Adyen

IThe business

When you tap a card at a Spotify checkout, an Uber ride or a shop in Paris, someone has to catch that payment, check it is not fraud, route it to the card network, get it approved and pay the merchant. Adyen does all of that on a single platform for about 300 merchants who drive most of its growth and a long tail of others behind them.⁷ It was founded in 2006, listed in Amsterdam in June 2018, and built its platform itself.¹⁸¹¹

It reports two revenue lines that are easy to confuse. Gross revenue includes what it passes through to banks and card schemes. Net revenue is what it keeps, and that is the number to watch. Net revenue was €2,364M in 2025, up 18%, or 21% in constant currency.¹⁶ In the twelve months to September 2026 it was €2,713M, up 19% C (calculated).¹⁷⁵ This page uses net revenue throughout, and I chart nothing else, because the gross line changed presentation around 2023.

What it sells

Three pillars. Digital is online payments for large companies: subscriptions, travel, delivery, marketplaces. Unified Commerce is the same customers in physical stores, with Adyen’s terminals on the counter and the online and in-store record joined up. Platforms is software companies that embed payments for their own small customers, such as Toast in restaurants.⁷⁵

The table shows the shift. Digital is still more than half of the business and is growing in the mid-teens. Platforms is small and growing at 44%. Q3 Unified Commerce includes Talon.One, so its 27% is flattered a little.⁵ Platforms customers processing over €1B a year went from 31 to 46 in twelve months, and 312,000 small businesses are active on them, up 48%.⁵ Those customers pay less per euro: Platforms kept 12.7 cents on €100 in 2025 against 17.9 in Digital C (calculated).¹⁶

How it earns money

Adyen charges a small fee per transaction, plus a share of the card cost it manages for some merchants. The pricing is tiered, on purpose: the more volume a merchant sends, the lower the rate on the next euro.²⁰⁵ So the take rate, net revenue divided by volume, falls as customers grow. Management calls this expected, and on the H1 call van der Does said tiering was the only explanation for the fall in take rate that half.²² The Investor Day deck puts the drag at a low to mid single digit percentage of growth each year.²⁰

There is a second income stream that the headline margin ignores. Adyen holds merchants’ money for a day or two on its way through, and it holds the money at central banks. It earned €272M on cash in the year to June, 18% of pre-tax income C (calculated).¹¹⁷ That sits below EBITDA. When people quote the 53% margin, they are leaving out a fifth of profit, and that fifth moves with the European Central Bank rate rather than with anything Adyen does.

Where

In H1 2026 EMEA was 55% of net revenue, North America 27%, Asia-Pacific 11% and Latin America 7%. North America grew 30% in constant currency, EMEA 15%.⁷ Top ten merchants were 11% of revenue in 2025, and no single customer passed 10%.¹¹ That is more spread than I expected for a business that sells to giants.

What changed this year

Three things. On 23 April and 11 June Adyen agreed the first large acquisitions in its history: Talon.One, a loyalty and promotions engine, for about €750M, and Orb, a usage-based billing system, for $335M. Both closed on 1 July.⁷²⁴ Its CFO left on 31 August, and an interim runs finance until Niclas Neglen starts on 1 February 2027, subject to approvals.²⁴⁶ And on 28 October it cut the 2026 margin to 50%, said it would speed up investment, and dropped the objective of more than 55% by 2028, saying it wanted flexibility.⁵ The shares went from €944.00 to €818.00 at that day’s close.¹

IIThe moat

A wide franchise with its customers, a narrower one on price. The strongest evidence is that the largest merchants keep sending more volume after a decade. The weakest is a take rate that is down 30% from its 2018 peak.

What protects it, source by source

Read the switching-cost row carefully. Big merchants use more than one processor on purpose, so they can move volume in days. That is why Adyen can win share quickly and why it can lose it quickly. In Q3 2025 volume grew only 8%, or 19% without one large customer, and net revenue barely noticed because that customer paid very little.¹⁰ It shows both sides at once: the volume can leave, and low-priced volume is worth little anyway.

