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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Global Payments Inc. (GPN) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-10-07): Designation Watch · Gem Score -5 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 2 · Value -9 · Sentiment -62 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $185.33 vs $92.81 at analysis
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profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
price-history,income-trend,key-metrics,financials(statement tables),insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.
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raw inputs are public-company filings and market data (via licensed data feeds);
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Global Payments Inc.
GPN NYSEGlobal Payments Inc. is a payment technology and software company that helps businesses, financial institutions, and other organizations process and manage electronic transactions. Global Payments Inc. provides solutions for card, check, digital, and contactless payments across in-store, online, and mobile channels. Its offerings include payment processing, point-of-sale systems, authorization, settlement, funding, security, dispute management, and reporting tools, along with software designed to support day-to-day business operations. The company serves merchants of different sizes and operates across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. Global Payments Inc. also provides issuer-focused solutions that support the broader payments ecosystem, making it an important infrastructure provider in modern commerce.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 5.78
Total Equity: $23.78B
Shares: 242,008,000
Total Debt: $21.46B
Cash: $8.34B
EBITDA: $2.98B
Total Debt: $21.46B
Cash: $8.34B
Revenue: $7.71B
Revenue: $7.71B
Revenue: $7.71B
Total Equity: $23.78B
Tax Rate: 20.0%
Equity: $23.78B
Total Debt: $21.46B
Cash: $8.34B
Current Liabilities: $7.46B
Long-Term Debt: $19.54B
Total Debt: $21.46B
Total Equity: $23.78B
Shares: 242,008,000
Shares: 242,008,000
CapEx: -$617.77M
Shares: 242,008,000
Stock Price: $92.81
Net Income: $1.40B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Sep 3, 2026 1:12am (34d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $8.5B | $9.0B | $9.7B | $10.1B | $7.7B |
| Cost of Revenue | $3.8B | $3.8B | $3.7B | $3.8B | $2.1B |
| Gross Profit | $4.8B | $5.2B | $5.9B | $6.3B | $5.6B |
| Operating Expenses | $3.4B | $4.6B | $4.2B | $4.0B | $3.8B |
| Operating Income | $1.4B | $640.2M | $1.7B | $2.3B | $1.8B |
| Net Income | $965.5M | $111.5M | $986.2M | $1.6B | $1.4B |
| EBITDA | $3.1B | $2.3B | $3.5B | $4.2B | $3.0B |
| EPS | $3.30 | $0.41 | $3.78 | $6.18 | $5.79 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $3.29 | $0.40 | $3.77 | $6.16 | $5.78 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Sep 3, 2026 1:00am (34d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $2.0B | $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.5B | $8.3B |
| Total Current Assets | $4.7B | $6.3B | $8.1B | $6.0B | $12.6B |
| Total Assets | $45.3B | $44.8B | $50.6B | $46.9B | $53.3B |
| Current Liabilities | $4.5B | $6.9B | $8.1B | $6.3B | $7.5B |
| Long-Term Debt | $11.4B | $12.3B | $15.7B | $15.2B | $19.5B |
| Total Liabilities | $19.4B | $22.3B | $26.8B | $23.9B | $29.6B |
| Total Equity | $25.9B | $22.5B | $23.8B | $23.0B | $23.8B |
| Retained Earnings | $3.0B | $2.7B | $3.5B | $4.8B | $5.9B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Sep 3, 2026 1:23am (34d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $2.8B | $2.2B | $2.2B | $3.5B | $2.7B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$493.2M | -$615.7M | -$658.1M | -$674.9M | -$617.8M |
| Free Cash Flow | $2.3B | $1.6B | $1.6B | $2.9B | $2.0B |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$1.8B | -$65.7M | -$4.2B | -$487.1M | -$352.1M |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | $2.2B | $1.9B | $1.2B | $1.3B | $5.1B |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Stock Buybacks | -$2.5B | -$2.9B | -$418.3M | -$1.6B | -$1.2B |
| Net Change in Cash | $33.3M | $92.6M | $41.3M | $479.1M | $6.4B |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Sep 3, 2026 1:12am (34d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +5.3% | +7.6% | +4.7% | -23.7% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +9.4% | +14.0% | +7.1% | -11.9% |
| Operating Income Growth | -52.9% | +168.1% | +36.0% | -24.8% |
| Net Income Growth | -88.5% | +784.6% | +59.2% | -10.8% |
| EBITDA Growth | -24.5% | +51.7% | +20.1% | -28.9% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 31, 2026 10:36am (37d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-12 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2026-03-09 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2025-12-12 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2025-09-12 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2025-06-13 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2025-03-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2024-12-13 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2024-09-13 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2024-06-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2024-03-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2023-12-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2023-09-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2023-06-14 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2023-03-16 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2022-12-15 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2022-09-15 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2022-06-09 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2022-03-10 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2021-12-15 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
| 2021-09-09 | $0.25 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — upside vs downside from this company's own quarters
Computed 2026-10-05 02:02A +1σ run of quarters pays -276%; a −1σ run costs 100%. Ratio -2.8:1 (μ 18.5%, σ 45.4% , 16 pairs).
