Fresh off its Dec. 15 initial public offering, FleetCor Technologies Inc. on Feb. 23 reported net income of $17.5 million for the fourth quarter, down 30% from a year earlier.
Total revenue rose 3.2%, to $106.5 million.
During the quarter, Fleetcor, a Norcross, Ga., fleet card provider, signed brandwide fuel card deals with the Chevron Corp. oil company and the truckstop chains Flying J Inc. and TravelCenters of America.
"These three additions will add more than 15,000 … accepting sites for our product, which we expect will enhance the [profit] of our product," Ron Clarke, FleetCor's chairman, president and chief executive, said during a conference call to discuss earnings.
Moreover, for Chevron, Citgo Petroleum Corp. and BP PLC, FleetCor developed a secondary, universal MasterCard usable not only at partners' sites but also at virtually any other U.S. gas station, Clarke said. Regions Financial Corp. issues the card.
"As we convert their larger accounts over to these universal card programs, we expect transactions to grow because of these additional sites these cardholders will be able to go to," Clarke said.
About two-thirds of the company's revenue comes from North America, but Clarke said he expects the international share to "grow significantly."
On Feb. 17, FleetCor signed a 10-year fuel card deal with Royal Dutch Shell's European unit, beating out various other bidders for the portfolio, which "is the world's largest and most complex," Clarke said. He called the deal a "single-digit millions annually" contract.
Shell's fuel card system is to migrate to a processing platform in partnership with Logica PLC, a United Kingdom technology and business-service company. The project will expand across 35 countries in Europe and Asia, according to FleetCor.
"While this contract is not expected to have a material impact on FleetCor's consolidated results of operations in the near term," Clarke said in a press release detailing the company's results, "we believe it is strategically very important, creating a partnership with Shell and providing a live and scalable reference point for other outsourcing opportunities worldwide."
Transaction volume on FleetCor's cards during the quarter was 48.9 million, generating $2.18 in revenue per transaction, down 0.6% from 49.2 million and $2.10 a year earlier.
Established in 2000, FleetCor serves about 750,000 business fleets and more than 3.5 million cardholders in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa under program brand names that include CCS, CFN, FleetNet, and others.