Evidence it is widening

• Volume grew 30% in Q3 2026, against a market Adyen puts at high single digits.⁵²⁰
• 300 merchants now drive about 60% of growth, down from over 70% three years ago, so growth is less dependent on a few names.⁷
• New products pull in customers who did not start with payments. Orb has already won the payments of Route and Wasabi.⁵ Adyen also won OpenAI, GOV.UK Pay and Toast in the US.⁶⁷
• Revenue per employee went from €388,000 in 2023 to €496,000 in 2025 C (calculated).¹⁶¹¹¹²

Evidence it is narrowing

• Take rate fell from 23.5 cents per €100 in 2018 to 16.4 in Q3 2026 C (calculated). Some of that is mix, and some of it is customers reaching better tiers, but the merchant gets the benefit either way.¹⁶⁵
• Digital net revenue grew 14% in constant currency in Q3 on 28% more volume. Those two numbers cannot sit that far apart for long.⁵
• Stripe’s volume grew 34% in 2025. It has moved from small firms toward the enterprise, and it says it serves 90% of the Dow.²⁵
• Paying 22 times revenue for two companies suggests management thinks payments alone is not enough C (calculated). I return to that below.⁷

16.4 cents on €100 is 0.164%, and net of what it pays banks and networks. Adyen is not Visa, though. Visa sits in the middle of the system and every issuer and merchant has to use it. Adyen is chosen, and it can be un-chosen. That is why I discount it at 10.5% and Visa at 9.0%.³⁶

IIIThe competitive advantage

The advantage is focus. Adyen picked the largest merchants when that looked like a bad customer to want, then built everything itself so it never had to integrate a purchased system. Its rivals grew by buying processors and now run several platforms at once. Fiserv, FIS and Global Payments all sit in its pay peer group, and the older firms have spent a decade merging.¹¹ A merchant that wants one contract for 40 countries, online and in store, has few places to go.

Adyen against the two that matter

Where Adyen wins

It wins where complexity is highest: many countries, physical stores and online together, high approval rates, and procurement teams that want a bank-regulated counterparty. In H1 it won GOV.UK Pay from a competitor, and it replaced a patchwork of acquirers at Tod’s.⁷ In-person volume was €175.7B in H1, up 28%, and 22% of the total.⁷ Terminals reached 878,000, up 25%.⁵ This is the part Stripe has found hardest to copy, and the part that gives Adyen its Unified Commerce growth.

Where it loses

It loses on price when a very large customer decides volume is a commodity, and it has lost on developer mindshare with younger companies. Stripe’s Revenue suite, its billing and invoicing products, is heading for a $1B run rate in 2026.²⁵ Orb is a late answer to that. Adyen paid $335M for a billing product, while its largest rival built one that is now far bigger.⁷²⁵ Whether merchants really want billing and loyalty from their payments provider, I cannot judge yet. Management says interest is “substantially stronger and broader” than it expected.⁵ It would say that either way, in the first quarter after closing.

The deals, on the numbers

Together the two deals cost about €1.04B C (calculated), 21% of the €4.9B of cash Adyen held for itself at June C (calculated).⁷ Management said they would add about one point to 2026 growth, all in the second half, which means roughly €24M in half a year, or about €47M annualised C (calculated).⁷ That is about 22 times revenue C (calculated). One outside estimate puts their contribution to Q3 constant-currency growth at about two points, which fits.³⁵ They also brought 399 people. €47M across 399 people is about €118,000 each C (calculated), against €496,000 at Adyen in 2025, and that gap is part of why the margin falls.⁵ Adyen had never made a deal like this. It may be right to start, but the record so far is nothing, in either direction.

IVManagement

The most unusual pay I have seen on this site. No bonus, no stock awards for the founders, and a very large personal stake. The incentive is simple and strong. It also means nothing in their pay punishes them for missing a margin target.

How they are really paid

That is everything.¹¹ The co-CEOs get a cash salary of €833,458 and pension and benefits of €36,150. There is no annual bonus, no long-term plan, no options and no performance share. The company says its pay sits below the median of its peers, and the chief executive ratio of 8 to 1 is among the lowest in the AEX.¹¹ Newer executives get shares worth about the same as their salary, held for five years. Their holdings are small because they joined after the listing.

Follow the incentive. Van der Does owns about 2.9% of the company C (calculated), worth 877 times his annual pay C (calculated). His wealth moves by about €8M for every 1% on the share price. Nobody can say he is paid to hit a number. His shareholding did not change in 2025, and neither did Prins’s or Uytdehaage’s.¹¹

Now the other side. With no bonus tied to margin, the 55% target carried no personal consequence, and dropping it cost them only what it cost every other shareholder. On 28 October that was about €116M for van der Does C (calculated). He accepted it. Either he believes the spending earns more than it costs, or he has so long a horizon that one year does not matter. Both are what a long-term owner would hope for. Neither helps someone who wants a clear margin path.

