Shift4 at Wolfe Fintech Forum: Strategic Expansion and Growth Plans

On Wednesday, 12 March 2025, Shift4 Payments Inc (NYSE: FOUR) participated in the Wolfe Fintech Forum, where the company outlined its strategic plans and financial guidance. The discussion centered on the acquisition of Global Blue, international expansion, and future growth prospects. While the company showed confidence in its growth trajectory, challenges in the restaurant sector were noted.

Key Takeaways

• Shift4 announced the acquisition of Global Blue for $2.5 billion, aiming to enhance international reach and cross-selling opportunities.
• Projected mid-to-high 20% volume growth and mid-twenties revenue growth for 2025, supported by a strong backlog and new deals.
• The company emphasized its focus on volume growth rather than same-store sales.
• Shift4 is rapidly expanding internationally, targeting 30+ countries within 18 months.
• The transition of Taylor into the CEO role is expected to continue the strategic direction with insights from the previous CEO.

Financial Results

• 2025 Guidance:

- Volume growth: Mid-to-high 20%

- Revenue growth: Mid-twenties percentage

- Organic growth: Over 20%

- Backlog: Increased in Q4 from Q3’s $33 billion

- Q1 EBITDA Margin: Expected at 45%

• Medium-Term Outlook:

- Various growth scenarios, including a conservative "sit on our hands" case

- Targeting a $1 billion free cash flow run rate by 2027

Operational Updates

• Vertical Performance:

- Restaurants: Slight 1% decrease in same-store sales

- Hotels: Continued growth

- Retail: Mixed results

- SkyTab: Gaining traction in complex table service restaurants

• International Expansion:

- Ambitious growth into 30+ countries within 18 months

• Global Blue Acquisition:

- Expected synergies with a conservative revenue target of $80 million

Future Outlook

• Growth Drivers:

- Strong backlog and new sales agreements

- E-commerce and US sales opportunities via Global Blue merchants

• Margin Expansion:

- Focus on synergizing acquisitions and improving service models, particularly in stadiums

Q&A Highlights

• Ticketing Opportunity:

- Ticket sales could be 2-5 times in-venue sales, with full-year contributions expected from the Appetize acquisition

• Jared Isaacman’s Role:

- Will remain a significant shareholder with a 25% stake, continuing to provide business insights

For further details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript of the conference call.

Full transcript - Wolfe Fintech Forum:

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Alright. Why don’t we start off?

And really happy to have the team from Shift4 with us. Many of you may be familiar with the story, but it’s a name we’ve covered very closely really since the IPO, which came out at a rocky time during the pandemic, but has has really proven itself and how how amazing it can be during good good and bad times, frankly, and, come out stronger on the other side of that, but really continue to add through both organic and a lot of inorganic really cool deals. So anyway, guys, thank you for so much for being here. We have, Taylor, who’s the president of the company and incoming CEO. We have Nancy, the CFO of the company.

So thank you guys both for being here with us.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Thank you.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Look, you just you guys just had an amazing Investor Day out in Vegas. A lot of interesting goals that were set, told the story. But I think just for purposes of anyone in this room that may be a little less familiar with it, maybe a recap of what the top takeaways you wanna make sure investors understand about what Shift4 is, what the goals are going forward would be a good place to start.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So, it was a super fortuitous time to be having an Investor Day, not just the expiration of our medium term guidance that we set in November of twenty one, but also a transition from a twenty six year founder CEO, who’s leaving the business to go serve the people in government. So the right time to kind of set what does the next few years ahead look like and an incredibly demanding time for us as a management team because our our most demanding shareholder is, Jared, our founder. So giving him confidence that he could step away from the business and, you know, not have the control he’s historically had and yet that we’ve got a great story to tell for the next, you know, several years ahead was something that was critical, in crafting the entire day.

Now what did we tell folks? We spent a little bit of time on each of our core verticals. So whether it’s restaurants, hotels, stadiums, we’ve got awesome products in each. Our stadium product is, totally unrivaled. We’re in, you know, 75 plus percent of all of the professional stadiums in every league in The United States, and yet we’re constantly winning more revenue streams from these teams and things like ticketing.

