Two of our annual KBW Fintech Payments Conference. My name is Sanjay Sakhrani. I lead the consumer finance and payments research efforts at KBW. I hope you guys found yesterday informative. It was a long day, but we had a lot of different companies and a lot of different topics that we discussed, and I at least learned a lot. Next up, or our first presentation of the day is WEX. I'm joined here with Melissa Smith, who's been in her role as Chair and Chief Executive Officer of WEX since 2013. Next to her is Steven Elder. He's the head of IR. Melissa has been with the company for over 25 years. Yeah? I know. No, you look great. Has held a number of leadership positions across the company, including four years as CFO. Maybe, Melissa, we start with question number one on the economy, right? You guys talked about it on the conference call. You're seeing small pockets of impact. Mm-hmm. Maybe you can give us an update on how things are panning out. Sure. Love to. When we gave guidance for the year, you recall we said we thought the first quarter we would continue to see strong volumes, we have. Mm-hmm. Continued to see strong volumes. The one pocket that we started seeing some weakness in towards the latter half of last year was the over-the-road business, so, like, in a little pocket within our fleet segment. You know, that has continued to be a little bit softer as we had expected. Mm-hmm ..in the quarter. Other than that, you know, travel volumes have continued to rebound nicely, so strength there. Strength within our health segment because we had really strong enrollment season, so we've continued to have really good volume coming through that part of the business. You know, our fleet business has continued to perform as we had expected. So far we're just seeing, like, a little one little area in the economy that's, you know, more acutely soft. I guess, like, is there any commonality in that small pocket that's causing it, you know, the impact? Like, is it that this cohort is seeing the impact of inflation or the demand is slowing? I'm just curious if there's something specific there. Yeah. Look, what ended up happening towards the end of last year's spot rates within the freight marketplace dropped. That squeezes the smaller players. Mm-hmm ...within the marketplace. You started to see the shift in who was actually providing the services towards the end of last year to larger carriers. As a result, they had, you know, more of the capability to ride through than, because they're typically not being paid off spot rates. Where the smaller carriers started to get squeezed, and that just has continued through this year. What you're seeing is some of the smaller players, main like 1, 2, 3 vehicle over the road fleet customers are really having a hard time. Where anything bigger or has been in business for a while is managing to actually make it through this period of time. They have more liquidity. They have more liquidity. A lot of them are newer businesses. Yeah. You know, newer startup-like businesses. Got it. They got into the market because spot rates had gone up so much during the pandemic. They made a lot of money, at that point. When spot rates came down, inevitably it. I see. ...didn't end well for them. Is there anything you're doing in terms of your? I know you've baked it into the. Mm-hmm in terms of how you're managing the business and underwriting these new cohorts. Like, is there anything that you've done to change the way you're growing? Sure. Sure. You know, that is a cyclical business, so think of that part of the business where there's actually quite a bit of fluctuation in how we're extending credit over time. We've tightened credit standards, we've reduced credit lines, you know, particularly focusing on those who are newer in business and smaller in size in the over-the-road segment. Mm-hmm. kind of at a macro level, looking across the rest of our fleet business, we actually had started tightening credit standards within our North American fleet business, you know, maybe a year ago. Mm-hmm. As we started to see some noise around, you know, what might happen with the economy. We had done that, you know, a while ago. Final question on this topic. This has not been a historical trend where you see this pocket deteriorate, and then it starts moving upwards. Like, you don't feel like this is a canary in the coal mine or anything like that. It's sort of a unique situation. I think that actually there was softness in this market a few years ago, it doesn't. Right ...it doesn't always tie into what's happening with the broader economy. It's certainly something we're paying attention to. Again, when we gave out guidance, we did guide to the latter part of the year being a slow growth environment, you know, just in case. That's just to be conservative. It's not because we're seeing something- Right ...that indicates that. Anything you wanna add to that, Steve? I know you talked to a lot of people. I guess maybe just moving on, 'cause I also heard on the conference call the reiteration of the targets. Maybe you could just talk about what gives you the confidence in these targets today. I'm sure, like the way the building blocks might be a little bit different than they were before. Obviously the healthcare business is doing quite well. Travel has done really well. Corporate payments is growing out. Maybe just talk about the different. Yeah ...inputs there. Yeah. Our long-term targets are revenue growth of 10%-15%, earnings growth of 15%-20%, fuel price FX neutral. Part of the confidence is because we have a good history of delivering on