Brink's (NYSE:BCO) released first-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Wednesday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

Brink's reported a strong first quarter with 10% revenue growth, including 4.5% organic growth driven by 15% growth in ATM Managed Services and Digital Retail Solutions.

The company achieved a record trailing 12-month EBITDA of $1 billion, reflecting a $200 million increase since the end of 2022, with margin expansion across major regions.

Brink's is progressing with the acquisition of NCR Atlios, which is expected to enhance AMS and DRS offerings and contribute $200 million in cost synergies.

Free cash flow exceeded half a billion dollars for the first time, with a conversion rate of 50% from EBITDA, and the company anticipates further cash flow improvements post-acquisition.

Guidance for 2026 remains stable, with expectations for mid-single-digit organic growth and EBITDA margin expansion of 30-50 basis points, supported by strategic initiatives in AMS and DRS.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day and welcome to the Brinks Company first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the Star key followed by zero. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question you may press Star then one on a Touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to Jeffrey Jenkins, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Jenkins (Vice President, Investor Relations)

Thanks and good morning. Here with me today are CEO Mark Eubanks and CFO Kurt McMaken. This morning Brinks reported first quarter results on a GAAP, non GAAP and constant currency basis. Most of our commentary today will be focused on our non GAAP results. These non GAAP financial measures are intended to provide investors with a supplemental comparison of our operating results and trends for the periods presented. We believe these measures allow investors to better compare performance over time and to evaluate our performance using the same metrics as management. Reconciliation of non GAAP results to their most comparable GAAP results are provided in the SEC filings which can be found on our website. We will also have commentary on the status of our pending acquisition of NCR Atlios. As a reminder, this transaction is subject to the completion of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and approval by Brinks and NCR Atleos shareholders. Additional details, including risk factors related to the transaction, can be found in the pertinent SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Brinks CEO Mark Eubanks.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Thanks Good morning, everyone. Starting on slide three, we're pleased with another strong quarter of growth and operational execution as we continue to transform Brinks into a more predictable and profitable enterprise. I want to thank all of our team members, especially those in the Middle East region for their focus in this dynamic global economic backdrop. I could not be more proud of our teams for staying focused and delivering on our Q1 commitments. Our results were at the upper end of our first quarter guidance ranges and we're off to a strong start to the year. First quarter revenue growth of 10% included 4.5% organic growth, driven mostly by 15% organic growth and in ATM Managed Services and Digital Retail Solutions or AMS DRS. The growth in the quarter was highlighted by the onboarding of Pandora in DRS and good momentum in AMS, especially in the Rest of the World segment. At the segment level, Rest of the World delivered 7% organic growth on strong precious metals activity in the global services line of business. Overall organic growth, favorable revenue mix and good underlying productivity drove margin expansion of 10 basis points with over 100 basis points of expansion in both North America and Rest of World and 240 basis points of expansion in Europe. In total Q1 EBITDA was $238 million with a margin of 17.3%. Trailing 12 month EBITDA was $1 billion for the first time in our history this quarter, reflecting a more than $200 million increase since the end of 2022. As we continue to deliver profitable growth across our business, we also continue to improve cash generation with an increase of $66 million year over year. In the first quarter on a trailing twelve month basis, free cash flow exceeded half a billion dollars for the first time in our company's history with conversion from EBITDA of 50%. Operationally, we saw improvement in both days of sales outstanding and days payable outstanding. Coupled with EBITDA growth I mentioned earlier, total free cash flow has more than doubled since year end 2022 with free cash flow now exceeding $12 per share. As I review the quarter we delivered on our commitments with results at the top end of our guidance range. As I mentioned, I'm proud of our consistent execution during volatile market conditions and our team's focus on the heels of the announcement of our transformational