Euronet Worldwide Inc (EEFT) 2011 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Euronet Worldwide Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call.

At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode.

Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session with instructions following at that time.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder this conference call is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr.

Jeff Newman, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Euronet Worldwide.

Thank you, Tyrone.

Good morning, and welcome everyone to Euronet's quarterly results conference call.

We'll present our results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2011 on this call.

We have Mike Brown, Rick Weller, and Kevin Caponecchi on the call.

Before we begin, I need to make a disclaimer concerning forward-looking statements.

Statements made on this call that concern Euronet's or its Management's intentions, expectations, or predictions of future performance are forward-looking statements.

Euronet's actual results may very materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including conditions in world financial markets, general economic conditions, technological developments affecting the market for the Company's products and services, foreign currency exchange fluctuations, the Company's ability to renew existing contracts at profitable rates, changes in fees payable for transactions performed for cards bearing international logos, or over switching networks, such as card transactions on ATMs, and changes in laws and regulations affecting the Company's business, including immigration laws.

These risks and other risks are described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on form 10-K, quarterly reports on form 10-Q, and current reports on form 8-K.

Copies of these filings may be obtained via the SEC's Edgar website, or by contacting the Company or the SEC.

Euronet does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, and undertakes no duty to any person to provide any such update under any circumstances.

The Company regularly posts important information on the Investor Relations section of its website.

Now I'll turn the call over to Rick.

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome to everyone who is joining us on this call or over the web.

I will begin my comments with the fourth quarter financial highlights on slide five.

After reviewing the highlights of the quarter, I will move on to the full-year results.

For the fourth quarter 2011, the Company reported revenue of $319 million, operating income of $23 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $42 million.

We have also presented the adjusted operating income for the fourth quarter last year to remove the impact of goodwill impairment charges for more meaningful comparison to the prior year.

Our cash EPS for the fourth quarter was $0.46, $0.05 ahead of the guidance that we provided at the end of the third quarter.

The extra five cents was attributable to tax benefits stemming from tax planning initiatives, foreign country tax return true-ups, and a shift in the mix of income to lower-tax countries, partially offset by the impacts of unfavorable foreign exchange rates, which was a little more than $0.01 a share.

About half of the tax benefits will be recurring in 2012, but spread evenly over the quarters, giving us a cash earnings effective tax rate of just under 30%.

I will discuss our segment results in more detail when I get to the segment reporting.

Move to slide six, please.

On slide six you can see the transaction trends in both the EFT and the epay segments.

EFT transactions grew by 22% in the fourth quarter 2011 compared to the prior year.

This growth was attributable to transaction growth in a number of markets, including Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, India, Pakistan, and our European cross-border acquiring business.

Epay segment transactions grew by 10% in the fourth quarter over last year, due to double-digit transaction growth in several markets, including Spain, Germany, Italy, the Middle East, India and the US, and to a lesser extent the acquisition of Cadooz in the third quarter.

We also saw a stabilization of the UK, where we achieved year-over-year transaction growth for the first time since 2008.

Offsetting these increases were transaction declines in Australia, as we continue to see competitive pressures in that market.

Next slide, please.

On slide seven, you can see RIA's transactions increased by 18% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year.

This increase is attributable to growth in money transfers from the US, Europe, and Canada, together with continued momentum from other value-added transactions, such as mobile top-up, check cashing, bill payment, and pre-paid debit cards.

In the fourth quarter, money transfer transactions grew by 11%.

This includes an 11% increase in transfers sent from the US, including a 10% increase in transfers to Mexico.

Transfers sent from non-US markets also increased 10% compared to the same quarter last year.

Other value-added transactions increased by 84% compared to the fourth quarter 2010, when we introduced mobile top-up in our RIA agent stores in Spain.

This top-up is supplied by our epay business in Spain, and sold to customers throughout Spain.

In the fourth quarter 2011, we saw volumes of about 1,100 transactions.

These transactions grew steadily during 2011 to 358,000 in the fourth quarter, showing success in some of our cross-selling initiatives.

Additionally, we saw US check-cashing transactions increased by 51% in the fourth quarter compared to the same order last year.

As I complete this slide, and I reflect back on previous calls, it sure is nice to see double-digit growth in transfers to Mexico.

Now to slide eight.

On slide eight, you can see our financial results by segment.

For purposes of meaningful comparison of the operating results, we have presented adjusted operating income, which excludes the impact of non-cash goodwill impairment charges we recorded in the fourth quarter last year, as well as charges recorded for acquisition earn-out payments.

I will focus my segment discussion on the next slide, where we present our segment results on a constant-currency basis, which provides a better illustration of changes in the business.

On slide nine, in the EFT segment revenues increased 16%, adjusted operating income decreased 2%, and adjusted EBITDA increased 5% for the quarter.

The margin declines are largely due to the regulatory-driven German ATM fee reduction that we informed you of this time last year.

This reduction was largely offset by expansion of our value-added services portfolio and ATM growth in Poland, Romania, India, and China.

If not for the German ATM fee reduction, revenue, operating income, and adjusted EBITDA would've increased 23%, 33%, and 27% respectively for the quarter, compared to the same quarter last year on a constant-currency basis.

Transaction growth out-paced revenue growth, due to the shift in transaction mix to lower-yielding transactions from India and cross-border acquiring, combined with the impact of the rate reductions in Germany.

Our epay segment saw expansion in revenue of 15%, adjusted operating income of 22%, and adjusted EBITDA of 21%.

You may recall last quarter where I pointed out that Cadooz, acquired in September, recognizes the growth value of vouchers sold as revenue.