Who runs it

Shareholders reappointed van der Does and Prins until 2030 at the May 2026 meeting.²³ Uytdehaage’s term runs to May 2027 and he is personally directing the integration.¹¹²⁴ Both co-CEOs have been on the board since at least 2011, and the top three have run the company together for about fifteen years. The finance seat is the weak point. Ethan Tandowsky left on 31 August, and an interim who is not a board member has been presenting results in a quarter that changed the margin story.²⁴⁶ Niclas Neglen is nominated to start on 1 February 2027, ten days before the 2027 objectives are due.⁶

Who can hold them to account

Adyen has a two-tier Dutch board, and the top three executives hold about 4.4% between them C (calculated). Temasek reported 1,565,824 shares on 16 June, about 5.0% C (calculated), and Capital Research reported about 1.55M voting rights on 9 October.²⁸²⁹¹¹ As a licensed bank, Adyen also answers to De Nederlandsche Bank, which can limit what it does in ways a shareholder cannot.¹¹

Capital over a full cycle

From 2018 to 2025 Adyen earned about €4.4B of net income C (calculated) and has paid no dividend. It bought back no shares in 2025 and the policy is still not to pay.¹¹ Its diluted share count has grown about 0.5% a year since 2018 C (calculated). The test of its capital came in 2022 and 2023. It doubled staff from 2,180 to 4,196 while revenue growth slowed, and the margin fell from 63% to 46%.¹²¹⁶ It then proved right: net revenue rose from €1,330M in 2022 to €2,364M in 2025, staff rose only 14% in those last two years, and the margin came back to 53% C (calculated).¹⁶¹¹

Read in one go, this is a team that sets ambitious objectives and changes them openly. The 2023 reset was followed by better results. I cannot tell you whether 2026 repeats that. What I can say is that the same people, with the same pay, took the same decision before, and it worked. A sceptic would add that the 2026 margin has now moved twice in eleven weeks, which suggests the plan is moving under them.

VFinancials

Three things make Adyen’s accounts unusual. It is a bank, so most of the cash on its balance sheet belongs to merchants. It reports EBITDA after stock pay, which most software companies do not. And a fifth of its profit is interest that never touches its headline margin.

Growth and margins

Net revenue grew 35% a year from 2016 to 2025 C (calculated). Growth slowed from 46% in 2021 to 22% in 2023, 23% in 2024 and 18% in 2025, or 21% in constant currency.¹⁶ In the first nine months of 2026 net revenue was €2,041M C (calculated), and management expects 21% to 23% for the year in constant currency, including about one point from the deals.⁵⁷ So underlying growth is about 20% E (estimate), as it has been for three years.

That last point is worth a pause. H1 was 49% with almost no deal effect. If the year is 50%, the second half is about 50.6% on my €2.86B revenue estimate E (estimate), four and a half points below the same half of 2025. That is a large step in six months. Underlying hiring is unchanged at 550 to 650 this year, so the cut comes from the acquired teams, from pay moving toward equity and from other spending, and the update does not split it.⁵ The 2027 margin is the most important number the company has not told us.

What an owner can really take out

Forget reported operating cash flow here. It was €1,030M in 2025, €1,705M in 2024 and €2,281M in the first half of 2026 alone, and the swings are merchants’ money arriving and leaving.¹¹⁷ Adyen’s own free cash flow is no better: it is EBITDA less capital spending and leases, before tax. On that measure it made €1,160M in the year to June C (calculated), which sounds like more than it earned.⁷¹¹

I start from net income and adjust for cash. That gives €1,094M of owner cash, 97% of net income C (calculated). Stock pay stays in as a cost. It was €50M in H1, €29.6M of restricted shares plus €20.6M of salary paid in shares, and that is 13.5% of wages C (calculated).⁷ The Q3 update says pay is moving further toward equity, so it will rise.⁵

So the honest range is €778M to €1,094M. To stand still, capital spending could drop by about €43M to depreciation, and owner cash would be slightly above net income E (estimate). To keep growing, a licensed bank needs more capital as it grows. That is why I show a second line. Today Adyen has plenty, so I let the buffer cover growth until about 2030 in my model, and only then hold back capital. In every case I treat the money as earned by shareholders, even though Adyen pays none of it out.