Older method (repeat-worst-quarter): 1.8 : 1
| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($92.81) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +49% | 17.3% | $260.66 | +181% |
| Base — stabilizes | +32% | 15.0% | $143.06 | +54% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +16% | 12.8% | $72.67 | -22% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | +69% | -9.2% | $0.00 | -100% |
| Upside — a +1σ run of quarters (v2) | +50% | -9.6% | $-163.36 | -276% |
| Stress — a −1σ run of quarters (v2) | -27% | -9.2% | $0.00 | -100% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-09-03 01:34The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.
Claude Reading
The raw numbers tell a discontinuity story that the models are papering over. Quarterly revenue jumped from ~$1.9-2.0B in the four quarters through Q3 2025 to $2.97B in Q1 2026 and $3.32B in Q2 2026 — that's not organic acceleration, that's an acquisition or reconsolidation (almost certainly the Worldpay deal closing, paired with the earlier Issuer Solutions divestiture that gutted 2025 quarterly comps). The -$1.80B net loss in Q1 2026 is consistent with deal-related writedowns/purchase accounting. So the "revenue_cagr: -10.7%" and "recent_revenue_yoy: -23.8%" are structurally misleading — you're comparing a post-divestiture stub to a pre-divestiture full company. Any model leaning on those CAGRs (Market Forces calling GPN "shrinking," momentum signals) is anchored to a corporate-action artifact, not a business trend.
The synthesis "fair value $270 → adjusted $197 vs $92.81" is where I part ways hard. That gap is too clean and too large for a mature payments processor generating $2.04B FCF on a $24.6B market cap (≈8.3% FCF yield) — a genuinely respectable but not screaming number given $21.5B of debt against $8.3B cash, so EV/FCF is closer to ~18x. ROIC of 3.8% and ROE of 5.9% are the tell: this business is earning below its cost of capital post-Worldpay, and a DCF that spits out $270 is almost certainly extrapolating pre-deal margins onto a now-larger, more-levered, lower-return entity. P/B of 0.94 isn't a bargain when ROE is 5.9% — it's the market correctly pricing sub-cost-of-capital returns. The "53% discount to intrinsic" narrative is the classic fallen-angel trap: cheap on trailing multiples, expensive on returns-on-incremental-capital.
The bear case from Market Forces is directionally right but sloppily argued. GPN isn't "shrinking" — it's reshuffling. The real problem is competitive: Stripe/Adyen/Block are compounding volumes at 20%+ while GPN's underlying merchant business grows mid-single-digits at best, and the Worldpay reunion is a defensive scale play, not an offensive one. Gross margin of 72.6% looks great but operating margin of 22.8% and net margin of 18.2% (annual) versus Adyen's ~50% EBITDA margins tells you where the pricing power actually sits. Insider activity is neutral-to-mildly-negative — the "net insider buying" tag is generous given most of the recent prints are F-InKind (tax withholding on vests) and option exercises, not open-market conviction buys. The A-Awards on 2026-05-01 are grants, not purchases.
