Worldline Replaces Its Longtime CEO As the Global Processor’s Shares Plummet

The big French processor Worldline SA announced early Friday longtime chief executive Gilles Grapinet will leave the company effective Sept. 30. The company says the search for a successor will evaluate candidates both inside and outside the company. In the meantime, the board has appointed Marc-Henri Desportes, deputy CEO since 2018 and head of merchant services, to serve as CEO for “an interim period.”

Paris-based Worldline ranks 26^th in volume among payments processors operating in the U.S. market, with $52.5 billion in volume from 25,000 merchants last year, according to rankings by the payments research and consultancy firm TSG. Its biggest markets are in Europe and Asia, with some presence in Latin America.

CEO since 2013, Grapinet leaves as the company’s shares, which have had a troubled record lately, plumbed a new low following Worldline’s third profit warning in the past 12 months. The stock on Friday sank to nearly 7 euros per share, down 92% since its high in July 2021, as investors grew weary of the company’s long struggle to generate growth independent of acquisitions.

“The company is good at acquiring and consolidating, but it has never been good at organic growth,” notes payments consultant Eric Grover, though he adds that “this is true of all the acquisitive processors.” Grapinet, he says, fell victim to that over-reliance on acquisitions. “Somebody has to be accountable,” he adds. Worldline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The next move for Worldline, some observers argue, is likely to be an effort to seek a major investment from private equity. “Worldline has failed to realize material synergies across its portfolio of related issuer-processing, merchant-acquiring and processing, and payment network assets,” notes Grover. “With its market capitalization now languishing under 2 billion euros, private equity firms’ interest has to be piqued.”

A recent example of such a large-scale deal is FIS Inc.’s sale last year to Chicago-based private-equity player GTCR of a 55% stake in the big Worldpay payments-processing platform. FIS had paid $43 billion in 2019 to acquire Worldpay.

And Worldline itself has made large-scale deals with management firms in recent years. Early in 2022, it negotiated an arrangement to sell its point-of-sale terminal line, which consisted chiefly of Ingenico, to Apollo Global Management for $2.6 billion.