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Shift4 PaymentsB
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Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-15

Shift4’s Q2 Earnings Call: Our Top 5 Analyst Questions

StockStory
Shift4’s second quarter results drew a negative market reaction following a combination of robust top-line growth and a sharply reduced full-year outlook. Leadership attributed the quarter’s revenue gains to resilient payments activity at major sporting events, continued momentum in international markets, and a diversified presence across hospitality, restaurants, and entertainment venues. CEO Taylor Lauber noted that “performance we delivered this quarter in our payments-based revenue streams is a testimony to our durable growth,” highlighting high-teen growth in mature U.S. markets and over 50% growth in international segments. Management acknowledged ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East, but said strong U.S. to Europe travel and better-than-expected trends in restaurant and lodging sales mitigated the impact. Is now the time to buy FOUR? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $1.30 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.24 billion (34% year-on-year growth, 4% beat) Adjusted EPS: $1.32 vs analyst estimates of $1.24 (6.8% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $284 million vs analyst estimates of $278.2 million (21.9% margin, 2.1% beat) The company dropped its revenue guidance for the full year to $2.51 billion at the midpoint from $2.55 billion, a 1.8% decrease Adjusted EPS guidance for the full year is $5.25 at the midpoint, missing analyst estimates by 5.5% EBITDA guidance for the full year is $1.17 billion at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $1.18 billion Operating Margin: 7.3%, down from 8.5% in the same quarter last year Market Capitalization: $3.47 billion While we enjoy listening to the management’s commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls is the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Dan Dolev (Mizuho): asked about changes in capital allocation priorities amid higher leverage. CFO Christopher Cruz stated the framework remains unchanged but noted a more conservative approach in Q2 due to seasonal cash consumption and ongoing investment needs. Rayna Kumar (Oppenheimer): inquired about the use of proceeds from the new Term Loan B and whether retail wins are sustainable. Cruz emphasized debt refinancing to extend maturities and Lauber pointed to growing traction with both larg…Read full document

Shift4’s second quarter results drew a negative market reaction following a combination of robust top-line growth and a sharply reduced full-year outlook. Leadership attributed the quarter’s revenue gains to resilient payments activity at major sporting events, continued momentum in international markets, and a diversified presence across hospitality, restaurants, and entertainment venues. CEO Taylor Lauber noted that “performance we delivered this quarter in our payments-based revenue streams is a testimony to our durable growth,” highlighting high-teen growth in mature U.S. markets and over 50% growth in international segments. Management acknowledged ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East, but said strong U.S. to Europe travel and better-than-expected trends in restaurant and lodging sales mitigated the impact. Is now the time to buy FOUR? Find out in our full research report (it’s free). Revenue: $1.30 billion vs analyst estimates of $1.24 billion (34% year-on-year growth, 4% beat) Adjusted EPS: $1.32 vs analyst estimates of $1.24 (6.8% beat) Adjusted EBITDA: $284 million vs analyst estimates of $278.2 million (21.9% margin, 2.1% beat) The company dropped its revenue guidance for the full year to $2.51 billion at the midpoint from $2.55 billion, a 1.8% decrease Adjusted EPS guidance for the full year is $5.25 at the midpoint, missing analyst estimates by 5.5% EBITDA guidance for the full year is $1.17 billion at the midpoint, below analyst estimates of $1.18 billion Operating Margin: 7.3%, down from 8.5% in the same quarter last year Market Capitalization: $3.47 billion While we enjoy listening to the management’s commentary, our favorite part of earnings calls is the analyst questions. Those are unscripted and can often highlight topics that management teams would rather avoid or topics where the answer is complicated. Here is what has caught our attention. Dan Dolev (Mizuho): asked about changes in capital allocation priorities amid higher leverage. CFO Christopher Cruz stated the framework remains unchanged but noted a more conservative approach in Q2 due to seasonal cash consumption and ongoing investment needs. Rayna Kumar (Oppenheimer): inquired about the use of proceeds from the new Term Loan B and whether retail wins are sustainable. Cruz emphasized debt refinancing to extend maturities and Lauber pointed to growing traction with both large and small retailers internationally. Timothy Chiodo (UBS): questioned the gateway conversion strategy and recent M&A integration. Lauber explained that converting gateway customers remains a core motion, with recent acquisitions like Eigen and Bambora providing embedded merchant bases for cross-sell. Christopher Svensson (Deutsche Bank): asked about the $25 million Q3 travel headwind and confidence in future free cash flow conversion. Cruz clarified that the outlook is based on short-term flight corridor data and expects operating leverage to drive improved free cash flow in the absence of current headwinds. Darrin Peller (Wolfe Research): pressed for details on Shift4 One and Global Blue’s contribution timelines. Lauber said substantial investment in sales teams and infrastructure will weigh on 2026 margins, but the company aims to see economic benefits annualize in 2027. Over the next few quarters, the StockStory team will monitor (1) the pace of international merchant onboarding and localization of Shift4’s product suite, (2) the impact of persistent travel disruptions on tax-free shopping and hospitality revenue, and (3) execution of technology investments aimed at improving customer experience and operational efficiency. Progress on deleveraging and margin stabilization amid continued expansion will also be important signposts. Shift4 currently trades at $43.90, down from $53.38 just before the earnings. Is the company at an inflection point that warrants a buy or sell? Find out in our full research report (it’s free for active Edge members). ALSO WORTH WATCHING: Top 5 Momentum Stocks. The best time to own a great stock is when the market is finally noticing it. These aren’t just high-quality businesses. Something is happening with them right now. Elite fundamentals meet near-term momentum — both boxes checked at the same time. Find out which stocks our AI platform is flagging this week. See this week’s Strong Momentum stocks — FREE. Get Our Strong Momentum Stocks for Free HERE. Stocks that have made our list include now familiar names such as Nvidia (+1,460% between June 2020 and June 2025) as well as under-the-radar businesses like the once-micro-cap company Kadant (+214% between June 2020 and June 2025). Find your next big winner with StockStory today.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-13

Shift4 Payments (FOUR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Motley Fool
Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer - Taylor Lauber Chief Financial Officer - Christopher Cruz Head of Investor Relations - Thomas McCrohan Operator: Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Shift4 Q2 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Tom McCrohan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thomas McCrohan: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Shift4 Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call today are Taylor Lauber, our CEO; and Christopher Cruz, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast on the Investor Relations section of our website, which can be found at investors.shift4.com. Today's call is also being simulcast on X Spaces, which can be accessed through our corporate X account at Shift4. Our quarterly shareholder letter, quarterly financial results and other materials related to our quarterly results have all been posted to our IR website. Our call and earnings materials today include forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results could differ materially as a result of certain risks, uncertainties and many important factors. Additional information concerning those factors is available in our most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which you can find on the SEC's website and the Investor Relations section of our corporate website. For any non-GAAP financial information discussed on this call today, the related GAAP measures and reconciliations are available in today's quarterly shareholder letter. With that, let me turn the call over to Taylor. Taylor? David Lauber: Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to acknowledge the entire Shift4 team for delivering strong quarterly results, including powering payments flawlessly at many of the World Cup matches. This tournament was a great unifying event and an unparalleled showcase for Shift4's ability to help merchants deliver the moments that matter on one of the sports world's greatest stages. Shift4 technology can be found at every match in both the U.S. and Canada and of course, across the broader experience economy of restaurants and hotels. It was especially rewarding to have the finals in our backyard and host…Read full document

