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Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) reported first-quarter 2026 results that exceeded management expectations, citing resilient consumer spending, early benefits from its Worldpay acquisition, and continued momentum for its Genius commerce platform.
Chief Executive Officer Cameron Bready said the quarter reflected strong financial and operating performance and reinforced management’s confidence in the business trajectory following the January closing of the Worldpay acquisition and the Issuer Solutions transaction.
On a normalized basis, Global Payments said adjusted net revenue grew approximately 5.5%, or about 4.5% on a constant-currency basis. Bready attributed the performance to healthy underlying consumer spending, partially offset by lower Middle East airline volumes and slightly lower IRS payment volumes tied to tax reforms under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Chief Financial Officer Josh Whipple said adjusted net revenue was $2.86 billion in the quarter. He noted currency exchange rates provided a roughly 100-basis-point tailwind, about 50 basis points below the outlook shared in February.
The company posted an adjusted operating margin of 39.9%, reflecting approximately 110 basis points of normalized year-over-year margin expansion, excluding dispositions. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.96, up 10% on both a reported and constant-currency basis. On a normalized basis, adjusted EPS was $2.99, up 11%.
Global Payments generated adjusted free cash flow of $544 million, representing nearly 70% conversion of adjusted net income to adjusted free cash flow. Whipple said the level aligns with the company’s typical first-quarter pattern, when cash conversion is generally lowest early in the year and improves seasonally.
The company invested $261 million in capital expenditures during the quarter. Net leverage was 3.5 times at quarter-end, in line with expectations.
Whipple said Global Payments issued $1 billion of senior notes during the quarter to refinance a significant portion of debt maturing in March. After the issuance, approximately 95% of the company’s indebtedness was fixed at a weighted average cost of debt of 4%.
Management emphasized continued capital returns to shareholders. Bready said Global Payments returned more than $600 million to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and share repurchases. Whipple said the total was nearly $620 million year to date, including a $550 million accelerated share repurchase program that retired approximately 7.3 million shares.
Bready also announced another accelerated share repurchase program to immediately repurchase $500 million of stock. Following that program, the company expects to resume open-market repurchases during the second quarter.
Whipple said Global Payments remains committed to returning more than $2 billion to shareholders in 2026 and approximately $7.5 billion over the 2025 through 2027 period, while preserving investment-grade credit ratings and targeting 3.0-times net leverage by the end of 2027.
Bready said integration work following the Worldpay acquisition is off to a strong start, with Global Payments taking a “best of both” approach across talent, products and technology. He said the combined scale is already creating commercial opportunities that neither company could have achieved independently.
Worldpay’s U.S. direct sales force began selling Genius shortly after the close, addressing what Bready described as a long-standing product gap. He also cited early interest from Worldpay enterprise restaurant clients, including Subway, which selected Global Payments’ Genius kitchen management software for deployment across approximately 2,500 locations.
Management said Worldpay’s business development team signed two new partners during the quarter motivated by access to Genius. Global Payments also moved quickly to integrate Worldpay’s e-commerce solution into its SMB distribution channels. Bready said new sales increased 25% sequentially and more than doubled year over year.
Whipple said the company is laying the groundwork in 2026 for the $200 million in revenue synergies committed from the transaction. He added that larger growth contributions are expected to begin in 2027 and build more meaningfully in 2028, when the company expects to realize approximately $100 million in revenue synergies and exit the year at a $200 million run rate.
Global Payments highlighted continued growth for Genius. Bready said Genius bookings increased more than 25% sequentially and nearly doubled year over year. He also said yields from new clients increased more than 30% year over year, reflecting greater perceived value in the platform’s capabilities.
Whipple said new Genius locations were about 25% higher than the prior-year quarter, and the platform’s payment attach rate improved more than 20%. He added that sales force changes and Genius’ ease of implementation reduced time to go live by more than 50% for small-business clients in the quarter.
During the question-and-answer session, Bready attributed higher Genius yields to broader functionality, greater cross-selling of value-added services, and improved payment attachment through dealer channels. Chief Operating Officer Bob Cortopassi said the company’s sales transformation—improved talent, training and tools—has helped increase deal values.
Executives also pointed to expanded distribution. Bready said Global Payments launched “Genius Days” to accelerate adoption with financial institution partners through hands-on demonstrations. Extending Genius into Worldpay’s financial institution partner channel remains a priority, with initial contributions expected in 2027.
Global Payments cited customer wins across channels and geographies, including Abercrombie & Fitch in the U.S., ALDI Süd across North America and EMEA, Morrisons in the U.K., CKE Restaurants for Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. in the U.S., and KFC and Pizza Hut in Asia Pacific.
Global Payments reaffirmed its full-year 2026 outlook for adjusted net revenue growth, adjusted operating margin expansion and adjusted EPS. Whipple said the company expects normalized constant-currency adjusted net revenue growth of approximately 5% and adjusted EPS of $13.80 to $14.00.
For the second quarter, Whipple said the potential impact from the Middle East conflict and softer tax payment volumes could be up to a 100-basis-point headwind to adjusted net revenue growth. Currency is expected to be roughly neutral in the second quarter. For the full year, the company now expects currency exchange rates to be less than a 50-basis-point tailwind to reported net revenue growth, reflecting recent U.S. dollar strength.
Management also reaffirmed expectations for normalized adjusted operating margin expansion of approximately 150 basis points for 2026, driven by operating efficiencies from its transformation program and cost savings from the Worldpay integration, particularly in the second half of the year.
Bready said the company expects the impact of the Middle East conflict to be “modest and transitory,” and noted that broader geographic, category and merchant-size diversification supports the durability of the business model.
Executives also discussed artificial intelligence as an area of investment across agentic commerce, product capabilities and internal productivity. Bready said Global Payments is working with enterprise merchants on Google’s UCP protocol, has a production-ready payments model context protocol, and is using Ravelin, its AI-native fraud prevention platform, to support agentic risk capabilities.
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