| Copyright: | CCBN, Inc. and FDCH e-Media, Inc. |
| Source: | FD (FAIR DISCLOSURE) WIRE |
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OPERATOR: Good afternoon; my name is Katherine, and I'll be your
conference facilitator today.
At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Cybersource
First Quarter 2008 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been
placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers'
remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. (OPERATOR
INSTRUCTIONS).
I will now turn the call over to Katrina Rymill, Director of Investor
Relations at Cybersource.
KATRINA RYMILL, DR - IR, CYBERSOURCE: Thank you and welcome to
Cybersource's first quarter conference call. During this call, we
will discuss our financial results for the first quarter of 2008.
If you have not received a press release summarizing our first
quarter results, it is available at www.cybersource.com. These
prepared remarks will run for approximately 20 minutes, and then we
will open up the call for Q&A.
Before we get started, I need to alert you to our Safe Harbor
provisions. During the course of this teleconference we will make
certain forward-looking statements regarding our business and results
of operations. Statements made today that are not purely historical
are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of
the Securities Acts of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, including without limitation, statements
regarding the Company's expectations, objectives, anticipations,
plans, hopes, beliefs, intentions, or strategies regarding the
future.
Such forward-looking statements include those relating to strengths
of the first quarter results, business model; and e-commerce market;
growth rate and momentum of the Company's international business;
discussion with new partners; entering into new and emerging payment
markets; integration of the Authorize.Net business; health of the
worldwide e-commerce growth; factors that provide insulation to the
e-commerce market generally; and the Company specifically from
economic downturn in the US; financial guidance; including without
limitations, those regarding revenue, transaction volume, gross
profit, operating expenses, net income, earnings per share, deferred
tax assets, and cash balance; factors contributing to the strength of
the Company's business and excitement about the payment industry
e-commerce market and opportunities ahead for the Company.
We wish to caution you that such statements are just beliefs or
predictions, and that actual results might differ materially from
those projected in any of all of the forward-looking statements.
These statements are subject and uncertainties including, but not
limited to, the following; changes in customer requirements;
potential financial risks relating to the Company's global acquiring
business; changes in general economic conditions and e-commerce, in
particular; changes in legal requirements and litigation arising from
time to time; unforeseen technical difficulties relating to the
Internet in general or our technology in particular; potential
systems failures including, without limitation, disruptions
intentionally caused by third parties and the intense competition in
our industry and the need for rapid technological change associated
with such competition.
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Further, Cybersource's past financial business, operations and stock
performance are not necessarily indicative of Cybersource's future
performance. Listeners are referred to the documents filed by
Cybersource with the SEC, specifically Form 10-K filed on March 11,
2008, covering the one-year period ended December 31, 2007, and our
quarterly reports filed on Form 10-K from time to time, all of which
include these and other certain important risk factors.
And now, let me introduce Bill McKiernan, Chairman and CEO.
BILL MCKIERNAN, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, CYBERSOURCE: Well, thank you,
Katrina. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us. It's a
pleasure to welcome you to our first quarter 2008 earnings call.
We started off 2008 with a very strong first quarter, building our
customer base and competitive position, and delivering financial
results that reflect the power of our business model, the
attractiveness of our value proposition, and the overall strength of
the e-commerce market.
In the first quarter, we generated record revenue of $53.4 million, a
141% increase over the same period last year, and an 18% sequential
increase over the fourth quarter.
Our growth was driven primarily by our transaction processing and
merchant-acquiring offerings and the acquisition of Authorize.Net.
During the quarter, we processed a record 445 million billable
transactions, a 68% increase over the same period last year. The
dollar value of the transactions we processed in the quarter was
approximately $26.6 billion, up 153% over the same quarter last year.
Cybersource's global acquiring business generated revenue of
approximately $17 million in the quarter, up 92% over the same period
last year. The value of transactions where we acted as the merchant
acquirer was approximately $615 million, up 86% from last year. But
the $615 million represents only about 2% of the total volume we
processed, so our acquiring penetration is still relatively low.
We added over 800 new acquiring customers during the quarter. This is
the highest number of new acquiring customers we have added in a
quarter, and brings our global acquiring customer base to
approximately 2,400.
Merchant acquiring services continued to be a major driver of growth
for the Company, representing about 32% of our total revenue.
Net income on a GAAP basis was $533,000 and earnings per share on a
GAAP basis was $0.01. Because these results include significant
non-cash charges, such as stock option compensation, amortization of
intangibles, and reversals to the allowance to the deferred tax
asset, we also provide non-GAAP financial metrics.
Steve will provide a more detailed explanation of GAAP versus
non-GAAP in a moment; and we also reconcile GAAP and non-GAAP
measures in the press release.
This quarter, non-GAAP net income was $11.5 million, or $0.16 per
share, a 281% increase compared to $3 million, or $0.08 per share for
the same period in the prior year.
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Our net operating margin in Q1 2008 on a GAAP basis was approximately
1%. Our net operating margin in Q1 2008 on a non-GAAP; basis was
approximately 22%, up from 14% a year ago, and highlights the
strength of the business, our business model, and the benefits of our
acquisition of Authorize.Net.
