Earnings call transcript: Deluxe Corporation Q2 2025 earnings beat EPS expectations

Deluxe Corporation reported its second-quarter financial results for 2025, surpassing earnings per share (EPS) expectations with a reported $0.88 compared to the forecasted $0.75. Revenue slightly missed projections, coming in at $521.3 million against an anticipated $526.93 million. The company’s stock saw a decline of 1.29% in after-hours trading, closing at $16.03. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock appears undervalued at current levels, with analysts maintaining price targets between $23 and $30.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $0.88 exceeded forecasts by 17.33%.
• Revenue fell short of projections, decreasing by 2.5% year-over-year.
• Stock price dropped by 1.29% in after-hours trading.
• Deluxe continues to reduce net debt and improve EBITDA margins.
• Strong performance in Data Solutions with 18.1% revenue growth.

Company Performance

Deluxe Corporation demonstrated resilience in Q2 2025 despite macroeconomic challenges. The company achieved a notable improvement in comparable adjusted EBITDA margins, increasing by 140 basis points to 20.4%. Deluxe’s strategic focus on digital transformation and operational efficiency appears to be paying off, with significant growth in its Data Solutions segment and a reduction in net debt.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $521.3 million, down 2.5% year-over-year.
• GAAP net income: $22.4 million, or $0.50 per share.
• Comparable adjusted EBITDA: $106.5 million, up 4.6% year-over-year.
• Year-to-date free cash flow: $52.1 million, an improvement of $34.5 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Deluxe Corporation’s EPS of $0.88 exceeded the forecast by 17.33%, marking a positive surprise for investors. However, the revenue of $521.3 million fell short of expectations by 1.07%, reflecting challenges in the domestic spending environment.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Deluxe’s stock experienced a 1.29% decline in after-hours trading, settling at $16.03. This movement reflects investor concerns over the revenue miss, despite the EPS beat. The stock remains within its 52-week range, with a low of $13.61 and a high of $24.45. Trading at a P/E ratio of 12.68x, Deluxe appears attractively valued relative to its near-term earnings growth potential, according to InvestingPro metrics. The stock is currently one of many featured in InvestingPro’s comprehensive research reports, which provide deep-dive analysis of 1,400+ US equities.

Outlook & Guidance

Deluxe provided a full-year revenue guidance of $2.09 to $2.155 billion and adjusted EPS guidance of $3.25 to $3.55. The company expects low double-digit growth in its Data Solutions segment, although the print segment is anticipated to see a mid-single-digit revenue decline.

Executive Commentary

CEO Barry McCarthy emphasized the company’s transformation efforts, stating, "We’re transforming a paper payments company into a powerful digital payments and data company." CFO Chip Zint highlighted operational control, noting, "We remain very focused on the operating levers within our control."

Risks and Challenges

• Macroeconomic pressures affecting domestic spending.
• Potential revenue declines in the print segment.
• Challenges in maintaining growth momentum in digital transformation.
• Competitive pressures in the data-driven marketing space.
• Managing restructuring costs and operational efficiency.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on the CheckMatch acquisition’s potential to expand Deluxe’s digital payment network. Questions also addressed the company’s strategy for improving merchant services margins and the growth trajectory of its Data Solutions segment. Executives were queried about macroeconomic spending patterns and their impact on future performance.

Full transcript - Deluxe Corp (DLX) Q2 2025:

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Deluxe Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. All participants are currently in a listen only mode, and today’s call is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to your host, Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations, Brian Anderson. Please go ahead.

Brian Anderson, Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations, Deluxe Corporation: Thank you, operator, and welcome to the Deluxe second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. Joining me on today’s call are Barry McCarthy, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Chip Zint, our Chief Financial Officer. At the end of today’s prepared remarks, we will take questions. Before we begin and as seen on the current slide, I’d like to remind everyone that comments made today regarding management’s intentions, projections, financial estimates and expectations about the company’s future strategy or performance are forward looking in nature as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Additional information about factors that may cause actual results to differ from projections is set forth in the press release we furnished today, in our Form 10 ks for the year ended 12/31/2024, and in other SEC company filings.

