Shift4 Embraces M&A As Its Finaro Deal Finally Closes And More Stadium Business Beckons

The payments business may be shying away from the mergers-and-acquisitions market for the time being, but that’s not a strategy Shift4 Payment Inc.’s boss is interested in imitating. “Now, there’s a general distaste for acquisitions. That’s not a mistake we’re going to make,” declared Shift4 chief executive Jared Isaacman early Wednesday during a conference call to present his company’s third-quarter results.

The acquisitive processor in recent weeks has announced deals that include a $100-million pickup of Appetize Technologies Inc. and has closed, after a long wait, on its key deal for Finaro, a European processor it agreed more than 20 months ago to buy for $525 million. That acquisition, Shift4 has said, was held up by regulatory scrutiny.

The long wait has frustrated Shift4’s top brass, but now, the addition of Finaro is expected to generate $15 billion in processing volume for the company next year, according to a forecast by call participant Taylor Lauber, Shift4’s president and chief strategy officer. “We finally completed the long-awaited Finaro deal,” said Isaacman. “We’re just getting started. This is really what we’ve been waiting for.”

Meanwhile, Appetize’s stadium business—which includes major venues such as major-league baseball’s Fenway Park in Boston and Busch Stadium in St. Louis—will add significantly to Shift4’s already growing trade in processing for that market, Isaacman and Lauber said. Transactions at the stadiums will include parking as well as ticketing and concessions.

At the same time, the company’s restaurant business continues to expand, propelled in large part by Shift4’s SkyTab point-of-sale technology, Isaacman said. Shift4 deployed more than 8,250 SkyTab installations during the quarter, he said, bringing the total to 23,000 “since coming out of beta just over a year ago, he said. “We added thousands of new restaurants this quarter,” he added.

Next up for the technology will be overseas deployments. “All systems are go for deploying SkyTab in Europe,” Lauber told the analysts. Indeed, Shift4’s goal next year, Isaacman said, is to reach 10,000 hotels and restaurants in Europe and Canada. Meanwhile, the company is “less than a few weeks” away from announcing its first European stadium deal, Isaacman said.

For the quarter, Shif4 processed $27.9 billion in end-to-end payment volume, up 35% from the same period last year. This is volume the company processes entirely itself on behalf of merchants rather than relaying to other processors. Gross revenue totaled $675.4 million, a 23% increase, while net income was virtually static at $46.5 million compared to last year’s third-quarter total of $46.4 million.