I dissent from the "fair value" synthesis and from the $197 anchor. My read: GPN is roughly fairly valued to modestly undervalued in the $85-$105 range. At 8x forward EBITDA on a pro-forma ~$4.5-5B EBITDA base post-Worldpay, EV of ~$36-40B implies equity of $15-19B after net debt — actually *below* current market cap, which suggests the market is already giving credit for synergies. If Worldpay integration delivers the promised $600M+ synergies and ROIC climbs back toward 8-9%, fair value moves to $110-125. If integration follows the TSYS playbook (messy, dilutive, multi-year), $75 is on the table. The contrarian argument against every bull here: payments consolidation via debt-funded mega-deals has a poor track record (FIS/Worldpay 1.0, Fiserv/First Data), and GPN is now betting the company on doing it again. That's not a 53% discount — that's a fair discount for execution risk on a levered rollup. I'd want to see two clean quarters of pro-forma organic growth above 5% and evidence of margin stability before paying up.
GPT Reading
The first thing that jumps out is that the data set is not describing a clean “mature earner”; it is describing a business in the middle of a structural reset, and the annual and quarterly figures do not reconcile into a simple steady-state valuation case. Annual revenue fell from $10.11B in 2024 to $7.71B in 2025, a 23.7% decline, while the latest quarterly pattern is bizarrely lumpy: $1.82B, $1.97B, $2.01B, then $1.91B in late 2025, followed by $2.97B and $3.32B in the first half of 2026. Net income is even noisier, with a massive -$1.80B loss in 1Q26 and only $13M of profit in 2Q26 on $3.32B of revenue, a margin of 0.4%. That makes the headline P/E of 16x and net margin of 18.2% on the 2025 annuals look backward-looking to the point of being misleading. If I annualize the first half of 2026 mechanically, I get roughly $6.29B of revenue and a loss of about $1.79B, which is obviously distorted by whatever hit 1Q26, but it underlines the central point: the current earnings base is not stable enough to support a complacent “cheap compounder” thesis.
Cash generation is the reason the stock is not a full-blown avoid. In 2025, operating cash flow was $2.66B and free cash flow was $2.04B, which means the shares trade at about a 12x FCF multiple on a $24.56B market cap, or an 8.3% FCF yield. For a payment processor with gross margin of 72.6%, operating margin of 22.8%, and a current ratio of 1.69, that is not expensive. Net debt is also less frightening than the gross debt number suggests: $21.46B debt against $8.34B cash leaves roughly $13.1B net debt, so enterprise value is around $37.7B. On 2025 operating income of $1.75B, leverage is meaningful but not necessarily existential if cash conversion stays intact. The market is paying about 2.9x sales and 11.9x EBITDA, which would be compelling if the revenue line were merely sluggish rather than shrinking and if returns were healthier than a 3.8% ROIC and 5.9% ROE. Those return metrics are poor for a company that should benefit from scale and software-like economics, and they suggest the balance sheet and past capital allocation still weigh heavily on equity value.
That is why I do not buy the model’s “fair value $197” conclusion. To get to anything close to a double from $92.81, I would need confidence that 2025 was a one-time trough, 2026’s first-quarter collapse was a discrete accounting or impairment event with little operating read-through, and the business can re-establish something like $2B+ of annual earnings power. The data here do not show that. What they show is a company whose reported revenue base has stepped down hard, whose recent quarterly profitability has evaporated, and whose valuation optically looks cheap mainly because the denominator is stale. Price-to-book below 1.0x is not a bargain by itself when the business earns subpar returns on that book. In a quality franchise, sub-1x book plus 16x earnings can be a screaming buy; in a business with shrinking sales and erratic earnings, it can just be the market refusing to capitalize old margins.
The best counterargument is straightforward and serious: the stock may already discount too much bad news. Even after the 2025 revenue decline, net income was still $1.40B, only down 11% from $1.57B in 2024, and free cash flow of $2.04B more than covered the dividend and gives management room to delever. The sequential revenue rebound from $1.91B in 4Q25 to $2.97B and then $3.32B in the first two quarters of 2026 suggests the business mix may have changed rather than simply deteriorated, and if the 1Q26 loss was largely a one-off charge, then 2Q26’s near-breakeven earnings may understate normalized profitability during a transition period. On that view, 11.9x EV/EBITDA and an 8%+ FCF yield are too low for a scaled payments asset, especially if the annual 2025 margin structure is closer to reality than the latest quarter implies. I weigh that case less heavily because the burden of proof is on management to show that the post-reset earnings power is real, and right now the freshest reported profits are terrible.