On the call today, we will discuss non GAAP financial measures, including comparable adjusted revenue, adjusted and comparable adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margin, adjusted and comparable adjusted EPS and free cash flow. All comparable adjusted metrics reflect the removal of impacts from business exits. In our press release, today’s presentation, and our filings with the SEC, you’ll find additional disclosures regarding the non GAAP measures, including reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable measures under US GAAP. Within the materials, we are also providing reconciliations of GAAP EPS to adjusted EPS, which may assist with your modeling. And with that, I’ll hand it over to Barry.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Thanks, Brian, and good evening, everyone. Our second quarter was highlighted by strong results across each of our core profitability metrics, including a tenth consecutive quarter of year over year comparable adjusted EBITDA growth. I’ll begin my comments tonight by acknowledging our top line of $521,000,000 was down 2.5% from the second quarter of last year, softer than our expectations but fully attributable to the low margin promotional portion of Print, which I will detail in a moment. Importantly, each of our other businesses performed as expected, and we generated strong results across all other financial metrics. For the quarter, we grew year over year comparable adjusted EBITDA over 4.5% to $106,000,000 We expanded margin rate by 140 basis points to just above 20%.

Comparable adjusted EPS increased 3.5% to $0.88 Year to date free cash flow expanded by 200% or more than $34,000,000 versus the 2024. We improved our leverage ratio to three and a half times and remain on path to be below three times next year. And we’re affirming our overall full year revenue and earnings guidance and increasing our free cash flow guidance. Now moving on to some operating segment highlights. The Data Solutions segment continued to be the standout, delivering more than eighteen percent second quarter revenue expansion.

Observers of the most recent cycle of bank earnings results may have noted successful demand deposit generation campaigns as an important earnings driver. We’re proud that our data segment had a role in many of those successes across our FI partners. Merchant services growth expanded sequentially to just under 3% despite lingering macroeconomic uncertainty impacting the broader domestic spending environment. B2B payments delivered expected low single digit growth, consistent with our prior guidance. We’re pleased with our margin expansion of more than 200 basis points and have a number of customer wins and implementation across the business.

The stronger margin check portion of our Print segment performed in line with our long term expectations, declining about 3%, helping the segment to hold on to its healthy margin rate. The low margin branded promo portion of the Print segment is where revenues were challenged during the quarter. In addition to the first quarter deal timing and industry demand headwinds we signaled last quarter, second quarter results were impacted by non renewal of a few large one time orders requiring unattractive margin levels. As we’ve discussed previously, our strategy is to avoid sourced promo deals with unattractive margins even at the expense of revenue. Importantly, as would be expected under such a strategy, resulting revenue headwinds during the quarter had nominal impact on the segment’s profitability.

Overall, we maintained our strong Print segment margins at 32%. As we discuss at each call, we see this margin rate and the predictable cash flows from Print, especially the legacy check business, continuing for the foreseeable future. We would not expect the second quarter rates of decline within branded promo to recur over the balance of the year. Finally, on our overall outlook, as I mentioned earlier, we’re pleased to affirm our revenue and earnings guidance and increase our full year expectations for free cash flow. Chip will have more on all of this in a moment.

At the midpoint of the year, our revenue ratio remains modestly weighted toward print at 54% to 46%. For additional perspective, payments and data together already deliver significantly more revenue than the legacy check portion of print alone. On a year to date basis, our combined payments and data segments have expanded year over year by a blended rate of just under 7.5%, consistent with our strategy and is shown on the current slide. Finally, I’d like to discuss two additional topics relating to our payments progress in particular. One, the small acquisition we have announced, and two, partnership development across our two payment segments.

First, for some context around the announced acquisition, our existing platform, the Deluxe Payment Network, or DPN, digitally connects physical lockboxes. This interlockbox payment network saves cost by eliminating postage, envelopes, labor, handling, and check costs for payers, including large bill pay services across the FI landscape. For payees, there’s virtually no change because the payments through the DPN follow the well established lockbox payment protocol, but now digitally. Consistent with our capital allocation priorities, the CheckMatch product will bolt onto our existing DPN platform, expanding our scale and creating both revenue and cost synergy opportunities. Deluxe is the obvious neutral third party to create and manage an expanded digital network, and we’re already in the process of enabling DPN across more than 5,000 eligible Deluxe Lockboxes.

