[scuttlebit] yet another Shift4 take
MBI and I recorded an episode of Never Sell recently (The Big Tech Capex Debate, Amazon Retail, Align’s Pricing Challenge) (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, RSS feed)
h/t @taobanker
I’ll keep this brief as nothing material has changed since my March ‘25 update and a number of adherents of the growing Shift4 cult have recently tweeted/blogged quarterly commentary that I broadly endorse.
Despite Shift4 performing more or less as expected, its stock has lost more than 30% of its value ytd, its latest leg down coming on the heels of Fiserv’s disastrous 3q earnings report last month. I think partly what’s happening is that Shift4, having been built through levered M&A, is being tossed in with other boomer merchant acquirers, who have for decades struggled to modernize their tech stacks and consolidate their tangle of disparate platforms. The market prefers clean, organic stories like Adyen and Toast, whose products make Shift4’s look, it’s fair to say, rather musty and kludgy. Investors look at Shift4 and think “this is Global Payments in five years”.