So lots of revenue growth across that business. And I highlight it because I think we were in one stadium at our investor day back in November of twenty one, which is where we hosted our investor day at the time. So from one to nearly all in a in a in a three year period was, was something that, was a proof point, I think, for us and a really awesome product that has, by the way, applicability all over the world and also in things like theme parks and a wider variety of kind of the entertainment side of sports and entertainment. In hotels, again, an industry leading product where we are number one, demonstrated not just by the large portion of hotels to roughly 40% that we support in The United States today, but also just a lot of awesome wins, whether that’s Wynn, the casino resort in Las Vegas. So I think the complexities, of winning a customer like that are pretty, are pretty easy to visualize.

And things like Alterra Mountain Resorts, which is, you know, a few dozen ski resorts across the country, but also the Icon Pass, which is, like, this really big billion dollar plus, ecommerce opportunity. And being able to serve the entirety of a merchant like that, I think demonstrates our capabilities. We wanted to highlight that. We hosted it at Fontainebleau in Las Vegas, which is, again, another good example. And then in the restaurant vertical and where we focus on is generally table service, an admitted second place in that vertical, but not, not through or not in any ways to diminish our own growth and our own capabilities and walk through kind of the product pipeline there and also demonstrate kind of the growth avenues, you know, not just for the product, but also for, you know, for for that vertical around the world.

So we had, representatives from TAO and Shoney’s and some of our other restaurant customers there talking to investors about what they love about the products and what they’re adopting and and how we’re growing with them. All of those were kind of to underlie or to give, a sense for our capabilities inside of these verticals, but international expansion is an opportunity irrespective of any of the verticals. And we had no capabilities internationally even just eighteen months ago, and now we’re in 30 plus countries around the world. I think that surprised people. Proving that out and showing how it works was important to us.

If you look at our the restaurant vertical specifically, I think 7% of our submitted applications from merchants were international in November, so just a few months ago. In January, it was 32 to give you a sense for kind of the international growth behind the business. I think, just in the nature of how investor engagement works, we’ve traditionally shielded our team from rooms like this because it can be a distraction from their day jobs. We didn’t wanna do that in the case of this investor day. So, I think, Jared, Nancy, myself did less of the talking, and you got to meet the entire team to show kind of how we execute against this.

And, and I think they showed really well in that regard. And then lastly, because we are Shift4, we are boldly forward. We announced the biggest transaction in our history from an M and A perspective, which is a $2,500,000,000 acquisition of Global Blue. So while it looks somewhat sudden in the announcement, the reality is it was a five plus year journey we’ve been on pursuing these capabilities and in dialogue with with that business, and it finally became the right time. And so we’ve got kind of yet another leg of growth in a bunch of different geographies and and and a new vertical to go pursue.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Let’s let’s just start there. I mean, again, your biggest deal that you’ve ever announced, dollars 2,500,000,000.0, Global Blue. Maybe just to help us understand a little more around the strategy and rationale and what it’s gonna do for you guys going forward.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So part of it, the the strategy and rationale come from conviction, which is that we’ve spent, five plus years thinking about it’s taking what’s made us successful in The United States and bringing that all over the world. And as we’ve learned about kind of these local markets, the the commerce experience is fundamentally different in a lot of markets. The capabilities you need to deliver are different.

What I mean by that is payment processing exists in many countries around the world, but merchants also need things like dynamic currency conversion. They also need things like processing of that tax refund. If you are a luxury goods retailer in Europe, this is a critical way you attract customers is if you’re traveling abroad, you can actually get a refund, to a meaningful portion of what you spent in the form of a VAT tax refund, and and Global Blue processes that. And they’re one of only two in the world that do it, and they own 80% market share. So we’ve kind of studied the commerce experience around the world diligently and constantly, and we look at capabilities that are pretty irreplaceable.

And Global Blue brought us two of those. And the synergies are very natural. We offer payment processing across the geographies that Global Blue does that. Both of these are essential. They’re not optional to the customers that they serve.