The €12.4B of cash

The balance sheet at June showed €12.4B of cash, of which €8.1B was owed to merchants against €0.6B owed by others.⁷ Data sites that call this net cash of €380 a share are wrong by a wide margin.³³ Adyen says its own cash was €4.9B, about €4.6B after the deals.⁷ Even that is not free. Own funds of €5.31B compare with an overall capital requirement of 16.5% of €8.48B of risk exposure, or about €1.4B C (calculated), so the surplus over requirements is about €3.9B on the regulator’s numbers.¹⁹

A shareholder might stop there. Management will not. Asked on the H1 call how much was deployable, the incoming interim CFO said the buffers also cover operations and the credit rating, and that excess cash is “a small fraction” of the figure.²² I take that at its word. I credit €1.0B as free in my base, nothing in my bear and €2.0B in my bull E (estimate). A billion euros is €31 a share if it is truly gone, and about €12 if it stays on the balance sheet earning interest and funding later growth, as in my model C (calculated).

Interest, the quiet fifth

Finance income was €1M in 2021, €246M in 2023, €350M in 2024 and €268M in 2025 as rates fell.¹⁶ It was 28.5% of pre-tax income in 2024 and 18.4% in the year to June C (calculated). In H1 it was €143.2M, up slightly, with the ECB deposit rate now 2.50%.⁷³¹ I assume 2.0% earned on balances in my base, 1.0% in my bear and 2.5% in my bull E (estimate). No one can forecast this, so I show it: at zero my base falls to €908 C (calculated).

Ten years

Sources for the table are the workbooks, the prospectus and the annual reports.^{16171811121415} Owner cash has grown 27% a year since 2019 C (calculated). That comfortably covers the 8.4% the price needs, for now, and it includes the jump in interest. Adyen has no debt.²¹ S&P rates it A- with a positive outlook, set in September before the margin news.²¹

VIValuation

What would ruin it

Before any numbers, I ask how an owner gets badly hurt here. I see three ways.

1. Price, slowly. Stripe and tiering together push the take rate down faster than volume grows. Adyen stays busy and well liked, and net revenue compounds at 8%. This is the most likely way to lose money, and my bear case is built on it.
2. Spending that never stops. The 2022 hiring round ended well because revenue caught up. This one comes with deals, a thinner product focus and an interim CFO. If margin settles at 44%, two points below the 2023 low, the business is still fine and the shares are not.
3. The licence. A payments bank lives on its regulator’s trust. A serious failure on money laundering, sanctions or a merchant collapse could cap onboarding for a year or more. I cannot put a number on this, and it is one reason I do not go below 10.5%.

Falling rates are a fourth, smaller way. They cost value but do not break anything.

What the price implies

At €826.90 Adyen is worth €26.3B on 31.81M diluted shares C (calculated), which is 31.57M outstanding, about 0.12M issued for the deals, valued at the 1 July close because the issue price is not disclosed, and 0.12M for share plans.³³⁷ That is 23.4 times trailing net income and 21.7 times the €38.07 consensus for 2026 C (calculated).³⁴ The consensus for 2027 is €45.81. My base has about €37.80 E (estimate), 17% lower, because I think some of those estimates were set before 28 October.³⁴

Put another way, my base cash flows are worth the price at a 12.2% discount rate E (estimate). Or the price is right if growth runs at three quarters of my base path, about 13% in 2027, fading to 4.5%, with my margins. Or margins would have to run 10 points below my path, about 37% in 2027 and 43% later, which is below anything Adyen has printed E (estimate).¹⁶ Those are large cushions, and large cushions are usually there for a reason.

The discount rate

I use 10.5%. The 10-year Bund yields 3.40%, and Damodaran’s implied equity premium is 4.20%, the basis used across this site.³⁰³² The rest is beta, and Adyen’s is hard to pin down. I computed it against the AEX from month-end closes: 1.71 since listing and 2.24 over five years, which give 10.6% and 12.8% C (calculated).¹ Over three years it is 2.38, or 13.4%. Against the Euro Stoxx 50 the two long windows give 1.40 and 2.07, and against the Stoxx Europe 600 1.67 and 2.35 C (calculated). Stock Analysis shows 1.89 over five years, or 11.3%.³³ Most of these fall between 10.4% and 13.4%, so 10.5% is at the bottom of what the data allow.