acquisition of NCR Atlios. Supported by this strong first quarter, I remain confident in our ability to continue our trajectory and deliver our full framework for 2026. Turning to slide 4, you can see the components of our value creation strategy which remain unchanged for 2026 and are well aligned with the strategic rationale of the NCR Atlios acquisition. We expect organic growth in 2026 to remain consistent in the mid single digits and driven primarily by new and converted customer growth in recurring AMS and DRS revenue, which is expected to approach a third of our total company revenue by year end. The acquisition of NCR Atlios is expected to accelerate our ability to capture these AMS and DRS customers by delivering a more vertically integrated AMS offering and lowering our cost base through increased network density on the retail side of our business on a standalone basis for 2026, we expect EBITDA margins to expand by 30 to 50 basis points as we shift revenue to these higher margin services and drive cost productivity across our operations. This mix shift is expected to continue after completion of the acquisition and cost efficiencies are expected to accelerate behind the $200 million of cost synergies that we previously identified as we eliminate duplicative SGA and public company costs, optimize our service delivery network, and finally drive global procurement savings. Both companies have delivered meaningful improvement in cash generation in the last few years, and we expect that will compound as we combine our two businesses. In addition to working capital improvements, we've already completed a secured financing arrangement that will allow us to absorb the $1.6 billion of NCR Atlio's bank debt at a rate that is more than one full percentage point better than their current level full percentage point better than their current level. While we're focused on the near term on reducing leverage, we expect to produce a combined $1 billion of free cash flow from the two companies, providing flexibility to maximize value creation through strategic investments and shareholder returns. Shifting back to the quarter, on slide 5, I'll provide some commentary on performance by line of business, starting with Cash and valuables management or CVM. Organic growth was 1% in the quarter with good pricing discipline offsetting a couple percentage points of AMS DRS conversions. Our global services business was also strong again this quarter despite lapping a robust first quarter of 2025. Precious metals movement remained volatile and trends can change rapidly, but we factored in the current favorable Trends into our second quarter guidance. AMS DRS revenue grew organically approximately $50 million in the quarter for a rate of 15%. This was the 13th consecutive quarter of at least 15% organic growth in AMS DRS as we continue to build momentum in these important businesses, it's important to note that in the fourth quarter of last year we saw strong growth related to one time equipment sales primarily in North America that impacts the sequential comparisons. Factoring in this dynamic, growth in the quarter was in line with our expectations and positions us well to deliver our guidance for the full year. In DRS. We continue to see positive momentum with large enterprise customers in North America including the onboarding of Pandora during the late fourth and early first quarters. In AMS, we're lapping some large wins in the prior year like Sainsbury's while we stage for other large deployments including some in the rest of world segment, we continue to see positive AMS trends with banking customers including in Southeast Asia where we recently won the largest national bank in Indonesia with about 5,000 ATMs. Looking to the balance of the year, we expect AMS and DRS to accelerate sequentially supported by our strong pipelines and DRS backlogs, including parities that will lead us directly into the next slide. On slide 6, I'd like to highlight an example of a type of wins we're delivering with DRS. Paradis is a leading travel retailer and Restaurateur operating over 700 stores and airports across North America. They offer major brands like Chick Fil, A Tumi, Starbucks Today, and Jimmy John's, just to name a few. Parity's came to us to help solve common dilemmas they see across large global retail and quick serve organizations. I've often discussed DRS as a true win win for both Brinks and retailers, and that's clearly the case here. With Parity's we designed a bespoke solution incorporating both front office recyclers and smart safes that integrate directly with Parity's Point of Sale (POS) software. Our solutions is expected to help them with several pain points across their global footprint. Among other things, we're able to reduce cash handling time for managers and employees, unlocking productivity and efficiency within their stores. Our solution digitizes cash quickly and tracks transactions down to the teller level, reducing operational shrink across the