And we support 40% of the hotels in The United States have never offered dynamic currency conversion, and yet they’re one of three providers that does that. So, take kind of really natural synergies against a business that just announced 20% year over year growth, in and of itself, and you can sort of get a sense as to why we’re so excited about it.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, in terms of what you’re incorporating in your outlook, when you think about incorporating Global Blue into it, just what synergies what are you actually thinking about in terms of its contribution to the story?

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So, the transaction requires, I would say, an above average level of conservatism and prudism just, on the nature of the fact that it’s our largest

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Yep.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: And it’s during a time of a CEO transition. So when we set expectations on this, it is a different set of expectations than we would traditionally apply. I think that’s for all the right reasons. But what we, what we did in presenting this transaction to to our board was to haircut the growth of their business. Luxury market growth, which is a a big driver of what they’ve done, we simply removed it from the forecast, and, we replaced it with this idea that we can cross sell their customers, we can deliver their products into our customers, And through that, basically replace the growth they were doing on a stand alone basis.

So if it if it sounds unconventional, it’s simply bet less on their future and bet more on the things that we know we can do in conjunction with them. The reality of how this traditionally plays out is both these things happen at the same time, and that’s why I think there’s embedded conservatism in how we think about it. But $80.80 rough million of revenue synergies, in simply delivering our products to their customers and their products to our customers in a very modest way. I mean, we we we think about, you know, penetrating less than 5% of their enterprise customers. Volleywise.

Yes, to come to, to come to conclusions like that, and, you know, a little bit more, but but also modest of their SMB customers, etcetera. So in many ways, it’s the exact shift for playbook of we have services that our customers are already buying today from other vendors. Right. And they have services our customers need. And combining these things, can account for a really night or can, result in a really nice business even if you take an above average level of conservatism to what they’ve done historically by themselves.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: So I wanna put that in perspective. You’re guiding this year to a couple of hundred billion dollars of end to end volume without Global Blue. Right? And you’re sit you’re looking at a addressable opportunity of Global Blue’s businesses or its customers that have $500,000,000,000 of volume through them, assuming a small percentage of that converts over the next few years, but pretty small, I think 5% of enterprises you said, right, and some subset of the SMB side. So you’re really only incorporating a little of that and you’re incorporating basically dynamic currency conversion being brought over to your hotels, which is kind of a no brain.

Like, you’re I was actually surprised your hotels don’t have it today.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yep.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: So that’s something that most hotels should wanna have that’s incremental, just the ability for, you know, a user to check out and pay in their home currency anywhere they go, which I think is all you’re including. So that’s that’s just to put it in perspective, the magnitude of conservatism in there.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Well, I think the the other thing, because I can always hear in the back of my head, my new activist shareholder, Jared, yelling yelling at me about what what we haven’t described as the the total extent of the opportunity. The reality is that doesn’t encompass any e commerce whatsoever. That’s simply in store sales that, occur at these merchants. And we now have 30 plus countries of e commerce capabilities, and we serve, some phenomenal customers that are, like, the biggest and most demanding in the world through ecommerce. So we try kinda not to emphasize these areas where we’re building out and investing and and serving kind of marquee customers in a product development capacity.

But, yes, there is an immense e commerce opportunity. By the way, there’s an immense US sales opportunity across these merchants, because many of them are global in nature. So there’s certainly volume well beyond that, but that’s the in store volume against the population they serve today.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay. That’s helpful. And then, Nancy, why don’t we shift to you and just touch on guidance for a moment? I mean, first, if you wanna recap how the quarter turned out that you just reported fourth quarter. But more importantly, when we think about 25 guidance, just touch a little more on what’s underpinning your assumptions and expectations.

I mean, you’re calling for mid to high 20% volume growth at the midpoint, mid twenties in terms of percentage revenue growth, and I think 20% organic. Mhmm. But you exited the year at, what, almost 28%, if I remember correctly, organic growth. Right? So overall, strong growth rates regardless.

But if you could just kind of, you know, reconcile the exit versus the year ahead of us.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Sure. Let me tighten that a little bit. So last year, we reported 26%, organic growth for the year. We put into the guide 20% plus and getting a lot of questions about this. So trying to emphasize the plus, and and kinda talk about the math underneath that.