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer - Taylor Lauber Chief Financial Officer - Christopher Cruz Head of Investor Relations - Thomas McCrohan Operator: Hello, and welcome, everyone, joining today's Shift4 Q2 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Tom McCrohan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thomas McCrohan: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Shift4 Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call today are Taylor Lauber, our CEO; and Christopher Cruz, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast on the Investor Relations section of our website, which can be found at investors.shift4.com. Today's call is also being simulcast on X Spaces, which can be accessed through our corporate X account at Shift4. Our quarterly shareholder letter, quarterly financial results and other materials related to our quarterly results have all been posted to our IR website. Our call and earnings materials today include forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results could differ materially as a result of certain risks, uncertainties and many important factors. Additional information concerning those factors is available in our most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which you can find on the SEC's website and the Investor Relations section of our corporate website. For any non-GAAP financial information discussed on this call today, the related GAAP measures and reconciliations are available in today's quarterly shareholder letter. With that, let me turn the call over to Taylor. Taylor? David Lauber: Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to acknowledge the entire Shift4 team for delivering strong quarterly results, including powering payments flawlessly at many of the World Cup matches. This tournament was a great unifying event and an unparalleled showcase for Shift4's ability to help merchants deliver the moments that matter on one of the sports world's greatest stages. Shift4 technology can be found at every match in both the U.S. and Canada and of course, across the broader experience economy of restaurants and hotels. It was especially rewarding to have the finals in our backyard and hosted by a great Shift4 customer, MetLife Stadium. Kudos to our team for demonstrating once again our ability to operate in demanding high stakes environments such as the World Cup final. Believe it or not, this was not even our busiest quarter for Sports and Entertainment despite the well-attended matches across so many of our customer locations. While there were clear signs of increased spending across restaurants, hotels and other locations in host cities, our stadium customers are quite accustomed to hosting large crowds, whether it be NFL, MLB, concerts or even events like Formula 1. We are with them for all these events, and I think the World Cup was another healthy demonstration of that. I'm proud of our results this quarter. They demonstrated resiliency despite ongoing travel disruptions and validated our deliberate diversification across the experience economy. With that said, 3 themes will guide how we talk through our second quarter results. First, the durability of our diversified business continued to show through, delivering resilient growth even as the operating environment stayed challenging. Second, our international expansion continues to scale and compound, and I'll share why we're increasingly confident in its trajectory shortly. And third, I want to spend some time on what I call the heart of our story. Our position across the experience economy isn't by accident. Many have asked about our competitive positioning in one vertical or another, but miss the big picture. We are exceptionally well positioned to handle in-person payment experiences from SMB to the largest enterprises. What we've learned from decades in restaurants is brought to hotels and then to sports and entertainment and most recently, luxury retail. We choose these growth paths, not because they're different, but to the contrary, they all demand a high-touch in-person experience that we are uniquely positioned to provide. And of course, we challenge ourselves to build new capabilities in areas like unified commerce, but with a capital discipline that demands results before risk. Diving into Q2 results, we delivered Q2 results above our previously provided guidance, including plus 34% year-over-year growth in gross revenue, plus 51% year-over-year growth in gross revenue less network fees, plus 39% growth in adjusted EBITDA and $21 million of adjusted free cash flow versus our $10 million guide. Adjusted for acquisitions, our organic gross revenue less network fees grew 11%, which is consistent with last quarter. We believe there is further room for expansion as we continue delivering our market-leading products to new geographies around the world. The performance we delivered this quarter in our payments-based revenue streams is a testimony to our durable growth. Total payments-based revenue less network fees grew 27% in Q2, with the Americas-based revenue less network fees growing 19% and worldwide payments base revenue less network fees growing at 53%. I'll repeat that our most mature Americas market grew in the high teens, and our growth markets grew over 50%. As can be the case, this quarter was not without some challenges. The Middle East conflict remained a headwind and weighed on inbound travel to Europe and across several Gulf Coast countries. However, the overall impact on our Q2 results was slightly better than we had forecast. Said differently, we were able to absorb some of the travel disruption impact from strong U.S. to Europe travel, strong performance in Asia and overall better-than-expected trends in same-store sales for both restaurants and lodging. Chris will provide more details when he reviews our guidance, but we do anticipate continued travel disruption in the upcoming quarter, and our guidance now reflects that. Regardless, our Q2 results coming in above our guided KPIs speaks to the resilience of our diversified portfolio and our ability to operate through factors beyond our control. I also want to address same-store sales directly since that's been a recurring topic on these calls. As a reminder, we experienced softer trends in recent quarters among restaurants and SMBs in the Americas. This quarter, as Chris will highlight, same-store sales trends in restaurants and lodging were slightly better than our expectations consistent with what we saw in Q1 and a further sign that the trend is encouraging. That said, our full year outlook continues to assume a neutral impact on same-store sales, and we are not forecasting any material recovery in the back half of the year. We think that, that's the right posture given what we deem to be arguably stable trends in consumer spending despite higher gas prices. The bottom line regarding Q2, we delivered better-than-expected results relative to our guidance in a quarter that provided some modest benefits from the halo effect of the World Cup, offset by ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East. Chris will provide more details on our full year 2026 guidance in a bit, but the bottom line is that we are tracking to deliver 24% to 27% FX-neutral year-over-year growth in gross revenue less network fees this year. Moving on to International. We delivered another quarter of over 50% growth in worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees as we continue to scale our business internationally. Some highlights in the quarter included -- we introduced our restaurant POS products, which is Shift4 Dine in Spain and Australia, and we are rapidly attracting restaurants to our platform. We continue to globalize all of our products for international markets and expect to introduce Shift4 Dine in many more international markets in the months and years ahead. Shift4 One continues to resonate with retailers in Europe, and we are now live in 12 countries, well on track to surpassing our annual goal of being live in 15 countries by the end of 2026. As a reminder, our Shift4 One product combines payments, dynamic currency conversion and tax-free shopping into a single device. This quarter, we added numerous retail cosmetic and jewelry merchants across Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. You can find them in our materials we provided this morning. Merchants understand the value immediately, and I expect that we'll be adding thousands of merchants per month in the near future. In Hotels, we continue to win excellent resorts and hospitality customers. This quarter, we added Massanutten Resort, The Nora Hotel West Palm Beach, Wayford Bridge Inn Hotel, Radisson Hotel Winnipeg, just to name a few. Again, there's more in our materials. And our sports and entertainment capabilities remain unmatched. This quarter, we signed the Buffalo Bills and Texas A&M, along with new venues, including Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium and Splashway Waterpark. You'll continue to see us processing ticket sales for LA 2028 as well. Finally, in Luxury Retail, we signed several brands to our tax-free shopping solution, including Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Patagonia and Givenchy in Japan. In an increasingly digital world, consumers are demanding more meaningful in-person experiences. As I mentioned earlier, we are uniquely positioned to address all aspects of this experience economy. We are beginning to see a meaningful amount of capital being invested in this concept of sporting events driving commerce in the surrounding neighborhood with some interesting new concepts beginning to break ground, such as Miami Freedom Park and its surrounding retail and restaurant shops. We expect the same halo effect we benefited from this quarter at the World Cup to repeat itself with several other upcoming sporting events such as the 2028 LA Olympics. The second way we benefit from our position in the experience economy is the daisy chain of relationships that leads to net new business. For example, our existing relationship with major casino resorts contributed to us winning many restaurants across the country. The ownership groups of these hotels often own restaurants and other entertainment venues and as such, want to deliver the same experience to their guests. We are increasingly aligning ourselves with the operators who share our vision of connecting consumers with experiences and having a shared vision goes a long way towards creating differentiated products and capabilities supporting the growth and vision of our customers. Our competitive differentiation across hospitality and sports and entertainment is unique, and it continues to widen the gap between us and peers who either narrowly focused on a single vertical or only offer a point solution. We are the connective tissue behind the entire consumer experience, the same fan like grab dinner, catch a game, buy a jersey, check into a hotel in 1 night, and we're the point of sale they're interacting. In the U.S., we still have meaningful market share to capture and incremental services to offer, and our DCC offering is live and has been well received by our first few customers. Before closing, I want to talk a little bit about the technical investments we've made recently. Our story as a public company has often been about the proof points. The customers won, the verticals conquered, the geographies opened, but none of this would have happened without meaningful investment and innovation. To that end, this was a record quarter for technology investment and product development. We released the next-generation payment terminal application and internal management software, which includes dynamic currency conversion, as well as multi-location enhancements and a totally new quick service feature set within Shift4 Dine. I mentioned Shift4 One being live in 12 countries, which, as you can imagine, requires meaningful language and local feature customization. And we have integrated AI-powered propensity models across our TFS platform, which will continue to enhance the customer journey and allow for more refunds processed. Despite this, the disciplined approach we have towards managing expenses hasn't changed. We continue to maintain a relentless focus on driving incremental operational improvements and preserving our advantages in regards to minimizing customer acquisition costs relative to others in our industry. I'm of the view that there is always room for improvement. And while we already deliver margins that are commendable relative to peers, I do see a path to 50% margins as we scale our international operations and continue to better leverage the resources that we have across the global organization. Let me close on a theme I keep coming back to with this group because the data keeps backing it up. We can grow meaningfully without adding a single new customer, and we can drive real margin and free cash flow expansion just by continuing to do what we do well, integrating our business and deleting the parts we no longer need. This quarter was another proof point: volume of $61 billion, up 22% year-over-year, gross revenue less network fees of $624 million, which was up 51%, 11% of that was organic. Adjusted EBITDA of $284 million, which is up 39% and at a 46% margin. And our updated full year '26 guidance calls for plus 25% to plus 28% gross revenue less network fee growth or plus 24% to 27% growth on an FX-neutral basis. The macro environment remains dynamic, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But the diversification of our business, durability of our growth and caliber of the team we've built continue to give me genuine confidence on the road ahead. Our long-term numbers are the clearest evidence of why this model works. To remind you, gross revenue less network fees have compounded over 35% annually and adjusted EBITDA of over 40% annually since 2019, all achieved with cumulative equity dilution of roughly 15% during that time frame. Said much more simply, we've 8x the business with only 15% dilution in 7 years. I'd encourage everyone to dig into the prepared materials for the additional detail. And with that, let me turn it over to Chris. Christopher Cruz: Thanks, Taylor. Q2 2026 delivered record Q2 financial results that exceeded all our guided metrics while our growth algorithm remains intact or ahead. All of this performance is underpinned by the continued execution of our durable model, rapid integration and disciplined capital allocation while continuing our strategic priority of diversifying both geographically and serving more of the experience economy. This diversification has afforded us the resilience to offset some of the travel disruption we continue to experience due to conflict in the Middle East. Gross revenue of $1.29 billion came in well above our $1.17 billion guidance and was up 34% year-over-year. Gross revenue less network fees, or GRLNF, of $624 million grew 51% year-over-year or 11% organically, excluding contribution from acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA of $284 million grew 39% year-over-year, delivering a 46% margin and adjusted free cash flow of $21 million exceeded guidance as well. Now let's unpack this further. Volumes grew 22% year-over-year to $61 billion, while delivering blended spreads at 65 basis points. The Q2 volume mix was largely in line with our expectations, while same-store sales in the Americas trended slightly better than our expectations. Turning next to the disaggregated categories of revenue that make up the Q2 GRLNF. Beginning with our North Star on growth, payments-based revenue less network fees, that was $402 million, growing 27% year-over-year. This category consists of an Americas region that grew 19% year-over-year and worldwide, excluding Americas region, that exceeded our expectations, growing 53% year-over-year. The next category of subscription and other grew 8% year-over-year. And although on a year-to-date basis, we are exceeding the original growth algorithm outlook we expect this category to moderate in the back half, resulting in a low single-digit growth for the year. Finally, the category of tax-free shopping, or TFS, grew 8% on a pro forma year-over-year basis, an improvement from last quarter's 4% growth. TFS results continue to be impacted by travel disruptions in the Middle East, but the overall revenue impact came in modestly better than our prior expectation of a $20 million headwind. Overall, we are encouraged by the resilience of the business that this growth performance expresses. Our growth algorithm remains intact or is ahead across all areas, and we delivered a consecutive quarter of low double-digit organic GRLNF growth. As a reminder, TFS was not part of our organic growth calculation this quarter. But given we just celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the acquisition closing in July last year, TFS will roll into our organic growth calculation beginning next quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 46%. And while an improvement from the first quarter, it is worth noting that we continue to scale our international operations and are continuously making investments in both product and internal initiatives. The encouraging outperformance we continue to see in the worldwide region validates all of these investments. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $1.32 per share. Adjusted free cash flow in the quarter was $21 million, which exceeded our guidance of $10 million, and on a non-GAAP per share basis, this results in $0.23 of adjusted free cash flow per share or 17% conversion from non-GAAP EPS. And when combined with Q1, this translates on a combined basis to a 52% free cash flow per share conversion for the first half. And now on to quarterly guidance. For the third quarter of 2026, we are introducing guidance as follows: GRLNF of approximately $650 million which embeds an approximate $25 million impact for travel disruption due to the continued Middle East conflict. Adjusted EBITDA of $310 million and $180 million of adjusted free cash flow. As a reminder, we raised an incremental $1 billion of Term Loan B on July 8 to prefund the August 2027 maturity of our convertible notes. As such, adjusted free cash flow revisions are largely the result of the net interest expense impact with the balance resulting from the flow-through of the aforementioned earnings revisions. Additionally, gross revenue for the quarter is expected to be $1.3 billion. We are also introducing Q4 guidance ranges as follows: GRLNF range of $661 million to $711 million, adjusted EBITDA of $327 million to $352 million, and adjusted free cash flow of $176 million to $186 million, reflecting approximately 53% to 54% conversion. Similar to last quarter, we are only forecasting potential travel disruption from the Middle East conflict for the next 60 days. And thus, our fourth quarter guidance does not assume any impact from this. This all translates into full year guidance ranges as follows: GRLNF of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion, up 25% to 28% year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion, up 19% to 22% year-over-year, adjusted free cash flow of $465 million to $475 million, representing approximately 40% conversion of adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP EPS range of $5.15 to $5.35 per share. Again, both the EPS and the adjusted free cash flow revision are majority of the result of the incremental net interest expense resulting from the increased Term Loan B to prefund the August 2027 convertible notes and the flow-through of earnings revisions. Just some color on guidance. Although we now have an outlook that will favor the low end of our original guidance range, we are proud of the durability and resilience that the business is exhibited by absorbing the travel disruptions associated with the Middle East conflict in the first half of the year. However, given the duration of the conflict, incorporating an estimated $25 million impact to Q3 and updating the outlook for approximately $20 million of FX translation impact seems prudent to acknowledge and comprises the majority of the $40 million midpoint guidance revision. On an FX-neutral basis, our GRLNF guidance now reflects 24% to 27% year-over-year growth compared to an FX-neutral growth of 24% to 29% in our prior guidance range. Said differently, the midpoint of our GRLNF growth range has only been reduced by 100 basis points on an FX-neutral basis. And now last, on capital allocation. Every allocable dollar must compete for the best use and is subjected to rigorous process, while the output that guides us is return on invested capital and adjusted free cash flow per share. In Q2, we repurchased approximately 650,000 shares at an average price of approximately $38. We were intentionally conservative this quarter given current leverage levels and the cash consumptive quarter we were in. Cumulatively, we have deployed $625 million against the $1 billion share repurchase authorization announced 3 quarters ago and this has resulted in an approximate 11% reduction in non-GAAP share count for the authorized period. On debt capital structure, our Q2 2026 pro forma net leverage was 3.7x and we maintain our view that we do not intend to exceed 3.75x pro forma net leverage on a sustained basis. Based on performance trajectory and guidance, the business is expected to delever by year-end to our long-term average net leverage level in the low 3s. As mentioned on July 8, we extended the maturity of our $550 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn and raised an additional $1 billion of Term Loan B at the same terms as our existing Term Loan B with proceeds principally to address the August 2027 convertible note maturity. The net result is that we have successfully termed out our capital structure to 2031. Before turning the call back to Taylor, I want to thank our colleagues for their flawless execution at one of the world's grandest events of the World Cup. At every venue, you tirelessly executed to ensure that our customers could deliver the moments that matter in the most demanding environment. With that, let me now turn the call back to Taylor. David Lauber: Thanks, Chris. And operator, we're ready for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Dan Dolev with Mizuho. Dan Dolev: Lots of good things here. I hope people pay attention to that as well. Chris, question for you. Has anything changed regarding your capital allocation priorities? So for example, how are you thinking about buybacks, acquisitions and leverage here? Christopher Cruz: Yes. Thanks for the question, Dan. Yes. So I would start with the overarching phrase that our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. I think we have the benefit of having a few different value creation drivers within that framework, and we have to be prudent about how to balance it at all times, given how focused we are on driving return on invested capital, and so when you think about where we are, though, in this past quarter, I think it's fair to acknowledge that we had to approach things with a little more conservatism and that was very deliberate. . So the execution against the share repurchase in the quarter was certainly impacted by the fact that we acknowledge where we are on our pro forma net leverage level at 3.7x, and we acknowledge where we are -- where we were in a second quarter that is a seasonally cash-consumptive quarter. You take those 2 things together and the strategic decision was to be intentionally conservative at the time. Obviously, the cash flow generation seasonality changes in the back half of the year. And then in general, from a liquidity standpoint, we're in a much more improved position in light of the recent financing. Maybe one other thing I would say about it, though, is that as we think through the cash flow generation in these coming quarters, and the growth that we anticipate, I think it's fair to reiterate that within that capital allocation framework, it's not just about repurchases, it's also about making sure we continue to invest. I think something that we like to highlight is the fact that this was a record quarter for us in terms of investment into product technology platform as well. We continue to believe that there are a number of interesting opportunities to strategically enhance or accelerate some of our strategic initiatives by looking at tuck-in M&A as well. So I would say, overall, no change in the way we think about the framework but very much intentional in how we look at it, given some of the seasonality dynamics. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add Taylor. David Lauber: No. I think you said it well. We've invested meaningfully in technology. We continue to see lots of interesting M&A opportunities. I would sort of categorize them in the tuck-in category. But keep in mind, we're in many dozens of countries that we weren't in just a few years ago. And in most cases, with a single product. So the ability to deliver the rest of our product whether that's been buying a local sales team is something that we're incredibly focused on. So nothing's changed with I think Chris' caveat that Q2 warranted a little bit of caution, but Q3 less so. Operator: We'll take our next question from Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer. Rayna Kumar: Chris, so you raised a new Term Loan B during the quarter. Can you just talk about the uses of funds and how you're thinking about your balance sheet here? Christopher Cruz: Yes, sure. Thanks for the question, Rayna. So we -- on July 8, we successfully executed a combination of extending our revolving -- our revolver maturity into a new 5-year and take that out to 2031 and also raised $1 billion of Term Loan B on essentially fungible terms or the same terms as our existing term loan. The primary use of proceeds there was to prefund the August 2027 convertible note maturity so that we could successfully term out the entirety of the capital structure into the 2031 territory. And actually, 2032, if you think about where there's -- where there actually is funded debt because the revolver is undrawn. And that's the primary purpose of that capital. I think the other dynamic within it is to acknowledge that within that, we also have some general corporate proceeds that went to the balance sheet, improves liquidity. And all the while, I think it was fair to say that it was a well-received offering in general. Ratings remained affirmed and unchanged as well the debt markets really do view us as a seasoned issuer and we're very supportive of the transaction given the fact that you could see the terms that came through are probably really amongst the market best for our BB rating -- our BB corporate rating. So overall, really satisfied with the transaction outcome and like where our balance sheet is right now. Rayna Kumar: That's really helpful. And just 1 quick follow-up. You announced some pretty big wins in retail. And I think your initial expectations were like signing smaller retailers. So just like are you surprised by the bigger wins? And should we continuing to expect that type of traction with large retailers. David Lauber: So there's a lot of receptivity across kind of the larger retail base. This is a group that Global Blue has had a marquee product offering in for quite some time. Increasingly, as the tax-free shopping sort of product adds new geographies, those retailers were the default for those retailers in those geographies. I would say I wouldn't want to challenge the sales motion that we have now, which is a lot of the SMBs that we would reference in the materials, these are same-day decision makers. This is a walk-in, get a meaningful enhancement from a product perspective and adopt the product quite quickly. Any of the enterprise retailers we work with require deep and sophisticated customizations and take longer to board, et cetera. I think as has kind of always been the case we Shift4, and it's kind of interesting to use in the context of the World Cup, like you win the MetLife so that it helps substantiate why all the local businesses around the MetLife should be doing business with you, and that continues to be the case in Europe. Operator: We'll take our next question from Timothy Chiodo with UBS. Timothy Chiodo: So I think a lot of investors appreciate the Shift4 approach, which, as you mentioned earlier, results often in lower customer acquisition costs. One of the hallmarks of that over the years has been the gateway strategy. And of course, there's many other means of doing this in conversion. But specific to gateway, there was originally the Shift4 gateway, there was a merchant link gateway. More recently, that opportunity has been somewhat replenished with Eigen and even more recently, Bambora. I was hoping you could give a little bit of an update on what remains in the -- specific to the gateway conversion opportunity and maybe a little bit more specifically on the 2 more recent ones in terms of Eigen and Bambora. David Lauber: Yes, sure. Well, I'm glad you categorized it in the way that you did, which is to say that the hallmark of the M&A approach that we've taken over the years is that in every case, it gives us an embedded base of customers to go cross-sell to. So institutionally, we don't think about the ability to migrate a Givex gift card customer over to our payments radically different than we think about an Eigen gateway customer. I would say gateways have been -- it's a no place like home M&A move for us. That's really what we call them in our M&A tracker because the playbook is seasoned, it's understood across the entire company, practically speaking. Eigen has been an awesome proof point for us. We've got one of the largest airport operators, concessionaires in the world has switched over. That was largely a result of the gateway conversion, many hundreds of merchant locations as a result of just that merchant moving. Eigen's been great. And they all kind of follow the same pattern, which is to say the newer the gateway, the less progress we've made through it, but again, a really seasoned motion through it. I will say though, we don't challenge our sales teams to prioritize one opportunity or the other. We basically bucket all these merchants into pain points we believe we can solve. So our restaurant team goes after all the restaurants, in our acquired book. Our hotel team does the same. Just now, our luxury retail team does the same with that. So we try not to sort of put a prescription on moving one versus the other. I would say highlights for us recently have been a beginning of conversion of Revel merchants over to Shift4 Dine, which is quite exciting. Givex, the kind of upper bound of that product is nonexistent, meaning we're attracting lots of awesome institutional customers to that product, and that product is compelling payments conversations. And Eigen, again, no place like home. I would put Bambora in the same category. Operator: We'll take our next question from Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank. Christopher Svensson: I appreciate all the details on the Middle East, but I do want to follow up on that just given how dynamic the situation is. For 2Q, I know you said the headwind came in lower than expected, but maybe just wondering if you can give more specifics on where that number was relative to $20 million and kind of the strength you saw offsetting that? And then just as we think about the $25 million headwind that you're baking in for 3Q. So I get that there's seasonality that's a higher travel quarter relative to 2Q. But given the results you saw in 2Q and some flight data that does look like it's improving. Just wanted to hear the assumptions underlying that $25 million? Christopher Cruz: Sure. I'll take that, and thanks for the question. Yes, so look, well said, the right word is dynamic, right? It's been -- it's definitely been a dynamic conflict, the travel disruption that has resulted from it has made forecasting a challenge specific to the corridors that are impacted. And when I say the corridors, I mean the dynamic of the consumer's origin point is an origin point largely in the GCC or Southeast Asia coming into Europe, right? That's the corridor that we're focused on. And I'll answer the question around the commentary that relative to the $20 million Q2 sort of number that we had baked in as far as kind of like a headwind. The $20 million, it did perform modestly ahead, not a meaningful amount, but modestly ahead of what we had expected within our forecasting at the time. More than anything, though, the overall TFS category, I think, outperformed across other areas that demonstrates its kind of balance and resilience as a whole. So for example, one of the themes that we had mentioned outside of that affected corridor of sort of GCC, Southeast Asia consumer coming into Europe, outside of that corridor, there was like nice pockets of strength. The U.S. consumer into the European corridor continued to perform well. We continue to see nice strength there. And we saw nice strength coming from the intra-Asia area, so travel into Japan for tax-free shopping. So when you balance out TFS as a whole, it actually was pretty resilient and demonstrates it's kind of the benefit that it has by being as kind of geographically diverse as it is. But in short, to come back to your question around specific to the $20 million, it was modestly ahead. Christopher Svensson: That's very helpful. And I hear you on the challenges, especially Asia to Europe, data is confusing to us. So I appreciate the color there. Just for the follow-up on free cash flow. So I get the points on the guidance this year sounds like mostly from the Term Loan B, maybe a little bit from these Middle East headwinds. But just as we think about free cash flow conversion into next year and beyond, beyond the higher interest expense that will be flowing through, is there anything going on across the business that changes your confidence or kind of visibility into what free cash flow conversion should look like in future years? Just trying to get our models in the right place as we think about next year and beyond. Christopher Cruz: Yes. No, it's the right question, and it's definitely something that I think -- the Street has done a good job of getting acclimated to through the balance of this year is sort of free cash flow modeling. So we appreciate that. I would say that as I think into next year, it's obviously 2 large caveats, right? The story of this year, a combination of capital structure, given that we had maturities in '26 and a convertible maturity in '27. That's now out of the way. I think there was some questions even in last quarter, as to how we might address the '27 convertible and how to think about that within models, hopefully, now that's fully off the table in terms of how to model it. And then the -- obviously, the travel disruptions that we experienced this year have been the other big factor on free cash flow, and corresponding or maybe connected or maybe disconnected, like there has been FX volatility as well. So when you take into those 3, if those are not part of what we have to contend with in '27. The answer is no. We don't see anything fundamental. If anything, something that we would reiterate from earlier in the year is that the incremental free cash flow conversion that should come through into the business, it should expand over time, given overall operating leverage that exists. Even when we think about record levels of product investment that is all still well within the normal and ordinary course of what the business can deliver. So I think the short answer is there shouldn't be anything incremental to the aforementioned things that we were facing this year and the capital structure point that you brought up. David Lauber: Yes. One thing I want to layer into it because fully acknowledged Global Blue is a little bit of a different opportunity than we've had in the past. Typically, whether it's any of the cross-sells I described in Tim's question, it's almost an immediate incremental revenue opportunity on an existing customer, and that revenue is like nearly 100% flow through to the bottom line on a net to EBITDA basis. One thing that's different about Global Blue is we are deliberately investing in meaningful sales build-outs across all the countries that they operate in that we see opportunity. That's because they're not just going to go after Global Blue retail customers, Global Blue SMB customers, they're going to offer all of our other products in those countries. So while this early cross-sell motion is great, we're seeing great momentum. Some of the costs associated with that mask what a typical cross-sell might look like. It's all for the right reasons, and that's kind of why when we even first signed and announced the Global Blue transaction, we talked about meaningful synergy benefit in '27. It's because this is -- I think it's very balanced, but it's an investment year to make sure we have the -- all of the infrastructure we want in these countries. And as much of our full product suite available as possible. Operator: We'll take our next question from Craig Maurer with FT Partners. Craig Maurer: Two clarifiers for me. First, on the 3Q guide or the effectively the guide for the rest of the year. You basically said similar to last quarter, we are only forecasting potential travel disruption from Middle East conflict for the next 60 days. Now what does that mean exactly? Does that mean beyond 60 days, it's just an immediate return to normal when we should be considering your model? Or how should we think about that? And second, you called out the FX drag this quarter. But could you give us the last, call it, 3, 4 quarters of FX impact, so we can model properly? Christopher Cruz: Yes. Thanks for the question. On the second one, I think it's probably most conducive to do that in a follow-up. So we'll tackle that one as a follow-up. On the first point around what does it really mean to continue to similar to last quarter, use a 60-day outlook forecast. So as a reminder when we look at the affected corridors in the TFS business, what we're really focused on is looking at how those corridors are tied to a forward forecast of flights. The flights, the seat capacity and a variety of the factors through data sets that we get are input into an outlook model that allow us to get a pretty good 60-day forward forecast view. I think indicative of the, we'll say, the predictability of that view is that relative to the $20 million sort of figure that we had forecasted as an impact figure in Q2, we were pretty close. So I think that we wanted to continue that same methodology, use the forward forecast and importantly, not try to predict the duration of a conflict, a geopolitical conflict. So you take those 2 things together, and we're consistently applying the exact same methodology that we applied the last quarter and that methodology would lend itself towards the $25 million number that we put out there. It's important to understand that the Q3 period in terms of seasonality is the strongest of the quarters in terms of total sales in store or volumes. And so the increase is only a reflection of the seasonally strong Q3 relative to Q2. And I know you didn't ask this as explicitly, but if you sort of think about Q4, the idea of what we're trying to say is that we're not -- we don't want to break the consistent approach we've used in the last 2 quarters and now try to forecast the fourth quarter on something like a geopolitical conflict. But for context, it's fair to say it's probably a good data point to appreciate that Q4 and Q2 are about the same size in terms of their TFS contribution from a seasonality standpoint in terms of volumes. And so I'll put that out there as hopefully something helpful for your own modeling. David Lauber: Yes. I just want to hit this again because I sense a little bit of confusion on it. I would say the impacted travel corridor that we anticipated and we forecast in Q2 behaved largely as expected. There were other corridors that outperformed, and therefore, you got a slightly better than forecast result. We are approaching Q3 with the exact same mindset, which is that we know what the impact of the travel corridor would be in the highest seasonal quarter. And so we're giving investors insights into that. The one thing I would just sort of say with regard to Chris' remarks, no, we haven't had a conflict that's kind of on and off and on and off and on and on. We haven't seen that change travel behaviors radically inside of that corridor. So this is why we're so reticent to want to try to predict beyond what we can see in flight planning capacity. But this is a shopper base that is largely quite resilient. When travel is safe in the eyes of the traveler, they get out and spend quite immediately. So I don't think it's unreasonable to say that when this conflict is decisively over that this impact would be muted. Operator: We'll take our next question from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Darrin Peller: Look, when we look beyond the Middle East impact, and to really follow up a bit on Tim's question earlier in terms of the cross-sell. It looks like you do have the underlying trends, obviously, in the payment side and the Americas side trending well. So just looking beyond the short-term Middle East conflict impacts and thinking about next year for a little longer, I can't help but wonder where you are on Shift4 One and Global Blue in terms of where you expect to be contributing to numbers. So we know by the end of the year, you're hoping 15-plus countries. It seems like you're progressing well. I think you had 12 now you said. But help us understand a little bit more in terms of the progress and the time lines you'd expect to see that really start moving the needle where not only do you have entry into the countries, but real ability to process volumes and convert more and more merchants, the sales team set up probably a little more structural time lines. David Lauber: Yes, it's an awesome question and it is literally the heart of our strategy here. So to give you a little bit of insight into how Global Blue historically operated, it was a very enterprise-oriented go-to-market motion with strong market share across the enterprises. And the SMBs were largely a self-service operation, meaning an SMB merchant would find its way to Global Blue without a lot of service without a lot of dedicated customer management. Our approach is kind of the inverse of that, which is that the SMBs are the first to target. They're the fastest move. They are, quite frankly, some of the highest benefit of consolidating all of these technologies into a single payment device for ease of use and increasing tax-free shopping at that hypothetical watch retailer or perfume boutique, et cetera. So we deliberately approach this with the idea that we're going to build a sales team that can focus on that motion explicitly. The way this works in practice, dedicated Shift4 strategy personnel that have done this across multiple acquisitions in their past, going into these countries, sitting in Global Blue offices, hiring local salespeople, training, building all the materials, et cetera. I can't kind of understate the amount of work that our awesome team has done in this. And then there's a threshold we have, which is after X 100 merchants are signed up, the motion is handed over to the local teams and they run with it from there because it is kind of a regular sales quota-based system. We've been able to hand that off in a handful of countries now. So we're very excited about that. That's proving that the motion is working. But again, and I don't think we've been inconsistent on this. Our goal is to be able to produce a few thousand merchants a month exiting the year. And admittedly with an economic contribution in '26 that is more expense than gain because of the cost of building out these teams. It's the ability to annualize that merchant base through '27 that we've had our eye on -- that's the prize we've had our eye on the entire time. And we're quite optimistic about the pace that we've had. We've got more countries to kind of evaluate than we expected to have. And the teams are just starting to get it, which is super exciting. But I think -- and again, this is less of an economic basis. We're admitting to the drag that this investment causes. But Q4 production against these is really the proof point to know that we're set up in the way we want to be for '27. Darrin Peller: All right. Can I ask 1 follow-up, Chris, for you on just the blended spread at 65 bps in the quarter. Can you just talk about the overall sustainability at this level and what extent this is impacted by the World Cup related mix or Global Blue or DCC perhaps in the quarter? Christopher Cruz: Yes, sure. So I think the 65 basis point spread relative to at the beginning of the year, sort of gave people visibility that we expect spreads on a full year basis to be greater than 60 bps. There isn't really much to the story of unpacking that. I think we view that spread mix is something that within this quarter is kind of well inside of what our expectations would have been. So sorry, when I say it's within, right? It was within the range of expectations that we were -- that we had for spread. So I don't think there are any specific call-outs to make around the spread differentials. I think what we have said in the past going into this year was that it is possible that we were going to see a bit of a change in terms of the dynamic of relative to the last 3 years, where enterprise had been an accelerating portion of the book and the enterprise spreads were having a mix shift downward on blended spread. And then this year, as that enterprise merchant base is finally kind of size and scale, and we're now growing off of that size and scale base, as we see more SMB business come through, we may actually start to see some expansion in spreads. So that trend is something that we have called out as a possibility for the year. And it is playing out. We are seeing that, but it's nothing outside of what we were already expecting. So nothing to call out over and above the fact that this is well within the expectations that we had for the year. Operator: We'll take our next question from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Sanjay Sakhrani: Taylor, you mentioned the World Cup was a strong contributor to the second quarter results. And then obviously, we saw that in the payments revenues. I'm just curious, when you look underneath that, do you feel like the business was performing commensurately ahead of sort of expectations as well? David Lauber: Yes. It's a good question. I actually want to be very balanced on the impact of the World Cup. We definitely saw trends of exuberance specifically in the merchant categories we focus on in host cities around games. It was very obvious in media commenting on this, like the Scots drinking Boston dry, we saw that. We saw that in our restaurant data. We saw it in Boston. However, the total payment volume across our SMB franchise, meaning specifically in the stadiums, was not our highest quarter by any measure. Keep in mind the football organization takes these stadiums offline for a couple of months to prepare for this event. The events themselves aren't conducive to concessions. We saw a healthy amounts of kit being sold, a lot of souvenirs being sold, less concessions in general. So I think quite balanced on our impact. And quite frankly, is Shift4 the net beneficiary of this kind of payments activity, absolutely, we are going to an event, traveling to it, even watching an event with friends nearby the venue. That's something we're absolutely a beneficiary of, but it was not a meaningful contributor to the quarter. I think it was more or less what we were expecting. And in fact, a lot of investors were sort of challenging us to talk up the impact. These are great customers that do great events all the time. And again, they would have probably been as full, if not more full with a regular event calendar in many of these stadiums as they were with the World Cup. Chris, do you want to comment? Christopher Cruz: Yes. I would just underscore the same point when you actually go and pick apart the data at a venue by venue, a city by city, you put sort of like a radius of commerce around the venue. We've analyzed and cut and slice the data a few different ways. And it's interesting to see that -- and probably actually shouldn't be that surprising if you actually just went and mapped the calendar of events year-over-year, you would see that the calendar of events at some of the stadiums was much more full last summer. And intuitively, you sort of asked the question, well, why is that? And Taylor alluded to it, the idea that these are venues tackling kind of almost a once in a lifetime kind of event. And in order to accommodate it, you have to go offline. I heard an anecdote that you couldn't be on -- the grass has to grow a specific regulated height, so no one can be on the field, let alone taking a country music concert on that field a couple of days before the event. So I think it was an interesting one to unpack, but more than anything, what I would want people to take away is it was a phenomenal showcase for us, our team, our talent, our technology to be flawless in an environment as demanding as that in a stage as large as that. And we're really proud of it, but by no means was it anywhere close to a Super Bowl. David Lauber: Yes. So to get to the root of your question, yes, the underlying business performed quite well through the quarter, we're probably equally as proud of that as well. And I would say, as we become a more international business. It didn't -- it probably didn't occur to us prior to the event, but it certainly occurred to us during these events that the Shift4 brand being recognized throughout the world is becoming increasingly important, and the World Cup gave us like a phenomenal platform to do that. Sanjay Sakhrani: Okay. That's perfect and encouraging. Just a follow-up question to all the balance sheet questions. I know you guys are trying to do a lot, delever, buy back stock, obviously, consider bolt-on M&A opportunities. I guess as we look ahead over the next year, 1.5 years, how should we think about you balancing all of that? I mean, are there opportunities given the way the stock is trading to actually divest some noncore assets and maybe utilize that for the 3 options? I'm just trying to think about strategically and tactically how you might figure out other ways to create capital and achieve some of the initiatives that you have in place? Christopher Cruz: Thanks, Sanjay. It's the right overall question, and it's something that is the top of our minds at all times is balancing the capital allocation framework. I think I and we look at it is actually -- it's a high-class problem to have. When you look at the number of ways with which we could generate return on invested capital through our capital allocation framework and also look back on our demonstrated track record and acknowledge that this is a business that has done this very well over periods of time managing both capital deployment and capital harvest to generate return at various periods. And then similarly, to always be able to be shareholder-minded and manage dilution. When you look at kind of the non-GAAP EPS share count, if you look at it year-to-date or not actually, if you look at it relative to when we launched the share repurchase authorization in the third quarter of last year, our share count is down 11%. So we think about all of this within the balance, and I think that it's something that I would hope people can appreciate and look at the long-term track record around and acknowledge that we're good at it. At the same time, what you're describing, this idea around divestitures is that within the framework? Is it within our lexicon? I mean it is, absolutely. And we have done some divestitures. They're going to be smaller in nature. They are the noncore components of, let's say, acquired companies along the way. I wouldn't expect them to be meaningful or material, but in the philosophy that we have of deleting the parts, driving efficiencies unlocking margin drags that might exist from them. Those are definitely things that we're focused on, and we actually have completed in the last -- within the last 12 months. Operator: We'll take our final question from Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets. Daniel Perlin: I just wanted to touch back on kind of the incremental investments that you talked about. It sounds like they were a little heavy in the first half around technology investments and obviously product. I'm wondering around the context since you've laid those out now, how do you think about investments in go-to-market to accelerate some of those implementations and maybe where we stand at that point. David Lauber: Yes, it's a great question. I would say, first of all, we're doing it. So we've added a meaningful number of salespeople. We try to be, as Chris just mentioned, we try to be incredibly pragmatic about looking at head count allocation across the organization as frequently as we can and where there are areas that we're deemphasizing can those people be applied to others? Or are there areas that deliberately need investment despite what's going on in other parts of the world. And we've been building sales organizations quite meaningfully through the entire first half of this. And I expect that to continue, all within sort of the guidance ranges that we've provided. We do like when M&A can accelerate that. I can't sort of understate the value of like -- we announced the German POS acquisition a couple of years ago named Vectron that instantly gave us 300 resellers that know how to sell restaurant product to customers, already have a book of customers, et cetera. So we do like to use M&A as a framework for acceleration. I think these types of organizations really understand how we operate and vice versa, and narrowing their scope to a single product or in the case of Vectron, giving them a heck of a lot more value that they can deliver in that product is something that we view as really attractive. So we're looking at that across the entirety of the 15-plus countries that we mentioned as potential accelerants. They're not particularly large. They're tuck-in nature, but it's something that we do well. And I think most interestingly, reputationally, we're known as enhancing the value proposition of these teams and the distribution partners themselves. So it's usually a good conversation to have that we're uniquely positioned at. Daniel Perlin: Great. And just a quick one, Chris, if I could, on organic growth, came in again very consistent 11%. For just the sake of running kind of interference, I think you said TFS is going to roll into that organic calculus in the 3Q, is there any way to kind of get a preview of what that would have been in this quarter just so we're all level set given the growth rate of TFS relative to the rest of your business. Christopher Cruz: Yes. So I think the -- trying to think about it on the fly, I would say that if you were to look at TFS in this quarter, it delivered within that -- the upper end of sort of the mid-single digits in terms of its quarterly growth contribution. And so if you were to blend that in on a weighted basis, TFS is about 1/5 of the revenues. So you can kind of do that math. The important thing that I think you have to take away from it, though, is that, that TFS segment today is burdened by the Middle East travel conflict. So even when you think about looking forward to something like a Q3 and you think about what the implied growth rates are there in that low double digits, you still have to keep in mind that, that very same effect of being weighed down by the Middle East travel disruption, the $25 million number that we gave, that's in that figure. And absent that figure being embedded within it, that low double digit just mathematically would be into the mid-teens. So hopefully, that answers your question. There's a bit of a brainteaser on the fly to kind of weight the average math. But nonetheless, hopefully, that does give you the building blocks. Operator: This concludes the allotted time we have for our question-and-answer session and brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect. 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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Shift4 Payments. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Shift4 Payments (FOUR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-12

