Key Takeaways
- Global Payments fell 12% today after Reuters reported that CD&R and GTCR dropped early-stage talks to take it private.
- The drop is about the same size as the stock’s 11% jump on Oct. 30, when the buyout talk came out.
- PayPal lost its own suitors earlier this year and keeps buying back its own stock.
- With earnings expected to keep climbing and a forward P/E far below its five-year average, Global Payments looks cheap on its own.
Global Payments (GPN) sank 12% today after Reuters reported that private equity firms CD&R and GTCR have dropped their pursuit of the payments processor. That’s about the size of the jump the stock took on Oct. 30 on a report of a potential buyout.
PayPal Holdings (PYPL) has been here before: Stripe and Advent International walked away from it earlier this year after a bid that valued PayPal at more than $53 billion, Reuters reported.
A deal this size is hard to finance
The early-stage talks stalled on how hard it is to arrange a take-private this size, according to people familiar with the matter. Lenders are scrutinizing leverage on the biggest buyouts, Reuters added.
PayPal, down 2% today, found a buyer that needs no lender: itself. It bought back $6.0 billion of stock over the twelve months to Sept. 30, and it raised its 2026 non-GAAP EPS guidance to about $5.60 from about $5.38 in its third-quarter release. At about 10x forward earnings, those buybacks go a long way.
TIKR tracks 36 analysts on Global Payments. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Global Payments, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Global Payments’ Analyst Ratings
Global Payments looks cheap on its own
On its own, Global Payments is now a processor focused on merchants, after buying Worldpay from FIS and GTCR and selling its issuer business to FIS. Analysts expect normalized EPS to climb from $12.22 in 2025 to $19.07 in 2028, up more than 50%, as Worldpay folds in:
Yet its forward P/E was 6.5x at the last close, far below its five-year average of 9.2x:
At today’s price, it’s under 6x.
Analysts were getting more positive before the talks ended, too. Barclays, Bernstein, Cantor Fitzgerald and Mizuho all raised their price targets this week, to between $97 and $115, and the consensus target hit $109, its high for the past year:
That’s about 20% above today’s price.
No buyer needed
Here’s where I land: Global Payments doesn’t need a private equity bid to work from here. At these prices, the market is paying for very little of that earnings growth. The catch is that those estimates assume Worldpay comes together smoothly, and a deal that big rarely does. Its fourth-quarter report early next year will show how the integration is going, and Reuters’ sources left the door open to another buyer, too.
So what is Global Payments stock actually worth?
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