Shift4 at Susquehanna Conference: Global Blue Integration Focus

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, Shift4 Payments Inc (NYSE:FOUR) presented at the 2025 Susquehanna Get Carded Conference, highlighting its strategic direction amid significant developments. The company discussed both promising growth prospects and challenges, notably the Global Blue acquisition and international expansion.

Key Takeaways

• Shift4 aims for a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) on gross revenue less network fees and adjusted EBITDA.
• The Global Blue acquisition is a focal point, expected to enhance Shift4’s international presence.
• Shift4 is committed to disciplined capital allocation and strategic mergers and acquisitions.
• The company is developing an all-in-one terminal to streamline payment processes.
• Shift4 plans to integrate Tencent and Ant Group payment methods across its platforms.

Financial Results

• Shift4 is targeting a 30% CAGR on gross revenue less network fees and adjusted EBITDA.
• The company models a hypothetical $200 million annual investment for mergers and acquisitions.
• Historical capital investments have yielded a 4.6x return on EBITDA and a 16% free cash flow yield.
• Financial contributions from Global Blue are anticipated in the second half of the year.

Operational Updates

• The Global Blue acquisition was finalized on July 3rd, with Jacques Stern now leading Shift4 International.
• Shift4 is creating a single terminal that combines currency conversion and other functionalities.
• A small acquisition in Australia was announced, expanding Shift4’s reach.
• Integration with ticketing technology providers is underway to enhance stadium operations.

Future Outlook

• Shift4 expects synergies from the Global Blue acquisition to emerge in Q1 of the following year.
• The company is focused on expanding in the unified commerce space and across more geographies.
• Shift4 emphasizes maintaining market-leading positions and exploring growth in new verticals.

Q&A Highlights

• Investors showed interest in payment volumes, the Global Blue acquisition, and capital allocation.
• Management discussed the CFO transition, with Chris Cruz taking over financial leadership.
• Shift4’s disciplined M&A approach and potential cross-selling opportunities with Global Blue were detailed.

For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 2025 Susquehanna Get Carded Conference:

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. Thank you, Mike, and thank you all for joining us today. I’m delighted to be hosting this fireside with the management of shift four. We’ve got Tom and Taylor. And I was reminiscing that we had hosted a similar fireside at our event last year Jared.

I looked through the questions from last year because I save everything. And it’s amazing how dynamic the company is because a lot of those questions you know, all those home are evergreen and durable, there’s been a lot of changes. And consequently, we updated them over the course of the last couple of days. And so in terms of the format for this one, like I said, this is a fireside. So I’m gonna be asking the questions, and and Taylor and Tom will give us the answers.

And if there is room at the end, which there may not be because we got a lot of ground to cover, we will try and get yours in. Now, folks, I’m on the Bloomberg. If you have questions, hit me there or send me an email, But I think you’ll see these are fairly comprehensive of what we want. We got a lot of people in this fireside. I’m very excited about that.

And and consequently, hope you find this, valuable. So, so, Taylor, Tom, welcome. I’m gonna start off with the kinda open ended kickoff question, but what have you found investors been focusing on in your conversations since reporting earnings last week?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. Thanks for having me, by the way. This is always a fun event to attend, and thanks for everyone who is dialed in. You know, a lot of themes coming through the quarter, not indifferent from other quarters.

You know? There’s tons of initiatives underway and a lot of investor clarity to provide around what’s working, what’s not working, and just simply the combination of the business with Global Blue, which was something that just closed in, early July and what the impact of that would have on our financials. So I would say the big themes across investor conversations are payment volumes and what does the average customer of Shift4 look like today versus, you know, years prior. What’s the relative success of each one of these initiatives? We are very unique to have both an incredible enterprise and SMB opportunity inside the business.

And I think that explaining that to investors is something that we’ve spent a bunch of time doing, which is we can win both, and the impact of both, you know, obviously represents different rates of growth for volume, different revenue growth, etcetera. So just giving clarity around that. And then lastly, international expansion has a theme. This has been a theme for us for several years now, and, hopefully, investors are starting to appreciate that these pieces that we’ve talked about as, you know, as far back as four years ago publicly have now largely come into place, and we’re able to execute against that strategic vision that we had. But the pace of execution and, the relative contribution of different countries is certainly a big theme as well.

