Worldline reassured investors yesterday with its Q3 results and the stock, which has been under pressure for several years, jumped 18%.
The new management team is tidying up the business: disposing of non-core assets, simplifying the organisation (all go-to-market activities now report directly to the CEO) and, crucially, calming nerves around liquidity management. Analysts had been worried about the group’s cash-pooling structure and whether the holding company had access to liquidity trapped in subsidiaries.
Q3 revenue fell by 1% to €1.15 billion, but management could finally point to some stabilisation after several quarters of grim news. Merchant-service volume rose 7% to €145 billion – positive, if still below Visa and Mastercard’s 12–13% growth.
The sale of the Mobility division to Magellan remains on track, and Shift4 will acquire Worldline North America (the former Bambora USA business, originally Beanstream/IP Payments, acquired by Ingenico in 2017 and folded into Worldline in 2020) for €70 million.
Worldline USA is a gateway business generating around €60 million revenue from 140 000 merchants via 500 ISVs, delivering about €8 million EBITDA. Both sides will be happy: a price of roughly €500 per merchant is fair for a gateway business lacking a growth story but leaves plenty of upside for Shift4’s usual cross-sell playbook.
Elsewhere, Worldline’s Italian operations are gaining share through new bank partnerships; the Australian JV with ANZ Bank is back on track after price increases; while Germany remains more challenging. Bank partnerships there are performing, but third-party channels are lagging and in both Germany and the Benelux, SMB sales were hampered by a lack of Android terminals. That issue is now resolved, but it feels like an avoidable own-goal.
Overall, a quarter that finally gives investors reasons for cautious optimism.