And and so first first, let me talk about the guide philosophy overall. You know, Taylor Taylor’s been talking about it all day. And and I think the word I’ve been using is just confidence. Right? Like, there’s a lot of confidence in this guide.

We wanna reiterate that we have a ton of visibility always to the year ahead. Right? The bulk of our volume is going to come from deals that haven’t annualized that we actually business we signed in ’24 that will annualize into ’25. It will come from the backlog that we’ve talked about, which is sales we’ve signed but have not yet installed or had their first transaction. And then it will come from obviously new signed sales, which will come both just from normal kind of new production but also from our embedded funnel of over a trillion now, when you when you add in Global Blue.

So even before Global Blue, like, just a really high confidence in kind of that 45,000,000,000 that we’ve built in as incremental volume. Specifically on the 20% plus, right, when we when we think about organic, first of all, we’re we’re growing over a bigger base. Right? So the organic dollar growth is not slowing down, and and again, very, very high confidence in the 20% plus. The the way we think about that organic is you’ve got a few things that always year to year change is you’ve got now new acquisitions like Fonaro and Appetize that are now part of our organic.

Right? They’ve been with us more than twelve months. They weren’t in last year’s 26% plus. And some of those models were still blowing up. So we’ll always be conservative about how quickly we can convert those into our new products and services versus how how the impact of turning off their existing products, especially as we kind of go further into their life cycle with us, we get less tolerant by keeping in old revenue streams.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Right.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: So there’s, you know, always moving pieces. As it relates to q ’1 specifically, getting a lot of questions about that today and seasonality. I think the most important thing to remember is that q one is a low seasonality mix for us just based on when you think about the 60 basis points of average spread that we talked about. That’s just a mix by vertical and size. And from restaurants in particular, which are kind of on the higher side of from a spread perspective, q one is a very low seasonal year for us.

So we’re expecting about if we look historically, q one, compared to the total year, has been about 19% to 21% of our total achieved gross revenue less network fees for the year, and we expect to be in that range again for this year. And we’ve also given guidance about 45% EBITDA margin expectation for q one. And when you think about that, our margins will go up throughout the year really because of two things. One is the mix of seasonality. So obviously, if we have higher spreads in a given quarter, that flows through for higher quarters.

We always talk about the summer being high seasonal for hospitality and restaurants, but also because we continue to synergize the acquisitions that we’ve done over the last twelve to eighteen months. So we’ve got really good visibility. I think last year, we exited the year saying we still had about a 300 basis point drag in margins. We know exactly where that’s coming from. And so we’ll be achieving that throughout the year.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay. I mean, from a volume standpoint, and just to reiterate the conviction in growth because, I mean, again, these growth rates are certainly not if if the market was 100% on board with 20%, you know, it would be, I think, a much higher multiple. And so when we think about the, the conviction around it and you annualize Q4 volume and you think of your backlog, which you didn’t actually just sort of set the record straight. Your backlog was, I think, it was $33,000,000,000 going out of third quarter. Where are we now in the backlog?

And if you annualized Q4 volume, you’d already be almost at the low end of your volume without incremental.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Yeah. So what we’ve said, and then Taylor can certainly add on here, is our our backlog in q four is larger than it was in q three, and that’s with about 5,000,000,000 of volume coming into the quarter as being achieved.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. And in terms of our backlog, it it generally represents our largest, opportunities that have signed, which naturally come with complexity in how they’re activated and and installed. Something like Alterra is a is a long process. Right? It’s dozens of different hotels.

It’s, you know, the icon pass, which is a phenomenal ecommerce opportunity. But if it’s not perfect by the time the season starts, you’re gonna wait until next year to get it done correctly. So I think it applies some conservatism, you know, to that backlog, not in believability that it will come through, but just when it comes through.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay. And then just touching on the medium term outlook, which maybe both of you can touch on this, but the guide you gave was really three different growth scenarios with the building blocks of a sit on your hands kind of scenario where you’re not adding a bunch of new things. Maybe just help us understand how you build up to the high teens that revenue growth there on that sit in the hands experience versus upside in the two other scenarios you talked about, which which obviously include both m and a and just, you know, adding a lot more business.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. I’ll talk I’ll talk about the philosophy behind it, and then Nancy can talk about kind of the the numbers that roll into each case. The sit on our hands case was because investors asked. It’s not because that’s what we do. We don’t sit on our hands.