This method of recognition was a key driver in this quarter's revenue growth.

Earnings growth was largely due to the impact of non-mobile product expansion, particularly in Germany, and our acquisition of Cadooz.

This important -- this improvement was partially offset by reduced revenues in Australia where, related to competitive pressures of a couple key retailers going direct with the mobile operators, and in Brazil, where a certain mobile operator modified its distribution strategy.

Going forward, we expect to offset this decline in Brazil by expanding non-mobile, and taking a revised approach with the mobile operators.

Our money transfer segment saw revenue growth of 13%, operating income of 15%, and adjusted EBITDA of 2%.

Revenue expansion is largely due to the rebound of the US market, where we saw double-digit transaction growth versus the same quarter last year.

We also saw expansion in certain new European markets.

These gains were largely offset by foreign exchange volatility, and economic pressures in Europe.

The European portion of our money transfer segment is impacted by highly volatile foreign currency exchange rates, such as what the market experienced in the fourth quarter.

As the euro weakens, customers tend to only send the necessary amount of money, and save the additional funds until they can get a better exchange rate for the euros.

When we see Germanic weakening in FX rates like we experienced in the fourth quarter, we see reduced transactions and transaction amounts for which we earn less revenue and less foreign-exchange spreads on each transaction.

As the euro stabilizes, we expect transaction trends to return to normal, which has been supported by the transaction volumes we saw in December and January, where the euro strengthened.

Corporate expenses increased for the third quarter, due to the higher stock-based comp and cash-based compensation.

As a side point in reflecting on the money transfer, you can see that the origination of these US transactions certainly increases our US revenue.

That contributes to our favorable tax benefits we've given, given the large amount of our US NOLs.

If we go to slide 10, here we present a few comments on our balance sheet for 2011.

The decrease in cash compared to the prior quarter can be attributed to the fourth-quarter acquisitions in Poland and Romania, the settlement of common stock and convertible bond repurchases committed to in the third quarter, partially offset by free cash flows.

Total debt increased primarily to fund the year-end money transfer segment cash requirements, and capital leases for either additional or replacement ATMs in Europe.

You will notice on our balance sheet that we have classified the remaining balance of the original $175 million convertible bond as short-term.

The classification is driven by the October 2012 first-put, first-call date provision in the bond agreement.

As you can see from our available cash on hand, together with free cash flows we expect to generate over the next nine months, and unused capacity on our $265 million revolving line of credit, we will not have a problem meeting the likely put of these bonds.

In summary, our balance sheet remains strong with modest leverage.

On slide 12, I will start looking at the full-year financial results.

Here on slide 12 you can see full-year revenue increased to almost $1.2 billion, operating income of $79 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $150 million.

Full-year cash earnings per share was $1.48, or a 9% increase over 2010.

I will discuss the full-year results in greater detail when I get to the segment information.

On slide 13 you can see the three-year trend in transactions for our EFT and epay segments.

Before I get into the segment breakdown, I would like to highlight that in 2011 we reached a milestone by processing more than 2 billion transactions for the first time in Euronet's history.

The full-year trend in EFT segment transactions is largely the same as I discussed in the fourth quarter, so I won't repeat them here.

The full-year expansion of the epay segment is attributable to a full-year of transactions from our 2010 acquisition of epay Brazil, the third-quarter 2011 acquisition of Cadooz, growth in non-mobile content, particularly in Germany, and organic growth from the Middle East, Poland, and India.

As we look at transaction trends, we note that our transaction growth out-paces revenue due to lower-yielding transactions from certain entities, including ATX and India.

Now moving to slide 14, where we review money transfer trends.

In the last two quarters of 2011, we started to see a rebound in transactions sent from the US.

Total money transfers grew 11% -- 10%, I'm sorry, 10% -- including a 6% increase in transfers from the US and a 1% increase in transactions to Mexico.

Transactions initiated, originated outside the US increased 16% compared to 2010.

Non-money transfer transactions grew 43% for the full year, due largely to mobile top-ups sold throughout RIA stores in Spain and increased check-cashing transactions in the US and Canada.

Now to slide 16, where I will discuss year-over-year results on a constant-dollar basis.

On slide 16 let's start with EFT.

The full-year results for our EFT segment were dramatically impacted by the rate reductions introduced in Poland in the quarter 2010, and in Germany in January 2011.

We have nearly overcome these rate reductions through the expansion of value-added services and cost savings from increased operating efficiencies.

Additionally we have seen ATM growth in several countries, including Poland, Romania, India and China.

The EFT team really came through this year to virtually overcome the difficult hand it was dealt at the beginning of the year.

We look forward to a year without such challenges.

In epay, our revenue, operating income and adjusted EBITDA increased largely due to acquisitions, including the full-year impact of epay Brazil, and the full-quarter impact from the third-quarter 2011 acquisition of Cadooz.

The segment's results also benefited from increased sales in non-mobile content, particularly in our German markets.

These increases were partially offset by declines in our Australian market.

Finally, our money transfer results reflect the benefit of our European expansion in new and existing markets, accomplished through the utilization of the PSD license we were granted in late 2009.

These new markets helped grow our US -- our non-US business 16%, despite the economic pressures in Europe I mentioned in the fourth quarter overview.

Additionally, we saw the long-anticipated turnaround of our US business, with transactions increasing 6% over 2010, including a 1% full-year increase in transfers sent to Mexico.

Operating income also benefited from full-year amortization of certain intangible assets.

These gains were partially offset by margin compressions in our US markets, and increased operation -- operating costs related to network expansions.