Sorry. I think you might be on mute.

Operator: Whoops. Sorry about that.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: No worries. I type really loud, so I tend to mute myself. So in terms of the CFO transition, can you touch on the CFO transition? Is that seemed to catch some of us by surprise. Your Nancy is very talented.

Chris Cruz Chris Cruz is well known in this ZIP code, but I just wanna make sure that everybody knows what he’s about and why it is that you’re making that change.

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Of course. So you’re right. Nancy’s incredible, and she’s been a driving force behind kind of the company’s success both before she was CFO as a board member and will continue to be as a board member after her tenure as CFO. One thing that she was adamant about even before she signed up for the role was that she wanted to contribute three years at the company in a full time capacity and and believe that she could accomplish her really, you know, long list of objectives inside of that three years.

And, to her credit, she did exactly that. So as, her tenure was coming up, you know, her three year agreement was, coming close to its expiration, she said, you know, I I’m happy to stay in a capacity to help through the transition with Jared and all that stuff. But fundamentally, you know, I I I wanna take a step back from the company and be involved as a board member and not in the full time race. So we just certainly tried to keep her around for another three years. She, you know, politely said, I’ll give you some level of flexibility because I wanna stay close to this, but I don’t have another three years in me.

I I Chris is a little bit of a different story because we’ve wanted Chris in the company in almost any capacity for a very long time. So for those less familiar, Chris, invested, in the company about a decade ago. Him and his firm bought a 60% share of the business, and, you know, provided tremendous guidance throughout some of the most formative years of our growth and quite frankly stayed on our board, as an audit committee member long past Search Light’s divestment the company. So we’ve had him around forever. Obviously, if we had to lose Nancy, this was, like, a really safe pair of hands.

And a a lesser known kind of fun fact is that Chris and Nancy actually knew each other long before Chris knew or Nancy knew Shifford. So there’s a ton of continuity between the two relationships, and that’s important to us. I mean, you you kinda talked about the or you alluded to the number of things we’ve gotten done in a year. It’s a fast paced company with tons of initiatives going on and trying to get a stranger up to up the curve comes at a at a significant cost. And so we’re thrilled that Chris can kinda step into the seat, bring a lot of continuity given his relationship with Nancy.

Nancy can continue to give us advice. By the way, she’ll be an employee through year end, so this will not be an abrupt transition in any way. And it’ll all be the same kind of cast characters just contributing at different levels. So I think the continuity will be there, but I also think we’re gonna get some, some fun insights with Chris and, all of his brainpower.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Alright. Let’s shift four away. So in terms of guidance, should we anticipate any potential changes in the overall guidance philosophy or methodology with Nancy leaving?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: No. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say that. I will say that the company evolves, and you’ve been kind of right alongside of us as we’ve evolved, you know, not having an international business, by way of example, not having a sports and entertainment business, and suddenly we’re, you know, just a few short years later, one of the largest in the space. So I think we’ll continue to refine at the pace within which we have, so nothing stays static inside the business. We have to, help people with disclosures like the contribution of Global Blue, for example, is a big theme in the back half of this year.

But, you know, philosophically, this is, largely the same group of people, contributing in in different capacities than they have in the past.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. Apropos of Global Blue, with that closing on July 3, you highlighted on the earnings call that you’re now tracking towards that third scenario, the guidance. So for those of you who weren’t at the Analyst Day or didn’t the company set forth the structure, which I think was quite intuitive, Maybe if you could revisit what that was, and then that call that third scenario calls for a 30% CAGR in growth in the, gross revenue less network fees and adjusted EBITDA. So, you know, maybe if you can give us some context as to why you set the structure that you did and why it is that now you’re messaging the higher end.