But to demonstrate what we think the business could do against our existing acquired base of customers and cross sell, our existing wins in the verticals that we’re serving. That is the sit on our hands case. Now what it ignores is it ignores the capital reinvestment that we’ve traditionally done with our free cash flow, and I would kind of compel investors to look back at our Investor Day, we’ve kind of demonstrated that whether we invest in R and D, whether we buy back our shares or whether we buy companies, every single one of those dollars has resulted in a 16% free cash flow yield. And the free cash flow growth in the business is quite nice. So sit on our hands case is quite, is is somewhat academic or theoretical.

Global Blue is real, so we wanted to demonstrate the impact of what the Global Blue business will be over the next few years. The most likely case is simply a modest reinvestment of that capital at rates that, or at yields that we would traditionally, see. I think, you know, the M and A opportunity for those that have been skeptical of it, I think we’ve proven an ability to find things that others don’t, and synergize them in incredibly interesting ways. And, Global Blue puts us in 50 new countries in new verticals with new capabilities. I don’t think that slows down.

You know, we’ll be modest of our leverage ratios in the face of, you know, any economic uncertainty, and, you know, a large transaction that we’re embarking on here. But, you know, that most likely case is kind of defined that way for a reason.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Yeah. I think the only thing I would add to that is, is it’s important to remember just how what the building blocks are and our visibility into those building blocks. Because in that sit on your hands case is obviously the assumptions we have around all the acquisitions that we’ve done and how they’ll play out. So both blowing up kind of the old models and our success in converting those into our into our existing, you know, end to end model. And, I would say it’s it’s it’s not really, it’s pretty modest, I guess, in terms of what you have to believe because we didn’t put in, I guess, what we see as kind of expanding margins, expanding free cash flow.

It really is a sit on your hands case without reinvestment, which is just run rate.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: That’s great to hear. Guys, you have pretty good visibility on some really important verticals. So I want to ask about trends for a moment. I know that was a little bit on the spot for now, but it’s important given all the headlines we’re seeing in the macro. So, you know, between hotels you look at and restaurants and obviously stadiums and now unified commerce, just maybe give us a sense of what you’re seeing out there because the headlines could be a little scary at the moment with, you know, pending consumer confidence questions and tariffs.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. So I would say the trends we’ve seen in the recent term are very consistent with what we’ve seen for the past year. We are a pretty cautious and risk averse organization, and we sort of try to predict where we think, payment can come into our merchant base. And we’ve generally gotten it wrong. So what I mean by this is, restaurants have been kind of modest, down 1% year over year on same store sales, through our analysis.

Recently, consistently throughout the year, it might go up or down a point.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: You’re saying all the way until from last year

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: through now? From last year through now. You know, in the face of, I don’t know, a hundred dollar steaks and $25 cocktails, it’s not the end of the world, and it’s been quite consistent. What it does demonstrate is a notable but modest decrease in spend on a year over year basis that’s been very consistent throughout the past year. We would have predicted hotels had more same store sales pressure, simply because if you follow kind of the evolution of the pandemic, you had kind of people starting to travel in, in ’twenty two to ’twenty three, and really those hotels couldn’t even staff to the occupancy levels that they wanted to.

And ’twenty three was kind of the first summer where hotels were staffed appropriately and and travel was high. That continued through this year. So while it wasn’t really meaningful same store sales growth, there was same store sales growth in the hotel vertical that’s kind of played through. Retail’s been mixed, and that’s more of a function of it being a smaller and chunkier sort of vertical for us, but no sort of duress of consequence, really just steady. And that steadiness has has continued.

Valentine’s Day, our busiest day ever. It will be until, Mother’s Day because because guys don’t like to cook, for some reason. But That’s Toronto. We’re seeing kind of a a very typical, a very typical experience in our same store merchant base. It certainly evolved with things like, heavier q four for us now that we’re in more stadiums, etcetera.