With this acquisition, JPMorgan Lockboxes and those of several large FIs already members of CheckMatch will be added to the DPN network. As a trusted partner to our FI clients, Deluxe is positioned to scale the network more effectively than any individual bank or group of banks. We do not expect this acquisition to have a material impact to our 2025 B2B segment results, but do expect to see positive impact as it scales across 2026 and beyond. We would expect to see a couple points of growth for the B2B segment when fully scaled, and we will provide periodic updates moving forward. Next, I’ll highlight the progress our payments businesses are making in building partnerships with software vendors and other technology providers.

You saw us announce a few of these partnerships during the recent quarter. These alliances are strategically important because our solutions get embedded in these partners’ offerings, so we grow when the partner grows. Customers acquired via our partners generally have higher attention, and their volumes tend to be solid. Recently completed merchant partnerships with ISVs such as Chargent, an embedded CRM automation solution, support our go to market growth plans. Partnering with fundraising platforms such as schoolauction.net and child care center operational solutions such as MyKidReports will continue to further enable our growth outlook.

Across b to b payments, similar alliances with technology and platform partners such as Square nine, Banco, and Accutital provide platform and vertical expansion opportunities spanning the attractive treasury automation and SaaS growth markets. To summarize, our overall second quarter and year to date results illustrate our ongoing operating leverage and execution focus. Importantly, our results highlight our ongoing shift towards the growing payments and data markets. While some general macroeconomic uncertainty remains, our first half progress enables us to affirm our 2025 core guidance, and our strong execution allows us to raise the free cash flow outlook. Finally, before passing this to Chip, I want to acknowledge the company has reached its 100 anniversary.

Since 1915, Deluxe has delivered for our customers, shareholders and communities because of the incredible dedication and commitment of Deluxers. Our people make the difference. Over the last few years, we’ve made great progress transforming a paper payments company into a powerful digital payments and data company, and the best is yet to come. With that, I’ll turn it over to Chip. Thank you, Barry, and good evening, everyone.

Chip Zint, Chief Financial Officer, Deluxe Corporation: As Barry noted in his opening, we were pleased with our second quarter progress and particularly our very strong year to date free cash flow expansion and continued year over year comparable adjusted EBITDA and EPS growth during the period. As in prior quarters, I’ll begin today with a bit of additional color around our consolidated highlights for the period before moving on to the segment results, our balance sheet and cash flow progress and our full year 2025 guidance ranges. For the quarter, we reported total revenue of $521,300,000 decreasing 3.1% against prior year reported results, while lower by 2.5% on a comparable adjusted basis. We reported GAAP net income of $22,400,000 or $0.50 per share for the period, improving from $20,500,000 or $0.46 per share in the 2024. This increase was driven by improved operating results, including both lower SG and A and restructuring related expense, offsetting the non repeating gain on sale from business exits reported in the prior year period.

Comparable adjusted EBITDA was $106,500,000 up 4.6% versus the second quarter of last year. Comparable adjusted EBITDA margins were 20.4%, improving 140 basis points versus the 2024, as Barry noted. Q2 comparable adjusted EPS of $0.88 improved from $0.85 in 2024, primarily driven by the operating income drivers previously noted. Now turning to our operating segment details, beginning with the Merchant Services business. The Merchant business grew second quarter revenue by 2.9% year over year to $101,400,000 accelerating from the one point three percent first quarter growth on new merchant and channel partner additions and planned pricing actions, net of attrition and some ongoing macro uncertainty across the domestic economic environment.

Segment adjusted EBITDA finished at $21,700,000 improving $2,500,000 or 13% versus the prior year, with margins expanding 190 basis points to finish at 21.4%, driven by the revenue factors noted and ongoing cost efficiencies. As we noted during prior quarters, persistent macroeconomic uncertainty remains in the broader U. S. Environment, leading us to continue to expect revenue growth for Merchant to remain closer to a lower single digit full year trajectory. Macro or discretionary spending tailwinds from a potential accelerating economic turnaround could provide upside versus this outlook, and we continue to anticipate a low 20% adjusted EBITDA margin profile consistent with our initial guidance.