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So it it’s it’s been a common theme with investors that they wanna kinda break down the parts of the business and understand the relative contribution. And m and a can make that difficult for investors to do. So at our investor day, we tried to lay out three scenarios that we think about when we’re planning ahead for the business.

First, is sit on our hands, and it’s kind of a joke internally because that’s not what we’ve ever done for twenty six years, but certainly happy to portray the results of that or or the expected results of that for investors, which is we have this massive base of customers over a trillion dollars that we can go cross sell payment volume into. And we also have product leading leading products across restaurants, hotels, stadiums, now specialty retail. And so the sit on our hands case is let’s continue to win with those products in those verticals, and let’s continue to cross sell the base we have, but not add to it in any way and not reinvest the capital. We we laugh about it because that is the last thing, we would ever do as a management team is not think about how to reinvest the capital and keep our growth funnel as full as it could possibly be. But there you go.

High teens is what we think is a reasonable three year CAGR for sitting on our hands. We also wanted to illustrate the impact of Global Blue that’s somewhat formulaic because Global Blue was a public company. They had their own forecasts and guidance set out to the street, and adding Global Blue to that standalone mix would create kind of a mid twenties, CAGR. And then the last one, which we deemed most likely is, of course, you do those things because that’s the way the business has been operated, but you also reinvest capital and seek out opportunities that we’ve done a pretty good job of pursuing over the years. You know, for example, we announced a small tuck in acquisition in Australia that gives us a Salesforce on top of a bunch of infrastructure that we already have.

It’s a very, obvious thing to do when you have this, this infrastructure and this plumbing to go add a bunch of salespeople on top of it. And if m and a is an attractive return on capital, way to in in inherit that Salesforce, all the better. So the most likely case, which you illustrated there, is kind of a 30% CAGR on, you know, our gross revenue less network fees, and it’s simply a result of pursuing the base that we’ve already set up for ourselves over the last few years. The inclusion of Global Blues capabilities, which gives us really large vertical access and geography expansion. And then lastly, reinvest a modest portion of that capital into opportunities as they present themselves.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. Thanks for that. And then in terms of the additional capital deployed in future m and a, can you help unpack that yeah. Yeah. And the methodology you guys set forth at the Analyst Day was really fascinating.

But, yeah, if you could talk about how the approach to investing that capital.

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. I wanna be, really specific in the description here because I think investors can sometimes, get confused about how m and a works in our industry. We have an incredibly disciplined model whereby our price structure and how we underwrite the returns from an acquisition, how we intend to integrate that business, what revenue streams we wanna delete from that business are all really, really rigid. And as a result of that, we don’t often get to pick when we do m and a because we simply have a basket of companies we think are very interesting and a price model that we think makes sense for us, and it’s kind of take it or leave it up to the seller if if they’re willing to pursue that, and whether they kinda buy into our vision. So, you know, in in many ways, m and a isn’t up to us.

It’s if it fits our model, we’re gonna pursue it within some modest reasonable amount of leverage. And we we feel compelled to if it’s if it sits between us and a really interesting growth opportunity like what we’ve I just described in Australia. So as we look at outer years, it’s imperfect. We modeled out, you know, a hypothetical $200,000,000 a year, which we think is a reasonable amount that you could deploy against opportunities. But I’ll say it’s certainly lumpy.

You’ll have opportunities like we saw in 2024 where five businesses that we had previously looked at many years prior all, you know, came to fruition at terms that we were pretty pretty, consistent on over those last five years. And then other times where cycles get great and, people’s expectations are high and there’s not much of interest to us. I actually asked Tom and our our investment banking, teams to go back and look at our deployment of capital against the m and a cycle, and it’s actually kind of interesting. The hot years for m and a, we did virtually nothing, and the slow years for m and a, we did a ton, which is what you should hope for from a capital allocator. So I’d say we hope we can deploy a modest amount, every year, maintain, a leverage ratio that delevers despite that deployment of capital, but add capabilities selectively around the world or in verticals that we think we’ve got a differentiated right to win.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: And it’s I I’m just doing this from the Analyst Day slides, but the total capital invested from that vantage point was $2,700,000,000. This is a five year return chart. 4.6 times return on EBITDA, 6.4 times return on free cash flow, and a 16% free cash flow yield. So so that’s the system. Certainly seems to be working.