This quarter, we signed approximately 25,000 new customers who
represent a wide variety of industries from all market segments, from
the very small to large businesses. Cybersource now has approximately
237,000 customers who rely on us for payment solutions.
New enterprise customers added this quarter include Circuit City, Cox
Communications, TAP Airlines in Portugal, Travel-X and Vera Wang.
Existing customers that added new services or renewed agreements
during the quarter include Craig's List, H&R Block, and Nike.
Our international business is expanding rapidly, and really comes in
two flavors; the first revenue from our European-based operation,
which sells to and supports merchants based outside the US; and two,
revenue from our international gateway and acquiring business, which
is generated by US-based merchants who sell to customers outside the
US. The European-based business is seeing significant momentum,
generating a record 86.2 million transactions in the first quarter,
an increase of 94% over the same period last year, and now represents
approximately 19% of total transaction volume.
Our European business represents about 6% of total revenue; however,
this does not include transactions originated by consumers outside
the US who purchased from Cybersource's US-based merchants. This part
of the business is also growing rapidly, as many of our customers are
looking to sell their products more aggressively outside the US.
We are continuing to add more payment connections, to open up more
countries and regions for our customers. This morning, we announced
our newest payment connection to open up the China market. Through a
partnership with PayEase technology, China's leading payment
provider, we can now facilitate our customer's entry into the
rapidly-growing China market. The Cybersource PayEase solution will
provide customers with fast and cost-effective support for both
Chinese credit cards, as well as debit cards issued by over 20
leading Chinese banks.
About 25% of our total transaction volume is now in a currency other
than the US dollar. We processed 68 different currencies last quarter
from countries around the world. Our ability to help merchants
attract customers from all over the world is an important part of our
value proposition. This global reach becomes even more important as
some of our domestic customers seek to drive growth outside the US in
the event of an economic downturn in the US.
As customers look to expand their businesses beyond the US, the risk
of fraud increases dramatically. In our annual fraud survey, we found
that fraud rates outside the US are generally running 2.5 times
higher than what we see domestically. Cybersource continues to
enhance its fraud solutions with new features and advanced levels of
automation to increase our customers' efficiency of reviewing orders
and the speed with which they process orders.
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This quarter, Cybersource added device fingerprinting to its
comprehensive fraud detection systems. Device fingerprinting creates
a digital fingerprint of the computer being used by the buyer, and
can expose fraudsters who use the same computer to place multiple
orders using different identities or addresses.
As fraud detection and complex order management becomes more of a
burden for merchants, Cybersource also offers managed fraud services.
Cybersource managed fraud services provide customers with a team of
Cybersource experts who complement their internal staff and
procedures to help mitigate the risk of fraud.
Our channel business continues to thrive; our discussions with new
partners, including financial institutions, ISOs, and technology
partners have never been better. In this uncertain and tight credit
environment, many financial institutions are curtailing their
investments in e-commerce infrastructure, and are looking to
outsource their gateway offerings and leverage Cybersource's payment
and fraud capabilities. Our partners recognize the value add we
provide, and we are investing to support our network of over 4,000
re-sellers and partners.
We are also entering new and emerging payment markets, such as mobile
commerce through relationships with strategic partners. The
acquisition of Authorize.Net has added tremendous value to our
business as we address the small business market.
We continue to work to ensure a smooth integration of these two great
businesses, and the results so far are very encouraging. To date, we
have combined these two great teams with virtually no attrition of
employees or channel partners.
Cybersource is improving net operating margin and rapid customer
growth are examples of the financial and business synergies we are
achieving from the combination. We are now able to sell comprehensive
e-payment services to all segments of the market through a terrific
channel organization, as well as a very talented direct sales force.
During Q1, our patent portfolio expanded, as we were granted a new
patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The inventions claimed
in the patent, including techniques for improving order flow based on
the characteristics of the order, are incorporated in the Cybersource
Decision Manager service. Cybersource currently holds nine patents
related to the online transaction processing business, with over 30
applications pending throughout the world. Cybersource also acquired
an additional 15 patents primarily related to the telecommunications
business as a result of the acquisition of Authorize.Net.
We will continue to invest in our customer support capabilities. In
Q1, we consolidated some of our customer support team into a larger
state-of-the-art facility in American Fork, Utah. This new facility
also enabled us to hire more support people where previously we were
constrained by the capacity of our facilities.
In the quarter, we also upgraded our phone system to support higher
call volumes, and we're offering more ways for our customers to
obtain support via our website and our online chat. Customer support
is a cornerstone of our reputation and our business, and we will
continue to focus on this area in 2008.
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The overall worldwide e-commerce market continues to grow at a
healthy rate. While the slowdown in US consumer spending has had some
impact on growth rates of US e-commerce, long-term drivers, such as
the expansion by US companies abroad and the growth of Internet
accessibility around the world are supporting the continued rapid
growth of global e-commerce.
Higher income households, which are the dominant consumers of
e-commerce, also provide some insulation in the event of an economic
downturn in the US, as these households may be less impacted by the
downturn.