Should You Add Sezzle Stock After Its Q2 Earnings and Sharp Pullback?

Zacks
Sezzle Inc. SEZL shares entered August carrying high expectations, but the sharp post-earnings reset has changed the investment setup. The company had already attracted attention in 2026 with rapid subscriber growth, rising profitability and an expanding set of financial products. After the recent correction, investors have a different question to consider: whether the lower share price now offers a better entry into a business that is still delivering growth well above that of many payments peers. SEZL closed at $178.53 on Aug. 6 before plunging nearly 34% on Aug. 7 following its second-quarter report. The selling pressure did not mark the end of the story. Shares subsequently recovered and jumped 8.7% on Aug. 11 to $128.27. Even after that rebound, SEZL remained roughly 28% below its pre-results close. The move has been far more dramatic than recent trading in PayPal PYPL, while Shift4 Payments FOUR has also experienced earnings-related volatility. The correction has removed a meaningful part of the valuation risk that surrounded Sezzle before the report. The reset makes the investment case more interesting. Sezzle continues to grow considerably faster than PayPal and has a different growth profile from Shift4 Payments, while its expanding subscriber base, high engagement and new products could support further earnings gains. Credit costs and execution remain worth watching, but the current share price offers a better balance between growth potential and valuation than it did before earnings.Year-to-date Price Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Sezzle's second-quarter results showed that the underlying business has not lost momentum. Gross merchandise volume increased 37.9% year over year to a record $1.3 billion, while total revenues climbed 51.7% to $149.7 million. Net income rose to $40.8 million, representing a 27.2% margin, and adjusted EBITDA reached $58 million with a 38.8% margin. Total revenue less transaction-related costs represented 63.5% of revenues, placing the metric near the upper end of management's 55%-65% target range. The customer metrics make the growth story even stronger. Active subscribers increased 76.4% year over year to 854,000, while Sezzle added a record 140,000 net new subscribers during the quarter. Average quarterly purchase frequency reached 7.2 times, up from 6.1 times in the prior-year period. This combin…Read full document

Sezzle Inc. SEZL shares entered August carrying high expectations, but the sharp post-earnings reset has changed the investment setup. The company had already attracted attention in 2026 with rapid subscriber growth, rising profitability and an expanding set of financial products. After the recent correction, investors have a different question to consider: whether the lower share price now offers a better entry into a business that is still delivering growth well above that of many payments peers. SEZL closed at $178.53 on Aug. 6 before plunging nearly 34% on Aug. 7 following its second-quarter report. The selling pressure did not mark the end of the story. Shares subsequently recovered and jumped 8.7% on Aug. 11 to $128.27. Even after that rebound, SEZL remained roughly 28% below its pre-results close. The move has been far more dramatic than recent trading in PayPal PYPL, while Shift4 Payments FOUR has also experienced earnings-related volatility. The correction has removed a meaningful part of the valuation risk that surrounded Sezzle before the report. The reset makes the investment case more interesting. Sezzle continues to grow considerably faster than PayPal and has a different growth profile from Shift4 Payments, while its expanding subscriber base, high engagement and new products could support further earnings gains. Credit costs and execution remain worth watching, but the current share price offers a better balance between growth potential and valuation than it did before earnings.Year-to-date Price Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Sezzle's second-quarter results showed that the underlying business has not lost momentum. Gross merchandise volume increased 37.9% year over year to a record $1.3 billion, while total revenues climbed 51.7% to $149.7 million. Net income rose to $40.8 million, representing a 27.2% margin, and adjusted EBITDA reached $58 million with a 38.8% margin. Total revenue less transaction-related costs represented 63.5% of revenues, placing the metric near the upper end of management's 55%-65% target range. The customer metrics make the growth story even stronger. Active subscribers increased 76.4% year over year to 854,000, while Sezzle added a record 140,000 net new subscribers during the quarter. Average quarterly purchase frequency reached 7.2 times, up from 6.1 times in the prior-year period. This combination suggests Sezzle is benefiting from both a larger customer base and deeper engagement among existing users, giving it more than one driver of revenue growth. Marketing expense climbed to $19.4 million during the second quarter as Sezzle deliberately tested how aggressively it could invest in customer acquisition. The encouraging part is that management said the payback period remained below its six-month threshold. Sezzle intends to reduce core marketing spending sequentially in the third quarter, although spending tied to newer products could partly offset that decline. This suggests management is pursuing growth without abandoning its return requirements. This ability to add customers profitably helps distinguish Sezzle from larger peers. PayPal has far greater scale and a more mature payments ecosystem, while Shift4 Payments has broader exposure to merchant acquiring and payment processing. Sezzle's advantage is its current pace of expansion. If it can continue converting marketing dollars into subscribers with short payback periods, the company can sustain a growth rate that justifies some premium over slower-growing payments businesses. Management lifted its 2026 revenue-growth forecast to 35%, effectively moving to the top of the previous 30%-35% range. Adjusted net income guidance increased to $185 million from $180 million, while adjusted diluted EPS guidance rose to $5.25 from $5.10. Raising both top- and bottom-line expectations after a quarter of elevated marketing investment is a positive signal about the underlying economics of the business. There may also be upside that is not fully captured in those numbers. Management said the guidance includes very little contribution from SezzleCash and no contribution from Sezzle Send. Nearly 10% of eligible new Sezzle Anywhere subscribers were already requesting a SezzleCash advance as their first transaction, while Sezzle Send had attracted about 100,000 people to its waitlist ahead of launch. If adoption develops without materially weakening credit performance, these products could create another leg of growth. Over the past week, earnings estimates for both 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward, signaling a bullish outlook from analysts. These figures also suggest year-over-year growth of 45.96% and 27.10%, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The biggest improvement in the investment argument may simply be the price investors now have to pay. The stock trades at 6.31X forward 12-month sales per share versus 5.20X for the Zacks sub-industry. On the other hand, PYPL trades at 1.42X forward 12-month sales per share, while FOUR trades near 1.19X forward 12-month sales per share.This is still not a bargain multiple in isolation, but it looks much more reasonable for a company targeting 35% revenue growth while producing strong profitability. The multiple is also substantially less demanding than it was immediately before second-quarter earnings. Valuation Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Sezzle's faster subscriber and revenue growth gives investors something different from either PYPL or FOUR. If earnings continue to compound quickly, today's valuation could become increasingly reasonable rather than expensive. Credit performance remains the most important counterweight to the bullish case. Management expects the provision for credit losses to equal 2.5%-3% of GMV for 2026 and expects normal seasonal increases during the second half. Rapid user acquisition can also increase provisions because newer customers generally produce higher loss rates than established users. Still, management said it was not seeing an underlying deterioration in repayment behavior or consumer credit health. Sezzle also finished the second quarter with more than $205 million of liquidity, while total debt to trailing-12-month adjusted EBITDA was only 0.5 times. This financial position gives the company room to invest in growth while absorbing normal fluctuations in credit costs. The market's initial reaction to the second quarter appears more severe than the change in Sezzle's business outlook. Revenues, GMV, subscribers and earnings remain on a strong upward path, while management raised its 2026 forecasts despite heavier marketing spending. New products provide additional upside that is barely included in guidance. The rebound on Tuesday also suggests some investors are already reassessing the selloff. SEZL carries volatility and credit risk, but the pullback from its Aug. 6 close has improved the potential reward relative to those risks. For investors comfortable with fintech volatility, the current level looks increasingly attractive for building exposure.At present, SEZL sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Sezzle Inc. (SEZL) : Free Stock Analysis Report PayPal Holdings, Inc. (PYPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-08

Shift4 Payments Q2 Earnings Call Highlights

MarketBeat
Interested in Shift4 Payments, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Q2 results exceeded guidance: Gross revenue rose 34% year over year to $1.29 billion, while GRLNF increased 51% to $624 million and adjusted EBITDA climbed 39% to $284 million. Payment volume reached $61 billion, up 22%. International expansion helped offset travel disruption: Payments-based revenue less network fees outside the Americas grew 53%, with Shift4 One now live in 12 countries and targeted for 15 by year-end 2026. The World Cup showcased the platform but was not a material contributor to financial performance. Guidance reflects conflict and foreign-exchange headwinds: Management expects full-year GRLNF of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion, with the outlook weighted toward the low end due largely to estimated travel disruption and FX effects. Shift4 also refinanced debt to extend maturities, repurchased roughly 650,000 shares, and expects leverage to decline into the low 3-times range by year-end. These 3 Beaten-Down Stocks Just Saw $25 Million in Insider Buying Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) reported second-quarter 2026 results above its prior guidance, citing growth across its payments businesses and resilience in its diversified exposure to restaurants, lodging, sports and entertainment, luxury retail and international markets. Gross revenue rose 34% year over year to $1.29 billion, exceeding the company’s $1.17 billion forecast. Gross revenue less network fees, or GRLNF, increased 51% to $624 million, including 11% organic growth excluding acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA grew 39% to $284 million, producing a 46% margin, while adjusted free cash flow totaled $21 million, above the company’s $10 million guidance. → Sandisk Just Delivered a Blowout Quarter—Here's Why the Stock Is Falling MarketBeat Week in Review – 04/27 - 05/01 Chief Executive Officer Taylor Lauber said the quarter demonstrated the durability of Shift4’s business despite travel disruptions related to the Middle East conflict. The company processed $61 billion of payment volume, up 22% from a year earlier, with blended spreads of 65 basis points. Payments-based revenue less network fees grew 27% year over year in the quarter. Revenue in the Americas increased 19%, while worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees, excluding the Americas, rose 53%. → 4 Oil…Read full document

Interested in Shift4 Payments, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Q2 results exceeded guidance: Gross revenue rose 34% year over year to $1.29 billion, while GRLNF increased 51% to $624 million and adjusted EBITDA climbed 39% to $284 million. Payment volume reached $61 billion, up 22%. International expansion helped offset travel disruption: Payments-based revenue less network fees outside the Americas grew 53%, with Shift4 One now live in 12 countries and targeted for 15 by year-end 2026. The World Cup showcased the platform but was not a material contributor to financial performance. Guidance reflects conflict and foreign-exchange headwinds: Management expects full-year GRLNF of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion, with the outlook weighted toward the low end due largely to estimated travel disruption and FX effects. Shift4 also refinanced debt to extend maturities, repurchased roughly 650,000 shares, and expects leverage to decline into the low 3-times range by year-end. These 3 Beaten-Down Stocks Just Saw $25 Million in Insider Buying Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) reported second-quarter 2026 results above its prior guidance, citing growth across its payments businesses and resilience in its diversified exposure to restaurants, lodging, sports and entertainment, luxury retail and international markets. Gross revenue rose 34% year over year to $1.29 billion, exceeding the company’s $1.17 billion forecast. Gross revenue less network fees, or GRLNF, increased 51% to $624 million, including 11% organic growth excluding acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA grew 39% to $284 million, producing a 46% margin, while adjusted free cash flow totaled $21 million, above the company’s $10 million guidance. → Sandisk Just Delivered a Blowout Quarter—Here's Why the Stock Is Falling MarketBeat Week in Review – 04/27 - 05/01 Chief Executive Officer Taylor Lauber said the quarter demonstrated the durability of Shift4’s business despite travel disruptions related to the Middle East conflict. The company processed $61 billion of payment volume, up 22% from a year earlier, with blended spreads of 65 basis points. Payments-based revenue less network fees grew 27% year over year in the quarter. Revenue in the Americas increased 19%, while worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees, excluding the Americas, rose 53%. → 4 Oil and Gas ETF Plays as Prices Stay Sky-High Shift4’s Explosive Growth Comes With High-Stakes Risk Chief Financial Officer Christopher Cruz said tax-free shopping revenue increased 8% on a pro forma year-over-year basis, improving from 4% growth in the prior quarter. The tax-free shopping business continued to face disruption in travel corridors involving Gulf countries and Southeast Asia travelers going to Europe, though the overall impact was modestly better than Shift4 had expected. “The U.S. consumer into the European corridor continued to perform well,” Cruz said, adding that the company also saw strength in intra-Asia travel, including travel to Japan for tax-free shopping. → No Hangover: Revisiting Microsoft One Week After Earnings Shift4 introduced its Shift4 Dine restaurant point-of-sale product in Spain and Australia during the quarter. Its Shift4 One unified commerce product, which combines payments, dynamic currency conversion and tax-free shopping in a single device, is now live in 12 countries. The company said it remains on track to operate the product in 15 countries by the end of 2026. Lauber said Shift4 added retail, cosmetics and jewelry merchants in Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. The company also cited new hospitality customers, including Massanutten Resort, The Nora Hotel West Palm Beach, Wayford Bridge Inn Hotel and Radisson Hotel Winnipeg. In sports and entertainment, Shift4 signed the Buffalo Bills, Texas A&M, Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium and Splashway Waterpark. Lauber also said the company expects to process ticket sales for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Shift4 provided payment technology at World Cup matches in the U.S. and Canada, including the final at MetLife Stadium, a company customer. Lauber said the event showcased the company’s ability to operate in high-volume environments and contributed to increased spending at restaurants, hotels and other locations in host cities. However, management said the tournament was not a material driver of the quarter’s financial outperformance. Stadiums hosting matches were taken offline for preparation, and management said event concessions were generally lower than at some regular sporting events and concerts. “It was not a meaningful contributor to the quarter,” Lauber said. “I think it was more or less what we were expecting.” The company said same-store sales trends at restaurants and lodging in the Americas were slightly better than anticipated and were consistent with first-quarter trends. Still, Shift4’s full-year outlook assumes a neutral same-store-sales impact and does not forecast a material recovery during the second half of the year. For the third quarter, Shift4 forecast GRLNF of about $650 million, adjusted EBITDA of $310 million and adjusted free cash flow of $180 million. The GRLNF outlook includes an estimated $25 million effect from travel disruption related to the Middle East conflict. Gross revenue is expected to be $1.3 billion. For the full year, the company forecast: GRLNF of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion, representing 25% to 28% year-over-year growth. FX-neutral GRLNF growth of 24% to 27%. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion, up 19% to 22%. Adjusted free cash flow of $465 million to $475 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $5.15 to $5.35. Cruz said the updated outlook favors the low end of the company’s original range. He attributed most of the midpoint reduction to the estimated third-quarter travel disruption and roughly $20 million of foreign-exchange translation effects. The fourth-quarter outlook does not incorporate an impact from the conflict because Shift4 said it forecasts the travel effects based on a roughly 60-day forward view of flight capacity and related data. Shift4 raised an additional $1 billion of Term Loan B debt on July 8, principally to pre-fund the August 2027 maturity of its convertible notes. The company also extended the maturity of its $550 million undrawn revolving credit facility. Cruz said the actions extended the company’s capital structure to 2031. Pro forma net leverage was 3.7 times in the second quarter. Shift4 said it does not intend to exceed 3.75 times pro forma net leverage on a sustained basis and expects to reduce leverage to the low 3-times range by year-end. The company repurchased about 650,000 shares during the quarter at an average price of approximately $38 per share. It has deployed $625 million of its $1 billion repurchase authorization, resulting in an approximately 11% reduction in non-GAAP share count during the authorization period, according to Cruz. Management said it remained focused on technology investment and tuck-in acquisitions. Lauber said the company recorded a record quarter of technology and product-development investment, including a next-generation terminal application, terminal-management software, dynamic currency conversion capabilities and new quick-service features for Shift4 Dine. Shift4 Payments is a U.S.-based provider of integrated payment processing and technology solutions, serving merchants across the hospitality, retail, e-commerce, gaming and lodging industries. The company's platform enables businesses to accept in-store, online and mobile payments through a combination of point-of-sale hardware, payment gateway services and back-office software. By centralizing transaction processing and reporting, Shift4 aims to simplify payments, enhance security and streamline operations for its merchant customers. The company's core offerings include encrypted point-of-sale terminals, cloud-based payment gateways, and developer-friendly APIs for online and mobile checkouts. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Shift4 Payments Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-07