business. We are also able to simplify service delivery for customers as we shift our key quality service deliverable from arriving within a certain appointment window to providing overnight electronic deposits for faster access to working capital. This shift creates flexible routing and scheduling options for Brinks, allowing us to arrive when needed or when easily added to an existing scheduled trip into the area. We've completed a successful trial phase with Paradis and are planning for the full rollout across their entire footprint over the balance of the year. While the solution we designed for Parities is unique to their specific needs, the problems we're solving for customers are universal. Our DRS offerings have a clear and demonstrated value proposition for retailers of all sizes. As we close more of these deals, I remain confident that we're in the early stages still of our efforts to expand our DRS business across the retail landscape. In all geographies that we serve on slide 7,, you can see our methodical progress towards 20% EBITDA, margins in North America. In Q1, EBITDA, margins in this segment expanded by 170 basis points year over year, driving trailing 12 month margins to 19.5%. Revenue mix has been a big contributor to this progression. It was another great quarter of AMS DRS growth in North America as we continue to convert customers and install new DRS units, including the Pandora win that we mentioned last quarter. Global Services revenue growth was also strong this quarter despite an elevated prior year period. Comparable Our shift to higher margin flexible service recurring revenue is unlocking operational productivity across the business. Over the years we've improved and standardized our service delivery network to enable profitable growth. This improvement is clear in the numbers as we continue to deliver improvements in revenue per vehicle and labor as a percentage of revenue. This is setting the stage for continued momentum post closing of our NCR Atlios, acquisition and as we layer on additional volume, to our more efficient network, I'm confident increased scale will position us to drive further expanded margins well beyond our preliminary 20% targets. Turning to slide 8 I'd like to provide a brief update on the NCR Atlios, transaction. While we've been publicly engaging with shareholders over the last eight to 10 weeks, we've been working hard, diligently behind the scenes to progress this transformational acquisition forward. At the end of March, we successfully completed a refinancing of the secured portion of the Bridge Loan, increasing our capacity while unlocking attractive rates and improving certain conditions in our credit agreement. Just last week we filed our registration statement and are progressing towards a shareholder vote over the next few months. We're making good progress on the regulatory front as well, with filings submitted in many jurisdictions and and reviews progressing as expected. NCRI ATLIOS first quarter results will be filed after the market closed today and we understand them to be in line with our business case modeling and on track with our full year projections. Though NCRI Atlios will continue to operate independently until closing, we expect our integration management team to work closely with NCR atleos to plan and prepare for the execution of the potential cost synergies. Importantly, we've created a dedicated integration management team within Brinks that is isolated from the day to day operations of our business and will be responsible for driving program execution of cost synergies after closing. While we're still in the early process, in many ways we're making good progress and continue to expect closing will occur by the end of the first quarter of 2027. The more we interact with our internal teams, our our customers and the NCR Atlios management teams, the more encouraged I am by the potential of this combination. Supported by strong momentum in AMS and DRS and ATM as a service, it remains clear that this is the right strategic direction at the right time to accelerate our growth and bolster our business for the future. Before I hand it over to Curt to walk through the financials, I want to thank our team for embracing the power of our strategy. We've lifted our performance by consistently delivering on our external commitments while improving our service levels to our customers, even redefining the definition of what service quality means. Our team is focused on continuing our efforts to move the business forward behind AMS DRS customer offerings that deliver clear win wins for both the customers and for Brinks. I'm encouraged by the strong results we delivered, the strong momentum supporting us, and I'm even more optimistic about the future potential as we combine with NCR Atlios and position ourselves to accelerate growth, profitability and value creation. And with that, I'll hand it over to Kurt to discuss the financials. Then I'll come back for Q and A. Kurt Thanks Mark.