Cybersource's international business also helps counter the possible
effects of a US economic slowdown. We've also gained significant
traction in certain industry segments that are less cyclical such as
colleges and universities. We now have over 800 colleges and
universities, including Cornell, Columbia, Duke, MIT, and the
University of California system.
We have also seen a trend in new vertical markets, such as political
campaigns, that are rapidly shifting much of their fundraising to the
Internet. Today, for example, we support over 150 political
fundraising websites, including HillaryClinton.com.
Now I will ask Steve Pellizzer to provide some more details on the
financials.
STEVE PELLIZZER, CFO, CYBERSOURCE: Thanks, Bill. As Bill mentioned,
our first quarter revenue was $53.4 million, $1.9 to $2.4 million
higher than our guidance of $51 to $51.5 million, and a 141% increase
over the same period last year.
During the quarter, we processed a record 445 million billable
transactions, a 68% increase over last year, and up 7% from the
fourth quarter, and also at the high end of our prior guidance for
the first quarter of 435 to 445 million. Please note that with regard
to both our enterprise and our small business platform, a transaction
is counted if it is a billable event.
Global acquiring revenue increase to approximately $17 million in the
quarter, a 7% increase from the fourth quarter, and now represents
32% of our total first quarter revenue. During the first quarter, we
added approximately 25,000 new customers on a gross basis, compared
to 2,000 new customers in the first quarter of last year. We added
approximately 9,000 customers on a net basis, compared to 1,800 net
new customers in the first quarter last year.
The churn was slightly higher in the first quarter versus the fourth
quarter, as small business merchants with low transaction volumes
typically hold on through the holiday season, but then close if
ultimately unsuccessful. Small business churn rates were high in
February, primarily due to these merchants going out of business, but
returned back to normal in March.
With regard to those customers on the small business platform that
left us in February, they only represented about 5,000 in the
aggregate of total revenue in January.
Our gross profit on a GAAP basis was $$27.6 million. Operating
expenses on a GAAP basis for the first quarter were $27.4 million.
GAAP net income for the first quarter was $533,000 million and fully
diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $0.01.
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Non-GAAP net income was $11.5 million or $0.16 per share, higher than
guidance of $9 million to $9.2 million or $0.13 per share. Our cash
and short-term investment balance was $38.4 million excluding the
$12.2 million payable to merchants at quarter-end.
Cash flow from operating activities was $11.7 million for the first
quarter of 2008, compared to $2.3 million for the first quarter of
2007. The Company also generated approximately $1.7 million in cash
from employee stock option exercises. Capital spending for the first
quarter was $3.1 million, below our prior guidance of $5.5 million to
$6 million, as we delayed certain capital purchases to the second
quarter.
Now I will give you some detailed guidance with regard to our
expected future performance. In light of SEC fair disclosure this
forecast, which is made in good faith and is based on all the market
information we have available today, will be the only numbers that
the Company will comment on going forward or until updated by the
Company. We also assume no duty to update these numbers at any time.
Guidance does not take into account any further reductions in our
valuation allowance against our deferred tax assets, which would
result in a tax benefit during the period of the reduction. We will
continue to evaluate whether a further reduction is appropriate.
We expect revenue in the second quarter of 2008 to be between $54 and
$54.5 million. We currently estimate billable transaction volumes in
the second quarter to be between 445 million and 455 million.
We expect gross profit to be between $27 and $27.2 million during the
second quarter. We expect total operating expenses to be between
$28.2 million and $28.4 million. Included in cost of sales and
operating expenses is approximately $7.2 million of intangible asset
amortization expense relating to our acquisition of Authorize.Net. We
currently expect to record a net loss in accordance with GAAP in the
second quarter of $500,000 to $600,000, and a loss per share of $0.01
based on a weighted average share account of 71.5 million shares.
We expect non-GAAP net income for the second quarter to be between
$9.8 million and $10 million, and non-GAAP earnings per share to be
$0.14 based on a weighted average share count of 71.5 million shares.
We expect our non-GAAP tax provision to be approximately 1% to 2% of
non-GAAP pre-tax income. Capital spending for the second quarter is
expected to be between $5 million and $5.5 million.
While our financial results for the first quarter were very strong
and exceeded our guidance, and while we haven't seen strong
indicators that our business is being impacted by an economic
slowdown, we continue to be cautious, and as a result, have been
conservative with regard to our 2008 full-year guidance. We are
reiterating our guidance for revenue and GAAP and non-GAAP income for
2008.
For the full year of 2008 we expect total revenue to be between $215
million and $220 million. GAAP net income for the full year 2008 is
expected to be between break even and a $1 million loss, while GAAP
earnings per share is expected to be between break even and a $0.01
loss per share based on a weighted average share count of 72 million
shares.
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Non-GAAP net income for the full year 2008 is expected to be between
$42.5 million and $44 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share is
expected to be between $0.59 and $0.61 based on a weighted average
share count of 72 million shares.
We are still forecasting a cash balance of approximately $60 million
as of the end of the year, excluding any non-recurring items,
including cash used to repurchase our common stock, as well as fees
payable to merchants. We still expect capital spending for 2008 to be
between $10 and $11 million.