Why Shift4 Payments (FOUR) Is Down 19.3% After Mixed Q2 2026 Results And ESOP Share Filing

Simply Wall St.
Shift4 Payments, Inc. has released its Q2 2026 results, reporting sales of US$1.30 billion versus US$966 million a year earlier, while net income declined to US$22 million and earnings per share fell despite the strong top-line performance. Alongside the earnings, the company filed an US$80.07 million shelf registration for 1,500,000 common shares tied to its employee stock ownership plan, signaling an increased focus on equity-based compensation and potential future dilution. With Q2 revenue beating expectations but net income lower than last year, we’ll examine how this mixed performance reshapes Shift4’s investment narrative. Capitalize on the AI infrastructure supercycle with our selection of the 56 best 'picks and shovels' of the AI gold rush converting record-breaking demand into massive cash flow. To own Shift4, you have to believe its expanding payments platform and new verticals can offset thinner margins and higher financial complexity. The latest quarter supports the growth side of that thesis, with Q2 2026 sales rising to US$1.30 billion, but the drop in net income to US$22 million keeps profitability and leverage as the key near term risk. The new ESOP related shelf registration modestly adds to dilution concerns but does not materially change the main catalyst or risk. The most relevant recent announcement here is the US$80.07 million shelf registration for 1,500,000 common shares tied to the employee stock ownership plan. Coming after heavy buybacks and alongside weaker EPS, it reinforces the focus on compensation and capital structure at a time when interest coverage is already tight. For catalysts driven by international growth and product adoption to matter for shareholders, the benefits need to outweigh this added dilution over time. Read the full narrative on Shift4 Payments (it's free!) Shift4 Payments’ narrative projects $6.8 billion revenue and $346.9 million earnings by 2029. Uncover how Shift4 Payments' forecasts yield a $61.15 fair value, a 41% upside to its current price. Yet investors should also weigh how rising financial leverage and dilution risk could compound if revenue growth slows or integration takes longer than expected... Some of the most optimistic analysts were assuming Shift4 could lift revenue to about US$7.5 billion and earnings to roughly US$512 million, but after this mixed quarter and softer margins, you can see…Read full document

Shift4 Payments, Inc. has released its Q2 2026 results, reporting sales of US$1.30 billion versus US$966 million a year earlier, while net income declined to US$22 million and earnings per share fell despite the strong top-line performance. Alongside the earnings, the company filed an US$80.07 million shelf registration for 1,500,000 common shares tied to its employee stock ownership plan, signaling an increased focus on equity-based compensation and potential future dilution. With Q2 revenue beating expectations but net income lower than last year, we’ll examine how this mixed performance reshapes Shift4’s investment narrative. Capitalize on the AI infrastructure supercycle with our selection of the 56 best 'picks and shovels' of the AI gold rush converting record-breaking demand into massive cash flow. To own Shift4, you have to believe its expanding payments platform and new verticals can offset thinner margins and higher financial complexity. The latest quarter supports the growth side of that thesis, with Q2 2026 sales rising to US$1.30 billion, but the drop in net income to US$22 million keeps profitability and leverage as the key near term risk. The new ESOP related shelf registration modestly adds to dilution concerns but does not materially change the main catalyst or risk. The most relevant recent announcement here is the US$80.07 million shelf registration for 1,500,000 common shares tied to the employee stock ownership plan. Coming after heavy buybacks and alongside weaker EPS, it reinforces the focus on compensation and capital structure at a time when interest coverage is already tight. For catalysts driven by international growth and product adoption to matter for shareholders, the benefits need to outweigh this added dilution over time. Read the full narrative on Shift4 Payments (it's free!) Shift4 Payments’ narrative projects $6.8 billion revenue and $346.9 million earnings by 2029. Uncover how Shift4 Payments' forecasts yield a $61.15 fair value, a 41% upside to its current price. Yet investors should also weigh how rising financial leverage and dilution risk could compound if revenue growth slows or integration takes longer than expected... Some of the most optimistic analysts were assuming Shift4 could lift revenue to about US$7.5 billion and earnings to roughly US$512 million, but after this mixed quarter and softer margins, you can see how views on execution risk and future upside might start to diverge even more. Explore 5 other fair value estimates on Shift4 Payments - why the stock might be worth over 2x more than the current price! Disagree with existing narratives? Extraordinary investment returns rarely come from following the herd, so go with your instincts. A great starting point for your Shift4 Payments research is our analysis highlighting 2 key rewards and 2 important warning signs that could impact your investment decision. Our free Shift4 Payments research report provides a comprehensive fundamental analysis summarized in a single visual - the Snowflake - making it easy to evaluate Shift4 Payments' overall financial health at a glance. Every day counts. These free picks are already gaining attention. See them before the crowd does: Find 51 companies with promising cash flow potential yet trading below their fair value. The future of work is here. Discover the 36 top robotics and automation stocks leading the charge in AI-driven automation and industrial transformation. Outshine the giants: these 16 early-stage AI stocks could fund your retirement. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include FOUR. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email [email protected]

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-07

Shift4 Payments, Inc. Q2 2026 Earnings Call Summary

Moby
Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Delivered resilient growth across the experience economy, highlighted by flawless payment execution at World Cup matches and high-stakes stadium environments. Diversification across restaurants, hotels, and sports venues provided a critical buffer against ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East and Gulf Coast countries. International expansion continues to scale rapidly, with worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees growing over 50% as the company globalizes its product suite. Strategic positioning focuses on high-touch in-person experiences, utilizing a 'daisy chain' of relationships where enterprise wins drive local SMB adoption. Record technology investment this quarter supported the launch of next-generation payment terminals and AI-powered propensity models for tax-free shopping. Management maintains a disciplined capital approach, targeting a path to 50% margins by scaling international operations and deleting non-core legacy components. Same-store sales trends in Americas restaurants and lodging were slightly better than expectations, though the company maintains a neutral posture for the second half. Full-year guidance assumes a neutral impact on same-store sales, reflecting a cautious stance despite stable consumer spending trends. Q3 guidance embeds an approximate $25 million headwind from Middle East travel disruptions, based on a 60-day forward-looking flight capacity model. International growth strategy targets being live in 15 countries by year-end 2026, with a focus on scaling the Shift4 One unified commerce product. Management expects to reach a production rate of thousands of new international merchants per month by the end of the year. Financial strategy prioritizes deleveraging to the low 3x range by year-end following the prefunding of 2027 convertible notes. Geopolitical conflict in the Middle East remains a primary headwind, specifically impacting the high-value travel corridor from the GCC and Southeast Asia to Europe. Raised $1 billion in Term Loan B to prefund 2027 convertible notes, successfully extending the company's debt maturity profile to 2031. Tax-free shopping (TFS) results were impacted by travel disruptions but showed resilience through strength in U.S.-to-E…Read full document

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Delivered resilient growth across the experience economy, highlighted by flawless payment execution at World Cup matches and high-stakes stadium environments. Diversification across restaurants, hotels, and sports venues provided a critical buffer against ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East and Gulf Coast countries. International expansion continues to scale rapidly, with worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees growing over 50% as the company globalizes its product suite. Strategic positioning focuses on high-touch in-person experiences, utilizing a 'daisy chain' of relationships where enterprise wins drive local SMB adoption. Record technology investment this quarter supported the launch of next-generation payment terminals and AI-powered propensity models for tax-free shopping. Management maintains a disciplined capital approach, targeting a path to 50% margins by scaling international operations and deleting non-core legacy components. Same-store sales trends in Americas restaurants and lodging were slightly better than expectations, though the company maintains a neutral posture for the second half. Full-year guidance assumes a neutral impact on same-store sales, reflecting a cautious stance despite stable consumer spending trends. Q3 guidance embeds an approximate $25 million headwind from Middle East travel disruptions, based on a 60-day forward-looking flight capacity model. International growth strategy targets being live in 15 countries by year-end 2026, with a focus on scaling the Shift4 One unified commerce product. Management expects to reach a production rate of thousands of new international merchants per month by the end of the year. Financial strategy prioritizes deleveraging to the low 3x range by year-end following the prefunding of 2027 convertible notes. Geopolitical conflict in the Middle East remains a primary headwind, specifically impacting the high-value travel corridor from the GCC and Southeast Asia to Europe. Raised $1 billion in Term Loan B to prefund 2027 convertible notes, successfully extending the company's debt maturity profile to 2031. Tax-free shopping (TFS) results were impacted by travel disruptions but showed resilience through strength in U.S.-to-Europe and intra-Asia travel corridors. Adjusted free cash flow guidance was revised primarily to account for incremental net interest expense from the new debt issuance. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Management remained intentionally conservative on buybacks in Q2 due to seasonal cash consumption and current leverage levels at 3.7x. Future allocation will balance tuck-in M&A that accelerates international distribution with a commitment to deleveraging in the second half of the year. Blended spreads of 65 basis points were within expectations; the shift toward SMB business is beginning to offset the downward pressure from large enterprise mix. The World Cup provided a brand showcase but was not a disproportionate driver of spreads compared to a typical busy stadium event calendar. Current international efforts are in an investment phase, with 2026 seeing higher expenses for building local sales teams to target the SMB market. The company expects the full economic benefit and meaningful revenue flow-through from these international cross-sells to materialize in 2027. Forecasts are strictly limited to a 60-day window based on visible flight planning and seat capacity data rather than speculating on conflict duration. Management noted that while specific corridors are currently blocked, consumer demand in these segments typically rebounds immediately once travel is deemed safe.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-06

Shift4 Announces Second Quarter 2026 Results

Business Wire

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., August 06, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) has posted its second quarter 2026 financial results as part of its Q2 2026 Shareholder Letter, which can be viewed here or by navigating to the Financials section of its Investor Relations website at https://investors.shift4.com. Earnings Conference Call Management will host a conference call today, August 6th, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss the results. Conference Call Details Toll-free dial-in: +1-800-343-5172Toll dial-in: +1-203-518-9856Conference ID: FOUR2Q26 The earnings conference call will also be webcast live and interested parties can join the live webcast through Shift4’s website at: https://investors.shift4.com X Spaces Simulcast As previously announced, the live audio of the earnings call will be simulcast via X Spaces. Follow @Shift4 on X for additional information on how to access the simulcast. About Shift4 Shift4 (NYSE: FOUR) powers the experience economy, enabling businesses to deliver the moments that matter. Transforming how people shop, dine, stay, and play, Shift4’s commerce technology allows for a seamless experience at any scale. From your neighborhood restaurant to the world’s largest event venues, Shift4 handles billions of transactions annually for hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. For more information, visit shift4.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260806795116/en/ Contacts Investor Relations Thomas McCrohanEVP, Head of Investor RelationsShift4(484) [email protected] Paloma PateDirector, Strategy and Investor RelationsShift4(484) [email protected] Media Contact Nate HirshbergSVP, [email protected]

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-06

Shift4 Payments (FOUR) Q2 Earnings and Revenues Beat Estimates

Zacks
Shift4 Payments (FOUR) came out with quarterly earnings of $1.32 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.19 per share. This compares to earnings of $1.1 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +10.92%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post earnings of $0.99 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.97, delivering a surprise of -2.02%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. Shift4 Payments, which belongs to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry, posted revenues of $624 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.48%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $413.4 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Shift4 Payments shares have lost about 15.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 12.8%. While Shift4 Payments has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Shift4 Payments was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's…Read full document

Shift4 Payments (FOUR) came out with quarterly earnings of $1.32 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.19 per share. This compares to earnings of $1.1 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +10.92%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this company would post earnings of $0.99 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.97, delivering a surprise of -2.02%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. Shift4 Payments, which belongs to the Zacks Financial Transaction Services industry, posted revenues of $624 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.48%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $413.4 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Shift4 Payments shares have lost about 15.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 12.8%. While Shift4 Payments has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Shift4 Payments was mixed. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to perform in line with the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $1.62 on $682.43 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $5.59 on $2.54 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Financial Transaction Services is currently in the bottom 39% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. One other stock from the same industry, OppFi Inc. (OPFI), is yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 10. This company is expected to post quarterly earnings of $0.48 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +6.7%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. OppFi Inc.'s revenues are expected to be $159.52 million, up 12% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) : Free Stock Analysis Report OppFi Inc. (OPFI) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-06

Shift4 Payments: Q2 Earnings Snapshot

Associated Press

CENTER VALLEY, Pa. (AP) — CENTER VALLEY, Pa. (AP) — Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) on Thursday reported second-quarter profit of $22 million. The Center Valley, Pennsylvania-based company said it had net income of 8 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were $1.32 per share. The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of seven analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $1.19 per share. The company posted revenue of $1.3 billion in the period. Its adjusted revenue was $624 million, also beating Street forecasts. Seven analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $614.9 million. _____ This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on FOUR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/FOUR

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-06

Compared to Estimates, Shift4 Payments (FOUR) Q2 Earnings: A Look at Key Metrics

Zacks

Shift4 Payments (FOUR) reported $624 million in revenue for the quarter ended June 2026, representing a year-over-year increase of 50.9%. EPS of $1.32 for the same period compares to $1.10 a year ago. The reported revenue compares to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $614.9 million, representing a surprise of +1.48%. The company delivered an EPS surprise of +10.92%, with the consensus EPS estimate being $1.19. While investors closely watch year-over-year changes in headline numbers -- revenue and earnings -- and how they compare to Wall Street expectations to determine their next course of action, some key metrics always provide a better insight into a company's underlying performance. As these metrics influence top- and bottom-line performance, comparing them to the year-ago numbers and what analysts estimated helps investors project a stock's price performance more accurately. Here is how Shift4 Payments performed in the just reported quarter in terms of the metrics most widely monitored and projected by Wall Street analysts: End-to-End Payment Volume: $61 billion versus the four-analyst average estimate of $61.49 billion. Gross Revenue- Subscription and other revenues: $105 million versus $106.69 million estimated by four analysts on average. Compared to the year-ago quarter, this number represents a +7.5% change. Gross Revenue- Payments-based revenue: $1.07 billion compared to the $1.03 billion average estimate based on four analysts. The reported number represents a change of +23.6% year over year. View all Key Company Metrics for Shift4 Payments here>>> Shares of Shift4 Payments have returned +11.6% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +3.3% change. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), indicating that it could perform in line with the broader market in the near term. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

TranscriptFY2026 Q22026-08-06

FY2026 Q2 earnings call transcript

Earnings source - 102 paragraphs
Operator

Hello, welcome everyone joining today's Shift4 Q2 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. To register to ask a question at any time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We are standing by should you need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Thomas McCrohan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thomas McCrohan

Thank you, operator, good morning everyone, and welcome to Shift4's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me on the call today are Taylor Lauber, our CEO, and Christopher Cruz, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being webcast on the investor relations section of our website, which can be found at investors.shift4.com. Today's call is also being simulcast on X spaces, which can be accessed through our corporate X account @shift4. Our quarterly shareholder letter, quarterly financial results, and other materials related to our quarterly results have all been posted to our IR website. Our call on earnings materials today include forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results could differ materially as a result of certain risks, uncertainties, and many important factors.

