the form of digital TV, radio, Facebook advertising, which is driving about 50% more visitors to our websites, so obviously leading to incremental sales.
The last innovation I'd like to touch on is our effort to transform our fuel card UI, which is used by over 100,000 clients, really into a broader payment platform. So we're combining our newest cloud-based SMB bill pay platform with our fuel card UI, so that clients go on to pay us the fuel card bill that they'd have the option then of paying additional vendors with the same software platform.
So, this idea is really aimed at accelerating the number of active bill pay clients we can add to our platform and again beginning the transformation of the fuel card business into a corporate payments business. So, we'll keep you updated there as we go. So, look, in closing, three thoughts for you. So, one, on 2021, again, we're pleased with Q2, particularly the record retention and record sales levels. And again, our second half outlook calls for new all-time highs again in revenue and profits.
Second, on the fuel card business, again, we think the prospects are bright for the business. We do have a plan to monetize EV adoption by providing some new services and particularly measuring and reimbursing at-home recharging. We've got an opportunity to keep stepping up digital sales and digital advertising at the top of the funnel. We think we can drive incremental visitors and incremental sales. And we're launching a bill pay cross-sell opportunity to our fuel card clients again by turning our existing fuel UI into a broader payment platform.
And lastly, although early, we're quite encouraged by our 2022 setup. Our second half guidance calls for nearly $7 in cash EPS for the second half or approximately $14 annualized, again, forecasting record sales for the full year, which will flow revenue into next year. We'll roll off $1 billion in interest rate hedges in January. That will free up about $0.20 of incremental cash EPS. And lastly, our two newest acquisitions, hoping to contribute in the $0.50 to $0.70 range of incremental cash EPS. So, look, taken together a lot to like about our 2022 setup.
So, with that, let me turn the call back over to Chuck. He'll provide some additional details on the quarter. Chuck?