For a list of our upcoming conferences we will be attending this
quarter, please visit our IR website located at www.cyersource.com.
And now, let me turn the call back to Bill for his concluding
remarks.
BILL MCKIERNAN: Thank you Steve. So in summary, Cybersource started
out 2008 with a very strong first quarter, setting new records for
transaction volume, revenue, net income, EPS, and customer additions.
I think the three biggest factors contributing to the strength of our
business are one, a strong secular shift to e-commerce globally; two,
our compelling value proposition; and then three, the expansion of
our international footprint where we benefit from our large US-based
customers who sell to consumers outside of the US, as well as our
European-based operations that sell to and support our non-US-based
merchants.
I think the combination of Cybersource and Authorize.Net givers us a
terrific platform for the future. Our sales pipeline is very healthy
and being driven by concerns about PCI, date of security compliance,
and increasing appetite for international growth, and the continued
strength in the small business market.
I remain very excited about the payments industry, e-commerce market,
and the opportunities ahead for Cybersource.
I want to express my thanks to the entire Cybersource team for their
hard work this past quarter. It is their hard work and dedication
that made these results possible.
With that, Operator, let's open up the line for questions.
OPERATOR: (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS).
Wayne Johnson.
WAYNE JOHNSON, ANALYST, RAYMOND JAMES: Good afternoon; I just wanted
to add a couple of questions here. Can you talk a little bit about
what the cross-selling was between Authorize.Net and Cybersource,
like what percent of sales it was and the services that would be
included in that for the quarter just reported?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Yes, cross-selling is a relatively nascent part of
the synergies that we're realizing when we are still working on
integrating the two platforms so we can cross-sell fraud services to
the small business segment of the market. We are sharing some leads
that come in, in order to offer merchant accounts to some customers,
but -- so that is one example of the synergy. But we're still working
on getting the integration between the two platforms to capture fully
the synergy opportunity.
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WAYNE JOHNSON: Right, so on a top-line basis, I guess, as a
percentage of total sales, it was less than 5%?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, I mean I would say it's a small percentage. I
mean, one of the strong initiators of the synergy, though, as Bill
mentioned is just the merchant acquiring leads, where we're getting
leads from the A-Net base for merchant accounts, and that was
mentioned in the script in terms of the number of new adds there.
As a percentage of revenue, it's relatively small, and it's one of
those situations where we're going to build obviously a customer base
over time.
WAYNE JOHNSON: And then so the same, the follow-up would be the same
question as it relates to cost synergies and between Authorize.Net
and Cybersource, and how do you see that playing out throughout the
year? When do you think the quarter, which quarter will feel the
greatest financial impact of that in the results?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, we've really seen it already. The biggest
synergy from the expense side was closing the Marlborough Office, the
headquarters for Authorize.Net. And that was done as of the end of
2007, so that's already built into our financial guidance, as well as
our first quarter results.
So that's the biggest opportunity from an expense perspective. We
really didn't reduce the workforce in any way. We retained the entire
workforce of Authorize.Net and Cybersource, and have no plans to
reduce headcount.
WAYNE JOHNSON: And last question, I'll jump back in queue; has
Cybersource in the quarter to date, so now we're in the June quarter,
have you seen any slowdown in transaction volume compared to what you
saw in the first quarter, compared to your expectations? Could you
give us a comment just on the transaction volume trends in
Cybersource's e-commerce market?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, we really haven't, and I sort of mentioned that
in the lead-in as I was speaking to our full-year guidance. We
haven't seen anything to suggest that things are slowing down, but
we're trying to be conservative just given what you're hearing macro
economically with regard to the full-year outlook.
WAYNE JOHNSON: All right, terrific; congratulations, good quarter,
thanks.
OPERATOR: Franco Turrinelli.
FRANCO TURRINELLI, ANALYST, WILLIAM BLAIR COMPANY: Hey Bill, how are
you. Bill, could you dig a little bit more into the international
business; I know this is becoming I think much more a part of our
thinking. It's been part of your thinking for a while, but I guess
I'm not really sure that I understand or am as aware as I would like
of the strategy there. Where are you pushing; is it to get into new
geographies; is it to expand market share in existing markets; is it
direct to merchant; is it distribution; could you just kind of help
us understand where you're spending your time internationally.
BILL MCKIERNAN: Sure, so Franco, there are really two ways that we
think about the international opportunity. The first is our
European-based business that services primarily European-based
merchants today, and India, and we provide them today with gateway
and fraud services, tax calculations and export control. It's
generally a set of services without acquiring.
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Over time, we want to add merchant acquiring to that mix of services
that we offer to those non-US merchants. And as I've said before,
we're working on that now, and we're optimistic that by the second
half of this year, we'll be in a position to offer acquiring services
outside of the US.
