The global economy has experienced in recent years, and may experience, downturns, volatility, and disruption, and we face certain risks relating to such events, including:
- Demand for our services could soften, including due to low consumer confidence, high unemployment, high inflation, changes in foreign exchange rates, changes in monetary policy, reduced global trade, including from trade disruptions, trade restrictions, or tariffs, or other events, such as civil unrest, war, terrorism, natural disasters, including those related to climate change, public health emergencies or epidemics, and any changes arising as a result of the recent United States elections. For example, in March 2022, we suspended our operations in Russia and Belarus, due to the Russia/Ukraine conflict (the "Conflict"), which has had an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows. The Conflict has had and is expected to continue to have broader implications to our overall business, including reduced transaction activity in Ukraine.
- Our Consumer Money Transfer business relies in large part on migration, which often brings workers to countries with greater economic opportunities than those available in their native countries. A significant portion of money transfers are sent by international migrants. Migration is affected by (among other factors) overall economic conditions, the availability of job opportunities, changes in immigration laws and their enforcement, including the potential for large scale deportations, restrictions on immigration and travel, and political or other events (such as civil unrest, war, terrorism, natural disasters, or public health emergencies or epidemics) that would make it more difficult for workers to migrate or work abroad. Changes to these factors could adversely affect our remittance volume and could have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.
- Many of our consumers work in industries that may be impacted by deteriorating economic conditions more quickly or significantly than other industries. The prospect of reduced job opportunities, especially in the retail, healthcare, construction, hospitality, agriculture, and technology industries, or weakness in regional economies could adversely affect the number of money transfer transactions, the principal amounts transferred, and correspondingly our results of operations. If general market softness in the economies of countries important to migrant workers occurs, our results of operations could be adversely impacted. Additionally, if our consumer transactions decline, if the amount of money that consumers send per transaction declines, or if migration patterns shift due to weak or deteriorating economic conditions or immigration laws and their enforcement, including the potential for large scale deportations, our financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows may be adversely affected.
- Our agents or clients could experience reduced sales or business as a result of a deterioration in economic conditions. As a result, our agents could reduce their numbers of locations or hours of operation or cease doing business altogether.
- Our exposure to receivables from our agents, consumers, and businesses could impact us. For more information on this risk, see risk factor "We face credit, liquidity, and fraud risks from our agents, consumers, businesses, and third-party processors that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows."- The market value of the securities in our investment portfolio may substantially decline. The impact of that decline in value may adversely affect our liquidity, financial condition, and results of operations.
- The third-party service providers on whom we depend may experience difficulties in their businesses, which may impair their ability to provide services to us and have a potential impact on our own business. The impact of a change or temporary stoppage of services may have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.
- The counterparties to the derivative financial instruments that we use to reduce our exposure to various market risks, including changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates, may fail to honor their obligations, which could expose us to risks we had sought to mitigate. That failure could have an adverse effect on our financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.
- We may be unable to refinance our existing indebtedness or finance our obligations to pay tax on certain of our previously undistributed earnings pursuant to United States tax reform legislation enacted in December 2017 (the "Tax Act") on favorable terms, as such amounts become due, or we may have to refinance or obtain new financing on unfavorable terms, which could require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to payments on our debt or tax obligations, thereby reducing funds available for working capital, capital expenditures, acquisitions, share repurchases, dividends, and other purposes.
- Our revolving credit facility with a consortium of banks is one source for funding liquidity needs and also backs our commercial paper program. If any of the banks participating in our credit facility fails to fulfill its lending commitment to us, our short-term liquidity and ability to support borrowings under our commercial paper program could be adversely affected.
- Banks upon which we rely to conduct our business could fail or be unable to satisfy their obligations to us. This could lead to our inability to access funds and/or credit losses for us and could adversely impact our ability to conduct our business.
- Insurers we utilize to mitigate our exposures to litigation and other risks may be unable to or refuse to satisfy their obligations to us, which could have an adverse effect on our liquidity, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows.
- If market disruption or volatility occurs, we could experience difficulty in accessing capital on favorable terms, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows could be adversely impacted.