Thomas McCrohan

Additional information concerning those factors is available in our most recent reports on forms 10-K and 10-Q, which you can find on the SEC's website and the investor relations section of our corporate website. For any non-GAAP financial information discussed on this call today, the related GAAP measures and reconciliations are available in today's quarterly shareholder letter. With that, let me turn the call over to Taylor. Taylor?

Taylor Lauber

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us today. I'd like to acknowledge the entire Shift4 team for delivering strong quarterly results, including powering payments flawlessly at many of the World Cup matches. This tournament was a great unifying event and an unparalleled showcase for Shift4's ability to help merchants deliver the moments that matter on one of the sports world's greatest stages. Shift4 technology can be found at every match in both the U.S. and Canada, and of course, across the broader experience economy of restaurants and hotels. It was especially rewarding to have the finals in our backyard and hosted by a great Shift4 customer, MetLife Stadium. Kudos to our team for demonstrating once again our ability to operate in demanding, high-stakes environments such as the World Cup final.

Taylor Lauber

Believe it or not, this was not even our busiest quarter for sports and entertainment, despite the well-attended matches across so many of our customer locations. While there were clear signs of increased spending across restaurants, hotels, and other locations in host cities, our stadium customers are quite accustomed to hosting large crowds, whether it be NFL, MLB, concerts, or even events like Formula One. We are with them for all these events. I think the World Cup was another healthy demonstration of that. I'm proud of our results this quarter. They demonstrated resiliency despite ongoing travel disruptions and validated our deliberate diversification across the experience economy. With that said, three themes will guide how we talk through our second quarter results. First, the durability of our diversified business continued to show through, delivering resilient growth even as the operating environment stayed challenging.

Taylor Lauber

Second, our international expansion continues to scale and compound. I'll share why we're increasingly confident in its trajectory shortly. Third, I want to spend some time on what I call the heart of our story. Our position across the experience economy isn't by accident. Many have asked about our competitive positioning in one vertical or another but miss the big picture. We are exceptionally well-positioned to handle in-person payment experiences from SMB to the largest enterprises. What we've learned from decades in restaurants is brought to hotels and then to sports and entertainment, and most recently, luxury retail. We choose these growth paths not because they're different, but to the contrary, they all demand a high-touch in-person experience that we are uniquely positioned to provide.

Taylor Lauber

Of course, we challenge ourselves to build new capabilities in areas like unified commerce, but with a capital discipline that demands results before risk. Diving into Q2 results, we delivered Q2 results above our previously provided guidance, including +34% year-over-year growth in gross revenue, +51% year-over-year growth in gross revenue less network fees, +39% growth in adjusted EBITDA, and $21 million of adjusted free cash flow versus our $10 million guide. Adjusted for acquisitions, our organic gross revenue less network fees grew 11%, which is consistent with last quarter. We believe there's further room for expansion as we continue delivering our market-leading products to new geographies around the world. The performance we delivered this quarter in our payments-based revenue streams is a testimony to our durable growth.

Taylor Lauber

Total payments-based revenue less network fees grew +27% in Q2, with the Americas-based revenue less network fees growing +19% and worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees growing at +53%. I'll repeat that. Our most mature Americas market grew in the high teens. Our growth markets grew over 50%. As can be the case, this quarter was not without some challenges. The Middle East conflict remained a headwind and weighed on inbound travel to Europe and across several Gulf countries. However, the overall impact on our Q2 results was slightly better than we had forecast. Said differently, we were able to absorb some of the travel disruption impact from strong U.S. to Europe travel, strong performance in Asia, and overall better-than-expected trends in same-store sales for both restaurants and lodge.

Taylor Lauber

Chris will provide more details when he reviews our guidance, but we do anticipate continued travel disruption in the upcoming quarter, and our guidance now reflects that. Regardless, our Q2 results coming in above our guided KPIs speaks to the resilience of our diversified portfolio and our ability to operate through factors beyond our control. I also want to address same-store sales directly, since that's been a recurring topic on these calls. As a reminder, we experienced softer trends in recent quarters among restaurants and SMBs in the Americas. This quarter, as Chris will highlight, same-store sales trends in restaurants and lodging were slightly better than our expectations, consistent with what we saw in Q1, and a further sign that the trend is encouraging.

Taylor Lauber

That said, our full-year outlook continues to assume a neutral impact on same-store sales, and we are not forecasting any material recovery in the back half of the year. We think that that's the right posture given what we deem to be arguably stable trends in consumer spending despite higher gas prices. The bottom line regarding Q2, we delivered better-than-expected results relative to our guidance in a quarter that provided some modest benefits from the halo effect of the World Cup, offset by ongoing travel disruptions in the Middle East. Chris will provide more details on our full- year 2026 guidance in a bit, but the bottom line is that we are tracking to deliver 24%-27% FX neutral year-over-year growth in gross revenue less network fees this year.

Taylor Lauber

Moving on to international, we delivered another quarter of over 50% growth in worldwide payments-based revenue less network fees as we continue to scale our business international. Some highlights in the quarter included, we introduced our restaurant POS product, which is Shift4 Dine, in Spain and Australia, and we are rapidly attracting restaurants to our platform. We continue to globalize all of our products for international markets and expect to introduce Shift4 Dine in many more international markets in the months and years ahead. Shift4 One continues to resonate with retailers in Europe, and we are now live in 12 countries, well on track to surpassing our annual goal of being live in 15 countries by the end of 2026. As a reminder, our Shift4 One product combines payments, dynamic currency conversion, and tax-free shopping into a single device.

Taylor Lauber

This quarter, we added numerous retail, cosmetic, and jewelry merchants across Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic. You can find them in our materials we provided this morning. Merchants understand the value immediately, and I expect that we'll be adding thousands of merchants per month in the near future. In hotels, we continue to win excellent resorts and hospitality customers. This quarter, we added Massanutten Resort, The Nora Hotel West Palm Beach, Wayford Bridge Inn Hotel, Radisson Hotel Winnipeg, just to name a few. Again, there's more in our materials. Our sports and entertainment capabilities remain unmatched. This quarter, we signed the Buffalo Bills and Texas A&M, along with new venues including Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium and Splashway Waterpark. You'll continue to see us processing ticket sales for LA 2028 as well.

Taylor Lauber

Finally, in luxury retail, we signed several brands to our tax-free shopping solution, including Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Patagonia, and Givenchy in Japan. In an increasingly digital world, consumers are demanding more meaningful in-person experiences. As I mentioned earlier, we are uniquely positioned to address all aspects of this experience economy. We are beginning to see a meaningful amount of capital being invested in this concept of sporting events driving commerce in the surrounding neighborhood, with some interesting new concepts beginning to break ground, such as Miami Freedom Park and its surrounding retail and restaurant shops. We expect the same halo effect we benefited from this quarter at the World Cup to repeat itself with several other upcoming sporting events, such as the 2028 L.A. Olympics. The second way we benefit from our position in the experience economy is the daisy chain of relationships that leads to net new business.

Taylor Lauber

For example, our existing relationship with major casino resorts contributed to us winning many restaurants across the country. The ownership groups of these hotels often own restaurants and other entertainment venues, and as such, want to deliver the same experience to their guests. We are increasingly aligning ourselves with the operators who share our vision of connecting consumers with experiences, and having a shared vision goes a long way towards creating differentiated products and capabilities supporting the growth and vision of our customers. Our competitive differentiation across hospitality and sports and entertainment is unique. It continues to widen the gap between us and peers who either narrowly focus on a single vertical or only offer a point solution. We are the connective tissue behind the entire consumer experience.

Taylor Lauber

The same fan might grab dinner, catch a game, buy a jersey, and check into a hotel in one night, and we're the point of sale they're interacting with. In the U.S., we still have meaningful market share to capture and incremental services to offer. Our DCC offering is live and has been well received by our first few customers. Before closing, I want to talk a little bit about the technical investments we've made recently. Our story as a public company has often been about the proof points. The customers won, the verticals conquered, the geographies opened. But none of this would've happened without meaningful investment and innovation. To that end, this was a record quarter for technology investment and product development.

Taylor Lauber

We released the next generation payment terminal application and terminal management software, which includes dynamic currency conversion, as well as multi-location enhancements and a totally new quick service feature set within Shift4 Dine. I mentioned Shift4 One being live in 12 countries, which as you can imagine, requires meaningful language and local feature customization. We have integrated AI-powered propensity models across our TFS platform, which will continue to enhance the customer journey and allow for more refunds processed. Despite this, the disciplined approach we have towards managing expenses hasn't changed. We continue to maintain a relentless focus on driving incremental operational improvements and preserving our advantages in regards to minimizing customer acquisition costs relative to others in our industry.

Taylor Lauber

I am of the view that there is always room for improvement, and while we already deliver margins that are commendable relative to peers, I do see a path to 50% margins as we scale our international operations and continue to better leverage the resources that we have across the global organization. Let me close on a theme I keep coming back to with this group because the data keeps backing it up. We can grow meaningfully without adding a single new customer, and we can drive real margin and free cash flow expansion just by continuing to do what we do well, integrating our business and deleting the parts we no longer need. This quarter was another proof point. Volume of $61 billion, up 22% year-over-year. Gross revenue less network fees of $624 million, which was up 51%. 11% of that was organic.

Taylor Lauber

Adjusted EBITDA of $284 million, which is up 39%, and at a 46% margin. Our updated full -year 2026 guidance calls for +25% to +28% gross revenue less network fee growth or +24% to 27% growth on an FX neutral basis. The macro environment remains dynamic, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but the diversification of our business, durability of our growth, and caliber of the team we've built continue to give me genuine confidence on the road ahead. Our long-term numbers are the clearest evidence of why this model works. To remind you, gross revenue less network fees have compounded over 35% annually and adjusted EBITDA of over 40% annually since 2019, all achieved with cumulative equity dilution of roughly 15% during that timeframe. Said much more simply, we've 8x the business with only 15% dilution in seven years.

Taylor Lauber

I'd encourage everyone to dig into the prepared materials for the additional detail. With that, let me turn it over to Christopher.

Christopher Cruz

Thanks, Taylor. Q2 2026 delivered record Q2 financial results that exceeded all our guided metrics while our growth algorithm remains intact or ahead. All of this performance is underpinned by the continued execution of our durable model, rapid integration, and disciplined capital allocation while continuing our strategic priority of diversifying both geographically and serving more of the experience economy. This diversification has afforded us the resilience to offset some of the travel disruption we continue to experience due to conflict in the Middle East. Gross revenue of $1.29 billion came in well above our $1.17 billion guidance and was up 34% year-over-year. Gross revenue less network fees, or GRLNF, of $624 million grew 51% year-over-year or 11% organically, excluding contribution from acquisitions.

Christopher Cruz

Adjusted EBITDA of $284 million grew 39% year over year, delivering a 46% margin and adjusted free cash flow of $21 million exceeded guidance as well. Let's unpack this further. Volumes grew 22% year over year to $61 billion while delivering blended spreads at 65 basis points. The Q2 volume mix was largely in line with our expectations, while same-store sales in the Americas trended slightly better than our expectations. Turning next to the disaggregated categories of revenue that make up the Q2 GRLNF. Beginning with our North Star on growth, payments-based revenue less network fees, that was $402 million, growing 27% year over year. This category consists of an Americas region that grew 19% year over year and a worldwide, excluding Americas region, that exceeded our expectations, growing 53% year over year. The next category of subscription and other grew 8% year over year.

Christopher Cruz

Although on a year-to-date basis we are exceeding the original growth algorithm outlook, we expect this category to moderate in the back half, resulting in a low single-digit growth for the year. Finally, the category of tax-free shopping, or TFS, grew 8% on a pro forma year-over-year basis, an improvement from last quarter's 4% growth. TFS results continue to be impacted by travel disruptions in the Middle East, but the overall revenue impact came in modestly better than our prior expectation of a $20 million headwind. Overall, we are encouraged by the resilience of the business that this growth performance expresses. Our growth algorithm remains intact or is ahead across all areas, we delivered a consecutive quarter of low double-digit organic GRLNF growth.

Christopher Cruz

As a reminder, TFS was not part of our organic growth calc this quarter, but given we just celebrated the one-year anniversary of the acquisition closing in July last year, TFS will roll into our organic growth calculation beginning next quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 46%, and while an improvement from the first quarter, it is worth noting that we continue to scale our international operations and are continuously making investments in both product and internal initiatives. The encouraging outperformance we continue to see in the worldwide region validates all of these investments. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $1.32 per share. Adjusted free cash flow in the quarter was $21 million, which exceeded our guidance of $10 million. On a non-GAAP per share basis, this results in $0.23 of adjusted free cash flow per share or 17% conversion from non-GAAP EPS.

Christopher Cruz

When combined with Q1, this translates on a combined basis to a 52% free cash flow per share conversion for the first half. On to quarterly guidance. For the third quarter of 2026, we are introducing guidance as follows: GRLNF of approximately $650 million, which embeds an approximate $25 million impact for travel disruption due to the continued Middle East conflict, adjusted EBITDA of $310 million, and $180 million of adjusted free cash flow. As a reminder, we raised an incremental $1 billion of Term Loan B on July 8th to pre-fund the August 2027 maturity of our convertible notes. As such, adjusted free cash flow revisions are largely the result of the net interest expense impact, with the balance resulting from the flow-through of the aforementioned earnings revisions. Additionally, gross revenue for the quarter is expected to be $1.3 billion.

Christopher Cruz

We are also introducing Q4 guidance ranges as follows: GRLNF range of $661 million to $711 million, adjusted EBITDA of $327 million to $352 million, and adjusted free cash flow of $176 million to $186 million, reflecting approximately 53%-54% conversion. Similar to last quarter, we are only forecasting potential travel disruption from the Middle East conflict for the next 60 days, and thus, our fourth quarter guidance does not assume any impact from this. This all translates into full- year guidance ranges as follows: GRLNF of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion, up 25%-28% year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA of $1.15 billion to $1.18 billion, up 19%-22% year-over-year, adjusted free cash flow of $465 million to $475 million, representing approximately 40% conversion of adjusted EBITDA, and non-GAAP EPS range of $5.15 to $5.35 per share.

Christopher Cruz

Both the EPS and the adjusted free cash flow revisions are majority the result of the incremental net interest expense resulting from the increased Term Loan B to pre-fund the August 2027 convertible notes and the flow-through of earnings revisions. Just some color on guidance. Although we now have an outlook that will favor the low end of our original guidance range, we are proud of the durability and resilience that the business has exhibited by absorbing the travel disruptions associated with the Middle East conflict in the first half of the year. However, given the duration of the conflict, incorporating an estimated $25 million impact to Q3 and updating the outlook for approximately $20 million of FX translation impact seems prudent to acknowledge and comprises the majority of the $40 million midpoint guidance revision.

Christopher Cruz

On an FX-neutral basis, our GRLNF guidance now reflects 24%-27% year-over-year growth, compared to an FX-neutral growth of 24%-29% in our prior guidance range. Said differently, the midpoint of our GRLNF growth range has only been reduced by 100 basis points on an FX-neutral basis. Now last on capital allocation. Every allocable dollar must compete for the best use and is subjected to rigorous process, while the output that guides us is return on invested capital and adjusted free cash flow per share. In Q2, we repurchased approximately 650,000 shares at an average price of approximately $38. We were intentionally conservative this quarter given current leverage levels and the cash-consumptive quarter we were in.