With that, I'll conclude my comments and turn it over to Mike.

Thank you Rick, pardon me, and welcome to everyone on the call.

Before I get into the specific fourth-quarter highlights, I'd like to take a minute and reflect on our 2011 results.

Referring back to our fourth-quarter 2010 call a year ago, we mentioned the significant challenge facing our EFT business related to the German rate reductions effective January 2011, while the actual experience in our German business was in the ballpark of the negative $10 million annual impact to operating income that we communicated last year,

I'm happy to report that just one year later, we have nearly overcome the gap created by Germany as well as Poland, which was announced in May 2010, through a variety of signed agreements and new products we have been telling you about throughout the year.

As I said last year, these reduced fees in Germany and Poland were only a temporary setback in our new revenue streams position us well as we move forward in 2012.

Additionally, we've made strides in our Asia Pacific market through significant ATM expansion in India, from more ATM outsourcing deals, and the Brown label model I have spoken about in my previous calls, which is now taking hold.

I am excited about the positive momentum generated by the EFT team, and look forward to strong results in 2012 as we put the German and Poland rate reductions behind us.

Now, let me highlight some of the key achievements that we attained in the fourth quarter of last year.

So please jump to slide number 21.

In Q4, the team continued to sign, renew, and expand agreements across all of our markets to make up for the gap created by the rate reductions I just mentioned.

I'd like to highlight a few of the more significant items that we signed during the quarter.

In Germany, we signed an agreement with Ikano Bank to operate ATMs located within IKEA stores.

This is the first outsourcing contract in Germany, a market where we have historically only provided services through our own independent deployed ATM network.

We talk about that, by the way, throughout this exchange, we call them IADs.

We also signed a long-term agreement with International Currency Exchange, ICE, to deploy ATMs at airport locations in Germany and Poland.

We won this agreement after a successful to launch of ATMs for ICE in the Czech Republic.

In Poland ad Romania we signed agreements with banks to operate automatic deposit terminals, known in the industry as ADTs.

This is an emerging technology in Europe, and we are proud to add as another product that benefits our customers.

In addition to new contracts, we renewed and extended several agreements, including a network participation agreement with Citibank in Poland, and a long-term extension with Raiffeisen Bank in Romania, to provide ATM and POS outsourcing.

Next slide, please.

On slide number 22, we highlight a number of value-added services agreements.

In the fourth quarter, we launched new or additional value-added services for customer banks in Poland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Montenegro, and India.

Examples of these launches include advertising on ATMs, loyalty cards, ADTs as I mentioned before, bill payment, and currency conversion on ATMs.

We also launched additional value-added services on our IAD in Romania.

Our teams also continued to sign new agreements.

Our team in India signed a deal to launch value-added services on Axis Bank ATMs in India, in Hungary, we signed a long-term agreement to provide value-added services on MKB's ATMs.

Additionally, we inked a deal with MasterCard to provide online authentication on client banks in Serbia.

We signed an agreement with Development Credit Bank in Singapore to provide mobile recharge on their ATMs.

Let's move on to the next slide.

On slide number 25, I'd like to talk to you about some of our new fourth-quarter developments.

During the fourth quarter, we made two acquisitions.

In Romania, we acquired SmartPay Network, also known as PayNet, the company which provides ATM outsourcing, card issuing and acquiring, and POS merchant servicing solutions.

With the acquisition, we added 734 ATMs and 2,560 POS terminals, in addition to the 540,000 managed cards.

This acquisition complements our growing Romanian ATM business through the addition of approximately a dozen new bank relationships.

Additionally, we acquired 535 ATMs from Diebold's cash4you network in Poland.

These ATMs were accompanied by 350 contracts with retailers for their ATM locations.

The acquisition of these ATMs expand our relationships with leading retail bank brands, and also increases our value-added services reach.

At the end of the fourth quarter, 52 of these 535 ATMs were live on our network, with the remaining ATMs expected to be live by the end of the first quarter of this year.

It is also important to note that as you look at our ATM counts, you will not see these ATMs in our backlog, as these are Euronet-owned ATMs, which don't -- which are not included in our backlog count.

Finally, in the UAE we signed a joint venture agreement with ATOM Associates to deploy payment and money transfer kiosks.

We will earn a one-time setup fee for each kiosk and additional monthly driving revenue for processing transactions at the kiosk.

Euronet owns 51% of the joint venture, and we expect to deploy our first kiosk in the second quarter of 2012.

During Q4, we added 1,556 ATMs, bringing our managed ATMs to 14,224.

With a backlog of 451 units and the 483 cash4you ATMs to be added this quarter.

With the regulatory rate reductions in Germany creating a hole at the beginning of 2011, our EFT teams demonstrated determination and resiliency to deliver more contracts and more products to fill that hole.

This determination and commitment to expansion has positioned this division for continued growth as we move into 2012.

As I wrap up my comments on the EFT division, I would like to provide you with an update on the criminal security breach we announced in January.

At the end of last year, we learned that criminals had penetrated a portion of our business that accounts for less than 5% of our transaction volume, revenue, and operating income.

We moved quickly and with significant measure to contain the breach, and we continue to work with their party experts, the international card organizations and law-enforcement to ensure that this matter is resolved timely and appropriately.

The full year and fourth quarter results reflect approximately $400,000 in expense associated with our response.

As I look at the industry, there are hundreds of similar breaches reported each year.

I am proud to say that the breach, which was limited to a small portion of our processing business, was and is contained, and I am confident that the aggressive measures taken to prevent future attacks has only made us stronger.

