Global Payments Inc (GPN) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

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Global Payments Inc (NYSE:GPN)
Q4 2020 Earnings Call
Feb 8, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Global Payments Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Winnie Smith. Please go ahead.

Winnie Smith — Senior Vice President of Investor Relations

Good morning, and welcome to Global Payments fourth quarter and full-year 2020 conference call.

Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that some of the comments made by management during today’s conference call contain forward-looking statements about expected operating and financial results. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, including the impact of COVID-19 and economic conditions on our future operations that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in filings with the SEC, including our most recent 10-K and subsequent filings. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update them.

Some of the comments made refer to non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted net revenue, adjusted operating margin and adjusted earnings per share, which we believe are more reflective of our ongoing performance. For a full reconciliation of these and other non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure in accordance with SEC regulation, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8-K filed this morning and our trended financial highlights, both of which are available in the Investor Relations area of our website at www.globalpaymentsinc.com.

Joining me on the call are Jeff Sloan, CEO; Cameron Bready, President and COO; and Paul Todd, Senior Executive Vice President and CFO.

Now, I’ll turn the call over to Jeff.

Jeff Sloan — Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Winnie. We delivered fourth quarter and full year results that exceeded our expectations, because of our focus on technology enablement, coupled with ongoing excellence in execution. Our fourth quarter results demonstrated continued sequential improvement, despite the impact of a more challenging macroeconomic environment in a number of our markets for much of the period. None of this would have been possible without the dedication of our exceptional team members during this difficult time, and we thank them for their commitment to our customers, to each other and to our communities.

We are very pleased to have delivered substantial margin improvement for the fourth quarter, while also setting aside funds to pay partial cash bonuses to our non-executive team members. Because of the actions we took early in the pandemic and our consistency in execution, we were able to deliver double-digit earnings-per-share growth in the fourth quarter, positioning us well heading into 2021.

We believe that we exited 2020 in a better position than we entered. We also accomplished a great deal over the last 12 months. Specifically, we signed Truist Financial Corporation, the sixth largest commercial bank in the United States, a competitive win twice over [Phonetic]; entered a new collaboration with AWS, our preferred provider of issuer cloud services to launch a unique go-to-market distribution strategy coupled with transformative cloud-native technologies; expanded and extended our partnership with CaixaBank by increasing ownership of our joint venture and…