Christopher Cruz

Cumulatively, we have deployed $625 million against the $1 billion share repurchase authorization announced three quarters ago, and this has resulted in an approximate 11% reduction in non-GAAP share count for the authorized period. On debt capital structure, our Q2 2026 pro forma net leverage was 3.7 times, and we maintain our view that we do not intend to exceed 3.75 times pro forma net leverage on a sustained basis. Based on performance trajectory and guidance, the business is expected to delever by year-end to our long-term average net leverage level in the low 3s. As mentioned on July 8th, we extended the maturity of our $550 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn, and raised an additional $1 billion of Term Loan B at the same terms as our existing Term Loan B, with proceeds principally to address the August 2027 convertible note maturity.

Christopher Cruz

The net result is that we have successfully termed out our capital structure to 2031. Before turning the call back to Taylor, I want to thank our colleagues for their flawless execution at one of the world's grandest events at the World Cup. At every venue, you tirelessly executed to ensure that our customers could deliver the moments that matter in the most demanding environments. Let me now turn the call back to Taylor.

Taylor Lauber

Thanks, Christopher. Operator, we're ready for questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will open the floor for questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one now. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star two. Again, that is star one to ask a question. We'll take our first question from Dan Dolev with Mizuho. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Dan Dolev

Guys, thanks so much. Lots of good things here. Hope people pay attention to that as well. Christopher, question for you. Has anything changed regarding your capital allocation priorities? For example, how are you thinking about buybacks, acquisitions, and leverage here? Thank you so much.

Christopher Cruz

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Dan. I would start with the overarching phrase that our capital allocation framework remains unchanged. I think we have the benefit of having a few different value creation drivers within that framework, and we have to be prudent about how to balance it at all times, given how focused we are on driving return on invested capital. When you think about where we are, though, in this past quarter, I think it's fair to acknowledge that we had to approach things with a little more conservatism, and that was very deliberate. The execution against the share repurchase in the quarter was certainly impacted by the fact that we acknowledge where we are on our pro forma net leverage level at 3.7x, and we acknowledge where we were in a second quarter that is a seasonally cash-consumptive quarter.

Christopher Cruz

You take those two things together, the strategic decision was to be intentionally conservative at the time. Obviously, the cash flow generation seasonality changes in the back half of the year. In general, from a liquidity standpoint, we're in a much more improved position in light of the recent financing. Maybe one other thing I would say about it, though, is that as we think through the cash flow generation in these coming quarters and the growth that we anticipate, I think it's fair to reiterate that within that capital allocation framework, it's not just about repurchases, it's also about making sure we continue to invest. I think something that we'd like to highlight is the fact that this was a record quarter for us in terms of investment into product technology platform as well.

Christopher Cruz

We continue to believe that there are a number of interesting opportunities to strategically enhance or accelerate some of our strategic initiatives by looking at tuck-in M&A as well. I would say overall, no change in the way we think about the framework, but very much intentional in how we look at it given some of the seasonality dynamics. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add, Taylor.

Taylor Lauber

No, I think you said it well. We've invested meaningfully in technology. We continue to see lots of interesting M&A opportunities. I would sort of categorize them in the tuck-in category. Keep in mind, we're in many dozens of countries that we weren't in just a few years ago, and in most cases, with a single product. The ability to deliver the rest of our product, whether that's through buying a local sales team, is something that we're incredibly focused on. Nothing's changed with, I think, Chris's caveat that Q2 warranted a little bit of caution, but Q3 less so.

Dan Dolev

Thank you so much for the color. Appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rayna Kumar with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Rayna Kumar

Good morning. Chris, you raised the new Term Loan B during the quarter. Can you just talk about the uses of funds and how you're thinking about your balance sheet here?

Christopher Cruz

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Rayna. On July 8th, we successfully executed a combination of extending our revolver maturity into a new five-year and take that out to 2031, also raised $1 billion of Term Loan B on essentially fungible terms or the same terms as our existing term loan. The primary use of proceeds there was to pre-fund the August 2027 convertible note maturity so that we could successfully term out the entirety of the capital structure into the 2031 territory. Actually 2032, if you think about where there actually is funded debt because the revolver is undrawn. That's the primary purpose of that capital.

Christopher Cruz

The other dynamic within it is to acknowledge that within that we also have some general corporate proceeds that went to the balance sheet, improves liquidity, and all the while, I think it was fair to say that it was a well-received offering in general. Ratings remained affirmed and unchanged. As well, the debt markets really do view us as a seasoned issuer, and we are very supportive of the transaction given the fact that you could see the terms that came through are probably really amongst the market best for our BB corporate rating. Overall, really satisfied with the transaction outcome and like where our balance sheet is right now.

Rayna Kumar

Thank you. That is really helpful. Just 1 quick follow-up. Taylor, you announced some pretty big wins in retail, and I think your initial expectations were signing smaller retailers. Are you surprised by the bigger wins, and should we continue to expect that type of traction with large retailers?

Taylor Lauber

There is a lot of receptivity across the large retailer base. This is a group that Global Blue has had a marquee product offering in for quite some time. Increasingly as the tax-free shopping sort of product adds new geographies, we are the default for those retailers in those geographies. I would say I would not want to challenge the sales motion that we have now, which is a lot of the SMBs that we would reference in the materials, these are same-day decision makers. This is a walk-in, get a meaningful enhancement from a product perspective, and adopt the product quite quickly. Any of the enterprise retailers we work with require deep and sophisticated customizations and take longer to board, et cetera.

Taylor Lauber

I think as has kind of always been the case with Shift4 and is kind of interesting to use in the context of World Cup, you win the MetLife so that it helps substantiate why all the local businesses around the MetLife should be doing business with you, and that continues to be the case in Europe.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Timothy Chiodo with UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Timothy Chiodo

Great. Thank you. I think a lot of investors appreciate the Shift4 approach, which as you mentioned earlier, results often in lower customer acquisition costs. One of the hallmarks of that over the years has been the gateway strategy. Of course, there's many other means of doing this in conversion. Specific to gateway, there was originally the Shift4 gateway. There was the Merchant Link gateway. More recently, that opportunity has been somewhat replenished with Eigen and even more recently, Bambora. I was hoping you could give a little bit of an update on what remains in the specific to the gateway conversion opportunity and maybe a little bit more specifically on the two more recent ones in terms of Eigen and Bambora. Thank you.

Taylor Lauber

Yeah, sure. I'm glad you categorized it in the way that you did, which is to say that the hallmark of the M&A approach that we've taken over the years is that in every case, it gives us an embedded base of customers to go cross-sell to. Institutionally, we don't think about the ability to migrate a Givex gift card customer over to our payments radically different than we think about an Eigen gateway customer. I would say gateways have been. It's a no place like home M&A move for us. That's literally what we call them in our M&A tracker because the playbook's seasoned. It's understood across the entire company, practically speaking. Eigen's been an awesome proof point for us. We've got one of the largest airport operators, concessionaires in the world has switched over.

Taylor Lauber

That was largely a result of a gateway conversion, many hundreds of merchant locations as a result of just that merchant moving. Eigen's been great, and they all kind of follow the same pattern, which is to say, the newer the gateway, the less progress we've made through it. Again, a really seasoned motion through it. I will say, though, we don't challenge our sales teams to prioritize one opportunity or the other. We basically bucket all these merchants into pain points we believe we can solve. Our restaurant team goes after all the restaurants in our acquired book. Our hotel team does the same. Just now, our luxury retail team does the same with that. We try not to put a prescription on moving one versus the other.

Taylor Lauber

I would say highlights for us recently have been a beginning of conversion of Revel merchants over to Shift4 Dine, which is quite exciting. Givex, the upper bound of that product is nonexistent, meaning we're attracting lots of awesome institutional customers to that product, and that product is compelling payments conversations. Eigen, again, no place like home. I would put Bambora in the same category.

Timothy Chiodo

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Nate Stinson with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Nate Svensson

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Appreciate all the details on the Middle East, but do want to follow up on that, just given how dynamic the situation is. For 2Q, I know you said the headwind came in lower than expected, but maybe just wondering if you could give more specifics on where that number was relative to $20 million and kind of the strength you saw offsetting that. Then just as we think about the $25 million headwind that you're baking in for 3Q, I get that there's seasonality that's a higher travel quarter relative to 2Q. But given the results you saw in 2Q and some flight data that does look like it's improving, just wanted to hear the assumptions underlying that $25 million.

Christopher Cruz

Sure. I'll take that. Thanks for the question. Well said. The right word is dynamic, right? It's definitely been a dynamic conflict. The travel disruption that has resulted from it has made forecasting a challenge specific to the corridors that are impacted. When I say the corridors, I mean the dynamic of the consumer's origin point is an origin point largely in the Gulf countries or Southeast Asia coming into Europe, right? That's the corridor that we're focused on. I'll answer the question around the commentary that relative to the $20 million Q2 number that we had baked in as far as a headwind. The $20 million, it did perform modestly ahead. Not in a meaningful amount, but modestly ahead of what we'd expected within our forecasting at the time.

Christopher Cruz

More than anything, the overall TFS category outperformed across other areas that demonstrates its balance and resilience as a whole. One of the themes that we had mentioned outside of that affected corridor of Gulf countries, Southeast Asia consumer coming into Europe. Outside of that corridor, there was nice pockets of strength. The U.S. consumer into the European corridor continued to perform well. We continued to see nice strength there. We saw nice strength coming from the Intra-Asia area, so travel into Japan for tax-free shopping. When you balance out TFS as a whole, it actually was pretty resilient and demonstrates the benefit that it has by being as geographically diverse as it is. In short, to come back to your question around specific to the $20 million, it was modestly ahead.

Nate Svensson

Got it. That's very helpful. I hear you on the challenges, especially Asia to Europe. Data's confusing to us. Appreciate the color there. Just for the follow-up on free cash flow. Get the points on the guidance this year. Sounds like mostly from the Term Loan B, maybe a little bit from these Middle East headwinds. Just as we think about free cash flow conversion into next year and beyond the higher interest expense that will be flowing through, is there anything going on across the business that changes your confidence or visibility into what free cash flow conversion should look like in future years? Just trying to get our models in the right place as we think about next year and beyond.

Christopher Cruz

It's the right question. It's definitely something that I think the street's done a good job of getting acclimated to through the balance of this year is free cash flow modeling. We appreciate that. I would say that as I think into next year, it's obviously two large caveats, right? The story of this year, combination of capital structure, given that we had maturities in 2026 and a convertible maturity in 2027, that's now out of the way. I think there was some question, even in the last quarter, as to how we might address the 2027 convertible and how to think about that within models. Hopefully, now that's fully off the table in terms of how to model it. Obviously, the travel disruptions that we experienced this year have been the other big factor on free cash flow.

Christopher Cruz

Corresponding or maybe connected or maybe disconnected, there has been FX volatility as well. When you take in those three, if those are not part of what we have to contend with in 2027, the answer is no. We don't see anything fundamental. If anything, something that we would reiterate from earlier in the year is that the incremental free cash flow conversion that should come through into the business, it should expand over time given the overall operating leverage that exists. Even when we think about record levels of product investment, that is all still well within the normal and ordinary course of what the business can deliver. I think the short answer is, there shouldn't be anything incremental to the aforementioned things that we were facing this year and the capital structure point that you brought up.

Taylor Lauber

One thing I want to layer into it, because fully acknowledged, Global Blue is a little bit of a different opportunity than we've had in the past. Typically, whether it's any of the cross-sells I described in Tim's question, it's almost an immediate incremental revenue opportunity on an existing customer, and that revenue's nearly 100% flow through to the bottom line on a net-to-EBITDA basis. One thing that's different about Global Blue is we are deliberately investing in meaningful sales build-outs across all the countries that they operate in that we see opportunity. That's because they're not just going to go after Global Blue retail customers, Global Blue SMB customers. They're going to offer all of our other products in those countries.

Taylor Lauber

While this early cross-sell motion is great and we're seeing great momentum, some of the costs associated with that mask what a typical cross-sell might look like. It's all for the right reasons, and that's kind of why when we even first signed and announced the Global Blue transaction, we talked about meeting the whole synergy benefit in 2027. It's because I think it's very balanced, but it's an investment year to make sure we have all of the infrastructure we want in these countries and as much of our full product suite available as possible.

Christopher Cruz

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the color.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Craig Marr with FT Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Craig Maurer

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Two clarifiers from me. First, on the 3Q guide, or effectively the guide for the rest of the year. You basically said similar to last quarter, we are only forecasting potential travel disruption from the Middle East conflict for the next 60 days. Now, what does that mean exactly? Does that mean beyond 60 days, it's just an immediate return to normal when we should be considering your model? Or how should we think about that? Second, you called out the FX drag this quarter. Could you give us the last, call it three, four quarters of FX impact so we can model properly? Thanks.

Christopher Cruz

Yeah, thanks for the question. On the second point, I think it's probably most conducive to do that in a follow-up. We'll tackle that one as a follow-up. On the first point around what does it really mean to continue to, similar to last quarter, use a 60-day outlook forecast. As a reminder, when we look at the affected corridors in the TFS business, what we're really focused on is looking at how those corridors are tied to a forward forecast of flights. The flights, the seat capacity, and a variety of the factors through data sets that we get are input into an outlook model that allow us to get a pretty good 60-day forward forecast view.

Christopher Cruz

I think indicative of the, we'll say, the predictability of that view is that relative to the $20 million sort of figure that we had forecasted as an impact figure in Q2, we were pretty close. I think that we wanted to continue that same methodology, use the forward forecast, and importantly, not try to predict the duration of a geopolitical conflict. You take those two things together, and we're consistently applying the exact same methodology that we applied the last quarter, and that methodology would lend itself towards the $25 million number that we've put out there. It's important to understand that the Q3 period, in terms of seasonality, is the strongest of the quarters in terms of total sales in store or volumes. The increase is only a reflection of the seasonally strong Q3 relative to Q2.

Christopher Cruz

I know you didn't ask this as explicitly, if you sort of think about Q4, the idea of what we're trying to say is that we don't want to break the consistent approach we've used in the last two quarters and now try to forecast a fourth quarter on something like a geopolitical conflict. For context, it's fair to say it's probably a good data point to appreciate that Q4 and Q2 are about the same size in terms of their TFS contribution from a seasonality standpoint in terms of volumes. I'll put that out there as hopefully something helpful for your own modeling.

Taylor Lauber

Yeah, I just want to hit this again because I sense a little bit of confusion on it. I would say the impacted travel corridor that we anticipated when we forecast in Q2 behaved largely as expected. There were other corridors that outperformed, therefore you got a slightly better than forecast result. We are approaching Q3 with the exact same mindset, which is that we know what the impact of the travel corridor would be in the highest seasonal quarter, we're giving investors insights into that. The one thing I would just sort of say with regard to Christopher's remarks, now we haven't had a conflict that's kind of on and off and on and off and on and off. We haven't seen that change travel behavior dramatically inside of that corridor.

Taylor Lauber

This is why we're so reticent to want to try to predict beyond what we can see in flight planning capacity. This is a shopper base that is largely quite resilient. When travel is safe in the eyes of the traveler, they get out and spend quite immediately. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that when this conflict is decisively over, that this impact would be muted.

Craig Maurer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Darrin Peller

Hey, guys. Thanks. Look, when we look beyond the Mideast impact, to really follow up a bit on Timothy's question earlier in terms of the cross-sell, it looks like you do have the underlying trends, obviously in the payment side and the Americas side trending well. Just looking beyond the short-term Mideast conflict impacts and thinking about next year for a little longer, I can't help but wonder where you are on Shift4 One and Global Blue in terms of where you expect to be contributing to numbers. We know by the end of the year, you're hoping 15-plus countries. Seems like you're progressing well. I think you're at 12 now, you said.

Darrin Peller

Help us understand a little bit more in terms of the progress and the timelines you'd expect to see that really start moving the needle, where not only do you have entry into the countries, but real ability to process volumes and convert more and more merchants to the sales team set up properly. A little more structural timelines. Thanks.