those, and if we kinda go through the pieces, we parsed out in our investor day our growth strategy of how we're going to get to those numbers, and we actually talked about how we did for the year last year compared to that. We have a strong markets there, and we're gonna grow 4%-5% from our existing customer base. We over-delivered that last year. It was 14% growth, so significantly higher. It's, you kinda keep going across that. We have a really strong sales engine, and we have history of bringing in new business. You know, if you can look across our portfolios last year, we had 14% growth of our health business. We brought in 1.7 million new vehicles during the course of the year within our fleet business. We had, you know, exponential growth within our travel and corporate payments business, and so we said that that's gonna contribute 3%-5% of our growth annually. Last year that was 4%, so that's net of attrition, so new customers coming in, net of those that are leaving us. On top of that, we're gonna deliver new products. You know, we've been ramping up what we're doing from a product perspective. We've got, you know, some great new product offerings that are in the mix, that's gonna deliver 1%-2% growth. Last year, that was 2%, so on the high end of that range. Finally, M&A. Mm-hmm. which is 2%-3%. My confidence as you go across each of those areas, is that we're in large markets. Those are growing, so you get a tailwind associated with that. We do a great job bringing in new business and retaining customers once they come in. Then on top of that, we're gonna continue to work on delivering new product offerings into the marketplace. I guess, how much of a cross-sale opportunity is there inside the business? Yes. You know? Maybe you can just talk about that. Yeah. As you know, we reorganized the business a little over a year ago, where we created geographic areas. We have a COO internationally and a COO of the Americas. That was really to start taking advantage of all the work that we've done on the underlying technology, where we're starting to share the platform and technology base across the different products that we have. It's also offering the ability for us to cross-sell, and so it's early days. We've said on the call that we had 100 new customers that came through cross-selling. Think about that coming through with infrastructure light. Mm. We've been building out the infrastructure related to that so that that can happen with larger customers much more fluidly. We're really focusing on the digital experience with our smaller customers. Digital first as we bring new customers in. Let's say that they come in in our fleet business, then we have the ability to then start cross-selling other offerings. It's early. We see this as actually a large opportunity for us. We'll talk more about it as we go. Okay. We're, I would say right now we're still in that building phase. Right. You talked about being on track to deliver the $100 million in savings on OpEx. You know, maybe you could just talk about some of the areas you're targeting to get those savings, and just broader comments on operational efficiency. Yes. 'Cause, I mean, it seems like you have a pretty leverageable business model. Yes. A $100 million worth of run rate savings exiting 2024. Mm-hmm. We said that we would have half to two-thirds of that by run rate as you exit 2023, and we're on track for that. You know, as you kind of step back and look at that, I talked about a lot of the work that we've done on the underlying technology. That's really enabling us to start to look across the platform and say, where are there things where we're doing multiple ways or using multiple systems, creating efficiencies associated with that? We're also have been using technology, so things that have been done historically, we might be able to replace with robotics automation- Mm-hmm. -or machine learning or artificial intelligence, depending on what the subject is. It's really allowing us to tap into this platform that we've created using new tools and technology, and that's creating efficiencies. I'm super excited about this because I think that we can create a better customer experience, through the use of technology and a better employee experience, and you can do it at a lower cost. Mm. I think that, It's been a big focus of ours, because we see this as a great opportunity to increase Net Promoter Score, employee satisfaction. 100%. and then our costs. Feel really good about where we are. Just long term, maybe just talk about how much leverageability there is in the model beyond the $100 million? Yeah. You can see when we bring in revenue across the business, it is highly scalable. They drop through at different rates, but they're, you know, across the board, they're dropping through at very high rates. You know, our goal is to make sure that we're setting up the platform in a way that can continue to increase that drop through. We've done a lot of work. I'd say, like, a great example is our travel and corporate payments segment. Yes. Right? Where Talked about a while back. Yeah. We did a lot of work a number of years ago within that segment to work on the underlying technology so that as we bring new spend volume in, particularly on our Embedded Payments product, you can see that it has a very high drop through rate associated with that. Feel good about the fact that we have the ability to create that leverage across the platform. At the same time, you know, part of what we said we're gonna do with these savings is reinvest, you know, half of them. It's, it's like a flywheel. You know, you