Now let's move on to slide number 27, and we'll talk about epay for a minute.

On slide number 27 we cover the quarterly highlights.

I would like to reflect on epay team's accomplishments, though, in 2011.

During the year, the segment saw double-digit transaction growth driven by two acquisitions and organic growth in key markets.

In addition, the team was successful in non-mobile product expansion by signing multiple new content partners across many of our markets.

Now I'll move on to the fourth-quarter highlights.

During the quarter, we signed an agreement with a large German retailer, [Netomax Futa], to sell top-up through 12,000 POS terminals located within their retail stores.

In addition, we signed an agreement to distribute top-up through Cuevas, a large Spanish retailer.

We also launched several products in the quarter, and in the US we launched bill payment at 5,000 Radio Shack stores.

In Spain, we expanded our product portfolio to include Orange and Vodafone products.

In Poland, we launched processing with REA Card, an independent supplier of POS terminals.

In this arrangement, REA Card has the agreement with the retailer, and we process the payments that flow through the REA Card terminal.

It's worth mentioning that we won this agreement through successful launches of our payment processing services in Germany and Austria.

On to the next slide please.

On slide number 28, we show our success in the non-mobile product expansion for the quarter.

In Q4, we launched iTunes gift cards with seven retailers in Switzerland, Austria, Spain, and France on a combined 2,600 terminals.

We signed an agreement with Euronics, a large electronic supplier in Germany to produce and process their closed-loop gift card.

I would like to point out that this agreement is significant because the production of cards allows us to move up the value chain by providing more than just transaction processing.

Now, in addition to processing those transactions, they rely on us to produce the physical gift cards as well.

In France, we launched Sony, Microsoft, and Zynga gift cards at SFR and Finac retailers.

These launches represent our first entry into the non-mobile product space in France, a very large market.

Finally, we launched Zynga, Nintendo, Sony, and Amazon gift cards in 19,500 retail locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain.

We've been quite busy.

Moving to our gift card mall product, we launched gift card malls in several major retailers.

In Italy we entered the Coop Italia, Italy's largest grocery retailer.

In New Zealand, we put gift card malls in the petrol channel through launches in Mobil, BP, Shell, Z Energy and KelTech stores.

Finally, we launched the first gift card mall in Brazil with GPA, Brazil's largest retailer.

Go on to the next slide, please.

During the quarter, we also launched several new gift box products.

In case you are not familiar with the gift box, the purchase of the box allows the recipient to choose from a predefined set of experiences that are listed on a catalog within the gift box.

We launched the gift card gift box at UniEuro stores in Italy.

We also launched Smartbox, a leading gift box in Europe, across several retailers in Germany and Italy.

As I move on to Cadooz, I'd like to take a minute to acquaint you with their product offering.

Cadooz provides one- and two-step vouchers.

With the one-step voucher, branded as DirectChoice, the recipient can redeem the voucher directly at any of Cadooz's retail partners.

Two-step vouchers, branded as BestChoice vouchers, are exchanged for other vouchers of the recipient's choosing from over 200 retail partners.

As we highlight the accomplishments of Cadooz this quarter, I will note that we signed five new retail partners to accept the one-step DirectChoice voucher.

This is significant, as the more retailers that accept this product, the more attractive the voucher is to our customers.

We also launched two new theme voucher products, MagazineChoice and DinersChoice, these are two- step vouchers, where the customers can redeem the vouchers directly with any content provider included under the voucher theme.

We also signed and launched several new non-mobile products in Q4.

Since many of these products were launched in late in the quarter, we expect to see additional contribution beginning in 2012.

I am excited about the opportunities for non-mobile, I've been talking about this subject to you for several quarters, and I am very excited, as it represents for the epay segment growth as we move forward.

I will now move on to the money transfer segment, and will hit those highlights on slide number 33.

On slide number 33, we provide our money transfer highlights.

Before I get into the details, I'd like to emphasize the positive momentum seen in the US, particularly to Mexico, which grew 10% in the fourth quarter.

The money transfer team has excelled at growing the European business over the last few years to overcome the downward pressure of Mexico, and they've done that despite weak economies in Europe.

I am excited to begin the year with this positive momentum, together with the strength of the European business that we have established over the last several years.

Now, let me have the highlights.

We continued to invest in geographic areas and markets that are fuelling our most rapid and profitable growth through the addition of new agents, correspondents, in retail locations.

During the quarter, we opened 15 new retail store locations, strategically placed in cities in the US, Canada, and Australia.

Our network now reaches 136 countries and 146,000 locations, which is a 33% increase compared to Q4 2010.

We also continued to focus on expanding our pay-out network.

In Q4 we launched 23 new correspondents with approximately 4,000 locations.

The most noteworthy are in the Ukraine, Nigeria, and Kenya.

In addition we signed 14 new correspondent agreements spanning nine countries and approximately 1,000 more locations.

The most significant of these are in Mexico, Honduras, and Sri Lanka.

Now let's move to the next slide, where we can talk about our transaction growth for the quarter.

On slide number 34, you can see that our total transaction volume increased 11% in Q4 2011 compared with the same quarter in the prior year.

This is largely attributed to the increase in transfers initiated in the US.

During the quarter, US transactions increased 11%, including a 10% increase in transfers to Mexico.

This is the first double-digit growth in transfers to Mexico that we have seen in several years, and I feel this represents the long, anticipated recovery of this important corridor.

In addition to US growth, we saw an increase in non-US transfers of 10%, despite a fourth-quarter foreign exchange volatility and the economic pressures in some of our European markets.