Now in terms of okay. So thank you for about Global. Thank you for disclosing the expected GRNF adjusted EBITDA financial contribution from Global Blue for the second half. Can you talk through, your early read on how that’s performing and what it will take to achieve those targets?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yep. Of course. So Global is doing great. It’s largely, though, today acting as the independent business it was a year ago. And so what does that mean?

It means that they are winning lots of clients to their tax free solutions business. This is the VAT refund business that they are, excuse me, a category leader in, and they’ve been adding great customers and and great capabilities around the world consistently. Similarly, their currency conversion business is growing nicely. We gave ourselves and I think this is just prudent given the size of the acquisition and given the slightly un uncertain timelines around the regulatory review. We gave ourselves a year before we would expect meaningful synergies inside the business.

And what, what do I mean by that? I mean, the ability to kind of cross sell our payments product to their merchant population, embed their currency conversion product across our merchant population. We don’t think it’ll take a year. We think we’re gonna hit the ground running really, really nicely inside of inside of q one with a broad based set of capabilities. But in terms of kind of keeping, you know, I think a reasonable and prudent set of expectations externally, that’s the right thing to do.

Again, there’s technical work that needs to be completed, and then, obviously, we have to go to market with these great products. And I I think unlike some of the other acquisitions we’ve done in our past, this is an awesome business that’s growing quite nicely, that’s winning share without us. And so there’s an element of do no harm that certainly comes in to the first several months of an acquisition. Let’s make sure we all understand kind of the the relative pace of execution, the big themes we’re going after as a business, and just the annoyances that come with m and a, which is, like, how do titles work, how does organizational structure work, etcetera. Let’s get that right.

Let’s not distract from the success they’ve already having, and let’s set ourselves up really nicely in ’26 for a set of capabilities that are gonna be unrivaled.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: And could you just repeat again, you said earlier the timing of when you anticipate the cross selling opportunity?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. So, you know, we publicly said, give us a year to put these capabilities in place. Now, again, that was from when we started announcing the acquisition. There was an uncertain closing timeline. We think we’re gonna be well within that, and we think we’re gonna have an awesome set of capabilities to go demonstrate in the first quarter of next year.

Yep. So we’re we’re really encouraged by that. But, again, I wanna I wanna emphasize this is a business that you don’t sprint at the synergy opportunity because that come can come at the cost of execution. They’re they’re growing quite nicely as a stand alone business. We wanna make sure they continue to win, and we embed our philosophies and our product capabilities over a reasonable period of time.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Now I found it interesting that you made Jacques Stern, the CEO of Global Blue, the head of Shiftware International. So what best practices do you expect that he’ll bring to the organization?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: He’s an exceptional leader. And unlike the Shift four business, they, were an international business from the start, meaning that their organizational structures and their governance models and their go to market, their support models are all built through the lens of operating in 50 countries around the world. Mhmm. Shafour was in one country for the majority of its history, and, you know, now we’re in over 50 countries, but moving very fast to get there. And so as Jacques and I got to know each other, it became obvious that the Global Blue governance structure would serve us well internationally.

This means that in a country like Germany where we can sell basically every product under the Schiffler umbrella, our restaurant product, our hotel product, our sports entertainment product, unified commerce, awesome retail capabilities with with VAT refunds, etcetera, That that should be under a German country head that gets to evaluate all these opportunities and pursue them based on what they see inside the market. Prior to this acquisition, Shift4 internationally was kinda structured as a series of acquisitions that happened to be in one country or another. So Jacques brings twenty years of executive experience. I mean, he was a CEO of EdenRed prior to Global Blue. He was a c suite member at Accor, the, global hotel franchise.

So positioning us for organizational success, and by the way, to bridge this cross sell, because the cross sell is a new concept to a lot of the Global Blue employees is something that we thought really important.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Yep. Makes sense. Alright. So I was intrigued by the comments you made on the earnings call. Oh, actually, this goes back previously to the Analyst Day about the functionality that’ll be built into the Global Blue terminal.