The second aspect to the international opportunity is enabling our
US-based customers to sell their goods and services to consumers and
businesses outside the US. And what that entails is for us to build
connections around the world to support different payment types. And
the announcement that we made this morning is a great example that,
with PayEase in China, and what we've done there is we've opened up
the China market to our customers who want to sell into a market with
about 1.5 billion cards in circulation right now. And the market is
growing rapidly; the number of cards issued has grown about 33%
year-over-year, and the e-commerce market in China grew about 92%
last year. It's still small relative to the US, but it's a very, very
fast-growing market, and a great example of the kinds of markets our
US merchants like to tap into.
So you'll see us building connections out into markets like that. We
have added Brazil in the last year; we're looking at adding other
payment types in Eastern Europe and things like that, so it's going
to be a continuing theme in these calls.
FRANCO TURRINELLI: So should we also expect you to start announcing
merchants outside of Europe and India, as well as support for
e-commerce customers outside of Europe and India, or is that sort of
further away?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, I think that's further out Franco in terms of
signing customers in China, for example. We're probably not in a
position to do that just yet. But certainly, in Europe, that's one of
the goals for the second half of this year to begin signing those
European accounts, not only for the traditional legacy services that
we offer, but also for acquiring services.
FRANCO TURRINELLI: Two questions if I may for Steve; the first is a
small, nit-picky question. Steve, there's $129,000 of non-recurring
excluded from our pro forma numbers. Where is that coming out of?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, that has to do with -- Bill mentioned in the
script -- we consolidated office space in American Fork. So we closed
the historical Authorize.Net facility there and recorded some charges
as part of that, so that's really just part of the G&A expense.
FRANCO TURRINELLI: Okay, and then, well I'm sure other people will
ask this question as well, and I certainly understand your desire to
be cautious regarding the overall outlook. But having reported $0.16
in the first quarter, $0.14 forecast for the second, your yearly
guidance would imply a second half of the year that's flat over first
half. Without you seeing anything of the current trends for
e-commerce, that seems awfully conservative given the prior year
history. Are there any expenses that you're expecting to step up in
the second half of the year that we would need to be aware of that
maybe haven't come out yet?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, I mean we do have an aggressive hiring plan,
but I think you're right in terms of the fact that I am being
cautious given where we are after the first quarter, a very strong
quarter, and sort of our guidance for the second. But I also think
you hear the headlines in terms of potential recession, and for that
reason, I think caution is due. So we'll see how things play out in
the second quarter, and hopefully, we're having a positive discussion
here come July.
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FRANCO TURRINELLI: Okay, but it's top-line caution; it's not that
there's a step-up; of expenses that we need to be aware of that maybe
isn't obvious to us as we look at you externally.
STEVE PELLIZZER: No that's correct; there's nothing from an expense
perspective that's coming in in the latter part of the year that
could impact the overall full year.
FRANCO TURRINELLI: Thank you, congratulations.
OPERATOR: Gary Prestopino.
GARY PRESTOPINO, ANALYST, BARRINGTON RESEARCH: Hey Bill and Steve,
how are you doing? Hello? Can you hear me?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Loud and clear.
GARY PRESTOPINO: Oh good, hi, how are you doing?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Good.
GARY PRESTOPINO: Most of my questions have been answered, but I just
noticed that this quarter, there was more of an uptake on the global
acquiring services in terms of merchants added, and there was a prior
question asked about cross-selling, but is some of that a result of
some of the A.Net merchants taking, acquiring, or is this just you're
getting better, smarter, quicker at marketing to these merchants?
BILL MCKIERNAN: It's both Gary; we will have customers who contact us
directly, might be small businesses, and they're looking for a
complete solution. And so, in some of those instances, we will offer
them both the gateway and the merchant account.
Having said that, we are also very focused on maintaining the
relationships that we have with our channel partners, both at the
enterprise segment of the market, as well as the small business. And
so at the small business level, we've got over 3,000 ISOs that we
work with, and in many cases, we send leads out to those ISOs as well
where they will offer the merchant account. So we certainly want to
maintain those relationships that we have with the ISO community.
GARY PRESTOPINO: Now another question; do you have gateway capability
for most of the established worldwide economies, Bill, or are there
other parts of the world economies where you haven't got, built
gateways yet?
BILL MCKIERNAN: We're probably less than halfway there Gary. We've
got most of the major countries in Western Europe covered, but Latin
America, with the exception of Brazil, we really haven't touched yet.
And China is a big market for us, and we think we've got a reasonably
good coverage there with our PayEase relationship. But there's an
awful lot of Asia that we still aren't as strong as we'd like.
GARY PRESTOPINO: Okay, all right, thank you.
OPERATOR: Colin Gillis.
COLIN GILLIS, ANALYST, CANACCORD ADAMS: Hey good afternoon. So much
in acquiring how to breakout quarter; is the new platform an easier
sell, and how many of the new merchant customers were an upsell from
the existing customer base?
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BILL MCKIERNAN: Well, in terms of the connection to global payments,
I think there are some advantages to that. I'm not sure that is the
primary driver behind the increase in the number of accounts that we
signed for merchant acquiring in the quarter.
I think the vast majority of the 800 that we signed, Colin, were new
accounts to Cybersource. I don't think very many came out of the
installed base.