Taylor Lauber

Yeah, it's an awesome question, and it is literally the heart of our strategy here. To give you a little bit of insight into how Global Blue historically operated, it was a very enterprise-oriented go-to-market motion with strong market share across the enterprises. The SMBs were largely a self-service operation, meaning an SMB merchant would find its way to Global Blue without a lot of service, without a lot of dedicated customer management. Our approach is kind of the inverse of that, which is that the SMBs are the first to target. They're the fastest to move. They're quite frankly some of the highest benefit of consolidating all of these technologies into a single payment device for ease of use and increasing tax-free shopping at that hypothetical watch retailer or perfume boutique, et cetera.

Taylor Lauber

We deliberately approached this with the idea that we're going to build a sales team that can focus on that motion explicitly. The way this works in practice, dedicated Shift4 strategy personnel that have done this across multiple acquisitions in their past, going into these countries, sitting in Global Blue offices, hiring local salespeople, training, building all the materials, et cetera. I can't understate the amount of work that our awesome team has done in this. There's a threshold we have, which is after X hundred merchants are signed up, the motion is handed over to the local teams, and they run with it from there because it is kind of a regular sales quota-based system. We've been able to hand that off in a handful of countries now, so we're very excited about that. That's proving that the motion's working.

Taylor Lauber

Again, and I don't think we've been inconsistent on this, our goal is to be able to produce a few thousand merchants a month exiting the year, and admittedly, with an economic contribution in 2026 that is more expense than gain because of the cost of building out these teams. It's the ability to annualize that merchant base through 2027 that we've had our eye on. That's the prize we've had our eye on the entire time, and we're quite optimistic about the pace that we've had. We've got more countries to kind of evaluate than we expected to have, and the teams are just starting to get it, which is super exciting. I think and again, this is less of an economic basis. We're admitting to the drag that this investment causes.

Taylor Lauber

Q4 production against these is really the proof point to know that we're set up in the way we want to be for 2027.

Darrin Peller

All right. Thanks. Can I ask one follow-up, Chris, for you on just the blended spread at 65 basis points on the quarter? Can you just talk about the overall sustainability at this level and what extent this is impacted by either World Cup related mix or Global Blue or DCC perhaps in the quarter?

Christopher Cruz

Yeah, sure. I think the 65 basis points spread relative to at the beginning of the year sort of gave people visibility that we expect spreads on a full- year basis to be greater than 60. There isn't really much to the story of unpacking that. I think we view that spread mix as something that within this quarter is kind of well inside of what our expectations would have been. I want to say when it's within, right? It was within the range of expectations that we had for spread. I don't think there are any specific call-outs to make around the spread differentials.

Christopher Cruz

I think what we had said in the past going into this year was that it is possible that we were going to see a bit of a change in terms of the dynamic of Relative to the last three years, where enterprise had been an accelerating portion of the book, and the enterprise spreads were having a mix shift downward on blended spreads. This year, as that enterprise merchant base is finally kind of sized and scaled, and we're now growing off of that size and scale base, as we see more SMB business come through, we may actually start to see some expansion in spreads. That trend is something that we had called out as a possibility for the year, and it is playing out. We are seeing that, but it's nothing outside of what we were already expecting.

Christopher Cruz

Nothing to call out over and above the fact that this is well within the expectations that we had for the year.

Darrin Peller

Got it. Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Sanjay Sakhrani

Thank you. Good morning. Taylor, you mentioned the World Cup was a strong contributor to the second quarter results. Obviously, we saw that in the payments revenues. I am just curious, when you look underneath that, do you feel like the business was performing commensurately ahead of expectations as well?

Taylor Lauber

It is a good question. I actually want to be very balanced on the impact of the World Cup. We definitely saw trends of exuberance specifically in the merchant categories we focus on in host cities around games. It was very obvious. In media commenting on this, like the Scots drinking Boston dry, we saw that. We saw that in our restaurant data. We saw it in Boston. However, the total payment volume across our S&E franchise, meaning specifically in the stadiums, was not our highest quarter by any measure. Keep in mind, the football organization takes these stadiums offline for a couple of months to prepare for this event. The events themselves are not as conducive to concessions. We saw healthy amounts of kit being sold, a lot of souvenirs being sold, less concessions in general. I think quite balanced on our impact.

Taylor Lauber

Quite frankly, is Shift4 the net beneficiary of this kind of payments activity? Absolutely we are. Going to an event, traveling to it, even watching an event with friends nearby the venue. That is something we are absolutely a beneficiary of, but it was not a meaningful contributor to the quarter. I think it was more or less what we were expecting. In fact, a lot of investors were sort of challenging us to talk up the impact. These are great customers that do great events all the time, again, they would have probably been as full, if not more full, with a regular event calendar in many of these stadiums as they were with the World Cup. Chris, you want to comment?

Christopher Cruz

Yeah. I would just underscore the same point. When you actually go and pick apart the data at a venue by venue, a city by city, you put sort of like a radius of commerce around the venue. We've analyzed and cut and sliced the data a few different ways, and it's interesting to see that, and probably actually it shouldn't be that surprising if you actually just went and mapped the calendar of events year-over-year, you would see that the calendar of events at some of the stadiums was much more full last summer. Intuitively, to ask the question, well, why is that? Taylor alluded to it, the idea that these are venues tackling a kind of almost a once in a lifetime kind of event. In order to accommodate it, you have to go offline.

Christopher Cruz

I heard an anecdote that the grass has to grow a specific regulated height, so no one can be on the field, let alone sticking a country music concert on that field a couple of days before the event. I think it was an interesting one to unpack. More than anything, what I would want people to take away is it was a phenomenal showcase for us, our team, our talent, our technology to be flawless in an environment as demanding as that, in a stage as large as that, and we're really proud of it. By no means was it anywhere close to a Super Bowl.

Taylor Lauber

Yeah. To get to the root of your question, yes, the underlying business performed quite well through the quarter. We're probably equally as proud of that as well. I would say as we become a more international business, it probably didn't occur to us prior to the event, but it certainly occurred to us during these events that the Shift4 brand being recognized throughout the world is becoming increasingly important. The World Cup gave us a phenomenal platform to do that.

Sanjay Sakhrani

Okay. That's perfect and encouraging. Thank you. Just a follow-up question to all the balance sheet questions. I know you guys are trying to do a lot, delever, buy back stock, obviously consider bolt-on M&A opportunities. As we look ahead over the next year and a half, how should we think about you balancing all of that? Are there opportunities, given the way the stock is trading, to actually divest some non-core assets and maybe utilize that for the three options? I'm just trying to think about strategically and tactically how you might figure out other ways to create capital and achieve some of the initiatives that you have in place. Thanks.

Christopher Cruz

Thanks, Sanjay. It's the right overall question, and it's something that is the top of our minds at all times is balancing the capital allocation framework. I think I, and we look at it as actually, it's a high-class problem to have when you look at the number of ways with which we could generate return on invested capital through our capital allocation framework, and also look back on our demonstrated track record and acknowledge that this is a business that has done this very well over periods of time, managing both capital deployment and capital harvest to generate return at various periods.

Taylor Lauber

Similarly, to always be able to be shareholder-minded and manage dilution. When you look at the non-GAAP EPS share count, if you look at it year to date. Actually, if you look at it relative to when we launched the share repurchase authorization in the third quarter of last year, our share count's down 11%. We think about all of this within the balance, and I think that it's something that I would hope people can appreciate and look at the long-term track record around and acknowledge that we're good at it. At the same time, what you're describing, this idea around divestitures, is that within the framework? Is it within our lexicon? It is, absolutely. We have done some divestitures. They're going to be smaller in nature. They are the non-core components of, let's say, acquired companies along the way.

Taylor Lauber

I wouldn't expect them to be meaningful or material, but in the philosophy that we have of deleting the parts, driving efficiencies, unlocking margin drags that might exist from them, those are definitely things that we're focused on and we actually have completed within the last 12 months.

Sanjay Sakhrani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take our final question from Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Dan Perlin

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to touch back on the incremental investments that you've talked about. It sounds like they were a little heavy in the first half around technology investments and obviously product. I'm wondering around the context since you've laid those out now, how do you think about investments and go to market to accelerate some of those implementations? Maybe where we stand at that point.

Taylor Lauber

Yeah, it's a great question. I would say, first of all, we're doing it. We've added meaningful number of salespeople. As Chris just mentioned, we try to be incredibly pragmatic about looking at headcount allocation across the organization as frequently as we can, and where there are areas that we're de-emphasizing, can those people be applied to other areas? Are there areas that deliberately need investment despite what's going on in other parts of the world? We've been building sales organizations quite meaningfully through the entire first half of this, and I expect that to continue all within sort of the guidance ranges that we've provided. We do like when M&A can accelerate that.

Taylor Lauber

I can't understate the value of a. We announced a German POS acquisition a couple of years ago named Vectron that instantly gave us 300 resellers that know how to sell restaurant product to customers, already have a book of customers, et cetera. We do like to use M&A as a framework for acceleration. I think these types of organizations really understand how we operate and vice versa. Narrowing their scope to a single product, or in the case of Vectron, giving them a heck of a lot more value that they can deliver in that product is something that we view as really attractive. We're looking at that across the entirety of the 15-plus countries that we mentioned as potential accelerants. They're not particularly large.

Taylor Lauber

They're tuck-in in nature, but it's something that we do well, and I think most interestingly, reputationally, we're known as enhancing the value proposition of these teams and the distribution partners themselves. It's usually a good conversation to have that we're uniquely positioned at.

Dan Perlin

Great. Just to prove, Chris, if I could, on organic growth, came again very consistent, 11%. For just sake of running kind of interference, I think you said TFS is going to roll into that organic calculus in Q3. Is there any way to kind of get a preview of what that would've been in this quarter, just so we're all level set, given the growth rate from TFS relative to rest of your business? Thank you.

Christopher Cruz

I'm trying to think about it on the fly. I would say that if you were to look at TFS in this quarter, it delivered within the upper end of sort of the mid-single digits in terms of its quarterly growth contribution. If you were to blend that in on a weighted basis, TFS is about one-fifth of the revenues. You can kind of do that math. The important thing that I think you have to take away from it, though, is that that TFS segment today is burdened by the Middle East travel conflict.

Taylor Lauber

Even when you think about looking forward to something like a Q3, and you think about what the implied growth rates are there in that low double digits, you still have to keep in mind that that very same effect of being weighed down by the Middle East travel disruption, the $25 million number that we gave, that that's in that figure. Absent that figure being embedded within it, that low double digit just mathematically would be into the mid-teens. Hopefully that answers your question. It's a bit of a brain teaser on the fly to kind of weigh the average math. Nonetheless, hopefully that does give you the building blocks.

Dan Perlin

Yeah, no, that was perfect. That was super helpful. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the allotted time we have for our question and answer session and brings us to the end of today's meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.

Investor releaseQuarter not tagged2026-08-05

Should You Buy, Hold or Sell PRTH Stock Before Q2 Earnings?

Zacks
Priority Technology Holdings PRTH is slated to release second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 6, before market open. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the to-be-reported quarter’s earnings per share (EPS) and revenues is pegged at 28 cents and $259.0 million, respectively. While the consensus mark for second-quarter 2026 EPS has remained unchanged over the past 30 days, it suggests a 7.69% increase year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly revenues implies a year-over-year jump of 8%.For the current year, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Priority’s revenues is pegged at $1.03 billion, indicating a rise of 8.47% year over year. The consensus mark for 2026 EPS stands at $1.24, suggesting a 20.39% expansion from the year-ago period. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Over the trailing four quarters, the company’s EPS surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate on two occasions for as many misses. This is depicted in the graph below: Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. price-eps-surprise | Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. Quote Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for PRTH this time. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat, which is not the case here. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.PRTH has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter. Priority Technology’s second-quarter 2026 results are expected to show whether the strong start to the year carried into a seasonally stronger period. After first-quarter revenues rose 11% to $249.6 million, second-quarter revenue growth is expected to have been supported by steady payment activity, acquisition benefits and continued demand across payables and treasury services.Merchant Solutions may have benefited from strength in property management, auto, gas, grocery and retail activity. However, softer trends in restaurants, construction and legal services are likely to have weighed on organic growth. Higher equipment costs and tariffs could have hurt margins, though management previously described that exposure as limited.Payables is likely to have contributed another quarter of strong growth as larger enterprise customers increased domestic and cross-bord…Read full document

Priority Technology Holdings PRTH is slated to release second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 6, before market open. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the to-be-reported quarter’s earnings per share (EPS) and revenues is pegged at 28 cents and $259.0 million, respectively. While the consensus mark for second-quarter 2026 EPS has remained unchanged over the past 30 days, it suggests a 7.69% increase year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly revenues implies a year-over-year jump of 8%.For the current year, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Priority’s revenues is pegged at $1.03 billion, indicating a rise of 8.47% year over year. The consensus mark for 2026 EPS stands at $1.24, suggesting a 20.39% expansion from the year-ago period. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Over the trailing four quarters, the company’s EPS surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate on two occasions for as many misses. This is depicted in the graph below: Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. price-eps-surprise | Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. Quote Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for PRTH this time. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat, which is not the case here. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.PRTH has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank #3. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter. Priority Technology’s second-quarter 2026 results are expected to show whether the strong start to the year carried into a seasonally stronger period. After first-quarter revenues rose 11% to $249.6 million, second-quarter revenue growth is expected to have been supported by steady payment activity, acquisition benefits and continued demand across payables and treasury services.Merchant Solutions may have benefited from strength in property management, auto, gas, grocery and retail activity. However, softer trends in restaurants, construction and legal services are likely to have weighed on organic growth. Higher equipment costs and tariffs could have hurt margins, though management previously described that exposure as limited.Payables is likely to have contributed another quarter of strong growth as larger enterprise customers increased domestic and cross-border activity. New client ramp-ups could have strengthened transaction volumes and operating leverage. Still, the continued shift toward buyer-funded revenues is likely to have affected margins in the quarter under review because that business carries lower reported gross margins.Treasury Solutions is expected to have supported profit growth through higher account balances, CFTPay enrollments, Passport activity and partner additions. These trends are expected to have improved revenue visibility. Lower interest rates may have constrained yield-related income, but balance growth is likely to have offset part of that pressure.Investors should also watch operating costs, free cash flow and leverage after net leverage improved to 4.0 times in March. Priority had maintained 2026 guidance for revenues of $1.01-$1.04 billion and adjusted EBITDA of $230-$245 million. The second quarter could confirm continued progress, although elevated debt, interest expense and uneven small-business demand remain key risks. Over the past three months, PRTH shares have rallied more than 27%, outperforming the industry as well as the S&P 500 composite. With respect to peers Shift4 Payments FOUR and Repay Holdings RPAY, the performance has been mixed. Shift4 Payments has risen 29.7% over this time frame, while Repay Holdings has gained 20%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research PRTH’s rally has already priced in a lot of optimism, so the company needs to keep delivering strong quarters. The stock trades at 6.14X EV/EBITDA, while Shift4 Payments and Repay Holdings trade at 7.29X and 3.83X, respectively.PRTH: Valuation Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Priority Technology’s shift toward payables and treasury revenues could have strengthened earnings quality, while acquisition contributions and operating leverage may have supported EBITDA and free cash flow. Continued account growth and higher balances also suggest that the platform is gaining use among partners and customers. However, investors should weigh those upsides against elevated debt, interest expense and uneven demand within parts of Merchant Solutions. The buyer-funded payables mix is expected to have pressured margins, and lower rates could have limited Treasury Solutions profitability despite balance growth. The second quarter will matter most for evidence of cash generation, margin control and further leverage reduction. Until those measures improve consistently, the shares appear fairly positioned, supporting a neutral stance rather than a more aggressive commitment. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (PRTH) : Free Stock Analysis Report Repay Holdings Corporation (RPAY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

As of 2026-08-22 • Updated weeklySource: Earnings sourceIngestion runbook