In Q4, we also saw an increase in non-money transfer transactions of 84% versus the same quarter last year.

This increase is largely from epay's mobile top-ups sold through our RIA network in Spain.

Since the acquisition of RIA, we have seen potential cross-selling products from our pre-paid segments through RIA's distribution network.

Excuse me.

This is a channel we have continued to work, and in 2011 we saw success in cross-selling mobile top-up through our RIA agents and stores.

We previously mentioned that during the year, we invested resources to expand our store and agent presence.

In late 2009, we were granted a PSD license that allowed us to operate under one license in all EU countries.

Over the last two years we have used that license to significantly expand our European presence.

In 2011, we also added 30 retail stores in the US, Canada, and Australia.

In the fourth quarter this expansion, combined with our focus on adding new additional payout locations, translated to the growth in three key markets -- transfers to Africa, Asia, and Europe grew by 14%, 34%, and 35%, respectively.

While the benefits from these investments have not directly translated into operating income growth, we feel that the rebound of the US market and the continued expansion of non-US-initiated transfers, despite economic pressures in Europe, are precursors to margin growth.

I am confident that these investments and our focus on pay-out expansion have positioned our money transfer segment well as we move forward in 2012.

Now on slide number 35, I can talk to you about our summary and our outlook.

Our Q4 cash EPS was $0.46, exceeding the guidance that we gave you by $0.05, even with a little over $0.01 of negative foreign exchange movement since then.

All three segments saw double-digit transaction growth for both fourth quarter and the full year.

EFT had a very strong finish to 2011, and is well-positioned for 2012.

EFT also completed two acquisitions, one in Romania and one in Poland.

Epay continued to benefit from non-mobile product development, and the third quarter acquisition of Cadooz.

Money transfer continued with US out-bound volume expansion, with the first double-digit growth rate to Mexico in several years, and realizes growth in Europe despite the economic challenges there.

Finally, we expect our Q1 2012 adjusted cash EPS to be approximately $0.33.

As I reflect on a strong finish of 2011, I am excited about our sequential cash EPS growth through the year of 2011 from $0.30 in Q1 to $0.35 in Q2, to $0.37 in Q3, and now $0.46 in Q4.

I would like to thank our teams around the world for their hard work in delivering solid results in 2011, and I look forward to more of the same in 2012.

With that, I will open the floor to questions.

Operator, will you please assist?

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Robert Dodd, Morgan Keegan.

Hi guys, good quarter.

Can you give us a little bit more color on the changes in Brazil.

Obviously, we've been through some issues in the UK, which and economically Australia was changed in mobile distribution strategy, and you mentioned that as an issue starting up in Greece now -- not Greece, Brazil.

Can you give us a little bit more color on what the mobile operation is doing, and what strategy you guys are changing to adapt to that?

Yes, we would be happy to.

In fact, I'll ask Kevin to do that for you, Robert.

Thank you.

Hi, Robert.

Epay was historically always a national distributor of mobile airtime across Brazil for all the mobile operators.

One of the key mobile operators in the market has made a decision to change their distribution strategy and go with only local distributors in the individual markets.

The reason they've done that is these local distributors, in addition to mobile air time, also distribute SIM cards and do hand-to- hand mobile top-up.

So it's really a shift in distribution strategy by one of the mobile operators to go away from the national players to one of 50 local players in the market.

We were treated equally to the other four national distributors of mobile air time in that market.

Okay.

In terms of how you are going to adapt, are you going to start distributing SIMs, for example, or is it just --?

We currently -- last year, we recognized this trend, so we started distributing SIM cards for this particular mobile operator.

In addition, we started distributing SIM cards for the other mobile operators to be a bit proactive with the other mobile operators.

In terms of what we're going to do going forward, I think Mike or Rick mentioned we're going to have a shift in strategy.

I don't want to speak to exactly what it is we are going to do for competitive reasons, but we're going to leverage the success we've had in some other markets like the US, where there's an ISO-like model.

We've been very successful in re-positioning ourselves in US, and we're going to attempt to do that in Brazil.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

On kind of capital allocation, obviously you guys have plenty of cash, et cetera, convert coming up.

Just a general question -- obviously, you've seen a lot of growth in check cashing in the US.

That's much more capital intensive or cash intensive than money transfer.

How are you going about looking at putting more capital into that business, versus expanding number of locations, or even the allocation between the businesses in terms of that versus deciding whether you should put more money into looking for additional EFT our ATM acquisitions like Romania or Poland?

Robert, I would just mention on acquisitions, I've said as a separate discussion, but as it relates to just the general capital, we don't see that as driving much of a difference in our business because there's really kind of two components of that capital.

One would be the cash to pay out for the check cashing, and the second would be either agents or stores.

Now we have expanded some of our stores in the United States.

Not necessarily just for cashing, but it certainly is an element that proves in the total return on one of those stores.

Then we also do check-cashing through agents.

It being an agent -- us being largely an agent- driven model, that would continue to be the case, and it wouldn't drive that kind of expansion cash capital requirement.

On the cash to pay out check cashing, that works quite nicely with the leveraging of the cash that we take in from the money transfer.

So in those cases, we take in cash, and in check-cashing we pay out cash, so we don't have to bring on additional working capital to cover that part of it.

It basically ends up being a nice product for us that synergizes the use of the cash that we have out there from our business and fits in nicely with either our store operations that we run largely on the premise of money transfer or the agent network.

Great, thanks.

That makes sense.

One more quick one if I can.

Can you give us a bit more color on Cadooz seasonality?