So can you elaborate on how that’ll work relative to relative to what it looks like today. On the earnings call, you discussed producing a, quote, single all in one terminal that consolidates five or six things. What are those five five or six things? And yeah. So I think you elaborated a currency conversion tax receipt.

Anyway, if you could unpack some of the features and functionality.

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. Well, I’ll I’ll start with just, fundamentally, what is the purchasing experience look like in these environments? This is what we do as a company. We we really obsess over what the purchasing experience looks like and the number of technologies that are required to enable that experience.

And so you obviously have a consumer coming in to buy, you know, what’s typically a luxury retail item, high ticket. That store operator may or may not have an inventory system, and an ISV that they rely on for running the retail operations of their store. They have payment hardware. They have a local bank relationship typically that actually accepts the funds and settles them. If it’s a tax free eligible shopper, that’s another set of technologies you need to bring to the mix, which is you wanna capture, you know, their passport data.

You wanna capture their email address. And you wanna do all this in a seamless way as possible and in a way that doesn’t offend this kind of luxury shopper. The best merchants in the world have been enabled by Global Blue to do this quite seamlessly. It recognizes at the point of payment that you are a foreigner, and it tells the, you know, the sales associate to get your email address and just take as as much friction out of the out of the process as possible. It works phenomenally in the largest retailers in the world and in countries that enable this this tax free process.

However, if you’re not the largest retailer in the world, the process can be more cumbersome. And Global Blue has had a ton of success just eliminating friction from the experience. We wanna take that to another level. We wanna take that local watch boutique in Switzerland and local perfume store in France and give them the kind of, consumer engagement experience that they would have if they were Louis Vuitton in Paris. And we can do that with a single device.

So you’re eliminating one or multiple bank terminals. You’re eliminating a computer they might have to use to enable the TFS journey. You are helping them identify tax free shoppers in a much less awkward way. It can identify simply at the point of payment that this person’s not from this country and therefore eligible for money back and might wanna spend more in the store. So the idea is just enable as much of this on a single device as possible.

And, you know, if it sounds novel, it’s not at all different from what we’ve done with hotels, which is take the multitude of technologies required to make all that software and payments work inside of a large resort and just simplify it down to as few devices and as seamless, an experience as possible. So we know it’s, we know it’s possible. We know we’ve got all the key ingredients to make sure that technology works well. And unlike, previous implementations, there won’t be handshakes from one vendor to another trying to make it all fit well. It’ll all be inside of Shift four, which as you can imagine, the the retailer sees a lot of value and fewer hands to shake.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Mhmm. Ea and Tencent are strategic shareholders in Global Blue. What, if any, opportunity you see to work together with them?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Absolutely. So, we identified them as really important partners to Global Blue as a stand alone business. Now how are they partners? They enable shoppers around the world with a lot of commerce technology. So whether that’s the WeChat application or the Alipay Plus family wallet with tons of different local payment methods that are predominantly used by Asian Asian consumers, enabling those payment methods around the world is a strategic priority of theirs, which is perfect because for Global Blue, attracting shoppers from around the world and giving them a consumer experience that looks like they’re buying something at home was a priority as well.

So to to the point you mentioned, they were existing strategic shareholders of Global Blue. And as we work through the transaction, we wanted to have dialogue with them because, you know, they they’d be important to us as well. And as you can imagine, the Global Blue story makes a ton of sense, and there’s a lot of opportunity for collaboration on a stand alone basis. But now you can add in restaurants, hotels, stadiums all throughout North America and around the world, and it just becomes that much more interesting for all the parties involved. So we will be helping to enable their payment methods.

And in, no matter how complex the payment environment can be, it should feel like you’re paying in the way you would pay at home, for, you know, large swaths of consumers that are traveling around the world.