get these savings, you have an ability to actually reinvest it. Then you can get more value. We're seeing that live right now as we're starting to see the benefit of the work that we've done. Mm-hmm. We have the ability to then take that, work on a different type of digital experience or, you know, in our finance group as an example, you can actually go through and look at some of the back-end processes we have and create automation from that and use that money to create a better customer experience. I'm really excited about where this is going. you know, at the end of this, what we want is this global commerce platform that is something that we can use across all of the services that we provide. you know, each year we get closer and closer to that. Got it. Maybe we dig into fleet. Maybe you just wanna level set sort of where fleet is right now before we go into, like, some specific questions. Obviously, EV is a big discussion topic. The core business seems to be doing quite well. Mm-hmm ...nonetheless. Maybe just talk about, you know, the push and pull there. Yeah, yeah. No. Our fleet business is, it's been a great growth vector for us. It's an ability for us to bring in small customers. If you look across that portfolio, we talked about the fact that we added over 100,000 new customers last year, some of those coming within our fleet business. We have this marketing machine that is out there digitally marketing into the marketplace, and we're bringing in customers on a very regular cadence, you know, as a result. We feel good about our ability to continue to bring in new customers both in the U.S. and then internationally. You talked about EV, but I think about this segment. The growth is largely coming from, in the short term, new customers coming in. Mm-hmm. We get a little bit of kick-up from our existing customer base, but I'd say that the bulk of the growth comes from just new customer acquisition. On top of that, we see EV increasingly as an opportunity for us, and what we're hearing from our customers is that what they, what they definitively want is the ability to be able to integrate their gas-powered vehicles with the what they're gonna have for electric vehicles into one product offering so that they can understand the total cost of ownership for their fleet. They want an integrated experience where they're getting one bill, where they're using one payment product. That's just creating a huge opportunity for us since we have, you know, 18 million commercial vehicles that are going through this transaction that will happen over, you know, an extended period of time. The offerings that we've entered in, both in the US and in Europe are allowing people to purchase fuel, I'm sorry, purchase electricity. Mm-hmm ...as they travel. Our, you know, short-term goal is to be able to purchase fuel as you go, also use depot charging in order to, you know, think of it a fleet who's out there moving around, you wanna be able to charge on the fly, you wanna be able to reimburse people as they're charging at home, and you wanna be able to reimburse for depot charging. Mm-hmm. Integrate that with all the what's happening with their gas-powered vehicles. That's been our short-term product approaches. It allows us to shift our revenue stream as part of this migration, so we can go from the interchange that we're receiving. You would receive less interchange going forward, but you start to earn subscription fees. When we've looked at this, we've talked about the fact that we believe that we have an ability to increase the revenue opportunity that we have. We talked about the $1.5 billion-$2 billion of TAM associated with just these initial product offerings. Our focus in the mid short term has been building up those products. The customers that we have on are still small. Mm-hmm. We have about 200 customers that are using our products right now, which is up 100% in the year, but still very small. They are paying us fees in the range that we expected. Right now, everything we're seeing is that this is a positive for us. Will there be one platform that does both? They want to have the ability to, yes. Think of this. Have you built that out or is that in development? Pieces of it are built out. Obviously we have the ability to pay for the gas-powered vehicles. Mm-hmm. We have the ability to charge as you travel, and then the pieces that we're focused on continuing to build is reimbursement at home. Okay. depot charging. Instead of the longer term opportunities, there's all kinds of complexity around these transactions as well. Think about energy management. You know, it's a lot cheaper to charge your vehicle in the middle of the night than it is in the middle of the day. Yeah. How can you know, have an effect on that? There's, you know, for public companies, ESG reporting. You know, there's all kinds of complexities around this. What does that driver do for the half an hour that they're charging their vehicle in the middle of the day, right? Things that, you know, our customers are gonna need to figure out from their operational standpoint, but also things that, you know, value that we can bring that, you know, gives us that kind of sense of this is as much opportunity as anything for us. Okay. What we're hearing from our customers is they're generally going out, they're buying vehicles and then they're saying, "I don't know what to do." You know, like, "Can you help me?" Again, it's just, it's creating an opportunity for us to provide even more value to them. There's a power of incumbency here in your opinion? Yes. If in part, you know, part of the mode is