COLIN GILLIS: What percent came out of the historical Cybersource
channels versus the A.Net channels?
BILL MCKIERNAN: It's hard to draw the distinction there because in
some cases, we'll have sort of leads come into a central call center,
and whether they were the result of Cybersource marketing activity or
Authorize.Net activity is not something that we necessarily tag in
that account.
Our view is we want to sell Cybersource capabilities, and we've got
an offering that addresses the enterprise segment of the market.
We've got one that addresses the small business segment of the
market, but it is, at the end of the day, one Company.
COLIN GILLIS: Just turning to the data centers, can you just give us
an update of how many data centers you're maintaining right now, and
what your go-forward thoughts are on that topic?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Yes, so right now, we've got four that are live.
Basically, we have a legacy Cybersource hot center and a warm backup,
and Auth.Net has the same. I think we can probably get to three data
centers before the end of this year, and then we're working on what
it would take to ultimately consolidate platforms and possibly get to
two. But I think to get to two is probably a two to three-year
process.
COLIN GILLIS: And just, Steve, any color as to where the Cap spending
is going to go?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, it's really sort of the typical annual Cap
spend in anticipation of the volumes that we expect to see in the
third quarter, so a lot of it's just adding front servers and the
like to support the increase in expected volume.
COLIN GILLIS: Great, hey great quarter guys.
OPERATOR: Gil Luria.
GIL LURIA, ANALYST, WEDBUSH MORGAN: Good afternoon; I wanted to
follow up on the international front. You, I'm assuming you already
get some transactions from China; is that correct?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Visa and MasterCard, that would be correct, but those
would be very small volumes because the vast majority of cards in
circulation in China are debit cards issued by the local banks there.
GIL LURIA: So this really adds the capability for you to accept all
the payment methods. I mean, it sounds similar to what you did in
India, Brazil, and Ireland; is that right?
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BILL MCKIERNAN: That's correct; I mean, the model is basically the
same where to enable our merchants to go into these new regions,
these new countries, you've got to enable them to support local
payment types, the payment types that are preferred in that market.
And that's exactly what we've done through this connection into
China.
GIL LURIA: So you have a few quarters of experience now with those
three countries, India, Brazil, and Ireland; what's your experience
in terms of how much that increases transaction volumes once you
offer all the payment methods? What changes between just accepting
Visa MasterCard to being able to accept all the payment methods?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Well, what's interesting about our business is about
25% of our volume is coming from cardholders outside of the US. And a
good percentage of that is the result of being able to support these
payment types that are preferred in these local markets. It doesn't
do a merchant any good to localize a website for Germany, for
example, and convert all the HTML content into German, and then just
support standard Visa, MasterCard, American Express cards when
countries like Germany are very much debit-oriented societies. So
you've got to be able to support the payment types that are preferred
in those regions, and that's what we look to do on behalf of our
customers.
GIL LURIA: That sounds like qualitatively you know that there's a big
difference, but you can't actually quantify how much of a jump it is
when you start accepting all the payment methods.
BILL MCKIERNAN: Yes I think that's true, because overall the
e-commerce markets are growing pretty fast, and to try to tease out
how much is due to supporting a new payment side versus the
e-commerce growth is difficult to do. But we certainly know from
talking to our customers that large accounts that are looking to go
into some of these major e-commerce economies out there, they want to
be able to support these local payment types.
GIL LURIA: Got it; and then in terms of the transition into American
Fork, at American Fork, is that pretty much complete? Have you
already settled into the new building, shut down the other one, with
a lot of capacity to grow there?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Yes, as a matter of fact, Gil, we had our April Board
Meeting in American Fork in the new facility. We're totally out of
the old facilities. So that's one of the reasons we took the charge,
but yes, and the new facility is great. It really allows us the
ability to grow that location, particularly in the customer support
area.
GIL LURIA: Then finally, would you break out maybe one last time, the
small business from enterprise, the classic A-Net from classic
Cybersource?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, you know Gil, that's not the way we think about
the business, as I mentioned earlier. We really think about it as one
Company, and we've got two offerings for the two markets, one for
enterprise, and one for small business, but at the end of the day,
it's one Company and I think it makes more sense just to report the
results accordingly.
GIL LURIA: Fair enough, thank you.
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OPERATOR: Robert Dodd.
ROBERT DODD, ANALYST, MORGAN KEEGAN & CO, INC.: Hi guys, first of
all, one housekeeping one, on acquiring overall, I mean were there
any 10% customers in the quarter, are friendly acquiring customers
still there?
STEVE PELLIZZER: We didn't have any customers over 10% in the first
quarter.
ROBERT DODD: Excellent; on the -- I'm talking mainly about the legacy
gateway business from Cybersource because I'm talking of large
customers -- could you give us an idea of what the contract terms are
that you've got -- I mean what proportion of your customers have
contract renewals this year, next year, over the next couple of
years; could you give us some visibility on that?
STEVE PELLIZZER: I mean, our contracts for the most part are annual
contracts that automatically renew, so there really isn't any sort of
disproportionate number coming due in one year versus the other.