Moving to B2B payments. For the second quarter, B2B segment revenues finished at $71,000,000 sequentially improving from the first quarter as well as the prior year quarter by 1.1%, consistent with our in year cadence expectations and prior guidance. B2B adjusted EBITDA finished Q2 at $15,600,000 expanding 11.4% versus the prior year period. As Barry noted, Q2 adjusted EBITDA margins of 22% for B2B resulted in overall two ten basis point improvement versus ’20 24. We sustained our focus on driving efficiencies across lockbox operations and have optimized segment SG and A to more closely align to the expected pipeline phasing and related onboarding initiatives for new business wins.

Within our full year B2B outlook, we expect a low single digit revenue growth rate. While third quarter revenues are expected to improve sequentially, results will likely moderate from the prior year period due to onboarding timing of certain deals. We expect a solid fourth quarter exit growth rate for this business as we enter 2026, while margins are expected to remain in the low to mid 20% range. Moving on to Data Solutions. This segment continued its strong performance, extending the robust growth trajectory seen over the preceding two quarters.

Q2 revenues finished at $67,800,000 achieving overall growth of 18.1% versus the 2024. As Barry referenced during his highlights for the period, this growth included continued strong performance across core FI customer campaigns. The segment has also continued to expand across non FI verticals. Adjusted EBITDA finished at $20,400,000 growing 29.1% versus Q2 of the prior year, while adjusted EBITDA margins expanded two sixty basis points to 30.1%. These results reflect a continued favorable mix of DVM campaign activity, the strong overall revenue growth rate and continued realization of operating efficiencies across the business.

The continued strong performance of this segment reinforces our updated full year outlook toward the low double digit segment growth expectations shared last quarter. We would note that the fourth quarter prior year comparison will be most challenging given the robust growth we realized during Q4. As such, we would not presently forecast year over year revenue growth and may see declines during the fourth quarter specifically while maintaining our overall strong full year growth expectation. Turning now to our Print businesses. Print segment second quarter revenue was $281,100,000 reflecting an overall decline of 9% on a year over year basis.

As Barry discussed briefly in his comments, it is important to further dissect the Print segment decline rate in order to better link our underlying core business trajectory and corresponding print EBITDA results in particular. As shown on the current slide and as included in each of our quarterly filings with the SEC, a further breakdown of revenues by product category shows that our two core print focus areas declined more modestly during the period. Legacy check saw second quarter declines of 3.2%, while forms and other business products declined 7.2% during the quarter. On a combined basis, these blend to an overall 4.2% rate of year over year decline, largely in line with our low to mid single decline guidance for the segment. Effectively, all the incremental print decline rate beyond these levels was driven via the 25.1% decline rate within the other Promotional Solutions product category, which carries a lower margin profile.

The overall modest 3.7% rate of year over year adjusted EBITDA decline seen within Print for the quarter aligns to the branded rate of decline for the more core Print focus areas. Overall, Print adjusted EBITDA for the quarter finished at $90,400,000 declining by 3.7% year over year as noted. Importantly, this resulted in an overall margin rate of 32.2% of revenue remaining solidly in line with our longer term low 30s target for the segment and 180 basis points improved from the prior year rate. In addition to being reflective of overall segment mix shifting towards stronger margin offerings, we continue to remain focused on operating expense discipline and overall efficiency across cost of goods sold inputs within the Print segment. These efforts helped to preserve our year to date achieved low-30s margin profile.

Consistent with our prior quarter commentary, while we did not expect decline rates for non core Promotional Solutions revenues to recur at the level seen during the isolated second quarter period, there remains an expectation that these offerings will likely decline at rates above that of the more core product groupings, including checks. On balance, we would continue to expect to realize mid single digit or better revenue declines across the overall Print segment for the full year with adjusted EBITDA margins remaining in the low 30s consistent with our prior rate outlook. Turning now to our balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the second quarter with a net debt level of $1,440,000,000 representing a reduction of just over $24,000,000 versus our twenty four year end levels of 1,470,000,000 This result was more materially improved from the $1,530,000,000 mark at the end of Q2 of last year, consistent with our ongoing commitment to debt reduction as a top capital allocation priority. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio finished at 3.5 times at the end of the quarter, improving from the 3.6 times ratio reported at both year end and within our full first quarter results.