Kurt McMaken (Chief Financial Officer (CFO))

I'll begin on slide 10 with a look at Q1. Revenue increased 10% with 5% constant currency growth and a 6% tailwind from foreign currency adjusted EBITDA was up 10% to 238 million with operating profit up 12%. Both operating profit and EBITDA accelerated 10 basis points year over year on favorable revenue mix, pricing discipline and productivity in both labor and fleet. Earnings per share was $1.80, up 11% in the quarter. We completed approximately 30 million of share repurchases prior to the NCR Atlios acquisition announcement, reducing outstanding shares by 5%. As Mark mentioned earlier, trailing twelve month free cash flow was $502 million at the end of the quarter representing conversion of 50%. I would like to call out that we have enhanced our cash flow disclosures to highlight cash flows related to the NCR Atlios acquisition which were $2 million in the quarter and are expected to be between 50 to 60 million for the full year. We believe it is important to isolate these cash flows for investors so they can get a better picture of the true underlying cash generation of the business. These cash flows are included in our expectations to get to approximately 2.3 times by the end of 2026. Similar to timing from the prior year, we we are currently ahead of our full year cash conversion guidance. After Q1, we expect the timing of certain cash tax payments and cash investments over the balance of the year to return us to our target level of 40 to 45% by the end of the year. On slide 11, total organic growth was 56 million where more than 85% of the growth came from higher margin subscription based AMS and DRS. The $8 million of CVM growth was in line with expectations and represents volume growth in global services and strong pricing execution, partially offset by the conversion of customers to AMS and DRS. FX contributed 71 million of growth in the quarter with favorable year over year rates primarily in the Euro and Mexican peso. Shifting to the right side of the slide, growth of $128 million generated 23 million of EBITDA and expanding margins by 10 basis points. As you will see from our guidance for Q2, we expect expansion to accelerate into the second quarter as we continue growth into AMS and DRS. Moving to Slide 12 starting on the left, operating profit was up 18 million to 168 million with a margin of 12.2% on strong productivity, pricing and line of business revenue mix. Interest expense was 64 million in the quarter, up about 6 million year over year and in line sequentially with the fourth quarter. For the full year, Interest expense is expected to be just over 250 million using current interest rate expectations. Tax expense was 29 million in the quarter, representing an effective tax rate of 27.6% in line with the prior year rate. Interest income and other was down $6 million year over year, primarily due to lower interest income related to the prior year repatriation of cash from Argentina. Income from continuing operations was 75 million. Depreciation amortization was 64 million, primarily reflecting increased depreciation from growth in AMS and DRS equipment. In total first quarter adjusted EBITDA was 238 million, up 23 million year over year with margins expanding 10 basis points. Let's move to slide 13 to discuss our capital allocation framework. Our capital allocation framework has remained consistent during Mark and my tenure, including through our transformational investment in NCR Atlios. Our leverage at the end of the first quarter was 2.7 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA during 2026. We expect net debt leverage reduction to be the primary focus of our capital allocation as we position our balance sheet for the NCR Atlios acquisition over the year, we expect to reduce our stand alone leverage to approximately 2.3 times, while we expect leverage to be approximately 3.4x assuming Q1 2027 closing, we are currently expecting to be below 3x by the end of 2027. We continue to believe that 2 to 3x is the right leverage to balance capital efficiency and appeal to existing and potential equity investors. Our capital allocation framework has generated meaningful shareholder value over the last several years. The growth acceleration potential into high margin recurring revenue AMS and DRS is expected to continue to drive margin expansion and compound cash generation for years to come. With clear line of sight to a combined free cash flow of $1 billion. We expect to have the flexibility to make strategic investments and return capital to shareholders in the future. Moving to guidance on slide 14 our framework for 2026 remains unchanged we expect to deliver mid single digit total organic growth supported by mid to high teens organic growth for AMS DRs using rates as of yesterday we are currently expecting to see an FX tailwind for the full year of between 2 and 3%. EBITDA margins are expected to expand between 30 and 50 basis points with conversion of EBITDA to free cash flow of between 40 and 45%. In the second quarter we expect revenue between 1.37 and $1.43 billion reflecting organic growth in the mid single digits. Using yesterday's spot rates, FX is expected to be a year on year tailwind of just below 3% at the midpoint Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between 245 and $265 million reflecting 10% growth and margin expansion of approximately 40 basis points. At the midpoint, EPS is expected to be between $1.85 and $2.25 and with that we are happy to now take your questions. Operator, please open the line.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star then two. At this time we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

George Tong (Equity Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

Hi. Thanks. Good morning.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Hey George. Good morning.

George Tong (Equity Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

In Dr. Hi in drs, can you perhaps quantify how much of the growth came from conversion of traditional cash and transit customers versus Greenfield wins?

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Yes, sure. We have again, George, a good quarter for us in Q1 kind of everywhere in DRS,, but particularly as you think about conversions, again, we stay on track. What we've seen in prior quarters, about a third of the install is really coming from conversions of existing customers, which as we've talked about previously, gives us a little bit of headwind in cvm, but of course get the benefits of the better margin and certainly recurring revenue. The 2/3 though really we continue to be excited about because these are new customers that are either unvended or were previously vended by some other solution. You can see we talked about the Pandora, deal, a little bit in the call. We had it in our presentation last quarter where we were able to really provide an enterprise solution for a customer that we were able to identify, negotiate and deploy fairly rapidly to collapse our time to revenue. We didn't get a chance to talk about it much last quarter, as you know, given the deal announcement. But if you look at again this quarter, another really nice deal here with Paradis,, that's one of the airport operators for food and quick serve and retail. And again, just the opportunity to work with customers like that to provide a unique solution, whether that's leveraging hardware, software, Point of Sale (POS) integration and even some of our cash forecasting and balancing software really allows us to tailor a solution to almost any retail environment as we look to streamline and optimize the total cash and ecosystem inside these retail stores. And this is something we'll continue to see going forward.