I chose it for three reasons. The since-listing figure rests on 100 months and has a standard error of 0.3, against 0.45 for five years on 60 months, so the two are not far apart. Betas pulled a third of the way toward 1, which is common practice because extreme betas tend to drift back, give 9.6% and 11.1% E (estimate). Adyen also has no borrowings and a large cash pile. Against that, the five-year window is the most recent, and the shares are down 70% from their August 2021 peak (€2,766) C (calculated). I cannot wave that away. Visa is at 9.0% and ASML at 8.5% on the same basis.³⁸

This choice matters more than any other on the page. At 11.1% my base is €969. The price equals my base at 12.2%. At 12.8% my base is €771, below the price, and my bear is €383 C (calculated). So 10.5% is a judgement, and the market may simply be using a higher number.

What I cannot judge

• The 2027 margin. Nobody outside the company knows it until 11 February. I use 47.5%, and the honest range is 44% to 51%.
• Free cash. €0 to €2.0B, or up to €63 a share C (calculated). Management says a small fraction of €4.9B; it gives no number.²²
• Whether Talon.One and Orb pay. They are too new. I assume no special credit and carry the cost in margins.
• Stripe’s real pricing to large merchants. It is private. Win and loss data are not published by either side.
• Agentic commerce. Adyen has joined the protocols and launched a product, but nobody knows who the machine buyer will favour.⁷⁶ It could be a new toll or nothing at all.

Three cases

All the rows are my estimates E (estimate). The base grows net revenue 13.5% a year for ten years, against 35% for the last nine C (calculated). At 13 cents per €100 that takes volume to about €7.8T in 2036 E (estimate), more than four times today, and more than half of the $17T Visa carried in FY2025, at the $1.18 per euro rate in the Stripe note.³⁶ That is a lot. It is also what compounding from 19% with a fade means, and I would not call it conservative. The tax rate is 25% in all cases, against 24% in the last year C (calculated). Share count is flat because stock pay is expensed in the margin.

Value builds as follows in the base: €17.6B from 15 years of owner cash, €15.2B from the value at the end, and €1.0B of free cash, for €33.8B in total E (estimate). The end value is 46% of the business value C (calculated). It uses a 13.7 times multiple of cash flow in 2041, and that is a mature payments multiple rather than a hopeful one.

The same euro, elsewhere

A euro put into a 10-year Bund earns 3.40%, with no risk of loss if held to maturity.³⁰ Even my bear case at 5.5% beats that, though the bear’s path has wide error bars. The better test is the best comparable on this site. Mastercard’s base return is 8.4% a year at its price and Visa’s 7.5%, and both are toll roads of a kind that Adyen is not.³⁷³⁶ ASML’s is 7.4%.³⁸ Adyen’s base is 13.1% a year E (estimate). I trust that number less than I trust Mastercard’s, because the range is wider. Mastercard’s bear returns 6.5%, not far from Adyen’s bear at 5.5%, and its bull returns 10.4%, against 18.0%.³⁷ On those figures Adyen’s range is far wider than Mastercard’s at both ends, and its centre sits higher, if my cases are about right.

Quality and price are two questions

Quality first. This is a very good business: high returns, no debt, EBITDA struck after stock pay, owners who run it, growth of about 20%. It is less safe than a card network and more exposed to a single stronger rival. Price second. At 23 times trailing earnings, with about 20% growth, the price is low for what it has been: it fell 46% in a year and is down 70% from its 2021 peak.³³¹ So this looks like a good business at a price that asks for much less than its record. That is unusual on this site, and I treat it with suspicion. The market has looked at the same numbers. The likely reason it disagrees is below.

Why the market may be right

• Growth is being held up by Unified Commerce and Platforms while Digital, 54% of revenue, grows 14%. If Digital drifts to 8% or 10%, the group is a mid-teens grower within two years E (estimate).⁵
• Management has now said twice that it will spend more than it said it would. The next number may be lower again. Investors tend to wait for a floor.
• Stripe has five times the valuation, faster growth and a tender-backed war chest.²⁵
• Earnings estimates will probably fall, and the consensus target of €1,276 from 35 analysts may be stale.³⁴
• Adyen pays nothing out. Value that stays on a balance sheet is only worth what it later earns.

How the odds shrink

This is why I do not read 22% below base as a free lunch. All of my base happens only about one time in five. The price needs less, and that happens a little better than one time in two. The second column is the simpler argument. It asks the business to keep going, not to be remarkable.

The margin of safety

My margin-of-safety price is €744, 30% below my base value E (estimate). I use 30% because the range is wide, the key input is unknown until February, the discount rate is a judgement and a regulator stands behind everything. At €744 the bear value is 32% lower still, so this price does not protect against the bear case, only against being moderately wrong on the base. At €744 my base would return about 14.3% a year E (estimate). The price of €826.90 is 11% above it.