Operator: And just to clarify, so there’s no ambiguity, they’re shareholders now in shift four. I think you’ve let off by saying no sure. Yep. Yep. No worries.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Thank you for that, Tom. So something you touched on at the Analyst Day was the digitization opportunity in the Global Blue business process. So what I remember you didn’t do this for everybody describing was that the business and business process and workflow can often be paper based. For those of us who’ve experienced it, obviously, you can get a physical receipt. That can be cumbersome.

So how should we be thinking about the digitization opportunity that that, may, accrue?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Absolutely. So, yeah, I I I think if if you’re like me, you might have remembered a a basket of, receipts in your wallet, as you’re checking out on your honeymoon, and trying to figure out what to do with this hypothetical amount of money you can get back. Global has already done a phenomenal job of this. So when I talk about the concept of do no harm, they’ve done an excellent job making the process easier and far more digital where basically your passport and your email address is is enough in certain geographies to help enable that experience.

And, you know, things like instant refunds, things like refunds after you’ve left the country, ways to just make the process more seamless seamless because you are eligible. This is kind of a regulatory construct, but it can be difficult to prove that you’ve left the country, to prove that you’ve left the country with the goods, etcetera. So they’ve done a phenomenal job of making it more digital, embedding a lot of technology in the process, identifying shoppers at the point of sale, that are eligible for this as opposed to hoping that the salesperson figures that out. It can be difficult if you’re guessing on accent or based on the card presented whether someone’s eligible. So, again, they’ve done an awesome job of this, and what we wanna do is take what they’ve done and pull it as far down market as possible so that even the small local retailer can get the benefits of all that digitization.

What it means is it means refunds are easier to occur, more of them happen as a result of that, and consumers are more likely to shop as a result of this somewhat nebulous benefit becoming crystal clear at the point of sale. I am eligible. I’ve gotten this much back. I intend to spend more because people, you know, budget these things on the basis of what they’re willing to spend, and then when they find out they’re eligible for more, they spend more. Again, they’ve done a phenomenal job of this.

This is an embedded opportunity that lives inside the business, and it’s not just about more shopping occurring. It’s about the likelihood of a refund being processed being higher because they’ve made the experience more easy.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: A couple more on Global Blue. We do have a couple that have been starting to come in. But in terms of how we should be thinking about the impact of currency, specifically the stronger euro on Global Blues, that tax refund business?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. So, unfortunately, it’s not as simple as a currency strength or weakness is, you know, a benefit or a tailwind or a or a headwind to Global Blue. I’ll take a couple of examples that we’ve seen. The weakness in the US dollar relative to kind of not just the euro, but a basket of currencies. What that means inside of Global Blue is it means The US shopper is spending less because their dollars don’t go as far when they travel internationally.

And yet there’s a translation benefit from euro denominated revenue being represented in US dollars as we report our financials. So there’s a lot more puts and takes. Currency fluctuation is both a strength and a detriment. Now, fortunately, Global Blue has a really diversified business, and travelers come from all over the world. So we can take shocks like what we’ve seen to the US dollar, and it really hasn’t had a meaningful impact on the expected performance of their business.

It absolutely caused US shoppers to spend a little less, but we got the the, you know, the tailwind benefit and the translation. And then there’s just lots of shoppers from around the world all with different currencies, you know, at the point of origination and the point of spend. So it’s certainly something we’re gonna have to continue to educate on. I think the early days have taught us that there’s a heck of a lot of ballast that can that can withstand one shock or another to a particular currency, but it’s not as simple as currency down as good or bad.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: K. And then going back to what you were saying at the beginning about the Global Blue integration methodology, I mean, it is noticeably a larger transaction for you, more international, and investors are wondering what safeguards you may have implemented to avoid some of the missteps that the industry has, has has suffered in in larger m and a transactions?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. It’s the absolute right area to focus, and that starts with a do no harm mentality, do an awesome business. It also starts with establishing what we think are the appropriate points of continuity for their entire team. So Jacques sticking around and helping us formalize our governance structures outside The United States is something that we see as very valuable. And I’d say, lastly, it’s really important, especially for US companies that are pursuing international acquisitions, to not to not take for granted the relative simplicity of doing business in The United States and how that might not be the case in different countries around the world.