the fact that this transition will take some time, the ability to have an offering that serves both their existing customer base. Mm-hmm ...transition, in transition to EV is really important. Is this happening more outside the U.S. than in the U.S.? Europe's definitely faster. Yes. Yes. In the U.S., there's interest, and people are making orders, but I would say they're largely either driven by really large company and got ESG reporting requirements or a public entity like, we do business with the federal government and, you know, more than half the states. There have been the kind of first movers in the United States, where there's certainly more pressure in Europe. Maybe we just drill down a little bit. You talked about this micro segment that has seen some pressure, but just any other trends, large versus small in fleet, even thinking about growth, not just credit, you know? Like if we think about the opportunity, large versus small... Yeah ...I mean, over the road has been a big push over the last, I don't know. Yeah many years. Yeah. That's been obviously a great growth vector. As we look ahead... Yeah How different does that look? Let me talk a little bit about how we acquire business. Sure. If you go across our go-to-market channels, so across every part of the business, we go to market both directly and directly through partners. In the fleet business, specifically the partners that we're doing business with are, think of most of the major oil companies are customers of ours, we go to market as if we're them. Those offerings tend to be geared towards smaller companies. We also go to market for a number of mid-sized oil companies and then directly. We're canvassing the marketplace with a number of different offerings. If you look at the acquisition engine that we have. The larger customer base, we're going with people that are in the field that are directly going after customers. The bulk of what we're doing is happening, focused on the smaller customer base. If you look at the growth opportunity, we still are winning business both in the over-the-road customers and the local fleets, with larger sized vehicles. The majority of the wins are happening within smaller customer base. That's just because if you look at the marketplace, it's like a pyramid. Mm-hmm. We've continued to see a huge amount of opportunity to bring in new customers in that small end of the marketplace. If you look at our forward growth, it will be geared towards smaller customers just because of the size of the market. A lot of that is singles and doubles type thing? Yes, exactly. Right. Yes. There's not a lot of aggregation happening there by other parties. No. Well, the aggregation is happening through our partners. We do business with some of those. Specifically in the over-the-road marketplace, there are some people that are active aggregators, but they're partners of ours. Okay. You don't see that as a bigger trend, 'cause I'm gonna assume that, like, that becomes a little bit marginalizing. No. No? No. Actually, even where you're seeing that as a trend, I wouldn't actually describe it as marginalizing. Oh, okay. No. The offering that we have is integrated into. Think of them as like a sales engine associated with bringing new customers, but we're actually providing the product. Right. It's just that they would have, like, the customer relationships. Yes. At times The intermediary wants more for that customer relationship. Yes. Yeah, but that, still very strong. Yeah economics. Okay. Got it. Maybe just a little bit more on international. Mm-hmm. Like, I know Europe has been a push. We've been sort of waiting on Asia a little bit more. Yeah ... the big fuels to come around and switch. I mean, where are we with that, all of that? Yeah. You know, we have not focused as much on providing the technology as a service with internationally. As people come to us because they're interested, then, you know, we have been certainly responsive to that, and particularly. Yeah the largest companies in the world that are interested in having global partnerships. I say that because as we've offered our technology globally, typically what we're finding when you go into a number of those marketplaces, there's a lot of complexity under their underlying technology base, so it's not as simple as, I'm gonna connect to your API. It's actually a lot of build that you end up doing for each of these parties. We have done it, we'll continue to do it, but we're increasingly selective of where we provide that type of service because it's hard to actually create scale. Mm-hmm ... out of that model. We've talked about OMV as the most recent customer in Europe that we're providing services for. Again, we have the underlying product and the technology. We provide professional services globally from a technology perspective, but it has not been a huge focus of our growth. We've been more focused around how we can build out the direct and partner channels that we have, both in the United States and Europe and in Australia. Great. I'm gonna shift gears and talk about travel. Obviously volume still remain below 2019 levels. Asia being one area. Maybe you could just talk about the opportunities for growth in Asia and just broadly? Yeah, sure. Pre-pandemic, Asia was about 20% of our portfolio. It's been around 10, maybe 12%. Mm-hmm ... of our portfolio most recently. For us, Asia is travel that's happening outside of China. It is certainly impacted by what happens in China. We do continue to see that as an opportunity for us to seek further rebound. What has happened in the travel marketplace is that