But on a on a merchant basis, it’s been quite, I don’t know, boring.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Yeah. Very stable.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay. So even with that, basically, it sounds like barely low single digit same store sales growth rates. I mean, your guys’ organic growth rates have been over well over 20%.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: So it’s grown

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: manufactured growth.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: It’s probably worth just kind of concluding what Taylor said to say. We’ve never relied on same store sales. Right? Like that, you know, we’ve been when when Taylor says we’ve been conservative, that’s the way of saying that’s not really a driver that we put into the growth model for some time.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Let’s let’s look a little more into the verticals now. I mean, again, we we were on a panel earlier about point of sale differentiation, and you are diversifying a little more into things like unified commerce, but you still have your heart being, you know, founded or you’re grounded in restaurants and hotels and stadiums, some some real differentiation on a vertical basis. So starting with restaurants, I mean, SkyTab was a big initiative going back over a year ago now, right? How has that been progressing for you? Talk a little bit about your progress and just general positioning in the restaurant category.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yes, sure. I would say it’s gone well. This is an area where you’ll never hear us being content with our progress. Keep in mind, our vantage point into restaurants is very unique vis a vis anyone else that serves the space. And what I mean by that is, we focus largely on table service restaurants.

I think investors are done a disservice when people talk about this massive restaurant TAM, and yet you never see the same solution in a coffee shop that you see in a fine dining institution or in a fast food restaurant versus a table service bar and grill. So let’s talk about table service restaurants as the market we endeavor to serve. Our positioning is informed by having acquired six different brands in the vertical, and they all serve a wide variety of table service restaurants built to brands inside of the business. And then also the largest payment processor for Micros, which has been a dominant player in the restaurant vertical for many, many years. So all of this data informs kind of the product we want to build for the future, which is Skytap.

And I would say where we endeavor to skew, and to serve is the big, complex table service, multi location and or really high volume single location, where the market is not well served by a single product today. We tried to demonstrate this by at our Investor Day, where TAO, who’s historically been using micros, has been collaborating with us on the next product for them to adopt into the future. That’s the market we endeavor to serve, I would say, and it’s going quite well. Outside of that, you’ve got the rest of the world, which looks like The US did twenty years ago. And what I mean by that is there’s a maybe a piece of software, some third party hardware it’s running on, and a bank terminal off to the side.

So delivering a, delivering a consolidated vertically integrated product to the rest of the world has been a significant priority for us. We tried to illustrate this in our investor day to say, in November, ’7 percent of the restaurants signing up for Shift4 came from outside The US. And in January, ’2 months later, 32% of the restaurants joining us came from outside The US as just a way to emphasize the the very, very small green shoots of the international opportunity. Yeah.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: I mean, hotels is another area that I think international opportunity for. But I mean, that’s been you guys are the you’re the largest payments engine for hotels. I think you’re over 50% of the strip in Vegas as an example. Right? But if we think about, you know, what you’re doing that’s allowing that to continue to grow, the differentiation that allows that to basically replicate what you did in The US now that you have so many footprints internationally.

Is that an opportunity or gateway conversion still an opportunity? Where do you see that?

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. It’s it’s it’s a very meaningful opportunity. And so to contrast the the large complex restaurant, let’s take that hypothetical tau, and now let’s put it inside of a Vegas resort. And suddenly, the payments integrations you need to support are no longer just the restaurant. It’s the front desk.

It’s the online bookings. It’s the lobby bar. It’s the spa. You know, out to 70 plus different pieces of software across hundreds of revenue centers. That’s what our platform supports today.

And, what’s amazing about our position in the vertical is when a new software company comes up and they wanna sell into these great hotels, they call Shift4 and they integrate. And so we’re not seeking out new integrations to figure out how to grow on behalf of our customers. The best software companies trying to serve the vertical are calling us and making our library of of supported, platforms that much more robust every single month. What’s really fascinating to us and why we started this international journey over five years ago is that all of this software is installed all over the world. So the Hilton in Times Square using the same, point in sale or same property management system as the Hilton in Madrid.

