Adyen cuts profit guidance by €49m as shares lose €3.8bn
Adyen shares fell 12.65% intraday after the payments group cut its 2026 EBITDA margin to 50% and dropped its 2028 target of above 55%. The market is pricing the withdrawn target, and the 2027 outlook on 11 February will help show which reading is right.
Adyen's margin cut is worth only about €49m of annual profit, yet its shares fell 12.65% intraday on 28 October. They traded at €824.60 at 3:46 pm Amsterdam time, from a €944.00 close. That removed about €3.8bn of value from a payments group that had just beaten forecasts.
Third quarter net revenue was €738.1m, up 23%, against a company compiled consensus of €730.3m, Reuters reported. Processed volume reached €451.1bn against an estimate of €435.6bn. Other concerns drove the sell-off. Degroof Petercam called it "clearly a nasty surprise", coming one quarter after guidance had been updated for two acquisitions.
The 2026 cut is small. Adyen now expects an EBITDA margin of 50% for the year. It says: "To retain flexibility, we are discontinuing our medium-term EBITDA objective." That objective was the 2028 target. The 13 August shareholder letter had said: "We continue to expect to grow EBITDA margins above 55% by 2028." It lasted 76 days. Dropping a target that recent hurts the credibility of the next one.
The market sold the lost 2028 target and the slower growth underneath it. The cut has a small cost in 2026 but larger implications for the following years. The evidence for "temporary" is thinner than management's case.
What the margin cut costs
Adyen's 2025 margin was 52.7%: €1,245.7m of EBITDA on €2,364.2m of net revenue. In August it guided to a 2026 margin one point lower, so about 51.7%. Revenue growth of 21% to 23% at constant currency and capital spending of 7% of net revenue are unchanged. Only the margin and the 2028 objective moved.
Growth of 22% on last year's €2,364m gives about €2,884m of net revenue for 2026. A cut from 51.7% to 50% is 1.7 points, or about €49m of EBITDA. The €3.78bn lost at the intraday price is roughly 77 times that annual profit. The loss reprices a margin outlook that no longer has a target.
A 50% year needs a second half at about 50.6%. The first half ran at 49.2%, from €641.5m of EBITDA on €1,302.9m of net revenue. That is about 4.6 points below the 55.2% of the second half of 2025 (€702.1m on €1,270.7m). It is also about 3.1 points below the 53.7% that the August guide implied.
Adyen's EBITDA margin was 55.2 percent in the second half of 2025 and 49.2 percent in the first half of 2026. Holding the full year at 50 percent implies about 50.6 percent in the second half of 2026, against about 53.7 percent had the August guide of one point below the 2025 margin of 52.7 percent held.
View data
| Period | EBITDA margin, percent of net revenue |
|---|---|
| H2 2025 actual | 55.2 |
| H1 2026 actual | 49.2 |
| H2 2026 implied by 50 percent guide | 50.6 |
| H2 2026 implied by August guide (51.7 percent) | 53.7 |
Staff and acquisition costs
The reset sits in the second half, and the spending is a run rate. Adyen ended the quarter with 5,596 full time staff, up from 4,771 at the end of 2025. That is 825 more people in nine months, a rise of 17%. The quarter brought 177 underlying hires and 399 people from the Talon.One and Orb acquisitions. It now targets 1,000 to 1,100 net new staff for 2026 including those deals. The underlying target is still 550 to 650. Pay increasingly emphasises equity based incentives.
Management says it chose the spending increase and sees no weakness in the business. Co-CEO Ingo Uytdehaage said on the results call that the 2028 target predated Orb and Talon.One. He added: "It would be relatively easy to get to the 55%, but that would be at a risk of longer-term growth." Interim CFO Hwa Tsao said "I don't think that there's been a structural change" in the cost of growth.
The interim CFO also gave the number that matters. One time costs run to about a point of margin in 2026. Separately, she said some acquisition related charges are not expected to recur in 2027. Adyen does not back stock based pay out of EBITDA, so the margin carries the full cost of equity pay. Strip about a point of one time costs and the 2026 margin is about 51%, against 52.7% in 2025. The CFO called people the largest component of the rest and equity pay a material contributor.
Slower growth and lower revenue per euro
The rival reading is weaker unit economics, and the third quarter numbers lean its way. The two acquisitions added about 2 points to constant currency growth, so organic growth was about 20%, against 23% a year earlier. The acquired revenue is about €12m. The acquisitions supplied about 2 of the 22 points of growth.
Adyen earns less per euro processed. It took 16.4 basis points of net revenue on volume in the third quarter, down 5% from 17.2 a year ago. Excluding the acquired revenue, which carries no payment volume, it is 16.1 basis points, down almost 7%. The Business Update points to tiered pricing, which rewards customers for bringing more volume. The co-CEO said a few hyperscaler and cloud customers are about 10% of volume. Digital revenue grew 16% on volume up 28%. Platforms grew 46% and Unified Commerce 29%.
The case for management is that a company that could reach 55% "relatively easily" is choosing growth, with €4.9bn of cash and revenue guidance intact. The cost is already visible, at €49m a year and about 77 times that in lost value. The payoff is not, with organic growth near 20% and revenue per euro processed falling. Orb and Talon.One will be reported on a combined basis with qualitative markers. The consolidated margin is the only clean test.
What the next outlook will show
At €825 a holder buys about 15 times 2026 EBITDA by our estimate. That subtracts about €4.6bn of Adyen's own cash, net of the two deals. The holder is betting on margin expansion from 50%. The deals signal that Adyen is building billing and loyalty products to sell into its base.
Adyen reports second half results on 11 February 2027, the first with Niclas Neglen as chief financial officer, due to start on 1 February. It has promised a revenue guide and some colour on EBITDA and capex for 2027, not a margin target. EBITDA colour pointing to about 51% would read as one time items falling away. Colour at or below 50% would show that hiring and equity pay are the new cost base. The market first interpreted the withdrawn 2028 target that way.