Where this could be in 5 and 10 years

For my base to be right at five years, net revenue has to reach €6.0B in 2031, after growth of 14% that year, at a 51% EBITDA margin. Owner cash is then €1.84B C (calculated). It is right at ten years if revenue reaches €10.1B in 2036 at 53% and owner cash is €3.3B E (estimate). The value climbs from €1,063 today to €1,448 and €1,883 because the cash comes nearer at 10.5% a year.

The bear and the bull differ on growth and margin. In the bear, revenue reaches €6.3B in 2036, margin stays at 44% and owner cash is €1.5B. In the bull, revenue reaches €13.6B at 58% and owner cash is €5.1B. The discount rate is 10.5% in all three, so the gap is the cash. At 12.2% my base is €832 today, about the price, and €1,557 in 2036.

The most likely way my base is wrong is price. If Stripe and tiering pull the take rate down faster than volume grows, growth drifts toward the bear’s 8% by 2031, and the five-year value moves toward €613. Three points less margin throughout gives €1,766 at ten years. The price is above the bear’s value at both dates and below my base.

These are estimates of value, not forecasts of the share price. The market price can sit above or below value for years.

VIIThe case for the price

What most people miss

Three things. EBITDA ignores €272M of interest, so the quoted margin understates profit by about a fifth, and comparisons with US payments firms that report adjusted numbers flatter them, since Adyen’s margin is after stock pay.⁷¹¹ Second, the top ten merchants are only 11% of revenue.¹¹ Third, the customer base is young. Customers in years 3 to 7 give Adyen under 20% of their volume, and those past year 12 give it over 40%.²⁰

The bull case

The strongest case comes from the company and from S&P, not from famous investors. Management’s Investor Day sums it up as about 20% growth a year: market growth of high single digits, plus high single to low double digits from share of wallet, less a low to mid single digit tiering drag, plus low single digits from new wins, mid single digits from last year’s new customers and about one point from financial products.²⁰ Uytdehaage said on 28 October that Adyen can keep growing faster than its market, and that it sees “a significant opportunity ahead.”⁶ S&P expected around 20% revenue growth in September.²¹ Large shareholders on the Dutch register include Temasek and Capital Research, though a filing shows a position, not a reason.²⁸²⁹ The consensus mean target is €1,276.³⁴

Against reality

Today underlying growth is about 20%, in line with that sum. On my model, if Adyen grows 18% in 2027, keeps the fade gentle and gets margin back to 50% by 2030, €1,063 is possible. If it reaches management’s old 55%, my bull’s €1,657 comes into range. Today’s numbers are close on growth and open on margin: 50% this year, with direction unknown for next year. The price itself needs less: about 13% growth fading, at my margins.

What a 10x would take. Ten times today is €263B C (calculated). At 25 times earnings that needs €10.5B of net income, and at a 40% net margin that needs €26.3B of net revenue, 9.2 times my 2026 estimate C (calculated). In ten years that is 24.8% a year, from €2.9B, with no fade C (calculated). Adyen did 35% a year from a small base, and it is doing about 20% now. At 13 cents per €100 it means about €20T of volume, or about $24T, more than the $17T Visa carried in FY2025.³⁶ My bull case reaches €9.4B of earnings in 2041, about €235B at 25 times, or roughly nine times, in fifteen years E (estimate). That would be about 16% a year, and that is a very good outcome. Adyen itself went about six times from its first close of €455 in June 2018 to €2,766 in August 2021, from a much smaller base, and gave most of it back C (calculated).¹ For a €1T company a 10x is close to impossible. For a €26B company with Stripe at €135B it is not absurd, but it needs roughly my bull case for fifteen years, or something I have not modelled, such as billing and treasury becoming a second business as large as payments. In ten years I see no honest path to it.

What they have to hit

Where I come down

The Investor Day arithmetic moved me: I can see each part in the reported numbers. The promise of 55% did not, and I built my base without it. Two clean half-years of margin above 50%, or a real number on free cash, would raise my values.

VIIIRisks, and what would change my view

What would change my view

What would raise my base value: a stated 2027 margin near 50%, clear proof that Orb and Talon.One are winning payments volume, and any return of surplus capital. What would lower it: growth under 16%, a second deal at a similar price, or a regulator’s action. A lower share price would not change my base, but it would widen the margin of safety, and the reverse is also true.