What would change my mind is not a narrative about “synergies” or “digital payments tailwinds,” but a few hard numbers. If the next two quarters show revenue holding above $3.2B while net margin recovers to even 8-10%, that would imply a materially better earnings base than the current tape suggests and make the stock look genuinely cheap below $100. Likewise, if debt comes down meaningfully from $21.46B gross without impairing FCF, the equity can rerate despite low growth. On the other hand, if revenue growth in 2026 is being bought with permanently lower margins, or if another large impairment/restructuring charge appears and annual FCF falls below about $1.5B, then even $92 is not obviously safe. My base case is that this is not the deep-value mispricing the models imply; it is a discounted stock for good reason, with modest upside at best until normalized earnings become visible.
Grok Reading
Global Payments at $92.81 is a cash-flow machine wearing a distressed multiple, but the distress is earned. The 2025 annual print of $7.71B revenue and $1.40B net income looks respectable until you notice it is a $2.4B revenue cliff from 2024’s $10.11B; the -10.7% revenue CAGR and -23.8% recent YoY are not noise, they are the post-divestiture baseline. Against that smaller top line the company still threw off $2.66B operating cash and $2.04B FCF, an 8.3% free-cash-flow yield on the $24.56B market cap that would be attractive for a mature processor if returns on capital were not so poor. ROIC of 3.8% and ROE of 5.9% with $21.46B of debt and only $8.34B cash mean the equity is levered into a low-teens EV/EBITDA of 11.9x and a sub-1.0x P/B of 0.94—cheap only if the cash engine is durable. The two most recent quarters shatter that assumption: Q1 2026 net income of -$1.80B (margin -60.6%) followed by Q2’s $13M on $3.32B revenue (0.4% margin) show either large one-time charges or a sudden collapse in conversion. Either way, the trailing PE of 16x and the model composite pointing to $197 are looking through a rear-view mirror that no longer matches the windshield.
The strongest counter-argument is that the valuation gap is real and the market is simply refusing to pay for a fallen-angel payments franchise that still prints mid-70s gross margins and $2B-plus FCF. A smart opponent cites the $197 signal-adjusted fair value, the 53% discount to DCF, Berkshire’s small holding, and the fact that earnings CAGR of 19% and FCF CAGR of 13% over the longer window still look healthy once divestitures are normalized. They would also note P/B below book and net debt that, while large, is serviceable against $2.66B of operating cash if rates stabilize. I weigh those points but discount them because the same data set shows ROIC stuck at 3.8%, revenue still shrinking into a market that Stripe and Adyen are taking share from, and two consecutive quarters of near-zero or deeply negative profitability that the annual 2025 18% net margin does not explain. Cheap on yesterday’s cash flows is not the same as undervalued when the run-rate has cracked.
I would flip to a clear buy if the next two reported quarters restore operating margins above 15% and sequential revenue growth turns positive without another large non-cash charge, or if management materially deleverages below 0.6x debt-to-equity while holding FCF above $1.8B. A further 10%+ revenue decline or another nine-figure loss would push me to overvalued at any price near $90.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Global Payments generates real cash: FCF of $2.04B in 2025 on OCF/NI of 5.89x and accruals of -3.6% of assets point to high earnings integrity. Buybacks dwarf SBC nearly 10x, shrinking diluted share count from 293.7M in 2021 to 242.0M in 2025 (-4.7% CAGR), so per-share value is being concentrated rather than diluted. Reported margins improved dramatically - gross margin from 55.7% to 72.6% and operating margin from 15.9% to 22.8% - which, taken at face value, suggests operating leverage in a mature payments platform. The concerns are structural and non-trivial. Net debt is $13.13B against $8.34B liquid cash, and Altman Z at 1.02 sits in the distress zone (though the model is calibrated for asset-heavy firms and is less reliable for a fee-based processor). More puzzling is 2025 revenue collapsing to $7.71B from $10.11B in 2024 - a 24% decline that is inconsistent with a healthy mature earner and likely reflects divestiture, reclassification (net vs gross), or a segment sale, but the raw data alone does not explain it. Insider activity is essentially neutral: the sole 'buy' was $99K, and the tape is dominated by F-InKind tax withholdings and A-Awards - not directional signal. This is a durable cash machine with a leveraged balance sheet and an unexplained revenue break that keeps it out of the top tier.