As mentioned on our last call, we anticipate sequential improvement over the balance of the year and expect to end 2025 at roughly 3.3 times leverage. Our long term strategic target remains three times leverage or better by the 2026. The announced acquisition is not expected to adversely impact our path to these target leverage metrics. Free cash flow, defined as cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures, finished at $52,100,000 for the year to date period. This was an improvement of $34,500,000 from the results reported through the 2024.

This year to date improvement was driven by continued strong operating results, including significantly lower restructuring spend and lower year over year cash incentive payments. As Barry noted, we remain very pleased with our overall operating cash flow generation during recent quarters and in our ability to continue our delevering path consistent with our clear capital allocation priorities. We continue to be positioned well from both a liquidity and go forward capital structure perspective following our December refinancing activity. As of the end of the second quarter, we maintained just over $390,000,000 of available revolver capacity with no material near term maturities. We remain on track towards our overall leverage ratio target of three times or better by the 2026.

Before turning to guidance, consistent with prior quarters, our Board approved a regular quarterly dividend of $0.30 per share on all outstanding shares. The dividend will be payable on 09/02/2025, to all shareholders of record as of market closing on 08/18/2025. As Barry noted within his opening commentary, we are maintaining our full year guidance for revenue and profit metrics while raising our expectation for free cash flow. We also acknowledge the continuing overall levels of near term uncertainty within the economic environment presenting challenges towards providing further position and narrowing of the outlook for the balance of the year. We remain very focused on the operating levers within our control, ensuring continued strong execution across our free cash flow, EBITDA and balance sheet optimization goals.

Our full year guidance figures are shown on the current slide, keeping in mind all figures are approximate. Revenue of $2,090,000,000 to $2,155,000,000 which as a reminder represents a range of negative one to positive 2% growth on a comparable adjusted basis. Adjusted EBITDA of $415,000,000 to $435,000,000 reflecting between 27% comparable adjusted growth. Adjusted EPS of $3.25 to $3.55 a range of flat to 9% comparable adjusted growth, and increased free cash flow of $130,000,000 to $150,000,000 Finally, to further assist in your modeling, our guidance assumes the following. Interest expense of $122,500,000 and adjusted tax rate of 26%, depreciation and amortization of $135,000,000 of which acquisition amortization is approximately $45,000,000 an average outstanding share count of 45,500,000.0 shares and capital expenditures of 90,000,000 to 100,000,000 This guidance remains subject to, among other things, prevailing macroeconomic conditions as noted previously, including interest rates, labor supply issues, inflation, and the impact of divestitures.

In summary, we remain pleased with our continued execution during the second quarter and our overall first half year to date results. Our ability to demonstrate sustaining year over year growth of adjusted EBITDA, EPS and particularly free cash flow, despite areas of anticipated top line pressure during the quarter, are testament to our continued focus on both execution and our clear long term capital allocation priorities. We remain confident that this diligent focus against core deliverables will continue to be reflected within our ongoing back half performance and look forward to providing additional updates as the year progresses. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. If you are dialed in via the telephone and would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. And we will take our first question from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Barry, there’s a nice turnaround in the merchant business on the margin front. And I’m wondering maybe if you could expand on what you’ve been able to do to drive the efficiency in business and have year over year margins increase by such a decent amount.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Thanks for that, Kartik. We’re very focused in that business, like all of our businesses, on operating efficiency and in the merchant business. And we’ve also been working on price and selling into new market spaces and winning new business. And I think it’s a combination of all of those things that has helped us expand our margin and as well as pick up the pace on revenue growth. And you also saw that we announced some new partnerships with software vendors that we think over time will help us accelerate the growth further.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: And then I know Barry Brian Mahoney took over the merchant business, and, obviously, he has, some interesting ideas to make the business better. I’m wondering if he’s been able to implement any of those ideas yet, or, you know, is he still in the data collection mode, and it’ll be a little bit of time before he is able to implement some of the thoughts that and ideas that he has for the business.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: No. Karna, Brian’s off to a really great start. It’s obvious that he knows the business inside and out having really grown up inside of a much larger merchant acquirer and is bringing some of that knowledge to bear immediately. And we are seeing some of the fruits of that. You’ve seen us announce partnerships.