Obviously, it's gross revenue, right, so it tends to move around a little bit more, but I'd expected more seasonality from that business given a full quarter in Q4.

Can you give us a little bit more color on how choppy that's going to be, given it can really move the revenue number more than the (inaudible) number?

Yes, it's going to be, kind of in rough order of magnitude, probably about half of its business will come in the fourth quarter, and the other half will be spread throughout the other three quarters, with kind of a traditional lightness in the first quarter like we see a little bit more with our other parts of the business.

It's kind of fourth-quarter is the biggest, then second and third are kind of in the same pack, and first is a little lighter.

Clearly, fourth carries a big load of that piece of business.

Great, thanks.

Chris Shutler, William Blair.

Yes, good morning.

Good morning, Chris.

A lot of moving parts in the quarter with the Cadooz deal in late Q3, and then the Poland and Romania acquisitions in EFT in Q4.

Really just hoping you can help us out in thinking about both the revenue and operating profit impacts from each of those in the fourth quarter.

Then on Cadooz, I think it's fairly seasonal in Q4, so hoping you can just speak to maybe how seasonal it is from an operating profit perspective?

From an operating profit perspective it was a little addition but not -- it's really didn't carry the day.

I would tell you that the lion's share of the operating profit in the fourth quarter was from non-Cadooz stuff.

I would tell you as we pointed out in the comments that probably the lion's share of the revenue in the fourth quarter left on epay was out of Cadooz.

I think that kind of puts those in perspective.

On the PayNet acquisition, there was really virtually nothing in terms of revenues or profits that came through.

We had a little bit of profit, but it wasn't enough to even move the cash EPS number.

And on the cash4you, Chris, as I mentioned there's about 50 ATMs that we've taken over so far of the 535, so we really got -- it won't be until kind of the -- we'll get them all in this quarter, so you'll start to see a little bit of a revenue impact in Q2.

But not much in Q1.

So net-net we had revenue production on the epay side, but not a lot of additional contribution revenue or margin coming through in acquisitions in the fourth quarter.

Yes, so when we look at our cash EPS of $0.46, I won't say none of it, but not a lot of it at all came from those three acquisitions.

Okay, great.

In epay, the situation in Australia there, which I know you've talked about in previous calls, just curious, has that situation kind of stabilized at this point?

Is it better or worse than what you saw in Q3?

Then when should we think about that, the impact of that, kind of anniversaring itself in the numbers?

Chris, this is Kevin.

As we've reported previously, there was a step-function decline related to a couple mobile operators going direct.

That has happened and played out.

As we've mentioned on previous calls, we don't anticipate more mobile operators going direct.

When we look forward, there's the natural competitive environment in the market that we'll have to deal with, but I would say that we would expect modest growth in Australia in the foreseeable future.

Okay.

Last question from me on money transfer.

Mike, I know you talked about the profits there.

The incremental margins in money transfer looked to me like they were kind of low double-digits for 2011.

I know you've said those should be higher, and I know you're investing a lot right now.

Maybe just give us a sense as you look out to 2012 and 2013, where do you think incremental margins in that business could or should be?

Well I think we can see them grow.

I mean, what we have done over the last two years is we have grown our number of agents in Europe by a lot, by thousands.

We've done this by an investment in the sales force, and that costs money, and usually the -- a typical sales guy takes about six months before he really starts paying for himself.

But you look at our market share gains in Europe and they've been extraordinary over the last two and a half years.

We're taking advantage of PSD, we're going into all these new markets, and we've aggressively make some investments there.

We're to the point now where I don't think we need to buy any more new sales guys, and we can watch these things start to play out, and we get kind of an earnings ramp on account of that.

Where could these margins go?

They're going increase, I believe.

They're going to improve -- if for no other reason, even if Europe stayed flat, they're going to increase because of the positive action we've got going down to Mexico.

At the end of the day our overhead stays the same, but the Mexican transactions are now in double digits, when they used to be negative every darn quarter.

You know those transactions are a good chunk of our business.

I won't -- when you look at the EBITDA margins of our competitors, we're at the low end of those, we're at about half of the number one guy, and about 66% of number two, I think we could start closing that gap, because that next new transaction to us is at about a 35% marginal rate.

As we bring in more transactions we don't increase overhead.

We bring about 35% of that revenue number right to the bottom line.

We've got a ways to go.

We're at less than half that right now with our margins.

Okay.

Thank you, guys.

Gil Luria, Wedbush securities.

Hi Gil.

Good morning.

I wanted to ask about the opportunity to do more deals like PayNet and the Diebold Poland business.

Are you seeing -- are there more properties like that available now, where you can get sub-scale single-country out-sourcers in Europe and Asia, and fold them into your infrastructure?

It seems like that would be maybe a new way of adding even more growth to that business?

Well, you know it's interesting, because I truly believe that those two acquisitions were able to be consummated because of the turbulence in the EU economy.

Now we had a seller and PayNet, it was basically a Greek guy, and he was -- I think he wanted to get some liquidity into his pocketbook.

The cash4you was -- I think that happened because of the lower interchange fees, and nobody was making money, except for us in Poland so they were able to sell that.

I think that -- it's like the dark cloud with a silver lining.

The silver lining in Europe is there are deals now coming up, or they have been.

They're a little bit more reasonably priced than they used to be, so we hope that more will come out.

I think the reality is, individual companies there's not a lot of, but what we're seeing is on the bank side.

We've signed all these new agreements that we've been articulating to you over the last couple of quarters with banks, and the banks are finally kind of got their head out of the cloud, and they're starting to recognize that we can save them and make them money.

