MoneyGram International, Inc. (
MGI)
Q4 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
February 4, 2010 9:00 a.m. ET
Executives
Alex Holmes – Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy
Pamela H. Patsley - Executive Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer
Jean C. Benson – Senior Vice President, Controller
Analysts
Josh Elving - Feltl Investments
Frank McEvoy – Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC
Bo Ladyman - Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc.
Michael Grondahl - Northland Securities
Presentation
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the MoneyGram International fourth quarter 2009 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Alex Holmes.
Alex Holmes
Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. My name is Alex Holmes, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy here at MoneyGram, and I''d like to welcome you all to our fourth quarter and full-year 2009 conference call. With me today are Pam Patsley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Jean Benson, Senior Vice President and Corporate Controller.
If you''ve not yet seen our earnings release, you can find it on our website at www.MoneyGram.com. I must remind you that today''s call is being recorded and that the various remarks we make about future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Actual results may differ materially from expectations, plans and prospects contemplated in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors including those discussed in our filings with the SEC. I encourage everyone on this call to read our SEC filings including our 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009 which is expected to be filed with the SEC on Monday, March 1st.
Additionally, I want to note that today''s remarks include certain non-GAAP financial measures including a presentation of EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. Our earnings release includes a full reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the related GAAP financial measures.
As you may have read in our earnings release and we''ll see in our 10-K, we revised our segment reporting in the fourth quarter to reflect changes and how we review our operating performance and allocate recourses. Primarily, we have moved the retail money order business out of the Global Funds Transfer segment and into a segment now called financial paper products where will be included along with our financial institution money order and official check businesses.
Our Global Funds Transfer segment now only includes our money transfer and bill payment businesses. In addition, net securities gains and losses will no longer be allocated to the segments as the investments generating those gains and losses relate to MoneyGram''s historical investment portfolio. Our reporting for historical results in both today''s earnings release as well is in the 10-K have been adjusted to reflect these changes.
In addition, later today on our website you''ll find a table that shows a revised segment information for the past eight quarters.
Finally we''ve also included slides in our website highlighting our key metrics for the quarter and full year. We hope you find them useful.
And now with that, I’d like to turn the rest of the call over to Pam Patsley.
Pamela H. Patsley
Thanks Alex, good morning everyone. 2009 was a year of improvement and stabilization for MoneyGram and despite the challenging economic environment; we were able to deliver solid financial results in the quarter and for the full year in our core money transfer business. Money transfer quarterly transaction growth improved from 4% in the second quarter to 7% in the fourth quarter.