We’re expanding and investing more in our sales and go to market efforts, and you can see it a bit in the business performance already. So I think while it’s still early, he’s only been here a few months, I think we’re off to a really great start, and we’re starting to see some very, very early fruit from from his efforts. And where we’re headed, I think, is pretty clear.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Yeah. And then just one last question, Chip. Nice increase on the free cash flow. You know, what are the key drivers? Is it you know, is there anything outside of just greater confidence in the business, Or are there specific drivers that you would point to as the reason for the improvement in the free cash flow guidance?

Chip Zint, Chief Financial Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Thank you, Kartik, for pointing that out. We’re very pleased with the execution and progress we’ve had not only year to date but over the last six quarters or so in this space. We knew coming into this year with good execution, we have opportunity to raise this over time. And so I think what you’re seeing is that confidence showing through. Good execution in the first half first half improves our confidence for the full year.

So really, it’s just that. It’s it’s where we are in the year and feeling good about what’s behind us and what’s ahead. I would say it’s a combination of the improved profitability that you’ve seen in the business along with bringing down the restructuring spend, which we talked about last year. The expectation is we will reduce that cash restructuring spend in half this year. And so that is helping give us good execution, continue to work hard on working capital efficiency, and all of it comes together with higher confidence in that full year number.

Kartik Mehta, Analyst, Northcoast Research: Perfect. Thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate it.

Chip Zint, Chief Financial Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Thank you, Kartik.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Charlie Strauzer with CJS.

Charlie Strauzer, Analyst, CJS: Hi. Good evening. Just a quick question, if I could, on the the data side on, you know, kind of continued impressive growth there. Maybe help us unpack a little bit more there, you know, some color behind, you know, what’s what continues to drive the growth in that segment.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: So I’ll start, and Chip can jump in here too. But but we’re really pleased and proud of that. And in my prepared comments, talked about one of the areas where we continue to have success, which is with financial institutions and helping them target and grow with their low cost deposits. And it’s an area where every bank has a need today, and I think it goes to show that the investments we’ve made into our database, which is now fully hosted in the cloud, we believe we have the largest consumer and small business marketing database out there that we can apply to help banks, in this case, or FIs, grow deposits. But it’s not just, Charlie, in the FI channel.

We’re also expanding, as we’ve been talking for some time, into other market verticals where we’re also starting to see even more success, winning business there to help those businesses grow their business. We really do think we have something very unique to offer in the data driven marketing business, and you can see it in our performance. Because one of the things that makes it very unique is at a time like this when people are particularly concerned about investing in marketing dollars, we can actually show them the return, and they can track and measure their return unlike other types of marketing. This has a direct impact to the bottom line. It’s trackable, and we can show, we can show the customer the return they’re getting from working with us.

Charlie Strauzer, Analyst, CJS: That’s great. Thanks, Barry. Looking at the CheckMatch acquisition made today, kind of intriguing, you know, from a technology standpoint, what did what did they bring to you that you didn’t have before? And maybe, you know, is it something it’s kind of a CapEx. You had to, you know, maybe you had to build something like this to, you know, gain traction and share, or is it just something that kind of was a positive company of business?

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Sure. Charlie, just to make sure you and everybody else, understands what CheckMatch is, it is a similar, platform to our platform called the Deluxe Payment Network. And in that network, we are digitally connecting all of the lockboxes where we’re processing today. And now with CheckMatch, we’re adding the CheckMatch connected lockboxes to create a network of lockboxes. So if we know that a payor has a number of of bills that they wanna pay and we know the lockbox location for where those are going to be sent, rather than printing those those bill payment payments and putting a check-in an envelope with a stamp and putting it on the postal service to deliver it physically to a lockbox, we can cut out that entire process and now distribute or deliver that same payment digitally to an existing lockbox.