We can remove some of the assets that they might have that aren't earning anything on their balance sheet.

There's a lot of interesting products we can bring to bear, and that weakness in the banking sector in Europe has been quite helpful to us.

Are there particular countries where you see this type of attitude shift?

Well if it wasn't for the attitude shift, we -- I mean we've probably closed more deals in Europe in the last nine months -- nine-ten months than we did in the prior five years combined.

Okay?

I mean it's just been unbelievable.

We couldn't have made up for the loss of Germany so quickly had it not been for that, and it's not slowing down.

There's just more deals to be had.

We're not just selling outsourcing anymore.

I think there's a theme here across all three of our divisions.

Is we're not just selling our single product anymore.

We're not just selling outsourcing, we're selling a whole plethora of value-added services within EFT.

We're doing the same thing in the epay segment, and even now in many transfer, where we're doing top-ups, and check cashing and lots of other things.

I think that's our mantra is to take advantage of the fact that we do millions of transactions every day.

We have millions of customers every day, let's try to sell them something in addition to what they're buying today.

Greg Smith, Sterne Agee,

Hi, guys.

Hello, Greg.

Mike, when you, we've had a lot of moving pieces in the business this year -- currency, acquisitions, the stuff in Germany and Poland.

When you step back and look over the next couple of years, what do you think the organic revenue growth rate and kind of organic earnings growth rate is on the overall business?

First of all, I never comment on organic revenue growth, because revenue, we've got three totally different economic models, and we could have a little bit of revenue growth in epay, and it's not going to give you much at the bottom line.

I mean, you could have a lot of growth there and it won't even give you much at the bottom line because our flow-throughs are different.

We have virtually 100% flow-throughs in the EFT division.

We've got 2% flow-throughs kind of in the other, in epay division -- or we will say 19%, if you, after the split.

I try not to conjecture where our operating income numbers are going to be, but I think you can see where they have been, our margins, and you can see that with we've kind of got over the hump of these regulatory changes in Germany and Poland.

I think they're going to do nothing but improve over the next couple of years.

We are in a really good move.

We're definitely in the double digits.

My goal for this Company is to get to 20%.

We're not there yet, but that's my goal.

Okay, great.

Then in money transfer, your largest competitor's facing some issues along the border states there.

It seems like you're picking up some of that benefit, potentially.

Is there any concern that kind of compliance and regulatory pressures could increase, and you might feel some of those effects, eventually?

Those guys are 10 times or eight times our size.

There is plenty of market out there that we can -- before we're worrying about border pressures.

That's just the US.

Don't forget that we are now generating about 55% of our gross margin outside the US, where we have a model that's different to -- our number two competitor does 66% of it's business in the US only 33% overseas, while we're doing 55% overseas.

Don't look at us through the same lens as you look at everybody else, because our name is Euronet, and our focus has always been outside the US.

We have a lot of strength and assets there.

Greg, I would add that compliance really probably falls into two parts.

One would be what might happen on the -- let's say the political front, as it relates to tightening of the border, et cetera.

That one is clearly out of our control and doesn't do any good for us to conjecture on that.

The other one has to do with how we run our own shop with respect to compliance.

As Mike said earlier, we've grown our business, we've put expenses into our business and we continue to be very compliance focused, to make sure that we're doing the right type of work on -- whether it's agents we bring on or the transactions we process.

We believe that our fundamental processing systems and attitudes toward compliance have not changed, have not diminished and that we shouldn't see any adverse impact on our business as a result of our own compliance processes.

Great.

Thanks, guys.

John Kraft, DA Davidson.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Good morning, John.

I just wanted to quickly follow up on Greg's last question there as far as Mexico.

How is it looking so far into Q1?

Wow, much better than Q4.

(inaudible - multiple speakers) What's that?

Much better than Q4, and Q4 was unbelievably, was unbelievable for us.

Wow, that's encouraging.

Then moving to the mobile top-up now that you're offering in some of the Spanish agents, is there something that would preclude you from doing that in all your other markets?

Oh, absolutely not.

In fact, we're rolling it out as we speak in Italy, Germany, and France.

I think France, I'm not sure on France.

We'll rolling that out really kind of as we speak.

Probably by the next time we talk, I will be able to claim a couple of more wins.

Then lastly just on the liability potential for the breach, it sounds like you've got insurance that can cover that, but what about -- I mean you didn't spend much money really here, $400,000 or so, to update some systems.

Is there a potential for needing to kind of update some of the rest of the -- some of your other systems?

We will -- we'll spend what we need to.

What we looked at is there are some procedural things that we can do that aren't necessarily expensive that could -- that will help harden us.

Plus, we've just got an ongoing investment now with some very sophisticated gear and procedures and software so that you can sniff this stuff out long ahead of time.

That's all baked into our number.

Got you.

All right, thanks Mike.

Good job with everything.

It will be a little bit more, but you're not -- I think the reality is, we're -- we'll notice it, because we notice every dollar we spend, but I bet you don't notice the IT increase.

This is Kevin.

The $400,000 that we reported in the fourth quarter, we've done more than that behind the scenes to make sure that the systems are secure going forward.

Good enough.

Thanks, guys.

Mike Grondahl, Piper Jaffray.

Thanks for taking my question guys, and congratulations on a nice quarter.

Yes, it was nice to have one, isn't it?

It sure is.

Three questions.

The first one is, the growth in ATM units was very strong in 2011, and it looks like you have a pretty good sight line to 15,000 units.

Mike, where do you see the business going over a couple of years?