George Tong (Equity Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

Very helpful. And then you expect AMS DRS growth to accelerate sequentially given the strong backlog. What are your latest thoughts on what sustainable medium term AMS DRS growth can be?

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Sure, I think the we think this mid to high teens organic growth will continue George here certainly this year and I don't know what your medium term is, but we've got a view as we go into 27 and get this deal closed, we can do, you know, continue to accelerate that more. So we're excited about it. And I think if you look at our backlog coming out of Q4 into Q1, team's excited about what we've got lined up for the second half of this year as we're installing those in Q1 as well as Q2. But you can see that the organic growth rates are continuing. Although we were a little bit higher in Q4, about 22% as we mentioned previously, we had a pretty significant amount of equipment sales, particularly in North America, but even that was still in the high teens from an organic perspective and that continued into Q1. Q1 is typically a little bit lighter just given the fact that we don't do a whole lot of installations during Q4 retail season because you know, most of our retailers are, you know, it's the busy season, particularly North America and Europe where, you know, they don't want us in their stores installing. So we tend to carry a good backlog into Q1 and Q2.

George Tong (Equity Analyst at Goldman Sachs)

Very helpful, thank you.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Great, thanks George.

OPERATOR

Thank you. The next question comes from Toby Sommer with Truist. Please go ahead.

Toby Sommer (Equity Analyst at Truist)

Thank you. Like to double click On AMs and DLs again, how would you describe the geographical differences you're seeing in customer uptake, in demand? And then what do you think it takes to light a fire under financial institutions in North America for this to take off?

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Yeah, good question Toby, because we're really starting to see more broad AMS and DRS growth around the World and you can see particularly in the Latin America in the quarter we're seeing Mexico continue to have a good run here in DRS that is allowing us not only to convert customers but continue to improve margins and build out an installed base. We're seeing that in Argentina as well. And then of course in Brazil we've been having success and that continues. We're seeing more AMs and DRs, but particularly I called out AMS in the rest of world segment which is really good because these are big cash markets that are kind of much earlier cycle when it comes to AMS and DRS conversion. But you know, last quarter we talked about AMS Security bank down in the Philippines that we're currently deploying. We also then talked this quarter about Indonesia, although we've had some success in Indonesia previously. This is a pretty big deployment there. So we feel good about that. We're seeing banks in the rest of the world as well as Latin America continue to either make decisions or continue to look at better ways to serve their continued ATM needs. If we move to the Northern Hemisphere, Europe and North America, of course Europe is our most highly penetrated AMS and DRS market and again continue to have good progress there and a good outlook as we think about Q2 and Q3. But North America, certainly our DRS trajectory continues to go higher and you see it in our margins and I called it out in the North American deep dive there we continue to see the good mix benefits from drs particularly as we see going forward. The last part of your question was around North America banks, particularly US banks. And that's something that we're continuing to have lots of discussions and you know, as we think about the services across the entire continuum for ATMs and ATM managed services, we're starting to get those opportunities and whether that's some of the off branch bank at work ATMs or whether that's specific services and or managed services on the on branch. The full outsourcing continues to be a little slower than certainly a lot slower than the rest of the world. I think this is one of the things that we think about with the Atlios acquisition though Toby, and getting to a full vertical solution where customer outcomes can be better controlled and I think create more confidence with those customers about a full outsourcing. This is something that we're keenly aware of and thinking about and certainly part of our long term thesis on the business to support both growth and being a catalyst for those banks to do outsourcing as well as increasing our density and Participation in our retail footprint. Thank you very much.