And yet what often do we see in Madrid? We see a bank terminal that’s not at all connected, off to the side because that merchant needs local settlement capabilities so they can get local funds into their local bank account. That’s what we’re endeavoring to solve and what we’ve been endeavoring to solve for the past eighteen months is what brought us from The US with payment capabilities into 30 plus countries around the world, again, in just eighteen months, not because we don’t have the merchants already to serve and the software integrations, but those local settlement capabilities are really important. And what we’ve been kind of, what’s enhanced our conviction is just just the the bare bones announcement of capabilities has compelled hundreds of hotels outside The US to embrace the opportunity. And that’s where you get conviction to actually invest more and grow it faster.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: That’s great to hear. Let’s just, from a vertical standpoint, we’ll kind of wrap it up with a catchall on unified commerce, which you’ve had some success with your large strategic customer, obviously, getting into new markets already. But, you know, when you think of your capability and differentiation to go head to head with other big providers of e com globally or unified commerce globally, you have a lot of confidence in doing so. And I think Global Blue now also gives you an intro to even more customers that can be in that category. So just explain to us the opportunity to go head to head with some others and why this why why you have a right to win in that area.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So, anytime there’s kind of one dominant player in a really interesting segment of the market, we get excited about it. I think it’s very easy to differentiate ourselves vis a vis one competitor no matter how great they are. The market values selection and choice and opportunity.

And clearly, our customer base was compelling us to be outside The US. Right? We serve verticals that exist all over the world, and the problems we’ve solved in The United States still exist all over the world. So, it it it sort of was was shouting at us that we need to invest in these capabilities around the world. What we don’t like to do is we don’t like to spend money hoping there’s a customer on the other side of it.

We like to spend it with high conviction that we know who the customer is gonna be and these aren’t wasted dollars even in the early stages of product development. So, for those that are newer to the story, I’d I’d I’d compel you to go back and look at our November 21 Investor Day where we had really ambitious plans to expand our capabilities across a variety of of merchant categories, largely within e commerce. We talked about not for profit. We talked about gaming. We talked about enabling that large strategic customer all over the world.

And we had none of those capabilities, but we had signed commitments from huge demanding customers that they would work with us in pursuit of these capabilities. And that’s why, on the backs of a really demanding customer, you can profitably add 30 plus countries over 18, and, and know that when you’re in these countries, there’s going to be a lot more opportunity for what we’ve done for twenty five plus years, hotels, stadiums, restaurants. And now retail will be undoubtedly a large portion of the story simply because we’ve got, like, really mission critical products in the face of global blue.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Just to wrap it up on the financial side, Nancy, I mean, I know you guided towards margins being flattish, basically stable year over year, which is effectively good operating leverage on the high growth rate, partially offset by integrations and deals and coming in some of them coming in and investment in them. Right? When we think about your free cash targets, you talked about 50% conversion, which is a bit of a step down. So maybe just remind us why that’s happening. And then your conviction, and I think you said a billion dollars of free cash run rate exiting ’27.

It’s a big number. So just talk us through the

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Great. You’re giving me an opportunity to mention something else I want to make sure everyone’s clear on. When you think about what we presented at Investor Day, it really was if everything was status quo taking our free cash flow conversion to north of 60%. I want to just remind everyone that bringing that down to basically kind of that 50% plus range is interest and taxes, right? It seems like the financing we did last year $1,100,000,000 of notes and the interest rate associated with that will obviously impact adjusted free cash flow and that first semi annual payment is going to hit Q1.

So that was a little commercial for me to remind everybody

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: free cash.

Nancy, CFO, Shift4: Yeah, reminding everybody about the Q1 impact of that. But when we think of actually the trajectory and how do we get to a billion, it’s really what we’ve been talking about for some time. Our service model is just improving. Our operating leverage with really pretty much every market that we’re serving right now is an improved service model. And I always go back to because it’s going to be even more relevant now with with the Global Blue.