I mean, could this be 20,000 units, 19,000 units?

Just like to get a sense of what you're thinking about a little bit down the road?

Well, we're in -- first of all, I think we're going to continue to grow our own IADs, okay?

Number one, and that's going to be some amount of hundreds or maybe 1,000, or whatever.

We have these automated deposit terminals which are kind of bi-functional, kind of a machine that will both take and dispense money.

We see that as an opportunity for us because Europe, particularly central Europe, is still such a cash-based economy.

Lastly, we're in discussions with a multitude of banks right now to actually buy their assets or out-source their assets, and they're having substantial talks with us.

Any one of these deals could be 1,000 all by itself.

If you say do I have a sight line for 20,000 in the next few years?

It would absolutely stun me if we don't get there in three years.

That's helpful, thanks Mike.

Then second question, in the epay business in the top-up business, it looked like revenue per transactions actually grew year-over-year.

I think that's the first time in many years.

What's driving that growth per transaction?

Rick, correct me if I'm wrong, but remember how we've got the different economic model with Cadooz, where instead of just it's kind of the whole face value of the voucher.

You recognize, which classically for us is about 15 times as much revenue as what we normally recognize in a transaction.

Just any kind of revenues we bring in Cadooz kind of skew that a little bit.

Mike, supplemented with the non-mobile top-up where we typically make a little bit more on those transactions.

Yes, that's another good point.

Okay.

Lastly, Mike, could you just give us an example in the value-added services?

You had a couple good slides on a lot of the new deals.

Could you walk us through like iTunes in a certain country, kind of what the growth has been, or Zynga, kind of what you've seen quarter-over-quarter, and what you expect over the next few?

Okay so I won't -- to give you an idea in Zynga, we brought that live in December in a couple of countries, okay?

The numbers on that were virtually nil, but those big retailers and now live with it.

Doing the same thing with Facebook, we mentioned all these big retailers that we've got in all these different countries we've gone live through.

Our biggest ones that we've had for longer periods are the ones that are actually causing the value-added service numbers to go up.

These are things like iTunes and Amazon and Microsoft, Xbox, and Sony PlayStation et cetera.

These new kind of social networking and whatever, the Zyngas and the Facebooks, they really haven't taken hold.

I think at the end of the day we're in the high teens right now as far as number of transactions, and our growth rate over the last few years, Kevin what would you say, like growth rate of value-added services last -- this year -- or 2011 over --?

Non-mobile is a percent of the total epay business, and contribution margin has grown significantly.

It's now in the high teens.

Which would make it, if we start -- remember it was about this time last year that we were around 12.

You can do the math on that, that's 50%, 60%, 70% growth, I don't have the number in front of me, Mike.

Okay.

A little bit of the color there helps, though.

It's growing really fast.

I guess in summary it's meaningful.

That's the point.

It's nice when -- I've talked to you about value-added services in epay now for two years, for eight quarters, but the first four of those I wasn't moving the needle.

Now we're moving the needle.

Great.

Peter Heckmann, Avondale Partners.

Morning, gentlemen.

Hi Rick, can you talk about the operating cash flow in the fourth quarter?

I don't happen to have that right in front of me.

That comes off of our traditional GAAP cash flow statement, here.

If you take a look at our cash earnings since our cash earnings per share have largely taken out non-cash items, and our CapEx is about equal to or depreciation.

In the fourth quarter it was a little bit higher because of some of these ATMs we bought, but that becomes pretty close to our operating cash flow.

That was 500, 5 million -- 52, 51 million shares and doing $0.46, you can do the multiplication there.

Okay, and how about CapEx for 2012?

Can you give us a range there?

I would expect it to be up a little bit.

I would tell you probably in the kind of, let's say $40 million to $50 million range.

We were a little bit light this year, if you would add up all the quarters there.

I don't expect it to be $70 million.

Kind of somewhere in let's call it $40 million to $50 million ZIP Code.

Okay, that's fair.

Did you re-purchase any shares or any the converts in the fourth quarter?

No, sir.

No, not in fourth quarter.

And then last thing, on your first-quarter guidance, a little bit stronger than maybe what I expected, given my perception of the seasonality.

Would it be appropriate to assume that the EFT segment is -- we're really seeing some follow through with incremental margins there, and then maybe just a little bit of benefit from this lower tax rate issue you discussed?

Yes, I think so.

I think as Mike said we finished 2011 on the EFT side with pretty good momentum there.

It's nice to see the momentum going on the Mexico stuff on the money transfer here.

We had completed the acquisition of the epay Cadooz business there.

Yes, I think on balance we've got good momentum going into the first quarter.

Yes, really all three segments we're happy with right now.

It's nice to hit on all the cylinders.

All right, good to hear.

Thank you.

I think we'll take one last question, operator.

Mike Grondahl, Piper Jaffray.

Just a quick follow-up, guys.

Did you say what the tax benefit was in the quarter?

Then what did you say about the tax rate going forward?

Could you repeat those please?

Thanks.

I said that the $0.05 that we had exceeded our guidance on was because of tax benefits.

That was slightly offset by a little bit more than $0.01 of FX headwind.

I said that I would expect our cash earnings effective tax rate to be slightly less than 30%.

Of the $0.05 or so that we had as far as tax stuff, about half of that's one time, and the other half we should see on an ongoing basis those spread over four quarters.

Okay.

That's helpful.

Thanks, guys.

All right, thank you one and all for spending a little over an hour with us, and we'll look forward to talk and see you in a couple of months for our next call.

Thank you, bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference, this concludes the program.

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