you've seen, as you said, volumes are, and transaction volumes are below 2019, but rates are higher. Mm-hmm. We've seen, you know, kind of a nice pickup from a rate perspective. Those rates have moved around over the last few quarters, which is I think normal. When we think about the opportunity to grow, we still think that there's continued rebound from pre-pandemic levels in transactional volumes- Transactional volumes ... in big part because of what's happening in Asia, but even more broadly. Then we think there's continued benefit of what's happening from a... This is where we do benefit from an inflation perspective is Yeah ... rates go up, we are a net benefactor of that. Just in general, that marketplace has historically grown in the high single digits. We think that you'll get market growth even beyond the rebound that's happening from the pandemic. Are there share gain opportunities, like inside the OTA volumes and such? There are, yes. It's not just within the OTAs that's offering different type of services. The primary offering that we have within the travel marketplace is paying for hotels, and that's because hotels are largely franchised. In short, our offering allows us to eliminate a lot of complexity, you know, related to travel spend. Just to kind of back up, if you're going to go and book a hotel room with an online travel agency, you're gonna pay with your consumer card, and our technology integrates into their system to then facilitate the payment to the hotel, and it gets matched one for one. The beauty of that is that it works with If you're a startup OTA, they can actually use our technology, and it scales as that business grows. Really frictionless. Highly integrated, and then we get involved globally on cross currency. Mm-hmm. As we are settling an issue in a number of currencies globally, we have the compliance structure to do that globally, which eliminates a lot of complexity that they have from a treasury perspective. That wholesale payment is incredibly complex, which is why that was really the starting point for us. We're also involved with airlines more in Europe, but increasingly, we think that's an opportunity in the U.S. as well. As you continue to penetrate not just with the OTA but also- Mm-hmm. ... as you get this migration to look at other sources to spend, we do think that's an opportunity. In Europe, you've got this migration of moving more and more to a model where they're expecting that customer to make that prepayment. That's where we get involved is that migration to the merchant model. Mm-hmm. ... continues to evolve. We also get market pickup from that. We do think there's a number of different opportunities here. Is there any other use cases for the virtual card product outside of the OTA travel? Oh, yeah. Like, we use it with insurance payments, so think of it like aftermarket warranties. Mm-hmm. There's a number of different- Nothing big enough to really. I mean, they're overshadowed by the- Right ... just the size of the travel marketplace, but we are involved and continue to bring in new business. Not just with the virtual card payment. Sometimes it's using the underlying technology that we have to facilitate the card programs kind of all the way through to the virtual payment. Got it. This embedded payment concept, that we use with travel companies, we've also deployed with FinTechs. Say they're going into the marketplace, they're doing something else, they're taking our technology and embedding a virtual payment associated with that through the use of an API. Mm-hmm. A highly, again, highly scalable model that we have where we can provide those services to our customers. What they're interested in and part of why they come to us is A, the reliability. That's really important 'cause they're operating 24/7 as their brand, and the technology is incredibly scalable and has worked really well. Yeah. It's done really well. Maybe we shift gears, talk about corporate payments. Can you just, like, level set for us right now what corporate payments is? Mm-hmm. Maybe just the competitive dynamics there, 'cause there's so many different players doing different things, and you work with many of those players that we know. Yes. Yes. The corporate payments for us, we would split into two different product offerings. One is Embedded Payments, which is travel is actually a use case of that. Beyond travel, we just talked about the fact that we embed our payments into a number of different workflows. You know, as a result, we're earning revenue associated with that. We're earning largely interchange revenue and are sharing a piece back with our partner. Then, beyond that, we have an AP Direct product offering, which we're where we're taking and fulfilling people's AP needs electronically for, on their behalf. That is something we do both with partners, and so with the partners or people think like American Express, where we're providing the technology to them, and they're going into the marketplace and selling, or directly, where we are, with our own direct sales force, which is, still relatively small for us. Mm-hmm. We have been ramping it. We've focused mostly on those partner channels first, and providing the offering and it's been a source of growth for us. It's mainly the mid-market companies? In the. Yes. Okay. As we think about the growth potential from here. Mm-hmm. ... is it, you know, more on the smaller end with Flume, or do you continue to see, like, great opportunity growing with your parners? Yeah. Within the space, we've created a digital offering. Think of this as a digital wallet where you can pay