If you think about stadiums as the best example, if we bring in something like ticketing into a stadium where we’re already in the stadium doing F and B, but we’re not doing parking or the suites or the ticketing, there’s no incremental expense to service that customer. So when we think about where ShiftForce started, especially back to the IPO, small, mid sized restaurants that would call us to change the price of a cheeseburger on their menu, the model as we move to Skytap and every one of the commercial markets that Taylor just talked about is a more efficient economic flow through all the way down to not only even a margin but then to free cash flow. So when we think about the building blocks to the billion, which kind of takes into all three layers of the three year midterm guide that we put out, the status quo, you know, sit on our hands, plus GB, plus a modest $200,000,000 of cash flow reinvestment into the business. This is just run rate, right? You don’t have to believe that margins could expand far greater or convert to free cash flow far greater than what we’re already doing today in the 60% plus trajectory.

It really is just a run out. And we’ve been doing we’ve been talking modestly about the investments we’re making in the business, right? One CRM, moving our total infrastructure with AI to cloud based tools, everything is driving efficiency in the way that we serve as a customer. So when we layer all these things on top of each other, you know, the outcome is is the billion. And we just thought that was really important to kinda underline everything that we’re doing.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Got it. I’m gonna open it up to the quiet to the audience in one minute. Last last question, Taylor, as you’re transitioning into the role of CEO now and Jared’s moving to to NASA and the government, you know, just your thoughts, number one, on the the strategy, anything different you see in terms of way to way to operate the business? And just just to hit on a point that’s probably a little bit of an elephant in the room, it’s just still Jared’s stock. He still owns, what, about a third, twenty five percent of the company or so.

And so just remind us his, you know, his, his his view of what he’s planning on doing, at least depending on what the government

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yeah. Sure. So, I’ll I’ll preface everything with, that there is a a an ethics review of all of Jared’s holdings where they analyze, what is permissible, not permissible, he needs to get rid of, etcetera. I can’t comment on kind of the the the timeline of that review, but I can give you what our expectations are, which are that, he’ll continue to hold Shift4. He stated that that’s something that he is personally important to him.

We also don’t view, it as as controversial in any way. So we anticipate him to continue to hold the 25% of the business that he holds today. This is why I’ve been joking that he’s, like, no longer my boss, but he is my activist shareholder. He is not gonna be silent about his opinions on whether we’re doing a great job or, or need to do better. And, generally, he’s always said we can do better.

So I I think that will continue long into the future. There’s no, prohibitions from me giving him perspective on what’s going on in the business, quite frankly, giving him data on what’s going on in the business and getting his perspectives back if he’s not, you know, actively engaged in in selling the stocks. So, I expect to get a ton of insight from him, in the the years ahead. And we don’t anticipate he’s going to be, he’s going to be a fore seller of the stock in any way.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Right. I mean, maybe just tax, you know, covering tax law.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Oh, yeah. I I can’t comment on on his, on his

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: On his liquidity needs over time. But I can say that he, he wants to make No. He has every opportunity, and and quite frankly, right after twenty six years of running the business to take a step back both economically and, emotionally. And he’s chosen that he wants to he wants to stay older. Good.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Okay. That’s great to hear. Questions, guys? In the context of the 75% market share in the stadium space, can you talk about the opportunity remaining on the ticketing side and how we can see that play out?

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Yes, sure. So ticketing is a small fraction of that base of customers today. This will also be the first year that even for that small fraction, we’re experiencing a full year worth of ticket sales. If you recall, the Appetize transaction in Q4 of twenty twenty three really represented an ability to convert a ton of stadiums on a software basis over and opened up a ticketing opportunity. But you need a full year worth to get a full year worth of the volume.

So both the embedded ticketing wins that we’ve announced have a year to seasonalize, which is great. And then there’s still lots more to be had across that base. And quite frankly, I think that’s important because ticketing sales can represent between two and five times what sales actually occur inside the venue. So to take what’s sometimes viewed as a niche vertical and capture a heck of a lot more volume than the in venue commerce has been our specialty. It’s why when you think about Global Blue and you think about just what sales occur inside of a store, your imagination should go to all the sales that don’t occur inside of the store.

We’re pretty good at that. So there’s plenty more to go in that regard.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: Very good, guys. Thank you so much for joining us. Guys, give us a sort of applause, please.

Taylor, President and Incoming CEO, Shift4: Thank you.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst/Interviewer: And then next up, we have Euronet

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