ROBERT DODD: Okay, excellent; and then one last question I've got for
you. On one of the big card associations, your local one actually,
has been talking about focusing more on e-commerce, and integrating
further with the checkout, etc., etc. Have you seen or heard anything
from them or from your ISO partners or processing partners that gives
any visibility as to whether that's going to have any meaningful
impact on you?
BILL MCKIERNAN: We've got very good relations with the card
associations, and Visa in particular, who was a very early investor
in Cybersource. I would hope that we would continue to work closely
with Visa as they look to promote Visa within the e-commerce market.
And I think Visa recognizes the role that we play in that market and
how we can help expand the brand and expand the footprint for both
Visa and MasterCard. So I welcome the card associations continued
interest in expanding their footprint in the e-commerce market.
ROBERT DODD: Okay, thank you guys.
OPERATOR: Leonard [DePresta].
LEONARD DEPRESTA, ANALYST: Good afternoon; most of my questions have
been answered, but just to be clear with regard to merchant
acquiring, you're going to try and offer it with the services
offering Europe later this year, and maybe Asia very late in the
year, or is Asia pushed off until next year?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Yes I don't, we haven't really talked about Asia this
year Leonard. I don't think, I wouldn't commit to that at this point,
but I am optimistic as I said, that by the second half of this year,
we will have an acquiring offering available in Europe.
LEONARD DEPRESTA: Okay, and just one more question, and that is right
now the merchant acquiring is about 2% of your total volume. I mean,
do you have a target of what percentage of volume you'd like it to
be, and is that a three, five-year you know what I mean? Do you want
to see 50%, 75%, you know what I mean?
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STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, I mean it's difficult to say because a lot of
our volume is coming from partners where the partners are selling the
merchant acquiring services and referring the gateway services to us,
so depending on how that mix plays out over time, I mean obviously,
we'd like to have as big a percentage as possible on the business
that we're selling directly where we can offer the merchant acquiring
services. And we continue to see that percentage increase in terms of
the number of those accounts that are taking on the acquiring
services in addition to the gateway services. But there's no sort of
target just because of the fact that we've got a significant portion
of our business comes from channel partners.
LEONARD DEPRESTA: Okay that's it, thanks.
OPERATOR: Andrew Jeffrey.
ANDREW JEFFREY, ANALYST, SUNTRUST: Hi, good afternoon guys; hey,
there are a couple of things that jump out at me, and I just want to
maybe get a little more granular with regard to the guidance, and
again I appreciate the conservatism. The first thing is the pretty
meaningful sequential increase in revenue per transaction, and just
wondering if you could talk -- I assume that's mix toward acquiring.
But if we assume you continue to have success and the trend kind of
continues, if I just sort of look at the revenue per transaction on
your projected payment volume, it suggests that either in the second
quarter and for the full year that either you're being very
conservative on one or the other, and I'm just trying to maybe break
that down a little bit more to understand what you're thinking.
STEVE PELLIZZER: Well, you're right in that the driver of the average
transaction price in large degree is the merchant acquiring revenue
growth that we've seen. I think when you look at sort of the average
transaction price from a guidance perspective, at the low end of the
range, it's fairly consistent with the first quarter at the high end
of the range. It's definitely showing some growth in the average
transaction price, but not growth that we haven't seen if you look
historically at the average transaction price over the last four or
five quarters. And again, what is driving that is the increase in
merchant acquiring revenue as a percentage to total revenue.
ANDREW JEFFREY: So is it reasonable, then to expect Steve, that if
there were a deceleration in revenue growth, or if you're
conservatism were to be borne out as being accurate that it would
come partly as a result of mix? Or am I not thinking about that
right?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Can you repeat that again?
ANDREW JEFFREY: I'm just trying to get a sense of whether some of the
caution you're exuding is a function of the thoughts around mix, or
if it's both mix and volume.
STEVE PELLIZZER: I would say it's more volume as opposed to mix.
ANDREW JEFFREY: Okay, okay, that's helpful. And then looking at your
gross margin, speaking of sort of break outs, the non-GAAP, gross
margin was the best it's been in a long time, and was up a bunch
sequentially, and again, the implication there is when you put the
revenues even with conservative guidance on, and improving gross
margin, your comments regarding the dearth of the second-half expense
ramp, again just trying to reconcile what would appear to be
exceptionally cautious guidance to what looks to be pretty good lift
at the gross margin line.
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STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, no I mean I expect that from a margin
perspective, we've seen some stabilization going into '08. Part of
that is the addition of Authorize.Net to the mix. We saw that in the
first quarter, and I think you're going to continue to see that
throughout the year. They've had a very good gross margin because of
the fact that they focus purely on the gateway business.
Pre-acquisition, the (inaudible) on that margins were at the sort of
high 70%. So that I think is helping our margin going out throughout
'08.
ANDREW JEFFREY: Okay, and then just finally, when, you've obviously
done a really good job of partnering with, as a re-seller of some of
the emerging payment technologies, could you just give us an update;
are there any newer payment technologies, like a Google checkout or
Amazon, for example, that are gaining a lot of technology or traction
where you don't currently have relationships; are you trying to forge
relationships where you see the competitive environment steadily
changing, for example?