Toby Sommer (Equity Analyst at Truist)

Mark, if I could ask a specific question on drs, have you finding this service is more valuable or less valuable to customers based on their business models as sort of like, I don't know, a standalone big box as opposed to an area like in an airport where retail is clustered or a mall because you've had a couple of marquee customers that you can talk about that sort

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

of fit that ladder bucket. Yeah, I say it's more about the idea around disclosure, Toby, and, and customers being willing to talk about it to be honest, because we are seeing drs, we don't get to highlight all of our DRS wins as we've talked about previously in retail, but we're seeing strong value propositions. Everything from the SMB, mom and pop coffee shops all the way up to the big box. Guys, many of those solutions can look similar maybe in the middle of that bulge, but when you get to the smaller you get to the larger, they're certainly more sophisticated and can be more complex. We think the complexity is helpful for us because we can solve some of those problems with more technology and an integrated service model. And then on the low end, on the smaller customers, we're able to frankly lower our cost to serve to allow us to provide a better value proposition as we build more density. And as I think about one of the other big opportunities, and we talked about that last earnings call about the Atlios integration is building out more density across our network. That again is going to lower our cost to serve and ultimately be able to provide better value propositions to customers both small and large, but ultimately provide a much more compelling solution then they're able to either self perform today or even than what we can deliver today from a cost perspective. So you know, again, those benefits continue to accrue and we think there's a definite network effect that we can create as we build out that density.

Toby Sommer (Equity Analyst at Truist)

If I could ask one last one and I'll get back in the queue with respect to cash conversion from ebitda, you had some numbers in your recent filing that gave us a look at what your expectations are for a number of years for standalone Brinks, but maybe you could touch on the opportunity or what the combination with NCR ATLIOS does to the, you know, the opportunity to increase that conversion over time.

Kurt McMaken (Chief Financial Officer (CFO))

Yeah. Hey Toby, it's Kurt. Maybe I'll jump in here. I would say first of all just, you know, from a profitability perspective, certainly an opportunity there, the synergies will help on Flow through for sure. Then you go below the OP line and below the EBITDA line. We definitely see opportunities in terms of capital efficiency from both the capex and working capital perspective. And we talked a little bit about it. We have to obviously develop that further together, but certainly see opportunities there to drive increased conversion on that.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

I think the other area, Toby, is that we think about and frankly we're seeing benefit now in our business as we really ramped up our efforts in and around global supply chain and procurement is getting better payment terms as we, you know, operate as one large enterprise versus, you know, 52 countries. And we've talked about that transformation that's been going on in the business for some time. We're really starting to see some of those benefits and we think that putting together two companies of similar size and scale and purchasing power would only help that in the future. As we think about managing payment terms, managing our balance sheet, managing our receivables in the same way as we think about common customers, you know, the working capital benefits are, you know, we're achieving, sorry, improvements we're achieving now by the way, atleos is doing a pretty good job of that too. We think only together can we, you know, really drive not only kind of end contract changes but also just efficiencies in our systems and better follow up and operational execution on credit and collections and you know, payment terms and maybe I just might add.

Kurt McMaken (Chief Financial Officer (CFO))

That's a good point, Mark. One other thing. If you look at cash interest and cash taxes, there'll be opportunities there as well the combined firm. And so that's another final area. Thank you.

Toby Sommer (Equity Analyst at Truist)

Thanks Toby.

OPERATOR

Thank you. The next question comes from Tim, my Rooney with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Sam Kofsterman

Hey, this is Sam Kofsterman for Tim. Thanks for taking our questions here guys. You know, maybe I'll pivot away from some of the AMS CRS questions. Some good ones were already asked and ask more about your Latin America business actually. So this year you'll be moving past some of the Argentina inflation impacts for the first time in a while.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