And so we have slightly different approaches to go to market in The UK versus Germany and then a different timeline for places like Spain and Italy and France. Asia is a whole another set. And I think just not taking for granted that you can activate large portions of the world instantly is something that’s really, really prudent because we’ve learned that the thesis holds true, that the simplification we’ve been able to provide in The United States is very valuable to merchants all over the world, they really want it. But the time to execution is different in all these different markets. We will be much faster to execute in Australia, for example, than we could, be in certain parts of Europe.

And I think it’s important that management teams recognize that at the start and at the underwriting of these opportunities as opposed to learning along the way that, you know, x y z country takes you six months to get your legal entity set up. So we’ve learned both in our own prudence and also from making mistakes along the way in terms of the timelines we set for ourselves that it can take a little longer, but none of that’s changed our conviction that is these themes are huge. When you get the right pieces in place, you see thousands of merchants signing up in a month. That’s, like, really, really encouraging, and we have to pursue them because, this simplification will be demanded by merchants over time. And if we can lead the way, all the better.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Alright. So zooming out a bit to the corporate level beyond Global, what do you see as the priorities, Taylor, that the company needs to achieve, you know, at a high level, not just for the remainder of the year, but sort of to achieve the mid cycle guidance?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: There aren’t as many as it might sound like when we talk about everything that’s going on in the company. Our our our road map for success is actually pretty pretty simplistic, and it’s been that way for a very long period of time. That is we’ve got category leading products. We are number one in hotels. We’re number two restaurants today.

We’re number one in sports and entertainment, and we’ve got lots of opportunities in this field of unified commerce that is kinda one of the fastest growing sections of of the economy. Continue to execute against those products, continue to build differentiation, and enable those products in lots more places around the world. So that’s like a just a big theme. Continue to maintain and grow your market leading positions across these large verticals and enable those capabilities to work in lots more geographies because, history repeats itself. And the themes we see to simplify the payment environment in, you know, Europe or certain parts of Asia look exactly like they did in The US fifteen years ago.

So just take what you’re good at and repeat it is is one piece, in as many places as possible. The other is I would say, make sure you have a point of difference. And all too often, you have companies expanding for the sake of expansion as opposed to thinking really carefully about what their point of difference is gonna be. The the example I would give is that we spent half a decade developing what would be our point of difference in retail, and it was not gonna be that we would do it cheaper than our competitors. We needed a a highly differentiated piece of technology that we knew was gonna open the door to conversations with retailers, and Global Blue obviously gave us that.

And then lastly, making sure that you’re focused on prudent capital allocation through this. You know, one thing that I I think investors can can sometimes, you know, underappreciate is that when you’re making these investments around the world, it comes with a completely different set of expectations for the j curve, if you will, on those dollars. And in order to be able to afford to do that thoughtfully and prudently, you need to be obsessing over how your dollar’s spent and the return that you generate on it. So said very simply, keep our products winning, expand internationally, and allocate capital in a prudent way, and don’t compromise on that. And you’ll end up in the right spot, I think.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: About the your stadium presence, can you talk about the barriers to entry that you see and how the competition may be evolving?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. It’s a highly attractive space, so there’s always somebody trying to provide a solution into the the environment. There are virtually none that can provide all of it under one roof the way that we can. And so what does all of it mean?

It means, you know, enabling point of sale for the largest category items inside of the business. It’s typically food and beverage inside of a stadium. It’s also connecting to all of the other, commerce experiences that stadium wants to support, whether that’s something as trivial as parking all the way through to really cool nightclub and restaurant concepts, inside the footprint of the stadium. You need to connect to all of those technologies to deliver a seamless experience for the fans. And then and this is where really where our team, specialized and what made us so interested in the Venue Next acquisition.