and get paid, which is branded Flume into the marketplace, which is giving us this entry into that small end of the marketplace. It's a huge market. Right. like I mean, honestly, we're gonna be canvassing. Right ... at many different opportunities here. We're excited about Flume is we think of that as like it's a great chassis that we've built. We have the ability to use that in many different ways. Yeah. I think of that as when I talked about the 1%-2% growth in products, so use Flume or Flume-like offerings or, you know, part of, you know, a number of different shots on that goal that we're gonna have. I would say within corporate payments, we're focused on the product offerings that we have, which are the embedded product offerings and AP Direct offerings. Flume is a digital component of that and we'll continue to build out functionality focusing on both our existing customers, which is Flume's really focused on how do you take an existing fleet customer and digitally offer them something more. We'll have that continued focus, and then as you get into the mid-market, that's where we're gonna go into the market much more directly. Okay. I think there was a question on your conference call just talking about, like, your learnings- Yes ... from up until now. I mean, so far so good in your mind? Yes. Yeah? Learnings for. For Flume. Oh, yeah. ... as you rolled it out. Yeah. You know, I think, you know, part of what I get super excited about this. You went. They asked a technology question a while ago. Mm-hmm. Like, we're have evolved so much over the last five years that the ability to take an idea, have a team segregated to work on it, spin it up, and bring it to the marketplace rapidly, and then go through a prototype to a beta to an alpha beta test, it's, you know, it's just incredible. Our learnings have been a number of different things, but one, segregating a team to work on innovation, you know, is something that's been highly successful for us. Doing things that are customer-focused innovation, which has been one of our core strengths, is also really important to us. It's we're not innovating just to innovate. We're actually. We have a huge customer base, and so we're taking advantage of that to listen to what are their needs. Mm-hmm. What type of problems do they have that we can actually solve? We spend a lot of time not just on them telling us, you know, what do they want, but us really kind of digging in and saying, "What inherent need do you have that we can actually solve?" Then watching their behavior patterns associated with that. I feel like we have this ability to rapidly prototype and move into the marketplace, and we will learn a lot of things. Some of these things are gonna fail, some of these things are gonna do great, and like, rapid cycle is an important component of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm gonna move on to health and employee benefits, then we can open up to the audience if they have any questions. You know, obviously that segment has done quite well. You've seen some acceleration there. Maybe you can just talk about some of the components of that and what the long-term strategy is. It's been great. It's been excellent. Quite well. When we entered this space in 2014, it was about $85 million in revenue, and last year we were $500 million. I'd say it's gone really well for us. You know, the focus that we've had is within this space of thinking of if any of you have an HSA account or an FSA account or any type of tax-deferred account, we provide the technology to make sure that you're buying things that are appropriate, and from a tax perspective. More recently we became a custodian, so we can take in accounts, which gives us a nice buffer with our fleet business, which is more interest rate sensitive. It's a great model. It is a model that's gonna continue to build because consumers continue to move to consumer directed healthcare accounts as employers are providing more and more incentive to move to high-deductible plans. As a result, when employers move to high-deductible plans, they typically are funding HSA accounts associated with that, which is provides a triple tax benefit to a consumer. There's inherent benefit from a consumer perspective, and there's a benefit from an employer perspective because they're focusing on buffering increased healthcare costs. What we do is provide the underlying technology for those account types. So think of us as almost like an administrator that sits in the background to that. You've got a benefit of this continued move to HSA accounts. Healthcare costs do keep going up despite all that. Again, you know, we are a net benefactor of that. This part of our business has continued to grow. We had a really strong enrollment season. You saw that coming through the account growth that we had in the fourth quarter. This part of the business, we'll see market growth. We continue to add new partners. We continue to add business directly. You get sort of this accumulative effect, and you're seeing that come through. Plus now the income that we're getting from our custodian assets. We had talked about this, having a growth rate of 15%-20%, and this year, you know, certainly gonna be doing well. I guess, like, you've also been expanding inside of HSA, FSA to do more for the employer. Yes. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit more and what the opportunity is from. Yeah. Yeah. addressable market standpoint. Sure. Yeah. Originally what we're doing was extending account types, and so, HSA, FSA, COBRA, benefit accounts, lifestyle accounts now, which has been, you know, an important addition. As those account types we've included and extended our technology capabilities. Mm-hmm. We also purchased a benefit administration provider. What that allows us to do is connect with an initial point with an employer who is interested in providing benefits, so that we can actually start from that first point of, you know, what offerings should you have to your employees, and how can we use the data that we have to help your consumers make more informed choices. You know, again, another one of those flywheels or the fact that because we have such a large database, so we can use that information associated with when someone is signing up of how much money should you fund. Mm-hmm. Like which type of account should you use? That's just allowing us to provide more information to the end user, which in this world where people are trying still to focus on retention, it's, you know, it's a net benefit for an employer as well. It's really a hidden gem inside- It- the business, it feels. Hopefully you get more credit for it in the valuation, you know? I think it, as it becomes a bigger part of our business, like, it's certainly drawing more interest. Yeah. which is good. Good. It's also an incredibly resilient part of our business. It grew through the pandemic. You know, we're very bullish about this. Yeah. Absolutely. Sorry, I'm gonna stop here, see if there's any questions in the room. Otherwise, I've got a couple more. Any questions? Raise your hand. There's one back there. Thank you. The benefits administration payments and payments intelligence associated with that. What are the competitive dynamics of that side of the business versus the core, and is that significantly different or same core competition? Yes. That part of our business, we're competing with a couple different people. In particular, HealthEquity, you know, is one of the direct competitors we have in that space, as well as a company called Alegeus, which is owned by Vista. The benefit administration component of it allows us actually a little bit more competitive strength 'cause not only we're providing just the technology stack to the employer, we can provide the benefit administration capabilities. Actually for us it's a competitive advantage, you know, within the space of where we're more broadly competing. Yeah, there's one over there, too. This one over there. Oh, back there. Sorry. Sorry. I should have pointed better. Thank you. I know that you said the growth is in the benefits space as well. Is there an equivalent to an HSA or something over in Europe? Is there equivalent, sort of the healthcare space, an opportunity for growth there? They, they don't have... You know, their whole healthcare system is obviously different than we have here. There's not something quite as equivalent. We are finding, though, in Australia, you know, there are opportunities in, within, some international markets because they have not exactly the same type of offerings that we have in the United States, but enough similarities that we're exploring the opportunity to move. I mean, honestly, I would say our primary focus, because of the opportunity we have in the United States, has been, with this segment, has been much more US-focused. As we see opportunities globally, you know, we are exploring them to see if it makes sense to extend. All right. Last question, 'cause you alluded to M&A, and I didn't ask a question on that yet. Last one. Last one. Yeah. Maybe just talk about what the opportunities are right now. Are they gonna be bolt-on type acquisitions, or do you see an opportunity for something more sizable? Yeah. Just capital allocation in general, one of the things that we'd started doing more aggressively towards the latter part of last year was also buying back stock. Good timing. Yes. Yes. As we've been thinking about capital allocation, one of the things that we've looked at is we generate a significant amount of cash, and we have the ability to do both M&A and think about other ways of deploying capital. We've reduced our leverage, we are in a, you know, a pretty strong position right now from an M&A perspective. In the marketplace, say, if you look across the categories, we've said we like scale plays. We like things that can, you know, continue to increase the margin capability and the strength of the business. We like product extensions as well, so those areas that either we're gonna build or we're gonna buy. Mm-hmm. We've done both, you know, if you think back over time, and then geographic extension through M&A. We've been really focused around energy innovation. In that case, we're making smaller investments in companies as opposed to it may not be M&A because you've got a lot of really early stage companies. We're really focused around our health and benefit segment and we're, you know, really focused around corporate payments. The, the multiples, you know, specifically in corporate payments still are actually pretty rich, despite the fact that they've contracted. What we're seeing, at least early on, is a lot of the assets that were hitting the marketplace were not the most attractive ones to purchase. We feel like we're, you know, really patient. We have pipelines. We continue to work through those pipelines and we're pretty rigorous around making sure they hit their financial criteria as well as strategic criteria. I think we're really well-positioned for, you know, what is happening in the marketplace right now. We're gonna stop right there. Thank you so much, Melissa and Steve. Yep. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Cassie.