So completely consistent with what we’ve been saying we would do in our payments and data businesses, we would look for opportunities where we could generate scale in businesses we’re already in. And this sits exactly with that position, which is the check match business is a is gonna be bolted into our existing VPN network. So the network becomes larger, giving us more places where we can distribute digital payments instead of having to mail a check. And that gives us a great growth opportunity and a great cost savings opportunity for the payers, improves cash flow for all the participants, and really gives us a great product to go to the market and lead with as we build the rest of our b to b business.

Charlie Strauzer, Analyst, CJS: Excellent. Thank you for clarifying that. Appreciate it.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Sure.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from Mark Riddick with Sidoti.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sidoti: So I think a lot of my questions have sort of already been covered, I was sort curious as to maybe talk a little bit about the pacings through the through the through the quarter in the business and if there were any particular read throughs that kinda tied to the the the general macro headlines that that that you noticed or any particular gyrations during the during the quarter that stand out a bit?

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Appreciate the question, Mark. I I don’t think that we saw anything that was particularly extreme during the the quarter. What we saw was sort of more of the same, some generalized consumer hesitancy and maybe some unusual spending patterns between discretionary versus more or less discretionary versus more discretionary categories. But it feels like perhaps it moderated a bit versus what we’ve seen in previous periods. But I don’t have any big headline for you that we’re seeing something extraordinary in the marketplace.

We’re just seeing sort of a continuation of some generalized consumer stress. Yeah.

Chip Zint, Chief Financial Officer, Deluxe Corporation: And, Mark, I guess I would add, as we entered into the quarter and we executed, we had really good forecast accuracy and performance almost across the entire business. We went a bit long in the prepared remarks talking about that other promo portion, but that truly was the area that was softer. We’ve talked about that for a few quarters now, the the discretionary demand nature of it, the fact that we wouldn’t go take low margin deals just for the sake of revenue. And so really, if you step back, what Barry said is a 100% right. But the accuracy, the estimates we had coming into the quarter, it played out extremely well across b two b merchant data and check.

So we had pretty good handle on the direction of the business. I feel like we feel good about that now with the time still to go. The promo side did shock us a bit. You’re talking a few million, not the end of the world. And, obviously, the profitability of it was not a concern, and we expanded margin nicely.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sidoti: Okay. Great. And then the announcement with the the the check match announcement, I was I was sort of curious as to maybe where you level of the opportunity for for other similar opportunities out there, whether there’s sort of a a pipeline that you’re looking at that that we we might see be executed on on other, you know, similar acquisition opportunities and or or partnerships that you know, are there maybe more now than there were, say, beginning of the year?

Charlie Strauzer, Analyst, CJS: Or, you

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sidoti: know, how how are you feeling about that type of pipeline of of what you’re seeing out there currently?

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: You know, I appreciate the question. I think you’ve seen us be incredibly disciplined on our capital allocation and making sure that we get great returns for any dollars we’re putting to work. And with our chief focus there of reducing debt and our leverage level. So are there other things out there eventually? Perhaps.

We are going be very opportunistic. We like the businesses we’re in. We don’t feel like we need to go race to the market to spend money. But we found this a really great opportunity entirely consistent with our strategy. It was entirely consistent with what we said we were going to do, which is about bolting on additional volume capacity to grow existing businesses faster.

And so if those kind of things come along for us, we’ll certainly take a look at them, and be as disciplined as we are now around, discipline around capital allocation and investing investors’ money to the maximum return.

Mark Riddick, Analyst, Sidoti: Excellent. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Thanks.

Conference Operator: Thank Your next question comes from Jonathan Navarret with TD Cowen.

Jonathan Navarret, Analyst, TD Cowen: Hey. Just wanna double click on CheckMatch. Can you guys talk about the cross selling potential there?

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Sure. So the nature of creating a network, Jonathan, is the more endpoints that you have in and more participants that you have in the network, the greater the value. So to begin with, our existing network, the Deluxe Payment Network, we’re in the process of implementing across all the lockboxes that we service today, and we’ve got a significant portion of them already enabled. You add into that the JPMorgan or the CheckMatch lockboxes that include a couple of significant sized and scaled banks, you suddenly start having a significant network that allows you to move payments in a digital way, reducing some of that paper. But we also think it’s a really important sort of step on our journey to become an even larger player in the digital B2B payment space.