Verify before trusting this (6)
- What drove the $10.11B to $7.71B revenue decline in 2025 - divestiture (Worldpay/Netspend/etc.), reclassification to net revenue presentation, or organic loss?
- Debt maturity schedule and weighted interest rate on the ~$13B net debt position, and covenant headroom
- Whether reported 72.6% GM in 2025 reflects a genuine mix shift or a presentation change following a business disposal
- Cause of the 2022 operating margin collapse to 7.1% - impairment, litigation, or integration charges
- Organic vs acquired growth in the payments merchant/issuer segments
- Customer/vertical concentration and take-rate trends in the core merchant business
The e2e composite FV of $270 and signal-adjusted $197 imply 100%+ upside from $92.81, but that math leans on a DCF of $395 that fails the sanity check for a business that just posted a ~24% revenue drop and carries an Altman-flagged debt load. The EPV floor of $20.70 is the other extreme and also non-credible. Triangulating: a mid-teens FCF-yield payments franchise with mid-single-digit organic growth and heavy leverage deserves something in the $110-130 range, meaning $92.81 offers a modest 15-30% discount rather than a 100% one. What is priced in at $92.81 looks like permanent margin compression from Stripe/Adyen/Square and a failed TSYS integration - a fallen-angel discount. That is not heroic to overcome; stabilizing revenue and holding buybacks would re-rate this. But the leverage means the margin of safety is thinner than the headline gap suggests, so this is 'modestly cheap' not 'deep value.'
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Whether the 2025 revenue drop reflects a divestiture/reclassification or true organic decline
- Organic revenue growth ex-M&A in the last two quarters
- Net leverage ratio and covenant headroom post-buybacks
- Management guidance on margin trajectory and Worldpay-related transaction economics
- Take-rate trends versus Adyen/Stripe in merchant acquiring
The market tape is neutral-to-mildly-positive (VIX 15.2, S&P near highs), and GPN's low beta of 0.78 means the macro backdrop is not the dominant force here. What IS dominant is a stock-specific narrative problem: GPN carries the 'fallen-angel' archetype with moderate intensity and moderate durability, and the tape confirms it - down 23.8% recently versus a -10.7% longer-run CAGR, meaning selling has accelerated. The story the market is pricing is TSYS integration fatigue plus fintech disruption from Stripe, Square, and Adyen eating legacy payment rails. That is a narrative pressing DOWN on the multiple regardless of what the DCF says. Analyst tone and news flow in payments have skewed cautious as the fintech-disruption frame gained traction across the cohort (FIS, FISV/FI, GPN all de-rated). The 10y at 4.79% and a market PE of 25.8 add a mild general headwind, but the specific press on GPN is the narrative, not rates. Cult coefficient is low, so there is no fanbase to defend the tape - no reflexive dip buyers, no story to rally around. That asymmetry (weak narrative defense, active bear frame) is what keeps the pressure one-sided.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Next earnings print - any beat-and-raise or TSYS integration completion language could crack the bear narrative
- Analyst target revisions - watch for the first upgrade or price-target hike after the drawdown; that inflection often marks the sentiment low
- Buyback pace acceleration - management leaning in aggressively at these prices would be a narrative counter-punch
- Stripe/Adyen results and commentary - if they show any deceleration, the 'legacy is dying' story weakens
- Payments cohort tape (FI, FIS) - a group-wide re-rating would lift GPN with it
Electronic payment volumes keep compounding, but the economics are moving up the stack — from authorization and settlement (commoditizing, price-competed) toward embedded software, orchestration and vertical POS. GPN's answer is scale plus own software; the world's answer so far has been to reward the developer-first and vertical-SaaS entrants. Simultaneously the macro is unhelpful: high long rates compress SMB formation and raise the cost of the leverage funding the consolidation, while a slowing services cycle caps volume upside. The realistic shape is a large, cash-generative processor growing volumes with the economy, defending yield, and converting scale into per-share earnings rather than into top-line acceleration.
When we made this prediction on Sep 3, 2026, GPN was $92.13. We expect it to be $120.00 by Mar 2027, and we consider it great value under $82.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Sep 3, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.