It’s deliver a fan first mobile experience that is unparalleled. So, you know, you you the the theme was was pretty consistent that consumers were gonna be bringing in better technology in their pockets into these stadiums than you could afford to to deliver via CapEx. And by the way, they’re gonna refresh it more often too. So capitalize on the technology that your fans are bringing in and deliver an experience through that. So we’ve done all that, and quite frankly, expanded far beyond the revenue of just this inside the stadium into supporting purchases of tickets for teams, etcetera, all to give operators of these really complex environments as close to a single plane of glasses they can get around all of the revenue they collect.

You know, it it’s been a tremendous experience. We, in the early days of the journey, had to kinda educate people that you don’t no longer have to RFP this one piece of technology. We can do all of it, and you can think about all of it under one roof, and the success has been tremendous. Lots more stadiums to go and certainly lots more revenue to capture across our relationships, so, haven’t slowed down. But I wouldn’t say the competitive environment has changed dramatically.

You will always have, you know, a provider writing a check to have their name on the outside of a stadium, and, and that’s just kind of the nature of the industry. But, our growth rates, are are continue, and quite frankly, the volume opportunity and challenges our merchants are asking us to solve continue to grow as well.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. Maybe just a couple more. Can you also, in that same train of thought, discuss the ticketing opportunity?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So what began as us solving the technical problems inside the stadium has evolved over the years into you know, I collect revenue through lots of different pieces of software and lots of different methodologies, and I’d like as few deposits as possible and as easy reconciliation as possible. And so about three years ago, we began integrating to, you know, a broad base of ticketing technology providers. So the Ticketmasters, the Seageeks, the Paculins of the world.

And so that as a fan, you could go buy your ticket to the team in the way you traditionally would. But as an operator, you’re getting your financial reconciliations and your deposits and data around that all in a single ecosystem, which would be Shift four. So, you know, I can I can sort of simplify it down to much in the same way we’ll enable parking software to collect revenue outside the outside the stadium? We’ll enable any ticketing platform to make that revenue collection easier. What’s cool about it is that, oftentimes, there’s, like, three to five x what’s spent inside the stadium being spent on tickets.

So it took what was a a reasonably narrow volume opportunity for us, which is sports and entertainment and theme parks in The United States and what’s spent in the park, and it’s expanded it to all the money spent on the journey, to get to that park, which is, you know, a significant multiplier in both the volume and revenue opportunity.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. So for, the last question, was wondering what Jared’s involvement is with the company at this point. How’s he spending his day to day?

Taylor, Management, Shift4: So, it’s a great question, and, you know, his involvement was kinda forced to evolve, over the first, six months of the year as he was, you know, contemplating a transition into, you know, a a different role, in government. And what’s funny is as as the year progressed, we found ourselves evolving our communications to, hey. We can only talk about the three or four things that really matter inside this business because we only have an hour with each other this week, and we really need to make as best use of that hour as possible. I’m frustrated for the country in the the outcome because I I think he quite frankly, he just deserves to contribute at a higher level than inside of Shift four, but but the byproduct of what’s happened is that he is focused exclusively on those three or four things that we think really matter. And he doesn’t get distracted by the day to day that that can pull you off mission more often than not.

And so he’s really focused on capital allocation. How are we spending our next dollar? You know, he is, as the largest owner of the business, very focused on the, you know, per share return of, of capital to investors and how we are able to generate that for him. SkyTab is a product, and its evolution is something that, you know, he began, you know, many years ago, and he wants to see through. And then international expansion, obviously, as the ability to take all these, capabilities that we’ve done quite successfully in United States and rolled them out around the world.

So it’s really those three categories. And in terms of involvement, you know, it it depends a little bit on on mutual schedules, but it’s usually, you know, several conversations a week and then, you know, meetings on a on a monthly or quarterly basis around big themes where we’re getting a larger group together to talk with them and get some advice.

Jamie, Host, Bloomberg: Okay. Well, we covered a lot of ground. Taylor, Tom, we are very grateful for your participation, your expertise. You explained the company industry strategy extremely well. And, and, again, thank you for your participation and and insights and leadership, expressed at our conference.

Taylor, Management, Shift4: Thanks so much for having us.

Operator: Thanks, Jamie. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks, Tyler.

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