By building the network, having an understanding of where all the endpoints are for payers, we think it brings additional opportunities for us. And ultimately, we think it will be a nice addition to what we’re doing on the receivables side of the business as well with our receivables three sixty product being able ultimately to help, treasurers manage, payments and receivables, going forward in a really, digital, streamlined, low friction way, everything that creates a nice market opportunity for us.

Jonathan Navarret, Analyst, TD Cowen: Got it. And, just the last one is on data solutions. Great performance there. And just wondering how much of the revenue growth was tied to existing clients, expanding campaigns versus new client wins? Thank you.

Barry McCarthy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Jonathan, I don’t know that I can that I have that at my fingertips. I don’t know that we’ve disclosed that before. We you know what? I guess the most relevant point is that we continue to add non FI clients while we continue to get more business from existing FI clients. Chip, you wanna add on that?

Chip Zint, Chief Financial Officer, Deluxe Corporation: Yeah. I agree with Barry. What I would say, Jonathan, is, you know, the strategy there is to continue to expand Share of Wallet with existing clients, get new logos, move into new verticals, expand the amount of revenue that comes from the core side and then deliver more growth verticals in the channels that we targeted as part of Investor Day. If you think about the last couple of quarters, we’ve been signaling this trajectory of data growing at roughly absolute dollars, a rolling two to three quarter average. And I think when you look back and you see that, that’s been very consistent and has delivered the growth we have.

So I know it can be a harder business to plan. So maybe perhaps I’ll give you a little bit of insight there. I still believe we anticipate another strong quarter here in q three from data. So I think it’s a very similar guidance. Take the rolling three quarter average, gotta blend in that really strong fourth quarter of last year with the seasonality of the fourth quarter last year.

And I think that really will pivot that it’s a business that’s going to continue its momentum here in the third quarter. Keep in mind, in the prepared remarks I mentioned, we’re expecting growth in low double digits for the full year. And I did acknowledge that that may mean it may decline in the fourth quarter. Again, it’s there’s some seasonality there. We’re coming up coming up against some tough tough comps.

It’s campaign oriented. That’s not a trend that we would expect to continue. It’s just inherent in the business, but very, very pleased overall with the business. So I think in terms of overall modeling, I think that’s the story there for data. I think we’re pretty clear across the other segments with B2B.

I mentioned seeing sequential improvement from the third quarter versus the second in absolute dollars. So the size of the business getting bigger sequentially quarter over quarter, that may mean it may moderate from the prior year period as some deals need to get onboarded and and implement, but, heading our way to a nice fourth quarter exit rate and nice low single digit growth for the year. Merchant, no real change what we’ve been telling you all year long. We said it would be low single digit growth to start the year, expanding as the year goes on. We told you lower single digit full year expectations.

So I think that business stays on its trajectory. And I do want to just reiterate, we’re not anticipating the Print side of the business to have the degree of declines you saw in the second quarter, especially not from that promo piece, we would expect to see the full year decline rate for print to be in that mid single digit level or better with the third and fourth quarter both being kind of back to those normalized levels. So I think when you put it all in a nutshell, as I said in the prepared remarks, we think it’s prudent to keep our guidance ranges where they are because with all of the uncertainty and the time left of the year, there’s there’s no way to get more precise. We think the overall top line is gonna be just south of the midpoint when you put it all together with profitability being right there towards the midpoint or higher. And, obviously, growing the free cash flow is a great result.

So we think we’re executing well across the board and pleased to affirm all those metrics here tonight.

Speaker 8: Great. Super helpful. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Brian Anderson for additional or closing remarks.

Brian Anderson, Vice President of Strategy and Investor Relations, Deluxe Corporation: Thanks, Rachel. Before we conclude, I’d like to share that management will be participating virtually at the Oppenheimer twenty eighth Annual Technology, Internet and Communications Conference on August 13 and at the Sidoti Small Cap Conference on September 17 during the quarter, for which additional information will be posted to our Investor Relations website. Thank you again for joining us today, we look forward to speaking with you all again in November as we share our third quarter results.

Conference Operator: This does conclude today’s call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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