So how are you thinking about the growth rate and margins for this business? And then I noticed a competitor of yours just made a pretty sizable acquisition in Peru. Curious how this might impact the level of competition you face in this region. Yeah, thanks. Good to hear from you. First of all, I'll address the Peru acquisition. We're not in Peru actually. We were in Peru years ago and actually exited the business, exited the country. But you know, for us we're very comfortable with the Geography we have today and as we've talked about previously, our strategic focus is really about moving further up the stack around DRs and AMs, more around technology and service efficiency versus really expanding geography. Now we will have some expanded geography. We expect to have some expanded geography, you know, post the NCR acquisition that will allow us to kind of reassess what resources we have and you know, which markets and how best to optimize, you know, cost and the supply chain there. But for us, again, this wasn't much of a, of a strategic lever for us. We didn't have any cost synergies there because we don't have any businesses there to combine. And really the market is pretty isolated from our perspective. So we don't see that competitive pressure, let's say in the region from this acquisition. Particularly more generally, we love Latin America from a fundamental perspective. High cash usage in these markets, good margins, we have good businesses, good leadership teams. And as you point out, Argentina is a place, as you look at the kind of FX trends here the last six months, as we get to the back half of the year at current rates, Argentina is not a headwind at all. And so from an FX perspective, so that's really interesting because it's a good business for us. We have a good position down there and, and it's good margins. And so as we think about going forward, it's going to be less noise and effectively will be something that investors will be able to get a better look at on an apples to apples basis without as much noise. The other thing that we think about also down there is the AMS market. It's a huge ATM market and we're in the biggest markets down there in Brazil, our Argentina and Mexico, Colombia, Chile and certainly there's activity already going on down there. We've talked about it, but there's a lot left to go and the banks down there are pretty sophisticated operators. They are relatively consolidated and so the discussions are progressing well and we have several active networks down there as well as active pilots with existing banks that we're, you know, working to convert here in the, you know, in 27 and 28. I'm sorry, 26 and 27. Hey, Sam, just I'd add too, I mean you should expect the margins to get better sequentially and that's what we're seeing. Yeah, I think it's. And Sam, just, you know, of note, as you look at our Q1 and performance and Q2 guide, you know, this 10 to $11 million of EBITDA that was above the midpoint of our guide, of our framework should flow through to the balance of the year. And that's, you know, part of it is this latam margin improvements. And as you can see, you know, the EBITDA margins are benefiting in Q1 kind of over our midpoint at the high end of our guide for a couple of reasons. One is the continued AMS DRS mix benefits. But also we had a strong quarter in BGS and our global services business. I mentioned it on the call. Given the all the volatility in the Middle east that we've seen, there's been a lot of movement of precious metals around the world and in and out of all of the big financial centers around the world. That likely in our guide, we assume that's going to continue into Q2. And as we look out to the second half, these markets are volatile. Hopefully we'll have peace by then and things will settle down. And we're not assuming kind of that same performance in the back half that we've seen in Q1. So if you think about progression, Sam is very typical to look at kind of a 45% of our EBITDA in the first half, 55% in the second half is very typical for us. We're a little bit ahead of it this year. And as Mark said, you know, we see that, you know, flowing through for the year. So good start. Got it. Super.

Sam Kofsterman

Very helpful. And you know, I was going to ask about BGS next, but you already beat me to it there. So maybe I can leverage this next question and maybe address fuel prices.

Mark Eubanks (Chief Executive Officer (CEO))

Sure. I think I know that your contracts generally have fuel surcharges that are written into them, but I guess I'd be curious if that's actually captured the full impact that you're seeing right now and if there's any impact to margins that you might expect for the remainder of the year from this. Yeah. So we've been, you know, it well, we've been pretty good at, at ensuring that fuel doesn't necessarily impact us over the long term adversely. Of course, those indexes and changes, some are monthly, some are quarterly, some are biannually, whatever that we recapture that. But if anything, maybe it could be delayed a quarter. But the fuel prices were in, we had them in Q1. And you can see our performance again was way above our midpoint at the high end of the guide. So we think that our teams have been pretty good at covering that and ensuring that our pricing discipline maintains those margins. If we go forward, we see that likely to be a blip. Some of the stuff we've seen around the world, you know, we heard about some of these interruptions and fuel and so forth, we haven't experienced that. We haven't experienced it, you know, in anything other than episodically, let's say. Okay, airports were closed in Dubai, you know, for a bit. But other than that, you know, we really haven't had any real kind of structural supply impact and aren't expecting that going forward. Yeah. So in our guide and our framework contemplates that, Sam. So we've been good about covering it and still feel good about continuing to cover it. Perfect. Appreciate the answers, guys. Best of the next quarter here.

OPERATOR

Well, thanks. Listen, we appreciate everyone's time, patient support and interest in the company and look forward to speaking with you either next few days or when we're on the

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