BILL MCKIERNAN: Well Andrew, I think one of the really interesting
aspects of the payment space is how dynamic the whole environment is,
and things are continually evolving. I don't see any new trends in
the payment area that present a big threat to Cybersource. I think
there are things out there that certainly present big opportunities
to Cybersource and in addition to China, we announced earlier in the
quarter a relationship with a company called Emporia to go after the
mobile commerce vertical. And this is for companies that are selling
things via a website, but generally that website is being viewed
through a cell phone device.
And so we're continually looking for partners that can help us extend
our reach into some of these newer verticals.
ANDREW JEFFREY: Okay, but nothing in terms of existing, I'm thinking
domestic net generation payment technologies that you think in any
way alter the competitive landscape for Cybersource where you'd be
looking to aggressively partner with one that, for example, you think
might have particular attraction or particularly good prospects?
BILL MCKIERNAN: No, I agree with Andrew; there's nothing like that
that I've seen out there.
ANDREW JEFFREY: Okay, all right, thank you very much.
OPERATOR: Glenn Greene.
GLENN GREENE, ANALYST, OPPENHEIMER: Good afternoon, guys; just two
quick questions. One, could you just, Steve where are the gross
margins on the acquiring business at this point, or are they still
relatively static to where they've been?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, I mean the gross margins are sort of in the
mid-to-high teens. They're generally the margin on domestic acquiring
is sort of in the mid-teens, and then on the international side, it
tends to be higher, and so the blend there is sort of in the
mid-to-high teens.
GLENN GREENE: Okay, and then just Bill, I just heard, obviously
you've gone through four or five months of the having Auth.Net under
the fold and the integration sounds like it's going well, but any
surprises, either positive or negative on either side of the
business?
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BILL MCKIERNAN: You know, Glenn, I think the biggest surprise I've
had is on the upside, and that's the benefit that many of our channel
partners see in working with the new combined Cybersource, and the
benefits that they see in being able to work with a single partner
who has a great offering for both the enterprise segment of the
market, as well as the small business segment of the market. And I
don't think we fully appreciated that when we went into the deal.
We did spend a lot of time before the deal closed between the
announcement and the closing, so between June and November, in
planning out the integration and how it would all work, and I think
that work last summer really paid dividends in how we were able to
seamlessly integrate the two businesses, and maintain the employees
at Authorize that were just a great group of people, and maintain the
channel relationships that they'd built up over the years, which are
really, really important to the combined entity.
GLENN GREENE: Okay, and then it sounded like you really haven't seen
much impact at this point from sort of the macro headwinds. Anything
at a very high level on either the Auth.Net side or the Cybersource
side that maybe you're seeing? Maybe the Auth.Net business customer
is seeing something; any sort of indications from the macro economy?
BILL MCKIERNAN: No I think both sides of the business I think are
very strong. I don't think we're seeing indicators on one side versus
the other, which is a good sign at this point.
GLENN GREENE: Okay, thanks guys.
OPERATOR: Brett Huff.
BRETT HUFF, ANALYST, STEPHENS INC.: Good morning guys; nice quarter.
One quick housekeeping question before I ask a couple more. You
talked about 9,000 net users and then you talked about a February
number of 5,000. Was that a revenue number Steve?
STEVE PELLIZZER: Yes, it was just making the point that the churn was
unusually high in February, which was sort of a result of small
business customers going out of business and the revenue from those
customers that went out of business in February was only about $5,000
in the month of January. It's just not significant to the top line
was the point.
BRETT HUFF: Okay; anything changing about your competition with some
of the more traditional acquirers and processors?
BILL MCKIERNAN: I don't think so Brett. This is a business that
historically been dominated by the large banks. The one change from
maybe a year ago is that many of those large banks are very
distracted right now with credit crises and things that are affecting
their businesses, their core businesses. So as I mentioned in the
prepared remarks, one of the effects of that is I think their even
stronger desire to partner with companies like Cybersource for
e-commerce infrastructure because they have neither the appetite nor
the capital to invest in e-commerce infrastructure.
BRETT HUFF: Okay, and then just two quick questions on the numbers
Steve; looking at your sales and marketing and G&A lines, are
those good places to start going forward? You said there's not going
to be any meaningful change in expenses, but does that hold true for
those lines individually?
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STEVE PELLIZZER: Well, I mean we are looking to hire this year, and
that's sort of already factored into my guidance. I mean I think as a
proxy, if you use those as starting points from Q1 and sort of just
ratchet those up slightly for headcount, I think yes, it's a good
basis. I mean, we did see some unusual change in the sales and
marketing line post the acquisition because of the commissions that
Authorize.Net pays to their re-sellers. And so it's unusually high in
Q1, but the expectation up is going to continue.
BRETT HUFF: Okay, that's all I had, thanks.
OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the Q&A portion of
our call. Ms. Rymill, do you have any closing remarks?
BILL MCKIERNAN: No thank you Operator, and thank you everyone for
joining us today.
OPERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference
call. You may disconnect.
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